I thought I'd kick off my blog with my namesake (it has more than one meaning, but the name was inspired tonight by this woman), Amy Glass. Amy Glass often contributes to Thought Catalog. She has recently posted this article and more recently in defense to a lot of hate-comments, this shorter article. The first article as entitled "I Look Down on Young Women with a Husband and Kids and I'm Not Sorry."
It starts like this: "Every time I hear someone say that feminism is about validating every choice a woman makes I have to fight back vomit."
Feminism, Ms. Glass, is absolutely about validating every choice a woman makes. Feminism is telling a woman she can be without judgment whatever she actually wishes to be. Feminism is about educating women and enabling them to be able to make that decision. I concede that many women are not educated in this way, and are raised to feel like they must procreate with a husband because that is their womanly role. In most ways, this is an environmental thing. I live in Texas, for instance, and we are mostly informed from a very Christian view-point as to our gender roles, among other things.
My religious rants must be saved for that topic, though. The topic at hand is women...or more accurately gender roles.
This book actually exists.
While there are many women who are raised this way, there are many other women who look at all the options and go, "You know, I would like to be first and foremost a mother," and I know a lot of women who have a husband and kids and are still successful at life. I do not necessarily believe a woman should have children in her early 20s (before graduating college or living a little outside their parents' household), and lots of marriages which start out that young end in divorce and/or make the wo/man exceedingly unhappy, but I would never presume to tell anyone how they SHOULD live their lives. Sometimes it works. I know people who will probably be living proof that sometimes it works (and I know people who are living proof that often it does not. That's their business. Not yours.
Sometimes (shock and awe) a woman isn't even looking for a husband because she's busy living, but she finds a man who fits with her so wonderfully and she goes "since I plan on hanging out with and having sex with this guy for life, it would be advantageous financially to marry." What's wrong with that?
The problem I have with the blog article is not necessarily that it takes a stance on marriage and children that I disagree with, but that it dictates without hesitation how every other woman should feel about a marriage and children. In her subsequent article she mentions that women have attacked her because having and raising a child and taking care of a household is hard work. She goes on to say that just because it's hard work doesn't mean it's "good or bad." My response to that is "and your point is...?" This was undoubtedly her initial response to her commentators' posts.
She said - I emphasise...SHE said - it is not necessarily good or bad. You understand, I am confused. If it is "hard", it is not necessarily good or bad, and thus if it is "easy", it is not necessarily good or bad. Did your logic train not quite take you to that station? If having a husband and kids is just the "easy way out" why is that bad? By your own logic, it is NOT bad. Sure, it MIGHT be easier because it's expected of a woman to do this thing. Have you ever thought that not becoming a wife and mother is easier for you because you just don't want to do it? Does that make it bad that you took your own "easy road"? Alternatively, is choosing to have a career instead of raising a family necessarily "good" just because you see it as "harder"? Don't use language with which you can be logically backed into a corner.
Let's take an autobiographical example:
I will never become an engineer because I do not want to become an engineer. I freely admit that I do not want to become an engineer because I do not enjoy maths and I find maths difficult. Am I taking the easy road by not becoming an engineer? I am becoming a teacher/writer instead. Does that invalidate my life choices because teacher is seen as a womanly job? I admire my friend who is an engineer and is actively trying to engage other women into engineering fields (which are sparsely populated by females), I support her, and I try to persuade my female students that science and maths are not evil subjects just because they're hard. If they choose to pursue a liberal arts degree because they find it more enjoyable who am I to judge? That's exactly what I did.
We are asking women to take agency for their own lives. This literally means having the capacity to make their own decisions and taking the right to make those decisions. Surprise, women are people. An even bigger surprise: women aren't there solely to push your political agenda. Using women to push your political agenda is not all that feminist, bro (lol I see what I did there). While we're on the topic of political agendas, you did mention Beyonce in your more recent post. I'd just like to point out that you're only heralding white feminism. You don't even know what feminism of non-white, non-Western countries would be. This is something to save for a different rant, because I don't want to get off the topic of the article itself.
Here's looking at you, Amy!
Back to Ms. Glass, I really enjoyed this paragraph. It made me laugh and make sort of a sobbing noise simultaneously:
"I hear women talk about how 'hard' it is to raise kids and manage a household all the time. I never hear men talk about this. It’s because women secretly like to talk about how hard managing a household is so they don’t have to explain their lack of real accomplishments. Men don’t care to 'manage a household.' They aren’t conditioned to think stupid things like that are 'important.'"
Of all the comparisons she could have made to men, I feel this one came up very short. Men complain about their jobs all the time, and if they don't complain about managing a household and raising children it's because they are too busy doing what THEY like to do...but they still complain about it. I really don't think the stem cause is that they are lamenting a lack of real accomplishment. You'd be surprised how many women feel very accomplished because they have raised children successfully. Every human complains because it is CATHARTIC (i.e. it feels good) to complain and rant and cry about things when the stress is too much.
Yes, raising a family is stressful and yes, having a career is stressful, and so we bitch and moan and spout all kinds of nonsense but at the end of the day we all do it! Follow the statement to its logical conclusion and you'll find the wo/man who has their successful career bitching and moaning "so they don't have to explain their lack of real accomplishments." You bitch and moan too, and apparently you have nothing to bitch and moan about except how other people are living their lives. How accomplished is that?
With the defense article, Ms. Glass did address the fact that she was too harsh in the first, saying that women who truly have no other ambitions than to raise a family and be a good mother should feel free and not ashamed. She then goes onto say that many women probably do not make this choice as freely as feminists would like. That's fair. I believe that girls and women should be more educated as to what their choices are. The only thing I will ask is how to do define that line of enough education to make the decision? In an ideal world, how much education does a woman need before you will give her the freedom to make the choice to become a good mother without judgment from you?
The very last thing she addresses on the topic is that most of the women who commented on the original post were raging enough to say that she would end up old and alone. Perhaps she will. Perhaps she won't. I'm not sure she cares about the opinions of people she apparently "looks down upon." I also felt it was just a defense mechanism and harsh, and Ms. Glass did not have to take up the presumption that "women only have children so they will not be lonely." A cruel and low blow from a woman who is supposed to be a "feminist."
This also pertains to having children.
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