donna, you are treading on very thin ice with me.
I have pinged one of my children, who just might have an opinion (probably very different than mine, lol!) on this subject.
Where on earth did you ever get the idea I thought motherhood was a form of servitude? I thought we were talking about Piper’s making Trig’s hair look nice with sister spit?
You were the one who went all “womens’ lib on me, and it truly is a waste of pixels. I am too old and opinionated to change.
Believe it or not, I read Betty Friedan before you might even have been a twinkle in your daddy’s eye. If I can pull the memory up in my old grey head, I think it was about sometime in the early to mid sixties, when I had 2 babies under two years of age.
She was totally wrong about us strong women, but “dead-eye-dick right” about suburbia. Most of us truly smart moms got out and into supportive villages and very small towns, but we didn’t pitch the babies out with the bathwater.
We got them bikes, and let them enjoy a true American childhood. And, we didn’t worry much about germs and spit, neighborhood bullies, and other such childhood traumas.
Even though there were a few “squirrely” neighbors, we figured that was part of growing up, being let down and disappointed. We also trusted that there were enough good neighbors around to help them figure out how to tell the difference between the good guys and the bad eggs.
It wasn’t always easy, donna.
Sometimes we had to make tough choices, but we did, because we loved our children, and wanted the best for them, even if it didn’t make us “popular” at the time.
But, I thought the issue was Piper trying to smooth Trig’s hair, using a time-old great-grandma tool, and you went all beserk on me. Why?
I’d rather stay out of this, other than to say that although I’ve only read some of the comments (since I’ve been pinged repeatedly), it seems like donna is trying to make a macroeconomic statement about organization of societies in terms of oppression and so forth—as I said I’ve barely taken time to read much on this thread—while jacquej and who knows who else are coming at the topic from a personal experience angle. If I’ve failed to capture the spirit of this thread, please eject me into the dark pit of my previous angst/euphoria trying to help defeat the bona-fide communist that seeks the Oval Office(!).
For myself, I believe in Patriarchy and traditional gender roles within a context of marginal social liberty for women to adopt non-traditional roles if they so choose; if as an individual any given woman sees that she for whatever reason isn’t suited for the traditional role of homemaker, and genuinely knows in her bones that she and society are better off with her competing with men for prominence in public life, industry, science, academia, what have you—so be it. But as an overall attitude for all women, I believe feminism is HIGHLY detrimental for everyone.
I see “feminism” as being interpreted in mutually antagonistic and clashing ways on this thread. Feminism is indeed a controversial and confounding topic. My own take is that “feminism” can be as benevolent as a social reformation against long-standing abuses of/by the Patriarchy, and/or as evil as a vendetta against males by power-mad female communists who’d just as soon chime in with Weather-woman Bernadine Dorhn’s exultant praise of the Manson Family’s rampage at the Tate/LaBianca ranch. Google Dorhn’s exact quote on that, if you dare. I remind the reader that Sharon Tate was pregnant at the time of her truly heinous and grisly murder. Very fitting that Hussein Obama followed Dohrn around since 1981; that “No Fetus Left Alive” program of his is obviously their “brainchild.”
“Helter Skelter” is the penultimate expression of anti-capitalist feminism; the long-haired, draft-dodging drugged-out hippie males abandoning their proper warrior roles in the struggle against communism in Southeast Asia, and instead perverting their remnant masculinity through brainwashed females in a completely twisted revolution taken to a nightmarish and bizarre, bloody extreme.
Marx and other founders of communism sought to replace the family with the state. BAD idea; even worse is that it has been fully realized to disastrous results elsewhere, and is steadily progressing here in America, even though the Manson Family was supposedly dissolved long ago.
But I COULD still be mad at my mother for reasons that I’ll not go into, even though she’s invited me to vent my spleen here. I’d just rather not.