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They blame the low income women for ruining the country because they are staying home with their children and not going out to work. They blame the middle income women for ruining the country because they go out to work and do not stay home to take care of their children.
--Ann Richards
If you're looking for reasoned analysis, read no further.
I'm too fucking tired. I think I'm just going to take to my fainting couch and have a case of the vapors. I'm going to gather my lovely children around me, and instruct them in the gentle, moral arts, so that both my daughters grow up to be fine mothers, who recognize that despite their intellects, their ambitions, and their dreams, when push comes to shove, (and a lady never shoves,) their jobs are about putting their children above all.
The fate of Western, elite, white society depends upon it.
All else is pure selfishness.
You can call me paranoid, but I don't think that it's accidental that at the same time that we have a virtual war going on against women in the United States (and that war is spreading throughout the West [2]) --just one example among many--over the right to privacy, at the same time, another assault has been re-launched. It's all part and parcel of the same meme: women are selfish creatures. We cannot be trusted.
It's not enough that we're opting out of giving birth. Those of us who are giving birth are still selfish, because we go back to work and return to our careers and our children are suffering. And it's all our fault [3]. Ours. Not this culture's [4]. Not men's [5]. And not the fault of our social inferiors--you know, those women of colour or lesser financial standing. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. No. It's women's fault, although when you look closely at the articles, it mostly seems to be the fault of elite white women [6] who are letting down the race.
It doesn't seem to matter that many of these critics have cockeyed views of a past that didn't exist. You could say their views of history are mythological, romanticized, a sort of fascist aesthetic in which women were kind, and gentle, and gave willingly every last ounce of their souls to those around them. Never asking for anything for themselves. Always serving themselves last. Always putting others first. Volunteering. If they had to work, they went into the "helping" professions.
Never mind the thousands and thousands of pages of historical research that has argued that our notion of a "private sphere" is a modern phenomenon. Domesticity is a part of ideology; but somehow, sacred domesticity gets a free pass.
I'm troubled more than I can say by the racism that I see in these arguments. After all, these articles hardly argue that non-white women go out and produce more babies and stay home, do they? As Ann Richards so wonderfully said years ago on "Politically Incorrect," poor women who insist on staying home and taking care of their children are to blame for the downfall of the country. Just like middle class women who insist on working are the downfall of the country. Either way, we're all selfish. It's just that some of us are more selfish than others.
So, it's time for me to start grooming my girls for their real duties. Never mind that one wants to go to medical school and the other wants to become a wildlife biologist. That's just plain wrong. Even though they've had an example of a mother who has managed to have a career and do a pretty kick-ass job of raising them, I've been doing it wrong. I'm a fuckup and a failure according to the forces of darkness out there.
So, off I go to the couch. Be a dear and fetch me a bon-bon, won't you?
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