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The sexist relationship myths even 'feminist' coaches and experts believe
Feminist relationship coaching has a dark side: upholding the status quo
Household labor inequity, which includes the endless labor of parenting, pet care, kinkeeping, schedule management, making special events special, cleaning, home care, bill paying, financial management, health management, and more, is stealing women’s lives.
This inequity requires a significant sense of entitlement. As I’ve said many times before, it’s not an accident. If that were the case, it wouldn’t occur on gendered lines. This inequity happens because men like it this way, and because patriarchy supports them to maintain this inequity.
Every study on the topic shows that women do exponentially more labor than men—even when they work full-time, even when the man doesn’t work at all. The endless distraction of caring for everyone else while a lazy man sleeps, plays video games, and relaxes is stealing women’s lives. The hours add up into years, and over and over I see how women have lost opportunities, health, and dreams because their partners refuse to pull their weight.
Household labor inequity also correlates nearly perfectly with other forms of abuse—because, of course, people who exploit their partner in one domain also tend to do so in other domains. So women in these relationships are also often dealing with sexual coercion, emotional neglect and abuse, chronic rage and grumpiness, and sometimes physical violence.
Enter the coaches. There’s now an entire world of self-described feminists who promise to train you on how to attain household labor equity. This notion, though, is built on the idea that there’s something the woman can do to get better behavior from the man. And that, like all other forms of victim blaming, is a flawed notion that actually upholds the patriarchy it promises to destroy.
I’ve written before about how most systems to improve household equity are inherently victim-blaming and unrealistic. These coaches mean well, but they’ve adopted a flawed premise: that they’ve done something right to earn household inequity, and can now teach other women to do the same.
Here are the most common myths I see in this world, and why I think they’re so harmful.
Progress, not perfection
No human being is perfect. I occasionally slip up and yell at my children, let them watch too much TV, miss appointments, or fail to walk the dog. Like most people, there are things I’m working to actively improve.
So “progress, not perfection,” sounds reasonable at first.
Until you consider that we are talking about an act of abuse against women. Household labor is theft of women’s time and opportunities. It knowingly and intentionally benefits men, at great expense to women.
The notion that everything is fine as long as he is making “progress” centers the man and his wants—an inherently anti-feminist approach. What about what he is actively stealing from the woman?
Consider if the roles were reversed. We would never tolerate a woman neglecting her children and her home, mistreating her partner, and foisting labor on a man, then assert that it’s all fine as long as she is trying.
We would also not adopt this approach with any behavior society actually takes seriously:
“Oh, he’s beating her a little less than he used to. Progress, not perfection!”
“He’s injecting less heroin than he did last week! Progress, not perfection!”
“She only maxed out three of the family’s credit cards last month! Progress, not perfection.”
“She’s cheating on him way less frequently than she used to. Progress, not perfection!”
We would find these assertions laughable because we think infidelity, compulsive spending, violence, and drug use are actually harmful. Society thinks household labor inequity is a minor inconvenience rather than a key driver of women’s inequity. And the feminist creators who insist women must be patient and positive are reinforcing the idea that this inequity really doesn’t matter.
Communication is key
It’s true that we all need to get better at communication. It’s important to be direct, succinct, and specific when you’re asking for something from someone you love.
What I see instead are a bunch of mealy-mouthed, meandering, borderline incoherent script recommendations that center the man’s feelings and anticipate that he is going to overreact to even the slightest request for change. This is insulting to women, to have to gentle-parent their husbands into doing better.
Moreover, my own research shows that this is not a communication issue. Women tell me that, on average, they discuss household labor inequity at least every two weeks. These men know what’s happening. That’s why so many of them have gotten so very good at excuse-making.
To insist that women must communicate their way to equity implies that the problem here is women’s poor communication.
It is not. It is men’s patriarchal entitlement. And if good communication actually worked, then the millions of women who are exceptional communicators would already have equitable relationships.
This is a journey
We see this “journey” metaphor spring up whenever activist movements demand that a member of the dominant class do something about their privilege.
At the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, white people loooooved to talk about their anti-racist “journeys.”
Giving up your unearned privilege is not a journey of personal enlightenment. It is the lowest possible bar a person must cross to be considered a decent human being. It does not require a long journey, therapy, reading tons of books, and more. It only requires that you commit to doing the work, and doing it now.
He can start cooking and cleaning and shopping today. He can plan the birthday party and buy the presents today. No one gives women time to go on a learning journey. From the moment women birth their babies, they are expected to know how to parent perfectly, or incur the wrath of everyone. Where is our journey? Where is our time to putter around and prattle about self-growth and reflection while doing absolutely nothing?
Men should not get to buy their time with the work of women they claim to love. They should not get to exploit women and pretend it’s a “journey.” This bullshit about how it takes years to divest from patriarchy is a lie that buys men more free labor, and that guilts women into staying. The coaches who propagate this lie are complicit in misogyny.
Do good men slip up? Yes? Do people need time to learn? Absolutely. But anyone can start doing an equitable share today, and no one is entitled to steal another’s life so they can get more time to pretend to learn. If inequity is a pattern, it’s intentional and it’s abuse.
You’re fighting a common enemy
Patriarchy hurts men, too. But it also benefits them. That’s the reason it exists. Men designed patriarchy to access as many unearned benefits as possible. The tradeoff is that it disrupts their ability to be fully human and have decent relationships. For many of them, though, that’s just fine.
Patriarchy is not a common enemy oppressing you both equally. It is not something external to the relationship. It is endemic to heterosexual marriage. Heterosexual relationships are built on an aggressively misogynistic foundation, and if you don’t do much to build something better, your relationship will be patriarchal to its very core. Patriarchy is something men impose on women. It is something husbands choose to impose on their wives.
Men can choose better. Many do.
Those who don’t are making a choice—and that choice is to exploit their partner.
Patriarchy is something your partner is doing to you, not something that is being done to both of you. And while he might respond better or be less defensive when you present patriarchy as something external to the relationship, this does not mean he will change. A man who is actually willing to change will do so when presented with the clear, direct facts. Indeed, confronting a man with the reality of patriarchy—not some fantasy in which imaginary outside forces impose patriarchy on both of you—is one of the easiest ways to test his willingness to change and grow.
If this causes a big fight, you have deeper problems than household labor inequality
One of the most common reactions to an insistence on household equity is aggression. In fact, for some of my readers, the household labor equity conversation is the thing that triggered physical violence for the first time.
Patriarchal men will do whatever it takes to maintain access to free, unearned resources, and to keep their woman-appliance in a state of permanent servitude.
Feminist relationship coaches act like this is a surprise. As if a man will, upon hearing the relationship is unequal, immediately roll over and change. This presupposes that men are stupid, and that they have no idea their relationships are unequal. All available data—including the plain fact that men generally have eyes and ears, that women frequently vocalize their discontent, and that anyone can see that someone is feeding the children—suggest otherwise. This insistence that aggressive reactions belie a deeper problem indicates that these coaches don’t take the problem seriously, and don’t actually understand the patriarchal dynamics at play.
Men know what is happening. They just pretend not to, because that’s a great way to escape accountability.
The reason these discussions cause a big fight is that household inequity is rooted in male entitlement. The belief that these big fights are rare is also rooted in male entitlement.
Wrapped up in this advice is the idea that household labor inequity is a relatively small issue, and that it tends not to co-occur with other issues. The reality is that to steal your partner’s labor, you have to dehumanize them. Which makes it very easy to react aggressively when they demand better.
He’s not a bumbling nice guy. He’s not a clueless feminist. He’s stealing from you.
Imagine any other scenario in which we advised theft victims to be patient, compliant, and understanding. Imagine any world in which we thought merely not stealing any more was enough.
In a truly feminist relationship, he will compensate you for what he has taken from you, take the problem seriously, and stop doing it.
Anything else is just bullshit designed to buy more time.
Your partner wants to do the right thing; he just needs you to teach him how
Did anyone teach you how to not starve your children?
How to not leave urine on the floor?
How to not exploit your partner?
A very good way to assess a man’s willingness to change is this: Is he willing to do the work on his own? Or does he insist you have to teach him?
Teaching men to be better is work. To tell women they must do this work, on top of all the other work they do, is inherently anti-feminist because it devalues women’s time and demands more self-sacrifice for men.
Live as I say, not as I do
If you spend a lot of time on these coaches’ social media pages, sooner or later a predictable theme emerges: they don’t have equitable relationships. They’ll talk about their “pre-vacation meltdown,” then use it as a segue to advice on getting husbands to participate in packing. They’ll talk about how “every mom” knows what it’s like to be up at 12AM wrapping presents while their husbands sleep. They’ll share how they gentle parent their husbands into getting them presents, sending thank-you cards, and not acting like abusive assholes. They’ll serve up the ridiculous scripts they use to avoid activating their husbands’ defensiveness about household chores.
Men who actually care about equity don’t get defensive on a regular basis. They don’t leave their wives sobbing about vacations, nor prance off on their own vacations without extending the same courtesy to their wives. They actually build equitable families.
These men are out there. It truly isn’t all men, because not all men despise and denigrate women, or see them as useful appliances. I know, because I married one. I didn’t create him. I didn’t gentle parent him into this. I was lucky enough to find him, and to know not to settle for anything less.
These men, though, are rare. The harsh reality is that if women raise their standards, most of us will be single. The problem isn’t women’s bad taste. It’s that they are fishing in a sea of garbage, then trying to turn the garbage into something worthwhile after the fact.
These coaches are not actually in equitable relationships. Which means they don’t know any better than the rest of us how to get men to stop exploiting women. If they did, then we would see a surge of egalitarian relationships. If there were a trick or strategy that actually worked, women would know it, because women work their assess off to improve their relationships, and they are desperate for household equity.
The strongest evidence that this is an issue of patriarchy, not communication or relationship skills, is that even the self-proclaimed experts can’t get their husbands to do a truly equitable share of anything.
It’s hard to accept that your husband loves patriarchy more than he loves you. It’s even harder to accept that he may be a bad father. Many women would rather scaffold their husbands forever than admit defeat. I get it. I’m not going to judge, because patriarchy is men’s fault, not women’s.
Staying with a man who mistreats you, though, does not qualify you to advise other women on how to have more feminist marriages. Before you follow the advice these coaches peddle, ask yourself: does she have the life and marriage I want? Or is she stuck in the same old garbage marriage most women have—maybe with a few small upgrades here and there?
So why are these coaches selling bad advice?
Men created patriarchy.
And I will never hold a woman accountable for the behavior of men. We are indoctrinated from birth to accept this system, and it takes a long time to deconstruct the bullshit we have been spoonfed. We are all at different points on our deconstruction journey, and many of us want to believe that selfish men can change, that change is easy, and that women can take the lead to change men.
I believe that these feminist coaches truly want the best for women. But as someone with a bit of public visibility—a mere fraction of what many of these coaches have—I can tell you from experience that public attention does funny things to your brain, especially when there is money attached. It becomes easy to confuse visibility with doing good: “The more eyes I can get on this page, by any means necessary, the more good I can do in the world.”
Positive feedback can become a drug, too. And telling everyone that men mean well and that women can train them to do better gets you a lot of positive feedback. Women want to believe their husbands can do better. Because the advice doesn’t work—because men’s bad behavior is rooted in patriarchal entitlement—the advice also gets a lot of repeat customers. This is probably why these coaches talk about a “journey,” and emphasize progress over perfection.
Most importantly, though, these women don’t want to perceive their husbands as entitled, sexist abusers. They’re projecting their own wishful thinking into their marriage.
They also want to see themselves as successful. This is one of patriarchy’s lies working overtime: the idea that good, worthy, successful, attractive women are able to earn good partnerships, and that a bad man is a reflection of his ignorant, undesirable, or unsuccessful wife.
Patriarchy attacks all women. Maybe if these coaches really considered that reality, they would be able to see their husbands for what they really are, and stop giving women advice that fails.
They’re signing a deal with patriarchy. They admit to the problem, give women some advice that’s unlikely to work, and promise not to rock the boat too much. Real integrity requires us to call the system what it is, then fight it head-on, no matter how unpopular it makes us or how much men dislike it. The face of feminism does not need to be a polished woman smiling and pretending her oppression is just fine, and she’s oh-so-fulfilled. It needs instead to be all of us coming together and claiming the power of our collective anger.
But there’s less, praise, money, and respect in that.
A quick editorial note: You’ll notice that I don’t name specific people here, and there is a reason for that. Men, not women, are responsible for creating sexism. These coaches are trying their best in an imperfect world, with imperfect information, and I think a lot of them get women halfway to where they need to be. The problem is that they don’t get women all the way there—and often cause them to blame themselves. Still, though, we don’t have to hate other women to disagree with them. A person can be wrong without being bad. And these coaches are wrong.
Zawn, thank you for your work. Your work and your writing is so validating! This article in particular. Please continue calling out all the BS women are taught under false ‘feminist’ pretense!
Something triggered me recently. I have an ex husband who, for many years, is stealing from me by not providing his share of parenting our child. He does a bare minimum - spends FEW days with our child (out of 365 days a year). I shared with my friend that I face few days I can fully dedicate to myself and what does she say … she implied that I am to be grateful to him for giving me a break. Sorry what????!!
There is so much shit that it being sold to us under the covers of being ‘grateful’. This really bothers me.
Excellent article! This right here is why I slowly "fell out of love" with my husband and I am now separated and heading toward a divorce. One of his big excuses for not doing more around the house is that we just have different standards of what is clean or not clean. But, if we invited people over to our house, he suddenly knew how to pick up and be tidy.