This isn't sexist at all.

[PiperIsTerrysChoclateOrange]

In my DH works on night shifts each of the wives/partners cook for all the men on shift.

I'm happy with it and so are all the other women, we have been doing this for years. It means they all get a hot home made meal.

The 1 partner of a new man who has started has pulled a strop and said it sexiest and very 1950.

The reason we all enjoy cooking them as we can step away from cooking 'kids' meals and kick up the heat on curries and jerk chicken ect.
While I accept that children do eat these kind of meals within our friendship group all these are always done mild.

IABU to think it is not sexiest.

In able to do this many years ago with the Christmas bonus they brought a George foreman, slow cooker, pressure cooker and a rice cooker. Due to H&S the only thing they haven't got is a deep fat fryer. But all the others have been PACT tested.

This thread is bugging me.

I wouldn't do it. I would have replied in similar, but significantly more polite terms, to the woman who was asked to join in. And I bloody love cooking.

I think it's fucking outrageous to expect women, wives, partners, whoever to provide meals on this basis, unless they want to.

And that's the key thing, the OP and the other women are all happy to do it. They want to do it. It makes sense to them to do it. There is no suggestion (as far as I understand it) that anyone wants to change the current system.

There are some bloody insulting comments on this thread, aimed at the OP, suggesting that she is a weak, subjugated, put upon woman for doing this. And that she shouldn't be happy to do it.

There's a rash of this sort of thing on Mumsnet at the moment; that if a bloke in any way benefits from any effort made by a woman, then he's a fucking twat and it's sexist. It's such a 'Aaannnd Why Can't Your DH Do It, Eh?? EH?!??' powder keg at the moment, that if I posted that I made my husband a cheese sandwich, I'd get jumped on for being married to some fucking arsehole who can't make his own lunch.

My husband usually does the family ironing on a Sunday night. If I said I did it, he'd be slagged off for four pages, and I would be a pathetic, willing victim of his arse-ish behaviour.

This thread is kind of bringing that into focus for me, that the OP and her friends are doing something through their choice, which they want to do. MN wisdom says that means that she is too dim to understand that she shouldn't want to.

And Mumsnet wants her to stop it because, as far as I can tell, it unfortunately benefits Men (the fuckers).

If she did not want to do it, totally different deal. Obviously.

I think my basic point is, yes, we all want equality. But don't let the pursuit of that stop you from treating all women with the respect you want men to. Even those who make different choices to you.

I'm going to have a quiet cup a soup now. I might make one for 20 blokes not fucking likely, would never waste cup a soups in this way just to piss everyone off.

LittleBearPad yes, I agree and that is essentially the point I made in the last paragraph of my post at 19:00 yesterday.

I love cooking. But not for 20. that is a chore, not a pleasure. Well, OP said in her opening post that she enjoys doing her turn. She has been doing it for several years and has obviously developed the skill of batch cooking.

OP, I am truly impressed by the cooking arrangements that you have.

SilverBirch2015

Really, that's what you got from this thread Manhatten? Because I got that the presumption that a woman would want to do this and some of the comments from the op that "Us partners do the rota due to the fact that we do have a life." are what I found "fucking outrageous".

Doing things as a collective to make life easier = a great idea and a good thing.
Doing something nice for your partner because you want to and not because you are obligated to do so = a good thing.
Taking on a share of the household chores because they need to be done and choosing to divvy them up along traditional ideas of gender roles = fine if that works for you.
Presuming that someone will want to do this because they are a woman = bloody odd and regressive.

FirstWeTakeManhattan Well said.

I think you and the other women are doing a really nice thing for your partners and I think your heart was in the right place trying to ask her directly as the other partners like to do it for the, but you must see that from the outside looking in, it probably seems a bit sexist. I would probably reply back and say apologies, shouldn't have assumed you'd do the cooking and I'll leave it for the guys to sort out themselves

Random, the point I made was about cooking for 20 being a chore for me. It was made perfectly clear in my post and to infer that I was stating an absolute is totally wrong.

Anyway, in the group of 20 is it really so unlikely that at least some of the others do not feel the same thing? It certainly didn't seem to rock the new lady's boat.

BTW - I've worked in hotel kitchens and know how to cater for large numbers. It doesn't mean I enjoy it though. Like I said, I find it a chore.

Manhattan, it's not the extant arrangement that's being criticised as sexist - though I find it odd and a bit - it's the assumption that was made.

Piper used her husband's phone to text the co-worker's phone with an "invitation" to join the chore rota. This text was from a woman, addressed to a woman, but was sent from the man's phone to the other man's phone. Thus implying, whatever the practicalities, that the wives are just add-ons to the men's lives having no voice of their own (or phone of their own, apparently.) I'd be wondering why Mr Piper hadn't raised this with my H to deal with as he saw fit.

Then there's the equally sexist assumption that it's the wife who'll do the catering.

"Like fuck am I doing that, what a bunch of sexist 1950 twats you all sound."
She's got to be a Mumsnetter

I reckon that was actually written to her husband. After all, Piper sent the message to his phone.

And, umm, I agree with her!

I am open mouthed about some of the MN threads today....I blame the eclipse. Anyway, as I see it, OP and the other wives love this arrangement, I can see how it works, that it's efficient and money saving and as they are all happy with that, great. I also see that OP was trying to include the new wife, rather than tell her she's got an extra job to do, although the way that was done was questionable. I think the new wife's response was pretty disgusting actually, especially as her husband is new to the workforce. She sounds extremely rude. She could have just said "thanks so much, but it's not something I can do or want to get involved with, but I appreciate your efforts". Much nicer. OP, you are clearly a lovely person and your husband is very lucky to have you as far as I can see.

Anyway I have to rush back to the thread where somebody is outraged because they received a missive where the writer signed herself off as Mrs. Like I said, the eclipse .

oh, xpost with Moving. Yeah, what she said :)

There are some bloody insulting comments on this thread, aimed at the OP, suggesting that she is a weak, subjugated, put upon woman for doing this. And that she shouldn't be happy to do it.

In fairness, the point of the OP was that she believed the arrangement wasn't sexist, and many posters thought that it was and that the OP was colluding in the sexism by assuming that the only way for the new team member to participate was by going directly to his wife rather than simply asking him if he wanted to be in on the rota.

I think some of the more , ahem, robust responses have been coloured by the fact that it didn't occur to the OP to let the men who actually benefit from the arrangement discuss it with the new recruit, instead taking it upon herself to approach the wife directly and accusing her of 'pulling a strop' when she didn't want to join in.

Whilst I agree that there is some degree of what you describe on MN, I do think that it's the way that the communication occurred rather than the arrangement itself which has riled people.

OP are you ever going to clarify if what you wrote as this woman's response was what she actually said or if you were paraphrasing?

1. Doing things as a collective to make life easier = a great idea and a good thing.
2. Doing something nice for your partner because you want to and not because you are obligated to do so = a good thing.
3. Taking on a share of the household chores because they need to be done and choosing to divvy them up along traditional ideas of gender roles = fine if that works for you.
4. Presuming that someone will want to do this because they are a woman = bloody odd and regressive.

Yes to all of that, MovingOnUpMovingOnOut and it is only on Point 4 that OP was out of order and she graciously accepted that yesterday.

But many of the posters have continued attacked the arrangements as "bizarre" and criticise OP for Point 3 and even Point 2. That is what Manhatten was on about.

I don't think that's a majority view. I think (like all threads) there'll be the odd one or two people with more extreme views and on this particular one there seems to be some assumptions that people are disapproving because they don't approve of the whole set up. Which I'm not sure is an accurate representation of what has occurred on the thread.

I do think there is a bit of a creep on MN in general that if you do something nice for your partner you're an unthinking doormat and I do find that offensive and a bit sexist too often. However, I wouldn't lump this thread in with those posts.

Oh, everything's just fallen into place! Of course the message was aimed at her husband. She means the husbands are the sexist twats not the women. Doh! And he sent this on!! Eek

I used to do night work. Having a hot meal was lovely - but as I didn't have much choice in what was available and only had a kettle or a microwave to heat things (and was spectacularly bad at forward planning of meals) I quite often ended up having a Pot Noodle. These days I wouldn't - but back then, it made sense. There's something quite decadent about eating Pot Noodle at midnight.

I would imagine that there is a canteen of some kind available during day shift, so the men would be able to use that. And during their night shift week, they'd be sleeping during the day (although they could probably still bung a bunch of stuff into the slow cooker and set it going).

She was very rude with her text, but yes the whole thing is sexist. Collective cooking idea is lovely though and I hope you don't lose the idea in the future but just open it up to be less sexist and with less weird assumptions.

A good example would be some of the reactions to the "Stepford" comments. A few (including the OP) have taken real exception to this, but the whole premise of the Stepford analogy is that the women are not thinking and have been programmed - which goes to the heart of the assumption that others will want to be in the hubby cooking click (clique) too.

Both are about not thinking. Although I am also fairly confident the op has changed her opinion about the sentiment of this woman's reaction (even if she is slightly baffled as to why anyone might think the whole set up is regressive because she doesn't consider it to be) because it literally hadn't occurred to her before she sent the text that anyone might find the invitation odd.

I have the impression that there are a lot of people on this thread that don't approve of the whole set-up.

I am wondering what OP is going to do now, because what she has is a communal arrangement that works, and a new person has joined.

Her initial approach was to assume that the new colleague would participate in the same way that her DH does. It is quite common, allbeit mistaken, to assume that others would like to do what you do.

No, don't think so Camolips - the OP identified herself as "the wife" in her text.

MorrisZapp Fri 20-Mar-15 19:05:59
Blimey this thread is so believable, and not in any way made up.

I thought that the new worker would see the text as it's on his phone, forward it to his wife, she answered back 'you're a load of sexist twats (meaning him and his mates) and he's sent it back to the op without realising Could be wrong though!

Ah sorry, I see what you mean yes! Could have happened that way, indeed.

There are a few things that make this set-up come across as 1950s:

The incredible co-incidence that not one of the 20 men in this workplace are the cooks in their households and the fact that it clearly never crossed the OP's mind that the new guy might be the one who cooks in his household

The one chap without a woman gets to cook something easier

The way that the OP clearly thinks it's somehow an amazing favour that she's being granted that she gets this fabulous opportunity to cook something spicy for 20 people! I love cooking but I would much prefer to cook for a group of friends...

Again, the OP clearly thinks that the men have been incredibly lovely in buying cooking equipment with their bonus money to make it even easier for their women to cook for them.

I don't for one minute think that she would have texted the DH of a female colleague.

I guess it's just the whole impression you get from the OP that this is just some kind of amazing culinary opportunity for the women to do and why on earth wouldn't you want to cook for your man and his 19 colleagues?

It's a massive favour that the OP and the other female partners are doing for the men in their lives and, yeah, of course you do nice things for your partners and that's all great but it's the way that the OP doesn't even seem to think it's a favour, she almost thinks it's a favour they're doing her!

That said, I do think that the OP has been very gracious.

Can I add fuel to the fire by pointing out that some women actually enjoyed being 50's housewives. My dm and my dmil both lived full and productive lives which were of great benefit to them, their families and the wider community. When my dmil died, at 94, she had a huge funeral and most of the people attending were under 50. She was the most influential person I've ever met - and she did it without having a job or a career. She had the time to be a part of many people's lives.

They looked after their husbands and their husbands looked after them, and if anyone thinks that they were in any way subjugated or taken advantage of or stupid, they couldn't be more wrong.

I'm willing to bet that there are a fair few Mumsnetters who'd like the chance to have a similar lifestyle, if only housing costs weren't so high.

Op and the other wives are doing a nice, and practical, thing for their husbands. If the new man's wife doesn't want to join in, all she had to do was say so. Nicely.

This thread is the bomb. I want to high five Newbie's Partner. Fuck that indeed.

This is how you make it NOT sexist: draw up a rota with every man (you know, the people who actually work there) responsible for a specific night shift. Then leave it completely up to him how that's done. Maybe he cooks, maybe his partner cooks, maybe he orders in pizza, whatever
This is, of course, how it should be framed.