A few days ago, a woman who showed flashes of craftsmanship caused irritation with screw technology in a hardware store in Velden, Lower Bavaria. What she wanted was a 20mm bit that she wanted to use to remove various screws from old wooden slats. She showed a photo to illustrate this. Nevertheless, the case raised questions for the seller: Are these 25 mm Torx? “But I need a 20 bit,” said the woman, “that’s four millimeters thick.”
Now another customer intervened. He had just bought screws, he said, “and thirty.” The woman knew immediately: “They’re six millimeters in diameter!” There was a contradiction: “Yes, absolutely not!”, said the man, put his screws on the table and asked the woman to please measure their size with the meter stick. She kindly complied with the request. “Now what?” asked the man. “Yes, that’s six millimeters.” “Never,” he countered, “that can’t be the case.” “Yes, then just measure it yourself,” the woman asked him. When he tested it, it was also six millimeters. “Hmmm,” the man muttered, “then the meter stick won’t be right.” The opponent replied with a smile: “It’s good that you don’t believe a woman in the hardware store.”
This event brings to mind the scene in Robert Seethaler’s novel “The Tobacconist” in which Sigmund Freud explains to the boy Franz that “even the best of us fall apart” on the cliffs of femininity. The recently opened state exhibition in Freising about early medieval Bavaria confirms this theory quite impressively. Liutpirc, the wife of the Bavarian Duke Tassilo, had already heartily signaled to the powerful Franks in the 8th century that they had better not mess with her. She provoked the vain men to the point of blood.
A bit of Liutpirc’s courage recently floated through the Velden hardware store, where it became clear that the struggle between the sexes, even when it comes to screw issues, is as complicated as ever. Sometimes this fight even goes beyond the limits of reason. The Freising cultural representative just stayed away from the opening of the state exhibition because only old white men talked there and because she found it all hilarious. The situation is threatening. Liutpirc help!