By David Futrelle
Fellas! Watch out! Women will do anything to trap men into marrying them — including baking!
I learned this today in the Men Going Their Own Way subreddit.
![Bronzeraptor 2 points 7 hours ago
True story:
While dating, my wife used to be into baking and I would get a ton of baked goods to eat. Once rings went on her finger, suddenly she wasn't interested in baking anymore. "It's too much work.." "We don't have the space..", etc. The wave of excuses continued
It's just a trap my bro
[–]jws755[S] 1 point 5 hours ago
My ex did the same prior to the wedding. The baked goods and blowjobs both ended about a year after the honeymoon.](https://i2.wp.com/wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/yrftuvygibu.png?fit=600%2C694&ssl=1)
You’re just sitting there enjoying an endless stream of pies and cupcakes and freshly baked bread and the next thing you know you’re stuck in a loveless marriage without even a dinner roll to your name.
THAT’S HOW THEY GET YOU.
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@Moon Custafer:
I still have The I Hate To Cook Book, along with its followup The I Hate To Housekeep Book; this recipe from the latter was a favorite at our house:
WIENERINOS (1):
You’ll need a slice of French bread or plain bread per customer.
Toast the slices on one side only. On the other side, spread, in this order:
plain yellow hot-dog mustard
chopped green onions
a good big dollop of canned beans
(any kind—tomato sauce-style or New England; they can be hot from the double boiler if you like, but it’s not necessary)
a good chunk of cheese
(Cheddar, Swiss, or what-have-you)
2 or 3 strips of uncooked bacon (2)
Slide them under the broiler, four of five inches front the heating element or flame, until the bacon is done.
(The chapter title is, “Dinner Will Be Ready As Soon As I Decide What We’re Having.”)
(1) I’ve taken the liberty of renaming it because a Google search implies that the original name, “Beanerinos”, has since become an anti-Latinx slur–and for another reason below:
(2) My family substituted hot dogs sliced into medallions for the bacon.
@Lainy
I’m sorry to hear that you were triggered. How’re you doing now?
@Full Metal Ox:
Bracken also did a pretty good etiquette guide called I Try to Behave Myself.
Dalillama:
There’s a bit of both. Kullervo was initially enslaved and raised by his uncle Untamo – the narrative is highly inconsistent on what exactly happened to his parents and how and when he lost contact with them. There’s certainly pent-up anger over the loss and exploitation, though it looks rather like simple social dysfunction from a rough childhood. Kullervo was already a grown up, difficult to manage slave when he was sold (for a comically low price) to smith Ilmarinen and his mistress.
The connection to Ilmarinen and his trophy wife was Lönnrot’s own addition when he composed the Kalevala – I think in original folklore narrative there was just a generic, unnamed evil farm wife (or possibly Untamo’s wife, or Untamo himself cast as the bullying boss). IIRC, the dread of “women’s laughter” also comes up in other storylines.
Naglfar: OK, how does one insert block quotes? I’m using a borrowed iPad, so there may be limitations here on what I can do – there certainly are in other forums. (I also can’t figure out how to include italics – other than in my e-mails.)
And yes, of course plenty of women never wanted to be housewives. Plus the fact that women who don’t really want children shouldn’t have them, so a childfree (not childless) woman really shouldn’t expect a spouse to support her as a housewife in that case. How many modern breadwinners WANT to support a CF homemaker/spouse?
But there’s a big difference between society’s saying “girls shouldn’t be pushed into a lifestyle they don’t want” and society’s putting down unpaid, menial work as a choice that needs to be discouraged for young women.
The real problem, IMO, was that too many women in their 20s, then and now, thought they were somehow entitled to stop working for pay and insist that Prince Charmings appear out of nowhere. As if they could just wish away the possibility of death, divorce, mass layoffs, terrible accidents, or chronic diseases. (Not to mention that housewives with small children often get little sleep, so that scenario won’t exactly feel like a fairy tale when it happens.)
Whereas any woman who wanted to be a nurse or a teacher already KNEW she’d never get rich that way and that it would be hard work. So while there was feminist criticism of “pink-collar” jobs, it wasn’t nearly as intense. (Plus, I have never heard any girl, in real life or even fiction, say “I want to be a professional housecleaner when I grow up!” A nanny or something similar, maybe, but one could say there’s far more fun in being a nanny.)
Finally, society would have quite a bit of contempt for any young man who complained that all he wanted to do as an adult was keep house but not take care of children – and never get a paying job. So what’s the difference? In a world where more and more men with good jobs are realizing that they have a right to say no to fatherhood if they wish, that means fewer women have ANY hope of becoming full-time housewives, and even if they do, it will mean having no real control over their own lives.
(Unlike, say, pursuing a lucrative Hollywood career. Most people fail at that when they try, but those who get lucky can save their money if they’re smart – and run their own lives.)
@Lenona
Do you see a button that says “quote” above the comment box? Press that button, paste your quote, then press it again. Or paste your quote, select it, and press the “quote” button.
If the button isn’t visible, type <blockquote> before your quote and </blockquote> after it.
I’m not sure there would be contempt for him. Plenty of men don’t get jobs and live off of inherited money if they’re very wealthy.
I don’t think feminists are pushing girls to think that they shouldn’t be housewives if they want to. Feminism is about women having rights, not telling women what to do. All the feminists I know are fine with women being homemakers (or men, for that matter), so long as it’s a choice.
And the latter idea is definitely not a feminist idea.
@Victorious
I vomited, but I’m better now.
@Lenona
Yeah, and when I was a little girl i wanted to be a vampire. But then i grew up and figured out that wasn’t possible so now i teach ballet classes and am wateriest. Part of going into adulthood is having realistic expectation for your life. A lot of kids might want to be president when their little, but guess what, only one president. So yeah, some people might want to be a fucking nanny even though you seem to think it’s something their forced into. My good friend knew from the time she was 9 that she wanted to be a special edds teacher because of how poor special edd kids are treated. because guess what. Some people love kids, some people love being around kids but have no desire to have their own. Some people want to spend their lives helping children. So nanny, daycare worker, grade school teachers, and so on. Hell i bought my car with the money i made off baby sitting in highschool because I loved it so much and the kids loved me.
Also your erasing disabled couples pretty hard that might have to “support” their partner.
I’m Gen X and AFAB, and I certainly never got that message. Who is pushing it onto millennials? I suspect “nobody” and this is a problem that doesn’t exist. I’ve always known that I need to work for a living, and for millennials the situation is dire if all members of a household are not working. Millennials, married and partnered and otherwise, are putting off having children because they literally can’t afford them. Who is telling all these air-headed young ladies that they can expect to be a childfree homemaker and that’s a real thing that is likely to happen to them?
This is not a thing in my world, and I suspect it’s not a thing in anybody’s world, and you’re just inventing a problem that isn’t there.
@policy of maddness
Something they are apparently really good at.
Also, there are absolutely children for whom being a house cleaner is the most lucrative job they can realistically see themselves getting. If you’ve never had the “pleasure” of hearing a child lowball their life trajectory, you’re incredibly privileged.
Since many people that are professional housecleaners own their own businesss, I personally don’t see what is wrong with girls wanting to be housecleaners or caretakers when they grow up. Some people REALLY like to clean. I don’t, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not a valuable skill for those that do, or that housecleaners won’t be successful in life.
The same generalization can’t really be said about housewives though. It’s not that it’s a bad thing to do, just that it’s really risky, and makes women vulnerable to abusive partners. Again, not automatically bad, just something to go onto with eyes wide open.
OT
‘She was the aggressor’: Former Liberty student alleges sexual encounter with Becki Falwell
A former student at the evangelical university opens up about a 2008 incident with the wife of the school’s president.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/27/becki-falwell-affair-liberty-university-student-band-jerry-402559
And it actually sounds more like oral rape than a “sexual encounter.”
News for yesterday make me very anxious. Between the lionization of that asshole who crossed state line to kill two protesters, and a videogame opening with far right conspiracy footage, things look a lot grimer suddenly 😡
Wait… I’m asexual, happily single, not interested in getting married and sometimes I bake tiny cakes and I bring them to work so everyone can enjoy them at coffee time.
Do my male coworkers really believe I want to lure them into marriage?!!
I’m sorry, when was this supposedly happening, and amongst whom?
@Lenona, in what social class is it/has it ever been the case that young women (are told to) expect not to work (over and above being expected/obliged to do all or nearly all the domestic work)? In paractice, often 24/7 to enable the wage-earner to make a profit for the actual owner of assets, of course.
Sure there are rich rentiers who don’t work – a tiny fraction of the population, who own a huge fraction of the wealth – but those wealth-owners are overwhelmingly men.
Your comment sounds like some sort of odd echo of the bonbons fantasy, and we know how completely divorced from reality that is.
Multiple people have already addressed directly the issue with Lenona’s comments, so I won’t go there. However, this does remind me of the last incident with this particular commenter, where they invented some new issue with teens and one night stands, or the issue of stumbling onto railway tracks while drunk. This seems to be a bit of a modus operandi: make up an issue that doesn’t exist except in the imaginations of conservatives, ramble about how feminists need to solve it, then leave without actually addressing people’s comments.
@Ohlmann
Wait, which video game? 😮
One of my younger sisters is a professional housecleaner. She used to be a kindergarten teacher. She doesn’t miss classroom teaching (which I suspect is her polite way of saying she doesn’t miss certain kinds of parents), and her side hustle is teaching yoga to kids at our other sister’s yoga studio. I have no idea how much she makes, but she’s happy and she supports herself and her two daughters, keeping them safe from their father/her ex-husband.
We’re an interesting bag of daughters. Two of us are healthcare professionals (myself and Dr. Baby Sister Vet) and the other two own their own businesses (housecleaning and yoga).
Ah, found the video game in question. Bloody hell.
https://www.kotaku.co.uk/2020/08/28/call-of-duty-trailer-recklessly-promotes-far-right-conspiracy-theory
This is actually quite horrifying.
@Cyborgette
Sadly I can’t say I’m surprised. I’ve never played Call of Duty, but from what I know it’s always been full of conservative military fetishization. Although the Kotaku article says it’s reckless, I am pretty sure this wasn’t an accident or mistake. It’s a calculated move to pander to a right wing conspiracy theorist base.
Where are these masses of young women who don’t think they have to work or even don’t want to work? There will always be the one person here or there. But one person here or there proves nothing. As for society mocking men who want to be homemakers, I know a couple of stay at home dads, not a lot but they do exist. And even in Texas, people don’t think much of it at all. Like “Oh ok” and everyone moves on about their lives.
@Some Chick in Texas
Presumably the same place where teens can never have one night stands and the main risk of drinking is railroads. And where teens listen to those lines of argument.
Oh for fucks sakes, this idea that only rich women “drop out” of the workforce in the US is a fantasy that needs to go die in some dumpsterfire. Stay at home moms today are more likely to be brown, more likely to be disabled, and unfortunately much more likely to be poor. Statistics show that it’s the working women that are more likely to be well off, white and privileged.
Who else do you think could afford a $600 a week childcare bill?
@opposablethumbs
I would say at least since the later part of the industrial revolution until second wave feminism took hold. Childcare has always been an issue for working mothers, but even besides that, a housewife was some American Dream status symbol that all groups should strive for. @barf@
Unless our men needed us for some war effort. Then we suddenly we should work outside the home, but only until all the men come home, that is.
What’s that saying; it’s called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it?
Oh great. Another bloody Call of Dude-T game.
Still, at least it’s two Christmas presents sorted.