Feminism and domesticity

Don't get married, girls - you'll sign away your life
You may start off as a woman but you'll end up as 'the Wife'
You could be a vestal virgin, take the veil and be a nun
But don't get married, girls, for marriage isn't fun
--"Don't Get Married Girls", Leon Rosselson*

Linda Hirshman's article about feminism and domesticity has generated a lot of discussion in the feminist blogosphere. Hirshman argues that women face a domestic glass ceiling because society still expects them to shoulder the lion's share of housekeeping and child-rearing. In other words, women aren't taking their places as Fortune 500 executives because in relationship after relationship, they lose at domestic brinksmanship.

Hirshman criticizes so-called "choice" feminists for insisting that any choice a woman makes is feminist just because it's her choice. She maintains that if we are serious about women's equality, we will have to set rules. Hirshman's "rules" are pieces of (pre-)marital advice for women seeking maximum independence: marry a younger or poorer man, get a marketable education, and be serious about your career.

Bitch PhD responds with a radical married feminist manifesto. Instead of seeking out a weaker partner in the hopes of forcing a fair distribution of domestic labor, Dr. B. encourages women to negotiate equality in every other aspect of their marriages and steel themselves for a long battle over housework. On her view, it's a mistake to expect that an ideological commitment to equality will ensure that the laundry and dusting actually get divvied up equally. Why?

Dr. B explains:

In fact, I believe that this is the single most irretrievably gendered division-of-labor issue for couples who want to be, or think they are, equals: the person whose job it is to monitor that equality is the person who has the least power. And in most cases, that's the woman.

Amanda of Pandagon argues that it's hopeless for women to expect equality in the home as long as we live in a patriarchal society. Amanda isn't as optimistic as Hirshman and Dr. B. when it comes to an individual wife's power to force her husband to do his share. Society is on the man's side, Amanda argues. In her experience, a woman who demands help is a nag. A messy house stigmatizes only the woman. On the other hand, it's soul-destroying to fight about the housework or do it and feel like second-class citizen.

Personally, I'm a huge believer in what Hirschman calls "ignorance and dust"--not caring about tidiness and not cultivating any special skills to produce domestic order. One of the way society controls women is by setting unrealistic bourgeois aesthetic standards and foisting them on women. One way women can resist the patriarchy is by rejecting these standards as unreasonable.

If you don't let other people shame you for your sex life, don't let them shame you about ironing the sheets, either. Slob is the new slut.

*I chose this epigram because it sums up the problem Hirshman identifies, not because I'm against marriage.

(x-posted at The PEEK)

Comments

[elliottg]

I withdraw my comment about gender differences and just state that there are some people who really don't care. It's not a feminist issue; it's a relationship issue and this is where Dr. B gets it so wrong. Assuming that the state of decay is not so high as to pose a health hazard then imposing rules on the person who doesn't care as to what they should do with their time is as unfair as forcing them to watch a football game or garden when they don't care. They might do it to please you, but expecting it is unfair. If a couple can't agree on what is individual time and what is couple time then there is going to be conflict. Suggesting that housework has some superior claim on either person in the relationship is wrong.

[Squashed Lemon]

Okay, for measure of 'neatness. This is my proposal.

We take digital picture of 'environment' that we want to measure. Then we dump it into a fractal analysis.

This method has been used to measure Jackson Pollack painting 'orderliness'

The assumption of course: neat equals geometric orderliness.

The definition of the fractal dimension of a self similar object is:

Fractal Dimension = log(number of self-similar pieces) / log(magnification factor).

I wonder if somebody has a webpage that we can just dump digital picture to churn fractal index.

Next question would be: How do we compare those indexes and what does it mean in term of neatness.

...etc etc..

Reference.
http://www.cs.colby.edu/projects/2002-03/donahue/fractals.htm
http://plus.maths.org/issue9/news/pollock/index.html#dimension

[Squashed Lemon]

I withdraw my comment about gender differences and just state that there are some people who really don't care.
Posted by: elliottg | December 01, 2005 at 04:01 PM ~~~~

no wait. we have to be more precise than that.

we have to collect statistic.

male vs. female vs. other attributes. The neatness seems to be easy enough data to collect.

... heh...

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Elliottg, housework is a general relationship issue, but it's also a gender issue. Amanda explains the gendered double standard really well at Pandagon. A lot of people tacitly assume that housekeeping is the woman's responsibility, i.e., if the house is messy it reflects badly on her character--even though she lives with another competent adult who is equally capable of cleaning. A woman who demands that her husband do more chores risks being labeled as a nag. Notice that nag is a gendered insult. Men seldom get called nags, even if they make persistent annoying requests. Sometimes that behavior pattern gets described as nagging, but "nag" as a character trait is an insult reserved almost exclusively for women.

[Njorl]

Yeah, I do almost all of the cooking too. My wife has always seen cooking as a means to produce the least offensive product for getting minimal nutrition. She views eating as a sad necessity. That's not the best attitude for a cook to have.

We both hate cleaning, and it shows.

The whole housework argument gets blown out of the water by the argument over who will fight the county to get the services our disabled children are being denied. We've even got that worked out. She does the reasoning and I do the threatening.

[refi3235@pacbell.net]

Sorry, not buying into the women get's blamed if the house is a mess just like I didn't give a damn when the neighbors clucked sympathetically at my wife cause I have a laissez-faire attitude about the yard.

[Squashed Lemon]

Thse two seems to be a pretty good candidate softwares.

FracLab
http://www.irccyn.ec-nantes.fr/hebergement/FracLab/
explanation here:
http://complex.inria.fr/index.php?page=eccv02

Wavelet Packet Fractal Analysis (convoluted, haven't read it yet)
http://www.swin.edu.au/chem/bio/s+code/wpafrac1.htm

hmmm. but I don't have a digicam. *sniff*

[Squashed Lemon]

It rains _mud_? it's none of my business, but may I ask where you live?
Posted by: dan | December 01, 2005 at 01:35 PM

Could be surface of Titan. It rains liquid methane and volcanic muds overthere.

Either that of New Jersey. that entire state is made out of mud. (sorry people in Jersey, but it's true. It's worst than NC)

[bellatrys]

Even husbands who "don't care" about cleanliness - at least not enough to do it themselves - still will freak and bully if they don't have ironed shirts for work and the trash is overflowing.

Double Standards R US! There's a lot of reasons why I'm single, but all of them come down to autonomy in its many manifestations. (I have been tempted to matrimony despite my resolutions, but avoided it in the end.)

OTOH, there are plenty of families I know where neither parter gives a damn or gives equal damns about the housekeeping, and do just fine. You'll just never see them interviewed in the NYT...

[Squashed Lemon]

okay I got it. I was trying to figure out how to calibrate and normalize the data.

this should work.

1. the calibration part:
a. pictures of A1 sheet of paper with a quarter face up in the middle

b. picture of a $1 bill face up in the middle, on top of A1 paper

c. On top of A1 devided into 4 quadrants, $1 face up on top right hand, and quarter face up lower left hand. Both in the middle of quadrant.

2. The data part:
a. take picture of the room, when you think it's in orderly state.

b. take picture of the room, when it's in messy state.

(Should calibration object be put in the room picture? Any CS/physic major in here?)

These steps should calibrate against various digital camera quality differences, and give us reference point between various pictures of 'room target'

Data treatment:
How should I know, some experimental psychologist or sociologist will figure it out. I design the experiment already. what else ya want. ...ha.

So, form now on. Anybody who start yammering about girls/boys are slobs/neat.

should run this experiment, collect data, and report analysis. Otherwise. .....HUSH... too much navel gazing, not enough experimental data.

------

Now, next. how to figure out 'cleanliness' Boy this gonna be a tough one. some sort of microbiology medium probably. (rice gel on top of table counter and measure progress over period of time? take picture of it and run fractal analysis?)

...

'mkay, that's my slob/neat contribution. heh.

[Xboy]

A simpler way to measure neatness:
1. Take photo of room.
2. Identify 20 objects in room.
3. Is object #1 at a right angle to another object? If yes, score one point.
4. Repeat for all 20 objects.

Highest scoring room is the neatest. This technique requires no fancy software.
Remember, neatniks: if it's not a right angle, it's a wrong angle.

As for cleanliness, I suggest a panel of judges made up of English nannies and USMC drill sergeants.

[dan]

Xboy

In the neatest rooms I've ever been in, you'd be hard-pressed to identify 20 objects.

[filler mcshane]

Compatibility------
I have lived for years with my girlfriend. It helps that she has her own room
and I have mine. She can keep her room as she wishes and I can keep mine as I wish. Sometimes she sleeps in my room and sometimes I sleep in hers. The living
room and bath and kitchen we keep fairly neat-- it does take some discipline
but not so much; we just developed the habit of limiting any mess to
certain areas of the house. We don't really pay close attention to cleaning unless we are having guests, then we vacuum and dust a bit. And if either of us really feels like slacking off we just let the bedroom go--= like a safety valve. It works pretty well. Both of us have better things to do than obsess about cleaning. Beyond a certain minimum level of clean-- who cares? I guess it is lucky we both feel that way. Men and women already have enough expectations toward each other to cope with, without adding cleaning issues to the mix.

[janet]

My husband and I have only one explicit agreement about housekeeping: the first person to find a mess made by the cats is responsible for cleaning it up -- an no pretending you didn't see that hairball! It used to be my job to dispatch half-dead rodents and birds when necessary, but lately my husband has mastered the technique of ending the misery of the cats' prey.

[bitchphd]

I have to laugh, Lindsay, because your place is about a thousand times cleaner and tidier than mine.

[(white) non-anglosaxon male]

extremely interesting in terms of knowing what's on Americans' mind :)and why people are not so happy about AMERICAN liberalism.

damn it, my wife didn't know that "One of the way society controls women is by setting unrealistic bourgeois aesthetic standards and foisting them on women. One way women can resist the patriarchy is by rejecting these standards as unreasonable."
I will explain this to her. I always asked her why she did't like dust and mess. She really looks idiotic when she's ironing the sheets and cleaning dust. Unfortunately, she has false consciousness and trust radical feminists' manifestos

ps. Lindsay, i've heard you have smth to do with philosophy, well, ponder this some time
"That men should rush with violence from one extreme, without going more or less,into the contrary extreme, is not to be expected from the weakness of human nature." Thomas Reid, Essays on the Intellectual Powers

[(white) non-anglosaxon male]

i meant that my wife Does NOT trust radical feminists' manifestos :)

[gordo]

(w)nasm--

Pray that your wife never wakes up to the fact that she married a dick.

[Republic of Palau]

(w)nasm--: your wife apparently can't comment for herself either.

[innocentbliss]

my bf & I live together. We have radically differing ideas about housework. I am fairly casual (tho not of the pizza-crust-middenite school) but when I get a bug in my britches to clean -- it's SURGICAL! He insists that everything be precisely and neatly placed, whether it is actually "clean" or not. My desk, with its paper piles that grow as the semester progresses, is the bane of his existence.

Our biggest difs/tiffs are over his nowhere-near-misses in fluid aim. To him, they are "no big deal" as long as counters, rugs, towels etc are "attractively" (for want of a better word) arranged. To me, they are disgusting! I'm almost to the point of me leaving used fems in the puddles, but that would only get my point across one week out of four. Ack!

Tho he claims an allergy to dust, it sure was mighty thick when I moved in... was more like carving in stone than writing in the dust. I do what housework gets done since i am a full time student and am not currently contributing dollars to the household: dishes daily, laundry weekly (or when we're out of skivvies ::blush::), vac monthly (no shoes in apt... saves on vac!) & the dust etc (taking the sofa apart & my desk) 3x/yr-ish. Does this make me a middenite? I leave the anal placement of things to him. afterall, he's so good at it :-P (i am anal about folding clothes tho -- my way or the hiway, bud!)

[Trystero]

Our biggest difs/tiffs are over his nowhere-near-misses in fluid aim.

They covered this (in excruciating detail) on FARK last week

[(white) non-anglosaxon male]

Republic of Palau-
she can but she doesn't want to. she's busy doing her own stuff. I showed her the feminist manifestoes etc. She says that she doesn't care much about this bullshit with all its resentment. She's lucky - I didn't introduced her to Solanas' "ideas" :)

In certain sense I have more to do with feminism than my wife does. Of course I am talking about 'classical' feminism, not about 'postmodern' resentful feminism.

To gordo: the question of dicks is a controversial one. it's not apparently related to 'analytic philosophy and liberal politics'

[Mark Hadfield]

"One of the way society controls women is by setting unrealistic bourgeois aesthetic standards and foisting them on women. One way women can resist the patriarchy is by rejecting these standards as unreasonable."

Damn, I wish the patriarchy had managed to impose those standards on my ex-wife! One of the foci of disagreement between us was that she was comfortable living in a level of untidiness and uncleanliness that I wasn't comfortable with. I was happy to do most of the cleaning, but I wished she would generate mess a little more slowly.

Obviously the patriarchy imposed those standards on the wrong person. Yes, that must be it.

[Julian Elson]

Overall, I agree, Lindsay. Slobs don't tell neatniks to be slobs, and neatniks need to learn the same tolerance.

Here's how I think it should work: suppose you have agents A, B, C, D... etc in a household. Agent A requires a hours of housework to maintain the household at her standards, agent B requires b hours, agent C requires c hours, etc.

All agents should share housework equally -- either by directly pitching in or by hiring services -- to achieve the cleanliness level of the agent with the lowest cleanliness tolerance. After that, all agents except the one with the lowest cleanliness tolerance contribute equally, until they reach the cleanliness level of the agent with the second-lowest cleanliness tolerance. After that, the second agent is dropped from responsibility, and so on.

Suppose we have a three-agent household. Agent A requires 9 hours of housework to get to acceptable levels, agent B requires 15 hours of housework to get to the acceptable level, and agent C requires 20 hours of housework.

Agent A contributes 9/3 = 3 hours.

Agent B contributes 9/3 + (15 - 9)/2 = 9/3 + 6/2 = 6 hours.

Agent C contriubtes 9/3 + 6/2 + (20 - 15)/1 = 9/3 + 6/2 + 5 = 11 hours.

This way, all share in the cleaning that benefits them, personally, and all share it equally.

Alternative, possibly more egalitarian, system: each contributes proportionally to their desires for cleanliness. 20 hours must be contributed total, to meet the highest cleanliness standards. The total demands are 9 + 15 + 20 = 44 hours.

A contributes 20*9/44 = 4.1 hours

B contributes 20*15/44 = 6.8 hours

C contributes 20*20/44 = 9.1 hours

Both systems, however, depends on all of the agents 1) knowing the amount of housework needed, and 2) being honest about it. So it's pretty unrealistic, I suppose.

[Alon Levy]

If you don't let other people shame you for your sex life, don't let them shame you about ironing the sheets, either. Slob is the new slut.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you... one of the things that irked me the most about Amanda's post was the assumption that if people expected a woman to conform to the standards of cleanliness of Nazi concentration camps, the woman had to conform to those standards.