Comments on: Sorry

By: Hedgepig

Hedgepig — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:17:12 +0000

I have a short anecdote illustrating the doublethink we hetro women seem to be capable of. I was visiting an old school friend in my home town. She was full time caring for her first baby, an 8 month old as I recall. She complained openly and unapologetically about how hopeless her husband was now that their situation had changed (she had had a job as lucrative as his before the baby). She said the past eight months she’d felt like a single mother with a lodger.

As we were talking a car pulled up on the street outside and two women got out and walked up to the next door house. My friend immediately started talking in utterly scornful tones about how these lesbians had just moved in next door. She talked about how pathetic they were and ended with a “well, if you can’t make it with a man…”

So, her rationale, as I could see it, was “If you can’t make it with a selfish, emotionally retarded, lazy chimpanzee then you might as well settle for an equal.”

IBTP

By: Carolyn

Carolyn — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 13:31:07 +0000

I just want to say that reading this comment thread (especially you, Lovepug) has meant a lot to me. I’ve had sex exactly once in the last I think four years, and wish I had a setup like Rikibeth’s, but all the crap it seems like I’d have to go through to get a man interested in fucking me is just way too much work, not to mention demeaning and distorted, and in my experience once you do they start making all sorts of unreasonable demands. This, by the way, is an example of my rule of thumb that anything that’s generally believed about one gender is in fact true of the other gender–it seems there are plenty of women out there who aren’t desperate for true love and romance and who’d be thrilled to have the opportunity to meet pleasant, presentable, well-behaved casual fuck buddies. Claire, you are fantastic and your website is fantastic, and I wish you everything you want for yourself.

By: January 28, 2009 « Rising in Phoenix

January 28, 2009 « Rising in Phoenix — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 23:57:29 +0000

[...] Without marriage to normalize femininity and misogyny and unpaid domestic drudgery and all that crap, the dominant culture would crumble. Source: http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/2009/01/25/sorry/ [...]

By: tfitz

tfitz — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:55:48 +0000

Excellent.

By: Jezebella

Jezebella — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 20:59:06 +0000

Stickers. I need stickers that say “A man is not a retirement plan.” I need to plaster them across every “self help”/”trick a man into marrying you before your ovaries wither up and you become a hairy lesbian” book I can find at the bookstore. I also need a crack team of distractionary forces that will keep the bookstore staff occupied while I deface their merchandise.

Who’s with me?

By: Samantha

Samantha — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:17:35 +0000

Apparently 40 is the new 35.

Your review of the review jogged my memory of this other absurd guide that came out a few years ago entitled “Find a Husband After 35 Using What I Learned at Harvard Business School” by Rachel Greenwald.

Here’s a snippet from the book that I think pretty much sums it up:

“Men are usually more attracted to women in skirts than in pants… literally as well as figuratively.”

And then there’s this inside the front cover:

“In her bold, no-nonsense style, Greenwald tells women how to package their assets, develop a personal brand, leverage niche marketing, use direct mail and telemarketing to get the word out, establish a husband-hunting budget, and hold quarterly performance reviews to assess the results.”

We could only suppose this Greenwald chick set aside any further “writing” or other career aspirations once she was properly hitched to some white dude.

By: Rikibeth

Rikibeth — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 01:07:13 +0000

Hedgepig, I couldn’t agree with you more. This is one of the reasons I try to speak up about the way I’ve arranged my life now, and how satisfying I find it; there need to be other models out there for young people to see, beyond heteronormative couplehood. I grew up seeing the regular het-marriage model, and while I observed plenty of post-divorce situations, those were tagged as failures, and the divorced women were universally acknowledged to be seeking new marriages. My mother’s college roommate had a very successful career, and lived at a highly enviable address in Manhattan, but she was held up as a personal failure despite her professional success, because she hadn’t married, and when she DID marry, she was past the age of childbearing.

I’ve got nothing against marriage for those who find themselves happy in it, but I wish I’d had more positive models for other ways to be happy.

By: Hedgepig

Hedgepig — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 23:07:37 +0000

Rikibeth, your lifestyle sounds great. I do notice though that you’re divorced, which means that, like most women, you had to experience the realities of heterosexual co-habitation before hitting upon a better formula for happiness. What I’d like to see is young women realising BEFORE they make hard-to-reverse life decisions that such an alternative lifestyle is attractive, fulfilling and possible. It seems as if each one of us has to make the same mistakes personally before we can really believe that the fairy tale is a lie. It’s no surprise, as we are bombarded with fairy tales from birth. We need to take seriously how damaging romantic ‘chick-flicks’, novels and actual fairy tales are. They are the vehicles of patriarchal propaganda, but because they’re only stories they’re dismissed as harmless.

By: Level Best

Level Best — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 20:18:45 +0000

I can tell from your comments on this site, Claire (CJ) that you’re wicked intelligent. That is a true asset you have. I am so sorry that you were plunked down in this non-working (for women) cycle and so angry that we’re all programmed this way!

By: cafesiren

cafesiren — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 19:07:07 +0000

CJ —

Jesus. That’s seriously messed up.

Just so you know: independent does not usually mean “she does it alone.” Print out what you just wrote and take it and yourself to your local women’s resource center. Places like this tend to specialize in battered women, but even if you’re not their usual clientele, they will have some suggestions for resources for you. If you live in a town with a college or university, there’s probably a women’s resource center there, too — generally set up to serve students, but these are generally women committed to feminist ideals, and I can’t imagine they’d turn you away if you asked for referrals.

You may not have a support network now, but you can build one. And it doesn’t have to be at the price of your independence or your peace of mind.