Today I failed as a feminist.

[youngblowfish]

I am a feminist and have a 14 month old DS. DH and I share childcare as my work is flexible and he gets a lot of time off.

Today during an argument, I realised that DH has not cooked a single meal for DS since he was born. Somehow, I shouldered the burden of feeding our child entirely, although we both work FT, without even realising it! How did that happen? Damn you, patriachy!

Just needed to vent - I am really disappointed in myself.

So are garlicbum and garlicbutt the same person?

Yeah, I change every couple of months :)

I think I agree with Back2Two that there has been quite a bit of over analysis here. Unless the youngblowfish is running round doing everything while her DH is sat with his feet up it is just something that happened in the chaos of a new baby. Was DH doing other things while she was feeding the baby? Hopefully he was. Now the baby is older, two people had a sensible discusison and things have been rejigged.

I am SAHD and I do 99.9% of the cooking and 90% of the cleaning and other work in our house. Always have. Someone has to. It just works for us. DW does other things. Am I doing wife work? Are you all outraged for me?

MB - can you nip round Pan Heights with a vac and duster now and and again, you angel?

Late-night thread check.

SAHPs: I hope that it goes without saying that I have nothing against your choice to stay at home. Nothing at all. NOMB. It is also good to know you are happy with your share of housework and it works for you and your partner. I work FULL-TIME and have been back at work since Jan. How am I over-analysing the situation if I have been too busy to even notice that I was doing 100% of cooking for DS? If anything, it smacks of woeful under-analysis. I don't want a medal, it is my choice and I feel privileged to be able to make it. However, I reserve the right to think about the amount of wifework I do and renegotiate it as I see fit. I also want to frame it from a feminist perspective, one that I share with DH .

Garlic, I love your insightful, measured and patient contributions to this thread. Your story also made me feel a bit better about my cognitive dissonance.

Thanks for your kind words :)

Um, I cook for dp and dd because I like it. I also like to be in control of what I and dd eats. Dp does lots of housework that I don't like doing, and incidentally he hates cooking. Works for us. Though once he questioned whether me giving dd a cheese sandwich ( with tomatoes and fruit) for lunch was healthy. I then said if he didn't like it then he can take over the budgeting, meal planning, shopping and cooking. He soon shut up.

But I do agree that sometimes I would like to not have the "burden" of meal planning and would like to just get home and be fed (am a full time medical student) rather than having to cook for the whole family. But, dp would probably happily do it all if i asked him, but I do get a lot of enjoyment from cooking and wouldn't trust someone else to provide me with food that was healthy and nice, so it is the price I pay for being a control freak! (still happy for dp to clean bathroom and do hoovering though!)

I think if cooking is what you choose to do and part of how you and your partner agree you divide the domestic work, there is no issue. It is an issue if you fall into it along gendered lines, and it prevents you from feeling fulfilled in other aspects of your life (no-one, I don't think, is arguing that cooking cannot be a fulfilling endeavour).

Garlic, I found your post directly below my last one about 'wifework' insightful and to the point; it made me feel less uncertain about some of the issues I see in my own life and I appreciated that.

My concern, however, would be the language employed. You did appear to be careful not to equate 'wifework' with women's work, but as wife means a married woman, or historically a woman, the language of 'wifework' still situates domestic work within what has traditionally been seen as the female sphere, I think. I would prefer a gender-neutral term, though I am struggling to come up with one, I admit as 'absolutely necessary for the world to keep turning' is a bit of a mouthful. Though maybe the point is that domestic work is gendered and the term tackles that head on, I don't know.

Sorry, missed the comma, I meant - your post, directly below my last one, about 'wifework'... should have previewed, sorry.

You're right, summer, I fiddled about with the language for a bit then decided to go for what everyone here would understand!

summerflower, you touched on something very interesting here. I really should leave this thread alone now or I will become unemployed, but just wanted to say that this difficulty in articulating the domestic division of labour in non-gendered terms, when historically these tasks have always been gendered, is one of the main concerns of feminism.

It relates to the idea that language is constitutive of power - unutterable is invisible. One of the most prolific philosophers of our time Judith Butler tackles this issues precisely in her book Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex". Wiki has a brief description, but it is still full of jargon.

If I may be so bold as to summarise and oversimplify her main idea, it is to do with the way in which one is entered into language and culture differently depending on one's gender - no one functions within a society or uses a language on their terms alone, it is always a social activity that has to be performative (i.e. it materialises through action and repetition). Gender is a constitutive aspect of human existence, which is where the main difficulty stems from - it is impossible to conceive of another human being without taking their gender into consideration, even if their gender identity is troubled in the conventional sense of the word. Therefore, thinking of gender differently is a contradiction in terms, as it actually subverts the very idea which you are trying to analyse and understand. However, this contradiction hides some revolutionary potential - gender is being imagined differently on a daily basis, despite its constitutive constraints. Hence the possibility of set-ups radically different from the patriarchal norm, such as Beta's example.

Or, for a very light-hearted take on essentially the same issue, there is a brilliant song performed by Stan in a cartoon called 'American Dad' (BBC3). Feeling somewhat let down by the divergence of his and his wife's priorities, he signs (DISCLAIMER: this song is a joke borrowed from a cartoon and is potentially offensive):

Stan: She wants to be equal partners? Well, I say no way!
I don't want a partner, I want a wife
Someone who's happy taking care of my life
Where's my Edith Bunker, Laura Petry, Wilma Flintstone?
I want to go back, to a simpler time
When men were men and women had no say
Attend to love, honor and obey
I want to be greeted with a massage and a martini
The way master was by his Genie-e-e-e-e
I don't buy this independence and doing your own thing
I want a woman to make me feel like a king
This ship is sinking and I'm swimming for my li-i-i-i-i-ife
I don't want a partner... damn it!
I want a wi-i-i-i-i-i-i-ife

Am loving juxtaposition of Judith butler and American dad. . It can be seen in Mary Poppins, too - when Mr Banks does his wee singsong about an englishman's castle and being the Lord of it. (although don't get me started on his suffragette wfe, because that rendering makes me want to murder Walt freaking Disney.)

But someone mentioned Judith butler, so now I need to go and have a lie down.

Yes, I too had to have a lie down after my post. Mad, surely the only responsible response to Disney is a murderous urge?

I know. I hadn't see MP for donkeys though, and it shocked me quite how blatant it all was, even given how old the film is.

It is brilliant to see the truth that language not only expresses, but also shapes our minds expressed so clearly with respect to feminism! Thank you, blowfish!

This was "my" feminism's point in wanting to replace the 'man' or 'woman' in word parts with 'person' and to eliminate 'wife' and 'husband'. I know it caused a lot of clangers in the early years, and we've evolved a mish-mash of terms that goes some way towards the objective. But, still, when I complain about my disability to others I say "I need a wife, haha" because they'll instantly understand the kind of help I want ( pax, Stan ) ... and the word for that 'universal support worker' is a gendered one :(

Thanks for this. I suspect that my DH sides secretly with Stan, though he would refute this allegation . He also recently cited Judith Butler to dispel my suggestion that women are systematically disadvanted socially on account of having children.

The latter point being what really troubles me about Judith Butler and post-strcuturalism/modernism in general, namely that it depoliticises feminism. I agree that language is constitutive of power, but I struggle with the idea that language determines how we see reality. Where do the very real economic and material factors which determine people's lives fit in? I am not sure how subverting norms on an individual level changes the overall structures. Surely that requires a critical mass, which is only going to be achieved through collective action (which Butler seems to work against).

If that makes sense.

Crossposted with Back2Two, I was really responding to youngblowfish's post!

I'm confused what the liberal/radfem distinction has to do with this, but then I am new to this board, or why a conversation about the value of wifework is equated with the sentiment that being a wife has shitty connotations.

However, I can agree that analysing my relationship within a gendered framework against the background of everything I know about feminism would be exhausting (and futile). I'd have to revert to single parenthood just for peace of mind. The saving grace is that I happen to love and respect my DH too, even if I occasionally see him/our relationship as an example of patriarchy in action. As for putting all men together in a patriarchal lump, only if I am really tired and fed up

Ah,
The old 'is Judith butler a feminist' gag.

Somewhere on fwr there are a few anti-the-academy rants which seek to explain why academics are not real feminists, anyway. (except the ones that are). I think that's what was decided in the end....

Nah, it's feck all to do with lib/ rad. I can count more liberals than radicals disagreeing with back.

hmm, I'm not sure I was challenging Butler's feminist credentials, given that there are many strands of feminism and I don't have the intellectual calibre to do that. More thinking through my own views, which have been packaged away for over a decade.

The whole lib/rad/academic/non-academic/are we not all feminists anyway thing is new to me, it has to be said.

Back2two - interesting post. I disagree with you, and not from a radical perspective (no chance of me being called that on here ).

I think there is a pattern that happens, even amongst loving equal partnerships which explains a large part of why the playgrounds are still full of women and the boardrooms are full of men.

It starts because most women marry men a bit older than them, and more men do money oriented jobs while more women follow their hearts into the arts, public sector and "make a difference" type jobs.

Then women get more parental leave so put in more time in the early years building up parenting skills (including meal planning etc..), while men put in more face time at work and progress faster.

At some point it comes to crunch where childcare costs mount up, or you agree the children need a parent at home and the question is who should that be. If at this point the mum has got much more skilled at day-to-day parenting while the differential between their earning power has risen then its a no-brainer for the mum to be the one to quit work, go part time, not go for the promotion or whatever.

I see this happening all the time in RL and on MN. It's not sexism or oppression, but at the same time it's not an outcome people choose. It's a default pathway (and one that no one warns you about).

So I think when someone notices it and makes an effort to step off the pathway it is important.

(or what madeomanintheattic said much more succinctly )

Personally I see subverting norms on an individual level as an opportunity to broaden the accepted scope of what is considered a norm, thus giving those that follow a greater choice of options to conform to, without the bother of having to subvert.

Although, I have to say that I fundamentally disagree with norms on a very basic level. Catch 22 though.