08/07/02

Housework

The reason that men do less housework than women is because, quite simply, they are less easily offended by any given level of mess.

Furthermore, to vacuum, dust or polish requires the same motivation levels in men as are required for moving house!

Men just do not respond to the same low levels of untidiness as do women. And so whenever the female-threshold is reached, and the good woman must whisk herself away to tackle the debris around the house, the man remains undisturbed, at peace, and contented with his surroundings. 

His threshold to domestic action has still a mile to go!

My teaspoons have to be positively caked with various oxides and tannins from my tea-drinking habit - with not a sliver of silver to be seen - before they hit the washing-up bowl for their annual scrape.

But have you noticed how women clean the teaspoons even after just one or two stirrings!?

It's ridiculous.

They pour the tea. They take a clean teaspoon out of the drawer. They stir in the milk. And then they toss that very same teaspoon - that sweet virgin of a teaspoon - straight into the washing bowl!

It's obscene.

But, of course, this is all part of the gender divide.

Statistically speaking, women are far more concerned with how things appear to be, rather than with what they are. And this is not just the case when it comes to their labours concerning clothes, makeup, fashion and bodily decorations, it even extends to teaspoons!

And to housework.

But if men were more like women - that is, more concerned about how things look rather than how things are - then women, western women, that is, would not now be living their precious lives as the most pampered, the most protected, the most catered for, and the most over-indulged organisms ever to have existed on the planet.

And so, "Let them do most of the housework," I say. They seem to be doing pretty well out of it.

Besides which, it is part and parcel of their wily natures to be concerned more than men about such things.

Appearance is everything.

Of course, if men were actually forcing women to do more housework than themselves - rather than it being the case that women actually feel more impelled to do it - then this might be some cause for genuine concern, but, since there is no evidence to suggest that men are using force, then, when pseudo-academics and sociologists or feminists complain that women do more housework than men, the answer to them should be, "And quite right too!"

And if women want to keep their habitats more tidy than would men, then why should they not be allowed to do so?

Nevertheless, I, myself, am always very willing to proffer some expertise and sound advice when it comes to any domestic enterprise. And so, for example, I would probably advise my Harlot that, ergonomically speaking, it would be far more efficient if she made me a cup of tea and a sandwich or two before doing the housework rather than afterwards. 

Such refreshments would enable me to assess more precisely the standard of her workmanship when the tasks are done, and I would also be able to pinpoint more accurately those areas of her work and attitude that needed improving.

09/12/02

Housework

Dear Jenny

If God had wanted men to do housework then he would have genetically programmed women to drool over men while they did it.

The sight of men doing the dishes would have made their G-spots zizz.

It turns out, however, that normal women find men who do housework to be about as attractive as do normal men find women who fix cars and build walls. 

A woman who wants her man to do housework is unconsciously seeking a divorce. She has no feeling for him - as a man, that is.

After all, imagine, for example, a man wanting his woman to repair the car or fix the roof!

What would this man really be saying to her?

But there is nothing more arousing for a man than to peer over the top of his newspaper in order to observe closely his woman scuttling around, hither and thither, vacuuming the carpet, dusting the furniture and cleaning the windows - her pretty negligee rising and falling tantalisingly to the sensual rhythms of her labours.

And the smell of the roast beef wafting over from the kitchen as it lies spitting in the oven while his woman is peeling the potatoes further stimulates his secret cavities with the most erotic and sexual of juices - confidential juices that only men know about - and which would never be mentioned around any womenfolk.

So. Tell me. How can it possibly be that men were meant to do housework?

Of course, if a man wishes to do housework, then this is his choice. And if he also wishes to wear a pretty pinafore while he does it, well, the very same is true.

But a man who has such things imposed upon him by his woman is not a man at all.

He is a mouse.

Furthermore, is it not the case that many female mammals and birds have something within their brains akin to a nesting instinct? Perhaps this is one reason why women feel impelled to do more housework than men. Perhaps there is some deep-seated configuration in their brains that causes them to want to be more involved with matters to do with the 'nest'.

For example, little girls like dolls houses far more so than do little boys. And womenfolk are certainly more concerned about how things look than are men. 

Such factors will make women reach for their dusters well before their menfolk even notice any dust.

Look. Women want to go out to work and to get special treatment in just about every area of their lives. This, they have already achieved. If they want to fix cars and build walls, no-one is stopping them. And so, if men do not want to do much in the way of housework, then, quite frankly, so what!? Why should they not be allowed to choose this option?

This notion that men should do as much housework as women is derived from nothing more than the usual feminist-inspired propaganda that tries to stir up hatred toward men. And, surely, there is no longer any reason why men should bother to conform to the wishful expectations of women, given that women are failing so completely to reciprocate.

AH

12/12/03

Guy Brains 

Dave Barry

Miami Herald 

I like to think that I am a modest person. (I also like to think that I look like Brad Pitt naked, but that is not the issue here.)

There comes a time, however, when a person must toot his own personal horn, and for me, that time is now. A new book has confirmed a theory that I first proposed in 1987, in a column explaining why men are physically unqualified to do housework. The problem, I argued, is that men -- because of a tragic genetic flaw -- cannot see dirt until there is enough of it to support agriculture. This puts men at a huge disadvantage against women, who can detect a single dirt molecule 20 feet away.

This is why a man and a woman can both be looking at the same bathroom commode, and the man -- hindered by Male Genetic Dirt Blindness (MGDB) -- will perceive the commode surface as being clean enough for heart surgery or even meat slicing; whereas the woman can't even see the commode, only a teeming, commode-shaped swarm of bacteria. A woman can spend two hours cleaning a toothbrush holder and still not be totally satisfied; whereas if you ask a man to clean the entire New York City subway system, he'll go down there with a bottle of Windex and a single paper towel, then emerge 25 minutes later, weary but satisfied with a job well done.

When I wrote about Male Genetic Dirt Blindness, many irate readers complained that I was engaging in sexist stereotyping, as well as making lame excuses for the fact that men are lazy pigs. All of these irate readers belonged to a gender that I will not identify here, other than to say: Guess what, ladies? There is now scientific proof that I was right. sorry...no link to the book

This proof appears in a new book titled What Could He Be Thinking? How a Man's Mind Really Works. I have not personally read this book, because, as a journalist, I am too busy writing about it. But according to an article by Reuters, the book states that a man's brain ''takes in less sensory detail than a woman's, so he doesn't see or even feel the dust and household mess in the same way.'' Got that? We can't see or feel the mess! We're like: ``What snow tires in the dining room? Oh, those snow tires in the dining room.''

And this is only one of the differences between men's and women's brains. Another difference involves a brain part called the ''cingulate gyrus,'' which is the sector where emotions are located. The Reuters article does not describe the cingulate gyrus, but presumably in women it is a structure the size of a mature cantaloupe, containing a vast quantity of complex, endlessly recalibrated emotional data involving hundreds, perhaps thousands of human relationships; whereas in men it is basically a cashew filled with NFL highlights.

In any event, it turns out that women's brains secrete more of the chemicals ''oxytocin'' and ''serotonin,'' which, according to biologists, cause humans to feel they have an inadequate supply of shoes. No, seriously, these chemicals cause humans to want to bond with other humans, which is why women like to share their feelings. Some women (and here I am referring to my wife) can share as many as three days' worth of feelings about an event that took eight seconds to actually happen. We men, on the other hand, are reluctant to share our feelings, in large part because we often don't have any. Really. Ask any guy: A lot of the time, when we look like we're thinking, we just have this low-level humming sound in our brains. That's why, in male-female conversations, the male part often consists entirely of him going ''hmmmm.'' This frustrates the woman, who wants to know what he's really thinking. In fact, what he's thinking is, literally, ``hmmmm.''

So anyway, according to the Reuters article, when a man, instead of sharing feelings with his mate, chooses to lie on the sofa, holding the remote control and monitoring 750 television programs simultaneously by changing the channel every one-half second (pausing slightly longer for programs that feature touchdowns, fighting, shooting, car crashes or bosoms) his mate should not come to the mistaken conclusion that he is an insensitive jerk. In fact, he is responding to scientific biological brain chemicals that require him to behave this way for scientific reasons, as detailed in the scientific book What Could He Be Thinking? How a Man's Mind Really Works, which I frankly cannot recommend highly enough.

Links for your Missus

Housework

Vacuums

Ironing