# Posted 9:13 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

AN OXBLOG VALENTINE TO THE FEMINISTS OF THE WORLD (AND THE CHAUVINISTS): Just in time for tomorrow's celebration of love a new round seems to have begun in the battle of the sexes. Rather than taking sides, this post aspires to launch a volley of Cupid's arrows in all directions, in the hope of reconciling the warring armies.

Now here's how it all started. In the Feb. 8 edition of the New York "Behind a Firewall" Times, gender pundit Judith Warner wrote in her tribute to Betty Friedan that recently she

...went through a pile of boxes and dug up my old copy of Ms. Friedan's book. This time, as it had for many of the homemakers who read it when it was published in 1963, "The Feminine Mystique" felt horribly familiar. Looking back convinced me that we needed to start working toward a different future...

The fact is, no matter how time- or sleep-deprived they are, working women today do upwards of 70 percent of household chores for their families. The gender caste system is still alive and well in most of our households.

Sensing an imminent rant against the "patriarchy", John Podhoretz ungraciously summed up Warner's argument as follows:

Judith Warner sez: I am a robot housewife drudge just like Betty Friedan's suburban housewife of 1963 -- even though I write books that get on the cover of Newsweek and get a blog on the New York Times website and publish op-eds on the Times editorial page like this one today!

Like a sensitive knight in shining armor, Matt Yglesias then rode to the rescue with a denunciation of J.Pod's condescension and miscomprehension. Yet surprisingly, Sir Matthew was lanced from behind by some of his own readers.

Then, in a charming reversal of gender roles, Belle Waring rode to Matt's rescue by fisking the commentary thread attached to Matt's post. Always gracious, Matt blew a kiss in Belle's direction as his way of saying 'thank you'.

With an eye toward restoring domestic tranquility in blogland, I hope to show that each side in this joust represents one side in a classical debate about political theory, a debate that often divides liberals from conservatives.

The broader issue at stake is the degree to which individuals are responsible for their own behavior. The specific manifestation of this timeless dilemma is the degree to which women, as opposed to entrenched social norms, are responsible for the disproportionate share of housework they must shoulder even in this progressive day and age.

Although housework itself is somewhat trivial, the burden of such labor may have a profound impact on a woman's prospects for professional success. Thus, I think that this issue is well worth engaging.

In his initial response to J.Pod, Sir Matthew writes that

A deeply entrenched set of social expectations winds up assigning a disproportionate share of the housework to mothers. Specifically because this set of social expectations is deeply entrenched, most women find conforming to those expectations to be the rational thing to do given the options available which serves to further entrench them and to give the unequal outcomes a veneer of having been freely chosen.

From where I stand, this dismissal of choice as a veneer -- even in the absence of any form of overt coercion -- is the critical turn in Matt's argument. As we all know, social expectation, no matter how entrenched, cannot literally assign a disproportionate share of the housework to anyone. Rather, it must invisibly and subconsciously infiltrate the negotations responsible for the division of housework in any given household.

The challenge for Matt and Belle is to demonstrate that this invisible force can be held responsible for the social outcomes they condemn. Hence Matt's argument that it is rational for women to conform to entrenched social expectations.

I find this statement somewhat curious. How can it be rational to do something so inimical to one's own interests? In the short term, conformism may have the potential to preserve domestic tranquility. Yet surely the smart and savvy women of today understand that there is a long-term price to pay for such short-term gains?

Some years ago, while reading some extraordinarily esoteric essays about the influence of culture on politics, I came to the provisional conclusion that culture has its greatest impact on politics when the inhabitants of that culture are unaware of its influence. Thus, what made male domination viable for so long, to a considerable extent, was a set of expectations that made it impossible to think that society could be organized any other way.

Of course, this is a much harder argument to sustain nowadays, when every educated woman in America is aware of her potential for equality. At the same time, it is hard to deny that the habit of so many women of accepting the lead role at home and/or sacrificing their careers for the benefit of their husband's reduces the social cost for each additional woman who considers doing so.

Consider the following thought experiment: What would prevent a man with an Ivy League degree from deciding to take five or ten years off to raise the kids? As the holder of such a degree, let me take a stab at that quesiton.

I could never give up five or ten years of my working life. I believe in the importance of family, but I would feel unacceptably reduced as a person if I had to break away from my career just as I am about to enter my prime. It would be an assault on my self-image, my self-esteem and even my masculinity. I would be ashamed.

Yet it would not be an assault on a woman's femininity. Only the most overzealous feminist would impose the punishment of shame on a woman who decided to take time out from her career to devote to her children.

Now imagine a professional couple, both with impressive degrees, who believe it is necessary for one parent to stay home with the children, at least for a few years. In theory, each parent has a fully equal say in this decision. From a conservative/libertarian perspective, the playing field here is balanced. Yet as Matt counters,

Liberals are not normally in the habit of saying that the fact that some state of affairs is in some sense attributable to individual choices puts either the state of affairs or the choices that led to it beyond criticism.

In other words, if the outcome is unjust, it is impossible to conclude that the process is just.

This argument seems to leave us at a crossroads. If conservatives assign moral significance to process whereas liberals assign such status to outcomes, how it is possible to adjudicate between the two?

I'm not sure that it is. Of course, there is one way out of this dilemma that Judith Warner notes in passing in her op-ed: pay for a nanny and a babysitter. This really is an ideal sort of free-market solution to the problem at hand, although not terribly plausible except for the upper-middle class.

So then what? Perhaps one might propose a compromise. Men should recognize the tough decisions women must confront and help them work out better solutions. Women (and Matt) should recognize that they have a responsibility to overcome history rather than blaming it.

Is it realistic to hope for such compromise? I believe that the answer is yes. With Iran and North Korea, the odds aren't good. But on the homefront, where we all want the best, I don't think it's wrong to have some faith this Valentine's Day in the power of love. (9) opinions -- Add your opinion