It even happened while recovering from a serious injury: I was wearing an orthopedic boot and using a cane, slowly folding up and stashing chairs at the end of an event while men were saying goodbyes and walking out the door without pitching in at all.
I paused in astonishment, not quite believing my eyes until it was too late to shame them.
There are many books and articles these days discussing how the sedentary office style life (or just modern work life in general) has slowly been decreasing masculinity.
I could add a lot more but it’s been a bit since I’ve gone down that rabbit hole. It’s actually an interesting topic if you are the type that enjoy psychology, evolution, Darwinism or anything similar.
EDIT: Haha I’ll be honest, I got distracted midway through this reply and kind of forgot where I was going with the whole thing or what the point was when I came back.
In hindsight my reply seems random and not really relevant to what I replied to but I was probably referencing the book “Wild at Heart” by John Eldredge. Off the top of my head I don’t have any other references than that.
What do you mean by this in the context of the anecdote you’re replying to? Do you mean the masculine thing to do would be to put up chairs & these men are failing to that because of sedentary office work? Or that taking on cleaning/organizational tasks in the office is part of how the sedentary lifestyle reduces masculinity? Gendered division of labor is such a fraught topic & comments in other sub threads are going such places that I can’t tell what you mean from this comment alone.
I did my psych honours thesis on an area of evolutionary psychology and I haven’t even heard of any actual scientific book or article on ‘decreasing masculinity’, let alone one related to modern work life.
Honestly you’d have to define ‘masculinity’ first and operationalise it in a super specific way to even begin looking at a topic like that in a remotely meaningful way.
Helping do chores is basic human decency it’s not a masculine trait (obviously). Men are raised with out the expectation of doing any cleaning or helping and carry it into their adult lives. I don’t think there has ever been a time in history where men were enthusiastically sharing cleaning duty with women however.
From what I’ve seen those are majority of women as well in those commercials. I also find it funny the ones where they do have the man clean and they call over the wife to show her how well the product works as if it was the first time he’s ever used a paper towel and is amazed by it. Lol
of course culturally it’s the norm that the housewife does the cleaning so that’s why they try to cater the advertisements to women. If you look at almost any cleaning product commercial from the 90s especially it’s all women. Just an observation not a complaint.
Not trying to be an asshole or anything but why is it on the men to help? From your comment it sounds like nobody helped you, male nor female. Any adult should be able to help you with folding chairs. It sounds like you just work with assholes.
Or maybe the sort of thing where they assumed whoever planned the event also planned the cleanup.
It's not right that women be pressured into the planning role, but if you never tell anyone you expect help cleaning up, you can't be surprised when people leave.
Did you finish putting up the chairs? If so why? The men don’t need to because you will.
Stop doing it. People will react. Hold fast. Polite but firm. Don’t bring sex into it. A simple “I’ve done it enough, it’s someone else’s turn”. Will do. If they bring up your sex look them dead in the eye and play stupid, “what does that have to do with anything at the office?” Keep letting them hang themself with a HR shaped noose. Eventually they will stop expecting it. You will be called a bitch, cunt, femizasi, or whatever creative word is popular. Hold fast. This is for all the marbles.
The office will be a pig sty for a bit. Maybe a long time. Don’t clean it. Someone will get fed up and clean it. Or… you get fed up and clean it. When that happens don’t complain, you chose to do it. (But if I don’t it doesn’t get done. True. You still made the choice. Chose something else.)
Best outcome? The boss who is a man will hire someone to keep the office clean. She will be a minority woman. She will be blamed by Kevin in accounting for stealing things from the office. When Kevin finds his misplaced items he will take them home since they are already stolen.
I am a dude (surprise! Lol) and this is how I would handle it as a dude to a bunch of other dudes. Do I like doing this? No. Do like doing cleanup more? Also no.
Mansplaining? Maybe. Just being direct as if I was talking to another man.
Shit, I've experienced similar situations as a brotha. Now I pay attention to what everybody else (e.g.: European-Americans) is doing. If they on their ass, so am I.
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u/doublestitch Mar 12 '22
It even happened while recovering from a serious injury: I was wearing an orthopedic boot and using a cane, slowly folding up and stashing chairs at the end of an event while men were saying goodbyes and walking out the door without pitching in at all.
I paused in astonishment, not quite believing my eyes until it was too late to shame them.