Counter-Currents
2,929 words
“The source of all life and knowledge is in man and woman, and the source of all living is in the interchange and the meeting and mingling of these two: man-life and woman-life, man-knowledge and woman-knowledge, man-being and woman-being.” — D. H. Lawrence, letter written June 1914.[1]
“Why do women want to dress like men when they’re fortunate enough to be women? Why lose our femininity, which is one of our greatest charms? We get much more accomplished by being charming than we would by flaunting around in pants and smoking. I’m very fond of men. I think they’re wonderful creatures. I love them dearly. But I don’t want to look like one.”[2]
Don’t get me wrong, fellas, like Tasha Tudor (who stated the above), I love you all dearly, but I have found it to be nothing short of infuriating to be expected to be the best woman I can be by being the best ersatz man I can be. It is so exhausting being around people who expect me to want to be something I have no interest in being (a man). I find it crippling to the true feminine spirit that so much of what makes the male and female sexes unique and distinct has been sacrificed at the altar of equality. There is nothing equal about us—equivalent, assuredly, but equal? Equal implies that we are interchangeable, that we can be substituted for each other, that we are not different from each other, that we are the same.
Looking back, it’s been years—all my life really—that I’ve been dealing with this issue. (I’m going to assume I’m not alone—there were lots of women born when I was born, and raised like I was raised—but I’ll be speaking of only myself and for only myself throughout this essay. I might not be alone, but it would be . . . shall we say . . . imprecise to give the world the impression that I’m the rule, when, looking at numbers of working moms alone, I’m very much not.)
As a child, I wasn’t dissatisfied with being a girl. I wasn’t threatened by boyness. Maybe it bothered the proto-bully-feminists (the ones who used to mutter about male chauvinist pigs when men politely held doors open for them), but it never bothered me that I wasn’t a boy. No, wait, I take that back—I was bothered by not being a boy, but only because I was forever being taken to task for not wanting to be just like one.
Assumedly it would have made my young life a whole lot smoother if I had been born a boy, then I wouldn’t have had to fight my natural disinclinations toward boyishness. I would have loved (I guess) team sports, martial arts, math classes, competitive swimming, running hurdles, playing with cars and Tinker Toys, fishing, throwing snow balls and thinking about what previously-male-dominated career I would commandeer.
As it was, I didn’t like any of those things—the closest would have been fishing, but even then I felt so sorry for both the fish and the bait that I didn’t get a lot out of it—yet I was expected (sometimes actually forced) to participate in them anyway, and then was shamed for not enjoying them or being particularly good at them.
Needless to write, no one praised my perfectly set up doll house, my staggering collection of nail polishes (I later would become an Avon Representative in high school), my alphabetized Nancy Drews and Trixie Beldens, or my polite and sincere “thank you” said to the gallant men who held doors open for young ladies (they still did, back then). My abilities/sensibilities weren’t worth much to the “We Can Do It” hairy armpitted rankers of human-worth because what I was interested in wasn’t directly aimed at displacing the specialness of people with Y chromosomes. I wasn’t out to out do men.
The schools were the radical front for all of this gender-melding . . . regardless of personal inclination or chromosomal pair, we had to play the same game on the same leveled playing field. Literally, when it came to PE: either we all played basketball (non-contact basketball, you can’t have all those tall muscularly built teenage boys knocking over the girls while lunging for the ball . . . that just wouldn’t be fair) in the blazing sun in stupid blue unisex shorts and off-white unisex converse sneakers or we all played flag football (the big tank like muscular boys weren’t allowed to play real football with all those girls out there . . . that wouldn’t be fair) on a flat green oval surrounded by empty risers with heat shimmers that laid across both ends of the thing.
The sole equality in those sport moments, the only melding of interest was that, in the end, both genders suffered. The boys were forced to deal with a crippling non-boy presence in the midst of their formerly rough and tumble activities and the girls were forced to try to be better at strategically physical maneuvers then the boys naturally were. Only non-boy boys and non-girl girls thrived in that world—the ones who were destined to grow up and become softly male and feministic.
The marginalized rest of us—the (to use Jack Donovan’s definition) Alpha Males and (to use my definition) the Self-Assured Females—had to go through the motions; we spent a lot of energy not letting all the equality that surrounded us warp our sense of who and what we were. That type of effort takes a toll, but like any sort of initiation, it separates the men from the boys. In this case it also separates the men from the girls who think they are just-like-boys.
It’s them—the soft males and the feministic females (I’d call them hard females except that I can’t bring myself to use that ridiculous term, as much as it fits) that lie at the root of what is happening to society. They blur the lines between manhood and womanhood—lines that used to be very clear and understandable.
The old gallant phrase “Ladies first” wasn’t demeaning, as “Ladies and Gentlemen” wasn’t demeaning, and “women and children first” wasn’t demeaning. How could they possibly be demeaning when the end result of them is recognition of the differences and gallantries accorded to our distinct genders. I can’t hoist 100 pound sacks all day, and I am smart to be a little wary of men, who are naturally stronger, and who could use their strength for less than altruistic purposes on my behalf.
In a healthy society, decent men don’t use their strength to overpower and control women. The basic outward expression of this, a token if you will, is the old gallant gesture. The holding the door open, the giving up of the last seat, the helping with the packages—all acts designed to prove that, while any real man is strong enough to do pretty much what he wants in any given female/male situation, this particular man is not an animal . . . and woman is not his prey. Our society isn’t a healthy society, we ditched social graces at our peril. And many did. Still do.
Of course this gallant sort of thinking is based on the ancient notion that women are different and distinct than men. Our strengths are different, our abilities are different. We are not the same in outlook or in physique. Not lesser, not greater. Different—and, fellas, let’s not quibble about the notion of real diversity. It’s good to be different. Nature’s — and thus, our — strength lies in diversity—no mono culture is good, no homogeneousness thrives. Two heads are really better than one, especially if one has a beard and one has face powder.
It is not so easy, now, to spot the difference between the sexes. And, really, on a practical level, who really needs to these days. Or rather, when it comes to sexes, who really needs two these days. It doesn’t make much difference what sex the person behind a computer screen, or the person behind a cash register, or the person behind a desk is . . . it’s all equal opportunity. Humanity is now interchangeable—we all buy the same foods, wear pretty much the same clothes, watch the same movies, read the same books, do the same jobs. Color, age, race, gender—they constitute non-issues in the modern world.
Girls are not taught to be women. Boys are not taught to be men. Children are raised—often by outsourced care givers of different races and cultures than the parents’—to become adult worker/consumers. Consumers of everything. Actual makers of very little, but consumers all the same. It’s the biggest crime, really, of the modern Western world. This robbing of every aspect of making . . . for that was what made us who we were, what made us great, what made us—each and every one of us—actually matter and have a purpose. A purpose that had, at the heart of it, a firm foundation of gender self awareness that is all but gone now.
Men don’t know which tools are used for what these days. Go to any estate sale in any older neighborhood in America and see for yourself. There will be some older men looking at the vintage tools, but the 50 and under guy crowd? They’re looking for collectables for their metrosexual midcentury homes, preferably things they recognize from episodes of Mad Men or Man Caves. If they do purchase a tool, it’ll be to decorate with, not to use, not to make anything with.
Time was, men could fix a toaster after supper, build a chicken coop on the weekend, do their own plumbing work, make bookcases, make flowerboxes, plaster walls—heck, make the walls and then plaster them—whatever it took to protect and provide for a family of anywhere from a couple to a dozen of kids single-handedly . . . and they would be rightly appreciated for these talents that they possessed.
Now, we can toss the broken toaster and pick up a new cheap Chinese model virtually anytime day or night, we don’t need a coop when we can buy ready-made rotisserie chicken and glaringly white eggs (again anytime day or night)—plumbers drive trucks right over (day and night once again), Amazon.com and eBay deliver everything from bookcases to flowerboxes, changes or creations of walls are arranged for by the decorator, contractor or subcontractor of our choice and security comes from an alarm system, two paychecks and a decent day care situation. Who needs real men?
In the past decade or so, the women’s magazines have taken to running home-handyperson articles suggesting that women can learn to fix things just as well as men. These articles are apparently based on the ludicrous assumption that men know how to fix things, when in fact all they know how to do is look at things in a certain squinty-eyed manner, which they learned in Wood Shop; eventually, when enough things in the home are broken, they take a job requiring them to transfer to another home.[3]
Of course, no one needs real women either. Anyone can pick up that ready to eat rotisserie chicken, anyone can toss those eggs in a microwave safe bowl, anyone one can drop the two kids off at the daycare center. Gone are the days when it was an advantage to a family to have a woman in it. Time was, it was important to be a woman—not an ersatz man—and know how to take care of chickens—from gathering eggs to plucking stew-hens—how to grow a flourishing kitchen garden, how to fold a cloth baby diaper, how to make bread to put in that toaster you husband knew how to fix, how to sew all the clothing and make the ones you have sewn last, how to manage a household budget on one salary, and how to successfully raise boys and girls to become men and women. There was a science to it, an art to (hence the terms domestic science and domestic arts), and done well, it served our ancestors for thousands of generations . . .
I am very sad that I was denied the chance to learn how to do these things from the real mistresses of real kitchens. I have taught myself a lot, and have gleaned priceless moments of hands-on learning with old women (very old women now) who were still very much in touch with their feminine value and so passed on much more than mere knowledge when they showed me how to make the few things the much younger me wanted to learn: jams, cakes, cookies. . . . They passed from this world before their entire domestic arcana passed to this generation. What a loss to womanhood, to lose our grand dames before we realized what it truly was we needed to learn from them. It’s almost as if it were part of some agenda we girls were happily glued to the after-school television sitcom versions of life, while the real source of our lives withered to the root. Nobody told me that I should pay attention to what my last great aunt was saying, but, boy, they sure told me not to misplace the TV Guide . . .
It’s not to their credit, but it’s not entirely their fault if these 3rd or 4th wave feminists think/realize that they are capable of being exactly like the modern man is, because they are doing everything the modern man does. Is there anything particularly gender specific in working at Intel or Walmart? How about being a professor? Or a banker? Ad agent? Modern soldier? Even the warehouses have mechanized forklifts for lifting the heavy stuff. We, as a modern Western cultured people, have been thoroughly gender blended for a long enough time now that it seems like a hateful and oppressive fact that one upon a time women raised children and sewed clothes. A crime against the PC order of things. A waste of a viable life. A sin.
Well, perhaps not a sin. There’s that whole Christian “women are naturally inferior to men” mindset that has been the springboard for Feminist recruitment since the get go. Ruining the ancient balance of the genders by placing one up and one down is as unnatural as our folk getting down on bended knee and praying to a desert god. Both are wholly and completely incompatible with our folkways. As Alain de Benoist says: “. . . the conversion of Europe to Christianity and the more or less complete integration of the European mind into the Christian mentality, was one of the most catastrophic events in world history—a catastrophe in the proper sense of the word . . .”[4] Still, there is no stepping over the fact that Christian thought molded Western minds, and Christians thought “What else is a woman but a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil of nature, painted with fair colors!”[5]
I’d rather be burnt for a witch then have to put up with that sort of ridiculousness. But, that said . . . the vile yoke of Christianity still didn’t do as much damage to essential femininity, to the essential woman, than feminism or modern gender-denial/gender blending has. It might chaff and rankle to be called inferior and evil (I still get that all the time, and not from Christians . . . from the liberals) but it doesn’t ruin the essence, the soul, the very fabric of real womanhood. Our folkways were not lost inside Christianity, only buried (see my other essay on this site for more on that line of thought). We weren’t lost as women then, like we are lost now—we weren’t incapacitated by this whole-cloth denial of our true selves. We weren’t re-created and re-cast as not-women, as widgets and gender-as-incidental humans. We weren’t expected to lose our inner light, to lose our place in this world or our intrinsic right to be who and what we were, through and through. Once, in a revolting heyday of Christian fervor, strong women may have indeed been burnt as Lucifer’s handmaidens but they were never burnt as just his hand-people. A interestingly vital feminine point to an otherwise horrific moment in the Abrahamic downfall of our folk.
I don’t like anti-woman sentiment. I don’t like it from men. I don’t like it from women. I don’t like it in a box. I don’t like it with a fox. I don’t want to be a man. I don’t want my life to be judged on criteria set up to measure anything but feminine life. Not male, and certainly not genderless. I am not a man. I am not just a person. I am a woman. And with this knowledge, with this awareness of my essential way of looking at and interacting with the world, I am whole and I am unshakable.
Men cannot be my equal, and I will not be equal to them either, but we can exist as we are designed to exist: purposefully equivalent to one another. As Swami Muktananda extolls: “Honor your Self. Understand your Self. God dwells within you as you.”[6]
Notes
[1] George Zyturak and James T. Boulton, eds., The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, vol. 2, 1913–1916 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 181.
[2] Tasha Tudor and Richard Brown, The Private World of Tasha Tudor (Boston: Little Brown & Company, 1992), p. 63.
[3] http://www.quotedb.com/quotes/2510
[4] Alain de Benoist, On Being a Pagan, ed. Greg Johnson, trans. Jon Graham (Atlanta: Ultra, 2004), p. 5.
[5] Selma Williams, Riding the Nightmare, Women and Witchcraft from the Old World to Colonial Salem (New Yoek: Harper Perennial, 1978), p. 35.
[6] Swami Muktananda, Meditate, Happiness Lies Within You (South Fallsburg, N.Y.: SYDA Foundation: 1999), p. 37.
24 comments
Excellent. Thank you so much for writing this.
I hate it when femininity is turned into just a bimbo sex kitten, or a deceitful liar. It was the bullying from feminists that I detested especially lesbian feminists who told me I was in denial if I didn’t know that truly I was a lesbian feminist deep down. What? I finally figured out that that is how they justified themselves to themselves. Everybody is the same and they truly believe this garbage. Some lesbians who are really lesbians (that is attracted to the same sex) hate the trendy lesbians and the political lesbians. One does not hear about them much for they don’t get on band wagons nor do they go about recruiting. Aside from that most feminists have created confusion and despair for women who just want to have a family and create their own home with the guy they love. Instead we get the message that we should be able to change a tire while nine months pregnant and then cook a full course meal for 50 people and also converse about the relative merits of all the positions on the latest political crises in the world, plus run for office while nursing a baby. Oh, yes, I will just do that! (not) Just where the emotional needs of the family fit into this, I think has been dismissed.
Thank you for your interesting article! I am afraid I might qualify as a “weak man” in your eyes, but I have to admit that the points you are making are quite convincing.
I especially liked your remarks about the consumer vs. the producer mentality. I think that healthy self respect, optimism and honour start with a “producer mentality”. It is certainly true that “making” was what made us great. Being creative is “Gods work”, even when the achievement is small.
Many people who struggle with addiction for example make great progress if they overcome the underlying attitude of consumerism first. Being a producer gives one a satisfaction that is inspiring and really satisfying. Consumption normally gives rise to only more desire for consumption.
This idea was probable the main attraction for me of those bewitching books by Ayn Rand. Fortunately, Objectivism was only a stage for me on my path away from the liberal swamp. For all its faults, Objectivism can play a role in waking up political incorrectness, rather like the men’s movement.
The James Bond Movie (May Swenson)
The popcorn is greasy, and I forgot to bring a Kleenex.
A pill that’s a bomb inside the stomach of a man inside
The Embassy blows up. Eructations of flame, luxurious
cauliflowers giganticize into motion. The entire 29-ft.
screen is orange, is crackling flesh and brick bursting,
blackening, smithereened. I unwrap a Dentyne and, while
jouncing my teeth in rubber tongue-smarting clove, try
with the 2-inch-wide paper to blot butter off my fingers.
A bubble-bath, room-sized, in which 14 girls, delectable
and sexless, twist-topped Creamy Freezes (their blonde,
red, brown, pinkish, lavender or silver wiglets all
screwed that high, and varnished), scrub-tickle a lone
male, whose chest has just the right amount and distribu-
tion of curly hair. He’s nervously pretending to defend
his modesty. His crotch, below the waterline, is also
below the frame – but unsubmerged all 28 slick foamy boobs.
Their makeup fails to let the girls look naked. Caterpil-
lar lashes, black and thick, lush lips glossed pink like
the gum I pop and chew, contact lenses on the eyes that are
mostly blue, they’re nose-perfect replicas of each other.
I’ve got most of the grease off and onto this little square
of paper. I’m folding it now, making creases with my nails.
***********************************
Kitchenette Building (Gwendolyn Brooks)
We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan,
Grayed in, and gray. ‘Dream’ makes a giddy sound, not strong
like ‘rent’, ‘feeding a wife’, ‘satisfying a man’.
But could a dream send up through onion fumes
Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes
And yesterday’s garbage ripening in the hall,
Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms
Even if we were willing to let it in,
Had time to warm it, keep it very clean,
Anticipate a message, let it begin?
We wonder. But not well! not for a minute!
Since Number Five is out of the bathroom now,
We think of lukewarm water, hope to get in it.
*************************************
Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers (Adrienne Rich)
Aunt Jennifer’s tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.
Aunt Jennifer’s fingers fluttering through her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle’s wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer’s hand.
When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on dancing, proud and unafraid.
***************************************
Miss Grant (Freda Downie)
Oneself Miss Grant,
Sufficient in the white walls
Around the necessary furniture
And one dog to talk to by the fire.
Resigned to the baker’s call,
The plopped frog on the parlour floor
For excitement, framed relations
And receded nephews in naval attire.
One Bessie cow to pursue
In the deep drenched garden endless
To the dripping honeysuckle
And boulders on the lip of the loch.
No distraction or running water,
But the mountainous moving picture,
The pouring stream and tile-hung
Curtain of rain before the sun’s lick.
One life to finish
According to the windowsill’s book
In Gaelic, as big as a tombstone
And appropriately black.
*************************************
Patriarchy preceded Christianity and will outlast it. The ancient Germans and Celts treated their women well but the Kings were men – and everyman should be the King of his own home. The ancient Romans and Greeks treated their women like Muslims do. Feminism errupted during decadent times in both these cultures. I know, I know, the warrior Queen, Boudacia. But a swallow doesn’t make a summer. It was an unusual circumstance – it happend in England now and then too. It doesn’t mean that the Britons weren’t Patriarchal.
Women are followers – Princesses who want to mary Princes or commoners who want to marry up, up, up into Hypergamous Heaven. Feminism cannot uproot this – it can only destroy men so there is nobody for women to marry. In recent cartoon movies, the girl characters are sassy and smart and the boys mere oafs. The current one, (can’t remember the title), the young princess is disgusted by her suitors at the archery meet, SO SHE SHOOTS FOR HER OWN HAND IN MARRIAGE. Madness is it not? What man would want to marry such a creature anyway?
“… it can only destroy men so there is nobody for women to marry.” If men were strong enough to begin with no “ism” of any persuasion would be able to destroy them. I don’t think female warriors want to replace their male counterparts but instead force them to become Nietzschean supermen.
I must say the author’s premise of a woman’s worth (making jams, cakes, and cookies) is slightly one-dimensional. I think you can have “male” aspirations but also lead a feminine life. Phyllis Schlafly is a great example of both.
Because mankind is weak and corruptible, I will always have a side income (dividends) at my disposal. I’ve witnessed from the sidelines too much heartbreak (from men and women) to completely trust my financial future in the hands of another.
I truly feel sorry for you. One dimensional? One’s time is one’s own. There is so much to explore and learn and read. The money question should be entirely between the two people involved. I know one couple where the man hands over his check to her, she pays the bills and they decide what to do with whatever is left.
I don’t believe self-overcoming means one has to become political like Mrs. Schlafly. I see her as one-dimensional and dogmatic. Self-overcoming for me means overcoming outdated beliefs and facing one’s fears. If the fear is being abandoned, then figuring out how to assuage that is in order. If a separate bank account works, then use that. It is not just about money.
And children! My goodness they teach you so much about enjoying life and one’s responsibility to them. There is hardly anything more rewarding than seeing what you taught them actually work for them in their adult life.
As a previous poster responded to you: no man is alpha next to the All Powerful State. Yes, maybe we’ll overthrow it someday when it weakens, but the toll will be frightful. Is that what you want? Are you going to wait till that day which may yet be a long time? In Chivalric times, ladies who urged men to risk their lives for their favors were known as “sauvage”.
And come on – we’re not fighting women primarily, but the forces of the Eye in the Triangle. Don’t flatter yourselves – you couldn’t have done this on your own to us even in our weakness.
You want to worship? Then go to God. The troubadours and tantriks confuse many in conflating the personal and the superpersonal, yet this conflation is the source of some of our greatest art – and a path for some who can sort it out. But first things first – no man is perfect and you would not deserve him if one did exist because you’re not either. But we want perfection – it’s inscribed in our being as St Augustine said. But in tcannot be found in other human beings. So look upwards – and then find a man who is looking upwards too. And remember as C.S Lewis said, obedience is an erotic necessity.
“You want to worship? Then go to God.” “God” is the ultimate sign of mental weakness. I don’t need a magic sky daddy (be it Paganism or fill in the blank) to make me whole in spirit and in purpose.
Again, I answer (not worship) to myself and myself alone. That also includes morality.
How can women give birth and successfully raise “supermen” if they don’t strive to be of the same mindset?
I don’t think men want “female warriors”. Men don’t want “strong women” either. These are masculine traits.
Opposites attract, masculine (strong) feminin (weak). Every career woman I have ever met was masculine (big jaw bones, aggressive etc.). Pretty much all models and TV personalities are also aggressive masculine women. Just look at their build, their jaw bones, hips, voice tone etc. etc..
It should be simple to understand. Women don’t like men who show signs of feminin traits, BUT men also don’t like women who show signs of masculine traits.
I don’t think feminine means weak or that weak is attractive. It’s true that we don’t think of a woman as being less of a woman if she is not strong – strength does not define a woman – but neither does weakness. Even today in rural areas, there are plenty of women who need to have physical strength just to function effectively in daily life, regardless of how strong their man is. They also need to be able to defend themselves because a man cannot always be present. For example, a relative forwarded a news story to me about a 12 year girl in Butte, MT who shot two criminal illegal aliens breaking into her house. I have more respect for that girl than I would for your typical urban woman who is appalled by the thought of weapons or violence, regardless of how “hot” or feminine said urban woman might be. I know it’s my responsibility as a man to do the heavy lifting and physically protect my woman from harm, but I’d have more respect for her if I knew she could handle a gun when the situation required it then I would for a woman who acted as if touching a gun was like handling a venomous snake.
There are plenty of stories from the Romans about Celtic and Germanic women fighting when it was necessary to do so, and in a few cases, even when it was not a military necessity. Apparently they didn’t have a problem with warrior women. Far more common was the women urging their men to fight, which doesn’t strike me as weak at all. It was the women using their feminine strength to exhort their men to fight harder, and that’s an idea that has real power for the right men.
There’s a reason the Greek Muses were all female – without bitching, nagging, or shaming, they could inspire a man to be greater than he ever could be on his own. Their strength made him stronger. We’ve largely lost that concept today, quite possibly because very few women do that any more. There are remnants of this in sayings such as “behind every great man is a great woman”, and I believe it’s still buried within us, but I almost never see it in any contemporary culture, .
Sparta is a good example of this at work. Spartan women were known as the healthiest and most attractive women in all of Greece. They were also known for sending their men off to war by handling their men their shields and saying “with it or on it”. I’d want my woman to do that for me, and I’d feel like I want to show her I can be the man she believes me to me. I can definitely see Ava doing that – in fact, I doubt she would settle for anything less. I have a lot more trouble seeing the Gamers who talk endlessly about Alpha actually stepping up to that level.
There is something more to be a man than physical strength.
I believe man tends to look at distant horizons,to contemplate,to idealize.
Certainly not all men,only a very small minority.
I expect many men and women to disagree with me.
I don’t disagree BasilX. Ideals are our lodestar.
As to what you said earlier about watching adult children apply lessons taught by you, my sister has a quote “The two things you must give children are roots and wings.”
Looking back on life recently I made an inventory of life outcomes of myself, my sisters and our cousins and aunt and uncles.
There is apparent great danger in being a last-born. It seems likely the mother is unable to let go sufficiently for the child to fully develop socially.
Of the four families I’m familiar with the youngest in each either failed to marry before age 35 or the boys were forced to settle for divorcees with “instant families” and consequently had no children of their own.
Inventory of lives of the last born among each set of we cousins:
(1) Myself, married one time at age 45 to divorcee who already had a 7-year-old daughter. She subsequently divorces me.
(2) Cousin P, had to settle for a divorcee with a young daughter. No children of his own. She later divorced him.
(3) Cousin M, had to settle for a divorcee with children, no children of his own.
(4) Cousin J, she was last known to still be single at age 35 with one adopted East Asian daughter.
Details of last family of my cousins unknown.
Aunts:
(1) Aunt F, last born in her family, was unable to marry until age 43, (to an unsuccessful itinerant painter, my grandfather had money.) No children.
(2) Aunt L, last born in her family, DID marry a WWII vet and produced two sons of her own. Aunt L is the exception that proves the rule. The probable reason she was able to develop normally in a social sense was because her mother had to spend time taking care of a slightly retarded older sister. So aunt L effectively wasn’t the last child in my grandmother’s family. The older retarded sister was the “permanent child” that took that role. The slightly retarded sister never left the farm till she was sent to a foster home at age 70.
Maybe the Biblical quote “There comes a time when a man must leave his mother and father and take a wife” has more hidden meaning than we knew.
If I were a mother in such a situation I might make the decision of having my 9 year old go live with his 19-year-old sibling. At the least a mother should bend over backwards to push her last “out into the world” at a young age. Apron strings can strangle.
Mothers beware.
You’ve just excluded and damned most of Western Culture. At least agnostics have a modicum of humility. Maybe Petruchio will take you on to be his Kate.
You mean the Western Culture that is dying? Coincidence? Hmmm.
Enough about my “shrewish” ways, how are you contributing to the refeminization of the opposite sex? Do you support a wife and children? Do tell, Professor.
Atheism has never produced a flourishing culture – quite the opposite. It is popular though! And the idea that you create you own morality – more pop profundity. Kate, we will be perfect for each other once I chip away all that you think you are.
You think I’m an atheist because of popularity? You mean like reading/writing on WN sites? I do think man is too weak for atheism to fully rally behind it as a savior for Western Civilization… Don’t even get me started on trendy secular humanism that has hijacked my “religion”.
There is some truth to your Kate reference. I’m at war with myself at my next piece for I don’t know how revealing I should be. I talk about rough sex.
Nice deflection method in getting out of your own responsibility of having white babies, Petruchio.
To Juleigh Howard-Hobson. Thank you for your article.
You are a “lady” & that from an old man (70.yo) which was despairing of what has become of our society!
Thank you, Juleigh.
You described many of the strife I have encountered in my upbringing.
You said you were afraid you weren’t the norm,
I agree, but make no mistake. Since I have plucked up the courage to
tell people I want to be a housewife and full time mother some day, I encounter a whole lot of women who sigh of relief when they hear me say such things. “Yes, if only we could do that!”
I realise this segment of women also includes some deluded women who see stay-at-home mothery as some sort of excuse to loaf around ( the well-fare mothers -_- ) and have no idea what challenges and hard work our grandmothers faced when trying to be an asset in the house, instead of another black money hole.
But I also encounter some genuine interest and recognition in my confessions.
Sadly, my mother and siblings (who pride themselves in their non-judgmentalism) still go rabid when I try to explain them my future plans.
You see, I was the golden girl, I was the promise of having one of them going to the university and being succesfull. It’s such a waste of my potential!
My potential? And what about my potential as a woman, as a mother, as a wife?
Does that not count?
I still feel sad when I think about these conversations, it hurts when your own family denies such a big part of you. Society can get bent but my family? They are a big part of me too..
Sigh, anyway, thank you! It’s nice to see some of my concerns and heartfelt convictions put so eloquently into words.
P.S. My apologies for my spelling and such, I’m not used to writing in English.
Bravo, your aspiration is not only admirable but heroic in this degenerate time. Our Race is dying for want of women like you. What could be more important than having high IQ White Children – and then raising them with true values?
@Phil White
Roots and wings. Yes, absolutely right. You are right too about the youngest taking longer to leave. My two son are completely different personalities and needed different methods of support and letting go. My goal was that they should be self-sufficient and not dependent upon me. This is not to say I would not help them if they needed it, but that they have the intellectual tools and wits to figure out how to go about their lives with their personal integrity intact. I am well aware of the empty nest syndrome and how mothers can cling to their kids and subtly pull them back into her sphere. My mother was an expert at that, especially guilt tripping.
The hardest part was telling them about how women use men and what to look out for. You can’t save a drug addict, no matter how beautiful she is. I was not perfect, but I did own up when circumstances proved me wrong. That’s how they started to find their wings. ( Ah ha, she doesn’t know everything.)
I don’t pry. They tell me what they want me to know and that is fine with me. I am not sure I really want to know everything anyway. Tone of voice tells me alot though. Certain things that they do just makes me very proud of them. I figure I just enhanced what was already latent or they would not do that. Perhaps my parents’ awful parenting made me a better one.
Your phrase “I don’t pry” I feel expresses the same part of your personality that allows you to let go. It’s probably the same part of you that says “I don’t have to know” that also says “I don’t have to be in control.”
Hope you have beautiful grand children some day, you’ve earned them.
And on behalf of our civilization I thank you.
I reposted this article at the Apricity Forum. It got over a 1,200 views and 66 comments. No one got my point. Need to work on my arguing skills.
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?t=56834
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