Meet Kyle, Dumbass of the Week

In case you've been living in a cave with no WiFi, let me introduce you to Kyle.  At midnight (better known as save-in-draft-mode-until-morning-o'clock) on Thursday, Kyle decided that the world needed to hear these words of manly wisdom:

Kyle personifies 2017.  Kyle has never seen a female orgasm so, instead of asking women about it, he mansplains that female orgasms must not exist.  Social media now guarantees he will never see one—by noon on Thursday, Kyle's asinine, patronising post had gone viral.  In football (soccer) they call this an "own goal."

Yes, instead of asking women about the female orgasm, he tells women they're a myth. Instead of considering that women might know more about our sexual experience than he does, he says we are wrong not to be sexually satisfied sans orgasms.  I can't wait for his next post telling us we should be satisfied as helpmeets without education and careers.

Even if chauvinist Kyle refused to believe women about their own orgasms, a quick Google search would have informed him that male researchers have documented the physiology of the female orgasm. But he couldn’t be bothered because clearly his own research on the subject is definitive, and finding evidence that the female orgasm exists would mean facing what a loser he is in bed. I guarantee that Kyle has never fucked the same woman twice. No woman makes that mistake more than once.  One commenter noted that apparently Kyle hasn't even had a woman bother to fake an orgasm Katz's Delicatessen style, implying he made so little effort that no one ever felt obliged to spare his feelings or give him some credit for the attempt.

Kyle's post is such an obvious indictment of his own skill that one can't but wonder if he is trolling.  Who in their right mind would advertise, using his real name and photo, on a worldwide public billboard, "I AM TERRIBLE IN BED."  To be fair, it was midnight, and we don't know what he was drinking/smoking, or if his roommate hacked his account.  His post is reminiscent of Ryan Williams, the 19-year-old British assclown who, just over a year ago, tweeted "If a woman ‘cannot hold in her period until she gets to a toilet’ then it is her problem, not the taxpayer’s.”  Last fall, the UK was considering removing the VAT (sales tax to Americans) on feminine hygiene products because they are a necessity.  Three weeks later, after what he claimed were "death threats from feminists," he said his Tweetastrophe had been a hoax.

Ryan initially invoked a tiny amount of sympathy from people who thought he was ignorant due to poor education rather than assholery, but Kyle has no such excuse.  He richly deserved the unlubricated public ass-reaming he received.  Unless he is currently incarcerated in a maximum security single sex prison, in which case he would not have access to the internet, he could have simply asked a woman.  Heck, even in Supermax, his fellow inmates would have told him he was full of shit.

Perhaps, like most men of his generation, Kyle's sex education has come mainly through internet porn.  There are female-friendly porn sites (trust me, I have them all bookmarked) but you can count them on your one (free) hand.  99.99999% of porn focuses on male pleasure.  When women are depicted as having orgasms, it is not to showcase female pleasure but male prowess, and they are transparently fake, with none of the physiological signs of a real orgasm, which are delightfully apparent in the real deal.

Those of us who had the luxury of misspending our youth before the internet but after the sexual revolution reached sexual maturity at a time when women expected to both give and receive sexual pleasure.  From the time of our first awkward kiss onward, we never got our boyfriends off without extracting quid pro quo orgasms.  Even the most fumbling, bumbling 80s teenage boy understood that pleasing his partner was non-negotiable.

We assumed that subsequent generations of women would be even more sexually demanding; instead, they seem to be regressing.  Boys raised on internet porn form their sexual expectations based on what they see onscreen.  Since porn focuses exclusively on male pleasure, young men today don't consider female gratification.  For a guy, being a good lover used to mean the ability to please his partner; now it means having lots of selfish, meaningless porn-style sex, parroting the anal, blowjobs, and degrading insults.  No man under 40 has ever seen pubic hair.  They don't see it in porn (where it is treated as a fetish) so young men don't expect to see it in real life and women have complied.  In a recent survey, 62% of women under 40 reported removing all of their pubic hair and 40% of men admitted to asking their partners to do so.

Consent is now emphasized on college campuses because the old double-standard survives in uneasy juxtaposition to hook-up culture.  Women can have casual sex like men but they can't want it—they can't have sexual agency.  It's the tired, old Madonna/whore complex but updated for the 21st century: Women aren't expected to be chaste—then they are harangued as prudes and of no interest/use to men—they just aren't expected to like or want sex themselves.  College sex looks a lot like rape: Men initiate it and order women into the porn star contortions they've grown up watching.  Young women comply but they are not saying "yes," they're just not saying "no."  Depressingly, studies of high school and college women show that the idea that they should get something out of the experience never crosses their minds.  Women over and under 40 give starkly different answers to the question, "Do you expect to have an orgasm during sex?"  For younger women, sex seems to be more about pleasing the man than reciprocal.  I'd like to think that as women have made progress towards economic and social equality that progress would manifest in the bedroom but the reverse seems to be happening.

Although the female orgasm indisputably exists, it usually takes more time, effort, skill, and communication to bring off than the male version.  There are doubtless evolutionary reasons for this—the biological purpose of female orgasm is still hotly debated.  (Alas for that brief era of medieval history when it was thought to be as necessary as the male orgasm for conception.)  In today's Tinder-driven hook-up culture, couples sometimes don't copulate more than once and it can take some practice together before even the most willing and considerate man learns how to get his woman off.

Those willing and considerate men are few and far between.  When a recent survey asked college-age men if they cared if their partner orgasmed, they responded that they sometimes cared in a relationship but never in a hook-up.  "I don't give a shit" said one.  Hook-ups are understood by both men and women to be exclusively about male  gratification. Women report not feeling comfortable asking their partner to help them cum, as if it is unreasonably demanding.

Kyle's mansplaining chauvinism indicates that he assumes sex is all about him:  In his mind, women should be satisfied with being desired but not experience desire ourselves.  We should be happy to settle for letting the Kyles of the world get off any way they choose to use our bodies and not expect any more from sex.  Kyle's attitude fits perfectly into the culture that produced Todd Akin, the Missouri Rep. who thinks women can't get pregnant from rape, and the growing list of rich and powerful men whose history of viewing women as objects without independent agency is coming to light.  And let's not forget the pussy-grabber-in-chief, who famously said on the Howard Stern show that "I couldn't care less" if the women he slept with got any pleasure.  You're in great company, Kyle.  Go fuck yourself.

P.S. #NotMe?

A quick addendum to my previous post:

In the wake of the Weinstein revelations, there is a viral trend on Facebook to call attention to the ubiquity of sexual harassment by asking women to post "Me too" as their status if they have ever been a victim of sexual harassment and/or assault.  Since literally every woman on the planet has been sexually harassed at some point in her life, the response rate if every woman on Facebook participated would be 100%.  In fact, there was previously a #YesAllWomen tag on Twitter to highlight that fact.

I had mixed feelings about this request.  I am not a joiner by nature; if everyone is asked to post something, even if it is something I agree with, my instinct is not to follow the crowd.  It's like in yoga class when the teacher asks us all to breathe or do an asana in sync with everyone else in the room.  I always follow an irresistible urge to break the rhythm, do my own thing.  I am both a feminist and a knitter but I didn't knit a single pussy hat last January.  I am quite proud of this trait—you wouldn't catch me participating in a wave in a stadium or holding up a lighter and swaying to the music with the crowd at a concert—so there is no chance I'd play along with a Facebook request.

I also felt I had never been sexually harassed seriously enough to merit saying "me too".  I've been catcalled on the street and online but I have never been personally harassed or assaulted in a work or dating situation, or any other context.  The random catcalls that all women experience just form part of the backdrop of being a woman in public; they're not in the same league of awfulness as, say, the childhood neighbour who was raped by her father when she was 12.  I fear my "me too" would minimize hers by seeming to equate our experiences.

There is also a form of survivor's guilt:  All these other women have been harassed and assaulted, why not me?  It is never the victim's fault—not at all, not even a little bit, not in ANY circumstances—so there is no possibility of rationalizing that I avoided it because I didn't engage in any particular behaviours.  The explanation that whispers in my head is that I simply wasn't attractive enough.

Both of those thoughts—that my harassment wasn't serious enough and that I wasn't attractive enough to be a target—are appalling.  Yes, it's objectively true that rape is way worse than a catcall, just as lynching is way worse than using a racial epithet.  But both are forms of sexism or racism and neither is acceptable in a civilised society.  And I certainly don't think any woman should judge her own attractiveness on the basis of whether she has been sexually harassed.  The fact that either of those ideas crossed my mind is indicative of how persistently patriarchal our culture is.

Finally, I was uncomfortable with the idea of the onus being on the victim, and it seems that I wasn't the only one as these two responses popped up:

"'If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote 'Me too' as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.'

Let me translate that.

"If the victims would just all get it together to say something all at the same time, maybe then somebody will listen."

If the victims would

It's on the victims

It's on (statistically) women.


SUGGESTION FOR REPLACED LANGUAGE:
  'If all the men who have sexually assaulted, harassed, or coerced women into sex, allowed it to happen without doing anything about it, or ever gaslighted a woman about it, wrote 'Me too' as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.'  There.  I fucking fixed it."

Defending Gravity

Young women are rejecting the term "feminist".  When I hear a woman state that she is not a feminist, I grill her on her views.

"So, you don't think women should vote?  You don't think we should be allowed to drive?  Be educated?  Own property?  Leave the house without a man's permission?"

They are invariably shocked and stammer that they believe in complete equality of the sexes.

"Ah," I reply, "you are a feminist."

At which point they protest that they don't hate men and they don't believe women are superior.  That is what they believe the definition of "feminism" is.

According to one survey, only 23% of Americans identify as "feminists" but 82% agree with the statement that “men and women should be social, political, and economic equals.”  In a survey of millennials, only 35% identify as "feminists" but a majority agree that discrimination against women is still a problem.

It seems we have a semantic snag.  According to the OED, the definition of feminism is, "The advocacy of women's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes."  Not, please note, "the advocacy of women's superiority on the basis of misandry."

So, help me out here, people.  I'm having a Rip Van Winkle moment.  When and why did the definition of feminism morph in the popular view from equality to misandry?

I can take a guess:  It's the same problem as Charlottesville.  The civil rights movement changed the laws of the land and forbid legal discrimination on the basis of race and sex.  But it didn't change people's attitudes.  It affected how they could behave, what they could say in polite company, but not their mindset.  The disgusting racist displays we have been seeing since Trump's ascendance to the presidency indicate that racist attitudes have not died out; they were just hidden underground (another reason to protect free speech, but that's a rant for another day).

In a related fashion, men have increasingly been called out on sexist behaviour so some of them have learned to put on a veneer of civility to women in the workplace to avoid getting fired.  But it hasn't changed their attitudes, just their surface behaviour.  Their resentment at having to treat women like equals has manifested in a victim mentality.  They used to be in charge and having to share power with women (and minorities if they are white) feels like a defeat, a blow to their egos.  So, they retaliated by labeling feminists as man-haters, claiming we want special rights rather than equal rights.

Gays have also been accused of requesting special rights when seeking equality.  When same sex marriage was being debated, it was common to hear opponents blathering that gays were asking for special rights.  That twist was a way of delegitimizing a bid for equality.  It's the same with feminism.  By claiming that women who seek equal rights with men are man-haters who think we are superior to men, they delegitimize the term.  Don't buy into it.  Call yourself a feminist.  Reclaim the word.  Defend gravity.

If you don’t want to be judged, why are you posting on the Internet?

**NO NEGATIVE COMMENTS**

NO JUDGING!!!

IF U GONNA JUDGE ME, KEEP UR THOUGHTS TO URSELF!!!

I am increasingly seeing these phrases, or some variation thereof, attached to posts on the Web.  So, I have to ask:  What part of public forum, potentially viewable by anyone in the world, don’t these posters understand?  If you post something that anyone can read and respond to, you don’t get to dictate the response.  If, for example, you post in a breastfeeding Yahoo! Group that you are planning to wean at two weeks because you just don’t want to be bothered and formula is easier, how can you expect a global group of militant breastfeeders not to excoriate you?  I have seen such a post, with “no judging, just supportive & positive comments” stuck onto the end.

This trend of demanding only positive, nonjudgmental comments is alarming and says a lot about how our society values self-esteem over truth, and feelings over facts.  As an adjunct professor, I teach a basic course in civil liberties in which we spend considerable time parsing out the rights contained in the First Amendment.  I always ask the class if there are any forms of speech that are not protected.  A few students are usually familiar with slander, libel, threats, and obscenity, but, without fail, every class there is always at least one student who asserts that speech that is mean or hurts someone’s feelings is not protected speech.  When I explain to them that, whilst saying mean things that hurt someone’s feelings might indicate that you aren’t a very nice person, it won’t get you arrested, they are always surprised.  Inevitably someone brings up whatever story has been in the media recently about a professional athlete being fined for using a racial epithet or an employee fired for saying on Facebook that his boss is a jerk.  At this point I explain the difference between public and private entities, and how private companies are not bound by the First Amendment.  It is obvious that this topic is confusing to people.  Speech rights prevent the government from censoring the marketplace of ideas but they only apply to the government, not private companies or individuals.  Protection from official government censorship is not the same as the complete absence of consequences.  Just because you can’t be thrown in jail or fined for saying something, doesn’t mean that others can’t respond and retaliate.  You can call someone a bitch, and they can call you an asshole right back.  You can’t insult someone in their own home and claim free speech rights when they show you the door.

By the same token, you own your little piece of Internet real estate and you are at perfect liberty to delete any comments for any reason on your blog or Facebook page or in groups you moderate.   If you only want positive comments on your blog posts or Facebook wall, that is your prerogative.  My argument is not with the right to delete comments with which you disagree but with the choice to do so.  By entertaining only viewpoints with which you agree, that validate your behavior and opinions, you are myopically limiting your perspective.

That is not to say you have to let every trollish post remain.  Posts that insult without making a counterargument or that are clearly posted by trolls who are only trying to sow discord rather than stimulate genuine debate, are no more than spam and should be treated as such.  But deleting posts that challenge your position is a sign of weakness.  Do you, on some level, know that your opinion won’t stand up to a factual challenge?  Are you looking for support because you realise, on some level, that what you are doing is wrong?  As an intactivist, I see anti-circ comments deleted all the time by posters who have mutilated their child and don’t want to be told that they made an uninformed decision.  Mutilators don’t want to be confronted with the facts that prove the harm they have done to their own child.  They want to do the Internet equivalent of covering their ears and shouting, “LALALALA! I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”

A closely related phenomenon is the tendency of posters to state that you must respect their opinion.  Even if you disagree, the thinking goes, you have an obligation to respect their views and, by extension, them.  (“You may not want to circumcise your son but I did and you have to respect my choice.  My son, my choice.  You have no right to judge me…” and similar nauseating bullshit.)  I cannot fathom where this idea that opposing viewpoints, and the people who hold them, somehow deserve respect comes from.  Is it related to the fact that we are supposed to debate our opponents in a civil fashion, avoiding ad hominem attacks?  But that doesn’t imply respecting the person or their views.  Is it somehow an outgrowth of freedom of conscience – i.e., because you can believe whatever you damn well please, every opinion is somehow equally worthy of respect?  But that doesn’t make sense either.  It is a mystery where this misguided idea comes from, but it is nearly ubiquitous.  This despite the fact that it doesn’t stand up to even the slightest challenge.  If someone holds the view that women should be subservient to men, or that the clitorises of girls should be removed at birth so the women will not enjoy sex and so not be inclined to cheat on their assigned husbands, I have not the remotest shred of respect for those views nor the people who hold such views.  None.  Whatsoever.  Zero respect.  Less than zero, if that is possible.  Could you respect a misogynist?  A racist?  Someone who thinks the earth is 6,000 years old?  Someone who firmly believes that a 9 year old girl should be forced to carry her rapist’s baby to term?  Can you now see how absurd the idea that you should respect opposing viewpoints is?

All of this nonsense about respecting people’s opinions and not judging them implies that all choices are equal: “Hey, you may make different choices or hold different views, but it’s a free country.  I am free to make my own individual choices and you cannot judge them or criticize them….”  Wait a minute—what was that last bit?  I can’t judge you or criticize you?  Um, why the hell not?  Free speech does not exempt you from criticism.  You have free speech to put your views out there, but so do I, to condemn your views or judge them or refute them, as I see fit.

Fertilizing the Present with the Manure of the Past

(My city friends will find that an unappetising post title but we talk manure a lot in the country.  When we say nothing gets wasted, we mean nothing.  Yesterday's chicken feed becomes tomorrow's vegetable garden fertiliser.  The circle of poo.)

Yesterday I explained how some women are becoming so disillusioned with life in the 21st century that they are leaving the workforce and becoming traditional housewives.  In some cases, it is the man who becomes the homemaker but the vast majority of the time it is the woman.  I talked about the impetus for this trend as well as why it is dangerous for women's rights if we go backward and embrace traditional gender roles.  Today I begin parsing out exactly what we are nostalgic for and how we can recapture it without women losing the right to vote or own property.

We miss:  Salespeople who are polite, friendly, helpful and actually know their business and their merchandise.

How we can bring it back today:  Avoid big box stores and shop at independent businesses and farmers' markets whenever possible.  Before supermarkets and other chains took over, and town centres became vacant, shoppers walked to the green grocer, the butcher, the baker, the florist, the dry goods store, the milliner, the dressmaker, the tailor, etc.  Each merchant knew his or her business, and shop assistants were taught it before they were allowed to interact with customers.

Why it is challenging:  Many Main Streets are lined with vacant store fronts, chains in strip malls on the outskirts of town having driven them out of business.  Some people live in suburbs that are purely bedroom communities, with no proper town centre at all and no stores other than chains.  These suburbs often lack sidewalks, making it impossible to walk safely to the shops.  Also, independent businesses tend to close earlier than chains and have shorter weekend hours, making it difficult for working people to get there.  The biggest challenge, of course, is cost.  With the economies of scale enjoyed by chains, independent merchants cannot offer such obscenely low prices on goods and services.  Which brings us to the next point....

We miss:  Quality goods that last, emblematic of a less disposable culture.

How we can bring it back today:  Buy less!  Mend and repair and make do.  Instead of paying less for an item that will wear out shortly, pay more for a better quality one that will last.  Think of each household purchase as permanent, an investment in an item that you will maintain for the rest of your life.  Look for items that are made locally, where you can contact the manufacturer for parts and repair. Look for items made by independent businesses, where the maker of the item is likely to take some pride in their work.  Look for items made under humane working conditions, where the workers are likely to care more about doing a good job.  Take pride in making items last rather than in having the latest and greatest.  If something breaks, try to repair it before replacing it.  If it cannot be salvaged, do research before buying a new one.  Find the sturdiest one available, utilising reviews and recommendations from unbiased sources.  Don't buy things you know you will only use once or that are meant to be disposable (e.g. disposable cameras, faddish toys, party items).  If you want to explore a new hobby or cooking technique, try to borrow or rent the equipment before buying something that may gather dust in your cupboards.  Think of the health and environmental implications of EVERY purchase.  Ask yourself:  Do I need this?  Why do I want this?  How long will this last?

Why it is challenging:  They really don't make things like they used to.  Most items manufactured today have a planned obsolescence; they are made to be disposable, so it can be difficult to repair them or prevent them wearing out.  Few items are made locally or even in the West.  Even if you are willing and able to pay more for a higher quality item, you may not be able to find it.  Do your best.  If no-one buys cheap crap, stores will no longer sell it.

We miss:  Home-cooked meals, eaten together at leisure and without distraction

How we can bring it back today:  The number one benefit cited by couples where one spouse is a full-time homemaker is meals taken together.  The rush for both spouses to get to work, get in a run or other morning work-out, and, if you have kids, to get them to school, precludes a sit-down breakfast for most modern families.  But breakfast together allows families to connect, to confirm plans for the day, and to start the day with proper nutrition and hydration.  Lunch is trickier to eat as a family.  Men used to come home for lunch if they worked close enough, and children sometimes came home from school, but this meal was the most likely to be eaten separately before the family came back together for dinner, to re-connect and recount their day for one another and eat a balanced, healthy meal without interruptions or distractions.

Of all the suggestions on this list, this one is the easiest to implement.  It takes commitment, and a desire to make it work, from each member of the household.  There may be resistance at first but, once each family member reaps the benefits and the new schedule becomes routine, it will become second nature. First, agree upon who will cook breakfast, set the table, and clean up—it may be the same partner each day or it may vary with work schedules or individual preferences.  Agree on a time when all family members can be present with enough time to sit and eat before they must be on their way to work or school.  This will mean getting up and going to bed at an earlier time.  For family members who work out in the morning, they may have to start their run in the dark, but play with your morning routine and see what works for your family.  Next, banish all electronic devices from the table—no TV, mobiles, eReaders, etc.  The only exception may be a hard copy of the newspaper, if your family still subscribes offline, as the news of the day can be a legitimate topic of breakfast table conversation.  Dress for meals—no coming down to breakfast in pyjamas or dinner in sweatpants.  Instill in your family the idea that meals are a time for conversation and interaction, to pay attention to their food and to one another.  Finally, make the meal worthy of your family's attention.  Put nothing on the table in its original container, and nothing in plastic—e.g., pour milk into a jug, don't set the carton on the table.  Put fresh flowers in the center of the tablecloth, use cloth napkins, and cook from scratch.  Eat local foods in season, growing as much of your own produce as possible.

Why it is challenging:  Getting everyone on the same schedule, with long commutes, shift work, extracurricular activities, etc., can feel overwhelming.  It is easier with kids because as the parent, you make the rules, and you can require them to be present at meals.  Not as easy to wheedle a spouse who would rather warm something up in the microwave and play video games in his precious free time after work.  Start with insisting that the family gather for one proper meal together per day, and add on from there.  If it is difficult to coordinate schedules, relax the rule about dress to maximise the opportunity for family members to be present at the table at the appointed time.  The effort required to cook and clean up meals before and after a long day at work is the biggest impediment to the two-income family from enjoying the traditional sit-down meal together.  The only shortcuts here are to alternate which partner takes on this duty, get older children involved in helping, and to plan meals in advance, cooking things at the weekend that can be reheated on the night.  I realise this won't help two-lawyer families where both spouses are trying to make partner and working 12 hour days but there are no perfect solutions here.  Either one spouse is a full-time homemaker or they split these duties, each shouldering some of them in addition to their paying job.

We miss:  People who take pride in their appearance and do not look sloppy.

How we can bring it back today:  Just like dining together as a family, this is another change that requires time and discipline to implement.  If you are feeling nostalgic for an era when men wore hats and well-pressed bespoke suits, with polished shoes, and women were always perfectly coiffed and turned out, with lipstick, hats, gloves, and stockings, then take advantage of all of the information available on retro hair, make-up, and wardrobes.  People used to own far fewer items of clothing, which they mended to extend their life.  Ignore the cheap, trendy clothing in the chain stores; invest in fewer, higher quality pieces.  Make older children save up for some of their own clothing to encourage them to think carefully before they buy.  Find and build a relationship with a tailor or seamstress.  Have clothing made, or at least altered, to fit you well.  You will feel more confident in clothing that fits you better and flatters.  Unless you are at that moment engaged in exercise, banish sweat clothing and trainers from your wardrobe.  Wear nothing "distressed" or with holes, rips, and tears, no matter how strategically placed.  Wear nothing shapeless or baggy.  Keep your shoes polished.  Choose a flattering, classic cut for your hair that does not take too long to style in the morning.  Shave, wax, pluck, exfoliate and moisturise—this goes for both sexes!  Update your make-up seasonally and don't go down to breakfast without it.  Dress with self-respect and take pride in being well-turned-out every day.  Look for hats, gloves, scarves, and incorporate them into your daily outfits.  Carry handkerchiefs instead of paper tissues, and a beautiful refillable pen instead of disposable ballpoints.  Put these into a clean, structured bag, not a shapeless sack.  Carry a full-size umbrella, not a telescoping one.  Plan a week's worth of outfits in advance, with accessories, so you do not have to worry about what to put on each morning.  At the very least, have your closet and accessories well-organized so you can choose your outfit quickly and without stress in the morning.  If you have children, insist that they dress well.  You do not have to indulge their desire to wear sloppy, casual or trendy clothes.  Reclaim your authority as a parent!

Why it is challenging: Everyone dresses so casually these days, even at events that used to require a bit of effort to dress up (I cry when I see people in jeans at the opera, and just try to tell myself that at least they are there), that you may feel self-conscious, and attract comments, when you are better dressed.  Ignore the comments.  Smile serenely and thank people for compliments.  If they ask you why you are so dressed up, tell them it makes you more confident and makes the world a more pleasant place.  Tell them it is a sign of respect, for yourself, for them, and for the occasion.  I know that bespoke clothing and footwear, and quality ready-to-wear items that will not be out of fashion next season, are expensive.  If you cannot afford to replace a casual wardrobe all at once, invest in new pieces as you can afford them, with an eye towards wearing them as long as possible, not discarding them when fashions change.  Or learn to sew and make clothing for yourself and your family.

We miss:  Fewer choices.  No, really!  Hear me out.  I do not mean fewer life choices based on sex or race, nor fewer choices in health care, nutrition, education, or anything like that.  What I mean is that the choices we face in everyday life are so overwhelming that people are starting to implement self-imposed limitations in order to bring back a sense of control and reduce stress.  It is one reason that people fall prey to organised religion and fad diets—they provide an externally-imposed list of rules that creates boundaries, limitations that help filter the overwhelming number of choices we face every day.

How we can bring it back today:  Since it is not the actual number of choices that we want to limit, but the stress that they cause, set your own rules to filter choices.  I find the handiest filters are health and environment.  If you only buy goods produced in an environmentally-sound manner, that automatically rules out much of the crap that is for sale.  Buy nothing produced in a sweatshop or by child labour.  Likewise, if you decide that your family will eat nothing with artificial colours, flavours, sweeteners, or preservatives, you will look at the grocery store in a whole new way.  Instead of a bewildering array of choices, there will be very little that you can eat.  Limiting your food choices to what is locally-produced and seasonal takes that a step further.  If you decide, as I did many years ago, not to use toothpaste with artificial sweeteners or colouring, suddenly there will be only a few brands that you can choose amongst rather than fifty.  If you only buy clothing made with natural fibres or linens dyed with non-toxic dyes, you will find your options for clothing and bedding reduced dramatically.  If you decide that your next car must get over 40mpg, that eliminates most vehicles on the market.  If you decide to only use native plants in your garden, selecting annuals and perennials from the nursery is suddenly a much less overwhelming task.  Try it.  Remember, you are not limiting your choices based upon arbitrary rules, or rules imposed externally by superstition but, rather, looking after your own and your family's health, and the environment.

Why it is challenging:  We are bombarded with advertisements and coupons, urging us to try new products or choose what is on sale, regardless of whether it meets our health and ethical criteria.  Even with our self-imposed restrictions, it can still be overwhelming to look at a shelf of 100 different deodorants and have to read all the labels, and research online, to find the ones without toxic ingredients.  But it gets easier.  I know now that there are only a handful of items sold by a conventional supermarket or chemist that are natural enough to fit my health and environment criteria, so I don't see the choices that are on the shelves as choices anymore.  They simply don't exist for me.

If you implement all of the foregoing suggestions, you will be able to recapture some of what we are nostalgic for in an earlier era, without becoming a full-time homemaker and risking your financial independence.

Smorgasboard of the Past

Yesterday I wrote about the lure of vintage living in the modern world and the dangers of women retreating from the workforce to become retro-style housewives.  Yet, it is obvious that our current lifestyle, dominated by convenience rather than community, is taking its toll on our health and well-being.  Women of all socio-economic classes are finding that they are still, half a century after the women's rights movement, having to choose between having a career and a family and men are still oblivious to that problem.  What is the solution?  It is not for women to simply tie their aprons back on and retreat from public life.  There has to be a way to get to the root of what we are nostalgic for yet avoid the rigidity, conformity, sexism, racism, and other ills of that era.

At university, City Boy was a member of an organization called the Society for Creative Anachronism. Their motto was, "the Middle Ages as it ought to have been".  The members were nostalgic for the aesthetics of the mediaeval period, but could do without the plagues, mediaeval medical care, mediaeval sanitation, the lack of socio-economic mobility, the theocratic oppression, and the body lice (although City Boy noted that many SCAers seemed to adopt mediaeval hygiene, so I am not certain about that last one).  At SCA events, members could step out of the modern world, put on their mediaeval garb, accent, personae, and rose-coloured glasses, and experience some semblance of a heavily romanticized and idealized age.

If we want to dispense with what is not working for us in the present and reclaim what we long for about the past, we need to adopt a similar custom of picking and choosing.  We would not want to return to that era in its entirety.  There was a lot of misery in the 50s.  The appeal to young women today of becoming a housewife lies in the fact that it is a choice.  Real post-war women lacked that choice.  Plenty were depressed and anxious and were the first consumers of modern prescription mood-altering drugs.  Women were stuck in marriages with abusive or cheating husbands because they would be financially destitute if they left.  It was women's discontentment with their circumscribed lives in the 50s that fueled the women's rights movement of the 60s.

So, what we need to do now is list what we long for about the past and figure out how to bring it back in the present, without the bad stuff tagging along.

Tomorrow's post will feature my own list, along with reader suggestions.

Let's Do the Time Warp Again, Or Not

There is a growing trend of young women choosing to embrace traditional gender roles and become housewives. I am not talking about women who are unemployed by circumstances rather than choice, nor women with children who have chosen to stay home with them. I mean, full-blown 1950s-era housewives, whose days consist of cooking and cleaning and other domestic drudgery. In most cases, the financial sacrifice that the couple is making requires many home economies to make ends approach, so the modern homemaker often embraces old-fashioned skills like sewing and mending, and making lunches for her hubby to take to work. This trend is both intriguing and alarming. It raises two obvious questions: Why is it happening and why is it so frightening?

The former query is easy to answer. As women have fought tooth and nail for equality under the law, in education, in the workplace, and in all areas of society, they have never lost the responsibility of homemaking. And making a house into a home is a full-time job. This means that women who work have two jobs, one of which must be squeezed into early mornings, evenings, and weekends. Some women can hire cleaning ladies, send out the laundry, and otherwise pay for others to do much of the housework, but that is a luxury for the wealthy. The more usual result is that the housework doesn't get done and the house is a place to crash but not really a home. Meals are not eaten together in a relaxed manner. Breakfast is a granola bar on the train, a yoghurt gulped in the car, or a bagel and coffee purchased on the way into the office, and dinner is microwaved or ordered in, eaten in front of the TV or computer. Parties are catered and cooking is reserved for special occasions, a rare effort when there is more time at the weekend rather than a daily ritual. In general, the necessities of life are purchased rather than made from scratch, and entertainment is passive, i.e., listening to music rather than playing it.

Back-to-the-Land Apparently Means Back in the House, Too

There is nothing wrong with the above scenario if hearth and home simply aren't important to you but, clearly, the lack of a home life is missed by some. It is a feeling that dovetails nicely with the slow food and locavore movements, the resurgence in chicken-keeping and small-scale farming, canning and preserving, knitting and spinning. The disconnection in the modern world from the sources of our food and textiles has become so extreme that it has spawned a desire in otherwise normal city folk to raise their own sheep, shear them, spin the fibre, and knit it themselves. Handmade items are wildly popular, and sites like Etsy are thriving. Work itself is also becoming less satisfying and secure. People change jobs frequently, and work longer hours for less money and fewer benefits. Not everyone has a profession that they chose, a fulfilling career that satisfies. Most people, women and men, are working to make a living and would gladly quit and take up gardening or knitting or bread baking if they won the lottery.

So, it is not difficult to see how a couple might decide that returning to an earlier model of the division of labour, with one spouse maintaining the household and the other working to pay for it, makes sense. The women who make this retro lifestyle choice report being happier, more relaxed, less stressed by the modern world. It's a retreat from the rat race, into the cocoon of the home, where one has more control.

Now, as to the second question, I think I can venture an explanation for why women who have fought for the opportunity to work outside the home frown upon women who make a choice to reclaim domesticity. One reason is that the hard-fought, hard-won gains of the women's movement are still a work in progress. Women are still fighting for equal pay, prestige, and respect in the workplace. There is still a perception amongst male, and even female, bosses, that women aren't as dedicated to their jobs, that they are apt to quit if they have kids, or be more likely than men to have competing demands outside work, such as taking care of children, elderly, the home, etc. This is true, of course, but it is usually a necessity for women, not a choice, because men refuse to take on or even assist with these responsibilities. But the result is that women are not taken seriously in the workforce. Men have never had a choice about working. Feminism liberated women to choose to work or stay at home but it did not create that choice for men (yes, there are a few SAHDs & SAHHs, but they are rare and ridiculed), so any perception that women are just playing at work, just dabbling in the working world but can retreat home anytime is anathema to equality.

And let's not forget that working gave women the freedom not to marry; they didn't need a man to support them any longer. A homemaker, unless she has a trust fund, needs a breadwinner. Women have fought hard to gain financial independence from men, to be single by choice, child-free rather than child-less. So reverting to a model of women as homemaker (or even man as homemaker) is a return to a scenario of dependency. The money-earning half of the couple always has the upper hand, even if they choose not to play it. A single worker can cope without a homemaking spouse; a homemaker cannot survive without money. Women entering the work force and paying their own way went psychically hand-in-hand with women being equal partners in marriage and not subservient to the master of the house, the controller of the purse strings. It wasn't so long ago—my mother remembers it vividly—when women could not get a mortgage, credit card, bank account, etc., in their own names, even if they were earning their own living. So there is a legitimate fear that women returning home takes us back to a time when men ruled the world and women lacked equality in every aspect of life. Yes, some laws have changed, some forms of discrimination on the basis of sex are now illegal, and homemakers are legally entitled to part of their husband's earnings in divorce, but the perception that going home is going backward in terms of women's rights is hard to shake, and the ability of women to make a choice to work or not leads to resentment on the part of men, single women, and others whose life circumstances don't permit that choice.

Additionally, some of the basic tenets of the women's movement revolved around the idea that homemaking was stifling intellectually, that women were capable of being doctors and lawyers and engineers and using their brains as well as men. In an era when education for its own sake has been devalued, when it is seen as solely vocational, will women's access to higher educational programs and scholarships be threatened by the possibility that she might choose not to use her degree? It is dangerous: women lawyers, for example, rarely make partner. If the male partners thought the female associates might leave to stay at home, it would be the kiss of death for any hope of female advancement in the workplace. Can losing voting and property rights be far behind? 

Obviously, this is an absurd situation for women. We are caught between a rock and a hard place. We have gained the right to work, but we haven't lost the responsibility to be the main parent and homemaker on top of it. Most women who work still do the bulk of the housework, childcare, elder care, social planning, etc. Women who made the choice to trade their aprons for briefcases just have 40+ hrs less per week to get done everything they had to do before. The home still needs to be made, the family cared for, whether both spouses work or not. And, as the author of an experiment in 1950s living called "The Apron Revolution" has been pointing out since she started her project, quality of life suffers. Few women have a career that provides intellectual stimulation and other forms of gratification; most women have jobs they hate but they need them to pay the bills. They're stuck in jobs as they were once stuck at home. As more women worked, the cost of living grew to the point where tremendous sacrifices must be made for a family to live on one salary.

Of course, most women would agree that, as difficult as it is to Do It All, it's a highly preferable problem to have than in pre-women's rights days when women had no legal rights and few professional opportunities, when they were frustratingly and absurdly perceived as both intellectually and physically unfit for public life. But women are exhausted from trying to do it all, and the solution of reclaiming homemaking is increasingly appealing. In a new, feminist guise, it is growing (Anyone read "Radical Homemakers"? I just ordered it from Amazon.), but it still forces women back into subservience to men and it is still mainly practiced by religious women, which justifiably gives it a bad name. If you are a SAHW or SAHM, and especially if you are a homeschooler, people like me will assume you are some type of fundie. That's a fact. There used to be a blog called "The Atheist Homemaker", started by a SAHM who tried to find others online but all the homemaking sites she found were run by Xtian women blathering about "obedience" to their husbands. That nauseating tripe taints the idea of homemaking; no-one sane wants to be tarred with that Stepford Wife brush.  Unless you are brainwashed by religion, it is a lifestyle choice that will be met with resistance, both internal and external.

Notice that it is the mothers (and other older female relatives) of homemakers who are the most vocal opponents of this lifestyle choice. They can still remember when women were fired when they got married, denied promotions, excluded from degree programs and professions. It hasn't been that long since women lacked legal rights, since they went from being their father's property to their husband's property, symbolized by the father walking them down the aisle to their husband, and changing their surname from their father's to their husband's. It hasn't been that long since women couldn't vote or run for office. It hasn't been that long since women were expected to be support staff and not the boss, secretaries and receptionists instead of executives or lawyers, nurses instead of doctors, elementary school teachers instead of university professors. It hasn't been that long since women could not open a bank account or obtain a credit card or a mortgage without a man's signature. It hasn't been that long since women lacked control over their fertility. It hasn't been that long since women were denied an education because how much did they need to know about philosophy or science in order to cook and clean and look pretty for the men, who were the only sex expected to have any brains or intellectual life. It hasn't been that long since a woman had no financial independence and could be left destitute if her husband left her or died. It hasn't been that long since women could not sue for divorce, and custody of children and property went automatically to the man.

Every gain in women's legal and financial equality has been hard won by women who fought doggedly against sexism and patriarchy, who stood up to men who said they shouldn't worry their pretty little heads about politics and law and medicine and world affairs and should stick to their ironing and sewing and let the men make the big decisions that affected their lives. If you can believe it, one of the arguments put forth against female suffrage was that a woman would never vote differently than her husband so he could cast the vote on behalf of the household. Many of the "firsts" for women happened within the lifetime of women alive today. Many gains, such as equal pay for equal work and equal political representation, have yet to be achieved.

There is a rational and legitimate fear that if women choose to be homemakers, they will not be taken seriously in the workplace. Women were once not paid as much as men for the same work because it was assumed that the man was supporting a family but the woman was just biding her time until she snagged a man to marry. This pay gap still exists, in the 21st century, and a return to traditional gender roles can't help but exacerbate it again. I read an article recently about a woman with a PhD in engineering who was taking time out from her career whilst her children were small. She was worried about the mommy penalty: losing ground in her field, losing up-to-date skills, and not being able to find a job when she re-entered the workforce. A man responded in the comments that her choice to stay home means that women should not be given scholarships nor places in graduate programs because they were denying space in those competitive programs to another (male) applicant who would use the degree.  It is scary to see that attitude, but that commentator is far from alone in his view.

So, in sum, it's difficult to negotiate a return to homemaking in the 21st century. It's hard to find a way for women to be homemakers yet not be guilty of intellectual vacuity, or religious zealotry, or anti-feminism, or financial dependence on men, and, above all, of not harming the careers of women in the workforce.