A few days ago I did my usual beach walk. It was just so much harder than usual because it was high tide. I’d forgotten to check the tide charts and moon phases before heading out. Few sea beans to be found. After a good hour I trudged back to the restaurant we routinely park at, the place above, and ordered a cold bottle of soda and a few glasses of ice water.
The waitress who is a local Tico we know, served my drinks no problem, watching me guzzle the ice water hard. I’d stupidly not filled or packed my beach bottle. She gave me two menus, knowing that my husband would be joining me shortly.
After a few minutes I called her back for more ice water and told her I wanted to order an appetizer and a lunch item. She says to me, “You need to wait until your husband gets back so he can approve your order.” I looked at her like she was touched in the head, even as I know that many Ticos hold very sexist patriarchal views. But this was the first time I’d run across one at a restaurant that solely caters to Gringos. I wanted to be rude, to say, “Look! I don’t care about that! Just bring me my pollo tacos and cheese stuffed jalapenos!”
A few minutes later I motioned another server over to the table, Enrique, someone else I knew, and ordered my food. No man hand holding needed. No man’s opinion needed. Jim and I do not always agree on food, whenever we go to KFC he tries to get me to order the “Mita y Mita” with him. It’s a dinner with two pieces of dark meat and sides, two different orders of this. He does this even knowing I hate dark meat, and never want a full KFC meal. It’s just too much food for me at lunch. Unlike many of the self described good patriarchs he accepts my disagreement with him in good humor.
Costa Rica is almost entirely Catholic, and this subservience to the ideas of men first, and males controlling everything is literally everywhere here. When I first arrived I was unpleasantly surprised by the men that would not shake your hand or look you in the eyes. I came from an area of the United States populated by a professional population that pumped your hand at first meeting, looked you in the eyes and greeted you. Having men ducking my handshake was disconcerting. Now I know not to offer it.
Domestic violence is rather high here, like in many other conservative areas of the world with the idea that men hold all the power and control. Where women are not respected you see these types of behaviors along with financial abuse, extreme control and denial of needs. Guys who think nothing of blowing their entire paychecks at the bar while the wife and kids don’t eat, and don’t get a say so in the family finances.
It used to be like this almost entirely in the United States in the not too distant past, but now this is only happening in the pockets of fundamentalist Christianity that are hold outs. Fewer and farther between. But I’m old, so I remember how many times my own father was called by my grandmother to go out and find what bar my grandfather was at, and extract him and his paycheck. My grandmother knew her large brood of kids at home would get nothing to eat that week if he wasn’t found before he blew it all, just as she knew she had no right to insist on receiving his check. Strictly at the mercy of my grandfather’s whims and alcoholism. Add her Catholic guilt in and you had a perfect woman-blaming bouillabaisse of no
Before you say that this stuff hasn’t happened in the U.S. since the days of the flapper and the stock market crash of 1929 let me disabuse you of that notion. This happened back in the 1960s. Would you be shocked to also learn that women weren’t allowed their own bank accounts or credit cards back then unless some man deemed it so.
When you limit divorce, demonize birth control, take rights of bodily autonomy away from women you get these kinds of abuses. As much as I hated that waitress’s notion of gender roles and the way women are treated here I have to realize it’s a deep part of their culture. Even as I find their culture backwards on things like this, it is their culture and I cannot change it. I just have to worry about this same regressive thinking in the U.S.
I’m afraid that as Christian Nationalism takes deeper root in the United States that we will end up with something worse than not being able to order lunch. We could well end up as a society with no availability to birth control, where forced birth is the rule. A place where there is no protection against financial or physical abuse, spiritual abuse or verbal abuse. That’s not a place that either glorifies God or speaks to the basic freedoms guaranteed all of us regardless of gender in the U.S. Constitution.
My young female server would serve me that ice water and an ice cold Coca Cero, but not those tacos or peppers. I now know the next time I walk the beach I have to sit in someone else’s section because that take is a dangerous one for all of us.