Pacific Views

Surrendered Wives

Just nauseating.

I bet their marriages do go better, though. Presuming that better is measured by the mere absence of bickering. If you're married to someone who wants a slave, then being one will surely make them happier. And that always works for as long as the other party (though mysteriously, it always seems to be the wife) can stand being a slave.

I imagine it would be a lot easier to put up with that if you lived somewhere like Afghanistan and your choices were basically slavery or death. Which is probably why the violent Christian terrorist sects, the James Dobsons and the Sam Brownbacks of the country always seem to be trying to make America more like Afghanistan for the female half of the population.

What it really comes down to is that they're a bunch of fundamentally lazy toads who want to profit from the time savings of having an unpaid servant take care of all the niggling little details of their lives without having to inconvenience themselves by reciprocating. Not even by the extension of proferring respect for the other person's autonomy, because the easy thing is always to just ask someone else to do things for us and have them say yes without fail. It isn't that it merely lessens a person's physical and temporal workload; it prevents them from having to do the mental and emotional work of paying attention to the other person's needs and engaging in negotiations over points of difference. That was *so* cute when we were all babies, but not so much as adults. It's a recipe for infantilized adult men and damaged adult women to deeply embed authoritarian whackjobbery into the heads of their helpless children.

And note, there's a difference between 'one of us has to stay home with the kids' and 'she must obey my every command.' If you doubt, click on over.

Posted by natasha at June 20, 2007 11:35 AM | Women | Technorati links |