Recently, I’ve seen a lot of comments around here about how you can be both an RPW and a feminist, citing “choice feminism” as a healthy middle ground where women can support feminism AND follow their more traditional aspirations in marriage, family, and homemaking. While anyone here is of course free to believe what they want and follow whatever movement they like, it’s unproductive for us to constantly defend feminism here of all places, particularly when using choice feminism as a justification.
The thing about “choice feminism” is that it has never been a part of the feminist movement, from its “noble” first-wave origins to today’s third- and fourth-wave radical feminism. There IS an explicit hostility and condescension towards women wanting marriage, children, and families in feminism, and to deny that as just “extremism” is to pretend that those sentiments aren’t built into the foundations of the entire movement.
Simone de Beauvoir, who in 1949 wrote “The Second Sex” aka the book so foundational to the feminist movement that some call it “the feminist bible”, has said:
“No woman should be authorized to stay at home to raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.”
Betty Friedan, who in 1963 wrote “The Feminine Mystique” aka the monumental book that kicked off second-wave feminism, has said:
"I am convinced there is something about the housewife state itself that is dangerous”
and
”the women who 'adjust' as housewives, who grow up wanting to be 'just a housewife,' are in as much danger as the millions who walked to their own death in the concentration camps. . . .'”
and
”A woman today who has no goal, no purpose, no ambition patterning her days into the future, making her stretch and grow beyond that small score of years in which her body can fill its biological function, is committing a kind of suicide..”
Before ending her own life, Sylvia Plath wrote “The Bell Jar”, a roman à clef novel that went on to become “required reading” for feminists and gender studies, which said:
”“So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about as numb as a slave in a totalitarian state.**”
There’s not much “choice” in these quotes and positions if it doesn’t align with “female liberation” from the “shackles” of marriage and childrearing. There’s also a clear disdain towards the women who choose to prioritize marriage, children, and homemaking, as well as the institution of marriage and the nuclear family itself - we are often seen as unenlightened Uncle Toms (or I guess Auntie Tommies?) who are willing perpetrators of our own “oppression”, simply for deciding to live the way we want to, and for having the audacity to feel good about it.
When these are the sentiments that are engrained within the core of the movement, it is incredibly hard, and I’d argue impossible, to move away from them. Even today, just a simple google search of the words “choice feminism” alone has these articles as the first- and second-page results:
Unless we choose to do the things that the feminist movement actively endorses, it’s clear that choice feminism has ultimately failed to create a safe space for marriage- and family-oriented women within feminism. It is not taken seriously within the larger movement, and we continue to be treated with hostility and contempt for living lives the way we want to. To say you are a feminist because you are a choice feminist is to give credit to a larger movement that does not support women’s freedom to choose.
Beyond think pieces and essays and novels about choice feminism, it’s also clear that there are everyday micro-aggressions and condescensions from feminists towards women who choose to prioritize marriage and their families.
Feminist political strategist and commentator Hillary Rosen said that Ann Romney “has not worked a day in her life” in an attempt to invalidate her ability to speak for women’s issues as a potential First Lady. When asked about her law career and the priority she and her husband placed on her law firm, Hillary Clinton said, “I suppose I could have stayed home, baked cookies, and had teas,” as if stay-at-home-motherhood is as frivolous as that. Jill Filapovic, a regular contributor to mainstream media like NYT, CNN, The Washington Post, Time, and The Guardian, has said:
”More mothers at home makes for worse, more sexist men who see women as mommies and helpmeets. Men with stay-at-home wives are more sexist than men with working wives”
and
”Marriage confers tangible benefits to men, and far fewer to women.”
and
“Having children is one of the worst things you can do for the planet. Have one less and conserve resources.”
These are not weird, fringe, radical, or extremist views. These are far from the only instances of this kind of resentment of mothers and marriage. This is feminism. This is why, among other reasons1, RPW is explicitly an anti-feminist community. The only thing that is true of all RPWs is that we all want male-led relationships, and that we are not afraid to prioritize (or at least realize the importance of) said relationships in our lives. As a result, we have MANY women here who are happy to be wives, to raise children, and to stay home to prioritize their families. RPW is and will always be an anti-feminist community because we want to foster a safe space for these women to REALLY be able to choose what path they want, without the mockery, the condescension, the disdain, and the wrath.
1: This post couldn’t even begin to tackle how anti-male sentiments are incredibly pervasive and commonplace in the feminist movement. That would turn this already long post into a book-length essay. Feminist anti-male rhetoric is obviously unproductive here as well, because we want male-led relationships and recognize that men complement us in many desirable ways. In order for that to happen, we have to work with men as teammates and not against them as adversaries.
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So? I'm not a feminist by any means, but I enjoy having a high powered career that makes a difference in the world.
My SO supported me for a couple of years when I thought I wanted to stay home, he's more than capable of supporting us financially, but it turns out I'm happier when I'm working. I don't think this is due to any insidious programming, it's just a matter of personal preference.
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Well I mean even if my job benefited no one but "the boss", if I got personal satisfaction from it I would continue working. Some women truly do enjoy career achievement in its own right and that's fine.
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Radical feminism is not the dominant feminism today. Most modern feminism are completely at odds with radfems. I feel like a lot of people use radical in this sense to stand in for passionate or extreme. Radical feminism is an actual school of thought that is very far removed from intersectional/online/modern feminism.
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It literally is, you just don't understand the meaning of the term.
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There are plenty of arguments to be made against feminism today, but plucking 70 year old quotes entirely out of context isn't honest nor helpful.
Second wave feminism arose in a political and social climate entirely different to today's, and mainstream modern feminism does not resemble de Beauvoir's at all.
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then why not focus on that?
there's nothing wrong with looking at the history, but to use that as an argument against following it today is a strawman.
the political party i vote for today has some VERY questionable roots, and 100 years ago was doing things i would never support. should the way the party looked back then influence my vote, or should i look at their policies and beliefs today?
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Opening with paragraphs of what feminists of a different wave said 70 years ago certainly dilutes your message that feminism today is anti choice.
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No I'm not critiquing your formatting, I'm critiquing the way you've cherry picked outdated and out of context lines to make a point. I see feminists use the same tactic all the time, and it's intellectually dishonest regardless of which "side" is doing it.
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