This is a great big rant but I find it so frustrating!!!!!

[amummyinwaiting]

I just feel I need to have a big rant as I fond this so FLIPPING (as you can see I'm trying not to swear) annoying and depressing.
My friend and work colleague has been with her boyfriend for 7 months. Up until then she was a strong willed person who happily defended women and their rights.
Now however she has become some namby pamby person who cow tows to her boyfriend and berrates (I know thats not spelled correctly) me for being a "feminist" (she says it as if it is a really bad thing to be.)
She and him have full time jobs but she runs around cooking and cleaning his house for him because "he works so much harder than her "(he works in an office exactly the same as her). He talks her down on "discussions" they have on her specialist work subjects and before the election she said that he was so much cleverer than her and she didnt think she was clever enough to vote.
Why do women do this? I know everyone changes to some degree when they are in a relationship to accomadate their new partner but this frustrates me so much!
Their, rant over!

Yes, I called the guy in question a twat, wasn't a quote it was an opinion. Sorry to offend.

Didn't intentionally make this about me, was just referring to personal situation.

I agree with you dittany - it's just that I don't agree that because a woman takes on the majority of the household duties that means she and her partner ate sexist. Surely, if that were the case it would go full circle. Becomes ridiculous.

No woman should be expected to do all the cooking and cleaning. But other women shouldn't assume one to be dominated and controlled because that's how her household functions.

Ah, it will bite her on the arse in times to come. Then you can revel in schadenfreude.

I guess the novelty of "playing house" (can't say I have ever seen the appeal) will wear off in 10 yrs time. But, by then, asking someone to change takes you into divorce area.

No a man is sexist if he expects her too.
Women who want to are different to those who think they have to, to keep a man as like herbeatitude says its what women have been conditioned to think they have to do, which is why it gets so frustrating.

Oh god I just realised I didnt see this entire second page so my comment makes no sense.
Thanks Secunda- I hope she has a revelation soon but I doubt it!
Dittany thank you for sticking up for me!feel a little intimidated that point I was trying to make got lost but everyone has an opinion.

At this v. moment there's a thread asking how much yuor DP helps out around the house.

Haven't clicked into it, but I mean it says it all doesn't it - the assumption that housework is women's responsibility.

Oh my gosh - I've come across wrong if you think that.

He absolutely does pull his weight. In our household, the tasks are shared. Very shared. However, I am better at cooking proper meals so tend to do it more. My standard of cleaning is higher than his, so I do that more often too, but if I get up and start cleaning, he'll ask me what he can do to help.. It's just not 'second nature' to him (yet). And I'll see jobs that need done before he will, IYSWIM.

No sexism in this household.

But I don't think it's sexist because I prefer to perform the stereotypical 'female' roles.

@DSM If he never offers to do it, and takes it for granted, and gives her tips on how to do it better without actually ever helping (cripes, I even refer to it as him helping when I mean "does his share"), then yes, that man is sexist because he "lets" his wife cook for him.

If OTOH, he delights in a meal his wife has cooked and the next day he enjoys cooking for her, or perhaps performs some other personal service (runs her bath or irons her work shirts or helps her with internet security) then that is different.

Can I just add my opinion to the discussion?

I think that other women are often instrumental in keeping men up on their pedestals.

To give an example of what I mean, my MIL is horrified that I don't iron my dh's shirts or get up in the morning to make him his coffee (he leaves for work at 6am when I'm still in bed). She has commented on it many times. Even my SIL, much younger, well educated, in full time employment, runs round after her dh, and expressed amazement that her brother, my dh, was expected to put on the washing machine and actually knew how to operate it.

So here are two other women doing their best to perpetuate the sexist situation for me, a fellow woman, with their comments and the fact that they tell my dh I'm lazy because I don't run around after him. (Fortunately he sticks up for me )

What I can't understand is WHY other women wish fellow women to experience domestic oppression in this way.

Maybe because they'll feel like right donkeys when they realise that they have been running themselves ragged for no reason? So they insist that everyone should do it, in order that they don't feel hard done by?

"here are two other women doing their best to perpetuate the sexist situation for me, a fellow woman" - exactly, and I think this goes along with what dittany said about feminism being about freeing women from male oppression. These women may be "choosing" (oh, the holy choice!) to do all the housework, but they are making your effort to live your life in an equal way harder.

A helpful concept that I came across recently: even if the action is not bad for the individual woman doing it, that doesn't mean it can't be harmful to women as a whole. For example if you have a strip club maybe one of the girls there is happy, fulfilled in her work and making loads of cash. But the existence of the strip club is still bad for women in the local area in the sense of making the place more dangerous, and women everywhere in the sense that they are being objectified.

Elephants - I agree very much with your last paragraph. I have made this point in the past about the burkha and the niqab. I do not accept that because some women choose to wear these garments that it is an individual matter. I think it affects women and the way we are perceived as a whole. But perhaps this is another topic, best not discussed on this thread.

Sadly, I laughed at the thought of MIL and SIL feeling like right donkeys. Very uncharitable of me!

OP I think your work colleague subconsciously knows that she is dating a bellend but that she is so desperate not to be single she is trying to overlook this. And her constant going on and on about him is a way of (simulataneously) wanting you to say 'Oh how lucky you are not to be SINGLE!' and at the same time 'FFS bosswoman, dump this fucknugget, you could do so much better.'
It's a PITA for you as you are a work colleague and not her therapist or even herbest friend, so probably just disengaging as much as possible is your best option, but hopefully it helps to understand why she's being so tedious.