Housewives and men had a busy Spring Festival

In Chinese families, women often do most of the housework. Men who are keen on housework are nicknamed "housewives and men" in their daily lives.

The word "woman" is used as a prefix for "male", implying the prejudice that female talents are bound to the family. This Chinese New Year, a group of men are determined to break the framework of traditional gender roles and become the main bearers of household chores in the home. Acknowledging the differences in social conditions and treatment between different genders, they take this a step further and try to take the position of women and take on the division of labour that has traditionally been fixed for them.

These men who want to change themselves are demanding that they no longer avoid working in the practice of gender equality with housework as the smallest unit. They stand in opposition to traditional masculinity, trying to transcend the limitations of gender experience, and use action to bridge barriers and build empathy.

Don't shy away from housework, men's first busy Spring Festival

Use a pair of scissors to cut the soaked sea cucumber from the abdomen, stop at a distance of 0.5cm from the top, and then use your fingers to pull out the sludge at the sand spitter, taking care to remove the lime smell as much as possible. Wu Junhong, who is currently studying for a graduate student in civil engineering, carefully processes each sea cucumber in the kitchen according to the instructions on the Internet. This step requires great care, if the sand spit is accidentally broken, the sediment will overflow, making the whole sea cucumber toothy, ruining the protagonist of the meal.

On the second day of the Lunar New Year, Wu Junhong spent two days of hard work and finally served the sea cucumber pot to the table, but he felt full of chagrin. Before going to bed the night before, he had told his parents that he would still be in charge of today's meal. After tidying up the room in the morning, he planned to take a nap and get up before 4 p.m. to cook the sea cucumber, but he didn't expect to wake up at 6 p.m. When he walked to the kitchen, his parents had already begun to clean the vegetables, the radish cake that he was supposed to handle had been arranged and cut, and his grandparents were already waiting in the living room.

In previous years, if you don't go out for Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, it is all cooked by Wu Junhong's mother, and Wu Junhong just works with his father. Before this Chinese New Year, he was determined to change that situation. Start with yourself: to take the initiative to participate in housework, you must also be the main person responsible for housework in the family. He demanded that if he wanted to cook, he would not only cook, but also take on all the work of washing dishes and cleaning the kitchen and table after the meal.

Frustration grew in my heart. In the first Spring Festival, when Wu Junhong was in charge of the housework, his mother and father finally took over part of the work while he was napping.

When he woke up, Wu Junhong realized that he couldn't catch up with his usual meals. He hurriedly put the sea cucumbers, squid, and scallops soaked in advance into a casserole, and then cooked them on high heat for 15 minutes as planned, and then turned to low heat and simmered for more than an hour...... When the six dishes were ready, and the aroma of seafood, chicken, and morels wafted into the house, it was already half past eight in the evening, two and a half hours later than the previous day. This is all because he has slept for two hours - thinking of this, Wu Junhong's frustration in his heart developed into anger at himself.

Figure | On the second day of the Lunar New Year, Wu Junhong made dinner

In the afternoon, his parents did not insist on waking up the sleeping Wu Junhong. They took Wu Junhong's hard work in the past two days in their eyes. In his Chinese New Year's Eve, he took care of the reunion dinner, bringing sumptuous dishes such as Buddha jumping over the wall and soy sauce chicken on the table. The next day, on the first day of the Lunar New Year, relatives came to Guangzhou from other places to pay New Year's greetings, and Wu Junhong cooked dinner for eight people, and was also responsible for washing and cleaning dishes after the meal.

Wu Junhong calculated that he would spend at least 3 hours on every lunch and dinner in the past few days. Cooking and cleaning after meals can take an hour and a half each, and even longer for complex dishes. To make a rice cake made from brown sugar water and indica rice flour, the dough needs to be boiled for 3 hours, and most of the day is passed until the fluid solidifies.

"You're going to be in charge. At the Spring Festival dinner table, hearing the praise of his grandparents and grandmother, Wu Junhong was not very happy. He felt that he had just grown from a "failing" man to a "passing", "going from forty or fifty to sixty or seventy". In the past Chinese New Year, his parents, mainly his mother, have been operating the process for years, but they have rarely been appreciated.

After learning to cook according to the recipes on the Internet, Wu Junhong found that cooking was not as difficult as he had imagined, and he felt that he should have participated in and become familiar with this household chore earlier, instead of "coming to make up for it now".

Since elementary school, Wu Junhong, as a boy, has borne the clear expectations of his family: study with peace of mind and don't have to worry about anything else. During the Spring Festival, he noticed that during the most relaxing time after eating, he could sit on the sofa and watch TV, while his mother would be called by his grandmother and grandfather to wash the dishes.

Later, when he was in middle school, he once wanted to try washing dishes, but his grandmother stopped him and dissuaded him: "You don't have to wash it, you can't wash it anyway." "It's as if boys doing housework are not encouraged. When he was young, Wu Junhong had such thoughts in a haze, and he also doubted that he really couldn't do it well, so he gradually stopped doing it.

As a child in a dual-income family, Wu Junhong found that his parents were busy with work since he was a child, and most of the housework in the family was handled by his grandparents at first, and later transferred to hired workers.

Since the second half of the 20th century, the U.S. economy has undergone structural transformation, economic depression and intensified international competition. The U.S. government has cut a range of benefits, class disparities have widened, the middle class has stagnated, and the lower strata of society have continued to fall. A large number of women who used to be at home went out to work, and both men and women worked longer and longer hours, and eventually there was a "care crisis" within the family due to social changes.

Xiao Suowei, a professor at the School of Sociology at Beijing Normal University, wrote in the afterword to "Working Mothers Don't Get Off Work": "In today's China, we are experiencing a similar caregiving crisis. Since market reforms, public services have been curtailed, and families have been expected to take on heavy responsibilities but have been overwhelmed in reality; ”

Housework is a bridge of understanding between private family life and macro social change. Participation in household chores is the first step in a gender equality practice that is within reach for most men. In today's society, men who want to change themselves come together this Chinese New Year to try to push for gender equality from the most concrete practices, to fight against traditional masculinity and overcome themselves in themselves.

There are many men who are as determined to change as Wu Junhong this Spring Festival.

Figure | Fu Weijun is shopping for groceries

32-year-old Fu Weijun has long hair, and he also let himself spend a busy Spring Festival at the beginning of the year. He did not return to his hometown, and entertained his colleagues as a housekeeper in a rental house. A colleague said he wanted to eat beer duck. On the morning of Chinese New Year's Eve, Fu Weijun ran to the surrounding vegetable markets and supermarkets, and found that all the ducks were sold out, and he rode his bicycle to several places before buying a duck in a supermarket far from home. As he returned home with vegetables, poultry and drinks, he felt the physical demands of purchasing. It was also that morning that he suddenly realized that many housework, such as holding the child, was actually heavy physical work.

This led him to think more deeply: "In many professions, men exclude women on the grounds of physical strength, but we turn a blind eye to many heavy household chores. It's very contradictory. Physical strength is just an excuse, the point is that we benefit from occupations that exclude women on the grounds of physical fitness, and we push heavy housework to women because it is not good for us. ”

Fu Weijun posted this insight in the group chat "Male Modernization". A male member immediately chimed in: "Men can't do housework, and being too good a housekeeper is a discipline for men, which causes wives to be overwhelmed with housework. ”

The group chat, called "Male Modernization," was established six months ago and gathered 66 members, almost all of whom were men. They also opened accounts on social platforms, introducing themselves as: "a community where men learn about gender equality and reflect on their gender dividends".

Fu Weijun is the leader of the group and the founder of the community. Two days before Chinese New Year's Eve, he launched an activity to invite group members to "check in on housework" during the Spring Festival, update housework notes in the group every day, and read the book "Working Mothers Don't Get Off Work" together. This is the American sociologist Hochschild's book on the distribution of housework in the marriage of working parents, and the author shares the conflicts and changes caused by the distribution of housework between several couples in the form of stories.

Fu came across the book at a book club and learned about the concept of "The Second Shift." "When you go to work, you work, when you get home, you still work, and then you go back to work and keep working", the concept was first proposed by one of the women interviewed in the book. She found that "family life", a life experience that should be separated from the work area, has in reality reduced to another kind of "going to work". Housework is the "second shift" for working women after work.

This Spring Festival, Fu Weijun decided to use practice and co-reading to let more men understand the gender reality in housework and promote change.

In daily life, men who are keen on housework are nicknamed "housewives and men". Fu believes that the title itself is an affront to women, "It reinforces the binding between housework and women." I want to encourage men to break with traditional masculinity, to break away from the traditional patriarchal abduction of us, and to establish a more diverse expression of masculinity. Why does housework damage masculinity? Why does housework belong exclusively to women?" Fu Weijun wanted to call such a group of men "modern men", which is also the source of his group name.

After the initiative was released, he didn't expect that the community event, which had always been a responder, would quickly attract many people to sign up.

After entering the role of women in the past, Rao Qingyi, a fourth-year student majoring in humanities, truly realized: "Men and women in the family do not live a family life. For men, the vacation is the "second shift" for women.

He also spent a completely different Spring Festival from the past. In previous years, he did not do housework except washing dishes, and felt that the time every day was "almost complete". On this holiday of family reunion, he can always do his own thing, reading, surfing the Internet, resting, but interspersed with a meal. After taking charge of household chores such as cooking and cleaning, he found that his time was cut into almost nothing—exactly what his mother used to do every Chinese New Year.

Men who don't want to be

When he pulled the kitchen waste bag out of the trash can, Fu Weijun found that the garbage bag had a hole. Dirty, smelly liquid leaks out of the bag and seeps out of the poorly sealed garbage can.

Wrap the broken garbage bag with a new one, or it will leak dirty water all the way down the hallway. Also clean the trash cans full of food waste leachate. He knew what he was going to do next, but Fu Weijun still felt that "every cell in his body was resisting". The unexpected appearance of dirtiness in the housework sometimes drives him crazy. 

When he was a child, Fu Weijun's parents worked outside the home all the year round, and as a left-behind child, he began to undertake housework early. In order to study, he later spent time in foster care with three relatives, and saw that the daily household chores, including dirty work, were usually mainly carried out by female members such as his aunt.

"If you haven't been involved in cleaning the toilet and the bathroom before, it is recommended to clean it once during the Spring Festival. There is also a hierarchy in housework. The ones with high value evaluation, entertainment, and non-routine are usually the ones that men who participate in housework are willing to choose, accompany their children for entertainment, exercise, and cooking. And dirty, trivial, and repetitive daily chores, such as washing the toilet, changing diapers, washing clothes, and other household chores, are usually more reluctant for men to undertake, and even feel that they are detrimental to masculinity. Inspired by his own experience, Fu Weijun posted another announcement in the group, inviting members to take on more dirty, trivial, routine, and repetitive household chores, and after a few minutes, he added, "If we clean the toilet a few more times, we will doubt the reasonableness of standing to pee." ”

Rao Qingyi's Chinese New Year's Eve was spent in cleaning. When he entered the house where his father lived alone, he was once again shocked by the filth. The coffee table was full of clutter, and the windowsill and floor were full of dust. When Rao Qingyi was about to start work, he found that "there was nothing". Mopping cloths, dustpans, and cleaning agents for washing tiles all had to be bought one by one on an ad hoc basis. 

He was no stranger to this scene. Rao Qingyi still remembers the scene he saw when he returned to his father's house during the winter vacation of his freshman year three years ago: the inner wall of the white toilet has become very yellow, and it has not been brushed for many years. The floor tiles of the bathroom are covered with thick black stains, which are the footprints left by my father who came home from outside and walked in directly with his shoes on. At that time, he also bought a mop and disinfectant water temporarily, but for some reason he can't find them all over now. 

In winter, my father would put a basin of water in the bedroom to relieve the dry air in the room. But as soon as the basin was put in, it never moved again – until the following winter. Last year's water had dried up, and my father did not remove or wash it, but took a new basin and put it there. In this way, the pots in the room are piled up more and more.

Since his parents divorced in the second grade and his mother moved out of the house, his father has been living alone. A few years ago, his mother went to do hygiene, but after Rao Qingyi junior high school, his mother basically never went again. My father never seemed to clean, "I didn't sweep or mop the floor, and I didn't clean the sink and toilet." Rao Qingyi said that his father, who was engaged in cultural and museum-related work, was considered "half a scholar", and was a typical workaholic, spending most of his time and energy on work.

There are books everywhere in the house. The sofa and coffee table in the living room had been removed and placed on my father's desk, which was full of books. Along the four walls, there are six bookcases with double doors. Even a refrigerator that broke down twenty years ago was stuck in the door by my father with a yellow cup, and two stacks of yellowed books were placed inside.

Figure | Rao Qingyi saw his father's book in the refrigerator

When watching the movie "Cosmic Exploration Editorial Department", Rao Qingyi watched it for more than ten minutes, and goosebumps were all over his body - the image of a simple, divorced, unsociable, and paranoid scholar in it was too much like his father. And living around such people is "not a good experience".

After seeing the thick dust in the house, Rao Qingyi said to his father, "I'll buy a mop" and went out. He noticed his father's embarrassed expression. After so many years, he no longer directly mentions his father's negligence in housework, because he understands, "None of these things are so important to him." ”

After buying cleaning utensils, Rao Qingyi used disinfectant to scrub the tiles on the bathroom floor little by little, and whitewashed the toilet bowl that had already turned yellow. In the face of dirty, he did not feel as resistant as Fu Weijun. He really didn't feel disgusting, and he also thought that if he had a bad emotional reaction when doing such chores, he would have not overcome his "toxic masculinity". He doesn't want to be a man who doesn't want to do housework.

He had already secretly decided that he would not become a man like his father.

Wu Junhong doesn't think that doing housework will damage his "manhood", but if he doesn't do it well, he will be very angry with himself. He always felt that he had changed too late, "Some of my peers were already familiar with things in elementary and junior high school, and I am actually only making up for them now." ”

In 2022, under the opportunity of a relationship, Wu Junhong came into contact with feminism-related ideas, and was hit by news of gender violence in Xuzhou and other countries one after another. Under the wave of unemployment during the epidemic, Wu Junhong also found that those classmates around him who had lost their living expenses had to go out to work to support their families. He gradually became aware of the inequality between gender and society, and began to feel ashamed of himself, "I can't do anything but study...... In high school, you only need to think about the college entrance examination, and in college, you only need to think about grades, scientific research, and literature, which is too narrow. ”

In addition to studying civil engineering, Wu Junhong began to study sociology and feminist theories on his own. After paying attention to the vast social realities such as factory workers and rural women, he felt more and more guilty about his identity as a "middle-class subject" and a "man", and felt that he was "really living too well". In the conversation, he repeatedly mentions a state of mind: "I am sorry to be born a man. ”

After a period of self-denial, Wu Junhong decided to reinvent himself. He wants to take action to promote the elimination of inequality and promote social progress, so as to alleviate his inner guilt and moral anxiety. He volunteered in social organizations and washed dishes in the back kitchen of a restaurant. After the initial self-transformation was completed, he began to want to influence the people around him. He divided the process of reform into four stages, the first stage of being offended, the second stage of acknowledging the problem and feeling guilty about the original sin, the third stage of reforming oneself, and the fourth stage of influencing others.

Wading through the sea of guilt, Wu Junhong stayed away from the man he didn't want to be.

After leading the housework for a period of time, 22-year-old Liu Yufei also felt a huge change in himself. On the third day of the Lunar New Year, when he saw his mother picking vegetables at home alone, he offered to "let's go together". In the past, seeing this scene, he would definitely continue to watch TV indifferently. When the dish was almost finished, my mother dissuaded him as usual and said, "Go play." Liu Yufei did not hesitate, and insisted on emphasizing again, "I want to finish it first." Mom looked surprised and praised him, "You're getting more sensible." ”

Liu Yufei has some leg disabilities, some movement restrictions, and his parents divorced when he was a child. When she was in college, her mother once said that she hoped to train Liu Yufei to become her "comrade-in-arms", but Liu Yufei felt that she was naïve and cowardly, and could only escape and passively accept her mother's instructions. At this moment, he finally felt that he had indeed become his mother's "comrade-in-arms": from a bystander and helper of family affairs, to a real active participant. He feels that gender equality practices are not so difficult and ambitious, "not necessarily to change the prejudices of society as a whole, but to start in the places that are closest to us, most relaxed, and even where we are supposed to be responsible." ”

This practice also allows Liu Yufei to see the most palpable meaning: to use his own emotions and strength to support the nearest woman around him, and to eliminate part of the oppression of a specific woman. True equality is not in the distance, in the closest place, "housework is the practice of gender equality in the smallest unit." ”

True equality

In the 7 years that he has lived with his girlfriend, Jiang Zhuzhen, a practitioner in the financial industry, has been doing more housework. When his girlfriend first came to Shanghai to apply for a job, Jiang Zhuzhen witnessed her encounter three times of gender discrimination, "This is a big reason why her career is far less successful than mine." On the contrary, because of their good interpersonal relationships in the workplace, some female seniors who interrupted their careers due to childbirth passed on their experience to Jiang Zhuzhen. The end result was that Jiang Spider Pillow was promoted smoothly for several years in a row.

Jiang Zhuzhen began to think about what true "equality" is. "We often see women who have a setback in their careers or a ceiling and have to face a bunch of housework when they get home, so that their emotions will only suffer a double blow. Therefore, Jiang Spider Pillow believes that the party with a better career development should do more housework, so that the party with a worse career can have more time to recharge and repair, and the emotions of the two people when they get along can be basically synchronized. And he himself has gained more gender dividends as a man, so he needs to "take the initiative to exchange my time for her time and do the main part of the housework".

Out-of-sync emotions will bring about wear and tear on the relationship, "Because I love her, I want to take the initiative to continue to synchronize with her", this is the equality practiced by Jiang Spider Pillow.

Since he got off work earlier than his girlfriend, when he got home, Jiang Spider Pillow would buy vegetables and cut them according to his needs, and then his girlfriend would come back to take charge of the spoon. In the common area, the girlfriend vacuums, mops and scrubs the floor herself. Consumables such as toilet paper are maintained and supervised, and the ginger spider pillow is also in charge.

Jiang Spider Pillow drew up a document, made a form, and regularly reminded himself to pay attention to whether he needed to buy. Cleaning the toilet and other dirty cleans belong to him. He also emptied the trash can a lot, because when he went out, his girlfriend carried the bag, and he didn't lift it, so it was more convenient to pour it.

Figure | Ginger spider pillow's housekeeping document directory

In the group chats organized by Fu Weijun, Jiang often shares his notes on gender issues and various related academic concepts. What is "male preaching"? Why is it a kind of "cognitive exploitation" for men to expect women to educate them on gender issues? What is "invisible housework"? The men often study and discuss together in groups.

This Spring Festival, when washing dishes, Wu Junhong always remembered the self who was once said by his grandfather when he was in junior high school, "You can't wash it clean". I don't know how many men quit the field of housework early under this hint and take it for granted? "Anyway, you're a boy, and you can't do it, so don't do it." ”

Wu Junhong thinks that the unequal social division of labor is probably constantly strengthened under such discipline.

If he goes back to the past, Wu Junhong hopes that the dissuaded self can persist in doing it. If I meet a little boy today, he will also encourage him to do chores and give positive feedback. He also had to inform him when the time was right that eliminating structural gender inequality would also require a male effort.

While doing housework at her mother's house, Rao Qingyi saw that her mother and her new husband still maintained a similar division of labor as her former father. Cleaning up the coffee table, sweeping the floor, mopping the floor, is still entirely a mother's job, without the involvement of men. The traditional gender division of labor is still irrevocably replicated in the new relationship.

But Rao Qingyi already has greater confidence in his heart. After reading books such as "Misogyny" and having feminist related ideas, he became a "complete minority" among his male classmates. When he hears a classmate make sexist remarks, he will jokingly say, "If you continue to say, be careful that I'm going to box." "The structure is hard to shake, at least you can change it from yourself.

Fu Weijun hasn't been home for two years. After quitting his five-year job as a well-paid programmer to join the low-paying sex education industry, his parents began to belittle his job, demanding that he cut off his long hair, saying that he was "neither male nor female". The split in ideas made him resist returning home. This Spring Festival, Fu Weijun did not call his parents, but only sent a New Year's greeting message.

On the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, Fu Weijun was going to leave Nanjing for a trip to Chengdu. Before going out, he got up and took a shower, washed and dried the changed clothes, and checked the room several times before going out to make sure that he had brought all his things and whether the garbage in the common area, especially kitchen waste, was collected and taken away.

He remembered that when he was at home for the Chinese New Year, every time he went out to visit relatives, the men of the family always went out early and waited for his mother at the door.

Mother never seems to be busy. "What are you doing?" "Can you go out a little smarter?" "Hurry up!" The male family members stood at the door and urged and urged.

Fu Weijun reacted that as the head of the family's housekeeping, his mother is not the one who drags, but always needs to be responsible for every detail of the family in the end. She needs to check that the lights in every room in the house are turned off, that the gas is turned off, and that there is anything missing...... The men never saw the labor, and blamed her for delaying.

Once, Fu Weijun was also one of the men who stood at the door urging his mother. Now he stood inside the door, looking around and silently reading the details, standing where his mother had always been.

For the first time, he no longer looks at women from the perspective of a spectator. Doing what his mother did, he entered his mother's first perspective - always working, never seen, always blamed. Similar memories kept coming, and Fu realized that this scene had been going on for decades, repeating it countless times. He began to feel sad.

This Spring Festival, Fu Weijun, who hadn't been home for a long time, suddenly missed his mother very much. He made himself a stewed bamboo shoot with chicken and pig's feet. Hunan is rich in winter bamboo shoots, which used to be a must-have dish on his family's table for the New Year, and he has not eaten them at home for two years.

Figure | Fu Weijun made stewed bamboo shoots for himself

* Rao Qingyi, Jiang Spider Pillow, and Liu Yufei are pseudonyms in the article

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Written by Fontaine

Editor|Wen Lihong