London - I suppose that as a card-carrying, man-mauling, moustache-twirling feminist, I should have dropped my blowtorch in sheer molten glee at the news that, over the past 30 years, men have upped their housework contribution about 60 percent, according to a new survey from Oxford University.
Instead, I thought, “Poor emasculated swine - now that's two genders rather than one who've been domesticated. Whoop de doo!”
All I can hope is that men will: a) do their domestic dirty business when alone; and b) not talk about it afterwards. If they fail to observe these niceties, chances are that even more women than usual are going to be suffering mysterious headaches which only come on when the sun goes down. Someone fussing about housework is highly sexually unappetising - almost as unappetising as someone who lives in domestic squalor.
The secret of successful housework is to do it quickly, do it alone and don't brag about it afterwards - a bit like masturbation. I daresay there is the odd weirdo who likes the idea of watching someone skivvying for them, but they're probably the sort of frigid half-wit who gets all worked up watching Downton Abbey.
Me, I don't like seeing women clean, I don't like seeing men clean and I especially don't like seeing cleaners clean. When I had a big house, I got round the last one by making my cleaner drink blue cocktails by my swimming pool and paying her for that instead; I eventually promoted her to the role of best friend and moved to a loft, thus putting myself out of the Lady Muck/domestic help scenario altogether.
It's a fact of life that a certain type of married woman, having gone off sex with her husband, will moan that she's “too tired” to do the deed because of all the back-breaking domestic labour she is all but crushed by the burden of. (Clue that it's not her, it's you: she won't be too tired to go out on the razz with her mates on a Friday night or to drag you to the garden centre on Saturday morning.) The poor sap promptly straps on a pinny and gets scrubbing and next thing you know, she comes up with the new excuse that she can't fancy him anymore now he's a lady-man. Just cut it off, why don't you!
My Swedish friend Cristina told me decades ago about a good part of a generation of men in her home country whose name translated to English as The Velour Daddies, “because they stay at home all day looking after the baby, on paternity leave, and they wear velour tracksuits so when the baby is sick on it, they can just bung it in the washing machine. And the wife gets so bored with this, she is off having sex with Finnish men, who are not tamed.”
You don't have to be a raving neanderthal to think that the idea of having a “house-husband” would be only marginally preferable to having a house-infestation; smart, tough people want smart, tough people, not some parasite poncing about at home with nothing to talk about at the end of the day.
I would no more respect a woman who made a man into a domestic dogsbody than the other way around, and as for cooking, I'd rather eat my own cellulite than let my husband cook for me. Or as I said to him, “If you need to do it, just don't tell me about it afterwards, and don't do it with anyone I know. And don't write a book about it...” - The Independent