How Women Wrecked the World
A great many ills of our current world can be placed squarely on the shoulders of women. Or rather, on the fact that they who supported our world shrugged off their noble role.
Perhaps this is not the best way to start my first post here, but it has been begun, and anyway it is a piece worth saying however unpleasant it might be to those who disagree.
Interest in recent documentaries such as Food, Inc. and The Future of Food has raised concerns about our food supply. The credit crisis has raised questions about the sanity of our economic system. Fertility rates are declining to below replacement rates, not only in China and Italy but now in the United States. Finally, or perhaps not so final in this litany of human terrors, there is now believed to be a crisis in creativity in the U.S.
I can find one common thread to point to. While it is not the answer to all of these issues, it is rather like identifying the saboteur responsible for the immediate ills: women.
The average woman today is herself hardly at fault, she has been betrayed, as her mother before her, and possibly even as her grandmother had been. The generations before were seduced and tricked into abdicating their thrones in the name of progress and equality.
All of the initiative to smash the idea of a woman’s place at home has resulted in the modern mess of the despotism of capitalists, an adulterated food supply, and the coming doom of underpopulation.
I can practically here the collective gasp and the murmurs against this article already. The cliche “Barefoot, Pregnant and in the Kitchen!” come to your mind and almost to your lips. Let me beat you to it: that’s not a bad place to visit next.
Barefoot Why are drugstore aisles filled with products for relieving the pain of women’s feet? Why is it everywhere in offices when the client is gone and the boss is absent the women kick off their shoes while at their desk? While feminists sneer about women being barefoot, the high-heeled shackles worn by their ideal woman seem to be the greater evil. Impractical fashion, of which the high-heeled shoe is only one example I give here, is a symptom of the working woman’s plight – she requires more attention to her clothes, even to the point of impractical and painful footwear, in order to feel right in the workplace. Why is this, if it is her natural place?
Pregnant While the failures of the education system may be many, the rank ignorance on this aspect is pitiful and shameful. Humans need to reproduce. To reproduce, women must endure the uncomfortable stage of pregnancy and birth. However uncomfortable the process might be, I know a great many women that enjoy the period expectation and, quite literally, “the fruits of their labor.” Why is fertility derided, and sterility praised? What future generation can you be improving the world for, if more and more women despise pregnancy and push child raising to the bottom of their priorities? Perhaps their mothers neglected to tell them how future generations would come to being, and left such things to be taught by schools.
In the Kitchen When a queen abdicates her throne, she throws the kingdom into chaos. This is no different in the home. Who manages a home when the housewife goes to work? The solution is very much the same as it is in the office: it is outsourced to those less competent, and who care less.
We are now finding what terrible things have been done to our food supply, because women have been given over to convenience and pre-packaged meals with more preservatives than real substance, farming out their children to schools and extra-curricular activities – a ballooning cost of which is reflected in the property taxes that continually eat into her (and her husband’s) earnings.
In the dawn of the industrial revolution, William Cobbett tried to rally people to the coming doom which we now experience. He laid out in Cottage Economy the cost of goods against the cost of producing them at home, just as the Tightwad Gazette and other thrift publications did a century and a half later. But Cobbett didn’t lose sight of the fact that his works were a last-ditch revolutionary effort to save his county, even humanity – and his frustration showed.
After pointing out that a housewife earned as much as her husband by her work in the home, and fully one sixth of the household income was saved by the singular task of baking bread, Cobbett writes:
How wasteful then, and indeed how shameful, for a labourer’s wife to go to the baker’s shop, and how negligent, how criminally careless of the welfare of his family, must the labourer be, who permits so scandalous a use of the proceeds of his labour!
It has been shown time and time again that a second income can, in fact, worsen a household income. How wasteful, how shameful, and how criminally careless for their family’s welfare are those willing two-income households.
Perhaps women could have broken the back of retail giants such as WalMart – who to sell cheaply manufactured food to, if homes still produced basic necessities? I have little doubt that women could, and perhaps still can.
Instead of defending the values of home production, women have set their aspirations beneath them, to be wage-salves like the men who fell first. This is not a placement of blame, but a spotlight on just how important the role of the barefoot and pregnant woman in the kitchen is to humanity.
About author:
Wayne is a writer with Eternal Revolution. He can be found on Twitter at twitter.com/NapoleonofHill and can be reached by email at [email protected] You can find Smith & Wayne on Facebook as well.
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18 Responses to “How Women Wrecked the World”
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- I don’t have time to blog all of these properly | occultrick
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Gee, a world where the biggest problems are pre-packaged food and women’s desire to put of having children sounds like a nice place to vacation. Gotta be better than here. What does the flight cost?
Well, I guess I suppose that a conglomerate controlling 90% of seed production using e.coli to genetically manipulate seeds, inserting sterility chromosomes into our food supply, as well as the top-heavy social security system, aging population, and abortion pale in comparison to insurance industry profits being too high.
A 1,000 word blog post was a bit on the short side for a venue on the entire impact and ramifications of those attitudes, I guess I supposed the readership could connect the dots from recognized root causes to the headlines.
Well Wayne, you DID leave out the tie-in of feminism and the failure of education. They obviously don’t teach logic or “root causes” in schools, just politics and sham economics.
We’ve got quite a task ahead of us, bro.
First let me say, I’d push back just as hard if you wrote an essay on “How Men Wrecked the World”. Now:
Wayne, even assuming your paranoid-sounding fears of Monsanto are all well-founded, I think you’ve wandered away from your original argument. After all, if women had stayed in the kitchen and everybody ate home-cooked meals, that wouldn’t remove any of the profit motive that drives Monsanto to try to dominate their industry. What does a preference for pre-packaged food have to do with seed patents and agri-science? I’m willing to bet without even googling it that Monsanto executives are for the most part men. I have little doubt that most of the evil scientists in white lab coats that are poisoning our food are men too. Social Security? Created by men. Demographic crisis, contraception, and abortion? Ok, women may hold all the keys to the reproductive machinery, but ask yourself, which of these scenarios seems more likely to be prevalent?
1) Woman wants a child and husband or live-in boyfriend does not.
2) Man wants a child but wife or live-in girlfriend does not.
Hmm…
PS: You obviously didn’t read my thing on insurance industry profits.
I’m sorry, I didn’t read your post on insurance industry profits. I grabbed the headline from your to see what issues you saw were so pressing.
However, I’m not feeling a great deal of remorse as I can’t see how you possibly read my article and made the above comments. The point wasn’t about what gender created the mess we live in (in fact quite the opposite was explicitly said).
Kevin and I go way back – he’s no troll (I hope you weren’t getting that idea anyway).
I must admit I am a bit surprised at some of his recent expressions of opinion, though. But he’s well intentioned and intelligent.
[Paul, thanks for your kind words. I've had a whirlwind of discussions over the past couple years as a lot of people that I otherwise agree with have embraced a Distributist view of economics. I'm a Chesterton fan, but a lot has happened in the last hundred years and even today the study of economics is probably still emerging from infancy.]
I should lay out a distinction: There are problems in our world that are distinctly related to the behavior and choices of women as opposed to men. There are also some problems in our society that you can point to as serious, alarming, and building towards crises — our “big problems”. I don’t see a lot of overlap between those two categories.
Some of the things you mention fall into one and some fall into the other. But I don’t think you’ve successfully made the case that any really serious problem is related specifically to women (even holding aside the blame.)
For instance… Prepackaged food & fast food: definitely related to women working outside of the home, but ultimately not a big deal in the grand scheme of things.
On the other hand… Monopolistic seed patents: definitely has the potential to cause a worldwide crisis if governments can’t be persuaded to act against corporate interests. Serious, but not related to the issue of women’s behavior. If women were home baking bread every day they’d still be buying grain from farmers that use Monsanto seeds. (And I’ve not heard elsewhere that Big Food is making us sterile, but again, how is that related to women?)
Demographic crisis & Social Security insolvency falls under the second category as well. Serious, but not obviously related to women’s behavior more than men. Both genders have undergone a change in thinking on this issue, but from what I see women have more desire to have children and raise the next generation than men. If anything, this one is on us. If a large number of men wanted big families, I’m convinced that there would be more than enough women happy to go along with it.
For comparison, here’s my list of our biggest problems. I might be forgetting something, but this is what comes to mind:
Spiritually: A cowardly, effeminate, and often heretical clergy who do not challenge or exhort their flock to holiness.
Educationally: (three-fold) First, too much focus on the right (ie left) conclusions, and not enough focus on the ability to reason soundly. Second, an almost exclusive focus on improving students with poor intelligence and bad attitudes, instead of challenging those who are willing and able to reach great heights. Third, (a cause of problems elsewhere) the repudiation and abandonment of patriotic propoganda and genuine civics topics.
Economically: A choking web of regulation and taxation that discourages enterprise.
Politically: An unengaged electorate, greedy for handouts and quick fixes, who frankly are getting eager to cast off the burden of liberty in favor of a benevolent dictatorship.
Food: Just kidding. There is nothing wrong with our food except that some people made poor choices in what they eat.
I admire you for speaking out on the real need for women to have an impact on home life. I also have to tell you that men need to have a strong impact on home life too. (I know some of the high heels women wear look rather painful. Nevertheless, pregnancy can bring on some pretty serious physical difficulties for some women too – all the way to one’s feet!) Many men are also caught up in the business world and can be totally or mildly uninterested and disengaged in home life. I know it is important to be able to make it today in a high tech, fast paced world to support a family at times. It is a shame that work at home has been given such a bad rap for both women and men. I know for me, as a woman, I had a very difficult time transitioning to motherhood because my education and friendships took up too much of my time as a young girl. I didn’t want my own children to go through this. That is one of the reasons we’ve chosen to homeschool our children during the elementary and middle school years so that they can attain a deeper appreciation and respect for the home before technology tries to wisk them away from understanding the beauty behind God’s plan for family life. I often admire the days of old where things were more simple and neighborhoods and families really connected with eachother. I do appreciate technology but not when it can rob us of what is really important. I definately agree with Kevin here.
Thanks Eileen! We homeschool our 5 children as well.
I don’t think Wayne’s intent was to put the blame fully on women for the state of the world, but to subtly point out the impact, or lack thereof, that the role they take can make. It wasn’t a comparison of men v. women but the downplay of the importance of the role of “homemaker” and, I believe, a tip of the hat to the women who have traditionally taken that role.
I’ve seen a dramatic difference growing up among other homeschool families in which the father was a co-educator and active in the home, indifferent to the idea of homeschooling, or outright at odds with the mother on the decision. It’s certainly not our opinion that men are important as well or to share the blame – Wayne tends to be hyper-focused on one aspect or idea when writing or speaking (not unlike the namesake he took).
Thanks again!
Call me Marabelle Morgan, but I loved this post. I am a proud housewife with a Masters Degree. My sisters and friends who are also housewives include former attorneys, corporate vice presidents, and doctors.
We are smart enough to know what you say is true, and happy to live it. We scoff at those who think us stupid to stay home. We are in charge of the future. The most the working mom seems to control is the minivan.
Wayne, what a great, thought provoking post, thanks so much for your thoughts, will be chewing all day….
thanks
Fantastic. Sure, the feminists will froth and foam, but then so does the ocean – and we know how tumultuous and unstable water can be. Let the waters roar, you’re on dry ground with this post. Good post, good work, keep it up.
Interesting, how men have so much to do with this.
As Sor Juana Ines of the Cross said in her poem, which can be found both in spanish and in a somewhat traduced version: http://cricketina.blogspot.com/2005/09/redondillas-i.html
Cheers!
I must say, I have been looking at the book “Christian Samurai” by Paul, and I am rather concerned by these opinions. I understand that Eve did eat the apple first, however blame does lie on Adam for eating it. Blaming all the travesties of the world on the shoulders of the women is rather narrow minded, in my opinion.
Also, I must wonder then if you are insinuating some great evil in my household. I, an autistic male who broke his back a few years ago, is not able to work the kind of labor I have and work to find employment to the best of my adjusted ability. My wife, a grade school teacher is the proverbial bread winner, aside from my mediocre disability. As I am the one at home, I am the stay at home parent for my soon to be 2 sons. I do not keep an immaculate home, but it is full of love and strives to serve the Lord.
I agree that our food sources are tainted. I cannot blame women for them solely. Take into account that the majority of the corporations and scientists behind these foods for the last 30 years have been males. It hasn’t been until this recession we are in that the ration of males vs females in the workplace has shifted. I see the argument that women could be the primary consumer on a retail end. However corporations always make their decisions based on the bottom line, not gender roles.
Also, to quote your last line “this is not a placement of blame,” sir you contradict yourself when you say “A great many ills of our current world can be placed squarely on the shoulders of women.” That is like a child saying “I hate you mommy” then saying “but I didn’t mean it” when they realize they hurt her feelings.
Eve was created from Adam’s rib, as to walk beside Adam, not beneath or behind. That said women have just as much place in the work place.
@Paul
I do not know your affiliation with the author of this post. I would like to know your thoughts on this matter as a part of determining if your book is right for my purchase.
This kind of post always bugs me, and I’m a pregnant stay-at-home mom of 3 children aged 4 and under, who adores cooking and prefers to go barefoot.
I think its great if women decide they want to stay at home, but I also have no problem with women who pursue interests or employement outside of the home. The vocation to motherhood can still be the main focus of a mother’s life whether she stays at home or not. There is nothing wrong with wearing heels, unless you don’t want to wear them and you’re doing it anyways. There is nothing wrong with limiting your family size if you feel called to, better to have children that you can love and care for then to simply keep producing them just to produce them. And honestly, there are many options for eating healthy (including husbands who can contribute to cooking just as easily as their wives) and even if you are eating less than healthy foods, there are worse things that could happen to you.
This one-size-fits-all mentality regardless of personality, gifts or happiness of the people involved is just another example of someones perfectionism being used to guilt trip others into living an unauthentic life. I am happy being a stay-at-home mom, but another mom may not be. Better to have a happy involved working mother of 3, than a depressed bored emotionally distant mom of 13. These are life descisions that belong to each person, there is no “perfect” way, there is no one-size-fits-all.
When I saw the title to this post I had to laugh. It looked like an excellent gag. I sobered up pretty quickly once I started reading…
”All of the initiative to smash the idea of a woman’s place at home has resulted in the modern mess of the despotism of capitalists, an adulterated food supply, and the coming doom of underpopulation.”
Firstly, there is absolutely no way to correlate any of the three ‘results’ to the supposed cause.
–Capitalism emerged nearly a century before the Woman’s movement became publicly active. Men, in fact, are responsible for the majority of economic abuses of the twentieth century, considering that for centuries women were very deliberately excluded from any exercise of power or control in economic or political spheres. Although it would seem ludicrous to try and ‘blame’ capitalism on a particular group of people, if you wanted to make that assumption women would logically have to be one of the least likely targets. Women working today are participating in a structured economy which dictates a subjected to a sytem of inequalities, though they had very little contributions to its construction.
—-The food supply? Its hard for me to accept that you are actually serious about this one. The technological revolutions which have produced current agricultural practices can hardly be blamed on women. I don’t see why its productive to play the blame game here, but if you were looking for a culprit, big food corporations and technological innovations were primarily driven by men. Once again there is no correlation with women.
—The coming doom of underpopulation. Ah, this is news to me. Check out the link. http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2010/07/population-index-overpopulated
Although I don’t think we are necessarily in a crisis of overpopulation, I don’t think you need to have any worries about the human species propagating itself.
You seem to hate the idea of women having any sort of choice…you simply state that women are best suited for the home life. I am not going to argue whether they are or are not, but don’t you think women should be allowed to decide for themselves where they are most productive?
Can you agree with the idea that men and women are of equal worth and should be treated with dignity?
If you support gender equality, you support feminism.
And although you seemed to think feminism is anathema, [ and I’ll admit there is a wide spectrum of feminist thought], I
I enjoy the idea of being able to freely exercise my right to vote; own a business/property and land, chose to have a child or not, chose to get married or not, work in any career field of my choice, become further educated, run for political office if I see fit; hell even be able wear whatever I feel is suitable for whatever occasion I’m engaged in. I can even sign legally binding contracts without the co-sign of a husband or male family member. These are the civil liberties that feminists fought for, that I as a woman may enjoy to date.
And these expanded public roles have allowed women to fight to bring awareness to domestic violence, rape/sexual assault and child molestation. Women have brought attention to educational and healthcare issues, and sought legislative and judicial recourse to put an end to human trafficking and the sex slave trade.
To sum it all up —– I think you better start making your own sandwiches.
I will admit there has been a lot of mirthful laughter behind the scenes here.
It appears to us that a great many of you have read the title, skimmed the article, and reacted while missing the main point. In a nutshell, it’s a satirical homage to women, not a put down for the individual choices a woman might make in today’s world. Quite honestly, we are left wondering if this had been published with a woman’s name as author if it would have been better received.
The article was not about choice or freedom. It is about the division of labor. An independent workforce, and the family unit. Gender has little to do with it other than our historical roles.
150 years ago, we did not farm out our children to schools for education. We did not buy produce grown in South America. Bread and chickens did not have to be stuffed with preservatives to become virtually non-perishable and quite possibly inedible. Learning was a process tailored to the student, not the student to the school.
Traditionally and historically, these critical needs were met by a universal craftsman vs the specialist craftsmen. The specialist might be the printer, the blacksmith, the shopkeeper. The universal craftsmen managed a household by producing a domestic supply of food, clothing, and education to the youth. Traditionally and historically, this was the wife of the printer, the wife of the blacksmith, and the wife of the shopkeeper.
With the industrial revolution, this changed. The independent craftsmen all but disappeared in the workplace, but also in the home. Almost none of the food a modern family eats is self-produced. Having to sit on a grocer’s shelves or be trucked to consumers has led to changes in how food is produced and treated, which has led to a radical change in what we are actually eating, to point out just one of the issues Wayne mentioned in the article. The fact is any one of those points has already generated dozens of documentaries, societies, books and essays – it’s not something to turn into a series of essays on this comment stream.
We don’t condone putting today’s women on the spot for the issues of the modern world any more than Swift actually wanted the English to eat Irish babies.
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