"What at first appears impossible, can actually be defined as a rare disorder I named Abode-a-phobia. As the only person I know of who suffers from this disorder, I am not only out to prove my sanity but help/find others who are suffering. Symptoms are most commonly found in women between the ages of 20 and 45. Perhaps you are secretly living with this disorder!

What are the Symptoms?

* Demonstrates distaste for all things that may at some time been mistakenly categorized as inherently feminine behavior.

* Inappropriate negative associations to their mother�s behavior (e.g., "I watched my mother do that crap for years").

* Capable people will claim ignorance in seemingly easy-to-learn tasks (e.g., "Yes, I won a Nobel Prize but I mysteriously can not cook, clean, decorate or bake worth a shit")." Deanne Paquette, "Abode-a-phobia"

"The fun-lovin� lipstick feminist of the mid-90�s has become the home-obsessed Brillo-pad chick of the 00�s. Housework has wrapped itself in feminist packaging as part of a celebration of all things girl, and not only is it making me feel unkempt, it�s a retreat from the hard-fought and ongoing battle to separate gender from responsibility for household chores.

Indeed, this domesticity revival is in part an outgrowth of a feminist drive to reassess previously disparaged elements of girl culture and the accoutrements of feminity. Domestic arts are a classic example of something long devalued- by men and women alike- because of their female associations."

-Justine Sharrock, "Queens Of The Iron Age: On The New Feminist Hygeine Products," Bitch magazine, winter 2003.

I don't think that I fit in with the rest of the female world any more. Okay, not that I ever did, but the older I get, the more out of sync I am with everyone else, it seems.

For example, I feel so out of it sometimes on chat, which I'm sure is obvious to all the chicks on there. Everyone (or almost everyone, it seems sometimes) is all "Yay babies! I want babies! I'm going to cook a fabulous roast! I need to clean my house now!" and well, I don't have much to contribute to conversations like that. My "Oh dear god, EW"'s probably aren't so welcome during the inevitable childbirth discussions, and everyone's probably sick to death of me angsting about that or the name issue and showing off how deeply immature I am. I don�t think that my new hobby of reading wedding websites (the ultimate bastion of traditional femininty) when I�m bored at work is helping my mindset either.

And lately, I am feeling inadequate in life about my lack of domesticity. I�ve rejected it all my life, and lord knows I have harped on the subject many, many times. Obviously, I still haven�t gotten over this yet. I genuinely don�t want to get into doing housewifely chores still. Yet I am starting for the first time to feel guilty about not wanting to.

I�ve mentioned the snippy notes Hill left all over the kitchen the other night. There�s two pages, in big bold letters, right in front of my face whenever I have to use the sink or do anything in our tiny kitchen, telling me in great written-for-morons detail about how I should first rinse off the food when putting dishes in the sink to be washed later. There is a similar note attached next to the trash can. These are all here because I am obviously too stupid to do it right. Because I am a fucking moron.

"Where do you come from anyway? Voice in my head, which will not leave me alone. Voice that nags, a buzzing background guilt.

Did my mother implant you when she tried to fill me with housewifely pride? All those lectures about getting the work done before you play, about judging people by the state of their homes and "her place is a pigsty, can you believe it?" Kathryn O�Halloran, "Voice"

Even before that, there was the roommate who refused to live with me any more after a year because I wasn�t good enough at cleaning. Not that I recall her doing much of it herself, to be honest, but it was apparently all me that was driving her out. And before that, there were the bimbos who claimed that I didn�t know how to clean a bathroom right. (I pulled my mother in for verification of this, and even she couldn�t tell the difference.) Really, I just shouldn�t live with people, period, because I am obviously too unclean for them. I should live in a pit of my own filth.

"I want to work outside the home, because society has told me that is what is valuable. But I also feeling obligated to take care of the home, because not doing so means that I am not a "good woman." �Amy Richards

Looking at the notes makes me feel this big. Not to mention this lame and this stupid. I want to scream, I want to tear them down, I want to kick myself every time I see them. And yet, I leave them up, and feel like I can�t take them down. Or the other snippy note she did a while back by the trash can. I have to leave them up. As punishment. To remind me every time I see them that I suck, because I won�t "clean up my act" unless I have my suckiness rubbed into my face like dirt, you know? And even then� let�s face it, will I really clean up my act? Have I ever? Do I truly want to, or do I just want to avoid being yelled at? You know the answer to that one already.

"Here's how it goes: no matter what else a woman is, no matter how many hours she works in commerce or scholarship or art, if she doesn't take primary responsibility for the housework she is not a "real" woman (I've actually had otherwise "liberated" men say this to me out loud, and personalize it to me). This may sound far-fetched, but I submit that most mated, educated American women are living under this system, and if they are not openly acknowledging as much to themselves it is only because it would be too traumatic to their love relationship to do so.

I've gotten no sympathy from any quarter on this issue. Men and women both seem to find it impossible to believe that a woman can be utterly talentless in the housework arena, or that pretending that she's not might be damaging to her soul. Why is this? Is there any other "job" about which we have this same attitude? I've come to believe that there's something very essential at the bottom of this prejudice. Even current research shows that neither relative (women : men) income or hours of employment outside the home have an effect on who does the housework. It's not just one of the lingering bastions of patriarchy --- that would be too simple an answer. Women have done a good job fighting their way into and out of too many other forbidden and expected positions, especially in the last five years. I think there is some kind of primal symbolism at work here. Something strong enough even to cause feminist men and women to accept or insist on roles they thought they'd eschewed." -Margaret Howard

Around people my age or older, I feel wrong because I'm not interested in domesticity, and it�s very obvious that I�m the only one who isn�t. Only the people I know under oh, 23 (coincidentally, the most immature of my friends), are apathetic or just plain hate to clean. And given this gap, I feel like I should be caring deeply about at least SOME of those things. Isn't that what girls do? What kind of a freak am I if I don't? Why can't I care? Will it kick in with hormones when I get older so I won't feel so out of it? Isn't wanting to be a domestic goddess part of growing up and becoming an adult woman? No wonder I feel like I'm 12.

Even my feminist magazines make me feel out of it these days. Every other month one of them is coming out with a special "yay, domesticity!" issue or a special "yay, mommyhood!" issue. I'm not relating, and it's bothering me. I am a feminist, and damn proud of it, in an age where women aren't nearly so proud to use the F-word any more and act like we're feminazi aliens for daring to have feelings about certain issues. However, I was obviously born during the wrong age of feminism. Mentally, I fit in more with the radical, bra-burning (did anyone actually burn bras, btw? I think not), women working rocks, 1970's Ms Generation. Where as my generation, the third wavers, seem to be all about reclaiming the joys of housewifery. I often feel like this is the neo-50's, and I'm not just saying that because Dubya stole the office. I mentally shudder every time someone cheerfully says that she's going to do something because it's tradition and she's an old-fashioned girl.

"It�s no wonder that Feminists have a hard time accepting that trends like these could represent what women actually want. After all, Feminists of the 1960s and 70s took to the streets on the premise that women wanted to escape from the prison house of the bourgeois home and take up positions in the office and the boardroom, where the real power lies.

Still, it is more than nail polish that makes these daughters very different from what their mothers envisioned when they groomed them to take over the family business. For all their in-your-face sexual bravado, girlie feminists can be unabashed traditionalists. Consider Bust, a girlie Internet �zine that describes itself as "the magazine for women with something to get off their chests." With its signature T-shirts that say KISS MY ASS and TOUGH TITTIES, and its pronouncement of "The New Girl Order," Bust is full of Erica Jongish, zipless-sex Attitude. Yet as the title of one article, "A Bad Girl�s Guide to Good Housekeeping," suggests, the hipness coexists with more conventional desires." -Kay S. Hymowitz, "The End of Herstory"

"The domestic realm has long been thought of as the female realm and thus the less valued one. In the 1960�s and 70�s, second-wave feminists argued that there was nothing inherently female about the private, domestic realm. They staunchly rejected domesticity in all its forms, arguing that housework was the shit job that women always got stuck with.

Being a housewife is, in reality, all about working your ass off for no pay, no recognition, and usually no appreciation." -Justine Sharrock, "Queens Of The Iron Age: On The New Feminist Hygeine Products," Bitch magazine, winter 2003.

Basically, I feel left out by the "cool kids" of my generation because I don�t want to be domestic. How stupid is that to care about? I still don�t care about domesticity for its own sake worth a damn. It�s never seemed fulfilling to me. The only person I grew up with who was a true happy homemaker type was my Auntie Dolores, and y�all know my feelings on her. Everyone else in the family feels inadequate and ashamed of themselves because they aren�t as perfect as she is and they know she�s making mental notes about it and bitching behind their backs. Admittedly, Auntie Dolores has no life and can�t hold down a job for very long while the rest of the women in the family have other things to do, but yet they all still feel ashamed of themselves for not being like her that way. I think it�s incredibly sad that their entire self-worth is tied up in how good of an unpaid maid you are. I saw this as a child this and thought, why the hell should I participate in it? It's clearly not making everyone that isn't perfect very happy.

"I still feel that a big chunk of my identity as a woman is tied up in how well I manage my home.

"We women still see ourselves as the Number One Homemaker in the family," she comments. "Our sense of success hinges upon it." Even when we have a nine-to-five job? "Especially then," Alice says. "We overcompensate out of some kind of genetically programmed guilt." -Chitra Divakaruni, "Houseguest Hell", The Bitch In The House.

This is why I decided not to care, why I decided not to learn how to do it right and correctly, only how to do the bare minimum so the cockroaches don�t come. If I can�t/don�t participate, I don�t have to fall into that trap. And I�ve been damn happy with this decision I�ve made.

Yet part of me is starting to feel obligated to care, regardless of my actual feelings on the matter. For one thing, because I feel so out of it because I don�t, and for another, because of unfortunate practical matters such as constantly pissing off everyone I live with. (As you can imagine, I am scared of living with anyone new who isn�t used to my shit. Hell, I wonder how long Dave�s gonna tolerate it when I have to share my space and he has a say in it.) At the very least, I should be feeling major guilt about my slackerhood, enough to motivate me to change my wicked, wicked ways. Or at least, change my wicked, wicked ways enough so that I don�t get kicked in the ass by nasty notes every other day.

"I spent a lot of time rejecting traditionally female things, like cooking and cleaning, only because I never wanted to be expected to do these things. But soon I realized that I was denying myself things that I actually enjoyed, like cooking and cleaning. I had to get to a place of choosing these things rather than having them expected of me." -Amy Richards

I am certainly not in a mental place now where I want to deliberately choose to like cooking and cleaning. To savor doing repetitive, dirty tasks that will only have to be done from scratch again in a few hours. It�s always been odd that in virtually everything else, I�m as girly as I am, not to mention the sheer number of 4-H craft projects I�ve done and the home-ec-ish college degree. But those have staying power. You have tangible, permanent results to those. I can feel happy and accomplished then. The only way I ever feel pseudo-accomplished with regards to chores is if I leave them in a large pile to do for days/weeks/months/whatever and then do it all in one load. Instead of constantly cleaning up trickles and dribbles, I feel like I drained a pond� at least for awhile until it starts up again. This method of cleaning doesn�t really go over well when other people are involved, though.

I am at a loss every time Hill starts skipping around the apartment singing "CLEAN! My room is CLEAN!" And yes, I swear to god, she does that for real, I am NOT making it up. She�s so genuinely delighted with herself about it. It disturbs me greatly. I just feel cranky after cleaning mine, not to mention that it seems like a huge waste of my time for so little a payoff.

As for cooking, if I truly wanted to know how, I could find people willing to teach me. Mom and I would kill each other, but Scott would probably go for it. Dave�s given up on the notion (now he�s claiming he isn�t all that great of a cook because he can�t improvise or memorize recipes- huh?) but says his mom is the most patient teacher in the world about that. But as you know, I don�t. Even I have to admit that I�m a bit ridiculous about it. However, being clueless and/or bad at cooking, while embarrassing, at least gets me off the hook.

Okay, so being a bonehead at domesticity hasn�t gotten me off the hook at all with anyone I�ve had to live with. They�ve all been pretty obviously irritated with me. My logic isn�t er, exactly working right. I really should just cave in, since I really can�t win no matter how much I fight, it seems.

Where all this is coming from is me picking up books such as The Bitch In The House and Flux, which go into great detail about how all these feminist mommies thought they could do a 50/50 life, and instead find themselves doing all of the housework, no matter how much they didn�t want to or tried to be egalitarian. I�ve always thought that if I avoided the things that lead a woman into the trap, I could avoid it. But maybe it�s unavoidable. It ticks me off that even after so many years of rebellion, women are still ending up doing everything grotto in the house. Women and men have it too culturally ingrained into them that if you�re a woman, you cook and clean. Period. It�s the message that even the most ignorant of us (i.e. me) get stamped on our brains. Hell, in my family, they consider that and the burning desire to homemake to automatically come with your vagina.

In yet another depressing example of how egalitarianism didn�t work, Alana Wingfoot claimed that "it's not biology" that made her the automatic choredoer in the house. But I have my doubts on that, especially after I read this paragraph:

"As a woman, I was raised to expect that I'd do housework eventually. I've read books for ideas on how to keep track of what needs doing, I've tried various techniques and systems, and I've generally put some thought into how best to keep up with the work. Bert didn't have the same expectation, and it's not at the front of his mind nearly as often." Would she have been raised to expect that she�d do housework eventually if she�d been born a guy? Hell no. How does biology not affect this? Okay, cleaning might not be in her genes and not in his, but culturally, she�s been brought up to take a LOT of interest in this, and even to dedicately research the topic during her free time. Her husband, however, doesn�t have to. And when she keeps on cleaning for him, he�ll never have to, will he?

"He is capable of doing all of them, but if they get done for him, my thoughts go, he might never even realize that they needed doing in the first place." �E.S. Maduro, "Excuse Me While I Explode," The Bitch In The House

Truth be told, it seems to me that despite all this "rebellion" that went on in the past, women have it ingrained into them for one reason or another (nature or nurture) that they should be the maids in life. Some might attempt to get men to join in, but since the men probably weren�t brought up with that expectation, they don�t do it, or they do it but not spectacularly, or not well enough to the high standards the woman was brought up with, so she gives up and does it herself, just like before. Only my generation seems to be embracing the whole thing, for whatever reason. "I�ll always end up doing this, so I might as well make it fun, I guess." Okay, perhaps some/most of them do genuinely enjoy it. But should they end up having to do it all the time when it gets to be too stressful, when they�re too busy, when they�re juggling children at the same time while their husband watches football?

I still don�t think that�s right and okay.

"If we claim cleaning as a cool feminine- and feminist- realm, we�ll only be ensuring that we�re stuck with the job forever. How is that liberating?" -Justine Sharrock, "Queens Of The Iron Age: On The New Feminist Hygeine Products," Bitch magazine, winter 2003.

Even though I feel guilty, even though realistically I should start caving in and joining the herd at least for practical reasons, I still want to rebel. Mainly because well, who else is doing it? Me and Deanne at the top there, I guess, and that�s it. But then again, if women always start picking up the slack, then things won�t change. Do I want to be a part of the solution or the problem?

"Both men and women should take pride in the domestic, but women need to be able to imagine more than life in the kitchen. Rejecting feminist neodomesticity isn�t about devaluing work done in the home- it�s about daring to think beyond that work, and to expect that work to be shared across gender lines. A feminist may choose to keep her house clean, but that doesn�t make a clean house a testament to gender equality (particularly if that house has been cleaned for free by a woman). If I have to iron, I don�t want to be part of this revolution." -Justine Sharrock, "Queens Of The Iron Age: On The New Feminist Hygeine Products," Bitch magazine, winter 2003.