'I'm the provider!' How abusive men weaponize having a job
A job is a basic requirement he'd have to meet whether or not he was married. So why do so many abusive men romanticize having a job?
It’s the silly retort I see most often on women’s posts about their marriages, and on feminist content generally:
“Bet he’s out providing right now while she posts this!”
“She’s lucky to have a provider so she can stay at home and do nothing!”
“Try being a provider, ladies, then you’ll know real work.”
The misogynist project is so intellectually bankrupt that it has to manufacture a fake world to argue about the real one. Misogynist men have to pretend that no women work, and that marriage is the only reason men have to work. Somehow, in a world without women, men would never have to have jobs.
The reality is that the overwhelming majority of mothers work outside the home. In fact, almost as many mothers as fathers work.
My readers tell me their husbands lean hard on their jobs as an excuse for not pulling their weight at home and with the kids. In fact, it’s the most common excuse readers cited in my last survey on the topic.
Weirdly, men weaponized their jobs even when the woman worked, even when the woman was the breadwinner, and even when the woman worked and the man did not. In this bizarre world devoid of facts, a man gets to lean on being a provider even when he provides literally nothing.
So what is going on here? And why is this transparently silly retort so effective and popular?
This is part of a series of bonus content for paid subscribers in which I address some of the weapons men use to deflect blame and avoid accountability. Previous pieces in this series have included:
“We just have different parenting styles: How men escape accountability for bad parenting”
The weapons men use in fights: “You’re never satisfied with anything!”
The arguments sexist men use in fights—and what they really mean
The most important tool men use to maintain household labor inequality
The weapons men use in fights: “You’re so controlling! Stop policing me!”
You can find the whole series here.
I also talk about the ways we gaslight women into thinking inequality and abuse are their own fault in this series.