Letters to the Editor
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@ firefly82
You're changing the hypo. Imagine if ALL WOMEN, including you and me, suddenly decided to be SAHM, and drop out of the workforce. Wouldn't those same old questions about women's nature and inherent inclinations come back really quickly? The collective choice of all women would be used as evidence.
Thus, I think it's very true that people look around themselves and judge groups by their collective choice. For example, people say "women don't start wars," which is a judgment on men, looking at how many wars have been started by them.*
So, if all women stayed at home, and the men not at home began to ask these questions, and there were no female senators or CEOs or canvassars, the right to vote might very well be imperiled really quickly.
The work of stay-at-home moms is not removed from the public sphere. Even the obligations and influence of people who just choose not to work are not segregated from the public sphere.
Do you remember the loneliness and alienation of SAHMs in the suburbs in the 1950s?
And if so, would it be the fault of the women who chose to stay home, or would it be the fault of people blind to or threatened by individuality, and who believe themselves to be in a position to enforce their blindness on everybody?
No, it wouldn't be the women's fault, but you can't take the fault question to a judge and get any favorable judgment. Meaning, it wasn't women's fault that they originally didin't have the right to vote, but fault or not, to get that right, the WOMEN had to put in the effort, not just passively wait for the men to come around and give them the right to vote. In the same way, fault becomes irrelevant in sustaining women's hold in the public sphere by making a collective choice not to drop out of it.
*I'll admit that very quickly the discussion will turn to the nature of choice, meaning, is every choice an individual woman choice makes a free choice where the other options were just as open to her, or are women victims of circumstance, societal mores, biology? And that's the nature of Linda Hirshman's article Homeward Bound.
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@ LeCastor
"Imagine if ALL WOMEN, including you and me, suddenly decided to be SAHM, and drop out of the workforce."
It's really, really difficult to take such an outrageously unlikely scenario seriously. Dropping out of the work force just isn't an option for me and a whole lot of women I know.
A scenario of all women instantaneously deciding not to work anymore bears so little relation to the one we have in which a certain fraction of partnered and relatively affluent women with children choose not to work for a portion of their lives that it really, frankly, disables my imagination.
And your hypothetical presumes that, um, all those women who don't want to work will...magically, immediately find partners who will financially support them for the next couple decades? Huh?
I'm single, I have to work...so no, I can't imagine your scenario, short of finding some way to do away with single women who have to work.
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@LeCastor
I have the same problem with de Beauvoir that a number of people claim to have about Hillary Clinton: her relationship with her partner.
There is such a disconnect between what she writes about and how she lived her life that I'm not particularly able to deal.
It's much like the Wertmuller film, "Swept Away." I never saw it because I understand that it involved rape. "But it's a symbol for ideology?" I was told at great length.
Nevertheless, I didn't see it.
Of course, I am talking about texts with which I am unfamiliar, but the reason I am unfamiliar with them is this disconnect. In a lesser being, one might call it hypocritical.
How do you reconcile this? This is a serious question, not a flame, BTW.
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@ Greeneyedskin
I have the same problem with de Beauvoir that a number of people claim to have about Hillary Clinton: her relationship with her partner.
I have the same problem with de Beauvoir that a number of people claim to have about Hillary Clinton: her relationship with her partner.
I'm not sure what the disconnect is. Could you elaborate what you mean?
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@ firefly
My only point with my hypothetical is to contest your statement: "Another woman's choices, even if I dislike them, don't threaten my freedom."
Other women's choices certainly threaten our freedoms, because people read into those collective choices all sorts of truths about womankind, and then want to base all kinds of legislation/action/reform on those conclusions.
For example, for a long time, the lack of female desire to go to the Citadel (a military college), impacted the freedom of a few women who may have wanted to attend. The first female CEO opened the doors to other women being able to attain that position. Same for first female Senator, Rep, etc.
Likewise, the opt-out revolution threatens my credibility in the workforce, if people will think "well, she fits into the demographic of those opting out, so she's more likely to opt out than her male counterpart, therefore...[insert conclusions detrimental to me]."
Thus, my very extreme example was meant to show that other women's choices do very much impact your freedom and your options.
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Just like I said originally
"...because people read into those collective choices all sorts of truths about womankind, and then want to base all kinds of legislation/action/reform on those conclusions."
And it is THOSE people who threaten my freedom.
We do better to combat bullying, fundamentalism of all kinds, and the groupthink, intimidation and intellectual dishonesty that those people employ, rather than demean other women's choices.
That only makes the people who do it as bad as the gender-role enforcers they say they're trying to combat.
And what are "collective choices?" Do you really think a whole lot of women got together and made group choice to stay home with kids? Or do you think that individual women make choices based on what they believe to be best for their families, and then other people perceive it as a movement or statement and try to spin it as something easy to sell stories about?