Women oppress men by “playing” at having a career
Silly woman! You probably don't even know how to work that computer.
Well, here’s a new twist. We all know, from reading the endless tirades on the subject scattered all over the manosphere, that women are evil, selfish and ungrateful creatures whose primary goal in life is to leech off of men and make them miserable.
In a recent post titled Playing Career Woman, manosphere blogger Dalrock takes on some of the most evil and selfish ladies of the whole lot of them: upper middle class ladies who insist on going to college and getting jobs, then later leave the workforce to raise their children.
You might think that these ladies would deserve some props from traditional-minded manosphere dudes for supporting themselves instead of leeching off of men during their twenties, then settling into a more traditional housewifely role once they have children.
Oh, but you don’t realize just how evil and disruptive and oppressive their phony careers are to the men of the world. After all, these aren’t women who need to work to support themselves. No, according to Dalrock, these are “women who use their education and career as a way to check off the box to prove their feminist credentials before settling down into an entirely traditional role.”
According to Escoffier, a commenter on Dalrock’s site whom he quotes with approval, in the good old pre-feminist days:
Women who pursued careers (apart from traditional female roles such as teaching … ) were considered at best sort of harmlessly odd … but we know that family life is superior and more important.
Then came feminism:
Now it’s “You MUST do this for own sake, not to do it is to not realize your potential.” …
The way the [upper middle class] has “solved” this problem is to send girls to college, let them launch their careers–whether in soggy girly stuff like PR or crunchy stuff like business and law–and then they marry late (~30), have kids a few years later and drop out of working at least until the kids are grown.
This answers a couple of needs, not least the need for two incomes to accumulate assets so that the couple can eventually buy into a UMC school district.
Oh, but these women aren’t really earning money because they need it to, you know, pay bills and shit:
[T]he real importance of this solution is to her psyche. Getting the education and career are a way of telegraphing “I am a complete person, not some drone like June Cleaver. I am just as smart and capable as any man. In my altruistic concern for my children, I choose not to use my talent in the marketplace but to devote myself to them.” In other words, she needs that education and early career to mark her as better than a mere housewife, even though she will eventually choose to become a housewife.
According to Dalrock, such women are far more evil than the feminist women who get jobs and stick with them. (Emphasis added.)
Men and women who work hard to support themselves understand that they are in it for the duration. There is a determined realism to them. … These aren’t the women we are talking about. The women Escoffier described see having a career as a badge of status to be collected on their way to their ultimate goal of stay at home housewife. They aren’t really career women, they are playing career woman much the way that Marie Antoinette played peasant and Zoolander’s character played coal miner.
In the comments, someone calling himself Carnivore explains just how unfair this all is to the poor innocent working men of the world:
When men get a degree or go through a vocational program and then land a job, they’ve normally got 40+ years to contribute to increasing the wealth of society. Women “playing” career damage society:
1. They displace men for positions in college or vocational school.
2. Upon landing a job, they displace other men for the job position.
3. The increase in the labor pool drives down wages (supply & demand).
4. While in the labor pool, women are less effective and less productive than men.
5. Because they are in the labor pool and cannot compete with men, women support labor laws to enforce “equality” which burden businesses and can cause men to get fired due to some infringement or just to meet quotas.
6. When they leave the labor pool after becoming bored, there is now a hole than can be difficult to fill because the men who would normally fill it have been displaced for all the reasons above.
Carnivore places part of the blame on the feminism-infected parents who taught these women the wrong things:
Women do NOT know what they want. They have to be guided. Most parents have so bought into feminism that they don’t see any other way. It’s a riot – or sad – talking to parents when they go into all the detail about choosing a college, going on campus visits, making sure she gets into the best school, etc., etc. You would think these parents would spend their time and energy on prepping their daughters for the most important life decision – choosing a man for marriage, how to make a husband happy and how to raise healthy children.
The commenter called Ray takes it one step further:
i was in the workplaces during feminism 1.0, and it had nothing to do with fairness, equity, egalitarianism, or any other positive attribute
in fact, it was a slaughter, resulting in the vast disenfranchisement and destruction of millions of american men — there were dozens of ways men could be hassled, RIFd, and forced from employment, and they were (all to chants of Equality and Empowerment)
this resulted in the massive unemployment of the very men needed to create, invent, and revitalize the culture. and to be fathers to sons . …
no female should be employed, or educated, if it means a qualified male must be excluded
Women, stop leeching off men by paying your own way!
NOTE: This post contains SARCASM.
Posted on November 27, 2011, in $MONEY$, antifeminism, evil women, I'm totally being sarcastic, life before feminism, misogyny, oppressed men, patriarchy, reactionary bullshit. Bookmark the permalink. 1,774 Comments.
Meller: Since you’re still tootin’ the horn for the nuclear family, maybe you’d like to take this opportunity to explain what went wrong in my family’s situation. I could even re-post the comment for you if you so desire :)
Zhinxi-
A very interesting idea, and one that has definite possibilities for the coming generation, as manufacturing and much highly centralized large scale commerce seems to have seen better days, and prospects for long term employment for the generation entering the workforce today are unpromising to say the least.
Worth keeping an eye on, but even here, maybe even especially in homebusinesses, it is quite likely that the “male” areas of the homebusiness will involve different responsiblities and types of work then the work specialties of the “female” areas. Gender will out, even there!
Brandon: Although they’re a very reliable method, vasectomies actually can still fail.
Well, you’re not doing a good job getting your point across. What I’ve seen so far is you belittling and devaluing the work of stay at home parents. That’s why you said,
@Bee: In the example I was talking about, I was talking about me subsidizing a woman to stay at home to raise my child.
and
It looks like you think stay at home parents are leeches, and do not contribute to the well being of their families when you make those statements. Why else would you say you’re “subsidizing” someone for raising your children, or say you want to charge that person room and board? You might as well put an ad out for a live in nanny and housekeeper, but specify that she will have to pay you for the privilege.
“The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists state there is a generally agreed upon rate of failure of about 1 in 2000 vasectomies”
http://www.rcog.org.uk/womens-health/clinical-guidance/sterilisation-women-and-men-what-you-need-know#how
“Worth keeping an eye on, but even here, maybe even especially in homebusinesses, it is quite likely that the “male” areas of the homebusiness will involve different responsiblities and types of work then the work specialties of the “female” areas. Gender will out, even there!”
If it outs naturally, it outs. Jury’s still out, like I said! We’ll see where the chips fall when we’re free. And if we’re free, we won’t make a big deal about it either way.
Seriously, read Carson’s the homebrew industrial revolution.
What you consider mutually exploitative, other people consider mutually beneficial. Not everyone has to live like Brandon to be happy.
I think promiscuous women are demonstrating poor judgement. If I were to get married, I would want a wife that exercises good judgement and not poor judgement.
In what way? Define Promiscuous.
However, I don’t really think her behavior is something that should be 1) emulated or 2) praised. It’s not the woman that is the issue, it is the behavior that is.
This is a repetition which says nothing more than the first. Elaborate.
I am also curious about the choice of descriptors. You say their behavior ought not be emulated. Ok… what would you do to reduce the number of people who engage in promiscuous (as you define it, and until you do we can’t really discuss the issue, because we don’t know that we are talking about the same thing).
Who, to close this, is praising them? What I see is people saying they ought not be condemned, but rather allowed to live their lives as they see fit.
Why is a promiscuous woman exercising poor judgment? What if the woman always uses protection? Why does casual sex automatically equate poor judgment?
Lastly, I think marriage is a way for both parties to exploit each other. Men get a stay at home servant and the woman gets money and resources without working (in a typical breadwinner/stay at home scenario).
So… servants ought not be paid, because being a stay at home servant isn’t working? Labor, for a spouse, is in some way not worthy of compensation? This ties into the whole, “She needs to pay me room and board, while I get the childcare for free” thing you have going with any putative parental partner you might have (in the theoretical sense, in light of your vasectomy).
@DKM: Men will just have to find something else to be prideful about. Back in the day, men displayed their “status and provider ability”, with a respectful and high paying career. Now that more women are graduating college and earning money, it isn’t a big deal anymore. Instead of complaining about it, let’s use it as an opportunity to make men’s lives better. There is a lot of positives to men not being forced into provider roles. In fact, I think men should actively shun that role and refuse to take it. Women and feminism tore up women’s social contract 40 years ago, I think men should do the same.
@Viscaria: I am expressing my thoughts on the matter. I am not telling people how to live, just that there are alternatives to the standard marriage bullshit that is praised in our society. You live whatever way you want, I don’t really care.
@thebionicmommy: Yes, you want to give women options at the expense of men. At least women have an option to either work or stay at home. Do you realize that doesn’t really fly that well when you switch the genders.
I wish I could find someone to financially support me, while I stay at home.
You are going to get criticized anyways, so do whatever you want. You don’t think men aren’t criticized for the choices we make? I can do one thing and make one person happy while simultaneously make 10 people angry. That is the world, you will never be free from criticism. Even famous dead people are still being criticized to this day (FDR, Mises, Guevara, Stalin, etc..)
“You live whatever way you want, I don’t really care.”
Yet you’ve spent all these posts trying to convince us that any other way of living is wrong…
Brandon: @Viscaria: I am expressing my thoughts on the matter.
No, you aren’t actually. You aren’t defining your terms. We don’t have a working definition of either, “Slut”, nor, “Promiscuous”. So you are speaking, but not communicating.
NWO, or Meller, for example, would agree with you. A slut isn’t a suitable person to marry. They would also say they weren’t good people; that they are morally deficient, and not to be respected (forget emulation and praise).
They would also be thinking of Ashley in the category delimited by “Slut” and “Promiscuous.”
As I have remarked ever since Reagan, “cutting” taxes is onlly half the problem, and the less important half at that! It is cutting government spending (and borrowing) that is the main challenge, then and–even more, with the horrific debt burden–now!
Another point is that the GOP tax cuts not only are too little too late, but, as you Democrats never cease reminding us, they go primarily to the uppermost five percent or so! This would be harmless enough if more of today’s rich were like e.g. Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, Adam Gimbel, John D. Rockefeller Sr. George Westinghouse, David Sarnoff, and Alfred P. Sloan…Men who actually built industries, gave employment to millions, facilitated trade, and improved industry and technology for everybody!
Instead we have an economy(?) where most of today’s rich (with apologies to e.g. Bill Gates or the late Steve Jobs) are more like Jay Gould, Al Capone, Daniel Drew, William (Boss) Tweed, Barney Madoff, David Koch, Henry Paulson, George Soros, et al! The money is simply gambled away in sundry government backed paper schemes, through debt pyramided “investments”, and when they go bankrupt, are then bailed out to the tune of TRILLIONS of $$$$ inevitably paid for by– guess who?
Notice that I haven’t even mention the criminals who seem to be the GOP’s special pets, the military contractors and war profiteers, whose activities are just as dishonest and corrupt as those of the crooks mentioned above, but get innocent people killed and maimed. Ron Paul calls attention to this, and has opposed such corruption for a very long time, Paul Ryan, and the other Republicans, whether they cut(?) taxes or not, don’t!
Notice that you also haven’t actually answered the question, merely spouted more boilerplate talking points.
Which means, so far, Ryan and Paul are much of a muchness, and Ryan is, by the measures you’ve been offering, the better libertarian.
He’s also more honest.
@thebionicmommy: Yes, you want to give women options at the expense of men. At least women have an option to either work or stay at home. Do you realize that doesn’t really fly that well when you switch the genders.
I wish I could find someone to financially support me, while I stay at home.
I and others here (Pecunium, I believe) have been stay-at-home dads at various times. In my case, my wife had a better job than I, whereas I had more experience working with kids. If we didn’t need the money, I would do it still, since I really don’t like the idea of my youngest being raised at daycare. There are some damn good reasons, from the perspective of child development, for one or both parents to stay home at least part of the time if they are able. Sadly, increasing numbers of parents are not able to do this. Not really a good thing, in my book.
Once again, Brandon, you are full of shit. Color me totally unsurprised.
@thebionicmommy: Yes, you want to give women options at the expense of men. At least women have an option to either work or stay at home. Do you realize that doesn’t really fly that well when you switch the genders.
…except for when it does, as in Wetherby’s life or the example I gave you. You know who is fighting for greater social acceptance of stay-at-home dads and less discrimination against women in the workplace so that they are just as likely to be the primary breadwinner as men? Hint: it begins with an F and rhymes with “schmeminists.”
I wish I could find someone to financially support me, while I stay at home.
The go look for someone like that! I can assure you that there are a not-insignificant number of women out there who’d find, “I really want to be a stay-at-home dad someday” to be a turn-on.
CB: I and others here (Pecunium, I believe) have been stay-at-home dads at various times.
For some value. I have been an au pair. I have also been the stay at home partner, but we didn’t have kids.
@Herp: Ya, what is the rate of vasectomy failure? .0001%. Plus you can get tested to verify you are “shooting blanks”. So even if it doesn’t work the first time, you can fix it.
@thebionicmommy: No, I just don’t buy into the notion that being a stay at home parent is 1) insanely difficult and 2) it is “the most important job on the planet”
Stay at home parents work but there are lots of other jobs that are 1) need more intelligence 2) more physically demanding.
Let’s get one thing straight. They are not my children…they would be OUR children. A mother has just as much responsibility in taking care of the child. You think being a stay at home mom is 1) what you want to do and 2) where you will be most beneficial…right?
Well, the child still needs food, clothing and shelter at a bare minimum. Better get working! Oh wait…you can just force a man to do all the grunt work you don’t really want to do…how nice!
@everyone:
I think slutty women are indulging in a very shallow activity because they think it will make them happy. Basically they are trying to find an external object/source to make them happy.
I think this behavior is similar to how drug addicts seek out drugs. They use them as an external object that can make them happy (at least in the short term).
The problem with that is happiness doesn’t come from an external source, it comes from within you. Addicts are trying to cure an internal problem with an external problem.
This shows 1) she is impulsive and 2) she has no self control. These two things alone is enough of a red flag to not consider a woman as a potential wife. At best she is a short term fling.
Yes, I know. Men aren’t held to exactly the same standards. Well, why don’t you try teaching women to view men that sleep around a lot are bad news and should be avoided? Wait…you don’t want to change women’s behavior…you want to normalize bad behavior.
Of all of the people in the world to complain to about society stigmatizing stay at home fatherhood, why are you complaining to feminists? Feminism is about giving people options beyond the traditional gender roles. I respect stay at home dads, and wish other people in society would treat them better for their choice. Feminists are much more likely than traditional, conservative women to take on the role of the breadwinner while their husbands stay home to raise the children. Complaining to us about traditional gender roles is just preaching to the choir.
If you honestly wanted to be a househusband, then you need to find a woman who wants to be a breadwinner and have you stay home. I do hope you realize, though, that running a household and raising children is hard work. I also know you say you’re getting a vasectomy, so it might be harder to convince a woman to be your provider if you won’t have and raise children for her.
“Basically they are trying to find an external object/source to make them happy.”
People who aren’t sluts or addicts never go to movies/plays/concerts/sports games for entertainment. They don’t watch television or have hobbies or read books. External sources of fun are for the sluts.
So, women are basically wrong no matter what they do? That seems to be the theme of the “manosphere”.
Well, the child still needs food, clothing and shelter at a bare minimum. Better get working! Oh wait…you can just force a man to do all the grunt work you don’t really want to do…how nice!
Like the 4 a.m. feeding, and the earaches, and the lunches, and the diapers, and the laundry, and the trips to the doctor, and the clothes shopping, and the puke in the carpet, and the cuts and scrapes and bruises, and the parent/teacher conferences, and the colic that lasts all day, and the daiper rash, and the “helpy” that takes all the pans out of the cupboard, “to clean them mommy1″ and the sweeping up the broken plates, and, and, and.
Add the meals for the adults, and the grocery shopping and dealing with the plumber, and the cable, guy, and travel to playdates, and soccer, and little league, and scout meetings, and all the other things you are still ignoring from the last time this subject came up.
Because it’s all days of wine and roses when you spend your days, 24/7 with children.
@Bathrobe: Yes, and what stigma is often placed on men that aspire to be stay at home fathers? That he isn’t a man.
1) If being a stay at home father was more important than you looking good in front of your male buddies, then you would do it regardless of what they thought.
2) However, most men do not aspire to be stay at home fathers.
Also, you just proved my point earlier on. The way society is going, it is becoming harder and harder for one parent to stay at home while the other works.
I find this funny to talk about. Men working and women staying home…what is this? Did we go back to the dark ages?
@Polliwogs: Why would I support more stay at home fathers? I don’t even support stay at home mothers. The notion that it is an actual option needs to change. Luckily for me, society is moving in that direction anyways.
I was actually being sarcastic. I don’t want to stay at home. Also, the women that I am attracted to aren’t usually “pro stay at home daddy” women.
Brandon: @everyone:
I think slutty women are indulging in a very shallow activity because they think it will make them happy. Basically they are trying to find an external object/source to make them happy.
Better, but still not a good operational definition. A woman who is with one partner all her life might be doing the same thing.
What is the observable behavior which you define as slutty/promiscuous? Once we have that (and you get to define it. No committee you have to get to agree with you. These are your ideas. This one is all about you) then we can begin to discuss the rest of it.
Until we have an actual definition, one we can measure against, then we can talk about it.
Until then, you are just blowing smoke.
Well, the child still needs food, clothing and shelter at a bare minimum. Better get working! Oh wait…you can just force a man to do all the grunt work you don’t really want to do…how nice!
Brandon, you keep saying these things that make me wonder if you are aware that children are not actually toys. They do not go into some sort of “standby mode” when you don’t happen to be around them. Children need food, shelter, and clothing. They also need someone to take care of them 24/7/365 until they are old enough to take care of themselves. Your options when you have a kid do not include “provide kid with food and clothes, then wander off and assume kid will be fine on its own.” They include only “take care of child 24/7/365 yourself” or “get someone else to do the work of taking care of kid during the times you’re not around.” You claim that you’re aware that child care is work, and then you come right back and explain that a stay-at-home parent needs to “get working” to take care of their child’s needs, totally ignoring that someone looking after the child IS one of the child’s needs.
Is it just that you find the idea of someone trading labor for money super-confusing? Because, um, that’s pretty much the entire concept of “a job” in the first place. Why is it okay to trade the labor of taking care of a child for the money to pay your bills if you’re a nanny or a day care worker or a babysitter, but magically totally different if the child in question came out of your uterus?
What!? You mean feminism isn’t like the KKK but against men?
Sigh. Back to the drawing board!
I find this funny to talk about. Men working and women staying home…what is this? Did we go back to the dark ages?
No. But we are the ones arguing for options. You are the one saying, “It should be this way; anything else is stupid, and wrong.”
Pecunium:
You asked the question, if I read your post correctly, what do I think of Paul Ryan, and his tax cuts. I replied,(in a fairly “Democrat-friendly” way, I might add) that I didn’t think much of them, or of him, and I proceeded to give you some reasons as to why.
If i just posted my opinion of Ryan without this, you would probably have just asserted that my opinion was without foundation and demanded sources, references, and notes ad infinitum. All I wanted to do was explain why Paul Ryan was unimpressive even as a tax cutter, and go on from there.
I hoped that my comparison between him (and the GOP people who support him() and RP (and the GOP people who HATE him) would have laid the basis for a more favorable view of Ron Paul, given the financial emergency the USA—to say nothing that the rest of the world–is facing now, but it is obvious that RP is simply someone whom we must “agree to disagree” about.
If you think that my effort at answering your question was “a bunch of boilerplate talking points”, then, Pecunium, I am sorry to have wasted your time!
Brandon: Vasectomies can fail years and years after they’re performed. The generally established rate of failure is 1 in 2000. So as long as you keep getting tested — regularly for the rest of your life — to make sure you stay sterile, then you’re good.
@AmandaMarcotte:
How nice of you to visit. I always wanted to talk to someone “famous”.
By the way, most men can also tell you that women put them in scenarios they can’t win. Hence the expression “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”.
It’s not men, or the patriarchy, or the matriarchy, or the manosphere….it’s people. People place high, often conflicting expectations on others. The point is why do you care about other people’s expectations?
Brandon, I don’t think you have any idea how much work parenthood is. It is a 24/7 job. There is no lunch break or clocking out. Children need constant care. It doesn’t matter if you’re sick or tired, you have to suck it up to meet the children’s needs.
When my children were babies, I had to get up two or three times a night to breastfeed them and change their diapers. They would cry and I would have to work out the puzzle of why because they couldn’t tell me they had gas, or needed a nap, or wanted to look at a toy. Then there is potty training, and believe me, it is no cake walk. After the tornado, my husband was at work, so I was alone to take care of the children, deal with contractors and insurance agents, and manage a household living in a construction zone. I wouldn’t change a thing about my life, but I will object if you say it’s easy.
Well, the child also needs feeding, bathing, teaching, playing, healthcare, a clean home, emotional support, and physical safety.
If a woman is doing that grunt work, that has value. It’s something that you would otherwise need to spend either money or time on. You can’t write it up as a zero on your relationship ledger.
Brandon thinks he can argue with Amanda Marcotte?
Let me get my popcorn.
Yet another clueless misogynist who has no idea how farm life works, I see.
@Lauralot: There is a difference between going to see a movie and allowing another human being to sleep with you.
@Pecunium: There is no objective definition. I basically watch how a woman behaves. Is she sleeping with a lot of people? What kind of people are they? Are they assholes? Do I know if they have an STD? etc..,
It’s not like there is a set number and voila…a slut is born!
@Polliwogs: Why would I support more stay at home fathers? I don’t even support stay at home mothers. The notion that it is an actual option needs to change. Luckily for me, society is moving in that direction anyways.
I was actually being sarcastic. I don’t want to stay at home. Also, the women that I am attracted to aren’t usually “pro stay at home daddy” women.
Oy. Yes, I know. Let me just recap this conversation for those following along at home:
Brandon: Being a stay-at-home mom is unfair because being a stay-at-home dad isn’t an option! Women have options that men don’t!
Me: Men do have the same options. There are stay-at-home-dads in the world. If you really wanted to be a stay-at-home dad, you could.
Brandon: But I don’t WANNA be a stay-at-home dad. So no one should be able to be a stay-at-home parent!
I mean, dude, even for you, thinking this is somehow a defense of your argument is asinine. All it is is yet another example of how, to you, What Brandon Wants not only defines What Everyone Should Want, but apparently determines reality itself. Stay-at-home dads, you no longer exist, because Brandon doesn’t want to be you!
You could say the same thing to hikers. Why do you need some damn mountain to make you happy? Happiness comes from within! Yet you don’t seem to think of hikers, or movie fans, or foodies, or people who use some sort of stimulus to make themselves happy (which is everyone) as dirty and degraded.
If a woman has sex using birth control and contraception with carefully selected partners, that’s not out-of-control. That’s just a lot of sex. Someone can have a lot of partners and yet be quite careful with each of them.
We don’t want everyone to be equally miserable. We want everyone to be equally free.
If behavior that gives pleasure and can be done with a low risk of negative consequences is “bad,” that’s a new and exciting definition of the word.
Women worked in the Middle Ages, too. They planted and harvested, spun and wove cloth, cooked and cleaned, were guild members and heads, captained ships (some legally with letters of marque, other not so much), served in armies (as washerwomen or soldiers in disguise), served in religious orders, were scribes, painters and sculptors. Some were even independent rulers or explorers (look up Aud the Deep-Minded sometime, she was pretty kickass).
In other words, it is a blanket term for women Brandon disapproves of. By definition, not marriageable (to Brandon).
But Holly, hiking and allowing another person to sleep with you are totally different!.
Amanda: This isn’t the manosphere, is the Brandonverse. Smaller, but just as dense.
If only we would accept his expertise on things like the law, psychology, gender relations and sexual mores, we’d be happy and fulfilled.
But he’s above it all, he comes here just to entertain himself, and cares not what we think.
@Brandon,
1) If being a stay at home father was more important than you looking good in front of your male buddies, then you would do it regardless of what they thought.
2) However, most men do not aspire to be stay at home fathers.
When did I say anything about my buddies? I went back to work because we needed money.
As for proving your point, I don’t think anyone disagrees with you about whether it’s increasingly difficult to get by with kids and only one income. What we disagree about is whether this is a good thing.
Personally, I believe the ideal situation would be where both parents work part-time and flex their schedules so someone could be with the kids at all time.
@thebionicmommy: No, I just don’t buy into the notion that being a stay at home parent is 1) insanely difficult and 2) it is “the most important job on the planet”
Stay at home parents work but there are lots of other jobs that are 1) need more intelligence 2) more physically demanding.
See, this is why I think you are full of shit. You don’t have the slightest idea what being a stay-at-home parent actually involves. I do, and I have to say that being at work, in my experience, is often easier: the tasks are usually clearly defined, there are other adults to talk to, and you typically get regular breaks. Kids are endlessly demanding in ways you can’t begin to comprehend unless you’ve actually had to care for them 24/7. And, no, babysitting nieces or nephews doesn’t count.
Pro-tip: STFU about parenting unless you’ve actually done it; otherwise, you just sound like a jackass.
Brandon
…says the man with no actual experience of being married.
And considering that you’ve never been married, you have a remarkably bitter and cynical view of a situation that should by rights be a case of both parties supporting each other – which is how successful marriages do indeed work.
If my wife was genuinely at home doing nothing, I’d have every right to query why I was supporting her. But in fact she worked damn hard to maintain her career, gain extra professional qualifications (which she’s now converting into hard cash) and put in the back-breaking effort that child-rearing involves, and as far as I’m concerned she was worth every penny.
Wishing won’t get you anywhere – you have to work at it.
And when we swapped roles, my wife was only too happy to pass the childcare onto me, and her extra professional qualifications ensured that when she returned to full-time work her salary shot up significantly – and now that her career’s back on track she’s only too happy to subsidize me, knowing that our kids are getting first-rate childcare and that I’m earning enough to pay my share (we’ve agreed that she covers mortgage and food while I cover bills).
But arrangements like this can only work if you have a mutually supportive relationship – as opposed to an exploitative one.
Meller: You asked the question, if I read your post correctly, what do I think of Paul Ryan, and his tax cuts.
You didn’t read me correctly, either time. Go back and read the questions, as written.
The first was very simple, “What do you think of Paul Ryan.”
I didn’t think much of them, or of him, and I proceeded to give you some reasons as to why.
No, you didn’t. You spouted slogans. You didn’t (any more than you have for Paul) address policy, or position.
I hoped that my comparison between him (and the GOP people who support him() and RP (and the GOP people who HATE him) would have laid the basis for a more favorable view of Ron Paul, given the financial emergency the USA—to say nothing that the rest of the world–is facing now, but it is obvious that RP is simply someone whom we must “agree to disagree” about.
You didn’t compare them. You have never, actually, detailed the, “financial emergency” you think the world faces, nor how you think it might be redressed. We have talked about the pie in the sky folly that is, “GOLD WILL FIX EVERYTHING, and twice (in Johhny Appleseed, and 100%) you have said a bunch of stuff and not responded to my answers, only to repeat your initial points elsewhere, as if not heard before.
That’s where you’ve been wasting my time, and I don’t think, no matter how apologetic you may be, that you are sorry at all.
CB:See, this is why I think you are full of shit. You don’t have the slightest idea what being a stay-at-home parent actually involves. I do, and I have to say that being at work, in my experience, is often easier: the tasks are usually clearly defined, there are other adults to talk to, and you typically get regular breaks. Kids are endlessly demanding in ways you can’t begin to comprehend unless you’ve actually had to care for them 24/7. And, no, babysitting nieces or nephews doesn’t count.
Yep.
Speaking as someone who has been one of the primary caretakers for two babes in arms, and had lovers who had toddlers, being in an outside job is easier, and less mentally demanding. It’s also less stressful.
And even with that level of experience, I am less than sanguine about the kids we are planning to have. It’s hard work, and demanding, and there is no vacation (not until they are old enough to spend time away from home for a couple of days).
This, of course, is what Brandon (and MRAs in general) deride as, “sponging” off of someone.
KathleenB
It is possible, isn’t it, that a lot of the women whom you cite in the middle ages who worked outside the home were extremely unusual specimens of womanhood for their time, and that their eccentricity, if not abnormality, was why they, and their activities, were recorded.
Their work would be considered especially remarkable if it was done as well as it would be expected to be done by a man, wouldn’t it?
Were the communities where these women, and others like them, doing the work most often accomplshed by men any better off then more traditional places, or were they simply showoffs of the ‘modern woman’ anything you can do, I can do better type that has become so unpleasantly visible in the past half century or so?
Were these women real women or imitation men? A question worth asking, isn’t it? And WHERE WERE their fathers, husbands, or other men who were supposed to be taking care of them?
Well, I see that Brandon clearly thinks that anything thought of as “women’s work” is to be unpaid and really not thought of as work. OK.
See, this is one of those situations that falls under “patriarchy hurts everyone,” because if the system itself were different, women working or not wouldn’t be an issue. As it is, “having it all” is a false choice, because if you do leave work, you’re penalized in the long run financially (no 401K or social security contributions). It’s damn hard to get back in the game unless you’ve made one hell of an effort to keep your skills up-to-date. Hard to do with small children, and as a bonus barrier to re-entry, the economy sucks right now.
I’m sure there are fathers who would love to stay home (contrary to Brandon and others delusions), but most companies aren’t that family-friendly in the first place. If we had better leave systems and flexibility, things would be better. If we I dunno, stopped working like fucking dogs in this country for very little return, that’d be a good start.
Brandon, most people–not you, you’re too special–get married when they have kids, so it’s not like the woman is expected to pay room and board, it’s a basic perk in most marriages. Hey, in your scenario, since it’s all financial, can she charge you for sex, or do you deduct that from the rent? Anyway, your world is sad.
Meller: Do you know that there is no list of the washerwomen who served the Crusades? This despite the fact that their services were so fucking important that they were often the first ransomed from both sides? Their services saved a great many lives – do you know what kind of shit bugs in your clothing can carry? They did an essential, amazing service for their countries/church/liege lords and no one fucking bothered to record their names.
I know this will blow your tiny mind, Mellertoad, but sometimes, fathers and husbands fuck right off to who knows where. Why don’t you rail on them for a while?
Amen, Captain Bathrobe. I used to know everything about how to raise children until I actually had kids of my own. That’s when I realized how little I really knew.
Meller: A lot of the time, they were working beside their husbands – there were no fucking bon bons when the harvest had to come in. You worked your ass off or you didn’t eat, and that meant EVERYONE. Would the men lower themselves to spin, weave, knit or do naalbinding? Doubtful, that was woman’s work. High born women ran their households, ensured that necessary work got done, kept household accounts, often made simple salves and medications, along with the spinning, weaving, making clothes and embroidery. Women worked their asses off, Meller, because they had to in order to survive, and in order to make sure the people they were responsible for survived.
Well, Meller, as a Medieval Studies Degree Getter, I focus on heresies, the Lex Mercantia and the works of the Scholastics, but let me tell you… Most of those women weren’t working “outside the home” they were working FROM “home”. Women brewers especially or women butchers were often married, and the husband had another job under the same roof, or helped out with hers… Yeah, you could be your wife’s butcher assistant in the dark ages. Funny stuff. Again, for most of history, that’s been work for you. Home homity home home home and family and work as one. As for the rest of it, “were they imitation men” isn’t really a question that has much meaning, as “imitation men” is in the eye of the gender role enforcing beholder. Well, wait I think the cross dressing soldiers kinda were imitation men in a WAY… ;)
Katherine of Aragon served as Henry VII’s Regent when he went to war on the Continent. She managed his armies well enough to repel a Scottish invasion. While managing the affairs of their kingdom and making his clothes.
Meller: A lot of the time, they were working beside their husbands – there were no fucking bon bons when the harvest had to come in. You worked your ass off or you didn’t eat, and that meant EVERYONE. Would the men lower themselves to spin, weave, knit or do naalbinding? Doubtful, that was woman’s work. High born women ran their households, ensured that necessary work got done, kept household accounts, often made simple salves and medications, along with the spinning, weaving, making clothes and embroidery. Women worked their asses off, Meller, because they had to in order to survive, and in order to make sure the people they were responsible for survived.
Indeed –
Highborn women also had instruction in commanding the knights and getting the peasants in the castle when it came siege time. Spinning, weaving, obeying your Lord Husband, devotions, manners, and How To Run The Siege When Your Husband Isn’t There, those were the lessons of a high born lady.
Or I could STFU and let zhinxy answer much better. ninja’d!
NO need, again, I focus on medieval LAW… It’s so not the good stuff XD (But zhinxy finds is awesomely interesting! )
zhinxy: Have you ever tried naalbinding? It’s a pain in the ass of epic proportions. No wonder Norsewomen gave it up when they figured out knitting!
I have NOT! I’ve made my own felt though!
Felt. Yech. That’s one process I’m glad to pay others to do.
Sex addiction is a real thing, and while sex addicts typically have a lot of sex (if they don’t, they usually masturbate constantly) not everyone who has a lot of sex is a sex addict.
I probably wouldn’t want to marry someone who couldn’t hold a job, maintain non-sexual relationships, or relate to me non-sexually because of a sex addiction. Addictions don’t make you a bad person, but they make it a lot harder for others to be with you. I wouldn’t be with a drug addict, either.
But someone who really enjoys sex, and has had lots of partners? As long as they’re cool with monogamy, sign me up!
@Bathrobe: I also don’t have to be a chainhand on an oil rig to see that is physically demanding.
Also, it really depends on what stage a child is in. Newborns clearly need more attention than pre-teens. Plus once they hit school, you have between 8am-2:30pm to do all your other errands without the demands of a small child.
I don’t have to actually do an activity to know that I don’t want to do it. I can learn from others mistakes. This is how people know not to jump off bridges or walk around dangerous neighborhoods.
Also, the spectrum of parenting is extremely broad. You can be a shitty parent that doesn’t give a rats ass about your child or you can be a good parent that wants to see them achieve and do well in life. Clearly the latter is “easy work” while the former is “hard work”.
And by observing the world, one thing I do see A LOT of is a bunch of careless shitty parents.
@Wetherby: I have a massive family. Hell, I have 26 cousins just on one side of my family…never mind the other side. I have seen weddings and marriages come and go. I have seen what marriage does to people. Out of all the marriages members of my family has been in. I think maybe 2 are happy. And this is out of aunts and uncles getting remarried. So out of roughly 15 marriages…1 to 2 are happy. Those aren’t good odds.
The other side of my family is much more “we can’t divorce because that is bad, but I would rather stay in this miserable relationship instead” kind of people. You can just tell the men are beaten down and the women are overly-righteous to the point of insanity. And what is even worse is that they think they are happy when everything else says otherwise. I guess they have to deny it and be delusional to keep their sanity.
Needless to say, the “marriage role models” are not really “selling” marriage very well. In fact, I think it is getting to the point where you get married if you want to be miserable.
So I don’t think I need to actually be married to see the damage it does to people. And people take on this risk on the slim chance that they will “find their soul mate”.
What’s that saying in that movie “The Girl Next Door”? “The juice isn’t worth the squeeze”.
How wonderful it is to see the masters of cognitive dissonance – feminists and women – claiming that MRAs hold contradictory ideas. Of course, it couldn’t be that maybe the manosphere isn’t one big monolithic entity, but in fact a dynamic community consisting of different people who have different and sometimes conflicting beliefs, could it? No of course not, because feminists can’t engage with anything that isn’t an imaginary caricature.
Just because one person might point out that women are parasitic luxury objects who would rather buy into a man’s success than create her own, while another might believe that women who try to resist the prostitute factory settings of the XX chromosome will never be more than stunted inefficient half-men, it doesn’t mean that they represent the same group. That should be obvious.
All I see here is classic female narcissism, the inability for a woman to imagine the world beyond her own experience. Women assume that because they have a hamster spinning away that lets them rationalize their contradictory and hypocritical actions and beliefs, that men must too. But that’s not how life works for the get-shit-done gender.
@Hellkell: I don’t see “woman’s work” and “man’s work”. I see “easy work” and “hard work”. A female attorney is doing a hard job that requires years of expertise. Any idiot can become a parent.
@Viscaria: And I wouldn’t marry a drug addict either.
@KathleenB
Just tried naalbinding from a youtube video. Oh holy HELL NO.
I’ll stick to my knitting.
Henry Adams, patriarch extraordinarie, in Mont St. Michel & Chartres:
“A trait peculiar to this epoch is the close resemblance between the manners of men and women. The rule that such and such feelings or acts are permitted to one sex and forbidden to the other was not fairly settled. Men had the right to dissolve in tears, and women that of talking without prudery …. If we look at their intellectual level, the women appear distinctly superior. They are more serious; more subtle. With them we do not seem dealing with the rude state of civilization that their husbands belong to …. As a rule, the women seem to have the habit of weighing their acts; of not yielding to momentary impressions. While the sense of Christianity is more developed in them than in their husbands, on the other hand they show more perfidy and art in crime …. One might doubtless prove by a series of examples that the maternal influence when it predominated in the education of a son gave him a marked superiority over his contemporaries…Man’s business was to fight or hunt or feast or make love. The man was also the travelling partner in commerce, commonly absent from home for months together, while the woman carried on the business. The woman ruled the household and the workshop; cared for the economy; supplied the intelligence, and dictated the taste. Her ascendancy was secured by her alliance with the Church, into which she sent her most intelligent children; and a priest or clerk, for the most part, counted socially as a woman.”
Adams was writing about the high Middle Ages. His book deals principally with the era during which the great cathedrals of France were being built.
Sorry about the mis-spelling.
…
….
…..
……WOW.
I’m just gonna leave that there.
Yes, Arks, the MRM has a beautiful diversity of misogyny. Let us never forget the beautiful tapestry of lady-hatred that makes up the melting pot of Internet lady-haters.
“Any idiot can become a parent.”
Any idiot can grunt out a kid, Brandon. It takes talent and dedication to become a parent.