In my case, it was never selfishness. It was a gnawing, horrible feeling borne of years of indoctrination that I wasn’t good enough unless I was outcompeting my husband, him and every other man on the planet. I had married the smartest man in the room, who was also the tallest, the most popular, the most loved, and rather well credentialed. And also a brilliantly capable provider, yet I was raised by a dyed in the wool liberal feminist who trained me from infancy that this was abject failure. I couldn’t conceive of my children even having a modicum of respect for such a pathetic failure as myself until I had gone back out into the world, attained as many degrees as my husband and began slogging my way through an unwanted career to bring home a paycheck.
Yet, I was a housewife. That’s part of the deal, he works, I stay home, and this is why this series is so hard to write. Because it’s partly a confession, and I am not fond of those. I also feel as if I’m writing perhaps to other women raised by Boomers now close to 80, and that this will not resonate with younger women whatsoever, but perhaps it will. Even if it does not, this is how I found myself in the woods having had such a blinding set of revelations about the feminism I was raised with that I barely trusted my own ability to make a decision afterwards.
My mother repeated to me many times that her own path, though she worked when I was very little (as a music teacher, so nothing I couldn’t accompany her for) was one of failure. She wasn’t supposed to fall in love and marry my father and have me, even though she was absolutely in love and constantly reassured me how wanted I was. Does this sound confused? I think so as well, and from this vantage point I’m stating loudly that this is what modern feminism does to a person. My father was from a successful family, then struck out on his own to equal success; there was no financial need for my mother to work nor was she geared towards a career. She had it in her head that being a moderately talented musician, she’d end up the next Linda Ronstadt, or would’ve had she not chosen the course taken by most women the world over. Had it not been for massive amounts of shaming in every corner of society she tended to inhabit (she wasn’t one for church or more traditional women’s circles), she probably would’ve put that dream on the shelf. This country is distinctly full of Boomers with guitars who didn’t make it in the music business, after all.
But she clung to the ERA pin in her jewelry box, explaining to me that Phyllis Schlafly was “the devil”, a phrase one of her daughters filled in for me when I related this tale to her. If Phyllis Schlafly’s daughter knows precisely what every woman’s Ms. Magazine subscribing mother (and grandmother) had repeated ad nauseam about her own mother, the famous anti-women’s liberation movement/anti-ERA activist, then it certainly wasn’t just my mom. So, in concert with her own mother, a far more career oriented woman who worked up to her retirement, I was taught early that this arrangement of marriage and children was not merely a form of slavery, but that it was horrendously unsafe as I might be “traded in for a secretary” when I showed the first signs of aging. On top of all the rest it was unsafe because I wasn’t earning my own keep and men were terribly unreliable (a notion belied by the fact that everything in my life was provided by the work done by…..my father). Nor was I proving to myself, the world, my children (should I be so low as to have any) that women, collectively, can achieve anything a man can. Is it any wonder that I was closer to the father who I was therefore supposed to model my behavior after, who also put none of these pressures on me whatsoever? Who protected and provided for me? Or defended me against the feminist menace in our own home when they went too far?
Which is precisely what they did when I finally met the man I would marry. Nature took its course, and reproductive coercion followed shortly after, something I never really recovered from, neither in ability to trust doctors nor how I would orient myself in the future. I quit school, determined to become the very thing the feminist brigade had feared, my quiet rebellion (which is not to say that I married or had my children out of spite, quite the opposite). But I was poorly equipped and saddled with the nagging voice always saying I’d not achieved enough. And often that voice was my mother’s literal voice, added to the chorus, telling me that I chose to be a housewife and should go back to the dungeon of my choosing. In my case, this led to some rather disastrous life choices trying to be “a somebody outside of the home”.
I don’t write this to sound as if my life is horrible (aside from disabling and permanent injuries I sustained in my quest to be credentialed at something, anything, everything….) or ever was, but because I realized just how good it was. Right before the injuries all recurred, all those years later (I am perhaps cursed, but that’s a different essay). My life wasn’t just good, it was near perfect, or had been prior to physical trials, and I’d always known this, but I overreached out of some ridiculous need to compete with my husband, this idea planted so young that my children would never respect me if I wasn’t achieving accolades outside the house. In reality, I’m a quiet homebody who rather likes all things domestic, so long as I get plenty of exercise. Yet I put myself through unnecessary hell and ended up injured for my pains.
That one day, as I made my way through the woods, walking aids in hand, I realized that the reproductive coercion was, in fact, not a bug of mom and grandma’s feminism, but the defining feature. Intended to keep me on a career track. I realized that two women who would choose a career for their daughter/granddaughter rather than a grandchild/great grandchild were perhaps the sickest of all. That my marriage was perfect, and that I had added “disabled loser” to my already long list of “non-credentialed in any way” put downs myself, the next rock on a pile begun when I was in the womb. I hadn’t put any of that in my head myself, it had been implanted from infancy and bolstered by the society I live in. Not just popular culture, but other moms, college classmates, even high school classmates. The mere fact that my female body could get pregnant was treated as a disease state with doctors and nurses pushing birth control pills on me before I was even a legal adult, and long before I even lost my virginity. My God given biology was treated as a risk factor, while mentions of God were omitted entirely.
At the time, I thought of this in the same terms as a cult member breaking free from intense brainwashing. After all, I’d been a traditionalist railing about the loss of traditions since childhood, a point of annoyance with my obsessively progressive mother and grandmother. How could I have still fallen into such a deep trap? What was the individualism I clung to if I couldn't even make a rational decision without this brainwashing kicking in for the override? What sort of poison, what ideology is modern liberal feminism that it can exert such power over us, even fairly rebellious women not otherwise much given to conformity?
So I was grappling with a new opponent, feminism, the ultimate betrayer. The impetus behind so many of my decisions (and votes), and my mother’s deep indoctrination. How early that must have started, and how fully it had engulfed her. How it engulfed many of the women in her age group, moms of friends to the point that they preached the same message. “I always heard that Phyllis Schlafly was….” “The Devil. You were told she was the devil.” Yes, that’s what it was, how did you know? The mask had been pulled off the opponent I’d been shadowboxing my entire life only to reveal the friend I’d long since grown wary of, but never dreamed could be deadly.
So, as the lens that had been placed over my eyes from such an early age finally fell away, I found myself suddenly disoriented and in a new world. Struggling to make sense of it all, but eventually righting myself somewhat, and realizing that I’d never had the tools to get along because I’d been raised by wolves. Raised to go against my own drives, raised to ignore and rise above other women (rather misogynist, isn’t it?) should they be religious or maternal, raised to put my kids down and try to make a name instead for myself. Raised to compete with my infinitely more admirable husband, as if that is conducive to any such marriage or family. Raised to be…nothing I wanted to be at all, and certainly nothing admirable. Yet raised alongside a more sane segment of society that still exists, one I just could only see through this distorted lens but was now ready to join.
Because after all, my choices and endless self deprecation hadn’t been born of any inherent low self esteem, but indoctrination. A campaign of relentless and usually low level shaming, but on occasion from people with an outsized influence over my life, such as the disastrous feminist primary care doctor*. A persistent whine from those like her, amplified once the world went online, that I was lesser, from a society that had once viewed our roles as wives and mothers to be rather fundamental. Because they are fundamental roles, and the slide had always been noticeable, but as someone raised by a Ms. Magazine charter subscriber, it didn’t really require much research on my part to discern the moment or the motive behind this deleterious shift in public opinion. This was the true face of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Modern liberal feminism.
*See essay A Series of Revelations, 2nd in this blog
**Author’s note: in retrospect, barely a month later, this piece seems almost cold, as I was shying away from the catalyst, as I often do, of reproductive coercion. This bandaid is rather safely now ripped off, the dive into the cold pool is complete, I just have yet to be able to express my thoughts on it here yet. For that topic isn’t really about me, is it? It’s about what I was complicit in, the damage done and the scars that will never truly heal. Liberal feminism won’t just steer you against your own self interest and moral core, shaming you against your own offspring, it’ll literally murder them. That’s a rather difficult thing to grapple with, but this note was necessary lest it appear that my entire complaint hinges on a few mean comments. Thank you again for reading.