What authority did being a man teach us we had over women—and when did any woman agree to give it to us?

We talk about what men are supposed to be for women all the time. Protector. Provider. Leader. Head of the household. Less often do we ask what authority those words quietly taught us to believe came with the assignment.

That distinction matters because responsibility and authority are not the same thing. A man can believe he is responsible for a woman and gradually begin treating her choices, movement, relationships, body, disagreement, or independence as matters over which he has jurisdiction. Control does not always introduce itself as control. Sometimes it arrives already dressed as duty.

The harder question is not simply whether men have exercised authority over women. We know that history. The question is how much of that authority became ordinary enough that nobody remembers women consenting to it in the first place.