Homewreckers Anonymous

Today we will take a break from international relations and warfare. It would, you will agree, be a welcome break.

So, we turn our attention to marriage, in particular, to the broken American marriage. Doubtless, you know that marriage in America is broken. Fewer and fewer children are being born to married couples. Fewer and fewer married couples stay married for very long. By now everyone agrees that this situation is bad for children. It is probably bad for non-children and it is certainly bad for America. 

Of course, we do not know why this should be the case, though we do have some suspicions. Don’t we all recall that movement feminists denounced marriage as a patriarchal conspiracy designed to oppress women? And didn’t feminists tell women to turn their kitchens into war zones, to refuse to function as anything resembling housewives?

The notion that the war against marriage has seriously damaged marriage and society itself should not be extremely controversial. Of course, it is. Given that feminists never accept responsibility for the damage they have caused, they will blame it on the patriarchy, and, if not the patriarchy, on men. They will blame it on a civilization that has systematically oppressed women, and so on.

As it happens, Anglo-Saxon cultures have been at the forefront of the struggle for women’s rights. And American feminists have nothing to say about the rampant misogyny that exists in other parts of the world.

Why, it was not very long ago that Egypt elected a president who represented a political party whose idea of voter outreach was to send mobile surgical vans into the poor neighborhoods of Cairo, the better to allow families to have their 12-year-old daughters genitally mutilated without having to suffer the indignity of taking them to a clinic or hospital. And we know that the same political party supports honor killings, wife beating and wife rape. Hmm. Misogyny, anyone.

Now, the interesting part is, when the candidate of this party, which represented of some of the most appalling misogynistic practices that exist in the world today, won an election to be president, guess who was the first political leader to land in Cairo to bless his election?

You guessed it: it was Hillary Clinton, the nation’s great feminist heroine expressing, by her presence, her approval of the world’s leading misogynist.

Will wonders never cease?

Anyway, today’s post concerns a less gruesome situation. It involves a letter that a woman sent to Washington Post columnist Carolyn Hax. And here, sad to say, we see Hax at her worst, putting on her homewrecker hat and showing a woman who has recently become engaged how best to destroy her marriage, even before it happens.

As often happens, we do not know how old the letter writer is. We do not know whether she has any meaningful employment. We do know that at a time when her fiance is required to spend long hours working on a business that he owns and that he has been struggling to keep solvent, her main concern is that he might not do his fair share of housework.

In her letter she shows no concern for his business. She shows no interest in supporting him and relieving him of the burden of vacuuming the rugs. She cares about nothing but what she learned in Women’s Studies-- which is how to complain about the division of household labor. Because she thinks that this makes her strong and empowered.

And naturally, as we will see, Hax is highly supportive. She is a true believing feminist and insists that all household chores be divided equally. And she insists that the woman in question put her foot down, and insist, and become a complete pain in the ass about household chores-- at a time when her fiance’s business is struggling to survive.

How tone deaf can you be?

Here, is the note by the fiance:

I’m moving in with my fiance. Unfortunately, it’s at the worst time of the year. His business — which he owns and is trying to keep going during the pandemic — is at its busiest, and he’s working 60-80 hours a week for the next two months. We both knew this was happening, but the right apartment came along.

I fully support his business and understand this situation is temporary. Yet I’m a bit wary that the first few months of living together will be me doing all the cooking, cleaning, chores, etc.

Any suggestions on how I end this precedent? I don’t mind pitching in while times are unusual, but I’m also wary of how to change a trend that starts when I move in.

If he is working between 60 and 80 hours a week, how much time will he have to mop the kitchen floors and to clean the toilets? Might she not have shown some consideration, not to mention some support for his efforts to support his family?

But, no. She might have gotten affianced but she certainly does not want to be a wife. And besides, if they have children, will she insist that he do half the diaper changes-- while working 80 hours a week?

Dare we mention that the letter writer says nothing about whether she has discussed this matter with her fiance. One suspects that she has not. One suspects that if she expressed her self-centered feminist wish to have him share cooking and cleaning, that he would immediately think that she was trying to undermine his business. Which, in fact, she is. Neither she nor Hax has the least awareness of this fact. 

Anyway, Hax is suitably outraged at this deviation from the feminist party line, so she starts off thusly:

The way to end a precedent is not to set it in the first place. Tell him you’d like to stay close to your normal approach to chores that each of you had while living apart; put a big X on your calendar marking the end of this stretch; and as needed treat this as a time when fewer chores get done.

If you still end up with a major and persistent domestic workload imbalance when it’s all over, then break up and move out. Ultimately the problem would be a partner who’s okay with letting you do all the work, and the solution would be a better person for a partner.

Think about how positively deranged this is. He is working between 60 and 80 hours a week and Hax is whining about how he is letting her do all the work. Huh? What the what.

And yet, the letter writer is terrified that she will become, upon being married, a housewife. Whereas Hax thought that the situation had played itself out in the past, the truth is, there is something novel about the man’s work schedule.

Basically, Hax is recommending that she move out, that she put her foot down, that she stomp around like a crazy person and force him to do his fair share of chores. As for being a housewife, Hax identifies that with the work of a paid domestic-- a servant, a slave, what the what.

Okay. I still think the less resetting, the better. If you didn’t move in, then he’d be managing this and his home solo. He just would, because he’d have to.

It's essential not to lose sight of that — or, to put it more plainly from the other side, keep firmly in mind you are not moving in to be his unpaid domestic. Talk to him about a fair division of labor for regular times, then about an adjustment to that for crazy time, then decide if that sounds doable to you. Weigh his attitude carefully. And:

Do not agree to anything you don’t want to live with.

Do not do more than you think is fair.

Do not keep doing anything past the date that he can very well resume doing it for himself.

Do not do anything he would refuse to do for you.

Do not do anything you wouldn’t feel right asking of him.

You are not obligated. Period.

Now you know what a strong and empowered hard-assed feminist should do to wreck her marriage.

If, perchance, this woman takes Hax’s advice, her engagement will quickly end. This form of leaning in, this form of macho posturing, this failure to support a man who is working around ten hours a day seven days of the week, will almost certainly damage any engagement or marriage.

One understands that feminists do not like being treated as homewreckers, and Hax is not exactly a feminist firebrand, but this brief exchange shows how seriously feminist thinking has infiltrated the mainstream media, to the detriment of marriage. 

Then again, when all is said and done, the fiance, with Hax, might be doing the man in question a large favor.