My family and I was staying with my grandparents in Ireland over the holidays. I was making an apple pie in the kitchen. My grandparents local preist (they’re catholic) came by to say hello and have a chat. When he saw me he said “what a good girl. Every woman needs her training behind the sink. I suppose I can’t say that nowadays. * laughter *” I didn’t say anything, my grandparents didn’t notice, my parents weren’t there. He was well into his 60s or even late 70s I’m not sure, I was 12.
The guys never have to help out with cooking during family holidays and events. It feels so blatant, so overtly sexist that I have never been able to bring myself to verbalise it. It makes me feel ridiculous! Standing at the kitchen counter peeling potatoes with my aunties and female cousins while the men are in the sitting room sat watching tv?! It makes me feel crazy that nobody talks about it. It’s so obvious! But it’s the obviousness that makes it feel so impossible.
This is one of those cases where I’m not sure it’s sexism. Sometimes it’s tricky to spot sexism because it could just be a problem with an individual and have nothing to do with gender. Still, my story makes me feel discriminated based on the qualities I may possess because I’ve been conditioned to cultivate them as a woman. I’m not a housewife: I go to work part-time and I’m a university student. I’m currently off work to care for our newborn baby, but I still have one class at uni and coursework to do. In a nutshell: I manage our household. If I didn’t dole out the tasks to make things more equal, I’d be doing everything on my own. I’ve spent so much time over the years discussing or arguing about cooking and cleaning, the things that take up so much time in our daily lives. My partner agrees that we need to share the responsibilities at home but doesn’t believe in doing things regularly. He would clean the toilet twice a year and eat a warm meal every day from a cheap snack-bar down the street from us in order to save himself the trouble of doing chores and doesn’t expect me to do the cooking or the cleaning either, so that’s why he’s not discriminating against me based on my gender. But the fact that I do clean the apartment on a regular basis and keep our kitchen stocked with healthy meals means that at the end of the day, I’m running the household on my own. It’s convenient that my partner doesn’t have to feel like a sexist when he eats his dinner at the table I’ve wiped his breakfast crumbs from by telling me that I don’t have to do anything at home if I don’t want to. Because he does see that he needs to share the workload with me, he will clean or prepare a meal (from time to time) but I always have to tell him what to do. In this respect I’m the house manager, organising our home-life on my own and enlisting my partner’s “help” rather than working with him on an equal level. I know that not all men are like this, and that in some cases, the man is the cook and keeps the home clean. Having spoken with others about their partnerships though, I get the feeling a lot of women are doing more than their fair share at home while working outside of the home. Not all men are abusers either, but I’m bringing this up because I think that many partnerships between men and women are tainted by long-standing conditioning of gender roles and that we’ve lost sight of the source of this problem in 2018 where we believe we’re on an equal level and that we’re free to do what we please. My children will grow up seeing their mother running the show at home and even though the world wants to convince them that women and men can share the responsibilities equally. The fact of the matter is, more often than not, we don’t.
This is one of those cases where I’m not sure it’s sexism. Sometimes it’s tricky to spot sexism because it could just be a problem with an individual and have nothing to do with gender. Still, my story makes me feel discriminated based on the qualities I may possess because I’ve been conditioned to cultivate them as a woman. I’m not a housewife: I go to work part-time and I’m a university student. I’m currently off work to care for our newborn baby, but I still have one class at uni and coursework to do. In a nutshell: I manage our household. If I didn’t dole out the tasks to make things more equal, I’d be doing everything on my own. I’ve spent so much time over the years discussing or arguing about cooking and cleaning, the things that take up so much time in our daily lives. My partner agrees that we need to share the responsibilities at home but doesn’t believe in doing things regularly. He would clean the toilet twice a year and eat a warm meal every day from a cheap snack-bar down the street from us in order to save himself the trouble of doing chores and doesn’t expect me to do the cooking or the cleaning either, so that’s why he’s not discriminating against me based on my gender. But the fact that I do clean the apartment on a regular basis and keep our kitchen stocked with healthy meals means that at the end of the day, I’m running the household on my own. It’s convenient that my partner doesn’t have to feel like a sexist when he eats his dinner at the table I’ve wiped his breakfast crumbs from by telling me that I don’t have to do anything at home if I don’t want to. Because he does see that he needs to share the workload with me, he will clean or prepare a meal (from time to time) but I always have to tell him what to do. In this respect I’m the house manager, organising our home-life on my own and enlisting my partner’s “help” rather than working with him on an equal level. I know that not all men are like this, and that in some cases, the man is the cook and keeps the home clean. Having spoken with others about their partnerships though, I get the feeling a lot of women are doing more than their fair share at home while working outside of the home. Not all men are abusers either, but I’m bringing this up because I think that many partnerships between men and women are tainted by long-standing conditioning of gender roles and that we’ve lost sight of the source of this problem in 2018 where we believe we’re on an equal level and that we’re free to do what we please. My children will grow up seeing their mother running the show at home and even though the world wants to convince them that women and men can share the responsibilities equally. The fact of the matter is, more often than not, we don’t.
Just watching an episode of Yes, Chef (a cooking show where 4 home cooks compete to work with a pro chef), & in this particular episode, a male contestant did a rather large Scotch egg as part of his dish. The male pro chef, Bryn Williams, made some comment about how the dish is going to be a “man’s dish”. Because of course it’s only men who are capable of eating big plates of food, isn’t it, while we ladies eat delicate plates of salad?! I’m sure that there are women who have large appetites, & men who have tiny ones. This gender stereotyping is getting out of hand- it’s really stupid.
I was watching an episode of Celebrity MasterChef this evening, & it was the Critics Round (for anyone who doesn’t watch MasterChef, this is where the contestants cook a 2-course meal for a group of restaurant critics, who pass their judgement on said meal, sometimes pouring scorn on their efforts & sometimes heaping praise on them). One of the contestants, BBC Breakfast presenter Louise Minchin, did a white chocolate & passion fruit cheesecake for dessert. Before it came to the table, the critics were discussing the fact that this was what she was proposing to feed them. One of the male critics (I forget his name) made a snarky comment about how it was a rather ‘girly’ choice. No stereotyping there then! The idea that ‘real men don’t eat quiche’ also annoys the hell out of me for the same reason, & I was less than pleased when a male contestant on Bake Off a few years ago was talking about how he was making a ‘manly’ quiche, & ‘butching it up a bit’ or words to that effect. I was also not pleased to hear Sue Perkins telling him to ’embrace the femininity’ of quiche, again, or words to that effect. This ridiculous gendering of food ticks me off royally- enough already! Food is food, & your gender doesn’t make you more or less likely to cook and/or eat certain foods! On a related subject, if a dish is plated up in a ‘delicate’ or ‘dainty’ way, it’s often described as looking ‘girly’ or ‘feminine’, while if a dish is plated up in a more ‘bold’ fashion, it’s described as ‘blokeish’, ‘manly’ or ‘masculine’. I ask you! I also get very annoyed by the ridiculous notion that barbecuing & braaing is ‘strictly men’s territory’, a ‘man’s job’, ‘only for chaps’, etc., etc., while the woman’s role on such occasions is making the salads. The thing that I found especially dispiriting about this was that it was mainly women who’ve come out with BS like this.
We were going round to my sister’s for lunch and I asked if I should bring anything. She texted back ‘could you ask [my wife] to make a salad? I am sure she didn’t even realise what she was doing but it just irritated me a bit that she expected the woman do the cooking despite the fact I cook a lot more than she does. (Unless my salads are just really bad!)