kshhh pssht

Is the best part that he got doxxed? No.

Is the best part that he got tracked down by a local and beaten? No.

Arrested on state at federal charges, looking at up to 5 years and 50K? Nope.

The best part is the local city council's reaction.

Okay I actually love this so much.

(Idk who the creator is, if you know let me know and I’ll give credit)

I also did no meal prep. I don’t even think I went shopping right before I left.

This is not about apples and oranges. This isn’t even about my husband. This is about the fact that this is apparently WEIRD.

Another mum at my daughter’s school is leaving for ten days. She’s taking her youngest (who is a very small baby) and leaving her husband with their two girls. She has been cooking for days preparing freezer meals. She’s panicking and deputizing her six year old to remind him how to make school lunches. AND I AM APPALLED.

A) He is definitely not helpless. (He’s a doctor or something.) What gendered bullshit. B) THAT LITTLE GIRL IS NOT OLD ENOUGH TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR HER AND HER SISTER’S WELLBEING. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. C) Why is she married to this person and creating children with him if he’s this big of an idiot?

While she was laughingly recounting this, the other mums were nodding and smiling sympathetically, like oh yes, I too have my caveman at home!! Such managing required! I was the only one who was like “Dude, he’ll be fine. Literally. He will be fine.” I said it a lot. She was not convinced. She kept bringing up her older daughter. She’ll be like a little mum!

NO.

NO NO NO NO.

NO.

Imagine you and your partner have been living together in the same apartment for a reasonably long period of time. 

On the whole, your partner seems great. They’re smart, supportive, and totally on board with an even division of chores. But over time, you notice something odd - no matter how long you and your partner live in the same apartment with the same responsibilities, they just never seem to get the hang of any of the chores. Your partner can grasp complicated technical concepts for their job or hobby, but several months into living together, they still claim they don’t know how to properly operate the washing machine or dishwasher. They don’t know where you keep the toilet cleaner or what time they’re supposed to feed the dog. They have no idea what day the garbage gets picked up or how they’re supposed to sort the recycling. 

When you do manage to wrangle them into doing chores, everything they manage to do is done poorly or with little effort. They put dishes back in the wrong spots when they unload the dishwasher and crumple up the laundry instead of folding it. They bring the wrong things back from the grocery store, even when you send them with a list, and do such a sloppy job of mopping that you can barely tell the floors have been mopped at all. They require so much assistance to do basic chores and do such a poor job that, eventually, you just stop asking them to do chores at all - since you end up re-doing all of their work, it’s easier for you to just do it right the first time. 

But despite how it may appear, you don’t actually have an incompetent partner.  You have a partner who has learned to weaponize incompetence. 

“Weaponized incompetence” - also called “strategic incompetence” or “performative incompetence” - is a manipulation tactic, where a person will purposefully feign incompetence to get out of doing tasks that they find unpleasant. The idea is to intentionally do tasks so badly and require so much help that you grind other people down; you convince other people that you simply aren’t capable of pulling your weight, or you make yourself so difficult to deal with that it’s simply less effort for others to just do your chores for you. It doesn’t matter if you work as a literal rocket scientist - you just keep insisting that you can’t figure out what to feed your children or when the electrical bill is due until other people feel they have no choice but to take over for you. 

If you’re living with someone or dealing with someone who has mastered the use of weaponized incompetence, here are some quick things you should know:

This behaviour is an act. Let’s get one thing clear: your partner (or whoever else you are sharing chores with) knows how to wash dishes. They know how to vacuum the floors. They are capable of remembering that Thursday is garbage day. These are not complicated tasks. Even if a person is genuinely new to household chores, we live in a golden age of information; all of us have instant access to a wealth of blogs, articles and video tutorials that will teach us any household skill we need to know. If a person is genuinely making an effort, it does not take years to learn how to separate laundry or figure out which cupboard the plates are kept in. It’s true that most people will be better at certain chores, or prefer certain chores. But a partner (or anyone else) who claims to be hopelessly bad at everything they dislike is putting on a show.

This is a learned behaviour. Why would a grown adult pretend to be so incompetent that they can’t figure out how to make a simple dinner? Because it works. It gets them the outcome they desire, which is other people taking over their responsibilities for them. Having other people think you’re clueless is a small price to pay if it means you get to do whatever you want while others scramble to cover your responsibilities. 

Weaponized incompetence is different than ADHD. There is a big difference between someone who wants to pull their weight but gets distracted halfway through a chore, and someone who does a bad job on purpose so no one will ever ask them to do chores again. A person with ADHD may need more reminders and take more time to do chores (or any other tasks), but they produce high-quality work. People with ADHD also tend to be aware of their issues with task management, and work on strategies to overcome it. People weaponizing incompetence will simply insist that they are hopeless and see no point in trying. It is possible for a person with ADHD to use weaponized incompetence intentionally, but this is different than their own inherent struggles with executive functioning. 

There is a gendered component to weaponized incompetence. Anyone, of any gender, is capable of faking incompetence to wriggle out of chores, but there are some gendered differences in who actually does it - this is a tactic most often observed in men. In a world where women still do the majority of housework and childcare, even in households where both partners work full-time, this is one tactic that women are increasingly observing in male partners who want to get out of domestic work while still touting egalitarian ideas. Our culture has a much greater tolerance for incompetent men than it does incompetent women - the dad who drops his kid off at daycare with two mismatched shoes and three packs of cookies for lunch is an overwhelmed parent doing his best, but the mother who does the same thing is viewed as a shitty mom. 

This is not limited to romantic partnerships. Anyone can weaponize their incompetence, not just partners - it could be friends, coworkers, roommates, teenage children, or just about anyone you have to share responsibilities with. That roommate who claims they don’t know how to pay the wi-fi bill or clean the bathroom wasn’t raised by wolves - there’s a good chance they’re simply choosing not to figure these things out because they know you’ll do it for them. 

The only way to combat this behaviour is to not tolerate it. People use weaponized incompetence because it works - eventually, you break down and do the thing for them. The key to combatting it, then, is to make sure that it stops working. Don’t jump in to help. Don’t offer to do it for them. Don’t spend hours drawing handmade maps of the grocery store because your husband insists he’s incapable of buying toilet paper on his own. When someone insists they can’t possibly do a household task that they’ve been asked to do dozens of times before, resist the urge to take over and simply say “I’m sorry, I have my own work to do. You are capable of figuring it out.” Remind them that figuring out how to do the chore is, in fact, part of the chore - if they don’t know where the clean bowls go or what needs to be on this week’s grocery list, it is their responsibility to investigate and work it out for themselves. 

I spent several years living with a (now-ex) partner who had mastered the use of weaponized incompetence to squirm his way out of everything he didn’t want to do in life. He got himself fired from numerous jobs so his parents would continue paying his rent and bills - eventually, they gave up on the idea of him working at all. Over and over again, he put the wrong soap in the dishwasher, over-loaded the washing machine until it flooded, and scraped non-stick pans with metal spoons. He quickly learned to use complex recording and sound equipment for his hobby, but scraped a Swiffer across the floor with no pad attached, claiming he just wasn’t capable of using one properly. I, inevitably, would get frustrated and take over for him, inadvertently teaching him exactly how to get out of his chores. 

The incompetence only stopped when I did. I reached a point where I was tired of hounding a grown man to wipe up his own spilled juice or wash his own underwear. So I stopped picking up after him. And when the apartment finally got disgusting and he reached the absolute limits of how long he could re-use the same underwear, something miraculous happened - all of a sudden, he realized he did know how to do laundry and dishes after all. 

take on weekly or monthly tasks, and think it’s equal to their wives daily tasks (even when wives also have weekly and monthly tasks)

take on tasks that require very little time or hard labor, like mowing the lawn.

take on a “project” that could be fixed by a professional, and work on it little by little but never really finish

create chores for their children, i.e. delegate rather than doing

do housework only in tandem, i.e. never on their own or without help.

volunteer on their own for some disliked task. For example, cleaning the toilets without asking. unfortunately, this tends to be seen as very loving and exceptional. Often it will be used as an excuse not to do anything else

enthusiastically volunteer to do things often, then conveniently “forget”, “make plans”, or have some sort of weird parameter to get started. When wife or child does it instead, claim they were going to do it, really!

pick a jurisdiction they already enjoy, like “take care of dog” or “the yard”

do something really badly, so that someone else has to do it for them anyway afterwards

“tidy up” a mess they made

pick up or organize clutter, however the often stressful, emotional, and time consuming task of de-cluttering is left undone or for someone else

meticulous keep clean a space that is only theirs, i.e. their study, their garage.

create tasks that aren’t needed, like “organize the toolbox” or “rearrange the bookshelf”

do tasks that require prep work that their wives will do for them (i.e. grilling the food, but not planning, purchasing, seasoning or preparing the sides)

take control of “finances” but do very little, perhaps the taxes. this is also used as a way to control their wives often

use their time with their children to play or dole out discipline/lessons, but very little time on feeding/bathing/dressing or organizing their lives. this is also away men can create a “fun parent/mean parent” dynamic

make lists of what needs to get done, discuss what needs to get done with their wives, act very invested in the housework, take on a “manager” role in the housework, but do very little of it

tell wives that what little is done in the house, by either of them, is “enough” and that he “doesn’t care” what the house looks like (this is a l i e). i.e. doing little and then making an emotional appeal that it’s fine, co-opting the emotional labor his wife does for him, but actually it’s very manipulative

getting involved with children’s after school activities, i.e. being a coach, organizing a concert, etc. often a thing he already enjoys. often does very little of the organizing/plan making. often makes little effort to create time for his wife’s personal interests