Save. Spend. Splurge.

I’ll give you a sandwich all right…

@emgenie tweeted this article: How I wooed my man with a sandwich, and after reading the first paragraph or so, my blood started to boil.

Maybe this article was just to troll people like me, as I feel a lot of articles are these days especially on NY Post.

Here’s the gist of it if you don’t want to read the article:

My boyfriend, Eric, is the gourmet cook in our relationship, but he’d always want me to make him a sandwich.

Each morning, he would ask, “Honey, how long you have been awake?”

“About 15 minutes,” I’d reply.

“You’ve been up for 15 minutes and you haven’t made me a sandwich?”

To him, sandwiches are like kisses or hugs. Or sex. “Sandwiches are love,” he says. “Especially when you make them. You can’t get a sandwich with love from the deli.”

…..

As he finished that last bite, he made an unexpected declaration of how much he loved me and that sandwich:

“Honey, you’re 300 sandwiches away from an engagement ring!”

stock-wedding-marriage-champagne-ring-married-bride-crystal

 Tell me Stephanie Smith, would you really want to marry the jackass who made that remark?

Ridiculous.

I’LL GIVE YOU A SANDWICH ALL RIGHT…

Call me a raging feminist, but flippantly (even jokingly) saying: “Hey woman, make me a sandwich!” … or .. “You’re 300 sandwiches away from a ring!“… makes me want to give him a sandwich all right…. a knuckle sandwich.

Can you imagine a woman saying that to a man?

Honey you’re 300 sandwiches away from my agreeing to marry your sorry ass!?

Like marriage is the only thing women think about and want. You have to be kidding me.

I can’t stand a woman who accepts such sexist teasing, because even if you are standing silently by and shrugging your shoulders when your boyfriend jokes about chaining to you to your kitchen or dishwasher makes me want to slap you too.

(I don’t play favourites with wanting to slap men or women. Stupid is stupid.)

IT IS NOT THE SAME THING AS SAYING FOOD = LOVE

I am the first person to tell you that food is love.

When someone takes the time to make food for me, it’s love. Edible love.

It’s one of the reasons why I fell in love with BF, was because he understood food as a way of showing affection.

….but it’s wholly another to joke about it in such a sexist way.

Just because you are a woman it doesn’t mean you need to know how to make a sandwich to prove you are “wife material” and what kind of stupid rule is that?

Should you also iron 500 shirts, and fetch him his slippers every night with the newspaper like a dog too?

So maybe you should start calling him “Master” or “Sir”, because you’re obviously the slave.

My sexist, idiot father actually once (seriously) asked my mother why she didn’t fetch him his newspaper and slippers when he came in the door, after they had both worked a full 8-hour day. 

My mother simply looked at him, laughed in his face, and said: Should I bark and wag my tail when you come in the door as well?

It isn’t funny to me in the slightest, and if I ever heard anyone in my family decide to joke like that about women, I’d rip them a new one, father or not.

BF has never, ever in his life, made such jokes (I don’t even know if they exist in France, but certainly not in his social circle), and I have never heard his friends or his family EVER say such things in mixed company or otherwise.

It’s not even an issue, sexism, because it simply doesn’t even exist as an issue between us.

We’re equals for everything, for better or for worse.

(As an example, I have to come up with 50% for all of our bills, 50% for our future house, 50% for our retirement, and 50% for everything we do together. There is no such thing as him carrying me financially, or vice versa. We both make the same kind of money (roughly), so this is not unfair to me in the slightest.)

wine-bottle-glasses-booze-alcohol-drink

The one time I remember him talking about sexism, was a long time ago when his father and mother were invited to an uncle’s house for dinner.

His uncle took out wine and said loudly to everyone at the table: “Hey, just so you know, the wine is only for the men at this table, not the women.

It’s not that women didn’t drink or weren’t allowed to drink (on the contrary!), it was that the uncle really thought that women were not worthy of drinking his wine stash.

You can’t get more sexist than that.

His father declined the wine, and then said: “I guess the next time you come over to eat with us, you won’t be having any wine either because it’s just for women at my house.

(This was of course not true, but it sure drove home his point.)

WHAT ERA ARE WE LIVING IN ANYWAY?

Maybe it’s not even such a big deal to some of you to say or hear such things, you might even find it cute, tongue-in-cheek or just an article meant to stir up trolls like me, but as someone who works in a male-dominated industry and is, as a woman, the butt of these jokes about 80% of the time I work, it loses its charm pretty quickly.

It is not funny.

I can’t tell you the number of times at work where I’ve heard all the off-colour, sexist jokes about vacuum cleaners, fridges, dishwashing and all the crudest jokes you can imagine about their wives or girlfriends joking around with other guys, just because they feel the need to front how masculine they are.

Maybe their wives or girlfriends would actually give them a good ol’ slap if they actually heard them joke like that in their presence (or in another woman’s presence for that matter), but it doesn’t change anything for me that they do it in the company of other men.

When I hear these jokes, I give them a blank (poisonous) stare and tell them: That was inappropriate.

They usually turn red and try to say it was just a joke, but I don’t say anything and just give them a long stare, which makes the whole situation awkward, but at the very least, drives my opinion home.

I don’t rant, and I don’t get on my soapbox to preach to them. They already know what I mean.

THESE IDIOTS ARE JUST INSECURE

If you think you’re being macho saying such things, it just goes to show how insecure you really are about your own masculinity that you feel the need to joke about this.

When I hear those jokes, I immediately peg the guy as someone who feels the need to act like he’s a man because he really doesn’t feel like one, either being emasculated at home, or otherwise a closeted misogynist.

Otherwise, why would he feel the need to show his dominance over women?

If you guys laugh at these jokes even out of trying to be a friend or to fit in (even if you don’t believe in such jokes or don’t like them), you are just as stupid and as crude as the guy who made those jokes.

So what should you do instead if you don’t want to confront them?

Don’t laugh.

Just listen to the “joke”, let that awkward silence hang, then switch the subject.

Or excuse yourself and leave.

If they think you’re not being “one of the guys” because you disapprove of such jokes, do you really care what those idiots think of you anyway? Do you want to be in their circle, stooping to their level of intelligence?

Real guys in their personal and work lives, don’t make jokes like that.

Maybe they have had to button their lips and re-train themselves to not joke in such a crude manner, but I have never met a guy I have respected who has ever joked or hinted at joking like that about women.

They’re too intelligent to stoop to such crude remarks, regardless of their station and social class.

NO ONE SHOULD ACCEPT THAT CRAP, NOT EVEN MEN

In the same vein, I don’t like it when women joke about men being dumb or being useless for almost anything at home, or even if they joke about their husbands or boyfriends being their bank accounts and slaves because they’re essentially paying for sex with them, are just as stupid.

I don’t find it funny either.

It’s just as inappropriate to make those kinds of sexist jokes about men as it is about women.

So for everyone out there? Don’t take that crap.

Call out your idiot partner when he jokes about ordering you to go make him a sandwich or she jokes about how whipped you are because you’re her man.

Tell them it isn’t funny, full stop.

Then think twice about staying with such insecure jackasses who feel the need to put men or women down and “in their place”.

Someone who (even jokingly) says they’ll make you their wife if you can make them 300 sandwiches, or how they’ll grudgingly have sex with you if you do _____ for them, is someone who’s a moron.

Every joke has a half truth and unless you are willing to accept that you are and always will be a second-class citizen in your relationship (some people are, and that’s their choice), then you should re-evaluate who you are really considering a life with.

39 Comments

  • Michael Proulx

    Just stumbled onto your blog. Excellent. I know I’m a little late(!) to the subject but wanted to contribute. I’m in my 60’s. I was brought up in a family where my parents both worked. There was never any question of it not being an equal and respectful partnership. Big tv shows at the time included Bewitched and I Dream of Genie. As a child, I couldn’t understand why Elizabeth Montgomery had to spend her time desperately finding ways for her husband to save face. My point is that the shows are gone but has the thinking? We live in a world where it is on the ascendance. We are told to respect differences and not to call out obvious crimes. Religion and culture trump human – read women’s – rights. “What God has ordained let no man put asunder.” The best we can do is speak up and show our children by example – as I was. The point is, every generation is a clean slate and the fight – the “knuckle sandwhich” – must go on. Fight or lose. There is no middle ground!

    • Sherry of Save. Spend. Splurge.

      I am pleased to hear that not everyone is like that, especially of an older generation. My mother is staunchly a feminist (even though she doesn’t think of herself as one), and my father is the complete opposite, even asking her many times (in all seriousness) why she didn’t bring him his slippers each day.

      (She had such a good laugh over that one…. !!!)

      I’m also very pleased to hear that your parents were the ones who influenced you so strongly. I am trying my best to do that for my son as well, and I am glad to hear it works!

  • Lila

    I honestly think their blog is fake. Who would get engaged for making 300 sandwiches? She’s probably trying to establish herself as a writer by starting this blog and the whole theme is getting people’s attention.

    I really don’t believe that girl’s bf wakes up each morning asking for a sandwich from her. I mean really?! LOL.

    Who does that?

  • Kara

    Ok, first of all let me say that I think the original site, the woman and her fiance are idiots for making this public the way they did and I think the concept of sandwiches for engagement ring *is* totally sexist. I think both of them should have expected the blowback they’ve gotten for the way they presented it and to not have is just dumb.

    BUT.

    I think your rant was over the top. Especially the part that accepting jokes about sexist roles means you’re accepting your “life as a second class citizen”. Sometimes we joke about things because we acknowledge that they are not the way the world is anymore and that it should be a CHOICE if you want to work or stay at home and make sandwiches. And if two people choose and agree between them that one of them will earn an income and the other will stay home and take care of the house, then that choice should be validated, instead of them being screamed at by “validating sexist roles”. Feminism is not about forcing women to do what they don’t want. Feminism is about women having a choice and not being ripped at by anyone for making that choice.

    • save. spend. splurge.

      Women having a choice is something I believe in and think is a good thing. You want to stay at home and make sandwiches all day?

      Go ahead.

      I fully support any of my friends who have done this, but don’t write an article using purposefully controversial wording to make it seem like guys only want women who make sandwiches, and make single women (of which I am not part of) feel like they are inadequate because they aren’t “wife sandwich-making material”.

      My rant may have struck a nerve with you, perhaps because you feel guilty in some respects for not having said anything, and thereby silently agreeing with the situation.

      Let me remind you of the innocence of such blind agreement especially with something as innocuous as making sandwiches, when I bring you back to those who felt uneasy at the start when Hitler started to take over Europe, but stood silently by because they didn’t want to make waves.

      When you don’t say anything or you laugh and joke along with people who say such things, you support their ideas.

  • cantaloupe

    Aiya, it’s a food blog! He doesn’t even eat all the sandwiches she makes. And he teaches her how to make many of them. And he washes the dishes after most of the meals. And she makes it very clear that she’s doing this out of love and not truly for a ring. Did you read the blog or just lash out because of a tagline?

    You think it’s ok to be so harsh on her because of some unfortunate phrasing? In reality, she and her guy are on very equal footing. She spun her tagline in an un-feminist way, sure, but she’s not really the problem in the world of men and women. And it’s extremely anti-feminist to lash out at a woman for the choices she makes in life! There are bigger problems in the world of feminism. For example, people who hate on women for choosing to fit conventional femininity norms…. let her be. It’s her life and she’s happy in it. Who are you to judge so harshly?

    • save. spend. splurge.

      I read the post she wrote to get attention from people like me (self-admittedly a bit of a troll).

      You may be defending her, and you think I’m judging her harshly, but she asked for it with the way she worded that article. She did it with the full intention of it getting press and that’s what it’s getting, or haven’t you heard that all press is good press?

      It isn’t anti-feminist to lash out at a woman for the choices she makes, if the choices she makes, basically puts other women “back in their place” and holds her up as a paragon of virtue for CHOOSING a traditional route.

      I don’t care if women want to get married, pop out babies, stay at home and not work again (or have you hypocritically not read my blog posts either?). Wow talk about the kettle calling the pot black.

      I want people to make those choices without making other women feel like that’s the only choice that is accepted by others out there.

    • save. spend. splurge.

      For the record, you can read one of my latest pieces defending women and men who choose to be stay at home parents, among other ones that I’ve written in the past.

      https://www.savespendsplurge.com/2013/09/20/stay-at-home-parents-do-not-call-yourselves-household-engineers/

  • MakintheBacon

    I was about to type in something about giving the guy a knuckle sandwich, but then I realized you already said that. Great minds think alike. Haha.

    Regarding the wine, I can’t believe your bf’s uncle would say such a thing. How rude.

      • Cameron Daniels

        @save. spend. splurge.:

        You’re right about that, girl! Whenever my girlfriend says something that frustrates me, I want to shove my foot so far down her throat that she won’t say something so stupid again!

        Mostly I enjoy popping her right in the eye when she says something like ‘Hey, let’s watch E! network instead of this silly football game.’ That should teach her not to have her own opinions.

        The author’s is sexist but it pales in comparison to the standard you have around domestic abuse. The fact that you are doing this in the same article that you are demanding equality is mostly laughable. I will stop laughing at jokes the day you villify domestic abuse for the atrocity it is. Or is it just sissy men who have to put up with shrew wives?

        • save. spend. splurge.

          Domestic abuse is an atrocity. Did I mention anything about physical abuse in the article? It is both men and women who shouldn’t have to put up with either. I’m confused if you actually read the post, or if you read it, and decided to only read what you wanted to read.

          The play on “giving you a sandwich” is obviously in regards to her 300-sandwich comment, which I guess.. totally went over your head seeing as you couldn’t see the connection.

        • save. spend. splurge.

          By the way, verbal abuse IS a form of abuse, but it doesn’t mean I think it is the only form of abuse (obviously).

          The post didn’t address in the slightest physical abuse, but obviously you’ve decided to skip over the fact that I am talking about sexism in speech, and I didn’t think I had to go into a huge long rant that covered EVERY single form of abuse when it doesn’t even have any relevance to the post I am referring to.

          Again, I am pretty sure you didn’t actually read the article and the post, because you totally missed the point but everyone else seemed to get it.

          • Cameron Daniels

            @save. spend. splurge.:

            “makes me want to give him a sandwich all right…. a knuckle sandwich.”

            “I was about to type in something about giving the guy a knuckle sandwich, but then I realized you already said that. ”

            “Maybe their wives or girlfriends would actually give them a good ol’ slap if they actually heard them joke like that in their presence ”

            Before you respond to tell me to learn how to take a joke, please re-read your article. I am pretty sure I read the whole thing and understand the point. Gently ribbing somebody about making a sandwich (from somebody who makes his wife a sandwich all the time) is levels of humor away from joking about domestic abuse.

  • Mo' Money Mo' Houses

    Umm if my HB ever asked me to go make him a sandwich I’d probably tell him to eff off, and it honestly has nothing to do with sandwiches. It just brings me back to being in middle school or high school and boys would think it was so funny to tell girls to bake them a pie or make them a sandwich, but what they’re really doing is being degrading and continuing this stupid chauvinist idea that all women are good for are being housewives and such. Ugh, that makes my blood boil too!

    • save. spend. splurge.

      Exactly my point.

      If you LIKE to bake and LIKE to cook and LIKE doing all that, there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as it doesn’t hold connotations that it is your ONLY role in life — to serve men.

  • Christiane

    Haha, as I once told you, the situation is sometimes not so easy here in my conservative area of Germany. I also worked at a very sexist environment for the last 4 years (as a research assistant), and one time when I came in in the morning, all our secretaries were sick or on holidays, they were not there. The men asked me to make coffee ^^ because they wouldn’t want to do it themselves. I gave them a blank stare and told them sarcastically, as they knew I was a career woman, they should know I have no idea about the big office coffee machines, but if they need anything concerning MY work, I’d be glad to help. I was never asked to make coffee again.
    The coffee machines here are part of the secretaries duties, whether they are male or female. I was just asked because I’m woman and should know all that stuff.

  • Dear Debt

    Amen! Just reading those few lines made me sick. Sometimes I really do wonder what era we live in. In some ways we are so progressive, but clearly some people are still living in the past! Seriously, who would marry that guy? He has no moves, he’s lame and terribly unfunny.

  • tomatoketchup

    Hmm. I’m pretty sure the sandwich comment was a joke, and it’s interesting that the writer actually followed through with the request.

    My girlfriend and I have this thing where we tease each other about making a pie for the other person. No one’s actually ever made a pie, and I don’t even eat pie except on Thanksgiving, but it’s a nice fun routine that we throw back and forth every now and then. I don’t see what the problem is with that as long as both parties are aware that it’s not to be taken seriously.

    • save. spend. splurge.

      Oh but you two joke about it for each other making you a pie. It’s not that you joke about it to your girlfriend, just because she’s a woman, that she should make you a pie.

      The problem for me, is his attitude in the way he said: “You’ve been up 15 minutes I don’t have a sandwich yet?”

      That whole tone and the way he delivers his “joke”, and her without having any expectation of HIM making HER a sandwich, is something I find quite condescending.

  • ArianaAuburn

    So..if this lady messes up at sandwich # 236, will that give that guy the right to reconsider not marrying her?
    I am trying to understand this man’s vague but simple requirement of getting him to consider a long commitment (marriage) to the member of the opposite sex.
    If that is what it takes for him to propose, he should have snuck into a 5-star restaurant and woo the chef.
    It also sounds like he got spoiled rotten by his mom and hasn’t gotten over it, trying to find a replacement he can sleep with.

  • neurosciency

    the dad’s retort to the wine comment made my day :). i hear this kind of stuff (maybe not so blatantly) so often but sometimes i try to call people out on it, because ain’t nobody got time for that. re: the sandwich thing, i really don’t understand how some females are able to be happy playing that kind of subservient role in a relationship…it seriously boggles my mind, but hey, to each their own i guess. i guess i am lucky to have a family that supports my raging feminist ways though. 🙂

  • Aleksie

    It isn’t even a funny joke. I’m embarrassed for and ashamed of both of them. Her for putting up with this and thinking it’s a good spin for a recipe blog, him for being a sexist jerk and being okay with this.

    Just the tone- geez…

  • Lisa E. @ Lisa Vs. The Loans

    This infuriates me!!! It just goes to show that sexism is alive and well, and it SICKENS me that women put up with it, even DEFENDING their men. UGHHHH

  • Debt Blag

    I don’t understand how anyone could feel OK being the subject of that sandwich story. That the conversation could be a pretty good indication of things to come would be enough for me to want to hit the door.

  • Indiraa

    I love this post! Right on. The sandwich story is not funny at all, and if I saw something like the wine story in person, I would really give that person a piece of my mind.

    • save. spend. splurge.

      That was way back when, though, when it was OK for ads to joke about husbands spanking their wives for not cleaning the house to their satisfaction. Gosh that sounded really S&M..

  • Romona@Monasez

    Wow. I totally agree with your perspective. I get the whole food is the way to a man’s heart but that guy took it too far.It’s not the caveman times and woman shouldn’t have to be submissive to men and serve them to earn their affection. That’s just ridiculous.

    • save. spend. splurge.

      It’s more his tone and expectations than anything. Apparently he does cook for her a lot, but that doesn’t mean jack squat to me if he’s demanding sandwiches after she wakes up.

  • MelD

    The mind boggles… 😮
    Fortunately, I don’t think I have ever had anything to do with men like this in my own personal or work life! That is a whole other planet – gosh, I must be very lucky!! I may be old-fashioned but am happy to have a gentleman as a husband and we both try to behave respectfully to each other, I really don’t mind being treated as a lady, not an idiot, a lady… Perhaps the fact that manners are so important in this country helps some?

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