I Married a Sexist and Never Knew It

Last weekend it was brought to my attention that my husband is sexist.  Yeah, who knew?  I mean, you think you know a person.  You share your life, your love, your hopes and efforts for fourteen years, only to find out that the world you’ve created for yourselves is a sexist’s utopia.  Sweet!

Of course, I staunchly disagree with this idiotic view of our life and our marital relationship.  Admittedly though, I have let this bother me a bit more than I probably should.  There are so many various levels of annoyance with this one ill-informed comment though, that I hardly know where to begin.

I guess I can start with the reason my husband was labeled, because that is really the lynch pin for my anger.  It turns out that he is sexist because when asked why he doesn’t make me get a job so he doesn’t have to work part-time outside of the fire department, his answer was, “I don’t want her to get a job.”  That…THAT made him sexist!  Really?!  Seriously?!  The man who has loved me and honored me and been my best friend, confidant, and biggest supporter for the past decade and a half does not want me to go to work every day.  Well, good!  This means we understand each other.

I wonder if the person who called him sexist for that honest answer even has a clue as to what I have to say about that.  No!  Of course he doesn’t.  He did not bother to ask me what I think.  He likely does not care what I think either.  I apparently have enough brain tissue and muscle mass to slog my way to work, be a dutiful employee robot and pick up my kids from the kiddy pharm on the way home each day, but I cannot be trusted with the thoughts it takes to decide for myself whether or not I want to, need to, or should go to work. 

Had he asked though, he might have just learned a few things.  For example, in the past fourteen years together my husband and I have gotten pretty good at communicating with each other and holding our own, as a couple, even when we go against the grain.  This tends to be happening more often lately.  Mr. Dogooder might also have learned that we have tried his prescribed lifestyle before.  I’ve worked for money.  I’ve gone to college.  I’ve gotten a bachelor’s degree.  Most importantly, I have decided that I hate going to work.  I do!  I hate it with a passion.  Not that I’m lazy, unmotivated or uneducated.  I just hate the day-to-day monotony of working as an employee and doing the same thing over, and over, and over, and over, so that at the end of the week, I can get some piddly paycheck (or two-thirds of it anyways) as my reward for being a dutiful worker bee and hating my life.

I don’t want that.  I used to think I wanted that, but then I got married, had children and created a life with my family.  With my sexist husband’s help, we are well on our way to being debt free.  It has been a long haul, but this is all part of a larger plan so that we can continue creating our life together, rather than allowing our stuff and our debtors to tell us how we get to live our life.

Sure, we shirk the cloak of normalcy, but we never shirk responsibility.  We understood years ago that we are responsible for our future.  In all of our years together and through much trial and error, we have come to understand that I love being a homemaker, a wife, a mother, a teacher, a student and a reviver of many forgotten tasks and traditions.  We understand this together though.  House Wife is not some label that my husband slaps on me as he pats me on my ass and sends me back to the kitchen to fry up another egg for him.  If he labels me, the adjectives are probably along the lines of:  intelligent, ambitious, amazing, or sexy (I’m simply repeating what I’ve heard.)  But never, ever has he cheapened what I do and the life that we’ve created by sticky labeling me for the sole purpose of justifying my existence to others who think they know better than we do what is right for our family.

So how dare someone jump in the middle of our best friendship and try to tear it down by claiming he is a sexist and I need to become an employee to make my existence a worthy one in modern society.  Again, if he had asked for my take on things, he’d have learned that I say, “Screw modern society!”  I detest the way women are practically forced to go to work.  It irks me that everyone is expected to get a job, work long hours and keep this charade up for decades, doing stuff they hate or even stuff they once liked, but come to loathe after years of dry repetition. 

I, for one, am not afraid to opt out of this nonsense.  That way of life is not for me and if I have any say in the matter, which I do because my husband respects my opinion, it is not the way of life for my family either.  We all like for me to be at home, doing a million and one things every day that most wives never get the joy of doing with their families these days.  We all like the fact that we are going to be free from debt soon and therefore free to make our own choices.  We like that my husband is the away-from-home worker who busts his butt so that I can be home with the children.  He likes the fact that I have dinner cooking when he comes home from work.  It would be ridiculous to be offended by that.  And if anyone wants to call me a sexist for enjoying the fact that he works hard, then why don’t you just go ahead and throw in the fact that I love his strength, his deep voice, the whiskers when he’s not quite clean-shaven and his powerful hands too.  After all, it is incredibly sexist of me to enjoy these overtly masculine aspects of my man, but I refuse to seek his feminine side.  In fact, if he showed me a feminine side, I would promptly ask him to put it away forever and go chop some wood or hunt something.

So, next time anyone decides to label my husband on my behalf, please allow my half to speak for myself and keep your damned labels for your own life or wife.