The Spanish have strange laws.

SPANISH men will be required to scrub toilets and change nappies as often as their harried wives under revolutionary reforms aimed at shattering the traditionally macho Latin nation's patriarchal division of labour in the home.

...

Yet despite the prescriptive nature of the new gender laws - due to pass the Spanish Senate this week - there is no means of enforcing equal sharing of unpaid work in the home in a nation where many mothers still regularly do their adult sons' washing and young girlfriends automatically prepare their partners' meals.

This seems to me a perfect example of what law ought not be used for. First and foremost is the impossibility of enforcing it. A law that cannot be enforced--that may be flouted at will--debases the dignity of its makers as well as that of all other laws. The law should not be used to "send[] a message," as Margaret Uria would have it do. It is not a Mercury but a Jove. It commands; it does not tattle.

I have no difficulty with such changes when they emerge from the free will of society. But to have them imposed is tyranny. Imagine if every washing machine were one of these:

Attempts to blast Spanish males out of their cosy reliance on women as girlfriends, wives, chefs, cleaners, childcarers and custodians of the elderly include technological changes to household appliances. The latest washing machine, named "Your Turn", prevents the same person - typically a wife and mother - from using the appliance consecutively by adopting fingerprint recognition technology.

If a household wants to get one to ensure equality, far be it from me to prevent them. Its imposition, however, would be an unalloyed evil. I say this as someone who can identify delicates at twenty yards, and has never failed to separate colors from whites.

Via Thysdrus, who also spotted the giant catfish.