This is a really really good take:
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That it’s happening at a time when the far right seems to be gaining power is especially important, I think. Men have certainly not managed to liberate the world. I’m afraid that it’s now up to women to do the job.
Lysistrata 2018?
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I guess I am one of those chickens! Even over Christmas (which I don’t particularly celebrate) dinner, a relative called me out hinting that I have a terrible work ethic because homemaking and parenting somehow “isn’t work”. And how “we sometimes need to do things we don’t want to do”… whatever that was supposed to mean. Without taking them to task too directly at the table, I explained that I have actual duties here which are necessary, and if I don’t do them, simply aren’t done. They weren’t convinced, but they weren’t able to explain how else we might have a functioning household.
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Another related issue I think is that of framing this “domestic sphere” strictly in terms of the nuclear family, which IMO has never made much sense from a labor or economic perspective, when something like kibbutzim or communes are an option. There is no way to take turns or divide work when those duties always fall upon the same single person.
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Don’t I know it! My son, despite being ASD (which I didn’t know till he was a teen, he’d been misdiagnosed with various behavioral disorders since he was five; I blocked out the memory of when it took like four people to restrain him when they took his blood for the first time), was much better off being raised by myself, my mom, his paternal grandpa, and his paternal aunt. My father, to a degree, helped out, but as he got older, his patience wore and a noisy, active child didn’t work out. Don’t even get me started on his dad, LOL! And it was a two-household upbringing because I lived with my mom and dad, and his aunt lived with her father.
It doesn’t take a village; it takes at least one dedicated person to raise a child.
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With all the conversations going on around the topic, this is a good thread. What we’ve been conditioned to do is not necessarily what we want to do.
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I thought Friends was slightly more clever than the usual sitcom fare but not particularly. It just seemed to work harder than most.
True story: my mom taught Courtney Cox in the 7th grade. She was called CeeCee back then. When Friends was on the air, one day a bunch of her students asked her if she taught Courtney Cox. She was like ??? How do you know that??? and they were like, she was in a PSA and she talked about you. I have looked and looked for that PSA to show my mom but I can’t find it. Thought it was a The More You Know but it’s not one of those.
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It was far from insightful, and a little contrived, but it could be clever and funny at times.
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In the 1990s the place where I worked still required all women, even those behind the scenes who would never see a customer, to wear a skirt or dress, pantyhose, pumps, and makeup. They also gave gendered holiday gifts to only the women, while allowing the men to choose from a general catalog.
The past isn’t even all that past.
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Oh for sure, the past isn’t past at all.
But things did get better, a little, I just don’t want to say that it didn’t.
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But was there an equivalent dress code for men, like all men are required to wear suits at all times?
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The past is a foreign country, occupying our own.
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Suits won’t hurt your feet. And if you can find the right suits, they won’t cause your skin to break out in hives. I haven’t been looking, but I don’t think there are the right pantyhose.
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Maybe not, but the shoes that go with them might, but to a very limited extent.
Speak for yourself. Every suit I have ever worn has been horrifically itchy.
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Much more range: a suit, or dress pants with a dress shirt and tie, with or without a sweater or vest or blazer. No rules about what kind of socks or shoes other than they needed to be dressy (but could be loafers, or wingtips, or saddle shoes, etc.).
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A lot of dress codes hit people with sensory issues, regardless of gender.
I cannot wear a lot of the most common fabrics for dress clothing – depending on both the fibre and the weave or knit, it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard (hidden for those who are imaginative and can mentally recreate a distressing sensation from text description alone) but against my skin. I also cannot wear anything around my throat (I think this may be due to a near hanging when I was about a year old), which led to a showdown at one workplace when they decided everybody needed to wear ties. I can’t even do up the top button of a button shirt with a collar, let alone add a noose.
This means that I am restricted mostly to wearing jeans or other very soft and smooth fabrics, which tend to be used in casual clothing (eg denim, jersey knits or flannels) or very expensive clothing (smooth silk, leather and suede). Most standard “office wear” is no go territory for me. I literally cannot afford the cost of a “professional” wardrobe. I am lucky enough to work somewhere that “non-offensive, not sleepwear” is acceptable. Go Union.
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I wonder about workplaces with gendered dress codes what happens if you don’t choose a gender, or else choose a different one with clothes you like better. Complaining about your gender wouldn’t get them very far, and laws certainly prevent them from confirming your biological sex.
What bothers me at least as much is that the dress codes are often ethnocentric, and hardly anybody ever remarks upon this. Why should I need to dress in the fashions of a completely different continent? And if so, why not choose dressy clothes from elsewhere? African dress clothes are no more indigenous here than are European ones.
(Yes, HR Directors love me. My previous workplace hired a new one just to deal with me making such cases to them)
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I think the French OSS 117 films are so much funnier than Austin Powers and deadlier in their satire of the macho spy genre. I also loved the French series on Netflix, A Very Secret Service, for a smart skewering of machismo and imperialism.
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Yeah, not quite as rigorous as for the women, but still rigorous. My current dress code doesn’t even require a button down shirt, let alone a tie or slacks or nice shoes. I rarely wear slacks at all because they itch so much, and I can rarely find shoes in my size.
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