The Responsible Feminist

What is the price for more choices?

Feminism is getting a lot of criticism these days. From Louise Perry’s The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, and Carrie Gress’ The End of Woman, to The Thinking Housewife’s “Ten Myths About Women’s Suffrage.” On one of his podcasts, Matt Walsh, creator of the film What is a Woman?, said he would trade the lives of all the aborted babies for a woman’s suffrage in a heartbeat.

A feminist raised me, and she was angry. Perhaps understandable, since my father treated her badly, cheated on her, and was a nasty alcoholic. She taught me by her obvious attitude that men were to be distrusted. I read Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique when I was in high school, and wrote a rather rambling paper on how boys and girls were raised according to the sex they were born with. The point of the paper being, that this kind of nurture involuntarily puts people in a lane they might not have asked for.

My mother discouraged me from sex and children, being emotionally reactive about the former. With the latter, she dismissively informed me that if I had kids I shouldn’t expect her to do any babysitting. And once I hit puberty, she counted the moments before I left home.

Feminist literature continued to be part of my reading well past college. But I also read psychology, mythology, books on personal growth, and piles of fiction. Not all of that accorded with what I’d been taught by my mother. Robert Heinlein, in particular, wrote female characters who liked being female, and who liked having children. It wasn’t something I saw from my mother. Nor did the mothers of my friends seem overly happy, while in contrast, all my friends thought my mom was really nice. Some of my high school friends still ask after her. She made an impression.

Perhaps my mother can’t be blamed for her anger at men. There’s no question my father behaved badly. [The man accounted for seven wives, although I suspect it was actually five.] However, my mother had no judgement about how to choose a good partner. In fact, even before my father, she managed to date and fall in love with a married man.