Thread by @RemakingManhood

THREAD: I Do the Housework --
Why millions of men can’t muster the empathy to understand this issue shocks me. medium.com/@remakingmanho… /1

I’m a college educated white male. I have a deeply satisfying professional/personal life. I’m responsible for washing dishes, cooking, cleaning bathrooms, laundry, and general house cleaning. There are days when it is joyful and there are days when it feels bleak/oppressive. /2

I can not imagine what lifetimes of this work felt like for women of my mother’s generation. Trapped doing decades of this relentless invisible work. How it must have driven many women mad. /3

Globally, women continue to have lifetimes of this work forced on them. They have no choice. For my mother's generation, and the generations before hers, this work NEVER ended. It grew exponentially with each birth, many of which were unplanned. /4

I’m looking at just few years of the current arrangement for a family of three. My mother did it for seven people for decades. /5

If I had to stare down the fifty year tunnel that she faced in her life, knowing full well my economic security hung in the balance, that my husband neither would clean nor cook, I’m not sure I would be able to survive it. /6

*Men, just do the fucking housework for a entire year.* Shut up and do it, every day. Don't point out you did it. Don't whine about doing it. Just do it. Also, do all the planning, shopping, childcare and spousal emotional support which that work entails. /7

Only then will you fully understand what I’m asking you to see. You will understand how utterly bleak it can look to know it will go on for decades, even while you also work a job, and that the person who professes to love you is perfectly fine with that arrangement. /8

It’s a wonder women trapped in this position have any affection to offer their husbands at all. /9

The reactivity of women about men not doing their share of housework is born out of the lived experience of cleaning a bathroom for years only to watch it get wrecked by people for whom your work is so normalized as to be invisible. I know. I do this work. /10

And the “you knew what you were getting in to,” argument is bullshit. No one should be expected to do all this work alone and unaided just because they want to raise a family. /11

I have the luxury of having negotiated my agreement to take care of the house. This is a COMPLETELY different circumstance. For some women negotiating an agreement like mine will fit for them. /12

My partner @thinkplay is our primary wage earner. My having agreed to this arrangement (and being grateful for it) does not change the drudgery or endlessness of it. The seeming invisibility of this kind of work no matter who is doing it. /13

If my partner automatically assumed I would do all cooking and cleaning, childcare, that regardless of my career demands, I would have no choice to do otherwise based solely on my gender, I can not imagine how sickening, exhausting and oppressive it would feel. /14

Well, guess what guys. Millions of us are that partner. Why millions of men can’t muster the empathy to see this shocks me. /15

House work is not automatically optional for any man. It is a moral failing to see it otherwise. /16

This thread is available in article form on Medium. medium.com/@remakingmanho… /17

Mark Greene is the author of The Little #MeToo Book for Men and Remaking Manhood. Both are available at Barnes & Noble Online and Amazon.

barnesandnoble.com/w/the-little-m…

amazon.com/dp/0983466963 /18