A female friend of mine recently told me she was having issues with her boyfriend. Nothing life-ruining, just the sort of domestic tiff that happens every other day when you’re in your mid-20s staring down the barrel of adulthood.

The disagreement was about her boyfriend claiming that he didn’t know how to do laundry. Not didn’t want to, not didn’t have the time, but didn’t know how.

The trope of the useless husband is hardly new, Jewish or otherwise. But now, in the wake of a new form of toxic masculinity, where men and boys fall prey to the Jordan Petersons and the Andrew Tates of the world, millennial men are honing a new skill.

Performative incompetence. They want to prove themselves the complete anti-Tate, but realising it is unacceptable to simply absolve themselves of responsibility, the new baby-men pretend that these day-to-day tasks are simply too difficult, too complicated or simply too important for them to even attempt, knowing that their loving mother-wives will pick up the slack.

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of things that men I know, many of whom I once respected, have said they’re simply unable to do:

Pay the rent on time, assemble Ikea furniture, book their own flights, provide proof of address to a landlord, pick where to go on holiday, load the dishwasher.

Much has been written of the alleged decline of Western masculinity, often how modern society has made us all into asexual, quivering messes who must turn to deranged internet strongmen for salvation.

And of course, most of that is rubbish. But it’s true that when it comes to domestic duties or basic life admin, there seems to be a core of men, who are almost proud of their inability to put together a Målm bookshelf or set up a direct debit. It’s a testament to their charisma that they can get other people to pick up the slack.

When you add this phenomenon to the constant message that women perform better in schools and the workplace, when old male columnists tell us that male resentment has been the secret driving force behind every bad thing in politics ever, it’s no surprise that many men opt for incompetence as a life skill.

Disguised by flattery, men feed the egos of people they want to do chores for them. It’s not a very subtle trick, but fanning the flames of ego with a healthy splash of self-deprecation doesn't need to be.

Why bother with the charade I hear you ask? A valid point. But the men I’m talking about, are often too educated and too middle class to be totally unreconstructed and often when Jewish women are in the picture they realise they wouldn’t survive the ensuing bollocking. Hence the convoluted strategy.

Honed from years of exploiting their mother’s goodwill, the little Jewish princes of 2023 take this with them into their relationships.

But at what point should we demand more of our fellow Jewish men? As someone who (and I don’t mean to brag here) can use at least three different programmes on the washing machine AND use those little Allen keys from Ikea, I feel qualified to demand more of my brothers.

Are you not embarrassed that you’re pretending to be outwitted by Skyscanner? Do you not feel the shame of the Maccabees when you lie and say you couldn’t possibly roast a chicken yourself?

To put it bluntly, there’s only a finite amount of self-deprecation you can do before you render yourself undateable, before the people who have to pick up the domestic tab lose their patience and cut through the bullshit, forcing you to do more than your fair share or kick you out.

And doing chores for your girlfriend is a lot less sad than having to do them for your mum for the rest of your life.