This is how feminists get a reputation for being humorless: we fail to laugh at jokes or quips that serve the kyriarchy. Like the one I heard yesterday, from D, an otherwise dear friend, spouse of my sister-in-all-but-genetics-and-law.
He and The Man were outside with the Boychick and his cousin, watching them run through the sprinklers (well, encouraging them to, anyway: the Boychick was standing at the edges saying it was “too cold!”, while his cousin happily ran around getting soaked). D came in, and my sister asked if they had towels out there for them. D’s reply was “Of course not: we’re men, we don’t think that far ahead!”
He didn’t understand why I raised an eyebrow and rolled my eyes, and nor did anyone else in the room.
The Man would have gotten it.
The problem with “the problem with men” type “jokes” is that they serve to support the patriarchy-assigned sexist gender-roles. Although directed at men, and not women, and supposedly OK and “not sexist” by being at the expense of men, and not women, by supporting the limiting and dehumanizing gender roles of the patriarchy, they ultimately hurt women. Not to mention being incredibly insulting to men who have worked hard to get past said limiting stereotypes.
These jokes are especially problematical when about the incompetence of men in the domestic sphere, for by casting men as bumbling idiots in the home, it falls on women to pick up the slack there, keeping us tethered to the domestic sphere, leaving the public sphere, with its associated privilege and power, exclusively the domain of men.
So call me a humorless feminist all you like, but I fail to see why I should laugh at tired old sexist tropes that dehumanize and underestimate the capabilities of my best beloveds, many of whom are male, while ultimately reinforcing my own oppression.
It’s not that I don’t have a sense of humor, it’s that I’d much rather laugh at the patriarchy rather than with it, and that requires thinking for yourself instead of regurgitating the partriarchy’s old standbys.
You can do it. I believe in you.
As usual, you articulate what's in my brain so much better than I could.
Since discovering pending fatherhood, the man in this house has become so much more aware of how these stereotypes are pervasive and limiting. It's been a really awesome transformation to witness, because he came to it pretty much all on his own. He just sort of got annoyed that he's expected to be uninvolved, shortsighted, goofy, and essentially irresponsible, all because he has a Y chromosome.
Additionally, he articulates (and not just to me) the desire to try hard to raise his son free from these jokes-as–free-pass. Which just makes this so much less scary for me.
Those jokes have always drove me bonkers. The idea that a man is uncaring, distant and incapable of caring for a home is absurd. The man of my house cares for the house, does all the cleaning while I work outside the home. It suits us.
Amen! I couldn't have said it better myself.
On my list of topics I'd like you to write about, is "what's funny?"
Probably not many commercials or sitcoms. They're just sad.
I'll send you the rest of the list in an email.
Couldn't have said it better myself. Can you elaborate on how you deal with this?? I find that I am surrounded by this within my own family. The other branch of this joke that we get a lot is if we stack something up and my 9-month-old wants to knock it down, it is because he is a boy and therefore wants to destroy everything. I guess the best we can do just show him the partnership as it exists in our home and how his dad is involved in his nurturing and care. That will be more than any words we could come up with. It does become exhausting to correct and tsk-tsk Grandma all the time.
Wow! I am loving your blog lately. Another great post.
Finally I understand why so many advertisements show competent women married to bumbling fat men!
This post opened my eyes.
TVille (I'm still waiting for your blog to start, btw!): I absolutely couldn't have done the kid thing if The Man weren't as feminist and amazing as he is. I can't imagine trying to struggle against the whole universe AND my coparent on kyriarchal issues. So yay yours!
Rachel: totally waiting for that email (your comments have actually recently inspired me to write two posts, just haven't had the time to get them up yet).
Anonymous: How I deal really depends on each instance. In this case, I chickened out and didn't explain why I wasn't laughing. Sometimes I try to find a simple, quick way of saying "uh, that's not really funny, and here's why".
But when it comes to gender-role assignments on the Boychick (like your blocks example), I'm much more aggressive/assertive (aka, because I'm female, a bitch). I'll just flat out refute it: "No, all infants like to knock over blocks. It's their way of exploring gravity and cause and effect." And if someone keeps making remarks like that, I'd likely tell them to knock it off, using some of my handy dandy assertive communication skills, learned at my mother's knee and honed at massage school (lots of "I" statements, boundary setting, etc).
I can't decide whether jokes of this sort (and other stereotypes of the same ilk) represent a deep societal sexism that's even worse for men than current female-directed sexism is for women…or if men just use them as excuses to be lazy. Hmph.
Humorless feminist
Ah, Anonymous, you disprove your assertion with your assertion, 'cause that was pretty funny: I did say "call me a humorless feminist all you like" after all.
Particles Of Stone: well, I don't think we can reasonably say men have it worse with this type of sexism, although sexism IS bad for men. It's more that these types of jokes are just another facet of the same old tired misogynistic sexism. And yes, some men do repeat them just so they can be lazy, although in general, for most men, I don't think it's that simple or that nefarious. But that's probably another post.
My boy's father is actually more averse to this type of statement (more so when it is not a joke) than I am. He is also as involved a father as anyone could hope for while making do with limited time with his boy because of very demanding work. If he weren't the way he is I might be seriously annoyed by such jokes, but as it is I don't find them particularly harmful. The reality is that I am, in fact, the one more likely to remember to prepare a towel in advance of running out to play with the sprinklers. And it doesn't mean anything other than that, but it could be considered amusing that a stereotype is being inadvertently met.
Of course, he could have just been self-depreciating, and in the process, generalizing that he is representative of all men.
If he had said "I don't think that far ahead", would he have still been so strongly damned?
Tamar: The problem is multifold: when one takes from an example of one (your partner is not as likely to remember towels) to an assertion about all members of that gender (therefore all men forget); from an example in a particular instance (men are less likely to remember) to an assertion of ability (men are incapable of remembering); and essentializing from a trend (men socialized in this culture tend not to remember) to an immutable inherent characteristic (it is fundamental and unchangeable to men that they forget).
It might be slightly amusing when a stereotype is inadvertently met, but I do not find it amusing when an inadvertently met stereotype is used to support and reinforce that stereotype as an immutable truism about all men, and for the reasons outlined in the post, it is one small example of the ways patriarchy reinforces sexism and misogyny.
Anonymous: No, he was making a very deliberate joke, and said exactly what he meant to say. (He's something of a smartass.) There was some followup conversation indicating that he really was intending to generalize about ALL men and an immutable characteristic of being unable to "think ahead" in that fashion.
I also disagree that he was "damned" in this post; I addressed only the "joke" and its repercussions for women and stereotype-defying men, and did not condemn him. He's my brother-in-law, and a good friend; he just also exists in and acts to support the patriarchy, and my goal as a blogger is to point out the ways in which such seemingly small moments perpetuate sexism, so that we can be aware of and, I hope, avoid them, and in that way work against kyriarchy.
Thank you both for your comments.
:D I know this is old.
What if he had instead commented something like “oops, got so focused on the goal we forgot the details. You’d think that would’ve evolved away by now.”
Would that have been funny?
(I’m SC, btw)
Holy cow! I just wrote a massive post at mymilkspilt talking about this same subject (the post was either deleted or is in mod or was eaten, I can’t tell).
In any case you are one hundred percent correct. And my partner & I don’t laugh at that stuff either.
OK, so the reason this stuck with me (besides the fact that I am partnered with a single dad and therefore slightly more aware of negative dad-stereotypes, and also very biased).
I remember reading a lot of Berenstain Bears as a kid. I liked the books and would get them out of the library of my own volition. It wasn’t until later that my parents confessed that they loathed those books–my dad in particular did. Why? Because Papa Bear is the quintessential Incompetent Dad. He is Just as Bad as the Children, indeed much like a third child himself, when the cubs watch too much TV or eat too much junk food. And Mama Bear is standing in the doorway with a stern expression, tsk-tsking and waggling her finger.
My dad, who cooked half the meals, did most of the laundry and the dishes, and (unlike the rest of the family, my mom included) played none of the video games, was justifiably indignant at the portrayal of men (men who are parents in particular) as bumbling overgrown children. I have a faint memory of the time, when I was an older kid, that my dad related his exasperation about this to me. But that has stuck with me. And this post points out the hidden misogyny in those portrayals better than I ever could.
Also, feminists do laugh at this: http://current.com/shows/infomania/90569059_sarah-haskins-in-target-women-doofy-husbands.htm
err, not to mention that the whole “just as bad as the children” thing doesn’t bode very well for the children, either. but that’s a whole other post.
What is sad is that HE thought it was funny.
This is something that has always irritated and even angered me and my partner, and now our children, a daughter and a son. My daughter hears this bullshit from other mothers who assume she doesn’t want to hang out with “the boys”. My son, 11, gets handed a pad and pen at the restaurant, courtesy of his grandmother who assumes he can’t “keep it together” long enough to enjoy a meal out, and yes, my partner gets the “Man Of The Decade” award for sewing up a princess costume for his then 3 year old daughter. A couple of months ago, my daughter was attending a Girl Scout activity day and I was assisting. I walked in on one of other instructors, teaching a cooking class, saying to all the girls that “the boys are just interested in the food and can’t be bothered to clean up…sigh…that’s boys, for ya!” I felt my blood drain first then heard the words “I don’t think you can generalize about boys or men that way. I think it’s extremely inappropriate and wrong” coming from my mouth. The teacher went on to blather what she thought was an apology, which was really just a lengthy rationalization for her comments. I was so outraged that she would take it upon herself to say things like that, and to Girl Scouts–you know, future leaders and all that, no less!