Bennetts: Men shirk chores because women let them
Hey, guys, fathers, dads, daddybloggers… Leslie Bennetts writes about you this time in “Chores for two: Why men don’t pitch in.”
Ask your typical American dad what size shoes his children wear, and you will likely draw a blank stare. He has no idea. Guess who makes sure the kids’ toes aren’t poking through their sneakers?
OK, Typical American Dads: Do you know what size shoes your children wear?
(If you do, you’re one up on me. I have to dig around in the closet and look at the shoes to find out what size my children wear.)
Here’s another question: Are you a lot like children?
And while I recognize that gender stereotypes are risky, in my experience husbands are a lot like children. They will get away with whatever they can get away with. When you put your foot down and make it clear that you won’t take no for an answer, somehow the kids’ rooms get cleaned, the groceries bought, the laundry folded. It really does work, I promise.
(My husband already has a mother.)
In case you haven’t seen me cite this quote enough already, here it is. Again.
So why aren’t women demanding something closer to parity? While many are resigned to seething in silence, the stakes are far higher than they seem to realize. When wives permit their husbands to shirk a fair share of the homemaking and parenting, not only do they themselves suffer, but chances are good that they’re also sentencing their children to a similar fate. When you have kids, everything you do teaches them how to live their own lives when they grow up. Unfortunately, all too many women are still teaching their children that “woman is the nigger of the world,” as John Lennon and Yoko Ono put it so memorably in a song lyric years ago. And what too many fathers teach their sons and daughters is that men can get away with dumping the scut work on their wives, and that women will grit their teeth and put up with it.
Posted by Becky @
2:34 pm |
Leslie Bennetts stars in ‘Dude, Where’s My Car?’
Leslie Bennetts should activate the Photon Accelerator Annihilation Beam on the Continuum Transfunctioner, save the universe and deliver Breast Enhancement Necklaces to the world.
Because, Dude. Reading the opinion piece she wrote for the New York Post, “Hillary & Katie, Two Women Pioneers … Driven off a Cliff,” is like waking up with a stoner’s hangover and a house full of pudding.
What’s her point? When she writes about everyday, ordinary American women for whom things go wrong, they’re stupid — willfully obtuse parasites who demonstrate for their children that woman is the n***** of the world.
When she writes about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Katie Couric, for whom things — according to Bennetts — have gone wrong, they’re victims. Well-paid, well-heeled victims of the patriarchy that calls for Couric to display her “denuded gams” for her $15 million annual paycheck.
Bennetts says male pundits gleefully deconstruct the “twin debacles” of Clinton and Couric’s “front-page flame-outs,” and she knows exactly who’s at fault.
But there’s plenty of blame to go around, much of which belongs to the male advisors whose catastrophic advice helped steer both women to defeat.
Dude. Because prominent women are, like, totally incapable of making their own decisions.
Bennetts says Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid is a failure.
Dude.
[Looking around nervously ... whispering ... ]
::::::Don’t tell Clinton!::::::
She will kick your ass. Or, as the Post would have you believe, she will shoot off your face, à la Susan Sarandon’s Louise Sawyer. Yeah, the Post bobble-headed (yeah, that’s a verb … shut up) Clinton and Katie Couric on a Thelma & Louise publicity photo.
But who knows? Maybe Clinton will step down tomorrow, and I’ll eat my words.
Psych! That’s never gonna happen.
Bennetts says Couric is “one of the toughest interviewers in television.”
At CBS, Couric was the $60 million talent, but the suits who run the network were the geniuses who decided that one of the toughest interviewers in television should be reduced to a nauseating female caricature whose main contribution to her new role was girlish fatuousness, despite the excruciatingly obvious fact that the primary job requirement was gravitas.
Dude. Did you see this interview with Clinton — the one where she asked, “Someone told me your nickname in school was Miss Frigidaire. Is that true?” Yeah. Whew! Tough as nails.
Bennetts says Couric was girly and leggy at the behest of the CBS guys writing her paycheck.
Dude. Because she was never, ever girly or leggy before joining CBS.
Bennetts talks about Manolo Blahnik shoes, an essential element of the Victim Uniform of American Female Failure.
Dude. Does a celebrity writer get a pair of Manolo Blahniks in the mail every time she mentions them?
When the ousted Dan Rather complained that his former broadcast had been “dumbed down and tarted up,” he wasn’t wrong, but nobody ever instructed him to insert cutesy comments about his kids between devastating news segments on the Iraq War, let alone to flash his shapely legs and a titillating glimpse of thigh for the cameras. America remains blessedly unfamiliar with the sight of Rather’s hairy pins — one shudders to think what they’d look like in Manolo Blahniks – but Couric’s denuded gams were accorded such prominence that the male honchos masterminding her show seemed to believe that sexy legs in stilettoes were all that viewers cared about.
Dude. Because Dan Rather’s opinion still counts. And Rush Limbaugh’s. And Nora Ephron’s.
Bennetts says Clinton and Couric are “two of America’s most prominent women.”
Dude. I guess that’s all there is. The rest? Posers. Not prominent at all. You know … like these.
Dude. Victims. Or … maybe they have better male advisers, eh?
And if blaming the patriarchy doesn’t work, Bennetts pulls out the “who’s the worst victim” card.
Lest anyone forget the proper role of women, there were helpful reminders from morons like the heckler shouting “Iron my shirts!” during a Clinton campaign appearance. No white males have yet been recorded yelling “Shine my shoes!” at an Obama event, but of course racism is offensive, whereas we’re supposed to laugh off even the most virulent sexism.
Dude. Because that’s how to eradicate sexism — by saying it’s worse than the racism a black presidential candidate (and an entire population of Americans) deals with every day. Because, you know, sexism can’t stand as an issue on its own. It has to climb on the back of racism to be seen and heard.
With friends like these, famous women scarcely need enemies. But there are more than enough of both to get the job done. And so the glass ceiling cracks a couple more well-coiffed heads, as effortlessly as if they were eggs.
Dude. With “journalists” like Bennetts, putting “prominent” women like Clinton and Couric in the “victim” sandbox, who needs a reason to get out of bed up in the morning? Quick. Someone get me a cosmopolitan and some pills. It’s women’s own fault. Because, as Bennetts said in her book, American women today have the most choices of women at any time in the history of the world. According to this article? Here are those choices.
1) Be stupid.
2) Be a victim.
So, Dude. Click your ruby-red high heels together and make a choice. If you pick the wrong one? Blame your male adviser.
*Click click.*
Posted by Becky @
9:34 pm |
