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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
<< And clearly, what happens isn't pretty: You have neglected children, men who aren't getting any -- no nurturing, no home-cooked meals and no sex -- and women ... well, the women might be the most miserable of all. Boy, are they confused! >>
yeah, that's feminism in short
I can cook, clean, wash the toilet, fluff up the pillows. I do not need a woman for that.
I do need someone who is not insulting me by claiming to want equality, then shoving her selfish 'superiority' demands down my throat and denying me even the basics of being treated well.
and congrats Miss Flanagan for giving us the answer feminists refuse to give us men.
but it seems even Miss Flanagan is looking for a way to live life without any misery, dissatisfaction, difficulties, or harm.
seems most women agree only men are supposed to be exposed to such things. All agree it is men's duty to shelter women from life.
Until women grow up and wake up, I never want to marry in America, I see nothing in it for for me but a degenerate misery and slow death foisted on us by foot stomping 7 year old girl women.
Many other men seem to agree with me since marriage is way down.
I really wish writers like Caitlin Flanagan would stop acting like this whole, "women working" thing is something new and was brought on by feminism. For most of human history, women have used their physical or mental abilities to bring income into the family house. Whether it was gathering, while their husbands hunted, working on the farm, or tending the family store or restaurant, women worked and they worked hard.
The only women who stayed home and didn't work at all were members of the aristocracy or the upper classes. And even they, like Ms. Flanagan, depended on hired help to take care of the house and children, etc. It wasn't expected of them to spend every minute of the day bathing their children in "mother-love." (BTW, I don't begrudge Ms. Flanagan her hired help. I don't think women should ever feel guilty for hiring a nanny or housekeeper. That said, I agree with Ms. Flanagan that you should at least pay their social security taxes and their health insurance.) True, the nature of the kind of work women do has changed dramatically over the centuries (we're writers, lawyers, executives and so on), but women are a permanent part of the office.
We may scale back hours or stay home for few years when the youngins come, but most of us will go back to work. It's time that people like Ms. Flanagan got used to it.
Without disregarding the notion that Flanagan's malaise dates from feeling abandoned by her mother... and perhaps that her own existence was not enough to satisfy her mother's creative urges... (thanks to Joan Walsh for this piece, and to most of the letter writers)
...it occurs to me today (as opposed to the many other days when this same media-made war is being played out in the public sphere) that there is some idea afloat that a woman cannot be both feminine and a feminist. Why the hell not? Just because the man/woman thing appears to some to be a dichotomy (maybe it's all a continuum?), doesn't mean we have to apply a false dichotomy to what it means to be a woman in a world that would have it be a lose/lose proposition.
The rest of the arguing is just about the details.
I stopped paying attention to Caitlin Flanagan after reading her histrionic screed on teenage sexuality in The Atlantic a few months ago. If anyone ever needed a reason not to take her seriously, this has to be it:
"I have never made a solution composed of one part bleach and nine parts warm water … I have been married a total of sixteen years to a total of two men, and never once have I been asked to iron a single item of either man's clothing or to replace even one popped button."
Two marriages in sixteen years, eh? Well, there's no one more strident than a convert, even when it comes to "traditional" marriage - whatever the hell that means.
Here's the deal - I'd like to hear from Caitlin's husband, talking to himself in the mirror while he shaves in the morning. I picture him tied up in a closet in their house (doesn't really sound like a home to me) and let out for her convenience. We're spending too much time on her; she's a bitter bitch with a personality disorder and depressive symptoms; someday she'll be writing about her divorce.
Let me get this straight as it’s quite confusing. We are supposed to work up until our due date to prove how seriously we take our work, then we should birth at home (with a doula or midwife) so that we are not supporting the patriarchal medical establishment, and then we are to feed the infant breast milk so that we are not supporting the multi-national plot to make money on formula, but we need to pump this milk because we are to return immediately to work to show how serious and liberated we are. We are not to be taken in by the artificial construct called “motherhood” but we are to fully embrace the equally ludicrous construct called “work week” and if we do not we are taking the easy way out. If you get a c-section, feed your kids formula, work part time, stay at home, go to work, gain too much weight, gain too little weight…then you are lazy, stupid, underachieving, overachieving, servant, bitch, whore, frigid, too vain, not sexy enough. You should attend school functions, but too many. You can like your job…but don’t tell people you love it. Applaud the woman who puts her child in daycare to go and teach but deride the woman who chooses to teach her own children. We want to hear about the daughters of frustrated housewives but not about the latch key daughters of driven workaholics. Vacuuming in demeaning, but getting botox so that you stand a better chance at a promotion isn’t. Mothers who work are selfish, money hungry shrews; those who stay home are deluded bon bon eating morons. We really are dupes and instead of true liberation we have, sadly, settled for an ersatz facsimile.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
