Sexual Symbolism and Filth Tolerance Thresholds

The gender symbolism of cleanliness characterises many a marriage. You know what I’m talking about. Women are clean. Men are dirty. Cleanliness is associated with proper morals and sexual purity. Dirt is associated with amorality and promiscuity. 

Given these connections, it is hardly surprising that 20^th century housewives were judged, largely by other 20^th century housewives, according to how tidy they kept their domiciles.  Many episodes of situation comedies in the 50s and early 60s featured women visitors covertly checking for dust, dirt, and grime has they moved through their host’s house.

Finding dirt was not just an indication of carelessness; it conveyed laziness, depravity, a wanton disregard for one’s family, communist leanings, and possibly an enthusiasm for devil worship. Keeping a clean family home was the essence of womanhood. Things have changed since then, but the remnants of this mindset still remain.

Stay-at-home, second income, and single dads do clean the house. They understand the connection between filth, microbes, and disease, and would generally prefer to avoid these nasties. But that’s where it ends. We are still a long way from getting men to think of cleanliness as the essence of manhood, and we may never get there.  Household cleaning for a man is purely functional. It is stripped entirely of its symbolic meaning, and this is perhaps one of the reasons why men’s standards for cleanliness are lower than women’s – which has probably led to mild cases of marital discord from time to time.[1]

---

[1] Cooper, Annabel, Robin Law, Jane Malthus and Pamela Wood (2000), “Rooms of Their Own: Public Toilets and Gendered Citizens in a New Zealand City, 1860-1940,” Gender, Place and Culture, 7 (4), 417-433.

Flying High: sexism, paternalism and sheer idiocracy

What are the dangers to a kid flying alone ?

Airline policies and parents concerned about allowing unaccompanied minors to be seated next to men make a travesty of both reason and justice.

That this fear feeds paternalistic policy and parental concerns is ludicrous.

If you send your child unaccompanied on a plane, your child has more chance of dying in a plane crash than being molested!

Tracey Spicer, journalist and Sky News anchor has recently affirmed her support of this controversial airline policy saying “I don’t want my kids sitting next to a man on a plane.”

Her statement is, as she admits, sexist. It most certainly is, but my major issue is that it is patently wrong and misleading.

It is said that we use only 10% of our brain, that 20% of statistics are made up, and the remaining 90% of the population aren’t any good at proportions.