Via quacktaculous @ Flickr.
I’m home, and since school is about to begin, I thought I’d get out my No. 2 pencil and write that time-honored back-to-school essay. My next few posts will be related to the concerns that arose during my vacation, away from the feminist /progressive /urban /pointy-headed /bo-bo milieu in which I live, and which protects me from many daily gender inequities others experience (although I have quite enough of my own as it is, thanks).
As expected, the Dude and I had a good time on our trip to the Midwest, visiting and feasting and playing card games and such. But crammed in there at the odd moment were spells of rumination, wherein I puzzled over the gender-related issues that regularly punched me in the face in ways to which I am unaccustomed. I mentioned in my last post that the Dude’s family, while kind and fun and generally loveable people (five of us, between the ages of 30 and 60, ended up going to a waterpark without little kids and having a blast), is not exactly progressive. The Dude grew up in a pretty traditional family, as far as gender performance goes. Men mow lawns (except when the women do), lift heavy things, and change oil, and women do everything else: cooking, cleaning, shopping, errands, social organizing, and so forth. Men scowl. Women worry. And they also raise children and work outside the home, just in case there were any spare minutes in the day. I highly doubt that any would identify as feminist.
The Dude was in this family, but not particularly of it, at least in that way. Unlike most males of the clan, he was into music and art, not sports. He was introverted, not brash. He liked the subtle, usually verbal humor of his grandmother, not the blustery teasing that his uncles subjected him (and everyone else) to. During family gatherings, he would linger in the kitchen after meals, listening to his mother, sister, aunts and grandmother visit while they cleaned, rather than sitting in front of the game with his dad and uncles.
When we were first dating, I remember learning about his close relationship with his maternal grandmother and sister, as well as a briskly affectionate rapport with his mom (they are not a terribly demonstrative people). I thought that was pretty great, especially since I had more tempestuous relationships with my family. It’s not just that he respected them, or shared a lifetime of memories and customs with them: he liked them. A lot. He enjoyed their company. He thought they were interesting, valuable, downright cool people.
I don’t have children, and I’m not even terribly good with them until they’re in middle school, but to our readers who are moms raising boys (and for all the laydeez out there looking for a decent, feminist-friendly fella), I would say this: men who value the women in their lives will value the women in their lives. That reads a bit reductively, I know. But there’s a lot of truth there. If a man cares for his mother’s feelings, speaks well of his sister, sends his aunts holiday cards and has a long list of inside jokes with his devilish, twinkly grandma, he’s much more likely to care for, speak well of, communicate with and take joy in you and other women as friends, co-workers, and partners.
There’s always the chance that such care might be coming out of a sense of ownership (“I treat my women right, the rest of you bitches are prey”), but if the Dude family had anything to teach me, it was that Oscar Wilde was wrong on this one:
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
The Dude is his mother’s son, inside and out. And I thank my magic pixies every day for it. Moms, you’ve got so much power. No mother is perfect–nor need she be–but knowing how the Dude was (and wasn’t) raised, and the kind of man he’s become, I would suggest the following things:
Don’t do too much for your boys (or girls, but since I’m addressing, as requested, mothers of sons here…). With? Sure. But keeping them ignorant of how to be an independent adult, with basic cooking, cleaning, banking, and shopping skills, along with a sense of purpose and community, will lead them to learned helplessness and a belief in “women’s work.” Give them responsibilites inside and outside of the house. Help them build and maintain friendships with girls. Calmly but consistently question whatever sexist drivel they’ll pick up in the world and bring home to you. Check your own thinking on appropriate gender behavior, and the kind of language that polices those lines when you speak without thinking, as we all do. Encourage your boys to be “on the same team” with their sisters. (This did not happen in my home, more’s the pity.) Expose your kids to older women—neighbors, aunts, friends—who can demonstrate that women are not Woman, and that they are just as funny and interesting and capable and fallible and everything else as men. Employ a male babysitter, if you can. Try to make sure your boys’ male role models—dads, uncles, “big brothers,” etc.—demonstrate healthy, egalitarian attitudes toward women, and won’t undermine all the hard work you’re doing to give your boy a bigger, better space in which to be a man, and as the result, to give the world a bigger, better man.
It’s not revolutionary, but it is concrete. Dads can do these things too. And aunts (I am one) and uncles and twinkly grandmas and babysitters and all the rest. Good luck. It can happen. I know from personal, if not maternal, experience.
AMEN, sister!
Also, I think it’s key to BE A WOMAN YOUR SONS CAN–AND MUST–RESPECT. My stepmother used to wring her hands and say “Becky, I just want my sons to grow up respecting women.” Unfortunately, she then went and did 100% of everything for them, never disciplined them, and never called them on their casually misogynist dudely behavior. She was the doormat and they wiped their feet on her all day. It’s a damn shame, because she’s a wonderful woman, but she didn’t demand respect, so she never received it, and that was the lesson she taught them. Now the sons she wanted to grow up respecting women….don’t.
Cautionary tale, ladies. Role modelling COUNTS.
I haven’t asked my son to try to cook yet, and he’s almost 15, But I have asked my daughter. hmmmmm. I have been asking him on and off to do his laundry.
Rod’s ToDo: his own laundry, his own grilled cheese lunch
Agreed! My hubby rocks and it’s mostly because he was raised between two sisters, and they were all expected to do their share around the house, from lawn mowing to meal prep. As an added bonus, being the Middle between two girls means he’s a total lover not a fighter, and a very calm, mellow guy. Which is good because I tend to be a hot head…
You make an implication that the men in the Dude’s family are lazy and stick strictly to their male duties while the females are hard-working intellectuals that stretch beyond their roles into those of the men.
Is this really the case?
Perhaps you haven’t observed/don’t appreciate the difficulty of the work of the men in the Dude’s family and perhaps more comradery exists in front of the football game than you can observe from the kitchen.
If you really want equality with men, perhaps you should engage them directly instead of condescending them on the internet.
Thanks, Heath. If I want equality, I should do just as you say. Got it.
In addition, you’re probably right that I’m discounting the power of sports-fueled camaraderie and undercutting the difficulty of their work. After all, you, having read an entire post that says almost nothing about those men other than that they watch sports while women clean up, clearly understand the situation better than I, who have known them for a mere decade.
Fuck right off, chief. I said nothing about lazy men. I didn’t call the women intellectuals. I said the family was “traditional as far as gender performance goes.” I wasn’t even talking about the men. I was talking about the women. As one might, at a feminist blog. Fool.
Wow. I was really surprised by that reply, PhDork. I came away from your piece thinking something similar and was about to post it when I saw your reply.
To me, the line that “I highly doubt any of them would identify as feminist” struck me as odd. Just because the women do so-called “traditional” tasks as cleaning and cooking does not mean they would not identify as feminist. Obviously, there is no way you could get into the intricacies of the family dynamics in one short post, but based on what you wrote, it just comes off as you maligning the men as “manly men who want to watch the game the game in peace without their nagging women.”
Again, I’m sure this is not how you see the family based on your obvious respect for them, but it is how it came across to at least two readers. Of course, as you mentioned, the men are not the focus of the post, but the anecdotal leads on this site are usually an entertaining introduction to the values of the writer.
I really enjoy this site and the varied opinions in the comments, but replies like yours make me want to stay away. I’m sorry if I have offended – just wanted to offer my opinion.
You didn’t offend, thatbrowngirl. There is a way of civilly airing your concern that I was unfairly “maligning” the men–you managed just fine–but what Heath wrote was not it. This was his first comment, he came out of nowhere to tell me how I don’t understand the situation, and his own blog has a recent post defending rape jokes as Swiftian satire. He’s not operating from a feminist viewpoint or even in good faith, and I have no qualms about shutting him down. I also have no qualms about calling out men who, in your words, “want to watch the game in peace without their nagging women.” That’s a pretty crappy attitude for a man to hold toward his partner. Watch the game, whatever, but don’t pretend the little woman is an athletic bonerkiller when she brings you (not you, thatbrowngirl) another beer.
That I doubt his family IDs as feminist is neither a slight to their personal beliefs or an indictment of their performing traditional tasks. I perform those tasks. I am a feminist. These are smart, sensible, get-shit-done women. I have great respect and affection for them. The point is, Mama Dude didn’t set out to raise the Dude to be a feminist. In his family, the lines are clearly drawn: women in the kitchen, men in the den. The Dude crossed those lines, and is, I believe, a better partner than he might be otherwise, although he himself admits that he has paid the price of closeness with his female family members with a lack of closeness with a number–though not all–of his male relatives. For the record, when he arrived home tonight, he swept me into quite the embrace and thanked me for the post.
@PhDork: Awww…go Dude!
@thatbrowngirl: You’re totally right in saying “Just because the women do so-called “traditional” tasks as cleaning and cooking does not mean they would not identify as feminist.” Many women in my family fall into this category. But in this case, PhDork was wasn’t speaking in generalities; she was talking specifically about a family she’s known intimately for over a decade. If she says they don’t identify as feminist, I’m sure she’s correct. I don’t think she was condescending to the men in question, just describing the very traditional gendered ways they operate, which, frankly, is the norm in MANY families (my grandfather and several of my uncles are good men, but they have never once cleared a table, cooked a meal or changed a diaper in their entire lives).
And Heath is an anti-feminist (check out his blog) who was trolling; she was completely justified in that response, IMO.
Thanks for the clarification, PhDork and BeckySharper. I was not aware of the previous commenter’s opinions. This was a great post about how men are influenced by their families – I love hearing how personal experiences of the harpies shape their views!
We know that you can be overly concerned with traditional gender behavior when you’re rearing kids, but is it possible that you can be not concerned enough? Our son, in his early 20′s, is looking for a relationship and having a very hard time making sense of female behavior on the internet dating sites he’s joined. He thinks women are being dishonest when they do things we would all understand as normal, like wanting to talk on the phone before meeting. It’s clear that he simply doesn’t understand the rules, and our daughter suggested to me that that’s because we didn’t teach them to him.
I want to help him-I gave him Deborah Tannen’s book ” You Just Don’t Understand” when he had a girlfriend in high school. But it doesn’t seem to have helped. I guess this is a bit of a cautionary tale-it’s one thing to raise your children to believe everyone is equal and it’s another thing to teach them that equal people behave differently and to deal with that reality.
Yeah, I hear you, mischiefmanager. I have spent a lot of time explaining to my little brothers why their girlfriends act the way they do, what motivates them, how to communicate with them, etc. I just try to counter that “OMG, girls are crazy!” knee-jerk with “well, okay, bro, but boys are crazy too…it’s just about learning to understand each other’s crazy.” Because you’re right, it’s sometimes hard to explain that while people should be treated as equals, that doesn’t mean they should always be treated the same as you.
I am intrigued, Mischiefmanager. Does your son go to you with his concerns?
It seems like rearing feminist boys either happens with a lot of work or by complete accident. My boyf would not identify as a feminist but he acts like one.
He is the youngest of four boys; the other three are all conservative while he is extremely progressive. His parents are conservative and very traditional as well. I love them all, but he didn’t get any feminist messages from them growing up.
One time we were jogging together and he refused to stop before I did. He said his dad told him to never, ever let a girl beat him at athletics. Also, “women are evil.” He recognized that it was wrong, though, and I think he just struggled to rid his mind of that nonsense. At this point our relationship is as equal as one can get. I’d be thrilled if my (hypothetical) son turned out like him.
My dad was the product of a single mother (his dad died when he was 8 ) and 4 older sisters, not to mention various aunts that would often drop by “helping” (side note: all in a house with one toilet). I really think it made him respect women and not view them as “other.”
I personally would never date a guy who badmouthed his mom. He doesn’t have to be best friends with her but I think a guy that doesn’t have basic respect (some exceptions for horrible abusive mothers) for his mom wont respect you.
what is dishonest about wanting to talk on the phone first? wha?
I apologize for appearing trollish. I can assure you that was not my intent. I found this post because a friend shared it on Google Reader. I didn’t just google ‘feminist blogs’ and post a vitriolic diatribe comment because I was bored at work.
I tried tempering my words with ‘perhaps’ to leave open the possibility that I was wrong about my assumptions. I don’t at all mean to presume that I know more about your family’s situation than you do. Clearly, that is absurd. I also realize that I’m nit-picking your post a little.
I didn’t mean to imply anything about you or women in general with the ‘equality with men’ comment. It was my presumption that feminists strive for equality between the sexes, so I was trying to reference a main goal of feminism indirectly.
I have a pet peave about the debasing of male culture on its face, and I was afraid you had done it on three fronts: work output, intelligence/learnedness and post-dinner pastime.
I inferred that in your post women do more work than men because you listed more tasks that women do than tasks that men do. Additionally, you mentioned that women do some ‘male’ tasks, but didn’t mention that men do some ‘female’ tasks.
I inferred that you considered the women more intelligent/learned because they were more verbal and not brash.
I inferred that you value the pastime of visiting in the kitchen more than watching the game based upon your tone and that you would value similar things as the Dude.
My inferences may have been (and based on your reply probably were) wrong, but I wouldn’t have known that without further information supplied in comments.
I actually agreed with the meat of this post. My own parents both consider themselves feminists, and I have great respect for my mother, who is one of the strongest people I know. I agree that the best way to teach your sons that women don’t exist to serve them is not to serve them when they can serve themselves. My wife and I plan to raise our son that way.
I hope you were using the my blog to identify me as a troll and not to discount my comments. I’d rather see my comments discounted with a reasoned argument rather than dismissed because I have a post on my blog you don’t agree with.
My original comment was calm and reasoned, if blunt. I apologize again for my bluntness, but if you truly thought I was trolling, you didn’t have to approve my comment, and this misunderstanding could have been sorted out through a simple email exchange.
Thanks! I’ve actually been wondering lately if there are any guys out there at all who see women as people… good to know there are!
@Heath – I recommend that you do a little reading before you comment on a feminist blog again. For example:
“It was my presumption that feminists strive for equality between the sexes”
This is overly simplistic. Look up what a system of oppression is — we’re trying to dismantle that, rather than just equalize things within our current system (impossible).
“I inferred that in your post women do more work than men because you listed more tasks that women do than tasks that men do.”
Look up the “second shift”. Although I cannot say for certain about PhDork’s Dude’s family, it is often factually the case that women do more work than men. You can find indicators such as minutes of leisure time per day to prove this – a quick google found a study showing that American women spend 40 more minutes per day working than American men on average, for example.
Also you may want to look up the definition of humor; humor does not necessarily offend by its nature. You also totally failed to understand the point of the Shakesville post you quoted. For a lengthier discussion of rape jokes and why the vast majority are irresponsible, I recommend http://fugitivus.wordpress.com/2009/06/24/a-woman-walks-into-a-rape-uh-bar/ and http://fugitivus.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/two-more-things/
(By the way, if that sounded condescending, I honestly didn’t mean it to. I think you just don’t know what type of discourse you’ve gotten yourself into here and it would behoove you to learn some of the basics before you continue.)
If one group of people is sitting on the sofa after dinner while another group of people is cleaning, then the inference that the former group is not doing their share of the indispensible unpaid labour is not unexamined assumption, it is empirical fact.
@SarahMC: He didn’t initially, but it was clear that he was upset about something, so we encouraged him to talk with us. He’s been very angry about what he sees as the refusal of the women on these sites to “be honest” with him. That is to say, if there’s a online discussion going on and the woman stops responding without an explanation, or stops responding after he suggests meeting, he feels that that’s dishonest because the whole point of the endeavor is to meet someone in person.
I’ve tried to explain that women are generally careful about meeting strangers in person, but instead of simply accepting that that’s the way it is, he tries to argue that a phone call isn’t really an effective screening device, and on and on.
@madaha: he’s not a phone person himself, so he doesn’t understand why women don’t want to proceed directly from online chats to meeting.
The thing is, whether or not he understands it, he needs to accept it, and that’s what he can’t seem to do. He’s a great guy otherwise (if I do say so myself), but this is a real problem.
That’s…troublesome, mischiefmanager. It sounds like he’s verging towards an attitude of Nice Guy (TM) entitlement to women’s attentions. I’m glad he has you for a mom, and that you’ve explained the very reasonable thinking that women who do the online dating go through. As to what else you can do? Maybe let him talk a little more and find out if this is just his way of dealing with rejection, or if there’s something more serious going on. You could note that some women might just be playing, but you might also suggest that/find out if there might be something he’s communicated that could be interpreted as coming on too strong or seeming otherwise “unsafe” (like not agreeing to phone calls). I don’t know that there’s a good answer, but you’re right in that he need to accept that women, being people with their own desires and concerns, won’t always behave the way he wants them to.
I don’t think you failed him by not holding his hand re: dating through his adolescence.
Thanks, Ph.Dork. I appreciate the support a lot. I’m going to end the public discussion here since this site isn’t here for me to discuss my personal family drama, but if anyone has ideas or thoughts, please feel free to email me directly.
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