Dirt is a Noun Separating Them
Men and women are different. One look can tell you that, each having a different arrangement of where bumps and hair are and aren't. Besides the obvious, the sexes differ in how each sees the world. Not the whole wide world, but the world close by right under our noses. A woman's nose is more attuned to the smell of it than a man's, which might be one thing preventing us seeing eye to eye. That, and men are generally taller.
One thing you can consider a microcosm of everything you want to know about these differences... dirt. Men don't much care and women do. But then, men don't much care about a lot of things, they'd rather be doing something. Women care about a lot of things, that's rather what they do.
Guys work noun-verb connections and gals see adjective-nouns. He wants to apply a verb to a noun, what a thing can do is what's important. He can look at something and ignore adjectives which don't matter to how it works. But she sees it all as part of what it is, an adjective can't be cut off a noun because otherwise it's something different. To a man a dog is an animal you take hunting. While to a woman it's either a nice, clean dog or a dirty, smelly dog whatever it's doing.
A man's brain is more like a filing cabinet which stores ideas in separate drawers. So he overlooks the dirt because the cleanliness file is closed, or maybe even empty. A woman's brain is akin to a flow chart where links between them are undeniable. For a dude if something works it doesn't much matter if it's clean or not. For a gal, dirty simply doesn't work for them. If it's dirty she doesn't want to even touch it let alone use it.
Male indifference to dirt feels utterly strange to a woman. This explains why a wife often says "better clean up your act, mister." But it's not an act, men are just oblivious to the dirt. On the other hand, the female attitude makes no sense to a man which is why husbands implore their spouse to "be reasonable" even though revulsion to dirty things seems perfectly reasonable to her. If something is dirty it's a dirty something. She can't ignore it any more than she could the feeling of insects crawling on her skin. (A sensation called formication, by the way.)
For instance, a man can wear the same underwear for a week with no problem. Hey, they still work, right? A woman can spend a quarter of her adult life cleaning herself up. Looking good and feeling good are, well, good for her. She'd no sooner wear the same clothes two days running as eat off the floor. If food falls on the floor "jelly side up" it's still edible as far as he's concerned.
Uncluttered is sort-of the male version of clean. Clutter makes doing things difficult, doing things being the operative words. A dirty workshop is "man clean" if it's organized. By organized I don't mean neatly arranged, rather tools are where he finds them handy. A room full of bric-a-brac is cluttered and messy, or "man dirty", no matter how aesthetically arranged and dust free it is. Especially since he can't actually do anything with bric-a-brac.
To continue the theme, men generally go more for modern design with undecorated flat, smooth surfaces. Chrome is the ultimate male material. They might even claim this is so it's easier to clean, though you won't find him cleaning it very often. Women tend toward classical fancy, elegant, even voluptuous. Fabric is the material of feminine choice. Where a woman would put up curtains, a man would use blinds. Where a woman would choose an floral duvet and toile French curtains, a man doesn't even know what those are. As long as it doesn't obstruct his view of the tv or have to be moved in order to eat dinner, it's otherwise meaningless to him.
Consider some of the jobs where men far outnumber women: Commercial fishing, oil riggers, longshoremen, farmers, merchant sailors, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, auto mechanics, heavy equipment operators, coal miners. Consider some of the fields women outnumber men: Secretaries, day care workers, nurses, cashiers, primary school teachers, librarians, hair dressers. Notice any trends here?
Men will do work that is dirty, greasy, grimy, smelly, and physically demanding. Women prefer not to do jobs that are most of the above. With the possible exception of nursing, or anything that entails changing diapers, which men just can't seem to come to grips with. Perhaps if babies were more like machinery a guy might cope better. This does point to another difference in the two job listings, men operating machines, women interacting with people.
Younger men, teens and college aged, are not only dirty but dishevelled and unorganized, too. Males of this age are works in progress, as yet undomesticated, if you will. With all that testosterone swimming about they have all they can do controlling their sex drive let alone organizing anything. At this stage, and even later to some degree, the male of the species thinks the female should overlook his disgusting (adjective) habits and appreciate what he can do (verb). At some point he realizes women just won't, or can't see it his way so they adapt or become permanent bachelors living in bachelor pads, i.e., pig styes.
But try as they might to adapt, a man's idea of clean enough is rarely enough where women are concerned. Think of it this way, to a guy brushing crumbs off the kitchen counter onto the floor is cleaning, to his wife that's redistribution of filth. My advice to women who want men to help around the house, try restricting their labors to mechanical repairs and the like. Otherwise you'll just end up rewashing whatever he just washed. It's not that men are incompetent, they really thought it was clean. Expecting a man to see what a woman can't overlook is like asking a woman to overlook what a man doesn't see. It's like tilting at windmills, clean, dirty, or otherwise.
copyright Terry Colon, 2008