He’ll be even softer, I promise, once I put 100 pounds of force on his back. Going to needing hamster steak recipes then.

As I said, I’m feeling a bit miffed.

g is, dare I say, typical.

There have been two main approaches to the traditional inequities of gender roles. To broadly generalize, liberals have re-enforced the perception expressed by the husband in the first joke. The work of raising children and taking on domestic chores is devalued. Just look at how g devalues traditional roles for a good example. The liberal approach seems to value only the traditional male role and devaluing the female role but insist that everyone help out. Raising children is devalued and even *having* children is devalued, though people generally still like to have them the having them isn’t a contribution but is a personal indulgence.

The other “work around” has been to recognize the value contributed to the family by women and endeavor to emphasize the equality of that traditional contribution and view a marriage as a partnership of two people working for the same goals, particularly the importance of raising children, regardless of differences in the roles they undertake. Everyone helps out in this version because the work needing done is valuable and important work.

I find them both very funny every time I hear/read them and don’t see how on earth their humor rests on an idological bent instead of upon the kind of quirky truth that men AND women can see and laugh at in themselves and each other.

Laughing at oneself is a function of self-discipline and self-respect. When you don’t have any, Marguerite, then you are likely to erupt in CartoonJihad like rages. Teddy Mohammed anyone?