I think one of the most important ways in which men both abuse women's labour and emotionally abuse their partners is strategic incompetence. Hopefully if you vet a guy well enough you won't ever get to the point of having to discover this, but unfortunately a lot of the time this is something that doesn't really become clear until you live together.

So what is strategic incompetence? Strategic incompetence is when men intentionally dumb themselves down in order to escape responsibility. This is especially common when it comes to household chores. It is such things as intentionally burning food, bleaching clothes when washing, buying the wrong groceries, doing a bad job cleaning or relying on women to give them tasks and constantly ask for instructions in easy tasks etc. until women get the feeling of "i'll just do it myself" to save time, money and or for quality, or makes women have to clean up the choppy job done by men.The problem is that a lot of time women don't realize that it's strategic, but rather we're thought that men just aren't as good at those things. But it's very much intentional and a widely spread phenomenon. Yes there is the occasional time when a fully-grown man don't know how to use the washing machine - but even then, there is no reason to hound women to teach them and ask a million questions each time they do it. If it's really a question of real incompetence they can look up everything online, and they will learn the first or poooossibly the second time they get instructions.

This is one of the many ways men trick women into taking on more of the unpaid labour, which increases men's benefit at the cost of women. Living in these types of relationships are extremely detrimental to women's quality of life. It forces you to make choices between giving up quality and possibly have your clothes and stuff broken or giving up your time and energy. On top of doing a bad job, men will also use this supposed incompetence to manipulate their partner for criticizing them. It's a way to give themselves an out, to be able to be above criticism because it's somehow not their fault that they can't care for themselves and their partner. This is how they lower your expectations in the home and free themselves of their own responsibility.

Men are not dumb enough to not be able to figure out how to wash clothes, follow a recipe and buy groceries that don't interefere with allergies etc. They just choose not to. If you see any sign of this; RUN IN A DIFFERENT DIRECTION!