by Spider » Sat Nov 09, 2013 11:39 pm
One thing that needs to die a sudden death is the belief that men "get" "to have it all".
Since they're working all the time, all they're really getting is work. And work is work. For most people, its drudgery, destroys the soul, and its not a positive thing to be pissing away your best years on. Men are accosted with the guilt of not being a provider in exactly the same way that women are facing guilt for not being around the home front as much. With exceptions for those who genuinely love their jobs and would rather be doing that than whatever else, being caged into the" good provider" gender role, both by society and by the expectations of the spouse and the family, is not any more acceptable than being caged into the "nurturing mother" role.
If you have one partner staying home, and the other partner out making the income...nobody is having it all. Both are getting half. And its a matter of personal preference whether its more desirable to run a household or run the rat race. Society will trash mens' masculinity itself for the sin of putting family first and doing the domestic thing, and society will trash womens' identities as mothers for not doing it. To hell with it all...just make a subjective decision and live with it.
Trying to "have it all" is ultimately a self defeating goal for most people, men or women, and I'm tired of it being used as a rhetorical weapon against men in particular, and as a feminist weapon against women who don't toe that ideological line.
That's the place where feminisim is losing its head more than any other: Its turning into a code of acceptable behavior for women. Be it their career or family planning, their rhetoric, or even their sexual proclivities. There seems to be a feminist yay or nay for all of it...and I'd think the proper feminist position would be that of perfect liberation, as opposed to guilting or expressing disdain for women's choices.