I really hope you're not familiar with Caitlin Flanagan. If so, I'm sorry, and I hope you don't take this woman seriously.
Even worse, if they grow up in a bubble where they're the center of the universe, they might be the ones doing the victimizing.
For those not, she's a professional anti-feminist, pretty much. She spends a lot of time clutching her pearls about how women do horrible things like get college degrees, hold down jobs, and don't pop five babies before they're 30. And because apparently she was put on this planet specifically to antagonize me, she also just wrote a book about how girls should be kept in isolation chambers away from the Internet, because they might discover men can be real @$$holes.
Approaching this from a man's perspective, I've just got to ask: has Flanagan ever spoken to a man other than her husband? Oh, wait, probably not. So let me brief you a bit on what most men worth dating actually like: a grown adult.
Here's the whole problem with the princess thing: actual princesses are extremely rich and come from a family that can afford to give a little girl a support staff, as well as several serious psychological complexes. People who have to grow up in the real world don't have that.
More to the point, a person who expects everyone else to cater to her every need is annoying as hell. If you are a grown-up, it is your job to take care of yourself. Period.
Secondly, shielding a human being from the world is a great way to make them a self-involved, screwed-up mess. This isn't to say we should fling our children to the wolves, but it does mean that if they don't understand that sometimes people are horrible and awful and self-centered, they get victimized.
Even worse, if they grow up in a bubble where they're the center of the universe, they might be the ones doing the victimizing.
So, in short, when it comes to having a healthy relationship, princesses need not apply. It's that simple.
In all fairness though, not every woman who is against feminism is a spoiled princess or even a woman who believes in "traditional gender roles".
My stepdaughter is very tomboyish and as far from girlie as a girl can get - a polar opposite of Flanagan, she got in trouble at her high school for calling feminism a "destructive force in society" and stating she wants to see feminism in her country declared subversive.
For that matter, my wife who could be considered a spoiled princess, actually supported feminism until she spent a few months in the US and decided she hated it. Now she just supports equality and wants nothing to do with feminism.
This makes no sense to me. Feminism IS about equality. However else you are defining it is the result of a small, radical group twisting the concept until it's ugly or divisive. All women who believe they should be able to make their own life choices and be treated equally to men while doing so feminists.
Agreed. I get so tired of people deriding "feminists" while enjoying the benefits of what we fought for in the 60s and 70s and beyond, not to mention the earlier women who fought to get the vote and the right to be considered adult persons. Feminism is about equality, period,
That is all well and fine, and anyone would agree, but not all women make the same choices, and the ones who don't make the "right" choices, or, god forbid, actually ask their man what would like them to do, and then agree to do it, they get flak for it. I can vouch for this first hand, my wife did ask if I wanted her to stay home, I said I did, so she chooses to stay home. Many of her women "friends", calling themselves feminists, gave her a hard time, and said really nasty things about me - not to my face of course, but to her. That they didn't agree with her, she told me she could understand, but that they constantly insulted me, calling me abusive and controlling, she said that convinced her feminism was not about equality anymore.
The more she points it out, the more I am becoming aware of it. An recent asker asked about becoming a stripper. If feminism was merely about equality and choice for women, the female commenters should have either supported her decision (you know, her choice) while advising her to take precautions and be safe about it, or, disagreed with it without the male bashing and general disgust towards female sexuality. Instead, they were telling she cannot ever ever do that, and generalizing men who go there as disgusting perverts (forgetting that there are straight women who like to go too). I ask my wife what she thought, she said while she would never choose to be a stripper even if she had the body and face for one, but she firmly felt any woman who did and wanted to should go for it, again, just be careful and smart about it.
Hmmmm...... I wish I'd kept up with comments on the stripper question. I liked FG's answer and pretty much stopped thinking about it after that. I would go back and comment on that post except that its a tad old for a new comment to do much good. Though I will say there were a couple of comments that I think were good.
I do think that the choice to become a stripper should be a careful one, because of the ramifications it can have on future career plans. And if a woman feels any shame for stripping I think it's a bad option for her, because so often shame (in all its forms and reasons) leads to substance abuse as a means of escape from that shame. That said, history is full of powerful women who sold their bodies or used there bodies as currency. In many a generation courtesans had the most freedom of any women (with other inherent risks and limitations created by their position). I'm not sure if it's empowering today in the same way it was in older times, only because women have many more career options, so rather than being one option among few, it's one among many, which makes it less....special I suppose but no less valid.
As an acting student, and professional, I am very aware that we are our products, its true in EVERY profession (even if people try to argue that) but it is especially true in the fields of entertainment. I personally come from a long line of can can dancers, night club entertainers and professional mistresses (my mother was the first not to go this route). Most of the women on her side of the family never married and worked in careers that were not considered respectable, and I can trace this well past the turn of the last century. I am very proud and empowered by the women in my family, they all made difficult decisions and lived difficult lives, but they lived confidently and daringly, and I am confident in my decisions because of it. I feel the same about women who live confidently today, in a profession including stripping or pornography, it takes art and skill, and some is better than others as in all art. Porn and eroticism has often been at the cornerstone of innovation and revolution. People should respect it more.
Sorry that was a somewhat unrelated rant, basically I'm all for stripping as long as its a well considered choice that is inline with future plans.
See that's the problem, people keep confusing what feminism really means. It's about choice and equality. The choice to work OR be homemaker, not to be pigeonholed into either because it's what anyone thinks women are supposed to do. And the equality of hving your rights protected whichever choice you make, whether that means equal pay or protection under the law for the work you do as a homemaker. The she-man man-haters club, or any other form of radical feminism, like all forms of radicalism, loses sight if what the real real values of feminism are. I share equal distaste for women who disrespect homemakers as "antifeminist", as I do for women who attack other women for making the choice to work and pursue careers. Any lifestyle a woman chooses is THE feminist decision as long as it's her decision, whether that decision is what people might consider traditional or progressive. A lot of feminists give feminism a bad name because they act like their choices are the only feminist choices.
Also, just because I've met a lot of feminists that leave a bad taste in my mouth, doesn't mean that I consider myself any less feminist, or that I think the feminist cause is any less important. Also I agree with Dan that for mist couples it's not about choosing who stays at home, because it's usually not finacially feasible. Not in this economy. My parents managed to do it, on a cops salary no less, but that's because they decided that with what my mom was earning before kids, her salary would barely cover daycare, and she'd rather raise us herself anyway, that said we just barely scraped by most of my childhood.
My wife asked me what I would like her to do, to work or to stay home. I said I would like her stay home. Gasp, she agreed to stay home, because that's what I wanted! Cost of daycare wasn't the issue, I simply feel uncomfortable letting strangers raise our kids.
She agrees.
Well then she made a choice. I hope that if she truly wanted to work you would have supported her.
Many couples chose together and of course this must include caring for the children. I chose to stay home while my kids were youngsters. It was my choice and my husband supported it. If he preferred that I worked I know he would have deferred to my choice of staying home. My neighbor chose to continue working and in the summer when school was out it cost her $8. a day after she paid for daycare. Obviously she brought home money during school days. We are two strong women who chose what we wanted and both of us have awesome young adult kids.
But, that is the version of feminism coming out of the US and to a lesser extent out of Europe. That's why my stepdaughter thinks its so destructive, because that's what she sees on American media here and wha'ts shown around the world. She holds men in very, very high regard, she idolizes men like John Wayne, Steve McQueen, even Charlton Heston, she loves her father, she loves her uncles, and though you will be shocked to hear this and not believe it, she even loves me and therefore she gets angry when she hears male bashing, to her its the same as insulting her dad, insulting her beloved uncles, and insulting me. She hates that when she hugs me in public in the USA, people give me looks like I am a pervert, it drives her mad (quite frankly I don't care much for that either). Never happens in China.
Women in places like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia see the male bashing in American media and news and see it being associated as feminism, thus women's rights groups don't want it coming into their country. I remember on CNN they interviewed a Pakistani woman's group and they said "We want equality us in our country, we want to stop being abused, we want we want to stop being harrassed, we want to put an end to 'honor killings', and we really want police to stop raping us, but we do not want feminism to come to Pakistan!"
I wish I read this question earlier when perhaps my response would have been looked at. I really just want to respond the the feminism vs. equality comments. I'm 25 and a feminist; I'm so grateful for the opportunities that feminism has afforded me as a young woman in America and even in the world [in some parts]. I was born in a country where I'd be expected to have a baby by now by most people; that's never been my dream and I don't have to give in to that pressure.
It took me a while as a person, to understand that people don't always say words that express what they truly want to convey. Age and intelligence don't necessarily play a part in having that ability. It took years of actively thinking about what I say vs. what I want to say to even begin to improve my communication skills; it's not a a skill that's inherited with adulthood.
Beyond just the few extremist groups within the feminist movement that tend to be viewed as the forefront of the entire movement, there are those of us, people in general, who just don't know how to communicate our ideas well. It is possible that those women held a poor view of your wife after her announcement to them; it's also possible that they really just wanted to ask if she understood the ramifications of her actions, that it was no longer her only option, if she was sure that this alone will help validate her as a person and so on.
To blame feminism as a whole for a few's view on what equality means today is, in my eyes, just as irresponsible and ignorant as classifying other social groups based on a few misfits. Broad generalizations tend to leave a lot out, and just close you off to new experience. IE: You miss out on knowing this great person of color because of some preconceived notion about that particular race (whatever that race may be).
Also I would never outright support a person who wanted to be a stripper, I would strongly point out that it is a dangerous job for any woman, that it takes a toll on your self esteem. I've had stripper friends tell me horrible stories about some of their nights; I wouldn't wish that on anyone, especially not a young woman who's still trying to figure life out. ( I missed that article though)
Some guys are jerks and many jerks frequent strip clubs. It won't just be one guy, there will be groups of them, few will stand up for you when you're harassed. Being supportive to a person shouldn't only mean agreeing with all of their decisions. You should show that you listen, and care enough to ask them if they really understand all that it means to go down a certain path.
We're not even talking about feminism here. We're talking about reality. In our current society, "traditional gender roles" are simply outmoded for the most part. If two grown adults come to an agreement that one can stay home while the other works, that's one thing, but for most of us, that's like agreeing we'll move to Mars and start a dental floss farm.
I agree to a point. I totally agree that reality often dictates that both must work.
However, while both work outside the home it is too often the traditional gender roles are expected in the home. So she works, cleans and cares for the kids. This might seem like a blanket statement but it is true way too often and it might not hurt for the offenders to have a feminist boot lodged in their traditional asses. To be fair, I think men in general are getting better and more competent with child care and keeping house.
BTW any married men reading this, don't EVER be a stay at home husband!!! EVER!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-467390/Househusband-backlash-high-flying-wives-ditch-men-em-em-wanted-stay-home.html
I WISH being a stay at home was an option for me or my guy.... I think the issue is that people don't get that taking care of a kid and household properly can really be quite a job.
Sorry, X, got to disagree with you on this one. Everything that article is describing, and I speak from personal experience here, is a two-way street. More than anything, the moral of that story is "Don't marry a horrible person".