Today, I want to expose the real victims of gender inequality. Yes friends, its not the females who are being victimized. Its the MALES, the real victims of gender inequality. ( You read that right my friend, its the Men who need help.)
Our society has done everything possible to empower the women. But, no one has ever thought of empowering our men. How do you think our society will progress when the men folk have been deprived of their right to live a well meaning life and grow? Even a snake which sheds off its dead, useless skin is better than our society which cannot shake off the scabs of obsolete biased ideas.
Please.. Someone shut the voices of these feminists with western ideas who want Indian women to be empowered. Can’t they see? In our country, women have already been empowered enough, right from the birth. This discrimination against men begins in the womb itself. (Poor men.. They don’t even know what they are getting into by supporting a patriarchal society.) Many girls are blessed and sent off to a better world (heavens) to live in as soon as they are born, whereas, boys have to take birth in this filthy, rabid world and live a cursed life to prove themselves. As a result, more boys are borne than girls.. Which naturally means.. Girls have more options to choose from.. (And anyways.. Girls do love having more options in everything they get. So, it is definitely ensuring a bright future for all the girls and more competition amongst boys.)
After being borne, the sons are spoon fed and well attended as if they are handicaps or invalids. Whereas, girls are left ill-attended to become a strong and healthy survivor, who can fetch/ fight for themselves inspite of having meagre means.
Don’t you know that if you don’t let a bird fly by itself, its wings remain weak.. And thus it gets eliminated from the nature ( Of course!!!! Law of Survival of Fittest doesn’t have any exceptions! I am afraid the day isn’t far, when nature will naturally wipe out men from the face of this earth for being a useless burden and enable women species to start reproducing all by themselves. Do we really want that???). Why do we let that happen to our sons? Why do we let them down and don’t trust in their ability to grow? Are they so dumb that we can’t train them to be a good human? Why do we let them turn into blood sucking parasites? Why do we spoon feed them and turn them into mentally, emotionally and physically weak people?
And when these sons reach adolsence, they still live a cocooned, handicaped and dependent life, while, the girls are metamorphosed into beautiful personalities by teaching them life necessary skills of fixing meals for themselves, caring for the family members, doing household chores or keeping their surrounding clean. By doing so, the boys are made dependent on the women folks forever. (I lament.. How bad is our society that snatched away the freedom of these boys to decide their very own daily meals??) Even in this age, parents don’t realise how much their sons would suffer for the lack of these basic life skills. Whereas, girls get to experience the joy of doing things by themselves and becoming self sufficient.
From a very young age, boys are let to have very haughty egos about themselves and they turn out to be spoilt, irresponsible, unsuccessful and disobedient brats. While, girls are humbled at each step by using warps and woofs of society, culture, religion, modesty, honesty, honour, emotional blackmailing etc (god knows what and what not!!), so that they turn out to be a really good, responsible, modest, successful and obedient human.
Poor boys, these days they don’t even get to indulge in clothes that they like. They have to stick to trousers and shirts right from birth to death. Whereas, under the garb of maintaining culture, modesty as well as comfort, woman have a variety of options to choose from or rebel against ( You see… Options to choose again. Lucky women!!!) Can’t you see? Women have the power of choosing for themselves and forming an opinion, creating controversies in the world by dressing up the way they want and ultimately adding variety to everyday life. But when it comes to choosing a life partner, parents take the liberty to do it for their daughters (whatever may be the age of the daughter) because, they don’t want to burden their daughters with such a life changing (or may be life damaging) decision. Compare this with a son, who is left to fetch a girl for himself if the parents fail to do so.
As far as boring education is concerned, girls are not burdened a lot with this responsibility, inspite of evolutionary biology stating that girls have better memory than boys. It is the poor boys who have to learn all the difficult things in the books and fetch a job to earn money. Whereas, girls can have their way about this by entirely skipping education. If girls do well in studies and find a job, then that’s a bonus ( Because, then they can afford to have a better bachelorette’s life than bachelors, and a better bookish noob as a husband for marriage). But, if they fail, they dont have to worry too much and can continue enjoying life at the expense of men in their lives. In short, girls get to interact more with everyone, play more, have little stress, have better and real experiences than the snob boys who slog for pieces of papers with numbers on them. Thus girls have a better life in general. Poor boys.. they are left wondering!! Why do girls have such an easy life???
When of marriageable age, this discrimination against sons can be seen more prominently. The poor boys having zero experience at life and who cannot add to their parents’ benefit are left off (sent off on jobs) to do things by their own whereas the learned and experienced girls are highly valued and protected more fiercely by their family. When the time for marriage comes, parents spend way beyond their incomes in the daughter’s marriage. At times, parents also expect sons to pitch in, in order to turn their sister’s marriage into a grand fairytale wedding and her life after it into a luxurious comfy life. The loans incurred thus are then made to be repaid by poor brothers and old father. Moreover, some parents even try to recover this expense at their son’s wedding by demanding dowry (i.e by selling off their son to the bride by putting a price tag) or by shirking off the responsibility of paying for their son’s marriage. Poor son, he doesn’t even realise that this action by his parents, made his wife loose respect, love and trust in him forever. What a good start to a newly married life!! And, if at this stage, the women cannot afford to buy at the fixed price tag, then she is praised by the entire in-laws family for taking away their son at a lower price, treated like the queen of the house and finally sent off to heavens.
You might have heard a lot of songs where the girl gets blessed for a happy life after marriage.. ( Remember??? Babul ki duwaein leti jaa.. or Mehandi hai rachne wali..) But, have you ever heard of any song where a boy has been blessed for a happy marriage? If you know then please tell me about it. I would be happy to know that there are some parents who wish well for their sons too. Poor boys, who are equally apprehensive as girls, are let off with just a handshake in their marriage.
Even when the bride reaches the in-laws house, she seeks all the blessings from the gathered relatives by touching their feet, while, the groom is left aside to see all the ongoings like an onlooker in his own marriage. Poor boy, he is deprived of blessings from his own relatives too!!! Besides that, staying in a new house as a servile and docile person with new people enhances bride’s qualities of patience, interacting with people, kindness, controlling temper etc. (A sure shot way to attaining sainthood and heaven in this life itself.)
If the girl is smart enough to earn, then she easily holds an upper hand over her dumb, handicap and useless husband who knows nothing beyond going to work, boozing, gazing and lazing in front of TV sets. He has to wait like a timid hungry puppy for his meals while she cooks her choice of food. He has to depend on her for every piece of cloth.. even getting a small clean raiment to sneeze or conceal his shame is now at the mercy of his missus. Not only that, having a presentable or cosy house is also a task which he cannot do for himself.
Later on, when the couple is expecting or caring for a child, its the women folk who get maximum leaves and benefits while no one cares for the Daddy of the newborne. The Mommy gets to spend more time with her kids while Daddy is not even visible in the picture. Its Mommy, who gets to see life coming to a full circle, while Daddy slogs like a robot and cannot experience the little human, who is so much like him. Poor Daddy doesn’t get to see the satisfaction on his kid’s face when the kid eats out of his hand, he doesn’t get to see how much his kid loves the food he cooks.. (Oh thats a far fetched statement.. Daddy doesn’t even know cooking!!) Daddy doesn’t get to see how his kid is babbling things, sqabbling with toys, trying to connect and learn with the world around him. Poor Men, they are deprived from this experience called LIFE, just because they have got this single role of being a breadwinner. Take away this role from them and men are left with identity crisis, as if they are an extra without any function in the predecided framework. ( And, I still wonder why is our society called as Patriarchal society.)
And, here we have all the feminists conspiring against men, by crying hoarse, that women are being victimised. I am sure no women will let this truth out.. But it is TRUE.. Men, its high time you realised this ETERNAL CONSPIRCY against you…Its high time you took a courageous stand and demanded more from life!! Its high time you shattered the shackles of shame enforced on you just because you are a man!! Its you who need to be empowered… You have to fight for leading a meaningful life. Men folks.. You have to take charge of your own life!!! You have to say.. Even we are capable of doing the roles stereotyped as woman only.. without any shame!! You can also be something more than what this traditional Indian society has defined you to be!! You too can have a FULLFILLING and SELF SUFFICIENT life!!
Folks, how is this post?
Comment here to pour your thoughts!
SweetNSourTamrind 
We’ve been working on emotional labor A LOT lately. I read the metafilter thread/google doc that’s been going around, cried about it & catastrophized for a few days (dumb), and then sent it to my husband. We had a really good discussion and it’s helped me make some changes. We already had a pretty good division of labor going on, we have a shared calendar, and we manage our own families, but I am still definitely the CEO of our day-to-day life.
I had this realization that if I am the self-declared CEO of the house, then I am going to run the house like a business. A lot of people have talked about splitting chores and duties with their partners – horizontal integration – but in our house it seems to work better if we are vertically integrated. What that means is that my husband is the CLO (Chief Laundry Officer) and responsible for making sure we always have clean clothes. If that means he feels like the laundry factory should be open every day, that’s fine. But he seems to believe in just-in-time production, so laundry gets done on a need-to-wear basis. I don’t care how he gets it done, as long as I don’t run out of inventory (i.e., clean underwear). I am the CFO, Chief Food Officer, so I handle meal planning, shopping, cooking, and dishes. That’s a lot of work in addition to my CEO role, so he’s the CBO (Chief Bathroom Officer), the other CFO (Chief Financial Officer), etc.
There are a lot of reasons why it works for us, and maybe not for others – I do better with the daily repetition due to my personality & regular schedule, he is better at doing things on his own time due to his work schedule. We also both lived alone for a looong time, so I know he can do the things I do, and vice versa. It’s hard to be a SME if you aren’t already a generalist, ya know?
Also I am 100% sorry not sorry for all the business metaphors.
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It has been 20 yrs for our marriage. I am a professor but I still haven’t managed to teach my husband the importance of helping at home. Most of our arguments can be traced to this fact. But I have ensured that my sons don’t take this legacy forward. It is just such an inhumane thought which I didn’t want them to learn. My sons do help me at home.. though it was not easy to engrave this attitude in their brains. It earned me the title of a nagging wife and a nagging mother.. but the real test is when they go out and live on their own.. or when they would get married and bring a daughter in law. I am pretty sure my daughter in laws would appreciate me for taking this stance.
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I am an IT professional working in Bangalore. I am fed up of this little emperor syndrome of my husband. Every time he leaves his wet underwear on the bathroom floor or leaves his used glass next to the kitchen sink, I get incrementally pushed towards considering divorce. These might sound trivial to you.. but I refrain from giving bigger examples.. because you yourself can judge.. If he can’t do these trivial things, what to expect of other things like making bed, cleaning house, cooking when I am late.. these are just far from imagination for me. I hate my husband!!!
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Please don’t be jealous, but I share my house with a living saint. He was last seen on my sofa, declaring exhaustion after an hour at the supermarket with our 19-month-old son, William.
He needed to be ‘left alone’ to take a restorative nap.
Yes, my husband Russell is a self-proclaimed martyr. Don’t you know how totally exhausting supermarket shopping is on a Saturday? With a toddler in tow, no less?
I had asked him to do our weekly shop because I had been struck down by the ghastly sickness bug and he had no plans. Did he complain? Did he ever!
But before a stampede of indignant feminist wives beat a path to my door, ready to wring my husband’s neck (like I nearly did last Saturday), let me explain.
It’s not Russell’s fault he is the way he is. He was mollycoddled by his mother.
Yes, dear reader, it’s her fault that the most mundane of challenges send him into the most pathetic of tailspins.
Spoiled, adored and over-indulged for nearly 30 of his 37 years on earth, I see the fact that he managed to make it to the supermarket and complete a weekly shop (albeit going slightly off-piste with alarming amounts of chocolate and a couple of lads’ mags) as nothing short of a miracle.
Janet, my mother-in-law, thinks my husband — her only son — is utterly perfect. She can’t do enough for him. No wonder he didn’t move out of the family home in Hertfordshire until he was 27.
Every morning, when he lived with her, she’d run his bath for him, then rush down to the kitchen to make his breakfast, even warming the milk for his cereal — just like she did when he was a toddler.
On winter mornings, while he soaked in his bubble bath, she’d head out into the cold and de-ice his car, so he wouldn’t miss his train to work.
After his weekly football games, she’d clean his boots in the garden, while he ate a warm, home-cooked meal.
She wouldn’t touch a sip of champagne on New Year’s Eve in case he and his friends got stuck and needed a lift home at 3am.
All she’d get as a reward was a kiss on the cheek and an occasional (very occasional, knowing my husband) bunch of flowers.
But, such was her adoration of her man-child, that she simply didn’t care.
Luckily, I have a great relationship with my mother-in-law, so when she came to stay for a week recently, I tackled her on the subject — the poisoned chalice she’d handed me when I married him.
She happily admitted she’d always spoilt him rotten. ‘I can’t help it!’ she giggled, acknowledging that she’s largely responsible for making him expect constant praise and willing servitude from me and all who encounter him.
She explained: ‘As not only our first child, but the first grandchild to my parents, Russell grew up worshipped by everyone in our extended family.
‘He was a gorgeous little child, really funny and sweet, so he had us all wrapped around his little finger by the age of two. You know his grandad still calls him God.’
She wasn’t joking. I’d initially been a bit confused when we received cards: ‘To God and Sarah’.
Until I’d been fully appraised of this unusual family dynamic, I’d always thought I was to blame for creating this domestic diva. I thought it was my fault he expected a giant pat on the back if he took the bins out.
Early in our marriage, I’d encouraged him to think he was special when he did the odd chore, to motivate him to help around the house more.
I told him he was wonderful for putting a new toilet roll in the holder, rather than balancing the replacement on top.
I thanked him profusely when his underpants found their way into the laundry bin, rather than lying, dotted like cotton stepping stones, across the carpet.
I sang his praises every time he decided to take charge of unloading the dishwasher.
I thought it was down to my own fulsome praise that, once we had started our own family, Russ peacocked around like Mick Jagger on stage whenever he deigned to change a nappy. But no: blame his mother.
WHO KNEW?
Sixty per cent of married women say their relationship with their mother in law is strained
But his reaction to the recent supermarket trip sent me over the edge. Ignoring that I was doubled up in pain from stomach cramps, he returned from the store huffing and puffing.
‘I hope you appreciate what I’ve done,’ he said. ‘The store was packed with screaming kids and it took ages to get a parking space. I don’t think you realise how annoying it is, shopping on a Saturday.’
Ignoring my own pain, I managed to unpack the bags, while simultaneously keeping William away from the bottles of bleach, as Russell continued: ‘I don’t mind doing it, as long as you’re grateful. I just want you to know it was quite tough but I did it.’
‘You’re amazing, you’ll probably be asked to turn on the Oxford Street Christmas lights this year!’ I replied, eyes rolling.
He disappeared to check the football scores and recover from his great sacrifice, while I fumed, silently cursing my over-indulgent mother-in-law.
At least I’m not alone. Plenty of wives suffer from the problems created by their other halves’ over-indulgent mothers.
I discovered this while sharing my well-versed top-ten list of Russell’s most self-congratulatory moments with my friend Nicola.
She was quick to point out her own little Mummy’s boy is just as bad. ‘I entertain his family for a whole day, but he hides in his study after ten minutes of polite chat with my mother, then feels deserving of a quiet pint at the pub to recover,’ she said.
‘He expects a lie in if, for once, he gets up in the night to soothe the kids. At all other times, he expects to be worshipped. I blame his mother. She spoilt him. No wonder he now thinks he endures a life of hard knocks with a harridan wife.’
When I discussed this with my own little emperor later, he was unrepentant: ‘I’ve always been a Mummy’s boy and it hasn’t done me any harm,’ he said proudly.
But now someone is stealing his thunder: his own son William, who is — in my opinion — much cuter, sweeter and more deserving of attention than his father could ever be. Will William finally put an end to Russell’s status as treasured number-one son?
It would appear not. Russ seems to handle the competition surprisingly well; he has grown up to be so secure and confident he feels certain there is plenty of love to go round. And he has a point.
Despite being a bit misguided about what a superhero he is at times, he’s a lovely son, husband and father, and credit where it is due, I can praise him for that.
The same can be said for Janet.
‘William looks just like Russ at that age,’ she coos as she cuddles him, losing her heart to another boy, one generation down. ‘He’s just as handsome and funny.’
I glowed at her kind words and she gave me a knowing look.
Yes, I’ve succumbed. I am now in her club: a devoted mother who would do anything for her little boy — even, I’m predicting, when he’s in his 30s with a family of his own.
Will I warm his milk? Quite possibly. Run his bath and defrost his car? Oh, all right.
In fact, I already feel sorry for my future daughter-in-law.
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Dinner time used to be my least favorite part of the day, for a gazillion reasons – I wanted our meals to be as healthy and delicious as possible and so I knocked myself out to make meals that dazzled. In part because I’d worked so hard, I stressed about how much of this food actually made it in my kids’ mouths. Because my kids were small and needed to be in bed by about 7 or else they were total basket cases, I wanted the preparation and the consumption to happen in a timely manner. And then, there were the dishes. Oh, the dishes!
My husband and I had a basic understanding – whoever cooks doesn’t do dishes. Perfectly reasonable, right? The thing is, my husband is a soaker. He actually says, “I come from a long line of soakers.” Which is code for, “Sometimes I do the dishes, sometimes I just stick them in the sink.” Which means I’d emerge from putting the kids to bed and often see the kitchen in the exact same state as I had left it. This bugged me to no end.
Here’s what typically happened: I would start doing the dishes, hastily, feeling sorry for myself all the way. “Why do I have to do all the work around here? Why doesn’t anyone else care if our house is a mess?” It was pretty pathetic.
Then I got pissed off. I still did the dishes many nights, but now I did it noisily, hating my husband in my head. “This is wrong and you are a jerk!” I’d think to him in my mind. Once or twice I said things to this effect to him, and we had a big fight that didn’t leave either of us feeling any better.
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My FH is messy. Has been messy and will probably always be messy. He’s gotten a tad better since we’ve been living together, but not much. This past Saturday I felt like I had to BEG him to put the clean dishes away. I was going 100 mph doing stuff for the wedding, cleaning, shopping for receptin stuff and food for dinner, cooking for our friends who were coming over later AND I had a dress fitting to go to before everyone came over. I was so tired (bad fit of insomnia) I didn’t know if I wanted to cry or scream.
Lists may not work for everyone. For awhile I would try “What time do you think you’ll be able to get _______done?” but that doesn’t seem to work these days.
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I’m in a similar situation, but feel as though I’m unable to complain. I am a student in a nursing program and I work part time. He works full time and pays the majority of the bills. When we first started dating, he had a very clean house, so it’s not like he won’t clean or doesn’t, however over the time we have lived together, I have slowly found myself doing more and more of the housework while he does less and less.
Tonight I was irritated because I had to stop studying to clean then go back to studying while he sat there and played a game. I know he pays most of the bills and I don’t work as many hours as he does, but does that make me responsible for all the housework?? I am sure between school and work I double the hours he spends at work. If I ask him he helps, but I don’t want to be a nagging girlfriend who is always after him to clean up after himself.
I wish I had some advice for you to fix this situation, but I am in need of a way to get a fire lit under my SO’s butt to get some house work done!!
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You “mention” you need “help”? No no no no no. [Cover any tender ears:] This is @#$!+.
Discussion vs. criticism is not the question I’m going to answer, because the fact that it has to be discussed/criticized is @#$!+. He wears clothes, so he does laundry. He eats food, so he buys, cooks and/or cleans it up. He uses the rugs, tables, bathrooms and bed, so he vacuums, wipes, scrubs and makes. He uses household items, so he puts them away.
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I can’t be the only bee going through this. First, let me state that I am NOT domestic AT ALL. I get no joy from cleaning my home or cooking. BUT, I am not a total slob so I do keep a clean home and I do have to eat so I cook as well.
But bees, I’m sick of it. I feel like FI’s maid. It’s not my job to keep the place clean. I work 10 hour days and would appreciate some help around the house. I have asked nicely, joked about it, asked directly, made sarcastic remarks, you name it. The only time he does something is if I ask and that is ALL he does. Whenever, I have a big enough fit he replies with, “I’ll do X tomorrow.” Well, tomorrow, never comes and I end up doing it anyway. Every so often he says, “Babe, I appreciate everything you do around here.” I have had to bite my tongue because I want respond, “I don’t want your appreciation, I want your help.”
I have tried not cleaning for weeks to see if he gets compelled to do something. Didn’t work. There is NO initiative on his part to do anything around here. Lately, I have become resentful and angry that he has the luxury of coming home plopping on the couch and dozing off. While I always have a to-do list. We currently have a one bedroom and no kids. I am getting sick to my stomach thinking about when we move to a larger home and kids become part of the picture. I DO NOT want the sole responsibility of taking care of the home now or ever.
Anyone dealt with this and was able to reform your lazy dude? Advice needed.
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The dilemma When I think back to how humanity has evolved, I feel an overwhelming sense of bewilderment and injustice at how little progress we have made. I have lived with my husband for nearly four years. He does only 5% of the housework, and then only after the fourth/fifth/11th request. I work full-time, as he does. When I bring it up I’m told that I’m “angling for an argument” and that I’m “nagging”. Hearing this, having just hung his clothes out to dry and washed his fatty frying pans, makes me want to run to a wide-open space and scream! I am five months pregnant and frightened at the prospect of this situation with the additional demands of a baby. I merely want him to do his share of the most basic daily jobs. Isn’t this fundamental to a respectful partnership? It feels like this is doing damage to our relationship, as when I think about how little respect he has for me in this matter, I find it difficult to muster a huge amount for him.
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I do help around the house these days. I had not known of the joys of being so helpful to my wife and kids before doing this. It brings a lot of joy and trust in our marriage. This was not the case some 8 months back. We were on the verge of divorce. Only after counselling did we come to know the constant source of resentment and tussle in our marriage was that my wife felt she was being ignored. Though I had never ignored her purposely but I never realised that I had been such a heartless person. She was overloaded with so many responsibilities. My wife was a stay at home mother to my kids except for once when she took up the job of a school teacher. She looked after everything from keeping the house clean to the PTA meetings of my kids. My only job was to work as an electrical engineer for my customers. Nothing more than that except with some occassional appreciation that I gave my wife beleiving that it would lift her mood. But I was absolutely wrong. I never realised that she was dealing with a lot more stress than needed. I had stopped taking care of her the way I did before marriage. I had stopped showing her that I care by not doing the little things tht I did before. And I never realised that managing house, marriage,kids, inlaws and a small job was tougher than being an electrical engineer. I ignored her painful screams of help which manifested every now and then as a fight between us. All this stress took a toll on her health. She developed kidney problem and started needing dialysis which I thought was because she was not taking good care of herself. After a huge fight we decided we needed to part our ways. But before parting, I wanted to give one more opportunity to our marriage.. It was out of love for her and my ego that I in my mind I thought.. I would be giving her this opportunity to let her realise that she has a good husband and she should be grateful for that. So i decided to rope in a counsellor to help her.. but little did i know that it was me who needed the help of the counsellor not her. After several sessions with the counsellor I realised that it was me who brought this situation upon us. From the beginning itself had I been helpful to my wife, she would have been in a better position today. I failed to be a partner in marriage.. Had I helped her with the house work, or kids, she would have expwrienced less stress. It would have given her a break.. and me a sense of responsibility. I thought house keeping or being responsible towards kids was her job.. keeping the marriage was her job.. But after conswlling, I felt a deep regret that her present state is because of me and I started showing interest in the so called women’s only job. It helped her reduce the resentment that she felt towards me, it brought back the smile which I had seen on her face when we had met for the first time. It gave me back my long lost companion.. My kids, who had believed that their dad was a cruel and exploitative person, have started appreciating this positive change.. though occasionally I was laughed at by my relatives.. I am happy I took this step though I still cannot fix the things that happened in the past. I cannot bring back the time that slipped away… I cannot go back and hold her hand at times when my life partner needed it…But I am happy we have a better future… I am making her feel needed and understood.. I hope I am buying some more time for my wifes short life.. I am setting a more humane example for my future generation. However, whenever I see my wife going through dialysis, I cannot stop self loathing.. A part of me cannot forgive myself for what I did.. A part of me blames my parents and society for not teaching me these things.. A part of weeps with pain for being so insensitive. My only request to all my friends and the future generation to come is please help your wife.. They are the ones who left everything for you and would stay with you in oldage when everyone has left you. Don’t let your ego become a barrier in achiwving a beautiful realtion with your wife. Please do not shirk your responsibilities.. Look at my mistake and take a lesson from it.. Thats the only request I can make to help my conscience deal with the pain that I am going through. It is my genuine request to you all.
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Manohar sir Thank you to share your pain and the changes you brought in your life. Its so sad to hear about your wife. May god bless her. We need more people like you around us who understand women and their situations.
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You are so right Manisha.. Very few people understand this.. I do not know whether we can expect this change from the past or present generation.. We can only request them.. But we can definitely teach these things to our kids, the would be husband and wife of future.. The future generation.
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@ Neelam Nakadi: Why do you say that we can only request the present generation? Doesn’t your husband take care of you? Use saam, daam, dand or bhed or whatever else you want to get this done.. think of it as a revolution against the dark obsolete ideas. Our future generations will only be thanking us for the fight that we put up now to get what is right..
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@Kirtikumar sagar
Thats not the case. He cares for me a lot.
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Thanks for sharing.. I wish my husband understood this.. my life would be far better than what it is now. We would have had a happy family.. Even my sons disrespect me a lot and take me for granted because they have seen their father doing this all their life.
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I think this comes back to society’s ills played out in the home: Women are taught that it’s our job to take care of men, our job to be the self-sacrificing ones, our job to manage home and work and etc, and that it’s wrong if we ever complain or feel put out or if we don’t do it all with a smile. End result is that women, in general (me included) have to be more aggravated before we even raise something as an issue and are less assertive in standing up for ourselves than men – and in a lot of cases, we have good reason to be as a lot of research shows that assertive women are viewed less favorably in a lot of cases, have lower job reviews, etc.
Men, for their part, are often not taught how to do housework at all (my partner wasn’t for example). Where they are taught how to do housework, they are often raised with the unspoken assumption that when they get into a relationship, their girlfriend or wife will take care of it, and that these skills are just for living alone or for not driving their roommates batty.
So you get men who simply don’t have the know-how to pitch in equally on the housework front and an engrained attitude that they shouldn’t have to, and on the other hand you have women who simply don’t have the know-how to raise something as an issue early and assertively and have been taught to be ashamed of not being some superwoman who can keep a house spotless while taking care of kids and pets if you have any of either, and working full time.
It’s a recipe for friction in a world where women just simply don’t have time anymore to take care of all the housework – maybe back in the 50s when we were expected to stay at home, there would have been time for it, but in the modern world, it’s only fair that if both partners are working both should pitch in equally on housework.
Yes, you should have helped your partner out with housework more. But the failure doesn’t just lie with you (or with her inability to articulate why it was important for her to get help, for that matter!). It lies with the culture that still raises boys and girls under an outdated and sexist assumption that girls only need to know about housework and babies, and boys will never have to pitch in with either.
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I completely disagree. Nobody taught me how to fold laundry, how to clean counters, clean mirrors, use a vacuum or to cook. But I do 80-90% of the laundry, I help cleaning our home (it’s our Sat AM chore) and I cook 100% of the time. I do these things because it’s my way of contributing to the home. My wife is on kid duty most of the time and I do the things I mentioned (plus a lot more such as mowing, landscaping, power washing and almost every outdoor related chore). I do enjoy cooking, but it’s still a grind when you do it 6 nights a week and not always enjoyable.
Like I said, nobody taught me, but if there’s a man out there who cant do any routine household task and is not physically or mentally challenged, then he’s just not willing. And, this goes for women just as much as men.
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Generalities like this irritate me as well. The author made the mistake of putting all men and all women in two different buckets, making the assumption that both sexes see the matter of doing a small deed for the one they love as trivial to men but monumental to women. I know a lot of women who would leave an empty glass by the dishwasher and a lot of men who would be bothered by it.
However, this article is EPIC in that it opens up a conversation regarding how completing a “trivial act” for the person we love, demonstrates that we value and respect them. THAT is the message we send them (male or female), no matter how slight the task. To dismiss any act that would please your partner as “trivial” is akin to slapping your partner in the face (in my opinion) and is what ended my own marriage. I just didn’t feel respected. At all.
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I agree 100% about your article and one I posted before. Totally agree on causes that lead to the divorce.
It’s true.
I even cried that it ended a sacred vow.
Hope you’ve learnt your lesson.
Wives feel the same way exactly as you wrote.
I’ll read your next article. It’s going to be my third from you.
I don’t like you while you’re married to her but in case she can trust you again, please prove to her parents that you will take the second chance.
If you have violated her more than twice then I pray you will never get her back and her happiness is my priority.
I don’t like what you did to her at all but if you’ve improved totally….I wish you the best together….again.
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I absolutely agree with you.. Thank you for opening my eyes.. We need to be empowered. Now we should start taking Mens Day seriously. 😉
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I am glad that it enlightened you.. 🙂
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