I went back to read Bread n Roses. I knew they would respond to my other post about the thread on angry so-con women.
Looks like Fern Hill has been reading my blog, as she says:
I've been out in the blogosphere. A really common refrain is that feminists claim to speak for all women, but the so-con women say we don't.
To which she says:
But the plain truth is that we do.
I have not given you any right to speak on my behalf.
. As Gigi says, there are different flavours of feminism, but one way or another, feminists have taken on all issues important, even critical, for women.
But you have not been delegated by me or other women to speak on our behalf.
The arrogance of that statement is astounding.
The point is that women should choose their paths freely, not limited by notions of proper spheres. But as responsible, autonomous human beans.
Feminism is all about expansion. So-con-ism is all about limitation.
Expansion? That's a sophistry. Expansion to sleep around and kill one's unborn children? Expansion to accuse a person who calls you a dog of being a misogynist?
A lot of women don't want that expansion and think it's wrong for society. Calling it "expansion" seems like taking the moral high ground, but it masks militating for the right to destroy one's life, the lives of others, and contribute to the breakdown of society.
That's what that "expansion" is.
The age when people argued for no limitations on behaviour-- that age is over. In fact, what we're seeing is people wanting more limitations, because they've seen how moral relativism and the behaviour it produces leads to misery, social toxicity and social disorder.
Again, it's the "anti-choice" label. Sometimes it's good to be anti-choice-- when the choice is wrong.
Gigi wrote:
The other observation I have made of late around the whole "you are not a feminist" (or, "I wouldn't call her a feminist") is that we really have to make a distinction between women who are out there walking through the doors that have been opened to them, while not actually doing anything to open more doors for women, and those who are actively working to shut doors to other women. *waves to visitors*
The issue shouldn't be: women want it, ergo, women should have it. We don't give men that option, either. The question is: is it a good idea? I don't care how beneficial it is for women to kill their unborn children, it's wrong. That women happen to be the ones who bear children doesn't make it any less wrong.
Same thing for same-sex marriage. Same thing for ridiculous speech codes (pro-life display as sexual harrassment?) or pornography for women.
Gigi asks:
I really don't get why certain stay at home moms resent daycare for other women, with this petty spiteful "if I can't benefit from this, neither should you" attitude.
Personally, I don't mind daycare for low-income women who need to work to put bread on the table. I don't mind helping people who are in need.
My problem is that a universal daycare program needs taxes. Women who stay home usually have to sacrifice to do that. The fact they stay home contibrutes immensely to society.
However, the husband is taxed in order to contribute to some other woman who wants to become a CEO or put an SUV in the driveway.
The woman who stays at home doesn't pursue her own business career or material gain and sacrifices for it, but it's expected that her family's income will subsidize other women who will?
That doesn't make much sense. She doesn't pay for her own material advancement, but she pays for someone else's?
The sense of entitlement is astounding. A government program should fulfill a need not a want. Some women want to work full-time, some of them want material advancement. There is no moral obligation to subsidize that. To say that people are selfish for not wanting to keep their own money for their own needs is a kind of moral extortion.
And consider as well, that even when a woman needs daycare, institutionalized daycare as conceived by the left is not always the right solution. I needed daycare when I worked evenings. But I only needed two hours a day, maybe two days a week. A universal daycare system is useless for that.
On another level, I have a personal problem with full-time daycare. I have a philosophical problem with paying people to raise one's children on a long-term scale. Some women have no other choice, because they have no relatives who can help out, and the circumstances of their lives compel to do so-- it's either day care or the family doesn't eat.
But I daresay it's not the case for many women. They want daycare because they want to have it all-- all at the same time.
Gigi writes:
I own my business, and thus, cannot possibly take advantage of EI. In fact, as an employer I have to pay into it for others. Do I work toward ensuring that NO ONE can have employment insurance?
But you are not an employee. If you were an employee, and you didn't get EI, that would be a fair analogy.
I also don't have children at all. Does that mean I should work toward making sure public education goes down the toilet (or just be opposed to daycare)?
Well, that's a possible choice. Do she want children to be educated by a publicly funded school system? If you want something, you have to be willing to pay for it. I do not want the nation's children to be raised in daycare. Daycare should be the last option.
I just can't bear to be around people who look at the world as a set of finite resources, some of them even taking it to the point of believing that happiness is a finite resource - that if someone else is happy, there is less of it for them.
I don't look at the world that way at all.
They seem to have made it their sole raison d'etre to make the world just that tiny bit uglier, and it seems to be a reflection of their souls.
I'm sure that statement says more about her thoughts than mine.
I guess if you can't see beauty, how can you create it?
Beauty is a function of Truth. If there's no Truth, there's no Beauty. Sometimes, the absence of Truth is a reason for anger. But being angry doesn't mean you cannot create beauty.
Kuri wrote:
This seems to be the very root of that kind of politics. It's about others' happiness being a threat.
I think they have to imagine some kind of explanation as to why women do not agree with them. It has to be because they're unhappy. They can't imagine that philosophical differences can be rooted in anything else other than one's personal feelings and experiences. Again, if a woman is not a feminist, she's not happy, she's nothing. She'a pathetic loser. She has to be living in some kind of oppressive emotional state.
