Impossible Things To Believe Before Breakfast:
5. A car with two steering wheels, two gas pedals and two brakes drives more efficiently than a car with one steering wheel, one gas pedal and one brake which is why marriage should always be an equal partnership.
Hi Erick!
Been working since 12:30 am with a 2 hr nap this afternoon, so this is going to be extremely truncated.
Two steering wheels, two brakes, etc. sounds like a good idea but I think it's a recipe for disaster in the domestic sphere. Originating in the fact that men are naturally more hunter-gatherers and women "nesters". The problem comes in because the average man's standards for domestic work are very low. The Off-White House is "not filthy" but it is not clean to the point of a woman's standards. Women do more housework because their standards are much, much higher. Something that isn't 97% clean for a woman is seen by them as potentially unhealthy. Which it is.
The IDEAL is nice: we'll BOTH do the housework. For a woman, a man's standards of "not filthy" just look like slacking, not caring, freeloading. We're supposed to BOTH be doing the housework. The house is going to look FILTHY to you long before it looks filthy to me so you'll clean it before I do. And resent it if I don't.
I think we will get back to what worked up to 1970 and which still works in much of the world: women in charge of the domestic environment and men in charge of "resources" or hunting gathering or whatever you want to call it. If it's how things are done GENERALLY in nature, then you are going to see that in the human sphere. Unless ideologues take over and decide to make the human sphere different from nature. The Feminist Theocracy wants the natural split eradicated, but that's purely self-interest, I think. For a "nester" to force herself to NOT be a "nester" and be a hunter-gatherer is cutting off her nose to spite her face. Which is easy for a masculine woman or a woman who wants to BE masculine. Better a pure Feminist Theocracy face with no nose on it than an "oppressed, subjugated" nose making a mockery of her Feminist Theocracy face. Women who accept that a nose and a face go together are going to be happier in the long run, GENERALLY.
"You wait 'til your father gets home". The other thing that used to exist was masculine discipline and corporal punishment. "A mother's heart contains nothing but love". I saw that on a sampler once. Very true! That's why they're lousy disciplinarians GENERALLY. They want their children to love them and they want their children to be happy 24/7. A spanked child is an unhappy child. Temporary unhappiness is important if an important lesson needs to be learned. Men are better able to suck it up in that area than women are, GENERALLY.
HOWEVER, because we live in a Feminist Theocracy, husbands and fathers have no rights. As long as you're zigging when she's zigging and zagging when she's zagging two steering wheels are fine. If you try to start steering the domestic sphere in a different direction from the one she wants, in how your children are reared, in particular, you are in danger of finding out that your rights got legislated away decades ago in Family Law. She owns your children, lock, stock and barrel.
I went through the custody battle for Craig Miller's daughter from the sidelines. I kept trying to tell him, Craig, you're going to lose (I held out a slim hope that because it was a Texas vs. Ohio thing, with Craig in Texas -- well, I mean, okay. TEXAS. Father's rights, right? -- No sir). Take what she gives you because that's ALL you're going to get and be prepared to say goodbye to your daughter permanently.
Getting married and having a child when you don't understand HOW much of a Feminist Theocracy we live in. Well, I feel for you, in a way (Apart from the fact that I'm not a "feel" kind of guy). But you should have recognized the nutcracker you were putting yourself into. A father is going to LOVE his kid(s). Definite CAPS. You will be deeply, deeply connected. But, you will not have a legal leg to stand on. Even when the courts find in your favour, they will not ENFORCE that decision. A Feminist Theocracy mother is a steamroller and she WILL flatten you if she's decided that you are in the way. NO court will go toe-to-toe with a mother and TELL her to do something. SHE will do what she thinks is best. Period. And the court WILL get out of her way.
Craig and his wife, like all couples, started out with the best will in the world to have a completely equal "two steering wheel two brake car". It's nice when it works. But when it doesn't work, it's a bloodbath.
When I visit the 5K (5 kids) Kitchens, I spend most of my time in the kitchen, because I want to visit with Mike AND Erika. If I sit in the living room or the dining room, I'll see Erika for 20 seconds until she thinks of something ELSE she needs to do in the kitchen. I stay out of the way. But it's wonderful to watch. It's like a ballet. A woman who IS just who she is: a wife and mother, given over wholly to what I'm pretty sure are MOST women's natural interests and enjoyments.
No way of proving that "MOST", and -- 46 years into the Feminist Theocracy -- I'll never live to see it reassert itself, but I'm pretty sure it will.
Okay. Prayer time.
10 comments:
"I think we will get back to what worked up to 1970 and which still works in much of the world: women in charge of the domestic environment and men in charge of "resources" or hunting gathering or whatever you want to call it. If it's how things are done GENERALLY in nature, then you are going to see that in the human sphere."
There's quite a lot of evidence on how humans live in hunter-gatherer societies. As far as science knows, the most common (but not universal) pre-agricultural arrangement is that men hunt and women gather.
There's no evidence, as far as I know, for the theory that men hunted and gathered while women "nested." In fact, that theory seems to contradict literally everything we know about pre-agricultural sex roles.
Dave and Barry,
Dave did you see that Madonna lost custody to her ex-husband? And guess who is paying alimony?
Barry, excellent point.
In modern day African and Amazonian hunter-gatherer tribes we see the men hunt and the women not only take care of the children but gather the fruits and vegetables, and maintain whatever minimal farming is being done. They also - and I am going to use a Sim favorite the capital letters -PROTECT the home and children while the men folk are out hunting meat and getting high licking frogs.
Up until 80 years ago in the United States 36% of all American families made their living from agriculture - farming. It is only 3% now. That is back breaking work that no single person man or woman can do in their own. It took all hands on deck to survive.
I rarely comment here, but as far as I know, Craig Miller had full custody of his daughter. She lived with him until he died. He had some tough legal battles, yes; but even here in Texas, he won.
John Thorne
I have a question for Erick.
Did you anticipate or want this much attention and response from Dave to your blog comment on the "Impossible Things to Believe Before Breakfast"?
Does it feel overwhelming?
Glen,
I thought Dave might respond, but not on a daily basis. But it is giving all of us an interesting window into his current thinking.
John Thorne, that is correct about Craig Miller. Every court case he had over this, he prevailed. I was speaking with him just a week before his untimely death and he had sent a video interview to be used on CerebusTV.
I am not sure the analogy of the car works for me. it seems to me that even -- and especially -- in Dave's "ideal" marriage of the stay home mom and the working father, marriage is an equal partnership. In the case of the stay home mom/working father, the work the mom is doing is every bit as valuable and necessary as the father's.
There will always be areas where a compromise must be reached, but that is true in any partnership, not just marriage. Anything else is a boss/employee relationship, and that's not the makings of a healthy family.
I do agree the laws/court system tend to favor mothers, probably to a fault, however this is based only on the cases that make the newspaper, which, let's face it, are only the most extreme examples, not garden variety cases known to only the people involved.
Something to ponder...does Dave's argument present the basis for the inequality in the court system? Positing: the courts make a basis of decision on care and well-being. As divorce and custody began to be more a court decision (1960s? 1970s?) the women were a small percentage of the workforce. The vast many homes were single income, with men being that income. The court is then faced with making a decision: keep the care of the child to the mother, keep the income steady and not have the child without daily family care.
It takes years...decades even...for the court systems to begin to change course. They rely so much on precedent for making decisions, that what was basis in the 1960s rulings still rule the decisions today.
So, if my hypothesis is correct (and I've done zero.point.zero zero research), then the very complaint Dave is making on custody is derived from his very preferred family arrangements.
Ironic, doncha think?
This is my favorite of all the Impossible Things. Its purity of conception, vividness of imagery, and specificity of rationale; all of these combine to make for a delightful focal point upon which the brain can wrestle.
Of course, that fascination is all for the wrong reasons, because it is so clearly and certainly such a painfully untrue premise. After all, the idea behind this list is that these are things one must believe to be a good feminist. It's not a bunch of jokes, nor a catalog of outlandish send-ups. There was a time it seemed obvious that this list was an exaggeration, a parody, a sharp-edged bit of lampooning the approach of feminists.
Yet here we are, many years later, and there's still this talk of "disproving" this masterstroke of philosophical skewering. What is there to disprove?
No one, not a single person, dog, nor fruit bat, on this planet or another, looks at this Impossible Thing as a truism. The analogy of two cars and two steering wheels, clearly intended to highlight how fallacious is the idea of an equal partnership, instead invalidates the entire "reasoning" the statement is intended to support.
Instead, please allow those of us who consider Dave's anti-feminism to be misplaced, overstated and wildly incorrect - me among them - to offer a replacement Possible Thing.
5. Marriage (gay, straight, formal or informal) is the bringing together of two lives, neither of which is more intrinsically important than the other. If marriage works properly, each party sacrifices things to maintain the pairing, and each party gains things from the union. Because two separate beings will invariably have different ideas regarding individual decisions and directions, each marriage should begin with the recognition that compromise by each party is a necessity for its smooth operation, which is why marriage should be an equal partnership in concept and, wherever possible, in execution.
That is a conception of feminist thinking I would be more than happy to debate. You want to say that doesn't represent the position of the average feminist because it isn't sufficiently radical in favor of women? Well, we can certainly talk about who's closer to the truth of what women want. At least in that scenario, I don't have someone marking the ground for the debate and then handing me something in which neither I nor anyone else believes as "my side" of the argument. I'll pass on you choosing my weapon for me, thank you.
2+2=4: if you're going to declare that people have a chance to "disprove" something, you must first begin with an absolute ability to "prove" that same thing. So when you can prove that specific statement about impractical cars with multiple, drivers-ed style steering wheels is something people actually do believe, and then show that it is the REASON people think marriage should be an equal partnership, we can make that a point of discussion - until then, stop declaring that the argument of your opponents. It's insulting, and it's silly.
--Bill Kremer
Bill, my own response was this
A camel with two humps stores more enriched reserves of nourishment in tissues than a one humped camel.
If you are gonna spout silly you are gonna get silly in return
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