I Am Not My Husband’s Secretary

One day when our kids were little, I was at work in the office when suddenly my phone rang. It was my husband who was at home with our children. He complained that he was supposed to have had an appointment with the speech therapist for our younger son. But since it was a date different from the regular series of appointments, he forgot about it. The speech therapist called him, and he got the the meeting, but a bit too late. Now he was upset and needed to vent. So, he called me at work to tell me that he almost missed the entire appointment. It sounded like a reproach. As if I should have reminded him of the meeting.

He was the one who was handling all of the speech therapy appointments with our younger son. I had nothing to do with that. But how come he called me at work with reproach in his voice as if I should have reminded him of the appointment?

I was the one who kept a calendar with important dates. He didn’t. When he had an appointment, he would keep it moving in his head, repeating to himself (and to me) daily something like “I have an appointment at the dentist next Monday.” That was his way of keeping track of things.

But now he suggested that I should have reminded him of his speech therapist appointment even though all these appointments were his task.

What would have happened if I had missed one of my appointments with the kids. Would I call my husband and interrupt him at work? That would be very unlikely.

Moms are prone to slip into the role of the family manager, carrying the mental load of planning, organizing, and remembering everything. Therefore, my husband must have somehow assumed that it would be my role to keep track of everything, even of his appointments with the kids.

I couldn’t believe it and said, “Honey, I’m sorry that you missed it and are upset now. But why don’t you get yourself a calendar? I am not your secretary.”

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This post is part of an online book about my journey with feminism and my son’s transgender journey. You can access the table of contents with links to each chapter here: TOC.

When I Escaped the Sewing Duties

Women are asked to do unpaid labor regarding more than just the cake-baking duties I wrote about previously.

When my older son was elementary school age, he sang in a choir.

One evening in autumn, we had a meeting between the parents (i.e., the moms) and the choir leader. The lady wanted to perform a musical with the kids and needed our help. She wanted the kids to dress in what I understood to be medieval peasant costumes.

There were no patterns for sewing. We should make some up ourselves. Also, we should find and buy the fabric ourselves. And then sew the clothing.

The longer she talked, the more panic rose in me. While I have learned to sew and even designed some patterns myself (for example, three Latin dresses and one ballroom gown for dance competitions), at that time, I had no time for it and felt overwhelmed.  Each autumn was usually already busy with Christmas preparations and planning the next summer vacation. And in addition, I should now find and buy fabric, invent a pattern, and find time to sew a costume.

Trying hard not to faint from the feeling of panic, I looked around at the other moms. How did they react? They seemed to be fine.

A feeling of guilt set in. Look at the other moms! They sounded like they could handle it. Why couldn’t I handle it as well? That’s just what was expected of a mom. We did it for our kids. It might not be that difficult. Just buy some coarse fabric, throw it over the shoulders, and tie it at the waist! But I still felt too overwhelmed. Nope. Not feasible.

I left the meeting with an uneasy feeling.

Fortunately, soon afterwards, my son decided he wasn’t any longer interested in the choir, and he left after he had sung with them for several years. He wasn’t aware of my resistance to the sewing task. So, this was like a miracle. The universe had answered my prayer.

I tried to imagine the scene at the choir meeting with only fathers present in the meeting with the choir leader. How would the men have reacted when they were asked to sew costumes? They would probably have refused—because they didn’t have the skillset and they would not provide free labor. But regarding women, it was taken for granted that they do unpaid labor.

Women, especially mothers, usually do more unpaid work at home than men. But society expects them to work for free on top of that and bake cakes for school festivals and sew costumes for their children’s performances. If the women enjoy doing it, then there is nothing wrong with that. But not everyone has the skills or the time for that.

Afterwards, there was another incident where I escaped the sewing duties again. My older son took ballet classes, and one day, the dance school had a big festival, showing off all their various dance groups. The young kids, the teenagers, and the adults, everything from ballet over jazz dance to hip-hop. It was wonderful to watch. Each group had a special choreography and also matching costumes. The beautiful costumes were sewn by the moms. The miracle: My son danced in the one group where the costumes were provided by the dance school. How lucky I was that I didn’t have to sew the costume for his performance!

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This post is part of an online book about my journey with feminism and my son’s transgender journey. You can access the table of contents with links to each chapter here: TOC.

Trying to Escape the Cake-Baking Duties

Around 2008, when our children were young, their pre-school and kindergarten had their annual summer festival with mandatory participation. Not only did we have to attend, but we also had to help set up the party and bring some cake for the buffet. The cake from the buffet would be sold, and this would earn some money for the pre-school.

I didn’t mind. We did this for our kids. So, I went to the grocery store and bought a yummy cake with vanilla pudding and cherries from the freezer.

However, when I brought the cake to the buffet–still in its original cardboard box from the store, but not frozen anymore–the lady who was in charge of the buffet put my cake into the kitchen and didn’t even unwrap it or put it on a plate. When I asked for the reason, she told me, “Oh, because it is a bought cake and not self-made. We want to sell the self-made ones first.”

My cake ended up on the shelf, still unwrapped until the party was over.

The next incident happened in the choir where I used to participate. Around 2009, they had an annual street festival where all the various clubs gathered and sold food to make some money. For these street festivals, they would ask for food donations from their members. In the case of our choir, they went around to everyone during a rehearsal and asked whether we could contribute a cake.

“Sure, I can bring a cake.” However, then I remembered what had happened in the pre-school and said, “But I will buy one and not bake it myself.”

The smile of the lady who asked me suddenly froze, “Oh! Well, uhm, then, thank you. No.”

I ended up not donating a cake to the choir for the street festival.

Apparently, there are some social expectations regarding the cake topic. Unwritten rules where I only learn that I have violated a boundary after I have stepped over it. Nobody told me explicitly, “We expect you to bring homemade a cake. And since you are a woman, we expect that you will eagerly want to bake the cake yourself. We expect you to have the skill, time, money, and the willingness to do it.” These assumptions are silent. Until I bump up against them. Then, I can figure out what was expected from me in the first place.

Another example of cake-baking duties is for birthday cakes at work. Here in Germany, we have the custom at work that the person who celebrates their birthday brings cake to the office and invites all the coworkers. It’s not mandatory, but most people do it, and it is a nice custom. Most colleagues bring homemade cakes. Usually, the women bake the cakes themselves. Most men would have their wives bake the cakes. One of the single guys would buy an expensive cake from the freezer. Only a few men would bake a cake themselves.

On my birthday, I wanted to bring some cake, too. But even though I felt some pressure to conform to the standard that women bring homemade cake, I didn’t want to spend time baking it. And since I don’t have a wife to whom I could delegate this task, I just bought pastries from the supermarket shelf because they were easily transportable by bike, stuffed them into my backpack, and transported them to work on my bicycle. My colleagues dropped by, wished me a happy birthday, and took a piece of the pastries. In contrast to the pre-school and the choir, nobody complained about the bought cakes.

I vacillate between feeling guilty for not baking cakes and feeling courageous for busting limiting norms when I just buy a cake.

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This post is part of an online book about my journey with feminism and my son’s transgender journey. You can access the table of contents with links to each chapter here: TOC.

Why Is It Offensive to Compare My Office Job to Household Chores?

One day around 2015, I had one of my yearly review talks at work with my boss and my team coordinator (both male). Regarding work, it had been a very intense year. I had handled two different products. My team coordinator asked, “How was this for you? How did you experience handling these two products simultaneously?”

A big part of my work is like doing a certain process on a computer (like baking a cake according to instructions or assembling an IKEA chair). Often routine stuff. Except that things go wrong frequently, and then the challenge is to find a workaround, which requires some analytic detective work and also some inspired inventive work. But if things go according to the plan, then the work feels boring and stressful (because of time pressure) at best, at least for me.

I said, “It was intense and stressful. I’d compare it to preparing breakfast and dinner simultaneously. And in addition, having to make sure that the kids have their sports bag ready for their next school day.”

I wanted to convey that, while it didn’t involve major brain gymnastics, it still required concentration and focus because there were parallel strands of work involved. When I prepare the cereal with fruit salad for breakfast at the same time as when I prepare the dinner plate with vegetables, I have to concentrate on this task so that I don’t put the pickled cucumbers into my breakfast cereal accidentally. And it was also stressful because there was deadline pressure. Dinner and breakfast have a fixed deadline. So has the project at work.

I thought my comparison was accurate and appropriate.

However, I wasn’t prepared for how they would react.

“You can’t say this. Many people in our department would feel offended by this. And I feel offended, too. Don’t say this!“ my team coordinator exclaimed. And my boss added, “Now I feel offended, too. Yeah, he is right, you shouldn’t say this.” (Note: Quoted from memory. These were not their exact words.)

I was speechless and unable to defend myself properly.

Why did this offend them? They had asked me to share my experience. How I personally experienced the work I had done. Usually, sharing one’s personal experience is something that is not debatable. My experience and my emotions about it is my experience. Period. And when I say that the work feels similar to me like preparing breakfast and dinner at the same time, then that should be considered as an unarguable truth.

But they started to argue anyway and told me that I should not say what I had said.

Hello?!

Why did they ask me in the first place when they didn’t want to hear what I had to say?

I was still speechless. I just tilted my head and said with a bewildered expression, “Why? You’d asked me how I experienced the work. So, I can share what my experience was like, can’t I?”

In our next meeting, even though my boss didn’t explain his initial reaction or apologize it, he said that I was allowed to say what I had said. That took a bit of the edge off of his former behavior.

For many years, I couldn’t figure out why my boss and my team coordinator had reacted this way.

This incident taught me that it was not always safe to share my experience with my boss, even when prodded to do so. It also taught me that men don’t see preparing dinner and breakfast simultaneously as a challenging task–as challenging as our work in the office.

How could I have responded instead?

Maybe I should have said, “Oh, I feel like in one of those video games. You overcome a lot of hurdles and kill many enemies, but at the end, you free the trapped princess, find the holy grail, and save the world.” (Insert full-blown smile here, trying to look as innocent as possible). Maybe that would have made them light up proudly and nod in agreement. </sarcasm>

Too bad, though, that I am not into video games. Animating this meat suit through each day of my incarnation is enough of a challenging game already, and I don’t need more games.

Or maybe, in order to avoid conflict, I should have just avoided any metaphors or comparisons. I could just have said that I felt bored and stressed at the same time. But probably even that would have sounded offensive to them.

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This post is part of an online book about my journey with feminism and my son’s transgender journey. You can access the table of contents with links to each chapter here: TOC.

Why Can’t Men Prepare the Family Dinner?

Around 2006, during lunch at work, a female colleague asked me why I wasn’t the one who prepared dinner when I came home from work in the evening. Why did I let my husband prepare the dinner instead?

I answered that when I came home in the evening from work and my husband had a free afternoon at home with the kids–well, with kids it is not really free–, then he could prepare dinner because he had more time to do it.

That statement raised some eyebrows. One of the bosses of my department was also present during this conversation. And he also signaled that he didn’t get why my husband had to make dinner. He wondered that it must have cost some effort for this adjustment because, surely, my husband would never voluntarily make dinner. I said, yes, I did have to ask my husband to please take care of the dinner (in our home, dinner is bread, cheese, and a large plate with fresh veggies and fruits cut into finger food but no cooked meal). And then he did. There was no resistance on his side.

I didn’t get why having been born female meant that I was the one to prepare dinner, but obviously, that seemed to be the silent assumption in society in those days. What I found especially astonishing was that even some women of my age had these assumptions. If I had heard these things from the previous generation, I would have said, ok, they are too old. If I had heard this from men of my age, I would think, ok, they haven’t caught up yet. But women of my age who had studied and were working–that was a bit of a shock to hear that some of them held gender norms in their minds that dated back many generations.

Even though our kids are adults now, my husband and I are both still working part-time. We share the duties of meal preparation. I prepare dinner only on those days when my husband works the entire day. On the other days, providing dinner is his job.

It is a relief for me that I don’t have to carry the burden of the chores alone. And for our sons, it is a good role model to see that men can prepare dinner.

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This post is part of an online book about my journey with feminism and my son’s transgender journey. You can access the table of contents with links to each chapter here: TOC.