These narratives never include how certain African American women have happily refused marriage on the grounds that the guy isn’t a long term love, and rely on a tree of true relatives, god parents, chosen relatives etc. to bring up their children and support their own inner selves. These hipster Brooklyn women have never bothered to read and understand the work of Kathryn Edin, a brilliant sociologist at Princeton who has conducted ethnographic studies that have illuminated the inner lives of African American low income women. My favorite book of hers is Promises I Can Keep: How Low Income Women put Motherhood before Marriage (with Maria Kefalas), 2005.
Edin's Promises I Can Keep is really good. Her new one looks great, too -- The Injustice of Place -- but I haven't had a chance to read it yet! You're right, she's wonderful, and under-read, too.
These narratives always forget that some people cannot get married, as it would cut them off from disability and other benefits necessary for their survival.
As I was reading this, I kept thinking, 'Wait, these women are just having standard-issue midlife crises, aren't they...?' And then you said the m-word and it made me so relieved, haha. Did Elizabeth Gilbert ever frame Eat, Pray, Love as anything other than her seeking her personal happiness? If not, then all the credit to her for just being honest.
I've written before about how the central tenets of this type of contemporary feminism are uplifting women's happiness and self-esteem. You said such a political ideology wasn't worth spending resources on. But I'd also add that such an ideology is inherently unstable and toxic because happiness can mean anything to anyone, so it will just reflect the day-to-day whims of those in power and pass that off as morally righteous.
If this kind of feminism is becoming dominant in defining liberalism/progressivism, is it any wonder there are gender divergences emerging between men and women regarding politics? If liberalism is about boosting women's self-esteem (especially in contentious areas like dating), then of course men will be turned off by that brand of "liberalism" and turn towards "conservatism," two political labels we should newly define as simply being emotional-support projects for their favoured genders.
I’m a man who finds it difficult to find simple things around the house and spent the entire day helping his wife clean the apartment, so I feel I’m qualified to say this:
If you’re divorcing your man because you’re dissatisfied at his share of the housework- assuming you haven’t specifically brought this up to him as an issue to work on- then you’re not a strong feminist, you’re a weak willed worm who just wants someone to roll over for you. These women are doing nothing but show their asses with their narrative (funny how they all seem to agree with each other). They don’t live in the real world.
As a woman with a reasonably intellectually demanding job (research manager) it’s always struck me that I take a kind of “male” approach to domestic work (at least based on these books). I am clean but not neat. Like, I put my bag down after coming home and do not hang it back up- it just kind of hangs out on a chair till I need it. I do not fold my underwear, I just shove it in a drawer. I can never find the ketchup. If I run OUT of ketchup, I don’t have another one waiting in the cabinet because I didn’t plan ahead for the fateful day when the ketchup runs out; I buy things when I need them. None of these little “mental load” behaviors are intuitive and I guess I just never really learned them? They also take a lot of cognitive effort, and I don’t have a ton of extra executive function to spare between work and children.
Women who have time to worry about restocking ketchup are usually, IMO, just bored; or else not sufficiently challenged in their life or work. Which is a separate problem. It seems like the women who are upset always have fun hobby jobs or part-time work and no empathy for what it means to, you know, have a real job with real demands, deadlines, and accountability. It is unreasonable, IMO for Maggie Smith to get mad her husband missed her domestic labor when she was out doing readings - of COURSE he did; he has a JOB; he can’t just drop everything to accommodate you. Hire a nanny and this won’t be an issue! Hire a housekeeper; have a monthly cleaning! Normal white-collar working couples do this kind of thing but it seems for the literary hobbyists it does not compute.
These narratives never include how certain African American women have happily refused marriage on the grounds that the guy isn’t a long term love, and rely on a tree of true relatives, god parents, chosen relatives etc. to bring up their children and support their own inner selves. These hipster Brooklyn women have never bothered to read and understand the work of Kathryn Edin, a brilliant sociologist at Princeton who has conducted ethnographic studies that have illuminated the inner lives of African American low income women. My favorite book of hers is Promises I Can Keep: How Low Income Women put Motherhood before Marriage (with Maria Kefalas), 2005.
Edin's Promises I Can Keep is really good. Her new one looks great, too -- The Injustice of Place -- but I haven't had a chance to read it yet! You're right, she's wonderful, and under-read, too.
These narratives always forget that some people cannot get married, as it would cut them off from disability and other benefits necessary for their survival.
As I was reading this, I kept thinking, 'Wait, these women are just having standard-issue midlife crises, aren't they...?' And then you said the m-word and it made me so relieved, haha. Did Elizabeth Gilbert ever frame Eat, Pray, Love as anything other than her seeking her personal happiness? If not, then all the credit to her for just being honest.
I've written before about how the central tenets of this type of contemporary feminism are uplifting women's happiness and self-esteem. You said such a political ideology wasn't worth spending resources on. But I'd also add that such an ideology is inherently unstable and toxic because happiness can mean anything to anyone, so it will just reflect the day-to-day whims of those in power and pass that off as morally righteous.
If this kind of feminism is becoming dominant in defining liberalism/progressivism, is it any wonder there are gender divergences emerging between men and women regarding politics? If liberalism is about boosting women's self-esteem (especially in contentious areas like dating), then of course men will be turned off by that brand of "liberalism" and turn towards "conservatism," two political labels we should newly define as simply being emotional-support projects for their favoured genders.
I’m a man who finds it difficult to find simple things around the house and spent the entire day helping his wife clean the apartment, so I feel I’m qualified to say this:
If you’re divorcing your man because you’re dissatisfied at his share of the housework- assuming you haven’t specifically brought this up to him as an issue to work on- then you’re not a strong feminist, you’re a weak willed worm who just wants someone to roll over for you. These women are doing nothing but show their asses with their narrative (funny how they all seem to agree with each other). They don’t live in the real world.
As a woman with a reasonably intellectually demanding job (research manager) it’s always struck me that I take a kind of “male” approach to domestic work (at least based on these books). I am clean but not neat. Like, I put my bag down after coming home and do not hang it back up- it just kind of hangs out on a chair till I need it. I do not fold my underwear, I just shove it in a drawer. I can never find the ketchup. If I run OUT of ketchup, I don’t have another one waiting in the cabinet because I didn’t plan ahead for the fateful day when the ketchup runs out; I buy things when I need them. None of these little “mental load” behaviors are intuitive and I guess I just never really learned them? They also take a lot of cognitive effort, and I don’t have a ton of extra executive function to spare between work and children.
Women who have time to worry about restocking ketchup are usually, IMO, just bored; or else not sufficiently challenged in their life or work. Which is a separate problem. It seems like the women who are upset always have fun hobby jobs or part-time work and no empathy for what it means to, you know, have a real job with real demands, deadlines, and accountability. It is unreasonable, IMO for Maggie Smith to get mad her husband missed her domestic labor when she was out doing readings - of COURSE he did; he has a JOB; he can’t just drop everything to accommodate you. Hire a nanny and this won’t be an issue! Hire a housekeeper; have a monthly cleaning! Normal white-collar working couples do this kind of thing but it seems for the literary hobbyists it does not compute.