Need a little more of this kind of cheeky feminist provocation: a frank and unapologetic assertion that the lives patriarchy prescribes for women are in many ways joyless, claustrophobic, and intellectually vacant.
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This gave me so much joy! Made me think of meeting up with a HS friend in our 20s; her Facebook was constant “joys of motherhood” type posts but the first thing she said to me when I sat with her: “I could never even imagine I could be as miserable as I am now.”
Fun fact from grad Soc stats course: people w/ kids score lower in every single subcategory of happiness: job, friends, hobbies, etc. And people with kids also score higher on overall happiness when it's not subdivided. Kids wreck your life and those who choose to be parents are happy for it.
My choice *to raise a child with my ex-husband* sucked 😅
My kid is great. It's the whole system around him that makes it hard to raise kids that sucks. Esp the system that normalizes staying with a profoundly unhelpful spouse
The sucky part is the implication that if you're a parent you're a fool and you hate your life. I'm just filing this under "damned if you do, damned if you don't."
It’s so wild that saying “actually, fuck that” pisses people so astronomically off, but I guess that makes it easier (???) to be an Offensive(tm) and Disruptive(tm) feminist presence
“Choose your own adventure in a material and cultural context that is designed to punish and foreclose all but one, especially degraded and dependent adventure.”
Rage and snark are part of the reason why we remember so many Irish writers from before WW1. And the many anti-colonial writers too. Sometimes you feel anger, and need to show that.
There is a reason patriarchal norms weaponized "femininity" as passive, subservient, uncomplaining, and acquiescent: misogynists don't wish to be challenged in any way.
This seems like such an incredibly weird take though. I don't want to make other women have kids (and I realize a bunch of weirdos do) but I love being a mom and think this whole "being a mom sucks" thing is actually pretty toxic.
It *objectively* sucks though. Women stop existing as individuals as soon as they have kids and are expected to sacrifice their body, health, free time, independence and future for the wellbeing of someone else. On top of that way more discrimination at work.
You can love being a mom, however the world you operate in as a mom exploits and ignores you. Dads are cherished for the bare minimum and moms are never enough. Patriarchy makes motherhood a very shitty deal for women, no matter how much you love your children.
I guess I am too much of a postmodernist to accept an "objective" truth here. Completely agree that our society is structured to make motherhood maximally hard. However, both as a statement about the human condition, and also as a political take, "being a mom sucks" still lands stupid to me.
It's not about you. It's about women who didn't get to choose by way of being naive, beleiving the tradwife hype and finding out later they didn't want it.
Children should be wanted, full stop. Maternal instinct is a myth. Full stop.
talk to any young parent and the consistent themes will be 1. lack of sleep 2. lack of breaks 3. sex life on indefinite hiatus 4. emotional exhaustion and (for the birth parent) 5. physical alienation & exhaustion from post-partum and breastfeeding.
yes you'll also hear "my kid is amazing i never knew i could love anything this much" and that is also true. but to someone without kids and in the context of the other stuff probably sounds kind of crazy
Indeed. For instance the goal of feminism needs to noy just be equality, but the destruction of manhood. Manhood as can even currently be conceived cannot exist absent the patriarchy.
Riiiiiight, but at the same time she's strongly implying that I have made my life a living hell through my own dumb decisions and, uh, you wouldn't react kindly to someone saying that to you, either.
the frequency at which influencers are peddling trad wife content or “being a sahm is actually anti-capitalist” rhetoric is divorcing an entire generation of young women from reality
“Being a stay at home mom is anti capitalist” was really big in the late 2010s—a logical continuation of all the anti-“girlboss” stuff—and it drove me absolutely nuts, but I felt like I couldn’t say so. “I’m fighting capitalism by serving my husband!” The most stupid dystopian shit.
it still pops up online! but the second you point out the possibility of financial abuse or a husband leaving with everything they say it’s just a joke 🙄
idk how to combat “every choice is good” feminism at a large scale but being more honest with each other should be a start
My therapist and I briefly talked about this last session, how many fewer women might have kids if we were more honest about how difficult/painful/isolating/awful/etc it can be? (And how unsettling it is that people often have kids without a plan to have kids.)
The Reddit girlies couldn’t handle it when I pointed out that their “I made the right choice for MY FAMILY and that’s why I took my husband’s name” was an anti-feminist action.
They also thought that my saying “I do not think we should support choice feminism” meant that I was as bad as Trump so…
To this crowd I’m sure it’s actually very feminist of Trump to have a young blonde woman as his spokesperson. He made a choice to give a lady a job, give him a break feminazi!
the one that kills me is defending super time/labor intensive, high maintenance, restrictive or downright physically harmful style choices as "equally feminist" or saying that criticizing them is actually the antifeminist thing bc "it's just bc they're associated with women"
sorry but styles that take up huge amounts of our time and mental energy, hobble us, or put us in actual physical pain are not equally valid and liberating choices! they just aren't.
we all make regressive choices sometimes, it is what it is, but that doesn't somehow make it feminist
I’m a lesbian mom who chose to stay home with my kids (conceived by choice in lesbian relationship). Is my choice equally bad? How can it ever be a good thing to tell people to their face you don’t approve of their life choices? There are more appropriate and effective ways of making your point.
Right. My partner makes literally 10X more than I made in my best year. Sure, I could’ve sent the kids to daycare and ground myself to dust working for a pittance, all while in constant physical pain due to chronic health issues, making me a much worse parent. Would that be more feminist?
ok, but see how that's a choice you made directly because of a stark economic reality? we don't think you should have yo operate under those kinds of constraints.
Telling people that the choices they make within a misogynist system aren’t feminist blames individuals for the misogyny of the system. Pay gaps & childcare costs aren’t feminist. I chose to be an artist. Partner is in healthcare. Staying home was best for my health & I’m grateful to have the option
my partner and I stopped and analyzed our finances, determined that childcare wouldn't be affordable, and she decided to stay home with the kids. When they got old enough she started working again, because she enjoys it. I agree with the concept that is being discussed here, but yeah...
none of this contradicts my initial comment. why do you need your choices to be validated as feminist? you made decisions that made sense for you. that's great! but that doesn't make them feminist. no one's dragging you back to the office. we're just pointing out what happens when you opt out.
(Unless “all” includes equal pay for equal work, paid parental leave, no career consequences, and a male partner who does equal caregiving without expecting a parade in his honor every time he “babysits” his children.)
Childfree women are some of the smartest, happiest, funnest, women I know. Did I mention the traveling and financial freedom? None that I know have regrets. Honestly, the worse thing about being a childless catlady (w blue hair) is that I’ve become a meme. 😝
Oh, and fuck the patriarchy.
the main reaction i have to this, as a parent is yeah -- especially if you don't have much (or any) help, parenting is exhausting and relentless, no matter how wonderful your kid is. the conservative vision of a mother who individually makes a home function for numerous children is insane
Every person I've met from a huge family (one was 1 of 17) said that after a while, it's just the older daughters who end up doing all the childcare. And all the mothers died young, in my albeit very small sample group.
And I don't think I've seen anyone mentioning the challenges of having a young child in America *right now*. Possible exposure to measles before being eligible for vaccination, uncertainty about whether vaccines will still be available when it's time, etc
That is true but also, counterintuitively, low-income parents are more likely to say they find parenting enjoyable all or most of the time than high-income parents.
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like, I'm not a people-person, but I acknowledge that's because I have chosen to not cultivate that part of myself, I don't treat it like a flex
My kid is great. It's the whole system around him that makes it hard to raise kids that sucks. Esp the system that normalizes staying with a profoundly unhelpful spouse
Lmao
There is a reason patriarchal norms weaponized "femininity" as passive, subservient, uncomplaining, and acquiescent: misogynists don't wish to be challenged in any way.
Violate those toxic norms.
Children should be wanted, full stop. Maternal instinct is a myth. Full stop.
what's surprising that this would read as hell?
idk how to combat “every choice is good” feminism at a large scale but being more honest with each other should be a start
They also thought that my saying “I do not think we should support choice feminism” meant that I was as bad as Trump so…
we all make regressive choices sometimes, it is what it is, but that doesn't somehow make it feminist
(Unless “all” includes equal pay for equal work, paid parental leave, no career consequences, and a male partner who does equal caregiving without expecting a parade in his honor every time he “babysits” his children.)
Oh, and fuck the patriarchy.
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/01/24/income-and-parenting/