I was amazed, enthralled and hugely relieved to come accross this site which I’m linking to here to provide encouragement that a woman like this can exist. She’s called kelly Mac. Her blogsite is a shot in the arm for Men’s Rights Activists. We only need a few million more like her to get the changes we so badly need. But it’s a start.
I’d like to tell you a story. It’s based on my experiences, but really it’s about any girl who was born in the West in the era of the 1960’s and later. It’s a story of betrayal, and lies, and fear, and pain. It’s a story of brainwashing on a massive scale, in a mad attempt to get us all to join the cult of feminism.
Like all successful cults, feminism targeted the most vulnerable and impressionable of us. They started on us young. And the messages delivered were sweet and affirming, and unobjectionable:
*Girl, you can do anything you want to do. Just set your mind to it, and it’s yours.
*My mom told me, “I wanted to be a doctor when I was growing up, but my mom told me that girls can’t be doctors. So I became a nurse. You can be anything you want.”
Cool! This is sure a great time to be a girl. I’m glad no one told me I couldn’t be a doctor if I wanted to.
Then the messages started changing. They became more about “being equal” and less about working to achieve your goals.
*A woman can do anything a man can do.
*Hey, kids, look at this new set of books we have in the library. They’re biographies of famous Americans, and guess what? There are the same amount of volumes about famous American women as famous American men.
I spent many many happy hours reading and learning about Amelia Earhart, and Jane Addams, and Harriet Tubman, and Rosa Parks, and Susan B. Anthony. I wasn’t really interested in learning about the famous men. I mean, come on. We were learning about them in class (not that famous women weren’t covered), and besides, look at all that those women accomplished despite having far fewer rights and choices as men. GO SISTERS!!!
You can see how the mind set started to change. You can see how we learned to ignore the evidence (we were covering all of these people in class, but still thought it was sexist). Oh, we were starting to get a little indignant.
Then, the messages became much more political and angry.
*Women have been victims of the Patriarchy for all of our history. We’re not gonna take it anymore. Get out of our way, men. We are women, hear us roar!
*Just a few generations before us, women had no choice but to get married and live in servitude to their husbands, pushing out kid after kid after kid until they died young and used up. No More!
*Just a few generations before us, women were only allowed to study home economics at college, because we were considered to stupid to pick up anything else. Besides, it was just something for us to do until we found our master…er, I mean, husband. No More!
*A generation or two before us, women were not allowed to wear anything but skirts. Oppression!!! No More!
*Boys and men want only one thing from us, and one thing alone. And they will do anything to get it, the disgusting pigs.
*If we let them, men would have us barefoot, pregnant, and chained to the kitchen stove, only to be unchained when he wanted *gag* sex.
*Women only have to get mammograms because we’re second class citizens. If men had to get their testicles squeezed, you can bet they’d come up with a different test.
Now we were really ignoring our common sense. Did we think of how the men felt, working to support all those children? Did we think of all those great American women who had accomplished so much, supposedly without benefit of education? Did we wonder why wearing a skirt = oppression, and about all those pictures we’d seen of women in pants? Did we wonder how men managed to accomplish what they did despite being completely preoccupied with getting into our panties? Did we actually know of anyone who had ever been chained to a stove? Were mammograms really that painful?
The answer to all of the above questions is a resounding, “NO”. We did not. Never entered our minds. We were programmed, and like good little robots, we spouted what we had been taught.
And we were angry. Oh, so very angry. Stinking, misogynistic, oppressive….MEN!
But we still wanted families. We wanted (sex). Even though we couldn’t say that, of course. But why couldn’t we? Weren’t we strong, liberated, independent women? Well, yes, but, but, but, if we said we wanted men, that would mean we needed them, and we don’t need those stinking MEN! Oh, my. We were confused.
But we still got married, and had children and fought and fought and fought against our instincts. We were unhappy and angry, and didn’t really know why, but we were told it was MEN, so that’s who we lashed out at.
And now that we were liberated and able to work, wages went down so far that it became impossible to support our little family on one income, and we soon had no choice but to get a job. Damn. Now we can’t be full-time moms, and that makes us feel guilty, but we don’t have a choice, let’s blame MEN.
And now the messages are:
*You are empowered!
*You can have it all!
*You are superwoman!
*Stinking men should do more housework! Oppressors. Everything bad is their fault.
And the one thing that is above all in importance when it comes to love and happy relationships was gone. We were unable to trust our men. We could never fully let down our guard. God knows we couldn’t let him run the household. That would be submitting to oppression, and we didn’t want that. Right? Isn’t that right???
So now, we come back to me. Eighteen years married. Having never fully trusted my husband. Sex went from painful to a chore. Resentment grew and grew and grew, because I couldn’t tell him how I felt, because that might hurt his ego. And everyone knows, we can’t do that. But why not? Am I not a strong, independent woman? Um…yes? I guess. I don’t know. I just can’t. Communication is a no no.
And then, I discovered something that changed my life. I discovered that I had been lied to from the very beginning. And suddenly, it all made sense. SON OF A BITCH! Those pigs had lied to me! From the beginning!! Oh, you want to talk about angry? Disoriented? It was like I had been having a nightmare all those years, and I finally woke up.
I became, as they say, “unplugged from the fematrix”.
I’ll be 41 years old in two months. I’ve been married for 18 years. And my life has been a lie. I’m getting my equilibrium back. I’m learning to listen to myself and say what I have to say and let people be who they have to be. I am no longer part of the cult. Oh, but the aftermath is painful.
I’ll survive it. I’ll move on. I still have part of my life left to live, and I can finally do so with a clear head.
But I’ll never get those 40 years back. They’re gone forever.
That’s what feminism has done for me.
Posted by KellyMac at 9/12/2006 01:14:00 PM
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