Guest post: They were proud, because they were real women
Originally a comment by iknklast on She described the situation as feminist because it is her choice.
while (some other) feminists made homemakers ashamed of that choice.
I heard this trope from my mother and sisters for years – but none of them were ever ashamed of that choice! They were proud, because they were real women. I am sure there were women out there who were ashamed of that choice, and perhaps feminists who made them so. I haven’t actually met any, but I haven’t lived in such a way that I know absolutely everyone, or even more than a tiny fraction of everyone, so I can accept that.
The problem is, this is presented as it stands. It never receives the proper response, which is that women who chose to be homemakers have for a very long time done everything they could to make working women ashamed. And since they are usually the ones getting the positive attention in the magazines, newspapers, and other venues (the Mommy wars?), and women are still expected to give birth to, clean up after, and chauffeur children, it is definitely an issue. In addition, there is still a lot of noise about how women “have” to work because of the economy and how horrible that is – usually coming from the left, who (rightly) want a better distribution of wealth and use that old trope to try to shame Washington (men) into propping up the social safety net. There are a lot more support systems for homemakers than for mothers who work outside the home, as well, and almost no support systems for childless women who work outside the home.
So, go ahead and acknowledge the fact that (some) women feel ashamed of making that choice, but please don’t leave it standing as a trope on its own without noticing that a lot of homemakers do their best to shame working women. My mother never let a day go by without throwing some crack out there about “real women”, by which she meant women that were girly women, didn’t do “man” things, did not work outside the home, and had no fewer than six children (conveniently, the number she herself gave birth to). I spent a dozen years in therapy, by the way, and a lot of it was from this sort of crap – being made to feel not just less female (I don’t give a rat’s ass about that), but also a lot less human.
Women homemakers doing everything they can to make working mothers ashamed?? Where is the citations on that? I stayed home and raised my adopted son and was a feminist throughout those years. For me and other women, it was a choice or for some other (medical) reason. We weren’t jealous of working women. Many of us dipped into and out of jobs, or were looking for one that would use our skills. Or we were going back to school.
Ironically, my mother had six children, too, and she drove all of us crazy with her behaviors and her sense of entitlement that being married meant a man would take care of her for the rest of my life. She’s 92 and no one can stand her. I was the oldest girl and soon realized motherhood was not for me, that an education was the only thing worth having, and that feminism was THE only way I could stay afloat.
So, in sum, don’t generalize and blame women at home.
iknklast said that a lot of homemakers do their best to shame working women, not that all of them do.
Gretchen, I think you misunderstood iknklast. She’s not blaming stay-at-homes. She’s pointing out that staying-at-home is not the only life for which women are blamed.
They’re also blamed if they go to outside-the-home work. (Neglecting kids! And even longer ago, also: Neglecting husband!)
She’s pointing out that the latter was there long before the “feminist” trope of blaming those staying at home. (It’s in quotes because there were very few feminists doing that. Marxists, yes. Feminists, not so much.)
And she’s talking about the tropes. She’s not saying they’re right.
Not to mention the tired old “you’re selfish for not having children” thrown at my partner and me (I love the look on their faces when I simply answer that we can’t) or the “you don’t really know what it is to be a woman without children” thrown at my partner. That particular person was lucky to leave with their head still attached (my partner is not as forgiving and reserved as I am).
Gretchen – I had quite a bit I was going to say, but, well, everyone else did a nice job. But if you want citations, well, there are tons of books out there and magazine articles all over the place about the Mommy Wars. And a pretty decent backlash from feminists and working moms trying to set the record straight.
Shaming women for NOT taking their patriarchally-assigned role is… pretty much everything feminism exists to fight. “Women are shamed for making choices disapproved by men” isn’t even feminism 101. It’s kindergarten-level feminism.
Shaming of women BY FEMINISTS, and FOR making choices that men happen to approve of, on the other hand, is a much tougher question–one for which no solution exists today, and which feminists hotly argue from both sides. I raise this question because Ophelia has expressed her low opinion of “choice feminism,” and while there’s something to be said for her position, there’s also something to be said against it.
I’m confused why anyone would even bother arguing this point in the context of yet another B&W post criticizing “choice feminism.” Shouldn’t the proper response be something like, “If we want to criticize stay at home Moms for making insufficiently feminist choices, its only because they deserve it.”
I guess you could argue that you’re not “shaming” them, you’re just advancing a political position which entails that their choices are suboptimal and that the world would be better if they made other ones. But how you’d square that with… pretty much everything feminism has to say about what constitutes shaming of women in other contexts… is beyond me.
Or you could just go with “you started it,” like here. That’s productive.
If it’s beyond you, Patrick, then there’s no use in trying to explain it to you, but since I was thinking about this earlier I’ll go ahead and comment.
There is a difference between criticizing and shaming. Yes, there may be times when the boundaries between the two are fuzzy, but that doesn’t mean distinctions can’t be made. It’s possible to say “this choice [wearing a hijab, say] is problematic, here’s why” AND “nobody should be mocked or put down for choosing wear a hijab.”
Sometimes people are going to disagree with some of the choices you make, and offer arguments for their opinion. That’s not them “shaming” you. I’ll take iknklast at her word: her mother said that women who didn’t have lots of children and stay home to raise them weren’t “real women.” That pretty patently goes well beyond criticism. It’s saying “there’s something deeply, inherently wrong with you if you do or don’t do this here thing.” That’s shaming.
Patrick – I was not saying “You started it”. That would be childish and, as you suggest, counter productive. I was referring to the fact that there is a huge cottage industry today in shaming women for not making the choices approved by men and society. The vast majority of crap I have gotten for working outside the home is from other women. I suspect a lot of other women have this experience too, especially since there are a number of books out there written by women who have received this message both subtly and unsubtly from countless sources.
On the other hand, I don’t think the shaming of women who stay home is as major as people pretend it is. From the very beginning, there have been strains of feminism working very hard to get homemakers recognized as people who work hard and do valuable work in our society. Much of modern anti-feminism ignores that history because they can hit feminists over the head with it, and too few people fight back by pointing to the long history of feminism fighting for recognition and appropriate pay for “women’s work”.
Do not try to make my comment out to be something other than it is, a corrective of a long and continuing societal whine against feminism.
From the OP – “The problem is, this is presented as it stands. It never receives the proper response, which is that women who chose to be homemakers have for a very long time done everything they could to make working women ashamed”
No, the problem is you can never win the game, mothers are often derided and if deemed to fail drawn over the coals, someone working gets told they can’t have it all and so on. The proper response is to call it all manufacturoversy, a created problem that yet again no one can win. Like beauty, you don’t do it, that’s bad, you do it and you’re an overly made up trollop. It’s great, the media can push out the myth of wars between women, divide and rule works. You can create infighting between women to distract them. Instead the reality is no one wins the game, while this is still going on the work women do is constantly undervalued. Women are undervalued in paid work, undervalued in unpaid work and perform most of the drudge work out there including the majority of volunteer work on top of all of that.
Choose your choice by all means, but is it really a choice when few choices are available and all of them shitty? Where you’re treading water, where socio-economic and other issues are ignored (so much for intersectionality, supposed to be understanding of intersections of oppression as it relates to women but now more about diluting the movement down to nothing, and everything other than women). Liberal (or rather libertarian) feminism lets you choose your choice, but does nothing really to improve those choices. Instead it’s made about the individual choice, rather than the limited choices and lack of real chances women have.