Tiny Brontosaurus posted:

Cool, barely into page 2 and already the most pressing feminist issue is male feelings. Since icantfindname, who is on my ignore list for being a huge bigot, incidentally, has had his answer maybe he can go off and chew on it by himself and not make this thread about him any longer? Men on the internet have a habit of seeing feminism threads as female attention dispensers, and it would be cool if people didn't let that happen here.

I am an activist in real life and one of the things I talk a lot about with people out there is concrete, achievable goals. With something as huge as patriarchy that can be hard, since it permeates everything and its causes and effects can be very hard to follow out. There's a kind of butterfly effect with societal biases - something as big as "why don't more women succeed in male-dominated fields?" is a river fed by tributaries so tiny people refuse to believe it could possibly matter, and get angry at the suggestion it does. Which is why I'd like to talk about the battlefront of my grandmother's generation of feminists, which has largely been forgotten by my own: Housework.

Ask any man who lives with a wife or girlfriend how much housework he does, and he'll usually say "about half," but taking stocks of all the domestic tasks that get done, that's almost never the case. Frequently a man is barely contributing to the work of keeping the home running at all, yet may feel his share of the chores is incredibly burdensome and he's selfless for putting up with it. Feminist men can be some of the worst offenders of this, because they know men should pull their weight, but the hidden sexism of their upbringing and their subconscious keeps them from really seeing how much work is actually done and who does it. If you ask a man about a household chore he doesn't do, he invariably says it doesn't "need" to be done - his wife or girlfriend only does it because she's so "picky," the silly woman.

Men tend to came the infrequent, showy tasks as their chores - cleaning the gutters might only need to be done once a year, and most importantly it's a concrete task with a satisfying finality when it's done. Not like laundry, dishes, wiping the countertops, vacuuming - a ceaseless grinding cycle of tasks that are never finished in the "don't have to do that again!" sense.

I have two articles I hope any cohabitating man will read. There's going to be some inevitable defensiveness, hysteria at being criticized, challenged, asked to think something new. Please don't post that here, it's not unique or informative, it's just growing pains you have to power through before a new idea can take roots in your brain.

Please also don't post to brag that you do, in fact, you'll have us know, contribute equally to the housework. Perhaps you even do more than the little lady! You're the one who needs to read this stuff most, because you're the one who doesn't even know all the work that needs to be done or who does it.

Here's a classic feminist piece, the best response I've ever seen to the reflexive "but you're just better at it, sweetie!" response men have about the chores they don't feel like doing. The Politics of Housework

Here's a blog post by a man who figured out the ingrained sexism he'd had regarding housework on his own. I haven't read the rest of his site, so if there's something impolitic in there I don't care. I like this post because he voices what I think is a pretty typical thought process men have about women "nagging" them about chores. The underlying assumption that poisons relationships and makes it impossible for men to see they're being sexist about chores is that women are always wrong and the things they want are stupid. You'll find this one lurking under a lot of sexism, really. It is nearly impossible to root out, because it's self-reinforcing. Men aren't being sexist when they assume women's thoughts are stupid and silly, they're just being level-headed and unbiased! Look how emotional this chick is getting when I tell her so, see, she was stupid and silly after all.

Anyway. She Divorced Me Because I Left Dishes By the Sink

I post these partly because men reading this thread in good faith might still have the impulse to whine "but what can I do?" You see us criticizing the structures of power, and you see yourself as powerless, and it's true. Odds are you're not a CEO cackling on the golf course about how no woman is ever going to make VP in your company, gat-dammit. But are you a man living with a woman who works just as hard as you, trying to succeed in a job just like you, who always has to put your dishes in the dishwasher for you because "who cares"? That's a drop of energy she has to burn and you don't, and those add up.