10/12/23 - They all pretended to not know. I didn’t know why, and didn’t ask too much.
An askreddit question, “Why do women do most of the housework in a household?”
The top-voted reply is, “I’ve got a friend who just divorced.
He’s a man, 182cm, very good figure, pretty handsome, great personality, makes about 600K a year. He works two days and has one day off. In our small city, he’s a very high quality young man.
He says his ex-wife was terrible. Never helped maintain family relations, so all of his family supported his divorce. He said that she never did any housework, so his parents supported his divorce.
Basically, the gist of it is that: no one was for them staying together. So for a couple to stay together, are the relatives’ opinions more important, or the parents’ support more important?
I asked him, “Does your ex-wife work?”
He said that she was a designer, and mostly worked from home from a computer. She’s home all day, and yet she never does any housework.
I asked him, “So have you tried asking her to quit her job, and giving half your pay check to her to manage, and have her run the household full time?”
He said that he’s tried telling her to quit her job, but never considered giving her half his pay. Because his family paid for the house, so her income pays for their daily expenses.
So why not hire a maid? With their combined income, it wouldn’t be a large expense for them at all.
He said, “I can’t accept a stranger cleaning my house. I’ve got OCD. It’s not like she couldn’t do it.”
“So why don’t you split the chores together?”
He said, “Quit it with all the whys. My mom has to work too, and she still keeps the house spotless. Why can’t my wife do the same? Isn’t it natural that whoever makes more money gets the say-so in a family? I make money, so she has to do the housework, right?”
I didn’t know what to say to that. After all, this wasn’t my marriage.
On the face of it, his logic makes sense. His mom also works and takes care of him and his dad. And the money she makes from work goes into supporting the household too. Almost all of our media encourages women to sacrifice themselves like this.
A lot of women nowadays are only children. Most of them have their own house and car before marriage. Even after marriage, they still need to make payments on those with their parents.
If I was married, and my partner took care of me 100%, then I would take care of him 100%. If you want me to give upon my career to focus on the family, then you have to cover my yearly income. Because your parents raised you, and my parents raised me. My parents gave me the best opportunities they could afford, so I could live a better life. I’ve worked hard in society to have a better life. I’m not looking for a slave owner, to have children for him and do housework for him and maintain family relations for him.
ETA: I didn’t think I’d get so many responses and upvotes when I shared this. I didn’t think that this would be the trigger for making me want to stay single.
A lot of people said I’m making everything up, that no one makes that much money in a small city. But I mean, no matter how small this city is, it’s still our state capital, right? A lot of highly risky jobs, highly skilled jobs, pay way more than just 600K a year. I was probably underestimating his income.
And I don’t see what I have to gain from making up stories. I don’t have the time for that bullshit.
I’ve never really thought about why most of the housework lands on women. This all started because a man complained to me.
If a woman had brought this up, I might have thought she was just being emotional. Maybe she was exaggerating.
In my family, my mom cleans and washes clothes and dishes, and my dad does grocery shopping and cooking. My dad will go do yard work while my mom swept. My dad runs his business, and my mom manages his savings. Whenever my brother and I are home, we take on as much of the housework as we can.
To me, that’s how a family should be, right? Helping each other, understanding each other, and getting help and understanding from each other.
It’s only when I met this friend that I found out, in a lot of families, people just assume that the woman would do most of the housework. And most men still think that she has to earn money at the same time too. But no man thinks it’s his responsibility to do housework or take care of kids.
I remembered an interview on the streets I watched once, when they asked a woman, “The childbirth experience machine, would you make your husband experience the pain of giving birth?” And the woman said, “No, because he never made me experience the pain of maintaining a household.””
Comments say, “People who bring up what their mom does all the time should just marry their mom.”
“She’s married, so of course she’s willing to put up with it. People who aren’t willing to deal with men’s bullshit are all staying single.”
“The person who earns more money should lead the household means that you need to give all of your income to your spouse, so they can focus on the family instead of work. Not saving up all the money for yourself, and make your spouse keep up with daily expenses and do housework. And people with OCD need to clean the house to their own satisfaction.”
“Just watched the investigation of the woman who swore at a nurse in Singapore. My mind has been blown. Here’s the transcript of the whole thing:
Police: “Did you swear at that nurse?”
Lady: “Look, my foot’s injured.”
Police: “I’m asking if you swore at that nurse.”
Lady: “I’ve been left waiting here for three hours.”
Police: “So did you swear or not?”
Lady: “Who are you? I’m starting to suspect you were paid off by that driver.”
Police: “I’m asking you again, did you sweat at that nurse?”
Lady: “I want to call the police. I’ve been ran over by an Uber driver.”
Police: “We’re not here to investigate the traffic accident. I’m asking you if you swore at that nurse?”
Lady: “I want to go to the police station.”
Police: “Did you swear or not?”
Lady: “Get all the cops in Singapore to come here.”
Police: “I’m asking you for the last time, did you swear at that nurse?”
Lady: “Which one of you is gonna push me to the police station? And get the guy who ran me over to come too. I don’t want to talk to you, sister.”
Police: “I’m not your sister. The traffic accident is a separate case. Right now, we’re investigating whether or not you swore at the nurse.”
Lady: “I was laying on the floor. I got ran over. You can check the security cameras. I was on the floor for 20 minutes. Either you need to help me up, or you need to pay me 5000 bucks. I understood her, really. It must be hard for a woman to come out and drive Uber in the middle of the night. It’s not her fault. But she didn’t help me up for 20 minutes. That’s premeditated murder.”
And in the end, the lady finishes off by saying, “Thank you, everyone, for your concern! Chinese people are the most hardworking, honest, generous, and smart people on Earth!”
Oh my god. I have never seen such messed up logic. I can’t imagine how much misfortune would come your way if you were stuck with her.”
Comments say, “I think she’s trying to explain why she swore, but the police only care about the final results, not the actual reasons.”
“There are so many people like this in China.”
“This is the first time I realised that in some countries, you can call the police if someone swears at you. When can I call the cops for swearing in China?”
“She’s just fundamentally selfish. It’s all me me me.”
A tiktok video of how curiously shaped pasta is made:
Comments say, “I get it now. Italy is Europe’s Sha’anxi/Shanxi.”
“Pretty interesting! I love all kinds of weird looking pasta. It’s a simple way to make food more fun.”
“I can’t accept the third one. I feel like I’ve seen stuff like that at bathhouses around here.”
An askreddit question, “Do you believe in natural bad seeds?”
The top-voted reply is, “A girl in fifth grade is getting English tutoring from me. A neighbour of mine found out that before I quit my job, I used to teach English in universities. Did about a ten classes, then I quit tutoring her using covid as an excuse and moved houses. The reasons are below:
She looks kinda different from normal people. Quite a bit ape-ish. Of course, no matter what she looks like, any ten year old girl is going to look really cute. The first couple of lessons, she had a really bad case of potty mouth. She kept saying things like, “fuck”, “getting a free ride” [白嫖—to sleep with a prostitute for free, meaning to take advantage of something], ”screwed up”. I told her mother about it afterwards as gently as I could, but her mother didn’t seem to understand the problem and never reined her in. Even after she sat in on one class, and the girl told her mother to “fuck off”, and said her mom was as stupid as a pig, her mom just kept smiling.
Afterwards, maybe she thought I was very gentle to her and would patiently teach her starting from learning the alphabet, she started to build up a kind of trust in me. Then she told me about her plan with her friend to kill her mom. She had a schedule, had tools, had plans for how to hide the body. She told me everything. I just about had a heart attack. I hesitated a lot over whether or not to call the police, and finally decided to tell her mom. Her mom talked to her about the situation, and finally got back to me and said, “She was just joking with her friends.”
I always had a habit of checking my student’s notes and textbooks, to see if they’ve been listening in class. In the final two classes, I accidentally saw the last page of her notebook. It was filled with food she wanted to eat, a whole page. But in the page, I saw people’s names too. I saw my baby’s name on that. He was only two years old at the time. When the girl would come over for class, he’ll say, “Hi, sis.” And after her class, he’d say bye to her. The only thing he could’ve done to annoy her is that if she came early or had to wait a while for her mom to pick her up, she always liked to nose about in my house, and looks through my things. I’ve gently told her no many times (and that was probably already pissing her off). But I would get a lot more forceful and harsh about stopping her from playing with my son’s toys or baby gate or slide. The reason I’d get forceful is because I was worried about the germs on her hands. She gets into contact with a lot of students in school. She’s already built up her immune system, my baby hasn’t. So I don’t want her to touch his things.
My baby’s name appeared among a bunch of food names, along with a bunch of other people’s names. I never told my family about any of this, I just told them to keep an eye on the girl. She’s a bad one. She’s pretty smart, but she’s just not willing to study maths or English. With my tutoring, her English grades went from 40 to 65. I really thought that without suitable tutoring and psychological counselling, this kid’s gonna end up getting into some shit. Later, we sold our house (this is the main reason why I agreed to my husband selling the house. He wanted to sell it for unrelated reasons), and now we’re renting at a pretty strict gated community.
I’ve been in this field for a long time (2014-2022). I’ve been at three different private schools. I’ve taught a lot of classes and tutored a lot of students. I’ve met all types. I’ll tell you a couple more that left a deep impression in me, that fits with the question.
In a sports festival or some kind of school event (I don’t remember anymore), a bunch of eighth graders were watching from the bleachers. I was walking around, telling off students who are wandering around too much or getting too loud. As I passed by two girls, they were playing rock, paper, scissors. They weren’t being loud, so I didn’t think anything of it. After a while, I passed them by again, and one of the girls asked to borrow some Red Flower Oil. I asked her what happened, and she rolled up her sleeve, and showed me her arm covered in red-blue pinch marks. It was really all over her arm. I didn’t know how to react for a moment and just stared at her in shock. That’s when the other girl came over and showed me her arm, and explained that they’ve been playing a game. The person who lost has to get pinched, and they started doing it harder and harder, and neither of them ever cried. I looked at those two girls who were only as tall as my shoulder, and just felt a chill down my spine. I later found their homeroom teacher and told her what’s up, and took them to counselling and all. But I had nightmares that night being chased by zombies with blue-purple arms.
For a while, about two months, I was temporarily taking a class. That class’s homeroom teacher got hit by a chair while trying to break up a fight between two students. I saw the bruise on her face. She really did need to take some time off. I basically just minded my business. They don’t pay me enough to do anything other than my basic lectures. There was a girl in this class who was super beautiful. She wasn’t pretty. Not the kind of pretty that can be created with make up and fashion. She had a thin fringe, hair to her collarbone, double-lidded eyes, big black pupils, naturally curved lips that make it look like she’s always smiling at people. Kind of like a cuter version of Song Hye-kyo. She was always slow to react in class. If I ever called on her for a question, everyone would laugh at her. Some students would throw away her books, or throw rolls of paper at her. She never had any friends, and no one ever talked to her. They all said she was diseased. Later on, a coworker of mine who had good connections to the management told me that she’d been raped before. Everyone knew this. The teachers knew. The parents knew. The school management knew. But no one ever talked about it out loud. They all pretended to not know. I didn’t know why, and didn’t ask too much. At first, I tried to lecture the class, and they never reacted. Later, maybe they got too annoyed, one of the guys in class (really handsome, bright eyes, fair skin, super good looking) said in the middle of the classroom, in front of everyone, “Teacher, mind your own business. I [something something]’d before. You’ve got no idea, right?” I forget exactly what term he used, but my first reaction was that it was some kind of drugs he’d done. It sounded like that kind of terminology. I didn’t understand it, but I could tell it wasn’t anything good. His family is super rich. After that, I never tried to make anyone listen. I can’t anyways.
There’s a ton of incidents like this. Like the boy who jumped off a second story window and broke his leg. Or a girl who jumped off the rooftop and got caught by her ankles by the PE teacher at the last moment. The student with multiple personality, etc.
Now I just tutor little kids whenever I’ve got free time. Whenever I meet a problematic student, I kick them out right away. If I didn’t find out during the trial stage, then even if I had to refund money, I’d get rid of them. (Like the time I refunded the full amount after doing two tutoring sessions, including the lessons I’ve already taught, because I discovered the kid had suicidal tendencies).
Anyway, that’s my answer for now. I hope all kids can grow up healthy and happy.”
Comments say, “Because humans are fundamentally evil. Haven’t you discovered? If no one disciplines kids, they’ll naturally be humongous brats. Adults have to teach and train kids how to be good.”
“When I was in middle school, a bunch of kids from my class held an orgy. I didn’t understand at the time, and only found out later.”
“There’s a thing called anti-social personality disorder, and it means they’re just born bad. It has nothing to do with how they’re raised.”