RW compares single, childless, working women to Hitler and terrorists

[LiviaOlivia]

Monday, May 02, 2005
CWFA: Women Need to Go Home
by cntodd

What is the “price” that women are paying for so-called “sexual liberation”? According to the Concerned Women for America, the consequences have been staggering: the erosion of a heteronormative lifestyle.
http://www.cwfa.org/main.asp

Based upon the organizations own research, Janice Crouse writes:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/GuestColumns/Crouse20050428.shtml

"This week, the Beverly LaHaye Institute (the think tank for Concerned Women for America) released its latest Data Digest which chronicles a disturbing trend for women: since 1976, the rate of childlessness has gone up between 50 and 90 percent among women in every age bracket, and the rate of singleness among women over age 30 has tripled."

That is a disturbing trend? What is disturbing about women remaining single and childless rather than shackling themselves to the norms a repressed generation said you need to live up to if you want to be “fulfilled”? Apparently, the CWFA thinks no woman is complete unless she has a man to obey and a child to raise.

Her condescension to any woman who choose a career over family is enough to make you gag:

"Millions of women are finding, through bitter experience, that while the wonders of modern communication technology can distract much of the time, at the end of the day –– when the iPod and cellphone sit in their chargers, when the television’s relentless barrage is finally silent––there is no hand to hold and no baby to cuddle."

We have heard it all before: there is only one good life, and if you do not pursue that life, you will be less than a person. (I wonder what she thinks about women who cannot have children.)

However, I suspect that if you pushed her hard enough, along with all the other bible bashing anti-feminist women out there, you would find that they really do accept a plurality of good lives to live. For example, I suspect that she would have no problem with a woman or man who chooses to live her or his life as a nun or a monk, devoting themselves only to prayer, worship, and devotion to God. Could such a person who chooses such a life turn out to be unfulfilled because they purposely chose a life that doesn’t add up to the heteronormative standard? Or does their God allow for other possible good lives?

If you keep reading her op-ed piece, you may be dismayed to hear that she compares the decision of women not to marry or have children to the Holocaust and to suicide bombers!

"Today in America, we are beginning to reckon with the bitter harvest from the scourge of self-centered “me-ism”… Drinking from the springs of a false ideology can steal priceless, irreplaceable elements of life for years before its tragic consequences are evident and its true nature revealed for all to see. For instance, the millions of deaths from Hitler’s Nazi horror or in Stalin’s Gulags, or the bloody massacres of today’s suicidal terrorists, reveal all too clearly the true character and the threat of counterfeit creeds. But for the victims, the exposé comes too late."

Apparently, deciding not to have a child or a marriage isn’t just a life-goal tragedy, but it is one of the worst possible crimes imaginable.

But, fear not, for she concludes her little rant praising the fact that women are already beginning to leave the workplace and return to the home, realizing that work is a man’s job and not for them:

"For many women the career track that lured so enticingly has become a daily grind that merely pays the bills; a treadmill that is no golden pathway to their dreams."
......
" The change is happening slowly, as all such societal changes tend to do. But the trend is clearly moving away from the flat-out careerism that characterized the late 20th century. Today’s American woman is looking to blaze her own path, and increasingly that pathway lingers at home."


http://cntodd.blogspot.com/2005/05/cwfa-women-need-to-go-home.html

[Sanity Claws]

1. Sickening

Why can't they tolerate anyone being different? Do they want everyone to be miserable, just because they are?

[Bunny]

2. Well, look who Ms. LaHaye is married to:

Yes, it's the author of those Left Behind books. We can only join them in prayer that the rapture comes soon. Very soon.

SNIP
LaHaye and his wife Beverly, who is chairman of the board and founder of Concerned Women for America, have been married for over 50 years. They have four grown children and nine grandchildren. Snow skiing, water skiing, motorcycling, golfing, vacationing with family, and jogging are among his leisure activities.
SNIP

http://www.timlahaye.com/about_ministry/index.php3?p=bio§ion=Biography

[liberalhistorian]

5. And don't you just love it that

it's always women with wealthy husbands who spout shit like this? Women who can freely choose not to work because they don't have to? Millions of women don't have that choice; even if they wanted to stay home, they couldn't afford it.

[Bunny]

6. It's the same old same old, ain't it?

And it's just sickening.

[Warpy]

8. Exactly, and that bitter woman seems to have accepted her role

as animated flowerpot, ready for her husband to dump his seed into, as the only socially acceptable thing for her to do in her youth.

Now that she's old, she'll spout about how her life view is the only valid one, and that her life choices were the only valid ones. The whole thing seems like an exercise in bitter regret to me. Someone who was deliriously happy with her own life wouldn't bother to condemn others.

I suspect there's a lot of self judgment going on, and that the poor thing has turned vicious out of a sense of having been had, about never having the courage to kick her lord and master in the nuts and then get on with her own life.

I have to pity anyone who is this nasty, narrow, humorless and judgmental because I know there isn't enough joy in her own life for her to focus on, so she's substituted a hatred of others.

[Hello_Kitty]

9. Damn straight

I'm one of those single, childless, selfish hedonists over 30 that she describes. You don't see me writing essays disparaging women who choose to marry and raise children or trying to persuade them to adopt my way of life. I'm not always blissfully satisfied, but I don't regret my life choices and see no need to impose them on others in order to validate my existence.

[htuttle]

3. Hitler glorified mothers and families

Not unlike how the right wing here does.

Also, 'the terrorists' (at least the fundamentalist Islamic ones) believe in the same social issues as the US right wing -- women should stay home, raise children, be treated as chattel, etc...

[MissWaverly]

4. excuse me, when was the last time corporate America

made children a priority, one minute, we're criticized for living in
sin, and having children by giving in to our evil ways, and pregnancy is punishment by a wrathful god, now we are criticized for not having children, for not being sinful and pulling our weight in this man's world, which is it, fundies?

[bloom]

11. not only that...

if they were so concerned about women and children - "corporate America" would do something to curb mercury and other emissions - so fetuses and young children aren't being exposed to such high levels of toxins... :argh:

[libodem]

7. I think this subject is at the root

of most major issues....male a superior human being. There really are no equal rights as long as this religious precept exists. That is why fighting for the equal rights amendment in the 70's was such a big deal. In the long run we could not get 2/3's of the States to ratify for the vote. We lost the right to have the country vote by a matter of a few states. Anyway that's what I recall. Keeping women as second class citizens, good for only one thing, breeding, or else they are choosing to be selfish, me-first, sinners and evil- doers is the brainwashing of the right wing. Dr.Laura is all about: you are a failure at life if your wife has to work and your kids are not in private school. She is death on public school.

[oddmanout]

10. I am speachless.....

I cannot for the life of me understand these people. Do they not know where this will lead them. Unfeakingbelievable!



:dem:

[politicat]

12. I will admit, I am not single; my income is currently soil-banked, but....

This woman needs to stop it with the koolaid already.

She says, "There's no hand to hold and no baby to cuddle."

I say "Praise Be! I didn't spend 18 years of my life getting a good education and doing volunteer work in my field to walk little Madison across the street to her playdate and wiping little Snotley's nose. I didn't become a full part of the society just to retreat from it!"

I don't not have children because I'm selfish; I don't have children because I realize that my genes are not important to the planet. I don't have children because there are millions of kids out there who need homes and there's no reason I should add to that number should I get the child-craving (which sounds a little cannibalistic, but....) In fact, I find it absolutely selfish to consider oneself so very important that one must contribute extra copies of oneself to the world. If you have to have a kid, fine. Even two is okay... but more than that? Ever heard of over-consumption?

Nazism and Stalinistic fascism were both about promoting the selfish agenda of survival of the state no matter the cost to anything or one else on the planet. Childlessness is by no means even close.

Bevvie, when the Rapture comes, and you're Left Behind, you'll see what a Pharisee you really are.....

[redqueen]

13. That's frickin nauseating.

We're still in 2005, right?

:grr:

[all.of.me]

14. choice = genocide?

oh please. she is probably in a horrible marriage and filled with envy!

[CBHagman]

15. Hasn't she ever met any single Christian women?

For the love of Mike, when I was in college back in the '70s, young Christian women used to stress out regarding finding a mate. They got an earful about not being "unequally yoked" -- i.e., not getting involved with someone who does not share your faith (interdenominational was all right).

I don't know what percentage of Christian women don't marry due to trouble finding a suitable mate, but it's no picnic out there, from what I can tell.

So unless Beverly LaHaye wants to become shadchan for Christian women the world over, I'd say she'd better not judge.