Laughing in Despair: Satire of Sh**ty Partners

Let’s see what he notices first, the pizza or my hair says a woman as she comes home with takeaway and a new haircut. Her boyfriend, gaming, barely looking up, tucks into the pizza. Cut the scene to them both laughing and him kissing her and apologising.

When I go to finally do the job that I asked my husband to do a thousand times… explains a woman as she walks towards the bins. Her husband appears frantically I was literally just about to do that!

List of stupid things my husband did whilst I was in labour... asked what was for dinner.

Laughing off bleak traits in husbands or partners has become a commonplace genre of humour on social media and in real life, and is a pillar of a hetero, straight, in-a-relationship identity on the internet. Skits, videos, and tweets are curated around the themes of chore delegation, cleaning, cooking, shopping, planning events, shopping for presents and keeping a social calendar. They make light of a male partner being inattentive to needs or un-noticing of appearance or changes to it. The punchlines fall into the category of ‘he is childlike, doesn’t notice when I change my appearance, is a sex pest, or is inept’ and frame the female partner as a nag, or the chore delegator. 

In theory, they are the type of harmless, self-deprecating, relatable internet comedy that does well as content. But women making themselves the butt of the joke, framing themselves as nags, as the gatekeepers of sex, as carers; are voluntarily falling into stereotypes that women through history have worked hard to challenge.

Whether a one-off post or an account dedicated to this humour, the perpetrating of negative gender stereotypes in a hetero relationship is the punchline. Things that should be insulting and embarrassing like ‘hopeless’ or ‘incapable’ are used fondly as adjectives for someone who is framed as adorably helpless rather than, let’s face it, stupid, rude, unbearable.

This online theme is creating a real-life relationship blueprint that is screwing women over – so why do it to yourself and your collective?

Sarah Spencer Northey, marriage and family therapist says “The internet’s tendency to laugh off woefully underdeveloped husbands is probably more harmful than we realize…It’s not cute or funny. It’s unfair and stressful to women.” Caroline Criado Perez explores through data the repercussions of this in her book Invisible Women[AA1] where she addresses the unpaid work balance between women and men. Both scholars are aware of the miserable social repercussions of normalising rigidly gendered households – ones that see women as a worker in their own homes or pulling the ‘second shift’ – a phrase coined by sociologist Arlie Hochschild to explain housework done after coming home from a paid job. Perez even found various studies showing that women do the majority of unpaid work irrespective of the proportion of household income they bring in. This is the invisible labour that keeps a household running but does not bring in a wage, thus going unnoticed and undervalued. Holding men to low standards in the home and in relationships not only makes for miserable repercussions intimately and socially, but it also creates economic and financial disparities. Oxfam has estimated that if unpaid care work performed by women around the world over the age of 15 was monetarily valued, it would amount to at least $10.8 trillion annually. A comedy skit in some cultures, but in others a stark inequality; in India, for example, Perez found that five out of six of women’s daily hours are spent on housework, compared to men’s thirteen minutes.

‘Weaponized incompetence’ is a phrase that was born in the critiques of this very genre of internet humour. It is generally understood as ‘feigning incompetence at any one task (though usually an unpleasant one) to get out of doing it. The hope is that someone else will say with a huff, “Fine, it’s easier for me to do it anyway!” Men in heterosexual relationships are repeat offenders. Grocery shopping, watching a baby, cleaning, or doing the laundry, are all the stages where men practice this tact. Marriage and Family Therapist Sarah Spender Northey sees it as “a passive-aggressive way of putting that labour back on the person you don’t respect enough to step up for” and that the effect over time can be “devastating”, begging the question of whether the online jokes are a deflective way of addressing a hurtful issue. One woman posted a reward chart she made to encourage her husband to ‘put to toilet seat down’ or ‘wash the dishes’ with rewards for chores, and another woman posted her husband’s guided shopping list that she had made complete with photos, quantities, and aisle numbers. It is difficult to see this as something posted with pride. The humour involved may be cathartic, a sort of miserable distress flair rather than intended for comedy. Despairingly, even when asking her partner to do something is time she is still spending running the home – adding cognitive labour to the physical labour she is already pulling double shifts on.

What do men do with this time spent by women and accumulated by them? They engage in leisure pursuits – sports, gaming, and watching TV. In the US, men manage to find over an hour more of spare time per day to rest than their female counterparts.

Conscious of the ‘nagging partner’ trope whilst the men enjoy this leisure time, women will complete this cognitive labour to make the tasks easier and seem like a joint effort for the man, coaxing into action rather than outright demanding. The subgenre of humour encompasses this well: a woman interrupting the man’s day to request help with something, reminding him to do something for the tenth time, offering a reward for the completion of tasks, manically cleaning, huffing around the house, and him being able to enjoy the ‘peace’ of when she goes out. There is also rewarding the bare minimum and genuine thirst for men who take the bins out.

Sex as a reward for completing housework and withholding sex as a consequence of not is a pillar of this humour. Women being the gatekeepers of sex, who only give it out for reward or gains, is a harmful stereotype that is a core belief of many meninist and incel groups and spills out into real-life violence. This not only is reminiscent of a mother/son relationship where rewards are given out and punishment imposed (and screams of an Oedipus complex when sex is involved), but also perpetuates the narrative of sex as a currency of manipulation spent by women on things they want.

Sadly, emotional neglect is held up for gags too. It is common for women to make jokes about their partners' ignorance of the effort they put into the relationship, the house, upholding social events, and their appearance. ‘My Valentine’s gift is him noticing my hair’ and ‘seeing what my boyfriend notices first, the pizza or my hair’ are videos of a sadder sub-genre. Under #hairtransformation, there are countless videos of women waiting to see how long it takes their male partners to notice.

It seems that laughing at it becomes a badge of honour both you and your partner can wear. ‘She’s so chilled’, ‘we’re so lucky that we don’t argue about that stuff’ frames banter as core to your relationship, at the expense of the actual relationship. The closest thing to a challenge a man will get in these skits is the withholding from sex, or a woman aggressively chopping a sausage or peeling a cucumber – ha ha ha. Here is a women’s urge to assimilate herself to typically masculine social traits, a lack of sensitivity and thick skin. Max Dickens explores these in his recent book about male friendships. Banter, he explores, is a core part of male friendships and a social currency. He explains that, almost like clockwork and even in serious conversations, jokes must punctuate the dialogue to ground the room, bring the conversation back to the surface, and relieve everyone. It is also a language of hierarchy, of approval, being ‘funny’ is placed above all traits. These humorous skits, then, could be a subconscious attempt to be valued and have opinions valued by a man in the same way he would value a man, speaking his language, addressing things in a way that will gain her, or at least not lose her, respect.

‘Cool girl was coined by Gillian Flynn in Gone Girl…“Men always use that as the defining compliment, right? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer… Hot and understanding. Cool girls never get angry at their men, they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner. Go ahead! Shit on me, I don't mind, I'm the cool girl… But it's tempting, to be Cool Girl. For someone like me, who likes to win, it's tempting to be the girl every guy wants.” Amy’s character proves in the book, it is a façade, an exhausting attempt to be valued in a masculine currency. Desperate to not nag, or seem genuinely upset about something, humour comes as a transparent shield.

‘She Divorced Me Because I Left Dishes By The Sink’ by Matthew Fray speaks his ex-wife’s language. He delves into the realisation that his neglectful actions were not a humorous eye roll but instead were making his wife deeply unhappy. “Every time she’d walk into the kitchen and find a drinking glass by the sink, she moved incrementally closer to moving out and ending our marriage. I just didn’t know it yet.” It is confessional and mature. “I always reasoned: “If you just tell me what you want me to do, I’ll gladly do it.” But she didn’t want to be my mother. She wanted to be my partner, and she wanted me to apply all of my intelligence and learning capabilities to the logistics of managing our lives and household.” But it took his wife leaving him to figure this out. “All of a sudden, it’s not about something as benign and meaningless as a dirty dish. The wife doesn't want to divorce her husband because he leaves used drinking glasses by the sink. She wants to divorce him because she feels like he doesn't respect or appreciate her.” This was realised through the divorce process and through losing a loved one, it wasn’t realised through jokes and humour and reward charts. Since he has written a book attempting to help men reinstall equality in their relationship called This is How Your Marriage Ends. Having this from a man is refreshing. Reading this spoken about seriously and not under the guise of humour or an inside joke is the way we would address any other inequality – so why not this one?

Why the humour? Why make yourself the punchline? Is it for a sense of comradery in despair? Cathartic passive aggression? Indirect venting? Making excuses for men and allowing incompetence to be humour is screwing us over.