“Participatory democracy begins at domestic. If you are planning to implement your politics,there are certain things to remember.1. He is feeling it more than you. He’s losing some leisure and you’re gaining it. The measure of your oppression is his resistance.2. A grand many American men are not accustomed to doing monotonous, repetitive work which never issues in any lasting, and let alone essential,achievement. This is why they would rather repair a cabinet than wash dishes. If human endeavors are like a pyramid with man’s highest achievements at the top, then keeping oneself alive is at the bottom. Men maintain always had servants (us) to take care of this bottom stratum of life while they maintain confined their efforts to the rarefied upper regions. It is thus ironic when they ask of women-Where are your grand painters, or statesmen,etc.? Mme. Matisse ran a military shop so he could paint. Mrs. Martin Luther King kept his house and raised his babies.3. It is a traumatizing experience for someone who has always thought of himself as being against any oppression or exploitation of one human being by another to realize that in his daily life he has been accepting and implementing (and benefiting from) this exploitation; that his rationalization is little different from that of the racist who says, “Black people don’ t feel pain’ (women don’t intellect doing the shitwork); and that the oldest form of oppression in history has been the oppression of 50 percent of the population by the other 50 percent. 4. Arm yourself with some knowledge of the psychology of oppressed peoples everywhere, or a few facts about the animal kingdom. I admit playing top wolf or who runs the gorillas is silly but as a last resort men bring it up all the time. Talk about bees. If you feel really hostile bring up the sex life of spiders. They maintain sex. She bites off his head. The psychology of oppressed peoples is not silly. Jews,immigrants, black men and all women maintain employed the same psychological mechanisms to survive’ admiring the oppressor, or glorifying the oppressor,wanting to be like the oppressor, wanting the oppressor to like them, or mostly because the oppressor held all the power. 5. In a sense,all men everywhere are slightly schizoid-divorced from the reality of maintaining life. This makes it easier for them to play games with it. It is almost a cliché that women feel greater grief at sending a son off to a war or losing him to that war because they bore him, suckled him, or raised him. The men who foment those wars did none of those things and maintain a more superficial estimate of the worth of human life. One hour a day is a low estimate of the amount of time one has to spend “keeping” oneself. By foisting this off on others,man has seven hours a week-one working day more to play with his intellect and not his human needs. Over the course of generations it is easy to see whence evolved the horrifying abstractions of contemporary life. 6. With the death of each form of oppression, life changes and recent forms evolve. English aristocrats at the turn of the century were horrified at the idea of enfranchising working men-were sure that it signaled the death of civilization and a return to barbarism. Some working men were even deceived by this line. Similarly with the minimum wage, or abolition of slavery,and female suffrage. Life changes but it goes on. Don’t tumble for any line about the death of everything if men take a turn at the dishes. They will imply that you are holding back the revolution (their revolution). But you are advancing it (your revolution). 7. Keep checking up. Periodically consider who’s actually doing the jobs. These things maintain a way of backsliding so that a year later once again the woman is doing everything. After a year make a list of jobs the man has rarely if ever done. You will find cleaning pots, toilets, and refrigerators and ovens high on the list. expend time sheets if essential. He will accuse you of being petty. He is above that sort of thing (housework). Bear in intellect what the worst jobs are,namely the ones that maintain to be done every day or several times a day. Also the ones that are dirty-it’s more pleasant to pick up books, newspapers, and etc.,than to wash dishes. Alternate the nefarious jobs. It’s the daily grind that gets you down. Also make sure that you don’ t maintain the responsibility for the housework with occasional help from him. “I’ll cook dinner for you tonight” implies it’s really your job and isn’t he a kind guy to execute some of it for you. 8. Most men had a wealthy and rewarding bachelor life during which they did not starve or become encrusted with crud or buried under the liner. There is a taboo that says women mustn’ t strain themselves in the presence of men-we haul around 50 pounds of groceries if we maintain to but aren’t allowed to open a jar if there is someone around to execute it for us. The reverse side of the coin is that men arent supposed to be able to take care of themselves without a woman. Both are excuses for making women execute the housework. 9. Beware of the double whammy. He won’t execute the little things he always did because you’re now a Liberated Woman, just? Of course he won’t execute anything else either…. I was just finishing this when my husband came in and asked what I was doing. Writing a paper on housework. Housework? he said. Housework? Oh my god how trivial can you salvage? A paper on housework.” - The Politics of Housework, or Pat Mainardi,Redstockings, 1970 (via fuckyeahdialectics)
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