Anyway, "Only in America", the most powerful, wealthy, pampered and spoiled society in human history could such a situation be seen as a "torturous dilema" that's "suffered" by mothers. Oh, the melodrama....

Ah fucking amen.

What about women who are childless by circumstance and not by choice, and who do not have a rewarding career, just because life is wildly unfair?

Women like me.

I find these so-called feminist debates to be absolutely ridiculous.

Yes, I read Hirsch's article in the American Prospect, and for the most part, I agree with her.

I believe that elite women with reunumerative, rewarding careers (the kind of jobs that come with a six figure salary and a corner office) who choose to stay at home are in a way anti-feminist. Sure they are. And, if they were real women, with real character, they wouldn't care what you called them.

Still, I believe that these women, whether they are feminists or not, really do go into those professions because it was their way of finding the kind of man that would provide for them the way their dads provided for their mothers. Or, perhaps, more accurately, they may wish their dads were able to provide for their mothers.

I believe a lot (although certainly not all, of course) of these women go to law, biz and med school to get their Mrs. degree, just as those women who got their BAs in Betty Friedan's generation did. Only now, because resources are dwindling and BAs are a dime a dozen, you cannot find a prestige husband with "just" a BA. And also, just because a woman goes to Harvard does not make her a feminist.

Let me explain further, using the law biz (because that is what I know) as an example.

Though it's been known to happen, unless a lawyer is on his second marriage, which will make him suspect in partnership territory anyway, young lawyers will not marry their secretaries. Any more than a Brahmin would be seen with an Untouchable.

Believe me, I've been a legal secretary/paralegal/office manager for two decades now, and worked in law firms large and small and I know.

Still, those two (count them, 2) lawyers that I do know who married their secretaries did so because when their first marriages to their "careerist" wives ended when they realized that their egos and/or their careers demanded that they re-marry someone willing to stay at home.

But most of the young and not so young women lawyers I know are still working, along with their kids and husbands and physical disabilities, because they are feminists, or because they are the sole breadwinners of their households, or because damn it they need to stay in the work force so their class status does not slip, or because all the other male lawyers are married to other lawyers who work as lawyers.

Yet no one gives a damn about the legal secretary who marries "up" so that she could leave the work force and "stay at home and have kids." In fact, to the rest of us, she is the envy of all humanity. She gets to retire early from work and do something that is far more fulfilling than working for lawyers (which I daresay is excellent parenthood training). Maybe it is because this scenario is such a rarity, but I fail to see where it is mentioned in Ms. Hirsch's article that these women should be considered "anti-feminist." Or, are they?

Women in the lower ranks get scarce mention by anyone, left, right or center. And yet the female workforce is made up almost entirely of women who work as secretaries, nurses, teachers, other support functionaries, and in the military. Yes, women who make much less than 50 K a year, women who really can't afford to stay at home, but gee would really like to.

Personally, and speaking only for myself, I believe that my being a permanent member of the working class has hindered my "growth and fulfillment" far more than being a woman ever did. I've learned through bitter experience that everything in this life depends upon how much money you have and who your daddy is.

Yes, Virginia, it takes serious money to send you to a seven sisters college out east, and spend junior year abroad in Italy, and allow you to not work full time and go to law school, after a leisurely stint in the Peace Corps, so you can get a clerkship because you made law review so you can get that hoochie coochie whoo haa haa six figure law biz job, so you can choose to "stay at home" when you get married and have kids.

The rest of the women in the work force still have families to take care of, houses to clean, old folks to check in on. We don't have much of a choice about working. We're part of the critical mass of women that are changing the the face of the American work place. Yet we're not called feminists, even though our aggregate economic power and accomplishments are substantial. Yet liberal feminism doesn't really speak to or support us in any significant way, if at all. So, what are we if we're not feminists?

As for me, kids, hubby or no, I've got to work until I die. And that fact has not changed and will not change, no matter which party is in power. I don't know if it makes me a feminist or not, and I really couldn't give a shit, but it does make me a survivor.

All the best,

Aud

To Claire Fontaine - you ask "Or is it just women's issues where we have to shut up and take it if we're not currently being ritually maimed?" I am sorry if I gave the impression that I thought that we should not continue to address issues that face women in this country - obviously, we must - that is a given. But by referring readers to Hirsi Ali I was simply looking for a little perspective and maybe even, dare I say it, a more global perspective on Feminism. Yes, there are still tremendous problems facing women in the U.S. but there are also millions of women beyond our borders whose lives are unbearable - whose lives most of us can't even begin to fathom - and they are women too and therefore their problems are women's problems - problems that feminism should also address. I would like to think that we are all intelligent enough to grapple with more than one serious issue at a time.

P.S. I do not know what "flame" means - I guess as a relative dinosaur (rapidly approaching the half-century mark) and a relative newcomer to the world of online discourse I need a quick tutorial in some of the terminology.