Babies, Babies, Babies

The media tend to blow things out of proportion no matter what their bias is, which is why I try to refrain from commenting on current events via the internet. I would much rather talk about issues face to face. However, the whole storm surrounding abortion and women’s rights is really starting to piss me off.

Whether you identify as pro-life or pro-choice, too many have turned this into a political issue when it is so much more than that. Let me explain. Among the many reasons women have abortions, it is my understanding that one big one is that they don’t have the means to support themselves or their baby, be it financially or otherwise. Some families may disown a woman for becoming pregnant out of wedlock, or at least look down on her for the situation she’s in. Maybe she wants to choose adoption, but people she loves and trusts are firmly against it.

Regardless of the situation, pregnancy happens, abortion happens, adoption happens. Instead of trying to prevent abortion, why not prevent one of the reasons for abortion – lack of support? If you’re telling a girl how wrong she is to get an abortion, are you offering to be there for her when she delivers? Are you going to help pay her medical bills so she can get back on her feet? What about the emotional roller coaster she has to go through regardless of what she does? Can you offer her a community who can wrap their arms around her so she doesn’t feel alone? These are the questions we need to be asking.

A Respectable Young Lady

I got the “lady” thing down. When I was a girl, I learned all sorts of “lady” skills that would prepare me to be a decent woman and successful housewife. I make applesauce. I spin yarn. I can knit and crochet. I paint, sing, and play the harp. I can make quilts and clothes, and serve afternoon tea.

The problem is, activities such as those are no longer as popular as they used to be. Spin yarn? Many people don’t even understand what a drop spindle is, or they have never seen a harp up close.

Felicity Merriman and Elsie Dinsmore were my childhood friends, but I have learned that girls like them remain alive only on the words of a page. While girls my age learned about makeup and name brand clothing, I was out riding horses. While so-and-so was dating her first boyfriend, I was wondering if it was morally okay to wax my eyebrows (would it be vain?). By the time I reached young adulthood, I thought I was well on my way to becoming an accomplished gentlewoman (I use the term loosely). You can imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered that a proper gentlewoman is not esteemed in the same way she would have been a century ago.

These days it appears that society values a woman who is career driven more than housewife driven. Many women today are being awarded for accomplishments that, a century or two ago, only men would have attempted. Maybe that’s not a bad thing. Maybe it means we’ve allowed women to go above and beyond the original expectations of their gender. I think, however, that there is something to be said about a woman who can manage her home well, career or no career. There is a certain beauty that is lost when the art of housekeeping is thrown to the wayside in pursuit of what used to be left to the men.

That’s not to say that pursuing a career is a bad thing. I myself am studying to get a bachelor’s degree, after which I would like to manage a flock of goats (maybe), grow an herb garden, and possibly build my own house. Yes, with my own hands.

Do you remember the term “calling” before it was used in reference to the telephone? In the Victorian era, ladies would pay visits to, or call on, each other. In higher society, women would keep track of who called on them and to whom they owed calls. Paying a call could be compared to paying bills, they were so important. Today? “We should hang out sometime.”

Sometimes I wonder what the hell men are looking for if not a housewife. I may be late in saying this (by about 100 years), but it seems that the woman is having to find a new identity, since it is no longer defined by the skills she acquires for running a home. In a way, this is freeing, because it gives her more independence to choose her own path. In another way, however, it leaves people like me a bit confused about what to do when I’ve spent a significant chunk of my life training to be useful to a man.

Please do not take this as a self-pity rant (although that’s exactly what it is, so forgive me). This is not to say that I cannot survive without a man taking care of me, because I have complete confidence that I can. I think more importantly, I am trying to find my place in 2014 when I feel like I should have been born in 1880.

Frustrations With the Modern Woman

There was a time when men took off their hats in the presence of a woman, opened the door for her, and threw their coats over puddles so she wouldn’t have to walk through the mud. Too often today I hear women talk about such acts of chivalry and conclude that there aren’t any good men left in the world, or if there are, they are very hard to find. With the ever-changing times, something has happened that has made men less caring and more disrespectful of women. I’ll tell you what happened.

Women’s rights.

Now before all the feminists get angry at me (although maybe they already are), let me say this: I am very thankful to be living in an era in which I have the right to vote, the opportunity to pursue a higher education, and the option to create my own career if I so choose. Benefits such as these were not (easily) accessible to women before the women’s rights movement. It is adjustments such as these that have changed not only how people view women, but have also changed women themselves.

Before the women’s rights movement, it was commonly accepted that a woman’s place was in the home, and a man’s place was out working. Whether you agree with that structure or not, it was a system in which people knew what to expect, because they knew their place in society. I believe that it was because people knew their place that allowed them to respect each other more, because each knew where he belonged.

However, the women’s rights movement has challenged that structure, and has left us with many changes in society. A woman may choose to stay at home, or she may choose to go out and work. In my opinion, she should be able to do either. My frustration is that we are women living in 2013 expecting to find men of 1913. And that is just not possible.

The women’s rights movement did not just affect women; it affected men as well. Now that the original structure has been broken down, I think it leaves people confused with how to interact with each other. Each gender does not have as definite a role as they once did, and that can lead to many misunderstandings.

I believe that every person deserves respect. But sometimes I think women have been so eager to gain respect that they’ve forgotten how to give respect, and we have allowed men to forget how to respect themselves. (I’m not saying that men’s negative traits today are all women’s fault; there are plenty of things I could say about men, but for the sake of this essay I will leave that for a different post)

What I am saying is that I think too many women bash men unnecessarily, and that needs to stop. Yes, some men are capable of being complete jerks, but some women are just as capable of the same thing. And if you’re a woman who doesn’t like a man opening the door for you in the rare occasion he does, there is such a thing as politely telling him you would prefer to open the door yourself instead of getting angry because you think he thinks you’re weak. Chances are he was just trying to be respectful and maybe even show you that he thinks you’re valuable.