Does Feminism Make Women Stupid?

I don’t want to be picking on feminists especially, because it is true of any ideology. Thinking in ideological terms makes people stupid.

Those who want to impose their ideas on the world are often incapable of defending those ideas against anyone who disputes them. This makes them even more ardent in their efforts to force people to think like they want them to think.

Such is the case of one notable feminist nitwit, by name of Jill Filipovic. In a recent Substack, reported by the New York Post, Filipovic offers up the standard feminist party line, one that we have been hearing now for five decades-- count ‘em-- to the effect that stay-at-home mothering is bad for women, bad for children, bad for men and bad for everyone. 

One does not like to repeat oneself, any more than is necessary, but we have had five decades of feminism now. And we have more broken homes, more children born out of wedlock, more divorces (among those who bother to get married) and far more women pursuing career opportunities.

The result, for women who are influenced by the Filipovic philippic, is more women being depressed, more women on psychiatric medication, etc. I wrote about it in this post, two weeks ago.

Anyway, Filipovic offers the following non-facts. Or, dare we say, partial facts, cherry picked to sustain an ideology, one that has largely been accepted, to the detriment of women and children.

She is responding here to a New York Times essay, wherein one Matt Bruenig suggests that it might be a good idea to pay women to stay at home to bring up their children. 

To that Filipovic takes serious offense, mostly because said children might not think the way she wants them to think.

“The problem with paying people to stay home with kids, though, is that (1) we’re overwhelmingly not talking about ‘people,’ we’re talking about mothers; and (2) pushing women out of work comes with overwhelmingly negative consequences,

Note the hyperbole-- dare we call it hysterical hyperbole; we dare not. “Overwhelmingly negative consequences”-- wow-- does she ever consider the impact on children from maternal neglect. Not at all, team. She could care less.

Now, Filipovic, mentally challenged that she is, suggests that the nuclear family is an historical anomaly. This is, dare we say, stupid.

We recall the words of San Francisco psychoanalyst Nancy Chodorow who wrote, in a book called, The Reproduction of Mothering, that “only women mother.” See the largely positive New York Times review, written by your humble blogger. It is a universal fact that all human societies have consigned the work of mothering to women. This has not always prevented women from working at home. It has not prevented mothers from involving their mothers in the work of raising children, but there is no such thing as a human society where men mother. 

And dare we mention, on the other hand, that it is extremely rare that women fight wars, or that they have traditionally worked in the police forces, in the NFL. The notion that the sexual division of labor is a novelty is simply stupid.

Filipovic noted that families that are set up in a more traditional sense — aka a “carer/earner nuclear family model” — is a historical oddity “that is tremendously isolating and often financially devastating for the carer (almost always a woman).”

“It also reinforces the gendered division of labor, which ripples out to all women,” she continued. She then recommended a “robust social welfare state” instead of “paying mothers a small stipend.'”

“More mothers at home makes for worse, more sexist men who see women as mommies. Men with stay-at-home wives are more sexist than men with working wives,” the lawyer wrote into the Twitterverse. “[Men] don’t assess women’s workplace contributions [fairly]; and they are less likely to hire and promote women.”

Imagine that, men who are raised by their mothers are more likely to become sexist. By that Filipovic means that they see women as nurturing and caring. And we can’t have that. As for the impact that that has on women’s career opportunities, the truth remains that a woman who works less because she wants to spend time with her children will probably not be promoted as quickly as will a man who does the same. Wouldn't be nice if feminists would allow women to choose?

I refer you to my comments on an article to this effect, from the New York Times, written by Claire Cain Miller.

So, more women are working. More women do not have husbands around. More women are rejecting stay-at-home motherhood. And, Filipovic does not quite get that this is not a good thing, for mothers, for children and even for men:

Filipovic claimed that “stay-at-home mothers are psychologically and emotionally worse off than working mothers by just about every measure.” She alleged that these moms suffer from anger, depression and anxiety.

She also suggested “a better model” is to have a paid parental leave policy that “heavily incentivizes men to take significant time off of work, too.”

“Especially in the earliest weeks,” she scribed. ” [A} child can be cared for at home by its parents for the first year of life. Then universal high-quality childcare [can be added].”

As for whether or not fathers can care for babies, the truth is that they are less good at being mothers than mothers are. And, how many women do you know who would happily trust a male, one who is suffused with toxic masculinity, to care for a baby.

Be serious, team.

As for the science, which an ideological fanatic like Filipovic ignores, I refer to the groundbreaking research performed by one Elseline Hoekzema at the University of Barcelona. Heck, it was reported in the New York Times. And also, see this link. She discovered that pregnancy enhances the empathy circuits in a mother’s brain; and that it does nothing for the father’s empathy circuits. Obviously, when dealing with a neonate or even a baby or an infant, being sensitive to non-verbal cues is essential.