I was having lunch with two friends who are second generation American feminists in their sixties.

“So what is your new car like?” one asked.

“Oh, I don’t know yet,” I said. “I let N choose it, negotiate for it, test drive it, etc. It will be a total surprise for me.”

The two friends looked at me like I was deranged.

“I’d never let anybody choose MY CAR,” one said emphatically.

“I’d never let A MAN choose anything for me,” the other one agreed.

“This is my huge feminist victory, ladies,” I explained.

The feminists were puzzled.

“How do you mean?” they asked.

“You see,” I said, “we all want the same thing, equal rights and responsibilities, right? It’s just that you, the American feminists, and we, the Soviet feminists, are moving towards this goal from opposite directions. You are moving towards more responsibility and control, while we move towards less. It is an enormous victory over myself to accept that I don’t have to control everything 24 damn hours of every damn day. I can have a partner who has his own separate area of responsibility while I have mine.”

A colleague says cheerfully, “Yesterday, we decided to have a family night and watch a Holocaust movie. So we got together, made some popcorn, invited a few neighbors, got drinks. . . Then, of course, it turned out that Netflix didn’t have the Holocaust movie I wanted. But it’s OK, we soon found another Holocaust movie.”

“I have to say,” I tell her. “You have the weirdest way of enjoying yourself, what’s with watching Holocaust movies for fun and all.”

“But the Holocaust is my area of specialization!” the colleague says.