To play devil's advocate for one teensy thing (so to speak): I was home-schooled for my last couple of years of high school, because I was getting the shit kicked out of me every day and nobody in a position of authority was doing anything about it. My mother could not afford private school, as we were "white trash", but she knew she had to do something or I would either kill myself... or something else. (This was pre-Columbine, mind you.) My grades went back up, and I still had some friends I saw from time to time... that being said, most of the people who homeschool their kids, and most homeschool graduates (esp. the ones who have been homeschooled their entire lives), wouldn't know reality if it bit them on the ass.

For the rest... *wild applause*

I wear skirts also because they're comfortable, and in SoCal summertime you either have the choice of looking like a hootchymama or wearing loose/flowing clothes if you don't want to die.

Unfortunately, my mom's extended fundie family are/were (living ones are; dead ones "were") very much into that whole "Christian femininity" paradigm, and part of the reason why I got an exorcism performed on me as a teenager was because I was already expressing feminist ideals; I didn't want a man to take care of me, I wanted college and a career. My life has taken the turn of where I am now actually a housewife (but looking at employment from the home), however it is not for everyone and I still cringe at uber-feminine froo-froo crap especially when it's used to keep women thinking themselves powerless *and* used to manipulate men or other women. Gah, I hate that.

Paganism looked very attractive to me as a teenager in no small part due to the "Christian femininity" crap spewed at me by my family, *but* I figured out after awhile that the labels may have changed but the game hasn't. If women want to honor the Goddess and have womens' space, that's great, the thing is, I got lambasted for taking a male patron Deity and I've found a lot (not all, mind you... not all) of so-called womens' circles to be just as catty and oppressive as the stuff they're supposedly trying to work against.

Notice how many of them feature pictures of Victorian or Edwardian ladies doing leisurely things like reading, gardening and sewing. They think this illustrates how things used to be in a more genteel time.

And you know, gardening is *work*. You don't wear a ruffled petticoat to garden, if you're doing it properly. I don't know about you, but my nails get dirty. Oh, heavens! *big eyeroll*

Anyway... just wait until *my* blog finally comes out. Hee hee hee. ;P