"Stay away from my uterus!"
Feminist Lexicon:
- Radical feminism: That branch of feminism that, at its extreme end, preaches that men are no longer necessary (cool I guess I don't have to work to feed my kids anymore) for anything other than procreation. These women (usually) actively hate men. These are the "feminazi's".
- Liberal feminism: The more familiar breed of feminist, whose catch-cry is most likely: "Anything you can do I can do just as well, if not better". (ever peed standing up? I didn't think so - EB) They campaign for equal rights for women, sue people for discrimination, lament the existence of such things as the glass ceiling (when it is impossible for a woman to be promoted any more simply because she is a woman) and the patriachy (the dominant class of males).
- Conservative feminism: Sometimes not even recognized as feminism. (I didn't know there was such a thing) These women believe that women are just as good as men, just different. Made for different roles, and hence good at different things. It has been suggested that the other two branches are merely trying to make women like men, instead of celebrating their innate feminity and difference from men.
Which brand of feminism does this picture depict?
Some have wondered, often out loud how do these angry liberal females prepare themselves for such things. I have come up with a few answers. I solicit your help as well. Please feel free to add some in the comments section.
Liberal Icky Girl Preparation
1. Bathe yourself in some self righteous conceit by watching Farenheit 9/11, Kramer vs. Kramer, and 9 to 5.
2. Wash your hair in some extra virgin olive oil, it's cholesterol free and some animal didn't die to make it.
3.Read a Gloria Steinem book so you can sound like a fembot at the "bare your breasts to stop the war rally".
4. Refuse to shave your armpits, your girlfriend won't mind.
5. Make sure the bullhorn is on when you shout "stay away from my uterus"
6. Remember that not everyone wants to see you naked in protest to the war. (PTSD comes to mind)
7. Remember it's not the lightbulb that needs changing.
8. File a sexual harrassment lawsuit - it'll make you feel better and your boss probably deserved it anyway
9. Act like a victim and FINALLY
10. Have an abortion - just to let everybody else know who is in charge
EB OUT
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If I had to pick a brand of feminism to practice, it would have to be #3. The sexes are equal in that we are intellectually the same, but we are very different in what roles we were designed to fulfill. My husband takes great pride in that he is able to go out, work, and provide for his family. I take great pride in raising my children and keeping my home up. Before I quit my job, it pained me every time I left my children to go to it.
That doesn't make me some barefoot/in the kitchen milksop, or give all the power in the relationship to my husband. Feminists just don't understand that.
The worst thing about feminism is that they espouse a woman's right to choose, and yet when I choose my home and family, I am a spineless moron/throwback.
Sorry 'bout the rant;Fantastic post, EB!
Comment by C-Mom— 2006/01/23 @ 05:11 AM — (Reply)
Um...I have peed standing up. I hope that doesn't make me feminazi! (It isn't that hard when you're skinning dipping in the woods.
)
Please leave virgin olive oil out it. These women are neither virgins nor do I love them as I love my olive oil.
I do not understand #3. If they truly hate men, why do they give them what they want? LOL.
#5. Then stop putting it in everyone's face.
#10. Murderers.
OT: I changed the name of my site to Loving God Holy. I began to feel as though I were hiding, and that is not my purpose. What kind of example would be?
Anyway, great post. It is about time there was someone out there on our side. I want my femininity back! I love being treated like a lady, and I love to treat men as the special creatures God created them to be. God bless you for this post, and for being you. Please say hello to your lovely wife
Comment by Simple One— 2006/01/23 @ 11:16 AM — (Reply)
Comment by A Conservative Realist— 2006/01/23 @ 01:17 PM — (Reply)
Comment by A Conservative Realist— 2006/01/23 @ 02:40 PM — (Reply)
Most of these ladies are very lonely.
Comment by Felis— 2006/01/23 @ 05:28 PM — (Reply)
C-Mom - Rant on
I was talking to my wife the other day about some of this stuff, it occurred to me while I was reminding her of abortions advocates arguments especially that a woman can do what she wants with her body....she reminded me that when I had my vasectomy that there were some stipulations:
1. I had to wait a month, it was state law
2. The Navy required me to be at least 32 years old and I had to have had at least two children
3. This is the kicker - I needed someone's permission...guess......
my wife's
Bueller....Bueller
Comment by Elmers Brother— 2006/01/23 @ 06:16 PM — (Reply)
Kramer vs. Kramer - liberation from husband and family
9 to 5 - liberation from the glass ceiling
Comment by Elmers Brother— 2006/01/23 @ 06:31 PM — (Reply)
If I were to get pregnant didn't want the baby, and he did, you could clock with a stopwatch how fast I could get an abortion without so much as a phone call to him.
But, the thing that REALLY galls me is that a school can REMOVE a teenager without adult permission, transport them to an off site facility and perform a MAJOR medical procedure on them without the parent's knowledge.
Now, moral ramifications nonwithstanding, a school won't take a kid across the street without a permission slip in triplicate, and a kid would be suspended for self treating with an aspirin on school property.
Also, if the kid didn't tell you about wanting to have an abortion in the first place, presumably because they would (rightly) assume that you'd be pissed, WHAT makes them think that the kid will be responsible enough to tell you what happened if any sort of complication arise? (Think excessive bleeding, sepsis.) Are you supposed to just GUESS? And who's responsible for the follow up care bills?
AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!
End rant.
Comment by C-Mom— 2006/01/24 @ 04:11 AM — (Reply)
Comment by Cate— 2006/01/24 @ 05:39 AM — (Reply)
Comment by Elmers Brother— 2006/01/24 @ 06:00 AM — (Reply)
Those feminists should be protesting against how Muslim women are treated. You know, the real problems of honor killings, not being able to drive, not being able to have a career, wife beatings, etc, etc.
Comment by seawitch— 2006/01/24 @ 06:09 PM — (Reply)
Seawitch, you're right. Somehow I don't see these ladies even thinking of that.
Comment by elmers brother— 2006/01/24 @ 06:11 PM — (Reply)
Comment by A Conservative Realist— 2006/01/25 @ 03:01 AM — (Reply)
Seriously, where the heck is NOW? If they were really who they claim to be, they'd be on Islam like white on rice!
Comment by C-Mom— 2006/01/25 @ 03:57 AM — (Reply)
Comment by A Conservative Realist— 2006/01/25 @ 03:09 PM — (Reply)
lmao@skinny dipping doesn't count. Truth is I could really care less what these femi-nazis do. They are irrelevant.
Let them burn bras and keep battery companies earning money.
Comment by American Crusader— 2006/01/26 @ 06:23 AM — (Reply)
Sad to say, I spent 20 odd years actively and virulently pushing the "alternative lifestyle" barrow, and that saw me in close quarters with the worst excesses of the feminist movement. Some time after I repented, and was led back to my senses, I had occassion to return to my old stomping grounds and I met up with a woman who'd been very much in the fore-front of "liberation". And there she was - a house-mom! To cut a long story short, when the obvious "what happened" was broached, she said she had come to hate Feminism because "it stole my femininity from me".
This has not been an isolated reaction, and gave me great heart, as it encouraged me to believe that curse may have finally run it's course - until I entered the world of Tertiary Education, as a 'mere male' teacher.
Wanna know where all the Feminazis went??? They are teaching your children.
Comment by Gravelrash— 2006/01/27 @ 11:29 AM — (Reply)
Grav there has been some news here lately about how this has been effecting young males, especially in the education system. I think Time or Newsweek just did a cover story on this.
Comment by elmers brother— 2006/01/27 @ 11:39 AM — (Reply)
That's got to be pretty hard to do, pre-1950 or so. I mean, what do you do, teach Betty Ross and Hariet Tubman after each time you learn about one of the founding fathers, 'cause that's about all there was from that time period.
Comment by C-Mom— 2006/01/27 @ 05:12 PM — (Reply)
I suppose Mrs. G would say if she was still with us: women are women and men aren't.
Comment by A Conservative Realist— 2006/01/27 @ 05:19 PM — (Reply)
It appears the cracks are everywhere. All that is needed is a bit more dialectic honesty in writing such as this. Note the "tone" - very fem-rhetoric inspired; still seeking approval from "da sistas"???? I had to snicker at the faux intellectualising, however, she's on the road to recovery, and that's good news! You're 'validated', Lucy!!
A FEMINIST UPBRINGING FAILS Lucy Cavendish (Brisbane Sunday Mail,22 Jan, 05)
When I was a little girl, and all my friends were little girls, none of us thought we'd grow up to be housewives. We might have played dollies in pretend houses and made pretend cakes and poured invisible tea from plastic pots, but no one ever considered that being a housewife, a home-maker, would be something that we would choose to be. For many years, that was not even an option. But now, at 40, I wonder why not?
My mother stayed at home. She baked cakes - terrible ones - and dusted and cleaned and darned names on knickers and obviously hated it. She would tell me how dull she thought stay-at-home mothers were. She would tell me how she'd wanted to be an artist, but that her father, my grandfather, wouldn't let her.gcause nice girls did not go to art school. She worked for a while as a physiotherapist and then, after she married my father, stopped working altogether, as so many women did.
But, during my childhood, my mother provided me with a steady stream of literature by women such as Germaine Greer, Betty Friedan. Kate Millett. Simone de Beauvoir and Susie Orbach. My mother was intent that we were educated properly. She took us overseas and showed us art, history and architecture. She helped me learn the joy of having an inquiring mind, of not just accepting everything I was told. She congratulated me when I confronted my teachers, even though she was hauled in to see the principal of my school regularly.
So did my mother expect me and my sister to stay at home, have children and turn into housewives? No, she did not. And yet, what has happened to us? In Susan Faludi's 1993 book Backlash, she predicted the tide would turn, that feminism would start becoming a dirty word, that men would march against women and that women would return, mentally beaten and bereaved. back to the home.
Now we have Darla Shine, who says in her book Happy Housewives that women should be allowed to embrace the mother, the housewife within and should no longer feel they have to go to work and break through the glass ceiling to be a proper, functioning person. "Why wasn't being a mum offered to me as a career?" Shine says.
What has changed? Staying at home - or even saying you want to stay at home -is breaking the last taboo. When, aged 29, I had my first child, all my friends thought I was mad. They thought I was even crazier when I moved out of city life and re-emerged in the bush complete with boots, basket, fresh fruit from the garden and an apron. They baulked when I got a dog. They nearly cried when I went on to have two more children and spent all my earnings on small shoes and baby outfits.
But now I know my friends love to come to see me. They love the atmosphere of the house, the freshly-cooked food, the salad picked from the garden, the grubby, muddy tearaway children and the over-friendly dog.
And yet I still work. I ask myself why: is it too much part of my past, part of what my mother instilled in me, for me to totally embrace my domestic goddess within?
But I am not the only woman who secretly likes baking an apple pie. Many seem to have quietly turned away from work. Everyone is "down-sizing" and searching for "quality of life". Why have it all when you only want a little bit? I think part of the problem is that women never really thought about what "work" meant. It's no fun being a woman holding down a full time job and also trying to run a house, children and a marriage. Where's the joy in trudging to and from work, to home, to the shops, and back again on a daily basis? (I am sure men feel just the same way, but we are talking housewives here, not house-husbands).
It's exhausting. I tried it. It was a disaster. I barely saw my children. I had no idea what they were up to. The cupboard was bare, the house was cold and unloved. I felt more tired than I ever have been. I resorted to checking my eldest son's homework when he was in bed. I made packed lunches at llpm. I barely spoke to my partner. At work, I sneakily called plumbers and electricians. Yet I seemed to achieve nothing, either at work or at home.
When I recently suggested to a friend that I give up work and stay at home with my children full-time, she gasped in horror: "But work is so much a part of who you are!" But work used to be part of who she was. Now she has two children, a husband who works from home, a serious tennis addiction and the best-baked cakes. Doesn't she miss her working life? She says not. When I press her on it, she says that she had always told herself that, if she had children, it would be her job to look after them. "I feel I owe that to them," she says. Her children, it has to be said, are happy.
And now I'm surrounded by these stay-at-home women - my sister, my sisters-in-law, my friends; none of them work. Elizabeth used to be a doctor, but now stays at home with her three girls. Emma was in films as a producer, but now spends her life videoing her twins, and Kate was a lawyer in Hong Kong, but was paid off. She's used her money to buy a run-down pile and, whenever you go round, there she is, paintbrush in hand, surrounded by children having fun renovating the place. They all seem happy. They all seem fulfilled. They are intelligent women and these are their choices.
Something has shifted. I find myself increasingly drawn to making cakes and staring wistfully at ingredients in the fridge. My friend calls up to tell me of a new lentil recipe her kids like. The correct feminist response would be: "Why are you calling me up with cooking tips? Burn your bra, baby! "Instead, I hurry to the shop to prepare for cooking it myself the next night. The truth is, I feel better when the house is clean and organised and the kids' clothes are folded and in their drawers. I LIKE to put a meal on the table for my partner when he comes home from work.
When I'm not working and the kids are at kindy, I go for a pushbike ride, walk the dog, or pop round for coffee at a friend's house. I find I rather like wearing an apron. I have a "baking" cupboard, although I am still not very good on cakes. But the kids like making them, so some afternoons we get floury and pour everything into a mixing bowl and then eat it.
The children are happier. My partner is happier. The dog is happier and I am happier. If I'm feeling particularly daring, I might even open a bottle of wine at lunchtime and invite people round. And who decreed we should all work so hard that we forget how to enjoy life? I think women are redefining things. Working hard, being successful and beating men at their own game now seems tiring and boring and, at the end of the day, not necessarily fulfilling.
It's much more fun to have freedom to be at home, to play with the kids, to walk a dog, to make my own decisions about my life. Being a housewife is no longer the dead-end job it was, and it's also not for ever. As their children get older, many women I know intend to start up some sort of small business. The internet has made this perfectly possible. Others intend to re-train as family therapists, teachers and such like. Some are doing extra-curricular courses in art, ceramics, philosophy.
If I had daughters, I'd give them the books to read that my mother gave me. I would encourage them to seethat they have choices, and that those choices are not between a man's world or a woman's world, or between going to work or staying at home, but the chance to do whatever it is they feel they want to do. And if it's a dishcloth that does it for them, hey, so be it.
Comment by Gravelrash— 2006/01/28 @ 08:16 AM — (Reply)
"But work is so much a part of who you are!"
Sadly I think men allow what they do for work to define them as well.
The children are happier. My partner is happier. The dog is happier and I am happier.
Imagine that.
I would encourage them to see that they have choices, and that those choices are not between a man's world or a woman's world, or between going to work or staying at home, but the chance to do whatever it is they feel they want to do. And if it's a dishcloth that does it for them, hey, so be it.
I would add what God has called them to do.
Comment by Elmers Brother— 2006/01/28 @ 09:27 AM — (Reply)
Comment by Cate— 2006/01/29 @ 04:56 PM — (Reply)
Comment by Elmers Brother— 2006/01/29 @ 05:17 PM — (Reply)
Children can be far more challenging than a 9-5, but it is also far mor rewarding!
Comment by C-Mom— 2006/01/30 @ 03:29 AM — (Reply)
It's an eternal investment you are both making
Comment by elmers brother— 2006/01/30 @ 03:35 AM — (Reply)
I've highly recommended actually doing the math to so many friends who insist they can't afford to stay at home. It's a real adventure to be in the trenches with the wee ones.
Comment by Dayna— 2006/06/01 @ 05:03 PM — (Reply)
Comment by Elmers Brother— 2006/06/01 @ 05:09 PM — (Reply)