Rachel Cusk’s Cruel Misandry

The woman who many years ago introduced me to Rachel Cusk had a particular Cuskian quirk that I remember well. We were both mothers of toddlers at the time, and my friend claimed that her 2-year-old son preferred her to be wearing an apron. She said it made him happy, and that you could tell he liked her better when she was wearing it. This seemed suspect to me—your 2-year-old has no interest in your outfit—and it also seemed mean-spirited. My friend’s implication was that her son recognized that she was tied down and subservient to him and to her domestic role when she was wearing the apron. She thought he was acting on an imperative to keep women down so inherent to maleness that it could manifest itself even in a 2-year-old. The idea wouldn’t be out of place in a Rachel Cusk novel; the author has described sex as an “elemental difference” that is “not violent, but looks like it,” and that creates a victimhood in women, a status bound up with the production of children. I never saw any evidence that my friend’s child preferred the apron. But I did think my friend preferred the fantasy; her abhorrence of sexism sometimes seemed to come full circle and become a sort of enjoyment.