So is Christmas women's work then?

[Katisha]

Following on from my thread here in which in would appear that left to their own deives most, (not all), men would hardly bother with Christmas at all, I would be interested to know why this is.

Is it because women do it all for them? Is it because only women want all the traditional food, decorations, visiting, card sending and frenzy of present buying?

Are women propping up some ridiculous commercial christmas industry and men are right to despise/ignore it?

Or what?

It's new years greetings cards that's wifework in Japan. DH has to do it or else looks like he's got a 4 year old for a wife.

"i actually do think you'd be better off taking to task the numpties that use christmas as shining bejewelled cranberried and iced proof of their ultimate feminine powers than sm though tbh."
Discussing something on MN doesn't mean I don't challenge what I see in rl, and I was hardly taking SM to task. My point was not about xmas cards (which are apparently middle class wank, you learn something new each day ) it's about a) pressures and consequences falling on the woman whether she buys into the whole wifework thing or not , b)the erasure of the womans identity.
B) may sound a bit of a leap from the example I've given, but as I said there are plenty of minor incidences that have made me reach that conclusion.
And I'm hanging on to my . It makes me

Exactly Lenin. Shame it has to turn into point scoring and steamrollering.

I totally agree with scottishmummy. All of this is so different from my experiences I dont relate to it.

I also dont get if something annoys someone why they would do it? If people get offended cause you didnt send them a card or whetever then they arent your real mates. Again though I am young so we dont do all this write cards, bake stuff, make dinner, stress about Christmas stuff. All sounds like making work for yourself if you dont want to do it.

Im not denying it didnt happen but it doesnt sound normal.

''Then impose (again minor) social sanctions on me not dp for not conforming to matter of etiquette'

Like this bit wtf who are these people this situation sounds crazy. I just would of said soz didnt bother writing cards this year mate as I am tring not to waste card but merry christmas and pop in when you want for a drink. Maybe write ot on facebook if they have an account. End of problem. If they were in a mood about it I would tell them to seriously get a life.

WIll be interesting to see if the Facebook generation of women can indeed shake off a lot of these pressures and expectations, or whether they will continue to swallow the media pressure to make "perfect Christmasses."

"Like this bit wtf who are these people this situation sounds crazy."
then I'm surrounded by crazy people. (think I already knew that) Unfortunately I'm unable to seal myself in my own little vaccuum, so have to interact with the world around me to some extent.

'WIll be interesting to see if the Facebook generation of women can indeed shake off a lot of these pressures and expectations, or whether they will continue to swallow the media pressure to make "perfect Christmasses."'

I seriously dont think our generation will worry about this stuff. I associate this stuff with peoples grandparents in their 50s+. Its not something I see people younger than that caring about. I will never attempt to cook a Christmas dinner. Fine if you like that type of thing, but why do it if you would rather be drinking and having a laugh. You will find me in the pub xmas morn.

ROFL, I'm not much older than you. And I'm avoiding the pub atm because I'm sick of the relentless sexism. (BTW was in the pub when the card was handed to me, but I'm over it ) besides, I don't think dd wants to spend xmas in a pub, not for a few years at least.
As long as there is xmas, there will be people worrying about this stuff. I don't have any experience of cooking xmas dinner, but that doesn't mean I can't see the pressure of it falling more heavily on the women around me.

I have never eaten a Christmas dinner cooked by a woman, I have never even eaten a roast dinner cooked by a woman.None of the women in my family can cook lol.

I can't really cook either but Dp's a chef. Maybe when DD is grown she'll be saying the same you.

Yep my dad is a chef to. My husband cooks for me, my uncles are chefs to. I have no female relatives that can cook tbh.

I have only recently started attempting to cook cause I grew up seeing cooking as a blokey thing that they like doing and not something women do much.

sixpercent tbh I think the women who haven't noticed what you have are in a bit of D.E.N.I.A.L

I mean, it's one thing noticing you haven't had a particular experience yourself, and it's quite another to deny that another person has had said experience a la scottishmummy and snowflake. Denying other peoples' truths and experiences is a tad neurotic

To be fair they are not denying it - they (as I understand it) are saying that because they don't experience it they can't relate to it. Well good. Hopefully more women will get to that position.
However it still doesn't help the general debate to keep going "well it doesn't happen to me so end of discussion." Which is how it rather comes over.

no, they're saying that the pressure is all in sixpercent's mind, almost that it's her fault she feels the way she does. That stance is possibly as anti-feminist you can get: to shift the focus away from society, and sexism, and onto the woman who is suffering from the problems in order to make out as though it's her who is the problem, and if she would only pull her finger out she could overcome the obstacles...
Freud's entire life work was based on getting women to change the way they saw the world, because so many Victorian women couldn't handle the status quo. What happened was, the women were made to believe that they were the problem, when the truth was society was patriarchal and sexis and it was driving them mad. A lot has changed since then, but not enough...

I just see all this type of thing as making unecessary work for yourself. I am not saying anyones anything didnt happen. All I am saying is that it is brought on yourslves if you feel like this.

Why havent you got the guts to not do something if you dont want? I dont understand where the pressure to do things is coming from either? Why on earth waste time stressing that someone is in a mood because you didnt send a card back when they sent a card that wasnt even sent to you in the first place but your partner? Its that sort of thing I dont understand. It seems like a waste of energy thats all.

"Why havent you got the guts to not do something if you dont want?" I haven't done something I don't want to do, and noticed what then happened around me as a result. I'm not stressing over it either, I provided an example because that's what this thread is discussing. I don't see how I've brought anything on myself, it felt like this situation and others are imposed on me.

I think that the 'Facebook' generation may have different experiences to slightly older women (I'm Gen X myself) but it seems to me highly unlikely that they don't, aren't and won't face sexism. In some ways I think that things are getting worse in terms of societal pressure, and once the marketeers have figured out how to better target this group (I'm doing some research for work on Gen Y and there are loads of papers trying to get a handle on how to sell to Gen Y - apparently Gen X was too small to bother much about) I'm sure it will get a lot worse.

Regarding Christmas pressure I think a lot comes from our own experiences as children, with many of us wanting to recreate that for our own children (I suspect that most of the pressure starts when we have children and start playing hostess). So we look to the models of the previous generation and try to emulate the experience, and those models (mostly) involve the women doing the work.

In my own family dh had a 'lets get really pissed' type of Christmas whilst I had a really quite a ritualistic one (everything just so, and exactly the same as the many years before). So I feel more pressure than he does. However he's coming around to the idea that getting the right presents is important, and we have a few traditions growing of our own (involving dh doing all the cooking on the day, whilst I do most of the pre-prep). In my family I'd not say any of the men enjoy Christmas less then the women, and my mother sets everyone (except my father who gets to opt out of pretty much everything anyway) to work - mainly because she has a fairly permanent tendency to treat both her children and by extension their families as children though.

Someone made a similar point to six's on AIBU recently. The OP was fed up because her husband expected her to buy Christmas presents for his relatives as well as hers. She made the point that, though she could easily stick to her guns and tell her DH that his family would be going without presents, it wasn't that simple. If she didn't buy presents, an elderly lady she was fond of would end up with nothing for Christmas, and that's sad.

It's great if you can say 'oh, but this is not my experience, it's so unnecessary'. But we live in societies, don't we? We have to balance how things work for us as individuals, or us as couples, against how we relate to the whole of society. To be honest, I think it's crap to say that women should just ignore perceived pressure to do work, as if that'll solve the whole problem.

making a rod for your own back undertaking tasks you resent and dont need to do.and well adds to the martyred poor woman so much to do etc

i understand consternation about the big stuff suuch as glass ceiling,institutional sexism.i dont understand shouldering a task you dont like and dont have to undertake

with these low level tasks perhaps best to get landed with doing them.whats the worse that happens if they left undone

perhaps expend energies and ire for stuff that matters to you,rather than undertake tasks you dont like

the more complicated compromise is when it involves other people eg children and relatives direct care or welfare