Most (heterosexual) impose
‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ roles on same-sex couples when it comes to
housework. It’s time to unpacks
gender stereotypes, sexuality and the chore gap
What do gay women do in the bedroom?
It is a conundrum, I have found, that seems to weigh heavily on many an
inquiring heterosexual mind. Who makes the bed, for example? Who folds the
laundry? Who pulls out the drill to hang a picture?
A new study presented at the Annual
Meeting of the American Sociological Association, found that when it comes to
same-sex couples, most people believe the “more masculine” partner and the
“more feminine” partner should be responsible for stereotypically male and
female chores. The study also found that people were more likely to consider
there to be a distinct “man” and a “woman” in lesbian relationships than they were
when it came to gay male couples. Probably, you know, because the idea of there
being no male presence at all in a relationship is utterly unfathomable.
I’ve spent most of my relationship
years in same-sex relationships. During this time many a moron has asked me
“who is the man?” Normally I have ignored these people. However, this study
made me rethink my views. If there’s a way to get out of doing the cooking and
cleaning, I’m interested. And if that means having to proclaim yourself “the
man” in a relationship, then so be it.
But how does one even figure out who
the more feminine or masculine person in a relationship is? Physical appearance
is obviously a major factor in how people initially pigeonhole you.
Interestingly, however, the ASA study didn’t touch on physical appearance at
all. Rather it asked people to look at vignettes describing fictional couples.
The study introduced stereotypically gendered traits via interests (for
example, a preference for action movies versus romcoms) and then asked
participants to assign household chores to each couple. (It should be noted
that the survey responses came from a nationally representative. These people
were 92% heterosexual, so responses don’t necessarily reflect how LGB people
think.)
For example, one of the vignettes
concerned a couple called Amy and Jennifer. Respondents were told that Amy (a
reporter) and Jennifer (a physical therapist) worked the same hours, but
Jennifer makes more than double Amy’s salary. On the weekend “Amy usually wants
to play basketball if they are going out, or watch an action movie if they are
staying in. Instead, Jennifer would rather go shopping or watch a romantic
comedy.” Because she liked romcom and shopping, most people decided Jennifer
was the woman in the relationship, which meant she did the stereotypically
woman’s work.
So was I an Amy or a Jennifer? After
considered analysis I decided my enthusiasm for the Fast and the Furious
franchise made me more of an Amy. But what about my girlfriend? Could she be an
Amy too? How would sociology deal with that? I promptly texted my girlfriend
with the Amy/Jennifer preferred-activity quiz. “I just really feel like I can’t
be defined in a multiple-choice format,” she replied. This is typical of the
way in which women can never give you a straight answer and a very Jennifer
thing to say. Ergo, according to the court of heterosexual opinion, she should
be doing more grocery shopping. Phew!
Research suggests that gay couples
have more equal relationships and share more childcare responsibilities
The ASA isn’t the first organisation
to conduct a study like this. Research suggests that same-sex couples have more
equal relationships than their heterosexual counterparts and share more
childcare responsibilities. Nevertheless one person still tends to end up doing
more of the chores. When I quizzed a number of my gay
friends about their allocation of household tasks, some noted that they’ve sometimes found themselves
slipping into stereotypically Amy/Jennifer situations. “When I’ve dated girly
girls I find myself feeling more masculine, inclined to hold the door, pick up
the check more, etc,” noted H. “I think gender roles are similar to sexuality,”
said M. “It’s fluid and can change based on the person you are dating at the
time.”
Sometimes your gender role can also
change based on the task at hand. My friend V notes that she often jokingly
plays up being the femme one in her relationship in order to avoid taking the
garbage out.
Ultimately I think Judith Butler had
the last sensible word on all of this. “Gay is to straight not as copy is to
original, but, rather, as copy is to copy,” she famously wrote. In other words
it doesn’t matter where you are on the sexuality spectrum – all gender is
performance. While some feminists have seen butch/femme dynamics as regressive
– a misguided reflection of heterosexual norms – Butler views this performance
as effectively unveiling just how constructed heterosexuals norms are in the
first place. After all, once you start unpacking the mental process of figuring
out who is best suited to take out the trash based on who’d rather watch Fast 7
or Love Actually, it’s hard not to realize that maybe the idea of “feminine”
chores and “masculine” chores is really a lot of nonsense.
There is still a huge chore gap in
heterosexual America; one that has barely closed in the last 10 years. If
housework is finally going to become more equally allocated among straight
couples then perhaps the best thing for everyone to do would be to sit down
with their partners and have a long discussion about whether they’re an “Amy”
or a “Jennifer”. By the end even the most hardened essentialist might be
convinced that gender isn’t just a performance – sometimes it’s a farce.
