Lateral movement is not progress

If I've heard it once, I've heard it a thousand times. At some point in any abortion debate, someone is on the "pro-choice" side is going to retort with the question of how many babies the people on the pro-life side have adopted. Whether they realize it or not, this is their premise: "You are not allowed to desire that a person does not murder another person unless you are willing to take on full, cradle-to-grave responsibility for the would-be murderer's potential victim."

That's the surface premise, anyways. The deeper premise is even more ostentatious and cruel than they realize, because they lack the full picture.

Once upon a time, an unwed pregnancy resulted in either a shotgun wedding or a woman struggling to raise her bastard child alone. The lucky single mother raised hers among her own extended family. Famous men could usually get away with fathering children they had no intention of supporting; in other cases, the woman's family, the male members in particular, acted to make sure that he paid in one way or another.

At one point, society decided that the government needed to be involved in this situation. First unwed mothers were required to live in group homes. Then welfare was extended to their families. Then welfare (originally meant only for widows) was restructured so that unwed mothers received more goods and services than other family types. Finally, abortion was both legalized and encouraged, with highschools enabling it secretly, receptionists glancing the other way, and advisers of all sorts telling young women that, if they carried their pregnancies to term, their entire lives, hopes, and dreams would be over. The fact that society's willingness to glance the other way has enabled many predators and outright rapists to hide the evidence of their crimes is another sordid story entirely.

What happened was this: At first, the unwed pregnancy was the responsibility of the father and then, should he manage to escape it, the mother, with an expectation that her family would step in. Then, the unwed pregnancy became the responsibility of all of us. Now, "we" are trying to escape "our" unearned responsibility by coaxing, pressuring, or outright coercing the mother into an abortion.

"So how many have YOU adopted?" means, in a deeper context, "She shouldn't be allowed to keep her baby. If she won't kill it, it should be taken away from her for her own good." Oh, it isn't a matter of legality, not yet, but the clear majority of women in even the most "pro-choice"-friendly polls and studies say that they wanted to keep their babies, but that they felt pressured or forced into getting an abortion instead. "So how dare YOU vote to lower these social programs?" means, in a deeper context, "This baby is your responsibility. If you don't pressure her to kill it, it falls to you to support the child." Have you noticed yet what is missing from this equation?

My grandmother is strongly in favor of requiring an unwed mother to give the father's name before she is allowed to receive government services, so that the State can seek him out for recompense. She was born in the mid-'30's, and is appalled at the current state of affairs, where men are 'free' to have sex with as many women as they like, without consequences, and the men (and women) who buckle down, work hard, and wear themselves out providing for their own families must now return for several more hours of work to deal with the freeloaders. When she says "freeloaders", she is not speaking of the unwed mother and her children. She is speaking of their absent fathers.

What she sees, and what I see, is a new form of patriarchal oppression. Modern Feminism loves to talk about 'patriarchal oppression', and for the most part, they are blowing smoke. That doesn't mean that there were never forms of patriarchal oppression in society from time to time. This was one of them: Men of certain stature were allowed, during certain areas of society, to avoid responsibility for impregnating women. We saw it among royalty and nobility in the feudal systems. We also saw it among slaveowners in the Deep South. Everyone else would shuffle about and cover it up, and those few men 'at the top' would know that they could do as they liked without repercussions or responsibility. In modern times, aided and abetted by Modern Feminism, we have the same situation again: Men are allowed to avoid responsibility for impregnating women.

The 'adoption/welfare' argument assumes as a beginning premise that, when a man is a cad, we are the ones personally responsible for the result. The 'pro-choice' argument itself concludes that the only way for us to absolve ourselves of his responsibility is to encourage or urge her to have the abortion.

Judge not.... what?

I saw a lovely post up yesterday talking about how homeschooling is growing sharply in popularity. Of course, I, like many homeschooling parents, cheered at the news. We firmly believe in what we're doing, and it's good to see more people swelling our ranks; if nothing else, there is safety in numbers, and there are still people who want to prohibit us from making this choice.

This morning, however, I saw a comment on that post, something that I suppose I could have seen coming, because it seems to happen at least once in every single conversation about homeschooling that is thrown out where the public can see it.

"Well, homeschooling isn't the best for everybody. Some kids do better in public school, and some kids do better in private school."

Of course.

If you take the absolute worst that homeschooling has to offer and compare it to the absolute best public school ever, no doubt the public school education will be superior.

I am getting so tired of lifestyle/moral equivalency. You can't say that homeschool is simply better than public school. If you do, you're judging, on a personal level, every single person who has ever been public schooled as 'inferior'. If you truly aren't, they will all believe that you are, and treat you as if you are. People are so quick to judge other people. We are all sinners. We all have inferiority complexes. Those of us who can't accept that have to try to make ourselves out to be 'righteous' by proving ourselves to be more 'righteous' than other people. Then comes the attempt to make yourself better than others by proving that you are "less judgmental" than others. It's hard, though, to not be judgmental, when you aren't allowed to view yourself as a sinner who is not really any better than anybody else.

So instead you take the easy way out. If all choices are equally good, then you don't have to try to view someone whom you think is making worse choices as if they are, nevertheless, no less perfect than you are. Or perhaps you think that, if they judge your choices and you "don't judge theirs", that makes you better than them. I'm not 100% sure what's going through these people's heads. All I know is that they have decided that the only way for them to show moral superiority is to show moral equivalency, because it never occurred to them (or they simply could not accept it) to view themselves and everyone else as sinners in need of a Savior. Their righteousness is not in Christ, so they need to find it elsewhere.

Meanwhile, this hurts every single person who is honestly, humbly, willingly trying to learn the best way forward. Young men and women beg for sexual advice, only to be told, "Well, ya know, maybe it's wrong to sleep with him, but maybe it's not. It's up to you, I guess. Do what'll make you happy." And if the young person points out in exasperation that he or she doesn't know what will make him or her happy, the best these people can do is to kind of vaguely repeat their useless advice.

So let me be the one to tell it straight.

Homeschool is better than public school.

Also, a home-prepared lunch is healthier than McDonalds, breastfeeding is better than bottlefeeding, your clothing will fit better and last longer if you make it yourself (or, at least, don't buy it from a cheapy place like Walmart), a small sedan will put out less pollution than a minivan, and you really ought to use those wipes on your hands and the handle of the shopping cart before you go in.

Guess what.

I will pull on an old t-shirt and pair of jeans from Walmart, herd my kids into the minivan, head off to a homeschool field trip without once using wipes, and pick up McDonalds on the road.

What we need to do is to focus, not on pretending that all options are 'equal', but on not judging each other. After all, life isn't about doing everything 'right'. We can't, even if we want to. It isn't about doing everything 'the best way'. If you make that your goal, you will be so stressed out that your health will fail far faster than if you eat a McDouble once every few weeks, or even *gasp* carry about twenty pounds more after having your children than you did when you got married.

Life is about growing, about loving and taking care of each other, about learning to change our priorities, about understanding that "superiority" and "inferiority" mean nothing next to Christ's sacrifice and love for us. I know that's hard for non-Christians to take in, but I hope for your sake that your worldview can come up with something close enough to follow my example here. She who is without sin can throw the first stone. By all means, stand there and state clearly that homeschooling is better than public school. But don't stand there in Walmart jeans with your kid eating a Happy Meal in your minivan (or even eating whole wheat sandwiches in your minivan) and say that the public schooling parent is not as good a parent as you are.

And if someone asks you which is better, breast or bottle, you can say 'breast' without going crazy trying to prop up the ego of every single woman who didn't take that path. But if you know a woman with an infant who is bottle-feeding, you go over there with a good meal, send her to bed, clean up her kitchen, and prepare that bottle so that she can actually rest for more than two hours.

It's much harder to learn how to not judge a person when you are willing to accept that not all choices are equally good.

But it's much, much more rewarding.

The opposite argument against women in combat

Recently, I saw a redux of a claim that I've seen made many times, on the subject of women in combat. "There are women who can be just as bloodthirsty as men," she proclaimed. "And they are just as fit to fight as men are!"

It occurs to me that many people seem to think this, and it is quite wrong.

Now in come the feminists screeching out what they appear to believe: "You Christians just don't believe that women can be rough and tough! You don't believe that women can fight! You believe that they have to be gentle and meek all the time and never stand up for themselves!" What they don't realize is that this is like telling someone who is taking high blood pressure pills that his real problem is that the doctors persist in thinking that his blood pressure is too low.

Yes, you are going to find plenty of Bible verses exhorting women to be gentle and sweet. Why do you think God keeps saying this? Do you think that God exhorts honest people to not lie? Do you think that God exhorts the naturally chaste to avoid sexual temptation? Jesus said it Himself: "I have come for the sick. People who are healthy have no need of a doctor." When we are reminded to not cheat, it is because we are tempted to cheat. When we are reminded that even looking at a woman with lust is tantamount to mental adultery, it is because we think that it's okay as long as we don't do anything physical. When God tells us to remember to give to the poor, it is not because we never think, "But then I won't be able to afford my new this-or-that." Women aren't continually exhorted to be gentle because God thinks we're nothing but gentle. It's because women need to be reminded to be gentle!

Anyone who works in public highschools, juvenile centers, women's prisons, and similar places will laugh in your face if you tell them that women are meeker and gentler than men. Women, they know, unrestrained by gentleness, will fight all the time. They won't just fight, however. They will try to do permanent injury. They will fight to disfigure. They will wage their battles on multiple fronts: physically, mentally, emotionally, and socially. People who will think nothing of breaking up a fight between two men will hesitate to enter a war between two women.

When men fight, they fight for dominance, and they learn that a loser can maintain social standing by losing well. The truth of this can be seen over and over again in stories based on studies and tons of widespread personal experience. When a boy has to deal with a bully, he has to strike a blow sufficient to show his worth. Either he has to defeat the bully once so that they can become friends, or he has to at least put up a good enough fight that his worth is proven within the group and he can join it as an equal member. When a girl has to deal with a bully, however, the only way to resolve the problem in most cases is that she must not knock her opponent down, but must humiliate her opponent to the point where said opponent cannot show her face in public again. Men can fight, lose (or win), brush themselves off, and become friends. Women, if driven to fight, fight to destroy utterly, so that their opponent can never rise again.

Consider an analogy in which women are like cats and men are like dogs. Uneducated folk might come to the conclusion that a 'good kitty' does not have claws at all. Nobody could make that mistake with a dog. The dog's claws tap on the floor. They show when he runs. If a dog launches himself on top of you, you will feel the claws. Now, though the claws can be used in fighting, they don't have to hurt you. You will feel the claws every single time, but they will not shred you. A cat, on the other hand, has retractable claws. If her claws are out, you will feel them. They will do damage. Furthermore, if a dog's claws are always out, you think that he is just a dog; if a cat's claws are always out, you know that there is something wrong with the cat. Just like cats, women are more than capable of fighting, but they need to remember to keep their claws sheathed - to practice gentleness - because with claws as sharp as these, it is all too easy to wound when you do not intend to do so.

Women are not sweet. Women are dangerous.

Now, just as countries are larger forms of tribal groups, just as a mountain is a larger form of the stone you pick up on the road, wars are simply larger forms of individual fighting. The reason why conservative Christians encourage fighting, when necessary, to be done between men rather than women is not because "women can't be bloodthirsty". It's because most fighting men are not bloodthirsty, and bloodthirstiness in battle leads to trouble. When men fight, they are more likely to regard women and children as non-combatants. Those who do not are treated with contempt by other groups of men, and may find themselves ganged up upon. Men can go into battle, fight, win (or lose), and then make friends with the warring countries. When men fight, enemies can become allies. They have a sense of mutual honor. We see this in World War I, on Christmas Day, when fighting stopped utterly in many areas and both sides shared meals and played games before returning to their trenches to try to kill each other the next day. Most women find this very hard to understand, and to most men it is obvious! Men always have their claws out, but their claws do not need to do damage; women do not unsheathe until they mean business.

I had to tell the woman who made the 'bloodthirsty' argument in her comment that, rather than being the best argument in favor of women in combat, it is actually the best argument against. God keeps reminding women to be gentle, not because we are in some way inherently meek, mild, and helpless, but because we need to be reminded to be gentle. In this day and age even more than most, when too many secular women glory in stalking about all the time with their claws unsheathed, causing casual wounding everywhere they go and stressing out bodies that were not meant to be 'on the bounce' all the time, we need to remember that the Bible calls for women to sheathe those claws and, inasmuch as we are able, to be at rest.

Dr. Ruth and the Evil Warnings

Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the mildly scandalous sex therapist, now in her mid-80's, has suddenly managed to turn the entire feminist movement against her. Oh dear. What on earth did she manage to say to rattle them so much?

"I know it’s controversial, but for your program, I’m going to stand up and be counted and, like I do in the book, be very honest. I am very worried about college campuses saying that a woman and a man or two men or two women, but I talk right now about woman and man, can be in bed together, and at one time, naked, and at one time, he or she — most of the time they think she can say, I changed my mind. No such thing is possible."

 Aye, that's relatively controversial as stated, However, in subsequent tweets, she clarified what she meant - and didn't mean - to say:

I am 100% against rape. I do say to women if they don't want to have sex with a man, they should not be naked in bed w/him.
That's risky behavior like crossing street against the light. If a driver hits you, he's legally in the wrong but you're in the hospital.

So what's the problem?

Apparently, the naysayers insist that Dr. Ruth is claiming that the man's action is no longer rape and should no longer be prosecuted as such, that the man has no responsibility over his actions whatsoever, and that she is basically placing the full fault of rape on the woman. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be able to refute her position without resorting to the bizarre, possibly because her position is quite reasonable. One commenter on an American Thinker article claimed that "blaming women for the rape", as Dr. Ruth was supposedly doing, was like "saying that if a dog humps your leg, it's your fault for having a leg." Others have brought up the old "asking for it by wearing a skirt that exposes her knees" claim. I find it strange that feminists are so bent on their goals of "free sex" that they cannot bear the thought of a woman engaging in any sort of selective behavior in her sex life without having to come to the bizarre conclusion that men are incapable of being responsible for anything they do.

But that isn't, at the core, what is bothering me about this "controversy".

What the naysayers are doing, at the core, is claiming that a private individual, however notable, cannot give advice to women in order to minimize the chances of them becoming victimized without somehow affecting the legal responsibility of the perpetrator of the crime. The reason this bothers me is because it depends upon the belief that we cannot simply choose how to regulate our own behavior; it must be unregulated entirely or under government control.

It seems that people are losing sight of the excellent "third way" between regulation and deregulation, the way upon which this country was founded. John Adams said, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." Putting aside the question of Christianity and religion in morality for the moment, I would hope that we can all agree that the intent of structuring the Constitution such that the government should not regulate us was to allow us to take up the responsibility of regulating ourselves. If we lose sight of that, we may deserve the tyranny we risk bringing upon ourselves.

Women should have every right to take control over their own sexuality by setting boundaries, starting with the very simplest and easiest to understand: if you don't want to have sex with a man, it will be much, much easier to avoid doing so if you do not climb naked into bed with him.

Back to the Fathers

The year is 2015. The pictures and quotes have been flying all over Facebook. In 1985, we were treated to the first part of one of the most excellent trilogies ever made... Back To The Future.

In the first movie, our protagonist starts out in 1985, a beautiful, perfect 1985 that now evokes nostalgia in everyone who was born before 1990. He gets dropped into 1955 in the first movie. In the second, he travels to 2015. In the third, he winds up in 1885. The year now is 2015, and we are finding that "the future" is sadly lacking in some areas, such as hoverboards and flying cars, but surprisingly similar in others, as the writers cleverly repeated trends as has always happened in the past and seems likely to continue into the future.

What I'd like to talk about, though, is the psychology and the sociology of the show. They hit upon one solid, repeatable truth, and gave us many excellent examples of it. A father's influence is vital within his entire family.

Note: If you have not seen the trilogy, stop now. Watch it through. Then read the rest of this post.

In the first movie, Marty McFly's father is not exactly an inspiring fellow. He is harried, submissive, and detached from other people. This deficit in his own behavior shows in his entire family. His wife drinks a little too much. (That point is subtle and takes some attention to detail.) His eldest struggles along as a night worker at a fast food restaurant, and his daughter is frumpy and consistently griping about her unpopularity. Marty himself is keeping himself from a potential career (or, at least, ten minutes of fame) as a musician by his crippling insecurity. During the course of the movie, George McFly learns how to be both assertive and connected, and his entire family benefits. His wife at the movie's end is healthier and happier, and their children are all progressing slowly towards successful lives of their own.

One instance, though, does not a trend make. In the second movie, Doc notes that Marty's family falls apart and traces the origin of the problem to his son's and daughter's arrest when his son gets browbeat into participating in criminal activity. As we see a night around the McFly table, however, we know that Doc is no expert in family sociology. (Did we expect him to be?) Marty is a manipulated blowhard. His wife married him for pity (not unlike his father's wife in the beginning of the first movie) and often goes out on long trips after work without letting him know where she has gone. His children have no respect for him. They are living in a neighborhood where the cops do not like to travel after dark. We do not see the end result when Marty changes his ways, but we clearly see how his wife and children's welfare depend heavily on his own behavior.

Families need their fathers.

In the same movie, we see that the antagonist Biff appears to have an absent mother and absent father. He is raised by his grandmother. We have no idea what happened to his parents. We do see his internal frustration with his grandmother and the way he takes it out on everyone else.

When Marty returns to 1985, or, rather, the problematic 1985A in which his father is dead and Biff has married his mother, we see the effects of Biff as a father once again spreading through the entire family. His mother is so beaten down that she justifies the abuse she suffers at his hands. Marty's older brother is on parole, and his sister can't seem to handle her money at all, as she has a dangerous amount of credit card debt. Marty himself apparently keeps getting thrown out of boarding schools. You almost can't blame Biff for griping about the "perfectly good money" he wastes on these "worthless kids".

Of course, the best movie isn't a hammer meant to drive a lesson deep into your head. The series has always been primarily about how you can improve your future by what you do today. In addition, the series is smart enough to not make a good father a guarantee of good children; Marty has his own problems even under the influence of his changed father, and one of the children of Lorraine's traditional 1950's father winds up in jail. Still, the message is clear, even if it is an unintentional result of a carefully-crafted series that pursues every thread to its most logical conclusion (flying cars aside)...

Families need their fathers. Of course, not everything relies wholly upon the father. However, he definitely has a profound effect on every member of his family.

We would do well to remember this.

Daddy's in Mexico with Sally

One of the bigger controversies of 80's films is Steven Spielberg's decision to replace guns with walkie-talkies in the DVD version of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. Remember that? Spielberg made a pretty little speech about how he felt the guns were 'too scary' for youngsters and he felt it was wrong to depict them in the movie.

Happily, Spielberg has seen the light, and regrets that decision. The guns will be back for the Blu-Ray release of the film.

That didn't stop me from thinking, though, as I listened to some E.T. soundtrack music while pinning and cutting a new dress on the dining room table. (Yes, I am that weird.) Spielberg was responding to a lot of criticism he received about that part of the movie. Apparently, there are many parents who believe that showing guns in a children's movie is just too scary. I have to wonder about their priorities. The scariest thing in that movie, for the children, has nothing to do with weapons or aliens.

Early in the movie, we are introduced to a family in crisis. The mother is obviously overtired and has little control over her kids. There is no sign of a father. We soon find out why, when the little one blurts out that "Daddy is with Sally in Mexico." From the way her older brothers hush her up, and her mother's shattered poise, it was obvious that only one member of the family did not know. The theme emerges a few more times. The boys are very obviously keeping important problems from their mother to spare her feelings and keep from burdening her further.

I was about eight years' old when the movie really hit the market and started being shown and reshown everywhere. I saw it at friends' houses, with that familiar green thing on the VHS tape making it easy to pick out from the others. I saw it at school for an 'afternoon treat' during a Christmas party. I saw it in a summertime drive-in theater. Right around that time, my closest neighborhood friend's parents got a divorce. It was like that in the mid-80's. You were going along your merry way and suddenly a friend, a neighbor, maybe even your own mom and dad were getting a divorce. In a way, it was like a battlefield. You never knew which of your fellow soldiers would fall next.

Spielberg chose to remove those guns from the DVD edition of the movie. Do I wish he had removed the parental abandonment angle from the movie? After all, in other famous kid movies, like Iron Giant and Toy Story, the missing father is barely alluded to, and his method of disappearance is never explained. No, I wouldn't want it removed. It is one of the major reasons, perhaps even stronger than the alien himself, this became such an iconic and important movies of the '80's. It dared to do what so many movies do not, and show all of us just how badly it hurts a family when "Daddy is in Mexico with Sally".

In this day and age, divorce is no longer a new and strange phenomenon. Our children are growing up with peers who never had a father, whose mothers never even married the guy, and they are being taught that this is fairly normal and no big deal. On top of that, we have seen all sorts of new gun legislation and attempts at gun legislation, enforcing and reinforcing the notion that guns are just too scary for children. Fatherlessness, though, that's just no big deal...

The idea of facing an adversary bearing weapons is practically second-nature to these kids. The guns aren't ever even pointed at them. Not a single shot is fired. What scares them is the lack of a parent, or the fear that, at any time, one of their parents may simply walk away... and go to Mexico with Sally.

Elliot Rodger and the Willing Women

A few days ago, an angry, bitter, deranged young man who had been shuttled back and forth between two broken homes for much of his formative years enacted the ultimate act of revenge upon the people he had come to blame for his misfortunes. He killed both men and women by stabbing, shooting, and using a motor vehicle, thus making the usual blame-guns narrative a little more difficult to sustain than usual.

Various people have blamed various things. One article blamed his parents for divorcing (while making it clear that he is ultimately at fault for his own actions). Another blamed the video games into which he sought solace. Yet others have claimed that the girls who shunned him were at fault for refusing to have sex with him. They depict these girls, as he did, as bullies who tease certain types of young men by dressing sexily and then having sex with different young men instead.

I'm not going to blame the girls. That's silly. I'm not really 'blaming' anybody but him, in the end. He had a problem and he went off. It happens occasionally, even in the best society. If it hadn't been the girls, he would have found something else. However, I do want to discuss something that this whole situation has uncovered, a profound change in society that I see as a larger problem that daily causes its own griefs and tragedies, never covered on the news. The crux of the statement just happens to be the very point of Elliot Rodger's manifesto: He felt that it was the women's job to seek him out for sex, the way they had been seeking out other men for sex, thus their refusal was a personal slight.

When did our society change so profoundly?

Before Modern Feminism, the man's job was to pursue the woman, and the woman's job was to not make his task easy. I am not talking about flirting with him, making promises only to withdraw them, teasing him for amusement. Her job was to rebuff him unless he met a set of standards that were hardly arbitrary: keep himself clean, show respect for her, and ensure that he had the ability to provide for her should she make herself vulnerable through pregnancy. Then as now, she decided whether he was worthy. Then, unlike now, she required him to commit to her exclusively, first.

 "What is the position of women in SNCC? The position of women in SNCC is prone." That quip, made by 1960's activist  Stokely Carmichael, seems to describe the position of women in this new liberal feminist 'paradise'. Around the same time, liberal feminist groups worked out the slogan "Women Say Yes to Men Who Say No", which basically promised free sex to men who did not join the military to fight in the Vietnam War. More recently, "Rock the Vote" encouraged women to offer sex only to men who supported Obamacare. Imagine the irony of a bunch of "liberated" women trading sexual favors in return for having someone else buy their hormonally-based contraception.

Now as I said above, Elliot Rodger had problems, and he would have fixated on something. I do have to ask, however, if those women did not grow up in a society that expected them to seek out men and have sex with them while teasing the others with their partly-clothed bodies, would he have developed the belief that it was their job to have sex with him?

Bathrooms and Locker Rooms

I have a new thought on the "bathroom bill" making its way across various American cities in recent years.

For those of you not in the know, the "bathroom bill" involves any variant on this theme: permitting 'transgendered' people to use whichever gendered bathroom with which they identify. The opponents are concerned that, since public areas (unlike workplaces) won't be able to keep track of their customers, any person (usually male in the example) can decide that he's going to pretend to be female that day just to get into the ladies' room.

Proponents argue that a man who wants to rape a woman is unlikely to do it in the ladies' room where they can be easily discovered and multiple women might overwhelm him. But, frankly, he doesn't have to rape her to do her harm. Men have been caught hiding cell phones in a bathroom to record women undressing and then selling the video to pornography sites. (Are you a porn actress? Are you *sure* you're not?) There is also a growing problem in society in which a strange man gets hold of some partial-undressed picture that a teen girl carelessly left on an unlocked profile and using it as blackmail to make her send him nude pictures and pictures of her engaging in sex acts. If a man can go right into a ladies' room for no other reason than that he claims to be female today, such material will be much more accessible.

But that's all beside my actual point. None of those thoughts are all that new. This is the new thought:

Proponents claim that life is hard for a male-to-female transgendered person, being not safe to use the men's room and not allowed to use the women's room. They fear that angry and disgusted men will attack them in the relative privacy of the men's room. For them, I have this question:

If the "bathroom bill" is in effect in a given locality, what's to prevent those angry and disgusted men from following you into the ladies' room?

What a mess.

The Rape Exemption

This was my response in a Facebook page for the group Ladies Against Feminism. The topic was Rep. Akin's 'unfortunate' comments, and I am pleased to say that we managed to shift the conversation from screaming about "legitimate rape" to an actual debate on the rape exemption in a proposed ban on abortion.

We had been debating for some time with a couple of feminist women who have been, predictably, proceeding from the viewpoint of secular humanist atheistic feminism. I made a response that I rather liked, and so I post it here for 'everyone' to enjoy:


The problem here is that we are proceeding from a radically different point of view. I could see how, if you do not believe in anything beyond this life, sacrificing yourself for another human being may seem like a flaw rather than a virtue. We Christians, however, follow a God who chose to sacrifice His only Son so that we could have life and have it to the full. Our God is based, not on temporal pleasure, but on love... and that love includes temporal sacrifice for eternal pleasure. Therefore a woman carrying her baby to term, even to give it up for adoption and never see it again, is virtuous.

We also are mostly pro-life... that means that we believe that a human life is created at the moment of conception, a human life as worthy of respect as any human baby, toddler, child, teen, adult, or elder. We do not determine whether a human being deserves basic human rights based on his of her size, age, race, gender, or contributions to society. It follows naturally that we believe that abortion puts to death a human being. That doesn't mean that abortion is Always Evil. Just that its benefits must be stacked up against the detriment of causing the death of a human being.

Given that, I know that from your viewpoint you would never have meant to say this... but your statement did sound as if you will proudly murder someone whether it's against the law or not, because you want to, and you should not be punished for murder because you're a woman - and this is what feminism means. Coming from our viewpoint, I'm sure you can see why feminism seems far more cruel to us than it does to those who do not believe in according basic human rights under the same situation.

Finally, we are not feminists. Rather than trying to claim that women and men are equal in physical form and meant to take identical roles in biology and society, we merely believe that women and men are to be treated equally under the law and are equally capable of petitioning God, with roles in society and biology that are very different, but equal in importance and honor. Therefore, we are very aware of a woman's role in nurturing life and giving of herself to join as partners with God Himself in bringing that life to an eventual state of autonomy. Women are tied strongly to Life in this way... it's no wonder that women have so often been the peacemakers in a society. The women of Sabine and Liberia both created peace and prosperity by joining up, confronting their men, and demanding a cease of hostilities.

As such, Life is our privilege and our business, and carrying a child to term, even an unexpected one, even a child of rape, is bestowing our gift upon the world. It is our privilege to turn something terrible into a blessing. In this way, even outside of our Christian view of sacrifice, giving life and love where there was none is, again, virtuous.

Even so, many of us *are* in favor of a rape exemption for an abortion ban. But we personally would choose life and encourage other women to do the same

Teen pregnancy: Many generations, no 'evolution'

Back in the 1950's and earlier, teen pregnancy was a problem just as it is today. Back then, however, we dealt with it in a horrible, barbaric manner... so say the feminists, at least. A pregnant teen was often shuttled off to a relative's house or a special house for pregnant teens, hidden away from Polite Society until her baby was born. Many times, that baby was either raised by her parents as her sister, or adopted out to another family. Shame was the order of the day. Her friends and schoolmates might suspect, but "ideally" should never have actually known for sure.

Now it's much better, or at least that's what impressionable teen girls are taught by those who are trying to inculcate them in the New Method and keep them from questioning it. Now, instead of being hidden away for months in a state of shame, they are taken away for only a few hours, maybe even less. It is still a hidden place, a place of shame, where advocates do all they can to assure that the procedure they undergo is done in the strictest secrecy. Even the girls' own parents often are not allowed to know about the abortions that the Planned Parenthood consultant or the school nurse will so gladly procure for them.

In the end, however, the mindset is the same, and the word of the day is shame. The 50's girl was taken to a hidden place to have her baby. The modern girl is taken to a hidden place to abort her baby. In both cases, they are given the message that their mistake is being 'fixed', in such a way that will not embarrass them in public. So what is the real difference? Not in cause, not in mindset... only the effect is changed. Before, at least a living person would have the chance to see the light of day and grow up to make all of her choices. Now, not only is that living person snuffed out, but her mother is held down and violated with sharp metal instruments tearing at her insides and, disturbingly often, causing physical as well as emotional damage that will haunt her for the rest of her life. Pro-abortion people, and, unwittingly, pro-choice people, call this Progress.

I would like to introduce another way of thinking about teen pregnancy.

When I was a young adult, I picked up a book that has fallen out of favor in modern day highschools. It is called The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Nowadays, it is generally barely mentioned, and only in derision. This book, in which an adulterous woman is sentenced to wear an embroidered red A on the chest of her clothing for the rest of her life, is condemned as a primitive Puritan shame-fest. It should be re-examined for what it actually is.

The young woman who bore the letter, Hester Prynne, was discovered in adultery when she became pregnant during a very long absence of her husband. She found a quiet, small house in which to live and raise her daughter. Over time, her scarlet A lost its initial horror as the people became accustomed to her. As she showed her skill with the needle, earning her keep, and showed herself to be a sober person committed to raising her child with dignity, the A further lost its sense of shame and horror. Living with her shame presented outwardly to society instead of hidden away, she beautified her life and became accepted within the community.

Meanwhile, she continued to staunchly refuse to reveal the name of her child's father. While her shame was open for everyone to see, his shame was hidden. Out of unexpressed guilt, he deteriorated, destroying himself by his silence while she built herself up by her deeds. Her good deeds, you see, in the face of her shame, rehabilitated her image by demonstrating her repentance. His good deeds only mocked him, giving him an image that he did not deserve, hurting him instead of easing his conscience. Finally, by the time he set out to break the bonds of hidden shame over his heart, it was too late... and the effort killed him.

When we hide away pregnant teens until their babies can be 'properly' killed so that 'nobody has to know', we are condemning them to the life of Hester's co-adulterer. When we used to hide away pregnant teens until their babies were born and spirited away, at least we were not adding murder to our efforts to hide their shame. We have not 'evolved', we have not progressed. We have regressed.

Someday we will face real progress, and create a society in which the shame of the pregnant teen is brought out into the open and faced clearly. Only then will we be able to build them up in the light instead of tearing them down in the dark.

Women's Body-Altering Fashion

There was a time when women wore corsets so tightly that they actually had ribs surgically removed. They compressed their organs to the point where they did internal damage to themselves. That's because society desired for them to have smaller waists than a normal woman is naturally given.

There was a time when women practiced breast-binding. They put themselves at further risk of breast-related diseases and medical conditions. They did this because society desired them to have smaller breasts than a normal woman is naturally given. The same has been done in Asian countries with women's feet, for the same reason, with similar dangers and results.

There was a time when women were basically expected to wear four-inch high heels all over the place, to everything and everywhere. The heels pushed their leg muscles up to an unnatural extent, gave them the illusion of greater height, and eventually malformed both feet and legs... raising the risk for back injury, shortening important calf tendons, and causing permanent damage to the feet. Society desired them to have a differently shaped leg and butt than the average woman is given by nature.

More recently, I've heard of all sorts of incredible stuff that women end up doing to themselves for the sake of society's flouting of nature. Women have botox injections on their face. Increasingly, I'm hearing of women having botox injections in their butt to make it bigger and plumper. Then we have breast implants and all their associated dangers. There seems to be no end to the number of things that women treat as essential, things that have one purpose... to alter a woman's natural body in such a way as to make it more 'acceptable' to society.

Now Obama insists that hormonal contraception pills are a woman's right and so must be provided by her employer for free, even at the cost of violating the employer's and/or other employees' faith.

What is the hormonal contraception pill? To be fair, for some women, it is a needed medication. However, the majority of women taking it are/were normal, healthy women who found, yet again, that society needed them to be something different from what women naturally are. To support society's current penchant for rampant sexual promiscuity, women must render themselves artificially infertile. The pill comes with its dangers, including an increased risk of breast cancer and potentially fatal blood clots. Then again, women's attempts to alter themselves for the latest fashion have almost always resulted in painful consequences.

Obama and his group (I cannot in good conscience say 'all Democrats' as many Democrats oppose this latest move) are spinning this horrendous new directive as "women's health", and many of the discussions surrounding it have focused on pitting "women's health" or "sexual freedom" against "religious liberty". But I'd like to take a moment and put a new spin on it, asking those of you who read this post to answer this simple question:

When will society favor the real, natural woman in all of her real, natural glory?

The Modern Gentleman

A couple of days ago, my son went to his usual mid-week social function, a huge age-separated club with hundreds of kids... about thirty or so in his age group. He enjoys his time, learning to play team sports, doing crafts, and meeting up with all his friends. (He's a popular kid.)

On his way to pick up his coat, he realized that he had short sleeves, so he started doing that arm thing that boys and men do, showing off his muscles. Or, rather, showing off what he thinks are his muscles, bless him. He's just turned nine years old. He hasn't had the necessary testosterone kick to really develop anything noticeable. Then, suddenly and quite unexpectedly to him, this girl about his size came up to him and started hitting him.

Oh it didn't hurt, or so he said. She didn't leave bruises. But the thing is, he's learned that he must never hit a girl. I've been trying to break his toddler sister of the habit of going after him. She'll pound on him when she's angry or frustrated at me. But he never hits back. Both Daddy and I taught him that way. That was fine with him, no big deal. But then he tried to move on and she blocked his path.

He didn't want to push her. She's a girl, and he's been taught to respect girls and not manhandle them. But manhandling her would be the only way to get where he needed to go. He needed to go... my sister was waiting for him, and my husband was waiting out in the car for both of them. He knew he was late, and he was frustrated. But he would not push her out of the way. He knew that the next step was to ask an adult for help, but she wouldn't let him get to one. He felt trapped and frustrated.

But still he did not strike back, and she tired of the game and wandered off. He hurried to grab his coat and meet up with his people, apologizing for being late for all the world as if it was his fault. The incident has clearly bothered him. He's mentioned it several times.

My husband and I were at a loss when we heard the story tumble out. We don't want to teach him to hit or shove girls. But I realized that, in disarming my son for the sake of protecting young ladies, we had left him vulnerable to girls who were not ladies at all. We finally let him know that, yes, you could push aside someone blocking your path, even a girl, as long as you did not shove hard... and you could do so for the purpose of dealing with someone who blocks your path and refuses to move. That's an interim solution... I don't know what a better one would be.

Oh Feminism! You teach girls to hit boys, and justify your behavior by claiming that men do not respect women as they should. But when we women, in our positions of power, teach our men to respect women, we leave them vulnerable to the ones who hit! What are we to do? We are patiently and carefully building up the men that feminists say that they want. We are fixing all the problems that feminism was made for... fixing them at the root. We are bringing up young men who will honor and respect you, who will love and cherish you, who will value your intelligence and your ability to work independently. Men who will treat you as an equal in the business world, who won't stare at your breasts when talking to you, who won't dismiss your words just because you're female.

But instead of helping us, you're working against us. My son is a gentle soul, a real person, with dreams and wishes and an inherent human dignity. Modern Feminism will not acknowledge that human dignity. They are all too happy to beat on him, to block his path, to advance their goals. They see him as someone to compete against, someone to fight. You and I know very well that a nine-year-old boy doesn't show his muscles because he expects a girl to start hitting him. Peacocks don't spread their plumage so that the peahens will start pecking and scratching them. He did not at any time consider her to be someone to fight, someone to punch, someone to risk hurting in a testosterone-fueled brawl.

And if you want your daughters to be able to find a man who will not abuse them, who will not hit them, who will treat them with dignity and respect...
...I'd appreciate it if you teach your daughters to not fly into attacks against people who have no interest in fighting them, people who are constrained by morality to not hurt girls. Because as much as I want my son to respect women, I love him too much to leave him open and vulnerable to those who will not respect him.

Equality of what, exactly?

I am a member of the Ladies Against Feminism group. As such, I have joined their Facebook page and often read and reply to the people there. I wanted to take one of my answers today and expand it for the edification for anyone who reads this blog.

One self-proclaimed feminist wrote the following (excerpt): "A real feminist believes women should have all the same choices as men do. However, the fact that most people who do choose to stay at home are women obviously says something. it cannot in every case be a choice or else 50% of stay at home parents would be men."

Now this falls into an error that feminists and liberals (the two groups often overlap) both follow. This error is defining equal opportunity as equal outcomes.

This nation was created in order to give each of us equal opportunity, and it has historically succeeded admirably. Anyone is allowed to start their own business. Anyone is allowed to work his way up, to find a way to pay for higher education, to transcend the social and economic class into which he.. or she.. was born. If you have a dream, America is the place to be. You will have no better luck in any other country.

Now of course, all human beings have different dreams. Many dream of simply having a safe, comfortable life. Some want to invent something new. Others want to heal anyone they can help. Still others simply want to accumulate wealth. It is a delight to me to ask people what they dream of doing and encourage them to take steps towards that end. I know one young man who merely wants to be the best teacher of history, the one who gives untold students a love for knowledge of the past. I knew one middle-aged woman, a data entry worker, who wished she was repairing, refurbishing, and selling antique furniture on Long Island. Walk down any street and understand that those houses hide (or display, depending on the house) all sorts of fascinating professions and hobbies. I've seen an entire basement taken up by a beautifully intricate, lifelike model railroad running its tracks through mountainous villages and a miniature city. I married the son of the man who invented the Auto-Reverse for the cassette tape deck.

What's my point? Well, if each person is a dynamic, living person with hopes and dreams, then not everyone is going to have the same dream and not everyone is going to have the same hope. Not everyone will want to be a doctor, and not everyone will want to be a carpenter. The last thing I would expect from equal opportunities is equal outcomes, because not everyone values the same things. One person will be utterly happy with a part-time job, an old trailer, and the ability to take three-hour walks daily. Another will prize money over time. Yet another will gladly give up all his money to be surrounded by children. If we are forced to have equal outcomes, we cannot have equal opportunity.

Back to our feminist talker of the day. "It cannot in every case be a choice or else 50% of stay at home parents would be men," she asserts. Is this true? A Pew research poll in 2007 showed that only 21% of full-time working mothers and 16% of stay-at-home mothers believe that full-time work is ideal for them. On the other hand, 72% of working fathers believe that working full-time is the best situation for them. Why would someone believe that equal opportunity to make your own choice would result in a 50/50 split of homemaker men and women, when over 70% of fathers prefer to work full-time and about 20% of mothers prefer the same?

Personally, ideally, I would think that equal opportunity would result in 100% of working mothers feeling that full-time work is ideal for them, and 0% of the stay-at-home mothers feeling that full-time work is ideal for them. Of course, we don't live in an ideal world, and, as our feminist of the day pointed out, not everyone has the ability to choose what he or she prefers in the area of homemaking versus working outside the home. So what should be done to make that choice more available?

Most feminists believe that more women should be pushed out of the homemaking sphere, by force if necessary, in order to ensure that they have equality through equal outcomes. I believe that equality comes through opportunity, and that true choice will result in the majority of women feeling that they are in their ideal situation. Given that 84% of stay-at-home women are in their ideal situation and only 21% of working mothers feel the same way, my analysis is that any method of coercion, any oppression of choices, is happening due to the feminist 'remedy'.

Plenty

I did laundry today. I hung sheet sets and jeans/pants on the line and did underwear and the smaller stuff in the dryer. Not as economical as hanging everything out, I know. Still, this middle-of-the-road solution works for me. As I finished putting the clothes away, I got a sense of well-being. I do enjoy having the laundry done, for the same reason why I love foodshopping. I get a deep satisfaction from seeing my house set up with plenty. Not wastefully huge, not scarce... just plenty. I know my husband would give me an odd look if I demanded that he come and see my 15-month-old daughter's dresses all hanging neatly in the closet, so I will show it to my readers instead.

Since my family is a classic single-income homeschooling family, we don't exactly have a lot of clothing money. I shake my head incredulously when I hear of women going to the store and spending $200 on clothing as if it's nothing. So how did I manage to glean such a lovely wardrobe? Well, "glean" is a good way of putting it.

Back in the Old Testament days, according to the laws of Ancient Israel, you were told to only harvest your field once. Instead of picking over it again and again to garner every grain and every fruit, you needed to leave it alone for the poor, the widows, and the orphans. This was an interesting kind of 'welfare program' unlike most common systems in that it required the recipients to work for their gain. Look in the book of Ruth to find a story of a widowed woman patiently gleaning leftover grain in order to feed herself and her mother-in-law.

My church has a giveaway room, and my aunt has kept the pretty dresses that family members sewed for her daughters. My stepmother-in-law also keeps an eye out for pretty things at yard sales. Through these sources, I have patiently assembled my daughter's wardrobe. The things you don't see hanging are the 2-3T dresses that I have folded and put in a box for next year.

Making plenty from little can be done, but it does take patience and foresight. I need to be willing to pick up items that I don't need right away. I need to have enough skill with a needle to repair discarded outfits with very little wrong with them besides a lost button or burst seam. I need to be vigilant and creative. My reward is that lovely closet full of little hanging dresses that my girl hugs in delight when I present them to be worn.

Does my post have a point? It has several, which is why this isn't really a proper Article Post of the sort that I usually write. For now, though, I just want to focus on that happy feeling I get when I see "the plenty" in the wardrobe, and how fulfilling my job as a homemaker in a frugal household can be.

Maybe you'll get a picture of my garden vegetables another time.

And you shall become one flesh

I have seen a trend that disturbs me. It is a similar trend to that which was seen in the 1800's, in areas of Europe and the southern United States. It always seems to follow wealthy societies. It would be nice to pretend that our wealthy society has been able to increase our worldly goods without falling into some of the traps of previous times, but humankind has not 'evolved' as many claim.

There are a few ways that we have seen wealth harm families in modern-day society, but there is one in particular that I would like to focus on today, and that is the separation of spouses from each other and parents from their children.

In the Victorian era, the very wealthy husband and wife did not find it unusual to have separate sleeping chambers. They spent their time among different friends; the wife in the parlor with the women, and the husband in the drawing room with the men. He might travel for months or years in search of more wealth, while she might go to visit a friend and not return for months or years. They were so wealthy that they could afford for each of them to live basically entirely different lives.

Most people in the U.S. share a marital bed (many of whom are not married, but that's another post), so how can I say that we're falling into the same trap? Well, have you ever seen the standard Master Bath of today? A separate shower, separate tub, two sinks set with a swatch of countertop in-between, and the toilet closed off into its own little alcove. There are, not one, but two walk-in closets in the typical New Home design that I see on the architectural websites, and the closets are nowhere near each other.

My concern goes far beyond walk-in closets, though. The huger homes of the upper-middle class and the rich allow for people to pursue their separate hobbies far beyond calling distance of each other. Even the middle class and lower-middle class often boast one vehicle for each family member above the age of 16. The largest separation in the family that I see, however, comes from the common cell phone.

The working husband and working wife, with their separate dressing areas and their separate mobile offices and their separate lives, could go for a week or longer while barely speaking a word to each other. As their children spend the working hours at daycare and school, and their evenings and weekends on a myriad of lessons meant to make them as fine and fancy as the other 'rich' kids, a family comes to the point where they strive to have a hasty sit-down dinner just in order to have the chance to see each other.

Now I hardly seem to be describing the life of a "rich" family. The upper-middle class, middle class, and even some lower-middle class families can meet this definition. Of course, so can the 'poor'... that is, those who are sufficiently poor for the Federal and State governments to provide their cars and cell phones and various activities. That is because this has become a decadently wealthy country. When we speak of the 'poor', we truly do not understand what it is to be poor. You may no longer be able to ask your mother for a description. Ask your grandmother.

Imagine for a moment a well-to-do but not 'wealthy' American farm out somewhere in the Midwest. The father and mother sleep in a bed that would be considered tiny by modern standards, in a room that would barely fit a modern nursery. The children share rooms. They need to discuss who needs the horse and buggy and who is going to accompany them. There is no daycare. The parents spend each day in the company of their children.

In the evening, there is no house big enough for each person to pursue separate hobbies in places where they cannot be heard by the others. The entire family sits down in the same room to learn writing or darn socks with no means of amusement except each other. This was not even considered poverty. It was merely the means by which the 'common folk' lived.

By now I can almost hear the objections. "But back then, the medicine was bad, and the food was harder to come by! The literacy rating was lower, and the technology was practically nil! We have all of those benefits today!" To which I answer: What does it benefit you if you gain the world and lose your soul?

Am I advocating an end to technology? Certainly not. However, I would like for us to show some ability to gain wealth while not making the mistakes that come with it. I would like to see the benefits of a modern society without the drawbacks. After all, if our lives are longer and more miserable, our education is up but our children are increasingly disturbed, our health is better but we are emotionally harming ourselves on a daily basis, have things truly improved?

How much better would we be if we took the best from each era? If technology helped to bind families together, wealth was a means to living well and aiding others instead of drifting off into fuzzy selfishness, and our longer lives were spent doing that which is worthwhile?

The Feminist Union

Lately, I have been hearing more from self-identified feminists than I have for about three or four years. This is thanks to the Ladies Against Feminism site starting a Facebook page. Though you have to go through a vetting process to post articles on their website, all you have to do to post on their Facebook page is to click the "Like" button. A surprisingly large number of feminists, often two or three at a time, click that "Like" button so that they can express how much they dislike the group. In speaking with many of them, I have come to a realization that feminism can be likened to another group that rose in this country during roughly the same timespan. Feminism is like a worker's union.

My experience with (and distaste for) unions goes further than the newspaper stories I read or the discussions in conservative media. The same goes for feminism, and my experiences with both are strikingly similar. I'd like to outline a few similarities here.

Feminism, like unions, started with a good intent. The first worker's unions were formed to address a power imbalance between the workers and their employers. The intent was to bring people together to form a stronger bargaining power, correcting the excesses of the 19th century. Feminism was formed to address a power imbalance between men and women, and operates much in the same fashion. Both groups held protests and made their case, pushing initially for the kinds of equality championed in the Bible.

Feminism, like unions, was quickly diverted from its original intent. It wasn't long before unions started demanding more. As representatives only of the workers, they push for worker's rights at the expense of employer's rights. This creates hostility between those who should be cooperating. It also leaves unions in the place that they once fought against. They are now the ones in power, and with few employers being capable by law to challenge them, they have become the oppressors. The same can be said of feminism, where once they fought to allow women to open bank accounts and now they struggle to give women equal pay for inequal work. (More on that later.)

Feminism, like unions, degrade the worker by lumping him in with a group that may not share his/her abilities or ethics. Without the union, a poor worker is quickly removed and an excellent worker is quickly rewarded. With the union, however, all workers are lumped together, and so they are all treated the same. This happened to me when feminism sought to 'equalize' the number of women in math and science, regardless of the average woman's prowess or desire to compete in those areas.

I was a computer programmer, and I was a genuinely good one. I could have become a 'crack programmer'. When I was hired on a co-op position, I was already correcting the code of my group's 'crack programmer'. I especially loved working with C and Assembler, preferring to get into the guts of the logic and work with as little as possible between me and the hardware.

Many people reading this do not know that much about how computers and the computer industry works, so let me tell you that this is an unusual gift and an unusual focus for a woman. Nevertheless, feminism continues to push women into the programming field. The problem is that, though women on average make decently good maintenance programmers, the one who can build new code from scratch is rare. Now, if the only women entering the field were those who were genuinely good at the job, the only female programmers entering the workforce would be treated much as the men. This was my experience at the beginning of college, before the feminists really 'discovered' the field. By the time I was hired, though, most companies were wary of a female programmer and automatically relegated her to the maintenance section.

Before anyone starts calling these people chauvinists on my behalf, let me assert that I have seen the work of the average female programmer and I agree with them. The typical woman who was prodded into the field by feminists anxious to prove that women could do whatever men could do is sadly inferior to her male counterpart in the area of code-writing. Unfortunately, I was lumped in with them and lost in the shuffle. My manager, recognizing my intelligence, tried to push me onto the management track. All I wanted to do was to write code, and if the market had not been saturated by less competent women in the name of feminism, I might have succeeded.

Feminism, like unions, hate when their members negotiate their own way. In my last full-time job outside of the home, I ran into trouble. I was a working mother, struggling to balance family and employment while my husband finished his degree. I tried to work out some alternate arrangements with my employer to better suit their needs and mine. Unfortunately, union rules prevented us from compromising. The same rules that prevented them from cutting me some slack also prevented me from giving them a little more in return.

It is true that feminists keep asserting that they wish to give their members a choice and allow them to be homemakers and stay-at-home mothers if they so choose. However, they keep insisting upon representing me in order to give me 'freedoms' that I do not want (mostly in the area of paid daycare so that I can work outside the home and extra benefits for singles so that I do not have to be married) while removing privileges that would make my job much easier (like the right to modify the terms of a service agreement in my husband's name). Feminists insist upon speaking for all women, even the ones that they are putting at a disadvantage.

Feminists, like union officials, don't want membership in their ranks to be a voluntary matter. Well, they aren't entirely against the membership being voluntary, as long as everybody voluntarily agrees to join. Union officials and feminist leaders both engage in attempts at intimidation and shaming in hopes of forcing the reluctant to join their ranks. If you are not a feminist, you are not a proper woman. If you are not a feminist, you are cooperating with people who want to enslave women as blacks were once enslaved by Southern plantation owners. If you do not subscribe to feminism, you don't count.

I mentioned the Ladies Against Feminism Facebook page above. To their credit, a few of the feminists have simply left peacefully when they understand that we do not wish to embrace their philosophy. The rest, however, quickly devolve into insults and anger. They keep a mask of politeness for as long as they think that they can convert us, and then turn very ugly when we politely refuse to be converted. I would like to think that this was not a hallmark of feminism, but as I encountered this in my college and my workplaces as well, there is only so much that separates "random incidences" from "systematic behavior".

Feminism, like unions, have become sufficiently blatantly political that the only logic in the people and policies they support is that they are in agreement with the leftist Democrats. We live in the odd world where those who claim to support the workers are giving political contributions and doing favors for those whose policies are keeping the workers from improving their lives. In the world of feminism, those who should be championing the efforts of women in politics are demonizing female conservative politicians and circling the wagons for male politicians who mistreat women. They are quick to protest against conservative men who treat women decently, but they have a poor track record of opposing socialist countries that oppress their women severely.

Feminism, like unions, has outlived its usefulness. The tide has turned.  It is possible for a woman to hold down a job without feminists screaming outrage. It is possible for a worker to negotiate with an employer (and, indeed, the richer ones are the ones who do their own negotiating) without a union threatening a strike. The abuses have been over-corrected, and now we need a movement in the opposite direction. Our brothers, husbands, fathers, and sons do not need to be our enemies.

Before feminism, women were able to participate in society. Though the situation in the 19th century needed to be corrected, it did not need a scorched-earth solution. Now the best thing we can do is to let wounded relations heal, and the continued acerbic mannerisms of feminism are only hurting those whom they claim to protect.

Response to Feminism

I was pointed to a link this morning on a definition of feminism. It sought to strip away the history of the feminist movement and present the concept fresh, with nothing clinging to it. I read through it, and I discovered the problem, the snag, the reason why I still cannot call myself a 'feminist' despite its attempt to stick to a single core concept that the author no doubt hoped I could support.

Here is the link: http://tomatonation.com/culture-and-criticism/yes-you-are/
I will be quoting from it and responding as a member of the group Ladies Against Feminism, who seek to live by, in the words of the main site, a "strong, intelligent, biblical view of womanhood."

It starts with a definition.

feminism n (1895) 1 : the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes 2 : organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests — feminist n or adj — feministic adj

  This is how far I got before I spotted the first problem. Can you spot it? No doubt, legal equality of the sexes is a good and proper thing. God Himself set this up in Ancient Israel, in which women had equal status with men in criminal and property law. A woman's testimony was as good as a man's. When this was perverted in exile, Jesus restored it to our attention by having His resurrection first viewed by two women instead of two men. They satisfied the legal requirement for two witnesses.

However, this definition doesn't even mention legality. It mentions politics, economics, and society. Politics is a touchy subject. At one time, the vote was held by male property owners. This wasn't for the purpose of disenfranchising women. After all, the grown sons still living in their father's household could not vote, and the wife cast the vote in her husband's absence. This was a means by which the vote was given only to taxpayers. Remember that this was before the income tax. That being said, I think I can tentatively agree with political equality of the sexes. If a male in a certain situation can vote, a female in an identical situation can vote.

Economic equality is a different matter entirely. It assumes separation where there should be cooperation. With the breadwinner/homemaker model, the man earns and his wife saves. Before the Industrial Age, the husband and wife worked together on a farm or at a business, and it did not matter if one "earned more than the other" because the money all went to the same place. Of course, now that the man might work for one employer while the women works for another, "equality in economics" ignores the simple and wonderful fact that women bear and nourish children with their own bodies. This interruption in a career will result in economic inequality of outcomes if it is approached with equal opportunity or, if you wish to have equal outcomes, requires unequal opportunity. The only way to provide equality on both ends is to neutralize the woman's ability and desire to bear children. I cannot agree with this.

Social equality has problems of its own. As mentioned above, women bear and nurse children. They have different standards of physical modesty, different allowances made in pregnancy and breastfeeding, and are properly treated differently in a respectful society simply by being female. Of course, I acknowledge that I share with the feminists a desire to prevent situations in which a woman is assumed to be less intelligent or less capable for being female. But I would not like to see her treated no differently than a man in society.

This brings me to another problem, which could merit a post of its own. One of the people responding to the link in hopes of helping us to understand feminism said the following:

Feminism is not about "being men" - it is about refuting the concept that men are "default humans".

 What, pray tell, is a "default human" and should we be striving for it? This is another problem with feminism. They appear to be making women like men and men like women because they are striving to create in one person an entity that represents the best of masculine and feminine, usually by stripping out the defining traits of both. This is the "default human". This I reject. Man is delightfully male, better than the "default human", complementary with the female, with strengths inherent in his masculinity. Woman is delightfully female, better than the "default human", complementary with the male, with strengths inherent in her femininity. The wonder of biblical womanhood is that it acknowledges not the "default human" but the "complete human", a man and a woman pair-bonded for life, bringing the fullness and richness of both sides to the table. This ties into the other part of the article that gave me trouble.

See, once the article is done with the definition, it spends most of its time defining what feminism is not. It isn't the clothes you wear, or the job you do, etc. This makes some sense, because this definition of feminism is meant to strip out what makes people male or female, and clothing is part of what distinguishes male from female. The bodies are different. Even a woman's jeans are different from a man's jeans in form, jutting out in some areas and not others. But that's beside the point. Here it is:

The definition of feminism does not judge your lifestyle. You like girls, you like boys, doesn't matter.

It has nothing to do with your sexual preference or your sense of humor or your fashion sense...

Ah, but that is the point. That which makes you female echoes through every single cell in your body, and informs everything you do in one way or another. Since I am a "Lady Against Feminism", I guard my sense of humor and do not indulge in jokes that tear down men. I seek modesty and attractiveness in my fashion. True, I can pull this off in jeans or dresses, but even when I dress in jeans and a t-shirt I am still doing so in a feminine manner. This is still off the heart of it, though, so let me say it right out.

The definition of feminism does not judge your lifestyle. You like girls, you like boys, doesn't matter.

They are not talking about the friends you make. They are talking about sexual preference. This is perhaps the largest example by which we can understand feminism and the desire to make us non-gendered beings. It doesn't matter. You 'like' girls, you 'like' boys, it doesn't matter. However, biblical femininity cannot work that way. This is not out of some 'hatred' for homosexuals. This is not even a matter of disapproving of the homosexual lifestyle. This is simply how femininity and masculinity works. When you see each person as richly male or richly female, you cannot pretend that pair-bonding two richly-female or richly-male people can result in that "complete human" which we seek. (May I add something here? When feminists scoff at us for seeking a man to make us complete, they are doing exactly what they claim to abhor, considering the male to be the "default human". We understand that our men also seek us to make them complete, and therein lies equality.)

In short, I must reject this "Yes You Are" philosophy of feminism, even shorn of its history and more radical statements. I can advocate equal rights under the law in a constitutionally-limited government. I cannot advocate that the childbearers of society be treated exactly the same as the non-bearers in matters of economics and sociology in which they are meant to be complementary. Likewise, I cannot advocate the "default human" stripped of a sexual identity. My choice is that of the richly masculine and richly feminine, pair-bonding to become the "complete human". I simply believe that it is a better solution.

A better way than this

A cartoonist posted this in his blog a few days ago:

You know what this is? It's a sculpture by Blake Fall-Conroy, the Minimum Wage Machine.
From the site:
The minimum wage machine allows anybody to work for minimum wage. Turning the crank will yield one penny every 5.04 seconds, for $7.15 an hour (NY state minimum wage (and Ohio state minimum wage, too--)). If the participant stops turning the crank, they stop receiving money.

I generally hate 'abstract sculptures', but this one seemed to reverberate in my very soul. I spent a few years of my life at that crank (granted, not working minimum wage), trying to wring out the pennies we needed to keep the household going. Now my husband is the one who turns the crank.

Granted, not all jobs are quite this bleak. Many people are able to make their living doing something they enjoy, or, at least, something that is not consistently monotonous. My husband works as a computer programmer, a "code monkey", as he puts it. Still, most workplace jobs involve a certain level of cranking. That goes doubly for the kind of jobs in which working women often find themselves.

This is one reason why the feminist anti-homemaker viewpoint baffles me. They wish to replace a system in which the man returns home from the crank to find beauty, warmth, and stimulating conversation. They wish to end a system in which the woman spends all of her creativity, intellect, and strength in fulfilling tasks that make life for her husband so much more than 'the crank'. They want to take her from her home and children.

Their idea of utopia is the man and the women both out at their own separate cranks, grinding away while the government takes half of what trickles out and raises their children for them. The feminist dream ends each workday when whichever parent finishes at the crank first having to stop and pick up his (or her) children from daycare, then to arrive at a cold, empty house in hopes of making things a little brighter for the sake of his (or her) mate.

(Of course, this changes the house life even on weekends and holidays. I see more and more women choosing to put their children in daycare on vacation days so that they can "get a break" and have time to do the chores. I hear them complain about vacations from school, grateful when their own children return to someone else's care. You have to live with a child to know how to 'deal with' that child. You have to spend most of your hours in a child's company to get into that child's groove, so to speak, to understand which sounds of frustration denote hunger and which sounds denote sleepiness. But I am getting off the subject.)

We laugh at books and magazines written in the '50's that encourage housewives to fetch drinks for their husbands. There is even an Internet meme full of advice such as making yourself pretty when he returns home from work and not bothering him with trivialities until he has had a chance to relax. We read it and scoff about what doormats those women were back then. The next time you hear that advice, though, and the next time you are ready to laugh, I want you to go back to that picture and I want you to look at that crank.

That cartoonist's blog post continues:

Picture that. Picture standing there for four hours, six hours, eight hours a day, turning that crank to squeeze out one penny at a time till you have enough to pay the rent, put gas in the car, keep the water, electric, wash the clothes, feed the kid, pay your taxes.... Your day revolves around being there to turn that crank. Your life revolves around turning that crank. Your precious limited time on this dear sweet earth is eaten away by that crank.

Ladies, your husband has spent his entire day at that crank. If you are a full-time homemaker, or even if you are a part-time worker, he has spent his day at that crank for you and for your children. He will spend tomorrow at that crank. He will work that crank until he is elderly, and he's doing it for his family. If he is like my husband, he may complain about his work, but he never complains about the fact that he will be winding away at that or another similar crank for most of his life. That 50's meme that so many women find ridiculous, the easy chair and the glass of his favorite beverage, the effort you take to look pretty and provide him with a hot supper... that is the least we can do in return.

Short thought on labor unions and feminism

As the modern woman tries to "have it all" and ends up with nothing, people are beginning to realize more and more the importance of "mother-friendly" work. The truth is, no matter how much feminists try to push women into high-profile careers, the majority of women continue to want their own children.

The feminists use the phrase "barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen," though it has greatly outlived its usefulness. The woman shrieking it in fury still thinks that it refers to a woman who is unable to go anywhere, using up her life in making her husband pleased while toiling endlessly over a hot stove. The average woman in touch with the real world pictures an idyllic moment of relaxation, connecting with the unborn dancing within while feasting upon a much-craved bowl of fresh-picked strawberries and cream, as opposed to trying to force her attention on company business as her pregnant body's feet swell uncomfortably inside rigid formal shoes and the only strawberries in sight are either freeze-dried or cost $5 for a small bowlful in the cafeteria.

The truth is that though women want children and are told that they should desire a career, the majority of actual work available for them is not child-friendly. The boss worries over how this little nuisance will impact the department's performance, while the woman looks forward to using a mechanical pump in the bathroom with a picture of her baby, who is in the care of some other woman being paid half of the mother's earnings. Working mothers have it tough. I should know... I was one out of necessity for a while, and as working mothers go, I had it easy.

How can we deal with this situation? Currently, a variety of possible solutions involve more and more regulation... rules that you can't fire a pregnant woman for being pregnant, rules that she must be given a certain amount of time in which her job is held open but empty, rules that she must be able to use "flex time" to be there when her children get off the bus, even if it means that she spends a cold and lonely Saturday making up her time.

I have a different suggestion.

Remove a few layers of regulation instead of adding more.

Why do so many women work full-time when so many want to work part-time? Part-time is getting harder and harder for employers to manage. A few years ago, I worked as a "casual employee" as a computer programmer. I was paid a set amount per hour, and that was it. No benefits. No holidays. No sick time. No vacation time. No health insurance. No retirement fund. Nothing but a simple wage for hours worked.

That situation is very, very difficult to find nowadays, thanks to a mixture of labor unions and employment law. Generally, hiring someone involves paying a salary plus significantly more for all the associated benefits. Places that seek to minimize their costs by hiring multiple part-timers without benefits are vilified, and they are becoming rare.

However, this is the perfect situation for the working mother. In most cases, her husband is working full-time and providing the family with everything from retirement coverage to medical insurance coverage. She doesn't need paid holidays. She doesn't need stock in the company. She just needs to put in a few hours when she can, to help fill in the gaps in the family budget.

I can see the justification of benefits in full-time jobs, which are usually worked by a wage-earner looking to provide for his family. Nowadays, a hefty percentage of the workforce are 'supplementary earners', and they should not be treated the same way.

A fly in Obama's ointment?

Obama will be president in January. At the same time, a number of congressmen's terms will 'roll over' and the Democrats will be in the majority. Whatever's going to happen this Christmas season is going to happen. So why is Nancy Pelosi already making her own bold statements about things she intends to do by January? Why risk getting your proposals stalled in a Congress that hasn't yet turned to your side, when a little patience will give you all you could wish for?

As a woman who graduated from a quite liberal college and saw my share of the current feminist movement as a silent observer on the inside, I conjecture this reasoning: she wants the credit.

Here is the irony of modern feminism. Obama's greatest challenge, more so than dealing with the economy, foreign leaders who wish to test him, and the disastrous results of his own plans, may simply be dealing with Nancy Pelosi. One of the greatest burdens to the Liberals may just be a monster (I am not referring to Pelosi directly as the monster - you'll understand in a moment) created by themselves.

Now, there are some on the hard-conservative right who believe that women should not run for office (or pastor a church, or become a manager in the workplace). I love these people dearly, but I do disagree with them. Biblical submission of women very clearly works within the household, as a matter of God-ordained organization. Even the most conservative Americans agree with me that man and woman are, though not the same, certainly equal in gumption, intellect, and ability to be capable in their work. However, I go a step further, and note that women in Ancient Israel, even wives, did own their own property, manage their own merchant businesses, judge court cases, and even build cities and bridges which they named after themselves, all within the framework of a proper Biblical society. (In other words, this happened before It All Went Bad.)

The majority of conservative women, far from believing like the Muslims that every woman submits to every man, realizes that we are to submit with grace and love to our husbands and work on equal footing with any other, as Executive Officer of their families. I conduct business with male attorneys, salesmen, and customer service representatives, and I drive a hard bargain, all within the calm knowledge that I am exactly where God intends me to be.

Have you ever wondered why liberal female politicians seem scarier than conservative female politicians? The root of the answer is simple: while conservative female politicians are comfortable in their roles as feminine community leaders, liberal females are still fighting that traditional submission role that still echoes in our Biblically-derived society. In short, liberal feminists are more than just non-submissive. After all, conservative women are not submissive to men who are not in God-ordained positions of leadership over them. No, liberal feminists are anti-submissive.

A liberal feminist wants more than to just avoid being submissive to her husband, if she happens to be married. No, she has to continually prove to herself and everyone else that she is submissive to NO MAN, in no circumstance. Once Woman grabs for power and prestige, she becomes a rather frightening creature, insecure in her femininity, willing to go further and fight fiercer than most male politicians, who tend to be quite secure in their own authority.

Remember the Democratic primary? What kept it so interesting? Long after the other runners-up had graciously stepped back to make way for this "new rising star", Hillary continued to fight tooth and nail. As long as she saw a chance at winning, the slightest chance of breaking even with Obama, she tore him to shreds with such efficiency that the Republican party spent most of their time merely repeating attacks she had already launched.

Now the question is this: will Nancy Pelosi put aside her own desire for power and her strong inclination to show that she submits to No Man in order to put Obama's plan, in Obama's wording, into law, and allow him the credit he will seek? Or are we going to see a power play based on little more than feminist self-righteousness? Or is he going to be the one to give way in the face of her sheer determination? I'll be watching in the next months.