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I’ve never been a fan of the rhetoric that Executive Function Theft is strictly a male/female issue.
From my experience there’s tonnes of common situations where the genders get flipped, and it’s a problem that often cuts both ways.
Honestly, from what I have seen, when it’s an issue going one way in a relationship it is also a problem going the other way, just in other areas.
Usually it’s just a sign the individuals have poor communication skills in general. Neither of them communicate well and both of them often have situations where they have a lot on their plate and the other person has to be managed.
There’s a reason these examples that argue it’s a man focused issue seem to always be covering traditionally feminine tasks, while glazing over traditionally masculine tasks.
I also have first hand seen plenty of examples where the woman is the lazy couch surfer of the family and doesn’t help with anything.
I think if the article wanted to actually appeal to an audience, it wouldn’t try and frame this is a man vs woman problem and gender it.
If someone has some actual concrete peer reviewed studies that actually show men are more prone to Executive Functikn Theft I would love to see it.
Until then, this post made some pretty bold claims and I’m not seeing any citations so, as a result it just comes across as sexist instead of informative.
Hey just wondering why you are asking for citations without providing any of your own? Because besides your own opinions and experiences you dont seem to provide any citations to back up your statements.
And just so you know, you can try to find citations for claims made in the comic on you own. Or do you want to do some Executive Function Theft and let someone else do the work?
Edit: Instead of reading that long ass response I looked for scientific stuff myself and found this in a short amount of time:
Mental Labor: A Systematic Literature Review on the Cognitive Dimension of Unpaid Work Within the Household and Childcare
Predominantly, the articles show that women perform the larger proportion of mental labor, especially when it comes to childcare and parenting decisions.
Hey just wondering why you are asking for citations without providing any of your own?
I did not make any broad claims about all individuals of a group, I explicitly made sure all my statements were clearly outlined as anecdotes and not to be taken as something to apply to all individuals of a group.
Note my use of “from what I have seen” at the start of my statement, which sets that everything following it is an anecdote and not to be mistaken for anything else.
The comic largely sticks to anecdote for most of its duration, but it pulls what I like to call “The Joe Rogan Move” halfway through, where sandwiched in the middle of two separate anecdotal statements, is a small but very abrupt statement of fact, that does not get supported by any citations or further info.
Its a mechanism a lot of unsavory individuals (like Joe Rogan and Andrew Tate, who I consider to be pretty shitty for doing this, dont mistake me for liking these people, the term is not a compliment), use to sort of wedge a fact in between a bunch of agreeable/empathetic anecdotes.
You are nodding your head along to their anecdotal story, thinking “Yeah I can empathize with this” and then they shove this sudden factoid in there, then quickly shift to another agreeable anecdote, quickly skimming past that prior factoid without lingering on it. It’s quick and sudden, but it’s shady as fuck.
In the comic, the factoid that was “wedged” in was this statement:
The mental load is almost completely born by women
Note this is NOT made in any context of “from my experience” or “When you do this, that happens” or “Many women report that” or any other such anecdotal context…
It is presented as a concrete factoid, as if speaking from a point of authority.
And that would be fine if it had a citation, a factual statement like that needs to have some kind of citation. That specific line should have some kind of facts backing it up. What’s the source for that line? What do you mean “almost completely”, by how much of a margin? How do you even measure that? What? Did you get this info from some sort of study or paper on the topic? Where is this fact coming from?
Then the comic very quickly shifts back to anecdote on the very next panel, by going “So while most heterosexual men I know say that…”
See how that little tiny factoid got sort of subtly wedged right in there, and because the story on each “side” of it is agreeable, it just sort of slips past the radar?
Thats the shit that I am calling out. That is problematic and I don’t give a fuck if you are a loser like Andrew Tate trying to lure young men into mysoginistic views/lifestyles, or if you are a feminist blog trying to spread awareness about mental load…
Cite. Your. Facts. Always.
Cite. Your. Facts. Always.
How about no? Thats just your preference
Then enjoy not being taken seriously and only rallying people to your side who don’t possess the capacity to question what they are told.
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Demanding citations to support a narrative of someone’s personal experience is a particularly obnoxious form of sea lioning.
The comic was not just a personal experience narrative. It expands to claim itself a political and feminist comic. I’d like to not go back to feminism intended as a one way only movement
Don’t be a reply-bro in an explicit women space please.
Not a woman, so feel free to downvote. I’d note there’s no yard work, car servicing, plumbing or electrical work, Bills and finances, and so on. While I agree that in general men don’t do their share of the housework, I think it’s important in a relationship to ask, understand, and acknowledge what the other person is doing. Maybe it’s actually a fair bit and it’s invisible to you. (Same goes the other way, obviously; it’s important to communicate is my point)
My husband does all those things but I also do a lot of the “every other weekend” type chores, too, like organizing all of our stuff, back to school supplies shopping, maintaining our appointment calendars, and dealing with our children’s change of season clothing swaps. There are always projects and we split them.
I do consider him sharing the housework as 50/50, however, because he does daily tasks, also. He does the cooking, half of the cleaning, half of the schlepping of children to doctor’s appointments and playdates, as well as other as needed things. The daily chores is where the rubber meets the road.
He has also been taking on more small but important daily tasks like monitoring our email inboxes for emails from our kids’ schools. I think its more than equitable given that the early years of our lives with children i was either nursing through the night or holding/wearing infants throughout the day. I think a lot of men don’t seem to register the overnight labor or the constantly carrying babies and infants as labor (it was freaking exhausting).
Thanks Janet. Seems like you two do a great job of communicating. Would you say you both share the management tasks 50/50 as well? With me and my wife, neither of us “owns” the problem, we just both do things to solve it based on what annoys us. It works pretty well usually, but I do feel like we should draw lines to say “no this is definitely my project to manage”.
Would you say you both share the management tasks 50/50 as well?
I think it depends on the task. We have our areas that we focus on (e.g., me laundry, him cooking) but there are others where we come together/alert each other of issues or tasks that are coming up (e.g., selecting afterschool for our children).
Yeah interesting. I feel like there’s also a sort of ownership that comes from actually doing the work, so doing the cooking means managing the cooking, but things you both need to share are managed in a shared way too, like school pickups (almost everyone I know has to co-ordinate these).
I feel like comics like the above sometimes give men the permission to not “own” being adults, because “that’s just how men are”, but fundamentally that’s not true. In my view, the right and masculine thing to do is to do half the work and communicate, share, etc.
I am so tired of this argument. It’s not a good one.
You just listed a bunch of tasks that take at most a couple of hours per week. When women do a couple of hours of extra work every day.
Please don’t come into women’s spaces with any variety of “not all men.” It’s not cute.
Along the lines of “not all men”, I actually scrolled down and looked at some of the comments for the first time despite having seen this comic shared numerous times. The thing that stood out to me was a guy complaining about how feminists aren’t fighting for men’s rights and things like funding for testicular cancer… which is epidemiologically a fairly rare and not typically lethal cancer. He doesn’t even care about men’s issues enough to know that prostate cancer is the epidemiological equivalent of breast cancer (and ignores the fact that, albeit highly unlikely, men can get breast cancer too).
Preach!
Hello, thanks for engaging, I know this is not my space and I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable. Firstly, I acknowledged that men generally do not do their share of the housework. The argument in the comic is that it’s not just the labor, but also the management work which needs to happen.
It was the management that I was trying to address, and specifically, that maybe because nothing outside the house was mentioned in the comic, maybe the management of all of this stuff was simply invisible to the writer. My point was more that as partners, they need to talk to each other (and that’s on both of them). If you ask a husband and wife (eg, like in the comic) about anything and get two misaligned answers (“I do half the work”; “no he does not”), that means communication is not happening.
I think the point of this comic is that women often have to manage those jobs too in terms of reminding their partners that they need to be done.
Yeah, if that’s happening this is pretty unhealthy. I honestly think that’s embarrassing for the man. That’s just being an overgrown child. Your partner is not meant to be your mum.
The argument completely collapses with one thought: okay, would you be okay with me telling you everything that needs to be done, and you do it all? No? Then it isn’t 50/50 is it?
OK, I agree that management is work, but I don’t agree that it’s half the work. It’s this kind of argument that allows CEOs to be paid millions. They manage thousands of people, after all, the business responsibilities fall on them!
It’s a load of rubbish, and frankly, you know it is because if I flipped that around you would not be happy. ie: You don’t have to “own the problem” of cooking, cleaning, bills, mowing, etc. I’ll set up a roster and then you can do all the work. It’s still half the work right?
In a practical sense, for our house we work as a board of directors. Talk about the problem (Often it’s as simple as declaring what you’re doing, “I’m making X do you want some”), share ownership, help out when the other person is struggling, lean on them when you are stuggling, and share your plans. Like 80% of the problems I’ve had in who does what and when have been resolved by just sitting down and talking about it. It sucks, it’s adulting, but it’s also the only way that’s fair. Other people divvie up the work (you own cooking I own children) or spaces (you own kitchen I own garage) etc.
would you be okay with me telling you everything that needs to be done, and you do it all? No?
They don’t want to do 100% and that means they aren’t doing 50%? what?
Did you read the post?
“50% of the work is in figuring out what to do, the mental load”
What do you think happens if the woman doesn’t do the dishes and doesn’t wash the clothes?
The man will start eating off the bare table and walk around naked?
The man will recognize the issue when it becomes one.
I think this is straying from the point frog. The issue is not “the man can wash clothes”, it’s “the woman often owns the problem of keeping the clothes clean and in the right spot”. Men tend to “help” but don’t think about the constant labor of keeping the house clean. Maybe the other way to think about it is: If one day the woman silently stopped cleaning and all the clothes end up dirty, would the man just take it in stride? I think not, I think there would be a silent argument.
There’s a bit of a flaw here though. Most men don’t do car servicing, plumbing, or electrical work.
And even if they did, they are infrequent in nature.
I think even bills and finances are more split.
Household chores on the other hand are never ending.
Cleaning and cooking need to be done every day, laundry every week, and so on.
I have sent this cartoon to so many people.
Keep it civil everyone
Fair point, sorry you got dogpiled by people about this
