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I have sent this cartoon to so many people.
I’ve never been a fan of the rhetoric that Executive Function Theft is strictly a male/female issue.
From my experience there’s tonnes of common situations where the genders get flipped, and it’s a problem that often cuts both ways.
Honestly, from what I have seen, when it’s an issue going one way in a relationship it is also a problem going the other way, just in other areas.
Usually it’s just a sign the individuals have poor communication skills in general. Neither of them communicate well and both of them often have situations where they have a lot on their plate and the other person has to be managed.
There’s a reason these examples that argue it’s a man focused issue seem to always be covering traditionally feminine tasks, while glazing over traditionally masculine tasks.
I also have first hand seen plenty of examples where the woman is the lazy couch surfer of the family and doesn’t help with anything.
I think if the article wanted to actually appeal to an audience, it wouldn’t try and frame this is a man vs woman problem and gender it.
If someone has some actual concrete peer reviewed studies that actually show men are more prone to Executive Functikn Theft I would love to see it.
Until then, this post made some pretty bold claims and I’m not seeing any citations so, as a result it just comes across as sexist instead of informative.
pOinTInG oUt sExiSem iS tHe rEaL sExiSem!!11
You missed the “without citations” part.
Claiming gendered behaviors exist without presenting any proof/evidence on the matter is indeed sexist. If someone wrote an article claiming women are the primary abusers of children in households, and a bunch of other very bold claims, and didnt present a single shred of actual proof of their claims, you’d find that pretty sexist wouldn’t you?
You’d respond with “Wheres your proof?” “Where are you getting these facts from?”, no?
It cuts both ways. If you are going to post/link/present information as facts, then one needs to be prepared to include the original source(s) you’re information is based off of.
Otherwise, it goes straight into the discard bin.
Don’t be a reply-bro in an explicit women space please.
Not a woman, so feel free to downvote. I’d note there’s no yard work, car servicing, plumbing or electrical work, Bills and finances, and so on. While I agree that in general men don’t do their share of the housework, I think it’s important in a relationship to ask, understand, and acknowledge what the other person is doing. Maybe it’s actually a fair bit and it’s invisible to you. (Same goes the other way, obviously; it’s important to communicate is my point)
My husband does all those things but I also do a lot of the “every other weekend” type chores, too, like organizing all of our stuff, back to school supplies shopping, maintaining our appointment calendars, and dealing with our children’s change of season clothing swaps. There are always projects and we split them.
I do consider him sharing the housework as 50/50, however, because he does daily taks, also. He does the cooking, half of the cleaning, half of the schlepping of children to doctor’s appointments and playdates, as well as other as needed things. The daily chores is where the rubber meets the road.
He has also been taking on more small but important daily tasks like monitoring our email inboxes for emails from our kids’ schools. I think its more than equitable given that the early years of our lives with children i was either nursing through the night or holding/wearing infants throughout the day. I think a lot of men don’t seem to register the overnight labor or the constantly carrying babies and infants as labor (it was freaking exhausting).
Thanks Janet. Seems like you two do a great job of communicating. Would you say you both share the management tasks 50/50 as well? With me and my wife, neither of us “owns” the problem, we just both do things to solve it based on what annoys us. It works pretty well usually, but I do feel like we should draw lines to say “no this is definitely my project to manage”.
I am so tired of this argument. It’s not a good one.
You just listed a bunch of tasks that take at most a couple of hours per week. When women do a couple of hours of extra work every day.
Please don’t come into women’s spaces with any variety of “not all men.” It’s not cute.
Along the lines of “not all men”, I actually scrolled down and looked at some of the comments for the first time despite having seen this comic shared numerous times. The thing that stood out to me was a guy complaining about how feminists aren’t fighting for men’s rights and things like funding for testicular cancer… which is epidemiologically a fairly rare and not typically lethal cancer. He doesn’t even care about men’s issues enough to know that prostate cancer is the epidemiological equivalent of breast cancer (and ignores the fact that, albeit highly unlikely, men can get breast cancer too).
Preach!
Hello, thanks for engaging, I know this is not my space and I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable. Firstly, I acknowledged that men generally do not do their share of the housework. The argument in the comic is that it’s not just the labor, but also the management work which needs to happen.
It was the management that I was trying to address, and specifically, that maybe because nothing outside the house was mentioned in the comic, maybe the management of all of this stuff was simply invisible to the writer. My point was more that as partners, they need to talk to each other (and that’s on both of them). If you ask a husband and wife (eg, like in the comic) about anything and get two misaligned answers (“I do half the work”; “no he does not”), that means communication is not happening.
I think the point of this comic is that women often have to manage those jobs too in terms of reminding their partners that they need to be done.
Yeah, if that’s happening this is pretty unhealthy. I honestly think that’s embarrassing for the man. That’s just being an overgrown child. Your partner is not meant to be your mum.
The argument completely collapses with one thought: okay, would you be okay with me telling you everything that needs to be done, and you do it all? No? Then it isn’t 50/50 is it?
would you be okay with me telling you everything that needs to be done, and you do it all? No?
They don’t want to do 100% and that means they aren’t doing 50%? what?
Did you read the post?
“50% of the work is in figuring out what to do, the mental load”
What do you think happens if the woman doesn’t do the dishes and doesn’t wash the clothes?
The man will start eating off the bare table and walk around naked?
The man will recognize the issue when it becomes one.
I think this is straying from the point frog. The issue is not “the man can wash clothes”, it’s “the woman often owns the problem of keeping the clothes clean and in the right spot”. Men tend to “help” but don’t think about the constant labor of keeping the house clean. Maybe the other way to think about it is: If one day the woman silently stopped cleaning and all the clothes end up dirty, would the man just take it in stride? I think not, I think there would be a silent argument.
OK, I agree that management is work, but I don’t agree that it’s half the work. It’s this kind of argument that allows CEOs to be paid millions. They manage thousands of people, after all, the business responsibilities fall on them!
It’s a load of rubbish, and frankly, you know it is because if I flipped that around you would not be happy. ie: You don’t have to “own the problem” of cooking, cleaning, bills, mowing, etc. I’ll set up a roster and then you can do all the work. It’s still half the work right?
In a practical sense, for our house we work as a board of directors. Talk about the problem (Often it’s as simple as declaring what you’re doing, “I’m making X do you want some”), share ownership, help out when the other person is struggling, lean on them when you are stuggling, and share your plans. Like 80% of the problems I’ve had in who does what and when have been resolved by just sitting down and talking about it. It sucks, it’s adulting, but it’s also the only way that’s fair. Other people divvie up the work (you own cooking I own children) or spaces (you own kitchen I own garage) etc.
There’s a bit of a flaw here though. Most men don’t do car servicing, plumbing, or electrical work.
And even if they did, they are infrequent in nature.
I think even bills and finances are more split.
Household chores on the other hand are never ending.
Cleaning and cooking need to be done every day, laundry every week, and so on.
Fair point, sorry you got dogpiled by people about this
