No, I don't mean the desiccated Phyllis Schlafly, even though she does play the role of the designated anti-feminism poster-hag quite efficiently.What I'm thinking about is Blob Blogging Wingnut's screed in 5 parts. By the way, that's a link to unrepentant old hippie's post about HER 'oover'.
HER ongoing attacks on feminism have become so predictably, tediously and pathetically stupid that it’s no longer a challenge or even fun to spoof HER. It would be like laughing at someone with Tourette’s syndrome. SHE can’t stop HERSELF, it is - along with HER zygote zealotry - an obsessive compulsive disorder.
Nonetheless, it's irritating to know malevolent fallacies and odious fabrications like HERS are floating in the blog-o-sphere.
Recently, I spent four days with a colleague who volunteers a bit of her time with an organization that I work for. She invited and welcomed me into her family (and her guest room) while I was working in her city.
My colleague is a stay-at-home mom with 2 daughters, one in first grade, the other a toddler. She’s a feminist who is happy to acknowledge that she's reaping the benefits of the activism my generation (and those who followed) did that allows her to be at home with her daughters. She feels that her commitment is recognized as valued and validated work because it is a choice, and NOT an obligation. There is joy, goodness, dedication and love that radiates from every activity she does for and with her daughters. There is no time in her busy days or nights for the type of bile that Blob Blogging Wingnut regularly regurgitates.
It's interesting that I've never felt or sensed the quality of nurturing, generosity and altruism in Blob Blogging Wingnut’s writing that my colleague expresses in her dedication to her family and community. At BBW's place, it’s always about HER, HER petty grievances, HER stifled creativity, HER disinformation and lies, HER screeds and HER shrieeekkking.
My stay-at-home-mom colleague chose what appears to be conventional family circumstances on the surface. Yet she had a multiplicity of career options that she discarded for the path that she has chosen while her children are young. And I suspect that when her daughters have grown into autonomous, self-reliant and competent young women, several dynamic possibilities will open to her as she is a skilled, accomplished and talented communicator.
Somehow I can't help but sense that in the case of BBW, it's MASSIVE sour grapes; SHE is bitter and resentful that HER belief in the supremacy of biology and the ideological tenets of the Roman Catholic Church does not make HER happier than the feminists SHE constantly reviles.
4 comments:
"HER ongoing attacks on feminism have become so predictably, tediously and pathetically stupid that it’s no longer a challenge or even fun to spoof HER."
Yes. That was part of my growing ennui at Birth Pangs. No fun, no challenge to mocking them any more.
You're right deBeauxOs, her attacks aren't even worth reading, except as a reminder of the lack of intelligence, humour and grace that she consistently exhibits. I do feel sorry for her kids, and sorry to feel that way, but it's a feeling that comes quite spontaneously.
I have been so fortunate to benefit from the progress achieved by feminism in Quebec, which possibly had the most uphill battle of any place in Canada at one point. The ordinary people I see in my everyday life and work, people who have no defined political ideology or agenda, recognise these gains, and praise the changes that took place when women were given a place in politics, such as during René Lévesque's era. I mean, we're talking practical progress and positive change here, not this post-modern critique mumbo-jumbo SHE's always on about. (What a waste of a publicly funded edumacation, I might add...)
I haven't been checking anything over at her little hive of bile. For a while, if there was a linky, I'd check and a couple of times I wrote but it's such a useless endeavor. My grandma Sarah used to tell me "you can't hammer intelligence into a block of wood.".
I've felt increasingly close to Sarah in the past few years. So much of what she told me still resonates. She was a very short, very round woman who left Northern England with five little kids to come to a place she'd hardly been aware existed, to join her husband. He was a union organizer who was blackballed for his union activity and was one step ahead of the Company goons when he came here. She followed a year or two later. Stepped off into the nearly unknown. God, the courage!
Sarah probably never heard the word "feminism" but she did know that one way or the other, if push came to shove, she could keep her children fed. She'd been "in service" before she got married, she could do it again.
What Brebis called "post modern critique mumbo jumbo" is really just nit-picking bullshit. Gee, sorry we didn't manage to make the world absolutely perfect for you BBW. Sorry there are some things for the next generation to clean up and finish. Sorry you don't like what you chose and are too stubborn to make changes.
Sarah said then and would say now "Aye, well, consider't'source,lass, and ignore it. There's some as is nivver 'appy unless they're miserable and best ye avoid them.".
Eh, ba goom, she did talk thick!
brebis noire, welcome to the wild and wooly world of blogging! I just clicked on your name and was whisked over to your website. It looks splendid, and I am enjoying reading you there.
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