Gender Confusion
Sometimes I (sort of) jokingly say that I am the man in my relationship with Re-Boyfriend. Now there is pseudo-scientific proof.
An article in Sunday's New York Times (yes, I have just gotten around to reading it), "You Want It Clean? You Clean It!", examines housekeeping as a gender war. On opposite teams we have women desperately wanting to clean but feeling they shouldn’t and men knowing they should but not caring.
A quote from the article: “Of the men I interviewed, it wasn't so much that they didn't want to do the housework as that they didn't notice that the house was dirty…They didn't see it or smell it. It just doesn't register the same way.”
A quote from me: “You just have to tell me when you want me to clean. I have no problem with doing it, I just never know when it’s time.”
A quote from the article: “Yes, it is true that society still assumes this to be women's work. And yes, it is true that many men do all they can to avoid their share. But it is also true that many women are guilty of what sociologists call ‘gate keeping’: building a fence around a territory, be it vacuuming or child care or grocery shopping, and defending it as theirs. They set the standards in that realm, and they set them high.”
A quote from a conversation with Re-Boyfriend as I ironed my shirt:
CB: What? Why are you staring at me?
Re-Boyfriend: Can you…can you just…
CB: You want to iron my shirt don’t you.
Re-Boyfriend: You’re just doing it wrong.
CB: No, no, it’s fine, it’s my technique, you’ll see—
Re-Boyfriend: JUST LET ME IRON THE SHIRT.
A quote from the article: “In other words, men wish women would change just a little bit more and accept that, though their mothers cleaned and stored the dishes after dinner every night, it is not wrong to let the dishes air dry next to the sink overnight.”
A fact from life: While perhaps not “after dinner every night,” Re-Boyfriend does indeed dry and store the dishes immediately after washing them while, in my apartment, dishes sit in the drying rack until they are used, washed and returned to the drying rack. That is just where they go.
I have always thought I was mildly messy and Re-Boyfriend was mildly obsessive-compulsive. It had not occurred to me that he is, in fact, a woman. I learn so much from The New York Times.
38 comments:
Iron..iron, iron. Oh yes, I think I've heard of one of those!
(My dry cleaners love me.)
so does that mean you are a lesbian? lol :)
And you are, in fact, a man. You surely learned this from the article as well?
Maybe you should call him Re-Girlfriend from now on. It'd be funny because all of your regular readers would chuckle about it, and all of your new readers would think you're a lesbian.
I think the situation is more gender equal than you realize however men are more heavily weighted in the blind to dirty category. My neatest/cleanest child is male, while his twin sister is decidely the messiest/dirtiest. She does not register either. I register dirt but not messes. My husband registers mess but not dirt and does little about either.
I've seen a lot of fussy men who have trained their wives to be cleaners but it rarely works the other way.
CB
Husband #1 thought clean meant a car that hadn't been modified.
Husband #2 thought clean meant a joke he could tell in front of the children.
Husband #3 will clean anything, but you have to be specific about what exactly you want cleaned and what degree of cleanliness you wish to see accomplished. Left to his own devices he will emerge from the bathroom 4 hours later with it so clean you could use it for an operating room. Nice but not necessary.
Me, I'm a lazy slob at heart...yet a compulsive cleaner in practice. Does that make me a woman who is secretly a guy?
im a slob, but then i have these odd moments when i cannot be near any amount of clutter. too bad those moments havent come lately.
Lol. My GF and I bought a nice looking drying rack from Ikea with the exact intent of using for both stoage and drying. However, she still puts the dishes away. The rack was her idea.
Hey CB, maybe you like girls?! O_o Nah, that'd make this blog so popular that you'd make it into Time. :-p
I whine and complain to myself that I am the one who ALWAYS does the house work and the child rearing. However, if he gets out the vacuume cleaner and I am home I find it insulting. I can't believe he thinks this is dirty! So, I will grab the vacuume and do it with an attitude.
I guess women are weird this way.
"I guess women are weird this way." No - women are weird, period! Every time men think they have the answer to you, you just change the question.
It is a scientific fact that mean are unable to stack a dishwasher... properly.
I don't think cleaning up is gender related. I'm a generally clean guy, and a lot of girls I know are slobs. We men, in our own way, might be more obsessed with order...
My wife hasn't a clue how to put dishes in the dishwasher. She throws them in all mumbo-jumbo. Dishwashers are designed to hold certain items in certain ways. Ignoring that design threatens the fragile kitchen eco-system.
I was on the phone with my dad last week and he was telling me that he put the afgahn (sp?) under the comforter so that it didn't look gawdy...my response was "your such a girl!" Little did I know there was scientific proof that his wires are crossed!
My boyfriend is a total chick:
From cleaning to organizing to cooking to being dramatic.
He would like to start a resteraunt or own a shop and I just aspire to have a Harley some day.
He would like to get married and have kids and buy a house to decorate and I've never even thought about it.
Dudes are the new chicks.
Yes, but-- who spanks whom?
yes, but he still snores. (so we've heard...)
LOL..... yay for laughs. :)
My boyfriend is a neat freak. He once said to me, "Like YOU would ever have to worry about using a vacuum as long as you lived with me." Total bonus.
Every time one of these gender war articles comes out, all that ends up happening is that traditional gender roles are dragged out of the closet again and rubbed in everyone's faces by the emphasis of stereotypes in the article's conclusions (I'm not the only one who doesn't fit in a box).
My fiance cleans when I ask him to, otherwise, it's just my job, because his job is to take care of me. So I clean. And sometimes, the roles are reversed. I have a godmother that lives alone, and has for a long time, and she just prefers not to clean very often. When you don't have someone around to sort of "answer to," you tend to forget about those types of things.
I think that is what's going on in your case. Maybe? And in the case of the ironing, I have a friend who doesn't know how to wash a car or to put a pillow case on a pillow -- simply because, she's never had to do it herself, and no one took the time to show her how. If my mom had not shown me how to iron, I wouldn't have a clue. And maybe re-boyfriend had to do all of that stuff for himself growing up, or something along that line.
Who knows?
I can totally agree with you about the drying rack, that's just where the dishes live, I don't know why they gave us all these useless cabinets...
My relationship is just the same ;-)
I read that article and had the same reaction... my boyfriend and I definitely have different opinions on what a "clean apartment" looks like... unless people are coming over, when I want to give the illusion of an apartment that has just stepped out of the pages of "young, hot couple's apartment" rather than "this-is-disgusting-can't-believe-your-fake-eyelashes-are-on-the-floor-like-a-tarantula." Oh well.
My husband is more of a neat freak than I am. Of course, after I've spent all day chasing around two little monsters who undo everything I've just done, in addition to feeding/grooming 2 dogs and 3 cats, I have just about enough energy left to ingest some stale chips and warm Mt Dew for dinner. So when Kevin gets home from work and gives me that look like "what have you done all day?"...
He knows better than to actually ask me.
If I didn't know better, I'd suspect you had a secret camera in my house and were writing about us. Even down to the "re" part in "re-boyfriend."
Very scary indeed.
Great post! :)
where does one find a man like that? or a roommate of either gender?
Things must be a changing because you were so describing me and my dude. I just fold the bath towels and put them away. He refolds them and stacks them by color! I toss all my undies in the drawer; he folds his in a nice stack. So weird.
LMAO That was pretty damn funny...
My ex-boyfriend seemed to be a little bit confused about which things are important to clean. He'd be perfectly happy to keep his stacks of engineering notes and textbooks piled nicely by the computer or to load the dirty dishes into the dishwasher, but when the bathroom sink had a thick film of black grunge in it (honestly, HOW do they get it that dirty in one day?!?!) he was completely oblivious.
I want one like the one U got CB... I want one one of those... ( arms flailing, throwing myself to the ground and having a fit like a two year old brat )
Sigh....I can only dream....lol
Yes to no ironing!
Freaking wow to breaking gender stereotypes!
Gotta love wearing them pants..
Nick and I are the exact same way. Its really thrown us for a loop how I am not so clean and hes freakin Mr. Clean.
No, Re-BF is obsessive. Dude, he dries dishes and puts them away??
That's what dish rack is FOR!
Buy him a nightie and a subscription to Cosmo for his birthday.
I finally just hired (cheap) house cleaners. I told husband that either they were going to do or he was going to do it, but I was NOT going to do it.
I think you've tapped into something here. By not doing something correctly, even housecleaning, his inner Alpha Male comes out in an attempt to show you - the female - how it's done right. This is brilliant!
Next time, I'll put some shoe polish on a rag to clean the tub, and see what my husband does.
I use Tone, it's 1/4 moisturizing cream, and I love it.
YES! Ha, you immediately-after-college roommates! They thought I was just being lazy and gross and I told them I just didn't think stuff was dirty when they did! And now I'll bet they are waiting on their husbands hand and foot while pushing a vacuum cleaner around. Me -- I ditched the husband and can do what I want. HA!
this was a hoot....love the comments as well. all your readers want to tell you about their lives, cb. thanks for being the catylyst!
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