Written @ 11:05 p.m. on 2007-12-16
Anti-feminist
Another weekend down in the rock n' roll lifestyle of Hil the Thrill! Another icestorm found me leading the girls stomping through the crust that lingered above 3 inches of snow. The girls discovered it to be great fun sliding on their bellies and behinds down any sort of incline at all, be it ever so humble. We even tried chalk on the ice, with little success. I got annoyed the second time a fist full of ice went straight down my shirt, courtesy of Mini-Me One or Two.
I've been reading, reading, reading all sorts of curious things on the net during slow moments at work. I can't believe there truly HAVE been slow moments, the week before Christmas...someone must have miscalculated something. I started on a homeschoolers link, and that of course, brought me to fundamentalist Christians, and that brought me to Anti-feminists. That's were I got stuck. Intrigued...what is this rare beast, an anti-feminist? Anti-birth control, pro-patriarchy...what the fuck is a "keeper of the home"?
An anti-feminist, for those of you who don't already know, is someone who wants to be a wife in the way the bible suggests. Probably Christian, definitely pro-life,probably into dressing modestly, homeschooling as many children as God blesses her with, and being the best darn keeper of the home possible. Their desire is for the man to be the sole breadwinner, and the leader of the family. To the Keeper of the Home, marriage is the center of her life.
Now, being a wiccan, liberal feminist, I pretty much am their enemy, but I do agree with many of their ideas. I think it would be great if stable family units became a higher priority in our society. I think it would be great if being a mother were as honored and sacred in my world as it has been in the stories I hear from other cultures or from years past. It would be nice to have a home where all shirts were pressed with lavender water and every pot roast slow cooked because a woman considered these tasks top priority. I have to think that children would benefit from this lifestyle. I grew up hearing stories of the "old days" when things went like this, but my mom was a career mom, a lover of her microwave oven. The stories are just stories to me, a little idealized perhaps, in the same category with growing up to marry a prince and live in a castle.
I'm not pro-life, but I can understand how many people feel that way. I don't think that life starts at conception. I don't think throwing out eggs, flour and sugar means you are throwing out a cake. I had a baby at a young age, without planning for her, without being married, and some people would have understood if I had chosen not to keep her. I never wavered in my choice, and would agree with many Pro-lifers who say that a child is a beautiful gift from God.
The part that I have more trouble with is the "Quiver full" movement...having as many children as possible to be members of God's army and spread "The Word".
I'm not big on Word Spreading, as you might have guessed, but more so, I just can't wrap my mind around HOW having 10 and more children is a good thing for a family? I know that lots and lots of families have handled it, but HOW? You cannot spend time with each child when you tuck them in at night, you cannot be with each child at their soccer game, it would be quite a job to look at each child's homework before sending them to school...which a lot of these families don't worry about, since they homeschool. How does a family handle braces, bikes, or unforseen emergencies when they are paying for ten peanut butter and jellies every noontime?
Well, they manage. Good for them. Good for their family centered lives and below-the-knee floral dresses.
You know what I don't like? They teach their children that the way I live is wrong. The way I think is wrong. The people who are pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-religious plurality are WRONG. The rest of the world, all those 6 Billion minus a very few, are WRONG..don't go to school with them, don't read about them, and if you meet them, try to convince them of the error of their ways and invite them to our church.
That stinks. The world is a wild and wooly place full of all kinds of existences. It is too easy to categorize people as "good" or "bad" in such simplistic terms. For some people, abortion is the best answer. For some people, gay marriage works. For some people, sexual freedom and rejecting marriage works. Life is crazy. We all have the right to create our own "pod" as we see fit (within the rule of harm none). Full Quiver followers have worked hard to create their own reality...why should other people not have the right to create their own, different reality, with different moral compasses? One moral structure does not fit all. It's just not that easy. Cough syrup does not cure every disease.
So, I feel blessed to study this life style...the parts I find useful (strong families, honoring the homemaker, a courageous life opposing the popular culture...) and the parts I disagree with (the narrow acceptance of other value systems...). I can teach my children about this lifestyle, like a flower from a meadow, and say,"Isn't this neat? They do it that way..." and regard it as beautiful amongst a field of diversity.