The time it takes to be a woman

I can’t think of any couple I know socially who would react that way. Guess it’s true: birds of a feather flock together.

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I only shave twice a week. Too much trouble.

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I guarantee you that it does not. Among four 13 year olds, at least one of them will know how to or figure out how to bypass it.

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I’m not sure how much of it is colour perception (although if it is, I’d have thought it was reduced colour perception in the men rather than tetrachromacy, which is much more rare).

I’ve never had a problem with colour tests and I can see differences in different shades of beige or white, but it doesn’t matter as much what shade of paint goes on the small part of the world that I have some control over. A couple of weeks ago I helped a new couple lay parquet flooring in their dining room. She wanted to lay it over the kitchen tiles too, and she was almost in tears because her boyfriend didn’t agree that the colour of the perfectly normal tiles was terrible. I didn’t express an opinion other than to agree with the boyfriend that tiles were waterproof, harder wearing and would look much better than parquet after a few spills. In our own case, I much preferred leaving our living room with the existing colour scheme, but it matters much more to my wife.

To the extent that it is a difference in ability, I may not be as good at matching colours as I am at recognising them. The biggest difference is that colour has a much lower priority to me than considerations like practicality, cost, time etc. If all of that is acceptable, any neutral or matching shade is fine.

As long as I’ve known her, she has been dedicated to sleeping as late, and arriving to work as close to the wire, as is professionally possible without raising too many eyebrows. Somehow, once she gets moving, she moves in a blue-shifted blur.

She’s aware of the stereotype that this article seeks to perpetuate, and singlehandedly sets out to shatter it. I do my part by waking early and taking my sweet damn time getting my shit together.

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Since the matter of gender as performance has been touched upon, with regards to make-up, expectations, drag, etc I decided to try forking it off into its own topic. Because I think that it is interesting but likely to go off-topic from the original post and study here.

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[quote=“plasticsyntax, post:24, topic:86108, full:true”]
My understanding is it’s because you can pack more urinals into a space than full bathroom stalls, this is a huge factor in why men’s bathrooms have better throughput.[/quote]
Urinals provide better utilization of space, less water usage, and faster cycle time.

With the gender-neutral washroom designers making the recommendation to “Remove urinals and replace with enclosed single stall toilets.”, the future may give us equality, in the form of longer lines for everybody.

I like the system used in many airport bathrooms – one area for sinks, one for stalls, and another area with urinals with the standard half-walls molded in. While currently gender-segregated, you could take down the signs and nobody would be forced to see anything objectionable.

IMHO, guys would be less likely to object to making restrooms unisex if the plan included standard individual urinals. No going to all stalls with full walls, no trough, and as few as possible of those protruding unisex urinals that nobody likes to use.

I’m a designer, I’m really aware of the spaces I live in, really sensitive to the aesthetics I surround myself with, I make all the colour choices and interior design choices in my household because my wife could not give a flying fuck.

But yeah I guess some people still sit around at dinner parties and smile knowingly because men are from Mars and women are from Venus.

It’s just nature people!

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I found that guy compelling when that book came out and everyone was praising him. Turns out it’s bull pucky and so is his PhD.

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MrPants would paint the living room bright purple if I let him. And I would paint all the walls in all the rooms Kitten White (the best white) if he let me. In fact when we redid the basement and he asked me about paint for the downstairs bathroom and I said “pick whatever you want I don’t care”. He picked a light green so bright and so electric so neon, the painter actually stopped painting twice to confirm that this colour was right and to ask “Does MissyPants know you picked THIS colour?” What does this say about gender essentialism other that we both care about different colours differently? Nothing. Nothing at all. Save that female stand up comics havent made routines over how husbands pick paint colours… yet.

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In my house, neither of us care what color the walls are. They’ve always been some shade of white or cream, and we’ve never had much desire to change that. I’m certainly not good at interior design.

There’s only one decorating thing I know Mr. Bells cares about: nothing with a flocked or corduroy texture. He finds it physically painful to touch.

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please please please compromise on striped

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I have nothing at all against purple — if I owned a house the exterior would be purple in short order — but one time I had a bathroom with green porcelain fixtures (and an old-timey elevated toilet tank!) that a roommate took it upon herself to paint the walls lavender, without consulting anyone else. It went from being a fairly nice looking bathroom to being the most hideous shithouse I’ve ever seen.

And I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.

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Those of us who would resemble werewolves if we did the same look on in envy.

Hmm. I would have thought when we were manfully striding through the primeval forest, pondering whether to hurl our spear at the patch of beige visible through the undergrowth, the ability to distinguish the shade of beige that indicated something small, squeaky and tasty from that which indicated a soon-to-be-enraged large carnivore would have been a definite evolutionary advantage.

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There seems to be LOT of men with so little imagination they can’t grasp that there is a lot more to do when you have to pull down your pants to pee. Let’s ignore for now the ‘lady business’ these same men have no knowledge of.

Maybe this will help. Guys, imagine that you have to do the same thing to pee that you have to do to poop. Got it?

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And I’m kind of in the opposite boat – I’m genderqueer, but for most of my life (up until about 44 or so), I presented almost exclusively male. I’m only recently getting comfortable with going out in public presenting as female or androgyn. At this point, I’ll often present as male (or mostly male, at any rate) simply because it takes less time and energy for me to default to male! (You also indirectly mention it, but yeah, this doesn’t begin to touch on the differences in the cost.)

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To say nothing of the fact that not every non-normative person lands squarely within one of the non-normative boxes.

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That’s why I do it. I can’t grow hair on my head anymore, but I can grow it on my face in like three days. Easy call.

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