Microblog Memes

I hadn't realised quite how different the female upbringing experience was to the male one until I talked about it with my partner. Quite different it turns out. We're both about 40, and from Ireland, and she was absolutely expected to do shit like this when the men weren't.

Event today some of her siblings families are heavily heavily sexist.

My mom involved my brother. I took the opportunity to play video games all day.

Growing up, no.

Will my potential kids be sharing the work equally? Definitely. I always got into so much trouble for asking why I had to do housework and my brother didn't.

That was it for us but realistically it was more A generational thing. Especially after divorces and stuff - all the aunts didn’t cooking, my uncle and my brothers and I did the setup/cleanup.

At one point they tried to get us do the cooking but I’m sorry but I’m flying in late the night before or early the morning of: that’s up to the locals. I can stop at the store to buy wine or something but cooking isn’t a realistic choice

But when we do Thanksgiving locally: if it’s my house I do most of it and my ex brings a couple sides. If it’s her house then vice versa

Sharpness doesn’t matter: more power! Break out the electric carving knife

Weird. Imagine thinking like that. How old were they?

This. So much this. And I want to break it down a bit and give my own experiences.

Years ago, I was teaching my then-girlfriend how to change her oil. We were broke 20-somethings, so paying for a place to do it was a costly option. She was kinda "meh" on the idea but went with it. The moment she really got into it, though, was when a random guy walked by and was so happy seeing a woman learning how to take care of cars and how he wished his girl would learn that. She got a sense of pride from it, and afterwards, when she realised she did it herself and saved a bunch of money... she was very proud of herself. Rightfully so.

A (former) friend of mine had bought her first house just a couple of years ago. (Kinda wish she hadn't because the house is in rough shape, but then again, the rental market is maybe in a worse shape... only time will tell). Anywho, I visit her, and she shows me the house. Not a single smoke detector anywhere in the house. No fire extinguishers anywhere. And in the living room, there was this fancy light fixture that was controlled by a dimmer switch... that was extremely hot. I think it was 6-8 bulbs (don't recall) and each was 120w incandescent lightbulb... all through a dimmer. Unsure when the previous owner did that, but that's a decent way to eventually cause a fire. The dimmer switch was literally hot to the touch. She knew it was hot, but didn't really think anything of it. I took us to Home Depot/Menards/Fleet Farm (I don't recall which exactly) and bought her a bunch of smoke detectors, extinguishers, and a new dimmer switch, which I installed, and we removed half the bulbs. Believe I also gave her a GFCI tester and told her to test every receptacle in the house.

Back in high school, I took a small engines course because I wanted to better know how engines really worked outside of a book. My station partner was a girl I knew (who lived a few houses down from me). One day I realised I was hogging everything (teardown and rebuild) and apologised and pushed everything to her. She pushed it back, said her brothers would do anything she ever needed, and she just wanted an easy course. (While this is not important to the story, it was a very unattractive move on her part, which did alter how I saw her, which, a few years later, when she asked me out, I rejected her.) Another course I took, which was an intro to welding, there was a girl who thought I'd do her work for her. I took to acetylene welding right away, which seemed to be the hardest for everyone else (hence why she picked me). Instead, I told her I'd help teach her, which she took me up on. The unbridled joy and pride when she got an A on her welding test... (a memory that leaves with me).

Final story, I was in college, and my roommate was a loser. He had no fucking idea how to cook. He tried to make Mac and Cheese once and didn't know how to boil water. He had no idea how the washer/dryer worked. His mom asked if I'd teach him. And I did try, but he had no plans to learn; he'd rather drive the 2-3 hours back home to make his mom do his laundry. Or if he couldn't make it that week, he'd just buy new clothes.

All kids should be taught all sorts of basic skills. And frankly, a bunch of adults could stand to learn things too. Example, do you know what an anode rod is? If not, I'm guessing you've been skipping out on maintenance. Do you know if your heater is gas/electric? And which one has a pilot light? Do you have a spare tire? Where is it? Have you ever used the jack on your car before? What are jumper cables and do you have some? How do they work and how do you use them correctly? Every adult should be able to answer all these questions and more.

That's why before any children visit my house, I take all of the sockets out of the walls and leave the bare wires dangling from the receptacle. You want to charge your phone? Take this outlet and screwdriver. Oh, got a bit fried? Lesson one: check the breaker before doing electrical work, idiot.

The survivors go directly to trade school.

Genuinely good advice.

I was on a trip with my partner (I am female, partner is male), and when we got off the train to go home, we had a flat tire.

He is not handy at all, and got super flustered and frustrated and was going to call AAA, and I was like umm.. you have a spare in here, right? Time to learn how to change a tire! Pop that trunk!

And so I made him do it, and walked him through how, and now he knows for next time, yay! I’ve also fixed his dishwasher, patched drywall, several other plumbing things, etc. only thing I wont touch for someone else is electric. I wont even do my own unless its a plug-in thing.

He, in turn, helped me with building my computer and doing various software stuff I could probably do on my own but didn’t know how.

So even if those skills aren’t super useful for you directly, you can and will use them with other people and you can pass on the knowledge. I mean I learned to change a tire as a very young adult, from an off-duty cop who stopped to help on the side of the highway. I knew the basics, but he showed me the full process. And since then I’ve taught two others, but haven’t needed it for myself.

My daughter always helps me with oil changes. We love it.

There is fair division of labor, though.

Jokes on you lady, Thanksgiving isn't for another 320 days, 12 hours, and 50 minutes 😤

My extended family operates thanksgiving as a potluck. My uncle hosts, he cooks several of the dishes served, one of my (female) cousins cooks the turkey itself, somehow it became traditional that I (male) carve it though. My father makes a pineapple punch, my mother makes the sweet potatoes, I often bake a pie of some kind.

Cooking, laundry, dishes, those don't seem to be gendered tasks in my family. In all but the bachelor's homes it seems women do the vacuuming, because the women seem to give more of a shit about the state of the floor. For most of my life lawn and leaf jobs were Male with a capital M, though my mother has started helping me rake (I live next door to my parents in what was my grandparents house, we share kind of an extended property) as kind of a reason to exercise, and one of my cousins took over mowing their lawn when my grandfather passed away.

Vehicle maintenance falls to the men as well, only one woman--my navy veteran cousin--would so much as touch anything with engine oil on it. Construction, house repair and basically anything else that involves a saw also tends to fall to the men; my mother refuses to climb ladders, I've never seen one of my cousins holding a hammer, meanwhile my father and I built our wood shop, and roofed my house.

Computers and gaming: A lot of my family games in some way or form. There are some gender stereotypes on display, one of the few games I've seen my aunt play is The Sims. My mother likes adventure and puzzle games, she's currently big into BluePrince. My father tends to be an arcade classics guy. OG gamer, he bought Space Invaders for the Atari 2600 on launch day and he and his best friend stayed up all night playing it. I've gone through phases with fighting games, FPS, simulators, etc. I'm the family computer hardware enthusiast. I think my father could build a PC, but the last time he did so was in the 1970s when he and his friend soldered together an Altair 8800 kit. Everybody else kinda refuses any chance to learn.

I can't dance, but I sure can cook. More than one way to meet a mate.

I know my way around the kitchen. You stabbed the plastic film with a fork and then you put it in the microwave. If I'm feeling really adventurous I'll use the air fryer.