I hate cleaners

I saw Stoker the other day. I'm going to post my review of it in a bit, but first I want to talk about what led me to see it.

I only saw it because my landlord's girlfriend is one of those women who wasn't told that "house elf" is no longer a requirement for being a good partner, and was feverishly cleaning the flat, on her first ever visit. As in, she has never been here before, and her first reaction was to clean a perfect stranger's flat, and then leave.

Unable to cope with somebody cleaning the other side of my bedroom door and making the handle shake like a serial killer with slippery blood-hands, I sloped off out, cursing the invasion of Dobby under my breath.

I genuinely hate people who clean like that, for a number of reasons that I will probably blog about at a later time. But in particular, I hate the fact that it is always women who have this desperation to cleancleancleanCLEANCLEAN!!!
Like I said above, there is something pathetically old world about it, as though they are try desperately to conform to the traditional role of a woman. And I can't help but feel this lady is looking at me as competition, as someone who needs to be out-femaled, somehow. Luckily for her, I am very easily over-womaned, by my lifelong aversion to cleaning, cooking and children (the three C's).

More than once, I have heard women refer to themselves as "obsessive compulsive", as though it is a good thing, or refer to something needing "a woman's eye," as though women's eyes have some sort of infra-red for dirt. It's a kind of self-stereotyping that supports the position that the gendered subtext of everyday life leaves a much bigger imprint on individuals than is readily apparent. I never hear men talk about cleaning like it's some sort of achievement or raison d'etre, because to them it isn't. Cleaning is in no way connected to the way society judges them , or how they value themselves. Cleaning is just something you have to do from time to time, to keep certain nasties at bay, to make the place look basically presentable to humans, and to make it just pleasant to live in.

There is a genuinely sad thing about this, as in it makes me sad for the human race. I am not the stereotypical woman, and that's not a surprise, because we take up literally half of the human race, how is it possible to generalise about such a huge, intrinsically diverse section of humanity. Which makes me wonder why we have a stereotype of "woman" in the first place? And why do some women feel desperate to upkeep these clichés? Is there a stereotype of "man"? If I say, "I saw a man the other day," what is the picture you have? What do you picture if I say "I saw a woman?"

Right, rant over. Night night.