Feminists

It's just that when I see a post where women are referred to in the context of the stereotypically female category of "dutiful little control freak...self sacrificing...for bragging rights" and who "neglect to delegate, like men delegate", I guess my sexism auto-immune response goes into overdrive. I see "working guy who sits on couch and drinks beer and watches TV while working woman comes home and does everything else and man can't understand why woman is consistently resentful about this and tries to explain why, and has repeatedly tried to delegate minimal domestic work, and guy says "hey I do things around here, I took out the garbage yesterday, so what's your problem? You're trying to control me!" syndrome.

As a woman with two children who has managed a household and been the executive administrator of two small successful, but not overly lucrative, businesses at the same time, one a non-profit, the other self-owned, and then later in life a manager of another non-profit as well, I have a tendency to totally resent the stereotypical "control freak female" label. You simply do what needs to be done, because it needs to get done, and you are ultimately singly responsible for the work getting done, so if someone else can't, or won't, do it, you do it yourself, even if you are ill, because (sometimes helpless) people are depending on you to get it done.

I've had to deal with more than a few men on staff who resented my position of authority because I was female, and who would childishly try to impede my efforts, and I'm sure that I have been labeled as a "control freak" by men both in my home and male staff members as well. (I do not believe that any of the women who worked or lived with me ever considered me a "dutiful little control freak self sacrificing for bragging rights". The younger brother (in his mid 20's) of one of my LTR partners who rented a room in our home actually had the audacity to say to me "Who appointed you God?" after I politely explained to him, while he was finishing scrubbing the cooking surfaces off of my expensive non-stick cookware with a metal scrubber, that doing so would ruin the cooking surfaces, and that that I would appreciate it if he cleaned up his own messes in the house. etc.

Soooo, from experience, I learned that, by only hiring women whenever possible, I no longer had these types of problems, maybe because we has all learned how to be dutiful little self sacrificing control freaks I suppose; anyway, under those circumstances, all the women simply did their job without hitting on each other, or trying to sabotage me, freeing me up to relax because I no longer had to monitor staff, and could concentrate on my primary work, allowing me to vacate my position of Chief Dutiful Little Control Freak Who Self Sacrifices Because The Reality Of The Situation Is That A Deadline Is Looming And She Needs To Complete Work That Failed To Get Done By Petulant, Disrespectful Staff

My children absolutely considered me a "dutiful little self-sacrificing control freak" when they were teenagers. Now that they are grown up, married, one with two children, neither of them even remotely believes that I was/am a control freak anymore. And it appears that I have been fairly successful in getting them to understand why and how to pull their weight so that they don't ever come to view their wives as "dutiful little control freaks self-sacrificing to claim bragging rights".

Now, I do see your point that there are some women who are totally, and needlessly, workaholics. It is regretful that male workaholics are generally positively stereotyped as "admirable, productive, highly respected over achievers", while women who conduct themselves in exactly the same manner as the aforementioned men are generally negatively stereotyped as a "dutiful little control freak self-sacrificing for bragging rights". Both are often heart attacks waiting to happen; the difference is, the man gets respect for earning his heart attack, while the woman is labeled an overbearing, shrewish, self-sacrificing fool for earning hers.

Honestly, I find it distressing that the feminist women you refer to in your post would stereotype workaholic women as "dutiful little control freaks self-sacrificing for bragging rights". I am pretty sure that there are some common sociological reasons behind women becoming workaholics.

Anyway, I sincerely do apologize for misreading your post as sexist; it is true that I am not familiar with you as a frequent poster in Feminist Groups, and because that stereotype/label "dutiful little control freak who refuses to delegate and self sacrifices because of a need to claim bragging rights" basically applies only to women, it totally hit a very, very raw nerve in me. I did not equate someone being "an obsessively reliable hopeless responsibility freak" with women working themselves to death for no good reason. And I have always viewed domestic responsibilities as equal in value and necessity to working within the system, so I do not automatically distinguish these types of work from one another. Again, my bad.

So very sorry. Please forgive me for my unwarranted, rude response. I do hope you can find some understanding, and a bit of empathy, of/for/why/where I was coming from with my misdirected rant, after this reading this relatively deficient explanatory "novel".