As the US election season goes on, the underlying threat from Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton is that he's going to bring up the subject of Bill Clinton's infidelities. The clear implication is that if your husband cheats on you, it's your fault and you are automatically disqualified from being President.
Of course, when this came up recently, I assumed I had written something about the subject in the past. I went to my archives and found this column which I wrote in January of 1989.
(I should note that Chatelaine is a magazine that has gone through many incarnations in its long life, some of them better, some of them worse. When this was written, it was one of their bad times.)
The current issue of Chatelaine – boy, I hate to admit it when I occasionally pick one up – has an article about the difference between "The Other Woman" and "The Other Man". I'm not going to get into it because it's as ludicrous as most of their articles lately but it did get me to thinking about the Eternal Blaming Syndrome: the notion that everything that happens anywhere can somehow be blamed on some woman. Starting with Eve, of course.
So for example, if the married Mr. X runs off with Ms Y, there are two things you'll definitely hear: 1) "What a hussy that Ms Y is, to get her claws into another woman's husband." And, 2) "It serves Mrs. X right. If she can't hold onto her own husband, I've got no sympathy for her."
Notice who gets off scott-free in this romantic triangle – not too many people pass judgment on that treacherous snake-in-the-grass, Mr. X.
The blaming syndrome is found on a larger scale as well. Thus, even after all this time, we're still inundated in our magazines and newspapers with the propaganda that all of the ills of our present-day society can be directly attributed to the women's movement.
"Feminists," I was informed just recently, "are the ones who want all women to rush out and have a career and they make women who stay home and care for their families feel ashamed of what they do."
The propaganda works very well, doesn't it?
But the way I see it, it's feminist women who recognize that our society is founded, not on the "sanctity" of the family, as we've always been told, but on the unpaid and low-paid labour of half the work force – the half that takes care of the children and the elderly, that volunteers for work in the schools, hospitals, churches and around the communities, that provides housekeeping services for the paid labour force.
It's also feminists who demand that society place a higher value on the work that women traditionally do, whether it's in the home, the office, the restaurants or the factories. And because our society expresses value almost exclusively in monetary terms, feminists lead the fight for homemakers' pensions, fair divorce settlements, dependable child care for the benefit of all mothers and children, and pay equity for women who work outside their homes.
So how can anyone say that feminists don't respect women who fulfil traditional roles? On the absolute contrary, society had devalued all women's work long before the current women's movement came along.
Perhaps the misunderstanding has come about because feminists do see the need for economic independence. Too many women are forced to remain in dead and dying marriages or in violent homes because they have no money and no certain means of getting any. Many more women are deserted by their husbands (remember old Mr. X) and left to fend for themselves and their children and are forced onto social assistance and probably into a deadening cycle of poverty, struggle, job retraining, no child care, and hopelessness.
And in spite of all this, I still hear young women embarking on their marriage careers with stars in their eyes, thinking how wonderful it's going to be to share everything in life – including the husband's pay cheque. Most of them, on their wedding day, would never believe that the day will come when they'll ask for money and he'll demand "what do you want it for?" Or that they'll be trapped in a violent situation with nowhere to go and no money to get there.
So feminists believe this battle has to be fought on two levels. When they suggest marriage contracts, or job training and experience before marriage, and part-time work outside the home during the marriage it isn't because of lack of respect for homemaking and child-rearing. And when feminists fight for fair divorce settlements, for pensions for women, for more vigilance from the courts to see that child support payments are made, it isn't because of any cynicism about all women's right to choose the kind of work they do.
Instead, it's based on the observation that so many women do so much work for so little money and that can only be changed around when women's traditional work is valued and honoured – monetarily as well as all other ways.
It's also done with one eye firmly on the divorce and desertion statistics.
No comments:
Post a Comment