Women: Butch Up or Shut Up

So yesterday, both Cassy Fiano and Rachel Lucas draw attention to an Oprah article where a woman verbally brutalizes her husband in print media for all to see. She points out his foibles in the head-scratching attempt to portray him as all men just naturally are: “moderately bad”. Men are bad. Her husband is bad. She drones on for paragraphs, finally concluding that the institution of marriage is to blame. Well, marriage is to blame, and bad men. How her husband stays married to her after that disrespect, I don’t know. He gets what he deserves, I guess.

But that’s not what I find fascinating about this article. What I find interesting is the perpetual, non-stop externalizing of blame indicative of a victim. The author comes across as a whining harpy, shrill and full of impotent rage.

And she’s a liberated feminist!

Just to remind the feminists: A liberated woman marries who she wants. She works where she desires. She controls her reproductive ability. She f*cks who she pleases. She stays where she wants. She leaves when she’s finished.

A liberated woman’s destiny isn’t determined by her biology (yes, it is, to an extent, but I’m spouting the feminist credo here). A woman’s destiny isn’t determined by a decision to marry or divorce or co-habitate or prostitute or any other version of coupling and decoupling.

Why is this woman complaining, bitching and sounding remarkably retro when she could be doing something about her lot in life? For example, “I recently stood by as a clothing designer, a mother in her 40s, announced to a group of women that she was divorcing her husband.” Hmmmm…… Were the group of women a knitting circle? Were they at the club playing tennis? Were they her Bunko group? I’m just wondering what kind of women’s group were talking here.

This woman reinforces every female stereotype. She complains about her husband. Wow, that never happens. (Well, in the circles I run in, I don’t hear men-bashing, but most of the women I know are too busy and their husbands are too, to sit around griping.) What’s new about her bashing, is that it isn’t enough to gripe to her girlfriends, she has to broadcast to everyone what a superficial, mean-mouthed woman she is. She has too much time on her hands, obviously. She can name the problem, but she can’t find the solution. Wow, I wonder where all those nasty women jokes come from? Could it be the guys married to women like this?

If this woman believed she were liberated, she’d get proactive about her life and make herself happy instead of buying the fairytale fantasies that some man would rescue her from her sad-sack life. She’d get a job. She’d make the relationship better, if she could, or she’d move on. She wouldn’t disrespect her husband or ex-husband because he is the father of her children and she dishonors her own judgment by dishonoring him to her children, thus, undermining herself to them, too. She’d go lesbian and give up on men altogether and find bliss in a woman’s arms, since they’re so much better than men. She’d do something.

But this woman isn’t liberated. She’s enslaved by her own ideology. Like most liberals, her decisions are someone else’s responsibility. She gets pregnant because she was drunk and didn’t use contraception–get an abortion. She gets married and finds out that her spouse is human and fallible like all people and the institution of marriage must suck, not her judgment, and all men are bad (and conversely, all women are good?). It’s easier than looking internally and solving her own issues.

So, these big, bad, independent feminists, 88 years after women’s suffrage, sound like simpering, helpless little women. They need to stop talking so damn much and start owning their choices. They want to be taken seriously, but pieces like this just undermine their message. They aren’t interested in liberation. They’re interested in having someone to blame.

Cross-posted at MelissaClouthier.com

Share this!

Enjoy reading? Share it with your friends!