Two writers I really admire and respect on this platform — Diana Fox Tilson, LICSW and Darby Saxbe — recently had a disagreement in a comment thread on Darby’s post about hetero married men’s contributions to household labor. I’m restacking to add my two cents, because it’s a really important debate with wide ramifications for progressive political strategy.

Essentially, Darby argues that men have come a really long way in the amount of labor they contribute to hetero-married households, and that’s a good thing. We should focus on positive change in order to encourage men to continue to take on their fare share of the housework load.

Then Diana argues: “It's infantilizing to suggest that men deserve a pat on the head and a gold star for doing less than half as much as their wives.”

I agree with both of them. So what do we do when we want to encourage and nurture progress in a good direction, AND the progress that’s happened so far isn’t nearly enough?

Here’s a thought experiment: What if instead of gender justice, we were talking about racial justice? To what extent should we applaud white people for whatever progress some of us have made toward being in better solidarity with people of color, and to what extent should we emphasize the very long way we still have to go?

Or what if we were talking about disability justice? To what extent should we applaud non-disabled people for whatever progress some of them have made toward being in better solidarity with disabled people, and to what extent should we emphasize the very long way non-disabled people have to go?

For what it’s worth, Emily Ladau and I recently did a Substack Live on this very topic and both came down on the side of measured encouragement — while at the same time recognizing that this is totally pandering.

Thinking more about this now, it seems to me that pandering involves making a certain degree of moral compromise — in the form of minimizing the bad — in service of a larger moral benefit — the aim of encouraging the good. Ultimately, I tend to think it’s a worthy moral compromise (and in that sense, I’m aligned with Darby), but I also want to recognize and emphasize that it IS a moral compromise (and in that sense I’m aligned with Diana).