It was with infuriated amusement that I recently read Stephen Marche’s “The Case for Filth” in The New York Times (Dec. 8). Marche – a novelist, Esquire contributing editor and author of a forthcoming book on the end of the gender wars – writes that men in our post-feminist age are doing no more housework than they ever did. He concludes:

“The solution to the gender divide in housework generally is just that simple: don’t bother. Leave the stairs untidy. Don’t fix the garden gate. Fail to repaint the peeling ceiling. Never make the bed.

“A clean house is the sign of a wasted life, truly. Hope is messy: Eventually we’ll all be living in perfect egalitarian squalor.”

He’s kidding, right? I mean, this is some kind of post-modern snark, isn’t it? Read more