I've name changed for this but I am a regular poster.
My DH is generally a lovely man. He is very vocally supportive of women’s rights and, as the father of a daughter, challenges obvious sexism when he sees it. It is one of the reasons I love him. However, something happened last night that makes me think that sexism is so ingrained within our society that even ‘nice’ men do not realise when they are being sexist.
Last night, I asked DH to massage my head – I had an awful headache. He did but was in a silly mood and kept pinching my nose – gently, but irritating. I asked him not to several times and he made a joke of pinching it. I said not to bother with the massage and got up, he apologised, said he was being silly and that he would do it properly. Then he started jokily tapping on my head which I said was painful and again, he carried on! At which point I got up and told him I wanted him to stop. I was mildly irritated because I just wanted him to rub my sore temples without being silly, but it was no big deal really. There was no malice in his actions, he was just being daft and I knew this, but I wasn’t in the mood for daftness, due to the headache. He then got the hump with me because I wouldn’t return to lying down let him ‘do it properly’. We watched TV and he started huffing and puffing that I had over reacted to his joke and that I was being unfair to him ‘just because he had misread the situation’. The truth was, I wasn’t mad at him in the first instance, I understood he was being silly but I didn’t like it so I stopped it. I gave him two chances to listen to me and he didn’t, so I said stop and that made him mardy at me! At this point I did get annoyed – because the only way I could have avoided him getting the hump was to allow him to continue ‘joking’ and not to have said no wasn’t it? When I put that statement to him, he then saw my point of view and apologised. But now I am annoyed. It annoys me that this nice, educated, reasonable man still thinks that his feelings should come before mine. I know it was a very small thing, but as a mother of a daughter it bothers me that they might ever be in a situation where they feel the need to go along with what a man wants to avoid him getting grumpy.
The thing that really bothers me though, is that in my 20’s, I’d have apologised when he got grumpy. Which is ridiculous. I am writing this down because I have been wrestling with it a bit today and I would just like some opinions. I know that the mumsnet jury will tell me if I am making a mountain out of a molehill.