A Brilliant Post From a Brilliant Person

I want to share this with you because it’s too good to be missed:

Choice feminism is not feminism: it’s patriarchy in a fancy dress.

Yes, our identities shouldn’t solely rest on our status as wage-earners. But the reality is that the ability to provide for oneself is integrally connected to one’s FREEDOM as a HUMAN BEING, at least in a capitalist society. The moment one gives up one’s ability to provide for oneself – however excellent the reasons for that might be – one does give up one’s autonomy, and, at least in part, one’s status as an independent human being. There’s a reason that women are grouped with children and not with men, and it ain’t because they are conceived of as “equal” to men.

The quiet desperation of the most recent posts on “opting out” is proof that more and more people are seeing the truth of what this brilliant quote tells us. Soon, an embarrassed silence reserved for the particularly clueless will accompany any public mention of choice feminism.

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43 responses to “A Brilliant Post From a Brilliant Person”

Evelina Anville

August 9, 2013

Wasn’t that post great? I was actually going to leave you a link but you beat me to it. 🙂

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bloggerclarissa

August 9, 2013

It is so great to see this kind of ideas being expressed, and in such a powerful way, too.

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Evelina Anville

August 9, 2013

Along the same idea, I came across this article this morning. It’s about a year old so you have probably already seen it. But if not, I really appreciated the commentary. I think “choice feminism” is coming to an end!http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/06/1-wives-are-helping-kill-feminism-and-make-the-war-on-women-possible/258431/

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bloggerclarissa

August 9, 2013

Yes, this was a great piece! I wrote about it: https://clarissasblog.com/2012/06/19/by-readers-request-article-commentary/

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GMP

August 9, 2013

Oh, this was an awesome article! Thanks for the link!
real feminists don’t depend on men. Real feminists earn a living, have money and means of their own.

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Titfortat

August 9, 2013

But the reality is that the ability to provide for oneself is integrally connected to one’s FREEDOM as a HUMAN BEING, at least in a capitalist society

Interesting point.

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ladyleahjane

August 9, 2013

Oh Lordy, I got into so much trouble yesterday for posting an article about the miserable, depressed lives of those “opt out” women on my facebook. I said that Stay-At-Home-Parenting was toxic for the whole family because it not only led to bored, unfulfilled parents who didn’t let their children have any space and spouses who didn’t have an equal relationship, it also takes a special kind of foolish person to assume that your “earning” partner is not going to get sick, lose their job, die, or get divorced.
A bunch of people got quite angry at me for that. But I stand by what I said, it’s not a feminist decision to be a stay-at-home parent and have no activities or identities outside of that.

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bloggerclarissa

August 9, 2013

One would think saying such obvious things would not be controversial but many people still feel a profound attachment to the patriarchal discourse.

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1. ladyleahjane
  
  August 9, 2013
  
  I had quite a few “my mom was a housewife and I turned out fine!” comments. Which weren’t deterred by my “Yeah, well, my mother was a housewife and guess what? It was a smothering experience for both of us, and mom gave up her passions, hobbies, and interests to fit to this idea of being a wife, which made her miserable.”
  I also had one woman who is a self-described stay-at-home mom, but she does a load of volunteer work and nonprofit work, which is basically having a job, just sans pay, so it really can’t be compared.
  I really don’t understand how this fantasy of being a housewife can be so seductive to so many of my progressive, educated friends. Giving up all that you learned, all that you could accomplish, for a life of domesticity is my idea of Hell.
  It just reminds me of that episode of King of the Hill where Peggy (who is a teacher) becomes a housewife after her son is (falsely) diagnosed with ADD, and becomes so miserable and bored that she takes up a number of hobbies to keep from going insane. In one scene, she’s seen chatting with other housewives, who are talking obsessively about coupon clipping. One of them chirps “I think we’d all go a little crazy without coupons!” which descends into desperate, forced, creepy laughter.
  Peggy gets her job back by the end of the episode, after the boredom of housewifery leads her to take guitar lessons from a feminist. 🙂
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    August 9, 2013
    
    It is extremely hard for people who grew up in this family model to imagine anything else as possible. Even if they go to college and start good careers, they often veer towards the familiar role they have seen all the women in their family perform.
    
    The woman who is the first in her family to be financially independent and craft a space for herself in the public sphere does an invaluable service to the next generations of women in her family. This is a very hard thing to do but it’s liberatory potential is immense.
    
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musteryou

August 9, 2013

Well, the males and females of America are desperate. When some guy, 40+ presents a theory to us that should men rise to the top of the capitalist’s hierarchy they would suddenly attract a mate, you have to wonder how much longer he is prepared to wait. Faith and trust, my friend. Trust and faith.

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Wirbelwind

August 10, 2013

Yes, without your own job you are depending on other people, usually your closest family. It’s hard to perceive somebody as an adult when that someone can’t buy shoelaces without your support (and please don’t write about how hard housework is, it takes 3 hours tops each day (and it’s work that has to be done either way, job or no job)).
And yes, that is a very good post, thanks for posting it.

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bloggerclarissa

August 10, 2013

I had a friend who had to ask her husband for money every time she needed tampons. He wanted her to work but she refused and preferred to live this way. Why she did is a complete mystery to me.

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1. Wirbelwind
  
  August 10, 2013
  
  I can’t believe somebody would just humiliation over working. I am looking for employment right now and it hurts my pride every single time I have to as for support.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    August 10, 2013
    
    I wish you the very best of luck with your search!!!
    
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GMP

August 10, 2013

and please don’t write about how hard housework is, it takes 3 hours tops each day (and it’s work that has to be done either way, job or no job)).

Exactly! My husband and I both work and we have three kids, he has a 9-5 academic staff job and I am faculty at a big public university (flexible schedule but overall I work a lot of hours). I cook and do dishes, grocery shopping, kids’ doctor visits; DH does laundry and mows the lawn and vacuums; we share child care etc. All these things are life and get done, job or no job.

We have a comfortable lifestyle, largely because we both work. I have several male colleagues (faculty) who would really love for their wives to go back to work because the families could use the extra money and the kids are in school. However, the wives refuse as they never liked their jobs anyway. This completely boggles my mind — just having this option to be a kept woman is extreme privilege. It’s wonderful if your job is a calling, a career. But even if not, one should be able to find a job that money and hopefully benefits and is not entirely horrible. I was brought up to believe that as an adult you have to work for pay, support yourself. Cooking and cleaning and laundry are not a job, they are just part of life.

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  August 10, 2013
  
  In the US where you can have any household appliance and labor saving device at home, it is truly a shame to dedicate all one’s time to nothing but housework. When children are at school all day long, what does one even do with oneself?
  
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Vanessa Sosa

August 10, 2013

Absofuckinglutely, right on! If I had to stay home all day with a bunch of kids or even by myself I would have gone batshit postal years ago, I love my job and I’m the sort who can’t stay home all day, I have to go and do something. This is part of the reason why I never want to marry or have children, I have cousins younger than myself who spent all day at home with their kids because they don’t work and their husband/boyfriend works, they’re on Facebook all day complaining how bored they are and gossiping while watching TV. I have no idea why anyone would want to stay home all day with kids, my mother has always worked and I got the idea as a kid that’s what I was supposed to do.

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bloggerclarissa

August 10, 2013

Since not even the most energetic adult can fulfill the social, emotional and physical needs of a child as well as a group of peers, such children seriously lag behind the children of working parents in terms of vocabulary, motor skills, social skills, maturity, etc.

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Kara K.

August 10, 2013

I feel confused when women act as if their kids will be ruined if they don’t have a parent home at all times. Frankly, stay at home motherhood sets up a poor example for children, especially girls. Do you really want to helplessness and dependence to be the model to which your children aspire? If you want your child to be an intelligent, independent, well-rounded adult, it’s important to model that behavior. Stay at motherhood fails on all counts.

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Kara K.

August 10, 2013

Actually, I would expand on that to include boy children as well. Im my opinion, it teaches them not to value a woman’s place in the world, leading to a misogynistic outlook.

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  August 10, 2013
  
  Very true! If you constantly see a Mommy who has no other purpose than to tend to your needs, you are bound to develop a very limited vision of the role of women in society.
  
  There was this male commenter on the blog yesterday who claim that women who don’t give him affection are immoral because they unjustly deprive him of something he needs. Somebody brought him up to believe that women should exist solely to fulfill his needs. And that’s scary.
  
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August 10, 2013

Yes!

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musteryou

August 10, 2013

This is an awesome paragraph, because it pinpoints the unconscious source of very much contemporary male resentment against the “liberated woman”:

“There was this male commenter on the blog yesterday who claim that women who don’t give him affection are immoral because they unjustly deprive him of something he needs. Somebody brought him up to believe that women should exist solely to fulfill his needs. And that’s scary.”

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bloggerclarissa

August 10, 2013

This is a very rare specimen of freak. The absolute majority of men have no interest in keeping a whiny dependent creature and slaving for decades to placate her hysteric outbursts.

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1. musteryou
  
  August 10, 2013
  
  I beg to differ. Actually my father had this mentality totally. If there was something wrong in his life, it was because women are not emotionally nourishing him enough, but are taking on other roles. He experienced this as malicious intent. It was not something he ever verbalized directly, in the way your troll almost seems to, but he was quite consistent about this.
  
  In the past, when I have described his behavior to others, they come back with the view that this is perfectly normal and acceptable. I have therefore concluded that the assumption that women’s reason for being is to emotionally nurture men is absolutely widespread.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    August 10, 2013
    
    I’m more used to the discourse of men being responsible for women’s emotions. But it isn’t like that discourse is very flattering to women either because the idea behind it is that a woman is this mass of conflicting and uncontrollable emotions that can be provoked into a raging storm at any moment. If anybody needs a reason not to hire women or take them seriously, here it is. When I was applying to university back in Ukraine, the admissions guy claimed he didn’t want to admit me because wasn’t ready to deal with my emotions. Even though I was completely unemotional when dealing with him.
    
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    1. musteryou
      
      August 10, 2013
      
      I see. This all concerns infantile psychodynamics normalized to the social level. Of course, they remain unconscious dynamics for the most part, since they are not analysed and the ethics of projecting qualities like intense emotionalism onto others is never questioned.
      
      A culture that considers itself individualistic is particularly blind to its own psycho-dynamics. Also it assumes that exchanges at this level are not costly. I have made it my life mission to try to point out the costs, but that is hard enough to do. There really are costs in remaining at an infantile level and not developing self-awareness. Not only the “individual” suffers, but society as a whole, since people are relegated to performing stupid tasks as part objects, rather than expressing their full capabilities as adults.
      
      I have pointed this out again and again, but it touches on very sore points for many, many people. You can tell just how painful they experience my analyses to be by the accusations they direct against me, personally, when I point out that these unconscious psycho-dynamics exist. I’m accused of bringing them into being, or representing what I am criticizing, or whatever.
      
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2. musteryou
  
  August 10, 2013
  
  I concede that men would not like the consequences, if they got what they were demanding. I have made that argument often enough before, but I do think that many people have no ability to think the issue through to its consequences. They are driven by unconscious feelings. There’s an endemic immaturity and alienation from their humanity that persists in the modern mind. Some people believe their demands are not costly at all. 😦
  
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3. Z
  
  August 10, 2013
  
  A lot of men have this mentality.
  
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matt

August 11, 2013

One question that I am legitimately curious about. I get the whole idea about women being “homemakers” when there kids are in school and such to be pretty ridiculous to claim that they are fully engaged and independent, but do you (Clarissa and other feminists on this site) think it is bad / non-feminist for someone to stay at home until their kids are school-aged? (around 5)?

One reason I ask is that financially it often makes sense (especially if you have two young kids), because day care can easily eat up all or most of the salary of women who are making less than $30 or 40k per year. If someone goes back to their career after 5 years off (which can be done easily for some careers – nursing, teaching (non-college) etc.) then is that by its very nature non-feminist? Very curious to hear thoughts because usually the presumption is someone is a permanent home-maker or permanent in the work force person.

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bloggerclarissa

August 11, 2013

Children lag behind severely when they are stuck at home with a parent until the age of 5. Integrating themselves into school and catching up with more developed kids becomes extremely hard.

Nobody wants to hire people who have been out of the workplace for 5 years. Such people need extensive psychological rehabilitation to be able to work.

As for the financial side, yes, it often seems more convenient for a man to keep a woman as an unpaid servant. However, if you consider the costs to her mental and physical state + the costs to the mental, educational and emotional health of a child, these savings become mostly imaginary.

Remember, more than any group of population, housewives suffer from severe depression. What savings justify leaving a child locked up with a severely depressed person all day long?

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1. matt
  
  August 12, 2013
  
  Ok. Interesting response. Is there some truth in generalities? Sure. And some women get depressed, and some women may be hurt from career prospects.. but not all.
  
  Again, as you either stated in the article or other comments obviously kids (including myself) who grew up with a mom staying at home are slightly biased based on experience. However, my mom was/is a nurse, and worked full-time until my sister was born.. then didn’t work for about 6 years, then worked probably 3 nights a week (night time nursing.. paid pretty well and her absence did not hurt her employment prospects). She also was not depressed. Also, on a related note about independence, and being about to support herself and my family, tragically my dad died completely unexpected in my early teen years and while life insurance helped a lot, she had to work, and within 2 months or so she had a full-time job paying pretty well. My point being she wasn’t stopped from all this stuff because she wanted to stay home.
  
  Lastly on the cost side, There are numerous places where child care can cost $8-10k per child. If someone has two kids, then that cost can be $20k per year. Again, this is after tax income. So, if her husband is earning $100k plus… which is somewhat common for women who stay at home, then she is taxed at about 35% (25% marginal federal rate, 5% state, 7.4% FICA, 2% local… so could be up to 40%). $20k / (1-.4) = $35k someone would need to earn to cover cost of child-care. Just putting the math out there.
  
  But overall I do appreciate the clarification that you offered as to your viewpoint.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    August 12, 2013
    
    A few exceptions don’t really change the general picture. I’m really in no mood to argue with what decades of research across a variety of countries have demonstrated hundreds of times. If you want to believe in hordes of happy housewives with brilliant job prospects, that’s your right. I only hope you never discover what it feels like to come home to one and feel eternally responsible for their depression and misery.
    
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bloggerclarissa

August 11, 2013

Besides, the most prestigious day care in my town costs $8K per year. So lets not exaggerate the costs of daycare arrangements.

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1. Stille (@aperfectbalance)
  
  August 12, 2013
  
  A list of average daycare costs per US state. Not knowing much about the average income per US state, I can’t say how widespread the problem of daycare costing more than a single person may earn is. It does look like it’s quite expensive in some states, however.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    August 12, 2013
    
    Even the highest number on the list subdivided by 2 is $5K. Nobody makes $5K per year when working full time.
    
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2. Stille (@aperfectbalance)
  
  August 12, 2013
  
  New Hampshire has 18,408.00$ per preschooler. That’s 9k/parent, presuming an only child.
  
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  1. bloggerclarissa
    
    August 12, 2013
    
    Exactly. Which is less than a full-time worker makes per year. Taking into consideration the high costs of keeping a housewife at home (medication, compulsive shopping, therapy, medical care, loss of future earnings over her entire lifetime, pension, rehabilitation for children, etc), this is a bargain.
    
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GMP

August 11, 2013

Matt, for a woman out of the workforce for 5+ years (there may be multiple kids) the opportunity cost is quite great. I often hear about woman making barely enough to cover daycare so why not stop working? Because gross pay is just one aspect. There are interactions with adults that she is missing, ability to stay current in her field and advance her career and her skills. Monetarily the family may be breaking even for a while, but that won’t be forever, and by the time they are in school she will much greater opportunities for advancement and raises. Moreoever, and that is one aspect Cheryl Sandberg emphasized really well, the higher up and more irreplaceable you are to your company, the more bargaining power you have, so a woman who has stuck with her career may well be able to then negotiate part-time, work from home a few days, or other perks just because she is a professional veteran.

There are professions such as teaching and nursing that may be more conducive to raising a family than others (K-12 teachers have summers off, nurses flexibility in scheduling). people also say these careers allow one to fairly easily take breaks and come back for family reasons. But many careers are such that once you are out, you are completely out. For instance, if I were to leave my professorial job for a few years, I would never get back to it or be able to get another one anywhere. EVER.

I don’t think Clarissa or anyone else is arguing against maternity or family leave. But as someone who has 3 kids I can tell you they outgrow a single caregiver pretty fast, within the first several months to a year I would say, but it depends on the kid. Kids start craving interactions with other adults, start showing interest in other kids, enjoy changes in scenery, and generally start developing into a social creature that we are. And I cannot stress enough how great daycare is for kids picking up on all sorts of wonderful skills from older kids.

With my first, I realized that by 4-5 months at home alone with an infant I start going stir-crazy from lack of intellectual stimulation and I have to go back to work for my own sanity. Other women may be different and may not like their work quite as much. I remember being reluctant to leave my first kid to go back at 5 months; within a week, I was so glad I did.

I am also a big believer (this has gotten me in trouble before, but whatever) that you and spouse cannot be equal partners unless you both contribute financially to the household (periods of unemployment or family leave notwithstanding). I know women who will argue against it, but I have seen this type of inequity in my family and it is not pretty. There is NOBODY in the world to whom I would willingly give up my financial independence if I am actually able to work.

Lastly, having kids is not a debilitating disease. It’s a part of life. There are loving childcare providers who can help you care for the kids, pre school or after school in K-12. They play and learn from multiple people and grow and have the freedom to pick their own friends and have experiences that are not tightly regulated by parents. Amputating a woman’s career and the associated parts of her personality for the kids’ sake is unnecessary: they don’t ask for it nor do they require it.

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1. bloggerclarissa
  
  August 11, 2013
  
  Everything I have ever seen confirms what GMP has to say. There is absolutely no benefit to a child from being stuck home with an adult all day long. Nobody really wins with this arrangement.
  
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Evelina Anville

August 11, 2013

“I am also a big believer (this has gotten me in trouble before, but whatever) that you and spouse cannot be equal partners unless you both contribute financially to the household (periods of unemployment or family leave notwithstanding)”

Yes. Yes. Yes. A financially dependent spouse is, by very definition, an unequal (and subordinate) partner in the relationship. Not working transforms the “at home” spouse (which in 95% of cases is a women) into a legal dependent and it erodes self esteem and spousal respect. And, as GMP pointed out so beautifully, children don’t need that level of sacrifice.

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cliff arroyo

August 12, 2013

matt: “However, my mom was/is a nurse”

Which means her/your experience is pretty atypical (for non-nurses). Nurses are almost always in demand which makes getting back in the job market a lot easier.

On the other hand, they face more verbal hostility than almost any other profession (from patients, patients’ families, doctors and even other nurses) so a break from that will be less traumatic than from a job where people aren’t yelling at or being otherwise hostile towards you.

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