- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
As usual, the discussion drifts off-topic and "the usual suspects" end up jawboning about personal issues (Brightstar and his dating problems, etc.) that have nothing to do with the SUBJECT.
The subject was not whether women ought to be stay-at-home-housewives, or how necessary household maintenance jobs OUGHT to be divided up or even if the division is sex-linked (and therefore holy and unchangeable). The question was: do women REWARD men for helping out with traditionally female home maintenance jobs by giving men sexual favors?
MY comment was that this implies women don't really like sex and use it simply as a tool to get whatever they want, be it money or jewelry or help around the house. And that men are panting dogs, who will only engage in helpful, productive behavior if sex is dangled in front of them like a dog biscuit. THIS assumption is what is patently ridiculous. Women enjoy and desire sex every bit as much as men, if not more. The idea that men are chomping at the bit for sex every second of the day is somewhat challenged by all the TV commercials I see for Cialis and Viagara.
In my experience, there are plenty of lazy-ass guys out there who sulk and pout at having to do ANYTHING besides go into a job and come home, collapse on the couch in front of the tube and drink beer. They don't simply refuse to do housework -- they don't do ANYTHING, including play with their own kids, cut the grass, take out the rubbish, etc. (i.e., traditionally male tasks).
I also know plenty of lazy slob SAHMs, whose homes are filthy (not messy -- I am talking about actual filth), who don't cook or clean or launder or bake, but sit around (as the lazy-ass guys above) and watch TV all day. The idea that all, or even most, women are compulsive neat-freaks is hilarious and untrue.
Modern 21st century life has made it very easy to be a lazy slob, since we can order in pizza every night or nuke TV dinners, and send our laundry out to be done, and hire low-paid illegal aliens to clean our houses and maintain our backyards. I am not at all convinced that lazy slobs -- even rich lazy slobs whose homes are clean because someone else cleans them -- are having all this splendid, frisky sex while the rest of us moan and bitch and sulk, all while trying to manipulate our significant other into doing more of the scut work.
The subject, once again, was "is sex a currency that you can trade for household jobs". And I think the answer is bluntly "no". Culturally, we just don't find doing household chores to be sexy, or even that valuable -- if we did, the lowest members of our society wouldn't be the ones performing them.
Once again, we have left out the big part of the magic equation: if we think that men have to trade housework to get sex from women, what the hell do women use to get similar sexual favors from men? I don't know, but I can't quite see how my changing the oil in the lawnmower (yes, I do it) gets my DH all hotted up. Just isn't happening, LOL.
The answer is, as it always has been, for ALL PEOPLE to be courteous, considerate of their significant other, helpful and that EVERYONE needs to have a sense of responsibility about taking care of both their own needs and contributing to the larger good of the home and family. And that tasks are not "sex-linked", but ought to be done by the people who are most skilled at them, or most interested in doing them, in a way that divides the labor (mostly) equally.
Oddly enough, I thought we were already mostly doing this, and that argument (as I pointed out) sounded awfully 70s-ish, like arguing whether women with kids ought to be working (when most of them already ARE).
***
BTW: when I said in my earlier post that I liked flowers and chocolate, I specifically said that this was about a normal human response of "nice behavior elicts nice responses" and that this applied as much to babies and grandmas as it does to couples...i.e., I was saying specifically that I did NOT trade sexual favors for these things, simply that they were enjoyable and pleasant. When I take flowers to my 90 yr old grandmother or buy a toy for my 3 yr old niece, I am obviously not "solicting them"!
Is every behavior manipulative? Isn't it possible to talk about considerate, caring, generous behaviors WITHOUT sexual rewards? there are other forms of currency, believe it or not.
