Why 'women in the kitchen' jokes aren't funny.

Welcome to the 1950's!
Dear men, 
Your 'success in' life is dependant on two things: how well you do at your mind-numbing, soul-crushing 9-5 job, and how many children you have.


Dear women,
Everybody knows you're not smart or strong enough to enter the workforce. But that's ok! As long as your house is clean, your children are well-dressed, you're always smiling and made-up, you'll be considered a good woman.

The 1950s had rigid gender roles. A man's life was gruelling and at times unfulfilling, to be sure, but that isn't the point of this post. All the ideas of 'women belong in the kitchen' come from the 50s. These ideas stem from a few main, socially accepted notions of that era:

• Women are not smart enough to enter the workforce.
• Women are not strong enough to enter the workforce.
• Women's only talents lie in cooking, cleaning, and raising children.
• A woman's sole satisfaction and accomplishments lie in how well she does the above, and how happy she makes her husband.
• Women's magazines in the 1950s encouraged women to "plan ahead even the night before, to have a delicious meal ready, on time, for his return. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs." To be "a little more interesting for him. His boring day may need a lift and one of your duties is to provide it". "Remember, his topics of conversation are more important than yours". "Never complain if he comes home late or goes out to dinner, or other places of entertainment without you." "Don't ask him questions about his actions or question his judgment or integrity. Remember, he is the master of the house and as such will allways exercise his will with fairness and truthfulness. you have no right to question him."

Quotes taken from a magazine entitled Housekeeping Monthly, issue of  May 13 1955. Article titled "The Good Wife's Guide".

Welcome back to 2010. Women can vote, work, and be educated. Sure, we're still socially and economically penalised if we want to have children AND a career. We're still paid less for doing the same work a man does. We're still called sluts, cunts, and bitches for doing the same things - sleeping around and being ambitious - that men do. We're still raped, assaulted, prostituted, enslaved and murdered every day in our hundreds, nay, thousands, accross the globe.

This is why I do not find 'women belong in the kitchen' jokes even a little bit funny. The mentality that they stem from has three main tenants:

• Women don't 'belong' in the work force
• Women who choose not to have children have something 'wrong' with them
• Women are intellectually, physically and socially inferior to men

These are tenets I do not agree with, and which we as a society should have outgrown by now. The fact that these jokes, and the aforementioned social/economical problems are still kicking around today tells me that this world of ours still has a way to go before achieving equality in any sense. Within 24 hours of Australia's first female Prime Minister being ballotted into office, I saw this on Facebook. "How can Julia Gillard run all of Australia from the kitchen?"

Hello, glass ceiling. Still there? Yeah, I can see that.

My honesty policy

I can't tell you how many times I've heard or read, somewhere, a female saying that she gets along better with men, or has more male friends, or finds it hard to relate to/get along with/get close to other women. In my early teens I was definitely guilty of this, after having been forcibly ejected from my female social group. And for what? Brutal honesty. One of the girls was being a total bitch to everyone else (as insecure twelve-year-olds with ridiculously turbulent homelives are wont to do) and I called her out on it. Three days later my other friends said, "Yeah, you upset her, we're sort of on her side because you were so mean, even though we agreed with you". As a pre-teen, this lack of a social network caused me extreme amounts of anxiety. I didn't want to go to school in the mornings, something perplexing in the extreme to my parents, as I was a fierce academic. I ended up moving schools a few months later.

Girls are creatures of criminal subtlety. We dance around what we think, what we feel, and what we expect. We do it in our relationships with men, both romantic and platonic, and we do it in our relationships with each other, both romantic and platonic. Is it stupid? Yep. Is it a symptom of social conditioning? Yep!

One major problem, I think, is this: girls, women, ladies are expected to be obtuse, over-polite, and to double-talk, which when negative emotions are involved, leads to being snide and implying not-so-nice things. On the other hand, women who take a more 'male' approach, who are blunt, who say what they think and demand such in return, are regarded with suspicion and bemusement. Words like 'bitch', 'butch', and 'dyke' get thrown around a lot. Why do you have to be masculine, or attracted to women, to be able to be honest?! Shame on society for making 'female' and 'honest' oxymorons!

I'm tired of getting tangled in misunderstandings. Especially those of my own creation. White lies are still lies - yes, there is a difference between being honest and saying truthful, yet nasty things. But you can be truthful and still be diplomatic.

I'm taking a dual-action honesty policy: saying what I mean, and calling out other people when it's obvious that they're not. When did we all start needing to be politicians to function socially? All its doing is harming our relationships with others, something that we as humans rely on. We are social creatures, not going into the balances between introved/extroverted personalities. When spending time with our 'friends' is a minefield of cryptic comments, hiding your emotions and holding grudges, I have to say:

 image taken from the super-awesome site I Can Haz Cheezburger.