I know and understand where it comes from, but I don’t want to deal with it in a partner.
The chainsaw thing was absolutely because I’m a chick and representative of his overall attitude toward me that evening. Asking if I’d used a chainsaw would have been appropriate, or a quick rundown on starting/stopping would have been fine.
Basically, I ask myself if he would have said the same thing in the same way to a man. I’ve worked on enough jobsites to know that no, that doesn’t happen.
I can certainly understand you don’t want to rehab a guy who was raised with strong sex roles! I do think it’s something that eases with time, in general. I’m old so guys my age are worse about that but they haven’t ever veered into thinking it’s unattractive for me to know my way around the stuff they thought was theirs, what I HAVE found more resistant is that they stay unskilled at stuff they think woman’s work. So egg guy surprises me a lot more than chainsaw guy.
We do have division of labor but it’s not based on gender but ability: I do the cooking in my house, husband cleans up after. He mows, I do all the stuff that beautifies and grow the food plants, I do the banking and financial planning, he does the cars and plans any travel, he takes more of the pet care, but not the litter boxes (he does WAY more dog poop pickup than me), I do most appliance maintenance, he does AC maintenance. We just figure it out so we are each doing what we are good at. What I notice is he defers all creative stuff to me, doesn’t have the eye for how things should look or sound or taste, and doesn’t try to develop it at all, just thinks it’s my world. Would let me buy his clothes if I wanted to, just seems to think that’s something women are better at, so he ought not be good at it!
I know and understand where it comes from, but I don’t want to deal with it in a partner.
The chainsaw thing was absolutely because I’m a chick and representative of his overall attitude toward me that evening. Asking if I’d used a chainsaw would have been appropriate, or a quick rundown on starting/stopping would have been fine.
Basically, I ask myself if he would have said the same thing in the same way to a man. I’ve worked on enough jobsites to know that no, that doesn’t happen.
I can certainly understand you don’t want to rehab a guy who was raised with strong sex roles! I do think it’s something that eases with time, in general. I’m old so guys my age are worse about that but they haven’t ever veered into thinking it’s unattractive for me to know my way around the stuff they thought was theirs, what I HAVE found more resistant is that they stay unskilled at stuff they think woman’s work. So egg guy surprises me a lot more than chainsaw guy.
We do have division of labor but it’s not based on gender but ability: I do the cooking in my house, husband cleans up after. He mows, I do all the stuff that beautifies and grow the food plants, I do the banking and financial planning, he does the cars and plans any travel, he takes more of the pet care, but not the litter boxes (he does WAY more dog poop pickup than me), I do most appliance maintenance, he does AC maintenance. We just figure it out so we are each doing what we are good at. What I notice is he defers all creative stuff to me, doesn’t have the eye for how things should look or sound or taste, and doesn’t try to develop it at all, just thinks it’s my world. Would let me buy his clothes if I wanted to, just seems to think that’s something women are better at, so he ought not be good at it!