Britt Peterson of the Democratic-but-neoconservative The New Republic, after reading this bit of a thumbsucker from NYT business writer David Leonhardt. has some good words about too may progressive men’s relationship to feminism
... it’s annoying the way (usually male) writers tend to twist them into the same tired old “women are overworked and virtuous, men are beer-drinking, TV-watching slobs” paradigm—it’s Marge and Homer, Edith and Archie, Katherine Heigl and Seth Rogen, etc. The author concludes: “Inside of families, men still haven’t figured out how to shoulder their fair share of the household burden. Instead, we’re spending more time on the phone and in front of the television. This weekend, I think I may volunteer to do a little dusting.”
It is certainly true that women do more housework than men and that men should take responsibility for making a better balance. I just hate the idea that that’s the best thing a man can do to make his wife happy—as if the feminist movement was only about getting men to pick up after themselves a bit more. Men are not children; women are not their mothers. Get over it! There are more important things at stake here than dusting.
Sin on a stick, guys, dusting — voluntary or otherwise — is the last thing on fucking planet earth anybody needs to do unless you just want to look busy ok? (Dusting is like the most futile, but possibly lowest-effort chore one can do. Unless you’re vacuuming with a soft dusting attachment you’re just kicking dust back into the air where whatever doesn’t lodge in your children’s lungs will just fall back into place.) So screw that.
And besides, the goal of equal distribution of chores is to gender policy as staying out of the oncoming lane is to traffic policy i.e. it’s not about fairness and definitely not about everybody slowing down to an equal speed — it’s about streamlining so everybody can go faster!
I’m not sure exactly what the elimination of gender inequality will look like, and I’m not sure anyone else does either, but I guarantee it’s not going to look like a giant spreadsheet-driven chore chart.
In fact, especially after reading, say, Barbara Eherenreich and Dierdre English’s 1978 book For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts’ Advice to Women
In fact, if David Leonhardt really wants to lend a hand to gender equality he might instead spend the weekend pondering ways that feminism is not a zero-sum game. Because, after all, if men start noticing there are benefits we might be more inclined to get off our dead asses and start pulling for it instead of watching, sort of bewildered, from the sidelines wondering if an apron would make them look more committed while they dust. (Tip for Leonhardt, and anyone else: “Woman’s burden” rhetoric and pointless duster merchandising notwithstanding, the flylady.net website mission, in effect, is to make domestic maintenance as small a part of one’s life as possible.)
