"i don't need a guy to get my shit done, to get what i want out of life," writes my friend, d. "so where is a guy going to add value? i need a guy who's going to partner with me and share the work. not someone who i have to take care of in addition to myself."
d and i were chatting today, catching up as she finishes her third year at a top law school, and as i flounder in a strange city, looking for work and questioning my direction. co-habitation was a common thread for both of us when we worked together nearly three years ago, she in a solid long-term relationship that was going well, and me in an unhappy, burdensome relationship that could attribute its longevity more to the american visa complications than any actual emotion on my part. now, as she has navigated her way around the dating scene in the limited pool of her law school, summer internship locations, and now a european exchange program, and i have (bravely, or foolishly, depending on the day) resigned from an amazing and overwhelming job in shanghai and relocated back to america to a strange city in the name of love and a future, we continue to commiserate.
two independent, intelligent women, we have always seen eye-to-eye on gender roles, simultaneously incredulous at what was expected of us as women in domestic partnerships or society in general, disgusted and critical of the apparent doubling of work for women in the doubling of apartment occupancies, instead of the division of labor that you one would predict mathematically, if somewhat naively.
we have sussed out that the type of male doesn't seem to matter. metrosexual, designer grooming product-using, french cooking technique-deploying boyfriends displayed similar feints at helplessness as the sports-loving, indiscriminate beer-swilling types. arrogant or humble, well off or deeply embedded in school debt, open or emotionally stunted, the results were always the same. when chores are split, say by the common i-cook, you-clean technique, we females seemed to create more work for ourselves. after meals are cooked and consumed - during which the majority of the pots and pans would be generously washed by the cook - the rest of the dishes would be blearily found the next morning to still bear traces - or outright remnants - of the meal from the night before. re-wash the dishes, sigh with annoyance. after a handful of these episodes, inquire politely about the dish-washing technique of the household male. dish soap depletion has accelerated, so it can't be that not enough soap is used. perhaps soaping the sponge and washing each item with the water shut off instead of throwing the liquid around and creating an ineffective and wasteful foam party would work better? snip, snap, the female is "nagging." the male doesn't believe that the dishes he washes require a second go-round. produce the proof and again we are nags. so the choice now is either to continue to inquire/guide/snap/nag, or to silently fume and re-wash dishes in silence.
i, for one, am not a martyr. he will learn to wash dishes properly so help me god. wanting a cereal bowl to be clean and not encrusted with last night's rice is not unrealistic. i am not going to compensate for his laziness and therefore add to my existing workload when he is the one that can correct his behaviors like the adult he is. ok, so perhaps it doesn't help that i frequently ponder aloud if he was raised by a pack of wolves, or just a single wolf. does he open cereal boxes with his feet or hand it to the nearest tasmanian devil for assistance? how many mornings will i stumble into the kitchen for a coffee mug and come away with grape nuts embedded in the soles of both feet?
interpreting the cleanliness level of the house is also an on-going discussion. at this point in time, i am the sole house cleaner (floor sweeper and mopper, laundry washer and dryer, bed maker, toilet scrubber and disinfecter) for the reason that i am unemployed and have nothing better to do, and the household male is in law school. i tell myself that when i find work, there will need to be a schedule mapped out and more guidance on what makes a sink disgusting and what makes it clean. how often a toilet should be scrubbed and why it is important. how to sweep hardwood floors where the dirt is actually captured and disposed of, and not just stirred around. call it nagging if you want, but we will not live in the continuation of a college frat house.
in doing this, in telling myself that the division of labor will be righted again when i have my own gig going on, i am soothing the equalist in my head. i am promising to her, no i am committing that i will not perpetuate gender oppression and will continue onward with my values and ideals. but every day is a compromise. now that studying for finals is upon us, i feel like an outright servant some days. i resent it, and being me, i let it be known. to be fair, he recognizes how dependent he is on my daily work, and how much more work i do than he, and how i feel about it, and even claims to feel badly. but how long will that last, and does that guarantee that the work contributions will change?
if i do procure a great, stimulating, career-forwarding job and the household male does the same, and we then outsource the domestic duties to someone else (who will likely be both female and of color), am i failing what i've promised to myself? am i perpetuating the oppression of another woman?
2 comments:
it seems to me that it all just boils down to what's important to whom. one can't always make something be important to someone else if the someone else just doesn't give a crap about that thing; and if that someone else is only doing that something to appease another person, then yes, eventually there will be resentment. not sure there's a perfect solution to be discovered here if both parties have inherently different ideas about what's an important way to spend their own time... oh life...
hahaha this is hilarious!
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