How It Ought To Be

Submission 13,224

Part of a series on 2017 Hurricane Harvey. [View Related Entries]

About

How It Ought To Be refers to a series of image macros based on a tweet by conservative blogger Matt Walsh. In the original tweet, Walsh shared a picture from the Hurricane Harvey recovery effort of a man carrying a woman and child to safety with a caption that enforced and endorsed stereotypical gender roles while belittling the idea of studying gender. People responded to this by posting humorous images of one thing holding another and copying Walsh's caption, similar to the This Is The Future That Liberals Want meme.

Origin

On August 28th, 2017, Twitter^[1] user @MattWalshBlog posted a picture of a man carrying a woman who was cradling a baby during Hurricane Harvey. He captioned the picture, "Woman cradles and protects child. Man carries and protects both. This is how it ought to be, despite what your gender studies professor says." The post (shown below) received more than 7,600 retweets and 20,000 likes in two days.

Spread

The following day, Twitter^[2] user @PraxisKenzie posted an illustration of a muscular depiction of the comic strip character Garfield cradling his owner Jon Arbuckle in his arms. The user copied Walsh's caption verbatim. Within one day, the post (shown below) received more than 230 retweets and 850 likes.

Throughout the day, more users began posting pictures of animals, cartoon characters and/or people in humorous or uncommon situations being carried by another (examples below).

Several media outlets covered the popularity of the meme, including The Daily Dot,^[3] BuzzFeed] Mic,^[5] and more. On August 29th, Twitter^[6] published a Moments page about the popularity of the meme.

That day, Twitter^[8] user @GMPaiella posted a picture of a cat on top of a dog. The post (shown below) received more than 5,100 retweets and 18,000 likes.

As the meme began to take off, another Twitter^[9] user and gender studies professor, @C_Wolbrecht, posted a popular thread that contested Walsh's assertion that "this is how it ought to be." She writes about how Walsh's initial assertion has economic and social fallacies that hurt society as a whole, specifically those in care industries, when upheld. The posts (shown below) received more than 33,000 retweets and 72,000 likes within 24 hours.

Twitter^[10] published a Moments page about the thread.

"I was going to stick w sarcasm but as an actual gender studies prof, there's just so much to unpack here, I can't help myself. THREAD! Care work (for children, infirm, elderly) is necessary for human flourishing & has been traditionally performed by women for free, which contributes to women's lesser financial & politics power. As care work has moved into the market, it remains poorly paid & overwhelmingly female, which again makes women more vulnerable. We ❤️to laud a woman "cradling her child" but don't provide paid maternity leave or support quality childcare & good pay/benefits for childcare workers (women, immigrants). But wait! There's more! As budgets for care work (mental health, health care) have been cut, a lot of that work has shifted to agencies like police & fire, who often lack training & capacity, and result in troubling outcomes. At same time, economists note that a central challenge to male workers is skills mismatch – men reluctant to take jobs in expanding care sector, partly bc jobs are female', partly bc they are low paying, low prestige (bc their "women's jobs"). IN SUM your rigid and illogical sexual division of labor, & related hierarchy of value, hurts both women & men, the US economy, & the flourishing of society as a whole. The value of work – holding the baby or carrying the mother – should be recognized & rewarded, no matter who performs it. Given how much care is needed, all hands on deck."

On August 30th, Redditor ^[7] becuzyoudbeinjail posted the original tweet on the /r/The_Donald subreddit, received more than 5,100 points (92% upvoted) in 15 hours.