Now and then I have imagined what would happen if women in this country were to stop caring for men. If for one month they said, ‘We don’t care’.

What would happen if they said, ‘Take care of yourselves, your dogs, your houses, your sexual needs, your offices, your hospitals, your children, all your needs that you have burdened us with for so long’?

Can you imagine that? If they were to care only for each other; not for us, or for white men, and not for white women?

How would we react? I think at first there would be laughter. Bafflement would follow. If they still did not come back to their caring roles, anger would come next, and then bribery.

And we would be furious. How can they? Who do they think they are?

But then we would surely make promises of better pay. Maybe, for those who love us, promises of a more practical love.

And then, after trying to invent robots to have sex with, make tea and take care of our other needs, we would resort to the old forms of torture.

It is no secret that we treat those who take care of us badly precisely because we know, in our nightmares, that showing how much we depend on them would reveal how much we owe them. We must make them believe that their labour is worth very little. We must never let them fully grasp that their loving care is the only thing between here and hell.