lady_kishiria | More Christian Taliban

patgund clued me in to a movement called "Prairie Muffins". I'll leave you to Google them because there's some pretty amusing feminist parodies and MST3Ks of them. These are women with the "Marylike Modesty" thing going, but they're Evangelicals.

A look at the website hosting their manifesto pretty much summarizes their life as being a quiet stay-at-home mama who accepts as many babies as God will "give" them, who don't believe in women having the vote, and who decry such firebrands as Louisa May Alcott and Laura Ingalls Wilder as being bad examples of womanhood for young girls. Jo after all wanted education and Laura Ingalls and her Ma had to work like absolute dogs on their homestead because Pa was away half the year making money and Mary was blind.

For a Catholic view, check out this chick's creepy blog: http://colleenhammond.blogspot.com/. To cut STRAIGHT to the chase, look at the entry on "The Western Media is At It Again."

Ready? No, you don't need the smelling salts because you're not hallucinating. She just PRAISED the way women live in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Made me die more than a little inside, too.

Make sure to go to her homepage (just remove "blogspot" and check out her essays on why women should not play sports (short answer--it's not attractive, whatever THAT means), and of course the ever-popular modesty thing.

However, one essay of hers gave me the in, the missing puzzle piece, the password, to what's going on with these movements. In it, Mrs Hammond admits throwing her hands up in frustration and telling her husband to do the household finances from now on.

Let me paint the picture. Mr. Hammond works, supporting a wife and a larger-than-normal family. Mrs Hammond breeds of course, but she also writes books, goes on speaking engagements, and otherwise puts the lie to the lifestyle she claims to espouse. Now she is able to foist another responsibility onto her husband while she does whatever she wants to do, namely, her best to impose her lifestyle on other women.

Similarly, the Prairie Muffins seem to do little but reproduce and clean house. No thought or responsibility involved. Heck, they want to get rid of as much responsiblity as possible, claiming it's against what it is to be female.

As I said to Steve, what a scam! These husbands should steer these freeloading heifers to the curb.

I really like how these self-created cows condemn women who won't buy into their line of bullshit with words of pity. "Oh you poor thing, you've given up your femininity and True Womanhood in search of the American Nightmare." Well, I guess so. Go ahead and pity me for my willingness to be an adult, to pull my own weight in the life partnership, to look a little rough around the edges while I defend YOUR freedom to stay childish and worthless.

Cause when your husbands do wake up and you find yourself abandoned in a house you can't pay for with ten kids you suddenly need to feed, you are going to wish you had my life.

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Gah that is so scary.

Even scarier is that I know women who became like that. I just don't get it.

ack ack ack ack ack. I guess if she's happy with that lifestyle, and her husband's happy with it, that's all that matters. But the moment she says this is how all women should live, I draw the line. Does Hammond realize that were here like Saudi Arabia, she wouldn't be able to blog, do such speaking engagements, or drive her kids to school? That's if she went to school, at all. (I realize Saudi Arabia is better than some countries in that region, with regards to education and literacy.)

Then you missed the point of my essay. I *do* get why these women are pushing this lifestyle. It means that all they have to do is sit at home, pop babies out, cook and clean. That's it. They live to infantilize themselves. I was reading another blog (again, do the Google search I recommended) and the woman said that she felt that women should not have the vote, nor should they be allowed to own property. SHE would claim it's to be properly, subordinately, feminine. *I* respond that no, it's so that she doesn't have to be an adult in any way, shape, or form.

Man, I'm slow tonight. Yeah, I do see what you mean.

Hammond does not want to believe that about Saudi Arabia. This is why she goes to a Saudi Arabian source to prove what she wants to believe. As

patgund will tell you, there is no free media in KSA, so of course all articles are going to be happy happy joy joy about womens' lives there.

I just read the "Prairie Muffin Manifesto." I think I'm going to be sick.

You aren't the only one.

I especially like the bit about it being okay to nag women to live THEIR lifestyle, but not to nag in the opposite direction.

DV

K, so she's belongs with the Phyllis Schlafy/Beverly LaHaye "do as I say, not as I do" crowd.

Laura Ingalls Wilder (and daughter Rose) were actually fairly feminist for the time - although I think what's she's actually pissy about with Laura is that Laura got the "son I didn't have" treatment, in part. (Although, yes, I learned as an adult that there was actually an Ingalls son who died as a baby, but anyway...) I'm just in shock that they're holding her up as a Bad Example. I mean, what about the whole helpmeet thing? Does that only apply to feminine tasks?

If that BS is "True Womanhood", sign me up for Imitation Womanhood.

DV

I went back and read through some of the Hammond stuff.

She writes in one:
Running a home is a full time job that woman are made to handle--men just can't do it the same way we can! It must be all those hormones we have that allow us to multi-task so well.

Or maybe it's the fact that many men enact the approach advocated by Shel Silverstein in one of his poems, about the little girl who does not want to wash dishes today. So perhaps if she breaks a few...

Men aren't stupid. They've learned that if they leave stuff undone long enough, women will do it. Why? Because generally they don't notice it or it doesn't bother them. We notice it and we are bothered by it.

When we have the MV's younger brother, you can bet we'll be training him out of that mindset early.

DV

You can indeed train them out of it. My bio-brother is pretty darned tidy because my mom shared your attitude. Steve on the other hand is a slob because his mom didn't think making him clean his room was a priority.

I'm also really disgusted with Hammond's "biology is destiny" thing. Oh yes, it's SO AWFUL to have ALL THOSE HORMONES. I want to smack her and point out that men do indeed have more than one hormone. They have the exact same number, just balanced differently. And there is nothing worse than a guy who's in full-blown PMS.

Couldn't I just hire a housekeeping service and thus get all of the "clean house" and none of the "mindlessly subservient wife to freak me out with that glazed look in her eyes"?

I dunno, seems to me like it cuts right through all the bullshit in this whole "Prairie Muffin" thing and gets to the point. I get someone to do my housekeeping for me, I continue having to pay bills and stuff like I would have whether I married a Prairie Muffin or not, nobody gets demeaned and stripped of their rights or dignity or purpose in life, there's no giant clan of shrieking miniature humans to suck up space and resources, and Miss Muffin Mix over there gets the chance to meet a man who will let her pay the gas bill every once in a while.

And on a marginally related note, you'd damn well have to be modest to wear an outfit like this. Chaste. Bashful, even! In fact, I think this leaves the airspace of "modest" and blunders into the anti-aircraft sights of "self-degradation."

...heeeeeeey, I think I get it now.

Awesome!! Android breeder chicks from Mars! I want one!

// "Oh you poor thing, you've given up your femininity and True Womanhood in search of the American Nightmare."//

Well, shit. I can study, work, do my share of housework and all - without losing my femininity at all. Being feminine and appreciating it doesn't mean I should lock myself at home, huh.

* uses an icon featuring a very girly and sweet-tempered female who's NOT afraid to pull a gun if it's needed *

And the prize for Completely Predictable Snarky Comment That I Knew Would Be Coming From Him/Her goes to.....

Another thing I thought of was, they think exercise is "unfeminine" so can you imagine what one of them must LOOK LIKE after kid #4? No wonder they wear tents and want to move on to burkas.

Whoa, that "bathing suit" is just....whoa.

azelmaroark, who is a competitive swimmer, commented on some of the "modest" bathing suits but that one just takes the cake.

Someone on one of the blogs commented that if they don't want to attract attention, they should just wear one-pieces and look like everyone else. Putting on a lycra Amish dress to swim is DEFINITELY going to make people stare, both men and women.

No, no, no. Sports are unfeminine. Exercise is okay, as long as you get it chasing kids around or walking around doing chores.

Sports would be unfeminine, of course, because

a) the competitive factor
b) there might be boys/men who SEE you
c) unless they have Prairie Muffin leagues, you might get exposed to reality

DV

More Christian Taliban

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