LynnS's blog

Cross-posted from Diary of a New Homemaker

Becky says Linda Hirschman gets it wrong again, and I agree. So much so, I feel a rant coming on and I've ditched today's planned "sermon" in favor of it.

Being a mother, I'm just plain tired in general. But these days I'm especially tired of people like Hirschman and her counterpart, Leslie Bennetts. They can both bite me, and so can the media that keeps setting these tired old arguments up.

I am tired of being told to be a good little feminist and do what's good for "women" instead of what's good for my family and myself. I am tired of being told I'm betraying the sisterhood by staying home. I am tired of listening to academics and pundits, claiming to be feminists, holding on to classist second wave claptrap like that espoused by these two. And I am most tired of the focus being put upon individual women rather than the society that makes it increasingly impossible for families to exist these days.

Why must academic feminists keep buying into the corporatist framework--that the only work worth doing is paid work? The corporatist philosophy leads to the dissolving of both familial and community ties, and everything becomes for sale, everything is a commodity. Motherhood is for sale--for that's what a daycare is, isn't it? Paid motherhood? I am not a commodity. You are not a commodity. Our children and our partners are not commodities.

CK will be down for an upgrade today.

[Liza suggested I cross-post this from my main site, The New Homemaker.--Lynn]

Over at the new-ish blog Mother Talkers, Amy points to a program in Wichita that is the kind of thing I wish anti-abortion people would take to heart. I have been saying this for years: The issue is not whether to outlaw abortion or not, the issue is, are we going to be there for women and children who need us?

I am personally pro-life, to the point that for me the only exception is life of the mother; after eight weeks, that's a baby as far as I'm concerned, and it's not that child's fault if it's the product of rape or incest.

At the same time I recognize the utter futility of outlawing abortion, especially without providing some form of help for women faced with unwanted or inopportune pregnancies. And "inopportune" is so not the right word, but it's the best one I've got at hand. The Choices program gives me hope, because as things stand now all we have are two polarized political bureaucracies who stand to gain from never moving forward on this issue.