Going to nap, and a link

I'm afraid I'm just too dopey for any more posting this week.  Rather than sit at the computer and try to think of something clever to say, I'm going to curl up in front of the TV for the rest of the afternoon and nap.  When I've got the energy to write, I write.  When I don't, I need to chill.

One terrific link: Jenell has posted a "work from home " job position announcement.  It's a magnificent summary of what's needed to be a stay-at-home mom.  Here's one excerpt:

Responsibilities:
1. Childcare. Plan, purchase, prepare, and serve food. Watch, wipe, and wash asses, noses, and hands. Take primary responsibility for night-time needs. Nurture, and support personal development. Research, make choices, and keep records regarding medical care and upkeep of bodies. Initiate and maintain spiritual care. Lift, carry, cajole, move, transport, and restrain bodies as needed. Provide appropriate play and learning activities. Generate memory-making situations, capture, develop, and creatively present these memories. Purchase, clean, and repair toys. Solicit, arrange, and monitor friendships. Worry. Pray. Hope. Love. Rejoice.

2. Pet care. Same as above.

That's classic, but this last bit is even better:

5. Marital maintenance. Initiate “us time”, and arrange child care. Help husband remember birthdays and anniversaries. Clearly designate husband tasks (car maintenance and repairs, yard work, garbage, major household repairs), and encourage their completion with affirmations. Enjoy sex. Maintain personal appearance. Encourage husband’s personal and spiritual growth. If desired, arrange husband’s medical appointments, financial matters, and haircuts. If desired, purchase and maintain husband’s clothing. If working under conditions of biblical traditionalism, create appearance that husband has initiated and executed much of this work. 

The last bold section is my emphasis.  Loving it!

Comments

[Breadfish]

So basically.... do all the work, but make sure it looks like your husband did all of it?

Eh, I think I'll pass...

[Caitriona]

Behind every great man, and all that.

[Col Steve]

Hugo - how does your bold emphasis on biblical traditionalism (and emphatic "loving it") square with some of your recent, pro-feminist commentary?

men, women, childishness, and responsibility
I ceded responsibility for virtually everything to my wives

I will not place the burden of relationship maintenance on my wife's shoulders alone.

Time and again, I turned wives and girlfriends into mother-figures, and the result was inevitably disastrous.

A note on vulnerability and responsibility

it's all too common for pundits to make the case that returning to traditional marriage and traditional sexual mores is the only thing that will lead men back to responsibility. Women, it seems, have to help men reclaim their sense of manhood by reminding men that they really are needed, and needed desperately.

"One of the things that I've been committed to in recent years has been the notion that transformation and change is a never-ending opportunity, and an unavoidable responsibility." How is one (a man in this case) supposed to take on this "unavoidable responsibility" if traditionalism posits the woman creates the illusion he already is doing just fine...

[Breadfish]

I think he bolded it as an ironic statement, not as an endorsement, Col Steve

[Hugo]

Indeed, Breadfish -- I ought to put up "humor alerts".

[Col Steve]

Yes, I understand the concept of irony.

I was hoping Hugo would elaborate on the issue underlying the statement, especially since he earlier touched, but in a slightly different context, on the intersection of faith and pro-feminism.

If the comment was merely for humorous or rhetorical effect as opposed to a contrast to raise an issue for exploration, then so be it.

[mythago]

Behind every great man, and all that.

Who the heck wants to be *behind* a great man?

[ANTIFEMINAZI]

Feminism= censorship, infanticide, presumption of guilt, serial false witness, thought control, mandatory atheism, endless victimization & liability, lesbian narcisism & supremacism, misandry, androcide, heterophobia, state induced slavery, phony statistics & propaganda and Stalinist-tyranny. Get the hell out of the US and stay out!

[Joseph]

If working under conditions of biblical traditionalism, create appearance that husband has initiated and executed much of this work.

If women feel this way, then why get married? Yet it is women who choose, no demand, marriage.

This is a real question. And one I find that no one wants to answer. Why given all the "horrors" of marriage that are proclaimed by women: enslavement to a man, spousal rape, battery, etc, etc, etc, so many women make a fetish out of getting married?

And for that matter, given the utter contempt for men that is expressed in the opening paragraph ("Enjoy sex." i.e., sex is just the wife's chore) why would a woman want to spend her life with a dreaded male? Brrrr!!!!

I know several late-20ish women, all making huge salaries, who are in a state of utter panic because they are facing being 30 years old and still single. You'd think that not being married would be a cause of joy, since they will not be oppressed by patriarchy, and their chances of being spousally raped or battered are reduced to zero.

Comments?

[Hugo]

First of all, Joseph, read in context it's a humor piece. Folks say feminists have no sense of humor, but MRAs don't seem far behind in the "can't take a joke" department.

That said, it's not women who make a fetish out of getting married; it's a culture that sets up impossible demands for women today. Women are expected to be both domestic wonders and stylish successes in the workplace. Though it's true that many women long for marriage, far more are coping with the crushing weight of the cultural expectation to wed.

[Mr. Bad]

Hugo said: "First of all, Joseph, read in context it's a humor piece. Folks say feminists have no sense of humor, but MRAs don't seem far behind in the "can't take a joke" department."

Except Hugo, the fact that feminists have been saying these things in all seriousness for decades now makes the "joke" pretty obscure and from past experience unlikely.

It would be like David Duke walking around in a hood chanting "lynch blacks" or neo-Nazis in their SS garb chanting "gas Jews" and then when called on those folks responding with "Oh, we were just kidding. Can't you take a joke?" For a feminist to bat his/her eyelashes and do the same when making these types of statements is disingenuous.

Feminists are going to have to establish a long history of disavowing misandry before these types of statements will be routinely seen as fringe or simply "joking."

[Breadfish]

If it makes you feel any better, Joseph, I personally don't give a damn if I never get married.

[Steph]

Ouch, that actually hits a bit close to home for me. One of the issues I have about marriage is how it can become a script for how one should act and one that is easy to take on because we have plenty of socializing about the way it's done.

So I catch myself making hair appointments for my husband and he catches himself letting me. Being a feminist means doing the hard work of resisting these dictates of femininity that can be easy to just assume in the course of daily life being married with kids.

[Joseph]

Mr Bad: good point on feminism and humor.

Women claim that "men just don't get it." But there are men who do listen to women, and when women tell us that marriage is patriarchical oppression, then those men respond by deciding not to get married.

That said, it's not women who make a fetish out of getting married; it's a culture that sets up impossible demands for women today.

But who in the culture sets up these expectations? Who is the villain here?

[Vacula]

People who create romantic comedies, where a happy wedding solves every problem.

People who write romance novels, where a happy wedding solves every problem.

People who ask singles about their love life in a pitying manner.

People who write articles in Women's magazines with lists of tips that will supposedly allow them to be perfect wives, housekeepers, and staff members.

How do you define "culture", Joseph? Why do you need to find a "villain" to accept that something could be wrong with the way we live?

[Mr. Bad]

Vacula in quotes, me not:

"People who create romantic comedies, where a happy wedding solves every problem."

Writers are many times women and write for a female audience because women want and ask for such stories. There's a reason why the romantic comedy film is called a "chick flick."

"People who write romance novels, where a happy wedding solves every problem."

See above.

"People who ask singles about their love life in a pitying manner."

Typically men really don't care much about other people's love life (negative male stereotypes not withstanding), so the target audience and inquisitors are mostly women.

"People who write articles in Women's magazines with lists of tips that will supposedly allow them to be perfect wives, housekeepers, and staff members."

You don't find men reading women's magazines and for the most part, writing for them either, so again, blame women not men for this.

"How do you define "culture", Joseph? Why do you need to find a "villain" to accept that something could be wrong with the way we live?"

I find it interesting that when we MRAs talk about violence against men, feminists dismiss it saying "well, it's men doing it to other men so we shouldn't concern ourselves with it." In other words, since the men are the "villains" vis-a-vis violence we shouldn't concern ourselves with violence against men. But when it's primarily a 'women doing it to other women' phenomenon we're supposed to address it.

Double standards, plain and simple. It shouldn't matter who is perp and victim, but unfortunately with femininists it does. So, don't blame us men for 'genderizing' these kinds of issues, we're just abiding by the rules you feminists established decades ago.

[Keri]

Joseph, I seriously doubt that most men who decide not to get married do so because they're terribly afraid of becoming patriarchal oppressors. More likely, they do it for the same reason some women do it-- they've concluded that the benefits do not outweigh the risks and drawbacks. Haven't MRAs on this very forum expressed the opinion that men should avoid marriage because it makes them vulnerable to all manner of deception and betrayal from women, or because they'll end up being treated as a "meal ticket" or "walking wallet"? I've seen no evidence whatsoever that when men opt out of marriage, they do so because they're concerned about women's best interests rather than their own.

And anyway, isn't it generally accepted by MRAs that all that "patriarchy" and "oppression" stuff is just delusional nonsense from women who want to assert superiority over men? So why the sudden claim that men are so hyper-sensitive to the possibility of patriarchal oppression that they'll swear off marriage entirely just to avoid being complicit in it? Seems a bit disingenuous to me-- you can claim to be warriors courageously battling the feminist tyranny, or you can claim to be selfless martyrs doing their best to understand those silly women and keep them happy, but I don't think you can claim to be both at once.

[Vacula]

Mr. Bad: "feminists dismiss it saying "well, it's men doing it to other men so we shouldn't concern ourselves with it."

Why do you have a problem with Hugo's men hold men accountable, women hold women accountable thing, then? Obviously many of our societal problems are due to men afflicting other men and women afflicting other women. Many feminists would agree with you that violent crimes are a horrible aspect of our society that we should all be concerned with.

From what I've seen in discussions here, they don't like it when you use statistics to minimize the importance of working against violence against women, but I see no reason why you shouldn't be offended when feminists minimize violence against men.

In the post above I was trying to throw out a few specific examples for Joseph, since he hates words like "culture" so much he ignores what people are talking about.

Just because women afflict other women doesn't mean women shouldn't work against it. This isn't all a boys vs. girls game. Look at Edith Wharton's "House of Mirth" - women, as Hugo points out in many of his posts, are often the audience that is most damaging to other women. But why? When feminists talk about "patriarchy" inflicting things on women, they aren't (or shouldn't be) saying that men are the only ones to blame - it's a system that places more damaging demands on women to the benefit of men, often through the complicity of female peer pressure.

Which was, I think, what the commentators above were referencing when they talked about the dangers of women obsessing over marriage. Which, by the way, wasn't at all about violence.

[Caitriona]

Behind every great man, and all that.

Who the heck wants to be *behind* a great man?

mythago, I *know* you saw the humor in that. ;-)

Besides, if we're *behind* great men, often it's because we're pushing them into even more greatness, right?

Now, before everyone gets into a total uproar, my husband tells me daily that he'd not be where he is without me, but what I keep trying to get through to him is that I'd not be where I am without him. He sees me as the person giving him the strength and determination to be the best he can be; but I see *HIM* as being my gift from God who has allowed me to become who I am supposed to be. It's a two-way street, which is something that often appears to have been forgotten by many of the ultra-feminists and ultra-MRAs I read. Neither my husband nor I would be the people we are today, with the strength and drive we have, without each other.