Friday, June 08, 2012

Memo From the Ministry of Gender: Slavery is Liberation!

My wife doesn't work outside the house (except at the park, the school, the hockey rink, the baseball diamond, the karate studio, the golf course, the swimming pool, the library, the pizza parlor, etc.), nor do I want her to (although she is of course free to do so, and in fact, I'd kind of like her to be my blogger mama after the boy doesn't need her quite so much). If she did have a second job -- and this is just me -- I'd feel like a bit of a failure as a man and father. Just raised that way, I guess.

But the left doesn't tolerate diversity, so that makes me an atavistic and reactionary counter-revolutionary to the workplace gender revolution. Yes, in the upside-down world of the left, to liberate a woman from being a wage-or-career slave is to enslave her.

I'll admit that I don't understand the point of a revolution that actually diminishes slack -- that robs us of precious family time and forces us to work at some stupid and meaningless job, whether one is flipping burgers or rolling hot dogs or reading the news on TV or pretending to teach ineducable young college adolts or whatever.

I mean, I fully realize that in some cases it's financially necessary (it's usually much more volitional than most people realize, a matter of values and priorities, not genuine need), but that doesn't alter the reality that it is nevertheless preferable for a child to have a mother and for a man to have a home and not a decaying sports bar (which is what my house would become without the Woman's Touch). What most strikes me about the feminist's stance on this is their utter lack of empathy for children. I'm big enough to deal with the sports bar, and the local pizza parlor will take care of the rest.

It's actually painful to imagine how much children need their parents -- a mother and a father, who fulfill very different psychological and spiritual functions -- and one can't help thinking that this empathic failure results from some repressed childhood trauma.

One perennial way to manage such intrapsychic conflict is to project it into one's own child and symbolically punish him so as to turn the tables. After all, this routinely occurs in other contexts, so there's no reason whatsoever to believe that so-called "working mothers" (itself a not-so-subtle putdown) would be exempt.

In fact, the one ironyclad argument feminists have here is that some mothers are so toxic that it is actually preferable for the child to minimize contact with them, and take their chances on finding a replacement via culture, friends, teachers, television, drugs, etc. Since mothers have always acted out unconscious conflicts with their children, abandoning them for some silly job is just the latest iteration of this pathology.

One hardly needs physical distance to abandon someone. One can easily do it in the other's presence -- which in a way is more damaging, because it's not as easy to recognize: the person looks as if they're with you, but they're actually miles away. Intimacy is not necessarily a function of proximity. Just as sex can be a disguise for mutual masturbation, parenting can be a mask for... something.

For example, to take an extreme case, imagine your mother is Gloria Allred, or Nancy Pelosi, or Jane Fonda. I can't see a child benefiting from prolonged contact with Nancy Pelosi, but the catch there is that she now becomes the problem for 300 million people instead of one little victim.

Yes, Nancy Pelosi wants to suckle us all, even those of us who have long since weaned ourselves form the government teat. And I certainly don't want to be suckled by Obama. Not that there's anything wrong with it.

Although it sounds like a joke, I don't want to minimize the importance of getting certain mothers into the workplace in order to Protect the Children. A great deal of child abuse is able to go on under cover of parenting. Since many people aren't in charge of anything -- beginning with themselves -- it can be an intoxicating feeling to play God over a helpless little soul. Imagine the possibilities!

Just last night I read passage in The Devil in the White City -- great read, BTW -- which briefly describes the childhood of the psychotically sadistic mass murderer, Dr. H. H. Holmes. His parents were said to be "devout Methodists whose response to even routine misbehavior relied heavily on the rod and prayer, followed by banishment to the attic and a day with neither speech nor food."

Thus, it seems that it would have been preferable for Holmes' mother to have worked as a waitress, or maybe been the head of some castrating feminist organization, at least for young H. H. As it turned out, let's just say that he had a fair amount of pent-up rage toward women that he acted out in uniquely creative ways.

It's a cliché to say that the family is the fundamental and irreplaceable unit of civilization. But the problem with a cliché isn't necessarily that it's untrue, but that it can become invisible and therefore unthinkable. Rather, it just becomes a background assumption that is no longer thought about.

But that's precisely where cultural revolutionaries come in to fill the void. It's odd to have to say this, but many of the most intelligent and sophisticated people -- because they are genrally subject to the most indoctrination -- don't know why it is preferable for a child to have a mother and father, or why full time daycare is damaging, or why a child needs a mother at home. To be liberated from reality is not liberation. Nor is it exactly slavery, in that no outside agency is compelling it.

Then what is it? I would call it rebellion, in that the rebel is always inwardly attached to the object of rebellion. And it isn't always pathological.

Take, for example, the normal rebellion of adolescence, when the child needs to distance himself from the parents in order to discover and forge his own identity. Obviously he can't just be an extension of the parents, but must become who he is. It is important for parents to "play along" with this rebellion in helpful ways. It may seem as if it's a different parental task, but it is actually the same task with a different developmental need.

For example, my son has had very different needs at two weeks, six months, three years, and seven years. Perhaps the biggest job of a parent is to be the object the child needs at this or that age, in order to cope with the specific developmental hurdle before him. It doesn't mean you're being "phony." Rather, you're always completely present with you're child, at least if you're a good and conscientious parent. They know when you're faking.

Which is precisely why it can be so taxing. I am in awe of my wife's ability to be "present" for my son over these past seven years. It isn't easy, especially for an interpersonally demanding child who craves human contact. She had another career before motherhood, and it would be easy enough to do that instead.

But not really, because if she did, I think she'd die of empathy. Plus, I'd no longer have a slave to oppress.

46 comments:

Tony said...

Rather, it just becomes a background assumption that is no longer thought about. But that's precisely where revolutionaries come in to fill the void.

Happens all the time.

"Why not?"
"Why don't you see for yourself?"

They say all that's required for evil men to triumph is for good men to do nothing. This goes for the realm of ideas as well as the realm of action.

Certain things are true, good, and beautiful. Like making babies. Like motherhood. And we should always be able to say why and to ground it in experience. No BS, just the truth told plainly and well.

julie said...

And we should always be able to say why and to ground it in experience. No BS, just the truth told plainly and well.

Agreed; the trouble is, then one gets accused of stating the obvious, and once it's brushed off as obvious it is promptly forgotten. Almost as though its very obviousness makes it trivial.

I guess that's how we end up with so many government studies that prove what every average person already knows...

julie said...

Or, conversely (having just read the Dr. Helen link at the beginning of the post), so many studies bent on proving what isn't so...

mushroom said...

Bad parenting can be somewhat alleviated by a good dog.

mushroom said...

To be liberated from reality is not liberation.

That bears repeating. Perhaps it is rebellion for some, slavery for others.

There are people who are aware of the reality yet stupid or delusional enough to think they can beat it if they get enough fools to agree with them (Yes, Democrat Party, I am looking at you). Then there are the fools who are enslaved by the lie.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

To be liberated from reality is fantasia... to some extent, it is possible to reshape reality to one's whims. That is to say, the world is changeable stuff, sure. But there are always consequences for doing so. The art of morality is glancing these destinations from afar and pointing the signs away from them.

Then again, imagine the problem of a moral system which entirely rejects rebellion; on the one hand you disincentivize disorder for its own sake (rarely a good thing) but then the youth, who to some extent must 'rebel' must then not feel merely as one discovering new territory, but as one alienated. Then what is a healthy separation becomes a whole subculture of pathological rebellion-expressions, of alienation, of repression, of bitterness and self-loathing and shame, of angst and rejection of authority, and so on.

If the boot-heel of necessity is heavy enough it crushes all of the young rebels, but as we've learned in the West, you can't trust that boot to always be around to maintain order.

Van Harvey said...

"For example, to take an extreme case, imagine your mother is Gloria Allred, or Nancy Pelosi, or Jane Fonda"

Now... that's... just... plain... hateful.

Van Harvey said...

Julie said "Agreed; the trouble is, then one gets accused of stating the obvious, and once it's brushed off as obvious it is promptly forgotten"

Jonah Goldberg uses a quote to open his new book 'The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas', from George Orwell's review of Bertrand Russell's book on the wonders of 'Power!', that fits here,

"...we have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men."

Yup.

Van Harvey said...

"Although it sounds like a joke, I don't want to minimize the importance of getting certain mothers into the workplace in order to Protect the Children."

This is a tough one... the words used can... go wrong.

But the modern world, once entered into, like a bullet fragment lodged in a tricky place, sometimes cannot be fully removed without doing more damage than leaving it alone ever would.

Having tried it both ways, we've had to admit that my wonderful [please insert mucho many more glowing adjectives here] wife, is a better wife and mother when she has a job that takes her out of the house two or three days a week, than when home all day, every day of the week.

Reminds me of a comment Beck made the other day, that while he & his wife were watching an old episode of 'Little House on the Prairie', they were unconsciously cringing and flinching at all the wholesome, patriotic or religious references in the show. They caught themselves thinking 'How did they get away with THAT on T.V.?!', before realizing... how abnormal the normal has become.

Ephrem Antony Gray said...

Have some cosmic rock. Especially of note is the allusion to Sargent Pepper on track 4 (Parade).

Air - Le Voyage Dans La Lune

Probably don't want to crank the volume on track 1 or 6 (some hard square/saw wave going on)

julie said...

Van,
"Having tried it both ways, we've had to admit that my wonderful [please insert mucho many more glowing adjectives here] wife, is a better wife and mother when she has a job that takes her out of the house two or three days a week, than when home all day, every day of the week."

Yeah, I know a few women like that; my brother's wife comes to mind. She's expecting her second and considering staying home, but they both have misgivings. Not that she isn't a great mom or doesn't love her daughter - having stayed with them for a few days earlier this year, I can attest that she is both - but they're both aware enough that she doesn't quite have the necessary personality to stay with kids all day every day without losing her mind.

mushroom said...

That's what Mother's Little Helpers are for. And wine.

I don't know. I grew up on a full-time farm where my mom was there at home all day every day and yet "worked", milking cows, feeding stock, harvesting, etc., in addition to taking care of the garden, canning, baking, and all the usual stuff.

She was never bored, but sometimes she would say, "I could just sit down."

Unknown said...

"decaying sports bar"
Brilliant.

Unknown said...

You should feel like a failure as a man, but that has little if anything to do with what your wife does.

Gagdad Bob said...

My feelings are none of my business.

ge said...

stay at home, mom

Gagdad Bob said...

That is the most hideous thing I've ever seen. One of the top ten worst songs of the '70s.

Gagdad Bob said...

Other candidates:

I've Never Been to Me
Feelings
The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia
The Night Chicago Died
Chevy Van
Sometimes When We Touch

Van Harvey said...

Ok, random observation... anyone else notice that at the start of that video, it looks like Alan Colmes seranading Ann Coulter?

EbonyRaptor said...

Not to come across as a bit too sanguine, but our wonderful Creator's handiwork can be seen just about everywhere if your eyes (and spirit) are open.

To see my wife with the kids and grandkids swells my heart in a way only possible through His plan.

Fathers have our role, and I love and cherish my children and grandchildren, but my wife - their mother/grandmother is on a wholly different level. The patience, tenderness, softness, forgiveness, acceptance - the mother's love that she has, is ... well, one of the many miracles of His great plan.

He must know what he's doing :)

Gagdad Bob said...

It is indeed awesome. Men at least have an excuse if they don't appreciate it, but what excuse do feminists have? Remember:

"Ann Romney never worked a day in her life."

Leslie Godwin said...

I'm incredibly grateful that Bob appreciates what some might see as not getting much accomplished. The first time Bob spent 24 hours alone with Tristan was when he was 2, and when I got home he said that he was trying to get through half an hour at a time. I think he realized then what it had been like for me the previous 2 years.

If I could have seen a few psychotherapy patients a few times a week, similar to what Van described worked well for him and his wife, I think that would have been a good thing for us, too. Tristan wouldn't let me out of his grasp at all the first year, so it was impossible. But I literally would have mortgaged the house to hire some part-time help if I were to do it all over again. Not so I could leave him with a nanny. But so I could go to the bathroom, take a shower, and get a half hour nap occasionally.

I wish I had known when Bob and I were first married (it'll be 25 years ago this August) that most men are happiest when they have a happy wife with whom they can be physically and emotionally intimate. It now seems so simple and obvious. But without listening to Dennis Prager and his frequent guest on the topic of male-female relationships, Allison Armstrong, I don't think I ever would have gotten it.

When Tristan came along, I knew I'd be a stay-at-home mom. And I stumbled into being a better wife that way. (And a worse one at times, too.) It's often felt like a domestic version of BUD/s (Navy SEAL training). But I think that's about 75% because Tristan is such a "spirited" child LOL.

EbonyRaptor said it much better than I could. Your wife is very blessed that you see her that way.

Re. valuing family time and slack...I have also made it a habit that no matter how many dishes are piled up in the sink, or how big the dust-bunnies have gotten, when Bob is listening to music and reading, I join him. And I lie in bed for a few minutes when he is falling asleep even if I am not able to go to sleep right then.

When I look back over our lives together, that is what I will remember. I guess that is why people go on vacation. So they can hang out together and relax a little. I'm lucky to be able to do that each day.

This is getting to be a bit rambly. Sorry about that. But I was very touched by Bob's post and the very heartfelt comments. (Even the troll seemed sincere ;)

Very Respectfully,
Mrs. G

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Thanks for sharing that Mrs. G.

My wife has a difficult time (at best) relaxing (although she is working at it) but the times she does relax is especially memorable and, well, really very blissful.

It's also when we are both most likely to have some of our most humorous conversations.
I'm pretty sure in those moments we could colaborate to write some funny screenplays (as an example) if we were so inclined (and if it didn't interfere with the slack), because we both spark each other.

Not that we always converse during family slack time.
Heck, it's such a joy simply to be together in holy slacktrimony!
Like a vacation, except much more fun.

Of course there's still Hell Week (sometimes longer than a week) to go through every so often. :^)

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

"I'd feel like a bit of a failure as a man and father. Just raised that way, I guess."

Me too. 20 years ago my wife had to work fulltime for about six months when our daughters were 10 and 11.

I was getting a lot sicker at the time and was only able to do part time janitorial work cleaning out banks.

However, I felt like an utter failure. In every fiber of my being. Not only that, I was miserable and so were our kids for the most part.

I mean, we got along okay, it's just that we were so used to Patti staying at home.

When we convinced her we needed her more than the money I felt a lot better.
She was and is always free to work anywhere she wants but I'm glad she works at home. :^)

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Unknown: Your brilliance burns like a candle in the wind.

julie said...

Leslie,
But I literally would have mortgaged the house to hire some part-time help if I were to do it all over again. Not so I could leave him with a nanny. But so I could go to the bathroom, take a shower, and get a half hour nap occasionally.

:D

Yes, I know that feeling. There's nothing like sitting down for a moment in the bathroom, only to hear a little fist banging on the door seconds later, along with cries of "MAMA! MAMA!"

Thank god for lockable doors. Plus at least that way, you know if they're hanging off the door handle they probably aren't getting into any more serious mischief...

Totally worth it, every moment. Even the ones where they've pushed your buttons farther than you ever imagined your buttons could be pushed.

Leslie Godwin said...

Julie wrote: "Yes, I know that feeling. There's nothing like sitting down for a moment in the bathroom, only to hear a little fist banging on the door seconds later, along with cries of 'MAMA! MAMA!'"

LOL! You just reminded me...when Tristan was in that (long) phase, I told him to yell, "Stella!!!!" LOL

julie said...

LOL - that's awesome! I'll have to remember that; of course, in my head it's the Ned Flanders version...

Gagdad Bob said...

That particular episode also featured the Ayn Rand School for Tots, which would ironically have to be the exact opposite of "attachment parenting." Just "cowboy up, little dude. No one said being a toddler is easy."

julie said...

Oh, that's right; I love that episode. All the pacifiers locked away, and the toddler version of The Great Escape. Except they didn't try to get out, they just worked to get their binkies back. I'm sure there's a metaphor for human behavior in general in there...

Gagdad Bob said...

I suspect that if one has true slack as a child, one won't seek it in inappropriate ways as an adult. Conversely, if deprived it, one may be haunted by the shadow of the Lost Entitlement, and attempt to find it in pathological ways, such as leftism and other drugs.

The idea isn't to completely shield them from the conspiracy, but to introduce it in small doses. One thing I've been meaning to ask Tristan is whether he is aware yet of "the darkness," or of the dark side of things. He lives so much in the Light, that I don't know that it has really impinged upon him yet....

Gagdad Bob said...

I just asked him, and it's on his radar. For example, yesterday evening he was spooked by a bald kid at the park who looked like he might undergoing treatment for cancer. He also mentioned people he's seen who are missing a leg or arm. Interesting how at that pre-formal operations cognitive level, it is conceptualized in very corporeal terms, similar to mankind's earlier concrete pictorial depictions of the demonic. However, it usually isn't difficult to tell who's good from who's evil in movies just by looking at them, so that corporeal element is retained....

Gagdad Bob said...

I remember when I was a kid, my barber was missing a finger, and that freaked me out a little bit. I also remember seeing an old black lady with a huge goiter that looked like a second head...

julie said...

Good points. Especially these days in the West, when it's so rare to see someone who's really physically damaged in an obvious way. Its very rareness causes a visceral reaction.

Hm. Makes me wonder about people who undergo purposeful deformation, the body-modifiers and plastic-surgery addicts who start to look less than human...

Gagdad Bob said...

Oh, I think there's definitely an aggressiveness about that. Reminds me of that commercial where the characters says, "for a guy with a face tattoo, he turned out to be kind of a jerk."

Joan of Argghh! said...

Beautiful post and comments. Actually a nice change-up pitch but still right across the plate.

I've been heartbroken at having to have to work away from home ever since being "liberated" meant the wholesale depression of wages for men. The Left encouraged women, actually berated women into the workforce. The swelling ranks of available people willing to work for less was a boon to business and a bust for families---it was also a re-work of the German progression into socialism: dissolving the family unit with work and school and official "activity."

Where there is no Slack, sin cannot be far behind.

Gagdad Bob said...

Joan:

That's an important point about the depression of wages. Obviously the greater the supply of something -- in this case, labor -- the less its value.

Equally important, the housewife used to be the family's "insurance policy," in that she could always enter the workplace if needed. But now, with both parents already working, there is no such margin.

Thanks again, feminists, for your glorious revolution!

Aloysius said...

It's worse than that. When women entered the work force in large numbers they turned us from innovation and risk taking to compliance and conformity. I know this is a broad generalization but I know it is statistically true.

Gagdad Bob said...

Absolutely -- cf. Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men.

ge said...

INTERVIEWER

Do you ever go back and reread your books and short stories?

BRADBURY

Every so often, late at night, I come downstairs, open one of my books, read a paragraph and say, My God. I sit there and cry because I feel that I’m not responsible for any of this. It’s from God. And I’m so grateful, so, so grateful. The best description of my career as a writer is “at play in the fields of the Lord.” It’s been wonderful fun and I’ll be damned where any of it came from. I’ve been fortunate. Very fortunate.

INTERVIEWER

I suppose it’s unnecessary to ask whether you enjoy writing.

BRADBURY

It’s obvious that I do. It’s the exquisite joy and madness of my life, and I don’t understand writers who have to work at it. I like to play. I’m interested in having fun with ideas, throwing them up in the air like confetti and then running under them. If I had to work at it I would give it up. I don’t like working.

Gagdad Bob said...

Except for the tears, I'd say "I can relate," but I never know if that sounds humble or grandiose.

ge said...

i should imagine the tears come after
the millionth sale, hundredth award, the ten thousandth fan letter....he had hundreds of fan clubs in Russia alone! [not that you Bob dont deserve same-ilar respect!]
entire interview---end story is great

Gagdad Bob said...

Important editorial linked at Instapundit, The Trap of Minority Studies Programs:

"When Naomi Schaefer Riley was fired by the Chronicle of Higher Education for her trenchant remarks on Black Studies programs, most of those who criticized the firing saw in it a display of the campus left’s intolerance. Fair enough, but this episode also has a much broader meaning.

"In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
large populations of poor immigrants arrived in the U.S. -- Irish, Italians, and Jews from Russia and Poland. Their extreme poverty placed them at the bottom of the social ladder, and they were often treated with contempt. Yet just a few generations later they were assimilated, and their rapid upward social mobility had produced mayors, senators, judges, and even Presidents from among their ranks. None of this could have happened without first-rate public education.

"To be sure, they worked hard to get ahead, but they were not obstructed by something that afflicts the have-nots of today: as they walked through the school gates they were not met by people intent on luring them into Irish or Italian Studies programs whose purpose was to keep them in a state of permanent resentment over past wrongs at the hands of either Europeans or establishment America. Instead, they could give their full attention to learning. They took courses that informed them about their new land’s folkways and history, which gave them both the ability and the confidence needed to grasp the opportunities it offered them.

"When we compare this story with what is happening to minority students today, we see a tragedy.... minority students are met on the way to campus by hard-left radicals who claim to have the interests of the newcomers at heart but in reality prey on them to advance their own selfish interests.... Disaffected radicals wanted to swell the ranks of the disaffected, not the ranks of the cheerfully upward mobile. Genuine progress for minority students would mean their joining and thus strengthening the mainstream of American society--the mainstream that campus radicals loathe.

"As thinkers, campus radicals are poor role models for students. Their ideas are simple and rigid, and they rely heavily on conspiracy thinking that infers far too much from too little. They are powered by emotional commitments that are highly resistant to the lessons of experience. As a result, their cherished ideas are now virtually obsolete, and strike any reasonably well-informed observer as downright silly. The minority students that they attract into their orbit are dragged down to this low intellectual level.

"Black Studies does have one thing right: black students are indeed oppressed. What they have wrong is who is doing the oppressing."

******

I can't think of a better example of a destructive mind parasite.

ge said...

Krazy Kwote du jour:

The religion of the United States is not Christianity; perhaps it never was Christianity, but is a curious form of American gnosis. It is a mighty queer religion, exhilarating in some ways but marked by destructiveness. It seems to me increasingly that George Bush won hands down and had to win because of the two candidates he more nearly incarnated the ideals and visions of the American religion. Our foreign policy basically amounts to making the world safe for gnosticism.

-Harold Bloom

Gagdad Bob said...

About an hour ago, I was just reading about Lincoln's effort to forge an American civic religion revolving around the Declaration, the Constitution, and the Founders. Obviously an early adopter of tea-partyism.

EbonyRaptor said...

" ... as they walked through the school gates they were not met by people intent on luring them into Irish or Italian Studies programs ... "

I'm first generation American on my father's side and 3rd generation on my mother's side. All my ancestral roots come from Sweden. I don't recall seeing a Swedish studies program offered anywhere.

I must be a victim. Where do I sue?

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