Nature also hates doing the dishes, or so I hear

Let’s keep this simple: If you are a man, and you eat food and live indoors, and you ever want to identify as a feminist or feminist ally or reasonably claim that you support gender equality by any name, you need to know what goes into what used to be called “keeping house.” And not just the charismatic mega-fauna equivalents of housekeeping, like “Grilling foods outdoors” and “Sometimes helping wash the dishes for extra credit,” but the actual dirty, boring minutiae of caring for and cleaning up after human beings.

I’m not going to lie to you, there are strategies to make cleaning house easier and to break it up into small tasks so it doesn’t look insurmountable, but it is repetitive and time-consuming and not very exciting…and utterly necessary if we don’t want to live in squalor. (And just when I think squalor might not be so bad, a mouse runs out of my toaster and I have to throw the toaster away and sterilize the counter.) But for men, whose traditional mindless entitlement has been made possible by generations of feminized domestic labor, backing gender equality takes more than a neutral stance; it requires positive actions that make restitution.

It’s easy to agree in theory that it’s not a woman’s gender-specified job to put food in your face-hole for you, but if you are a man or male-presenting person and you don’t proactively take responsibility for planning and/or making your own meals until you’re forced to by near-starvation or until someone else volunteers to help you, then you are enforcing partriarchy with your passivity. Even if you don’t order your domestic partner or that woman you just passed in the hallway to make you a sandwich, by simply doing nothing, you’re saying that the work is not yours to do. And when you get into the habit of leaving that work undone, a woman or female-presenting person is more likely to feel pressured to step into that role because it’s modeled absolutely everywhere for all of us.

Likewise, if you don’t sweep up the cat hair, clean the bathroom, do the dishes & laundry, and just generally take responsibility for whatever happens in your home without being asked and without expecting undue praise for doing so, you’re still part of the problem–you’re coasting on privilege to avoid responsibility for the necessary work of physical life. (This is also like that thing where when dads take care of their kids for 3 hours out of the week, they’re “baby-sitting.”) You’re not living your feminism–you’re reinforcing patriarchy while expecting the benefits of identifying as feminist.

And don’t even say you didn’t notice–did you ever notice how only people who benefit from privilege can afford to remain ignorant of it? Everyone on the wrong side of that fence has already been forced to notice whether they were inclined to or not, so don’t go crying to them. Did you think equality was sitting on the couch for equal amounts of time while no one bought groceries or took the trash out? Believe me, son–Nature abhors a vacuum even more than you do, and saying that someone else doesn’t owe you their labor does nothing to change the status quo if you don’t take over that labor for yourself.

The same conditions apply to anyone on the receiving side of privilege in any context, so take heart: you’re not uniquely burdened in this regard, and no one is getting off the hook here. All work–of daily life, of social infrastructure, of culture change, of movement, and of justice–needs to be done. If you don’t want to be part of the problem, start doing it.

I can’t believe I missed International Street Harassment Week!

And BOY, if you know me, you know I’m sorry I did, because I am all over that nonsense. For instance, I have a bonus example of both street harassment AND gaslighting to share with you, because I have thoughts about it.

A young man outside a bar this weekend called me “sweetheart” and was resentful when I didn’t take that so well, mocking me to his friend for my reaction. Only after his friend left could he risk the devastating blow to his masculinity caused by approaching me to apologize and explain (read: totally justify his behavior).

Him: “I’m just trying to be kind, other girls really like it.”
Me: “Welcome to the world: you’re being presumptuous. Don’t do that.”
Him: “I’ve been living in the world for 30 years (Ed: lol) and no one has EVER had a problem with it. I’m just being kind, saying that you look like a sweetheart.”

This is where it’s obvious he was lying and/or reading from an internal script, because if there’s one thing I don’t look like to strange men who take liberties, it’s “a sweetheart.” Also, and more pertinently: stop trying to convince me that I’m wrong to dislike your behavior because no other human being has ever objected to it in the history of the world as imagined by you! In this way, my street harasser usurped my right to even have an opinion about being infantilized and demeaned with a familiar, intimate word that he didn’t have the right to use.  He just redefined himself and his conduct as normal, and my objection as the non sequitur that didn’t make sense or fit events. I’m sure he would have loved it if I believed him and backed off, accepting his view of the world in which he was being politely flattering and I was being irrational and easily offended.

I’ve got news for that guy: I’ve been gaslighted by far more cruel and subtle actors than you, including (but not limited to) organized religion, history class, and at least one ex-boyfriend, and I’m onto all of you now. I’m not going to change the world by calling you out on a Saturday night, but I am going to make sure your terrible, horrible framing of the exchange doesn’t go unchallenged. Free, on the house.

Oh hai

I’ve been avoiding “writing” as anything more than an incidental facet of life for…well, most of my life, on the pretext that writing as a purposefully honed craft sounded suspiciously like a lot of work. At the same time, I’ve been using words and their arrangement and presentation on the internet to communicate ideas and build relationships for over 15 years now, so it’s probably time I admitted that my life is actually built around that shit, and I should stop being afraid of being judged by it in some nebulous way. Let’s just call this “blog” a practice space, one that doesn’t smell like spilled beer and the bass player’s BO.