Since I’ve become a parent, one of my favorite stores to visit is Pottery Barn Kids. While the merchandise is largely Chinese-made (but so is Ethan Allen these days!), the aesthetic of the children’s rooms, toys and furniture reminds me of a more innocent time for children, made all the more relevant when you consider the prevalence of slutty clothes for 3rd graders in every Wal-mart and JC Penney’s.
Now, PBK is NOT cheap, esp. when you consider you’re buying for kids. When visiting their store in Houston, you can’t help but notice all of the pretty moms with pretty kids looking around the store. What interests me the most are the toys they have for little girls: of course, the standard dollhouses and stuffed animals, but most interesting are the little pink ironing boards, pink play irons, pink dishwashers, pink kitchen appliances and pink refrigerators. Not only are they pink, they are done in a 1950’s aesthetic, harkening back to the days before feminism:
These toys are pretty much exclusively on the “little girl” side of the fully sex-segregated store. The “little boy” side has toys like airplanes, antique cars, fighting dinosaurs, and huge castles with working catapults.
Think of how enraging this must be to the ardent feminist. For fifty years, they have worked to deconstruct gender rules, to rebel against the order of nature, and convince women that their natural roles in the home are inherently oppressive and exploitive.
And now, in 2007, upper crust mommies are buying their little girls toys that demonstrate gender roles to them that are entirely inconsistent with the feminist worldview, in an aesthetic (retro 1950’s style) that is patently offensive to the feminist narrative.
The feminists said that the 1950’s housewife, largely liberated from the labor of her mother by labor saving devices like the dishwasher, confident in her status as the heart of the home, was actually being exploited by her husband and society at large. What the housewife really needed, according to the feminists, was to go to work in a cubicle somewhere in Corporate America, where she could find true fulfillment in a spreadsheet instead of in the lives of her children.
And this is why feminism is dead: it is a lie. Most corporate jobs are not glamorous, they are tedious, boring, and dehumanizing; they cannot compare to motherhood. It took women a generation to figure out the lie (I think they figured it out pretty quick myself, but were guilted into staying in the workforce longer by the relatively few hardcore feminist enforcers).
But now the damage has been done. The increase in the labor pool lowered wages for male breadwinners, and globalism and outsourcing has further weakened the ability of most families to survive on one income. Women were convinced by a lie to join the workforce, and now many, even if they realize the lie, cannot now escape, thus doubling the guilt of the feminists in their deception. Having harmed women by convincing them of the non-existent “fulfillment” of a career, they closed the exits and women cannot go back.
Thus, in a roundabout twist, the “stay at home” mom is now a status symbol, an indication (except in cases of uncommon frugality) that the male breadwinner has sufficient income to provide a middle class lifestyle on one salary; this is especially true in cities where the cost of living is higher. And the mommies are as uniformly pretty as their husbands are in earning power.
And why do these mommies buy their little girls gender-specific anti-feminist toys at Pottery Barn Kids? Simple: they are training them for their future role as a middle class stay at home mommy, and inoculating them against the downward social mobility associated with the feminist outlook on life.
Just another lesson in the undeniability of God and Nature in human affairs. Everything will eventually seek its own level- and as a wise man once said, a woman’s primary role ever was and ever will be as mothers and “keepers of home”.
The feminazies will be besides themselves with anger, hate and all things feminists are good at. They may be preparing a likeness doll to pierce with sharp needles, the article was that good.
The funny thing is that these are the things that little girls NATURALLY gravitate towards anyway! THAT’S the bottom line of why stores produce these things – because they SELL. And they SELL because parents know their kids, and they know that the things the little girls enjoy are the caretaking toys, and the things little boys enjoy usually involve some type of destruction! =)
I have never been to proud to be able to say that we have made the choice for me to stay at home. Especially when I work for wonderful people who allow me work from home comfortably! =) However, even if we had to make MORE sacrifices in order for me to stay at home, it would still be well worth it! I can’t imagine WANTING any other job – I’ve got it made, and I thank God for it!
We bought my oldest daughter a LeapPad-brand caterpillar toy with all of these buttons to teach her letters, phonics, etc. The caterpillar, of course, is never used to learn anything, but is just another baby for her. She puts it down for a nap, changes its diaper, pushes it around in a stroller, feeds it a bottle. Around our house, any lifelike object, babydoll or not, becomes a baby, and any piece of cloth (rag, towel, washcloth) becomes a baby blanket. We find these random packages all over the house- a “baby” put “night-night” with a “blanket”. I try to get her interested in counting or other analytical things, but mostly to no avail- she’s interested in her babies.
Feminism is so self-evidently a joke.
Lindsay and Tom are correct! I taught Early Childhood for years. I was told that we were not to have any “toy weapon type” toys in the classroom. It didn’t really matter what I did; the little boys made guns out of Lego’s, crayons, sticks, rocks and dolls! When I was young and naive I thought that male and female roles were for the most part taught to children by their parents; that is until I had my own. I had Lego’s, trucks, blocks etc. all around the house from my days teaching. My girls were not the least bit interested. If I sat down to play with “boy toys” they gave me a look like “you’ve got to be kidding”. All my girls wanted was a hairbrush and a babydoll. My now grown up girls have turned out just fine. The are smart, accomplished, confident, happy, and stable women who have embraced their womanhood. What more could I ask for?
I love that my daughter is drawn to “mothering” play. I also love that my son is drawn to construction vehicles and rough play. That is how God made them and I encourage their individualities.
I have to say as a woman in 2007 I appreciate the battles that previous generations of women fought for my rights. I can vote, I can own land, I can be out in public unchaperoned. Do I think women would have been thought of as smart, capable humans without those battles? No, but I do think that balance is key. The Feminazis go too far insisting that women can do a man’s job, and that men are only needed for procreation-if that even.
It’s quite true. Little boys have their toys, and they love to put ‘em together, take ‘em apart, and make something new out of it. Little girls have their dolls, dress-up clothes, and glamour toys.
Both qualities are in both male and female, just that one is more prevalent. There is no superiority or inferiority anywhere. Just two different things that are necessary for society. Both are required. Both are important. The fact that feminists can’t see that is quite sad.
Wow! Great words man, as ChristianJ stated, nice job!!!
Becki, I hope you don’t take this as being to harsh, but liberal voting women are the problem now. They are voting away our rights for security, voting to keep abortion legal, even partial birth abortion, condoms for school kids and the like.
If you value a free nation, you should be supporting women’s freedoms inside of the family unit with her husband as the head. It is clear to me that women might mean well, but they have an all to predictable herd mentality in politics. God designed women to have a male leader.
Gen
[16] Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
Things to consider when looking into the anti woman’s suffrage movement. The tax rate before women voted was 1%, the government was limited, there was a tiny debt in teh government only because the banks were trying to push their weight around, the divorce rate was 7%, the crime rate was next to nothing, as single mother households produce 85% of the worlds criminals, and only just under 10% of women worked outside the home. There was no inflation and there was high property ownership. Good morals, you could leave your doors unlocked at night.
Now with women working and voting, single mothers all over the place, high divorce of 50% (84% in some democratic strangle holds, 11% lowest in Republican places in Utah), promiscuity, murder via abortion, fatherlessness, high crime, rape, no morals, etc.
All this can be blamed on the liberating of women. The elite had to know what would happen if women and men both voted in teh arena, we would destroy ourselves and they could prance around piously pretending to outwardly be the cure all fix all, cradle to the grave quick fix it!
When in reality they created the chaos and confusion.
Some quotes that never get old to me:
“If you women continue to demand your choice to work, you will so upset the economy of this country that the time will come when you will not have a choice. You will have to work.”~ Helen Andelin of Fascinating Womanhood.
“I am most anxious to enlist every-one who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of ‘Women’s Rights,’ with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feelings and pro-priety. Feminists ought to get a good whipping. Were woman to ‘unsex’ them-selves by claiming equality with men, they would become the most hateful, heathen and disgusting of beings and would surely perish without male pro-tection.”— Queen Victoria, March, 1870
Thank you for your comments.
I’m not sure what can be accomplished by talking about women’s suffrage and its supposed effects on society- that cat is already out of the bag.
Voting demographics tend to show that married women vote pretty much like their husbands, favoring the tweedledee candidate labeled “conservative”, whereas single men and women tend to vote for the tweedledum labeled “liberal”.
In fact, the best predictor of Bush votes in 2004 was married white female fertility. In states like Texas, where housing and land are cheap, taxes are low, and jobs are plentiful, married men and women have more children (though still anemic relative to the Third World). More children tends to make people more conservative, and that’s tragically what they think they’re voting for with Bush. In places like California, where no one can afford children, instead of settling down, single people console themselves with status-seeking lifestyle behaviors to obscure their lack of social upward mobility- these “lifestyles” usually have a liberal ideological component. Veganism, enviromentalism, “civil rights” agitation, etc.
Well, who ever said homemaking was “oppression” to begin with?
Fact is, homemaking using an assortment of home appliances represented a great privilege and progress from when women had to pitch in more around the farm and homestead doing far more manual labor. Really, a woman in the kitchen cooking with an easy-bake oven was no different than a man working on the car in his garage with a snap-on toolset.
There is one thing that I find wrong with your argument that goes to the core of everything I believe of feminism.
You act as though children are not affected by our culture.
When I was younger, I grew up outside of the American childhood culture because I was the daughter of two journalists living in post-Soviet Russia. Because of the dangers of Moscow at the time (early 90s) I stayed pretty much in our appartment with our nannies and my parents. We had tons of toys, and I automatically went for the power rangers outfit (the red one always) and the TMNT action figures, completely passing over my mini-kitchen.
Growing up away from Barney, Sesame Street, etc meant that I grew up in a place where there were no “typical” roles for women or men in my 3 year old mind. In today’s culture, children are constantly reminded of whether they are a girl or boy. Girls like pink because that’s the color their parents dressed them in, decorated their room in, etc when they were babies. I had a baby blue room in Moscow, and surprise: that was my favorite color.
Children aren’t naturally one way or another, our culture affects us in different ways. Children have huge preocupations with being normal, and if normal is a pink sewing machine, then it’s not only a pink sewing machine, but also Barbies, tea sets, and the toy gun gets thrown aside.
Last thing:
You write, “And this is why feminism is dead: it is a lie. Most corporate jobs are not glamorous, they are tedious, boring, and dehumanizing; they cannot compare to motherhood. ”
As a woman planning to go into a male-dominated proffession (particle physics) I can truly say that I would rather spend my entire life sitting side by side men in a corporate job than be a submissive wife with no economic independence or dignity. While you may say that women are limited it tedious jobs, that is a problem of our society that should not be fixed by sending women back to a 1800s cult of domesticity. Instead, equality in the workplace should and will be reached as soon as men and socially conservative women accept that us strong women will be moving up the corporate ladder until we break the so called ceiling of our search for independence.
Catherine,
Observing my own daughters and the behavior of other children, I believe your childhood experience was likely an exception. Nothing in the social sciences is as clean-cut as a field like physics, but the in-born biological differences between men and women are about as clean-cut as social sciences get. This is not to say some women or men have a different experience, likely biological in their origin as well.
Part of the problem with our society is that intelligent women like yourself believe that more fulfillment is found in a career than in mothering children. The premise here is that high IQ is “wasted” on rearing children- nothing could be further from the truth.
The most important capital in any society is not material resources but human capital (this is why resource barren Iceland is a much more pleasant place to live than resource-rich Haiti), and that largely consists of two vectors, one qualitative and the other quantitative: A) character, and B) intelligence.
A tends to strongly correlate with B (likely due to intelligent people’s high degree of conscientiousness and compassion, even pathologically so sometimes- together with the ability to delay gratification), but traditional Christianity puts A within reach of everyone (and many “post-Christian” secular societies in Europe are still coasting on Christianity’s civilizing influence). B, however, is stubbornly genetic in origin.
Our civilization needs more than anything else for intelligent women and men to understand that their highest duty to their people and mankind is to reproduce the priceless genetic gifts they have been given in the form of children- preferably 3 or more so that the investment grows over time.
This is always the problem of great civilizations- as culture and learning increases, the higher classes find more interesting things to do than have children, which results in disproportionately high fertility among those who cannot sustain the civilization. Thus the fruits of civilization choke off its taproot.
It’s even worse for the US, when we have third-world immigration accelerating the process- we need fewer Mexican manual laborers and more Russian physicists if you ask me.
One more thing:
Catherine, you should appreciate this. I also believe that certain disruptive technologies will make child-rearing more practical for more intelligent women. From my corporate experiences, only about 20% (or less) of my time was spent doing value-added work- the rest was various wastes like meetings, trainings, etc. One of the things I’m doing in my company is recruiting smart stay-at-home moms who get more work done working part-time for my company, and for less cost, than full-time people would underfoot. Not to get into details, but a lot of it is fairly high-level mental heavy lifting. Many academic endeavors are similar as so much work is done on a computer.
I know that I’m the low-cost producer in my industry, because I cut through the corporate bull and give smart people clearly-defined job tasks they perform remotely- and when they’re done, they clock out and go spend time with their family instead of spending time in pointless meetings- over time, as other businesses catch on, this will liberate many men AND women from the tyranny of sterile, fake and alienating Corporate America.
In response to your first post:
In many ways I completely agree; child-rearing is important. Let me present a situation: I meet a man who is of equal intelligence to myself, perfectly equal, no evidence to prove that either is smarter, and we get married and have a child. If I was to ask that man to quit his job for the next 5-ish years and take care of our child during the day so that I could keep my job, would that be acceptable with your morals and talk about the importance of bringing up children?
Just one more thing about the first post. I presented my own childhood situation knowing that I am an exception. What I was trying to get across was that I am an exception because I grew up away from American culture.
On the other post:
Okay. Sure. I’m not a business analyst or anything like that, so I’m just going to agree that maybe your plan would work. However, that’s not in effect now. So until it is, women should be equally distributed in what you claim is an alienating Corporate America and more men should stay home and take care of children until you are left with an equal number on each side.
Parts of your argument seem rediculous to me not because I want to be part of an alienating corporation, but because of how much I am reminded of the post-Revolutionary War America. Women were put into their “cult of domesticity” because of the idea that the world is a cruel and evil place that women should be protected from. The problem with this is that it led to serious sexism in work but also in culture. From a Christian standpoint, the possiblity of a woman preacher was unheard of. Today we have progressed so far, to the installation of a woman as the head of the Episcopal church (my church), and I don’t think any women want to go back to our version of the dark ages.
This just happened to catch my eye:
“Voting demographics tend to show that married women vote pretty much like their husbands, favoring the tweedledee candidate labeled “conservative”, whereas single men and women tend to vote for the tweedledum labeled “liberal”.”
Did it ever occur to you that maybe more conservatives just get married? Then they vote for conservative candidates. Then us liberals with our free love and drugs and scary music and burned bras all vote for liberals but we couldn’t possibly get married because then in buying an engagement ring we’d be supporting South African diamond importers who abuse their miners. (just kidding by the way – but not kidding about the first bit)
Catherine, you are my hero.
Generally, a child’s mother is going to do a better job at being the primary caretaker. I guess it depends on your presuppositions- whether you see children as a hindrance in pursuit of fulfillment in a career, or a career as a means of supporting fulfillment through children. Most of the time, a second career is a net economic negative to a family anyway.
My moral view matters little, as the availability of contraception will tend to microevolutionarily favor those who choose the latter view. The future, one way or another, belongs to high-fertility fundamentalists. I just wish more of our people could overcome suicidal individualism and have a greater share of the future.
the reason girls gravitate towards these toys is that they are marketed to them. yes, we have maternal instincts, but as far as playtime goes, we get baby dols and barbies and kitchen sets.
i grew up in a neighborhood that was mostly boys, so i had barbies that a drove around in my dump trucks in the sandbox. it’s what i thought was the nnormal and “cool” thing to play with. then i moved at six years old to a different neighborhood with more girls. they didn’t want anything to do with my trucks of kickball, so i started playing with dolls. it’s all about what will get you some friends to play with and what’s being sold to you. you see a little girl on the box with the babydoll, you know that is what you are meant to play with. you don’t usually want to toy with the “icky cootie boy” on the front of the box.
and when you look at how woman are marketed now, feminism is needed. when you’ve got trash like girls gone wild and all sorts of publications that objectify us as sex machines, you need a couple of girls with some dignity left to get pissed off and speak up. otherwise, our hopes for respect are completely dashed.
as a feminist, i can tell you that it’s not all about working in a bland little cubicle and punching numbers all day to ignore your kids. it’s changed over time and it varries from woman to woman, but the fundimental ideal stays the same: we are strong, smart and just as capable as men, especially when it comes to decidding how we wish to spend the rest of our lives. if a woman makes the choice to have a child and stay at home (like my mother, who i recently found out considers heerself a feminist), then that’s wonderful for her and she’s not seen as submissive or dumb. that’s a noble thing to do. but we can also hold our own in the work force and if we so choose, should be treated as equals. no better than men and surely no less.
I wonder if non-conformance to feminine norms are a common biological feature of feminists- that’s 2/2 right here. If so, then low fertility career women could be a self-correcting phenomenon, similar to the tragic self-correcting of the pro-choice. Nature doesn’t particularly care about individual fulfillment or equality, but instead rewards those who reproduce themselves successfully; that’s why feminism is a long-run self-limiting movement.
I think there’s a bit of extremism on both sides. The Christian groups it’s evil for a woman to value work over children and Hardcore Feminists think the SAHM is regressive and evil. IMO, a woman should do whatever she is comfortable with, but little girls shouldn’t feel pressured into fitting into assumed roles. She should be able to play with a Betsy Wetsy and a LeapPad without issue.
how does it “reward them?” where’s your source for that. and yes, it biological that we are the mothers, but in no way is it biological that we can’t go get jobs. what are you talking about? i plan on being a mother with a career as well. it can be done, you know.
do you know how many species in nature have the male as the submissive sex? their purpose is for reproduction and sometimes even to care for the offspring. many species have mothers that hunt. you’ve got lions, whales, penguins, lizards, and there’re even a species of eel that are entirely female. a fully grown female will choose an egg, release a hormone to make it male, and it lives inside of her, impregnates her and is then expelled to die.
so it isn’t “biological” or natural for us to just stay at home. you’re confusing it with social norms that have been in place for hundred of years.
Survival and success as a group is dependent upon high or at least above-replacement-level fertility. The highest fertility human groups do not exhibit feminist tendencies- think Orthodox Jews, Mormons, Palestinians, etc.
To the extent feminism limits fertility, it is self-limiting, as genes that produce feminist tendencies will be bred out of existence.
“The highest fertility human groups do not exhibit feminist tendencies- think Orthodox Jews, Mormons, Palestinians, etc.”
You are trying to say that there is a significant correlation between religion and fertility? Source…?
It’s amazing to me that people find a pointing out of obvious facts (except for those presuppositionally committed to a feminist worldview- and I’m not exactly sure how to communicate with people so far down the moral sewer that they want the right to kill their babies while condemning others for merely disagreeing with them) to be a personal judgment of their lifestyle choices.
There are certain consequences associated with every choice, both individually and as a civilization. It may be a hackneyed thing to say, but there are probably very few feminists who, on their deathbed, will wish they had spent more time at the office.
So when facts are pointed out, those wedded to an equalitarian ideology respond with variants of insults, name-calling and anecdotal evidence. The tragedy of the situation is that the false gods of feminism are harming millions of women right now, women who are following societal imperatives at the expense of their natural inclinations, but suffer to grind other people’s axes.
Since most people politicize their personal life, I’m not really surprised that, just as many misogynists are male divorcees who have generalized their experience with their exes to all women, militant feminists are generally women who have had some sort of unpleasant experience in their personal life that they have generalized into a political issue. Thus, the extremists define the terms of the debate.
General information to tidy up this thread:
1. The rejection of feminism does not mean rejection of equality between the genders, but rather recognition of true equality instead of false equality. Instead of pretending that men and women are the same and insisting that equality measure up to this obvious falsehood, we recognize that both genders are equally needed for functioning society, though with different natural roles- this is simply the economic law of higher productivity through specialization, or the complementarian view of gender.
2. Feminism reduces fertility- this is a fact:
Everything has an opportunity cost- analyzing opportunity costs is life’s most profitable activity. No corporate job can compare to parenthood, and in the age of the 80-hour workweek for executives, they are becoming mutually exclusive.
3. Fundamentalist groups with anti-feminist leanings have higher fertility:
Thus, there lies the path of death: the Equalitarian Left, with their no-child or one-child self-centered lifestyles, is insignificant in the long run. Though they live a long life, they and their genes will be extinguished.
To revisit the concept of equality, I don’t think that anyone has suggested that women CANNOT perform the corporate roles that men perform. The issue isn’t one of capability. In the corporate world, productivity is increased when the candidate who is best suited for the job gets it. Wouldn’t the same hold true for parenthood?
If you’re married, and especially if you have children, it becomes quickly obvious that, as a rule, women are more natural caregivers – more sensitive, understanding and intuitive when it comes to their children. Men are (typically) more strict and less connected to their children. This is not a negative – it just shows the different roles to which (most) men and women are naturally attuned. So wouldn’t it make sense for the one who is naturally suited to the job to perform it? Isn’t this what would be the best for the ‘customer’ – the child?
I personally would like to thank my husband for the sacrifices he has made, working so hard so that I could have it easy! =) It is my privilege to stay at home with my kids, especially when that gives me the freedom to live the kind of life I want. I am not limited by someone else’s schedule, but can instead fill my life intentionally with the things I WANT to do. Though parenthood does require sacrifice, in my mind the sacrifice is not near so great as the sacrifice the corporate world requires.
I think the nature vs nurture (biological vs cultural) character of this debate has slightly missed the point. Just because it is natural does not mean we OUGHT to do it. We may have natural inclinations to murder, but this would go severely against God’s command. What seems to be important is to be moral, and the correct conception of equality is trying to acheive just this–that is, equality (in some sense) is God’s command. Since we have the ability to choose how to live our lives and organize society, we need not follow biologically or culturally inculcated inclinations. We can live our lives and organize society MORALLY.
Some brands of feminisms (the ones I favor) do not downgrade homemaking and motherhood, but try to increase its importance. It tries to show that labor in the home is just as important as labor in the workplace. Perhaps women should be rightfully paid for this labor? The answer to this question need not be answered; it is merely an example. The point I am trying to make it that giving women the power to make their own choices and work outside the home is the MORAL thing to do. And we can do the moral thing regardless of our predispositions. It is quite dubious that women ONLY being in the home is the moral thing.
While I don’t agree with many of the views you seem to be putting forth, the biggest problem I have thus far is your tenuous hold on the ability to distinguish between cause and effect and use accurate terms.
You’re using the term “fertility” inaccurately, and it’s indicating something that isn’t true. Feminism does not reduce fertility. Fertility means that a woman has the ability to have children, not that she actually does. The correct term for that is fecund, and while if you wanted to say that feminists are less likely to be fecund, you would be correct, I imagine that takes a tad bit of the punch out of the statement, doesn’t it? Feminism has absolutely no effect of a woman’s theoretical childbearing state; it only affects whether or not she chooses to use it.
Your assumptions about different voting demographics and why they exist is also laughable; the woman is obviously conservative because of her husband, and it cannot simply be a matter of like-seeks-like. Of course a conservative spouse will indicate that their spouse, in turn, is conservative, just like an educated spouse will indicate that their spouse, in turn, is educated. That isn’t a cause and effect in any statistically significant way; it’s simply a matter of certain kinds of people gravitating toward one another.
As well, your assumption that children lead one to be conservative jumps the gun on several levels; I don’t doubt that large numbers of children indicate conservatism, but, again, you mistake effect for cause.
• The more children one has, the older one is likely to be. Older people are typically more conservative than younger people; generally, that simply means that they are a product of their time, not that having children made them conservative.
• Many large families are like that because they elect not to use birth control; of people who make that choice, the vast majority do it for religious reasons, and generally, those religious ideals that lead them to make that choice in the first place also lead them to be more conservative in their thinking on political levels.
David,
You’re fighting a straw-man. No one is advocating legal restrictions on female employment outside of the home- I don’t think government should interfere in the private employment affairs of anyone. I’m just talking about the natural consequences of choices we make. And to say you support your own privately-defined version of “feminism” is interesting. I frankly reject any movement with one of its prime goals the destruction of traditional families combined with the right to murder children. To avoid a confrontation with this very real evil by defining your own terms is rather passive-aggressive.
I think what’s getting people on the Left about this article/thread is my (mostly) avoidance of moral language and simple reporting of factual consequences to certain choices.
—-
Connor,
Most people use the word fertility in the way I use it. This is not an academic setting, so I use the vernacular. Perhaps to be technical, I should say “fertility rate”, which has the precise meaning of what I’m talking about. But thanks for validating the factual content of my point.
There’s quite a bit of evidence for marriage/children producing conservative behavior. The #1 statistical predictor of Bush votes in 2004 was white female fertility. To explain a 0.86 correlation by pointing to purported age differences is sophistic. Young unmarried people don’t vote much anyway, so I doubt the average age of conservatives with children is much higher than the average age of liberal voters.
Tom,
Perhaps I misunderstood, but I was picking up the scent from the article and many responses that the fact that girls are naturally drawn to homemaking and motherly toys was support for the claim that we ought to value the practice of women as homemakers and motherly caretakers. Consequently, the counter-argument seemed to go: if girls are merely cultural drawn to homemaking and motherly toys, then these practices are not valuable or not objectively valuable. I took this to be an assumption operating in the background of this discussion (except for many of your points). My point was to say that neither our natural nor cultural proclivities make a given practice valuable or disvaluable. For example, a certain practice, like seriously harming someone who has hurt your family, might be a natural predisposition but immoral (perhaps also sexual promiscuity).
So, if some feminists claim that women are only drawn to be homemakers/mothers because they are socialized that way, these same feminists need not claim that homemaking/motherhood is disvaluable. In fact, most feminists do not claim the latter; they believe homemaking/motherhood is very valuable. Perhaps more so than has hitherto been recognized. This is not my own private brand of feminism, but most feminists. It is also dangerous to lump all feminists into one group; there are definitely variations of feminism.
I was not intending to directly address your factual claims about fertility and so forth, but grant them for the sake of argument.
David, if you feel the need to equivocate about feminists, that’s fine. I reject it root and branch based on its poisonous fruit.
As for your analogy to murder, the natural instinct I am appealing to here is that of survival- a problem our people are having a serious problem with right now, with below-replacement birthrates throughout Europe, the US, and the Anglosphere- much of it driven by feminism, among other causes. Survival IS a natural instinct, but must also be a positive good- this is a postulate most people don’t have a problem with. But you’re welcome to debate the merits of survival if you wish.
I’ve already decided that my progeny and civilization’s survival is a preferred moral outcome.
Thus, by artificially (largely through guilt and peer pressure on women, and appeals to vice and irresponsibility for men) suppressing most women’s desire to be a wife and mother, feminism threatens the survival of the group. It’s evil because it threatens survival, not merely because it is unnatural.
I find it particularly interesting that many of those who would promote mothers being the primary caregiver find themselves feeling very squeamish when it comes to providing the nourishment that God intended for babies. How many of you Christianazis actually took the time to breastfeed your children? How many of you did so to the exclusion of chemical laden, highly processed, inappropriate, factory manufactured cow’s milk?
It’s funny. Many of us straddle a line without the same agenda. I would never use God as a tool to beat my children, and in fact, stand in shock and horror at those who twist the words of the bible to push their physical domination of their children. It is a wise person who can overcome the weakness of brutality, and give of themselves completely to a helpless infant.
I stay home with my children. I guide their education from home. I will not allow my children to be exposed to mindless drivel such as that promoted by Christianazis. I will never spank my children, nor give them juice, breastmilk substitutes, highly processed foods as I’m sure many of you do. You judge, yet you know not what you judge…
My son LOVES the PBK kitchen set. He looks darn good in a Cinderella dress. And, my daughter is into trains, planes and automobiles. For them, there is no gender associated with either. They do tend to play more with their “gender associated” toys, but they are merely mimicing adults. Not submissive women. Please…
Let me get this straight: you let your son run around the house in a Cinderella dress, and you want to accuse other people of child abuse for spanking?! I’m wondering if I have an ethical obligation here to report your IP address and contact information to the authorities in your state.
Johanna is particularly representative of the emotion-driven irrationality of feminism.
This is way too weird to me. I will respond to an earlier post though that was commenting on how there may be a correlation between religion and fertility. Please explain how that works. I’m fertile myrtle and am by no means real religious, but my Aunt and Uncle who are conservative Christian are completely infertile, no matter what they did that can not have their own kids. Last time I checked our world is already over populated, so why in the world would we want to keep making babies? Because the majority of the religions mentioned Orthodox Jews, Mormons, Palestinians, etc, view baby making and rearing as the ultimate expression of their religion. Most rational people don’t feel the need to have kids that strongly or don’t feel that it is the only thing that makes life worth living.
I have a son, a husband, and two jobs. I’m an Airman in the Air Force Reserves(originally Active Duty) and I love that job, I’m more than proud to serve my country and protect others. Protecting others is a trait that I’ve had since birth, I have always felt the need to protect others, no matter the cost. I also work as a child care aide at one of the local schools, because working with kids is also something I like to do. It gives me time away from the husband and the baby to be just a person, not a mom, not a wife, just me. Is it wrong for a woman to glory in just being herself, not being tied to someone else, but being her own very capable person? Last time I checked we are all human, no one being any better or any worse then the next.
And letting a boy run around in a dress in not something bad, its silly and funny. Get over yourself.
I am not primarily trying to make a moral judgment here, just pointing out some trends I think relevant:
* Women have tried careers and many find them less fulfilling than children and domestic life. For most people in these days of outsourcing and downsizing, work sucks. Raising children is preferable to working in a cube in a faceless organization.
* Due to the entrance of women into the workforce, wages have been deflated due to increased supply, which means it takes two incomes now for most people to survive. Thus, staying at home is now a luxury, and a hard-to-fake one at that. The stay-at-home mom is becoming a status symbol differentiating the true middle class from the lower middle class.
* People who have no or fewer children have less of a stake in the future. Whatever their traits as individuals, their genes and their group will suffer because they did not pass on their heritage to the next generation, either at all or to a lesser degree. Similarly, people who believe in overpopulation (i.e. who tend to be those with a genetically hypertrophied sense of conscientiousness and altruism) only hurt themselves.
People who don’t have children because of overpopulation (I think this is mostly a red herring to cover over their selfishness of not wanting to change diapers and live a sacrificial life of raising children) yield the spots of their descendants to people who don’t care as much about overpopulation, thus ensuring overpopulation in the long run.
While I disagree with his environmentalist bent, his anti-human overpopulation theories, or his implied endorsement of “population control”, Garrett Hardin explored the consequences of altruism to general humanity, in his famous Lifeboat Analogy:
http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_lifeboat_ethics_case_against_helping_poor.html
It all depends on your perspective- I see my individual life as ultimately having little meaning independent of the accomplishments of the various groups I am loyal to- primarily my blood descendants.
My value as a woman is not defined by the job that I have. The feminist assumption is that if I am “just” a stay-at-home mom, I am not making a valuable contribution to society. I am limiting my potential and wasting my intellect and talents.
First of all, this assumes that if I am a mother who stays at home, I do NOTHING else but stay in my home and take care of my kids. The reality is that this ‘job’ enables me to have MORE time to contribute to other things – volunteering with organizations (mainly my church) which make valuable contributions to society and help others in a practical way.
One more person in the workforce adding taxable income to a family’s bank account isn’t going to matter much in the grand scheme of things. But one more person volunteering time at a homeless shelter, pregnancy crisis center, or church can change people’s lives for the better. Which is more profitable?
The second assumption is that staying at home and raising children is not a valuable pursuit. It is somehow ‘wasting’ resources. By, as the cliche goes, ‘the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world’ – my kids will be the next voters, the next doctors, the next pastors and policy-shapers in this country. Am I not making a contribution nurturing them and enabling them to reach their full potential?
My intention is not to say that if a woman chooses to work outside the home, she is condemned forever. I am just wondering if society doesn’t need to reorder it’s priorities and look more toward the future (our children) than the present and our comfort and the ‘what-I-want-to-do’ mentality.
“As a woman planning to go into a male-dominated proffession (particle physics) I can truly say that I would rather spend my entire life sitting side by side men in a corporate job than be a submissive wife with no economic independence or dignity. While you may say that women are limited it tedious jobs, that is a problem of our society that should not be fixed by sending women back to a 1800s cult of domesticity. Instead, equality in the workplace should and will be reached as soon as men and socially conservative women accept that us strong women will be moving up the corporate ladder until we break the so called ceiling of our search for independence.”
A few points here Catherine, if I may:
1. I have a degree in mathematics. I was pushed/encouraged to do this by my misguided, egalitarian, liberal east coast parents rather than pursue a family as a young woman. I later (but luckily not too late) saw that this was a misuse of my talents and would be ultimately unfulfilling to me, and about 99% of the women in the world as a way of life. The 1% or so of women who prefer the hard-driving career life really ought to not marry or have kids. They lack the proper submissive temperament and ability to be content with mundane tasks. Their husbands and kids would be unhappy because these women would see to it.
2. Throughout history, most men have not had a career. They have had monotonous, dangerous jobs that paid the bills to sustain a much loved (as opposed to oppressed) wife and kids. They were by and large doing this without complaint or abuse of their power(except in rare circumstances) because their was an organic culture that discourged doing otherwise. They were certainly not thinking “we have to keep those women in the kitchen and away from this fun coal mine, sewer, office, bridge, etc…” but rather “can’t wait to go home to my sweet warm wife and laughing kids”
3. Women historically had to do jobs either around the house or if they were urban outside the home to help take care of the house. During the industrial revolution lower class women usually worked alongside their husbands. It was the wealthy, fortunate women who were allowed to stay home. These women, who have worked as waitresses, cleaning ladies, etc are still looked down upon by feminists as not reaching their full potential.
4. Why all this rabble rousing about pushing your way into the exciting corporate world? This always was an world of the elite few, historically they were nearly all white men. But most white men were not in that world. They were on the streets, in the coal mines, sewers, on railroads, in the army etc. If women and men are truly equal in mind, body, ability and desire then for every women in a CEO, astro-physics, high paying cushy job there ought to be 50,000 women in terrible, dangerous, tedious work. That would reflect that reality of the time when men “oppressed” instead of protected women by taking on these “careers” for themselves
5. The feminist movement has never had the best interests of non-college degreed, working class women in mind. It has always been about pushing the philosophy and desire of the ivory tower elites down the throats of the “little people” as if it were a gift from heaven.
6. No, roles should not be reversed for men to take on child care during the early years. That is retarded and ignores the very real, and evident to logical people, difference between the male and female psyche and ability.
7. Inequalities are a natural part of life. As Tom pointed out, intelligence is given to a few by virtue of genetic luck. Why everyone needs a college degree is beyond me, let alone the people who are most like to spend their days caring for small children. We need working class laborers and getting a college degree would interfere with starting a career .Not to mention filling their heads with this liberal, egalitarian nonsense. Liberal arts departments have become nothing more than propaganda mills.
Johanna, I breastfed all of my many kids and will do so for any more I have. Breastfeeding is an important reason for women to be home with the little ones.
I’m thoroughly glad my mother didn’t stay at home to look after me after I started school. My father, who would have been the sole breadwinner if we’d had the lifestyle you seem to be advocating, died suddenly of a brain haemorrhage when my sister and I were both under 3. If my mother hadn’t had a career herself (as a hospital doctor), we’d all be living in poverty.
She took good care of us as well; she started working part-time after her maternity leave and went full-time when we started school (and yes, we were breastfed). Because she had a career, she could afford to let me study at one of the best universities in Britain.
My sister, incidentally, played with dolls and toy kitchen things when she was little, yet now she has applied to several universities as well. (My favourite toy was a walrus plushie of all things, and I don’t want to be a marine biologist!)
I’m not saying women should abandon their children; these days it is much easier to fit work around your domestic life. But I want to be self-sufficient. We can’t rely completely on our husbands for our income because they could lose their jobs, fall ill, die or divorce us. Otherwise, what else are we to do if our husbands suddenly can’t provide for us? Sponge off government welfare? Desperately try to find another man to marry, like some kind of glorified hooker?
I don’t see staying at home as being a waste of talents in general, since homemaking is certainly useful and indeed necessary, but it is a waste if women’s skills lie in different areas. Sure, I can do Maths, but I’ll be damned if I can clean a house properly. Why should I try to do something I’m terrible at and don’t enjoy, and ignore something I love and I’m brilliant at? And how would it help the country and its economy if a competent, enthusiastic mathematician were replaced with an incompetent, bored housewife?
A lot of posters here are describing what works for them and trying to apply it to all women and all families. I’ll admit, I’m trying hard not to do it myself and I still have.
This just goes to show that the reality is all women are different, and so are our partners and families, and so different domestic situations suit different people.
If you have good domestic skills and want to be a stay-at-home wife/mother, that’s fine. I personally believe it’s only good sense to at least keep any work-oriented skills you have up to date as a “safety net” in case you suddenly have to find work.
If you want to depend utterly on your husband, that’s fine as well, but only if you (and your children, if applicable) are happy with taking that risk.
I’m very grateful that I live in a society where we’re all free to make these choices. I just hope that soon there won’t be such stigma surrounding any one of them.
Emily,
Your post is based on assumption that as a homemaker and wife I have no use for math, science or any other “intelligent” pursuit; that I’m staying home because I excel at cleaning toilets and mopping floors. Cloaking your judgment in phrases like “if you want to…that’s fine” also seems to me to be taking the easy way out. The rest of your post makes your true feelings obvious.
I don’t think anyone has taken the position that a child playing with dolls would not have the ability to earn a college degree – any more than a child playing with guns was destined to become a soldier or a criminal. The point was that we as females tend to gravitate towards more nurturing activities. These are generalizations, not absolute statements about all mankind.
You know, there WERE a lot of absolutes posted early in the thread, like women voting is a problem, the suffrage movement was a problem, taking women out of their ‘God’ ordained place as the one to raise children was a problem.etc.
We all agree that the extreme feminazis are wrong. But you know what is great about feminism? Women now being able to CHOOSE what kind of life they wish to have. They can choose to be a submissive housewife if they want, or they can choose another lifestyle. They have that choice now, thanks to feminism.
The extremes on the other end are just as wrong. To say women should never have been able to have a choice in what kind of life to live. Never been able to vote, or support themselves, or have any choices.
And since abortion was thrown in there too, I’ll comment on that. I’m pro-choice… I would never want my wife to have an abortion, nor will we ever abort a baby – but as much as I am against abortion, who the hell am I to tell some other woman that she HAS TO have her baby?
But hey, I’m not a Christian. If you believe God will punish you for something like abortion, then fine, don’t do it, I don’t have a problem with that. But why in hell do you insist that someone else WHO DOESN’T BELIEVE IN YOUR GOD to have to live the same way? No one is trying to force you to have abortions, why are you trying to force others to live by your theocratic oppressions?
And what if my wife has a miscarriage, eh? Isn’t that ‘God’ aborting the baby? But murdering unborn children, that’s God’s will, eh? So it’s ok then, huh? Now, what about for someone who doesn’t believe in your God?
It’s like Eric Schwartz said, ” Anti-Choice Agnostics? I can count them on one hand.” It’s religious intolerance that is the problem, and that is MY absolute. Saying that other people have to live a certain way, because you believe that YOUR God wants everyone to live that way.
I have a lot of anger on the subject… can you tell? But I have some compassion, I used to be a Christian too, until I read the bible. (so many people quote Ecclesiastes… how many of them have ever actually READ it?)
While I am on the subject of God, let me close with – if anyone claims to tell you they KNOW what God thinks or feels about ANYTHING… run.
Feminism was never a backlash, it was a straw man ideology derived from pride and gender disobedience. It was an aberrancy de novo based on distortions of humanist ideology originating in the Enlightenment era, and hence, is a fundamental denial of biologically normal gender behaviour. It is about as antichristian an ideology you can get, with well-documented ties tracing into dianic witchcraft.
Testimonial evidence would seem to suggest that prior to the imposition of gender liberalism and its associated programme of indoctrination, women understood their differential social, biological and spiritual roles, and were considerably more content than their modern day counterparts. This concurs with more recent gender psychometric data suggesting that women who adhere to biologically normal gender roles score more highly on “objective” indices of physical attractiveness, health and psychological well-being and enjoy a higher quality of life in many areas.
Our current societal situation belies an inability to learn from history: that which modern feminists would celebrate as groundbreaking social revolutions in recent decades have, in actual fact, happened numerous times in the past during the history of the major civilisations (cf. Toynbee, Jim Black). They are invariably associated with a declining society: matriarchist ideology, disruption of family cohesion and functionality, breakdown of normal gender roles and relationships, widespread moral and sexual degeneracy, violent disobedience of children; culminating in the onset of destructive events and widespread violence against and abuse of women, prior to reestablishment of the original traditions. All of this sounds alarmingly familiar.
The bible spells out clearly that there is a direct chain of command and delegation principle from God to Christ to Man to Woman, and that this relates to intrinsic creation order. Many of us still have the grace to understand and hold the patriarchal tradition as the biological norm, and are blessed by it. Those women who, by grace, have avoided or resisted feminist indoctrination appreciate clearly that obedience in a woman *is* beauty, or more accurately, that the two are effectively facets of the same overarching principle.
Despite years of feminist sophistry which has undermined our families, our nation and our workforce, a silent minority holds true to our core design, the very criteria which define us as God-created human beings male and female. Everyone else will rot, mentally and physically, from the very moment they are indoctrinated with contrary views, such is the nature of absolute principle.