Suffering does not build character. I say this as a nurse. Pain serves only one purpose; to let you know there is something terribly wrong and that you need to address it. It's the body's 911 system.
This mommy wars BS is so disgusting I want to scream. In the void. Again. Who are you to judge? Doesn't your fairy tale, I mean, holy book, tell you to alleviate suffering where you find it? And to not pass judgment on others? Jeez Lou Eeze...
Survivor of two unwanted pregnancies. Thank Mom Almighty I didn't have to carry either to term, since my reproductive organs are a mess and I know I'm not mom material. Since up to a third of all women are not driven to have babies, but some do (and that never turns out well,) having the audacity to choose your own life and priorities over biology should just be a fact of life.
And if I can't have choice, then life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness has no meaning for me personally.
Just saw a headline on a digest assembled by Texas Impact, the faith-based justice organization I work with, from one of the anti-abortion groups the gist of which was “Kate Cox lied about her baby.”
The GOP makes powerful use, or misuse, of diction. We need a label for the type of woman you describe, one that both describes and satirizes/ridicules. Something like “drama mamas”, but better and more precisely targeted.
I am incensed that the forced birth misogynists want womtn eho have nonviable pregnancies to be forced to suffer emotional as well as possible physical injuries so that they can birth a dead or dying newborn.
How sick are thsee people?
As for the womtn who are playing the trad wife influence game, they need to be called out as hypocrites. These women are paid to pretend to churn butter, mill flour, have their own fabric, etc. In reality they either have other female family members raising their children while they play at being domestic goddesses, or they are employing nannies because being a well paid influencer has become a full time job.
In any case, they are selling a lie.
My mother was happy to be a full time wife and mother, but she depended on our father for an allowance. That still bothers me, even though thry had a happy marriage. I swore to myself that I would not be dependent on a man. Ever.
All of this is tinged with evangelical rhetoric. Those quotes square with the idea that suffering is noble because Jesus suffered for their sins. Everything is supposedly God’s will. Still trying to figure out how these evangelical men suffer like Christ but I digress. When your belief system is predicated on a set of unprovable ideas that some have decided must be true and you add that with a sinner turned saint story and they see proof of God. It’s like confirmation bias on steroids.the women who buy this crap have bought a bill of goods that pays lip service to elevating their subservient status to that of exalted motherhood. If feminists are less happy it’s proof ignorance is bliss because if yiu aren’t upset, you aren’t paying attention.
Promising that earthly suffering will ensure a happy afterlife in a mythical heaven is a way to distract people from acting to improve their lives on this planet.
I have written extensively about the source of this "it is a mother's/woman's duty to suffer" over the past year. It is a Christian Nationalist religious construct drawn from their belief that God cursed Eve for eating the fruit first and "tempting" Adam to fall with her. (We can trace this garbage to St Augustine, who couldn't control his own lust, so he became a priest and instituted the idea that it was up to women to control themselves because men cannot control themselves.) Anyone promoting this "narrative of female suffering" is promoting an extremist Christian Nationalist talking point. It is imperative that we as a nation start calling out this religious fanaticism and helping more Americans know it when they see or hear it.
Andra, you recently explained the psychological gymnastics that CN women go through to rationalize their lives and why/how demaning and judging other women is a key part of it. Perhaps you would like to include a link to it for those who are not familiar with your substack page.
In 1676 in colonial Virginia, black slaves and white indentured servants rebelled against plantation owners/landowners. The slaves and indentured servants outnumbered the landowners that depended on their labor. It was in the landowners interest to end indentured servitude and rely more on slaves and to make the white indentured servants think they were better than the slaves, so they were divided. This is what conservative men do with their wives......"you are so beautiful and feminine serving me, not like those ugly feminist women....I will protect you and you will go to heaven." They are keeping women from linking arms with other women to make all of our lives better. The conservative women think they are better than liberal women because they get the benefit of thinking that men like them more and will protect their position. I could go on and on. I posted a lot today. I took a break after the election and now I'm reinvigorated. Also, I'm in Virginia and we have a job to do to ensure the house of delegates and the state senate stay blue and that we get a blue governor (and a woman) this coming November.
Women are responsible for their own happiness. Nobody is going to do anything for you because you are a martyr. Maybe people who want women to be subjugated to a lower status will praise you for your sacrifice, and a bible written and translated by men will say you are going to heaven, but how helpful will that be to your life? If you truly want to carry that pregnancy, I believe you should be able to and I believe your insurance should provide you whatever support you need. But, same goes if you decide you want to terminate your pregnancy. None of this is black and white, just like none of the other mommy war arguments. We need to support women's decisions about their bodies. As far as the anti-contraception stuff, my girls who are in their 20s know that is bullshit and tell their friends the same. All women and men should be talking to their daughters about this.
The feminine mystique by Betty Friedan needs to be required reading for all young women and men! Limiting women’s human potential/influence to the corridors of their home is detrimental to the woman and the children!
I’m reading “Women Race & Class” by Angela Davis, more expansive history of feminism. Same with “The Trouble With White Women” by Kyla Schuller (a white woman). Both very illuminating multi-ethnic histories of feminism.
And the rest of society. I read The Feminine Mystique in college and it really spoke to me even though I fully planned to be a working mom when I read it, before I read it.
Jessica, you wrote: “The not-so-veiled implication, of course, is that those who decide to end their doomed pregnancies are selfish—unwilling to put in the requisite suffering that ‘good’ mothers take on happily.”
I disagree about wording: “those who decide to end their doomed pregnancies are—MURDERERS”—I believe that’s the language they’ll soon be using for women who want abortions.
But yes, suffering is a big deal for the far-right, and martyrdom.
This one hurts and I couldn't agree more. This trad wife thing is just damn scary. Every time I see something like that I want to go to the person and start demanding everything feminism has given to them (checking accounts, not being raped by their husband). This feels like when women started saying they wanted not to have epidurals and those of us that did were somehow taking the easy way out. And don't get me started on vaccines. If I see one more woman post in my neighborhood group that they are looking for a pediatrician that doesn't require vaccines I could scream. As a woman who worked most of my kid's lives, I saw firsthand the ramifications of the mommy wars and it is sad to see that this issue will be the new wedge.
And the mommy wars makes working women afraid to ask stay at home moms for help and it keeps stay at home moms from making friends with working moms. Also, we don't all stay in the same boat all along. I joined a book club 15 years ago and most of the women in the book club were not working and now they all are. Things change. When I first went back to work after having my first baby, I kept feeling like I was being judged and then read something that said "if you feel like this, maybe you aren't comfortable with your decision," and I realized that I was comfortable with my decision even though it was really hard to return to work after my maternity leave was up. Same goes with breastfeeding. Does anybody really give a shit if their neighbor, friend, co-worker breastfeeds or not?
When I was in the working world I worked with several women who had children. Every one of them, whether they were single moms or married, loved their children. I still remember one telling me about how she dropped her oldest child at daycare, drove off and then pulled off the road to cry.
Conservatives talk a great game about caring about families and it's complete BS. If our society did care about families we would offer more generous paid parental leave, and treat childcare as a respected and decently paid profession.
Thank you, as always, Jessica, for your hard work in disentangling the Orwellian lies of the Christian right. Your TikTok (linked at the reference to Hannah Neeleman) is brilliant.
If there is one thing I’ve learned this past year, it’s that these self righteous conservative women are not victims. They have chosen proximity to power and couldn’t care less about the suffering of others. They are not our sisters. We are not the same. I have indeed noticed the rise of trad wife lifestyle propaganda and cottage-core fashion and it’s disturbing. Hoping there is a huge backlash coming. I feel it in the air!
It totally makes me think of Serena Joy and how she helped create Gilead and then got relegated to her lower status once Gilead existed. She was better off than the handmaids, but her life sucked too.
The women who die while carrying nonviable pregnancies won’t be posting anything. And with Texas and Mississippi doing away with maternal mortality statistics, no one else will be able to post about them.
Suffering does not build character. I say this as a nurse. Pain serves only one purpose; to let you know there is something terribly wrong and that you need to address it. It's the body's 911 system.
This mommy wars BS is so disgusting I want to scream. In the void. Again. Who are you to judge? Doesn't your fairy tale, I mean, holy book, tell you to alleviate suffering where you find it? And to not pass judgment on others? Jeez Lou Eeze...
Survivor of two unwanted pregnancies. Thank Mom Almighty I didn't have to carry either to term, since my reproductive organs are a mess and I know I'm not mom material. Since up to a third of all women are not driven to have babies, but some do (and that never turns out well,) having the audacity to choose your own life and priorities over biology should just be a fact of life.
And if I can't have choice, then life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness has no meaning for me personally.
Just saw a headline on a digest assembled by Texas Impact, the faith-based justice organization I work with, from one of the anti-abortion groups the gist of which was “Kate Cox lied about her baby.”
The GOP makes powerful use, or misuse, of diction. We need a label for the type of woman you describe, one that both describes and satirizes/ridicules. Something like “drama mamas”, but better and more precisely targeted.
I am incensed that the forced birth misogynists want womtn eho have nonviable pregnancies to be forced to suffer emotional as well as possible physical injuries so that they can birth a dead or dying newborn.
How sick are thsee people?
As for the womtn who are playing the trad wife influence game, they need to be called out as hypocrites. These women are paid to pretend to churn butter, mill flour, have their own fabric, etc. In reality they either have other female family members raising their children while they play at being domestic goddesses, or they are employing nannies because being a well paid influencer has become a full time job.
In any case, they are selling a lie.
My mother was happy to be a full time wife and mother, but she depended on our father for an allowance. That still bothers me, even though thry had a happy marriage. I swore to myself that I would not be dependent on a man. Ever.
I don't think most secular-oriented people are going to fall for this nonsense. Let the religious right live in their delusions.
Secular people might nit believe this, but secular people are subject to religious zealots enacting legislation that affect everyone-see Texas
All of this is tinged with evangelical rhetoric. Those quotes square with the idea that suffering is noble because Jesus suffered for their sins. Everything is supposedly God’s will. Still trying to figure out how these evangelical men suffer like Christ but I digress. When your belief system is predicated on a set of unprovable ideas that some have decided must be true and you add that with a sinner turned saint story and they see proof of God. It’s like confirmation bias on steroids.the women who buy this crap have bought a bill of goods that pays lip service to elevating their subservient status to that of exalted motherhood. If feminists are less happy it’s proof ignorance is bliss because if yiu aren’t upset, you aren’t paying attention.
Promising that earthly suffering will ensure a happy afterlife in a mythical heaven is a way to distract people from acting to improve their lives on this planet.
I have written extensively about the source of this "it is a mother's/woman's duty to suffer" over the past year. It is a Christian Nationalist religious construct drawn from their belief that God cursed Eve for eating the fruit first and "tempting" Adam to fall with her. (We can trace this garbage to St Augustine, who couldn't control his own lust, so he became a priest and instituted the idea that it was up to women to control themselves because men cannot control themselves.) Anyone promoting this "narrative of female suffering" is promoting an extremist Christian Nationalist talking point. It is imperative that we as a nation start calling out this religious fanaticism and helping more Americans know it when they see or hear it.
St. Augustine and his apologist (the Catholic Church) have a LOT of explaining to do.
Andra, you recently explained the psychological gymnastics that CN women go through to rationalize their lives and why/how demaning and judging other women is a key part of it. Perhaps you would like to include a link to it for those who are not familiar with your substack page.
I think you’re referring to this newsletter, Tamarra. But I have many more on this topic:
https://open.substack.com/pub/andrawatkins/p/comparison-is-the-thief-of-joy?r=1ohjc1&utm_medium=ios
In 1676 in colonial Virginia, black slaves and white indentured servants rebelled against plantation owners/landowners. The slaves and indentured servants outnumbered the landowners that depended on their labor. It was in the landowners interest to end indentured servitude and rely more on slaves and to make the white indentured servants think they were better than the slaves, so they were divided. This is what conservative men do with their wives......"you are so beautiful and feminine serving me, not like those ugly feminist women....I will protect you and you will go to heaven." They are keeping women from linking arms with other women to make all of our lives better. The conservative women think they are better than liberal women because they get the benefit of thinking that men like them more and will protect their position. I could go on and on. I posted a lot today. I took a break after the election and now I'm reinvigorated. Also, I'm in Virginia and we have a job to do to ensure the house of delegates and the state senate stay blue and that we get a blue governor (and a woman) this coming November.
Women are responsible for their own happiness. Nobody is going to do anything for you because you are a martyr. Maybe people who want women to be subjugated to a lower status will praise you for your sacrifice, and a bible written and translated by men will say you are going to heaven, but how helpful will that be to your life? If you truly want to carry that pregnancy, I believe you should be able to and I believe your insurance should provide you whatever support you need. But, same goes if you decide you want to terminate your pregnancy. None of this is black and white, just like none of the other mommy war arguments. We need to support women's decisions about their bodies. As far as the anti-contraception stuff, my girls who are in their 20s know that is bullshit and tell their friends the same. All women and men should be talking to their daughters about this.
The feminine mystique by Betty Friedan needs to be required reading for all young women and men! Limiting women’s human potential/influence to the corridors of their home is detrimental to the woman and the children!
I’m reading “Women Race & Class” by Angela Davis, more expansive history of feminism. Same with “The Trouble With White Women” by Kyla Schuller (a white woman). Both very illuminating multi-ethnic histories of feminism.
And the rest of society. I read The Feminine Mystique in college and it really spoke to me even though I fully planned to be a working mom when I read it, before I read it.
I can't help but notice the Christian undertones through it all as well: women deserve to suffer because Eve ate the apple. Ugh.
ding ding ding!
Jessica, you wrote: “The not-so-veiled implication, of course, is that those who decide to end their doomed pregnancies are selfish—unwilling to put in the requisite suffering that ‘good’ mothers take on happily.”
I disagree about wording: “those who decide to end their doomed pregnancies are—MURDERERS”—I believe that’s the language they’ll soon be using for women who want abortions.
But yes, suffering is a big deal for the far-right, and martyrdom.
That's true - I man, they're saying it already. Just not as explicitly. Sigh
This one hurts and I couldn't agree more. This trad wife thing is just damn scary. Every time I see something like that I want to go to the person and start demanding everything feminism has given to them (checking accounts, not being raped by their husband). This feels like when women started saying they wanted not to have epidurals and those of us that did were somehow taking the easy way out. And don't get me started on vaccines. If I see one more woman post in my neighborhood group that they are looking for a pediatrician that doesn't require vaccines I could scream. As a woman who worked most of my kid's lives, I saw firsthand the ramifications of the mommy wars and it is sad to see that this issue will be the new wedge.
And the mommy wars makes working women afraid to ask stay at home moms for help and it keeps stay at home moms from making friends with working moms. Also, we don't all stay in the same boat all along. I joined a book club 15 years ago and most of the women in the book club were not working and now they all are. Things change. When I first went back to work after having my first baby, I kept feeling like I was being judged and then read something that said "if you feel like this, maybe you aren't comfortable with your decision," and I realized that I was comfortable with my decision even though it was really hard to return to work after my maternity leave was up. Same goes with breastfeeding. Does anybody really give a shit if their neighbor, friend, co-worker breastfeeds or not?
When I was in the working world I worked with several women who had children. Every one of them, whether they were single moms or married, loved their children. I still remember one telling me about how she dropped her oldest child at daycare, drove off and then pulled off the road to cry.
Conservatives talk a great game about caring about families and it's complete BS. If our society did care about families we would offer more generous paid parental leave, and treat childcare as a respected and decently paid profession.
YES! Very much related to the rise of 'natural' motherhood, I think
Thank you, as always, Jessica, for your hard work in disentangling the Orwellian lies of the Christian right. Your TikTok (linked at the reference to Hannah Neeleman) is brilliant.
Thank you, Don!
If there is one thing I’ve learned this past year, it’s that these self righteous conservative women are not victims. They have chosen proximity to power and couldn’t care less about the suffering of others. They are not our sisters. We are not the same. I have indeed noticed the rise of trad wife lifestyle propaganda and cottage-core fashion and it’s disturbing. Hoping there is a huge backlash coming. I feel it in the air!
It totally makes me think of Serena Joy and how she helped create Gilead and then got relegated to her lower status once Gilead existed. She was better off than the handmaids, but her life sucked too.
The women who die while carrying nonviable pregnancies won’t be posting anything. And with Texas and Mississippi doing away with maternal mortality statistics, no one else will be able to post about them.