Haven't you heard about the British women who carried their fishermen husbands out to their boats on their backs - and carried them back in again?

Oh terrible! How repressed those women must have been! What a big lot of misogynists those fishermen were!

But - there was a damn good reason, especially from the women's viewpoint. The weather was freezing - North Sea Winter style weather - and the men needed to fish to feed them all. Getting the man DRY into the boat was a damn good idea, as far as everybody was concerned - he would then stay alive in the driving freezing wind, instead of being frozen to death by the wind chill factor... and after being out several hours out in that weather fishing and rowing out and back (heavy work definitely), the wife considered that it was a damn good idea to get her exhausted man back home safely to go out again tomorrow - after all, she had been in the dry warm house for the last few hours and was relatively rested, and she only got cold and wet for a few minutes...

It's so easy to misunderstand motives through ignorance...

Robin