The only thing mansplaining (a neologism I’ve never liked, preferring “sexist condescension”) and nagging have in common is that they both can be prefaced with “if you were a man…”
Gilles de Rais telling Joan d’Arc “If you were a man, you’d understand how to lead an army…” while she was doing exactly that just fine.
Lady Macbeth goading “If you were a (real) man, you’d seize the throne,” which of course only an accident of time and birth prevented her from doing so herself with ease.
Do you live in a 19th century novel?
Yeah, nobody likes being micromanaged, but there’s a point where resistance to micromanagement, coupled with consistently shoddy work, becomes essentially a declaration that shoddy work is the best you’re willing to do.
I’m all for couples making serious efforts to negotiate and compromise to develop shared standards of household management that both of them can live with. And sure, that has to be a two-way street.
But going on permanent strike at any sign of criticism or dissatisfaction with your work is not a good-faith negotiating position. It’s deploying strategic incompetence in order to slack off on one’s responsibilities.
(To be fair, that’s not exclusively or intrinsically a male behavior. Innumerable women back in the girls-can’t-do-math days similarly exploited their unwillingness to learn or do basic computation properly, to avoid sharing the tasks of managing family finances and budgets. I’m thinking specifically of Clarence Day’s Life with Mother, but there are lots of other examples.)
You’re assuming the micromanagement is over shoddy work, when it is often over meaningless details. If the job is getting done, and done well, does it really matter if my posture is correct?
Well, like I said, that’s where the negotiation and compromise for shared standards of household management comes in. And yes, like I said, that has to be a two-way street: the person with the “higher” standards can’t expect to automatically get everything their own way.