November 29, 2004
Oppressed by Choices
Angst is a staple of modern feminism these days, not that such self indulgent whining hasn’t been a cornerstone of the movement since time immemorial. For years, though, you can’t seem to pick up any rag which has an article about working moms without reading a piss-and-moan rant about the pain of having it all, and how tough it is being a woman.
God, give me such tough choices.
The latest of these is where Joanna Murray-Smith writes in “Feminism’s Booby-Trap” asking “Is a working mother good for the child?” She almost gets it, actually very nearly realizing in the end the age-old principle of TANSTAAFL. (There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.) Of course, she has ignited the predictable firestorm among feminista writers whose howls of outrage are heard all the way here in the US from far away in the Land Down Under.
I’d love to take each response article to task and dissect them point by point. The amount of verbal effluvia on the subject, though, is astronomical. And I have only so much patience for wading through the literary vomit of feminist pseudo-intellectuals. It’s easy to sum up, though: “We fought for choices. We got choices. Now being responsible for those choices only oppresses us further.”
The conclusion? Who is to blame for all this oppression? The usual suspect and whipping boy. Men.
Boy, I never saw that one coming.
So, let’s just cut to the chase. A few decades ago, women had no choice but to stay home and labor there to maintain the family, and men had no choice but to go into the working world and labor there to support the family. So it was women who were oppressed. Now women have a choice to do either of those, while men are still trapped where they were, so women are still oppressed. By men.
Yes, I know. I have the same headache.
The logical masturbation it takes to reach such a conclusion is astonishing. And it is accompanied (here is where I came in) by the requisite amount of angst, “Woe is me! I have to be the Perfect Mom! I have to be the Perfect Career Woman! And never mind that even if I am a trailer-park Welfare Queen I am canonized as a heroine by society, it is society which puts this shame and guilt upon my head! Alas, and alack; ochone, ochone!”
How to respond succinctly? Ladies, put a sock in it. Here’s a choice for you: One lump or two in that cup of STFU?
About every whine-fest I’ve heard in response to this piece is how they are “forced” to go out and work, and then come home and still “have” to do all the traditional women’s work, and there is no time left for “me.” (Another usual choru – “Me.” Yes, the unselfish and giving gender. How very droll.) And it’s all because lazy and shiftless men won’t do their share. Men won’t sacrifice their profit sharing and bonus so that women can have day care in the workplace. Men won’t sacrifice their seniority so that a woman can take a few years off of work to have kids, and see them in school, and come back with that time being counted as “on the job.” Men won’t work longer hours at work so women can telecommute and come in when they feel like it.
Men won’t just roll over and give women everything they demand, no matter how ridiculous it is. And it doesn’t stop there, oh no sir. Men don’t ever, they never, no not once, not even try, to do so much as one little pip of housework, no, never, ever, ever. Not a smidge. We come home, plop ourselves down ion our easy chair, and pick up the whip and start cracking it. CRACK! Wench, fetch me a beer! CRACK! Wench, do the laundry! CRACK! Wench, this kid hasn’t been changed since this morning, get to it! CRACK! Wench, WHERE”S MY HAUSENPFEFFER?!?!?!
Know what, girls? Know why we don’t give a bag of sour owl crap about all this complaining anymore? Because we have been there. We have seen the other side of the coin. And it’s baloney. Fact of the matter is, we could roll over, grant you your every hearts desire in the workplace, set aside half of any positions of authority, welcome you home with the housework done, and a hand-fed hot meal, a bubble-bath drawn, and a foot massage and these kinds of women still find something to bitch about.
First, the so-called pressure to be career and family oriented is one that has been created as a result, and by, feminism. Back in the time where the work force was half of what it is today, a man could support a family on a single salary. The simple reason for this is the law of supply and demand. If I need a job done, and I have a surfeit of workers, I can afford to give the job to the one willing to accept the least pay. More workers available is good news for me, as probably one is willing to do it for half of what someone else is. The less skilled that job is, the easier a time I will have.
Now this isn’t to lay blame, but it’s a simple fact that the labor pool is saturated. It’s a buyer’s market where that goes – if more jobs are available than labor, the pay scales go up; reverse that dynamic and they drop. Once the work force was increased with millions of women, a great many willing to work for less, the less possible it became for a blue collar, single-income family to maintain a standard of living. Women of that social class, and lower, began to find they HAD to work.
There’s equality, ladies. Welcome to our world. That’s the fruits of feminism. You just keep sending in that money for EMILY’s list and voting lock-step for the usual socialists so your rich white feminist mistresses can rail about the rough life they have right before they hop into their limousine and drive off.
Now, this in and of itself would not be so bad except that it’s the feminists who metaphorically gave the white feather to those women who wanted to stay home and be a mother and housewife. It’s not men, but feminist women, who made the statement that women shouldn’t have that choice because if they did too many would make that choice. It’s feminist women, not men, who have painted those women who advocate for full time motherhood as lapdogs of the patriarchy and traitors to their sex. The rubric that women who are content to be SAHMs (Stay at home moms) as lacking in ambition, unfulfilled, oppressed, or selling their sisters down the river is a picture painted by Steinem, Freidan, Dworkin and company. The only men such SAHMs will find that look down their noses at them are left-wing, fem-boy allies to the feministas.
So, like it or not, the pressure to “be Super-Woman” is one placed on women – by women.
It goes further than that, though, and having been on the other side of the “men don’t do diddly at home” canard, I can only describe it as a steaming pile of bovine excrement of the male persuasion. In most cases such accusations amount to nothing more than maternal gatekeeping, namely, such women still see the house and heart as Their Turf, and resent male intrusion on it, and are especially threatened when men prove themselves more than adequate to the task. Whatever is done is deemed “done wrong.” Fault is found. A dishwasher is “loaded wrong” and ran, and even though the dishes be clean, the woman in question will, in perfect martyr fashion, empty it, reload it, and rerun the cycle so as to claim “Nothing was done” or “It’s no help when I have to do it all over.” Thus, hours spent in doing half –or in most cases more –by men is conveniently shifted to the “Doesn’t Count” column.
I’m sure I’m not the only man who has been on the receiving end of such treatment, and it goes to the heart of the issue – one will be unable to sufficiently please women with enough being done on the home front if they will not allow themselves to be pleased. If no task can be done with sufficient thoroughness, or in a timely enough manner because they will not let it be, and move the goalposts when their demands are met, this is a neurosis that women must overcome themselves. This need for a perfect, Martha Stewart Home is not a woman’s need, but a want. It is not done to “please men” anymore than an hour and a half in front of the mirror is done to please men before the date – it is done to show themselves off to other women.
No? Guys, you tell me – you go over to another couple’s house for a dinner, who is it, once you are on the drive home, that is commenting on the décor, the cleanliness, and so on? I’m willing to say that unless there is an actual odor, most men are oblivious to the state of someone else’s house. It’s like coming home to a redecorated and rearranged house – very nice, dear, but where can I find my stuff? I trust it isn’t in the Salvation Army box because you decided I didn’t need it? Men tend to be utilitarian in their environmental needs, we don’t obsess over whether the carpet and drapes match precisely. After centuries, women’s claims to be doing it “for their families” is transparently specious. “Keeping up with the Joneses” is hardly a new phenomena.
At no time, though, in any of these articles is any responsibility assigned to the woman to even communicate, let alone negotiate her wants; instead, men are expected, as usual, to miraculously just know these things and unquestioningly and unhesitatingly provide them. The failure of men to do so, of course, is evidence of their swinishness.
It’s more than tired. It’s not choices these femnuts want; it’s to be absolved, in advance, for the consequence and responsibility of the choices they make. And as is par for the course, guess who gets left holding the bag. Doesn’t wash anymore, girls, not at all. You wanted to be men, you got it. Sadly for you, though, nobody informed you that there is bad to go with the good, and part of that bad is missing out on the home life and milestones of your children. This is something we men have endured for millennia without whining, because it had to be done. Let’s see, now, if you all are made from as stern a mettle. So far, though, the evidence for that is non-existant.
MAKING THE GONZMAN CRY
Daksdaddy from SYG writes to Santa for his letter:
May be a long shot, But…
Santa? Could I please have some time with my Daughter?
My God. What the hell do you say to something like this? If there is any justice in this universe, there is a new and deeper pit being dug in Hell for people who would cause something like this to be written.
If anyone can read the above and still wonder what makes men into M.R.A.s, they need to go out this year and buy a heart and soul; or be visited by three ghosts.
