There are two kinds of dumb in this world: bag of hammers dumb, and Amanda Marcotte. She’s a blogger at Slate Magazine’s Double XX feature, and she has really outdone herself this time.
Look at the title of that piece: America’s declining fertility rate: it is not up to the female reproductive (nice grammar!).
Hmm. Really? That’s interesting. I know we can blame men for ALMOST EVERYTHING, but declining fertility, too? For fuck’s sake, men, would you please start having babies? What, you think women should do everything? Sorry lads, we’re too busy working on oil rigs and flunking out of STEM courses to have babies.
Who needs babies, anyways?
Oh, just, you know, the ENTIRE WORLD. I could be wrong, and correct me if you think so, but I believe babies actually grow into adults and without them, WE HAVE NO SOCIETY.
Let’s look at Amanda’s first sentence (her grammar improves, trust me).
Ever since it became less socially acceptable to argue openly that women—at least white, middle-class women—owe it to men to curtail our professional ambitions in favor of a life as our husbands’ support staff, conservatives started to panic about declining birth rates.
Ladies, you must not curtail your professional ambitions. And what are those professional ambitions? Oh yeah, to work as SUPPORT STAFF for someone who is NOT your husband.
Yay, ladies! Don’t be support staff for the man you love! Go and do it for someone else.
Ok, that’s just one job. I hear you. What are the other jobs?
Teachers
Nurses
Retail sales clerks
Home health care workers
Cooks
Waitresses
Maids
Childcare workers
http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2010/07/27/where-women-work/
So, let’s see. Women found being a housewife so terribly dull and dreary and oppressive that they flocked to the labor market to teach children their alphabet, tend to the sick, fold clothes, care for the elderly, cook food, fetch food, clean house and take care of small children. And that’s just all the ladies who couldn’t find a cushy job organizing a man’s professional life.
Organizing, tending, fetching, wiping noses and asses, cooking and cleaning.
Wow. Those are some pretty big ambitions. Kinda makes you wonder, doesn’t it? If it’s not the actual JOB that women dislike, since they clearly don’t mind doing those things for OTHER people, what is it that women didn’t like?
We’ll get to that. For now, let’s go back to our favorite little retard, Amanda.
And don’t give me any crap about using the word “retard”. Retard DOES NOT mean someone with Down Syndrome any more than gay means “effervescently happy” or computer means “someone who does calculations”. Language evolves. It’s called semantic change, and it’s WHAT language IS.
To save America, women, especially those aforementioned pesky middle-class, white women, are going to have to start having more babies at a younger age, the argument goes. That this demand means that women will end up curtailing their ambitions and moving into the support-staff role is simply a coincidence, of course. Nothing to see here.
Uhm, Amanda? WOMEN HAVE NEVER LEFT THEIR SUPPORT STAFF ROLE. That is what they do, by and large. Women are not building airplanes or crafting bridges or curing cancer or designing new technologies or searching for the Higgs-Boson. They are SUPPORT STAFF for the MEN who are building airplanes and crafting bridges and curing cancer and designing new technologies and searching for the Higgs-Boson (it’s not a done deal, yet folks!).
And those are the ambitious ones. The rest of them are fetching and carrying food and sorting out shit on shelves or scanning things across a bar-code reader (designed by men!) or taking care of children, the sick or the elderly.
Your outliers don’t mean shit. Look at the facts. The doors have been thrown open to women for decades, and most of them are still housewives.
They’re just not at home.
If women don’t want to have more children, then instead of abandoning women’s equality as a goal, we should rework our economic system so it doesn’t rely on a steadily growing population to function.
WOMEN’S EQUALITY? Equal to what? Because it sure as hell isn’t men.
Where is our Mozart?
Where is our Galileo?
Where is our Hawking?
Where is our Mersenne?
Oh, wait, I know. She’s busy getting an order of wings ready.
Let’s rework our economic system, shall we?
First of all, ladies, stop going to college. Seriously. Just stop. Most of what you study is complete and utter bullshit (film theory degree here). You don’t need an exhaustive knowledge of the Sonnets of the Portuguese to be a secretary. You need to know your alphabet, how to tell time and the days of the week.
Secondly, get out of the labor market during your reproductive years. Stop taking care of other people’s children and parents and husbands and go take care of your own. You can get to filing shit alphabetically AFTER you have made your contribution to society by raising stable, happy, healthy children and supporting a man who is probably out there doing something useful.
Those two things combined would have quite an impact. First of all, the labor market would contract dramatically and wages for men would rise correspondingly, allowing them to support a wife and young family. Funding that is currently being poured into Children’s Literature and Urban Anthropology would go instead to the STEM fields, where all the real innovation and work is done. By men, of course. Social spending by the government would decline as women contribute more to the care of children and the elderly. Federal tax revenues would stay about the same, because the fact is that while there are MORE jobs in the current labor market, there is not more MONEY. The money would shift to men, and they would pay tax as usual on that income. If anything, reduced need for social spending would lower the government’s outlay, giving them MORE money to spend on defence and debt repayment and infrastructure.
So why don’t women want to do this?
Because it would make them dependent on a man during their reproductive years. They would need to rely on a man for income, and if you are going to rely on a man, you will have to give him something in return for that. His own children, first of all. Oh my. Well that will require fidelity, won’t it? #sorrysluts
If he is heading out into the labor market every day, earning a wage for all of you, you will have to accommodate the stresses and anxieties that entails. How do you do that?
Be nice. Cook. Clean. Take of the children. Teach them manners and how to read and how to count. Take care of your parents. His and yours. Keep the house organized. Fold clothes. Book your appointments and needs around his schedule. Watch your finances. Don’t spend too much money.
In other words, do all the jobs that women do in the labor market. Secretary, teacher, retail sales clerk, home care worker, nurse, waitress, cook and maid.
But don’t do it for money. Do it for love. Love for your husband, love for your children, love for your parents, love for your country. The alternative is to do everything for yourself. Your own goals (be a secretary!), your own ambitions (fetch people food!), your own fulfilment (fold clothes at the Gap!), your own actualization (I never see my children!).
There is plenty of time to get to being a secretary or a waitress or a teacher. Children are only young for a short period of time. The real problem with people like Amanda is that she has uncritically accepted a male timeline for achieving what she defines as “equality”. Go to college, repay horrendous loans, build a “career” (if you can call being a secretary a career) – all during a woman’s reproductive years. The result is obvious: no babies.
All to avoid being dependant on a man for a few years. Amanda is probably one of those feminists who would claim that she “loves men”. And yet, she’s terrified of them. She has bought, hook line and sinker, the idea that men are abusive power-mongers who will oppress and mistreat their dependent wives and children without remorse or hesitation. And she is hell-bent on making sure other women believe that, too.
And we all pay for that. Dearly. The consequences will be stark when we have failed to produce the next generation. The most important thing we lose is love. Feminism has destroyed the family, destroyed the love between men and women and destroyed the love between parents and children.
How very sad.
True love, and true happiness comes from loving another person. For most of us, the greatest love we will ever know will be for our children.
Who needs babies? We all do. Without them, we have nothing.
There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved.
George Sand
Lots of love,
JB
LMAO. Yes! Let me quit my secretary job-which pays for my apartment/car/accounting degree/food/life. Move back in with my parents and go man hunting! Yes Yes Yes!!!! I should of never started working at 18, I should of never moved out. I should of gone man-hunting and found someone who is close to 10+years older than me, because someone closer to my age would not be able to provide for me. Yes, Yes, Yes. How could I be so fucking stupid-this article is such an eye opener. Fuck my degree, i’ll be spending the rest of my life on my back and knees anyway. Im going to quit today! Such a life changer!
Wow, Emma, your reading comprehension is outstanding!
Get your accounting degree, sweetheart. That’s actually a really sensible choice.
Then get married.
Then have children.
Then raise your children yourself. Do the work. Assuming you WANT children and a husband. If not, well, get a cat and carry on, pumpkin. You’re doing great!
Your career as an accountant can wait. That will be a fine way to help support your family once your children are in school full time.
But if you WANT children and a husband and a family and a home, you’ll need to get on that now.
Listen here judgy bitch- I don’t need your fuckin approval on my choice of study-it is GENUINELY what I desire to do. You make a reference to women being FORCED into STEM courses, some are, I don’t dispute that. But when I was growing up it was all “oh, why dont you become a nurse, nursing is a nice way for a woman to make money.” Or a teacher, or child-care. I never wanted to be any of those things-genuinely. Women are pushed more into pink collar jobs than the military, law enforcement, science, technology, mathematics, or engineering. That’s what I saw and still see today. You can argue that all you want, but you will hear more people supporting a 10yr old girl who wants to be a nurse, than another 10yr girl wanting to be a Marine.
You are just as awful as any fuckin feminist out there. We enjoy choices today as women. STOP JUDGING THE WAY OTHER WOMEN LIVE THEIR LIVES. Its fuckin theirs. You just keep making those sandwiches sweetheart, its what you were made to do. Not all women were made like you. In the same way not all men are protectors and/or providers. And you’re not addressing the fact that most men don’t even WANT to be those things today! You’re not addressing the fact that men today are not looking for traditional women but women who can provide for themselves. You can blame that on feminism if you want, I could care less why they feel that way. But bottom line is-in today’s world men want independent women. Don’t know how fucking old you are, but that’s the way the world is today.
I have nothing against stay at home moms, working mothers, single women, women who work in pink or blue collar jobs. I’m just happy they have the choice to do what they want to do! Just a thought, I would love to see you battle it out with some MRA. MRAs are fucking lethal in calling stay at home moms parasites, useless, and resource seekers. I will never agree with them, OR YOU, but it’ll make for some good entertainment.
Am I the only one here that reads something into the title JUDGYBITCH?
LMAO!!!!!!!!!
Hmmm does that mean her blog shouldnt be taken seriously because its called judgybitch? Damn! The genius you are! How could I have missed that. Thank you pointless, you make great points.
oh yeah, I mean yawn…” STOP JUDGING THE WAY OTHER WOMEN LIVE THEIR LIVES.” (Emma) Of course this blog must be taken seriously, it is the way, the truth, the god damn light! I am a fucking genius. Maybe you just missed the word JUDGY from the title was all i was implying. Meaning to judge.
“There is only one lawgiver and judgybitch, she who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your fellow commentor?
glad you still find us entertaining.
oh yeah, I mean yawn…” STOP JUDGING THE WAY OTHER WOMEN LIVE THEIR LIVES.” (Emma) Of course this blog must be taken seriously, it is the way, the truth, the god damn light! I am a fucking genius. Maybe you just missed the word JUDGY from the title was all i was implying. Meaning to judge.
“There is only one lawgiver and judgybitch, she who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your fellow commentor?
glad you still find us entertaining.
Women are pushed by whom, exactly?
The type of man who wants an independent woman (such as myself) usually can’t in turn be depended upon, so you might not wanna raise a family with him anyways.
The thing is, society isn’t built around the needs of men, it’s built around the needs of women and children. What men WANT doesn’t play so much into the equation, if most women want to be a stay at home wives the men will comply, because in order to sleep with women they need to please them first. This also explains why men never put up a serious fight against feminism.
“men today are not looking for traditional women but women who can provide for themselves.”
Bullshit.
I live in AMERICA. And thats the way it is here. Or maybe, it is bullshit, and guys are just bullshitting. But Im almost positive a 23yr old woman who is educated, employed and living on her own is more attractive than an uneducated, unemployed, girl living at home with her parents waiting for prince charming to scoop her up.
Providing for yourself does not make you a feminist. Living on your own and providing for yourself (male or female) is vital to one’s self development. You learn much and grow as an individual when you only have you to fall back on. You understand yourself better and would be better in a partnership (marriage) later on in life.
But then again, what do I know? Im just a 23yo girl.
It’s projection on the female part to assume that men are attracted to formal education, employment and having their own home.
They are not. But women are.
I could agree that a “good” woman (not gonna bother defining “good”) who is taking care of herself is better than a “bad” woman who is not taking care of herself.
But that’s not a fair comparison.
I rather say that a “good” woman who is training to be the best housewife will be better than a “good” woman who is striving for independence, academics and a career.
Why would i want a woman who has boosted up their hypergamous instincts through advances in masculine endeavors, when i rather could have a woman who has boosted their hypergamous instincts through progress in feminine fields?
If i was turned on by masculinity, i would get a hard on for my male friends. I do not.
I agree, I dont think you need to be formally educated, employed or have assets for men to find you attractive. But it does help, and set you apart from the pack. A lot of men are afraid of being “used” solely for their resources, and being self sufficient suppresses that fear? I think its why men find independent women attractive. But I agree, its not a necessity.
Its not about training to be the best housewife or the best manager, its about becoming the best person you can possibly be. Living on your own can sharpen both domestic and labor skills. Being educated opens your mind. A career that is mentally demanding will make you more intelligent. All of those things attribute to you becoming a more well rounded individual.
Then you can be whatever the hell it is that you want to be, housewife or career superstar-whatever it is, I’ll be damn good at it.
Of course the article was all about you… of couse it was. Isn’t everything?