If we were married, DJ, it might well be an option. I don't want to fucking stay home. You stay home and make sure you're looking handsome when I get back, offer me dinner, clean up my messes without ever being able to tell me to do simple stuff that would make your life easier, mend my clothes, shine my shoes, raise my children so I don't have to think about them, and leave alone my "woman cave" so that I've got privacy. Oh, and we have sex when I want to, and you have to beg off. And I'll leverage the fact that I make money and you don't whenever I feel like it, so that you constantly feel beholden to me and belittled.
(Somewhat based on what's seen in my own little family, of course
My mom is a stay-at-home mother, because she's pretty much too disabled and uneducated to get anything above minimum wage)
Let's see, financial and reproductive freedom, not constantly hearing rape jokes as an immediate threat to my own integrity, not being literally greeted to college with reference to rape rates, being the majority in my major of choice, having my opinion be the "objective" "unbiased" opinion, not being told to man up. Seeing myself in a wide variety of roles, with a wide variety of body types, being the hero, being the scientist, being the rationalist, and being able to quiet another half of the population with a wink at hysteria or irrationality or any of those other dog whistles that remind us that "hey, you, you're a little bit less important than I am." I'll take the kudos if I feel like helping out with the kids, rather than having it seen as my primary responsibility and the main reason for my existence. I'll take having it called "babysitting" and the inevitable compliments for being "soooo helpful." I'll take clothes that fit with little fuss and being the default gender, the assumed subject of discussion. I'll take being seen as a responsible go-getter, the one who knows how to work a job, the one whose salary is earned (not with sexual attraction but with aggressive rhetoric) and the one who gets to be in charge. I'll take being the brilliant inventor, the genius, the creative force, the creator of "seminal" works and author of "muscular" prose.
I want to exist! I don't want to disappear.
To be the sacrificial lamb in a country that glorifies self-sacrifice and denigrates those who stay home? Yes, I'll take it. To be mutilated once at birth and never again, to live without the demand for my own starvation and endless bodily self-sacrifice until I disappear from the scene when I'm no longer fuckable or a mommy--yes, I'll take it. What's a couple more years living, for the privilege of being visible for your entire life?
None of this bullshit about getting doors opened for me and how it's such a huge fucking privilege. I'm a woman. I persistently hold the door for my date.
I fucking HATE being a woman. I have always hated being a woman. It's not that I'm transgendered or whatever. But this deal is especially bad for me, who I am, whatever. I know women who are happy with their lot, because they honestly want to get married and have lots of babies and be chaste until the wedding. But I'm. . . not.
And I know men who want to coordinate color swatches and be submissive and have access to their feelings (whereas I, for most of my life, have been accused of being stone-cold--and for a man, would probably only be seen as slightly too emotional and temperamental), and this isn't fair to them, either.
But there is something that is the truth: help women out of their position and you will help men out of theirs. If we no longer see everything feminine as bad (yet still an ideal to which a woman must cleave), then men will receive more flexibility.
Lots of guys work long hours because they have domestic problems. I for one, had a relationship where i preferred the time at work to the time at home, less stress. And my work at the time was dealing with constant customer complaints for an extremely large and unpopular telco.
And you control the amount of time together, because your workplace isn't the home. This sort of thing is what I envy. Housewives don't have the option of working longer hours to keep away.
It's supply and demand - guys want it, the girls have it, so the guy will jump through hoops to get it. The girls are clearly smart enough to definitely be onto this.
As men are about the fact that they're wage earners. But I think part of the problem here is that the feminine illusion constitutes always being pleasing and happy, whereas the male illusion constitutes always being in charge. So you don't hear about the daily grind for women--and it is truly a daily grind, not the pleasure-fest women necessarily pretend it is. It's fucking hard work. And we don't hear about male weakness, and male submission.
You know, there's a reason why we have a saying: "beauty is pain."