I can’t imagine anyone saw this coming. Update to this story.
Via Guardian:
Sheryl Sandberg’s latest endeavor, Lean In Together, is otherwise mostly very smart. The newly-launched website provides some excellent prompts and tips for men: don’t give your daughters less allowance than your sons and make sure their chores are equally valued; be a hands-on father to increase your daughter’s self-esteem; pay attention to gender stereotypes in toys and children’s media; encourage your daughter to lead rather than label her a “know-it-all”.
But the incentive for men to be 50/50 domestic partners with their wives leaves me cold:
“When men share household responsibilities, their wives are happier and their marriages are stronger. Not only does marital satisfaction go up, but couples have more sex – “choreplay” is real!”
Leaving the unfortunate coinage of “choreplay”, do we really want to live in a world where men are only cleaning up around the house to get some? In a New York Times op-ed touting the new campaign, Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant tell the story of a woman who asked her husband to do the laundry. They write, “He picked up the basket and asked hopefully, ‘Is this Lean In laundry?’” I understand that the anecdote is meant to be charming, but in a culture where men are already taught to feel entitled to women sexually, I don’t find it cute in the least.
It also paints a fairly inaccurate – and transactional – picture of female desire. Despite terrible gift books to the contrary, most women don’t get off on men vacuuming or picking up socks (not that there’s anything wrong with those that do). What turns women on is what turns men on: good sex.
Perhaps it’s true that couples have sex more often when men take on an equitable amount of domestic work. But I’m sure that has less to do with women wanting to screw men who do dishes, and more to do with pissed off women not wanting to have sex with lazy sexist husbands who won’t do a damn thing around the house.