I think you’re looking at this more abstractly than me.
I can imagine a lot of women (not all) being fine with a situation where they do some chores and a maid does some chores but their husband doesn’t do chores.
I don’t think many men would be OK with doing the dishes and cleaning the bathroom while their wife doesn’t personally do any chores.
You’re not representative, as I think you acknowledged later in general.
Do you have much experience socializing with guys and hearing their “locker room” talk or other talk about women?
Not so much any more but I spent 2 years in an on-campus college (about 200 residents, mostly undergrad, about 50/50 male/female). There was plenty of locker room talk there.
I’m reconsidering things with that in mind.
When you put it like this, I think I agree with you. Like putting aside the abstract, if we just took real world relationships at random, I think you’re right.
Maybe that’s because the default is worse, but in that case why aren’t the men fixing it? What does not fixing it imply about their likelihood to have a problem with their wife doing no chores? (note: those questions are rhetorical)
Hmm. I might replay again later once I’ve thought about things more.
@anonymous45 I have been disagreeing with you a lot, so I am going to try to offer some sympathetic perspective on what happened here and maybe back up your original point a little.
I think Elliot brought up a very ubiquitous real example of how chore breakdowns occur in real marriages. A scenario where the husband does basically no chores and the wife does basically all chores is common and consistent with typical gender roles. Adding a maid into the mix, so that the maid does 50% of chores, the wife does 50%, and the husband does roughly zero (but he pays the maid since he is the breadwinner) was also relatively common (when people could afford it) and consistent with standard gender roles. And it basically would amount to the same thing as “they agree to split 50/50, then the husband pays a maid for his 50%” in terms of who is doing what.
Everything Elliot said there makes sense to me and is true. However, I wanna go back to your original scenario that led to this example of Elliot’s.
I think this scenario is, on the outset, uncommon. It is not a typical marriage. The situation Elliot described is normal and common, this is unusual and remarkable. However, engaging seriously with your unusual hypothetical…
If they genuinely agree to a fair 50/50 split and put in the effort to identify all chores so that it is a genuine 50/50 split, we’re way outside the norm of marriages. But in such a case, I think I understand what your implicit reasoning was. Not sure I agree, but your guess is at least plausible to me.
Mainly because such an unusual couple is probably very aware of social gender roles, since they are spending sincere effort breaking from those roles. So then if they spend all that effort breaking from gender roles and then the husband spends money to get out of his chores, that looks very much like he actually does want those traditional gender roles after all. It’s like the work they put into splitting chores was just lip service. It makes him seem like a fraud, someone who wants gender roles but wanted to trick his wife into thinking he didn’t. Even if he says he is paying it from “his” discretionary fund, it can still appear this way.
Whereas if the wife wants to pay to avoid her chores, that’s not conforming to the same normal patriarchal gender roles. So a husband who is aware of those roles and sincerely trying to break from them might be more okay with it. I suspect he would still find it annoying, but it would seem less like a fundamental betrayal of their partnership, and more like a cheesy lame way of getting out of shared work.
I do not think this was your explicit reasoning, but it might have been unconscious on your part. Note also that I think in this case the wife is probably correct to find it more upsetting than the husband should find it. There is an asymmetry in social roles that informs her frustrations. I did not get the impression you thought this, it seemed like you imagined her being upset was at least somewhat irrational. But I think it follows from what I said above.
I thought of this pseudo-contradiction (representative of contemporary right wing / red pill views) after reading Elliot’s recent essay. I don’t often think of criticisms / jokes about red-pillers so I wanted to share. It’s a bit flawed but gets the point across.
Reject: Judge men by the worst few.
Accept: Judge immigrants by the worst few.
I think some red-pillers might notice and point out that it could be flipped to be a criticism of the left instead of the right. I think that’s interesting (that the literal inverse works nearly just as well).
While I think that red-pillers think “judge men by the worst few” is pretty accurate when it comes to feminism, I don’t think feminism thinks that. instead it thinks that it’s not just a ‘worst few’ but more like a ‘worst lot’. The two problems have different scales and shapes. (Note: low confidence here, esp with how I represented feminism)
PS @anonymous105, that’s actually more detailed than I was thinking (I went more with my gut). I think you make some good points. I have some comments but might be a bit before I reply.
But anti-immigration people would say they are not judging immigrants by the worst few, they are judging them by the “worst lot” or similar as well. They believe that most immigrants are rapists/criminals/drug dealers/job-stealers etc. The president literally says things like this.
There is a fact of the matter in both cases, though. It is possible that in reality one group actually does typically have worse behavior. Regardless of what the respective tribal beliefs say.
The plot goes from S2E5 to S2E10. I rewatched two scenes:
S2E5 27:00 Roxie (cancer patient) is in the hospital after a seizure. Paul (husband) calls Lena (nurse, helper, advocate, death doula) a “life saver”. Roxie praises the joke and gets more pain meds.
S2E5 40:40 Roxie wants to go to the bathroom herself and advocates for herself over the objection of Lena. When she tries she has pain. Paul says “this is not a good idea” about her idea that she said “please” for. He doesn’t need to insert himself there. She can use her own judgment as can the doctors. He had nothing useful to add and no expertise. It’s not like everyone else is too dumb to recognize the problem. He doesn’t have a good understanding of when to stay out of the way and what actions would be helpful. Lena then diverts the husband and tries to get him to leave and get coffee – he is a problem that has to be managed. Also Roxie wants privacy for using a bed pan. He doesn’t take the hint immediately and has to be reassured about leaving by both Roxie (who is busy and in pain) and a doctor before he leaves. He caused some unnecessary delay.
This didn’t seem like a deliberate joke to me, more like a slip of the tongue that Roxie played off. But I haven’t rewatched it.
Nothing particularly occurs to me about this.
S2E5 40:40
Yeah this seems worse – I forgot about this earlier. In hindsight, I’m surprised Paul isn’t more accustomed to this situation (maybe he’s always like this, or more on edge because of the injury). In any case, those actions aren’t supportive, he’s not trying to help her achieve her goal. Lena’s more supportive even if it removes her (Lena) from the scene. Which in many ways is reading the situation better – she trusts Roxie and the doctors to handle anything, and recognizes that Roxie would be better served by them getting out of the way. Now Paul reminds me more of a helicopter parent or one who bubblewraps their child. Note: that’s going by your recount + my memory so I’m still a bit unsure. I might need to rewatch it if I’m off the mark. Lena seems very capable and compassionate in her role, again from memory though.
I feel like sometimes there’s a social dynamic reason for these kinds of objections (“this is not a good idea”), although I don’t think it’s happening here. The reason is that sometimes people will be stubborn and prefer to be told no than change their mind, and will continue doing something that doesn’t work. On the other hand, sometimes it’s done to control the other person, too, or out of (momentary) helplessness / uselessness plus preferring to be involved even if it’s unnecessary than not.
Heads up: this is an old draft that I didn’t finish. I didn’t want to discard it, but not sure I remember enough to properly finish it now. I’m going to post it unfinished. Sorry for dropping the ball on this one.
Okay this is curious to me. Perhaps in the 50/50 case there’s an expectation of doing something other than what would fit into normal gender roles. Like it’s important for the wife to feel that they as a couple aren’t falling into those roles (even if it would be ‘fine’ by all the rules).
Good point – I hadn’t thought of that.
Yeah. I asked my mom about this and she pointed this out when thinking about it, like she was particularly scoping her thoughts to that context.
She had a similar intuition to me (I tried not to prime her), in that she thought the wife would be more likely to be bothered. When we dug into why, one thing that came out was that one source of annoyance was the husband ‘getting out’ of the chores, and that it was important that he did actual labor (which seems to me like wanting to control your partner). This same reasoning can work vice versa too of course.
I guess another way to look at the set-up is that — (unfinished)
I believe I addressed this in the post you’re replying to. I agree this reasoning can apply to either party and I think either party is likely to be annoyed by this. I do think a husband could easily be annoyed in this situation, and feel like his wife is “getting out” of chores. I don’t think this is necessarily wanting to control your partner, but that could be a reason.
But regardless, that possibility of annoyance seems fairly symmetrical to me. Therefore I don’t think this explains why the wife might be more annoyed when dealing with this situation.
Quoting myself…
I think this detail reflects an asymmetry in the relationship (due to gender roles/expectations). And it is an asymmetry that we are assuming the parties are aware of. So it seems like a good place to find the cause of an asymmetrical amount of annoyance from the wife.
You didn’t finish the post so I don’t know if you agreed with this or not.
