In my younger days, I wanted a career. No kids, jet setting, being the boss, etc. You know, "FEMINISM." My thought process was similar to this broad. Homemaker? YUCK! Who would ever want to do that? Gross, chasing after kids and cooking dinner and mopping floors. I took the Nope Train to Fuckthisshitville on that one.
Rewarding, right? Working all the time, eating from Styrofoam containers in my car, driving from job to job, (sorry, environment) "Bringin home the bacon." I embraced the "liberated woman" lifestyle and went as far as spending 21 years with a self proclaimed "stay at home dad," (how chic!) who egged me on from his chair in front of the living room TV, where he sat in his underwear planning what to buy next with my money. "You go girl!" (The OG male feminist. what a joke.) Oh yeah that's the life for me. So progressive, so enlightened I was. Look at me, the Modern Woman! FEMINISM! I can do it all!
As it turns out, that sucked balls. It was miserable, and I had no idea why. I was supposed to be powerful, respected, admired, a REAL woman. I was not. I was mentally and physically tired. Instead of being a superwoman, I carried an unbelievable load, I slept maybe only a few hours a night, I had no social life, no relaxation time, no time to take care of my health. Only work. My refusal to fail at juggling everything, kept me working eighty hours a week to eke out a living.
The worst part of it all is that I have an amazing kid, and I missed a lot of things in his life because I was at work, hell he missed a lot of things because I was at work, as his dad really liked to focus on the "stay at home" part of SAHD.
Now, if a woman wants a career and no kids and the freedom to do as she pleases with her time and money, I'll be the first in line to cheer her on, because she made a choice for herself. But to insist that this way of life is the embodiment of the FEMINIST REVOLUTION is to miss the point of it entirely.
I was born at the start of the 70's, and grew up in the time of this:
YOU CAN DO IT ALL! FEMINISM! Be all things to all people all the time!
and this:
A movie about a woman who unexpectedly becomes a Mom, (not through any of that nasty childbirth, mind you, because we need to stay thin,) and then turns Momming into a business. Living the dream! FEMINISM! Turn that housewifery into a hostile takeover. Take that Homemakers!
and don't forget this:
Glamorous! Working is so much better than actual living, and so fashionable as well.
But all of that was
Brilliant! It was with this media shovel the grave for the traditional woman and actual feminism was dug.
Was homemaker one of the choices back then? I'm not sure. If it was being discussed as a respectable option for the modern, progressive, feminist woman, it looks like I was absent that day. I didn't notice it of course because my Mom had a career, a working mom was all I knew. Most of my friends had working moms. My parents encouraged me to seek out a degree and a career. I only knew two housewives, both of whom still worked, one was a housecleaner on the side and one was a babysitter. Women were moving in on what men had, the respect and money that came from working outside the home. The trend was less Carol Brady and a lot more Mr. Mom.
These days it goes even further, the grave was dug in the eighties and radicals spent 20 years constructing the casket. Activists and gender studies afficionados now are pounding the final nails into the coffin of what was FEMINISM. The modern woman is expected to ONLY want what men have and to take it with force if necessary. The modern feminist (and if we are going to include all 762 genders in this then we have to stop using the word FEMINIST) wants you to decimate the "Patriarchy."
Feminists no longer encourage women to exercise their right to choose between career and family, and support each other's choices, they straight up shit on anyone who chooses something other than pussy hats and protests. They mock "Trad wives" and disparage any woman who wants to take on the role of homemaker.
They are calling the old ways "choice feminism." Its different than FEMINISM and apparently its a bad thing.
Observe:
Uhhhhhh...WHAT?
The covert misogyny of natural parenting?
I personally don't care that the womxn's studies sky screamers now insist that Feminism at its core is about destroying the patriarchy and always has been, that's a load of horse shit. Real FEMINISM (in theory) is about personal choice. Back in the day I chose to live my life the way I did, but I wish that the "get it girl" squad had not disparaged the alternatives to the "Lady Boss" lifestyle, because my choices would have been very different.
Would I have been a homemaker? Probably not, but I would have maybe taken my whole maternity leave instead of using eight vacation days to have an emergency C-section and attempting, (with SAHD's encouragement) to go back to work still sporting my surgery staples. I would have put the kibosh on the parenting role reversal and insisted that some jackass get a job that pays actual money. I would have learned to cook earlier, spent more time than just the drive to and from school every day with my incredible offspring. But I embraced the notion that a FEMINIST has no time for doing mom shit and I became the breadwinner. I chose it for myself.
Why am I now questioning all of my super empowered choices?
I got a new washer and dryer today. When I say "got," I mean my amazing, wonderful and incredibly thoughtful #besthusbandever bought them for me and had them delivered this morning. Now I am washing his socks and work clothes and wracking my brain to come up with a commensurate way to thank him for this gift.
Since we met five years ago, I have discovered that I very much enjoy keeping house, I love to cook, I love to do laundry and I love not working eighty hours a week to pay for groceries. My son is a man now, with a full time job and a place of his own. Although he and his fiancee visit and I cook for them and mom the hell out of them while they're here, I realize that I missed out on this as he was growing up. I didn't get to be the mom that baked the cookies and organized field trips and chaperoned school dances and hosted sleepovers for all of his friends. I chose the other option, working "Lady Boss." Was that the right choice? Who knows, but I made it.
In 2021, I don't even recognize the "Feminist Revolution," (mostly because they appear to be neither feminine, nor revolutionary). The "get it girl" squad of thirty years ago has been sidelined in favor of a third string of disorganized, corduroy clad persons who no longer desire equality for women. All they want now is free tampons, and "the right to have facial hair," and to play professional sports and get paid the same as men do despite drawing a smaller crowd than the Chick-Fil-A drive through at the mall on a Saturday.
In retrospect, I've never really been a feminist. What I am is a woman who does what she wants. Right now what I want is to transfer a load of clothes to my new dryer and get to the store before they run out of the good bread.