Wednesday, June 29, 2005

fatherhood v. feminism (v. class)

Slice of Laodicea: Calling All Fathers

so which is it? what is killing young women today? weak fathers or evil feminism?

The daughter of a loving father is the beneficiary of a precious oversight that keeps her from the very real threats that menace her purity and safety. But America has thrown out God’s headship and authority in the biblical model of the family. Much of the church has, as well. Natalee is the unfortunate heir to a legacy of bitterness and death called feminism. Feminism laughs at the notion of loving headship. Feminism declares that females can take care of themselves, that they have need of nothing and that the very notion of innocence and purity is laughably archaic. Effeminized fathers go right along with this notion now, sending their daughters off to war in Iraq while their sons win football scholarships and sending their teen-age daughters off to Caribbean islands to party all night with strange men.

and before anyone assumes i'm saying natalee totally should have gone out drunk with three men, i'm not saying that. i actually look at adolescents with a mixture of contempt and fear: they're just crazy and stupid enough to do anything so, frankly, i don't think they should be allowed to be anywhere without a responsible adult around.

i'm saying *MY* parents would never have let me go to a foreign country for my senior class trip. not only could i barely get permission to go to a school dance across town, spending money to send me to party with my friends across the border smacked of something only rich white kids did. for my working class folks, a trip like this was not for us.

so. let's adjust the lens a bit: instead of blaming feminism how about looking at how a bourgois sense of entitlement (that runs rampant through middle class culture) seems to create these intersections of permissive behavior/bad decision making/getting the native populations in trouble? (i'm sure the local population really enjoys american tourism...)

via bad christian who had some interesting things to say about fatherhood in his post.

7 comments:

LutheranChik said...

Yeah, yeah, yeah...it's all women's fault...where have we heard that one before?

The saddest thing of all is that a woman -- an obviously self-hating woman -- wrote this.

MEP said...

I think it's more important for a father to teach his daughter how to make good decisions than anything else. Notice my emphasis is on the PROCESS of good decision making, not the decisions. That's up to her.

Anonymous said...

....Fathers need to stop spending so much time putting work before family. Seems to be the chief source of distance between family members-- dad and mom are working harder, longer, for more money so they can buy more crap.

The perceived weakness of men is false. Men are owning themselves as people--outside the constrains of certain roles, as are women. Women can't expect to transition from the home to the workplace without expecting similar transitions to happen to men. Being the head of the family is a burden, a heavy responsibility--a responsibility that my Generation X DEMANDS be shared with a partner after witnessing our parents struggle with their roles in life.

Clearly an OLD woman wrote this, someone who doesn't have a clear understanding of feminism--feminism is the pursuit of equality. Not independence.

As for Natalee....she's from Alabama. Whatever. I agree that she clearly wasn't given the skills to make smart decisions. The basics: like demanding an escort back to the hotel. As an upper middle class white chick with executive parents in MN, there is no frickin way that my CEO father would have EVER allowed me in a foreign country with a student-chaperone ratio of 20-1. I take umbrage with it being a class thing. It all goes back to values.

Anonymous said...

how does this become anyone's fault but the girl's or the company she was with? and how can anyone here pass judgement on who is to blame - because i would gander to say that none of us made the wisest judgements when we were the ripe old age of 18. i don't know this girl's past or present behavior, the situaiton, her family, the company to whom she kept, etc, nor would i care to speculate on why teens do what they do, the behavior of teens various classes, teens from AL, teens from other countries, etc. but, i would not state i had contempt or fear of teens as i was a teen once upon a time and made an occasional bad decision myself - this was not my mother's fault, my father's fault, the fault of the nation, the fault of feminism, the fault of society or the fault of anyone but myself. however, i do agree with one thing "anonymous" stated that this is a values issue. having values or morals is the path of the future and we all need peers to help remind of of those values that make us as a nation a better place to live. but of course, there are those of you that think "oh, just love the person and accept the lifestyle" as written in texas: no place to be gay. so you can accept that "alternative lifestyle" and have no problem with that, but now you pretty much change your stance with this situation with a teenager making a poor judgement call on her lifestyle??

Delia Christina said...

(having been a teen i think i'm in a perfect position to say i look at them with contempt and fear. i was crazy, hysterical, quick-tempered, irrational and had no idea how anything worked in the real world. the only thing that made me bearable was having a healthy fear of satan.)

this is not even remotely the same thing as being gay in texas. unless you're saying that i'm saying that getting drunk in aruba is a civil right (on par with winning hospital visitation rights for gay partners.)

which i'm pretty sure i'm not saying.

Delia Christina said...

and class is just one way to view this situation. not the only way, but a way.

(you could also look at it in a racial way but notice i'm not going there...)

Delia Christina said...

...and when i say 'middle class culture' i'm not talking about occupations that make up those of the middle class. i'm talking about middle class ideology.

totally different.