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Cleanliness is next to Girliness
By Jeff Fecke | October 15, 2009
You know, there’s nothing wrong with toys that mimic housework. Toy stoves? Vacuums? Brooms? Absolutely fine. Indeed, by playing at cleaning when you’re three, you become more likely to grow up to actually clean when you’re 33.
Just remember, though, that cleaning is for girls only. I mean, we wouldn’t want a boy playing with a toy cleaning cart. That would make him gay.
Some days, beating your head against the wall seems to be the only reasonable response.
Topics: Feminism | 11 Comments »
October 15th, 2009 at 10:18 am
It’s probably because only about half of the box is shown, but I had the same thought the first commenter there had; is “Girls Only” the name of the company that made the toy?
October 15th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Jeff Fecke wrote:
Interesting how you analyzed this in terms of sexuality. My impression of the picture of that cleaning equipment made me think in terms of class roles.
October 15th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
John –
Oh, don’t get me wrong; there’s probably a bit of classism involved too. But there’s no question that this is of a piece with the general lesson to girls and boys alike that the home is the domain of women, only. (This is something that MRAs and feminists should have the same view on, incidentally; it’s as objectively bad to tell our sons they shouldn’t clean their homes as it is to tell our daughters they shouldn’t aspire to careers in science.)
Brien–
I misdoubt you’re right (at the very least, it’s the brand name), but that doesn’t make it better. All it means is that someone launched a toy line of domestic household toys and marketed it flatly to girls, and only girls.
October 15th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Most MRAs consider it a privilege to be offered by your spouse the option of staying at home or working a paid job. Feminists consider it tyranny against the stay-at-home spouse, as if they are in the home because of coercion. Regardless of what society or your spouse thinks you “should” do, last I checked there’s still a choice involved on the part of the stay-at-home spouse. So if you’re given the choice (and 9 out of 10 times working wives will NOT offer such a choice to their husbands), then you truly are privileged relative to those who don’t receive such an option. Options equal power, and men are usually denied this option.
October 15th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
After reading some of the comments over at the original posting at Feministing.com, I have noticed a couple people who actually work daily with kids (nannys, stay-at-home moms) give some insight into why this product is not so sexist after all, aside from the color scheme. These commenters kept saying that children love to play with brooms. They love pretending to clean and sweep; the parents have to literally guard access to the brooms in the house because the kids are likely to use them to spread the dirt around.
Feminists are up in arms about the “Girls only” label on the package for this product, but one commenter pointed out that the product itself is not gendered; this is just the girl’s version of the product. Here’s the boy’s version.
So much outrage — by the experts in the art of outrage, feminists. Ladies (and Jeff) need to calm down and relax.
October 15th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
I’ve done the stay-at-home and work-from-home thing, John, and let me state flatly: if you actually care about your kid, staying at home is far more work than not staying at home.
As for the “privilege” of staying or not staying at home being reserved for women…
The reason I refuse to take MRAs seriously is they assume everything happens in a vacuum. That women become interested in cleaning houses because the X chromosome has super-special dirt-finding genes. That’s not the case. We raise our girls from early in life to see homemaking as their primary duty. The fact that we do not do the same for men is the reason MRAs view staying at home as a carefree privilege — because they have not been inculcated from toddlerhood with the idea that they will keep a good house for their spouse and children.
This stuff doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Those women who want to stay home not because they want to give up their careers, but because they view it as their most important duty. Why? Because we’ve told them it is. The messages should be balanced; work is important, family is important, it’s all important, and it’s everyone’s responsibility. But MRAs don’t want to work toward a system where responsibility is apportioned equally. And your response is prima facie evidence of it.
October 16th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Jeff wrote:
You feminists sure have a way of infantilizing women. They must not be able to think for themselves, because they’ve been conditioned! Apparently you think that they need counter-conditioning, or “re-education” as the Chinese call it. I call it meddling by the nanny-state.
The strong link between mothers and their children is biological and natural. It is not a problem that needs to be solved. The fact that women choose to leave the workplace and mother their children full time illustrates their own personal set of priorities. What exactly do you propose to condition them against exercising their free will to nurture their young? What shaming, indoctrination and “incentives” did you have in mind?
Jeff also wrote:
Here you’re just projecting the mentality of the worst aspects of women onto men. Maternal gatekeeping is an actual problem, and it’s reflected in the feminist agenda. In divorce, if Mom wants to keep the chattel (read “property,” as in “the kids”) to herself, 90 percent of the time she wins primary or sole custody in contested family law cases.
If you really believe in equality, you’ll recognize that if there’s no substantiated finding of abuse or neglect, fathers should have a guaranteed right to substantial time with their children. But due to feminist conditioning and policies, children are considered the property of mothers.
If anything needs to change, it’s these two things:
1. Feminists need to stop shaming mothers who choose stay-at-home nurturing over paid jobs, as though such mothers are conditioned dogs. Butt out!
2. Feminists need to stop enabling gatekeeping mothers from abusing laws against abuse to lodge unsubstantiated allegations in a bid to gain the upper hand in child custody. If (as you say) “family is everyone’s responsibility,” then how about removing the impediments faced by perfectly fit and non-abusive fathers so that they can exercise that responsibility? How about requiring allegations of abuse in family court to be evaluated on the merits, rather than the possibility of being merited? How about encouraging involved fatherhood by supporting the presumption of shared parenting for fit and non-abusive parents? Put your money where your mouth is!
October 16th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Also, gentleman, in most heterosexual couples, when both man and woman have fulltime jobs outside the home, the woman does most of the domestic labor.
I’m sorry to not have links at the ready, however, this is a statistic I’ve read in countless articles, online and in print.
I also have lots of informal evidence vis a vis, myself, my family (mom, sister) and my friends.
Lots of women feel pressured to give-up nothing and to try and do it all (work outside home, build career, take care of home, husband, kids, aging parents, etc., etc.).
October 17th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Ruth,
I remember reading those same studies too, and yet am having trouble locating the ones which focus on man-woman couples. I also remember that the men in those couples spent more hours working, commuting etc. than the women.
Also, I vaguely remember that early studies about “domestic labor” conveniently defined it as a contest that women would win hands-down, by for example, not counting any work on the home’s exterior. (I guess that balancing on a ladder to clear out the gutters must have counted as “leisure time” for the guys). So I would raise the same question about any more recent study that came out.
The closest thing I could easily find is from Glenn Sacks, an MRA admittedly, but he genuinely tries to be fair:
“A 2002 University of Michigan Institute for Social Research survey found that women do 11 more hours of housework a week than men but men work 14 hours a week more than women. According to the BLS, men’s total time at leisure, sleeping, doing personal care activities, or socializing is a statistically meaningless 1% higher than women’s.”
Anecdotally, I’ve observed that husbands seem to prefer to do lasting “projects” like putting up shelves, paintin’ and fixin’ as opposed to “repetitive” tasks like laundry and cleaning. Whether they feel “pressured” to do this or not no-one cares.
Finally Ruth, when you write “Lots of women feel pressured to give-up nothing and to try and do it all”, that’s a classic use of the passive voice to present women as victims. Pressured by whom? (Other women perhaps???). At least in the US, there aren’t gangs of men with AK47s roaming the streets looking for women who aren’t doing what they’re “supposed” to. Ask an Iranian or Afghan woman about feeling pressured.
October 24th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
John Dias Says:
“Feminists need to stop shaming mothers who choose stay-at-home nurturing over paid jobs, as though such mothers are conditioned dogs. Butt out!”
A) You don’t believe that women and men aren’t conditioned to fill gender-defined roles?!
B) If you knew anything about feminists, you would know that they only take issue when women feel as though they don’t have the choice between being a stay at home or working mom. Mothers are expected to be the nurturers and are shamed if they don’t fill that role. Men are made out to be dumb cavemen by society (*the media) and are labeled “gay” or “feminine” if they don’t act accordingly.
October 25th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Repeated for emphasis: using the passive voice to describe women as “conditioned” or “expected to be…” conveniently leaves the actor out of the equation, as well as being somewhat patronizing. (In another sphere, that of media reporting on rape, feminists apparently DO care about the difference between “she was raped” and “this man raped her”).
Also when men “are made out to be dumb cavemen” by society, I don’t hear feminists complaining. In fact they’re often the ones on the “actor” side contributing to the stereotype(often using “violent” instead of “dumb” ).