Stop disrespecting and discriminating house husbands!!!

2

July 2, 2019 by hasheyehosh

I am a house husband who loves my wife very dearly but I am fed up of friends and family and even strangers always bringing up irrelevant and old-fashioned gender-based family roles whenever they address me about my employment status.
I consider myself to be an advocate for women’s rights and equality but also an egalitarian.
So, it’s not a terrible thing for me to say that my wife goes to work while I take care of household chores and run errands as she is away. But people keep asking me to find a job, purely because they believe a man is the head of the family and therefore should go and work while the woman stays at home, is extremely disrespectful and utterly rude!
This archaic thinking which is also very rude and intrusive completely fails to acknowledge that there are different family types around the world, and that traditional heteronormative gender-based roles of a family no longer apply to everyone in today’s 21st century society.
Nobody asks these people for their opinions, and it would be considered just as rude if my wife or I were to suggest what form their families should take and how they should be run.
Worse still, is that these views linger on and further permeate other social structures that lead to discrimination against people who choose to live their own lives how they see fit simply because they do not fit the traditional norm. This happens in places of work, worship, communal gatherings, etc.
Many women would and do struggle to keep up with household duties and work at the same time while their partners also work but crucially offer no substantive help around the home.
Having one person do one thing and another the other shouldn’t really bother anyone if it works for the couple that chooses to live that way. In this case I choose to do the homemaking while my wife goes to work because I am a proponent of women’s emancipation, so seeing my wife go to work and return to just put her feet up and not have to trouble herself with dishwashing, laundry, housecleaning, and all other things is a breath of fresh air and frankly is a well deserved treat after all that hard work.
Also, we get to have more time together as a family, in each other’s company and sharing in our tremendous love for each other, offering support whether it be emotional or otherwise, as opposed to both of us being in work and reducing that time considerably, simply because some people think that money is everything, well it may be for them but happiness is more important to us and money is far less important than love and companionship.
House husbands must be protected from discrimination and disrespectful comments at work and at home, because all they are doing is being supportive to their partners in ways that no amount of money will ever compensate because love is not something to which we attach a price but rather we either experience it or share it with others through our words and actions. These comments can also have a very serious adverse effect on the recipients because they can directly negatively affect someone’s mental state as they can very often be humiliating, shaming, undermining, dismissive, disparaging, intrusive and hurtful to the person at whom they are aimed.
There must be legislation introduced to recognise that just as same-sex couples have the right to live as they want to and run their families in their desired way, house husbands on the other hand and incidentally working women must all be protected from those who seek to use so-called outdated cultural traditions and old-fashioned thinking to abuse their right to live peacefully without being judged for the course of life they seek and choose to lead.
Traditionally, my wife wouldn’t even be allowed to work at all, so there’s some progress made in this arena but sadly most women in work today – worse if you’re from a Black Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) background – will still be paid significantly less than their male counterparts for doing the same or similar type of work! This, in addition to the fact that the most high-paying jobs are dominated by (predominantly old White) males.
It is therefore a no-brainer that someone who champions women’s emancipation also walks the walk when it comes to his own household by doing whatever little I can to further that agenda, and enable my dear wife to reach heights that women before and present can only dream of because they have hypocritical partners that only support women in name only but no tangible deeds to show for it!
So, to all those family and friends and strangers that keep imposing your way of life onto every and anyone that doesn’t subscribe to or practice your beliefs, your opinions are best kept to yourselves, and perhaps it behooves you to spend that time and effort fighting for equality and diversity, eliminating discrimination everywhere and supporting women who’ve been left so far behind in the era in which your ideas and beliefs are stuck, and thus benefiting the society you live in, including supporting your friends and family rather than demonising and disparaging them!