We Few, We Lazy Few...
1287 words. Commentary.
This advice is from a man, addressed to other men. You know who you are. Lately, though, what with gender fluidity and advances in pronoun technology, knowing who or what you are and what to call yourself is not a sure thing. Perhaps I should address human beings who self-identify as male a filibuster-proof simple majority of the time, and who don’t object to being called “men.” You have a vague notion of who you are, and that’s enough for now.
Imagine how long and confusing the extremely man-centric Saint Crispin's Day speech in Henry V would have been if Shakespeare had had to worry about triggering folks who object to blatant references to specific genders. The French would have won that battle and The Hundred Years’ War while Henry V was still wandering through a verbal minefield to avoid offending anyone instead of just whipping his men into a fighting frenzy.
I am not invoking Shakespeare at random, for the line just before Henry’s speech bears directly on my topic. Westmoreland says, “Oh that we now had here but one ten thousand of those men in England that do no work today [emphasis added].”
“Men…that do no work today.”
Boys—men—that’s us, apparently. Every day in newspapers and magazines and blogs you see articles saying that the extra workload at home caused by the pandemic has fallen disproportionately on the shoulders of women. In fact you can probably just hear your SO saying it to other women on the phone, or muttering it in their sleep, or even womansplaining it directly to your face. They don’t come right out and say that men are craven, lazy bums, but that is the inescapable subtext. Housework is a zero-sum game. If someone is overworked and pitiable, then someone else must be underworked and deplorable.
I am here to offer solutions, but first I must say that this gender divide over housework was ever thus, and it is not the fault of men. It is dangerous to speak of nature versus nurture nowadays, so I will offer two illustrations and leave root causes as an exercise for the reader.
I had a beloved aunt who had extreme notions of cleanliness. You had to scrub her bathtub with Comet after every bath or shower. When brushing your teeth you were not allowed to spit toothpaste into her sink, even if you could hit the drain with a high degree of accuracy. You were allowed to spit only into the toilet, which you then had to scrub with Comet. With my aunt gone these many years, I can now reveal that I sometimes opened the window and spat toothpaste onto the driveway below. The driveway was in my uncle’s realm, and he was content to let insects and rain remove the toothpaste residue, or he would hit it with the hose next time he washed his car. I do not know for sure which theory of cleanliness, my aunt’s or my uncle’s, was correct, but I do know which one created more work. Work then, like gender, might be said to be a social construct—that is, nuanced if not downright artificial.
Later, as an adult I lived alone for a while in a really cool condominium. When my wife-to-be visited, she commented on the interesting cream-colored patina of the bathroom fixtures. I wove a word-tapestry about 1950’s color schemes, plus the effects of aging which I had gleaned from The Antiques Roadshow, and we were content. Later, after we married, I foolishly showed her the photos of my condo from before I moved in. That’s when she learned that the fixtures had quite recently been sparkling white, and also that they were 1990’s vintage, not faded Mid-Century heirlooms, and that there was no such thing as caramelization of bathroom-grade porcelain. And that’s when I learned that I had better stop blabbing and scrub those things down regularly. With Comet. Unlike toothpaste, I could not simply cast my sink and tub and toilet out the window. Here again we see that two individuals of different genders might entertain opposite notions of what it means to be “dirty” and “gross” and “unbelievable” and how much effort is worthwhile in maintaining some arbitrary ideal of cleanliness.
Sadly, the solution is not as simple as telling your SO that you do not share her standards. I was just letting you know that, just between us men, that’s how it is. But have you ever gotten anywhere by saying, “Honey, that’s just the way it is”? I didn’t think so. What to do? I offer a grab bag of solutions.
Use the language of politics and social justice. At a moment when she is not telling you to do something, and especially when she is not actively doing any housework, subtly ease into a discussion of how some people are right-wing conservatives when it comes to cleanliness, while others are kind and caring progressives. Associate conservative, which for many is a bad word, with the hyper-cleaners; associate progressive, which for many is a happy word, with those with a live-and-let-live stance toward bacteria. If your lady is woke, you may succeed in setting up an internal conflict between her wish to be seen as tolerant of otherness and her wish for you to get off your rear. An internal stalemate for her is a victory for you.
Use the language of pop psychology. Watch an hour of Dr. Phil with your SO to get her in the right mindset, then reveal to her that you suffer from Grime Blindness Disorder (GBD). Tell her how your aunt shamed you for this condition, and how you have nightmares similar to the Heffalumps and Woozles dream of Winnie the Pooh, only with dancing cans of Comet. If you don’t normally show much emotion, you need to keep a shattering memory close to the surface to help you achieve the appropriate look of devastation. For me it’s the “infield fly rule” call from the 2012 National League Wild Card Game. I was there and while I did not hurl anything onto the field, that call is why I now scream “infield fly rule!” whenever the opposing team hits a ball in the air, even obvious upper-deck home runs, against the Braves. But I digress and my heart is now racing. You must dig up your own most painful memory.
Use the language of cosmology. If you sense a demand for help building up in your SO, pause on the way to or from your vehicle one night and look up at the sky. When she asks what you are doing, tell her that the sight of the stars sometimes reminds you how insignificant our planet and Mankind are in the grand scheme of things. If she doesn’t make the connection with the to-do list fermenting in her brain, be sure to add that we are as insignificant as a speck of dust—or even many specks, such as the kind of specks that multiply in and around bathroom fixtures.
Finally—and this is a last resort, to be attempted only if creativity fails you completely—consider radical simplicity and get up and do your share of the work. Your name, despite your failure, shall in our flowing cups be freshly remembered by we few, we happy few, we band of brothers who refused the yoke of rag and broom and Comet (Shakespeare is very handy both for motivating men and for lamenting their defeat).
Men, I know I can count on you to make the right choices and also to not tell my wife about this article. I’m still working the Grime Blindness Disorder angle.
Good luck!
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