In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Hey, Everyone, It’s MENKSGIVING!

Sady

Hey, you guys, it is almost Thanksgiving! A holiday when we give THANKS for things! I’m sure you all have things that you will be thanking, this fine holiday season. But I have an addition to your list! Have you considered thanking… MEN?????

Yeah, me neither. But that is just TOO BAD, because there is an exceedingly cranky man by the name of James Delingpole in the UK Telegraph who has a severe problem with you all for not thanking Men enough. Because I get that it is holiday time, and you may be busy, I shall sum up. Because this article is profoundly unworthy of serious consideration, I shall sum up in the manner of an old-timey prospector: CONSARNIT GOLDARN WOMAN ALWAYS WANTIN’ ME TO TAKE OUT THE DAGNABBED GARBAGE MAKES ME MADDER’N A TWO-LEGGED MULE AT A HOOTENANNY.

Anyway, someone did a study showing that women nag dudes about housework because they are all guilty about their superfulfilling postfeminist career-lady lifestyles, or something. Not touching it, y’all. I don’t have time for examining a study carefully right now. Thankfully, neither did James Delingpole. Because guess who just decided to complain about doing his chores? With, like, a bizarre fantasy world of whimsy and wonderment involved also?

Do you have any Spanner Fairies in your household? In our home we’ve got loads. We must do, for I can’t think of any other explanation as to how all the tedious male-oriented chores get done. It’s the Spanner Fairies who go round the house last thing at night, checking the downstairs doors and windows are locked; and it’s the Spanner Fairies who are in charge of putting out the rubbish and getting the car fixed and [blah blah blah enjoy my mystical world of elves and orcs and anyway SPANNER FAIRIES] are the biggest contributor to the household budget, slogging their guts out day-in, day-out so that delightful Wife, adorable Kids, and utterly useless, lazy Husband can be watered, fed and housed.

So why, you ask, don’t these poor Spanner Fairies get more credit?

Uh, because you made them up? Oh, no, wait: I see what you’re doing. You clever rogue, you! It turns out that you have to do CHORES! That must be TERRIBLE! And you don’t get a shiny gold trophy full of chocolate and hugs each and every time you complete one! Say, James Delingpole, is there any more or less completely unrelated social movement that you can blame for this?

After four decades of feminist drivel stigmatising men as inept, workshy, uncommunicative neanderthals whose only significant inventions are rape and war, it’s about time someone spoke up in our defence.

Oh. OKAY!

Consider how men are now portrayed in films, books, adverts, and sitcoms from Men Behaving Badly to Friends.

THEORY: This column has been lodged within James Delingpole since the mid-’90s. Medical professionals have only now extracted it. This explains both reference points and odor.

Or maybe, in the mystical world of the Spanner Fairies, Friends is still relevant! Could be either one, really.

[Always] it’s the boys who are feckless, one-track-minded, chauvinistic and basic, while the girls are invariably the much put-upon omnicompetents who do all the real work and make everything right in the end.

You’d never guess from all this that men had written the complete works of Shakespeare,

Wait. That was all of you? I thought it was just the one guy! Very well, Men: now that we know each and every single one of you to have participated collaboratively in the creation of Shakespeare’s works, I suppose we can forgive you. But first, reveal to us your secrets of time travel!

painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, climbed Everest, discovered electricity, invented the internal combustion engine and decoded DNA.

Plus, there was the oppressing to do! Truly, Men have been a busy gender.

Nor that, every now and then over the years, we have made perfectly good husbands, fathers and grandparents.

It’s the “every now and then” that is the relevant part, as it turns out! For James Delingpole will now take a hard left into complaining about his spouse and children. Specifically, his female child!

[Try] breeding a daughter. From almost the moment she can speak, she will dedicate her tiny life to bossing Daddy around, telling him where he’s going wrong and ordering him to do chores – often ganging up with Mummy in sisterly solidarity to mock and diminish Daddy’s supposedly pathetic achievements. This isn’t learned behaviour; this is hardwired into the female system.

Yep. James Delingpole’s daughter is AWFUL. Just awful! Much like her mother, James Delingpole’s spouse, who is apparently awful also! Because both of them want him to take out the f@$king garbage, if you can believe it, and he isn’t constantly getting praise from them either, and sometimes they even think he does things wrong, can you imagine, and CONSARNIT GOLDARN DAGNABBIT CRAZIERN’ WHISKERS ON A CHICKEN THERE’S GOLD IN THEM THAR HILLS etc.

Okay. James Delingpole. Two things! First, feminists, on the whole, don’t have problems with dudes. Feminists expect more from dudes – and believe dudes are capable of more – than non-feminists, on the whole. And I am sure that, if you self-Google and find this, you will think that “feminists” are convinced that men are awful and that is why someone made fun of you on the Internet. But your article is not laughable because you are a man. Your article is laughable because of this attitude that every single thing you do is deserving of constant praise, and that any criticism of your efforts – or, indeed, failure to be awed and overjoyed by your efforts – by women is somehow equivalent to brutal, violent oppression. Which is, yes, a recurring attitude amongst sexists. So, in that sense, my feminism compels me to make fun of you. In all other senses, I just think your article is funny because it makes you sound kind of like a jerk.

Second? I know that Thanksgiving is a US holiday, James Delingpole, and that if you are a Brit you will not be celebrating it. But this article – which begins with a dude complaining about being asked to do chores, wanders on into incoherent ramblings about the awful things they show on the teevee these days (“no, Uncle James! Friends ended a long time ago, you must be thinking of another program”) and then descends directly into brutal recrimination of family members, comes remarkably close to capturing the precise spirit of the holiday. Happy Menksgiving, everyone.

55 thoughts on Hey, Everyone, It’s MENKSGIVING!

  1. *headdesk*

    “Decoded DNA”? Really? This asshole wants to hear me talk about Rosalind Franklin? In an article about *not recognizing contributions* he wants to bring that up? Somebody needs to give the prospector an abrupt education . . .

    Great post. Sarcasm is sometimes the only way of dealing with these idiots.

  3. Yeah DNA is a really strange pick. He couldn’t have chosen, I don’t know, powered flight, the theory of relativity or the telephone? Not until quite recently were women permitted to be educated enough to be reaching the higher fruits of engineering, physics etc, so really he should have gone for older examples. Talk about not appreciating people.

    I find my husband thanks me far less for doing household chores than vice versa (we both work full time). I quite deliberately pour giddy and elaborate praise on his every move in the direction of cleaning, mending, tidying etc, because I think this perpetuates a virtuous cycle. He didn’t used to notice my efforts at all so I sat him down and explained the art of effusing. As he is not at heart a sexist pig but a very good man, he is now trying harder. As they say, “Thank your wife every day. If you don’t know why, she does.”

  7. I’m just scratching my head as to why he’s worried about what stereotypes 90s sitcoms promote when apparently, us ladies being nags is “hardwired into the female system” anyway. Also not understanding how he thinks those sitcoms were designed or approved by feminists.

    Let’s throw a feminist party! I’ll bring my Everybody Loves Raymond DVD!!

  10. Oh dear dog, I started reading the comments on that piece ‘o’ crap. Eyes burning. Brain melting. Why haven’t I learned my lesson yet?

  11. @RacyT I’ve learned to just not ever read comments on a site, unless it’s one I know is decent. At best, it leads to fits of laughter and great joy in making fun of them. At worst it leads to thrown keyboards and an annual membership card to MISANTHROPY MONTHLY. (Which always include AOL free trial discs, for some reason)

  12. wow. i wish i was this man’s daughter. or spouse. really. because nothing makes me more appreciative of a man than him whining and insulting me in a national newspaper.

  13. Oh Friends, that ancient and beloved feminist text. Every women’s studies department has the complete dvd set housed between Feminine Mystique, The and Guerilla Girls Companion to the History of Western Art, The.

    Oh how we cheered when Monica consistently had to cook for the gang and clean up after them. Feminist accomplishment! So happy we were that someone *finally* realized that the satisfying conclusion to every woman’s life is her wedding day! We were a little confused when Monica was even on the show after she got married (I mean, what else was she going to do, right?) but then, so subversive, she had a BABY!

  14. In the same spirit as the “HELLO, ROSALIND FRANKLIN” comments, climbed Everest? Is he serious? If he’s still stuck in 1996 with his Friends references, shouldn’t he know who Yasuko Namba is?

  15. Oh why did you have to bring this back to thanksgiving? It’s not even written by a USAian. Ugh!
    /rant

    In other news, what the frell was that article? Spanner Fairies, seriously? My Partner does his share of housework, as I do mine, and we get along just fine appreciating each other. He has never before griped about the fact that he has to do dishes or cook or what have you.

    The way this man talks about his daughter makes me so angry. I mean seriously, does he hate her? Sure sounds like it. What a butt smear.

  16. Interesting thing about this: I read a report about that same study in the Guardian (I bookmarked it to write a post about it later, haven’t got around to it yet). The Guardian report of the study’s findings suggest that there is no support for any such nonsensical rant as Mr Delingpole’s.

    According to that report, the study said that the reason women feel a need to disparage men’s domestic contributions is that they feel a need to reclaim the “traditionally female domain of the home” or to keep up the appearance of doing so. If this is true, then the problem is whatever social pressures make that seem important to women.

    Since it is the male-dominated media that works hardest to create these social pressures, as with so many things men blame feminists for, it is actually men doing it to themselves.

    I’m at a loss as to how they determined the “real” reason for women complaining about men’s domestic contributions (I also haven’t looked at the study in detail).

    Incidentally, the peer-reviewed journal where the study is published describes itself as specifically feminist in approach.

  18. I think I understand what he’s getting at, as ill-conceived and poorly executed as his article was. I don’t agree with his premise or conclusion, but I think I have a sense of its genesis.

    In any household there are the visible chores and the invisible chores. The visible chores usually occur on a regular schedule, like cooking and cleaning and taking out the garbage. These are the things that need to be done and were once considered “woman’s work” (I refuse to acknowledge that any such view could still be held today – la la la I can’t hear you).

    But then there are the invisible chores, and they’re like, not visible. Some guys think they have a monopoly on the invisible chores but don’t realize that women have their own set of invisible chores as well. The problem with these chores is that the other person doesn’t see them (that’s what makes them invisible chores). For example, my wife never noticed that the tires have never blown out nor the engine seized up while she was driving. Because she didn’t see oil changes and tire maintenance as something “needing to be done” it was not present in her mind that they were getting done. They became unimportant.

    Likewise, I seem to lack the gene that allows me to see dust (it was the first gene decoded by Rosalind I believe). Now I don’t deny that dust exists. I’m sure I breathe it in every day and it settles on our stuff, and I’m okay with that because I never see it. But she sees the dust, and when I’m cooking her meal she’d prefer it if the quite appreciable amount of dust on the range hood did not make its way into her linguine. And to be honest, I’m not all that keen on the culinary addition myself. So she dusts. Because it is a thing that needs to be done.

    We both cook and clean, I do laundry and take out the garbage. (Aside: I don’t get these men who don’t take out the garbage. They have it easy. Take bag to can. Take can to curb. Done. I don’t have curbside pickup. I must load family car with the garbage and recyclables that have been separated and drive them to the transfer station where I need to load them into the many and various containers.)

    But I never dust, and it made my wife resentful. And I said to my wife, “wife, you don’t fix the cars, or oil the door hinges, or repair the stuck window. The pellet stove stays full of pellets and free of fly ash to make the house warm. But I don’t complain, because there are things you are doing that I don’t see.” And now we have an understanding because we realize that neither of us is a layabout and we’re both doing different things to make the household work.

    So I understand where he’s coming from, but he fails to make the next step and realize that for all of these invisible chores that his spanner fairy is doing, there is another fairy doing the invisible chores that he doesn’t see. And that is what makes him a douche bag.

    Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to start cooking – those pies aren’t going to bake themselves.

  19. I thought it was pretty well established that women do the majority of the housework and childcare in the average household? So while that might not be the case in this particular family, I don’t think there’s much justification for whining about how men in general are underappreciated and overworked when it comes to domestic chores. If he’s annoyed about his wife not remembering to take out the rubbish or whatever, wouldn’t it be more sensible to take that up with her, rather than writing a newspaper column about how awful and spoilt and lazy all women and girls are?

    As for men being ‘the biggest contributor to the household budget’ – is he seriously expecting sympathy for being on the right side of the pay gap? I’m sure his employer could be persuaded to pay him less, if that would make him happier? No?

  20. Wait, why is he blaming the doofy husband trope on feminism? It’s invariably paired with the Naggy Wife with Irrational Emotions.

    @Lizzie – Relativity isn’t quite old enough to be an era of physics untainted by teh wimmins. It’s more or less contemporary with Lise Meitner, who was the co-discoverer of nuclear fission. (Her male, non-Jewish research partner got a Nobel for it.)

  21. All of that work that he complains about men doing and not receiving the credit, around my house, it’s me who does all that work. That’s right. A little (and I do mean little) woman takes out the garbage, checks the locks, mows the grass, takes the car to get fixed, pays taxes, earns the income for the family, and does the housework. What was this about me needing to give some man some credit? Oh, right. There isn’t even a man in my house. I also intend to keep it that way. For a very long time.

    Also, I always love when men like him bring up sitcoms. Who does he think is writing all of those damn sitcoms? Hmmmm….

  22. Generally, famous scientists (and playwrights) of our world have tended to be white, European, mid-to-upperclass men. For example, they have not often been black women from drought-stricken Ethiopia.

    This is a very strange phenomenon! After all, as we all know, every single citizen of every nation ever has always lived in a perfect, privileged paradise, fully able to follow and fullfill their dreams.

  23. I also don’t get the mention of Friends, not just because it’s not exactly heralded as a feminist show or very current, but also because it’s a weird pick considering his argument – how were the guys on that show any more doofy than the women? Phoebe, anyone? You could say Joey was the doofiest character, but Phoebe’s a close second and Chandler and Ross weren’t really doofy at all. The girls on the show did just as much stupid shit as the guys and any stereotypically negative feminine qualities were played for just as many laughs as any stereotypically negative masculine qualities. Monica and the other brides beating each other down for the best wedding dress, and being generally obsessed with marriage and babies the entire 10 years of the show? Rachel crying all the time over nothing? Phoebe, the blond airhead?

    He could have picked Raymond, King of Queens, Curb your Enthusiasm, According to Jim, Family Guy, the Simpsons, I could go on and on and on. But no. He picked Friends. ?

  24. Also, I remember talking to my dad about the “doofy husband” sitcom phenomenon. He was saying it’s a “woman’s world” now, because of all those shows.

    But if you look at every show I just mentioned that he could have picked – with the exception of According to Jim, because I’ve never seen an episode and don’t know what the wife does, someone can fill me in on that – they are all typical male-breadwinner-female-homemaker situations. Every single one.* You have to give a wife a redeeming feature there, because we do live in a world where that dichotomy isn’t really common anymore in reality and to have a ditzy little typical subordinate housewife character would not go over well with contemporary audiences. So you have the reasonable – but unemployed and dependant – wife, and the doofy – but still head of the household – husband (who is, incidentally, always the main character too). That doesn’t play out any better for women than it does for men.

    *Note: Yes, I know that King of Queens is different, because they both work, but the wife is an overly aggressive asshole and I think there’s something curious there – it’s like in TV land, they say “OK, they don’t have any kids, so I guess this wife character can have a job, but it’s gonna be a pink-collar one, and she’s gonna pay for it with a steak of meanness that makes her as ridiculous as the husband.”

  25. I thought it was pretty well established that women do the majority of the housework and childcare in the average household?

    It is in Canada, anyhow(Statistics Canada), where we celebrated menskgiving a month ago.

  26. chipchop: I’m just scratching my head as to why he’s worried about what stereotypes 90s sitcoms promote…

    I think y’all ought to have a little more sympathy for this poor guy. Maybe some of you can watch teevee endlessly and not have it utterly scramble your brains, but there are those of us who, if we want to think straight at all, simply must Just Say No. And teevee is everywhere, it’s as though they sold crack cocaine over the counter at the Pick-Kwik. For me, to read Dinglepole’s blather is to weep; there but for the grace of God go I.

  27. Wow, in my happy little feminist apartment bubble, I rarely get to benefit from mansplaining of this magnitude. Thanks Sadie!

  28. Oh, fuck him. I just had a whole thread on my blog from women who are exhausted from the Second Shift, and he’s whining that he doesn’t get thanked for taking out the trash? Fuck him. And to pick Thanksgiving, a holiday characterized by women laboring while men eat at watch football is just priceless.

  29. Reminds me of a discussion I got into on Usenet, with a guy who argued quite seriously that women had no right to complain about housework, because men’s housework was harder Sure, he conceded, women do the easy, trivial chores like laundry and vaccuuming and washing dishes and making beds — but men do the hard and dangerous tasks like replacing electrical wiring, or fixing the roof, or digging and lining the swimming pool, or bricking in the outdoor grill.

    Hmm. Do I notice a pattern here? The tasks my interlocutor stereotypically assigned to “women” are those which never end — those which have to be done again the next day, and the next, and the next. Those he stereotypically assigned to “men” are those done on a schedule ranging from “once or twice a year” to “once since we bought the house” to, very frequently, “good lord, I hired that done.”

  30. It’s odd as well because (not that my boyfriend would ever dream of doing this) past boyfriends and acquaintances would never dream of ‘letting’ me do the wiring, DIY etc because men do it so much better than women and with my tiny woman brain I should stick to watching soaps and ironing rather than burning the whole house down. I always get a bit bemused by this – yes, I’d leave the house wiring to an electrician but I’m definitely qualified to change the fuse/plug/fix the washing machine/etc.

  31. To be fair, Lucy Gillam, he probably did not actually “pick” Thanksgiving, given that he is not American, but British and therefore has most likely never attended a single Thanksgiving celebration in his life. More likely he simply happened to write this article at a time when somewhere across the Atlantic another nation to which he does not belong happened to be celebrating a holiday of which he has no personal experience and of which in all likelihood does not make a point of keeping track…

  32. I know the British don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, but in this country it’s an odd time for a man to be complaining about the mystical fairies that get all the housework done considering that the Thanksgiving ritual in most American households consists of the men gathered around the television watching “the game” while the women spend the entire day in the kitchen putting the meal together.

    Also, the work Delingpole lists in his column is so pathetic. So he spends two minutes every night making sure the perimeter is secure? Does he make dinner? Wash the dishes? Do the laundry? These are daily tasks that are getting done by SOMEONE. More fairies, I suppose. (If he has kids that means the laundry is generally a monstrous pile that never seems to completely go away, which is why I include it as a daily chore)

    And does he really want to get into the issue of why exactly men have historically been in a much better position to create great art than women — including much better access to the required education, apprenticeships, etc? What a doofus.

    This is how things go down in my parents household. My stepfather gets home from work first, and immediately sits down in front of the television. My mother gets home about an hour later, on the other hand, and immediately starts putting dinner together. Step-dad doesn’t leave the couch until it’s ready. After dinner he goes back to the couch, and my mom cleans up. There are some nights when she doesn’t get off her feet until 9 PM. And my brother’s family lives with them currently, so she’s also dealing with two toddlers all over again after having raised two children already.

    I know anecdotes do not equal data, but I’m sorry if I can’t muster up much shame as a working woman over this study. And every time I visit my parents I’m also glad I live alone!

  33. [quote]Men: now that we know each and every single one of you to have participated collaboratively in the creation of Shakespeare’s works, I suppose we can forgive you.[/quote]Oh, indeed: the ‘t’ and ‘h’ in the eighth occurrence of the word “the” in A Winter’s Tale was all my work, as were [i]two[/i] ‘o’s in the first act of Macbeth. I’m splendid, me.

  34. It also occurs to me that by wanting ‘thanks’ for doing basic household tasks like taking the rubbish out, he betrays that he doesn’t really think this stuff is his job – it’s women’s work, and he’s doing his wife a favour by doing it. Like the men who talk about ‘babysitting’ their own children (I actually heard that one the other day).

    I mean, it’s nice when couples appreciate each other and all, but you don’t get a medal for doing your fair share of the day-to-day chores that are just part of normal adult life.

  35. I agree that nobody should have to thank an entire gender.

    Yes, most men are jerks, but they aren’t just jerks to women. They’re mostly jerks to each other now.
    Sure the old timer is using stereotypes, but saying “men are oppressors” is too much of a general statement too. Not all men are out to drag women through the muck.

    I seem to remember a book about a woman who went as a man to study their behavior towards other men, only to find out that most of their actions were facades.
    Men have standards of one another, and the author pointed out that her “butch” qualities were considered feminine.
    After the experience, she developed depression because of how she was treated as a man.

    The problem to me isn’t that men hate women. I think the oppression comes from the desire to over protect women, and that men are stupid in the way they’re trying to go about it. From my experiences, they would rather see another man bloodied and beaten than so much as a bruise on a woman.

  37. First, the entire article is about the experience of female breadwinners who bring in greater than 50% of their household’s income. So the men being the “biggest contributor to the household budget” comment he makes is irrelevant.

    And the article just completely misrepresents the study. 13/15 of the women in the study described valuing the contributions of their partner to their family and household. Their HUSBANDS, sometimes felt devalued, not because of their wives, but because they felt they weren’t contributing to society, for example, by not working many hours outside of the home.

    He seems to be basing his argument based on the 2 women who valued their partners contributions but also wanted them to do more. One of these women felt that her husband needed to work part-time outside the home so that they could make ends meet.

    But regardless of the utter misrpresentation of the study, I think Jill’s point is the more important one. Men taking on household duties does not warrant a gold star or a certificate of achievement just because the past expectation was that they did no traditionally “female” chores. Doing more than you used to isn’t enough when you aren’t contributing equally. And frankly, women shouldn’t be expected to be grateful to men even when they do pull their weight. Delingpole, let me know the next time your editors, says, hey, way to show up to work today!

  38. James Delingpole…he sounds like a Dickens character.

    What the hell is a Spanner Fairy? I thought “spanner” was British for wrench.

  39. It is. He is the little wrench fairy, fixing his silly wife (and silly daughter’s) DIY issues. Without thanks.
    My heart bleeds.

  40. Faith from FN, I do all that kind of stuff too – check the locks and windows at night, mow lawn, get car serviced (and check the oil and tyre pressures in between), put out rubbish AND bring bins back in, tighten loose fittings around the house change light bulbs… AND I’m a woman living with a male partner. ;-(

    Invisible tasks: Bathroom and toilet cleaning, wall and cupboard door wiping, all tidying/putting away of things in kitchen, stove cleaning, garden weeding and pruning. It’s really as if fairies do these things as far as he’s concerned.

    Oh and keeping track of all the school shit like excursion forms and payment envelopes and gold coin donations (although he will do lunches.)

  41. Sure the old timer is using stereotypes, but saying “men are oppressors” is too much of a general statement too. Not all men are out to drag women through the muck.

    I’ll take “Responding to Arguments Nobody is Making” for $200, Alex.

  42. Toward Sophist:
    “Plus, there was the oppressing too!”

    That is in the article which my post was directed towards.
    The “Men did this, that and the other thing (but not really the other thing)” immediately followed by the quote above seems too general a statement.

  43. “they would rather see another man bloodied and beaten than so much as a bruise on a woman”

    ever hear of domestic violence? It’s a pretty big problem here on planet earth.

  44. @Blitzgal

    But he wasn’t complaining about mystical fairies “in this country”, he was complaining about it in *this* country, i.e. the UK. He’s a Brit writing in a British newspaper. I agree with everything Sady said and most of the comments, but is the US-centricity necessary? If I hadn’t happened to be reading this blog I honestly would have had no idea that it was Thanksgiving this weekend across the Atlantic and I see no reason for taking pot-shots at James Whatshisname for what is in fact nothing more than a coincidence either. What he wrote is unacceptable no matter whether it’s a holiday or not and no matter who usually bastes the turkey in other people’s houses at the other side of the globe. Can’t we just leave it at that?

    @ SomePerson

    Wow, those domestic violence stats must be way off base then!

    Anyhoo, are you disputing that during Shakespeare and Michael Angelo’s time women were oppressed and that is probably a convincing explanation of why few plays were written and chapels painted by the female sex during those times? Coz I think that’s what the comment you’re referring to was getting at.

  45. My apologies for threadjacking, but I thought this article deserves to be spread all around the feminist blogosphere, mainly for the comment by Tony Esolen that women don’t need medical care:
    here

    Please go comment there and publicize this as much as you can. The world needs to know that conservatives agree with the Taliban that women should die as soon and as painfully as possible.

  46. @ Christina

    I was talking about my own personal experiences.
    I guess I should have put “most men” before the last sentence.

  47. Oh and keeping track of all the school shit like excursion forms and payment envelopes and gold coin donations (although he will do lunches.)

    this. and all the birthday parties. and playdates. and after-school/extracurricular activities. and who needs new socks. my husband and my ex both have no fucking idea how much time, energy and brain space i use on stupid kid/house logistics. when is the school photo money due and do both midgets have games tonight and are there any carrots in the fridge? they just don’t have to spend as much time thinking about the needs of other people. it is soooo frustrating.

  48. Christina, I think the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday is just a segue, in that it’s funny that on a day where ol’ boy is lamenting his apparently thankless family just so happens to be the day we U.S.ians commence to ratchet up the narrative of gratefulness that goes along with what is for many of us Eat Shit and Like It Season, i.e. a trying holiday season spent straining already strained family relationships. Like this Thanksgiving, where I volunteered to help cook a dish or two and ended up paying for and cooking the whole damned dinner for thirteen people.

  50. “I guess I should have put “most men” before the last sentence.”

    Given the rate of male violence against women, maybe you might wish to consider the phrase “some men”.

    Be that as it may, I fail to understand how some people don’t realize that men believing that they must protect women is in fact a form of misogyny. That particular idea stems from the idea that men are dominant and women are fragile little critters that need a big manly man around in order to function and survive. It’s pure misogyny, whether or not the men who feel that way even recognize it as such.

  51. @Wednesday – thank you! Please strike relativity from my comment. I have just done some Googlage of Lise Meitner and I am adding her to my arsenal of awesome women to teach my future daughters about – refugee, scientist, conscientious objecter, what an amazing person! More ammunition when sexists say the wimminz aren’t brave or principled and can’t do Nobel-prizewinning work (of course she got screwed like Franklin – who to be fair was dead and Nobels aren’t given posthumously but she was the giant on whose shoulders Wilkins, Crick and Watson stood – and why’s it called the damn Auger effect when Meitner discovered it 2 years before Auger… of course, he had a penis). I love that Max Planck gave her a job when women weren’t even allowed into lectures. Good for Planck.

    Of course if the MRAs get wind of this they’ll probably start blaming women for the bomb.

  52. Neither my husband nor I have much interest in housework. However, we both reach a critical point where we can’t stand it anymore and will attack some portion of it. We then call the other over and request validation for whatever annoying task has been accomplished. (We’ve even sent e-mails titled “request for validation”.) It actually works better than I would have expected.

  53. Yeah I thought it was a little funny when I saw that it was a UK paper, but not a big deal. It is also a holiday in Canada, where it is celebrated in October.

    What a silly article, which you have already done a good job examining.

    “Spanner Fairies”? There are also a lot of other, FEMALE “fairies” that do a hell of a lot of thankless work and get met with such a foolish “wahh bow down before us” rambling

  54. Lauren, I understand that, which is why I have no objection to the way the connection with Thanksgiving was formulated in the main article – in fact, as I stated above, I agree with all of Sady’s points. But Sady acknowledged that James Delingpole is not from the US and that he will not be celebrating Thanksgiving. She simply seems to be saying “right now I am particularly sensitive to the stupid thing you just said, Delingpole, because of the situation I currently find myself in, although I realise that you do not share that situation.” Nothing wrong with that. What I do object to was the huffiness directed at Delingpole in the comments for “picking” Thanksgiving to write this piece or that this is an “odd time of year in this country” to complain, when in actual fact in the country that Delingpole does live in its just day like any other. And the reason I mention this is because these comments jar with me for pretty much the same reason Delingpole’s do (although admittedly to a much lesser degree – they are obviously just the product of haste and thoughtlessness, rather than entitlement). Delingpole’s complaints are based on a lack of perspective, a failure to view the world through the eyes of others – however if somebody wants to bring him to task for his slated point of view, it might be best if they first checked to make sure that they own perceptions are entirely objective. People say a lot of nonsense in homosocial environments (or in this case, environments they foolishly assume are homosocial). The same is true of homoethnic ones. And the thing is, I don’t really care for either, that’s all.

  55. It’s the Spanner Fairies who go round the house last thing at night, checking the downstairs doors and windows are locked

    Oh, you must be exhausted! Allow me to wipe the sweat from your noble brow, my protector.

    As for the whole sitcom thing: who does he thinks writes sitcoms? Friends in particular was known as a boys’ club; if I’m not mistaken, one of the female writers brought a sexual harassment suit.

    Not to mention, the whole doofy/fat husband and competent/thin wife? Goes back to The Honeymooners. Blame Jackie Gleason and everyone who tries to recreate that successful formula.

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