"Why should I learn to cook?"

So, talking to a dude in my class today, it became apparent that he can't cook anything. I mean, I sort of assume that he knows how to pour cereal into a bowl and toast a slice of bread, but frankly I'm not certain of that, since I got the impression that he'd be working from first principles and reverse engineering if he had to make a sandwich. (I mean, he definitely said that his Mum makes his lunch for him, so I'm going to go ahead and assume the worst here).

We all expressed some disbelief that you could consider yourself a functional adult, in your final year of a postgraduate degree, but also be in a position to starve to death of left alone for a fortnight in a kitchen containing only uncooked rice and raw meat, for instance. It turns out that he's not worried because his Mum will continue to look after him until he gets married, then his wife will. He's sure any potential fiancee whose cooking isn't up to scratch will be trained by his Mum, and notes that her cooking is great, since he can tell her what he wants, and she'll make whatever it is.

We were all a bit gobsmacked, because frankly, last time I came across opinions like that being openly expressed was an episode of Mad Men, and even then, surely there's the metatextual implication that that's less than ideal. When we were all like "what if you have kids but then your mum and wife and so on are all killed in a bus-crash or miscellaneous tragedy?" but no worries, because there is apparently no conceivable scenario in which there would not be some sister-in-law or female cousin or aunt on whom to depend for basic sustenance and complete childcare services. History did not relate what these ladies would think about suddenly having to do all the chores and kid-raising for all their surviving male relatives whilst also mourning for all the female relatives, but apparently they're likely to be unfazed? Presumably they'll be too busy making sandwiches and bathing distant cousins to have a moment to worry their pretty little heads about that sort of thing?

I guess making fun of the breathtaking sexism here is so easy and so obvious that it counts as a cheap shot, a cheap shot at a large fish in a small barrel, because, of course, and I say this as a woman and also as any other adult: fuck that noise. I mean, it's just so outrageous that there's really no point trying to argue against it; anyone reading this can either already see what's crazy about this "women's place is in the kitchen, men's place is at the dinner table waiting for his damn sandwich" approach, or else there's something so determinedly blinkered that nothing I'm going to say will change their mind. It's a bit like someone who just genuinely believes that eating green vegetables is wrong. You can show them all the evidence you like, you can offer all the salads you can think of, dude's still going to be like "No. I know what I know and the Lord scorns broccoli, yea and peas also" or whatever. There's none so blind as them that will not see and so on. Unless perhaps it's those who so persistenly refuse to see that in the end some woman, tired of all their shit, stabs them in the eye with a fork. I mean, they'd be even blinder then, but you just know they'd be all "See? Too flightly even to cope with the rigours of my intellectual superiority!" or whatever.

Anyway, I appeased my feelings by explaining that I didn't think that was likely to work out well in the long term, declaring & clarifying that I would never ever marry him (he pretended he was ok with this, or even relieved, but he's not fooling anyone), and proofreading his essay with a red pen and really going to town on his sentence structure. You can be as convinced as you like that a woman's place is in the home, but it's got to be hard to maintain your equanimity in the face of that many altered commas and crossed out instances of suprlus appearances of the word "whereas".

The thing that's left, then, is this: why would you do that to yourself? If we ignore the sexism, how do you get past the creepy Freudian-ness of "it'll be hard for my wife to live up to and compete with my mother"? That's the most Oedipal thing I reckon I've ever heard an actual person say.

Plus: cooking is often quite pleasant, I personally enjoy it a bunch (and not because of the flutterings of my ovaries, I'm pretty sure). I mean, you get to make something, and you can make it as functional or as artistic as you like, playing about with the aesthetic appeal to like a good 4 to 5 of the senses (although I grant you that I rarely pay that much attention to the way a cake sounds, the crunch of salad or crust or creme brulee is definitely a pan-sensory wossname), and then you get to eat it! Or share it with other people who trade you friendship for cookies, if necessary! It makes you happy and it makes them happy! You get to do something enjoyable which makes other people happy, and stops you being hungry! I mean, what's not to enjoy?

It seems to me to be equivalent to, like, deciding that music is redheads' work, and that therefore I would listen to the radio or CDs, but never buy them myself, and never ever sing along or hum or play an instrument of any kind. It just sounds like a weirdly barren way to live (and I mean barren in the desert-with-tumbleweeds sense, not the what-would-Gillard-know-about-families-she's-deliberately-barren-and-also-I'm-an-asshat sense).

Even leaving that aside, since I know that baking teacakes isn't everyone's cup of tea, doesn't it seem weird to you to deliberately avoid gaining an entire genre of life skill? What if something unexpected happens and you have to fend for yourself? (I asked him this, and he said that was what McDonald's was for. I kind of meant a larger scale emergency as well, but it didn't seem worth the effort to clarify). I mean, I have an NRMA membership, but I still made damn sure I know how to change a tyre, and check and change the oil levels, and jump-start a flat-battery and so on. Because who wants to be unable to do things for yourself, forced to rely on the convenience and amenability of other people for everything?

Plus, you never know what life will throw at you! What if there's some kind of apocalypse? You'll need to know how to start a fire, how to shoot a bow and arrow, and how to skin a rabbit! You never know when you'll be transported back in time and a smattering of latin will come in useful. You might unexpectedly need to ride a horse, or play tennis, or ski, or swim, or give first aid, or call for help in Morse code, or ride pillion on a motorcycle, or tell a German that you have a headache and also that that is your hamburger! You might need to hire a car and find that only manual ones are available, or you might ever talk to a person who has a different cultural background to yourself, so you could need to know what red packets are, or the difference between haram and halal, or which seat to sit in on a train in Japan! I'm not claiming to know all the things I want to know, or might ever need to know, but at least I'm sort of slightly prepared for some very specific emergencies, and I like to think that I use my internet procrastination time wisely, because I never know when I might need to unexpectedly infiltrate some kind of cult, and knowing that Jehovah's Witnesses don't believe in blood transfusions and Pentecostal Christians do believe in glossolalia might just save me from discovery.

To be honest, this is one of the things that I'm really doing Medicine for. It's not because I have a burning desire to know which electrolytes are filtered by which kidney tubule, it's so if I'm ever on a plane and someone says "Oh my god she's giving birth! Is there a doctor on board?" I can help, or if I'm at the mall and some kid gets shot, I know what to do. Embarrassingly, this is also one of the main reasons I don't have any tattoos; what if I become a spy, or a fugitive from justice/injustice? I need to be able to disguise any potentially identifying marks!

This may sound stupid, but I assure you, after talking for 45 minutes to someone who's condescending to you about how their future wife will look after them and explaining how doing things is for suckers, the possibility that I might have to go on the run to escape a charge of aggravated assault occasioning grievous bodily harm and/or manslaughter (no jury in the country would call it murder, surely) didn't seem at all implausible.