Male supremacist alert: how dare women “control their husbands”! (commentary)

“the ways in which a majority of American women actually think we are better than men in the entire domestic realm, from kids to kitchens. About the things we don’t actually want to give up. And about the roles many of us want men to play and the roles we are willing to let them play.”

Sorry, since when is traditional motherhood and stereotypes against women “female superiority”? And also, who said women are expecting men to play certain roles? It’s other men who do that, not us.

”You walk into your office on your first day of work and your boss, a man, says, “I have evolved biologically to do this job better than you can, but I’m going to let you try. To be sure it’s done right, however, I will leave you detailed instructions for every individual task. And when I travel, I will call in every couple of hours to make sure you are following those instructions to the letter.”

Most women would complain immediately to human resources and perhaps start considering a lawsuit. But when I describe this hypothetical scene to audiences of women, the laughter begins to ripple along the rows by the time I get to “I will leave you detailed instructions.” This is precisely the way the majority of us treat our husbands or male partners when we leave them in charge of the children. When I point out our own double standards in this regard, double standards we have long ago fiercely rejected in the workplace, I see a number of women looking slightly shamefaced. But inevitably at least one woman in the audience will raise her hand and say what many others are thinking: “But they really don’t know how to do it.”“

There is a HUGE difference between the two, it is that in the female side, women are undermined in office work simply because we are treated as inferior and not suitable for “man’s work”. Meanwhile in the male side, nothing is stopping men from simply working in the house since he is literally choosing to be lazy and it is a fact that most men don’t know how to do housework or childcare because they simply don’t want to do “women’s work”. Men aren’t being prohibited from housework by women, it’s the patriarchy that reinforces these stereotypes.

”I point out that I have spent many years in my career wondering why men seem to think that their way of getting work done is the best or only way. The cult of face time; the endless sports metaphors; the assumption that bigger is (almost) always better. I often have a different way of doing things, and who are my male colleagues to say I’m wrong, as long as the work gets done and done well? Women initially had to accept the roles and routines of office work on male terms; increased equality today means that women are increasingly free to do it our way. Why shouldn’t men have that same liberty and equality at home?”

No one is saying men shouldn’t have the same freedom at home, that’s just you saying that. The real reason men think their way is better is because of male supremacy and systemic misogyny, not because of women restricting their rights. Women had to fight for their right to work in male-dominated spaces. Again, no one is stopping men from doing housework. It is all about responsibility and motivation.

”Men are certainly aware of a widespread female presumption that we really do know better when it comes to home and kids.“

This is because women were EXPECTED to do housework and childcare according to the patriarchy. That’s not our fault for following patriarchal norms.

”In an article in New York magazine, therapist Barbara Kass calls many of us out on this account: “So many women want to control their husbands’ parenting. ‘Oh, do you have the this? Did you do the that? Don’t forget that she needs this. And make sure she naps.’ Sexism is internalized.” On Huffington Post, dad blogger Aaron Gouveianotes it’s mostly the moms “who claim to be over- worked and desperate for dads to do more” who also criticize dads for not doing things right when they do step up. “And by right, I mean their way. I’ve seen dads criticized and made fun of for how they dress the baby [and] for how they feed the baby.””

Oh boo-hoo, men are so oppressed. How dare we tell our husbands to do what a true responsible parent does! Us women are so judgmental, are we? All we ever do is complain about how overworked and exhausted we are yet it’s the dads who apparently work much harder than we do! Not to mention, we’re always complaining how they seem to neglect feeding the baby or getting his/her clothes inside-out. Because that’s all we FeMaLeS are ever good for anyway, right? “Nagging” and “controlling” our husbands, isn’t that right?

”Still, for the sake of argument, let’s assume for the moment that the average woman you know is better at managing all the household tasks and childcare than the average man. Now ask yourself why that might be so. Both practice and confidence come to mind.

In families with biological children, the mother bears the child and typically breastfeeds. That means she instantly begins gaining competence, even if at first she’s having a whole new experience. Confidence—or lack of confidence— are self-fulfilling prophecies, as we know from social psychologist Claude Steele’s work on priming. In Whistling Vivaldi, he discusses how stereotypes can be both cultural and situational. For example, women, blacks, and Latinos are told they are bad at math, and so they don’t do as well in math overall as Asians and men. But Steele showed that “stereotype threat” can be situational, too. He did a study where researchers told one group of white male Stanford students with high math ability that they were taking a difficult eighteen-question test on which “Asians tend to do better than whites.” A control group of white male students was told nothing. The results were stark. The white men who were told that Asians do better on the test performed three questions worse than the students who were told nothing at all, the difference between an A and a B grade.

If women assume they can do whatever needs to be done in the domestic space better and faster than men can, they are likely to be better. Conversely, as Rutgers professor Stuart Shapiro puts it, “If a man is told repeatedly he is not good at child care (or cooking dinner), or that the family is better off if the woman does more of it, he will probably start believing it (as he is probably predisposed to anyway).”“

This lady was so close to getting it right, only for her to completely miss the mark. A stereotype is a stereotype no matter how good or bad it is. How does she not see right through her own bullshit?

”Once again, biology rears its controversial head here. Women produce big doses of the “love hormone,” oxytocin, during labor, which plays a part in that magic moment when you look into your baby’s face and your world shifts under your feet. Men don’t. Women breast-feed. Men don’t. In nature only 5 percent of male mammals are engaged fathers; the other 95 percent inseminate and depart. Surely then, even if we feminists deny it with our dying breaths, women are “naturally” customized for child rearing.”

Oh god, it’s one of those “biology” drivels again. Apparently women are supposed to be mothers because it’s “natural”, and yet she’s complaining about a lack of men regarding housework and child-rearing. For fuck’s sake, lady, make it make sense!

”It is true that women get that dose of oxytocin and that they breast-feed. Neuroscientists Kelly Lambert and Craig Kinsley have shown that motherhood makes rats smarter, more emotionally resilient, and physically agile. It turns out, however, that similar changes, and the same hormones, are found in the brains of male California deer mice, one of the species in which both males and females care for the pups. And deer mice are not the only species in which the male is affected by parenting. Endocrine systems and neural circuitry are altered in a manner “strikingly similar to that in mothers” in male marmosets, owl monkeys, and, of course, human beings.“

Because animals weren’t indoctrinated by manosphere logic, you fucking idiot! This is exactly what parenthood should be, yet the patriarchy fucking ruined it by saying “men are too good for housework and child-rearing, that’s female stuff!”.

”I vividly remember the first time one of our sons woke up in the night and called for Daddy instead of Mommy. My first reaction, to put it politely, was deep dismay. I’m his mother. Kids are supposed to call for their mother. If he’s not calling for me, then I must not be a good mom.

On that particular occasion, I got up and comforted my son, telling him Mommy was here and that Daddy was sleeping down­stairs; all was right with the world. Over the years, on the many other occasions when our sons turned first to my husband Andy rather than to me—for homework help or advice on subjects ranging from music to girls—I have had some tough conversations with myself. Even if, as my mother would say, I have always wanted to have my cake and eat it too, I simply cannot have all the rewards and satis­factions of my career and expect to be the person my sons call for first”

Why is it that tradwives think motherhood is a reward and not a fucking responsibility? I swear to god this lady thinks that just because she’s doing exactly what traditional norms tell her to, she needs to be pandered to. From how she talks, and the fact that her sons are giving more attention to their father and far less to her, not to mention she doesn’t mention any of the work her husband works to make their sons come up to him more, she is unintentionally teaching her sons to ignore women in spite of the fact that she was the one raising them. What makes matters worse is they’re coming up to their father wanting to learn more about girls, which personally rubs me the wrong way as a lot of fathers (the ones I met) know little to nothing about women. In my opinion, in heterosexual relationships, if boys want to be educated about girls, they should go to a female figure (like their mother for example). When I was growing up, I (obviously a girl) was taught by my dad about boys and how they behaved. When I travel with him, he usually talks to men and sometimes has a couple of little boys chatting with him about traditional boy stuff. I had to put up with it despite me rolling my eyes and having no understanding of men and boys’ hobbies and ways of communication.

”Americans having fewer children, women having more control over their reproductive lives thanks to widely available contraception, and parents having children later than they did in my mother’s day—as reasons why benign neglect went out of style. From 1970 to 2006, the proportion of women having their first child after the age of thirty-five increased nearly eightfold. “Because so many of us are now avid volunteers for a project in which we were all once dutiful conscripts,” Senior writes, “we have heightened expectations of what children will do for us, regarding them as sources of existential fulfillment rather than as ordinary parts of our lives.””

How is that a bad thing when women are acknowledging that caring for children costs a lot of money? Especially since the debt is at an all time high and a lot of women with children are in poverty? Come to think of it, you completely ignored the lives of single mothers who are much worse off than you, you selfish bastard!

”If I am honest with myself, the hardest emotion to work through when I heard our son call for Andy rather than for me was not guilt but envy. Even with all the rewards of my career, I would still like for them to call for me first. As the psychiatrist Andras Angyal writes, “We ourselves want to be needed. We do not only have needs, we are also strongly motivated by needed-ness.” Mothers have gotten that special rush for years when a child reaches for us and says no one else will do; the question is whether we really want or are willing to share that role with others.

It is still unquestionably important to me that our sons turn to me first on some things; I specialize in emotional issues and moral dilemmas. Overall, however, I have to accept that if I’m going to travel as much as my career often demands, then Andy is going to be the anchor parent at home.”

This has got less to do with envy and more to do with the fact that you’re allowing internalized misogyny run the household by not only being the only woman in your family, but also the fact that you’re spewing this nonsense about lowering women’s importance and ignoring traditional norms and the patriarchy. You are clearly upset about having a job while having children and wanting to be there for them more. Come to think of it, why didn’t you just quit and let your husband do the office work? Problem solved.

”If we accept that trade-offs are necessary for women if they want to reach the top of their careers, even if they have money and choices, and if we’re prepared to let men be equal caregivers just as we insist on being equal competitors, then we have to be very honest about our deepest needs and desires. It is one thing to let go of the housekeeping. Quite another to relinquish being the center of your children’s universe.”

What the fuck does trade-offs got to do with childcare? Like I said, no one is stopping men from being caregivers, it is not a business like your office work. Lady, in your condition, you are the one who birthed your children and held them on the day they were born, and now you’re just wanting your own children to ignore you in favor of your husband, who didn’t do shit.

”We need to step off our new self-created pedestals. When we are feeling overwhelmed, we need to let go and ask for help. It often takes much more strength on our part to acknowledge weakness than to pretend infinite competence.“

Women had to FIGHT to get where we are now, there were NO pedestals for us to stand on! You are deeply obsessed with wanting women to admit they are weak and men are perfect in every single way just to tickle your tradwife brain! You hate it when we are confident with ourselves, you are clearly jealous of our confidence, and you desperately want us to think like you! There’s your problem. Women are not sexist to men, they’re sexist to OTHER WOMEN!

”Some readers are probably thinking at this point: Of course! That’s ex­actly what we have been asking for. We want the men in our lives to pick up the slack, to be equal partners as caregivers so that we can be equal partners as breadwinners.

But that’s exactly the final place we have to let go. We have been asking for “help.” That means we decide what needs to be done and we ask the men in our lives to help us do it. It’s not going to work that way. Real equality means equality at home just as much as at work. It means a whole new domestic order.”

Goddammit lady, make up your fucking mind! You are desperate to bring other women down and glorifying men by giving us a “damned if we do, damned if we don’t” situation! So go on, tradwife, do tell us what true equality really means in your own delusional opinion!

”For years, I got upset with Andy about why everything domestic seemed to be my responsibility. Although he did lots of stuff, it was almost always when I told him what needed to be done, and he never seemed to feel the urgency or necessity of getting it done himself. But then I came to realize something else: for a long time I wasn’t really willing to let him take responsibility. I did feel, deep down, that I knew what I was doing in terms of running our household better than he did. I didn’t really trust him to be able to do it on his own, or certainly not to do it the way I would.”

Because if you simply left him alone and let him do his own thing, he’s not going to do shit! He’s not going to properly parent your sons the way they should be raised! He’s just going to physically neglect them until they scream loud enough that they’re hungry, and I wouldn’t be surprised that you also didn’t teach him or your sons how to cook. Because he wasn’t taught how to raise children like you were, it’s no wonder you thought you raised them better simply because you were actually trying and facing responsibility.

”As our sons would be quick to point out, that’s sexism, plain and simple. I was assuming, like almost all the women I know, that he wouldn’t be able to take care of the kids or run a house­hold as well as I could because he’s a man. But of course if a man were to assume that I really can’t practice law or medicine or busi­ness or any other profession or job as well as he can because I’m a woman, I would hit the roof.

So why won’t we let go? At least part of the reason why women assume that we are superior in the home, and that our way of parenting or decorating or homemaking generally is the right way, is the oft-cited mantra that women are better than men at multitasking.“

Oh good lord, what has your husband been educating your sons?! Reverse sexism?! Give me a fucking break! This “reverse sexism” bullshit is just a lousy excuse for lazy and entitled men to avoid responsibility! And for fuck’s sake, stop blaming women for the harms of the patriarchy and don’t go saying “if men said just I’m a woman” bullshit because it’s ALREADY HAPPENING! Oh sure, do let go and let your lazy-ass husband rot in his lounge chair while letting his untaught sons starve to death and wilt in the house that hasn’t been cleaned in months all because they weren’t taught to cook and clean.

”In her controversial article “The Retro Wife,”journalist Lisa Miller writes, “Among my friends, many women behave as though the evolutionary imperative extends not just to birthing and breast-feeding but to administrative household tasks as well, as if only they can properly plan birthday parties, make doctors’ appointments, wrap presents, communicate with the teacher, buy the new school shoes.” She goes on to cite a 2010 British study showing that “men lack the same mental bandwidth for multi-tasking as women. Male and female subjects were asked how they’d find a lost key, while also being given a number of unrelated chores to do—talk on the phone, read a map, complete a math problem. The women universally approached the hunt more efficiently.”

Okay. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that women are better at doing multiple things at once. So what? No matter which partner is better at focusing or multitask­ing, homework monitoring or organizing playdates, if we women truly want equal partners in the home, then we can’t ask our hus­bands to be “equal” on our terms. Andy’s view of how to run a household definitely differs from mine, just as his taste in every­thing from furniture to how to organize a kitchen differs. But why is my way the right way?”

Because women were TAUGHT how to be caregivers and men weren’t. It’s that fucking simple! And also, you also said “we should ask men for help, but also we should NOT ask them to help because they think we’re “controlling” them”. So if true equality means letting your husband be lazy and not tell him to do anything and then wonder why your house looks like a mega garbage disposal, then you need to seek therapy.

”And even if every stereotype does hold, and our worst female fears of living rooms turning into man caves are realized, are we really so sure that our kids will come out worse? While single fathers may not be nearly as plentiful as single mothers, they have managed to raise plenty of successful kids. So have families with two dads or two moms. Alternatively, if women let go and let the men in our lives be genuinely equal or primary caregivers, we may just find that all these stereotypes of male/female parenting differences are socialized as well.

There is only one way to find out.”

No, our worst fear is not having our homes turned into “man caves” (even though I hate that shit with a burning passion). Actually our worst fear is coming home to a literal dumpster that makes it impossible to live in! Single fathers knew they had to raise their children because they had no one else to turn to, they had a responsibility and they took it seriously! Your husband on the other hand, is just simply letting you slave away and then screaming oppression when you ask him to do his share of the work. Women need to let go but not in the way you think. Women need to leave lazy men if all they do is make shitty excuses just for them to be treated like children.

”In terms of parenting, fathers were often the primary caretakers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. What was once unthinkable in one age becomes normal in another. So try to envision what the future might hold, and how we might get there.”

Because women weren’t allowed to do childcare. I’m not surprised how you have to glorify men for everything all while bring your own sex down.

”Close your eyes and just imagine letting it all go—the expectations you imagine others have of you and that you have of yourself, your mate, and your house. Imagine that if your children call for your husband or partner or any other loving adult in their lives, then you have the security of knowing that many different people can be there for them. Imagine that your mate takes charge of an equal set of domestic responsibilities and tells you what to do to help out and fill in.

If we can let go of the mountain of assumptions, biases, expectations, double standards, and doubts that so many of us carry around, then a new world of possibilities awaits. We may lose our status as superwomen, but we have everything to gain.“

What do women gain in that situation? Have your own kids and spouse ignore you and treat you as an object despite the fact you’re the breadwinner? Having to do everything in the fucking household and never have time for yourself because you don’t want to tell your husband help around the house because he’s too lazy to do so?

We have been letting men off the hook for far too long and now you’re upset that men don’t want to be told what to do despite the fact they fucked us and made us bear children? The real issue is that uneducated men are the reason child abuse neglect is common in heterosexual households. They refuse to acknowledge the hardships of being a mother and not engage with her to ease her pain.

If I see a man who acts that way, or a woman who lets her husband disregard her, and I have to live with them, I’d be out the door in a flash.