Christina Hoff Sommers: Still Shilling After All These Years
Jan 28th, 2009 by admin
Oh for god’s sake.
Here’s what Sommers somehow considers an intelligent critique of feminism (in bullet point format because it’s all what she wrote in oh-so-many words deserves):
- Extensive critique of Eve Ensler and the Vagina Monologues that is oblivious to the ongoing and often vehement critiques of both by most feminists, including — or maybe especially — those feminists she calls “gender” and “victim” feminists;
- Using the terms “gender feminists” and “victim feminists” in the first place, i.e., propaganda, thought-stopping cliches designed to promulgate heat, not light in the dialogue around women’s issues.
- Treating errors in obscure-to-by-far-most-feminists college textbooks as though they are somehow the very pulse, nay, the nerve center of contemporary feminist thought, work and theorizing, when in fact, feminists ourselves long ago recognized the kinds of problems she’s “uncovered” and have moved on. Yes, there are issues around, for instance, the notion of the “rule of thumb.” So? Anytime that subject comes up or that reference is used among feminists, feminists ourselves refute it as unproven or unproveable (which doesn’t mean the rule of thumb did not exist as a basis for old laws around wife-battering. It just can’t be proven, and again, who cares if it can’t, what is important is that men, from time immemorial, including in the U.S. in the last 300 years all the way up today, have battered and murdered their wives with impunity, then walked.) Sommers might have some shred of credibility if she ever took a look at any of the glaring errors to be found about women, women’s issues, women’s history in a gigantic number and array of revered and honored college medical texts, legal texts, psychology texts, science texts and history texts. But she is, again, oblivious to these and worse than that, doesn’t acknowledge the way they oil the patriarchal machine and keep it functioning, the way that it would take an avalanche of college texts making exaggerated feminist claims to begin to make a dent in the way the system favors and benefits men. And no, I’m not suggeting that’s a great idea, I’m making a statement about Hoff Sommers’ skewed approach and perspectives which strain out the gnat and swallow the camel time and time again.
- Cherry-picking random facts from a college textbook in some attempt to demonstrate that feminists everywhere in the U.S. (especially those despicable (and fictional) “gender” and “victim” feminists) believe American women having difficulties obtaining abortions (by the way, a very serious issue for American women, especially poor women) is comparable with Ugandan women being forced to marry their rapists. That Sommers does not get that the vast majority of American women are every bit as hobbled by constrictions around dress, mobility and behavior as women in developing countries tells me Sommers needs to get out more, you know, rub elbows with the plebes, the common women and feminists, the kind that would not use the terms “gender feminist” or “victim feminist” if their lives depended on it, because in fact, we know that our lives do. Sommers might also consider how incredibly ethnocentric to xenophobic to racist she might be sounding, depending (and here I’m giving her an undeserved benefit of the doubt that she isn’t really any of these things more than most affluent white people are, she’s just another clueless academic who lost track of the plot a couple of decades ago and can’t be bothered to find it now because she’s way too personally invested and has too much to lose. Her sentiments sound appallingly like conservative rationales that the U.S. should bomb Iraq and Afghanistan and now Pakistan in order to save the women).
- Dismissing Lawrence Summers-President-of-Harvard-now-Obama’s-Chief-Economic-Advisor’s having said publicly, “Women can’t do math” as just some sort of innocent theorizing on his part, and gee whiz, you women are just so SENSITIVE. You make such a BIG DEAL about EVERYTHING. All he is is the President of Harvard and, you know, Obama’s Chief Economic Advisor.
- Suggesting that the reason women only make .76 cents to the dollar in the U.S. compared with men is, women just have “markedly different preferences in life.” Yeah. Like, you know, preferences around taking care of the babies they have that men abandon, abuse, neglect, mistreat and do not want to support financially, let alone exerting any energy to share in the burdens and difficulties of raising children, in a society that counts this as women’s work to be uncompensated and doesn’t give a rip whether men share in it or not. The wage gap is essentially a motherhood gap; I wrote about this a couple years ago for off our backs. Women who never have kids have already achieved economic parity with men in the U.S.; women who have kids make .76 on the dollar. Can Hoff Sommers be bothered to do even a modicum of research there, though? Well, no. The idea that women are just “different” and want “different” things and that’s why they struggle to survive economically suits her purposes far better, in that it’s right in line with the male supremacist playbook that has been her guiding light since she fashioned herself as American Men’s Best Shill Forever.
- Calling us the rough equivalent of “man-haters.” I guess that’s an example of the “bias toward logic, reason, and fairness” Hoff Sommers thinks is what has REALLY put her “at odds with the feminist establishment.”
What Hoff Sommers put up on Feminist Law Professors is so old, there was nothing new to see there, it’s as though time stopped for Hoff Sommers when she published Who Stole Feminism how many years ago now. Guys like Amp devoting all the time he recently did to what she wrote just affirms what I’ve known forever, that Amp does take her and people like her seriously and possibly enjoys this idea of “equity” feminism and so wants to give it more air time (”equity feminism” being another thought-stopping cliche designed for heat- and not light-production). People enamored of the notion of “equity feminism” never get it that there can be no”equity” until women, as fully as men, comprise the standard legally (and in every other way) by way of which “equity” may be determined in the first place. That’s never going to happen so long as we have people like Hoff Sommers who, for example, ignore pervasive misogyny taught as the gospel truth in textbooks and by sexist professors in many to most universities and colleges in favor of pointing out that feminists’ claims about male violence haven’t been statistically proven and therefore, feminists are not credible, best case, liars, worst case.
Which brings me to my final point, not that there isn’t a lot more that could be said, but Sommers’ piece is so disingenuous and disrespectful and boring in its cluelessness, it’s not deserving of any more of my time. The statistics available from the Department of Justice and the FBI do notremotely BEGIN to tell the tale about male violence against women. Not even CLOSE. These statistics give a picture only of what has been reported to authorities. As we have discussed many times, over decades and centuries and millennia, as women, as feminists, here and everywhere, we all know women or have been women who never reported being raped, brutalized, battered, sexually assaulted, incested, abused to anyone, let alone authorities because we know it would be worse for us if we did. Most of us know far fewer women who have never been harmed by men in these ways than women who have been harmed. We know, as women, that at least one in three of us has experienced violence at the hands of men. The statistics do not begin to report that truth and reality accurately and cannot be expected to. Again, there is a very long way yet to go before women’s lives and experiences, equally with men’s, inform the standards — legally, medically, academically, historically, in every way — by way of which statistics and facts can even be accurately obtained and compiled. So pointing to feminist errors around statistics doesn’t document feminist lies, doesn’t even make feminists and their books less credible. If feminists (stupidly) did rely on these statistics as though they told the truth about our lives, what we wrote and said would not be remotely true!
I agree with Hoff Sommers only on one thing, and that is that as feminists, we’ve got to make more and more connections with conservative, evangelical and fundamentalist women. This I believe with all of my heart. My reasons, though, aren’t Hoff Sommers’ reasons, which I believe have mostly to do with Hoff Sommers’ view that American women “are not oppressed” and so, feminists should hang out more with women she thinks get this. I believe this because I have watched, seen, been part of, myself, the female resistance to male supremacy and male power that already exists within fundamentalism, in evangelicalism and among conservative women, that has existed for a long time, and that is a sleeping giant, a force to be reckoned with worldwide and in the U.S. as well. The way some — not all by far, mostly loudmouths who prioritize entertaining readers over commitment to women — feminists make a name for themselves mostly by attacking, mocking and harassing religious and conservative women is a constant source of aggravation and disgust to me and has been for as long as I’ve been a feminist. A more wrongheaded, more stupid and shoot-ourselves-in-the-foot strategy would be hard to envision.
So I’m with Hoff Summers there in principle, though we diverge so far as the paths we take to get there and the reasons for taking the paths. Let’s make common cause with women throughout the world, wherever they can be found resisting male power. These women can be found everywhere, including in the most fundamentalist of fundamentalist religious communities. They deserve our respect and support as feminists even though they may not want anything to do with us — in part because of people like Christina Hoff Sommers and the ridiculous things she says and writes about feminists!
I really think Christina Hoff Sommers ought to spend some time reading this and other blogs. It might be an enlightening experience for her. But I won’t be holding my breath on that.
Heart
YOU GO, Heart! This makes me want to stand up and testify! What an awesome explication of the truth behind all those smokescreens. It occurs to me as I’m typing that maybe one example of resistance to male supremacy within conservative religious groups is how women learn to construct a narrative of their own lives within the context of “witnessing” or “giving testimony.” I remember what it felt like when I stood in front of a prayer meeting and gave my “witness” for the first time. I had become extraordinarily fearful of public scrutiny by that time–though I had been a vigorously outspoken child before society got to work on me–and it was a breakthrough for me to stand up and speak out, about anything. Religious women do learn to forge the story of their lives, in a way that gives them meaning, dignity, and sacredness. Later on, if we want to continue to be true to ourselves, we have to re-examine that story and reject the boundaries that were imposed on it by others. But religious women do learn to see themselves as part of a great story, and I think that can become a strong tool for them.
That wasn’t what I meant to say, however. You see, you are inspiring. ; )
There’s so much here to respond to! I was just going to underscore the bad faith of picking out any error in any feminist commentary to invalidate the basic principles behind it, whereas exactly the opposite is done for male supremacy. Because male supremacy is presumed to be true, any and every error, even those that are basic and that effectively make nonsense of the assertions–like Summers’ view that women can’t do math, in the face of clear evidence that women do very well on current math SATs–is overlooked and excused.
And THIS:
Like, you know, preferences around taking care of the babies they have that men abandon, abuse, neglect, mistreat and do not want to support financially, let alone exerting any energy to share in the burdens and difficulties of raising children, in a society that counts this as women’s work to be uncompensated and doesn’t give a rip whether men share in it or not. The wage gap is essentially a motherhood gap
YES. This is why I loathe the blather of conservative males about how patriarchal social structures are all for the benefit of “our children” and how feminists are evil child neglecters. More patriarchal reversal! Care of children is fine as long as it can be done on women’s backs for no pay. If it starts costing men anything, forget about it. The safety net depends on women/mothers/sisters/daughters putting ourselves last. It’s no wonder the men in charge start freaking out when we begin to question the justice of this arrangement.
But the biggest question in my mind after reading this post is, again and sadly, how do we deal with opposition from women? I just refuse to get pulled into fights with front women for the conservatives. It doesn’t do any good that I can see. I will engage respectfully with them when I can, and take a lot of abuse from their side without response in kind. It usually appears to me that the issues that drive them into the arms of the patriarchy are personal ones, not likely to be resolved in a public forum. Obviously, they feel very threatened by the mere existence of feminists. They don’t really want to discuss issues–what they want is for us to go away. I know other women here have been dealing with this much longer than I have. I just haven’t come up with a good strategy.
Wonderfully written, Heart. I had forgotten CHS even existed. I believe the book you mention by her is the one that came out when Susan Faludi’s Backlash was a huge bestseller and CHS thought she could make a little money with her anti-theories.
I kind of hoped, back then, that she was a put on. Sad to know she’s still spewing the same stuff.
Conservative front women like Hoff-Sommers are always out there to make a buck. Conservative patriarchal think tanks and radio shows just love her and give her a platform. The irony of course is that feminism paved the way for women to do this stuff in the first place!! “Who Stole Feminism” another book about schools cheating boys’ education and on it goes, was another one of her dubious research projects. The conservative media has plenty of room for these women, and gives them mainstream platforms. But I guess it’s all a matter of perspective, because from a radical lesbian perspective, just about all women seem shockingly conservative to me — marrying men in the first place, putting everyone on this green earth ahead of themselves, sacrificing a life in the service to others…. this just horrifies the heck out of me. So conservative I guess is in the eye of the beholder.
So much I want to respond to in your comment, Anuna! I will try for tomorrow. And thanks, Keesha!
I know what you’re saying, Satsuma. But. Bottom line, women marry men (in our culture) because they want to be truly and deeply loved and and because they want to love truly and deeply in return. They believe men when men say they love them, they are smitten, this is it, this is true love, they will climb the highest mountain, swim the deepest ocean, and so on. I think men believe the things they say themselves along the lines of that Lundy Bancroft article I excerpted a while back.
I know all of the arguments against love and partnering and marriage and for spinsterhood and so on and they are good arguments as far as they go. But they don’t go very far, in my opinion. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to passionately love someone and be passionately loved in return. I can’t fault a woman for wanting that, going after it, marrying a man or a woman she really believes she loves and who she believes loves her back.
I should find that Robin Morgan quote I love so much on real love as a central goal of radical feminism. That’s something I think needs to be discussed a LOT more than it is. I didn’t come to feminism or radical feminism to be self-sacrificing and stoic and alone. I came to radical feminism in large part because I know that love is very beautiful thing and I want it in my life.
Young women can’t be faulted for acting on their best knowledge and information (they believe they are in love) and finding out later they were sold a bill of goods. By then most of the time they are going to have kids and it will be very complicated and they will not want to face what has happened to them, they will SO SO SO want it to not be true, please god, the love comes back, please god, he really loves me, I really love him, please god, it’s not really what I’m so afraid it is.
I just think one really good reason to build a new world is so that more and more and more men and women will find the love they deserve, that nourishes them, inspires them, calls forth their creativity, all the beautiful things that happen when we love.
I think the greatest difficulty for women is that they are colonized from within. No other group would accept the kind of personal prisons that are the ones women live in.
Somehow, I think women have such an odd idea of what love is, and believe this mythology to such a degree, that we really don’t know what the true nature of free women would look like on a worldwide scale. We don’t know what that massive freedom would look like. I believe this is why the powers that be are fighting lesbian and gay rights tooth and nail, and this issue has now become major. There is something in the idea that the monopoly on human relationships that heterosexuality represents is at long last finally coming to an end. Now it is not an obscure choice for women to say, we don’t believe men love women at all. This isn’t love, it’s an artificial approximation. Women may think they love men, but I don’t believe men are capable of love at all. They are capable of an artificial emotion that they say is love.
I read a statistic awhile back that in the 19th century, a good 63% of the women in a British suffrage organization were unmarried women, or lesbians. Maybe it was the Women’s Social and Political Union, or one of its close relatives. That radical feminist battle that was fought before the first World War was significant because its legions consisted of unmarried women. This was such a shocking state of affairs that I believe the scientific establishment wanted to shut this down, so we had the Freudians and the sexologists trying to make lesbian identity into a mental illness, or they tried to make all women who never wanted to have sex with men appear mentally ill. But the truth was, this was the first 20th century manifestation of radical feminism, and it was a remarkable human rights movement. I believe that this is the chief obstacle to women’s freedom. Women are simply spending way too much time serving the heterosexual family unit, leaving almost nothing left to fight the real enemy. Not knowing this is what could mean the difference in seeing what all women would fully be capable of if they stopped doing the same damn thing over and over and over and expecting full human rights and freedom to come of it. I believe this is the vision I had even going back to early childhood, where I looked at men, and I saw them as obstacles to my freedom. They horrified me with their condescention, and this wasn’t even violent, it was worse, it was the dismissal of women’s intelligence entirely. It’s the great violence that men unleash in the corporate world on women– that subtle degrading idea that women will always serve men as long as women can be conned into believing that men even know what love is.
Ah, Satsuma, you’ve done it again.
As well, you have expounded the gist of The Spinster and Her Enemies, by Sheila Jeffreys
http://www.spinifexpress.com.au/non-fict/se.htm
Heart, I fault the idea that men “deserve” any kind of love, or that a female is not amiss in believing that a male or males “love her back”. Women desperately, desperately need to question that belief, for their own individual, and our female collective, well-being.
Yeah, that’s one place we disagree, Mary. I think all human beings, and all creatures, and the whole earth, everybody in it, deserve to be loved from their first breaths, first moments of life. I think that all life and all that is created has incredible value, immense value, and that love and connectedness between us as people and creatures and the earth is the highest possible acknowledgement, the grandest recognition of this value, and that if this were recognized and all children and all animals and all life experienced this love always, the world would be a far different place.
I really wasn’t talking in my comment about whether women are remiss in their beliefs or anything like that. I was talking about life as it is, about women’s lives as they are. Feminism exists in the wake of women recognizing how remiss they’ve been. But, nobody could have told most of us 20, 30, 40 years ago what we know now. We had to learn this. So, I’m not one to go on and on about how wrong women are to believe what they, in fact, so often sadly, believe. My response is to blog here about what is real and true about our lives as women and about men as well. I get tired of the way feminism gets turned into long lists of shoulds and should nots. Been there, did that to death, and am here to say it doesn’t work.
There has to be more than that, a lot more. Caring, compassion, connectedness, love, some reason to believe the world can be different. I believe it can be. And for that matter will be in time. But I can’t lay the problems of the world at the feet of women because they loved the wrong people or blame them because they keep loving the wrong people. It just isn’t effective feminism, I don’t think.
“Suggesting that the reason women only make .76 cents to the dollar in the U.S. compared with men is, women just have “markedly different preferences in life.” Yeah. Like, you know, preferences around taking care of the babies they have that men abandon, abuse, neglect, mistreat and do not want to support financially, let alone exerting any energy to share in the burdens and difficulties of raising children, in a society that counts this as women’s work to be uncompensated and doesn’t give a rip whether men share in it or not. The wage gap is essentially a motherhood gap; I wrote about this a couple years ago for off our backs. Women who never have kids have already achieved economic parity with men in the U.S.; women who have kids make .76 on the dollar.”
Actually Heart, its even worse than that.
The 76-78 cents (depends on the study) on the dollar is what women who work full time make in comparison to what men who work full time make.
When you factor in mothers and women who take care of elderly family members, in other words, comparing all working women to all working men, women make THIRTY EIGHT CENTS to every dollar a man makes.
THIRTY EIGHT CENTS.
http://www.wageproject.org/content/gap/what.php
Ah, Heart, I see what you are saying. It’s a beautiful visualization.
But have men (males generally) not been “loved” far, far and above what anybody or anything deserves? No other actually manifested, exhibited, love exists in the world that I observe. In my observation and experience, females only love each other to the extent that they are seen to love and prefer males, or male well-being, to that of females. Females are imbued with that requirement from the moment of birth.
I agree with you completely that the “faulting” of other women by each other doesn’t get us anywhere. It needs to stop, or be left behind.
I do believe that females are the only humans capable of manifesting or generating the type of love that you describe. If it were otherwise, the patriarchy could not exist. I do believe that it is wishful thinking for women to believe, or to hope, that males will ever attain that ability that we females have. I don’t fault those women for believing that - I simply think that that belief doesn’t get us (or them) anywhere.
Caring, compassion, connectedness, love, some reason to believe the world can be different.
Yes - but different in what way(s)? That it can start spinning on its axis in the opposite direction? I believe that the caring compassion and love have to (and I don’t mean that in a coercive way, but in a “logical possibility” way) originate in the feelings of females primarily for each other. It can’t be otherwise. We females have been drained, parched, of that mutual love.
Let’s see: if males succeed in eliminating females as species members altogether, by selectively aborting female fetuses, harvesting egg cells from the last few remaining females for the purposes of cloning males, then do all the (exclusively) males born thereafter “deserve” to be loved? They sure don’t deserve my love. I’m not indebted to them. Whose love is it exactly that they deserve?
I’m not saying that they deserve hatred, neglect from other males, abuse or whatever. Just that I don’t see them as “deserving” of anything in particular from women.
Yeah, you are right, Amananta.
But now someone’s going to come in and say no one should be compensated for taking care of their children, they shouldn’t have had them in the first place and why is it my issue that you had kids. You should have known what caused that.
So the wheels on the bus go ’round and ’round.
I’ll never forget an old Ms boards discussion we had circa probably 2000 about motherhood, mothers in the work force, the way mothers are not compensated for the work they do. Overwhelmingly the FEMINISTS in the discussion said, basically, hell no, why should mothers be compensated, why should we have onsite daycare, why should mothers get paid time off, it isn’t fair, we have to take care of our animals and we don’t get paid for it and get time off for it, they CHOSE to have those kids and besides that, I can’t stand kids (not everybody, but many; this was closer to the heydey of the “child free” movement so-called).
What a rude awakening that was for me as someone who had believed feminists supported mothers and mothers’ issues. And of course, some do. Not many, though, at least not many feminists who hold the views that most closely resonate with my own. So we have all of these other organizations springing up and doing really good work, like the Mothers Movement Online and the Association for Research on Mothering and for that matter, we have the old guard, Mothering Magazine, the Compleat Mother, etc., but they consistently get sort of x-ed out, dismissed, by all sorts of women who are otherwise feminist.
I felt so disappointed about this! I’m just used to it now, eh, that’s the way it is. But it reminded me so much of both conservative AND liberal men! Conservative men say, “Shoulda kept her legs closed, the s*** (slut or sinner depending on the brand of conservative men.)” Liberal men say, “Shoulda had an abortion! Shoulda taken her pill!” Jerks all. But to hear feminists say essentially the same thing? That was a very sad time for me, feminists washing their hands of the kind of issues 80 percent — 80 PERCENT — of the world’s women must face and deal with as, eh, not my problem.
Well, I guess I’m feeling chatty.
And I agree with you.
And I love love love forever oob and Karla Mantilla and Jennie Ruby and Carol Douglas and the oob collective for NOT taking this approach to mothers’ issues and asking me to edit the motherhood issue of oob a couple years back even though they knew probably ahead of time it was going to be pretty crunchy granola for oob.
That put me back together in some ways, so far as feminism goes.
Look at me now. 
I love those women.
And I’m not picking on you, Satsuma or Mary, or anybody else here who wants women to stop partnering with men and stop having kids! I actually want the same thing and I know what you’re driving at and I know what you mean. I also think there’s a lot to be said for spinsterhood and I am enjoying mine right now and may well enjoy it for the rest of my life, mostly because I am not convinced most of us have a handle on love, what it is, what it means, and especially, I think we are all so schooled in dominance and submission paradigms that pass for love, it’s going to take decades and decades to work through the sequelae from that and I don’t have decades and decades anymore. And I love my freedom and being able to devote the time I do have to what I think is most important. I just think blaming the women or calling them out for taking up with men is not a good way to get their attention.
Ugh, now that whole conversation comes back to me in 3-D. Women saying yeah, but they had to take their kitties to the vet and why should mothers get paid time off for motherhood stuff if they didn’t get time off for kittiehood stuff. But I actually totally agree that kittiehood stuff IS important enough to honor it. And I also think that mothers also have kitties, you should come to my house and see how true that is. Now someone will say, well, if you wanted cats you shouldn’t have had kids and it’s not my problem that you have both cats AND kids. And on and on with a “feminism” that makes no sense to me.
TURN THE DAMNED CAPITALIST SYSTEM ON ITS HEAD. LOCALIZE. WORK FROM HOME. KNOCK IT OFF WITH EVERYONE DRIVING INTO TOWN TO WORK IN SKYSCRAPERS. COMPENSATE PEOPLE FOR WHAT THEY DO WELL, TAKE CARE OF ALL THE BABIES, ALL THE CHILDREN, ALL THE KITTIES AND ALL THE WIMMIN!
Eh, I shout here to the choir, huh. Most people are OBSESSED with shoehorning women into a death-worshipping system and culture that churns out more and more and MORE death worshipping and ugliness instead of really CONSIDERING what would be revolutionary.
But have men (males generally) not been “loved” far, far and above what anybody or anything deserves?
Yeah, Mary, they sure have. That’s what I’m getting at when I say love is pretty impossible right now between men and women and even between women and women. Women have loved men in a context of female subjugation and subordination and all that could do was produce more and more subjugation and more subordination and more modeling of the same, generation after generation. I don’t think love can coexist let alone thrive or survive where there is dominance or subordinating behaviors. A lot of interesting feelings can exist, sexual feelings certainly can exist with that for many people, but love? As a recognition and acknowledgement of the VALUE of the other person? As a creative force, a source of life-giving energy? Heck no. For real love to happen and to flourish, dominance and submission have to to be viewed as the anti-love that they really are. So yes, women have thrown their good love after bad and men have usually convinced themselves and one another that they were returning that love through various acts of, for example, chivalry. Yes, but look! I gave my life for you! I died for you in wartime! I slaved away for my whole life in the salt mines all to prove my love (even though I came home every night and treated you like my fiefdom). Men have erected mammoth religious institutions and concocted deities in the interests of rubber stamping this version of “love”, love as having to do with giving up one’s own life, or dying for someone or dominating someone or submitting to someone — EVERYTHING BUT love being about respect, admiration, support, encouragement, kindness, joy, all of the life-celebrating things I believe really do constitute love. That’s where I think Lundy Bancroft gets it so right– abuse is not about anger problems or something like that. Abuse is an issue of VALUES.
:::: Still with the raging over that old Ms boards discussion::::
And SOME of the worst offenders re “your kids are not my problem” had no problem with IVF, surrogacy and reproductive technologies and thought they should be a-okay!
Feminists!
ARGHGHGHGHGHGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
I’m sorry you’re frustrated (and for some of the things I may have said back then, though I am fortunate enough to routinely forget such things), but I must admit I’m laughing over here. Har.
“Feminists!
ARGHGHGHGHGHGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.”
HA!
Actually, scout’s honor, I wasn’t even thinking of you there, funnie, though you probably did say something or other.
I do have a couple of individuals in mind, I must admit, but so far as I know, they don’t ever come around here. Hmph.
I agree that motherhood time off and kittiehood (and all other pets!) time off are both important and should be available. I don’t see why there should be a conflict.
***TURN THE DAMNED CAPITALIST SYSTEM ON ITS HEAD. LOCALIZE. WORK FROM HOME. KNOCK IT OFF WITH EVERYONE DRIVING INTO TOWN TO WORK IN SKYSCRAPERS. COMPENSATE PEOPLE FOR WHAT THEY DO WELL, TAKE CARE OF ALL THE BABIES, ALL THE CHILDREN, ALL THE KITTIES AND ALL THE WIMMIN!***
Yes!
I also agree with Mary and Satsuma. As to men and what kind of love they deserve, I think they have to learn how to give it as well as receive it. The best way men will learn how to give it is if they become independent of women’s love and learn how to love and take care of themselves, each other and boys. Then they will reach their potential in this area, whatever it is, and ultimately, men will “deserve” in love whatever men in general are capable of giving. “Practice makes perfect” is the watchword here.
You know, actually taking care of the people, the women, the kids and the animals is the LAST THING on white male heterosupremacists’ list.
We have a budget crunch in Washington state (like everywhere else) and so all of these programs are being proposed for slashing. And what are they? Payments to unemployable people, like people in chronic pain who get — get this — $339 a month! Shelters with beds for runaway teenagers (there are only 32 beds total in the whole state and they are taking away MOST of these for this extremely VULNERABLE population of kids that ends up prostituted most of the time). A medical insurance program for people with cancer, AIDS and other terminal diseases who can’t get insurance any other way. Oh well, they should just die then.
It makes me SICK.
Jeyoani read to me last night something that said that Wall Street pieces of work who are responsible for the tanking of the economy got $18 billion dollars in bonuses last year.
$18 BILLION.
For their fabulous performance tanking the world’s economy all while beefing up their own pocketbooks!
I read on the way home in the paper last night that pretty much ALL of the CEOs of the banks that got “bailout” money are STILL CEOs. Even though THEY are also culpable in the tanking of the economy and led their banks and all of us down the primrose path, but eh, so what, rotten job performance is no reason to let them go, I guess.
Then the most simple and obvious solution and suggestion is one I read in a letters to the editor. Instead of bailing out the people who put us into this predicament (here in WA Boeing will lay of 10,000 people this year, Microsoft, for the first time, announced 5,000 layoffs, Starbucks is laying of 6,400 people, THAT’S A LOT OF FOLKS), why didn’t the bailout money go to us, as individuals and taxpayers. We all would have gotten caught up on our bills and mortgages, spruced things up, got our credit cards paid up to date or paid off, taken trips, SPENT MONEY, in other words, which is what we need to do to keep the economy rolling. Then the credit card companies and airlines and mortgage companies wouldn’t end up holding the bag for all the people who can’t pay their bills anymore and sure aren’t going to go on any trips any time soon.
But no. Give it to a very few greedy assholes who have been destroying this nation since forever.
Women, children, animals, the earth– these are not on the list so far as people doling out the cash.
And I just read this morning that even if all carbon emissions would end TODAY, the environment is too gravely harmed to recover.
And we have a Democratic (woman) governor and a Democratic majority legislature too!
The Ms. boards? I forgot them. You were once able to comment there and they had boards. They killed the boards and the last time they let anyone comment was a week after Betty Friedan died when they still hadn’t done anything on Coretta Scott King’s passing and they got rightly called out on that. They quickly updated it to “share your memories on both!” but that was so weak and the whole post they’d written was on Betty.
Ms. really has no online presence and that’s appalling. After they got rid of Christine as a blogger, Eleanor Smeal and Carol Leaf were supposed to be the new bloggers. Leaf did about six posts and then disappeared which was about five more than Smeal managed.
Totally off topic, sorry.
On the subject of time off for pet needs - it was discovered quite fortuitiously last month that my pup had a tumor in her lung. She underwent lung resection surgery to remove the accessory lung lobe along with the tumor in it. It turned out to be a pulmonary adenocarcinoma, grade I, the least aggressive grade of cancer. They got all of it and there was no evidence of spread. The doc said grade Is usually don’t spread, but they may. So now I just have my fingers crossed that there were no microscopic cancer cells in her bloodstream to start other tumors. She has recovered quite well from the surgery and is doing great!
If anyone needed puppyhood time off, it was me.
Well, I agree with all of the thoughtful posts from all of the women above. And Keesha had me laughing with her ‘Totally off topic, sorry” comment. It’s the little asides that I love so much here sometimes.
I think maybe many of us have such divergent opinions, that it is often difficult to realize that all women come from a position of neglect. Our lives are all neglected by the larger male worshipping vampirism known as patriarchy.
As feminists we have to be honest about where we are coming from. I didn’t need 30 years to know that I wanted a life of my own uncontaminated by male entities in my home. I knew even as a young child that women were overworked, stressed out and under the thumb of men. I saw this mental exhaustion of women, and wondered where their energy went.
It comes at me in odd moments. I’m not a vain person;l I like well pressed shirts and tailored jackets (with pockets and four buttons on each cuff), I do like this uniform. I meet people far and wide, but I have never worn make-up, am always happy with whatever age I happen to be at the moment, etc. I assume people must know my correct age of 51, because I make no effort whatsoever to hide behind cosmetics of any kind. That said, I am shocked by how often women and men mistake me for someone around age 35! I know I am a very nerdy lesbian who was never hip even when I was younger. Heck, I didn’t even know Beatles songs when I was a high school freshperson in 1971! That said, I’d ask people why on earth people thought I was 35? “Are you flattering me, really, tell me the truth.” And they would say they really thought this. “Why?” I’d ask. “It’s your energy, your passion, your expressive wild happiness…” or some such answer. True I am wildly enthusiastic, I wear my heart on my sleave, and I have no social fear. This is a true description of my in person self.
What I came to realize over the last 5 years or so that people have been saying this, is that I have this energy because I haven’t used up my vital life force serving men. I am convinced that women are worn down in marriage, deadened in the “care” of husbands, and chronically exhausted much of the time. So what would free women? It would help if women had far more choices — no long commutes every day, much higher pay for all the work…etc. But Mary Sunshine, Branjor and a few others are on to something. We don’t believe men love women, and we don’t believe men even know what love is. It’s why men often fool women because they are “great poets”– Shakeseare, Wordsworth, Bryon etc. I often wondered how men can produce such a beautiful symphony or even a poem and then turn out to be such s— heads in real life. And I believe that men approximate and create an artificial idea of love. It’s why they came up with this idea that god the father sent his only son to be tortured and murdered for “the sins of the world.”
Only men could come up with this horrifying “redemptive” idea of divine child abuse and call it love!!
I agree with Mary Sunshine; men must be left to learn love without women proping them up all the time. Women put on “love training wheels” on men, the way men put “money training wheels” on women. Women don’t know how to earn good livings because they are largely living under heterosexual male subsidy. I know this because it’s my job to know where people’s money comes from, and when I get down to it, most businesses that women say they are running are not making a profit or even breaking even, the rest comes from the husband. You would not believe how common this is. Not that it’s bad, but because women haven’t known how to get off the training wheels. I believe men are on love training wheels too, and have never been forced to really learn how to love. It’s why men are so weird and schizophrenic — mean and hostile or weird with colleagues, then they turn on the charm for their clients.
They turn on the love like an on switch when they are trying to get women (wives girlfriends a date for Saturday night). I can’t recall a time when a man was genuinely altruistic and consistent with everyone. There should be no “charm on / off switch” and I rarely see women doing this. I’m not saying women can’t be phoney, it’s just that I don’t see the extremes the way I do with men.
So, if women continue to do what they have always done, we won’t have an end to patriarchy. It’s why I don’t believe that heterosexuality will ever result in freedom for women. It’s a waste of time, even though women are convinced that they can make men change.
I think a lot of lesbians got really fed up with heterosexual women (we’ve heard all the arguments for years), and so sometimes (although not nice or not fair) we get sick of childcare issues, and children and husbands, and all of it. Add birth control and abortion to the mix too, or what I have called the boring sex with men issues that can annoy. I don’t expect time off to take care of my pets, but I was concerned with an overall quality of life. It’s why I chose a flexible profession, because I don’t like 9-5 and never have. I never even liked being locked into a salary, and wanted to be in charge of my own income. I figure, since I have to be twice as good as men, I might as well get paid more if I work harder. That little theory I worked out for myself back in the 70s.
The bottom line is, it is very hard to police jail cells that are individual. Men abuse women in the home, they harm children in the home, they pretend out in the world, and then turn it on the family in the home. As long as women are trapped in these personal worlds, it’s very hard to get at patriarchy.
I don’t believe that men know what women mean by love. I think men do whatever they want to do, and then pretend “it’s for the sake of wife and kids.” For example war. Men love it, it’s the time of their lives, and they are generally bored to death with family life, so they run away to war, or to the continental congress or to be envoys to France. Men are bored with children, tune them out, and want to be out in the world. So they make up a story that they are doing it “for the sake of women.” Maybe women pretend that they want to be wives and mothers, because they don’t want to work in companies, and don’t want to really do what it takes out in the world to be ________ (Dr., Lawyer, Indian Chief). It may simply be about role playing, and since this seems so “natural” to heterosexual women and men, they keep on keeping on as they say. All I can say is, I’m a little minow of a minority group. A bizaar little purple fish swimming with a bunch of yellow fish. The big yellow fish just go swimming by me every day. It’s very hard for me to find the rare few other purple fish out there. I think it’s why I have so little sympathy for that hetero world out there. Knowing that half the population just keeps doing all of this is troubling to say the least. So there you have it
Hugs to Branjor and pooch of Branjor!
You know, Satsuma, I do think marrying men is a deal a lot of women cut. Like Andrea Dworkin wrote, they consider their options and decide it’s a better deal to serve one man than to serve a bunch of different men. As anuna wrote about so eloquently and I’ve written about as well, women often carve out lives of their own to various degrees inside of the subordinations of marriage and home and church. Often they are extremely courageous and creative, resourceful in the ways they manage to do this and often, though it isn’t obvious to onlookers, they find ways to resist male power inside of their subordinated circumstances, and I have a lot of respect for them in this and for myself, too, in the ways I managed to resist male power even inside of battering relationships, churches and communities. Women show SO much courage all of the time in ways that go unnoticed by the surrounding culture, but not by me! I see them.
I find reasons for hope in how things really have changed in my lifetime. I graduated from high school in 1969. Back then it was a foregone conclusion that girls would get married, and many to most of my classmates did marry straight out of high school, big weddings with white gowns and all of that. Yet again more of my classmates who went away to college, like I did, dropped out to get married as well. And everybody thought that was about right. There was the old cliche, “She went to college to get her Mrs. degree.” I went a different route, “shacked up” in the vernacular of the time (though I finally did marry but not until after I’d had a child), but there was considerable censure for those of us who did that, even though it was counterculture/”Sexual Liberation” days.
I know we often feel as feminists that things have moved backwards, not forwards, but I see it a little differently in some ways. For example, almost none of my daughters’ friends have married straight out of high school. Off the top of my head I can think of only one. None of my adult daughters has ever been married, and most of their friends are not married. Those that did marry usually married late in their 20s. Many of their friends do not intend to have kids or intend to have only one or to adopt. Nobody talks in terms of getting an “Mrs.” degree (!) anymore and in general, girls who marry straight out of high school engender concern or worry, they are not viewed as having achieved every woman’s goal, as was true when I was their age.
So I do find reasons to be hopeful and to feel proud over the paths our generation has blazed. Perhaps those who aren’t around young people as much as I am don’t notice it as much but I’ve been around young people for 37 years and will be around them forever, basically, though possibly not in as close day-to-day proximity as my youngest grow up and leave home.
I also have observed a HUGE difference in the kinds of relationships with men young women have. They might have boyfriends, but it’s not serious in the way it used to be anywhere near as often. They go into their relationships with the idea they are going to college, need to get established in their careers, don’t want to settle down yet, and significantly, the pressure from their peers seems to be more against serious relationships and marriage than for them.
So all is not lost. Women are changing and changing their minds and ways of living in ways that are really significant.
Of course, there are also out lesbians and out gay guys in high schools these days as well as “Lesbian-Gay Alliance” groups (which some of my daughters have been part of even in our rural high school). This would have been unheard of in 1966-69 when I was in high school! We never even spoke those words, there was NO information about the existence of women who loved women, men who loved men, and what those choices represented in terms of an alternative to heterosexual marriage wasn’t even out there on the table. People still talked about “old maids” and “spinsters” in the pejorative and felt sorry for women who were not married in a way you only see now days among people in conservative religious groups (though that’s a lot of people).
So we have made progress over the last 40 years so far as heteronormativity goes and as far as women charting their own independent courses, though not as much as we’d like to see.
Heart I know completely of what you speak, re anti-child bias among feminists and others.
I’ve been reading about the Octuplets in L.A. (don’t read readers comments in articles unless you have a strong stomach for hate mail).
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-octuplets31-2009jan31,0,6246659.story
I think this story can be looked at (from the outside, as we all are) in a different way from the usual negative media spin. Here’s a woman who always wanted a big family, who LOVES children, who has financial and daily support from both her parents. So she goes out and conceives a big family, 7 in total was her expectation with the last treatments, *without a man*. She doesn’t wait around to find some untested husband who says he has her same vision and love of children. No she just goes out and makes her own family without being legally beholden to a male for the rest of her life in regards to access etc.. she is FREE from all that bullshit regarding the owner of the sperm.
She ends up with octuplets and will be castigated FOREVER because she is single and has a bunch more kids. If that was the first pregnancy of a married couple it would be called A MIRACLE. Because it’s the 6th pregnancy of a single mother it’s called A SCAM.
If we as a society had a real heart for children there would not be this vicious response towards this woman’s family. I like how the doctors just speak positively and lovingly about the babies. That’s their calling in life, to care for those whose needs they meet, not to judge based on morals or bank accounts or the existence of husbands.
For people who remember the 1960s:
Where have all the young girls gone?
Gone to young men, every one.
When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn?
All right, everybody stop posting such interesting comments, I’m behind.
Hey, Tei Tetua, that’s a blast from the past!
I remember Wedding Bell Blues!
Bill
I love you so
I always will
I look at you and see
the passion eyes of May
Oh but am I ever gonna see
my wedding day?
Argh. Those lyrics were written by one of my all time sheroes, Laura Nyro, too! :/
Not to mention the really heinous songs, like “Wives and Lovers” by Burt Bacharach. I knew this song was heinous in the 60s when it was popular and when I, too, wanted to get married!
Hey, little girl,
Comb your hair, fix your make-up.
Soon he will open the door.
Don’t think because
There’s a ring on your finger,
You needn’t try any more
For wives should always be lovers, too.
Run to his arms the moment
he comes home to you.
I’m warning you.
Day after day,
There are girls at the office,
And men will always be men.
Don’t send him off
With your hair still in curlers.
You may not see him again.
For wives should always be lovers, too.
Run to his arms the moment
he comes home to you.
He’s almost here.
Hey, little girl
Better wear something pretty,
something you’d wear to go to the city.
And dim all the lights,
Pour the wine, start the music.
Time to get ready for love.
Oh, time to get ready,
Time to get ready,
Time to get ready
For love.
Eesh.
Well I guess it depends on what you think feminism is about. Is it about getting more more more for YOURSELF and you happen to be female? Or is it about making a deep change in the world? If someone is a feminist because she wants the world to change (which is what I happen to think real feminism is) she won’t just say offhandedly “well your kids aren’t my problem”. To me, real feminists (and yes I dare to actually define some aspect of feminism here, oh noes!) ask about this situation, “Why is taking care of children unpaid or poorly paid labor? Why do women virtually always end up taking care of the children? How are these two facts related? How is this harmful to women and their children? Why do so many women have children in spite of a rapidly overpopulating planet? Do they truly have a “choice” to have these children? If they are being pressured into having children they don’t want, what are the causes of this pressure, how does it work, how can it be stopped?”
I refuse to feel any “bad feminist” guilt for having a child, if for no other reason than because I was very young, the father was much older than me and it was only as I grew older that I realized how much I had been manipulated, and no I had little feminist consciousness at the time, as in the community I grew up in feminism was something so whitewashed from my world I had no knowledge of there being some choice to not have kids. Unlike irresponsible, heartless men, I won’t simply dump my child beside a road somewhere now because he is inconvenient to me. Not to mention there is nothing WRONG with having children. But I do believe there is something WRONG with a world that makes the mother of a child into a slave who must be dependent on keeping the good will of men and society in order to survive, or else have her work a 16-20 hour day every day - and then pay her less than an unencumbered man.
Amananta,
There is incredible pressure put on women to have children. It’s in your face constantly. My Latina friends get badgered all the time by their extended families “Why aren’t you married yet? Why don’t you have children?” — especially when these women get beyond age 22. If you don’t want to have any children at all, and are intent on staying single and getting a first rate education, in a Latina/o culture you have committed the ultimate crime. Women who live by their own lights are always called selfish. Any time women want to live on their own and not reproduce and insist on not being involved in heteronormativity at all are called selfish. In this I am very very selfish; I don’t do anything that I don’t want to do, and I won’t get coraled into straight women’s agendas anymore either. I have my own lesbian agenda and it has virtually nothing to do with the straight world these days.
It is not bad feminism to say you don’t want to do certain things that women have been forced to do in the past. Nor is it bad feminism to say, hey, I want to make an above average income and I won’t settle for subsistence poverty.
I would question just about anything women do that is within the hetero-social world view, and I seriously doubt that a lot of women make real choices at all. I think women get trapped into obeying social expectations, and it’s the rare woman who is truly different from the norm, or who goes outside the heteropatriarchal mode.
Do women have real freedom? Are women allowed to say they hate things and don’t want to EVER do them? It’s up for debate I guess.
Amananta, eloquently and succinctly expressed as usual. Wow! Thanks.
Amananta: “But I do believe there is something WRONG with a world that makes the mother of a child into a slave who must be dependent on keeping the good will of men and society in order to survive,”
You nailed it there, the constant scramble and tweaking of a woman’s life to keep that good will. Because woe betide the woman who loses that good will by stepping outside of the “good woman” box. To keep harping on those octuplets–the media is having a frenzy declaring all the possible ways the octuplet mother has stepped outside of the good will of men and society. PRIMARILY she made choices in her life that did not include a man. It is quite horrifying for me to see how other mothers of multiples are in the good will of men and lauded for their place in the good woman box.. because they look nice, have men by their side, are white and middle class and don’t have dubious arabic surnames.
I remember when I got divorced I could see the way very clearly.. there were certain steps I could take, things I could say in order to keep my grip on being in the good woman box. Friends even prompted me to tweak my choices to keep myself in the good will of society (which I did not do). Women spend enormous amounts of energy trying to stay in the good will of men and society, fearing to be slapped with some label that takes her out of that support/bondage.
I keep trying to figure out how to say this without having it turn into too long a story about my life–so I’ll just put it briefly without the back story. I can see a lot of mistakes I’ve made in my life by getting entangled with the demands and desires of men. I grieve over that, and I often wish I could have had my own growing-up time all for ME, my vision, my goals, my focus. But I also see, looking back, that so much of the energy I invested in causes not my own was trying to help other women–my sisters, my daughters, my mother. Women who have children aren’t just contributing to the patriarchy, we’re also creating the women of the future. I applaud and admire women who, like Satsuma, have had the vision to create great, independent lives for themselves. They are a beacon for us. But I also admire women like Heart who made her own little tribe of Amazons, against all the odds. She inspires me, too.
I guess I’m saying I find a conflict here, and I don’t know how to resolve it. How do we stick up for ourselves, but stick up for each other too? Yes, absolutely women always have a right to say NO, to any activity. But isn’t there also a value for those who say yes to the vulnerable among us, to other women who need our help? I think we need to invest in each other, and that includes little girls.
I want to make it clear that I know lesbians have so often gotten the short end of the stick, so I’m not implying that lesbians or any other women who choose not to participate in caring for children owe mothers something. I’m talking about the community of women in general, which means heterosexuals sticking up for lesbians and mothers sticking up for the child free, too. I don’t want to feel that any woman’s choices diminish me–though, sadly, I’m often confounded and dismayed some of the things I see women do in the grip of patriarchal delusion. I would rather see all of us flourish in all our outrageous glory, and be applauded for the fullest expression of our unique choices.
I don’t want to feel that any woman’s choices diminish me–though, sadly, I’m often confounded and dismayed some of the things I see women do in the grip of patriarchal delusion. I would rather see all of us flourish in all our outrageous glory, and be applauded for the fullest expression of our unique choices.
The ongoing eloquence and brilliance of anuna! Thank you, sister. xo
Brings a tear to my weary eyes.
Arietty, so interesting what’s going on with the woman who had the octuplets, isn’t it? Just thinking about her situation, honestly, is gut wrenching to me. The more time passes and my memories of my years of raising all 11 of my kids fade, the more I can’t believe I really DID that. How in the heck did I DO it? Dear god, I did it and I can’t even believe it! I mean, I know how I did it. I just don’t know how I survived it! Thinking of eight at once and six under 7 or whatever it is this woman has now? It just pains me. But what people say about her, yes, it is sexist, misogynist, usually racist and infuriating.
I think where we get into trouble is where we make other women wrong. I think it’s good and right for all of us to talk about our own lives and what we’re proud of and what we’ve been through. I think it’s not good to attack other women for their different lives and for what they’ve been through, for decisions they made when they were young, etc.
I love the song “Inspire Me” by Libby Roderick, a lesbian performer from Alaska who has performed at Michfest in the past. The refrain is:
Give me a woman who can climb the tallest mountain
Give me a woman who can swim across the widest sea
Women need women who live lives of boldest daring
Tell me your stories, they inspire me.
Well, maybe I can find the lyrics online.
I found them.
Everybody needs someone to show them what is possible
Everybody needs someone to go as far as she can see
I need to stand up on the shoulders of giants
I need a woman who’s as big as me
When I was an itty bitty baby sittin on my mama’s knee
I looked around to see just what the future had in store for me
I needed to see women who were living without limits
I needed to see women making history
So I said….
Give me a woman who can climb the tallest mountain
Give me a woman who can swim across the widest sea
Women need women who live lives of boldest daring
Tell me their stories they inspire me
Give me Amelia who went soaring across the ocean
Winnie Mandela who was gonna set her people free
Judy Chicago who breaks all artistic silences
These women leave a precious legacy
…I know of women all across the nation
Leading lives of courage in the face of fear and poverty
One leaves an abusive home, one raises her five children
Women, we need a new mythology
…Give me a woman who can climb the tallest mountain
Give me a woman who can swim across the widest sea
Women need women who lead lives of boldest daring
Tell me their stories they inspire me….
I love the way Roderick acknowledges the courage of the woman who leaves an abusive home. That takes COURAGE. The way she recognizes the courage and BIGness of the woman who raises her five children. That is BIG and courageous. Women really are so incredibly courageous in so many ways that are not recognized. And in the same way to make one’s own way, without men, without marriage, without children, that takes COURAGE! It is BIG.
Then there’s Marge Piercy’s poem, The Sabbath of Mutual Respect that I love so much, especially where she writes:
Praise the lives you did not choose.
They will heal you, tell your story, fight
for you. You eat the bread of their labor.
You drink the wine of their joy.
Somehow so many feminists have abandoned the vision of sisterhood. This vision still exists here and there, but not the way it once did, and that is such a loss. But the vision begins, I think, with acknowledging the courage, resourcefulness, creativity of women whose lives have been different from our own.
Satsuma, you bring so much to the discussion. I really do love the variety of thoughts in this thread. Thanks to Heart for both inspiring it with her great post and for participating in it with her comments.
The grandmother of the octuplets is telling quite a different story than the mother. Aside from the issues about such a use of reproductive technology, the grandmother is furious, feeling put upon and betrayed by her daughter.
That may be an exaggeration, but this does not sound like a good situation for anybody.
I’m sorry that the grandma’s in the position she’s in; nobody should raise children because she feels like she has to.
That said, millions - billions? - of women worldwide do just that, as a result of men fathering children they simply do not raise. Some women assume that’s the natural way things, maybe, and do it without a complaint, ever; but I imagine many many more are tired, sometimes, and feel like they aren’t up to the task, but know no one else will do it if they don’t; others, I’m sure, resent — at least sometimes — what “the mother” has “done to” The Chiiiildren, and her support network, by going ahead with a pregnancy she “can’t handle alone” for whatever real or perceived reason, and freely lecture her about that burden she’s hurling at other people.
But the situation that is bad for everyone, IMO, is the one that assumes a pregnant woman (whether she was impregnated by a man, as most are, or by her own initiative, as a tiny minority are) “should” only be having a baby, or babies, if she is capable of caring for, loving, and affording them all by her lonesome. That’s not how the world works, for anyone. I’m sure it’s a pleasant vision for women who don’t have or want children, or are done raising children, and are petrified of being asked to raise children, either personally or economically. But it’s a total and utter fiction.
The reality is that nobody does anything alone, ever. The reality is that everyone needs help sometimes. And the reality is that we’re much better off envisioning how to structure that help, as a society, than we are spending time discussing which kinds of people who need help “deserve” it (as opposed to brought it on themselves), and which kinds of people who need help are “hurting” other people with “their” predicament (rather than suffering silently and stonily and killing themselves to avoid asking for help).
Because of all that: why IS grandma’s anger or irritation or fatigue or concern or worry news, instead of a private family issue? It isn’t any different than other grandmas’ — except that she’s not being expected to pick up the slack for a particular man. She’s supposed to cover for a woman…and so her negative feelings deserve to be heard!