"Housework is the only activity at which men are allowed to be consistently inept because they are thought to be so competent at everything else"
About this Quote
A neat little indictment hides inside the dry politeness of that word “allowed.” Pogrebin isn’t describing a natural gap in skills; she’s pointing to a permission structure. Men’s “ineptitude” at housework isn’t merely tolerated, it’s socially licensed, even strategically performed, because it props up a broader story: male competence as the default setting, female competence as invisible maintenance.
The line works because it flips the usual framing. Instead of arguing that domestic labor is hard (it is) or undervalued (it is), Pogrebin exposes how incompetence can be a kind of power. If you’re presumed competent in “everything else” - the paid work, the public sphere, the Big Decisions - you can afford to fail at the small, repetitive tasks that keep a household functioning. That failure is cushioned by expectation: a burnt dinner becomes a charming anecdote, a missed dentist appointment becomes “he didn’t know,” and the clean-up quietly migrates to someone else.
Written out of second-wave feminist critique, the quote sits in the era when women were told they could “have it all” while still being drafted as the home’s default manager. Pogrebin’s subtext is that housework isn’t just labor; it’s a cultural test of who is responsible for noticing, remembering, anticipating. The joke stings because it names the asymmetry: competence is a badge in public and an opt-out clause in private, and society often treats that as fairness rather than theft.
The line works because it flips the usual framing. Instead of arguing that domestic labor is hard (it is) or undervalued (it is), Pogrebin exposes how incompetence can be a kind of power. If you’re presumed competent in “everything else” - the paid work, the public sphere, the Big Decisions - you can afford to fail at the small, repetitive tasks that keep a household functioning. That failure is cushioned by expectation: a burnt dinner becomes a charming anecdote, a missed dentist appointment becomes “he didn’t know,” and the clean-up quietly migrates to someone else.
Written out of second-wave feminist critique, the quote sits in the era when women were told they could “have it all” while still being drafted as the home’s default manager. Pogrebin’s subtext is that housework isn’t just labor; it’s a cultural test of who is responsible for noticing, remembering, anticipating. The joke stings because it names the asymmetry: competence is a badge in public and an opt-out clause in private, and society often treats that as fairness rather than theft.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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