Men and Women and Doing the Dishes

An image from Reductress, a sort of feminist wanna-be Onion style satirical news site. Image used without permission. Please don’t sue me. And go look at Reductress, it’s funny.

Every now and again I’ll be at a friend’s place for a dinner, and when the meal is done, generally speaking, the women will do the dishes, and the men will hang out and talk.

I don’t live in any kind of 1950’s American sit com style mythological universe where women are “supposed” to do the dishes, or are “supposed” to do anything. I know a lot of different men who are on a spectrum of opinion about gender roles, from those who self identify as non binary and have a lot to say about gender, to men who generally follow heteronormative patterns. But even those on the more traditional end of the bell curve understand that expectations in a relationship are decided by mutual agreement, and most assumed gender roles are archaic.

No man that I would be comfortable hanging out with, or respect, would ever insist that women are obligated to clean up after a meal. And yet, most social interactions involving a group of men or women I’m at seem to go that way.

It’s something I notice partly because a long time ago, a discussion about the matter happened within my family, and it made an impression on me as a child. My father’s side of my family used to get together for a regular Sunday dinner. My grandparents were Anglican, but not particularly rigid about it, and almost everyone else in the family is non religious. There was never any kind of…