Snarky Repartee

This question on Ask Metafilter really struck a chord with me. Brief synopsis of the situation (though you should really click through and read the whole thing): The question-asker is an American woman with a boyfriend who comes from a traditional Latin family. She and her boyfriend are invited to spend Thanksgiving with the boyfriend’s family. Boyfriend tells her that in his family, on Thanksgiving, it is traditional for the women to get the men’s plates of food before they get their own. He wants her to do the same in order for him to not lose face with his family. She also says that he has sometimes said that he would like her to do the cooking when they eventually live together, but that since she loves cooking she hadn’t been very bothered by it.

I was really surprised and a little shocked at the kind of responses this question elicited. While there were plenty of people who realised the slippery slope nature of the situation, many people seemed to think it was no big deal — after all, what’s the big deal about getting a plate of turkey for your boyfriend? I think I could even have understood this attitude if the boyfriend had said something like, "I think this is a really stupid custom, sweetie, but could you please just do this, just this once?", but there seems to be no realisation on the boyfriend’s part that this is a degrading tradition at all. There were several people who felt that were the situation reversed the boyfriend would have had no problem getting her plate of food for her. But honestly, these are not analogous situations — women getting food for the men before their own says something about the attitude of the family, and perhaps the boyfriend, regarding the domestic roles of men and women. Add to this the fact that he seems to expect her to do the cooking when they live together and a lot of alarm bells are ringing for me. It’s also worrying that the boyfriend values not being embarrassed in front of his family over sticking up for his girlfriend and her values. That says a lot to me. The other thing that seemed to come up again and again was that the women in the culture that the boyfriend comes from don’t mind doing this for the men in their life and that we should respect their traditions. First of all, how do you know? Have you asked them? Very often the most vocal members of a culture are the men, who are perfectly happy to see the misogynistic traditions of their culture upheld. That really doesn’t mean that every member of that culture feels the same way. I hate it when people regard a foreign culture as a monolithic block. Secondly, the woman asking the question is not of that culture and however the women of the boyfriend’s family regard the tradition, it is clear that she not comfortable taking part in it. Why should anything else be relevant?

One of the things that I have always loved about my own parents’ relationship is that they present a very united front. If my dad’s parents were to ask my mom to do something like this (though they never would) my dad would make it clear to them that this was not acceptable. In fact, my dad’s family (apart from his parents themselves) is a pretty traditional one. At family gatherings it’s pretty usual for all the female relatives to go away to the kitchen and cook the meal, yet I have never once seen my mother do this, nor have I ever seen a fuss being made about it. While this is probably mostly due to the fact that they’re really polite people, I’m sure it’s also because my father’s first priority is my mother (and vice-versa). He would never ask her to do something just to save face in front of his family, especially something she considers demeaning.