A Dining Room Comedy
Part of the issue with the word “serve” isn’t just that it’s sexist, it’s also linked to all the invisible work we take for granted and often don’t appreciate – from slavery to the waiters we don’t like to tip.
One for our collection of classic sentences, I think.
I felt like my wife was offering to perpetuate the very sexist ways that women have and continue to supply invisible and undervalued labour. And I wanted no part in that.
The bearer of these sorrows, David Dennis, has apparently spent an awful lot of time fretting about his wife putting food on his plate. I mean literally putting food on his plate, as when serving a typical meal. Given Mr Dennis’s rather pronounced Guardianista tendencies, it’s scarcely surprising that he’s also been fretting that other people, possibly people much like himself, may subsequently judge him for this patriarchal trespass, as if he and his wife were dreadful throwbacks to a darker, more primitive age:
The problem seems to arise when other people outside our marriage project their criticisms and expectations of gender onto our actions. Typically, they might only observe one action – like making the Thanksgiving plate – and make assumptions, much as I initially had. Usually, the assumption was that my wife and I were living some sort of twisted Stepford Wife life.
Will nothing short of a clearly visible gender-balanced serving rota stem this flow of tears? Or perhaps a mechanised buffet?
Is it the act of “serving” itself that makes people uneasy, or is it that the service is done while conforming to oppressive gender norms? Would my wife be viewed as any more or less “subservient” if she did something for me like rotate my tires, instead of the more stereotypical female act of making up my plate?
At home, when either of us cooks, neither of us thinks in terms of being subservient. Likewise, when a female friend or relative dishes up fine vittles, no-one present is acting out a theatre of oppression or compliant womanhood. That just isn’t the dynamic, not by a long chalk.
Our fretful husband confesses,
I’m not an expert on gender equality,
Though clearly he’s internalised many of the pretensions and anxieties required of that role. He’s halfway there, at least.
So I don’t know exactly why it took me so long to understand that my wife was choosing to “serve” me out of love, not because she had been conditioned by years of gender bias.
Answers on a postcard, please.
On a practical note, one person serving up also tends to avoid a lot of needless faffing and spillage in the kitchen. And thinking in terms of serving dinner, rather than in terms of bowing, eyes averted, to an oppressive patriarch, even a neurotic one, might save everyone a lot of faffing too.
I have finally allowed myself the comfort of sometimes being “served” by my wife, and her kindness has taught me to try to find more ways to serve her in return.
I do love a happy ending. Though it took a while to get there.
Let’s just pray there’s a dishwasher.
Seriously, what is it with these people? Can’t they get through their day without thinking of everything in the context of their messed-up “progressiveness”?
It might save some angst if, perhaps, when their friends come over, he allowed her to sit and eat at the table. And maybe not wear the white bobbed cap and apron over the black mini dress with the black seamed stockings and the black high heels.
(Or did I OD on Benny Hill when I were a lad?)
the waiters we don’t like to tip.
And I thought lefties were all about sharing the wealth…
And I thought lefties were all about sharing the wealth…
Sharing yours, not theirs.
In our house whoever’s cooking and dishing out is in charge. The rest of us are just grateful.
In our house whoever’s cooking and dishing out is in charge. The rest of us are just grateful.
I denounce your outrageously uncomplicated approach to mealtime.
This man is so insensitive. He’s so comfortable with his dinner now, when he should be deeply troubled by his dinner’s association with the word consume. We all know that consumption is capitalist, evil, and oppressive by its very nature. By definition, his meal consists of oppressively imposing his will onto smaller and weaker living things such as plants and even animals. Not to mention all the minerals, such as salt, forcibly removed from their native locations. What could be more imperialist?
In our house we split up the work by demonstrated competence.
There’s a correct way to load the dishwasher and my wife won’t, or can’t, learn how to do it properly.
Therefore I’m in charge of cleaning up after dinner and taking out the trash and recycling, and she gets what’s left: making it and dishing it out.
The problem seems to arise when other people outside our marriage project their criticisms and expectations of gender onto our actions.
Perhaps it’s time for a new set of friends.
Next week, he muses about latent colonialism when it comes to the pizza delivery guy.
I wonder if he thinks about this sort of thing when he and his wife are having sex. Or, is that even allowed? I’m willing to bet there is a school of “progressive” thought that believes even consensual sexual relations between a husband and wife is, by its very nature, oppressive. Because of the Patriarchy.
A review of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang will get him a mechanized serving and plate delivery system.
—And for Kevin B, the movie also features Benny Hill.
The spam filter appears to have ideas above its station. If anyone has trouble with comments not appearing, email me and I’ll tug randomly at wires.
My wife and I know that some people will judge her for making my plate and see me as a chauvinist for “allowing” her to do it… But what they fail to see is that we’re serving each based on the mutual desire to make one another happy and our lives easier.
They really are rediscovering the wheel.
This guy must have an awful time playing tennis.
I’m willing to bet there is a school of “progressive” thought that believes even consensual sexual relations between a husband and wife is, by its very nature, oppressive. Because of the Patriarchy.
There is. I’m not going to bother digging for it, but I do remember running across references, examples—-As I Recall, I recommend checking that blog that recently featured absolute hyperventilation at the thought that someone might actually be reading her own posts on her own blog . . .
I’ve said it before: either all this hand-wringing is an artful pose – peacocking for other bien pensant Islington class warriors – or these people must be absolutely miserable all the bloody time. Either way, it would appear that there is no pleasure so simple that a Grauniadista can’t spoil it with some angsty manufactured drivel.
“The problem seems to arise when other people outside our marriage project their criticisms and expectations of gender onto our actions.”
I suspect the ‘people outside our marriage’ with such damning convictions are exclusively recruited from his niche group of graunista colleagues. How narrow and utterly miserable his social life must be.
Someone passes on Oscar Wilde’s comment about “washing one’s clean linen in public”.
When barbecuing, I wonder if it is Mr Dennis or his wife who weilds the Plastic Spatula of Oppression of which we have formerly heard?
https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2013/07/two-balls-bad-no-balls-good.html
Siiiiiigggggghhhhh.
Just Spotted. Or should I state, just splattered.
This guy’s old lady would have to rotate the tires since he is such a puss.
My wife does the cooking, cleaning, most of the kiddie care, and the laundry. She was happy to stop working when we had our first child and concentrate on being a wife and mum.
I do the bill paying, screaming in terror when I see a spider and blindly lashing out at it with a slipper, and cleaning out the litter box belonging to our cat, Princess Fluffytinkles. Rugged manly stuff like that. It seems to work OK for us.
I wonder if Mr “Rocky” Dennis thinks we’re living a “twisted Stepford Wife life”.
I saw both film versions of The Stepford Wives and don’t think I’d like it if my wife was replaced by a fembot. For one thing, I’d be concerned about water getting into her circuitry and causing her to go on a robotic murderdeathkill rampage, human ladies are contentious enough as it is. Also, what happens if she catches a computer virus? And would that mean she’s been having an affair with Siri? I never have trusted that smug know it all voice coming from her iphone.
I don’t mean to be crude, but as a teenage boy with too much time on my hands I once made the painful mistake of allowing my rampant hormones and natural curiosity to get the better of me while hoovering my bedroom. The experience soured me forever on the idea of man/machine romantic liasons. Thank God it wasn’t one of those newfangled Dysons with their dual cyclone technology or I’d be writing this as Stevella.
Sally: “Dinner’s ready, Pete.”
Pete: “Yes, darling, but what about the oppressive gender norms, the patriarchal conditioning? Shouldn’t we eat on a sound ideological footing?”
Sally sits, begins eating. “Watch the plates, they’re hot.”
Pete paces back and forth, mulling fretfully. “But what will our friends think? They’ll judge us. They’ll think we’re unenlightened, bordering on evil.”
Pete reaches for a copy of the Guardian, desperate for an answer.
Sally rolls eyes, pours large glass of wine. “Your dinner’s getting cold. Again.”
Pete, now frantic, begins posting questions on Feministing. “If anyone asks, we’ll say I did it yesterday. And the day before.”
Sally: “Must we do this every bloody time?”
the issue with the word “serve” isn’t just that it’s sexist,
If this were a tweet it’d be in the ‘Agonies of the Left’ top ten.
*hits tip jar*
Heh! If she doesn’t rotate his tyres, I wonder if she checks out his fluids and fiddles with his hydraulics?
may subsequently judge him for this patriarchal trespass, as if he and his wife were dreadful throwbacks to a darker, more primitive age:
I denounce your (clearly racist) use of the word ‘darker’.
Imagine the shock to his system if the cucumber on his plate were served whole rather than sliced.
That’s the patriarchy writ large.
I recommend checking that blog that recently featured absolute hyperventilation at the thought that someone might actually be reading her own posts on her own blog
“When men view our blogs in such large numbers, it’s a threat.”
Reading http://witchwind.wordpress.com/2014/01/18/in-retrospect-to-the-85000-reformism-and-other-things/ is an aggressive act of gaslighting for which I denounce myself.
One wonders how did couples manage their lives before all these new Things To Worry About were discovered?
But we already know the answer we’d get from these tiresome people, don’t we? Marriage and childbirth were slavery in those days, and women had no “bodily autonomy”
It seems to me that women in fact have no problems whatsoever negotiating within a relationship – they do so very effectively. The idea that all (or even any) are being held down by these insidious patriarchal ideas is purest, brownest smelly stuff.
tempdog
The ‘radical wind’ blog. We’ve been there before. Whether it, and the daft comments beneath it are all spoofs, we may never know. They easily could be.
Poe’s law: “there is no parody so extreme that it won’t appear on the internet soon as you think of it, or probably before”
I wonder whether they worry about the term “public service” and are working on a suitable replacement.
meaningless drivel.
OT but picture it:
“I just got asked to do Big Brother,” writes Laurie Penny on her Facebook page.
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/londoners-diary/laurie-penny-takes-a-fancy-to-big-brother-9109319.html
To Jon Power: (and the excessive use of euphemism and circuitous loquaciousness is merely an attempt to avoid the Hormel-product filter)
Some feminasty years ago decreed (I think it was Dworkin, whose name aptly seems to be a mashup of ‘dwarf’ and ‘munchkin’) that “it was impossible to have politically correct s3xual relations with a (tumescent) (male member)”. Luckily, as I get older, this is easier to achieve.
”I just got asked to do Big Brother,” writes Laurie Penny on her Facebook page.
Sweet sandals of Allah! What a thought.
IT’s apt that Laurie’s name comes up, since when i read “The problem seems to arise when other people outside our marriage project their criticisms and expectations of gender onto our actions. Typically, they might only observe one action – like making the Thanksgiving plate – and make assumptions, much as I initially had.” I immediately assumed that they had invited Laurie over for dinner and been scolded
Re: “They really are rediscovering the wheel.” We know they aren’t, but they need to FEEL they are having these fretful insights, sui generis, to see themselves in tune with the Meta-Id of their culture.
Some feminasty years ago decreed (I think it was Dworkin, . . . .
Q: What is the difference between Andrea Dworkin and a raging bull elephant?
A: The overalls.
—T. R. Witomski
One wonders how did couples manage their lives before all these new Things To Worry About were discovered?
In parallel, or extending from same, one wonders how these hipsters managed to exist at all before the creation of the web enabled telephone . . .
Just the other morning I watched two hipsters interacting. I was walking towards the paycheck, was standing at a corner and staring into infinity while waiting for a light to change, and there was a screech of brakes somewhat in front of me. What I then saw was a car in the crosswalk, where there was a hipster right next to it, where the right side mirror had just broken off, was dangling by wires, still swinging back and forth after rather apparently hitting that hipster on foot. Judging from location and timing, the hipster on foot had ignored the red lights in the direction he was walking, launched himself off into the oncoming traffic, where the hipster in the car never bothered to look up from her electronic wozzer until the car mirror had impacted, and then she hit the brakes. I saw the head of the hipster in the car then, and only then, come up, and her mouth moved. The hipster on foot lowered the hood of his coat, pulled it back up again, and then wandered off around the back end of the car, continuing off down the sidewalk, limping slightly. The hipster in the car started the car into motion again, and rolled off down the street—yes, I am recognizing that as she is a hipster, what she was doing in and with the car is not called driving. Yes, there was clearly zero concern on the part of either hipster regarding that, had adults had been involved, that someone nearly got killed.
”I just got asked to do Big Brother,” writes Laurie Penny on her Facebook page.
Agreeing with David, that does almost inspire me to get cable.
—On another hand, to balance that, I am thinking of doing so anyway given that the internet connection did just recently get upgraded and I do have the Oscars telecast coming up. Watching that without doing the dance of accessing the current digital broadcast signal would be nice. Yes, regarding TV and those who have Their Shows, I do also have mine as well; The State Of The Union Address, and the Oscars, so that tells you how often I bother to have the TV on aside from watching DVDs . . .
After I cook all morning I just put the meal on top the stove. The wife and kid can serve themselves.
Off Topic
But while western opponents of the Kremlin’s law may have noble intentions, their criticism has far too often been both hysterical and hypocritical.
Extract from this piece from Marc Bennetts, which I thought was of well written.
I’m not an expert on gender equality,
That sentence says so much. In future my wife and I will refer to experts before cooking for each other.
In future my wife and I will refer to experts before cooking for each other.
It’s for the best. You see, our unthinking womenfolk must be liberated. It’s just that they won’t be allowed to do things that might make their lefty friends gasp. Like serving dinner in anything other than a gender-balanced way. We must all be purged of residual patriarchy. Being self-conscious, dogmatic and fretful is apparently the path to freedom. It’s purity through neurosis.
“Would my wife be viewed as any more or less “subservient” if she did something for me like rotate my tires”
Having your wife ‘rotate your tyres’ when you could just, you know, drive around a bit if you wanted them to rotate, would look an awful lot more like oppression to me than just letting her dish up the dinner.
John Meredith,
“…Having your wife ‘rotate your tyres’ when you could just, you know, drive around a bit if you wanted them to rotate…”
I’m not sure whether you have mis-understood the concept do to your metro-sexual lack of understanding of traditional male things, or are just being flippant (it’s hard to tell) but, in case it’s the former, I believe that ‘rotating tyres’ actually means swapping the wheels around on the car so that the tyres wear more evenly and last a bit longer. I’m not a wealthy man but it seems pretty penny-pinching even to me. No doubt it’s mainly for the good of the polar bears.
I am a 59yo male caring for my Mum who has dementia, after a nice meal cooked by me, she talks about my sister, who cooked the meal. Apparently, she can’t believe that a man can cook as proficiently as me. She was born in 1920. Even women of that generation can show us how to think.