"You're so much better at cooking and cleaning than me. Why don't you just do it?"
Sound familiar? This behavior is called "weaponized incompetence," and it's more common than you'd think.
Sound familiar? This behavior is called "weaponized incompetence," and it's more common than you'd think.
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00:00Babe, how do I turn on the machine?
00:02Babe, what setting is it supposed to be on?
00:04Babe, it's not working!
00:05Again, the worst ones will do this so that you get frustrated and do the task for them.
00:12I'm so bad at this, could you help me?
00:15I guess that's why you do the cooking.
00:18What? You know about detectors now?
00:21If these examples sound familiar, then you might be confronted with weaponized incompetence,
00:25a situation in which someone says they do not know how to do something
00:29in order to get out of a task.
00:31This might manifest itself in friendships, at work,
00:33but it's especially discussed in the context of romantic relationships.
00:37Weaponized incompetence means when a partner pretends like they don't know how to do something
00:43or they ask for extra help or they're calling you all the time from the grocery store,
00:46they can't complete a task without help.
00:49It's purposely completing a task terribly, so terribly in fact,
00:53that you just never ask them to do the task again.
00:56Like those videos that you'll see where you can tell when dad dresses
01:00the daughters or the sons clothing that makes absolutely no sense.
01:03They're not washed, their faces aren't clean, their hair's not brushed.
01:06They were given like Pepsi and Goldfish for breakfast.
01:10The term weaponized incompetence or strategic incompetence isn't new,
01:14but recently it's being discussed more and more on TikTok
01:17where people have been sharing their experiences.
01:20When it's your birthday, do you have to remind him five,
01:23six times that your birthday's coming up and then put it on the calendar
01:26and then email him stuff you want and then he still f**ks it up?
01:30Stop doing s**t that they're not doing for you.
01:32Match their energy.
01:34Take a 45-minute s**t.
01:36It's 6 a.m. and your kids are screaming and he's not rolling over to get them.
01:41You don't roll over either.
01:42On this app, we talk a lot about weaponized incompetence in men,
01:45but one thing that we don't talk about is weaponized ignorance.
01:48And it's when you know you don't know, but you put no effort into learning.
01:51So literally, I want to say this to every guy who's preparing to get a gift
01:54or an experience for a woman that they care about.
01:57If you give her a gift that she has to then do work to actually fully enjoy,
02:02you did not give her a gift.
02:03You gave her a task.
02:05How would you feel if she said dinner's ready
02:07and on the table were just a bunch of raw ingredients?
02:09Here's a list of some of the things that I've experienced.
02:12Task refusal.
02:13I don't do dishes.
02:14I don't like touching dirty plates.
02:16I don't change diapers.
02:17That's disgusting.
02:18I'm sorry.
02:19I can't handle that.
02:19They are shutting down your request and refusing to work with you.
02:23While people may engage in this behavior consciously or not,
02:26it is not just forgetting about something or not being able to complete a task.
02:31Here's the difference between weaponized incompetence
02:33and just not knowing how to do stuff.
02:35Ugh, you're so much better at cooking and cleaning than me.
02:38Why don't you just do it?
02:46Can you help me change this tire?
02:47I have never had to do this in my life.
02:49That makes total sense because I can't either.
02:51Let's call a mechanic.
02:53Because some of us are neurodivergent or depressed or chronically ill or disabled.
02:58Any number of things that makes it harder for us to
03:00go about our daily lives in a way that is viewed as competent.
03:05Nobody's trying to use these things as excuses.
03:07There's a difference between excuses and explanations.
03:10So yes, we got to call out men and society
03:13for these patterns and this behavior of weaponized incompetence.
03:18But we have to be careful in the way that we're doing it because
03:21it can get really harmful and very ableist very quickly.
03:25Many are discussing how weaponized incompetence manifests itself
03:28in the context of division of labor at home,
03:31with many mothers working what they call a double shift.
03:34One shift at work during the day and another shift in the evening at home,
03:37caring for children and the household.
03:39A 2021 poll by McKinsey found that during the pandemic,
03:43mothers were three times as likely as fathers to be the ones
03:46responsible for most of the housework and caregiving.
03:49In every relationship, there typically is a what I like to call load bearing partner,
03:54a partner that tends to take on the majority of the tasks in the home.
03:57Someone who weaponizes their incompetence.
03:59You did the laundry. You're always going to do the laundry.
04:01And they will never step up to take that responsibility off of you.
04:05And if you don't think you know how to do this,
04:07if you're not capable of understanding that dishes need to be done
04:11or that the laundry needs to be put away or that the floor needs to be swept,
04:15then you are a moron. OK, and you are an immature little infantile baby.
04:22I think there's another piece of the puzzle that doesn't get talked about as much,
04:26which is the fact that while, yes, a lot of men do weaponize their incompetence,
04:31a lot of men are also just actually incompetent.
04:35And that still has connections to sexist societal structures.
04:40Like the bare minimum is so frequently accepted from men and from an early age,
04:47men and women are socialized to accept the bare minimum from men.
04:52And boys are expected to mature slower than girls.
04:56A lot of men never had to like accrue knowledge and learn how to like
05:02navigate society because there was always a woman to do it for them.
05:07A partnership means delegating the tasks so that one person is completing it.
05:12Full responsibility from the beginning to the end.
05:15The issue of weaponized incompetence isn't just being bad at something and asking for help.
05:21It is a tool of oppression.
05:23When you don't put in the effort to learn how to do something successfully in the house,
05:28you are assuming that your partner is going to do it.
05:31You are forcing them to take their time to complete that task for you.
05:36When it is a domestic task, it has to be done for the health and safety of your family.
05:41Unpaid time is just as finite as paid time.