Perhaps for the reason being they have been dependent on women for the entirety of their lives, a large sum of men in society claim to lack the ability to carry out simple tasks which results in their reliance on their mothers being passed onto their female partners in turn. Yet the most amateur of tasks, such as putting the toilet seat down, are not skills which can’t be learned and which raises the discussion as to whether or not men voice their incapability in order for someone else, that someone nearly always being a woman, to do it for them. Hence, the common phrase “boys will be boys” functions as a humorous excuse of male incompetence. However, excuses as such don’t continue to be funny in comparison to society’s intolerance for female ineptitude; in reality, they are fostering deep-rooted sexism.
If one makes a point of being helpless at completing a task sufficiently, either by verbal expression or through substandard effort time and time again, naturally someone else will take this task into their own hands out of frustration. However, the unwillingness to complete a task to a tolerable standard is a reflection of one opting to remain ignorant; and whilst ignorance is bliss, this is only the case for some. For instance, in the case in which men wittingly claim to be unable and the women in their lives are forced to compensate for them, perhaps subconsciously, immersing themselves in misogynistic behaviourism which overloads women with responsibility.
Don’t get me wrong, not every single man out there is faking incompetence in favour of someone else picking up after them, however I guarantee that a majority of women will have experienced deliberate male incompetence at their own cost. One example of this which I’ve noticed in my own life is the difference between my brother and I in buying gifts for either one of our parents. Since my parents are likely to feel disappointed if they do not receive so much as a card on their birthday from both of their children, I take it upon myself to be responsible for my brother as well as myself on the grounds that he would not think to make the effort of going out and buying something himself. On self-reflection, by taking what should be his responsibility upon myself I am sustaining the cycle which is fostering misogyny in society.
Whilst I strongly believe that men’s and women’s differences should be celebrated for the reason being both sexes equally bring different things to the table, men are just as capable as women in carrying out domestic errands… unless they really are as stupid as some of them are making out to be.
Ultimately, it is essential to understand the ways in which sexism manifests in order to challenge sexist attitudes and demeanour. Thus, we need to put an end to our toleration of women’s injustice in day-to-day life by acknowledging male incompetence for what it sometimes really is and accepting that men do in fact have the ability to perform simple tasks when there is not a woman to do it for them. However, whilst this is more easily said than done, male incompetence as a form of misogyny is something which should at least be discussed in defiance of it remaining the norm.