I grew up fairly sheltered - not in the religious/tradwife way, just in the way that my family were decently well off and there are things that I never had to do for myself before now. Learning to stand on my own two feet has been a journey and a half, and honestly I’m still on that journey, I think I will be for quite some time…
What I guess I’m trying to articulate is that even with a good start in life, parents who did everything they could to give me a good upbringing and a good education at my fingertips, there are still a lot of things I’m having to figure out for myself. Most of the time it is stuff that I can get an answer either from Google or from a well placed phone call. But I can’t even begin to imagine how much harder my life would have been if my upbringing had left me with 0 real world skills.
It’s scary enough having to figure out the little things by myself, my heart bleeds for every woman who has to figure out the big things for/by herself.
I met a girl when I was fresh out of high school in undergrad who frankly, annoyed me quite a bit, but I also had an inkling to continue to be compassionate to her given a few things about her life/background/family
I ran into her two years ago. Last week, her daughter turned 1. This girl, let’s called her “P”, is a really good example of why I never feel comfortable mocking trad wives
Her perfect trad husband, who was a shining young figure in the local religious community, volunteered in all sorts of groups, well loved in his workplace and everything else, beat her up at 1 month post-partum. I reached out to her after seeing her desperately asking for a stroller on a page, confused and slightly concerned knowing both of them came from wealthy backgrounds.
The reality for lots of tradwives living “perfect lives” is this: P was immediately ostracised. All the wealth of her husband and her family meant absolutely nothing if she wasn’t in favour and doing what she was told. Her child and her well-being didn’t matter. P, at 25 years old, was basically deemed an oopsie, and left on her own to figure out how to pay for herself, a baby, find housing, and every other task you can think of.
Having known many of these women (and supported many of these women), another factor most people don’t consider is this: they are intentionally raised to be helpless. When I immediately offered my support to P, she really needed it. This young woman needed to be guided through how to apply for government assistance, how to weigh up rentals and apply for them, how to apply for jobs, how to sign up for childcare. How to sign up for your own power and internet, and how to connect them.
It wasn’t that she was “stupid”, or incapable, or spoiled. While it looks like they’re being sheltered, in reality, these women are practically being held hostage. Sure, they might be allowed to learn things that are expected of them (see: basic cooking, baking, cleaning, child rearing, women’s bible studies, hosting, and so forth) but they are heavily controlled from family life into marriage life, and they are never given the opportunity or the reality of what many of us would consider basic adult tasks.
She’s doing okay now. Her daughter turned 1, is happy and healthy. They live frugally, but they have a roof over their heads and the essentials. I often babysit for her so she can attend counselling, or go to a woman’s support group. She is painfully aware that she has so much to learn about how to live as an adult.
I don’t envy tradwives, but I don’t find any joy in mocking them either. Even when they live the most picturesque lives, they’re also practically living a real life Jenga game. If (and often, when) it comes tumbling down, they’re screwed too, and they often have 0 skills to help themselves or find community (that again, isn’t carefully curated).
People giving JKR shit for Cho Chang will never not be annoying to me as an actual Chinese person. The thing about Chinese is that there is no perfect way to transliterate it into English, as the two languages are just too different from each other. And while there are more common romanization systems than others, ultimately it's up to the discretion of the individual person for how they want to transliterate Chinese into English. In the Chinese editions of HP, Cho's name is 张秋, which would most commonly be romanized as Zhang Qiu (East Asian names are written surname first, given name second). However, it's completely reasonable to assume that Cho's parents simply decided to romanize her name differently because they personally felt that Cho gets the pronunciation across better than Qiu. I've known plenty of Chinese people, and also people whose languages do not use the Latin alphabet in general, who spell their names in English differently from how the more standard transliterations would spell it, just because of their personal preference. If anything it's no different than Catherine vs. Katherine, so trying to use Cho as a gotcha against JKR is not only annoying and nit-picky, it's also just ignorant. Which I suppose goes for a lot of the criticism against her.
wow this is a great insight, thanks anon
I hope this is fine with the OP, but I wanted to make my own seperate post about this subject.
That is why I feel as if misogyny is so rampant. I feel as if misogyny is truly the backbone of society. It has the most equal ratio between the oppressor and oppressed, plus the nature of our sexes being to work together for procreation. Therefore, men did their best to separate women, to alienate them from one another. Many women feel more connected to the male of their race or ethnicity when compared to a woman of another race or ethnicity. Many women are taught to be hostile to other women. We see this a lot with the constant attacks on white women instead of white PEOPLE. White women can be very racist and uphold white male supremacy (another facet of alienation of women. White women want to be white men's best version of "woman" and, therefore, attack WOC) but it confuses me why I see white women as a sole demographic in most cases. It feels as if its an excuse to morally surrender a group of women to leftist men without hurting the feelings of the white leftist men who also oppress minorities and women. It's also a way to appease men who, despite characteristics they are oppressed for, still hate white women on the basis of them being women. I'm not saying white women are innocent little babies, but my point is that women are taught to attack women on the basis of womanhood to appease males of all kinds. We constantly downplay an aspect of our female experience because to us it is just innate. Feminism, to most who are more liberal feminists, is just about becoming a humanely treated animal that a man owns. To identify with him but as a subset of him. If women started to identify with each other across race, sexuality, and disability, men know we would overthrow their control. Humans were meant to be a matriarchy, so they isolated women from their fellow leaders.
I think this discussion came about from a man advocating for a return to handwashing clothes for climate conservation purposes. This is where I get problematic because messages about how small I need to live my life and how much energy I should save the planet by exerting my own and doing things manually will forever fall flat for me.
Respectfully, I will be utilizing every convenience and purchasing every energy-saving machine, gadget and gizmo. I think I would need to live 3 lifetimes to approach the energy consumption of even a moderately rich North American. Therefore, I will be CONSUMING. I WANT TO EAT THE WORLD. And I love how I need to give up hot showers and handwash clothes but nobody can be arsed to stop wars where energy is being used to make trillions of weapons to be dropped on infants. And yes people with say "B-but you have a personal responsibility"- sorry idgaf. I will pick up litter and recycle and not buy stupid plastic shit on Amazon, use one water bottle at a time and buy well made designer clothes that last decades instead of fast fashion- that's me doing my part.
checked out a copy of TRANS by Helen Joyce from my library but a TRA got to it before me lol
painful irony in calling the claim that gender ideology erases women “bad faith” while simultaneously having so little respect for female voices that you wrote over a female authors words in a public library book 😭😭
New tin foil hat theory: the rise and propagation of minimalist home decor is meant to manage expectations for a desired culture of renters.
idk if there's like a good anwser to this or not but
i always wondered why the solution for my dysphoria was hormones and surgery because the solution for my eating disorder isn't to just lose weight, the solution to my anxiety isn't to isolate myself, the solution for my ocd isn't to give into every compulsion, so why is the only solution for my dysphoria giving into it and letting it control my life?
men are like, nooo don’t recognize that you have similar struggles to all kinds of women, you’re so easy to manipulate when ur isolated aha