- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
Because otherwise, I can't understand why this rather dumb argument is still being tossed around. Most women have been working outside the home for decades. That's not even taking into account all the labor saving devices we have in our homes, compared to yesteryear, or the fact that many upper-middle and even middle-middle class families have access to at least some outside help -- cleaning services, landscapers, etc.
And all of us (perhaps to our detriment) have unlimited access to fast food, and restaurant food, in such quantity and at such reasonable cost, that many of us very rarely eat at home (or when we do, we are basically just nuking frozen junk food).
The idea that such "housewifery" even exists in 2008 is pretty funny. Maybe the illusion of it is maintained by Martha Stewart (who in reality is a single 66 year old billionaire, with an army of servants), but the reality of it is long dead.
Anyhow, I guess the question was: when men do traditionally female household chores, do they get more sex? My guess is that the answer is going to be pretty individualized -- for example, was the female partner WITHOLDING an average amount of sex because of her rage at being stuck with a lot of unpleasant chores (like, say, Swiffering the Pergo flooring in the urban loft)? Or is this "extra sex", that she is rewarding her spouse with because he has relieved her of a tiresome burden, giving her the time and space to "re-energize"?
God knows, consideration and kindness have a miraculous effect on everyone -- even babies and grandmas -- so, yes, if you are extra-special nice to someone, they may well be extra-special nice back to you. But I personally would rank housework pretty low on that totem pole -- flowers or Godiva chocolate or dinner at a great restaurant would pull more weight with me.
I suspect that nobody, male or female, finds it a turn-on to watch a partner of the opposite sex scrub out a dirty toilet bowl. I may not enjoy doing it, but I don't enjoy WATCHING it either. When we hire low-paid illegal immigrants do to our Industrialized World scut-work, do we find it sexy? I don't think so -- we find it convenient. (It is especially pleasing and convenient when anything -- cleaning, food prep, child care -- happen "invisibly" while we are out at our soul-satisfying paying jobs.)
It seems to me that when I was a singleton, I still had to do stuff like clean out the cat box, scrub toilets and shop/put away/cook food...so those things just seem like the rhythm of life -- not sex-linked and not punishment in any way. I appreciate help from my spouse if I'm occasionally overwhelmed, but it's not related to my sexual desires and/or "willingness to put out".
In fact, the more I think about it, the more I feel this is the offensive part of the theory -- that men have all these sexual desires and needs, that women (having few or none of their own) simply decide to gratify or not, based on materialistic, self-serving standards. That's crap, and I'm sort of embarrassed that anybody still thinks this way.
