The Viral Post About Household Labor That Facebook Keeps Deleting

If you’re an activist on Facebook, you’ve probably already had a few posts deleted. Facebook’s anti-hate speech rules have disproportionately affected activists because, in Facebook land, asserting that men should stop abusing women is worse than men actually abusing women. Meanwhile, rape threats, racism, and live-posted bomb threats continue to proliferate on the platform.

Two years ago, in a fit of rage after one too many posts on mommy Facebook groups, I posted a rant to my page about household labor inequality. It went viral because it spoke to women. It also upset men, who keep flagging it. And Facebook keeps coddling these snowflakes by deleting it. So here’s the new permanent home of the post:

“On every page I follow, in every parent group I am in, I see the same thing: mothers talking about how exhausted they are, how hurt they are by the imbalance of work in their heterosexual relationships.

The problems are all some variation of "I just gave birth/am up half the night breastfeeding. Why do I have to also make dinner and clean while my spouse watches TV?"

The advice is always the same: Be gentle with yourself. You can't do it all. Parenthood is hard.

Blah blah blah.

I don't know which of you needs to hear this, but I'll give you some better advice: Divorce his ass.

This cultural norm where a man buys his free time with his partner's labor, suffering, and sometimes with the literal destruction of her body is misogyny on steroids.

Men are not innately incompetent or lazy or incapable of doing their fair share.

Tell that jackass to get off the golf course, get his ass home, get up in the middle of the night with the baby, and start earning the right to stay married.

And remind him that not all men are this way, and that a dude who doesn't do his fair share is not exactly a prize. He is replaceable. Lazy men who think you should have to work 168 hours a week while they work 40 are easy to find.

If my spouse can pull his weight while litigating police and prison death cases and dealing with the unending horror of our current legal system, then your Johnny Do Nothing husband can manage to get up with the damn baby and stop blaming your postpartum depression on your woman hormones.

If he gets free time and you don't, if he gets to sleep and you don't, if you have to do the grunt work and he doesn't, guess what. It's not an accident.

He knows exactly what he is doing.

Division of labor imbalances in marriage are a form of spousal abuse.

Stop making excuses for shitty men.”