Stop Telling Women To Do Startups

"Submissive" is pejorative. You might as well say "bitch" (edit: almost). I mightn't have picked up on this if he hadn't also said "everything difficult and challenging".

I actually agree with the point about feminism being to some extent a prejudice of its own that makes some women feel bad about wanting what they want. But they're figuring it out. We're, what, 50 years into this? That's lightning-fast change. It's fine to let the pendulum swing back and forth a few times.

The more pressing question in the long run might be how we got into a situation where both men and women have to work full-time in order to have things (like a house) that a single-salary family used to be able to afford.

It's highly likely that I will regret posting this, but I just find this woman annoying (and her ideas stupid -- and this is not the first piece of hers that made me feel this way). I don't view myself as a "feminist". To me, "feminist" means "women who want to pursue career/personal fulfillment at the expense of their children". I wanted a career but when push came to shove, I ended up doing the full-time mom thing for eons (my oldest child was 19 when I got my first full time paid job).

I had children younger than I intended. My kids had special needs. I could not count on their dad to help raise them (if I left the kids with him for two hours, it went disastrously, with children unfed and diapers unchanged). Their dad had a lot of fine qualities and was a dutiful provider, but, no, taking proper care of children under a certain age was just not one of his strong points. I happened to be extremely good at it. So I did it -- for the sake of my children, not for personal joy. Yes, I made a choice (like she keeps harping on). But, no, it wasn't a choice of the "gee, golly whiz, staying home and raising kids is all I have ever dreamed of my entire life and this is the fulfillment of a DREAM!!!" variety.

If I had been in a different situation with more support (or less demanding children and fewer health issues of my own), I would have preferred to have both a family and career. That option was simply not viable for me so I rose to the occasion and did right by my kids. And most of the time I am reluctant to talk about my views on the topic because I am leery of the potential to come across like this woman, who is doing all she can to set women back a few decades. The fact that women clearly make different choices from men hardly means those choices are rooted entirely in free will and the fulfillment of their dreams. A lot of it is rooted in "shit happens and then, if you are a decent, responsible person, you do right by your kids rather than indulging your personal whims, like it or not."

I don't resent my kids. I do resent the general lack of support that denied me other opportunities. And I've worked really hard to change my life. So I am not thrilled with the crap that routinely comes out of this woman's mouth.

A reasonable and level-headed response. Thank you.

She's a sociopath who seems pathologically opposed to objecting to any aspect of culture, or asking men to do anything. Given that the behaviors she is working around actively hurt men, there are responses other than "you should stay at home with your kids while pretending to work until your company fires you" that would be win-wins. The problems she sees can not be solved by any change in individual women's behavior; that way lies madness. It is going to require a systematic cultural change in the behavior, assumptions and attitudes of people with institutional power, most of them men. The "you must homeschool" is a good example of this: improving public schools is a valid alternative that would help everyone, not just children of women like her.

The life that is left for men in her world sounds incredibly un-appealing. I am a sperm donor, a potential source of income as I pay her to produce children for me, or on the non-romantic side, I'm someone to trick into doing most of the work in a start up while she takes credit. Regardless, I am expected to work jobs that consume my entire life, prevent me from having a relationship with my children and my wife's goal is not to have an equal or communicative relationship with me: she's just trying to keep me happy so we'll both be in our kids lives. That makes it my responsibility to be happy, and if I'm not it is a world-ending failure on my part. Have we seen Mad Men? The lesson from that show for me was "Holy Crap, that sucked!"

Humans are social creatures; any effective change will not be the product of individual behavior in isolation from all others. She takes as given: "nothing can change except my behavior" and then optimized under a set of terrible circumstances. Unfortunately her optimizations make her life better at the cost of making other people's lives worse.

I'm very much an "out of the box" thinker and rarely fit in. So I don't think that explains it. To me, sheer stupidity is a likelier explanation. Combined with not understanding how fortunate she is.

I've spent quite a lot of time over the years reading books on "feminist"-related topics, etc. I fundamentally disagree with the strong emphasis put on promoting women's careers (at the expense of children -- America is doing a terrible job with regards to its children in so many ways). My general understanding is that cultures where women sought more hands-on support for helping raise kids and practical accommodation for the burden of bearing children (which is unique to women -- as far as I know the "Junior" scenario is still science fiction) have generally done better by women. The American feminist "don't tread on me"/"get the fuck out of my way and I'll show you!" approach simply fails to address reality.

My sister and I both graduated high school as STAR student and national merit scholarship winners. I was inducted into Mu Alpha Theta (math honor society) and she was inducted into some other honor society. I, whoops!, was fertile Myrtle and had my first child the day after I turned 22. She went through years and years of fertility treatments and finally had a kid in her mid thirties. We have compared notes and she did a lot of reading with regards to women with fertility issues. Her conclusion: "Career women" are often the result of someone simply being unable to conceive (as was her case). Personality-wise, my sister was much more of the "I would love to stay home and raise kids variety" than I was. And, in fact, she left a very serious career to stay home for five years. The main reason she has a much more serious career than I have is that I happen to get pregnant a helluva lot easier than she does. My oldest son arrived 7 years earlier than I wanted and we skipped birth control like twice to get our second child. (I had to call my sister and tell her I was pregnant yet again while she was going through fertility. Ugh.) I was surrounded by women saying "we tried for 8 months for this one (pats belly)" or "we tried for two years for our second child, that's why they are so far apart".

I have the brains. I have the drive. I didn't have a supportive situation for doing both family and career. My husband used to joke that the kids didn't get the memo when we were "planning" when to have them (and he also used to tell people "if you don't want them, keep it zipped"). We were already married so it wasn't some tragedy that I turned up pregnant, but it also wasn't the way I had intended for my life to go. And in some ways, I am still paying for that. So I sometimes wish someone would put a muzzle on Ms. Trunk.

Anyway, thanks for your response. If I sound wrapped around the axle, rest assured any venom isn't intended to be aimed at you. Have a great evening.