Women and Men Weigh in on Division of Labor in the Home

This week's topic is very near and dear to my heart: the division of household labor as it relates to relationships with family, friends, and partners.  Basically, I grew up in a home where everyone did what they had to to help out and pull their weight.  Don't get me wrong - it wasn't without a major fight half the time, because my family and I were always INCREDIBLY busy and stressed.  My mom was a single mother who worked all the time after she divorced my step-father (I was about 13-14 years old at the time), and us kids wanted nothing more than to do our homework, play with our friends, and shirk our cleaning responsibilities as members of the family.  After all, my mom was the caregiver, right?  At the time I thought so.  I expected her to play mother, father, and housekeeper.  I was 14 at the time, but years later, I'm still having arguments about the fairness of the division of labor in my home.  Recently, I moved in with my boyfriend, who is also pretty recent for being so serious, after having basically not ever lived with someone who I was seriously dating.

Here's the thing: No matter how run down my mom would get after working AND doing most of the chores around the house, she would still shell out money for us whenever we needed it (and she had the freedom with money to do so, of course).  I realized from a young age, that money didn't mean anything if you had people to take care of you and love you in your life, and that, despite how much we complained and how hard we were to deal with, she truly valued us because we were the thing keeping her afloat.  That slowly became the thing that I valued much more than money.  I began to take care of people, to shell out money for my friends and boyfriends when we went out, and to share my possessions as much as I could.  It made me feel really good.  But the people who decided to thank me verbally instead of showing me their thanks through their actions (and I don't mean by spending money on me right back!), whether it was by calling me to hang out more, inviting me to fun events, or by general thoughtfulness, soon dropped off the face of the earth as my friends.

Fast forward to now.  I live with my boyfriend, who I love.  We hadn't planned on living in a house together, but after our unorthadox plans of starting a very cheap cooperative in which everyone lived in and renovated buses as tiny homes fell through, we had about a week to find this place.  Neither of us were making as much money as we had been, although my income was basically the same as it had been before: not good at all.  This move caused my bills to drastically increase because of the amount of money that I had to spend to go through with all of our projects on my credit cards and through borrowing it from my mother.  Thus, I was forced to choose between paying slightly more for rent, chipping in for groceries for both of us, or affording utilities and other expenses.  Not a great place to be in at all, especially when things were going so great for us and our relationship.  I thought we had formed a bond and that now, despite him having to pay for groceries and me having to chip in for all the cooking because of our agreement, we would be doing whatever we could to work things out, together.  Despite all the stress and all the time spent on cooking, I felt great about our arrangement.

The only thing we had discussed, however, was the arrangement with the groceries and cooking, and that I would pay the same amount in rent that I had at my old house, being that I had made a sacrifice to pursue the failed coop with him.  We had never discussed the seemingly countless other chores we would have to take care of together around the house, despite all the free time we had had before to just hang out and bond.  After awhile, I began to feel overwhelmed with cooking every day, cleaning the entire house every week, doing laundry and hanging it up to dry, picking up after everyone (including our friends who were always over), vaccuuming, wiping things down, tidying up clothes and crap all over the living room, riding the bus to and from work, working 14 hours a week at a school, writing papers every week for extra money (sometimes the equivalent of two full-time workdays, albeit from home and with some flexibility).  I brought it up to him that I felt really overwhelmed and that soon I would be having a full-time job and paying for more but right now I didn't and I still felt kind of overwhelmed.  It just wasn't the same as having someone around the house who noticed these things and tried to chip in, even if it was just to show me they could do it too, and it was making me feel like servant.

After a few fights, I took it upon myself on my free time at work to make a chore chart.  I split the chores 50/50, thinking that was fair since we both had some free time every week to make sure they got done.  In fact, he had more free time than me, but it was filled with things that he said were necessary for him to do, for our future.  He built us a table in his free time that was awesome.  Throughout all of this, I never forgot that he was paying for food for us, and paying more in rent than I was.  I tried to find spare time to help out with the projects, wanting to learn how to use tools and to help out in any way that I could.  Most of the time, though, I just felt exhausted.  I realized that I was putting aside other hobbies that I wanted to pursue, such as working on my novel that was extremely important to me, working on converting my bus, and just being able to unwind with him the way we used to.  He ended up telling me flat out that he didn't agree with my division of labor, because I seemed to be forgetting how much money he was chipping in every month.

Right away, something felt wrong to me.  Money had never been an issue in any of my relationships that last more than year.  Money, unlike chores and personal responsibility for a shared living space, was NEVER certain.  And, unfortunately in this society we live in, it's never going to be.  In our arguments he would say things like "well I would never put you in that position, never force you to choose between your happiness and my survival."  The funny thing is, I would definitely have said that before the situations that I found myself in this year.  So if it had happened the other way around, and I had money to set aside for groceries for him, I was sure that I would never make him feel bad or make him feel like he had to do more labor to make up for it.  He isn't my employee, he's my partner and my lover.  Not to mention, he had NEVER expressed how resentful he was about "having" to pay for stuff for me.  I had thought this entire time that he was doing it gladly, because he loved me and wanted our situation to work out for both our benefits.  When asked why he was so resentful, he cited past relationships as his primary reason for choosing to be resentful of me and to treat me differently. I don't think I need to point out how obvious the problems with this are.  I am me!  And I'm a great person, even if I don't always know how to help out with things like building and crafting wooden tables; I've certainly always tried.

Based on all of these experiences, and what I've learned over the course of my life, I sincerely believe that household labor should be divided based on who has more time, never who makes or spends more money.  It is a partnership with romantic undertones, and people need to be allowed room to breathe and free time to do their own thing, or else the relationship will turn stagnant in less than a year.  If it doesn't, chances are one person will feel like a slave to the other, though they stay together.  If people have kids, it can get even messier.  Time and money situations might change.  We do plan on going into business together, and all of these recent discussions will factor into my decision whether to do that or not.  Problems in our personal life will surely affect how we work together, and I can't allow that to happen, even if I try hard to shoulder my "part" of the burden; I will eventually end up being more resentful than he ever could have been for spending more money than me.  Long story short: pretty soon he was fed up with the amount of dishes he was doing, even though that was his only (identified) chore, and I was fed up with the whole thing, and here we are.  

Not to mention, studies have explicitly shown that women who see their men doing less housework than them, will feel less sexually attracted to them.  When doing research on the topic, I found that pretty much every single advice and help blog related to the topic (a few in psychology journals online), said that in order to have a successful partnership, we must never hold money over the other person's head, as it is the most unsure thing that we could possible use as collateral.  The amount of free time that a person has might change as well, and with that the amount of chores they are able to take on.  In fact, time should be the deciding factor in these things, according to literally every person I've spoken to and everything I've read on the subject.  To round it out, here are a few quotes from people around the internet on the topic:

One blogger, galbella, says "It seems fair to adjust the contribution to housework based on the numbers of hours of other work each person has (so that the total number of work hours is similar), but not based on income! What if one person works 50 hour weeks at a non-profit and the other works part time but makes a huge hourly wage? My observations of other couples and of my own relationship makes me believe really strongly that all income should be considered shared family money. Our worth should not be determined by our earning power, especially in family relationships!"


Another blogger, a man this time, states that, "Who makes more should absolutely not be an issue, but the person who has more time doing more around the house shouldn't be a problem. All work, whether it's at home or away, should be considered contributions to the running of the house, put in the pot and divided as needed. Keeping score leads to resentment."  

Angry blogger: "It should upset that he brings up the salary differential, because it's hurtful and arrogant of him to point it out.
And don't use the "oh he's a male scientist, he isn't capable of emotions" argument. Both my DH and I are engineers and we don't do this kind of thing to each other."

Not entirely satisfied with my research on the topic, even after reading about 150 comments like these, I decided to ask a few of my friends and acquaintances, telling them I was conducting a survey to see how their own personal household chores were divided and what were the deciding factors for those.  My friends come from a very different variety of backgrounds, and one of them has a family with children.  These were the answers, not surprisingly:

"what I can tell you is, that between my girlfriend and I there hasnt ever been anything like this. we are actively conscious of what we do for each other and never think twice about helping. if i see that she needs help, ill do it. if im on my ass and asks for me help ill do it. if i spent alot of money on her for year, i never ever go back on it and tell her that she owes me or make her feel bad about it. she never makes me feel bad that im broke and has to pay for me all the time now. if i need help she is there. if she needs help im there. when you are in a relationship, you do things together naturally and harmoniously with out taking a vengeful you did this you did that approach" - Anonymous friend

Another friend had this to say about his and his wife's respective duties and lifestyles: "Mostly its what we were just comfortable doing with our schedules the way they are. Taking care of the baby is truly a full time job by its self. Im sort of a perfectionist so I like to do most of the chores myself. I come from a family of 4 brothers so I was ironing my own clothes by 12. We have been together since 2006 but have known each other since 5th grade. My wife is at home more because of the baby so for the last year she cut back at work. I work full time and am gone from home more often. I make most of the money. Money doesnt play a role in who does what re: chores."

Another friend on him and his girlfriend's living arrangements: "we both do house chores like cleaning the kitchen and the bedroom. we probably don't clean the living room as much because we don't spend a lot of time in there. money doesn't have anything to do with it. sometimes i'll spot her on things and vice versa. i cook because i don't mind doing it and because i know more about cooking. she cleans up after dinner because it's fair. i mean if we made the same amount and she only worked one hour a day, i would still expect her to do more chores."

Thank you to everyone who contributed to this post! It has been a real learning experience for me, even though everyone agreed with my basic views on the topic. I have tried to conduct interviews where I did not influence people's answers, and I really appreciate their honesty on the topic. I hope this post can help even one person to realize the true potential of a partnership, and not to treat it like a business, or to be tempted to use the amount you make or spend as an incentive to treat the other person like their own personal Cinderella!  We all do what we can for one another, and we should value the bond and the relationships that form from giving selflessly to one another. No matter what happened in our past, we must never forget who will fill our future full of light and love! If we take our anger out on them, we will have only our angry selves in the end. Also, be honest with one another! If you don't feel that you have enough money to buy something that you really need, because you are spending it all on someone else's groceries, then make sure you set aside a few dollars here and there for yourself. These are YOUR choices, don't let the resentment build up, because selfishness isn't the only thing that can ruin a relationship. Before you know it, the person who thought you were doing something sweet for them can start to feel like a slave in their own home because you think they owe you manual labor, and you will be confused about why you still resent that person so much. Could it be that you need to make a different choice about how to alot your own money? After all, people do not force you to give them anything and they certainly don't want blame and no free time for doing happy things if you do decide to help them out. Chores are menial tasks, and you wouldn't want to do 20 hours of meaningless tasks every week, if both of the people who made the mess could chip in and do 10; Perhaps even try to use it as a bonding activity. Now there's an idea for a great relationship!

Peace and love, friends.

Don't You Dare: A Poem for the Modern Feminist

Don’t you dare try that slut-shaming bullshit on me

with your hand on my breast

and another up in my tree

Don’t you tell me who or what I’m to be

I spent to many years walking around that track for free

yet you’re here now, talking about my sexuality

as if I couldn’t dare or possibly be

someone for whom the girls call on

a mentor

a lover

a sexy motherfucker

as if fucking mothers were bad-

please, they deserve all the pleasure in the world - 

and all the autonomy too

make that decision, boo

it’s all you

Yeah, sometimes I wear fucking heels in public, 

with my skirt hiked up so high you could rub it, 

without my permission, if you wanted to 

but if you do just be warned that it’s your fault, not mine

for the simple reason that 

my thigh highs do not define

all that exists within my mind

a beautiful paradigm with not enough time

to be realized or celebrated for what she truly is inside

… yet I don’t wear that for you, or you, or the person

to whom all this is untrue,

the patriarchal dove, sending a peace branch 

with little to no love

for a sister with the right to choose

who she screws, and in what kind of shoes

you who have tried to pressure me

into watching porn, or dancing with three

different men and women in just one evening, 

propose to tell me that I’m perpetuating?  

A roman orgy, is that what you want, really?

Because I’ve spent my whole life

recovering from lonely.

I want the freedom to be.

Finally.

I’m angry now and so I’ll resign

all my time

the years I’ve spent down in the grime

for this justice now, 

for the chance to say whats really on my mind, 

stop hating on a sister when you’re running out of time

for all the other things in the world-

boys and girls

growing up amid the constant swirl of gossip -

what is she doing on that cover in that getup?

How can she speak for any woman, let alone all?

and she can’t, that’s not that point.

That’s not the point, at all…

By me, Charlotte Stephens

To be an ally!

This is not coming from a place of anger.  I just truly with all my heart wish to be able to get along and respect each other.  Men, I have been in your space for so long.  I have received so much backlash recently for posting things that I thought were thought-provoking, accurate representations of how I have felt over the course of my life, and still feel to this very day.  They were met with resistance because people (men) felt attacked and that the author was saying that "all men do ______, and they do it with malice."  I got the total opposite from the article.

And I think that the common denominator is that we both, men and women, read it with different expectations.  We both expected to either feel shitty and like the article was accusing, attacking, or we expected to feel validated, like our feelings this whole time weren't imagined, that the injustices were still alive and kicking.  And they are.

This Is My Baggage: I'm A Woman

So, when I moved to Austin, Texas and decided to start a life here, I'd experienced more than my fair share of heartbreak.  I have "daddy issues," a penchant for sex, and past mistakes tend to come back to haunt me from time to time.  It really is the perfect town for me!  Well, maybe that's a stretch.  But once you get through my sarcasm and my faults, however, you begin to realize that my problems are very common, even if they do manifest themselves differently in others.

When I met my boyfriend here, I knew I had found someone who could understand me.  Not that he doesn't have his own problems, because there's never any shortage of challenges in our life together, but I knew even if he didn't understand fully, he would almost certainly try to empathize with me.  And he has, and it's been great.   But there's something that bothers me pretty consistently, and it's the fact that I'm 25 and my mental and emotional issues have only gotten worse.  Good things are happening to me every single day and I have a wonderful partner that I share great times with, and who gets me through the bad times when they hit.  Sometimes they hit hard, but he usually has my back.  I've seen him and many others through their own breakdowns and temper tantrums, even while I wanted to kick and scream and have my own.  Bottom line: I'm a nice person and a great woman to be with, but there's one thing that I can't seem to shake; that I am a woman.

Now, don't get me wrong, I want to be a woman.  I want to be a woman because we're great, even when we're fucked up inside from years of emotional and physical abuse.  We prevail, even in the midst of tears as we crumple to our bathroom floor for the tenth time that week, sad about who knows what...  But the truth is that I seldom think about why I do that.  I'll be honest and say that I've been more likely to attribute that to my birth control or to my hormones not being right.  I'm sure that all of that does hold true and that my hormones are out of whack... but what about all the baggage that I've been carrying around my entire life?  Is that enough to go crazy?

We all have baggage, and it comes in so many different sizes and different packaging.  It sits next to us on planes and it seems to never go away, but to live in the back of our minds.  For so long I've been telling myself that I'm okay with everything that's happened to me in my short life, but maybe I'm not.  Maybe I'm not okay with the fact that every single part of my body is its own commodity, and has the option of its own implant.  We women are slabs of meat sold on the black market every single day, while I sit in my living room pretending it doesn't exist.  When the boy that I lost my virginity to when I was 15 told me he was sorry for the way he treated me a few years back, I just told him it was "fine."  I didn't want to talk about it then.  But maybe it wasn't "fine"!

Maybe I'm not fine because every single day I get catcalled on the street and forced to examine myself the way that others see me, even when I don't fucking want to.  If I'm in public, I'm not allowed to be me or to exist without being reminded all too often that I'm a woman.  They assess me so matter-of-factly as if checking off some imaginary list that I've never had access to.  I find myself asking, "what is it about me that people like, that people hate?"  "That girl seems popular and attractive, how can I change myself to be like her?"  I STILL DO THIS.  Why should I ever do that?  But I can't stop, I just can't.  This obsession with how I look and act and feel and think and treat others, and what I say and how I say it started long before I was born.  I'm just another casualty.  All of us are.

Maybe I'm really really sick of people telling me that I hate men because I'm a feminist , when really I just fucking hate myself.  

This might seem a little harsh.  It's the only way to get an impression of how I feel out to the world and to show what goes on.  What we do to women's brains is really quite extraordinary.  We convert meaningless things into obsessions and we reinforce them in everything we show the woman. Everything we offer her is contingent upon her own rejection of herself as she is, now.  I want to do so many things and live and breathe free air, being one with myself and my sexuality, and not threatened by the selves and sexualities of others.  But it all comes at a cost for me.  I want to be able to watch porn with my boyfriend and not compare myself to everything about the girls on there.  But to see someone get an erection over something that society teaches me that I should strive to be while denying everything that I already am, is hard to deal with.  It's an uncomfortable thought.  I didn't think it would be, but it was!  I thought I could separate the two things, but I couldn't.  My mind wouldn't let me!  I want to explore life with my partner, but I feel like he's being forced to explore mine first.  I have so many mixed feelings about these issues, even that of porn.  I used to think that if you were cool with porn that meant that you were enlightened sexually and that you were adventurous and men would like that about you.  And they do, it's all true.  Except I'm starting to think that maybe I'm not so enlightened, and that I was wrong about a great many ideas that I've held deep down within myself.

When I was just a child, or at the very last an adolescent girl struggling to make her mark on the world, I was the prey.  I never had a chance.  I realize that now, plain as day.  You can apologize for it ten years later, and say that you realize what a great person I really was and how sweet.  Of course I was fucking sweet, that was how I would get you to sleep with me.  Accommodating women are great, right?  No, you were the prize, for your body and your brains and your company, and I was not.

But it won't matter now if you tell me how great you really thought I was.  I will already be that 25 year old woman wrestling with the demons of the past that writes this post today.  I am that woman.  In many ways I'm a bitter person, too.  I'm bitter that I have thousands of insecure thoughts every single day and it cripples me and stops me from doing the things that I love.  I don't know who I am any more,  and I know it's because I never did.  And that's a scary feeling at this age.

Because I never took the time to find out who I was in the first place.  I defined myself and my sexuality by what others wanted, and what others thought they saw in me.  Every day I live now is a nightmare filled with objectification, insecurity, missed opportunities, confusion about my own sexuality and beliefs, crippling jealousy that is caused by imagined fears that are caused by real-life events in which men have lied to me, cheated on me, told me they never loved me, they just "kept me around."  Left me places, or locked me out on the street because they'd rather sleep with someone else and they were too chicken to just tell me the truth.  Things that you or I would never dream of doing or saying to anyone; They've done it all.  In many ways that has NOTHING to do with my current partner.  The problem is that it's been the only reference point I've had to go off of.  Women do these things too, of course, and it hurts people.  But I haven't dated one, so I can't speak on that subject.  And, as we know, attributing traits that some people possess to an entire group of people is bad and hurts others.  The point of this is not to hurt men or their image, but to tell people what it feels like to be me, and a woman.

The worst part is hearing someone tell you that this is all a choice.  How you choose to view something and what you feel is a choice.  To a certain extent it's true, but it's like saying that even though you're only surrounded by pudding, it's your choice to eat it or not.  Well, I'd rather fucking accept it than starve.  And that's what I would do, again and again!  I'm already starved for attention.  I want it so badly, it hurts.  Acceptance, sure!  Give me a heaping plate of that as well.

But what I really want and need, more than anything, is to be able to provide those things for myself.  I just... never learned how because everything in my life has been defined by a man.  And I can't escape that tendency no matter how hard I try.  I could, maybe, but you know.  It feels so foreign, and I don't know how to even begin.

So, that is my baggage.  I am a woman.

Systematically and Deliberately Silenced

I'm so sad.  I was going to put today, but really I've been sad my whole life.  I think now more than ever that my sadness stems almost entirely from my insecurities.  Not just the insecurities themselves though, because in many ways I am too smart and logical to know that they are real.  But the fact that I have insecurities at all just makes me irreparably and deeply saddened.  Every single thing that I do, I wonder if it's wrong.  Every single thing that I say, I've already accepted in my head that it's probably either wrong, or at the very least, only half right.  It's stupid before it has a chance to escape my lips.  I've received over the years so much positive feedback from both men and women, I've become somewhat successful in what I do, and I've made my life and the life that I want work for me.  And yet every single day I feel emotionally crippled by the effort that it takes to control my level of anxiety over not feeling safe.

When I say "safe," I mean safe in the sense that there is no space that I could ever habitate that would provide me with enough of a feeling of security.  I am not safe because I am not safe from my own mind, from my own insecurities.  And yet no one that reacts to this asks themselves why I might feel this way.  Well here it is people: I have been systematically and deliberately silenced my whole life.  My voice was taken away and it was GIVEN TO SOMEBODY ELSE.  Why?  Because I am a woman.  I carry tampons in my purse, I listen to Madonna, and I sometimes wear "girly" colors.  Actually I really infrequently do any of those things, but they fit the stereotype right?  Or could they all just be a product of being human?

Here's the thing: this is ugly.  It's going to sound ugly and it's going to make you uncomfortable to hear it.  Most men that I know, that I have ever met, even men I currently associate with on a daily basis, shut me up constantly.  When I try to tell them that they do, they shut me up more.  When I'm not being shut up, I'm remaining silent so that I can feel kind of safe.  Because DEAR GOD is keeping up this existence emotionally taxing!!!  Who wants to go in circles all day?  I try to speak, I'm suddenly crazy, I try to explain the reason for my "overreaction," and what do you know?  I'm crazy, annoying, clumsy, stupid, mean, rude, making someone uncomfortable, awkward, weird for being insecure.  I'm sitting in my bedroom right now, and I'm alone, and I DON'T HAVE TO BE ANY OF THOSE THINGS TODAY!  I can be what I am, what I want to be.  I can be beautiful, I can dance around and knock things over and smash things and nobody can call me names or tell me that I'm not perfect, or hold me up on a pedestal.  That should make me feel good, but the insecurities hang from me like noisy charms at all times, even when I'm alone.

I'm haunted by the imagined fear of annoying a man every single day of my life.  Does that make me unattractive, I sometimes ask myself.  Which in itself is out of control that I even ask myself that!  What would possess me to give two fucks if someone who doesn't want to listen to me thinks I'm attractive or not?  Where is this coming from, you might ask.  Well, since every time I express something, people expect it to have been "set off" by something as if I were some crazy person in a mental hospital, I will tell you.  I read an article.  A beautiful article that described everything that I'm telling to you right now.  Everything that I thought was my fault.  I posted it on Facebook.

The first thing that the article did was list these commonly heard phrases: You’re so sensitive. You’re so emotional. You’re defensive. You’re overreacting. Calm down. Relax. Stop freaking out! You’re crazy! I was just joking, don’t you have a sense of humor? You’re so dramatic. Just get over it already!

Oh.  My.  God.

This is crazy, I thought to myself.  This guy knows every response I get when I try to tell someone how I feel, EVER.  FUCKING EVER.  FUCK.  I am getting so extremely upset writing this that I might have to stop.  I've had quite the week, ya know, what with my friends calling me a Femi-Nazi for standing up for women everywhere and posting articles on Facebook.  One even called me annoying.  One of them told me that I was overreacting and being overly sensitive about an issue that only affects Texas women.  I live in Texas, but even if I didn't... SO WHAT?!  I'm a woman.  I want to literally curl up in a ball and cry forever.  I actually have been all week.  I feel broken from trying so hard that I just don't want to talk anymore.  I have so much to say that I want to explode.  These conflicting emotions are actually making me feel crazy. 

Here's the thing: sometimes when I get mad at a man, I call them a name.  I say "God you're such an asshole" or I'll call them a "douche" or whatever comes to mind.  All words that we have in our language to describe people that act like that.  This enrages them beyond belief.  A NAME, how dare you call me that?  I do dare to call you that, because that's what you're being.  Call me annoying, call me an idiot, call me what I am to you so at least I can stop torturing myself in my head, wondering what you truly think of me, where your disdain is coming from.  That is emotional manipulation.  It is barely disguising the contempt that drips from your mouth and your face as you say to me, "you're too sensitive."  But what you're really saying is "wow, I hadn't thought of that, I feel dumb, and this is really inconvenient to have to talk about and listen to."  What it comes off as though is that you think I'm barely worth associating with, and you think that I'm truly stupid for feeling the way that I feel.  What if you were never going to change, but someone hated that you felt a certain way, hated your feelings, the very essence of your soul?  

A few more gems from the article: 

These women aren’t able to clearly express to their spouses that what is said or done to them is hurtful. They can’t tell their boss that his behavior is disrespectful and prevents them from doing their best work. They can’t tell their parents that, when they are being critical, they are doing more harm than good.  <--- ME

No wonder some women are unconsciously passive aggressive when expressing anger, sadness, or frustration. For years, they have been subjected to so much gaslighting that they can no longer express themselves in a way that feels authentic to them.   <--- ME

They say, “I’m sorry” before giving their opinion. In an email or text message, they place a smiley face next to a serious question or concern, thereby reducing the impact of having to express their true feelings.  <--- ME, all the time

There are many sad things about this, but I think the one that gets me the most is that even after I post this, even if I become perfectly articulate and strong in the face of expressing my feelings to people, and even if I stop taking their bullshit, most people will still treat me like this.  It's easy to do, there's even a formula for it.  It's been happening my entire life.  It makes me very very sad, because normally I am so full of love and happiness and joy.  I have a genuine desire to care for people, to listen to their feelings and express empathy.  To hold them in my arms.  And the best that I can come up with for myself today is to write this in my lonely room with tears streaming down my face.  Maybe that means I'm "being emo" or a "drama queen," but I deserve this, and today for the first time, I really don't give a fuck.

Things are getting out of hand in this country.  That is all I have to say.

I usually leave you with an expression of love, but today I feel pretty numb from everything that's been happening, so uh... keep on trucking?

What kind of feminist are you?

Lately I've been feeling like I'm coming on too strong as either an angry feminist or a sad sappy feminist who doesn't know who she is or how she feels about herself.  But then I remember that we're all feminists, or at least we should be if we want women to continue to exist, and that we make up all different kinds of people and emotions and backgrounds.  I'm not sure exactly what I want this post to be about, but I guess I'm just feeling sick and tired, literally, and sick and tired of feeling sick, tired, and unappreciated.  My whole issue with the way the world functions is that we don't view people as, well, people.  We expect them to fit into neat little boxes, or we expect them to take what we give them, because after all, aren't we feminists the ones who wanted equality?  I have come across so many men with that point of view that I don't know where to begin.  There are men and women who feel that when dealing with women, treat them exactly as how the men they know would want to be treated is an acceptable adage.  I disagree.  I think that we need to pay special attention to both the men and women in our lives and how their unique personalities and sentiments cause them to act and react, and pay heed to them accordingly.  Even men and women that claim to be feminists can often be blinded by gender, albeit in a different way than you would expect.  They see a woman and panic!  "What do I do or say so that she'll know I'm on her side and that I'm a feminist?" one might ask oneself.  But contrary to what many people do, which is to treat everyone exactly the same, they should instead be considering what they know about how that particular person operates.  If you don't know the person, treat them with respect and an open mind until you discover things about them.  Feminist is a tricky identifier, because it challenges us to walk a fine line and reassess what to many might seem obvious: how to deal with individuals who also have a gender.  What I see as obvious: treat them as you would any other individual and take into account various factors in their environment and yours, may not be obvious to the somewhat confused, newly adapted feminist.

Today I was helping my boyfriend with his home/bus conversion project, and I realized very quickly that I'm not a carpenter, but that that is totally okay.  The thing that wasn't okay was the way that we both felt about me helping with the project in conjunction with how we were communicating with each other.  I felt like I needed more background information on how the task that I was supposed to be completing should be handled, and I wrongly assumed that he knew what information to provide me with.  He wrongly assumed that I had all of the information I needed.  I ended up neglecting to check one detail and it ended up resulting in him having to do more work.  I felt deflated and useless.  As with anything that is important to me in life, I like to feel that I'm really making a difference and that the person understands that I am also learning and growing.  I may be a smart individual, but with little to no experience installing cabinets in a school bus.  My confidence level in that regard is only as good as the constructive feedback that I receive allows it to be, for safety's sake.  I like to think that I am cautious but not frightened to try new things.  I need a nurturing environment with constructive feedback, as do most.  However, I've been walking this fine line between wanting to help and not wanting to fuck anything up, for obvious reasons.  I often choose safe activities that are helpful without having the added danger of allowing me to completely destroy something that my boyfriend has worked so hard for.  I feel that he chooses the same for me as well and I'm not quite sure how to view that.  Today, after recovering from my mistake, without skipping a beat, he ran off saying how good it was that his friend had just arrived, and then asked me to boil some water for pasta as they proceeded to finish the current activity we had been working on without me.  I wasn't unhappy to be relieved of the burden of wondering what else I might do wrong, but after removing myself from the situation, I felt a little nonplussed  by how quick he was to express his joy at being saved from my inferior job as wood-stabalizer. I don't like to make assumptions, but I think that it can be convenient for him and many other guys to treat their girlfriends as they would anyone else.  I am not more special than his friend, but I do have a different personality and my feelings are hurt by different things.  I have a vested interest in helping and a vested interest in both my boyfriend and his project, so it was hard for me to stomach the dismissal of my help, my subsequent relocation to the kitchen to boil water, and our interaction later when he explained that I hadn't been "communicating with him properly" and that's why things got "messed up."  Be careful how you choose your words, friends.

People, significant others in particular, are sensitive to their own faults and mistakes already, even if you are not to yours.  There might be a lot of conclusions to be drawn from this interaction, but I like to think that most of them are obvious if we remove our genders from the equation.  What if we were both genderless individuals working together in close quarters, but with an added romantic twist?  Neither of us was communicating well, neither of us did the exactly correct thing, and neither of us felt great about our interaction after the situation was over.  I think there is something to be said about that, and it is that if we had just been more sensitive to who the other person was, and not what, things could have gone a lot more smoothly for both of us.  I hate to use personal examples at the expense of my loved ones, but they are all I have, and after all, they are also at my expense being that I frequently make mistakes -_-

That is all I've got in me folks, have a great Monday!  And if you're sick like me, feel better!

Pour Les Hommes...

So, whenever I teach, I try not to answer too many questions.  I try, in fact, to get my kids to ask themselves MORE questions.  And the more questions they ask themselves, the more questions they have.  If all goes well.  I want to take the same approach to femin(ism) because I want to believe that men (and women!) are just deterred by the daunting task of picking up an academic text and sifting through years of inequality, theories, and philosophies surrounding the segregation of women from most parts of society.  Well, I would argue the "misplacement" of women because there are prostitutes, and then there are wives, and then there are nuns.  You see what I mean.  Anyway, what I want to do is, after experiencing a series of almost attacks on my mind and body this week and last, and reading some great texts surrounding the issues of sexuality, gender, and equality in society, urge women and men to ask themselves some questions about their inner discourse before speaking out loud.  What I personally want, as a woman, is for you to ask yourself the following:

"What am I about to say to this woman?"
"Why am I about to say this to her?"
"Is there a deeper meaning for me in this exchange or is it purely superficial?"
"What do I gain from this interaction?  What does she gain?"
"Is whatever I'm about to gain from it worth it if she feels uncomfortable, offended, or saddened by it?"
"If this exchanged happened between me and someone else would I feel personally attacked or disrespected in some way?"
"Am I being truthful or just plain rude?"
"What might this say (to her) about what I think or feel about her?"

That's it for this post.  Just think I guess.  I have no desire to write more today.  I actually wrote this post early this morning before my day decided to head straight off a cliff.

Love.