The case for cleanliness
Stephen Marche has found the solution for one of the greatest inequalities women face in their daily lives: the fact that they are the ones who still do most of the housework, despite many working away from home as many hours as their spouses. In his opinion, men are never going to start doing more housework, therefore it is women who should start doing less. He even wrote a book about it, The Unmade Bed.
One valid point that Marche makes is that standards of cleanliness and tidiness are highly cultural and personal. Sure not a single person, in the right state of mind, would bear living in excrement, but most of us keep a standard of cleanliness in our houses that is well above the minimum necessary to good health. Therefore, he claims, if women do more it is because they have higher standards than men. Change that by lowering these standards and you have a more equal marriage (at least where housework is concerned).
Nothing new here: according to the sexist, sexism has always been women's fault. Men do not change, it is women who should if they are unhappy with the way things are. It is the same type of argument that says that, in order to avoid rape, women should dress differently, not get drunk, or not leave the house after dark.
Except that there is actually more to it than that. First, he is right to point out that different people have different standards of cleanliness, but he is not entirely correct in making it a gender divide. Even if it is true that on average women do have higher standards, this is only a fact of statistical significance. When considering the individual, there are many exceptions. In my household, for example, I am cleaner than my husband, but he is tidier than me. So, he is the one who goes around putting things in their right places and the one that makes the bed.
On the other hand, in my household, we both respect each other differences. So he makes an effort to clean after himself for my sake and I make an effort to keep things in reasonable places for his sake. And that is the perspective that is missing in Marche's argument.
Women (or men) do not do more housework because they enjoy it. And the (extremely rare) ones that do, have no reason to complain when their spouses do not join in. They do more housework because somebody else is not sharing the necessary chores.
The fact is that when it comes to cleanliness and tidiness, we all have 3 thresholds. The highest one is our ideal threshold: how clean and tidy would our house be if we had one or more servants to clean it. The middle one is our realistic threshold: how clean and tidy our house is when it is us that do the job. The lowest one is our disgust threshold and below it we feel deeply disgusted and miserable (a good measure of someone's laziness is how close the realistic and disgust thresholds are). I have seen many people take advantage of living with someone whose disgust threshold is above their own realistic threshold. I have seen them happily sitting on the sofa in front of the TV, while the other one cleans, effectively treating him or her as a servant. This is not only deeply disrespectful, it is abusive.
At some point in The Unmade Bed, Marche's wife states that when she sees him sitting on the sofa when the house needs cleaning, she feels both angry and envious. Angry, we all know why. It is the envious that is more interesting. By saying that, she is acknowledging that everyone in her situation wishes it was that simple to change, to just raise one's disgust threshold to the same level of other people sharing one's household and, this way, not to unwilling become the slave of their selfishness. But the truth is that it is very difficult to change one's sense of disgust. It is actually a lot easier to make an effort to clean more out of respect for those who share one's household. That is, if you are not a selfish monster.
In the end, what feminism demands from men is simple human decency, that they choose to treat women fairly, instead of taking advantage of their privilege. This is not only true between men and women, but in all cases of privilege. We do not have to abuse someone (human, animal or plant) just because we can. And even when we can, we should choose not to. It is our moral imperative.
One valid point that Marche makes is that standards of cleanliness and tidiness are highly cultural and personal. Sure not a single person, in the right state of mind, would bear living in excrement, but most of us keep a standard of cleanliness in our houses that is well above the minimum necessary to good health. Therefore, he claims, if women do more it is because they have higher standards than men. Change that by lowering these standards and you have a more equal marriage (at least where housework is concerned).
Nothing new here: according to the sexist, sexism has always been women's fault. Men do not change, it is women who should if they are unhappy with the way things are. It is the same type of argument that says that, in order to avoid rape, women should dress differently, not get drunk, or not leave the house after dark.
Except that there is actually more to it than that. First, he is right to point out that different people have different standards of cleanliness, but he is not entirely correct in making it a gender divide. Even if it is true that on average women do have higher standards, this is only a fact of statistical significance. When considering the individual, there are many exceptions. In my household, for example, I am cleaner than my husband, but he is tidier than me. So, he is the one who goes around putting things in their right places and the one that makes the bed.
On the other hand, in my household, we both respect each other differences. So he makes an effort to clean after himself for my sake and I make an effort to keep things in reasonable places for his sake. And that is the perspective that is missing in Marche's argument.
Women (or men) do not do more housework because they enjoy it. And the (extremely rare) ones that do, have no reason to complain when their spouses do not join in. They do more housework because somebody else is not sharing the necessary chores.
The fact is that when it comes to cleanliness and tidiness, we all have 3 thresholds. The highest one is our ideal threshold: how clean and tidy would our house be if we had one or more servants to clean it. The middle one is our realistic threshold: how clean and tidy our house is when it is us that do the job. The lowest one is our disgust threshold and below it we feel deeply disgusted and miserable (a good measure of someone's laziness is how close the realistic and disgust thresholds are). I have seen many people take advantage of living with someone whose disgust threshold is above their own realistic threshold. I have seen them happily sitting on the sofa in front of the TV, while the other one cleans, effectively treating him or her as a servant. This is not only deeply disrespectful, it is abusive.
At some point in The Unmade Bed, Marche's wife states that when she sees him sitting on the sofa when the house needs cleaning, she feels both angry and envious. Angry, we all know why. It is the envious that is more interesting. By saying that, she is acknowledging that everyone in her situation wishes it was that simple to change, to just raise one's disgust threshold to the same level of other people sharing one's household and, this way, not to unwilling become the slave of their selfishness. But the truth is that it is very difficult to change one's sense of disgust. It is actually a lot easier to make an effort to clean more out of respect for those who share one's household. That is, if you are not a selfish monster.
In the end, what feminism demands from men is simple human decency, that they choose to treat women fairly, instead of taking advantage of their privilege. This is not only true between men and women, but in all cases of privilege. We do not have to abuse someone (human, animal or plant) just because we can. And even when we can, we should choose not to. It is our moral imperative.
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