Random acts which betray how we've been programmed to think about gender stereotypes.....

[HerrenaHandbasket]

....or something like that.

Basically I just chose a new toothbrush from the multipack DH and I share. The choices were blue, green, purple and pink. I always use the pink, he always uses the blue, the other colours are more of a toss-up.

I've noticed that I do this (automatically choose the 'girliest' colour) and have tried not to do it as it's madness (it's a toothbrush FGS). However, I then find myself forgetting which toothbrush is mine and gravitating towards the 'girliest' of the options available. This has occasionally meant that both DH and I use the same brush for ages whilst the other sits there and gathers dust

So what do you lot find yourselves doing/thinking that you kind of wish you didn't?

It's ok to ask for help with heavy lifting if there's someone else present who's stronger than you! Although it does sound like you could manage just fine

It's also DH's job to take out the bins as boys can cope better with mess than girls can doesn't explain why nappy-changing traditionally falls to females but hey ho

I just asked DH to put our bin out - it's usually my job. However, at the weekend I filled it with spent wet compost and it weighs an absolute ton - it was all I could do to get the wretched compost into it in the first place, in batches. (As I was shovelling heavy new compost out of our compost bin I contemplated getting him to do it but decided that would be too wimpy.)

But I still hate that he's stronger than me... actually, even he struggled with the fruits of my gardening.

I try and get DP to look after the cars. I can do it myself (and often have to) but it's a job I would like to delegate!
I also have to call him in if I get a jar I can't open...

Now I do let dh do the cars, but because he genuinely enjoys tatting about with them, but to me it's just a chore.

Now gardening is relaxation for me, again to him it's a chore

So we pick tasks we like. But it worries me how gender divided out likes are. And I am / was a huge tomboy.

I always took green / blue on the toothbrush just to be contrary to the manufacturers. Take that, toothbrush manufacturers!

On tasks, I used to do everything, lived merrily by myself, was super-independent, i loved it. Thing is DH is big and tall and strong and if he spots me trying to lift/reach anything he immediately jumps in and offers to do it. And I am quite lazy so always say yes. And now after some years there are some things I expect him to do... "Oh DH I don't suppose you could carry the hoover upstairs please Not good it's been a gradual erosion and now I feel like a right lazyy bastard and it's all his fault for being so nice

He is shit with cars though

Getting the stronger person in the household to do the tasks requiring strength has bugger all to do with gender stereotypes

Ha yes I also pick blue toothbrushes! And I do a strict rotation of every colour available for ds.

But we live in the country and I realised he was slightly confused when I said the woman on the bus was a farmer. So I must have given him the impression that farmers are men. I try very hard with FireFIGHTER, police OFFICER etc etc.

And I think this earns me some kind of Super-PC-Twit award in most people's eyes. I don't say Green/Red Man about road safety .

DH has a pink toothbrush and I have a green one atm.

However, I can't smug because something that I really dislike is that, by default, DH does the bins. I think that one is really bad, actually.

It doesn't in the slightest bother me that DH is stronger and does the heavy lifting. He is twice my size and he hardly notices the weight of something that I would put my back out to lift. But I'm coming at this from an odd perspective, because my parents are not dissimilar in terms of strength and I didn't grow up expecting there to be someone strong around - then my brothers grew up and suddenly there was! So I'm 'programmed' to look at the tallest person and think 'stronger than me!'.

This is really making me think. I'm a lone parent so was doing everything myself. But now I have a bf and I've stopped fixing things and glueing things. I just leave them until he comes over. And I have no idea why

He's great at helping out with whatever I ask him to do. There's nothing he would consider as my job. But there are definitely jobs I ask him to do when I could probably do them myself if I decided to, or wanted to give it a go.

I have an inner conflict about this taking-the-bins out business and using the drill and mowing the lawn - if I do them too then I would be doing everything, but I don't like not doing them either! (DH does do his fair share when he's home, but I'm home more.) Can I please please please leave something out of my repertoire?

I think what galangal said was also described in Delusions of Gender.

I am now a single parent and I do it all.

I don't like using a drill though. I sometime wish there was someone around who could do some competent drilling (ExP was worse at it that I am).

Dh opens bottle tops. It is a man's job.

Where does this weird obsession with bins come from BTW?

I was amazed when I first heard this on threads about jobs division and men taking out bins.

It never occurred to DH and me. Whichever one of us remembers it's bin night takes the bins out. Sorted.

Bizarre.

My DH was unemployed for some time, and I found myself incredibly resentful that I was the 'breadwinner'. On reflection (and reading this site) I realise I behaved much like some husbands towards SAHM. (We don't have children.)

I get DH to do computer and DIY stuff. When I lived on my own I'd have been more likely to do it myself.

DP does DIY, mows the lawn, grows veg, deals with the car and barbecues. I hate doing/ have no interest in these things. Although if there's heavy shit to move/ something needs demolishing I am in there!
I do the lions share of the housework as I am SAHM.

Oh yeah, and computer/ tech stuff. I am a technophobe.

grimble - erm, it might come from houses where the bin is a big fuck-off heavy thing you have to pull out, I guess? I've sort of unthinkingly picked up the idea that DH does the bins cos it's heavy lifting, but where we live now, it really isn't so I have no excuse.

LRD - never found our big Wheelie bins too heavy, even when cram full of heavy grass mowings. And used to do it before Wheelie bins came in, when you had to actually lift the blasted things.

Maybe I just eat plenty of spinach!

Is grass heavy?!

I'm thinking of (eg) lifting a recycling bin full of bottles down two flights of stairs. That is something DH can do much better than me. Not that I can't do it, obviously, but it is pretty heavy.

No excuse now, though.

DP is totally impractical, so I do all of that kind of thing - haircutting is what's on my mind - I have a son, I cut his hair short because he's a toddler, he gets gunk in it and I have no interest in brushing the hair of a crying child, or spending ages washing it.

If I have a girl, I'm struggling with the feeling that I wouldn't want to cut her hair (apart from fringe to keep it out of her eyes), or at least wouldn't want to give it the number 4 I give DS.

In most other aspects I'm fairly non-gender stereotyped (I think) - technical job, share household tasks, not fussed about colours or toys, putting a girl in DS's hand-me-downs etc. but this one little thing perplexes me.

Grass is heavy is there's a lot of it and/or it's damp!

I think the bins thing must come from before wheelie bins. I was confused by the bins = man's job when I came on MN as well!