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Saturday, Jul 4, 2009
For someone who bitches about another woman who doesn't fit her definistion of feminism, Joan Walsh runs a pretty embarrassing site chock full of sexist claptrap, mysoginist gossip, and truly anti-feminist journalism.
And now Cary's column is just an advertisement and he's another shill.
I am so disappointed.
Thank you! I read Abraham's article in Elle and by the end of it I was infuriated. How dare she preach to working mothers that we're damaging our children while insisting *she* is lavishing her family with all of her love and devotion. Doing what? I'd love to be a "traditional wife and mother" if that meant never doing any laundry or cleaning. If you have a full-time nanny, then a babysitter, and a housekeeper, so you can write (at the kitchen table, snort!), how does that mean you are NOT a working mother? Give me a break. And in spite of all that help, she was *still* depressed. She should have tried being home ALONE for 16 hour stretches every week with energetic boy twins for 2 years straight. My darling sister has done just that with no outside help, just a loving husband. But she has NEVER judged me for working outside the home *and* at home while others took care of my children. Both of us are devoted to our children and our husbands in completely different ways but we RESPECT each other's choices. Flanagan's holier-than-thou attitude is only a manifestation of her own traumas and insecurities. Brava Joan!
This book review is right on target. I read an advanced copy of this book and although passages of it were interesting I was left totally confused as to what the author was trying to say. A truly muddled piece of work.
Remember, so long as women are willing to catfight each other, all the men have to do is step back and watch...and stay in charge of everything.
Congratulations, Joan!
So at least we now know for sure what the hell happened to Salon. The directive to turn Salon into a Feminist boot camp clearly comes from the new chief editor Joan Walsh. It's no accident we have new features like Broadsheet stocked with five writers (count 'em, five, that's equal to the rest of the blogs combined) dishing man-hatred daily. Or pathetic self-involved drivel from Ayalet Waldman. Or all the rest of the Cosmo-esque navel gazing crap.
Apparently, Joan Walsh thinks her pet obsession ought to be the raison d'etre of this publication. And to hell with what the readers think.
I guess we'll see how that works out.
P.S. Joan - I think you forgot to put a red star next to your byline?
I'm constantly amazed by these so-called traditional moms. I was raised by a stay-at-home mom in the sixties, and I would have died of mortification if she had stepped foot in my classroom. School was where we learned to be independent; hovering mommies were not considered a good thing. Stay-at-home moms that I recall did not live and die to be mommies. They pushed kids out the door after breakfast and expected that we would take care of ourselves till dinnertime. If they were lucky enough not to have to work, the moms managed the house and the kids, but they also had clubs and hobbies for themselves. Some, unfortnately, got dumped by their once loving traditional husbands.
I also had friends whose mothers worked (even back in the ol' traditional days!). These friends seemed to do fine. They didn't grow up to be ax murderers, or resentful magazine writers with crazy ideas about social roles.
The stay-at-home moms today aren't traditional so much as hyper-neurotic. What kid could be comfortable causing such self-sacrifice? It's a smothering idea of motherhood, and it's no wonder that Caitlin Flanagan and few others can actually live up to it, except in their own fevered brains.
Flanagan and others like her imagine that most women working outside of the home have made their choices based solely on the notion (which they malign) of self-fulfillment. This is a specious argument because she knows very well that most women work outside their homes because they and their families need a second income to pay for their mortgages, health insurance, education expenses for their kids, and put food on the table. I suspect that what she means when she talks about women, is women like herself, those who can subcontract out the less pleasant parts of the stay at home mother/wife job to other women, to attend to the things that they find self-fulfilling, like writing. I would welcome an article that discusses how men find it difficult to come home in the evening and find the energy to nurture their wives and children in the hopes that they are putting enough in the relationship bank to draw upon it when they get cancer. What a crock.
Nora Cain
Bravo to Joan Walsh for nailing Caitlin Flanagan's hypocrisy on its braindead little head. Unlike Flanagan, I'm a full-time mother who also runs a business without a nanny or a housekeeper. Since, unlike Flanagan, I know just how hard it is to really take care of your child full time, I've never had much patience with her sanctimonious guilt-tripping. She's not a full-time mother, she's a lady of leisure who dabbles in writing. She really has nothing to say about real full-time mothering nor mothers who work outside the home.
As someone whose working mother (and grandmother) died of breast cancer, Flanagan's exploitation of her own illness to score cheap shots is grotesque. Yeah, my mother worked and was (gasp!)a feminist. She also took care of her mother when she was dying. My family did the same and we were heartbroken when she died. Is Flanagan's understanding of love really so limited that she thinks only women who fit safe stereotypes are loved and cared for? With such a benighted view of humanited, no wonder she's depressed.
Someone made the observation around here once - and I hadn't noticed it before - that women writers on Salon are subject to the nastiest and most vituperative feedback on their writing.
Granted, the work of Traister and Waldeman are not my cup of chai, but I will read ANYTHING by Joan Walsh, even an article about a neurotic psuedo-stay-at-home mom.
As a former newspaper reporter I have to say: Joan rocks, people! I miss seeing more of her writing now that she's the Big Cheese, but I think she's one of the most insightful, sober, balanced, sane and interesting journalists in this country and her editorship is a big reason why I trust Salon as a publication much more than most.
I'm not sucking up or anything, I'm just sayin'....
Can't folks stick to attacking the argument? Why get so personal? Sheesh.
The Wasilla soap opera just gets weirder as Palin complains critics are "picking apart a good point guard"
The media outlet's use of Bush euphemisms sparks a much-needed debate on journalistic standards.
And so are his Fox News pals, who lambasted Sen. Al Franken's "stolen election"
An inflexible right wing is allowing the Golden State to drown in debt. But it's not alone
Thanks for sharing, Governor. Now please take a cue from Norm Coleman, and go away
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