"Women Rest the Most in My Opinion.”
Thursday, June 30, 2011 at 10:51PM ...was the infamous line blurted out today on PTSD Support, an iPhone/Android social media application for, yes you guessed it, PTSD. What do you think happened after that? And why did he (yes he) say such a thing, in response to a woman no less? Well, as I am sure you can guess, no woman let that pass. Especially me. Not to be an overbearing sass or anything, but I happen to know a little about the dude who said it, and where he was coming from. It reeked of male chauvinism.
Meet Murphy, the gal who got the lovely comment given to her and author of PTSD Love :
"I posted a comment this morning saying: “Not feeling so hot today. Only 7 hours of work instead of 9 though. ” One of the fellow wives basically told me to get some rest because we often neglect ourselves and don’t do it enough. In response to THAT post, one of the vets commented “What? Women rest the most in my opinion.” And then backed it up with some lame excuse about how people with PTSD have trouble sleeping, so obviously women rest more. Well, he is entitled to his opinion, and I am entitled to mine. Here is a brief overview of my day:
6:45 am- my alarm goes off
6:55 am- get out of bed
6:55-7:45am- get ready for work
7:45-7:50am- Leave for work
8:15am- I arrive at work (I have a job where I work with children in their homes. I am at a single location 3.5 hours max)
8:15-4:30- work work work (this is an average. There are some days where I only work 4 or 6 hours.
5:00pm- arrive home, figure out what to make for dinner, make dinner….
7:00-10:00pm- watch some TV with D and relax…maybe I’ll fall asleep by 11.
This is my summer schedule, and not including the weekends. I have had the past 2 Saturday off, but a lot of the time I work even more on the weekends. During the school year I squeeze classes in there.
Okay, big deal right? Tons of people work full-time, go to school, and manage a significant other with PTSD and/or TBI….minus the last part. I actually used to work A LOT more before I met D, and wasn’t nearly as exhausted as I am now. Don’t get me wrong, I love him to death, but it’s exhausting sometimes. I’m not even really talking mental exhaustion at this point…this is a topic for a different time. A lot of nights, I stay awake until D falls asleep and because I make myself stay awake I then can’t fall asleep after he does. Lack of sleep sucks; especially when I know that I have a full day of work to look forward to.
Amber has a bit of a different story as she is a stay at home mom. I’m pretty sure her job is more exhausting than mine."
Competitive Tiredness
Usually I'm whining on here about some recent incident that occurred causing so much grief... bla bla bla, but lets go beyond that today, shall we, and back it up with some actual facts! Well, lets call them "professional opinions?" -
"Women are significantly more sleep-deprived than men," confirms Michael Breus, Ph.D., author of Beauty Sleep: Look Younger, Lose Weight, and Feel Great Through Better Sleep. "They have so many commitments, and sleep starts to get low on the totem pole. They may know that sleep should be a priority, but then, you know, they've just got to get that last thing done. And that's when it starts to get bad." -HuffPost Living
"I think many women are chronically sleep-deprived because of their work obligations: They're taking care of children, helping them with homework — whatever is happening that can only be done in the evening hours." -Charles Czeisler, professor of sleep medicine and physician at Harvard Medical School from the article on NPR ' Women's Circadian Rhythm Beats Faster than Men's
Not only do we tend to get less sleep on average, but one study says women need more sleep than men each night by 20 minutes. So even if we are smart and get our rest- men don't need to be ridiculing us for it. More than anything else, SO WHAT?! But the charming male I am quoting above happens to be my lovely husband who has sleep competitions with me all of the time. And has this overriding perception that I am in the lap of sleep luxury if I get to take a nap after I get the four kids to go read a book for "quiet time." Do you know how hard it is to get all four people to actually do that all at the same time and stay that way?
"Competitive tiredness is a sport familiar to most couples. Men and women frequently disagree about who gets the most sleep, who finds it the least exhausting to tend to a crying child in the night and who has the most energy left for chores. Indeed, Arianna Huffington, a leading U.S. commentator, has declared women's sleep 'the next feminist issue' - Who really gets more sleep, men or women?
Now I am sitting here asking myself, "Why am I writing up this whole thing in response to some comment he said on a quiet little app that should be there to HELP him, not allow him to get attacked for every little thing he says," then I remember how when he got home he claimed to have "said that" in order to purposefully "stir things up" which I am calling the bullshit flag on. So for that reason, I have no regrets exploiting this little tiny occurrence (and staying up way too late to do so and not sleeping) to teach other non-grown men a lesson on what to say, and what not to say. Or rather, what not to think. And I am really not "that" kind of feminist. I loathe "that" kind of feminism. But,...
It's not a "woman" thing, it's an occupational hazard thing. And if the dear gentleman wants to make it a "woman" thing, we have sources to say it ain't necessarily so. Would you give a woman who works full time for children and cares for a veteran coping with PTSD a hard time about sleep anyway? Would you give a SAHM with four children, a special needs child, and a veteran ptsd/tbi husband a hard time about getting sleep either?
I didn't think so.
This is common sense people, consider this the PSA of the day.
