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Each month, the SELF Well-Read Book Club highlights a timely, delightful, and crucial book on a subject that helps readers live better lives. So far, we’ve covered everything from the politics of running to the state of modern motherhood. This month we’re reading Alex Manley’s The New Masculinity: A Roadmap for a 21st-Century Definition of Manhood. Below, read an excerpt from Manley’s book, where they explore why men historically don’t do the dishes—and why they really should. Learn more about why we chose this book for Mental Health Awareness Month and how to watch the live discussion between Manley and SELF’s editor in chief here.
You’ve been, I’m assuming, to parties before.
After a few hours, the place is a mess. If you’re a guy, you probably don’t spend too much time thinking about that. If you’re not, chances are you’ve spent a good amount of time cleaning up while the guys don’t think about it.
If you’ve ever really paid attention to this, it’s a jarring split. No one ever announces, “OK, time for all the women to clean up, and then men can stay where they are and have important conversations,” and yet functionally that dynamic reproduces itself over and over in parties and social gatherings of all stripes all across the world.
Of course, this isn’t the case in every culture, and certainly it’s rarely explicitly gendered. Some women may stay and chat with the boys, and maybe a guy or two will grab some plates or some bottles in a show of well-meaning solidarity. But particularly in North America, the people doing the most cleaning will, without fail, be women, and the people doing the least will, without fail, be men.
There’s no great mystery there—women are socialized to attend to the domestic space, and men are not. And even if you’re on board with the weirdness of the divide, you have to admit that it’s not high on the list of priorities when it comes to fixing societal problems.
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The only problem is, the party isn’t where it ends—it’s where it begins.
I don’t really give a damn if you do your own dishes, and neither will anybody else who’s not your roommate. My question is: when was the last time you did someone else’s?
The crux of modern masculinity—and what separates men from other genders—is that men don’t go out of their way to do the dirty work when others will do it for them. They won’t fight to do the dishes at the party when all the women just congregated in the kitchen to do it first.
And as small as that moment may feel, it’s emblematic of so many more situations where men make the exact same choice—to let someone else, most often a woman, handle things that need to be done—while they do something that they want to do.
This isn’t just the guy leaning back and talking sports with the other guys at the dinner table as their wives, mothers, sisters, girlfriends and friends clean up. It’s the dad who lets his wife handle all the kids’ stuff and then is totally clueless about details like the dentist’s phone number or what to make for lunch when Mom is laid up sick for a few days. It’s the senior citizen who’s been utterly alone in his room for a year since his wife died because she was the one who ran their whole social life.
