Before I was married, I didn’t consider my failure to manage even basic hand tools a feminist inadequacy. I thought it had more to do with being Jewish. The Jews I knew growing up didn’t do ’do-it-yourself.’ When my father needed to hammer something he generally used his shoe, and the only real tool he owned was a pair of needle-nose pliers.

Waldman uses self-deprecating humor to examine how people explain (and excuse) their perceived shortcomings through identity narratives. She contrasts a possible “feminist inadequacy” (the stereotype that women are less handy with tools) with a culturally specific explanation rooted in her Jewish upbringing, where DIY competence was not modeled or valued in the same way. The anecdote about her father hammering with a shoe underscores how family habits become inherited assumptions about what is “normal.” The quote also gently satirizes essentialist thinking: she recognizes how easily personal skill gaps get mapped onto gender or ethnicity, even when the real causes may be socialization, class, or household culture.