obviously i meant matriarch - not patriarch.

How is it NOT progress? My cousin is extremely happy being a working mom. Her husband is extremely happy being a stay-at-home and sometime work-from-home dad. Under the patriarchy, this just could not happen. With the help of feminism, families are able to organize the way that makes them happy, not the way that society says it must due to gender.

I'm not sure what you're taking offense with, unlses being a stay-at-home parent is really offensive to you. Flipping it around like you did is just reaffirming a preference for traditional gender roles, not a preference for setting up a family in a way that works for that family. The former is offensive, the latter isn't.

Uh- I didn't mean that I expect him to do the laundry. Or that I enjoy some sort of repression for revenge.

I, in fact, do the laundry. I also do the dishes. And all the cooking. But it's negotiated fairly. Nothing is based on the expected gender roles.

Actually, feminism is about people making the choices to do what THEY want. If her relationship with him works out that way, and they are both happy, then great for them. There are plenty of stay-at-home moms that are happy with that role and I would never argue that there is anything wrong with that choice--as long it is THEIR choice.

The problem with saying "it's a woman's job" is that it assumes that WOMEN have certain roles they HAVE to fill. It would be just as offensive to see a joke that said something to the affect of "Go out and work, men, because IT IS YOUR JOB to do so." Plenty of men want to stay at home and raise children. No one should be forced to fill the role they do not simply because of what is between their legs.

I am giving the commenter the benefit of the doubt that her "bring home the bacon" was used with a touch of irony.

I once was in a writing group with a woman whose children were grown -- she had been a SAHM and was now widowed -- and a man who was single-parenting two or three tween/teen boys. As the mother of a toddler, I had lots of concerns and complaints, and the other mother and I were commiserating on the demands of mothering, I think specifically we were talking about how difficult mornings were, trying to meet our own needs *and* our childrens' needs while still half-asleep. The Dad commented how much fun he had with his boys in the mornings, which left the other Mom and I speechless at the time, but it gave me a lot to think about. Simply put, some people -- whether they are Moms or Dads -- enjoy parenting more than others do. This makes perfect sense -- some people enjoy filing and organizing while others don't. Some people enjoy solving mechanical problems, and others hate it. I think it would be useful for all of us to keep this reality in mind when we're talking about roles and responsibilities in the household or the family. If some households want one breadwinner and one stay-at-home parent, that's fine, and household responsibilities should be divvied up in a way that makes sense for that household. Most households have two working partners/parents now, and some of us suffer because the old model that assigned certain responsibilities by gender aren't equitable or reasonable. So, this label assuming that the laundry is the "wife"'s job is absurd and offensive, and an obvious FAIL to anyone but a troglodyte. And Steph's somewhat-dismissive description of her husband as a "stay-at-home Dad" is unnecessarily glib and I find it a little offensive.

I'm going to say this generally, because it's something I've been thinking about for a while but for some reason my irritation with the above comment made some of the words for it click into place in my mind. So take this both as a response to elephlux in particular but moreso as just a general statement:

The problem with this kind of reaction is that it hinges on a certain assumption about the situation in which we find ourselves. In order for this to make any sense, we have to posit that we, right now, exist in some kind of entirely neutral void, and have two abstract options floating before us that have the same sort of status as mere options -- that is, we are being disembodied so-called "rational" agents weighing two options that are completely unrelated to the environment in which we make this decision, which is neutral. And so, one says "Isn't 'bringing home the bacon' the same thing regardless of whether it's the husband or the wife doing it? Aren't you being 'reverse-sexist' by preferring one over the other, given that these are nothing more than two different options?" But of course, this is a sort of ridiculous view of what it is that's actually going on, even though "rational" people like to envision themselves this way, as completely free from external influence, (Cartesian minds, for you philosophy people here).

What is actually going on is that we ask this question already ensconced in a certain situation, and indeed, there are two options available, but they are not merely "Breadwinner A vs. Breadwinner B." The first option, given that we do exist actually in the world and actually in a certain place in history and actually as influenced and as influential by and to the rest of society, amounts to "Adhere to a traditional way of doing things as husband and wife, which in turn gives a certain tacit approval to and support of traditional gender roles, which is not merely limited to who 'provides for' whom but propogates outwards for the whole system, which includes some terribly oppressive and anachronistic things," vs. "Actively reject the traditional roles of husband and wife in this case by doing things oppositely to how they have historically been done, which similarly implies a rejection of these roles in general."

Of course, this is a simplistic version of what's going on as well, since it's not as if our entire lives can be characterized so clearly under "accept" or "reject" like this. My point, though, is that there's only one world that we are in, and it is only a certain way and has only one history, and we make decisions (especially decisions pertaining to things like who the 'breadwinner' of the household is) as thoroughly ensconced within the context of that singular world. It is a sort of sympathetic but naive ignorance of this (or in some cases, a willful ignorance) that can lead one to think it's even reasonable at all to say something like "But isn't it just the same if the wife does it?"

Yeah the comments are the usual collection of j-offs with the usual "WHY can't you WIMMINS have a SENSE OF HOOMOR OMG!!!" bullcrap.
*sigh*

EXACTLY.

That's why I was so livid. Really, failblog? THAT's what you'd call a 'win'?

Good sexist jokes are funny. Good jokes ridiculing men are funny. I don't think you understand what a joke is.

Why be abusive? I'm not a troll!