AUT: Why Women Do the Drudgework

[Katha Pollitt <kpollitt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Bill Bartlett wrote:
>
> Katha Pollitt wrote:
>
> >  I feel that you are trying to explain the greater drudgery of wives
> >without  taking account of sexism.
>
> But what is the cause of sexism?
>
> >which isn't just that men and women
> >are socialized to be and feel different, but that HE is superior. What
> >famous thinker said every binary opposition conceals a hierarchy? Light,
> >dark; good, bad; man, woman. That's the problem!
>
> Surely THIS is no explanation! The implication is that such a hierarchy is
> natural and inevitable. (Unless we can somehow abolish the  sexual division
> of humanity.)
>
> Bill Bartlett
> Bracknell Tas.
>
>      --- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---

  Oh Bill, give me a break!  do you really think I believe that men are
naturally superior to women? What I was trying to say, and not for the
first time either, is that  sexism is not just the ideology of sexual
difference, but the ideology of  male privilege. that is, women do not
do the housework  because they are brought up to want to do the
housework, as Harald was claiming, but because they exist in a society
permeated by male privilege and structured by the BELIEF in male
superiority which expresses itself in thousands of ways: from better pay
for male-dominated jobs to sons getting bigger allowances and fewer
chores than daughters to women serving men in the home.

 I do feel that the men on this list go through considerable effort to
persuade themselves that domestic inequality is women's fault (they
don't want to surrender their turf, as Harald put it) or just a relic of
former historical periods.  But not doing the housework has actual
real-life consequences for most women right now: abandonment, fights,
emotional withdrawal, hostility,loss of child custody, even beatings and
murder. So who knows what it would mean for women "really" to want to
clean the toilet?  You might as well say that someone who earns a living
cleaning public toilets really wants to do that because they show up at
work every day. With  women in marriage, as with waged workers on the
job, you always have to ask: what would happen to them if they said NO.
 There was an article in Science News a few months ago, for example,
which studied heart-attack recoveries in husbands and wives.  Husbands
recovered faster, because wives took care of them.  But husbands
expected their wives, just out of hospital, to resume their wifely
duties straightaway. So the wives stayed sick longer. I mean, just think
to yourself what is going on in the minds of a man who won't make dinner
or wash the dishes even though his wife is convalescent!  This study was
of people in Iowa, by the way, not a particularly benighted state as
these things go.
  Having said all this I really should add that I do much less housework
than Paul, although more than most  men I know. So this is not my
personal problem.  But it still makes me furious.

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Katha Pollitt wrote:

>  I feel that you are trying to explain the greater drudgery of wives
>without  taking account of sexism.

But what is the cause of sexism?

>which isn't just that men and women
>are socialized to be and feel different, but that HE is superior. What
>famous thinker said every binary opposition conceals a hierarchy? Light,
>dark; good, bad; man, woman. That's the problem!

Surely THIS is no explanation! The implication is that such a hierarchy is
natural and inevitable. (Unless we can somehow abolish the  sexual division
of humanity.)

Bill Bartlett
Bracknell Tas.




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