This is called gender essentialism and it's utter bullshit.

Sorry, people with reproductive organ set A are not any more "wired" to care about cleanliness than people with reproductive organ set B.*

*Note: the fact that I, a woman, could peacably live in squalor for weeks at a time; that my uber-neat male partner ends up doing laundry because I'd sooner buy a new shirt than take the time to wash it; and that I don't and have never owned a mop is not the source of my assertions. For every one of me there may be a thousand women who would run shrieking from my household management failings and who obsess over lint.

The point is not that there are anecdotal exceptions to a "rule."

The point is that the "rule" is mischaracterized as a quasi-biological matter, an issue of "wiring," when in fact it is almost entirely SOCIAL in origin. In the West, women are trained since toddlerhood to care for cleanliness, appearance, grooming, and household harmony. Men aren't.

I wrote a comment in reply to that article pointing out how sexist it is...and that if this type of article were written about any other group - making these types of generalizations (say about a racial or religious group) than it would immediately be called out for the BS prejudiced trash that it is. Except that it's stereotypes about women, so it's considered "true"...especially because it's written by a women. (as if women can't be sexist misogynistic dolts too)

I find sexist articles and comments on HuffPo fairly common. Especially in the comment section. The thing is, it's supposedly in their policy not to publish sexist, racist, homophobic etc. comments. Yet I see sexism in the comments ALL THE TIME. It's infuriating, too because when I try to respond to people making sexist comments, I find that my comments are always moderated and censored out. It makes me so frakkin angry that sexist comments will get published over and over...yet my comments pointing out blatant sexism is censored out. I've written to HuffPost time and time again, but I never got a response. I can only imagine that the moderators are sexist asshats, that only publish the comments that they like - and delete all the others.

So anyone reading this, help out, post a comment on that thread calling out the utter BS that is that article - as well as all the other commenters there that are happily agreeing that "women are evil controlling b-s" and pity "te poor menz that jus wants to take nappypoo".
Barf.

I'm pretty sure I'm "hardwired" to follow the philosophy of: "Don't touch my stuff I know right where everything is, what your calling a mess is my organizational system." I've tried having an orderly/neat desk. It doesn't work for me.

Also, Saturday afternoon's are strictly reserved for Friday-night recovery day. None of this has anything to do with my vagina.

The description of the man fits me perfectly. How depressing.

My boyfriend and I are in an unspoken battle for who has the messiest home, and we enjoy napping together on Sunday afternoons :) Yet another reason why it's better to date a feminist.

My spouse has an almost fanatical hatred of my occasional Saturday afternoon naps. He can't imagine why I'd waste weekend time sleeping.

I always knew that he was really in touch with his feminine side.

Thank you fellow commentors - I'm not alone as being a *gasp* female-napper! As I read the HuffPo article, I was tempted to go to the bathroom and check that I did in fact have a vagina.

Housework-wise, the SO and I try to keep on top of things - but seeing as we both consider the house big, soft comfy surfaces - with my love for naps & his WoW addiction...it doesn't happen often.

Sorry I can't stop commenting about this.

But did anyone else notice Lisa's analogy of men & their jobs to housework? Reminds me of Dennis Prager's analogy last week about why women shouldn't say no to sex.

What is that all about?! Women aren't career-oriented either? We're just sex-slaves and maids. Wow. What year is it again?

Want another one? Male audiophiles and home-theater freaks sometimes speak of a component or system's WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) as being one of its most important specifications. There's at least some truth to it. :-|

I don't comprehend Saturday naps. You can SLEEP LATE on Saturday, why nap?

My husband hates when I come home from work and take a nap, because then he has to make dinner and watch the kids (or, more likely, watch TV and the kids, and put off dinner until I get up.) But if I don't get enough sleep, I am a zombie at 6, and if it's a choice between me napping and me eating other people's brains starting with his, he'll put up with it.

I can totally understand why women, or anyone who has things they need to get done, would be royally pissed off that the person who's supposedly their partner and helper would take a nap on Saturday, one of the few full days any working person has to get stuff done. By taking a nap, not only is the guy in this scenario saying "I am not interested in helping you with the chores that need doing today", but he's also sabotaging her completely, because most big home-org chores cannot be done with a person sleeping on the couch, as they make a lot of noise. And if there are kids they're going to have a hard time parsing the mixed messages of "Mommy is working hard and Daddy is asleep."

But it really is gender-essentialist to imply that this is typical male behavior or that it's typical female behavior to want to get the house cleaned and do chores. My husband and I usually spend our weekends cleaning the house because we can't do much about the messes the kids make over the course of the week, since we work; or we engage in home improvement projects, or work on IT projects for our home business, or go shopping. Lying around the house taking naps happens only when someone is sick, has been sleep deprived all week, or has some other legitimate reason to be exhausted, and if one person is lying around taking a nap the other one takes that time off and reads, watches TV, surfs the Internet, plays video games... anything but do useful work. We don't do that "I work and you nap" crap unless someone is laid up from surgery and can't help with the chores anyway. When one person relaxes, the other does as well.

I take naps on the weekend, therefore I am a man. Good to know.

I see my house as "a long soft comfortable surface" and would rather nap or do just about anything on a saturday afternoon rather than get to those dishes. Maybe HuffPo thinks I'm not a real woman?

"When a woman sees a pile of dirty dishes and laundry strewn about the floor, we don't just see a mess, we literally feel failure...it's the way most of us are wired"

No. It's not a matter of hard wiring. It's a matter of raising and socialization.

Who traditionally is supposed to take care of the home? Why, women.

So who's going to get the shame and blame of having a messy home (whether or not the mess is theirs, whether or not they spend 40 hours a week working outside the home and another 40 taking care of errands around the house and for the family, whether or not they've even been in the home the last week)?

We're still under the delusion that the home and the cleanliness of the home is solely a woman's domain. Now, if she were the only one living there, I could agree with that.

If more than one person (regardless of sex or gender) is living in a place, the onus is on both of them to keep it clean. To what degree is based on their mutual agreement.

My cleaning the kitchen has fuck all to do with my vag and more to do with the fact that I don't want roaches or ants in the apartment and I dislike trying to make a meal while having to constantly shift the dirty dishes around to make room to use the counter or sink.

I live with my boyfriend. Of the two of us, I have a lower tolerance for clutter. (My mother was very much about organization and cleanliness when I was growing up; his mother is not much for organization.)

If things are looking particularly messy (dishes piling up in the sink, laundry piled up, items strewn across the living room) I physically and mentally cannot relax until things are straightened up. (Much like I can't concentrate on work if my desk is a war zone of papers and files.)

It's also not a matter of "hating men taking naps." It's a matter of feeling respected within the relationship and not feeling like I'm the one doing all of the grunt work.

I've been able to compromise on how clean I feel the apartment has to be, but there are some things I just can't ignore (and be able to relax) and he's got to meet me halfway. I consider it a matter of respect for me that my boyfriend takes consideration for what I need and tidies things up when he has more time at home than I do.

Then we can take that nap together.

Wow, where to begin? Okay, my fiance does like to take weekend naps and I'm not a fan of them myself (mostly because I sleep late anyway and naps tend to make me feel groggy). And I'd be annoyed if we had things to do, like go to the grocery store or whatever, and he insisted on napping instead. But that doesn't happen because of this magical thing called communication. We say - let's get all of our stuff done early Saturday, so we have the afternoon free. Then he can nap and I can read my book. Look at how nicely that works out!

Also, way to feed into stupid stereotypes. So men are all career-oriented and need to see the home as a work project, right, whereas women's careers are nowhere NEAR as important as their homemaking skills. Gag. I couldn't give a damn if the apartment is a mess (okay, maybe if it's starting to smell...). The boy is far more likely to care about piles of crap that start amassing. It's appearance has no reflection on my view of myself as a success or a failure. Seriously. Enough with the gender essentialism - some women care about their homes more than men, and vice-versa.

Love. love my naps. This essay is an excellent example of a particular social construction of gender. In the U.S. during the early 1900s, women might have been considered more delicate (well, upper class ones at least) and in need of a nap.
Now, apparently, we are insane organizers.

Fainting couches anyone?

You know what I see when I see a pile of dirty dishes? A pile of dirty dishes. And guess what? I'm okay with ignoring it too. In fact, most of my family (four women and one man) is like that. That's why dirty dishes become such a chore for us since we let it go on for a couple of days. Oh! And laundry? Hah! We'll wait till we're down past our last pair of underwear before we even think about putting in an hamper to the laundry room. I an so sick of the stereotype that women are cleaner than men. It's sexist at it's very core.

Oh! And I'm the only one in my family who doesn't like naps. Especially on a Saturday.

Naps? People still take naps? Maybe because we have kids, but I cannot remember the last time my husband or myself took a weekend nap.

(sigh)

yeah, what I was going to point out-the problem with one partner napping and the other not is more with respect and actually helping as opposed to an irrational hatred of naps has been said. this goes for things like video games and DVDs too-it's rude to assume that you can use your time for leisure because your partner will clean up after you. end of story.

Hey men! You men out there living with female partners! Do your damned fair share.

Seriously. Women catch all sorts of judgment about housework and home cleanliness, and eliminating this for your female partners is mostly wishful thinking. There's a certain amount of shit that needs to be done. I have young kids, and my spouse and I work, and the amount of shit we have to get done is "one huge fucking shitload." There are about ten loads of laundry a week. There are always meals to make the pots and dishes to clean, getting the kids up and out and back and unpacked, staying on top of the paperwork, taking out the constant stream of trash and recycling ... there's a lot of stuff.

I had a short experience with doing it all. My spouse was on bedrest and for several months, I did 100% of the work. That taught me that, for all my efforts to do half, I was really doing more like 40%. And I think of myself as someone who tries. Of opposite-sex couples my spouse and I know well enough to tell, I'm probably doing closest to half.

That means the rest of you are not doing your damned jobs.

There's a lot of shit to do. Do your fair share. If you were, she wouldn't mind letting you nap.

I think I'll go take a nap now, at 12:41 on a Tuesday....take that HuffPo!

Yeah, everybody knows that men like napping and watching sports and beer, while women like cleaning their countless throw pillows while having marathon discussions about their feelings. I know it's true, cuz I read it in a "Cathy" comic once!

Or maybe I'm just sarcastic because I saw a dirty dish on my way out the door and now I feel like a "failure".

(By the way, did anyone notice that in this stereotype there are piles of pizza boxes and yet there are dirty dishes? If these people presumably have been calling for pizza rather than cooking, when did they dirty the dishes? This whole thing makes no sense!)

This is ridiculous. I both love to clean and love to sleep and I see no problem reconciling the two. I understand that it can be frustrating when your partner decides to take a nap in the afternoon right after you say,"Hey, can we go run errands soon?" but if they normally like to take an hour long nap every Saturday at two, I don't see why you can't work around that and go to the grocery store at three or four. If I or my partner needs to sleep on our day off, I don't see why we shouldn't.

In response to women being cleaning machines, I am in a lesbian relationship and we are the odd couple when it comes to cleanliness. I would be ecstatic if we were both typical womanly housemaids! (Kidding. Mostly.) My fiancee has more relaxed views on cleaning than I do, in part because my dad is the most extreme neat freak I know (he's up there with Monk w/his OCD) and my mom simply liked being in a clean house. Predictably, I like to clean and if the house is a mess I just can't relax. Unfortunately, I start to think things are dirty before she thinks they need cleaning and she also doesn't think things like ceiling fans or shower curtains or coffee tables really need to be cleaned ever, so I have to ask her to do a lot of chores she thinks don't exist.

Luckily, she does the dishes (though not often enough) which is my ultimate least favorite chore even below cleaning the toilet. So that's one blessing.

Well, since the article made no sense, I wondered where the author got her ideas from. I figured she must have modeled the article after her own personal experiences since I have never heard of incidences of women begrudging their husbands for taking weekend naps. So, that the article could make more sense I simply replaced all the instances of "woman" or "women" with the authors name to reflect her apparent personal experience. For example:

"Men love them and Lisa Earle McLeod despises them...
...Actually, let me rephrase, men love to take them and Lisa Earle McLeod despises them for enjoying it...
...When Lisa Earle McLeod sees a pile of dirty dishes and laundry strewn about the floor, she doesn't just see a mess, she literally feels failure. Lisa Earle McLeod could have spent the workday brokering world peace, but if her home isn't running smoothly, she feels out of whack. It might not make sense, but it's the way Lisa Earle McLeod is wired.
...

Now doesn't that make a lot more sense? I don't mean to be mocking this woman- but I can't imagine she got her information for this article by observing and talking to actual women. Again, my only guess is that it's based on personal experience in which she wrongfully assumes that everyone else is like her.

Good God, and I just read her bio and realized that she supposedly specialized in self-help!

Thomas, way to invoke the stereotype that men are lazy bums. This is the year 2009; lose the bigotry.

"I expected more than this from the Huffingtonpost!"

Really? Cuz I've seen quite a bit of crap articles and editorials on that site, not to mention some of the awful, awful comments. There's plenty to like, but they also put up a lot of inexplicable stuff.

Saturday afternoon naps are the best - I love them. It never occurred to me that naps were gendered because I grew up seeing men and women enjoy an afternoon nap.

Saturdays I usually get up early, finish the housework and do my shopping. I come home, have lunch, read for a while and then...nap time. Bliss, pure bliss. I am a restless sleeper at night but my Saturday afternoon naps are deep and restful.

As for housework...urgh...I do it because I have to, not because it gives me any particular pleasure or sense of accomplishment. My mother was "house-proud". I'm not particularly. Does that make me less feminine? I don't think so!

Chiming in, I don't believe that most [traditional] men don't really care if the house is cluttered.

They may not *want* to do the housework themselves, but based on the experience of my oh-so-traditional family, they will complain to high heaven if their wives/daughters don't flurry around keeping everything spotless - if we're chilling out on the sofa and there's A DISH in the sink, it's time for throwing a fit! ZOMG, there are FINGERPRINTS on the doorknobs and switchplates! And you're just sitting there READING A BOOK, you lazy slattern! Isn't there laundry to do? (But yes, Daddy is tired because HE works hard all day teaching, so you must all tiptoe around and not make any clatter while doing the dishes, either, so he can take his nap on the weekend.)

This was my life experience from age 3 when my mother remarried until I moved out of the house - and more importantly, my mother's life experience...and some people wonder why I'd rather be single than have a male "protector"/"supporter"...

and Vince-even in 2009, when the amount of housework men actually do is tallied and compared to the amount of housework women actually do, it isn't 50%. even(I think especially, though I can't find the study that specifically dealt with this) among men who swear up and down that they do 50% so no. his point is really really relevant-make sure you know how much housework really has to get done before you get all offended that you're doing your half.