FITZGERALD writes:

Your comment that the Democrats are sitting on a “powder keg” because liberal attitudes and policies have forced women into the full-time workforce is spot on.

There is a quiet groaning across society from women who feel they must work to be valuable. The having-it-all lie in particular has them trapped. Women are highly susceptible to peer pressure and the feminist overlords have been able to perpetuate a web of lies that has trapped a large majority of women into wage slavery and abandonment of their families, with a resulting quiet desperation and longing for a loss most can’t quite place entirely. It is the loss of the freedom to focus on their families, churches and communities as in days of old. The “freedom” to be a wage slave is not freedom. Dare we also bring up the sexual revolution? Both sexes have adopted lies en masse, believing that sexual freedom and the resulting “necessity” for contraception and abortion equals political and individual freedom. It is of course enslaving psychologically, and often physically damaging. Furthermore, a large majority of males and females now consider it their duty to push their daughters into sports, degrees, career trajectories at all costs without a second thought.

One of the grandest lies of all that the feminist movement has pushed forward is that there are large number of highly fulfilling jobs. Most men see through this quickly. Very few jobs are highly rewarding, creative endeavors, and even those largely comprise a form of intellectual share cropping work on the company land, so to speak. True, modern information businesses have generated a few more interesting jobs, but most of those in all fields come with crushing responsibilities and demands for near complete focus and commitment, with decades of continuous education and self-driven evolution. Few women are willing to make the ongoing, demanding commitments save for pursuit of the degree initially, only to then seek for some kind of balance once they have checked the “career” box off their checklist. Women workers are typically planning for their next break or vacation while most men are driven to excel or at least seek success and respect for fulfillment. I believe the recent posting on the law profession and the cultivation of female underlings as favored pseudofamilial daughters very aptly describes this now entrenched phenomenon.

Inexorably and slowly, the fat shining lies are dawning upon a growing minority of women, but they feel trapped and are often so separated from the traditions and practices of their forebears a lengthy rediscovery process will be necessary. Until women are able to break free from their current perverse enculturation, dare I say brainwashing, set aside the supremacist and anti-male notions, in particular the fatuous lies of male oppression, and are willing to assume traditional role models the angst will grow. Further economic crisis will ensue as more and more productive wealth is captured and redirected to governmental aid programs, socialized medicine, scholarships and government give outs to the university industry (talk about crony capitalism) and other forms of wealth redistribution all in a failing pursuit for gender equity to “right” the supposed wrongs and injustices foisted upon the female sex.

A lengthy treatise on the spiritually rebellious nature of feminism with a particular focus on how female anger at the Creator God is being projected on men via the feminist and other anti-male movements should ensue, but I must return to my obligations. As Tim Allen says, “Men have two choices in this world: Go to work or go to jail.” I continue to choose the former. Women, however, have many choices, but they are finding few are truly satisfying. I urge them to stand up for their true inheritance as wives and mothers and to intentionally ape Timothy Leary. Drop out, but in this case drop out of the rat race and wage slave meat grinder.

Laura writes:

I agree with everything you say.

It is not enough, however, for women to drop out after entering careers and using up valuable, scarce training that could have gone to men. This “have-it-all-till-the-baby-comes” mentality lowers standards and denies opportunities to men who have to work and cannot drop out. Look at what it’s done to the law profession and medicine, discussed here, here, here, here and here.

The conversation should not revolve exclusively around what women want or what makes women happy. It’s a question of what’s best for all. Women are trapped in feminist self-centeredness. Fulfilling one’s duties is key to personal happiness. One of the duties of women is to preserve what the French writer Philippe Bénéton called “the rhythm, rites and ceremonies” of life.

J.N. writes:

Laura wrote:

“The conversation should not revolve exclusively around what women want or what makes women happy.”

I think discontentment is something to which women are particularly prone. It’s one of the most common female sins mentioned in Proverbs (19:13, 21:9, 21:19, 25:24, 27:15), and I would argue it lies at the bottom of why Eve heeded the serpent and ate the forbidden fruit.  Yes, liberalism has been a driver of feminism, but I think a large part of what motivates a woman is discontentment with her current lot and the false belief that she would be happy if things were changed.  American women of the postwar era had the easiest and most comfortable life in history, but they threw it away because they were told working outside the home would make them happy.

When I got married, I told my wife to stay home and read those books she always wanted to read while we waited for the Lord to provide children.  I, who had been studying a demanding subject or working full-time since age 18, thought it was a marvelous opportunity.  Yet my wife was miserable.  She complained that I wasn’t doing enough housework.  Finally, I told her get a job, any job, to occupy her time until our first child arrived.  Now that we have four homeschooled children under the age of 8, my wife has learned what work is!  More importantly, she has also learned to be content.

Women need to realize the reason they are not happy is within themselves, not outside circumstances.  Until they face up to the true source of their discontentment and repent, I don’t see much hope for our society to turn around.

Laura writes:

Absolutely.

I wholeheartedly agree. Feminists led women to believe that every passing foul mood was due to outside factors and oppressive limitations when often it was within themselves or due to problems that could be faced with an inner transformation.

As Bénéton said in his book Equality by Default, modern life is one big conspiracy against the inner life. Feminism is part of that conspiracy.

J.N. adds:

My wife and I were recently discussing the marriages that have broken up among our relatives and family friends.  In almost every case, it was the wife who instigated it, either by asking for a divorce up front, or by  abandoning her husband for another man, upon which her husband divorced her.  The husbands weren’t perfect, of course, but they had steady jobs and weren’t abusive, drug users, or philanderers.  What’s remarkable is that, aside from the benefit of novelty, the new situation for these women  is no better (and often worse) than the old situation.  For example, there’s my wife’s aunt, who left her husband and daughter and drove across country to be with a man she met on Facebook.  Now she has a child out of wedlock by this man, who is unemployed and lives with his mother.  I could  tell you more crazy stories, and I’m not even factoring in the devastation to husband and children.

Men do these things, too, but they are typically more willing to tough it out in unhappy circumstances.  The legal and moral permission and encouragement our society has given to women to express their discontentment and seek their own happiness with no regard to others has unleashed monsters.

Laura writes:

Feminism has destroyed many thousands of marriages and encouraged outright cruelty in women.

I have written many entries on women who have left their husbands, including posts here, here, here, here and here.

Diana writes:

I think it’s great that Rosen said what she said, in the current context. The fact that Romney is a total wuss and won’t fight back isn’t even disappointing to me at this juncture. I don’t expect anything from him. What’s important is that some of US have found our voices and we’re fighting back without fear of being fired.

What Rosen said should be broadcast virally. Let people make up their own minds about her. You can’t fool all the people all the time.

Mary writes:

Women like Melinda Gates and Hilary Rosen are blind to the fact that the vast majority of working people – women and men – are not, and never will be, working their dream jobs. It is preposterous to assume that America has an infinite supply of stimulating, personalized work experiences at her fingertips and is just waiting to hand them out to each and every citizen, fulfilling the promises of the modern age. Rosen accused Romney’s wife of never working a day in her life, while Rosen and her ilk pay other women to press their clothes, clean their toilets and help raise their children, never seeing the irony. Women working in jobs Rosen and co. would call menial vastly outnumber the relatively small amount of women who can, after graduating from a top school, “choose” a specialty they love and be well paid for it. Can Rosen actually believe she speaks for the majority?

You would think at some point it would occur to these very intelligent feminists that, if asked, many women might prefer – instead of chambermaiding, waitressing, doing factory work, etc. – to stay home and clean their own toilets and be there for their own children and husbands; to do the good work of the home; to be deeply satisfied by controlling their own surrondings, to make, even on a shoestring, a happy and beautiful place to live – to have less materially but infinitely more in reality. Rosen and Gates pay others to do homemaking for them, never realizing what they are missing. But one modern woman does in fact know just how much today’s women crave homemaking, how the sweet, small details of homelife can fulfill like nothing else. This woman sews and raises chickens and is really quite hospitable, and has created an empire cashing in on one of humanity’s more wholesome urges, the urge to feather one’s nest. Yes, in a most ironic way, and like her or not, Martha Stewart exemplifies both sides of this coin: she’s an ambitious and driven woman who found out what was really missing from manic modern life, and now she is a billionaire.

Lydia Sherman writes:

Is it a luxury, as Rosen would say, to share a car with your husband, to live in relatively isolated conditions, without a lot of social activity, to make your own clothes, to bake your own bread, and clean your own house? Is it a luxury to teach your own children at home instead of packing them on a school bus to be taken to an institution to be taught by others? Is it a luxury to use old furniture instead of new? How did the word “luxury” get attached to full time homemakers? We don’t have the luxury of a new working wardrobe each year or eating out. Sometimes we even do without the luxury of makeup except on special occasions.

I think its been twisted so badly, it can hardly be unravelled. They think think we should have the luxury of going out and working so we can have better clothes, fancy holidays, visits to the hairdressers and nail salons, and eating out. Yet, they call staying home and doing things ourselves a luxury.

Lydia adds:

Laura, don’t you think that the homemakers are kind of a sleeping giant, a peaceful lot? They haven’t got time to demonstrate or establish federal policy, but still, I think its a mistake to rile them up.

Laura writes:

Well, there is much to say on this subject of why homemakers have not spoken up more before. They lost much of their self-confidence with the onset of feminism and were intimidated. Also, women at home tend, by nature, to be non-confrontational and less aggressive. But things are changing. I think the Internet is partly responsible for that.

Jesse Powell writes:

On the subject of work, I think it is important to point out that what “work” means is very different for men and women. Men’s work is focused and specialized and productive where pretty much the same task is done over and over again over many years. The development of ever higher power and ever higher status and ever greater earning power is an important aspect of a man’s career path. Women’s work on the other hand is more general, more varied, more spontaneous and less structured and organized; it is many different kinds of activities going on where the focus at hand shifts according to the priorities of the moment. You might say that men’s work is about specialization and expertise while women’s work is about flexibility and multi-tasking. In women’s work, personal relationships and social interactions are highly important.

One of the defining characteristics of men’s work as compared to women’s work is that there is no limit to the man gaining an extra reward for an extra unit of his work; the man’s specialty has an unlimited demand. In women’s work there is a natural end point for each task taken on; new tasks may always emerge but any particular task takes a limited amount of time to complete.

The spheres of what is “men’s work” and what is “women’s work” need to be kept separate in people’s minds and more importantly it should be recognized that men should do “men’s work” and that women should do “women’s work.” It is OK for a woman to at least partially involve herself in what could be described as “men’s work” but only if there is no man charged with her care. If a woman is married then very definitely it is her husband’s responsibility to guard her from “men’s work”.

When people speak of “work” or someone’s “job” they are always talking about work for money or being in the “labor force.” “Work” as conventionally defined is men’s work, it is not women’s work. It makes sense for men to “work” because “work” itself is part of the man’s sphere. It does not make sense for women to “work” when there is a man available to support her because “work” is not a part of the woman’s sphere; it is specifically a part of the man’s sphere. “Work” always refers to “men’s work”; working for other people for money fits with the man’s role, not the woman’s role.

It’s very important to be aware of the gender role distinction in work because a man working supports his role as a man while a woman working undermines her role as a woman. A man’s value in reference to women increases when the man works but a woman’s value in reference to men decreases when the woman works.

In traditional society such as in America 100 years ago a married woman working was seen as a very bad thing; married women working was less common than divorce. This tells me that a married woman working on a regular basis is as serious a disruption to the family unit as divorce is. When a man works he gives to his family but when a woman works she steals from her family.

The satisfaction from work for a man is in large part the pride and benefits he gets from supporting his family. Satisfaction from work for a woman is downright pathological in most circumstances. It is much better for the woman to seek satisfaction and a sense of identity from her role as wife and mother as the wife and mother role fits very well with the nature of “women’s work.”

Laura writes:

Again, jobs are not in limitless supply, as feminists such as Rosen believe.

Women used to be among the major supporters of restrictions on married women in the workforce. That’s because these restrictions enabled them to be assured of support from husbands and it also enabled single women who needed jobs to be assured of work.

Sunshine writes:

Fitzgerald wrote: “Furthermore, a large majority of males and females now consider it their duty to push their daughters into sports, degrees, career trajectories at all costs without a second thought.”

We have been discussing this very issue at patriactionary. Here is a comment that I made there, but I think it is very relevant to what Fitzgerald wrote.

Oh, thank you for the posting this! It really clarified what I have been noticing…feminism is an insidious poison that has infected even conservative Christian men. My husband’s mother was a home-maker for most of his youth. I was a feminist with a degree from a prestigious univeristy and going into grad school when we got married, which he was fine with until he met Jesus and we had children, at which point he ordered me to leave my career to care for my family (and I am beyond grateful to him for that). However, recently I told him that I do not think our daughters should attend university, and he was horrified at the suggestion. He went on about them needing to be educated and to have choices, and so on. He asked me if I wanted them to grow up only to be housewives; I said yes, and he was just shocked. In just one generation, what has been the normal sphere for women for time immemorial is now seen even by conservative Christian men as a pursuit that is almost shameful for their daughters. I am not convinced that university is best for our, or anyone’s, daughters. Do we really need to shell out tens of thousands of dollars for them to be exposed to the Vagina Monologues? I do not think all these choices really make women happy and fulfilled anyway; I believe that is one of the biggest lies of feminism.

Laura writes:

Don’t send your daughters to college.

Let them have a few years to relax and pursue their own interests before they undertake the serious business of finding a spouse and forming a home. Women today arrive at the threshold of marriage completely burned out. It’s not worth it. Let your daughters have freedom under your care for a few years. Let them breathe and cultivate their interests. But don’t send them to college. If you have the money to spare, take them to Europe.

Carolyn writes:

I just discovered your blog. I appreciated your comments regarding Hilary Rosen. Here’s my two cents’ worth on the subject.

Laura writes:

Excellent!

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