Tried With Fire

At first glance, this video is an over-the-top parody of traditionalist ideas from the 1950's, but it may be closer to the truth than we would like to believe: It was widely believed in the nineteenth century that "while sinful man was controlled by his brain, delicate woman was controlled by her reproductive organs." Women had wombs that were used for physical creation; men had brains that were used for mental creation... From this belief derived not only the notion of woman's irrational, unpredictable, and mysterious "feminine" nature, but also the idea that childbearing was every woman's ultimate fulfillment while intellectual pursuits were the fulfillment of the masculine nature. A woman who pursued intellectual activities therefore assumed for herself a masculine nature, such women of the nineteenth century were often accused of being "hermaphrodites in mind." Much was made of the supposed smaller size of the female brain and the ...

When I was young, my sister and I would play house. If we were in the mood, we would go back in time to "the olden days" and imagine we were a pioneer or colonial family. We even used a cardboard tube from Christmas wrapping paper as a pump handle and made sure we did not turn on the tap in the play sink. But we didn't know how hard life was back then. It never dawned on me, as a child, that Laura and her family nearly starved to death during that long, hard winter . Families in the community banded together and held a Pride and Prejudice Ball several years ago. I sewed matching regency ball gowns for my daughter and myself. We attended English country dance lessons in preparation. It was so easy to romanticize about life in that era especially after watching the Colin Firth/Jennifer Ehle version over and over again. But we were pretending to be the gentry, not servants or the working classes who had no ability to "quit the sphere" in which they were born. ...

As part of my exercise in reading primary sources, I've started  Women Caught in the Conflict: The Culture War between Traditionalism and Feminism . I am well aware that the author, Rebecca Groothuis, is an evangelical feminist which is precisely why I am reading her book. The traditional side is not without its prejudices and stereotypes, so I want to hear it straight from the horse's mouth. So far Women Caught in the Conflict has been very thought-provokoing. Groothuis lays some groundwork by giving a history of the women's rights movement in American history and the influence on and from the church.  She also spends time delineating the various streams of secular feminist thought. This section was interesting in the light of Rosaria Butterfield's prior life as a lesbian feminist. However, feminism is not a monolithic ideology, and to lump these streams together is, in my opinion, a misrepresentation. To include egalitarianism with secular feminism is inaccurate a...