When I was searching for roommates to fill my three bedroom house I put an ad on craigslist, but I too put down that I only wanted female roommates. The main reason being that I didn't feel comfortable sharing a house with a male that I would most likely not know. I didn't want to put myself in danger of being assaulted or be treated like the maid. Although, I'm finding that living with two other females doesn't mean the house is always clean. I live with one girl that usually picks up after herself but sometimes leaves chip bags on the floor or her purse and its contents on the ground. She's not as bad as one girl who leaved dirty dishes with food still on it on the floor and trails her dirty laundry across the house (she btw doesn't do ANY house work). So guess who's stuck with cleaning *hint* it's me. I'm a naturally clean person, and I've decided that once this lease is up, I'm living on my own so I'm the only person who makes any mess. I have found that women can be just as messy if not more than men.

I dunno, maybe being steadily driven out of typical affordable student housing will wake men up to cleaning up after themselves.

I'm living with a male friend next semester, and I'm actually not very worried about him being messy. He's a very conscientious guy, and will respond if I ask him to do something nicely. Last semester I lived with two girls, and our apartment was a DISASTER. Food everywhere, nothing ever dusted, stuff piled everywhere... it was gross.

So yeah, I think the stereotype of the dirty male is just that: a stereotype. I can understand more not wanting to live with a guy that you don't know because it would make you uneasy.. but couldn't you just meet with the guy beforehand, take precautions?

I know I wouldn't want to be discriminated against for being a girl, why should we do that to guys? Imagine an ad for an apartment saying "no girls need apply, you'll talk to much and... be bad at math" or something. (I know that's not very applicable for living arrangements, but you get it)

Sexism is never the answer!

Seriously? The only way boys will ever be as neat and dirt-conscious as girls is if they see their fathers helping out around the house and doing chores like washing the dishes, dusting, cleaning the bathtub, whatever. Because the reality is that in most houses the mom still does most or all of the housework, and boys still get off easier than girls when it's chore time. If there are any Douglas Adams fans here, they will understand when I say that, for boys, there is an SEP (someone else's problem) field around dirty areas of the house. Which is to say, they don't clean up because it's never been their job to do so.

Seriously? The only way boys will ever be as neat and dirt-conscious as girls is if they see their fathers helping out around the house and doing chores like washing the dishes, dusting, cleaning the bathtub, whatever. Because the reality is that in most houses the mom still does most or all of the housework, and boys still get off easier than girls when it's chore time. If there are any Douglas Adams fans here, they will understand when I say that, for boys, there is an SEP (someone else's problem) field around dirty areas of the house. Which is to say, they don't clean up because it's never been their job to do so.

Well, I'm a fairly messy person. I try to clean up after myself, but I'm pretty forgetful. I leave cabinet doors open and I leave the juice on the counter. I do need to be reminded from time to time to stop doing these things, and part of the reason that I don't is because I had a neat-freak mom. I never realized that I left doors open or things on the counter because they disappeared back to wherever they came from. I realize that this is my problem and I have to learn to be aware of what I'm doing, but I can relate the to whole, "What? I didn't do that..." syndrome that you first get when there isn't anyone cleaning up after you.

However, I am always the one who vacuums, dusts, washes dishes, cleans the toilet (my least favorite chore. I hate dried pee. Especially other people's.) or the bathtub, etc. That is something that really does bother me. Perhaps that has to do with seeing my mother do these things and being in a house where cleaning was just part of the weekly schedule.

I think it's sexist, too, but I would be very wary of living with a guy I didn't know well. I mean, I'd be wary of living with a girl I didn't know well, too, but for different reasons. I think that the stereotype is just a stereotype, and should you encounter a guy who doesn't like to clean up after himself, you should hold him accountable. I know it's been good for me to hear it, and I think it's been good for my roommate, too.

Anytime you put up an ad looking for a roommate, you're taking a lot of chances. You're going to interview this person once and then decide to let them live in your house. They might turn out to be messy and annoying, they might skip town with all your stuff, they might get drunk and attack you, they might try to poison your food with laxatives if they get mad at you, who knows. (All but one of those have happened to me or my boyfriend with roommates who seemed like nice people at the beginning).

Given this, I think a lot of people take the same approach as insurance companies-- try your best to minimize your risk. Car insurance companies routinely give better rates to teenage girls than boys, because girls are statistically less likely to crash their car. Those statistics mean nothing at all about any one particular girl or boy, but its all they have to go off of until you have driven for a few years and have a record (good or bad).

I certainly don't think that all woman are cleaner than all men. I've seen very messy men and women, and very clean men and women. Currently I live with two guys, and they are both quite a bit cleaner than me, and I was much cleaner than my last set of roommates who were girls. But I've also seen guys that live in horrific filth, so I see where the stereotype comes from.

I think most people figure that with a girl they are statistically less likely to have anything serious like an assault happen under their roof. You could always have bad luck and get a psychotic girl, but its probably less likely than getting a violent guy.

Now, if we're talking about living with people that we already know, I'd pick guys any day. But random roommates from craigslist? Yeah, I'm more comfortable with a girl.

I wouldn't want a male acquaintance/stranger for a roommate either, because I don't want to risk being assaulted, and that's my decision to make. I also don't think I'd tell people that was my main reason when stating a preference. I probably wouldn't give a reason at all unless asked (and I'm actually not sure what I would say if asked out of the blue).

While some women might really just recoil at the thought of living with a stereotypically "messy male", I can also see why some women might find it easier to use an excuse like that when in actuality the reason is that they have the same fear of assault that I do.

I'm curious how you went about investigating this, because from most of the housing ads I've seen (in the United States, not Canada), people don't give a reason for the gender preference. And if you're a male (? I don't know) calling up women to ask why they don't want male roommates, they might well be hesitant to outright say "well, I'm scared of getting assaulted, so thanks for calling but no thanks." Unfortunately, many guys see that as a reason to act defensively, instead of a reason to join the fight against sexual violence...so a lot of women avoid discussing it with men to begin with.

I lived with all male roommates my senior year of college and loved it. I didn't think they were any messier or neater than females I have lived with, it just depended on the individual.

Whenever I talked about moving in with guys before I actually did people would bring up 2 things: one, was I afraid that as the only woman I'd be expected to clean up after them, and two, would there be any sexual or romantic concerns?

I'm not sure which was worse. One: no, because I'm a fucking slob too, and simply won't clean up after people. Two: no, because a woman and men under one roof doesn't necessarily equal sex, plus one of them is gay. True, I'd briefly had feelings for one of them, but those were long past and there was nothing sexual about my relationships with either of them.

We had the best time in that apartment.

I chose same sex housing simply because of the statistic that youre more likely to be raped by someone you know, than a stranger. I've heard too many stories by fellow peers and friends about being raped by someone they knew and never taking it to court. Some sadly even blamed themselves. Particularly with the crappy prosecution rates for rape crimes - I'm not chancing it.

I dont think its sexist to seperate the sexes based on gender. At the most, it should be a choice that they choose, not something that is universally enforced. I like being around women, it taps an energy in me that men cant. There are also practicalities such as rape that we have to confront. A guy is also more likely to bring his other guy friends around, and even if hes not a rapist, then they could be. I mean, all a woman needs is for some friend of his to be some sort of right-wing piece of shit that thinks because youre wearing a tank top that he can make sexual advances torwards you. That he cant "help" it since hes an oversexed male and just saw female flesh.

Part of the issue seems to be whether choosing a roommate is purely a business matter, purely a social matter, or somewhere on a spectrum between the two.

Is deciding who you want to live with closer to deciding who to sell a house to/lease an apartment to/etc. when you don't live in it, or closer to deciding who to be friends with/ask out on dates/etc. when they don't exactly depend on it (the way people do depend on having somewhere to sleep)?

Meanwhile, what about on-campus housing? Is it sexist of schools to take gender into account when running a room assignment lottery to decide which strangers to house in the same room? Is it sexist of students who lived in that housing to stick with same-sex roommating when they move off-campus?

An explanation seems to be in order, and a woman's concern for her safety with a strange man or his friends is a perfectly good one. Not so regarding cleanness. Racists use the cleanness argument against e.g., Chinese who allegedly cook with peanut oil and create hard to clean residues from hot or vaporized oil on kitchen surfaces, when refusing to rent to Chinese.

I would even allow normally classist behavior like inquiring about income or the nature of one's work before renting, to decide for oneself short of a credit check, how likely one is to be paid on time, and regularly. Again, however, impermissible on racial grounds. In LA, my brother and his two fellow male Japanese-American roommates were chosen to rent a house, over a single black mother offering MORE money. I don't know what her circumstances were, but that just struck me as totally wrong - the landlord was Japanese-American, and it was a Japanese-American part of town, across the highway from Watts. I am convinced he was simply racist.

I am a woman and a complete slob. I have had many female roommates over the years, they too were slobs. In my family, my father is the neat freak. I am not sure where the stereo-type of women being the ones to clean up everthing comes from. But it sure does fit into what the patriarchy expects of women, that is to stay home and scub toilets, and clean up after men and babies.
Even though, in my experience, it's women that are generally more messy, I would still choose to room with women simply because I want to avoid being raped.

A male commented at July 28, 2008 6:38 AM: "I would even allow normally classist behavior like inquiring about income or the nature of one's work before renting, to decide for oneself short of a credit check, how likely one is to be paid on time, and regularly."

Yeah, that seems less classist than just setting a price for the goods or services one offers and not making the trade if the price isn't likely to be paid. At the same time other stuff like rejecting a blue-collar applicant for a white-collar applicant, or an unemployed relative of some white-collar workers, who offers less money definitely seems classist.

A male commented at July 28, 2008 6:38 AM: "Again, however, impermissible on racial grounds. In LA, my brother and his two fellow male Japanese-American roommates were chosen to rent a house, over a single black mother offering MORE money. I don't know what her circumstances were, but that just struck me as totally wrong - the landlord was Japanese-American, and it was a Japanese-American part of town, across the highway from Watts. I am convinced he was simply racist."

That's my first guess too!

My second guess is, was number of tenants an issue? Did he choose 3 men (3 people) over 1 woman + 2 children (3 people)? Did he choose 3 men (3 people) over 1 woman + 4 children (5 people)? Did he choose 3 men (3 people) over 1 woman (1 person - for all I know, she was a single mother of adults who couldn't live with her because their jobs were thousands of miles apart)?

Likewise, how much room did the apartment have? I remember hearing someone else get angry about a case in which a public housing agency gave an apartment to a Protestant single young woman over a Catholic widow with 8 children. He didn't say how big the apartment was, how many roommates the Protestant applicant planned to bring in, how many daughters and sons the Catholic applicant didn't plan to bring in, etc.

Having recently gone through a few years of University housing (and recently subletting a room) this is certainly a relevant issue. I'd say it's totally NOT okay for a landlord to take gender into account when renting an apartment but completely okay for roommates to do it.

I wouldn't want to live with a guy I didn't know already (and if you're putting out an ad it'll be someone you don't know) mostly for safety reasons. I'd just feel to vulnerable with him and his friends around and with complete access to me in my bedroom and bathroom. Also, I feel like a lot of men are dirtier than women because they are often not expected to do cleaning at home whereas girl children are more often (this is a generalization not a universal truth of course). Messy doesn't seem to be affected like this.

I am currently living with 3 guys and their maleness as related to dirtiness is definitely a problem. My old girl roommates would leave purses out or laundry on the floor, but now I have to deal with stray pubic hairs and badly aimed urination. Eew. That was never a problem with my girl roommates.

The single mother had two or three children, and I didn't know anything else about them. I did assume with that level of rent, in that part of town, that it was not someone on government assistance because it was simply unattainable.

My brother and his roommates were all white collar professionals, btw, not students. It was an actual house, average, wood, three bedroom, maybe a little more than 1200 sq. ft., in a nice middle or upper middle class neighborhood, in LA, about five minutes STRAIGHT down the highway and offramp from LAX, with shopping centers and hotels on the same street. It was kind of like downtown Honolulu or Waikiki off the main beachfront strip of hotels, except without the grass, flowers, and trees.

And full of Japanese-Americans and Japanese nationals, displaying less cultural diversity than Hawaii overall, or even Waikiki itself. The average non-Japanese would probably feel out of place living there. I liked the neighborhood for its video store with the selection of anime (this was back in 1989 before it was common).

I still wouldn't hold it against a black woman who wanted to live there.

As a single female I've been letting rooms in my house for ten years. It's never occurred to me that the men I interview might assault me. I do not discriminate. I tell people upfront that this is a tidy house and they have to keep it tidy and clean up after themselves.

Over the years I've had more male than female housemates. Currently have 2 male 1 female. Both males are exceptionally clean, neat and tidy people, even more so than us two females.

Helena in the UK