patriarchy hates families, not just women

Phyllis Schafley’s being given an honorary degree from Washington University in St. Louis.

This is the woman who came on the talk shows in the 1970’s declaring that, if the ERA passed, our sons would die by the truckload because the women in combat with them would be more worried about breaking their nails than rushing out to save them. This is also the woman who said there’s no such thing as marital rape because a woman agrees to sex when she takes vows. I don’t recall that particular vow. I wonder what church she attends. No man has ever hated women more, and yet Washington University will honor her because she’s a “leader of the conservative movement.” (Washington University Tells Its Female Grads They Are Second Class Citizens)

Now, my brother’s a voice (not so public) for the conservative movement, as well as a long-serving, high-ranking member of the armed forces, and he would never say such things. What Schafley stands for isn’t conservatism, but hatred of women. I wonder if her husband ever raped her.

Women Have All the ‘Burdens’

Katha Pollitt’s recent litany of women’s losses in Backlash Spectacular is depressing. The promise of liberal feminism (as opposed to radical feminism) was that jobs were supposed to lead to economic freedom which was supposed to lead to women’s empowerment and eventual equality of opportunity with men. Believing that greed is blind, women with money were supposed to gain political power because they gained economic power. 

Didn’t happen.

Maybe that’s because greed isn’t gender blind. While women have gained economic power, they have not gained autonomy because in a patriarchy, the deck is stacked to privilege men. Men are traditionally supposed to retain the economic burdens which is the rationale for privileging them with greater economic power. But women have actually retained the greater economic obligations — from rearing children to paying more for services — all while getting paid less.

But liberal feminists know this, which is why they also focus on birth control, abortion rights, child care, increasing preschool options, afterschool programs, and various co-ops, etc. – things which will help women ease their burdens. But in focusing on these issues, feminists are also running into resistance from many women. And not always anti-feminist women. Sometimes women like me.  

• I homeschool. Iowa just cut its funding to homeschool assistance programs while at the same time the state is making noise about mandatory preschools. I pay for public school salaries through taxes and pay for my homeschooling through fees and out-of-pocket. I fear one day the state may come to penalize me even more financially or may outright say I must send my kids to public school.
• I’m a stay-at-home mom. Tax breaks are given for working moms who have other people caring for their children but not for stay-at-home moms who make no money and care for their own. Wanting to be a traditional mom gains me a great deal personally but nothing economically, socially, or politically. A few pats-on-the-back from the likes of Schafley and nothing else.
• I have two children. I oppose abortion, and would like to see it restricted to first trimester (as a necessary evil for a situation with no truly good solution). I know the emotional scars as women are left to decide whose rights matter more, theirs or their child’s, while they’re manipulated by prochoice forces, who insist the decision is about empowerment not life, and by prolife forces, who batter them with guilt and terror.  
• I’m a feminist. I feel women and men should have equal voice to work out their relationships and lives in the way that suits them both, with the expectation that they will be helped in those choices through equal economic and social opportunity.

Patriarchy Hates Families, Not Just Women

What patriarchy values it assigns to men and what it devalues it assigns to women. Playing within this system means adopting its values of aggression and competition over nurturing and service. Patriarchy values punishment and vengeance rather than negotiation and reconciliation. Men are identified with all qualities that are valued, and they acquire power and success by association with, if not actual expression of, those qualities. If women wish to be valued, they must express those same qualities. (And if you do it too well like Hillary Clinton, you get mainstream media writing epithets about you like “nutcracker” and “scolding mom” and comparing you to the villain in “Fatal Attraction”)

But many women don’t agree with those values, and refuse to live them. These women come under fire from liberal feminists, who think such women are giving in, giving up, or remaining ignorant. What liberal feminists don’t seem to realize is that they are buying into the patriarchy’s values. I mean, many women don’t want to lose the “burdens” of motherhood by making money so we can pay others to raise our children for us. And women like me, who try to resist the values of patriarchy, are not only criticized by feminists for remaining dependent, but we’re courted by anti-feminists. I can’t tell you the assumptions from neighbors, parishioners, and online visitors thinking I agree with their woman-hating agendas because I’m a stay-at-home, homeschooling, Catholic mom. As if.

Because Women Love More

Have you ever wondered why it’s so easy to drive this wedge between women — the so-called “mommy wars” – when you couldn’t do so with men? Maybe it’s because women have split loyalties and men don’t. When women consider how to raise children, they know the child’s success may not be dependent on their own success. That is, women will sacrifice for their children in many ways men will not.

Men assume their success will automatically translate into their family’s success, or maybe they just care more about their success regardless of how it affects others. After all, patriarchy teaches that success is its own justification. I’ve known men without a smidgeon of regret for the worldly success they achieved, despite the emotional damage to, or even loss of, their families that such success required.

The system is rarely suspect. A woman’s failure to thrive in it is believed to be because she doesn’t embrace and engage well enough. She isn’t enough like a man. But maybe you’re a woman out there who is: 

• uncomfortable with the thought that a “family-friendly” workplace means a workplace daycare open longer to keep you working longer while your children are in the hands of strangers for all but the half-hour lunch when you visit them
• disturbed by the argument that the baby moving inside you isn’t a person
• distrustful of a public institution with no accountability for your child’s learning but demanding more-and-more time with them while giving you less-and-less control of them

You don’t have to hate women, like Schafley does, to want something other than a life of “empowerment” as defined by the liberal feminist agenda. Like it or not, a full-time working mother spends less time with her children than strangers do. The choice I’ve made is to be home with my children, and I’ve sacrificed a lot for that, not least my security, which relies a great deal on the good will of my husband. I wish feminists would focus on how to “empower” women like me, without just telling me to give up the thing I value most.

Working fathers likewise spend little time at home, but so few of them seem to care. I think if fathers did, their voices would be heard in a way mothers’ are not. Fathers could effect a change in the way the very issue is seen. It’s not that we need to get mothers good jobs and parents more child care. We need to get parents home with their children.