Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Good Letters

Home
Catholic
Sexist Assumptions and the Difficult, Dirty Work of Grace

Sexist Assumptions and the Difficult, Dirty Work of Grace

Last updated on: April 29, 2015 at 5:45 pm by Tania Runyan

Sexist Assumptions and the Difficult, Dirty Work of Grace 2015-04-29T17:45:26-07:00 Tania Runyan

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

My husband was deep into a bathroom remodeling project when he asked me to stop by the home improvement store to grab a faucet connector. He had purchased the wrong size on his previous trip, and I was out running errands anyway.

A young female employee met me in the plumbing section. I tried to decipher the details from my husband’s text but couldn’t figure out what the succession of measurements meant. The employee didn’t know either, so I called my husband to confirm.

After I hung up, the employee shook her head: “Don’t you love how men send their wives out to do their dirty work?”

I was momentarily confused. Clean and decently dressed, I sipped a latte in a relatively quiet store while my husband banged on pipes and collected plaster dust in his pores. He had been averaging about five hours of sleep a night, skin cracking and knees creaking, because he was determined to finish the bathroom before the end of spring break. He had already installed a double sink to accommodate our tweens’ preening habits and gifted me with a whirlpool tub for my evenings of poetry and wine. The dirty work was certainly his.

The woman’s comment not only made me bristle because of her false assumptions—that my husband lolled in front of the TV with his hands in his pants while barking orders—but because it diminished me as well.

By tearing down my anonymous husband, the woman presupposed my inadequacy. Every time we attempt to prove that a man is a somewhat lesser parent or partner, we reinforce that a woman needs that extra boost to stay smart, responsible, and independent. By privileging the woman at the expense of her husband, we assume her inferiority.

It’s all around us. The “man cold.” The clueless dad haplessly putting diapers on an infant’s head and exploding mac and cheese in the microwave when his wife goes out of town. I met a woman whose husband was recovering from surgery. “You know how they are,” she said, rolling her eyes. “They whine about any kind of pain.”

I thought about my husband, who had survived a severe injury or two, several kidney stones, and the Ironman triathlon without so much a peep. And I just shrugged.

This time, I couldn’t stay quiet. “Well,” I said to the woman at the home improvement store. “He’s actually stuck under a sink. Working.”

She said nothing, and I didn’t expect her to. She seemed young and new to the position, searching the aisles with me to find the right parts. I know she wasn’t really trying to degrade my husband; she didn’t know him, of course. She was trying to find some common ground to speak from, some woman-to-woman small talk. It could have just as easily been a comment about the spring weather. Or my shoes. Or perhaps it was merely a way for her to buy some time, since she couldn’t find the three-eighths-inch compression inlet by half-inch female iron pipe outlet by thirty-six-inch flexible braided polymer water connector either.

So how should I have responded? If I had called her out directly on her sexist comment, she may have gotten defensive or wilted in her failure to provide excellent customer service. And as a result, I would have felt guilty, too, and nothing would have changed. If I had agreed with her, however, I would have compromised my true reaction to a comment that reflects our society’s need to diminish one to elevate the other.

Is there any way to win?

The best solution, it seems, is to somehow respond without violating the ethics of the situation, the good faith in which the comment was spoken. The goal isn’t to take a stand or to ignore the comment but to turn the conversation into something positive.

If I tell a woman with a “whining husband” that mine is a badass who can handle all manner of pain and suffering, I’m passing judgment on her. If I proclaim boldly that fathers are parents and not childcare workers, I come across as self-righteous. However, I can take a moment to uplift a situation in order to redeem it—in this case, to share that I was serving my husband, confusing as his text was, so that he, in fact, could serve me.

A year ago, several writers and I spent a weekend at a Catholic retreat center. An older woman who worked in the kitchen asked my poet friend, Susanna, if her husband was “babysitting.”

The word makes me bristle when used in the context of husbands. I could tell Susanna, too, was simmering inside. But she took a deep breath and responded with something like this:

“Yes he is. And he’s so good at it that I’m not even worried about being gone. We share parenting pretty evenly. He’s so invested. And I love seeing him with my boys.”

The woman nodded and smiled, maybe a bit surprised, but looking genuinely interested in Susanna’s life and perspective. She had probably never had a conversation like this. With just a few gracious sentences, Susanna had affirmed the woman’s question, praised her own husband, reminded herself of her own joy, and taught the woman something about gender equality.

Later, Susanna told me she had felt “a little livid” inside when the woman made those stereotypical assumptions. But she exchanged offense for compassion and anger for gratitude.

And that, after all, is what we are called to do: the difficult, dirty work of grace.

Tania Runyan is the author of the poetry collections Second Sky (Cascade Poiema Series), A Thousand Vessels, Simple Weight, and Delicious Air, which was awarded Book of the Year by the Conference on Christianity and Literature in 2007. Her book How to Read a Poem, an instructional guide based on Billy Collins’s “Introduction to Poetry,” was recently released by T.S. Poetry Press. Her poems have appeared in many publications, including Poetry, Image, Books & Culture, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, The Christian Century, Atlanta Review, Indiana Review, and the anthology In a Fine Frenzy: Poets Respond to Shakespeare. Tania was awarded an NEA Literature Fellowship in 2011.

Photo above credited to Kate Ter Haar and used under a Creative Commons license.

Previous Post

April 28, 2015

Death Comes for the Deconstructionist: An Interview with Daniel Taylor

Next Post

April 30, 2015 Jesus and Legos in the Deep, Part 1

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category A. G. Harmon Alissa Wilkinson Allison Backous Art Authors Brad Fruhauff Bradford Winters Bryan Bliss Caroline Langston Chad Thomas Johnston Chris Hoke Christiana N. Peterson Culture D.G. Myers D.L. Mayfield Daniel Bowman Jr. David Griffith Elizabeth Duffy Faith Film Greg Wolfe Guest Contributor Interview Jan Vallone Jeffrey Overstreet Jessica Eddings-Roeser Jessica Mesman Griffith Kelly Foster Lindsey Crittenden Morgan Meis music Natalie Vestin Nick Olson Peggy Rosenthal Personal Reflection Poetry Friday Reflection Relationships Review Richard Chess Richard Cole Sara Zarr Shannon Huffman Polson Sonya Bilocerkowycz Tania Runyan Tony Woodlief Topical Categories Uncategorized Vic Sizemore Writing

Select a Month October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 February 2008

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What did Jesus teach about judging others?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Do not judge lest you be judged Judge quickly Use harsh words Ignore everyone