A random rant (as promised in the title of this blog)

For many reading this (well, in no sense do "many" people read this, but many of those who do), my rant won't be anything new or shocking about the world. But, grr.

When men do things that women are "supposed" to do, they get extra credit for it. If a man cooks dinner, or if he spends alot of time with his kids, he's super-awesome. If a woman does it, well, duh. Isn't that her job?

This is not new or surprising, but in the past 24 hours I have seen like four blatant examples of this, and it's starting to annoy me!

First off, I was with two of my friends, and one was talking about a guy in one of her classes who is a single dad, raising a four year old son because the mom left as soon as he was born. The other friend said, "oh, that's awesome that he's doing that!" As if he's so special because he's taking care of his child. I mean, how often do we talk about how wonderful single mothers are? I pointed out that he didn't have that much of a choice in the matter. If the mom left, he was stuck with the kid. Not that what he's doing isn't tough, and not that it's not good that he didn't abandon the child or something--but I never hear anyone talking about how wonderful a woman is if she's had a child and the dad decides not to be present at all.

I guess alot of it has to do with the fact that we view pregnancy as a woman's "fault" rather than the man's. When teenage couples get pregnant, somehow it's the girls' fault, at least in society's eyes. They're the "gatekeepers." They're also the ones responsible for birth control. Now, I'm all for teaching birth control to every teenager, boys and girls. And I think that girls ought to know enough to prevent pregnancy. But so should boys. That way, when a man is raising a child alone, it's not seen as some wonderful, altruistic thing he's doing, while a woman in a similar situation is seen as reaping the consequences of her irresponsible actions. grr.

With this fresh in my mind, this sort of thing kept standing out to me all yesterday and today. While being a lazy bum and watching sitcom reruns on Nick at Nite rather than studying for my several midterms next week, I noticed it alot. Men are wonderful when they take care of the kids, cook meals, etc. Whereas women are expected to do it. We don't even notice it until they don't do it, and then we blame them for not doing their "job."

Anyway, sorry for going on and on and repeating myself.