Barefoot and Pregnant

I believe most women would go out of their minds with rage if their families suggested to them that their role in life was to be barefoot and pregnant. I like to walk around barefoot in the summer and no I never wanted to be pregnant but plenty of women love being mothers. But using such a phrase on them would most likely sound like an insult to them which I believe it is meant to be. In Nazi Germany women were given a bonus to produce a child which seems pretty horrifying to me.

I bring this up because I see phrases and innuendos which echo this type of mentality today (notably by the man who shall not be named). Here’s how I respond. What makes you so insecure that you dislike having a woman be educated, get paid as much or more than you, and generally feel that her only place is under a man? Let’s look at this upside down – for centuries women have been under the man and finally they said “no more” and slowly built up some “rights” in this modern world. A lightbulb seems to have gone off in some men’s head where they are saying

“Hey, they are smarter than us, they are getting more than us, they are working harder, but what is happening to us? Hell, let’s knock ‘em down a few pegs. Hell, let’s get them barefoot and pregnant. Hell, let’s make them go back to church and believe St Paul was right about their position under man and God.”

Like that is going to happen . . . but sadly it appears that for some women that is precisely what is happening.

Now there are a lot of things I cannot stand in this world but one of the worst things I dislike in an “argument” is cherry-picking. If you bring up the Bible you better be prepared for me to go at you hammer & tongs; if you bring up the old saw “my parents said never discuss politics or religion” then go back to kindergarten because you aren’t in the grownup world yet. Don’t even get me started on the idea of who is allowed to raise their voice and who isn’t. [and no, I haven’t even gotten there in the book Good & Mad!] If one has a proper discussion on an issue then the arguments should be bold, strong and direct; there is no skirting around an issue or pulling out ancient rhetoric and attempting to make it the holy of holies. That won’t wash in a true discussion.

So where am I going with this? I am going to the garbage dump to get rid of all these old men’s tales about women. We are grownups and we can toe the line as good as . . . anyone.

"I'm tough, I'm ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay." ―Madonna