Many libertarians have said to me that the wife shouldn't need to work, nor should she have to. I find that sexist, and disrespectful. A woman should not have to depend on her husband financially. Women should be encouraged to be independent and hardworking, just like men are. This is why it saddens me to see so many libertarians spewing this anti-woman and anti-feminist rhetoric. The movement has brought us so far as women. Why go back now?
I had one silly libertarian tell me that the mother should be the primary caregiver of the children, while the man works for the family. Well, why can't it be the other way? Or why is it that the woman MUST stay home to take care of the children and now contribute to the family like the man does?
There are daycares, there are schools. There is no need to have a parent (particularly the mother) home all the time with their children. A mother should not be thought of as just a caregiver, but a provider and contributer just as the father is.
What is this.
This isn't even an argument. What libetarians think women should do is irrelevant since libertarians reject the use of coercion to enforce any such things.
"A socialist called me something hateful once, so all socialists are evil racist monsters! How do you reply!"
They hate feminism. I don't know why.
The feminist movement didnt free women. It freed men.
How so?
Libertarianism, itself, has nothing to say about the proper role of a wife/mother.
wheylous posted this. i dont feel like taking much time in my life explain how silly a feminist movement is to me.
humanaction - ya she is just making stuff up. she is responding to a single post earlier today from someone. I mean seriously when have you ever had a bunch of libertarians around you in the real world? i dont think ive ever met 'a lot' of libertarians in my whole life let alone a lot that talk about feminism.
It's not anti-feminists who are so concerned about which parent does which work, it's you feminists, that's why you say "a woman should not have to depend on her husband financially" and want women to be "encouraged to be independent and hardworking". Since you deny the concept of human nature (like Marxists) you have this insane idea that women can be happy constantly competing with men.
grant.w.underwood:humanaction - ya she is just making stuff up. she is responding to a single post earlier today from someone. I mean seriously when have you ever had a bunch of libertarians around you in the real world? i dont think ive ever met 'a lot' of libertarians in my whole life let alone a lot that talk about feminism.
Yeah seriously, I don't get why this is about "libertarians" either.
Are you here to have a discussion or fling around wild, unbacked accusations?
The truth of the matter is that there is stability in family. If a woman or a man chooses to not go with a family, it's a risk s/he takes by her/himself. I personally have little interest in pushing people one way or another since I do not know what choice of lifestyle is better for others (on this issue, at least. I can pretty confidently say that drugs are bad for you, however, although I do not want to ban them).
kilyo is that you?
“Since people are concerned that ‘X’ will not be provided, ‘X’ will naturally be provided by those who are concerned by its absence.""The sweetest of minds can harbor the harshest of men.”
http://voluntaryistreader.wordpress.org
As noted already, libertarianism has nothing in particular to say about whether a woman does or doesn't work.
However, I think that the feminist narrative turns the situation exactly upside-down from a position of actual respect for women. The fact is there is a reason why women generally did not work outside the home (with the exception of servants, maids, housecooks, secretaries, governesses, fashionistas, novelists, singers, pianists, etc. etc.) and even today still work less than men do. The reason women did not generally work outside the home until recently and still work less than men do is that they already provide a service that is more valuable in terms of annual income than most men contribute to the household: child-bearing. A woman's ability to produce a child is valued by men, so men compete for the best women in every way - socially, economically, even martially. Even today, a man can attract a better class of woman if he is willing and able to put her up. In the last 10,000 years of human experience to the present moment, little if anything has changed in this regard.
What has changed is that capitalism and industrialization have commoditized grunt labor, rendering it of relatively little value by comparison to other, less muscular yet more mental lines of work. This has made women "more costly" in the sense that the benefits a woman must be offered to lure her into reproducing (marriage/no-marriage is not even in view here) are much larger than they were, say, 100 years ago. This* is why birth rates in the developed world have declined since a century ago.
So, women deserve respect for being the engine of the future of humanity. The human race will perish from the face of the earth in a matter of decades but for the costly act of pregnancy and childbirth which only women are capable of. One way they often choose to receive that respect is in the form of material benefits courtesy of their partner: less work and more leisure time.
Clayton -
*... as well as the subsidization of non-reproduction through a host of legal activist schemes which have been so successful that Germany and Russia, for example, have had to start offering to pay women to have children
Also, that shirt is not hers:
http://www.google.com/search?tbs=sbi:AMhZZivP09raB6iUWy82ssbdBuQYwDAeDhr_1TB9bYeHh4EzuLrAXGSlXTwATLINLf2Qc43dUZhN0K5irCiQ6_1H0T-X3ixDMN2mSZpQ2Kv6us0HnSkIlglfBqMWeym765T0k2-zc-_1fDsjHfUnwcfeWtlZ2UtZiQemyXnQkPQuKTK2TOCdpTEHdF4MKNMPbSWBNZfk-heiBcfb-20lPvmgXmN-ovncquM4gvjzD3aHEiFk4GJ1rEhRDz9TfAGiCjsPIrLE8x_1COihEfwgOJ4zB0KypcB0xHClUdoPSP3XpZJWGjEP-q5oUt5WR7TGhn0ghzA18itA4EvPhsSiFE80N26qtAXC3WaBZ4ikRsxvQpbyQXxd4RXeJagU_17B1aCqkC1gw74qPEr1FkNSFZA8dj-AyZkDYLUaE84LStDG-Q9pOi1JTA5Hn55gZxtAQlkCoTqH065bQ92kBNN9ol1S_19cOVZuepr7YHBZnkrCqcIpW-qyyB_1WUWj4eX5_1wxbn6IE8L2MoSOtjypI1CouGtXwUyMzoswCRzZjzGwZy2XxuNe_1WAC2ibeipZSNSnvSbO0Hn6-XzwklDgsAkrWfWTEMrGyuHh9U2oymBugrggkDvo5yi3wdf3hqHFL5mk9wVRPkwjXTl91mgxMZH1s7kfW-IzYBcCe_1Jwsjd_11VIIYK2zv4MTQBQp2WaYIE6gDbYbfrtkmCHtT13nsHxfhXoQMIr2Cz7yxzPDdpgRf6JXHeXkH_1fdAUp6PjpGaaXB2OafzUMoPklSN6x3w7EYtFQ36I9-LDr2DhjWEoLL8WC2Nphys-vrmR_10T7u5Ii_1A1x4FekLpEv466qoQQZJG5sqo-gXrwlJFP3RiSDexJDCvY29AeL-rAsTpWA4l2UNcOMahgmVzK3HV8WNGaAH76jvaWSJvFtjDIBNuzEX6V-U--Lu_1JDGbqiUfWCvbaLKpEeTTRxMp-mCggVi2yJRf07PlBB4h8mKWPqRGxIfwcsFqdOa9e1Q6WES-EEHY-YNyvHB7Pp1Cos-vcwRucRKqApAem1yajTAPtlvKmiXQ89xkQzGBN6FO9nhcf3r61m9GK6GGK9FfYP8SQljcKg2rcZbjln4V65U-O-6Wploo16np1S0R0L_11exLvJyAf0cl4NSznvbtQFeYqs7OZaLPZgfNd8V3ficX7UmJdyXEiQrdWjlOBqczYuKZgC_1jP1jElJpMDz7mVMWuuvhKVvjZOCsdkHuJzjtIu8w3ZaHAh7a1TOEK99dhHGPF1fGuQgUjGRMr9yYqlXQbJtRIfenDza2MAY3KTXEgDRQXSqIUOlfdl-GtyJfgn5mBXSomCXPaDzp_1Xv33Y96qnbJ3Cj&num=10&hl=en&bih=959&biw=1680
I have nothing against feminism. I do have a problem with some feminists though, specifically the ones that think men are pure evil, just because some men are douches doesn't mean we all are, a point some feminists just don't get.
(Libertarianism has been over run by conservatives, so judging us based on what some so called "Libertarians" have said, won't give you a good idea of what we believe. Any real Libertarian or Anarchist would be able to understand why independence is important for all people. Not just understand actually, any real Libertarian/Anarchist should do more than just be able to understand why independence for women is important, the true Libertarian/Anarchist should encourage independence.)
Do you have kids?
Based on your post I'd be willing to bet you don't.
When poeple say women shouldn't need to work and stay home with the kids, they mean that the wife shouldn't take a job outside the home. (they should really phrase thier statement better)
Because raising kids (especially more than one) is very hard work and is an on call 24hour a day job just by itself.
it is not a gender inequality thing - it is a division of labor thing.
As for daycare... why would anyone want strangers raising thier kids for them if they can do it themselves?? If your own child is not worth your personal time why did you have it?
If fact I would make the argument that the wife who stays home and raises the kids is actually making a bigger contribution to a family's well being than the traditional husbands role of being primarily a breadwinner.
You use the phrase "just a caregiver" far too easily. Which indicates to me you probably don't have kids and have no clue of the sheer amount of work involved in being "just a caregiver" for even one child. Let alone raising a family of three or four.
Mothers are just as big, if not bigger providers and contributors to thier families as thier "working" husbands are, just in different ways.
Just because you can't measure the contribution in cash it doesn't mean it didn't require a lot of hard work.
Personally, I think that reffering to stay at home mothers as "just caregivers" is about as anti-women anti-femenist as you can get.
The "just a caregiver" label is extremely demeaning to mothers. It belittles all the hard work, love, and personal sacrifice that countless women have made since time began to give thier kids a stable and loving home.
If you feel that the hard work of real mother is beneath you, here's my advice:
Don't have any kids!
Gender roles through history have a lot to do with the economy. This makes the subject interesting to a libertarian, but certainly doesn't designate women or men to specific tasks.
In hunter-gatherer economies, there is a real incentive to keep the birth rate lower. Women tend to breast feed longer, and have more leisure time apart from child rearing to add to the community's sustenance by gathering. In fact, the "gathering" usually contributes more calories than the "hunting", depending on the region. When women contribute more to the community, they achieve greater status.
In farming economies, the need is for a bigger labor pool. Women spend more of their lives unable to work at anything but bearing and raising. In consequence, they become primarily sexual objects and their social status diminishes.
Then again in an industrial, and especially in a technologically advanced industrial economy, the demand for large families goes down again. Women have the opportunity to work, and the available work is less likely to be menial so they can do equal jobs with men. Hence, their status rises again. This is what we're seeing since the industrial revolution.
A libertarian, with a libertarian's interest in economic processes, should not see a particular moral lesson in this. In fact, it seems to me that a libertarian attitude to "womens rights" would simply be that if women want a world that gives them a voice, then they should eagerly support the free market. As soon as the socialist revolution puts them back on the farm, their freedoms will go right out the window.
Listen, sweetheart. We believe that people should focus on maximizing their comparative advantage. If you're a woman and your skills are best suited in the kitchen (but I repeat myself), then economic efficiency demands that you stay in there. At least until we can get chattel slavery reinstated, at which point you won't have to work at all. You can just sit and be pretty (no fatties allowed).
Can one of the mods please ban this MissSocialist and remove the offensive avatar?
Thanks,
MissSocialist has been banned for ban dodging.
To paraphrase Marc Faber: We're all doomed, but that doesn't mean that we can't make money in the process. Rabbi Lapin: "Let's make bricks!" Stephan Kinsella: "Say you and I both want to make a German chocolate cake."
Geez. You can't just let people be themselves...Emerson would be ashamed.