Wait, wait, you see, I’m the guy. Unlike you, I was always entitled to have my cake and eat it too.
Published by Kyso Kisaen November 26th, 2006 in Cock!, Family, Feminism, HUH!?, Sex, Wankers, What Patriarchy?This is some kind of satire, right? It’s British, and that just makes it too dry and subtle for my American humor palate, right? Please?
Because if not, the lack of self-awareness of some of these guys (OK, and the women as well) is just staggering. I feel like there is some sort of award I should nominate them for.
When Andrew Clover met Livy Lankester he was writing a novel and earning tiny sums from stand-up comedy. She had a proper job and earned a proper wage. When he complained about how little he earned, she would ask why he didn’t do something else instead…
They married and had two children (though not in that order). As head of corporate responsibility in a large retail business, Liv still earned more than Andrew.
“So I started doing childcare,” he recalled. “I took an old-fashioned male view: ‘I have failed at my work, so I’m looking after kids.’ I was a lone man in the world of kids. I felt a bit gay as I pushed the buggy up the streets of Hackney.”
People would tell Clover — who writes the Dad Rules column in The Sunday Times — that they admired him. “They’d say it must be terribly fulfilling. I wanted to say: ‘I’m a man. If I’m good at something, I want acknowledgement. A fancy job title. A pay rise. I don’t expect to be changing nappies in the middle of the night — working with sewage, for no money, for someone who shouts at me’.”
As he puts it himself, he had the domestic instincts of a smack addict. “The living room was an orgy of dismembered dollies. We were eating tea in the bath. I didn’t fix anything. The bulbs would go in the bathroom: we’d use candles.”
Candles in the bathroom because you’re too feckin’ useless to change a lightbulb? On what planet would that be an acceptable admission from a woman in exactly his position?
The article is way too sympathetic to these guys: “Men with marginal employment marry breadwinning women, discover that unappreciated housework is never-ending soul-sucking dream-destroying bilge and everyone is always condencending towards you. Why, oh why did no one ever warn them?”
Didn’t we already go over this?
All too often, in the homes of higher-earning women, the result is that relationships fall apart. The richer a woman becomes, the more likely she is to divorce her husband, according to Randall Kesselring, a professor of economics at Arkansas State University, who examined the finances of 112,740 women. He found that for every £10,000 a wife’s earnings increase relative to the family’s overall income, the chances of marital break-up rise by 1%.
Isn’t £10,000 nearly $20,000? For an 1% increase in my risk of divorce? I like those odds. I’ll take it.
The article buries a couple of good points in the middle of it’s incessant whining about gender roles, but by the time I got to them, I didn’t freaking care about any of those assholes anymore.
Dude, too bad they didn’t interview G*ldst*in.
More pertinently, she said: “Men are being undermined. Their role is hard to define now. Because if women can look after themselves, what are men for?”
I know, if I can’t define myself in terms of who I can lord over, then where the fuck would I be? I mean, I might actually have to have something of substance, and that just isn’t fair!
How many useless stay-at-home-dads does it take to change a lightbulb…
Well, that lightbulb thing might explain why he was less than employable.
I’d like to think it’s some sort of joke. He is a stand up comedian, after all, and his level of inability sounds like the sort of thing people make up for a routine. Why would you eat tea in the bath?
But if you did have tea in the bath, it would explain why you’d have candles there. He would be doing that “total womanhood” thing, or . . . wait . . . umm, I’m confused . . .
“if women can look after themselves, what are men for?”
Funny - the manly 18th century Scottish rebel from Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series asks the same question of his time traveling wife. (Well, actually, he asks what do women need men for if that’s the case.)
I rather thought the answer (to either question) would be painfully obvious - but apparently not.
I’m a little frightened of what that means people think relationships are for.
Was this asshole shocked to discover that the absence of a metaphorical dick did not make his actual penis smaller? Or was he so married to the patriarchal conception of manhood that without the bigger paycheck he lost his ability to become erect?
The richer a woman becomes, the more likely she is to divorce her husband
Actually that sentence misses out what’s going on there: The richer she is the more able she is to divorce her husband, which is a better examination of the date because it of course notes that the real cause of divorce is marriage itself, or more accurately marriages that don’t work and then end in divorce are the leading cause of divorce (Strangely enough), the distinction is that working class wives can’t always divorce and indeed often never divorce, utilising seperation and the effective actual ending of the marriage through method known in german as gettingthefuckawayfromthatassholeathighspeedgestung.
I felt a bit gay as I pushed the buggy up the streets of Hackney.
Now this confuses me, as children are the universal symbol that women have doned it with boys, and have thus been both poked and owned, why does a man going around with a child make him look gay?
Oh right, looking after children –> woman’s work –> homosexual men are women –> looking after children makes men look gay.
All I want to know is: Is there someway to add blackface to that sentence so that it can have the full bigotry trifecta going on? After all, a year of the blackface would be remiss if it ended without a small white child being done up in burnt cork.
Hell, if he called it something arty like “Digby-a culpa” first, he could pass it off as artistic satire, rather than merely stupid wankery.
“Men are being undermined. Their role is hard to define now.”
Women have put a hell of a lot of effort into redefining their roles, defying societal expectations and shunning the patriarchy…your turn, guys.
Ginger–surprisingly, it’s not nearly as much work as it was for women. Either I have very not-masculine peers, or I was never getting that much out of traditional gender roles.
I had one significant other, mid-fight, complain that she was cooking and cleaning for me, acting like a surrogate mother. I took stock, realized she had a very good point, and resolved not to put myself in that position again. I mean, come on, how demeaning is it not to be able to change a light bulb?
‘Course, this could all change if I have kids. Maybe I’d go after privilege with gusto. But I’m not there yet. Not for many years, if at all.
Well after being married faithfully for 18 yrs, my wife has a good career and so do I we love each other and are best friends. Now for the subject personally I think men put themselves up to be the end all of life ( they think they are overly important ) I believe women can be totally self sufficient and do not need men anymore to fulfill there lives.
They choose to have men in there lives to compliment them and to share lifes pleasures ,or they choose to have and raise a family. Men need to redefine themselves and be aware that the imaginary view of there being needed has gone by the wayside a long time ago, I have many succesful female friends most who are single and date occasionally and are vary happy, and a few who are dating regularly or are married, a couple of those who are married have bad relationships due to the husband has this outdated few of superiority, I keep trying to tell the guys in this relationship that they need to get there heads together or they will be divorced, I think one is listening the other thinks he is the most important thing in the world to this relationship ( my view well LOL he is lost out already)!