Housework and the partnered feminist gamer
I won’t lie to you — Amanda’s recent post about the feminism being the root cause of male underachievement, with videogames being the escape pod for harried men has me absolutely green with envy. This level of writing is why I’m vying for head pom-pom girl in the Amanda fanclub.
Amidst the skewering of the various bullshit theories put forth by antifeminists leaping forth to explain how feminism is to blame for whatever problem happens to be in their brain, there are some very important points Amanda makes that are worth highlighting and elaborating upon:
First of all, a sports or XBox widow shouldn’t necessarily try to take gaming as an interest in order to spend more time with her partner (or the other way around). Apart from the fact that she should feel free to explore interests of her own, there’s no guarantee that the partner would actually welcome her involvment. The gamer may not be a cooperative gamer, preferring single-player RPGs or highly competitive games like Halo or CounterStrike.
For single-player gaming, the offer to “help” may be little more than annoying backseat driving. Attempts to learn how the game works means that she will just be couch-squatting: which, if it isn’t an act of passive-aggression, will probably be interpreted as one. For a competitive multiplayer, there is nothing more obnoxious than trying to instruct a n00b who has never actually used a controller–especially when you can’t heap abuse on them about how much they suck because it could spell the end of your relationship.
In short, if you’re an XBox widow and you happen to be reading this, open the lines of communication. Explain that you want X number of hours for “together time” every week, whether it’s for the carnal carnival, watching a movie together, or going out to play skeeball. And in the intervening hours when the partner is playing the XBox, you can always go clean the kitchen!
Kidding, of course! But it does bring us to the next point, which is the division of household labor.
This is a problem I know very well, and has been known to make me crazy. I was raised in a less-than-egalitarian household, and I have struggled to overcome the sort of bullshit that was modeled for me. Here’s a hint: If the breadwinner has tits, she’s not given a pass on her “responsibility” to keep a spotless house. And I say responsibility because, as ginmar pointed out in the comments: it isn’t a man who is judged negatively by peers if a house is a complete shithole.
Ultimately, what it comes down to is: women’s housework is expected to come before leisure time, and men’s participation in housework is considered secondary to leisure time. Women’s leisure time is valued less than men’s.
I really bristle at the common “solutions” for the problem: The first, the “work strike” is unacceptable for a number of reasons. First of all, a messy/unclean house is hazardous. Dirty dishes left piling up encourage vermin and disease, and tripping over a pile of discarded crap in the middle of the night on your way to the bathroom is never fun. Oh, and, it’s passive-aggressive, and all it’s going to do is allow your anger to fester as you watch stuff pile up and your partner is zoned out in front of Assassin’s Creed. Not to mention, if “house work” also entails childrearing, then going on a work strike is basically neglect. The second solution is the “lowering of standards,” which again, is a problem. For the reason mentioned above: the cleaner a house is, generally, the safer it is. Also, I find it very patronizing that a woman is expected to lower her standards with nothing required of the partner. Having to actively ignore a problem because you’ve “lowered your standards” can be as much work (maybe even more) as just doing the chore yourself. Finally, a variation of the “work strike” is the Lysistrata gambit–or sex strike–not ‘allowing’ your partner to have sex with you until they start cleaning up is frankly so stupid I’m surprised when I ever hear it brought up (with the exception of being too exhausted from housework that you’re not in the mood). Apart from the fact that it assumes that women are the “gatekeepers” of sex, who have no initiative for it and can take no pleasure from it, it’s such a non-sequiter. It’s would be like going on a hunger strike because your partner didn’t fill up the car. There is no (nor should there be any) relationship between clean house and dirty sex. Trying to create one is just asking for trouble in the relationship.
Again, the solution is an open line of communication, especially about standards and expectations. What chores are expected to be done daily? Weekly? Draw up a list if you have to. Talk about “assigned chores,” if one of you hates to mop and the other one hates to dust, then don’t make the mopper dust, and don’t make the duster mop. Don’t expect things to change right away, but do expect them to change.
A very good piece to read, and one I’ve found helpful in my own struggles to achieve parity in the housework, was Bitch, Ph.D.’s post regarding housework. The problem with housework is that women seem to have some bizarre need to work invisibly, as if they were “the help” in a pre-war manor house, and so men don’t think about the work because they don’t even consciously realize that it’s been done. If the laundry is neat and folded on the bed, they don’t think about the time you spent doing that. If the dinner is made after the shopping has been done, or the floor has been vacuumed and the trash taken out, tell them about it. In fact, as Bitch puts it, be willing to be a bitch about housework. Loudly proclaim the chores you do as you do them. “Now I am sweeping up the kitchen floor, being sure to get under the stove and around the trash can. Now I am bending down to sweep the dirt and crap into the dustpan. Look… see all that shit that was on the floor? It isn’t there anymore because of me. Now I am throwing it away and filling a bucket full of soapy water. Now I am mopping the floor. Now I am done. It only took me about ten minutes to do all of this, now I’m going to spend ten minutes cleaning the bathroom. I’m going to spray these bubbles on the sink and wipe it down with a clean rag. I’m going to put windex on the mirror and clean it off with a paper towel…” (you get the idea). I’ve actually had a measure of success with this technique myself because it takes the work I was doing out of the theoretical “laundry fairy” realm and into the concrete list of tasks that either one of us could be doing.
It may seem passive-agressive, but it’s a lot less passive-agressive than silently doing all of the housework yourself and then being sulky the rest of the night. It becomes much less passive-agressive if you follow up the play-by-play of your household chores with an honest discussion about how you could share out the responsibilities more equitably. Keep talking about the housework you do afterwards, and ask your partner what they’ve done to help out. If you stick to it,you can both have leisure time, whether for pursuing your separate interests, or a co-op game of Gears of War.
February 4th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
First of all, a sports or XBox widow shouldn’t necessarily try to take gaming as an interest in order to spend more time with her partner (or the other way around).
I can say from experience that this is very true. My long time boyfriend is into MMO’s, and I have on occasion felt like a final fantasy xi widow. The boyfriend does actually really want me to play ffxi with him, to the point where he offered to level up my character for me. But whenever I tried playing it with him, I always ended up being rather bitter that I had to play a game I didn’t enjoy just to spend some time with the guy. If you’re not interested in an activity, doing it with someone you love isn’t going to make the activity more interesting. It’s just going to make you associate your loved one with a boring activity, and that’s not going to help the relationship.
The method of evening out the housework is interesting to me, mostly because my boyfriend does that whenever he cleans. It’s always bothered me, like, why are you telling me this, do you expect me to give you a cookie for doing the bare minimum cleaning? In a recent argument over chores, it came out that he didn’t understand why I wasn’t telling him about the chores I’ve done while doing them. So I’ve started listing out chores too, and it does seem like it’s helped. It still doesn’t seem even to me though. But maybe I’m just bitter cause he monopolized the tv yesterday, and I wanted to get in some Super Paper Mario…
February 4th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
We’re actually pretty good as far as gaming equity — we have a computer and consoles, so if one of us is occupying the console, the other one can go on the computer, and we’re good about letting someone get first dibs if they have a kewl new game to play. But yeah “I’ll level up your character for you” doesn’t really make playing FFXI with the bf more enticing.
I think that having the open line of communication about housework is good for both ends, because sometimes (at least for me), the person doing more of the housework is so fixated on one particular chore that He! Isn’t! Doing! that they could miss out on other chores that are being done, and being reminded that yes, the partner is doing something (maybe not his fair share, but not necessarily sitting around on his ass doing nothing) is worth bearing in mind.
February 5th, 2008 at 12:58 am
It’s weird; I’ve always been the one to do the housework whenever I’ve lived with someone. It doesn’t matter if it was the 3 years I lived with a GF, the 6 months I spent living with a couple of male roommates in college, or the sister I live with now.
Your point about higher standards is interesting to me– when I lived with the GF, my standard was to simply clean once a week. Spot cleaning all the rooms, and mid-level cleaning on one of them. Since I never _deep_ cleaned anything, she never really considered it “cleaning”. Of course, this was a woman who didn’t understand why I hated having 2 piles of laundry on the floor– one clean, and one dirty. I grant, my experience is atypical…
February 5th, 2008 at 1:53 am
@ Punning Pundit - actually I don’t think your experience is that out of the ordinary. In my household growing up, mum was a full time teacher and dad was home with a disability - in short, bad neck problems. As a result, he did most of the child rearing, cleaned and cooked.
You make many valid points Mighty, especially regarding the attempt at taking an interest in games just because your partner does. Taking an interest in the hope of spending time with a partner, though you have no really want to, could almost be likened to the “snack making girlfriend” of the sports widow. You’re simply there to cheer them on! Wooo.
It’s a strange tug o war when trying to argue feminism and female independence (just thinking but unable to articulate exactly what! - this is my first post on these issues since I left uni so I’ll have to get the dialog back…)
Regarding chores and stuff, I’ve always found it interesting that people need to keep track. When I’m left alone, living by myself, the house is always clean AND I GAME PRETTY MUCH FULL-TIME. Why? Because I clean everything AS I GO.
Example, I eat breakfast and chuck the plates in the dishwasher before I leave for work - if it’s full it goes on so they’re clean when I get home. When I do get home, the dirty work clothes go straight into the wash and if the machine is full, it gets turned on. Dinner is cooked because I like eating, after dinner, clean dishes put away, dirties thrown in.
Etc. When something is used, you clean it and put it back. There shouldn’t BE a build up of house work. Sorry, this is a personal thing, I hate it when people leave stuff for others to do and both men and women can fail horribly at this. You should see my girlfriend’s room. EEEEK. And the layers of dust … so much dust. Clean as you go, there isn’t a problem and there’s more leisure time for EVERYONE!
February 5th, 2008 at 3:50 am
When my college boyfriend and I lived together, basically one of us would say, “Help me do the dishes,” or “it’s time to do laundry”, or “sweep up the floor while I clean the kitchen counters” or whatever and we would do the chores together. The only times that one of us was sitting around while the other did chores was when one of us bussed another one’s plate.
It was a pretty good setup, excepting that I preferred doing things on set days (like “saturday is laundry day” and “sunday is the day to vacuum and clean”) and he liked doing things whenever he felt like it. We fell mostly into his schedule, which meant that some weeks we didn’t clean, but then again living alone (with my schedule) it’s not like that doesn’t happen to me sometimes anyway.
February 5th, 2008 at 8:16 am
When we had to schlep stuff to the laundromat, we definitely had a laundry day because it all had to be done at once. Now that I have the luxury of our own w/d, I’m definitely “batches as they come.”
I certainly didn’t mean to imply that one gender had the market cornered on cleanliness. When I lived with a German dude in college it was awesome because we had the same standards of cleanliness, and we didn’t mind cleaning up after one another because Klaus knew that if I was having a rough week and left a bunch of dishes in the sink and he took care of them, I would do the same for him in a week when he was having a rough week. And have known couples where the man had a higher standard of cleanliness than the woman. I generally chalk it up to how a person was reared: traditional or egalitarian (not to mention if they were raised in a tidy or messy house themselves).
It must be an interesting frustration that comes to the man who is the tidy one in the relationship, because I do stand by my belief that it is women who are judged on the cleanliness of the house. I wonder, Punning and Daniel, if you ever felt like your partner was taking the credit for your hard work?
February 5th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Hahaha. Not a damn chance! Not once have I heard a partner complain about or even take credit of cleaning. I’ve always found it to be an unspoken thing. The only time someone complained about the issue of cleaning / cleanliness or not is as tekanji said, if someone is having a rough time with life in general. And in those situations the state of the house is a direct reflection on the persons state of mind - except in those situations when my mind is so messed up I need to clean the house to sort out everything mentally.
I’m not even sure what kind of answer I just typed - hope I answered your question haha.
Actually, now you remind me, I was with a girl for a short period of time in my first year of uni, maybe a month or so and her family was fucking terrible. She was from the north, which in my city is like the ass end of the state, and the first time I visited her house the smell was inconceivable. Dishes were piled up, laundry hadn’t been done, there were boxes EVERYWHERE because no one had unpacked since they’d moved in three years earlier and every single one of the house members, two women and two men, refused to take responsibility for cleaning.
They’d all complain how it wasn’t there job and they didn’t have any responsibility over it and that was it. So it was like a breeding ground for filth. In the end I left because that was just a general reflection on all their states of mind, that they were all downtrodden and had to do everything and etc. Really, they were just lazy. That’s the only situation I’ve found that cleaning was the responsibility of SOMEONE who just refused to do it, whether male, female or the poor family cat that I saw kicked once or twice. Was at there house once, and never went back!
February 5th, 2008 at 10:53 am
Daniel — it sounds like these guys were careless and accidentally gave their house elf some clothing.
February 5th, 2008 at 11:12 am
I wonder, Punning and Daniel, if you ever felt like your partner was taking the credit for your hard work?
Nope, never. When I was living with the EXGF, her mother had– high– standards. To the point where she would actually fly in from Hawaii on her vacation and spend a day cleaning our bathroom. The then-GF took this as a major insult (as it was intended to be, I think). I just felt that “crazy woman wants to clean my house? Let her!”
Note: It’s not that our bathroom was _dirty_, just that every visible surface hadn’t been scrubbed with pumice. Since I would never go to that level of clean, my housekeeping didn’t “count”.
February 5th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Punning, I know *exactly* what you’re talking about, there.
February 5th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
[...] this is interesting. Fellow Pandagonians have probably already read Amanda’s follow-up to my previously-linked post taking apart an anti-feminist’s attempt to blame videogames for the loss of male excellence: [...]
February 5th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
The gamer may not be a cooperative gamer, preferring single-player RPGs or highly competitive games like Halo or CounterStrike.
Or, the ‘Xbox widow’ may turn out to be hella good at the highly competitive game, which will just piss off the guy who is now having his ass handed to him by his wife.
To me it’s a pretty simple equation: if I’m doing an unfair share of the chores, I should bring that to his attention. (It’s very true that many people are just *not* aware of how much cleaning goes on; hey, you mean the floor gets dirty if it isn’t mopped? I thought it just kind of stayed that clean.) Once we’re all on the same page as far as what chores actually need to get done, if he isn’t doing his fair share without me reminding him, then screw him with an epic backhoe. Because that means he is deliberately choosing to stick me with extra work so he can play.
“Work strikes” work pretty well when they’re a) announced and b) apply to the person who’s being an asshole. Laundry? Oh, I did everything in the laundry basket. What do you mean, your favorite dress shirt isn’t clean? Is that the one you threw on the floor and expected me to pick up? Gee, that sucks.
February 7th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
My wife doesn’t like competitive games, to the point that she balks at a suggestion of Settlers of Cataan or a hotseat Heroes of Might & Magic game where we’re on separate teams.
She loves Dungeons & Dragons, on the other hand, and other tabletop RPGs.
We recently got our copy of Tales of the Abyss back from our friends to whom we had lent it. We don’t play that game (or Symphonia, for that matter) solo, and we were disappointed that Legendia was a solo game.
As far as cleaning goes, I tend to do dishes more than she does because somehow she’s learned somehow that dishwater has to be at its most scalding or the dishes won’t get clean. I tend to “wimp out” by that standard and add a little cold. No point burning the epidermis off my hands, I say.
She’s the one who usually initiates laundry, on the other hand. We do it all at once because we don’t have our own machines and we have to take our clothes to the laundromat.
But when it comes to housework in general, we’re both kind of bleh. I certainly understand that society’s pressure for cleanliness is on the women. I was cheered up a couple years ago when I found a short story in a 4th-grade reading book whose main character went to stay with his grandfather down on the ranch, and learned that there’s no such thing as “women’s work,” it’s all work, and men can do it just as well.
May 27th, 2008 at 11:59 am
[...] games like the husband loves the video games, then the marriage would be saved (yeah, I’ve written about this before). And here’s the thing: video games can be as much of a symptom of a bad marriage as staying [...]