Fannie, who is Teh Awesome, made a comment on my last post about something called Porn for Women, which involves pictures of men doing housework.
Of course, I had to look.
The first thing I found doing a google search for "porn for women housework" is this. (see above) It's a book containing pictures of mostly clothed men vacuuming and such.
I think I just rolled my eyes so hard I sprained them.
This is not pornography. I don't even think the most modesty obsessed fundys I stalk would consider that pornography. Unseemly, perhaps, but only in that their wives ought to be doing the housework.
I find this disturbing on two levels.
1. "As soon as I'm done with the laundry, I'll do the grocery shopping and take the kids with me so you can relax" is not erotica. This is erotica*. Honestly rather mild erotica that kinda flirts with kinky. But it's erotica.
"I'm going to do some chores and spend time with my children" should just be normal communication between partners. (Also, I am seriously uncomfortable with mentions of children and erotica in the same place.) That that is eroticized is disturbing. I find it unbelievable that I am so outside normal gender roles and interplay that I am experiencing erotica on a regular basis and not recognizing it.
Seriously, really, honestly, truly this sort of thing is so rare in the average marriage that it counts as erotica? My husband is no great shakes in the participating in the maintaining our property department, and he says something like this to me all the time. (Obviously, not involving kids.)
"Hey, I had some time waiting for the sauce to reduce, so I loaded the dishwasher."
"I noticed you had laundry left in the dryer, so I folded it and brought it upstairs."
"I spilled salt all over the kitchen floor, so I figured I might as well sweep the entire downstairs while I was at it."
Yes, I do thank him. He also compliments me on a job well done every time I clean the kitchen and every time he finds just the t-shirt he wanted, already clean, in his drawer**.
This does not arouse me. I do not fantasize about this. I'm not telling you you shouldn't be aroused by this sort of thing because I don't care what gets you off, but, c'mon, really?
Men want to fuck, women want to . . . sit around eating bon bons? This is a view of male/female relations stuck somewhere in a mythical, TV 1950s, then turned into a joke that isn't funny. Women, they do all the housework and- hahahahaha!- it's housework that turns them on. If men do it.
2. This enforces so many gender stereotypes I don't know where to start. and, it plays them off as a hilarious joke so that I'm just a meany mean feminazi with no sense of humor for complaining about it.
Let's see if I can list all the gender stereotypes at work here:
- housework is women's work. If men do it, it's superspecial.
- childcare is women's work. if men do it, it's superspecial.
- fucking is what men want. women don't really like to fuck. women consent to fucking.
- women consent to fucking in order to please men.
- what women really like to to is get a break from women's work.
- women are not turned on by depictions or descriptions of sex. that is for men.
I probably missed a few. And no, it's not fucking funny. This is not pornography. It's also not a joke. It's just another slap in the face of women as mature adults with actual sexual feelings.
*C'mon, you knew there was Jägererotica, Rule 34 demands it. And if you didn't think I knew where it was, you just don't know me.
**The man is incapable of putting dirty clothes in a hamper, so simply finding his dirty clothes is like Indiana Jones in my house. He should compliment me.
