It used to be that women had no choice in their lot in life. A woman had to agree to serve, honor, and obey a man.
Women had all been brought up to believe that our role and purpose in life was to please men and look after them and their children, and to put their needs ahead of our own. There was a clear, unspoken expectation that we would derive our satisfaction in life by getting married, and thereafter living our lives vicariously through our husbands, supporting them, sharing their triumphs, subjugating our hopes and dreams to theirs and exchanging our sexual and domestic services in return for their financial support. Psychiatric theory at the time assumed there was something wrong with a woman if she wasn’t perfectly adjusted to marriage and motherhood, because getting married and having children was thought to be a naturally fulfilling state for all women. (From: here.
There is no question that the women who fought and sacrificed to erase that expectation are to be commended. There is no argument that the Women’s Liberation Movement needed to occur.
But the assumption that all women wanted this liberation is insane. To claim that all women were stifled under the oppression, that all women resented being forced into that domestic role, is pure propaganda. There were, there ARE still, many women who thrive on, and choose to be, domestic, “oppressed”, feminine souls.
It’s come full circle. Women worked so hard to ensure a choice, to create opportunities, to secure that their sisters and daughters and granddaughters would not be boxed into something that they *had* to be defined merely by their gender. Only to come to find out that they’ve been boxed just as deeply into something else entirely. Under the name of fighting to secure choices, the only choice acceptable to the masses is the choice of independence and strength.
Oh people want to say that’s not true. People want to say “your choices are fine! Live how you want. It’s a free country!” But that’s followed up with the warning to keep those choices quiet. “Keep your (shameful) choices under the rug where no one else has to see them. Do not, under any circumstances, voice that opinion of yours. After all, we don’t want our daughters to actually SEE you living like that! We don’t want to influence them *your* way. Only *my* way. Not yours. Yours isn’t wrong, I didn’t say *that* exactly, it’s just.. not right.”
What are they afraid of? That we who choose to live in a traditional role are going to turn the tide our way again? We’re going to somehow cause a return of the oppressed woman? Now isn’t *that*an insult to women’s intelligence everywhere.
The women on the forefront of the liberation movement were subject to intense name-calling. Bra-burners, dykes, unhappy bunch of lesbians with chips on their shoulders, man-haters. They were accused of destroying the foundation of society, ruining families. Now, we get called names. Under-achievers, lazy, ignorant, traitors, weak, doormats. We are accused of poisoning the minds of young girls everywhere.
Women have every ’right’ to be completely outraged when they become aware of the kind of outright and subtle oppression they suffer and that their sisters throughout the world suffer. They have every ’right’ to be outraged at the indifference of men to their plight, their willingness to reap advantages until it is no longer possible. But just as might does not make right, nor does right make right. That is, one does not then have the right to play the same game with the tables turned. If one does this, one is playing society’s game, for that is what this society is all about: absorption is its game. (From: here)
The reaction given to those of us who like our choices, who live our choices with pride and confidence, the discrimination we experience from society these days? You’ve become that which you fought so hard to destroy. Why is it not okay for my opinion to exist just as strongly as yours? Most of us who *choose* to live in a traditional role are well aware of the prices paid for that choice. We’re grateful for, and thankful to have, the freedom to make that choice. As such, we return that gratitude in kind to our own children, raising them with full knowledge of the choices waiting them when they reach adulthood. Making them aware of why they have that choice, and hopefully, assuring them that whatever choice they make for their own personal happiness is not one to be ashamed of. Not anymore. Not in this day.
Though I am not so sure of that now. Shame is assigned. And that’s sad.
There’s an article I’d urge anyone with an interest in this to read, if you haven’t already. It’s long, but it’s well written, and from a woman who was accomplished and successful.
Spoiling Eve’s Con Game
(If you choose not to read it, I’m going to quote the last paragraph for you anyway.)
Remember this: The strongest sign of the decay of a nation is the feminization of men and the masculinization of women. It is notable that in Communist nations women are exhorted, and compelled, to do what has traditionally been men’s work. American women, some of them, feel triumphant that they have broken down the “barricades” between the work of the sexes. I hope they will still feel triumphant when some commissar forces a shovel or an axe into their soft hands and compels them to pound and cut forests and dig ditches. I hope they will be “happy” when a husband deserts them and they must support their children and themselves alone. (After all, if a woman must be “free” she shouldn’t object to men being free too, should she?”) I hope they will feel “fulfilled” when they are given no more courtesies due to their sex, and no kindnesses, but are kicked aside on the subways and buses by men, and jostled out of the way by men on busy sidewalks and in elevators. I hope that no man will extend mercy to them because of obvious pregnancies, but will rudely tell them that that is no excuse to shirt a day’s heavy labor, and they should be like Russian women. I hope they will be proud when some court demands that they support “delicate” husbands for a lifetime, and pay alimony. I hope, when they look in their mirrors, that they will be pleased to see exhausted and embittered faces, and that they will be consoled by their paychecks.
The decay and the ruin of a nation has always lain in the hands of its women. So does its life and strength, its reverence for beauty, its mercy and kindness. And, above all, its men.
One more article and then I think I’m done with this subject.
What the Women’s Liberation Movement has done for me.
Women’s lib has made America label the stay-at-home mom as an underachiever. Women’s lib has made marriages disposable now. After all, if we’re spending all of our time working on that high-powered career, who has time to work on a marriage? Good marriages don’t just happen. When you and your husband both work 50 hours a week, there is precious little time to work on keeping your marriage together. What if I don’t want “it all”? What if I don’t want a Burger King breakfast on my way to dropping my son off at daycare? What if I don’t want a grande mochachino in the car on my way to my high-powered job that leaves me too exhausted to share quality time with my family at the end of the day? What if I don’t want to microwave frozen dinners for me and my husband before we retreat to our respective corners of the bed to sleep a couple hours before we start another grueling day? Why do I have to have a career AND a family? Why can’t my home and family BE my career? Whoever defined “it all” anyway? Some whacked-out women’s libber who hates women – that’s who! What if I want to enjoy a home brewed cup of coffee in the morning while Regis and Kelly banter and my son coos in the background? What if I want to starch my own shirts? What if I want to throw a tennis ball around for my dog to enjoy? What if I want to bake the perfect 5-layer lasagna for dinner and prepare fresh cannoli for dessert? What if I want to be at home at 6pm to bathe my son, read him a story and tuck him into bed? What if I want to cuddle on the couch with my husband at the end of the day? I consider “having it all” to be having a comfortable, clean home, a happy marriage that lasts “until death do us part” and happy, healthy children. Unfortunately, between Hillary Clinton and all those other woman-hating chicks, my desire to be a homemaker is suddenly suspect and America wonders what is so wrong with me that I would want to remove myself from the world in such a way. Well listen, if my being a homemaker makes me happy, causes my marriage to last more than the average 7 years and is responsible for raising a gentleman who will remove his hat when he enters a building and step aside for a mother and child then I’ve done my part in making the world a better place. In fact, maybe our world would be a better place if women who wanted careers had them and weren’t made to feel guilty for not having children and women who wanted to have children weren’t made to feel bad about not having careers. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard a man criticize a woman for being a stay-at-home mother but I’ve seen that same woman have to defend herself to other women. Maybe it is time for us women to stop being our own worst enemies.
It is possible to have a personal belief and hold that belief only to yourself. It is possible to want something for yourself and not make it anyone else’s reality. My preference runs my life, and my life only. I have to wonder why some of you are so insecure in your opinions, in your children’s future, that you attack my opinions so vehemently. I am not worried that your opinion will influence my child, nor my life, nor my future. I don’t feel the need to protect my children from the knowledge that other opinions, other choices, other beliefs exist. I believe in the success of the women’s rights movement. I believe that choices will remain. And I’m confident that they are smart enough and confident enough to do as I did – choose for themselves, decide upon their own beliefs and live happily.
Should that choice be to run a company or to run for president, I’ll support them as much as my own beliefs allow. After that, I expect their own beliefs will carry them, just as mine did.
“It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.”
~cunt