R.I.P. Nice, July 2016

So it's France again...Why am I not surprised?

80 Dead, More Than 100 Injured

Luckily, the driver was known by the police. Makes one feel safer or does it????Instead of deleting those posts, I should probably just create a R.I.P. label as there are certainly more to come.

The War On Femininity, Part 3: Motherhood

Have you noticed how it's practically never a good time to become a mother? When you are young, you are expected to study and "work on getting established in your career". When you are older, you should avoid having children because they all will be born with all sorts of disorders. There is a narrow window of opportunity somewhere between 28 and 35 when a good middle class girl is supposed to get married and produce a certain number of children, usually 1-2 so that they won't interfere with her career and she can return back to work as soon as possible.

Women having more children than a designated amount will often find themselves at the receiving end of some nasty remarks, sometimes even from the medical professionals (ditto for older mothers though the trend is slowly reversing due to career women getting married and starting to have children later in life).

Though in real life they probably won't go so far, internet progressives will accuse such women of contributing to overpopulation and burdening the Earth with their offspring. Yet while European ladies are expected to  restrict the number of their children they are also often encouraged to donate to charities supporting all these "poor children" of the Third World whose women apparently don't contribute to Global Warming by bearing 10+kids each.

With the birth rates in Western countries falling every year we also keep hearing how we need immigrants "to pay our pensions" so essentially we are encouraged to stop reproducing ourselves and pay for reproductive habits of other nations whose citizens then will move to our countries and inherit them.

Yet, Westerners didn't always hold motherhood in such disdain. In fact, it was viewed as sacred duty and poets were writing sentimental verses about the Hands which rock the cradle and so on while artists worked on all these Madonna and her Baby paintings. American women often married young and kept having children well into their late forties and even fifties (as demonstrated in this link). Mothers were respected and had status in society for just being mothers, not for bringing home an extra paycheck or excelling in the world of men. So what happened?

What happened was that individuals like de Beauvoir were suddenly given a profound voice in society. According to her, women found their babies "burdensome" and "maternal instinct" was non-existent. Breastfeeding inflicted "a harsh slavery" on the mother and her own baby was "a tyrant" and "a little stranger". A mother was nearly almost " a sexually frigid" and "discontented" woman whose work is not "directly useful to society" (according to Domestic Tranquility by F. Carolyn Graglia, p.p. 106-107).


However, while it's easy to blame individual feminists for changes in the society attitudes, the massive culture shift from the traditional Western family structure of provider husband and homemaker wife which predates Christianity and has endured for thousands of years didn't happen because some obviously confused ladies started venting their sexual frustrations in public. In fact, while many men nowadays blame women for feminism, it often took government efforts to enact this change.

Google has an interesting 1980s document which highlights the fact that Western governments actively pursued the policies of pushing more women into paid workforce in such countries as West Germany and the Netherlands which had long traditions of mothers being excluded from the burden of providing a living.

It states, among other things that it's the government which provides women with the majority of jobs, that government bureaucracies need "talented young women" and decries "the culture of motherhood" which prevents Dutch women from climbing the top echelons of power. While attacking the Netherlands and West Germany for their "sexism" the document suggest taking countries like Bulgaria as an example.

Well, one should say they finally succeeded, albeit to a degree, since we now have preachers decrying the fact that joint taxation of married couples is unfair since it prevents wives from working (longer hours) and earning more money while the doctors assure women and their husbands that pregnancy and childbearing don't take a toll on a woman's body and she should be ready to resume her duty to economy after a couple of months of maternity leave. And, of course, "traditional patriarchy supporters" calling housewives leeches and "kept women". Heaven help us, because we really need it...

The War On Femininity, Part 2: The Female Role

Those Christians who still believe in the natural distinctions between the sexes like to cite Deut22:5 but few will go out further than pointing out that there should be some distinction between the appearance of males and females. Yet, in less enlightened times the verse was understood as to refer to much more than just clothing. As Matthew Henry puts it in his famous Commentaries:

It forbids the confounding of the dispositions and affairs of the sexes: men must not be effeminate, nor do the women's work in the house, nor must women be viragos, pretend to teach, or usurp authority, 1 Tim. ii. 11, 12.

 Since our society's ideal currently appears to be unisex, it naturally leads to the blending of male and female traditional roles. Yet, though we have some rise in stay-at-home-fathers this blending has mostly been one-way-street with feminine role diminishing and some tasks disappearing all together. Take the previous discussion on clothes, for instance. It has always been one of the tasks of a traditional wife to take care of the appearance of her family members. She would wash, mend and iron, polish shoes, fix the children's hair, shop for clothes and sometimes make them at home.

Being well-dressed isn't just something which happens randomly, it takes some consideration and experience, knowledge of different fabrics, the eye which can discern quality, planning beforehand when there is an event calling for it, like a birthday party. It all takes time and time is something which most couples with both partners working simply do not have.

Furthermore, things like washing and ironing fall under "housework" and it's something which feminists have traditionally hated. Some people even speculated that the whole feminist movement of the 1960s was motivated by the disappearance of cheap servants so that UMC women tried to push their husbands into the maid's role.

All this was supposed to help women but more often than not it actually led to the denigrating of the traditionally female tasks which started to be seen as degrading and oppressive, or as Betty Friedan so eloquently stated in her famous book: "peculiarly suited to the capacities of feeble-minded girls" (quoted from Domestic Tranquility by F. Carolyn Graglia, p.116).

While feminists like de Beauvoir calling housewives  parasitic creatures is old news, the new phenomenon is that now we have men on the internet who describe themselves as the supporters of the traditional patriarchy in full agreement with her assessment of the housewives.

Nor is it in the man's interest, de Beauvoir continues, "that woman is supported by him like a parasite". (idem, p.107), and these men agree. I have lost count how many times I read about there being nothing to do at home, since we have a vacuum-cleaner (invented by men, so there!) and a washing machine, and how it's really not necessary to vacuum or clean the toilet more than once a month.

Nowadays there is a lot of talk about female submission but it's rarely pointed out that this wifely submission was directly tied up to man's duty to provide for his family. Since he bore all the costs it was only fair that he took all the final decisions. You simply can't have a traditional family with both husband and wife working full time or very close to it and earning approximately the same. Feminists of the 1960s understood very well that even if the law made the sexes equal, the chief breadwinner wielded a tremendous economic power hence they wanted all wives to get a job because it meant financial independence.

The female role in the present day has been largely restricted to motherhood, though even this primary function is heavily under attack, but the traditional definition of the female role would be something like "a caregiver". Women would take care of their husbands, their children, their family members, the neighbours etc etc and it included just as much providing a listening ear and some sympathetic understanding as cooking nutritious meals and running the house.

Moreover, in the Western culture women were traditionally seen as the companions of their men. The law which prohibited divorce ensured that the man couldn't kick out his wife for failure to produce a (male) heir or in fact, any children at all. Even in pre-Christian times the husband was supposed to treat his wife kindly and marital love was praised. F. Carolyn Graglia documents it in her book by, among, other things, narrating the story of a Spartan king Anaxandrias who refused to divorce his infertile wife despite the outside pressure because he loved her. (idem., p. 234).

 However, a wife can't properly function in her role unless she is supported by the breadwinner husband since fulfilling all these traditional tasks takes time, that is, unless you agree that vacuuming once a month is a proper way to run a house.

Oklahoma!

The War On Femininity, Part 1: Like Grey Clouds In November Sky

Our church newspaper published a very wonderful article recently. It actually proclaimed that the traditional Western clothing for females is skirts/dresses. It went further to say that the believers shouldn't  look  like grey clouds in November sky but rather like people invited to a wedding feast.

It sounds like a radical statement nowadays, but not so long ago you didn't have to persuade women to try and look pretty. In fact, when you watch old TV series like I Love Lucy you see that the most quarrels she had with her husband was about her spending too much money on a new hat or dress. 1950s advertisements feature both men and women wearing nice clothes, like this:

Folks used to have healthy pride in their appearance and even housewives would wear nice things at home:

I still keep wondering how did it all go from this to this:

Modern unisex clothing is boring, to say the least. The colours are drab, the style is absent, the fitting either baggy or too tight. 2/3s of the population appear to be wearing basically overalls (what are jeans if not work clothes?) on a daily basis. All this considering the fact that we have an abundant choice of decent clothes on the internet. They must be putting something in the water...

The Port Of Rotterdam

Below are some nice pictures taken today:

My husband tempted me into eating this:

His crimes against humanity didn't end here as he further seduced me into eating (nearly) a whole doughnut (not featured), a food item I've sworn never to eat:)

I hope you all are having a great Sunday!

Science Proves What We Always Knew

If you dress like a slob, you'll behave like a slob and people around will perceive you as one, while dressing sharply and professionally will increase the success of your performance:

If you want to be a big-ideas person at work, suit up. A paper in August 2015 in Social Psychological and Personality Science asked subjects to change into formal or casual clothing before cognitive tests. Wearing formal business attire increased abstract thinking—an important aspect of creativity and long-term strategizing. 

(From Scientific American)

So here you have it from the mouth of scientists, modern sloppy "casual" way of dressing decreases abstract thinking and destroys creativity, while dressing in formal attire produces "the feeling of power". There is a reason dress codes exist in business and finance and legal profession.

Now what does it do to a woman's self-esteem to constantly wear what was traditionally considered male attire and could at best be described as unisex clothing? Or for an adult man, husband and father to wear baggy shorts with flip-flops on a daily basis? Or for a housewife to spend her whole day in pajamas?

Dress for success, not for failure!

An average American 1950s family doing shopping:

An average American 2016 family doing shopping...
Well, never mind!

Pumpkin Pie Dessert

This is my version of a pumpkin pie recipe from Gooseberry Patch's Family Favorites.

You will need:

4 eggs
2c frozen pumpkin cubes, cooked
cinnamon
1tsp salt
1c sugar
ab. 1 1/2 c coffee milk
2c flour
ab. 2tsp baking powder + 1tsp baking soda
ab. 50g butter

In a bowl, combine eggs, cooked pumpkin, cinnamon, salt, sugar and coffee milk. Add baking powder/soda mixture and flour, blend together but don't overmix. Transfer into an ungreased baking dish, drizzle with melted butter. Bake at 175*C/350 F for ab. 50 min. or until done. Serve with ice cream/whipped cream. It tastes delicious!

The Art Of N.C. Wyeth

N. C. Wyeth was an American artist and illustrator. Born in Victorian times, he created his most famous works, including the illustrations to Treasure Island in the early 20th century, had overall a very successful career creating about 3000 paintings and illustrating 112 books, became a father of 5 children who inherited his artistic talents, but unfortunately, was killed in a car crash at the age of about 63 together with one of his grandsons.

Brought up on a farm he spent much time outdoors engaging in such pursuits as hunting and fishing and his sense of observation helped him later in his works. N.C. Wyeth had a keen interest in Native American culture, spent some time working as a cowboy, painted farm scenes and illustrated books about European history, such as Robin Hood or The White Company.

Below are some of his paintings courtesy of WikiArt:

Lancelot and Guenevere:

A Native American:

The Scythers:

The cover of Treasure Island:

You can read more about N.C. Wyeth on Wikipedia.

Here is the link to his works on WikiArt.