all the unpaid unthanked work round the house - a feminist issue?

[semirurallife]

AIBU for regularly thinking of quitting my job(s) as full time mum, part time worker, part time job hunter? what gets my goat (?) is the thankless tidying, cleaning, cooking, shopping, sock-pairing, ironing, drawer tidying, hovering, mopping, shoe-lifting - I could go on - that I do. I can't get a proper job coz have taken too much time off looking after the DH and DCs, so feel stuck. a separate issue! but isn't it (house and family care) a feminist issue, and why doesn't mainstream feminism seem to care about all this sh*t we do? they all seem glamorous media savvy Londoners rather than stuck in the sticks with boring mundane problems... anyone know what am talking about?...

[semirurallife]

www.upworthy.com/that-awkward-moment-when-you-realize-america-is-way-more-sexist-than-you-could-have-imagined?c=ufb1
from the sisters across the pond...

[CailinDana]

I agree in principle silverapples although in practice it's rarely as simple as that. The idea that house and family is the woman's domain is very deeply ingrained, so much so that women can feel a failure if they don't do everything. What I see a lot on MN is women saying "I'm on maternity leave so I do most of the housework and all the night wakings..." This is where it all goes wrong for a lot of women I think. They become the proficient ones at running the new more complicated family household while the man just goes to work and is oblivious. So either he comes to expect the woman to do everything or he genuinely loses track of how everything works and feels defeated when he tries to join in.
I do think a woman on ML should maintain a basic level of tidiness but there is no reason for her to be washing or ironing a grown man's clothes or making him his lunch/packing his bags/buying presents for his family. I honestly think in some families when the woman becomes "mother" she takes on that role with her partner too. Not only is it unfair, it slowly kills the relationship. Who wants to sleep with a man-child?

[youretoastmildred]

An attitude I often see on here is that if a woman is having her domestic labour taken for granted, it is up to her to do something about it. "it's about respect," these posts begin, and then go into a long rambling thing about how every member of a household has a responsbility to take an age-appropriate role blah blah blah, as if this was not the holy grail that the OP was perfectly capable of thinking about and articulating, BUT NOT GETTING.

The reason why is that many men simply refuse to. There are men who accept in principle that they should be doing it, and need a nudge; others who accept in principle but nudging somehow never gets anywhere, it was always mysteriously and subtly the wrong kind of nudge and he is upset now; and others who just don't even accept it in principle. The latter two categories account for huge numbers of men and huge numbers of relationships and no amount of talking is going to get those men to pull their weight.

We all know this (don't we?) yet we keep seeing women being criticised on here for how their men treat them domestically. It makes me sad. And cross.

[SilverApples]

So I'm victim blaming again am I? Feminism, I'm doing it wrong?
I hope that if DD is in a relationship with someone who takes her for granted and doesn't respect her, then she'll walk. I think she has enough self-esteem, and that her education has taught her that she's worth more than that.
Yes, I do think that adult should take more control and responsibility for their choices. Being used, putting up with not only your partner, but your children treating you as a second-class citizen there to service their every need is not OK, and I won't facilitate that attitude. Or understand others that do.

[SilverApples]

Or to put it in a simple, non-rambling form...Why stay with a man who metaphorically wipes his feet on you?
What stops you leaving in this country where your rights are equal to his?
Leave. Dump him. Live like a free adult.

[CailinDana]

Exactly silver, what is it that stops women from leaving?

[coldwinter]

I agree with you silver that no women should stay with a man who does that. But many of us are brought up to accept it and it can take time and confidence, to say no, I am not going to put up with that any more. I actually think MN is great for helping women to get to that point.

And like many women who are active in feminism, I became a feminist through raeding stuff on the internet

[SilverApples]

I just hoped that the future would be different when I got there, I was a shiny-eyed newbie feminist in the seventies, when women's legal, work and social rights were so much more limited.
I didn't think that 40 years later, there would still be educated women unable to see how unfair their lives are and to challenge that at a personal level.
I don't have a problem with women who love being homemakers, caring for children and partner and home and loving it. My friend cooks and dusts and polishes and arranges flowers and has three children. Happy in that role she's chosen.
But why tolerate it if you feel undervalued, miserable and servile?

[CailinDana]

Why do you think women tolerate it silver? Genuine question.

[BasilBabyEater]

Why do you think women tolerate it?

I know why I do: a combination of personal beliefs and societal factors.

But why do you think they do?

[SilverApples]

I think they lack courage and confidence, that many women want a life with a partner, any partner rather than being single.
That many are still afraid that if they stood up to their partners and pointed out that what was happening is unfair and needed to change, that he'd leave them, so they comply and facilitate until it's so ingrained that their children treat them without respect or appreciation and without any concept of the woman being anything other than a wife or a mother.
However much we pour into education and theory, it seems to make little difference to the reality.

[SilverApples]

I think I'd better just join the Red Hat society and accept that I'm one of the mad old bats that so many of MN seem to come across on a regular basis.

[CailinDana]

Where do you think all that comes from Silver - the lack of courage, the desire not to be single?

[SilverApples]

The need to be part of the herd.
The acceptance of inequality as just how it is, how things are.
In the same way as many of the mothers I knew in the 60s when I was growing up accepted giving up their lives to become SAHM without an alternative, marital rape as necessary part of 'meeting a man's needs', and the shame of having an unfaithful husband because you as the wife were somehow lacking.

[CailinDana]

So is it an inherent failing in women- the acceptance of inequality, the need to be part of the herd?

[SilverApples]

inherent : existing in something as a permanent, essential, or characteristic attribute.

synonyms: intrinsic, innate, immanent, built-in, inborn, ingrained, deep-rooted;

No, otherwise change would be impossible, and huge change has happened in my lifetime.

[CailinDana]

So if lack of courage, desire not to be single, need to be part of a herd and acceptance of inequality aren't inherent failings of women, where do those characteristics come from?

[SilverApples]

Are we taking this down to the basics of nature/nurture?
Why do you think that education and the other gains in equality have made so little differences to the way that so many teenage girls carry out their relationships?
Societal pressure? Conditioning by external forces? Why do some resist and some comply, and why does acceptance of a second-class status cross wealth boundaries?

[SilverApples]

wealth and class boundaries.

[CailinDana]

It's important to ask these questions because we can't change these things unless we know why they're happening. It's not useful saying "women should just leave." If it were that simple there would be no problem. Women put up with being treated badly. If that's not due to inherent female qualities then clearly women aren't solely at fault. Something else must cause them to behave that way. Identifying what that is will help us tackle it. Do you agree?

[SinisterSal]

Who is going to leave just because he won't pick up his socks?

Housework is trivial, boring, have you nothing else to think about. Just chill. Why would you break up a family for a non reason such as this. Just tell him you're getting a cleaner. No, a dishwasher. It's not like years ago when you had to bring water from the well and wash clothes by hand. Young mothers today don't know they're born.

You hear that much more than you hear the Just Leave view.

[BasilBabyEater]

"Why do you think that education and the other gains in equality have made so little differences to the way that so many teenage girls carry out their relationships?"

What education?

Teenage girls are told that they are all equal now and there is no problem anymore and no more need for feminism.

All the time being bombarded by male supremacist propaganda that they haven't a hope in hell of recognising as such, because they're being told we're all equal now and... etc.

What education?

[youretoastmildred]

Great socratic stuff there, Cailin

Basil I agree with your last post too.

In fact I think it is more realistic to say that women should not get into committed relationships with men who do not treat them as equals, rather than to say they should leave. It is hard to cut your losses when you have love, a past, a future (you hope), children, materially and legally entwined lives, a chidcare schedule... much better to get to the younger ones and say "watch out for disrespectful socks. A sock on the bedroom floor, near, not in, the linen basket, is a punctuation mark on your life story: a question mark over your future happiness." We do not say this, we say: love conquers all; it is better to give than to receive; men need our love and support; the answer to everything is to give more; don't be petty; be the bigger person.

But yes I do agree you can't make them pick the socks up. If you can do anything, you can ltb. but that is pretty much it.

however it is not craven and weak to want love. I want love. I have fucked up big sections of my life by not admitting this and trying to be above love. Women who want love (nor men) are not to be sneered at. Attempting to be post-love is like attempting to be post-food. (I keep trying that too, doesn't work for me)

[BasilBabyEater]

Yes, it is not unreasonable to want love and not to recognise what love isn't when you are surrounded by a culture which lies to you about it. Our culture tells us it's trivial to worry about a man not doing the laundry; our culture hasn't made it absolutely taboo for a man to talk about babysitting his own children; our culture tells women that they are dysfunctional, bitter and odd if they don't live with men.

I'm not going to blame women for that.

[motherinferior]

I'm glad this thread has accepted that feminism has always been about housework! I was a feminist in Norwich in the early 1980s when I first came across the (actually quite dodgy but that's another story) Wages for Housework campaign...