So the NY Times runs a perfectly decent, balanced article about the tremendous increase in men taking on the Stay At Home Dad role. There’s no sneering at the men; the article approaches their lifestyles respectfully, and acknowledges that some of the challenges they encounter (like their efforts not always being fully appreciated by their spouses) are things many women have dealt since the ‘Dad works, Mom is a housewife’ arose as the standard model for middle class homes more than a century ago.
All in all, an article that any gender egalitarian would be happy to see hitting the electronic newsstands. Working women: yay! Nurturing men: awesome! Nontraditional families FTW!
Melissa McEwan at Shakesville, however, saw fit to weigh in with a half dozen dismissive, sneering paragraphs, like the sarcastic one she wrapped up her post with:
But I think my favorite part is probably all the cookies. So many cookies. Delicious, delicious cookies. It’s nice to see guys getting credit for deigning to do what women have been doing, as if work done by women isn’t intrinsic garbage! MORE COOKIES.
She titled her piece, “This is so the worst thing you’re going to read all day,” and it’s the one thing about her post I agree with. Just not the way she meant it.
This comment thread is the “No Hostility” thread. Please read this and this for the ground rules. The “Regular Parallel” thread can be found here.
The sense of entitlement these gynocentric idelogues just drips everywhere on that page.
To them, these men can’t do anything right no matter what. An article praises stay at home dads for once and they can’t help but shit all over it and complain.
Like I always said, they lament where all the good men have gone? Why their husbands are not pulling their weight?
Well, they should look in the damn mirror.
Somehow I suspect an an equivalent response as McEwan has written to let’s say a similar MSM article about women in STEM fields would not be well received at all. I am sure there are plenty of to me non-convincing rationale for such a double standard.
This is not the first time Melissa McEwan have written negatively about fathers or men wanting to be fathers.
True enough, Tamen. Two years ago I responded to a similarly mean-spirited post of hers about men wanting to be fathers.
ballgame Shakesville is a den of gynocentrism gone extreme. This does not surprise me. What surprises me is that people will lap it up.
Basically McEwan is mad that people are glad more stay at home dads are popping up. I guess she would rather these dads just remain in the background. I wonder if she will pull out the talk of cookies and that title the next time someone writes an article on the wonderful increase in women in the boardroom (as in taking on higher corporate positions).
I don’t think that’s quite it, Danny. The gynocentric world view is largely built on the notion that women are oppressed by men, that men get all the ‘goodies’ and women are left to scratch and claw in a world where they are ‘othered’ and systematically deprived of their due. In that view, any discussion of women is just another teaspoon against the ocean of talk about men, and so is totally justified — indeed, wholly inadequate to the task of helping women get what they deserve. Men, OTOH, already get more than they deserve — they’re the default human beings! Pay gap! Congress! Board rooms! — so any talk about them is just ‘centering’ them once again, no matter how egalitarian the topic is. And since the world is already ‘overly centered’ around men, well that’s just stealing precious ‘cookies’ from much more truly deserving and neglected women.
It’s a dangerous caricature of reality formed by a weird amalgamation of traditional neglect of vulnerable males combined with the feminist apex fallacy of presuming that men at the top represent ‘all men.’
Melissa isn’t the only major feminist who comes across as somewhat puzzlingly hostile to giving positive feedback to men taking a more active role in child care … Jessica Valenti had a somewhat similar reaction. It’s easy enough to find feminist discourse which appears to assume that — while men ought to be doing more of the domestic drudgery — children are still ‘possessions’ of their mothers. I suspect — and here I’m speculating, of course — there might be some underlying ambivalence towards male encroachment on what has been a female-dominated sphere.
Melissa McEwan, to my knowledge, is not raising children, so any comments form her on SAHDs or any other kind of parenting are pretty irrelvant, but it is a measure of her gynocentrism that she thinks they are worth making at all.
How much traction do you really think her feminism is going to get with the actual women those dads are married to? Bu that is never why these women disavow frminism in general, oh, now; they are just uninformed and ungrateful.
“Melissa isn’t the only major feminist who comes across as somewhat puzzlingly hostile to giving positive feedback to men taking a more active role in child care … Jessica Valenti had a somewhat similar reaction. It’s easy enough to find feminist discourse which appears to assume that — while men ought to be doing more of the domestic drudgery — children are still ‘possessions’ of their mothers. I suspect — and here I’m speculating, of course — there might be some underlying ambivalence towards male encroachment on what has been a female-dominated sphere.”
What it is vicarious mommy-blocking. It’s as if these women think they have a better right to these children than their own fathers do – why else is it any business of theirs at all?
“there might be some underlying ambivalence towards male encroachment on what has been a female-dominated sphere.”
It’s the whole “what’s mine is mine. what’s yours is mine” attitude that we see everywhere when it comes to women’s spaces and men’s spaces. Women can barge into any men’s space and even feel entitled to dictate the ruels of behavior there, see the whole Sarkeesian kerfuffel in gaming, but woe betide a man who is so male privielged as to want to raise his own children.
This is not an ideology, it is a pathology, and the only use for a reasoned argument with this particular kind of attitude is to divert their attention while the rest of us fix these problems. and there are plenty of us out in the world to balance this; like I say, the mothers of these children are more interested in supporting the fathers’ efforts than in falling into line with some self-appointed ideologue’s program and being in with thecool kids.
I find it funny that on Michfest forums I would often (along with all trans women) get accused of wanting to enter women’s spaces…due to male privilege.
But they can enter all male space, and it’s no privilege at all, it’s their right.
And I’M the one with a sense of entitlement? Let me laugh.
Interesting albeit speculative thoughts, Jim. I don’t subscribe to the ‘identity politics’ assumptions underlying a lot of it, though (i.e. that it matters whether Melissa is raising children or not, or that there should be such a thing as ‘women’s spaces’ and ‘men’s spaces’, etc.).
So, are you mostly just angry about McEwan’s “tone” or do you have anything substantive to say about her post?
If you think she thinks negatively in general about fathers or stay-at-home fathers I’d say you are pretty off-base. You, and many commenters here, don’t even understand why she’s taken a sarcastic tone about the way the NYT’s article is presenting these fathers, so I’m not surprised that you can’t even articulate a fair or substantive critique of it.
Really. You’re now writing article bemoaning “gynocentric” feminists who “sneer” at stuff. This is a new low for this site.
I think it’s noteworthy when a major blogfeminist sneers at an article extolling men who are taking on non-traditional gender roles, fannie. You appear not to understand the objection to her piece; I suspect that — as Tamen pointed out — many mainstream feminists (including yourself) would be a bit less blasé about a similarly-framed post bemoaning the celebration of women in STEM fields or something.
For the past 7 years I have been a stay at home dad. If anyone has any questions you can get answers straight from me without it being filtered through some blog or newspaper.
“I don’t subscribe to the ‘identity politics’ assumptions underlying a lot of it, though (i.e. that it matters whether Melissa is raising children or not, or that there should be such a thing as ‘women’s spaces’ and ‘men’s spaces’, etc.).”
Identity? Raising children isn’t an identity, it’s a matter of what experience you have or don’t have.
My point on women’s and men’s spaces was not to defend them, but simply that raisng children has traditionally been seen as a woman’s space.
I think when you look at them, all the objections to being prioamry care-givers for young children always end up boiling down to tradtionalism.
Fannie, since we “don’t even understand” what
McGowan’sMcEwan’s objections ot the article really are, could you please enlighten us?I’m not sure how different that argument is from an ‘identity’ argument, Jim. I’ve never experienced life as a woman; that means my comments on things that involve women are irrelevant?
I don’t agree that you have to have had the ‘experience’ of being this or that to make relevant comments about it. Often times having some experience does help a person glean greater insights about an issue, though there are also times when immersion in an experience or an identity kills your objectivity and you actually understand it less well than an outsider.
@debaser71, do you get “sneered at” by people when they find out you’re a stay at home dad? If so, who is it doing the sneering, if it is consistently by group? Men, women, feminists, or MRAs, etc?
Anecdotal, but I’d like to know your personal experience.
A friend of mine was a stay at home dad at one point. It sounds like a tv sitcom, but he let his kid in the stroller get away from him on a train when he was left on the platform (long story). Got picked up by right wing radio, who gave his name and contact information, and he took crap for weeks from people who wanted to let him know he was a bad dad, with some undertones about how a more traditional, conservative family wouldn’t have had this problem.
“I’m not sure how different that argument is from an ‘identity’ argument, Jim. ”
We’ve been over this before. You either have experience in an area or you don’t, and your identity has nothing to do with it. I didn’t require that she be a mother, that might be an identity, if you stretch the term, but she could have a lot of experience raising kids even if they aren’t hers.
But as it is she just sounds like all the other kibbitzers who feel it their place to preach to preganant women or come right up to fathers in public and advise them.
“I’ve never experienced life as a woman; that means my comments on things that involve women are irrelevant?”
Not analogous; you have lived with and around women all your life, you grwew up under the control of a woman, and that is a pretty good basis of observation.
Tell me – I see you making lots of comments on matters that involve women, but I have never seen you say much at all about parenting. You clearly have some reason for making a disticntion. What is it?
McKewan(McEwan. Please make the effort, everyone. — Daran) seems to being suffering from feminist privilege, in the sense that the notion of having available non-traditional gender roles is normal. Men did not have a “masculinist” movement to help them realize this, and they’re struggling to adapt. The feminist movement in general didn’t do enough to help men make the jump they helped women make, have put down men struggling to change the way women have, and now appear to be ridiculing them. In general there was a failure to open up options for men and to create a culture in which people in general are comfortable with men taking up non-traditional positions…and to have gynocentric feminists sneer at the baby steps of this finally happening is really kind of offensive. It’s like an experienced driver who had years of lessons making fun of a new driver without the benefit of driver’s ed struggling to keep the car moving straight even though they’re moving in the right direction. I understand it, but I’m not sympathetic. Egalitarian feminists would be out there applauding this and trying to help and be constructive, not sneering.@Mike
Without going into details…women (moms) used to “watch” me, at say the play ground. Women would also be the first to glare at me when my children were say, behaving badly in public. It should be noted that for a long while I was generally the only man around.
A bit more interesting interaction IMO is this. People will be talking. The topic of housewives will come up. People will poke fun of them, how lame they are, etc. Then it’s my turn to say that I am a stay at home dad. Sometimes the look on their faces is funny. But whatever, I can just roll with these sort of akward social interactions. People are goofy, yeah.
Where it crosses the line, and maybe this is more about “sneering” is this notion that men are predators. I don’t want to explain myself to the cops or store security. And I sure as hell don’t want to explain myself to some old woman approaching me on my lawn, or some random lady at the mall who finds it crazy that I’m standing around waiting for my daughter to come out of the bathroom.
Most interactions seem to be positive or neutral though. Men mostly express jealousy or that I am lucky. Woman seem to, I dunno, be impressed? (The opposite of being a “loser”.) I’m overstating it…but that’s the general gist.
On the internet most people don’t give a shit. Some people say that it’s a good thing. Any sort of negative reactions towards me being a stay at home had something else at it’s core. A disagreement first then negative comments.
Well, she may ‘sound like’ that, but I don’t see anywhere in Melissa’s brief article where she does any advising, Jim. The whole point of her noxious post was to say what a terrible insult it was to women for these SAHDs to express positive feelings about what they were doing, and how awful it was for the NY Times writer to let them ‘get away with it.’ In all honesty I don’t see how Melissa’s experience/non-experience as a guardian of children has any bearing at all on any of the points she raised in her post or my response to it.
debaser71: Interesting observations.
Here’s another take on that NY Times article which avoids the sneer and focus on the statistics and the use of the phrase “the new normal”: http://familyinequality.wordpr.....r-changes/
Although I think it misses the mark on the “new normal” criticism. Here is the full quote where it appears in the article:
This is clearly not an appropriation in the form of a claim that the majority of care-takers on the public playground are now men, but rather an expression that they no longer are seen as abnormal.
The criticism also includes this about the statistics of stay-at-home dads:
I don’t really see why men who stays at home with children and does so primarily due to unemployment should not be counted as a stay-at-home dad. Why does intent seem to matter here? Is the definition for stay-at-home mothers equally strict I wonder.
Her argument is puzzling: “Men are getting credit for doing something that women have been doing all along.” Well, yes. That’s the point–a shift in stereotypical roles, men expanding into territory that was formerly off-limits to them. That’s improvement, is it not? It was celebrated when women did it….
ballgame said this stuff:
“I don’t agree that you have to have had the ‘experience’ of being this or that to make relevant comments about it.”
“these SAHDs to express positive feelings about what they were doing”
“experience/non-experience as a guardian of children has any bearing at all on any of the points she raised ”
ballgame, that quote in the middle. That’s the part a non-parent might not understand.
Having kids is a monumental game changer.
1) there’s no more excuses…100% ultimate absolute responsiblity
2) there’s the whole human animalistic instinctual part…a part not ‘awakened’ in non-parents
3) there’s a complete life style change
People’s mileage may vary.
@debaser71, thanks for the insights. I appreciated them. My father always liked playing with little kids and in the 1990s started feeling like a creep about it, something that only changed in the last few years when he became a grandfather and got fewer dirty stares with his own kid in tow. There was just something on the news, too, a poll about whether it was a good idea that many non-U.S. airlines were refusing to seat minors with men, and made men switch seats (Schroedinger’s pedophile, becoming institutionalized). Another friend of mine took an injured female friend to the E.R. and went through a battery of questions under the assumption that she was a victim of domestic violence at his hand (Schroedinger’s abuser). But ignore all that, it’s about the women and their lack of privilege, not about being treated equally.
@daran, embarrassingly enough, I corrected my spelling of McEwan’s name with the last vowel. Should learn to stick to copy/paste on unfamiliar names.
I’m with ballgame that anyone is entitled to their opinion about anything, whether they’ve experienced it or not, and shouldn’t be silenced. In some cases that lack of experience can bring objectivity. Of course, in other cases it’s a liability and leads to a poor, uninformed opinion and people should be aware of that risk. I don’t accept the premise that lack of experience makes it impossible to understand or know something about an experience, otherwise what would be the point of making privilege lists and trying to get others to understand that their personal experience is not universal? We can listen and learn from everyone, and sometimes the experienced are the most biased.
Fannie,
So I read the NY Tomes article and found nothing wrong with it. Maybe you can enlighten me on what I’m missing. I see some things in her response article that I question beside the sneering tone, which should be enough.
“I also definitely love the guy … And the guy who assures us there “isn’t any shame” in being a stay-at-home dad.” Are you suggesting that men aren’t or haven’t been shamed in society for acting like women or being perceived as women? Were the men not to be believed when they said “The moms and nannies gawked at me like I was an exhibit at the zoo. Now, I’m the new normal.” because women can’t be misandrist or support the gender norms.
Let’s contrast this with what she decided not to criticize “It would be no surprise if Ward suffered paycheck envy.” The idea that a man’s worth is defined by his earning potential is not worthy of comment. Supporting the gender norms much, I see.
“All of that sounds way better than being a stay-at-home mom where you only learn stupid lady skills and should probably be embarrassed about your “’50s sitcom vision of the American family.”
Maybe she has a legitimate issue with the “manly skills” section. Then criticize that, but why bring housewives into the discussion? So any articles that celebrate a woman’s achievement in an area traditionally considered a man is trivializing male achievements because you know, men had been doing the work all along. Any articles that suggest that a woman may bring something special into a field based on her experiences and interests should be dismissed as misandric.
It will be interesting to see what she writes when a woman achieves another “first”. Wasn’t it feminists who always complained that men always tried to refocus discussion about women toward men? Why then is there a complaint that women’s experiences be given equal recognition?
I suspect you mistyped here and that it should have read “misogynic”.
“Well, she may ’sound like’ that, but I don’t see anywhere in Melissa’s brief article where she does any advising, Jim. The whole point of her noxious post was to say what a terrible insult it was to women for these SAHDs to express positive feelings about what they were doing, and how awful it was for the NY Times writer to let them ‘get away with it.’ In all honesty I don’t see how Melissa’s experience/non-experience as a guardian of children has any bearing at all on any of the points she raised in her post or my response to it.”
Well that’s different. She’s just talking like a sexist and a gender bigot. Parental status is immaterial.
“Her argument is puzzling: “Men are getting credit for doing something that women have been doing all along.” Well, yes. ”
Her argument is lop-sided. Women have been getting the you go grrrl for decades now every time they break into something new, and they should; those things should be celebrated. It surpises me no end that a feminist, of all people, should be grumping about men becoming equal parents. It’s not only the most central part of gender equality, but it’s also cruciala to women being freed to do what they want in life.
Feminist or not, this is just simple man-hatred, not feminism. They seem to be at war in one person here, not aspects of each other.
And her argument is also trivial. I have never really heard anyone but women making such a big deal, “giving credit” for men doing all this parenting.
Fair enough ballgame.
fannie:
You, and many commenters here, don’t even understand why she’s taken a sarcastic tone about the way the NYT’s article is presenting these fathers, so I’m not surprised that you can’t even articulate a fair or substantive critique of it.
Sarcasm? Of course a feminist says something unlikeable it must be sarcasm or snark…..
Fact of the matter is there are dads that are doing the “stepping up” that people constantly complain we don’t do and that’s a good thing.
“So, are you mostly just angry about McEwan’s “tone” or do you have anything substantive to say about her post?”
There’s not much substantive to say about McEwan’s post, because she’s not saying much substantive about the article.
Also, I love how all the comments try to associate it with husbands “babysitting” and “helping with the housework” and various other things not actually in the article.
“ballgame Shakesville is a den of gynocentrism gone extreme. This does not surprise me. What surprises me is that people will lap it up.”
They aren’t, not exactly. I’ve heard that they’ve been bleeding readers, but it was on Tumblr, with no source attached.
Jezebel, however, people will lap that stuff up.
I also find it interesting that despite the question she opened with, Fannie did not stick around to see the responses. Almost as if it were an entirely rhetorical question whose purpose was to say that we’re just making the “Tone Argument”.
I suppose that this method of communication through seething sarcasm is some sort of invisible ink with a secret message for one particular group. Perhaps it’s a dog whistle of sorts.
“I suppose that this method of communication through seething sarcasm is some sort of invisible ink with a secret message for one particular group”
“In sarcasm, ridicule or mockery is used harshly, often crudely and contemptuously, for destructive purposes.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm
I think people like her and Futrelle are using sarcasm to evade arguing in good faith….
No, the definition for women isn’t equally strict. In Germany (unlike Norway) people in TV-shows are often presented with work-titles.
It’s routine to present a couple where none of the adults are working as “Anne – Housewife” and “Peter – Unemployed”
The implications are clear: It’s his (and his alone) responsibility to “bring in the dough”, and this guy is a loser, currently unable to perform his duty.
The female, on the other hand, is *also* sitting around at home all day, but in her case she’s a “housewife” a legitimate occupation, even for couples with no kids.
I need to to thank you for this wonderful read!!
I definitely loved every bit of it. I’ve got you saved as a favorite
to look at new things you post…
In a way, I almost like the spambots for bringing up old posts to read through sometimes.