Fox guest encourages female host to quit, get married, have babies http://t.co/CV6Oop8eil
— ThinkProgress (@thinkprogress) December 8, 2013
Fox News ran a segment entitled “You Do Need A Husband!” on Sunday. Their guest, founder of the site ‘Women for Men’ Suzanne Venker, was on to argue that women are trying too hard to reduce their reliance on men. Her appearance followed up on her article “Why women still need husbands,” published Friday on Fox’s website. In the piece, Venker argues that women won’t find fulfillment trying to balancing a relationship and family with full-time work. “Financial independence is a great thing,” she writes, “but you can’t take your paycheck to bed with you. And there’s nothing empowering about being beholden to an employer when what you really want is to have a baby. ” She uses this opinion to advocate for women having less of a role in the workforce, and letting men be the breadwinners. “Unlike women,” Venker writes, “a man’s identity is inextricably linked to his paycheck.”
It took me awhile to stop laughing long enough to sit down provide this story the appropriate level of ridicule and disdain. I find it interesting that Conservatives continue peddling the “a woman is incomplete without a man” theory, as if a single woman is one step removed from being a ronin. While I’m furiously wracking my brain in an attempt to recall the last time I heard any news outlet opine that a man is incomplete without a woman, I keep coming up empty. Conservatives are still, here in the 21st century, caught in a 1950s view of gender roles: men are free agents, masters of their fate, born to conquer and subjugate; women are empty and incomplete without a man in their lives, as their true mission is to propagate.
The two male hosts (and yes, one was Tucker Carlson) seemed incapable of understanding why Venker’s theory might be controversial. At the least the one female in the triad pointed out that “some critics have said it’s a little bit too broad to say men are this way and women are that way.” I suppose some men are sufficiently threatened by having to compete with women in the workplace that they’d advocate “traditional” gender roles…perhaps as a way to thin out the competition.
Anyone with a working knowledge of physiology understands that men have a penis and women a vagina. No great mystery there. Why should the assumption be that this biological truth assumes each organ carries with it very specific gender roles? Why can’t we assume that women have every bit as much right to choose their role(s) in life as men. We’ve come a long way since men roamed the land killing buffalo to feed their families, while the women remained behind to cook and care for children. What I fail to understand is why our attitude toward gender roles seems to have evolved very little…in some cases not at all.
I understand that some women want to have it all: career and a family. Achieving both and fulfilling both roles can’t be easy…not that I would know, but I admire women who are able to successfully keep the balls in the air. They made their choice, and if that’s the road they choose…well, good on them. In the same way that men are viewed as having the right to be the captain of their own ship, women deserve the same consideration. If you choose to travel a more “traditional” path, more power to you; you made what you felt was the right choice for you and your loved ones. That’s as it should be; but it’s your choice, which has nothing to do with the choice(s) someone else might make.
Male or female, each of us deserves to able to make the choice(s) we feel best serve our interests and those of our families. You may not agree with a choice someone else makes, but then you don’t have to bear the consequences of that decision.
You don’t have to agree with the choice a woman might make regarding the direction(s) her life takes, but they’re ultimately hers and hers alone to make. You’re free to your opinion, but what you don’t have the freedom to do is to judge someone for making a decision different from what you might choose.
Freedom means being granted the opportunity to make your own decisions (and living with the consequences that flow from them). That’s what adults do; you don’t have to agree with another’s choices…but would it asking too much that you respect them?
As if I need to answer that.
