I've been trying to blog about Beardy Nonsense Kicker's lecture to the female graduates of Benedictine College without making it personal but it's been tricky.
I was a homemaker. It was my choice, a choice that went against the advice of every older, wiser woman I knew at the time, all of whom advised me to keep at least one foot in the world of paid work.
No one has ever been able to tell me anything. I've always done whatever it was I wanted to do.
Radical responsibility, radical responsibility, radical responsibility.
No regrets (kidding, I've got a million of 'em). But taking radical responsibility for my choices in life has freed me up, not just from blaming others, but from blaming myself.
Who knew?
A wild and crazy guy in a purple suit on YouTube.
The problem with homemaking in straight marriages is that straight marriage is already to the advantage of young men, who don't always handle it with grace and equanimity. Add in children and the power imbalance becomes even more pronounced, a power imbalance young women don't realize has always been there until it's too late and we're stuck living in it.
"Only women bleed." (Alice Cooper)
Here's the thing about homemaking: it's isolating, comes with zero social status, there's no money in it, and, in my experience, young husbands aren't mature enough to appreciate the sacrifice young wives make when we give up our money-grubbing ways - even when it's our choice - so they can climb the money-grubbing ladder and be heroes of their own story, a live in cook, housekeeper and babysitter running interference for them back at the old homestead.
Cripes I wasn't mature enough to appreciate it until blogging the paragraph above. I can practically feel my blood pressure rising as I realize how ripped off I was in divorce.
Oh boy was I ripped off in divorce.
Oops. Radical responsibility, radical responsibility, radical responsibility.
I chose to leave the married life, homemaking, to become the hero of my story, not a bit character in his, and I guess not my children's either.
Because here's the other problem with homemaking: half of marriages don't last. That's a lot of marriages. And we marry, many of us, because time invested, clock's a tickin', and so we rope one off from the herd to get down to the business of procreating.
More often than not, I swear to Gord, we don't even like each other by the time we say "I do".
There's nothing quite like growing up a young Feminist in Northern Ontario and ending up a homemaker in a different city every couple of years, married to a young man who used to make much less money than yourself, who believes he deserves better now that you don't make any at all (and who in this capitalist Patriarchal hellscape constantly trying to alpha dog our liberal Feminist democracy can blame him?) and who takes your existence for granted such that marriage begins to feel more like a practical joke you've played on yourself, a colicky trap, instead of the partnership of mutual respect and shared finances you had imagined it would be.
Oops. Radical responsibility, radical responsibility, radical responsibility.
Good Gord magical thinking is a cunt of a thing.
I've watched a lot of Gabor Mate YouTubes over the past couple of years, trying to get a handle on the panic attacks I suspect were triggered by the Christo-Fascist Freedom Convoy's occupation of downtown Ottawa in February 2022, but enough already. I've got my wild and crazy guy in a purple suit now.
Also, he and his son are currently focusing on adult child estrangement, "adult child" pretty much saying it all if you really stop and think about it, with petulant thirty-somethings berating their bewildered helicopter parents for failing to fly them to making better choices in their lives.
I've too much of my own mother in me to prostrate myself in abject apology to another adult for the 101 ways in which I failed them. The role of wife was not for me. The role of mother is impossible to perform as well as any of us hope to, but blaming mom - and who among us, etc etc - is no way to be grown up.
Radical responsibility, radical responsibility, radical responsibility.
So while I can appreciate Gabor's lament about our society not being particularly nurturing, I suspect how children used to be raised, in our long ago hunter/gatherer tribes, is a lot closer to community childcare centres than lonely young wives trying to be the best mothers ever in the history of the world, stuck at home with no money or support network, and dealing with increasingly disrespectful husbands pointing out how the beautiful young colleagues they're mentoring at the office manage to work and have children.
Oops. Radical responsibility, radical responsibility, radical responsibility.
But okay, sure, a straight couple wants one parent to stay at home to make life easier for the other.
LET THE HUSBAND HALF BE THE HOMEMAKER THEN.
Whether we want to admit it or not, I assure you, the Patriarchy is still the social construct we live in and if we want to tear it down - and we do because therein lies the freedom we all want to live as we are, not who society tells us we are - young men taking their turn at doing the free labour of homemaking and childcare so they can better understand and appreciate the sacrifice it entails, seems like as good a start as any to this former homemaker who only just worked her way halfway back to where she left off before marriage, thank you very much, and good enough because life is just fine, so yay radical responsibility.
Because, of course, young men have no idea how unfair it all is out there in the world for young women who, in many parts of it, have no rights at all. And it's not like we here in our liberal Feminist democracy/capitalist Patriarchal hellscape don't live every day with awareness of that fact, how lucky we are to live where Feminism can and does battle every day against the Patriarchy, which is still trying to alpha dog us all. And never mind the devolution in parts of the US where male impregnators have all the rights of procreation now and the female impregnated none, and young people are being indoctrinated by a Conservative Christian cult to believe that's how life is supposed to be, that female people are born to be birth vessels for the state.
So sayeth the beardy lord.
Not to mention we live knowing elsewhere in the world female children are being sold off to old men in sexual slavery every second of every day, which men here are only too happy to point out, as if we should be grateful to them for not being the Taliban.
That's our real world, the one we all live in, our big ol' Patriarchal construct of a global village.
But enough about me and my real life experience as a homemaker, much romanticized by men who have no idea what they're talking about, and don't care to inform themselves, because my life, the lives of all women, are about them and their narcissistic, entirely ego-driven cult that pretends (white) Conservative Christian men are the REAL chosen people, designated by their made up beardy god in the sky to rule over the lives of girls and women.
And I'm sorry to say this, fellas, but the only reason they're getting away with it is because not enough of you can be arsed to HELP US. Women are people. When we lose rights, you lose rights. Period. End of.
Your vote for your local Conservative candidate, maybe even NDP or Liberal candidate if it just helps elect a Conservative, is a vote against liberal Feminist democracy. So bully for you. Just don't pretend to me you give a shit about the lives of girls and women because you really don't or you'd HELP US BY NOT ELECTING CONSERVATIVES.
By the way, Beardy Nonsense Kicker didn't say anything the young women of Benedictine College haven't heard all their lives. He's just as indoctrinated as they are as, and whichever cult leader invited him to speak knew that fully well. It's why he was invited to speak ffs. No one was more surprised than... nobody graduating from Benedictine College by what he said. That's because Benedictine College isn't a REAL educational institution. It's Christo-Fascism. The worst cult going these days. And it's exactly what the Conservative Party of Canada, under the leadership of the misogynistic case of arrested development (and phoney baloney living a lie), Pierre Poilievre, wants for our children.
And I say children because we have to stop framing this as a problem just for our beleaguered daughters to deal with because it's every bit as much a problem for our sons, because, just in case you don't get it yet, our sons are the real prey.
They. Are. Building. An. Army.
So I don't care if you think Trudeau's a bit of a douche bro (although come the fuck on, he's clearly matured in office, even letting a little grey show now in the ol sideburns), hasn't come through for you on this or that line item, or you can't stand his speaking voice for another "uh".
Get in line.
Vote Liberal anyway because there's a reason his name is on all the Christo-Fascist hate flags. It's because he's all that stands between us and the current crop of Conservatives here who are no different from their Republican cousins south of the world's longest unprotected border - where male gun violence in a capitalist Patriarchal hellscape rools and liberal Feminist democracy drools - and who've been indoctrinated into a cult - because that's what Conservative Christianity is, a cult - IN THE MILLIONS - to believe their beardy god in the sky has decreed female people exist to be birth vessels for their state.
Not yours, not ours, theirs. Their state.
So pay attention, please, because the Christo-Fascists are closer than you think. Stornoway, to be precise.
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