Feminism
A couple months ago, I stumbled upon a website called Ladies Against Feminism. It made me cry. I yearn to be like those women. At my very core, my heart's desire has always been to serve God and to be a wife, a mamma to as many babies as God would give me, keep a pretty house, play my cello, sing, sew, write, maybe even cook. I have always hated wearing pants and I'm not cut out to work outside of the home and I never was...
This is an unedited-stream-of-consciousness-diatribe about my thoughts on this topic:
When I went to college, I went to become a music teacher and then a librarian. I chose the library profession because I thought it was one where I could work part-time just in case we needed extra money in an emergency. When I wanted to quit school to become a wife and mother, my mom encouraged me to stay and finish and it would help me be a better mom. [I think my background might actually make me a great homeschooling parent, but that's another story.] I am a perfect case study of someone who got caught in the feminist trap without even knowing it.
When I was in the third grade, we lived down the street from the homes where new doctors lived during their residency. One of the moms had three young children and needed a little help. She offered me five cents an hour to help out. Mrs. V. was an emergent feminist in 1973 and my dad started calling me "Little MS" as he figured that Mrs. V. was indoctrinating me in feminism. She might have been, but I sure don't remember any of it...I was helping her with her mommy duties and playing with her kids. I do remember really resenting my dad for calling me that...I HATED IT!!!
I blame my poor marriage choices to feminism...my first husband was a college grad who made a lot of money, but he always said that when I finished grad school, he was going to retire. He was probably kidding, but we divorced 6 months after I started grad school. Maybe if I wasn't so stuck on the idea that I too had to have a career, I wouldn't have gone to grad school and we would have stayed married and I could have been a stay at home mom. I doubt it...his mom had nine kids, was married to an engineer, and still worked as a nurse as soon as her kids hit junior high.
My second husband was an all-around loser, but he was a so called "Christian", which in my warped mind made him suitable for me. I felt that at my big salary of 25,000/year I could support us and anyone else who would come along. I lost that job, replaced it right away for less money, and lost that job almost immediately. I found a job with fluctuating hours that had to support us until we divorced when baby was two months old. All the time he was having his career of private investigator which meant he worked when he felt like it and called it his job.
Due to my poor marital choices, it was a good thing that I went to grad school and was able to support baby and me. However, I think my credentials clouded my mate selection. I am now happily married to a good man. He works hard and is steady and reliable. However, he was the son of a widow. His mom worked hard her whole life. He thinks that children of moms who work turn out fine. He sometimes forgets that his grandma took care of him all of those years.
My husband is brilliant but didn't go to college. He has stayed at the same job for 30 years. This position pays about as much as a librarian position, but then librarians don't make a lot of money. There is also not room for career growth...he has been a warehouse/sales/delievery guy for all of these years. If it weren't for the union, I think he might have sought better employment, but now he's two years short of retirement. I pray he finds a satisfying and lucrative second career, because I don't think it is right for me to leave my young kids home while I get back on the corporate ladder.
The trouble is, I am tangled up in the trappings of a two-income family with 1 1/2 incomes. I need to cut back and be satisfied with what my husband can provide so I can return home. I had to leave a vomiting baby and my 8 year-old home on a snow day to be a work this morning. That is so wrong. My husband was home with the kids, losing a day's wage because I made a work comittment I needed to keep.
Escaping the web of feminism is very hard...there is much more to it than one would think. First, I love to wear dresses, but I feel really weird cleaning the house in a dress or exercizing in a dress or ice skating in a "modest dress". Do you give up your favorite activities...can't you put leggings on to play in the snow with your kids??? Do you take care of your horses in a dress????? Do you have to ride side-saddle or not at all???? Where does practicallity come into all of this????
What about going to hockey games with your husband...I could wear a dress, but is enjoying hockey feminine or feminist??? Or cheering my Alma Mater, which was not even a private church college, but a major BIG TEN party school (although I didn't not party in the 'party-school' way.) What about my car...I love cars I love my car I even love driving my rear-wheel drive car in the snow...does that make me a feminist????
What about make up???? I love wearing make-up...I think it's girly...as long as my heart is a pretty as my face, I don't think it is un Christian either. Hair color...come on, I've had gray hair since I was twenty...I'm supposed to be attractive to my husband, aren't I? I love long hair, but mine breaks off so much, I need to keep it on the short side...with clips and sparklies to keep it girly. I don't even like to wear oxford shirts because they look so manly, but then a lot of what I think "feminizes" my clothes is sometimes considered immodest. I don't want to end up looking like a cliche. Do you have to look like the Amish??? I know a (anti-feminist) young woman who dresses very stylishly...she even wears red nail polish sometimes...
This is all getting me to look at my values again. I think I got a bit liberal since I married my husband. I need to get back to the BIBLE and the US CONSTITUTION for my compasses. Unfortunately, no where is it written, at least I don't think it is, that a lady can not drive a Ford Mustang...
This is an unedited-stream-of-consciousness-diatribe about my thoughts on this topic:
When I went to college, I went to become a music teacher and then a librarian. I chose the library profession because I thought it was one where I could work part-time just in case we needed extra money in an emergency. When I wanted to quit school to become a wife and mother, my mom encouraged me to stay and finish and it would help me be a better mom. [I think my background might actually make me a great homeschooling parent, but that's another story.] I am a perfect case study of someone who got caught in the feminist trap without even knowing it.
When I was in the third grade, we lived down the street from the homes where new doctors lived during their residency. One of the moms had three young children and needed a little help. She offered me five cents an hour to help out. Mrs. V. was an emergent feminist in 1973 and my dad started calling me "Little MS" as he figured that Mrs. V. was indoctrinating me in feminism. She might have been, but I sure don't remember any of it...I was helping her with her mommy duties and playing with her kids. I do remember really resenting my dad for calling me that...I HATED IT!!!
I blame my poor marriage choices to feminism...my first husband was a college grad who made a lot of money, but he always said that when I finished grad school, he was going to retire. He was probably kidding, but we divorced 6 months after I started grad school. Maybe if I wasn't so stuck on the idea that I too had to have a career, I wouldn't have gone to grad school and we would have stayed married and I could have been a stay at home mom. I doubt it...his mom had nine kids, was married to an engineer, and still worked as a nurse as soon as her kids hit junior high.
My second husband was an all-around loser, but he was a so called "Christian", which in my warped mind made him suitable for me. I felt that at my big salary of 25,000/year I could support us and anyone else who would come along. I lost that job, replaced it right away for less money, and lost that job almost immediately. I found a job with fluctuating hours that had to support us until we divorced when baby was two months old. All the time he was having his career of private investigator which meant he worked when he felt like it and called it his job.
Due to my poor marital choices, it was a good thing that I went to grad school and was able to support baby and me. However, I think my credentials clouded my mate selection. I am now happily married to a good man. He works hard and is steady and reliable. However, he was the son of a widow. His mom worked hard her whole life. He thinks that children of moms who work turn out fine. He sometimes forgets that his grandma took care of him all of those years.
My husband is brilliant but didn't go to college. He has stayed at the same job for 30 years. This position pays about as much as a librarian position, but then librarians don't make a lot of money. There is also not room for career growth...he has been a warehouse/sales/delievery guy for all of these years. If it weren't for the union, I think he might have sought better employment, but now he's two years short of retirement. I pray he finds a satisfying and lucrative second career, because I don't think it is right for me to leave my young kids home while I get back on the corporate ladder.
The trouble is, I am tangled up in the trappings of a two-income family with 1 1/2 incomes. I need to cut back and be satisfied with what my husband can provide so I can return home. I had to leave a vomiting baby and my 8 year-old home on a snow day to be a work this morning. That is so wrong. My husband was home with the kids, losing a day's wage because I made a work comittment I needed to keep.
Escaping the web of feminism is very hard...there is much more to it than one would think. First, I love to wear dresses, but I feel really weird cleaning the house in a dress or exercizing in a dress or ice skating in a "modest dress". Do you give up your favorite activities...can't you put leggings on to play in the snow with your kids??? Do you take care of your horses in a dress????? Do you have to ride side-saddle or not at all???? Where does practicallity come into all of this????
What about going to hockey games with your husband...I could wear a dress, but is enjoying hockey feminine or feminist??? Or cheering my Alma Mater, which was not even a private church college, but a major BIG TEN party school (although I didn't not party in the 'party-school' way.) What about my car...I love cars I love my car I even love driving my rear-wheel drive car in the snow...does that make me a feminist????
What about make up???? I love wearing make-up...I think it's girly...as long as my heart is a pretty as my face, I don't think it is un Christian either. Hair color...come on, I've had gray hair since I was twenty...I'm supposed to be attractive to my husband, aren't I? I love long hair, but mine breaks off so much, I need to keep it on the short side...with clips and sparklies to keep it girly. I don't even like to wear oxford shirts because they look so manly, but then a lot of what I think "feminizes" my clothes is sometimes considered immodest. I don't want to end up looking like a cliche. Do you have to look like the Amish??? I know a (anti-feminist) young woman who dresses very stylishly...she even wears red nail polish sometimes...
This is all getting me to look at my values again. I think I got a bit liberal since I married my husband. I need to get back to the BIBLE and the US CONSTITUTION for my compasses. Unfortunately, no where is it written, at least I don't think it is, that a lady can not drive a Ford Mustang...
posted by Susan at 8:21 AM
2 Comments:
I don't want you to think this is cheap grace, but one thing the feminists were right about is that there was a very tiny window in history when women didn't work. When our country was primarily agricultural, all women worked--and it wasn't all inside the house. My own grandmother, who was blind, bundled the babies up and took them to the barn to milk the cows and the babies rode in the farm wagons in the field when she helped her husband. My other grandmother had immigrant household help or the wives of the tenant farmers to help, but what about their babies? Farm wives often had hired help living in the home whom they fed and clothed.
My mother "stayed at home" with the babies (1930s), but at first she took in boarders (during the Depression). So I'm thinking during the shift from rural to urban to suburban, there was about 25 years where wives weren't employed outside the home and weren't working in the fields, then the feminists started their drum beat around 1970 for "paid" work of value.
We now have had some generations of men who expect women to bring home a paycheck, unless they are really well off and need her to manage an estate or their leisure time. But in 1905 most farmers would have expected their wives to have butter and egg money and to take in a boarder or two, or in town they would have lived over the store and managed it too.
Still, I understand your desire to be home. I was one of the fortunate ones. Those are important years.
I think yes, if you are using the privileges procured by feminists, you are also feminist.
Did you dislike us?
So lace yourself as tight as possible, wear high stiletto heels, ride side-saddle and long skirt!
And do not dare to drive a car or to use a computer - that's absolutely mannish things!
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