NAMALT. Really? Dig deep and be honest with yourself. AMALT

Out of curiosity - without meaning to stir anything - @NoEggs does your Nigel know how you feel about the imbalances?

Yes, unless they've actually been taught this practical stuff growing up or in work, they're no more naturally knowledgeable than untrained women are.

But if he's relying on watching a YouTube video or a set of instructions, so can a woman. With modern tools, like a decent electric drill, if she chooses to, there's no reason a woman can't do the DIY - or do the research to project-manage bigger issues.

Quite a lot of blokes I know seem to start DIY projects, like ripping stuff out with great enthusiasm - and then they leave it unfinished and looking like shit, either because they never knew what they're doing in the first place or it's too hard or they get bored, I don't know.

This assumption that men know how to do practical stuff can be pretty humiliating for men who do not, in fact, know how to do practical stuff.

Thinking of my most recent ex who, for various reasons, thought he had to project an air of manly authority about Stuff to impress me, and would attempt to do things like fixing cupboard doors (something I am perfectly well equipped to do myself) and just fail badly.

Or his knowledgeable pronouncements about gardening, God help me..."Ooh be careful, looks like you've got Japanese knotweed over there...." (sucks teeth)
"That is not Japanese knotweed Nigel, it's vervain. It looks nothing like Japanese knotweed what so fucking ever" 🙄

But I don’t know how to fix a burst pipe or how to deal with a collapsing cob wall or how to re-grade the drive so that it doesn’t flood every time it rains.

Nor do most people.🤷‍♀️. All you have to do is find the people who can fix that stuff. How is that different to organising anything else @mindutopia?

Getting the links after being asked for them out of genuine curiosity? Not sure what makes it delicious...

Delicious response
🔥

Tbf most men wouldn't be able to do this, especially not city types who don't work in the trades. What you just described sound like skilled activities so its fair game that you don't know how to do them. Booking the lunches and clubs are basic tasks that he should be able to pick up if necessary. I think this is what the OP is getting at. There are plenty of simple household tasks and mental load activities like the school lunches that men could help out with......but they don't, even if both partners work full time. Men's free time is their own, women's free time is taken up with chores and life admin. Men are selfish is what it boils down to. I've never met one that isn't including my own dad who I love dearly and who does actually help my mum with chores.

It's not about claiming most men are rapists. It's the claim that most men don't actively stand up and call out men who are rapey or rape apologists.

I'm raising two boys and I'm not teaching them to hate themselves for being male, just like I don't teach my daughter to hate herself for being female. They are however well-schooled in things like power dynamics, consent, misogyny etc. And all of them are just as prone to not picking up after themselves, a constant battle I wage regardless of which gender child is slacking.

My mum is a gifted woman who thinks my dad is useless. He does a hell of a lot around the house, more than she does (through circumstance rather than choice), but because he does it differently to how she would he's an idiot apparently. She thinks she's in the right simply by virtue of being a woman, and he's a man so he obviously sucks. She doesn't see that she's being abusive and a huge bitch to him, and she doesn't realize that most if not all their adult children would support him if he decided to leave.

Do some men suck? Yes. Do all or even most of them suck? I'm going with a no simply because I have fought gender stereotypes my whole life, so there's no way I'm forcing them on anyone else. I will say some women have a hard time seeing their own behaviour with clear eyes.

No one is suggesting they are.

but they all benefit from misogyny which might be a reason why there aren’t many up in arms trying to solve it

Most posters who agree with the OP are imo only considering their relationships with the dh not the bigger world.
This again tends to be a female trait

• you mean personalising/lack of big picture thinking? I do think some posts are disregarding that in some cases the DH is working longer hours & that his work is not necessarily a picnic either. But at the same time, I think the thread isn't about marital relationships so much as men's behaviour to women generally. I agree the good things men do towards humanity generally should be included too though on the thread.

And if you look at male forums,,there's loads of threads complaining about women, often in terms of dating/relationships and ignoring the things women dominate like caring & teaching etc

Exactly, the Charlize Theron film North Country is based on a real awful case of sexual harassment in the mining industry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Country_(film)

This was especially bad but you have had & sometimes still get similar in building, police , army etc. I mean, it's not a wholly unfair coincidence that builders were traditionally stereotyped as pervy....

I mainly agree.

I do also think there are physical limits to some manual labour. Plumbing (I think) less so, but some jobs (at least at some levels) require a level of physical strength that women are less likely to have on average. Pp ignores that in her post.

Exactly!

This is an interesting post. I'll address this point first : 'If women want men to be more rounded then women should be taking on all the dirty manual tasks that men do.'

• which men? As your own point indicates, large numbers of men also employ men to do manual tasks for them, it's not only women who outsource manual labour like plumbing, electrical stuff & roofing.

I think women should do more manual tasks though, I'll develop this in my next post.

I agree about average sex differences but I think this is a bit too much of a sweeping statement.

'the things that make men great at pushing the world forward: risk-taking, obsessive focus on one topic, high testosterone levels, aggression targeted towards fighting just wars and so on'

Male aggression certainly has been channelled in just ways but it's not automatically directed only towards just wars (as far too many recent wars prove). Men in the armed forces fighting a war may arguably often not have enough info to know of it's a just cause or not. The men at the top who start wars aren't usually physically fighting themselves.

I would also note that the world is fuller & fuller of female politicians who take an aggressive, sometimes even extreme, stance on nationalism, war, identity, patriotism etc. Examples: Marine Le Pen, Giorgia Meloni, Mette Fredricksen, Isabela Diaz Ayuso (Spain), Alice Weidel (and before her, Franka Potente led the AFD), Afroditi Lantinopoulou (Greece), Roberta Metsola (Malta), Sana Takaichi (Japan), Kim Yo-Jong (North Korea), Samia Suluthu (Tanzania), Maria Corina Machado (Venezuela ofc!) Etc etc. They don't seem to be gentle kittens...

That's just being disingenuous. The latter is obviously a response to the overwhelming number of posts here that claim they are.

No man is ‘perfect’, of course not. But not all men are rapists either.

Some wars are necessary. There is no peace without war. Peace has to be defended. How can you not see that? It's obvious!

It's not so obvious to me. It's difficult to know if the world was more matriarchal whether wars would be so "necessary".

What I see is mostly a bunch of old men bombing the shit out of other countries over control of resources, dominance and ideology (or to distract from what's in the Epstein files). "Just" wars are few and far between.

And after all, if it's about "freeing" Iranian women in any way - who exactly are we freeing them from? Oh right ... men's institutionalised oppression.

Who's to say female-led societies wouldn't be more likely to co-operate and negotiate, and be more concerned about the lives of their people than letting them be collateral damage or cannon fodder?

Yes, and not a doctor's, nurse's, carer's or paramedic's uniform at that!

Yes. I thought this. PP seems rather disproportionately concerned about being rescued by a man from a housefire (only 1% of people are in housefires) yet less interested in her much greater likelihood of needing 'saving' via medical intervention. Which is the case for up to 90% of us at some point in our lives. And 77% of NHS clinicians are women.
Perhaps getting ones hands dirty and saving lives only counts if you're big, strong and brave and wearing a particular type of uniform.

When we're talking about dirty, dangerous jobs, how come nobody mentions the caring professions?

Many carers are physically attacked by their charges, particularly those suffering from dementia and with learning difficulties- and these charges are sometimes large, heavy men. I have heard stories of badly run settings where carers are left alone with these kinds of patients. And, of course, intimate care and dealing with toileting needs can be very dirty indeed.

Is it because- as carers are far more likely to be women (and appallingly paid)- this doesn't fit in with the narrative that "men do all the dirty dangerous jobs"?