It’s been quite some time since we last checked in with the genteel racist and Holocaust-denier who calls herself The Thinking Housewife. Flipping through her blog archive today, I could not find it in me to click on posts with such unappetising titles as “Usury and Homosexuality” and “Martin Luther King: Commie Fraud.”
But her recent post on lady astronauts got my attention. In it, Laura Wood (her real name, evidently), throws some reactionary shade at NASA for the unforgivable sin of training four women for space work and a possible trip to the Red Planet.
As Wood sees it, Mars does NOT need women, because a trip to yucky Mars pales in comparison to the joys of full-time housewifery.
[T]he things these women could accomplish within the dramatic and exciting Inner Space of their own homes so dwarfs what they could accomplish on Mars (where they won’t be going anyway), that the very suggestion is an outrage.
Wait, I thought Innerspace was the movie in which Dennis Quaid got shrunken down to microscopic size, Fantastic Voyage style, and accidentally injected into Martin Short?
Who would trade insipid, lifeless, finite Mars (Yuck!! Revolting!!) for the chance to create and influence human beings, each one of whom is a fascinating planet, an eternal sphere of consummate adventure, a being that is utterly unique and made in God’s image?
Apparently, God is a tiny bald, incontinent person who can barely walk straight and communicates mainly through shrieks and vomiting, yet is somehow also adorable?
If that isn’t power, what is?
Uh, being president? I mean, having a kid is a momentous thing, for mothers and fathers alike, and fulfilling in many ways that even being president or taking a trip to freakin Mars couldn’t ever be. (Or so I’ve heard.) But it’s not power.
And seriously, if the thing you value most about your children is that they’re small enough to boss around, you’re probably not cut out to be a parent. Go run for president, or something.
God gave men galaxies and distant planets and asteroids to compensate them for the misfortune — and unfairness — of never being able to become mothers.
And God says this where? I’m a dude with no uterus, and I never got my owner’s certificate for everything in the sky.
Outer Space takes their minds off the unfairness of it all, something women have been kind enough to recognize in the past by not denying those who have dreamed of being astronauts since they were little boys of the chance to experience the “vomit comet.”
I’m just going to let J-Law here handle my response:
Dudes, if you’re truly furious that some darn woman has stolen what should rightfully be your spot on the “vomit comet” — the affectionate name for the plane in which astronauts first get used to the joys of zero gravity — you can actually just pay these guys to have the very same experience.
Women don’t want it anyway. If someone came to my door when my children were young, blossoming creatures and said, “Hey, lady, you have just won a trip to Mars!,” I would have told him to get lost. I would do the same now.
Uh, yeah, and so would I. But I’m not all men, and you’re not all women, and neither of us has the right to be making these decisions for other people.
I just hope that Mars turns out to be as cool as the moon.
I will admit to wantonly using the Power of Parenthood to indoctrinate my spawn with my own personal taste in music, film, television, and humor when he was too young to mount an adequate defense against any of it. Now I am (blessed? cursed? both?) with a child who has almost exactly the same sense of humor as I do.
Don’t tell anyone but I’ve found that to be one of the cooler things about being a parent.
I guess Valentina Tereshkova, Svetlana Savitskaya, Sally Ride, Liu Yang and other female astronauts and cosmonauts should have just stayed home instead of pioneering opportunities for women. Oh, and by the way, the Chinese space program initially required female candidates for the astronaut program to be married with children. They were considered more mentally and physically mature, although, it seems those requirements have since been dropped. Liu Yang, the first Chinese woman in space was married but childless at the time of her first spaceflight.
“Mars (Yuck!! Revolting!!) ”
This is very similar to how an 8 year old would dismiss going to mars except no 8 year old would dismiss going to mars.
I was sort of hoping this would be satire in the Ladies Against Women vein.
Pity.
Forgot to mention in last post: transwomen can also be fathers if they so choose. Kaitlyn Jenner comes to mind. By “fathers” I just mean not being the carrier of the babies. I’m not sure how many transwomen would want to be called fathers, even if they technically “fathered” a child in the biological sense.
Ugh, I’m probably making no sense. I need to shut my ass up and go to bed. Like, now. 🙂
Given a choice between being an astronaut and giving birth, I’d definitely pick the former. Maybe not a Mars mission, but definitely the ISS.
But who’m I kidding? I never wanted to give birth anyway, and I’ve ALWAYS thought astronauts were way cool. It’s not like this would be a terribly tough decision for me to make.
(Also, does anyone else notice how much like a cheaper, drearier, dimmer version of Podkayne of Mars this woman sounds? Because I seem to recall Poddy saying that women churning out babies is so much better than women becoming spacer pilots, or some such.)
Not everyone wants the same thing, lady. You wanna have kids and be a housewife or a working mom, great.
But you should let other people pursue what they want and not presume to tell them what that is.
@ Bina
Poddy never clutched her pearls this tightly.
I LOVEDddd Inner Space as a child. It kind of influenced my career choice. I think it was originally based on Fantastic Voyage, which has beautiful background art, done by this great recently deceased artist Frank Armitage.
Also, The Martian made me cry in a good way. Matt Damon actually gave the character some emotions, which he didn’t have in the book (which I also enjoyed, with a few caveats).
Uh… I don’t think I’ve ever felt it’s unfair that I can’t be a mother. A, I don’t want kids, and B, if I did there’s no reason I couldn’t be the stay-at-home-raise-the-kids parent beyond it being slightly out of line with traditional gender roles. And I’m already gay, a sub and have at various points in my life been slightly unsure of my gender identity, so that’s obviously something I don’t give a shit about.
First, what everyone has already said above. Second, ahahahahahaha what a funny funny thinking housewife she is.
Third, I have only one child-person myself, and being in charge of one is actually a form of power – but a bloody terrifying one. If you’re not floored by the sheer responsibility, then you may need to re-think parenting. Kids are not little clay pots for you to play god with.
The whole ‘argument’ (such as it is) does a huge disservice to women who parent, & those who don’t. And astronauts. Oh, and Mars (“yuck!!” – seriously??)
Did Poddy even have pearls to clutch?
Also, what a dreary book that was. It was like a Choose Your Adventure book, but with each new ending shittier than the one before it. In one ending she’s killed, in another rendered immobile and hospitalized. And this even though she picked the “good” feminine route of “Motherhood is better than space piloting, so there!” Sci-fi misogyny from bad to worse.
“Utterly unique and made in God’s image…”
Yeah. Not surprised she doesn’t see the contradiction there.
idk about communicating fully through Jennifer Lawrence gifs, but last spring a large quantity of my NFL Draft commentary on Twitter was in the form of Broad City gifs, which even in that context were very well received (several people even told me they started watching it bc of that). Since the new season has started up with two months before this year’s draft I’ll probably do it again with some new ones and old favorites.
You would not be able to get me on a spaceship off of Earth for love or money. I’m quite happy to stay on planet Earth, thank you.
That said, even though the thought of going to outer space terrifies me, I would STILL pick it over having children. Man, I’m really womaning wrong, ain’t I? (Thank goodness that there are actually more than two choices in life!)
Why stop at space travel? Isnt internet blogging just as selfish?? The inner space of her own home should be more exciting to her than the vast space of the world wide web, so she should leave it to the men. As a (presumably) christian woman, shouldnt she abide by the rules of apostle Paul who spoke for God when he forbade women from teaching over men, or speaking to them plainly? There’s men on the internet, buttercup, and Gods gonna be PISSED if one of them stumbles upon your ramblings and takes them to heart. So basically get off the internet forever now. Goodbye, go away now. Us women who dont live by the rules of a two thousand year old book written by angry cave men that was inaccurately translated a hundred times want to do selfish type shit on here. Go away.
Has she not been told that no women (or men) are being forced to go to Mars?
Don’t be scared, TH, Nasa won’t come and tear that soiled nappy from your grasp and bung you in a rocket to Mars!
All I can see when I read this is “I’m dead inside and desperately need to believe that everyone else is as miserable as I am.”
What everyone else has said and all of the above, but what no one has said yet, is from what complete and utter middle class privilege this woman is speaking.
Poor women have NEVER had a choice between staying home and going out into the world to work, (especially poor Woc.) There’s also The 3 Ds, that a lot of women have to deal with, as chronicled in The Witches of Eastwick, Death, Desertion, and Divorce, which also forced women out of the home, so they could find ways to feed their kids.
And another thing she neglects to mention: women who stay home get vilified for being SAHMs, told to get up off their lazy asses, eating Bon-bons, stop living off of a man and get to work.
Women who work, earn all their own stuff and take care of their business, without the help of a man (in some cases this isn’t voluntary), get vilified by small minded yahoos like this one, to get back in the house and have more babies. Lesbian women are left out of the occasion entirely. Being lesbians, I’m pretty sure they don’t want to be taken care of by husbands (who disdain them for not working.)
I think she’s resentful about the life choices she made, but rather than express that, she tries to come up with this sour grapes philosophy, that being out of doors is bad, and nobody really wants it or needs it anyway. Then she takes on this inner goddess/uteri thing as a way to feel good about the life choices she resents.
She’s not trying to convince us. She’s trying to convince herself, that the choice she made is good and just.
What lkeke35 said.
Sorry, the only Vomit Comet will ever be the Yonge 97 bus.
Here are two people who may have opinions on the subject.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/Valentina_Tereshkova_and_Catherine_Coleman.jpg/1920px-Valentina_Tereshkova_and_Catherine_Coleman.jpg
(Image courtesy of NASA)
On the left is Valentina Tereshkova, first woman and twelfth human being in space. A year after her space flight she gave birth to a daughter, Elena.
On the right is Catherine “Cady” Coleman, an American astronaut and mother who made the news when she had a mother’s day call from her son whilst on the International Space Station.
Both of these fine human beings didn’t feel restricted to only one of motherhood and space travel.
And he put them so far away that we can’t get to them. Thanks, God: reeeeal generous of you. Jerk.
Yeah, why would men trade that? See, it can go both ways. Novel idea: men can also stay at home, raising the little “planets” or whatever, which they also helped to create. Why does anyone still act like it’s just the woman who created them, because we get that 9 month-long uncomfortable, foot-swelling barf-fest to deal with? Kids need their fathers, too, if there’s a father in the picture… and as more than just the family breadwinner who works long days but can’t make it to any school functions or be around for the milestones. I had a dad like this, and I wished it were more balanced. The idea that the mother does almost all of the childrearing is bullshit, and totally unhealthy.
From the OP:
Well, having kids certainly shows how the concept of power works. What we call “positive” aspects of power are actually the various dimensions of what it means to have tremendous responsibility for another human being. What power actually is, though, is what conservatives like Thinking Housewife here promote: the ability to mold an impressionable, defenseless human being into whatever your selfish, narrow mind can conjure. Fuck parents who see kids as extensions of themselves, not unique human beings who require both care and encouragement to grow into their full potential.
Of course, if your mindset is twisted enough to think that people should conform to extremely restrictive social roles in order to live a fulfilling life because you were raised to believe such crap, then you’re probably just paying it forward. Sometimes I pity these kinds of people, sometimes I’m furious at them. No wonder I’m not meeting my relatives that much these days.
Ignoring the trans exclusivity of this statement for a second, is Thinking* Housewife going for some reverse Freud thing here? All the great deeds cis men are a part of is just compensating for not having a uterus?
*By extension, didn’t God give thinking to men to compensate for the misfortune of never being able to become mothers? What’s she thinking, going around thinking like that? Really thoughtless, I think. OK, I’ll stop now.
@katz
Yes, please!
As an aside, I really wonder what she would have to say about Pluto. “Yuck! Cold and nasty, not at all like the warm, tender embrace of motherh… What? It’s not a planet after all? Well, Pluto’s all right, I guess.”