Yet another complete but unposted draft.
You can find out all about the deeply anti-feminist National Organization for Marriage’s “Ruth Institute” project from DailyKos’s Dante Atkins starting here and continuing here. The short version is that the Ruth Institute’s founder, Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse disagrees with Atkins’ evidence that the intent is not just to encourage women (that would be white American women) to make a choice to stay home, be supported by men (that would be white American men), and have babies (those would be white American babies) in order to stave off the brown menace but to force them to do so through social, political, religious, and legal legislation.
Morse evidently apoplectically disagrees with Atkins’ assertions… not so much by refuting the considerable evidence Atkins presented but instead by claiming that’s what some women want.
You can follow the links above to assess the evidence yourself, and assess for yourself some of the excellent points Atkins raises that I really agree with and think you might too, but I want to talk about one particular point about willingness vs. coercion that really gets to the heart of the question of choice.
[I]n Dr. Morse’s opinion, it’s not sexist of her to advocate that women’s economic and social advances be rolled back. Why? Because many women actively want take on what one could call a traditional domestic role. That is definitely true: many women do actively seek that role, just as there are many men who actively desire the corresponding role of economic provider. What Dr. Morse seems to want, by contrast, is to force all women to reject the technological, medical and social advances that guaranteed their freedom to choose something else.
There are certain points in adolescence, during the formation of adult identity, where it really can feel like a threat to one’s own validity when other people make choices different from your own.
On the other hand in adulthood healthy individuals have completed the work of finding their identities with the result that they may be annoyed by, or attracted to, or otherwise influenced by other people’s choices but they no longer feel threatened by them. Indeed I’d argue that this is the definition of adulthood — the thing that distinguishes full-sized post-pubescent humans from full-sized mature humans. (It also, incidentally, distinguishes when I think people ought to wait till they — and even more importantly their partners! — begin having, well, real adult sex.)
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Also, not to put too fine a point on it but how, exactly, is Roback Morse’s assertion that society should be bent to satisfy her 24/7 M/f master/slave sex fetish than for it to be bent in favor of, say, NAMBLA’s fetish for pedophilia? I mean, it wasn’t all that long ago that sexual subjugation of boys was as institutionally acceptable as subjugation of women. Why privilege either?
