feminine-genius

The "work-life balance" myth

Suzanne Venker has posted a very good piece at NRO about why careers will naturally be negatively impacted by decisions that prioritise family. It's the nature of reality.

What we never talk about is where this feminist utopia [of balancing work and family] leaves employers. Employers can not — they must not — be responsible for helping parents manage their family lives. If employers can afford to offer part-time employment, fine. If they can afford to allow their employees to take off an endless string of days and still make money in the meantime, more power to ’em. But come on: such businesses are few and far between. Employers are in business to make money. They may be sympathetic to the The Problem, but they cannot solve it.

This piece is similar to what I found in her new book, The Flipside of Feminism. While I promised a review, I'm not usually in the habit of doing negative reviews (at least not for the "good guys"). The book was good -- as far as it went. It was hard-hitting, enjoyable and completely conservative, but also entirely secular. There was a thin veil of Protestant virtue about it, but that veil hasn't sufficed to keep the country on track thus far, and it wasn't enough to recommend the book (though as a gift to non-religious recovering feminists, it would be great).

We know how America is supposed to work, and we know what rules should govern the workplace. All of that was covered very well, but Catholics know that there's more to life than a secular work-life dichotomy, and that secular paradigm never attempts to factor in vocation, a family wage, the hidden cost of vice, and the priorities that faith demands, etc. Apart from realigning the public sphere along Godly principles (which isn't going to happen any time soon) we will have to settle for these secular guidelines -- while providing a witness for something transcendent in our own lives. A challenge, indeed, but this wasn't the book to help with that quest.

Rape as a weapon of war

Throughout history, rape has  been used as a means of spreading terror during conflicts. Horrific, but nothing new. It should also be noted that the honour cultures in the Middle East preceded Islam but, unfortunately, long association with that faith has done nothing to undermine the honour-based mindset. Rather, it coexists comfortably with Islamic religious tenets. Thus, when confronted with the rape in this region, we find this violent and misguided response by one family:

A Libyan father killed his three daughters after they were raped by Gaddafi's troops to lift the shame on his family, a human rights group said today.

The girls, aged 15, 17 and 18 were allegedly assaulted by soldiers at a school in the town of Tomina, near the war-shattered city of Misrata, during a two-month siege.

When they returned home, their father slit their throats in a so-called honour killing, according to Physicians for Human Rights (PHR).

To be clear, there is another Muslim response:

But PHR also noted that 'some in Tomina have stood up against this practice, including a well-known sheik who has publicly advocated for raped women and girls to be seen as brave and bringing honour to their families.'

Please note that this also filters the rapes through the "honour" lens, which the Imam cannot abandon -- he can only attempt to redefine the parameters. Rape is neither honourable nor dishonourable (unless one wants to argue that it degrades the aggressor). As Augustine wrote in his Confessions, chastity is "a virtue of the mind, and is not lost by rape." (He wrote that in defense of the pious virgins who suffered a similar fate during the sack of Rome -- for they feared that they were going to be held accountable for the "breaking" of their vows.)

[Jesus] summoned the crowd again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand. Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile (Mark, 7:14-15).

Rape is simply a vile and depraved act that cannot elevate or devalue those who suffer. It's a tragedy, and the only response should be compassion.

Mary, most Pure, intercede for your beloved children!

She survived Hollywood

 

Sybil Jason was supposed to rival the biggest child star of her generation, but rather than an ongoing cat fight, the two little girls established a friendship that lasted until the end.

In 1935, when she was six, she was spotted in the British film Barnacle Bill by Irving Asher, then in charge of Warner Bros at Elstree. Asher telephoned Jack Warner to say: "I've seen this kid, she'll be bigger than Shirley Temple." She had a screen test and Jack Warner signed her.

Sybil Jacobson was born in Cape Town, South Africa, on November 23 1927. When she was two the family moved to England, where she was soon picking out tunes on the piano; at three she was impersonating Maurice Chevalier, Greta Garbo and Jeanette MacDonald on stage; at four, she was headlining at London night clubs, singing, dancing, doing impressions and playing the piano.

Her uncle, the bandleader Harry Jacobson, was also piano accompanist to Gracie Fields, and it was Gracie who was responsible for getting Sybil her first film part in London.

Once in Hollywood, Sybil was top-billed in Little Big Shot (1935), for which she sang the title song, Rolling in Money. The film bore a striking similarity to Little Miss Marker (1934), starring Shirley Temple, and was a success with critics and audiences alike.

To see some crying scenes, go here. You also might remember as Becky, the scullery maid who befriended Shirley Temple in The Little Princess. I wish we knew more about what grounded her so that she didn't become shredded by the fame machine, though WW2, which grounded her in South Africa, may have played its part. May she rest in peace.

The Price of Abortion

The American Vice-President is a Catholic who doesn't seem to mind pandering on behalf of the most pro-abortion White House in history. His latest mouthful of horror was offered while visiting China, to whom his country is deeply in debt. Deeply in debt. That said, there are ethics, and there is realpolitik -- the latter shredding the former much like the way that humanity is being shredded across the vast Asian continent. 

The following is a portion of Vice-President Joseph Biden's remarks in which he responds to a question about the deficit and America's need to curb spending:

So the savings will be accomplished. But as I was talking to some of your leaders, you share a similar concern here in China. You have no safety net. Your policy has been one which I fully understand -- I’m not second-guessing -- of one child per family. The result being that you’re in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. Not sustainable.

So hopefully we can act in a way on a problem that's much less severe than yours, and maybe we can learn together from how we can do that. 

Interestingly, he points out that there is a harsh financial price to be paid when limiting families to one child: it is not sustainable. But what he glosses over in that equation (each worker supporting four elderly relatives) is the means by which they arrive at this state of affairs -- mandatory sterilisations and forced abortions. But he's not second-guessing that!

Let this woman make it clear to you what is involved:

 

Even many "pro-choice" advocates can see that this is inhuman -- and yet the aging, fatherly civil servant dares not interfere with the internal policy of the nation to whom we owe money. In fact, we might link arms and chat about how many babies can be sacrificed on the altar of economic growth while not adversely impacting the twilight years of their would be grand-parents.

For shame! Thankfully, the American Speaker of the House (also Catholic), John Boehner responded forcefully:

I’m deeply troubled by the comments reportedly made by the Vice President yesterday regarding China’s reprehensible one-child policy, which has resulted in forced sterilizations and coerced abortions and should not be condoned by any American official. No government on Earth has the authority to place quotas on the value of innocent human life, or to treat life as an economic commodity that can be regulated and taken away on a whim by the state. I hope and trust that the Vice President didn’t actually say what has been reported, and that a correction or clarification from the White House will be forthcoming. The Obama administration should be focusing on jobs for the American people, not encouraging foreign governments to utilize abortion as a means of population and deficit control.

All the deficit control in the world cannot justify killing the most vulnerable among us. This will soon become even more complicated with our own aging population, as fewer young people are asked to bear the costs of sustaining them. That is when aborting our own will logically lead to rationing care for those who acquiesced to such a calculating society. A cold logic that.

Has love prevailed?

This is an [almost] entirely flighty post about a European noble. Since we've watched a couple royal weddings already this summer, we're in the mode, and I wanted you to know that another many be on the horizon:

One of Spain's richest women, the 85-year-old Duchess of Alba, has announced she will marry a civil servant 24 years her junior in early October at a private family ceremony.

If you click to see the picture attached to that piece, you'll understand why I had to dig further. Age 85 -- really? There is plenty more, from her vast titles and history found here, to a story that explains the opposition to the match:

Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart, a spectacularly colourful member of Spain's bizarre celebrity clique, has never been camera shy. With her piping, querulous voice and eye-popping outfits, the duchess is constantly in the public eye at society weddings and bullfights featuring her ex-son-in-law Francisco ("Fran") Rivera Ordóñez, a popular torero from a distinguished bullfighting family.

Since the death of her second husband seven years ago, she has enjoyed a close relationship with an old family friend, Alfonso Diez Carabantes, 58, and wants to marry him. "It's true that I planned to marry. We were both full of enthusiasm for the idea," the duchess told Hola! magazine this month. Plans for a secret ceremony were apparently well advanced before the family found out by chance. Backed, it is said, by King Juan Carlos, they vetoed the match.

Some gossip columnists hint that Mr Diez is little more than a carpet- bagger battening upon a frail old woman estranged from her children. Others say it's bit much if Spain's top aristocrat can't choose her own partner for her twilight years.

Beyond idle gossip (yes, I'm coming close) the real point to this item is the nearly-frivolous level to which marriage seems to have descended at all levels of society. In fact she made no bones of the fact that the fourth of her six children was fathered through an adulterous union. And her second husband was an ex-Jesuit priest. And all six of her children are divorced. And several of her grandchildren were conceived out of wedlock, and...

It's rather interesting that she was begged by her children to act with more propriety, since they can see how ridiculous it looks. Fearing that they were more concerned about their inheritance, she settled that issue earlier:

Spain's fabulously rich Duchess of Alba has signed away her enormous wealth, string of palaces, priceless works of art and vast swathes of Spanish real estate to marry for love at 85, Spanish media has reported.

Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart, a regular subject of gossip in Spain's glossy magazines and said by Guinness World Records to have more titles than any other royal on the planet, wants to marry a humble civil servant 25 years her junior.

The duchess has divided her fortune between her six children to convince them that her suitor is besotted with her rather than her money and the kinds of possessions that are considered national treasures, reports said.

Is it any wonder that Europe is wandering in a dark veil of confusion? That it's utterly post-Christian? Rank becomes farce when such grandees are so far from their true vocation.

Thankfully, Spain saw something of more substance this month, when pilgrims from around the world came to celebrate the only communion that matters: aligning our wills with the sovereign will of God. For all her money, for all her treasures, for all her titles, for all her culture, perhaps the Duchess of Alba could stop to ask herself why they slept in the fields, braved the heat, and endured the storm. She seems to have provided such scandal that the choices are increasingly clear to the young. May graces be shed on Spain, their royal family, and all who seek to live with integrity.

Two aging feminists

They may have burned their bras, but that didn't mean that they really wanted to go natural. Natural fibers, yes; natural aging, no. Organic food, yes; organic fertility, no. Shunning the conventions of the traditional family and a God-centered society certainly didn't mean shunning their own conventions once they were established -- and their own included as much sterile sex as possible with whomever they chose. The sexual revolution has hinged on the belief that intimacy need not lead to babies, nor should it be reserved for life-long marriage. Unfortunately, that premise has utterly changed the landscape in our world -- and not for the better.

Gloria Steinem has few regrets:

[She] wishes she’d “fought harder” for things she believed in. One of the choices she doesn’t regret, however, is not having had children.

“I was in Mumbai at a women’s center a few years ago, and they asked whether I regretted that,” says Steinem. “I thought, if I tell them the truth, I’ll lose them. But there was no point in lying, and so I said, ‘No, not for a millisecond’ – and they applauded. Because they don’t have the choice.”

I do commend her for fighting against female genital mutilation and for showing the dark side of Playboy's bunny ranches, but her advocacy for women obviously comes on her own terms, which is based on a zero-sum game. According to gender feminists, women can only succeed at the expense of their motherhood. That undermines both complementarity and healthy families.

Jane Fonda, another icon of empowered women, has made her own beautiful life of cosmetic surgery and artficial hormones -- so that she can still frolic with male friends despite her age:

In one of her most candid interviews, Fonda, 73, happily tells of taking the libido-boosting hormones and advises other women to try what is still a controversial treatment.

"Here's something I haven't said publicly yet: I discovered testosterone about three years ago, which makes a huge difference if you want to remain sexual and your libido has dropped," she says.

"Use testosterone. It comes in a gel, a pill or a patch."

But she adds: "I had to stop because it was giving me acne. It's one thing having plastic surgery, but it is quite another to have adolescence acne. That is going too far.'

Well, one must set some boundaries, I suppose. The trickle-down effect of examples like these is found all around us, in the promiscuity of youth, the broken families, the cohabitation (not only of the young, but with the parents of many children, who endure living with virtual strangers in their own homes). One might be confused by the seeming "good works" of Ms Steinem, who does go beyond herself to work on behalf of so many other women, but if you study the issues, her goal is singular: to free women from the shackles of culture, marriage, and children.

The heart of the difference is whether they advocate for persons or individuals. The former are social creatures integrated in a larger society, while the latter are atoms, floating freely and seeking their own goods. The Catholic message is always to remind us of the personhood of others, and through that prism to promote that which supports human dignity and a strong society. Ultimately, feminists have agitated for abortion, contraception, no-fault divorce, sexual license, micro-loans for women, and [many of them] for legalisation of prostitution. None of these things advance the dignity of the human person, nor do they strengthen relationships between men and women, and often they harm or kill children. But then, feminists don't think about the children, "no, not for a millisecond."

It's not over yet, and there is always time for repentance. God grant these two and their adoring fans the wisdom to see the truth about love, the rewards of selfless generosity, and the beauty of "man, fully alive."

Another curious life

Sophie Gurney was the great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin, and born into a very creative home. Unfortunately, it was also one where suffering was found, and not always dealt with on Christian terms. There was love, though, which she passed on generously. The vignette of her home in one brief period sounds lovely, in its own disheveled way:

After the war the family settled in Cambridge, where Mark became a lecturer in Zoology and then Senior Tutor at Trinity. Their large house in Chaucer Road overflowed with children, cousins, lodgers, friends and pupils in difficulties. Sophie was expert at looking after people, and an excellent cook. She tolerated her husband’s collection of usual and unusual pets — the lawns were mowed by vast numbers of guinea-pigs, or “poor man’s deer” as he called them.

Of course, retrospect is often coloured in sepia tones, which gently cover the trials. A life of suffering and little graces -- may God grant her rest.

The worst child abuse

This tape is disturbing for many reasons, not the least of which is what this girl suffered when she was 12. Beyond the pathology that allows men to systematically brutalise a child (in the company of friends, who collaborate in the violence) there is the the wider culture:

• What is in the minds of the police who further brutalise her?
• What make a person clean or unclean?
• What components of a religion allow non-believers to suffer?
• What family norms allow you to beat the children of others?
• What sort of justice ignores such brutality, or compounds it?
• What construct allows such degradation of women?
• How much violence does it take to make people immune to it?
• Is there any hope for Christians in Egypt?

How very difficult to follow the Christian demand for forgiveness--for the parents, for the child. This doesn't short-circuit the need for justice and accountability, but it's required all the same. Prayers for their healing and strength through this ordeal. I know the local bishops are asking for Christians to stand firm and not emigrate, but parents must also consider the safety of their families in a region where even the law ignores their plight.