|
Poor Michael's Almanac
asked for my take on this a few days ago. I've been out of town,
house-hunting and preparing for the big move to Colorado, so things have been
hectic. Thanks to Em for the great response on her
blog that I can't pronounce. Here are my thoughts on the article
in question.
In her recent article, American Prospect Online - Homeward Bound,
Ms. Linda Hirschman laments the practical failures of the feminist
movement. While women are afforded more opportunity, are better educated,
and would seemingly be poised to take over the world, or at least the
workplace...they're not. Time and again, these "elite" women
choose to forego high-powered careers to stay home.
What's the problem there? Isn't feminism about supporting women making
whatever choices she wants, giving her the freedom to have options to be a
butcher, a baker, or a candlestick-maker if she so decides?
It is. And that's precisely where it has failed, according to Ms.
Hirschman.
Apparently the goal of feminism was to get all women working full-time in the
upper tiers of business or government. If we absolutely must have
children, we should return to full-time work as soon as possible. A
week. Maybe two. After all, a high-powered job with a paycheck at
least as fat as her similarly-qualified male co-workers is the way that a woman
will truly feel most fulfilled. Because the goal of life is to feel
fulfilled, dontcha know...
According to Ms. Hirschman, conservative values have beaten feminism by
pressuring women not to abandon traditional family roles, and sacrifice a
high-ranking career for a part-time, dead-end, second-shift job and then do so
only if it is absolutely necessary for her to work in the corporate world at
all. Not even "elite" women, the ivy-league-MBAs with limitless
executive-potential, whom, as starry-eyed college students, were the icons of
feminism's hope for the future can resist the siren call of
"Tradition" when it comes to getting married and starting a family.
What the feminist movement should have done, Ms.
Hirschmann believes, was continued its radical, idealistic origins. When
it compromised and actually gave women more options than they knew what to do
with, and validated whatever choices they made, as long as they were freely
chosen by women for themselves, it was not expected that women would choose such
demeaning, menial roles or eschew the material and powerful success that society
valued to be housewives and soccer moms. Talk about a backfire! Ms.
Hirschman and her femi-boomer friends have not been happy with these
results. They burned their bras, made abortion legal, and put their
careers first to pave the way for young women today to break through the glass
ceiling...and women a generation or two later just aren't interested.
The solution? Take away choice. Just as
women today take for granted the right to work for a fair wage in the career of
their choice, and take for granted the right to vote, feminism's new (old) goal
should be to change society to where women associate a "flourishing
life" with one that is not limited to one tending to their families and
homes, but may or may not include it so long as women's "flourishing"
is not impeded. It will be difficult, Ms. Hirschmann concedes, to pry
women from traditional roles, but with the proper rules in place, she believes
it can be done.
First, girls, when you go to college, don't pick a
liberal arts major. Liberal Arts are fun and interesting, and it's good to
learn to think critically, but most times it doesn't prepare you well for a
proper "flourishing" career after graduation. Already as
students, young women are preparing to sell themselves short and make it easy to
drop out of the working women's world and end up doing thankless menial labor at
home for no pay.
And that's how you measure success today.
"Money is the marker of success in a market economy; it usually accompanies
power, and it enables the bearer to wield power, including within the
family." So get an education that will get you a job that will get you
money that will get you power. And THEN you will be truly free, ladies.
Now if you want to marry a man, do so with your career
goals in mind. Find a spouse who is:
1. ...on the same page regarding
gender equality in practice as well as ideology (and be willing to tolerate a
messy house in the name of equally shared chores, or the lack thereof); or
2. ... much older and secure in his own career, and therefore
financially established to hire others to tend to the home (you know, those
traditionally-minded women who need part-time, dead-end jobs); or
3. ...much younger or of a lower social/educational status
than yourself, such as an artist, so that you will be the primary breadwinner
and never be tempted to rely on a man to provide for you, because the one you
picked will likely be unable to make enough to support a family anyway.
And if you MUST have a baby, just have one. One
can easily be carted around and shuffled off to daycare (or under the care of a
full-time substitute live-in mommy). Once again, employing one of those
unenlightened, likely overqualified, traditionally minded women whose families
need additional income. When there are two or more children in a
household, the trap of traditional family roles becomes exponentially bigger and
nastier.
Insulted yet?
I think the freedom to choose the direction for our
lives is where most women today find themselves. That was the conclusion
of the popular movie Mona
Lisa Smile. When my mother was in college, she basically had
three careers open to her - teacher, nurse, or secretary. Nowadays, we can
be and do and achieve anything we want from Secretary of State of to
astronaut or mega-millionaire conglomerate corporation owners.
Yet more and more women are seeing the importance of a
well-run home and raising their own children over a high-powered, big paycheck,
full-time (and then some) career). You'd think it was instinctual, almost
an innate quality of "woman" to have a mind toward family and
home. For some reason, feminism sees this as a problem. Perhaps most
shockingly, Ms. Hirschmann informs her gentle readers,
...what they do is bad for them, is certainly bad for
society, and is widely imitated....these choices
are bad for women individually. A good life for humans includes the classical
standard of using one's capacities for speech and reason in a prudent way,
the liberal requirement of having enough autonomy to direct one's own life,
and the utilitarian test of doing more good than harm in the world. Measured
against these time-tested standards, the expensively educated upper-class moms
will be leading lesser lives. At feminism's dawning, two theorists compared
gender ideology to a caste system. To borrow their insight, these daughters of
the upper classes will be bearing most of the burden of the work always
associated with the lowest caste: sweeping and cleaning bodily waste.
Wow.
People think I'm exaggerating when I talk about the
lies of feminism and how dangerous it is to women, that it really despises and
is demeaning toward the very people it claims to be serving.
Feminism doesn't seek justice for women, it doesn't free them from enslavement
to a certain ideology, it just replaces her master for a mistress.
The thing about Christian woman is that we are free. By grace through
faith in Christ, we have been set free from all that truly enslaves us - not a
patriarchal misogynistic society that keeps woman illiterate, barefoot,
pregnant, in the kitchen and without a voice by all means possible; not an
egalitarian, androgynous, misogynistic culture with its superficial,
materialistic definition of success - but from the things that will not only
kill us but damn us for eternity: sin, death, and the devil. We have been
freed not by marching on Washington, burning our undergarments, or killing the
unwanted "byproducts" of promiscuous fornication (a.k.a. babies), but
by the suffering and death of Jesus Christ on the Cross.
It is only in the freedom of sins forgiven in Christ that women can see what
a gift it is to have been made female, to have been given such beautiful gifts
of the vocations just for us, where we can serve our neighbors without worry
about material gain or even that our Heavenly Father will tend to us and provide
for us. He has already given us all that we truly need in Christ's death
for us - forgiveness, life, and salvation. Now that...that's freedom.
Edited on: March 11th, 2006 9:41 pm
|
