Men Vs. Women

Do you think men are superior to women?

I have a big issue with someone telling me:

The man builds the house and the woman keeps the house.

My feeling on the issue:
If he holds me to "traditional roles" then he should be held to them too. That means he is the primary bread winner. I stay home and take care of the kids /house. Tend the school functions and so on. Working outside of the home is up to me, and the money is not for primary bills.

However, if we are both working and making around the same income then he needs to help with the "woman stuff" (house / kids). No reason that only one person should tend to the house/kids if both work 8-10 hours a day and share equal responsibility with the bills.

Women get tired too.

Why does he lose a responsibility because he can not be the main provider (due to changing times with higher cost of living), but the woman is supposed to add a responsibility (work=providing / home).

Yes I know woman are wonderful, but give us a break!

One more thing? What is with the whole house help in Kenya (or East Africa)?
I may be wrong, but it reminds me of indentured servants. Sounds like oppression to me.
(I think I need Okie on that one for a true view regarding house help.)

[okiedokes]

Girl, you've raised many issues so I'll try to address them one at a time.
I don't believe men and women are equal, at least in the eyes of society. But I'm of the opinion that men and women should have equal rights when it comes to issues like reproductive rights, wages, careers, house chores, etc. Personally, I don't care about being equal to a man, I just want to be shown the respect, love, etc that I show him. I also want to have rights over what I do with my body(thank God for Roe v. Wade), voting, equal pay rights, etc.

It is worth nothing that even today in the US, women make 77 cents for every dollar a man makes eventhough they are doing the same job. That is unfair. It is one reason I'm supporting Sen. Obama for Prez. because he supports 'equal pay for equal work' while McCain has voted against it 3 times.

About being the breadwinner, I don't think that should exclude a spouse from helping out in the home. Full-time housewives have a lot more work on their hands than those who work outside the home. According to research data, men contribute an average of 7 hours of extra work per week. Add that to children and you get what I'm talking about.

If I as the woman was the breadwinner, I would expect the man to carry his own weight by helping around the house but I will help him with it a little. There are some chores that I enjoy doing like cooking, so it's something I'll always do regardless. I think a marriage/relationship should be a partnership of sorts. Both spouses should be willing to step in and help each other when need be.

About house helps, it depends how they are treated by their employer. As long as they are treated well, I don't see it as a form of oppression. They voluntarily take on these jobs to help their families just like the live-in nannies and house keepers in the US. Ofcourse some of them are oppresed by their employers but that happens in the US as well. For instance, some of them are lured into industrial nations(Europe, US) with the promise of good jobs but are then forced into prostitution or human slavery.

[keny@n]

Originally Posted by sugarnspice

one more thing? what is with the whole house help in kenya (or east africa)?
i may be wrong, but it reminds me of indentured servants. Sounds like oppression to me. (i think i need okie on that one for a true view regarding house help.)

KENYAN'S ARE SLAVE DRIVERS FOR SURE:
since somebody already wrote this on some blog, i'll just paste it:

it is common knowledge that many housemaids in genteel middle class nairobi are never paid a wage; it is their parents, or ‘auntie’ who receives the pittance that they are owed every month.
Anyone who has lived or visited the city for any length of time also knows that it is not uncommon to have ten-year olds doing the washing, cleaning and cooking for an entire family while enduring a steady diet of slaps and kicks.
And i do not exaggerate when i point to the high frequency of maid rape in many households. If you ask your typical nairobi ‘babi’ or middle class boy what his first sexual encounter was, he will spin a tall tale about the ‘older girl who lived just up the road’. Wrong.
The first encounter, and the second and the third, is more often than not with the maid. She is shared among the boys in the house, their friends in the neighbourhood sometimes and very often the man of the house who after dropping off the kids and wife to school in the mornings, will sneak back for a quick one. T
his sexual access is usually procured forcefully with the implicit threat that for the maid to resist will result in instant dismissal.
Here’s a little clue for hiv/aids health workers who decry the transmission of the disease from philandering husband to wife: it is the maid who is at the centre of a domestic sexual web that runs through the sons and their father, not to mention any other lovers she may take.
This is of course not to blame her, it is to recognise that the helplessness that attends many maids – relentlessly mistreated, isolated from friends and family, and economically disempowered – exposes them to the malign actions of a class of people whose upward aspiration is often marked with a immense contempt for their ‘inferiors’.

grabbed from: the slavery in our midst: the nairobi house maid « african bullets & honey also:

"it is common whenever kenyan women are talking, the conversation will go to house girls, and it's usually negative," murogo said.
The relationship between the "woman of the house" and the "house girl" is a complicated one. On the one hand, women want and need the help to run the household, but at the same time, having another woman in the house taking care of the family is also seen as a threat.
The result is that domestic workers are dehumanized, often considered possessions of the family rather than employees. "the house help is like something to use," murogo said. "i know people who lock their help in during the day, who don't give them any days off, who pay as little as 1,500 kenyan shillings [$23] per month, much lower than the minimum wage."

from:
abc news: a hidden industry: mistreatment plagues kenya's domestic workers

Originally Posted by okiedokes

Girl, you've raised many issues so I'll try to address them one at a time.
I don't believe men and women are equal, at least in the eyes of society. But I'm of the opinion that men and women should have equal rights when it comes to issues like reproductive rights, wages, careers, house chores, etc. Personally, I don't care about being equal to a man, I just want to be shown the respect, love, etc that I show him. I also want to have rights over what I do with my body(thank God for Roe v. Wade), voting, equal pay rights, etc.

It is worth nothing that even today in the US, women make 77 cents for every dollar a man makes eventhough they are doing the same job. That is unfair. It is one reason I'm supporting Sen. Obama for Prez. because he supports 'equal pay for equal work' while McCain has voted against it 3 times.

About being the breadwinner, I don't think that should exclude a spouse from helping out in the home. Full-time housewives have a lot more work on their hands than those who work outside the home. According to research data, men contribute an average of 7 hours of extra work per week. Add that to children and you get what I'm talking about.

If I as the woman was the breadwinner, I would expect the man to carry his own weight by helping around the house but I will help him with it a little. There are some chores that I enjoy doing like cooking, so it's something I'll always do regardless. I think a marriage/relationship should be a partnership of sorts. Both spouses should be willing to step in and help each other when need be.

About house helps, it depends how they are treated by their employer. As long as they are treated well, I don't see it as a form of oppression. They voluntarily take on these jobs to help their families just like the live-in nannies and house keepers in the US. Ofcourse some of them are oppresed by their employers but that happens in the US as well. For instance, some of them are lured into industrial nations(Europe, US) with the promise of good jobs but are then forced into prostitution or human slavery.

Okie, I changed my question to are men superior. I have been asking this among my family and friend as well. I notice when I say equal, people think in biological terms.


Thanks for your response. I like that you think either way the person who works outside of the home should help the stay at home parent (atleast a little bit). I have been getting responses (from men) that we should do all the housework plus hold a job.
Housework/parenting is a never ending job with a lot of work.

[mo-uk]

This is one of those never ending resentments!

Personally, I don't have regard of the idea of one gender's superiority than another but a problem always arises when one feels the other gender is acting or thinking they're superior. Women are better than men in some area such as cooking e.t.c, and Men are vice versa. Males hold some advantage so do females but Because how we think about and evaluate each side psychologically shapes our response to them. It is based in deep-seated cultural beliefs in male superiority in every society but that's matter of no important as long as women belief they're superior too in their own unique way. In my personal opinion, Sexual (Gender) identity is responsible for genderized power and each side is superior in their own way. Plain and simple!

However, If women belief male domination will be eliminated by challenging them and trying to do everything they can like most feminist do in most cases, they would definately end up in disaster. Each gender should stick to their own power gender and let loose focusing what the other gender is doing. females should focus on beauty emotional, and seduction as their source of feminine power..male superiority linked to male physical strength and power. Ladies don't think about Power if you think it's the theme of superiority cause it belongs to male.LOL

[nat89]

Haven't we done this before and established that women are equal to men in this day and age; And in the future to come?

[grip_daddy]

My life was easy. My job easy. My affairs easy.

All was easy until, until I played fair and employed some idiots around the office. Women are idiots, nothing less.

[nyira]

We might be equal,but are different in many ways.

On the issue of maids,I think women fail terribly and in most cases they are the worst molesters of maids.You find when the husband comes from work,its the maid who opens the door for him,(and she can't fail to smile),she prepares warm water for him to bathe,warms the food and presents it to him while the wife orders things around.Will the man fail to feel for this maid?.And they wonder how the husband got attracted to the maid!

[Jay-R]

Originally Posted by nyira

We might be equal,but are different in many ways.

On the issue of maids,I think women fail terribly and in most cases they are the worst molesters of maids.You find when the husband comes from work,its the maid who opens the door for him,(and she can't fail to smile),she prepares warm water for him to bathe,warms the food and presents it to him while the wife orders things around.Will the man fail to feel for this maid?.And they wonder how the husband got attracted to the maid!

These r some of those tired lines that r used to legitimise sleeping with maids that need to b put to rest....the unfortunate thing is that they come from women....

You dont f*uck the maid simply because she smiled at u.....no..no

You r apparently not an island and anywhere u go u shall find people who seemingly treat u better than ua spouse .....does that mean u go f*ucking those too....

The maid is doing her job (read she is not a sex object at ua disposal).....for heavens sake try n excercise some self control.....otherwise u go fu*cking anything that smiles at u.....aghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh......this is so pissing..