Feminist Agony, without the Ecstasy

The letter seems to be a caricature. Yet it counts as a perfect coda to my Sunday post, “The Marriage-Go-Round.”

A woman wrote to Washington Post advice columnist Carolyn Hax to vent. Better yet, to offer up a cry of feminist agony-- because her 37 year old brother is engaged to a 26 year old woman.

The injustice of it all. Makes you want to gag. It made Carolyn Hax want to gag.

The issue is simple. The letter writer’s friends, presumably in their late 30s, cannot get a date. She believes that her brother, also in his late thirties, would be perfect husband material for any of them. And yet, in an ultimate indignity, her brother has gotten engaged to a 26 year old schoolteacher, who behaves, the letter writer explains, like a Stepford wife. 

The horror of it all.

So, the woman who is engaged to her brother wants to be a wife. She behaves like someone who is happy to be a wife. Just as I suggested in my earlier post. For that, the letter writer despises her, to the roots of her feminist soul.

So much for female solidarity. Feminists do not merely think ill of misogynist males. They think extremely ill of any woman who deviates from the feminist life plan. They are especially horrified when they discover that men value reproductive potential when choosing a spouse.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this means that the slew of articles about the biological clock, slew that has somewhat quieted down of late, was ignored by a large number of bright feminists.

So, feminists have found a new injustice. They reject the notion that women who defer marriage and motherhood in favor of career might find themselves at a competitive disadvantage in the marriage market. 

So, the letter writer rails against the 26 year old school teacher. This woman is not only a teacher, but she is a capable and competent homemaker, a capable and competent housewife in training. 

The letter writer preferred that her brother choose a career woman who is too busy working her way up the corporate ladder to bother with household chores. That is, choose one of her unmarried friends.

Since the letter writer herself is married, we  might imagine that she is also torqued over the fact that she is less than competent at homemaking. The brother’s fiance makes her look bad, and we cannot have that.

So, what happens when reality diverges with feminist ideology?

Consider her text:

My brother is 37, and she is 26. He is a doctor, and I think he focused on getting established, and when he wanted to have kids, he picked a younger woman. I have a lot of female friends in their 30s who describe dating as very hard specifically because men want younger women.

The other part is that she is such a Stepford wife. She is a teacher and was off for the summer. Their entire house was clean and organized, she had meals or local restaurants planned, she made activities suggestions for our other brother’s kids, and looked incredible — thin, young, hot. It feels like my smart, accomplished brother picked a young, hot woman instead of somebody his own age who is too busy with a career to put cereal in plastic bins.

I agreed to be a bridesmaid because I couldn’t think of a way to say no. But I don’t know how to fake it for an entire wedding.

My husband just says, “She was very nice to us,” which is true if you just look at the surface. I need help not tearing my hair out.

Obviously, the woman needs help. Like it or not, she has exposed some glaring character flaws, beginning with ingratitude and extending to bitter resentment. 

Happily enough, columnist Carolyn Hax is having none of it. 

Please reread your letter. It is ageist, petty, cruel, bedazzled with cheap assumptions and ungrateful to the point of comedy.

Your brother chose, from your description, a kind, generous, inclusive and conscientious person with one of the most difficult, underpaid and self-sacrificing careers out there, and she busted her shapely backside to host you all — and you hate her for her looks. Holy tap-dancing mean.

If she were 26 and fat, would you like her then? Or still thin, but 36? What about 26, thin, leaves dishes stacked in the sink? Unthreatening enough?

Hax continues:

I’m sorry your friends can’t get dates. That you correlate one man’s choice of one woman with collective female suffering just gave me “domestic supply of infants” flashbacks that I could have done without today.

So, no sympathy for her friends who cannot get dates. They got duped by feminists. Is this the fault of men? I think not. They would have done better to consider the role of procreative potential in their decision making.

Like it or not, feminism has not repealed human nature. One understands that, like good ideologues, feminists believe that they can change reality by forcing everyone to use non-sexist pronouns, but, alas, such is obviously not the case.

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