For the most part, the private sector work environment is a masculine place. The business of making money has little to do with emotions. The capitalistic marketplace is the realm of logic and reason in order to create and sell profitable goods and services. It’s really that simple. If there is not enough profit, there is no point creating that service or that item.
Men have historically dominated this social and economic realm. In the last two generations, women have entered the workforce. That didn’t change the essential rules of capitalism. Women had to adapt and they often did so out of economic necessity. Women adapted reasonably well. They adopted masculine traits to cope and succeed. Having such traits is not necessarily a bad thing in the right context.
The problem is the transition back to home and hearth, there is none. A woman is still in work mode when she returns home. There are tasks to organize, things to manage, kids to herd. A woman’s work (and career) is never done, after all. Whither the husband or significant other? He’s likely a beta. He’s toiled his day in the trench cubicles taking orders all the while. He’ll happily defer to the woman’s relationship leadership despite losing her respect for him. He’s used to it. His mom, single of course, told him to be nice and follow orders.
What if she’s married or committed to an alpha man? If she wants to maintain that relationship, she must transition to a feminine role in a brief span of time. That span is 35 minutes, about the average commute time. In that period of time, she must embrace her feminine nature so she can be the loving wife/significant other that she is supposed to be. Of course, if she truly loves her man, embracing her feminine nature for him comes naturally and without much thought. In fact, she should be thinking of that while she is still at work. Suggestion to all the guys in long term relationships: read Athol K (Married Man Sex Life).
If her man is a sad sack beta, the transition from masculine to feminine is a serious struggle. The woman sits in traffic and wonders “why I am doing this?”. She then fires up her audio book of Eat, Pray, Love (turning off NPR) and makes a mental note to tally up her man’s finances and then to look up divorce attorneys while he is having fun with the kids.
Paige
/ March 16, 2011Generations ago wives hero-worshiped their husbands. They saw what they did in the world as exciting and important and above their own abilities. Now that women are quite-successfully competing with men the adoration they once felt has largely disappeared.
But the instinctual desire to be the “weaker” sex does not seem to have disappeared and seems to be undergoing a perverse transformation. Sexual masochism is on the rise, even amongst self-proclaimed feminists. Women are taking the need to feel “weak” to such an extreme that they are putting themselves into ridiculously dangerous situations.
I hate to admit it, but there was real wisdom behind the idea that women should not seem too smart. As distasteful as it sounds to modern sensibilities, convincing women that they were way inferior to men actually made for happier marriages. Of course there were always some women who didn’t buy into it, but they were always the minority.
So how do you turn back the clock? You can’t suddenly start convincing women they are inferior to men because they won’t buy it…especially when they can literally see themselves out performing men.
I have a theory as to what might help this situation, but it is highly controversial.
theprivateman
/ March 18, 2011“I have a theory as to what might help this situation, but it is highly controversial.”
Do share.
It it’s good, I’ll post it front and center.
Paige
/ March 19, 2011I believe we can get women back in the domestic sphere if we up its demands. The problem with 1950′s domesticity is it was almost entirely servile rather than productive. A life too far removed from
production is not satisfying. Consumerism is soulless and parasitic. There is an instinctual human craving to be the means to our own survival. Women plant gardens and men hunt even when there is a grocery store full of both.
Convenience comes at a price. It affects our bodies, our earth, and our minds. The Blue Pill isn’t just being fed to us in the form of feminism but also in the form of the industrial agriculture and pharmaceutical medicine that claims to make us better while actually making us sicker. I won’t even get started on the current state of education which is basically just a feminized propaganda machine. Sending women back to the doemstic sphere with a new list of challenges and goals kills several birds with one stone.
Alte did a post on Radical Homemaking. Here are some of what you can expect form the new Radical Homemaker (Think Laura Ingles Wilder):
-Attachment Parenting/breastfeeding for the proven psychological and physical health of children.
-Cloth diapering for the health and environmental benefits.
-gardening/homesteading
-home creamery, scratch-cooking, home fermentation
-homeschooling
-toy crafting
What men will notice amongst women who have this kind of lifestyle is an increased dependence on their men. Even those who don’t claim a traditionalist philosophy behave in a more traditionalist way because they have greater respect for themselves and greater respect for the men who make what they do possible.
So what I propose is that men require more of their women. Yes, expect them to stay home and make babies but also much more than that. Radical Homemaking will increase her financial and practical dependence, busy her idle hands and mind, and her work will be challenging enough that it will allow her to achieve the self-respect she craves outside of the social sphere of work accomplishments. The added bonus is the family will be more frugal and a lot healthier.
http://traditionalcatholicism.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/surprise-surprise-im-a-radical-homemaker/
theprivateman
/ March 19, 2011Interesting ideas. I do take exception with attachment parenting.
Paige
/ March 19, 2011What about breastfeeding for a year?
theprivateman
/ March 20, 2011As I am childfree by choice, my ignorance about breastfeeding is vast. I only know about attachment parenting because some friends thought about that approach and I did some research on it our of curiosity.
Paige
/ March 20, 2011Most women have a nurturing instinct that can smother a man if not channeled. If there aren’t any kids in the picture there should probably at least be a dog.
wifey
/ March 20, 2011interesting. i don’t think you’ll be able to lure women back into the domestic sphere with promises of productivity in things like “home fermentation” and “toy crafting.” why would women want to stay at home and create such items that come at such a low cost outside of the home?
is there not a point where you’re just kind of an idiot for, say, mending socks when a new pair costs you $0.50? certainly, you may feel some sense of accomplishment on a minor level, and that’s bully for you, but at least you must realize you’re doing these things for that minor sense of accomplishment — and not because you’re being smart with your time and/or money.
Paige
/ March 21, 2011In the case of darning socks- you are right.
But if you unite your productivity with a sense of social responsibility it gives it more significance.
Toy crafting may seem silly, but what if you believe plastics contain dangerous chemicals and that simple toys are superior because they are open-ended and encourage pretend play? What if you take a Waldorf philosophy or Montessori philosophy towards learning and childhood? Then spending hours making felt gnomes feels rather important.
wifey
/ March 21, 2011paige –
i agree, if you have certain philosophies then obviously you’ll act in accordance with said philosophies. but, assuming you have these philosophies you’ll probably already be acting in accordance with them, i.e., staying at home and making toys or whatever. the suggestion that you can “get women back into the domestic sphere” by “upping its demands” is…flawed, in my opinion.
i see you’re going off of the idea that women originally left the home because they no longer needed to be there — thanks to new technology, etc., housework is no longer an all-day every day job. however, you can’t stuff women back in the home by creating “housework” that’s unnecessary to all but a few radicals. but if someone has no problem with, say, plastic, then making toys is as frivolous and time-wasting as darning socks.
wifey
/ March 21, 2011also, i have no idea why wordpress insists on these bs nested comments, but they’re incredibly annoying
Paige
/ March 22, 2011The social reform I speak of make those things seem very necessary. For years after formula was invented breastfeeding was considered an unnecessary time-waste. Now there is enormous social pressure to do it.
Thag Jones
/ March 23, 2011Wow, someone besides me has thought of this! I agree, Paige, people need to feel productive and like they can look after themselves – I dislike being so dependant on “the grid” just to survive.
re: attachment parenting, I think it’s good for the first couple of years, but after a point kids start to require training to learn obedience in order to learn self mastery later on. The egalitarian approach that a lot of people take these days seems to result in precocious brats who think they’re on the same level as adults.
Hope
/ March 21, 2011I honestly doubt women really act all that masculine at most jobs. In the cubicle farms most people work nowadays, you basically sit in front of a computer all day and maybe talk with coworkers during breaks. That is not very masculine. It’s also why many office worker men feel feminized.
If a female police officer comes home to a husband who works as an accountant, then maybe she has to do a lot more masculine to feminine transformation. But that sounds like an extreme exception. I think the real issue is that everyone has been equalized, so women feel like they are “equal” to men which doesn’t inspire a lot of “hero worship” feelings that Paige mentioned.
wifey
/ March 21, 2011i do have a comment on the actual post
a lot of guys assume that the most alpha male will be attracted to the most submissive, feminine woman, but this is not true. in fact, it seems to be a sliding scale — men are attracted to women who are feminine “enough” for them — betas, for example, are attracted to, and end up with, women who are less masculine than they are, while alphas are attracted to, and end up with, women who are less masculine than they are but who are oftentimes more masculine than betas. the most feminine, soft-spoken, submissive, etc. women that i know are with extremely “beta” guys, whereas the outspoken, aggressive, ambitious women i know are with extremely “alpha” guys.
that’s not, of course, to say that an ambitious, aggressive woman will be that way with her alpha male — perhaps that’s what you’re trying to say. but in my experience alpha guys prefer high-t, aggressive women, while beta guys prefer demure, soft, feminine women. this makes sense, of course, because every guy wants a woman who is “more of a woman” than he is, duh, and there’s just too much disconnect between a raging alpha and a demure, chaste, feminine woman.