A Letter to Post Contributor Jelena Kecmanovic About Her Article on “Cognitive Labor”
Another warped feminist idea rooted in the myth of a "gender housework gap"
Dear Ms. Kecmanovic,
As a brief introduction, I’ve been a lifelong reader of The Washington Post who has long noticed the paper’s feminist bias, provable by its imbalanced coverage of domestic violence1 and made undeniable by its 2018 publication of the op-ed Why can't we hate men? Since then, I’ve been sending letters to Post columnists who have written articles that perpetuate this bias.
Your article, Being CEO of the household is weighing women down, is yet another example of the Post’s feminist bias.
Please don’t misunderstand. Your article doesn’t come close to the undeniable gender bigotry of the “Why can’t we hate men?” op-ed from 2018, but it’s an example of the kind of daily, run-of-the-mill, feminist-inspired gender propaganda that is so prevalent not only the Washington Post, but throughout most of Western media.
It and many, many thousands of similar articles that have appeared in newspapers and magazines for the past six decades collectively have, to borrow a quote from your article, “poisoned the water that both men and women all drink”.
Ms. Kecmanovic, you’re roughly the age of my three children, young enough to have lived your entire life under feminism, so I can understand how, with little original thought you have simply regurgitated a feminist perspective, not recognizing that “cognitive labor” is just one more fictional feminist rationalization about how women are constant victims of sex discrimination.
As one reddit commenter aptly summarized a similar feminist complaint, “emotional labor”,
“When you have to make up new concepts to describe the way that you're actually a victim, you're pretty much making it clear that your life isn't all that bad.”
The Root of Cognitive Labor: The Gender Housework Gap
As suggested under the “Stalled progress” section of your article, both cognitive and its feminist sister, emotional labor, are rooted in the “gender housework gap”, a long-running complaint by feminists that women do the lion’s share of work around the home.
Unfortunately, this feminist portrayal of unequal work done by husbands and wives is fundamentally a lie, providing a one-sided depiction of the division of labor between partners, where men’s share of the work is often either minimized or deliberately overlooked altogether.
Before you continue to complain about cognitive labor, you really need to examine how distorted the feminist depiction of a gender housework gap truly is.
You could start by reviewing my short examination on the subject, The Division of Labor in American Marriages, which shows how:
Many surveys about housework misrepresent or even ignore facts:
“Who does more housework, men or women? There are many informal surveys and also a large academic literature on the subject. Care is needed because many surveys are clearly skewed.” 2
Feminists ignore inconvenient facts that don’t support their worldview:
“When comparing combined work both inside and outside the home, the average man worked sixty-one hours per week, the average woman fifty-six” 3
Feminists often exclude traditionally male jobs:
“Other activities such as home repairs, mowing the lawn, and shoveling snow were not in the study. ‘Items such as gardening are usually viewed as more enjoyable; the focus here is on core housework’.” 4
Men are often automatically assigned by wives the “icky”, traditionally male jobs like taking out the trash
Much of “inside work” done by wives is “non-essential”, while “outside work” done by husbands is “essential”
You should follow this by reading a book by former NY NOW member Warren Farrell, Women Can't Hear what Men don't Say: Destroying Myths, Creating Love, which lists 54 categories of chores that men do more than women that are usually excluded by the feminist portrayal of “housework”.
Among these 54 categories are the following:
Activities most likely to break an arm, leg, or neck, or to crack a skull: In your relationship, who climbs tall ladders or checks out the roof? For example, who uses ladders to do house painting (e.g., reaching for a spot we’ve missed that’s too far away on a homemade scaffold on a windy day), or to clean outside windows; or to go into the attic? Who shovels wet snow off a roof to avoid roof damage, resulting in many men slipping off the roof every winter?
Activities most likely to trigger heart attacks: Shoveling snow off a driveway or sidewalk; pushing a car that’s out of gas off a crowded street into the gas station.
Assembly: Mail-order products, toys, bikes, furniture, bookcases, beds; putting up kids’ plastic pools, backyard tents.
Car buying, maintenance, and repair: These aren’t normally considered “housework”, but surely should be included as part of husbands’ contribution, right?
Bill paying, financial and retirement planning: Although women are capable of doing these tasks, in most cases the responsibility falls to husbands.
Finally, feminists completely ignore the male job of “protector”, or unpaid bodyguard:
“What would you pay someone who agreed that, if he was ever with you when you were attacked, he would intervene and try to get himself killed slowly enough to give you time to escape? What is the hourly wage for a bodyguard? You know that is your job as a man— every time you are with a woman . . . any woman, not just your wife.”5
So, Ms. Kecmanovic, for your next article, may I suggest that you examine the job of unpaid bodyguard that automatically comes with the role of “husband”?
Would that be fair?
Sincerely,
Stephen Bond,
Publisher of "Letters to The Washington Post" Substack
My observation was confirmed by a February 2023 report by The Coalition to End Domestic Violence that described a 10-Year Suppression of the Truth on Domestic Violence by the Washington Post.
For example, one study surveyed only women and included 54 chores of which almost all were traditional "housewife tasks". – The Empathy Gap: Male Disadvantages and the Mechanisms of Their Neglect
Journal of Economic Literature, 1991 (as cited in The Myth of Male Power)