How are we supposed to do ALL of this?

[cakestop2016]

Modern society is completely screwed up for modern women as far as I'm concerned. Why are we expected to go to work AND juggle all of the housework AND take care of the children's needs? Why haven't men caught up in assisting us? My DP is slowly learning that he needs to do more but why am I having to write him to-do lists, why can't he think for himself? Why does he fail to notice the greasy finger marks on the kitchen cupboards when he 'cleans' the kitchen?
why is it like this? Why does all the meal planning get left to me? I'm now seriously contemplating leaving DP and taking our DD with me because I can not live like this anymore.
what's the answer for modern women?

So your message is "accept that you have to live in a shit hole and never be comfortable in your own home"?

Really?

That's what women are being told all the time, isn't it. Accept a standard of hygiene and comfort that you would not choose if you didn't live with this guy. Stop expecting to feel comfortable in your own home. Stop expecting the other adult you live with, who claims to love you, to contribute to your comfort instead of undermining it.

Can you tell me what's feminist about that message? And can you tell me where the recipe for happiness is, in that message?

Because I'm not seeing it.

AskBasil

Whilst you were writing that 22:24

I have wrote rewrote and delete a post about just what you are saying.

In RL I am close to a younger friend who is going through just this situation. I'm actually giving all the support and advice I can to her. She loves him shes hoping to marry him. I know if I said straight out just LTB it would not go down well and she would be upset. I also realise she would stop seeking me out to confide in.

I give her my opinion on his behaviour and point out things she says does that enables him further also. We discuss how she should approach him on subjects and arguments to make him stop and think and change.

When she says things like, I told him I needed help getting it all done before X Time but he didn't help. I point out she shouldn't be asking for help, because that makes it look like it's her responsibility in the first place. Instead she should say.
Look this this and this need doing, WE need to have it done before X time.

Then Say nothing so he has to divi up who does what and when.

I don't know it's hard to describe these things.

So yes I know exactly what you are saying, And I'm sorry to the OP for not giving her the same courtesy and support I give my friend.

The reason I don't want to stop my friend from confiding in me is that, unfortunately I see her walking straight into a very controlling and abusive marriage. Whilst the lines of communication are still open I can help her see sense in the long run

She has already dropped another of her friends for saying she needs to LTB

See the thread I started a few days ago on 'emotional labour'.....

Bloody hell AskBasil that is a fucking awesome post. I don't like to swear but your post merits it

I don't think I've explained that very well, or which is way I kept deleting post. It's very hard to articulate. How I help her, but I can see changes in her and him. She knows what she doesn't want. But she's finding it hard to get things how she wants it.

but it is not a practical analysis of why this happens in relationships and how to guard against it

OK we know how it happens(you've explained it)
So how do we start looking at guarding against it?

Because they only way I was equipped to guard against it was to watch out for it and stamp on it damb quick.

"OK - women should do as much housework as they want - is that 'should' OK? In may case, that is very little.

Honestly, there is nothing misogynistic in saying women shouldn't do housework they don't want to do. Quite the opposite, in fact."

Well in a weird way there is because what you're failing to do is recognise the worth of housework, something that women have traditionally done, and something that needs to be done so that other people can engage in other occupations which garner more praise and admiration from society.

Look, I'm the laziest woman in the world and my version of "too much" housework is to get my arse off the sofa to put my mould-filled cups in the sink but even I recognise that a certain amount of housework needs to be done .

And whilst married even I found myself doing more than my even lazier XH because I recognised that I didn't want our DS growing up in a disaster zone.

Housework isn't something that only the Monicas of the world do because they want to (who was after all a sitcom character who worked as a chef all day and came back home itching to get cleaning, yeah because those women exist everywhere ) it's something that is necessary for the rest of society to continue.

Standing ovation for Basil!

I have somehow ended up in a 1950s style marriage, despite being an educated, high-earning, emotionally intelligent feminist. It happens (in my case through a combination of expatriation and illness).

I don't deny that my own choices in life have contributed to it, but they're only one part of the equation. We don't make choices in a vacuum, and blaming individual women for their lot in life isn't a sophisticated analysis of the system, and doesn't stand any chance of changing it. It's another example of where choice-based liberal feminism doesn't advance women at all - yes, you can choose to LTB, things have improved to the extent that women have that option, in fact, we could all LTB, but then what? (actually maybe if we all did LTB, that WOULD be a challenge to heteronormative hegemony!)

you can choose to LTB, things have improved to the extent that women have that option, in fact, we could all LTB, but then what? (actually maybe if we all did LTB, that WOULD be a challenge to heteronormative hegemony!)

Yup and I consider that a victory for the much maligned liberal feminism

I think it would result in more happier women myself, I don't think individual actions to take control over your own life should be dismissed as worthless - I think they are the most effective catalyst for incremental societal change, actually.

Women are onto a losing racket if they try to insist that men do "their fair share" of household chores. You have to bite the bullet and outsource those chores to a third party.

"You have to bite the bullet and outsource those chores to a third party.".
And if you don't have the money for that?

you can choose to LTB, things have improved to the extent that women have that option, in fact, we could all LTB, but then what? (actually maybe if we all did LTB, that WOULD be a challenge to heteronormative hegemony!)

Yup and I consider that a victory for the much maligned liberal feminism

No, if societal change required that all women left all unsatisfactory men, that would be more like separatist feminism, not libfem...I don't see that gaining significant traction any time soon. There'd be no shift in the balance of power, no improvement in society, just an abdication, "ah well, all men are useless, let's not bother". Now THAT'S sexist.

Bobochic do you honestly believe that?

That men are either utterly incapable of being fair to women, or simply determined not to be? That they hold us in such contempt, that they will always grind us down in our relationships by refusing to do their fair share of domestic work?

You don't like men very much do you?

I don't blame you, if you think they're all such horrible people.

I don't think individual actions to take control over your own life should be dismissed as worthless - I think they are the most effective catalyst for incremental societal change, actually

Agreed. The most off-putting aspect of feminism is the way this is dismissed.


"ah well, all men are useless, let's not bother". Now THAT'S sexist

No it would be a message that particular man was useless. The more society sees it will not be tolerated. The more people will not accept it, The more men will be aware that they cannot behave this way.

If you have genuinely fallen into this pattern, your DP is all other respects great. But it just crept up on both of you. Wouldn't they be upset when you realise and point out to them that they are now behaving in a very sexest way? And want to change?

I feel that the calling someone sexist, is no on anymore. You don't hear it in the media the don't name this behaviour sexist, it's like it's a dirty word.

There is stuff going on in tennis at moment, its in the media, but I haven't heard media use the word sexist.

Individual actions are worthwhile in themselves, for the individuals, of course they are.

But actually, unless enough individuals do the same thing and therefore cause a tipping point, they don't cause a social change.

That's not dismissing individual actions. It's just recognising that on their own, they don't change the bigger picture.

As for individual actions being dismissed and that being offputting about feminism

a) feminism doesn't dismiss individual actions. "Deeds not words" is an exhortation to individual action isn't it?

b) I think anyone who wants to be put off feminism will always find something to put them off

and

c) I think telling women that the only way to solve the issue of men doing whatever it is that is a systemic, ongoing problem for women, is by them taking their own individual action against it (irrespective of the consequences) and if they don't it's their fault they're "letting" men do it, is incredibly dismissive. Really amazingly so. If it's dismissiveness you don't like, try that one, how can you not recognise the dismissiveness in that response?

ILeavetheRoom, I think it's because the media don't even like to admit sexism is a thing.

It never, ever got the same level of social opprobrium as racism or other bigotry.

It needs to start with our sons and daughters.

People need to stop buying into the gender shit. Stop thinking "it's natural" somehow for girls to like dollies, toy kitchens, playing mummies and daddies. Stop teaching boys to avoid "girly stuff", stop thinking they ate a different species.

Put the same expectations on boys as girls, so they dont grow up seeing raising babies and looking after the house as stuff girls and women like, boys and men don't, they "need" to be outdoors burning off energy.