Be sure to add "Smash the Patriarchy." Via JD'na @ Flickr.
I’ve got a few things on my To Do List that have been hanging out there for far too long. Things like “Wipe old laptop hard drive,” “Take bottles to LORL*,” and “Fix corner of kitchen table.”
I’ve been putting these things off lately, hoping that my dude will do them. They’re not hard (well, the HD-wipe might be, I don’t know). They’re not time-intensive. While wanting the dude to do these things make sense, since he has far better computer skills than I do, he walks right by LORL’s building everyday, and it’s his side of the table that needs fixing, when I think about it, all three of those things are, well, Things That Dudes Do. They fix machinery, and take out the trash, and repair little things around the house with their technical wizardry and manly know-how. Like I said in my last post, we can justify anything, if we want to.
I have been putting these things off for two weeks or more, but I haven’t quit making the bed, or picking up stuff around the house, or washing dishes, even though those things are unending, and what I’ve put into any one of them takes far more time and energy than all three of the tasks I’ve been avoiding combined. My guess: I do these daily things because they’re Lady Chores. And I’m (often mistaken for) a Lady.
Which brings me to the topic of brain colonization. I am a big mean nasty hairy-legged overeducated bonerkilling feminist. And I am still having to sort out and confront messages, both explicit and implicit, about the division of labor in my home. My dude is a quality dude, and we work together to make a life that is pleasant and comfortable for us, but we do fall into patterns that we abjure. So we have to stop, and assess, and re-group. Unlearning our gender-programming is a perpetual process.
But beyond that, I’ve been thinking about how living with a dude has led me to limit myself in ways that I consider, well, handicapping. If I were on my own, there would be no question about who would deliver the bottles, fix the table, or bleach my old computer (me, me, a knowledgable somebody paid to do that). But because there is a dude in my life, I’ve deferred those tasks to him, and as a stunningly unhelpful bonus, I’ve even occasionally resented him for not doing those things that I could be doing.
We each have strengths and weaknesses, and it only makes sense to use them to one anothers’ benefit. But there’s a risk, particularly since so many activities are gender-coded, that you (and/or your dude) could be denying yourself knowledge, competency, and even pleasure by sticking solely to your strengths. There’s always something that needs doing, so let me encourage you to push yourself to tackle a project that you’ve been resisting, whether its due to fear, discomfort, or because it’s “his job.” You might surprise yourself.
Now pardon me, I’ve got to dig up a razor blade and some epoxy. That table ain’t gonna fix itself.
*Little Old Recycling Lady. She and her husband, Little Old Recycling Man, live around the corner and ask everyone for their bottles and cans. We are too busy/lazy/spoiled to take a six-pack or a couple of two-liters to the grocery store for nickels, so we happily give them to the LOR Couple.
I can thank my mom for the fact that I don’t do this at all. When I was in high school my friend’s car got a flat on my block, and I told her to pull it into our driveway because my (older, brawny, things-fixy) cousin was coming over and he’d change it for her (she didn’t know how). My mom beat him to our house by like 90 seconds.
Mom: [Friend], did you know you have a flat?
Me: Yeah, we’re gonna ask [cousin] to fix it, since he’s coming over anyway.
Mom: … Is he bringing the spare?
Me: No, she has one.
Mom: … What? Do you not know how to change a tire?
Me: Well, sure, but it’s hot, and [cousin] is coming over anyway …
Mom: Get off your ass. You too, [friend], yvanehtnioj is about to show you how to change a tire.
And my little brother can cook and sew (basic stuff). Although he finds it less empowering than I find piecing together my new furniture from Overstock. Thanks, Mom!
My dude is halfway around the world and will be for many more months, so I am on my own for the first time in many years. I have a roommate (who I clean up after, but that’s a different story), but it’s not the same.
And I’m finding I love being on my own. I did a bunch of the things that I would have asked him to do were he around, like fix my bike, and figure out how to hook up the laptop to the TV. And when I’m just cleaning up after myself, I really don’t mind doing it (even cleaning up after the roommate for some reason doesn’t bug me as much as cleaning up after him, because I’m able to accept that that’s just how she is).
Living my life without reference to my relationship is awesome. At the same time, I’ve learned a lot from him, so I’m bringing that to bear on taking care of myself now. I just hope that if/when I am partnered again, I can bring this zen attitude of doing it for myself to the situation.
When I lived with a dude and planned to happily recede into his shadow as lady-in-chief, my awakening to gender disparities in work allocation had yet to come. So I dutifully did the dishes and cleaned up and listened to his whining about my moving around his TransFuckingformers (on display in the living room despite my protestations) to dust. And I let him carry heavy stuff and go shopping when it was cold and I am already so fucking depressed about my former self in telling this story that I shall simply end this comment here.
This is very complex for me because I’ve never been an independent person, always let my older siblings and parents do shit for me growing up, and always preferred group houses and communal or family living to being alone. My husband assumes a lot of stereotypically female duties like cooking every night, sewing and darning, fixing my jewelry and shoes and shit, and forcing pills down the cat’s throat. I think because he does some lady chores, I use that to avoid interrogating our workload as to equality more deeply. Because I’m “naturally” dependent and tend to romanticize sharing, “you do what you’re good at and I”ll do what I’m good at,” etc. I really avoid challenging myself to learn about electronics (would rather sell all that shit and never look at it again frankly), handyman things, etc. Now I gotta go home and be all introspective and shit! Damn you, feminism!
PS, we’ve all got our crosses to bear, but your cross made me laugh out loud.
JDR, I totally feel the same way about electronics. I learn what I have to, begrudgingly, and really would be perfectly satisfied with the jam-box and TV I had in HS. I love being handy, but no one ever bought me a DeWalt cordless drill, despite it being on my xmas list for years. The Dude got something similar (an inferior Craftsman) a couple years ago. ‘Cause we need those trenches dug deeper.
PilgrimSoul – I now suffer from a very real fear that you were dating my ex. How many dudes with Transfuckingformers collections on display in the living room can there be?
I’ve always been a fairly independent person in general so unless something is actually beyond my ability I usually just do it. Which is good, since my husband is often out of the country for several months at a time. I also suffer from a severe case of I’d-ask-you-to-handle-this-but-you’ll-probably-do-a-crappy-job-so-I-might-as-well-do-it-myself-itis. And not just about household stuff, but stuff like calling the cable company to dispute a charge or finding out why the fucking oil company fucking forgot to deliver again so it’s 45 fucking degrees in the house.
Blondegrlz, I know my husband has that attitude with me too, just does shit for me (like hang pictures) bc he knows i will fuck it up and complain about it relentlessly. I very much have the attitude you often hear women complain about men where they act like they can’t cook so they don’t have to. I try something new, can’t do it perfect the first time, and give up. This holds true outside of the household as well sadly. Luckily I am handy in a few areas, such as aforementioned screaming at utility companies, obsessing over saving ever larger percentages of our meager disposable income, and keeping houseplants alive.
Additionally, while I did not date your joint ex boyfriend, I DID have one with a glass display case full of pez dispensers. But I always liked that about him. Probably because he didn’t expect me to dust the motherfuckers.
Blondegrlz: Have we all dated the same guy? I almost prefer to think of it that way, rather than accept that there’s a fairly large population of dudes with Transfuckingformers collections in the living room.
I’ve lived on my own since I started graduate school, so figuring out wtf is wrong with whatever Mac I’m currently using has always been something I’ve had to do myself. (I might have called my father and gone MY COMPUTER’S BROKEN!!! but since I’ve spent most of my independent years 1500 miles away from home, I have eventually had to fix it myself). I also set up the dvd player, kill the cockroaches, hang the pictures, and put together the storage crap by myself. A girl in my building helped me put together my new bed a couple years ago, and last year I put together a bookcase myself.
Having said that, I HATE doing most of that stuff, and occasionally wish I could just hire a boyfriend to do it for me. I’m not sure if that says anything other than the obvious: I am epically lazy.
PhD dork, that is why I bought the cordless drill myself. It is the best purchase I have ever made.
To be fair, wiping a hard drive is fairly time intensive, that is, if you can’t multitask. THe really intensive part isn’t the wiping, but the getting it back to normal after it’s wiped. I’m pretty fast at it, but I did get paid for doing it for an entire university campus (not by myself of course).
This will totally out me to any friends who are reading the site, but BG and Ratti, if your exes also had a strange and singular devotion to Kantian ethics (such that questions of ordinary household drudgery always ended up turning, eventually, on the Categorical Imperative) we should talk.
I just realized I forgot the most shameful part of my dependency — rolling joints. I’ve been a daily smoker for more than a decade and now I literally sit at home and wait for mister to get home to roll me a joint. Fucking pathetic for an addict, truly.
I hereby demand a recurring feature by PSoul called “boyfriends I have known.”
I don’t know about BG, but the only other devotion my ex had was to multiple apocalyptic anime series, so I think we’re clear there.
Oh, JD. My specialty is Sad Young Writers/Philosophers/Filmmakers.
And, Ratti, I should say he did have the anime bug. And the video game bug. Years later, friends who knew me at this sad time of my life still turn to me with a knowing grin on their face whenever someone speaks of Playstation, knowing the role it once unwillingly played in my life.
PSoul – My ex wouldn’t know what “ethics” meant, let alone “Kantian”. So there are at least 2 guys obsessed with their Transfuckingformers (I will never use the regular word again).
Ratinski – Could still be the same guy. But unless your failed out of 3 different schools thank to a computer game obsession, mine still might win the loser award.
Mine had the video game bug as well. I can’t count the number of Saturday nights I spent on the couch watching him play whatever the hell game he was playing that week. This was followed, of course, by yet another viewing of either Neon Genesis Evangelion or Serial Experiments Lain (two anime series I liked at the beginning of our relationship and despised by the end).
The lesson here is that even the vaguely datable guys at the college anime club are to be avoided.
Oh, an BG – mine ending up dropping out of the only college he went to and working in a comics shop, and additionally wouldn’t know Emmanuel Kant if he rose from the grave and bit him in the ass, so I’m going to assume that there are at least three guys out there obsessed with their Transfuckingformers.
A truly harrowing thought.
I dealt with the videogame bug by mastering Gears of War.
By “mastering” I really mean “becoming moderately profficient at.” But still. Good enough.
@ ratinski: I second you on the “epically lazy” front. I tend not to do, um, anything around the house, cleaning- or fixing-wise (including pick up and put away my own clothes much of the time). I do cook because I actually enjoy it, but my boyfriend does the dishes, cleans the kitchen, and takes out the garbage, one of my roommates vacuums, and the bathroom just never gets cleaned (which I’ve been deluding myself into thinking isn’t that gross). My other roommate fixes random crap around the house. So, yeah…I take screaming advantage of other people’s goodwill/lower mess tolerance. While there is definitely some element of “girlyness” involved (I think the garbage bins in our building are gross, I don’t trust myself to take apart a bathtub faucet), for the most part it’s just that I’m a lazy, lazy shirker.
@jdregent: I was kind of like you before I moved here. I wasn’t really allowed to do anything useful when I lived with my parents because they were just sure I’d mess everything up, so when I was in college and alternately living in dorms and with my aunt, people helped me with just about everything. Which made me feel bad and which is why I moved to a state far, far away from everyone I knew so I’d be forced to learn to do a lot of things for myself. (Not that you need to/should. I just felt bad because there were people who really thought I was faking all my inexperience to get out of doing things.) Which is a great segue into my more on-topic rant.
@yvanehtnioj: Omigawd, your story made me think of the time I found myself installing curtain rods in my cousin’s room out of frustration. My younger cousin and her mother routinely save the kinds of household tasks that some of you assign to your husbands/boyfriends for my older cousin’s best guy friend or my younger cousin’s exes to come over and do. Which I guess I understand for big things like their massive entertainment center that takes up an entire wall and that they probably would’ve wanted to delegate even if they did feel they could do it themselves. But my cousin was talking about calling an ex over to put four holes in the wall for a curtain rod. I was like, “Are you frigging kidding me? It’s a curtain rod. I am more than happy to put it in for you myself.” And her and my aunt were like, “Woooooow!” Like I was Shera or something. I was so annoyed! And I’m always shocked that the guys don’t feel put out, which I guess is dumb considering how many times I’ve been told they like feeling needed. This is why I’m glad I’m not a dude. I don’t want to feel needed. I want to go to sleep.
Oh JD, if anything you must, must, must learn to roll your own joints. I learned out of necessity in the woods behind my high school and I’ve never stopped. I love projects, hanging pictures, sewing shit, cooking, building furniture, anything that has a beginning, middle, and end I can be in charge of. This turns in to me wanting to do everything, because like BGZ said, I think I can probably do it better (in my head.)
I straight up won’t cook raw meat and I make Boyfriend do it.
beginnings middles and endings give me heart palpitations and shove me off into a miasma of self sabotage and procrastination. i prefer a crisis-response paradigm.
Jd: re rolling joints–don’t feel bad, I make whatever guy I’m with light the bowl for me, as I am terrified of burning my fingers.
I have always been fiercely independent — the original “I’m gonna do this by myself!” — regardless of my relationship status. I make but one exception: I prefer having someone come to my rescue when members of phylum Arthropoda (i.e., insects and arachnids) invade my living space.
I will not let Fiancé hang pictures, because he hangs them too high and doesn’t care if they are exactly centered in the allotted wall space.
Oh, and I also have been a video game widow — thank GOD he stopped playing WoW — and he does own a few Transfuckingformers, but thankfully he doesn’t display them.