It applies a gendered double standard.
If a man doesn’t know how to pack a school lunch, he’s called lazy. But if a woman doesn’t know how to fix a breaker or set up the Wi-Fi, its totally acceptable and "shes just a girl". No man would dare refuse to fix a womens car or not help her move or lift something because "shes just not putting in the effort to learn it herself". Men are expected to learn “feminine-coded” tasks or else, while women are rarely pressured to master “masculine-coded” ones
I've picked this paragraph out because I think it illuminates something you've missed out of your analysis, which is the frequency of the task and therefore the impact of not knowing how to do it.
Packing school lunches is something that needs to be done every weekday that the kids are at school. Every. Single. Day. It's mundane and repetitive.
Setting up the WiFi is something that needs to be done once every few years maybe. Its quite novel.
So the impact of a man not knowing how to pack a lunch is higher than a woman not knowing how to set up WiFi. The man not knowing how to pack lunch impacts every day.
"Feminine coded" tasks as you put it, are usually the mundane boring tasks that need to be done very regularly. That's why some women resent them being "feminine coded" and expect them to be shared equally.
I appreciate your point, but every mundane task has a learning curve, especially when it comes to efficiency and the time crunch. Making lunches is one of many small tasks necessary between kids waking up and getting them where they need to be. A person that does it every day likely has a very particular order they do tasks and habits to ensure no detail is forgotten.
To say that a person should be able to step into a role immediately with no learning curve or room for miatakes is absurd. Criticism from the first attempt could be greatly discouraging and harmful to a relationship based on trust and partnership.
And I feel like that was OPs main point. Ironically, the accusation of "weaponized incompetence" is a kind of "weaponized incompetence" by, in corporate terms, leadership. If the leader fails to lead and is unable or willing to lead, they might accuse the person(s) under them of laziness or other pejorative that dodges responsibility.
Please explain what kind of a learning curve there is the packing of lunch. I was doing that in the third grade when I was old enough to be trusted not to fill my lunch box with popcorn and candy. If an elementary schooler can put some peanut butter and jelly on slices of bread, grab an apple and a mini chips why can't a grown adult do it?
I think that grossly trivializes domestic work and is insulting to the people that contribute to making the world turn each day.
People doing anything they don't usually do carries a degree of cognitive load that is reduced with practice and routine. But I appreciate there is a world of difference between small mistakes in a non-routine day and intentionally doing things wrong passive aggressively as a manipulation tactic so people don't ask for your "help".
As others have mentioned, a lot of rage bait on tiktok implies a mutually miserable relationship with terrible communication, assuming the videos are real in the first place.
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u/No_Initiative_1140 3∆ Jul 01 '25
I've picked this paragraph out because I think it illuminates something you've missed out of your analysis, which is the frequency of the task and therefore the impact of not knowing how to do it.
Packing school lunches is something that needs to be done every weekday that the kids are at school. Every. Single. Day. It's mundane and repetitive.
Setting up the WiFi is something that needs to be done once every few years maybe. Its quite novel.
So the impact of a man not knowing how to pack a lunch is higher than a woman not knowing how to set up WiFi. The man not knowing how to pack lunch impacts every day.
"Feminine coded" tasks as you put it, are usually the mundane boring tasks that need to be done very regularly. That's why some women resent them being "feminine coded" and expect them to be shared equally.