Perfect Wife Syndrome

The child beating one was written with her husband. You can read the whole horrible thing here: www.achristianhome.org/to_train_up_a_child.htm

Highlights include the part where they whip a four month old because it is trying to climb the stairs It's been banned in a few countries and there was controversy a few months ago because Amazon UK continue to stock it despite the fact that the "method" is illegal here.

Oh and look at this fucking disturbingly cheerful book aimed at reducing child abuse in a victim-blaming manner. Words fail me. How can one person be so utterly screwed up.

The one thing that is clear from this garbage is that the women who do it totally lack any self respect whatever (or they are simply lazy cows who can't be arsed to make any decision for themselves and therefore cannot be held responsible for anything in their lives).

In other words, they have never grown up and remain for ever infants in women's bodies.

.

Can I join you there and order room service, garlicBread? :o

Re that Taken in Hand Website - there is an article named "When rape is a gift" I'm not going to look at it anymore. It is awful awful awful.

I am lost for words.

Nice dress & hair, beautiful home, nutritious and lovely food ready on the table... ... best achieved by marshalling your independent resources and hiring someone who enjoys doing that stuff, imho!

The thing that most frightens me about Taken In Hand is the way it blurs the line between dom-sub sex and everyday life. Its guiding principle is that the man masters the subservient woman in evey way. It's not a game for the bedroom; it's a lifestyle. Moreover, it presupposes no agreement on the woman's part. It is okay to train a woman, using whatever techniques work, to become 'interestingly' submissive. Strong women make more rewarding subjects, apparently.

If you take the bedroom bondage out of it, you're left with a philosophy that is indistinguishable from Fascinating Womanhood. (It's also a reasonably good manual for abusers.)

Luckily, neither TIH or FW are strong movements in the UK. But it is interesting - in a ghoulish sort of way - to look at abuse described from the "dominator's" point of view and to see how that's reflected in social pressures on women to submit, like the lawyer allegedly described in the Mail article.

I think if I turned all the finances over to DH, expected him to make all the decisions and prayed for him to make the 'right' ones, he'd run screaming for the hills...

The thing is, from a distance, this 'perfect housewife' thing can look very pretty and enticing. Nice dress & hair, beautiful home, nutritious and lovely food ready on the table... what it doesn't mention is the reality behind it - a lot of hard slogging and denial of self in order to service others. And if you work outside the home too... Jesus! It's a one-way ticket to a nervous breakdown, I'd have thought.

I came across Taken In Hand a while back, on another feminist forum. It is scary. I think it is an extreme BDSM thing rather than a general plan for life though.

Depressingly, there has been a bit of talk about the kind of Fascinating Womanhood stuff in that article. There was a piece by Fay Weldon somewhere that made my blood boil, claiming that women should absolutely not be subservient in the workplace, but should be at home. She even described doing someone's laundry as "mating behaviour". Barking.

The takeinhand link makes me feel sick in the stomach!

Yep Babyheave but there are people out there like that and if just completely depresses me. My MIL is one of those people.

It reminds of a conversation with my MIL that finished our relationship.
I happened to bring up that I had trouble finding work and thought partly that some of the issues were due to hidden discrimination by whom I was being interviewed by, because I had a young baby. I had expanded on this to cover the issues of equal pay, so she turns around to me and say...

"But why of earth would you want to be a director, why on earth would you want to be in the boardroom, you have to careful about women bosses, and why go on about equal pay - you have a baby now, Women don't need equal pay, it is men who need to be supported as the main breadwinners".

It just came right out and there was more. The weird thing is that she worked most of her life, in low paid jobs while her husband did earn loads of money.

This is the same person that, very insensitively left us brochures about infertility treatments - I think she really thought that because I came from a large family that I wanted lots of children. I didn't - my DH and I were together for decades before wanting children.

So that was it really, well that and she also is not welcoming to other cultures. So I decided there and then that I couldn't really have someone with that attitude around my child - it was just too negative. I'd given up my bed for her to stay and I suddenly realised that she had a pecking order and I was last on her list.

She was so delusional that although I was not earning at the time I realised that she did not consider the money that we used to be both mine and my DH's. As it happened a previous years bonus that I had achieved was paying for them also. So MIL thinks it is because we live in different countries, but she won't have much input into my child's life, which I know is severe.

We did try challenge her on her views but came to the point of not wanting to waste our energy with her.

I am shocked at that take in hand link

But on a more serious note. How ridiculous to believe that the best a whole gender can be is subserviant to the other one?

The Facinating Girl: "The greatest contribution a woman can make to society is to get married and successfully fill her role as a wonderful wife."

Thank god no one said that to Marie Curie.

Someone also needs to tell Christine Lagard or Aung San Suu Kyi where they've been going wrong perhaps?

The Facinating Girl: "The greatest contribution a woman can make to society is to get married and successfully fill her role as a wonderful wife."

It's the fact that they are having sex with a different woman. The novelty of it all that makes causes a man to cheat. Do these 'perfect wives' know anything?

The fact that this woman is educated and has an income of her own makes thing worse not better!
Living proof that being educated is no guarantee of wisdom.
Does she not realise the burden she is placing upon her own children? A son who thinks mummy should do every-f*ing thing, a daughter who will run herself into the ground trying to please a man?
Education is not the same as wisdom-truly clever women know that a man of a mind to cheat will do so whatever.

Oh god these are all so depressing :(

I'd rather have a messy house, my own income and life on my own terms; thanks.

freedom of choice is fair enough, but I'm under no obligation to respect someone elses' choices. I respect her right to make them, and I've no right to interfere of course - but agree with the choice itself, just because? nah

If a woman wishes to be a housewife and do all housework, fine; (apart from sex thing which of course should never be something that women 'comply' with). It is the fact that a woman is now expected to work AND do housewife thing that makes my blood boil!
Women are hated by some, aren't they?

This woman has both education and income as a lawyer, and the others are all billed as successful too.

They are free to make personal choices on how to run their household, and also to talk about it publicly if they wish.

I wouldn't want to live like that (and if DH had wanted a wife like that, he'd have chosen someone else). But I don't think I should automatically knock someone for making a different choice at a particular time in their life, and within their specific marriage/relationship.

Freedom of choice and self-determination encompasses those who make choices I don't like, as well as those I do.

If you're worried that you're not as Fascinating as you should be, why not get your husband to take you in hand?

Blimey, my poor DH. I'm a SAHM who argues debates with him vigorously, manages the money and can't cook half as well as he does. He is obviously getting a raw deal.

But in my eyes it is fine to appreciate your dp/dh and to do thing for tthem ......as long as they fecking do it back. I was brought up by my GM - an intelligent woman - she was MOST insistent about the importance of education. What she MEANT by this, is that IF you are educated you will meet a better class of husband.

The worst thing was when I announced I was leaving my exH, she wrote me a letter saying SHE had put up with having a crap DH all her life so I should just get on with it. Bad - because my GD is absolutely lovely and also because she felt I should be miserable all my life because she was.