Many women have a very low opinion of men

[greenwinter]

As a feminist, I sometimes get told that I have a very low opinion of men, I don't. I think men are (mostly) intelligent human beings who are perfectly capable of behaving well and doing housework and childcare well.

But some women make constant excuses for men, and in doing so, I think don't realise that they actually have a very low opinion of men. For example, saying that men:

• Just don't see mess the same way as women do (as if they haven't got eyes or a brain like us)
  
• Have difficulty understanding verbal communication (funny how that is only ever the case with their partners communication)
  
• Just can't multi task like women can
  

In short, these excuses for men paint men as half blind, incapable and stupid individuals. I think men are much more capable than this, and I think that women should stop making excuses for men.

[TereseaGreen]

On the other hand it fucks me off that dh is seen as a special snowflake because he is a decent male.

Excellent point, because the female of the species has always been the "fairer sex". Men are almost expected to be a pain in the arse whilst we women run around making amends for their wrongdoings.

[OwlCapone]

If the men are all helpless babies and the women all helpless damsels, where does that leave us as a race?

[greenwinter]

Read Crdelia Fine's Delusions of Gender. There is no scientific basis for the idea that women and men's behaviour is "naturally" different. Men choose to behave the way they do.

[OwlCapone]

In the example you use greenwinter, the man is the one behaving badly, not the woman. He is the one taking the piss and throwing his weight around at home. So no I don't have a particularly high opinion of him. Lets put the blame where the blame lies.

Except his wife is allowing him to do it rather than challenging him on his behaviour and pointing out how ridiculous it is given his job. She's letting him get away with being useless.

[TereseaGreen]

Owlcapone The technical term? Fucked.

[FreudiansSlipper]

those adverts just perpetuate the idea that women should be doing those jobs like washing, cooking, looking after the children. an advert on a few years ago showed a career women coming home to find her two children and her big child (husband) had managed to cook dinner and clean up after she could not quite get her head around it

my granddad gave up work to look after me when I was 4 (he was 65) when I went to live with them he did everything for a few years until my nanny retired. apart from one relationship my ex's have all be able to clean, cook, look after themselves the one who pretended he was unable to I had little respect for

[greenwinter]

Yes it is the man behaving badly, I totally agree. He is to blame for his behaviour.

But this is mainly a female site, and it would be great if women would stop making excuses for men.

[Owllady]

It's only very recently,say the last couple of years, that I have started seeing mess and I am a woman :)

I don't think it helps that generational attituees remain the same though. My mil is nearly 80, worked full time, her husband worked split shifts etc. She still comes out with crap like 'I don't know why he left her, she always kept a tidy house' etc
And she had a go at me yesterday because she actually insinuated I was lazy as I have been unwell and her son has been having to get up in the morning nd get my daughter (HIS TOO) ready for school and I should pull myself together as he has to work. Which e does. But our dd is a severely disabled teenager. I am NOT lazy. I am ill
Fucking self obsessed rant sorry

They, all the women in both our families, refer to me as a lady of leisure too and when I worked 25 hours a week until end of 2012 it was always refer ed to as my little job

[Ploppy16]

Should have added that I don't see DH not being that good at multi tasking as a symptom of being a bloke, it's just not one of his strengths. It's also not something he does at home, it's at work as well. He would rather do one job at a time well rather than 2 jobs not up to the same quality. Not because he's male, it's more to do with having a finicky personality..

[greenwinter]

I don't care if someone has a natural talent for multi tasking or not. If your female partner is ill, and the dinner needs cooking and kids need taken care of, then you just have to get on with an do both things at once.

[scallopsrgreat]

It would be even better if these men stopped behaving like arses. Then women wouldn't need to make excuses to make peace with themselves.

Cognitive dissonance.

[specialsubject]

I don't generalise about 3 billion people, and would think anyone who does incredibly stupid.

there are dumb, lazy, feckless men, and dumb, lazy feckless women. Just don't marry or breed with either.

[pebblyshit]

The conditioning starts very young. Boy's can't be expected to sit still/listen/take turns so they set the bar low and the gap widens. Boy's aren't good at literacy so we'll flood the reading scheme with non fiction and a very narrow 'boy focussed' set of fiction and act surprised 10 years later when they struggle with relating to characters that aren't exactly like them.

[wheresthelight]

I think it is less about having a low opinion and more about excepting that in some cases men and women have differing priorities.

My dp will happily changes nappies and look after the kids but i have to ask him to help with cleaning or to do the pots. He isn't lazy so much as just doesn't see it as a priority on his time. I only dp the pots once a day as we don't use a lot in the day and I don't see the point in wasting water doing a bit here and a bit there, dp works hard and sees it as more of a priority to spend time with. The kids or with me in an evening than doing the dishes.

[MollyBdenum]

I have s lot of those conversations, but it isn't about men, but about the way the relationship dynamic changes once you have children. Stay at home mothers with a female partner generally have exactly the same gripes. Stay at home Fathers with a female partner tend to have fewer, as the gender conditioning tends to pull each partner into a slightly more egalitarian dynamic.

But although the gripe is often phrased as "men always/never/can't do X" that's basically shorthand for "in a couple where person is responsible for the majority of domestic tasks and the other for earning the majority of the money, one partner has become so unaccustomed to doing task X that they don't even notice that it needs to be done."

[FreudiansSlipper]

I agree the conditioning starts young and it is all around us :( is hard to get away from

[scallopsrgreat]

I don't think washing pots is an innate priority of women wheresthelight. We don't come out of the womb wanting to do the dishes. We are positioned into that role because of the messages sent to us over the course of our lifetime. There is no reason why your partner doesn't prioritise the dishes as you do other than he views it as your job.

[greenwinter]

Except Molly, even when a woman and man both work full time, it is still the woman who usually ends up doing most of the housework and childcare.

And lesbian mothers may still have gripes as the SAHM, but research shows that lesbian couples when they have kids do tend to share housework more fairly than Het couples,

[Suzannewithaplan]

I'd probably feign helplessness at the unpaid menial drudgery tasks if I could get away with it and that would free me up to concentrate on well paid prestigious activities which would help further and maintain my higher status in life.

Surely men are quite happy and not at all offended if they are seen as incapable when it comes to the 'shitwork'?

[Ploppy16]

pebnlyshit that's exactly what happened in DS's year. It was boy heavy with a lower reading age so they ditched Biff and Chip for captain Underpants and Roald Dahl. It did actually work in all fairness but hasn't exactly fostered a love of reading in DS or any of his friends. He doesn't read fiction at all unless it's for school.

[PrincessBabyCat]

We have a unorthodox set up in our house. My husband does all the cooking and dishes, while I do laundry (and used to work). Now that we have a baby we do the same thing except, I do most of the childcare so I'm not entirely useless around the house and he works.

I've gotten women asking me how I managed that. Like I trained him. He can't just like to cook?

[Louise1956]

I think most feminists do have a low opinion of men. As far as housework goes, my experience is that the one who cares more usually ends up doing more, and in the majority of cases, that appears to be the woman. i think this is nature, not 'social conditioning' as feminists tend to claim. i don't think this is that important. To suggest that men are 'useless' because many of them aren't keen on housework baffles me. When you consider how many more important things there are in the world. it shows how very insular some women are in their thinking.

[lessonsintightropes]

I love my husband, my brother and my Dad. All of whom are real gentle men in every sense of that term. And all with different strengths to each other and to me, my Mum and sisters/sister in law.

Dad, DB, me and one DSis brilliant at DIY. DH, DM and other Dsis not so much! DB and all the women good at cooking. All couples have entirely different 'deals' about how household labour is distributed, based on the individual skills of each. In our house, I do financial and future planning, cookery and general housekeeping - he does more cleaning, laundry, hoovering, shopping and bins.

What really fucks me off about this entire subject is the number of women who really do hate men and extrapolate one shitty relationship to the entire gender and it makes me pretty angry. And also read misogyny into situations where it doesn't really exist and mysandry for that matter

I agree some advertising doesn't help, but I don't see much infantilising of men in real life - in my own family, or more broadly. What environment do some of you live in?