Blame Idealism

We're supposed to explore feminist writings today, huh?  Maybe we'll do a bit of that, but I wanted to throw in a little current events.

Did anyone catch the buzz over a study that linked the childhood obesity epidemic with the rise of hours mothers work out of the home? I don't know about you, but my first reaction was "Why's it always the mom's fault?" Dads can cook and shop.  Dads can take kids outside to play and make sure they aren't eating too many potato chips.  It seems that there is always another reason for moms to feel guilty about their parenting.

An article by David Niven (this is not the feminist writing) reported findings that women in political office get much more media attention on personal issues (Hillary Clinton's "cankles", Kirsten Gillibrand's status as the "hot senator"), including their ability to juggle career and family.  Men do not get the same attention. No one is reporting about whether Eric Cantor is able to be a good dad.

And now our feminist writing. Anthropologist Sherry Ortner's essay, "Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture," in a probably pathetic summary: women are universally second class citizens, across cultures and history.  Woman is mediator between culture and nature, with men being culture, which is transcendence over nature.  Women's biology is more difficult to separate from nature, so we are assigned the position of being closer to nature.  By our connection to infants, socially more connected to nature.  Ortner asserts that this circular reasoning has deep tentacles into our collective psyche, and this keeps a stranglehold on women's social standing.  She says that our efforts only at structural change like equal pay and women holding office will not root out the whole problem.

So kids and cooking are our domain by this culture/nature reasoning.  Our biology assigned us to have to give of ourselves (pregnancy, nursing) and be involved in messy processes.  Are we subverting what we are made for if we share domestic and breadwinning responsibilities?

Fatima Mernissi, a Morroccan feminist writer, argues that liberation is an economic problem more than a spiritual problem.  It costs society to move women from being free domestic labor. "A system of kindergartens and canteens is an indispensable investment" in freeing women from the traditional role of a Muslim woman.  But note that the United States has not made this investment either.  There are 198 countries in the world that offer mandatory paid maternity leave, and we are not one of them.  Human rights violating countries, not just the EU.

Ok, so I threw that all out there for discussion.  I'm not offering my opinion yet.  I would like to put an observation of my own into the mix.  When I was driving yesterday, I noticed how beautiful the winter scenery was.  Our hills were mounds of white with little houses cozily tucked in and trees sparking with clinging snow.  A winter wonderland.  But up close, the dirty gray and black snow lining the roads is disgusting.  And it's taller than I am.  That's a lot of dirt that up close, we can't hide.  Winter is gorgeous from a distance, but our lifestyles muck it up and we can't hide that under closer examination.

No matter what new direction we take in our society, no matter what fabulous solutions for equality we come up with, there is always going to be unsightly fallout.  Are we going to stop driving because our cars make snirt? No matter what your personal feelings are on the matter, women are in the workplace, and there are good things and bad things about that.  But that's not going to change any time soon, just like most of us are not going to stop driving any time soon. Men are working 163 hours a year more than they used to, back when women were not as much of a presence in the workplace. Economic forces have changed things and we can stop blaming each other's ethics and work together for solutions. We keep striving and trying to make the world a better place.

 Things aren't going back to 1950.  Oh, and by the way, find your elderly African American neighbor and ask her how great her life was in the 50's, how much time she got to spend at home with her kids.  Things have never been ideal, nor will they ever be.  Before cars, there was horse crap everywhere.

This was perhaps not an uplifting way to begin the week....