July 25, 2005

On Marriage, choices, nannies and Jude Law's shlong
by Liza Sabater

I'm going to pick a fight just for the fuck of it. This is a cat-fight. I'm coming out in full-swing mode. Why? Because I'm really sick and tired for what passes these days as progressive feminism and alleged "forward-thinking" views of romantic, familial and sexual relations in this country. What Amanda's ripping of the latest "nanny" scandals masks is a real disgust for all things domestic; especially "stay-at-home" motherhood.

Guess what feminists out there :

I chose to have children.

I chose to get married when I got pregnant.

I chose to stay-at-home.

I chose to defer my career for my children.

I chose to defer to my husband for family stability.

I chose to hire a nanny to help with the kids.

This bullshit that self-loathing women would choose to do these things happily and merrily is just ... ARGH! If you have never gotten married, never had children, never hired a nanny or never made choices against your own interest but for the sake of the greater good of your family, you know what?

SHUT THE FUCK UP!

Olen is an asshole for having printed this article. At least, she's a shrewd asshole -- she got paid to spread her misery to the world.

And yet, that's exactly the problem with this story.

What I find problematic about this whole "Olen vs. Tessa" story is what has escaped a lot of people from this conversation : Olen's comodification of herself. Nobody is really addressing the fact that Olen has chosen to profit from her misery as opposed to using it to engage in a real discussion about marriage and womanhood.

Olen has made a choice to turn herself and Tessa into commodities because -- and this is where the clash between mass-media writers and bloggers lies -- she believes this is what Tessa is doing through blogging. I truly believe Olen's is the classic view of mass-media writers : that blogging is done only as a way to sell yourself to an audience until you get the book deal every writer deserves.

Writers write because for some of us, it's not just the best way to communicate; it is also the most powerful thing we can do.

I spent 4 years of my life with all sorts of post-partum depression and anxieties about motherhood and what not. This was before the blog explosion. So I have journal after journal written about how I could not write because pregnancy, nursing, and motherhood did not let me think straight. Motherhood was my "writer's block" yet I have scores of notebooks were I wrote about the block itself.

I couldn't stop writing about not being able to write.

I tried turning my stories into articles but just couldn't. Not only was it hard to find the conviction to put my misery up for sale; I did not want to be pigeonholed into the role of a "mommy writer". I wanted to write about everything that interests me. Not just motherhood. Not just my vagina. Everything. Pay-per-write was just not for me --and it created a crisis for me because it shot down the only reason why I decided to quit teaching and a corporate job and stay home and breed. I thought I could get paid to write and be a mother easily. It was not.

Then I discovered this technology called "blog" and the practices that come with the technology and, literally, blogging saved not my life -- I don't have the maniacal personality to become suicidal -- but it saved my sanity and with it, the well-being of my family.

Well, blogging and my nanny saved my family.

Yup. I have a nanny. I also have had a slew of babysitters who have worked with us, all young and hot and sexy. And I thank them all for putting up with me through these 8 years; for being my nanny and my babysitters. Because, you know what? Parents hire chilcare providers to help them take care of the children.

Nannies, mannies and babysitters are not hired to parent. They are hired to become an extension of their employers' parenting. That's why to a lot of people who hire them, childcare providers become an extension of who they are.

That nobody is even giving kudos for Ollen to admit that, is well, troubling to say the least.

Pandagon: Good wives and wild nannies, the "can't win for losing" edition

In the first story, Olen treated her nanny's status as a single woman as some sort of rebuke. That Tessy is young, can have sex in her living room if she likes, has free time to analyze everything through the lens of her interest in Victorian novels, can go out for drinks with her friends without having to get a babysitter, and just generally has other things on her mind than the children and domestic life in general was treated by Olen as some sort of judgement on herself, as if Tessy's mere existence mocked her for having other, more domestic concerns.

Is it stupid that Olen and a lot of other people look at their nannies as an extension of who they are? Yeah or just maybe.

I think it is an unfortunate by-product of American alienation : we don't know the value of who we are unless there's a dollar sign attach to it. So "the nanny" becomes the public face of a lot of mothers. The better the nanny, the more expensive she might be and thus the better the mother. "Quality childcare" is something you buy in this coutry; not something you get through social capital.

"Quality childcare", just like "quality education" have become the ultimate commodication of pareting and people from both the left and the right eat this like alienated fools.

"The nanny", "the school" : These two everyday myths, just like the whiteness of the refrigerator and the softness of the laundry have become reflections of the value of women as mothers and home-makers in an age when women will spit feminist platitudes at other women for chosing to be mothers and not career opportunists.

That a lot of women enter completely alienated to the their beings into not just relationships but marriage and motherhood? That is the discussion that is missing from this debate and I'm going to start fisking it through Jude Law's shlong :

Pandagon: Good wives and wild nannies, the "can't win for losing" edition

In the second story, the nanny is contrasted with the lady of the house again, but this time to rebuke the lady of the house for the opposite reason--in this case, the nanny is the symbol of domesticity used to make the lady of the house look like she's too adventerous, gets out too much, is too interested in things other than house, husband and children. You know, exactly what Olen fired Tessy for.

First off, a woman who is involved in the break-up of the man she is going to married has to be deluded to think that she will be afforded the "sanctity of marriage" he gave up to be with her. To defend Sienna Miller's lifestyle while bashing Daisy Wright is just too easy if we're going to extend the alleged sanctity of marriage to her part of the relatioship while blasting Jude Law for being a cheating fool. This is hypocrisy at its feminist worse.

The hypocrisy of this outcry is just flabbergasting. I'm sorry, but the meaning and rules of fidelity in this relationship changed the moment Sienna Miller decided a married man was fair game. There is no sanctity she can defend; no monogamy she should expect.

Does this mean though, that it is wrong for married people to breakup and go on with new relationships? No, I don't believe so. I actually, truly believe that fidelity is a social construct contrary to what humans, in a more "natural state" would do. It is a morality play and to defend it, is to fall into the trap that being in a marriage or relationship forever is good no matter what.

Marriage is terribly overrated.

AlerNet : The Myth of Marriage

I think that you really cannot predict how well a marriage is going to go by the values that people have entering it. And in fact, one thing we do know for sure is that women with higher egalitarian ideas about gender are still slightly more likely to divorce than women with more traditional ideas. The opposite is true for men. Men with more traditional ideas about male bread-winning and female roles are more likely to divorce today than men with more egalitarian liberal views.

There is no inherent sanctity in any relationship -- not marriage; certainly not in an engagement. There is no outside Platonic value to love. Love is what you make of it.

To believe that someone like Sienna Miller can go on with ther life as it was before without having to make adjustments or sacrifices for the sake of that relationship --because it is her feminist right not to surrender to a man for love -- is not only foolish, but it is the trap of what a lot of women believe should not be negotiated in a relationship.

Economy comes from the ancient greek word that means "housekeeping". There is an economy to relationships, a negotiating, a give and take; a loose and earn. These practices, these "everyday doings" is what makes culture, it's what creates our values and our morals. The economy of our intimate relationships is what writes the rules of society.

Progressive women, real independent and feminist women truly understand that marriage is the accumulation of their practices with their mate; and not something that has been given to them from a higher power -- wether they call that higher power a god or society.

AlerNet : The Myth of Marriage

There's a sort of attitude, again, magical thinking, that if we get you married, then you'll be fine and we don't have to worry about anti-poverty programs, we don't have to worry about job training for men and women, we don't have to worry about child-care. And if we can't get you married, well then we don't want to bother with you either, for a different reason. If we get you married we say you're fine, you don't need anything else. And if you don't get married, it's like you're not fine and you don't deserve anything else. So I find the rhetoric and the millions of dollars that are being spent to promote marriage very frustrating because it seems to me that we would make a better effort to do two other approaches. 1. If you're going to fight poverty, the best way to fight that is to get good child-care, affordable child-care, and decent jobs. And 2. If you want to help people do their relationships better, I'm all for that.

Not only is marriage more of a transaction than a statement of love; but marriage, as the ultimate expression of the union of "uniquely compatible souls", is a myth. Just like fidelity is a myth. . Even in tantric buddhism it is a state you aspire to through the very physical everyday practices of yoga. It is a doing; a conscious and aware doing.

Fidelity is not something that happens to you; it is something you make. If you come into a relationship that is the product of an "infidelity", then that relationship has been defined by that act. Yours is a relationship that has started from blasting open the closed bonds of another woman to your new man.

Is this bad? It's not bad, but foolish to believe that you can easily shut close your new relationship just by having the man give you an engagement ring and even marrying you. There are always consequences to our actions; not just rights or wrongs.

Fidelity becomes either a paradise lost or a new world to build together in awareness. Most people choose the former to the latter.

Pandagon: Good wives and wild nannies, the "can't win for losing" edition

In both cases, the nanny was trotted out as an example of what is intensely alluring to men that wives better watch out for if they won't provide it to their men. In the first story, I find this a little ridiculous--nowhere did Olen even come close to indicating that her jealousy of Tessy had shit to do with her husband and I really don't think it did. But I saw many people in the comments here and on other blogs insist that was the main reason Olen threw Tessy out, because a single woman who isn't domesticated is supposedly incredibly alluring to men. For what it's worth, I think those folks couldn't conceive of the idea of a woman getting jealous over anything that doesn't involve a man, so they imposed a more familiar, man-centered narrative on one where the husband actually only matters as a character in the story when he fires the nanny.

But no matter, because the narrative--a single woman with condoms in her purse whose life isn't centered around home and hearth is an overwhelming temptation to a married man--is so familiar that people read it into a story where it wasn't really there. Clearly, it's a dominant narrative in our culture. The underlying threat to women is clear--men cheat because domestic women are boring.

Here Amanda is right (Of course she is right! It's not like I don't admire her. I do.)

As Amanda rightfully points out, here's another myth that needs to be blasted but in a more specific way : The "intesely alluring to men" part is what women believe is intensely alluring to men; not what men actually find alluring.

New York Daily News - News & Views - Even skinny women found to have weighty fixations

The results were fascinating: Women chose drawings to represent themselves that were larger than average, 5.26 on the scale. The men, however, saw them as thinner than average, 4.84 on the scale. The body type the women desired was significantly underweight, 3.88; the body type the men would most want was very close to how they saw their partners now, or 4.51 on the scale, about average.

"The other interesting aspect to this research," says Charlotte Markey, "is that we found that the longer women are in romantic relationships, the less likely they are to think that their partners are satisfied with their bodies." She speculates that there are two possible explanations.

First, the longer people are in relationships, the more they tend to project their own feelings on their partner. So if women are dissatisfied with their bodies, over time, they begin to believe their husbands are dissatisfied as well, even if they aren't.

I find women awfully complex. Men? Not so. When I man wants you, no matter how fat you are, he wants you. His dick is his main head; his brain comes second.

Heh.

Yeah, yeah, call me sexist, I don't care. I've aroused enough men in my life and seen enough cock-a-flying to know this to be a truth in my life : I've been fat and I have been thin; I have been single and now married; I have been childless and now a mother. Men -- other men beside my husband -- have always wanted to fuck me. When they say "he's just not into you"; trust me, he ain't.

We women complicate what is simple when it comes to relationships. We really need to learn (and I include myself, first in line) to move on when it comes to men wanting us or not. They either do or they don't.

Now, that some men want to be with more than one woman? Grock! I so can understand that. If I could fuck everything that walked, believe me, I would. Unfortunately, am not only a very picky eater (I like my man-meats to be aged and have a je ne c'est quoi to them); but I have not been liberated by the pill. Such is life.

But this is about choice. I truly believe that in Jude Law's case, his choices were not ... let's say ... well thought out. He gave too many voting rights to his dick and it shows in how his ideal was shattered with the blasting of his marriage vows :

Pandagon: Good wives and wild nannies, the "can't win for losing" edition

The second story of Jude Law, however, has him in bed with his nanny complaining about his fiancee because she has a life outside of being staying home and tending to him.

Wright's account of the affair begins when Law whines to her about his beloved Miller's commitment to work and social life. Wright wrote, "I said to Jude I didn't understand why he didn't find a wife who didn't want a career and to party all the time ... He said ... he would love that more than anything." A seriously pissed friend of Miller's has confirmed this angle of the story, claiming that Law explained his straying to his fiancée by saying, "I told you I needed you to be there for me."

Traister quickly sees a parallel between this and the taunting stories aimed at Jennifer Aniston for refusing to buckle under and become the happy, un-careered wife of Brad Pitt. The moral of the story, ladies--men cheat because domestic women are sexier. You can't win for losing.

Let's not talk about Jude Law for a moment. Let's talk about men in general (especially since Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston were dragged into this):

Why is it wrong for a man to want to have a wife at home? Can someone honestly tell me what is wrong with that? Is it because it is what conservatives think is the right thing and therefore liberals have to be against it?

Let me put it this way : If a lesbian couple marries and then divorces because one of the women didn't want to stay at home with the kids, how different is that from a heterosexual marriage breaking up?

The problem in Jude Law's morality play is not that he boinked the nanny. He already had boinked Sienna Miller while married to his then "post-partumly" depressed wife, Sadie Frost.

No, the problem here is of another soul lost in the land of the clueless : Jude Law wanted to have in Miller what he threw away by divorcing Frost. And because Miller wasn't all she could be -- and Frost was out of the question with their divorce finalized and her moving on with her life -- he found that missing something in Wright. Is he a mysoginist for having found the perfect wife in three different women? No, I don't believe so. I just think he's selfish yet clueless.

He wanted a wife to take care of him, to be his fashion plate, the mother of his children and his professional cheerleader. He, like many women, had unrealistic expectations of his relationships. So he went ahead to get what he wanted : Instead of having it all in one woman -- the so-called perfect wife --, he broke down the myth into 3 separate women.

Nobody becomes that famous without being a go-getter.

He wanted to have his cake and eat it too? Yeah and then, maybe. I think though he is as trapped in the myth of marriage as his foolish bride-to-be.

Pandagon: Good wives and wild nannies, the "can't win for losing" edition

Of course, there is an underlying narrative that ties these two contradictory ones, and it's really quite simple--male infidelity is always women's fault. Once you accept that basic premise, all you have to do is reduce the cheated-upon woman to a type, declare that she's not a good enough woman, and your job is done.

I'm sure someone out there has tried to create a logical explanation for all the contradictory narratives we create to blame women for male infidelity, but the best I've ever heard is that men are fickle and always want something other than what they have. I think that's utter nonsense, of course, because that's just another variation of the insulting stereotype that men are animals that can't control their own urges so women have to do it for them. You see that evoked in the Traister article when she quotes a New York Post article on this Jude Law story.

Amanda, it's really simple : We need to throw away the victorian conventions of marriage and love. If we are part of the reality-based political community, we need to take that practice and apply it to everyday life --even the fairy-tale of the perfect marriage and the perfect love.

The underlying narrative is that the rules of marriage change with our choices. Marriage is not a static-thing you can count on. It's a give and take of actions, choices ... even the idea of love and certainly the doings of sex.

In Law's and Miller's case, they fooled themselves into the romantic notion that everything was going to be conventional, traditional, pure with that one ring [ haven't they learned anything from Tolkien! ]

Should that be a reason to begrudge them, to consider them less human for not having fairy-tale lives?

A recent study showed --and I think I read this at Pandagon -- that women who "over-dosed" on fairy tales as kids are more likely to fall into "abussive" relationships than women who had more "reality-based" childhoods.

Isn't it time we got real about sex, marriage, parenting, nannies and the meaning of Jude Law's runaway shlong?

Posted by Liza Sabater in Culture, Family, Feminism, Liberalism, Marriage, Morality, Motherhood, Mythologies
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