Today has been a day of triumph and tragedy for me. I won’t go into details; there has been too much going on, and it would take up a lot of space. Let’s just jump straight to today’s offering, an essay on domesticity and women.

 DOMESTICITY DENIALISM

One characteristic we frequently hear when discussing women is “domestic”. What is domestic? It simply refers to family or home. Women have long had the responsibility for domestic work, or work done in the home. They have taken care of the home, the cooking, the cleaning, and the child rearing. This is nothing new; we all know that. For me, I am firmly locked in domesticity denialism.

What is domesticity denialism? Like every other denialism, it is denying that which is represented by the word preceding it. In this case, I am denying domesticity. I am not domestic. I cook and clean, but that can be necessary to take care of ourselves. I don’t make a life time of it, and my husband also cooks and cleans. It’s a partnership. I am not domestic and I live for something other than just home and family. While those are important, there is more to life than staying home and painting the kitchen while turning out a perfect soufflé.

That isn’t the only way that I am a domesticity denialist, though. I also deny that is women’s natural role. Some women appear to enjoy domesticity; that’s great for them, because enjoying your job always makes it better. That doesn’t mean the rest of us have to embrace that role. There are many other options, and we have a lot of different interests and skills.

 So, if I believe that women are not naturally domestic, how do I explain the fact that women are traditionally in that role, while men are traditionally in the role of bread winner? There are a lot of explanations, some of them reasonable, some not so much. I don’t believe God (any of the gods that have been part of human history) decreed it to be so. I don’t believe evolution imposed it on us through our DNA. What I do believe is that one half of humanity, bigger and stronger on average than the other half, forced the females of the species to take care of them, to have their children, and to do what they ordered.

There are a lot of evolutionary psychology explanations. Some of them might be true, but I doubt any one explanation is the full truth. Did men do this to keep the women away from other men, so they could be sure the children they were paying to raise were their own? That’s certainly a possibility; I don’t think it’s likely the entire explanation, of course. Did men simply decide to assert their power because they were stronger, and they didn’t like housework? That also seems probable…it could definitely be part of the explanation.

It might seem unreasonable for me to deny the reality of female domesticity, considering all the evidence of women preferring caring jobs, of nurturing mothers (but what about all those mothers who are abusive and not nurturing? You can’t just throw that data out as outliers). We are starting to learn that some of that evidence might simply be wrong…not wrong in itself, but wrong in the interpretation. Some scientists have proposed that women participated in the mammoth hunts, and that they were involved in the cave painting, and they have presented reasonable evidence for their proposal. We have found females in Viking burials that were buried with the trappings of a warrior. For a long time, male scientists assumed she was in the wrong grave, or things got jumbled. A new generation of scientists are revisiting the evidence, suspicious of the too pat explanation and willing to consider the possibility that maybe the woman was a warrior.

Evidence of behaviors from the past is limited, especially in the pre-literate societies. We can’t determine behavior from the physical artifacts and ruins left behind, though there are conclusions we can draw from them. We just have to be careful when drawing those conclusions, because our own biases will tend to get in the way. Yes, this is true about my domesticity denialism, as well. I have to be cautious that I am not seeing these new interpretations as potential answers just because I like it that way. I do know, however, that the interpretations put on prehistorical human behaviors based on 1950s society are deeply suspect.

How can I conclude that? Why do I say the 1950s isn’t a good model for our ancestors? After all, we came a long way to get there, and it has typically been the role of women, right? Not really. The 1950s seems to be our model for families and gender roles, but the evidence doesn’t support the idea that this was some sort of continuous pattern. It appears, in fact, that the decade might be quite anomalous. We don’t have to interpret behaviors back into caveman days to come to that conclusion; the 1950s were different from immediately preceding decades, for which we have good records, and were also different from those decades that followed. We also have good records for those decades, and a lot of people still living that were part of those decades.

So here’s my challenge to you. Try to imagine that everything you believe is wrong. Try to imagine that women were vital participants in the cultures, including work, that came before. Try to imagine that the phenomenon of the strong, independent, hard working woman isn’t new to this decade, but in fact stretches back through human history. Look at women around you, and imagine them as being the logical outgrowth of a history full of strong independent women.

If you are not able to imagine that, you are not yet ready for full scale domesticity denialism, but it isn’t too late for you. Continue the exercise; do it every day for at least half an hour. Someday, if you’re fortunate, you may be able to join me in the radical position of domesticity denialism. At that point, you will truly be on your way to a grand epiphany – women are not a monolithic bunch of nurturing, caring, caretaking domestics. They are a diverse, vibrant, and challenging group of people who often don’t have much in common with others of their sex. Put your illusions on the shelf, and give other interpretations a chance.

Once you do, you can proceed to bore anyone you like to bore at parties, at work, at school, or at the dinner table with your newfound discoveries. Trust me, domesticity denialism will never make you popular. But it might make you smarter.