Things I learned from feminism I wish I'd learned from Christianity

[Xantippe]

The Anne of Green Gables series is about the boring beta getting the girl. It’s about their entire life together and how much she loves having her boring doctor beta.

That series has sold more than 50 Shades, and over a longer period, and is in fact more influential on young sweet Christian girls’ husband-desires than anything with brash alpha types.

That’s just one of easily a dozen extremely popular culture examples I can think of where the boring man with a solid job and work ethic gets the girl and it’s portrayed as romantic and wonderful.

That’s a very interesting point.

 

[DarkLight]

Speaking for myself, what has been very attractive to me is a guy who values what is special and unusual about me. My future husband, for example, is both a Slav and a language hobbyist–he was very pleased to learn that I was studying both Polish (his first language) and Old Church Slavonic (the mother language for current modern Slavic languages). That may sound a bit dry and boring, but when you have a number of unusual passions like that and the other person is at all attractive, they’ll look smoking hot to you–even if not to everybody else. Attraction is much more individual than Red Pill guys or pick up artists understand–otherwise we’d all be dating the same person.

I agree about “alphas.” If they are so gosh darn self-sufficient, why is it that they can’t shut up about what they want from women and aren’t getting?

Actually, this was another issue I had with a lot of the conservative Church. A lot of people talked as though any godly man and godly woman should marry each other - preferably sooner rather than later. There was little discussion of whether those two individuals were compatible.

 

[pensmama87]

The Anne of Green Gables series is about the boring beta getting the girl. It’s about their entire life together and how much she loves having her boring doctor beta.

That series has sold more than 50 Shades, and over a longer period, and is in fact more influential on young sweet Christian girls’ husband-desires than anything with brash alpha types.

That’s just one of easily a dozen extremely popular culture examples I can think of where the boring man with a solid job and work ethic gets the girl and it’s portrayed as romantic and wonderful.

Yes.

Though he isn’t totally boring - he is very smart and has interests, and can be really funny. The “alpha” she had the opportunity to marry was boring, though. (It wasn’t his fault, though, he was just pretty surface level.)

ETA: The Carrots for Michaelmas blog just had a post about the grooms of Fiddler on the Roof. Not as popular, but it occurred to me that none of those men are alphas, either - a poor tailor, a Bolshevik, and a nerd. Nor is Tevye, but if you don’t say “awwww” over “Do You Love Me?,” I don’t think you have a heart. Their love has grown because of all they’ve suffered together.

But maybe since it’s about Jews it doesn’t count.

 

[Xantippe]

Actually, this was another issue I had with a lot of the conservative Church. A lot of people talked as though any godly man and godly woman should marry each other - preferably sooner rather than later. There was little discussion of whether those two individuals were compatible.

shudder

 

[Xantippe]

Yes.

Though he isn’t totally boring - he is very smart and has interests, and can be really funny. The “alpha” she had the opportunity to marry was boring, though. (It wasn’t his fault, though, he was just pretty surface level.)

ETA: The Carrots for Michaelmas blog just had a post about the grooms of Fiddler on the Roof. Not as popular, but it occurred to me that **none of those men are alphas, either - a poor tailor, a Bolshevik, and a nerd. **Nor is Tevye, but if you don’t say “awwww” over “Do You Love Me?,” I don’t think you have a heart. Their love has grown because of all they’ve suffered together.

But maybe since it’s about Jews it doesn’t count.

That’s also a very interesting point.

 

[fin]

True. But there are women who want to be with men who are doormats, who do their every bidding and someone they can push around. Of course it’s not real love,but there are men who put up with it because the woman is trophy wife material. It’s not just men, women are just as guilty of putting up with something similar.

Women generally aren’t attracted to doormats.

 

[DarkLight]

True. But there are women who want to be with men who are doormats, who do their every bidding and someone they can push around. Of course it’s not real love,but there are men who put up with it because the woman is trophy wife material. It’s not just men, women are just as guilty of putting up with something similar.

True - you can find abusive people of every sex. And unfortunately, for both sexes, there’s a certain truth that what you put out there is what you’re going to get. Manipulative people have an eye for those who don’t know how to resist them.

 

[starshiptrooper]

The Anne of Green Gables series is about the boring beta getting the girl. It’s about their entire life together and how much she loves having her boring doctor beta.

That series has sold more than 50 Shades, and over a longer period, and is in fact more influential on young sweet Christian girls’ husband-desires than anything with brash alpha types.

That’s just one of easily a dozen extremely popular culture examples I can think of where the boring man with a solid job and work ethic gets the girl and it’s portrayed as romantic and wonderful.

1. As I recall, Gilbert had a bit of a bad boy attitude towards Anne early on. She obsessed about him all through high school.
2. The book was written when the evil, white, heteronormative, capitalist, patriarchy was still an effective force.
3. Had the book been written in the present era, Anne would have slept with 5 or 6 other guys to find herself along with sundry other encounters that she would have convinced herself did not count before deciding that Gilbert was just right.

 

[BlueEyedLady]

1. As I recall, Gilbert had a bit of a bad boy attitude towards Anne early on. She obsessed about him all through high school.
2. The book was written when the evil, white, heteronormative, capitalist, patriarchy was still an effective force.
3. Had the book been written in the present era, Anne would have slept with 5 or 6 other guys to find herself along with sundry other encounters that she would have convinced herself did not count before deciding that Gilbert was just right.

If you think the series played out as it did because of social constraints on the writer, you don’t know any more about literature than you do about Marxism.

 

[DarkLight]

I happen to like my skinny nerd who believes in affirmative consent.

Of course, I would imagine most redpill guys would say I’m not really into him and just want someone I can push around…

 

[starshiptrooper]

If you think the series played out as it did because of social constraints on the writer, you don’t know any more about literature than you do about Marxism.

You and I both know that society will have an impact on literature and vice versa.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, true Marxism has never been tried. We just need to give it one more try. :bighanky: Then we will all hold hands and sing Kumbaya in our brave new world. :hypno:

While Marx may not have been the first lay out the concept of class warfare, he was arguably the most well known writer on this subject. It is hardly a stretch to note the similarity between writings of Karl Marx and Marilyn French for instance. Instead of the bourgeois and the proletariat, it is men versus women.

 

[ThePCWife]

There is no “Marxism” in Anne of Green Gables. But if you’re going to define any literature about a man and a woman as the man being a secret, hidden alpha if he’s with the girl, then you’re pretty much “queering” the text, as the liberals say when they want to make similarly absurd claims about old books, including the Bible.

Projection is a thing.

 

[BlueEyedLady]

You and I both know that society will have an impact on literature and vice versa.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, true Marxism has never been tried. We just need to give it one more try. :bighanky: Then we will all hold hands and sing Kumbaya in our brave new world. :hypno:

While Marx may not have been the first lay out the concept of class warfare, he was arguably the most well known writer on this subject. It is hardly a stretch to note the similarity between writings of Karl Marx and Marilyn French for instance. Instead of the bourgeois and the proletariat, it is men versus women.

Now I’m a Marxist too?

So much for intelligent, enlightened discussion.

Tell me, is there anyone who disagrees with your worldview who isn’t a “Marxist”, or is that just your go-to label for ideas you don’t want to discuss, consider, or that you outright don’t like?

Oh, and generally, rad fems who could be argued to be Marxist, or at least Marxist-lite, aren’t happily married housewives like Xan, or happily married pregnant chicks like me. They were actually pretty unrelenting in shunning those things as essentially slavery.

 

[Xantippe]

I happen to like my skinny nerd who believes in affirmative consent.

Of course, I would imagine most redpill guys would say I’m not really into him and just want someone I can push around…

Yay skinny nerds who believe in affirmative consent! (Mine has bulked up a bit since getting into rock climbing, but that’s nice too.)

This being a Catholic site and all, I have to point out that affirmative consent is much more conducive to premarital chastity than the method SST has recommended earlier of just continuing to do sexual things until somebody says stop…

The Red Pill idea is (brace yourself) that women mess around with Bad Boy Alphas until they are over the hill (i.e. 27+) and then glom onto a timid beta to leech off their resources. Then women are unhappy with their beta because they dream of their Bad Boy Alpha. If only they had married a beta at 18 they would be contented!

Please ignore the divorce rate for 18-year-olds and Bad Boy Alphas. Also please ignore the fact that modern courtships leading to marriage tend to be quite lengthy (and tend to include years of cohabitation), so they don’t actually typically begin when women are 27, but several years earlier when the woman is in her dewy early 20s. Ignore the fact that the alpha-beta strategy involves having a couple babies with a beta, which is supposed to be (according to Red Pill theory) the WORST THING EVER. Also please ignore the fact that many states have substantially lower median ages at first marriage for women the national. So, for example, in Utah, women are apparently “over the hill” at 24. There is a great deal of variation in median age of first marriage, and it generally seems to track with local cost of living–hence the highest median age at first marriage for women is around 30 in the District of Columbia.

livescience.com/27974-women-media-age-marriage-states.html

But, again, pay no attention to all that–women in the NE marry late because they are trampy tramps, not because of stuff like the median home in Boston costing $555k (nearly triple the median US price).

zillow.com/boston-ma/home-values/

huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/13/median-home-price-2014_n_4957604.html

Frankly, given the real estate costs, I think it’s a miracle that women in the NE marry as early as they do, but it is true that they are under heavy pressure to start having children at 30 (or at least no later than 35) because of fertility concerns. It’s not that women are suddenly (visually speaking) old hags at 30–which is the Red Pill theory. If you follow what single women actually say online, it’s clear that fertility is the primary concern for being in a hurry get married by 30–there’s a lot of pressure to start having babies between 30 and 35, even in very liberal states and social environments.)

So, there’s a huge crunch in high cost of living areas between a) cost of living/saving for a home to have a family and b) actually having that family at all. My husband and I awent through this ourselves, having two children when I was in my late 20s in WA DC. We discovered pretty quickly after that that we were never going to be able to afford a house in the DC metro area, or at least if we did get a house, it would mean me working and us not having more children.

Again, the national median for home prices is around $190k. That’s a lot better than the Northeastern medians, but it’s still not really within the reach of the median household. As TPC may point out, it is within reach of the median **married **household, but there’s the rub–people tend to not marry until they are within reach of that median home.

This post contains a lot of stuff that you will not normally hear from conservative Christians.

 

[Xantippe]

Here’s another issue with the alpha/beta thing:

In high cost-of-living areas with high ages at first marriage for women, married mothers are more likely to be working, and also less likely to divorce than in areas with lower ages of first marriage.

So, that really blows the doors off the Red Pill theory of Alpha-loving, beta-leeching divorce-happy older brides.

Edited to add: One of my more interesting discoveries when we lived in DC was that Northeastern middle class liberals live like Ward and June Cleaver in terms of marital stability. The issue is, you can’t be just middle class (or lower upper middle class) in the NE and be a single or divorced parent. That just does not work in that environment. It is a very challenging environment to stay afloat in, and parents have to stick together or they will fall right out of the middle class and have to leave their nice school districts and give up their nice activities for the kids. In the eyes of middle class people in those areas, that is a fate worse than death.

When we lived in DC, I knew zero single or divorced middle class parents at my kid’s good NW public school.

 

[Xantippe]

Now I’m a Marxist too?

So much for intelligent, enlightened discussion.

Tell me, is there anyone who disagrees with your worldview who isn’t a “Marxist”, or is that just your go-to label for ideas you don’t want to discuss, consider, or that you outright don’t like?

Oh, and generally, rad fems who could be argued to be Marxist, or at least Marxist-lite, aren’t happily married housewives like Xan, or happily married pregnant chicks like me. They were actually pretty unrelenting in shunning those things as essentially slavery.

The nice thing about contemporary Marxists (in my experience) is that they will tell you straight up that they are Marxists. Even better, Marxist-feminists will be even happier to tell you that they are Marxist-feminists.

 

[BlueEyedLady]

Yay skinny nerds who believe in affirmative consent! (Mine has bulked up a bit since getting into rock climbing, but that’s nice too.)

Full disclosure: I support colleges putting administrative policies in place if they feel like clarifying consent will enable them to crack down on an assault problem. But in my real life adult world, I would have died laughing if a guy tried to carry that out by the book, and I think it’s even less sexy (and practical) in marriage. Rape is sex when told ‘no’, not sex in the absence of ‘yes’. In my opinion, the idea of affirmative consent, especially at every stage, is crazy. And frankly, if that’s the standard, I’m as predatory as anyone.

I actually agree with about 60% of what the red pillers say about attraction, and with maybe 3% of their take on public policy.

 

[BlueEyedLady]

The nice thing about contemporary Marxists (in my experience) is that they will tell you straight up that they are Marxists. Even better, Marxist-feminists will be even happier to tell you that they are Marxist-feminists.

Heck, on the right campuses, people who aren’t Marxists proudly wear the label! It’s one of those overused words that 98% of the time can be translated into “I have no idea what I’m talking about, but I’d like you to think I’m smart”.

 

[DarkLight]

Full disclosure: I support colleges putting administrative policies in place if they feel like clarifying consent will enable them to crack down on an assault problem. But in my real life adult world, I would have died laughing if a guy tried to carry that out by the book, and I think it’s even less sexy (and practical) in marriage. Rape is sex when told ‘no’, not sex in the absence of ‘yes’. In my opinion, the idea of affirmative consent, especially at every stage, is crazy. And frankly, if that’s the standard, I’m as predatory as anyone.

I actually agree with about 60% of what the red pillers say about attraction, and with maybe 3% of their take on public policy.

I think it’s a useful concept but not necessarily a useful law/policy.

As a concept…I think most people have a pretty good idea of whether or not their partner is into what is going on. People can and do communicate without explicitly saying “do x, y, and then z.” And I think people who pressure or coerce others into sexual situations generally know that their partner really isn’t willing. For an obvious example, if one person tries to initiate contact, and the other person pulls away from them, that’s a pretty clear signal to stop, or at least slow way down and figure out what’s going on, even without the second person explicitly saying “no” or “don’t touch me.”

The flip side, of course, is that one can also threaten without the use of obvious threatening words or a display of a weapon. I read a story about a young woman who was upstairs in the house after a party. A man came up and pinned her to the wall and initiated sexual contact. She said she didn’t say no because, even though he didn’t explicitly threaten her, he was much bigger than she was and was already being rough, and she was afraid to tell him no because he might hurt her.

 

[starshiptrooper]

There is no “Marxism” in Anne of Green Gables. But if you’re going to define any literature about a man and a woman as the man being a secret, hidden alpha if he’s with the girl, then you’re pretty much “queering” the text, as the liberals say when they want to make similarly absurd claims about old books, including the Bible.

Projection is a thing.

I never said that there was.

Now I’m a Marxist too?

So much for intelligent, enlightened discussion.

Tell me, is there anyone who disagrees with your worldview who isn’t a “Marxist”, or is that just your go-to label for ideas you don’t want to discuss, consider, or that you outright don’t like?

Oh, and generally, rad fems who could be argued to be Marxist, or at least Marxist-lite, aren’t happily married housewives like Xan, or happily married pregnant chicks like me. They were actually pretty unrelenting in shunning those things as essentially slavery.

I never called you a Marxist. I just noted that your ideology has some similarities to Marxism. You then claimed that I did not understand Marxism.

At the end of The Communist Manifesto, Marx outlines 10 policies to implement in developed nations. Just for fun, look at how many of those are present either completely or partially in the United States. Now see how many conservatives actually challenge them. You do not need to be waving a hammer and sickle to be influenced by Marxism. You just need to belong to a mainstream political party in the United States. Incidentally, class politics were initially ineffective in the United States. Gender and racial politics have been far more effective.

This being a Catholic site and all, I have to point out that affirmative consent is much more conducive to premarital chastity than the method SST has recommended earlier of just continuing to do sexual things until somebody says stop…

It was a descriptive statement, not necessarily a prescriptive one.

The Red Pill idea is (brace yourself) that women mess around with Bad Boy Alphas until they are over the hill (i.e. 27+) and then glom onto a timid beta to leech off their resources. Then women are unhappy with their beta because they dream of their Bad Boy Alpha. If only they had married a beta at 18 they would be contented!

No, they would still be just as likely to divorce.

Ignore the fact that the alpha-beta strategy involves having a couple babies with a beta, which is supposed to be (according to Red Pill theory) the WORST THING EVER.

Now who said that they had to be the beta’s kids? Also, there have been a number of studies indicating that ovulating women prefer men with higher testosterone levels. However this preference is not so prominent at other times. It would not surprise me if couples with a more beta husband are using birth control, then they stop using it to try for a couple of kids, and then the woman realizes that she is not so attracted to her guy after all.

Frankly, given the real estate costs, I think it’s a miracle that women in the NE marry as early as they do, but it is true that they are under heavy pressure to start having children at 30 (or at least no later than 35) because of fertility concerns. It’s not that women are suddenly (visually speaking) old hags at 30–which is the Red Pill theory. If you follow what single women actually say online, it’s clear that fertility is the primary concern for being in a hurry get married by 30–there’s a lot of pressure to start having babies between 30 and 35, even in very liberal states and social environments.)

The biological clock is real and ticking. Again, nothing here contradicts Red Pill theory.