MRS. = MR’S.

Nasty Little Brats:
A (semi) Rant In response to Maureen Dowd article for “The New York Times, “What’s A Modern Girl To Do?”
(http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/magazine/30feminism.html?ex=1288324800&en=197a1142bf2ba967&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss)

Most people misunderstand what feminism is about. The true definition of a feminist is someone who believes that women should be treated equally to men. A feminist can be a woman or a man, hetero or homosexual, and any race or religion. Not understanding this is what might be fueling what could be called a backlash to feminism. Nasty little brats who take what their mothers and grandmothers went though for granted are the women who are leading this backlash. Even though they take full advantage of many of the things these women got for them they don’t understand them.

In one part of Dowd’s article she talks about how women today use the dinner check as a way of testing whether a man is worth a second date. When the check comes they offer to pay, fully expecting of course that he’ll decline her offer and ante-up. As one woman said, “If you offer, and they accept, then it's over." That pisses me off quite a bit. She is taking what feminists in the 60s and 70s gave her the ability to do, have money to pay for her own meal, and using it as bait to get him to pay anyway. I think we all have to admit to hoping that someone else would pay when we’ve been out, but offering to pay and then getting angry when the other person accepts is just dishonest.

Feminists in the 70s worked hard to have it all: a rewarding relationship, a career, and a family. Women today seem to be throwing that away. Sure there are examples of where that contributed to problems within the family, but it is definitely not the only thing that was hurting them. In many cases the problem was probably more the man’s fault, expecting the women to bring in half the income and fulfill the womanly duties of cooking and cleaning.

Maybe my views have to do with my upbringing. My mother’s name is Janet Dougherty-Smith. She works full time. She doesn’t cook unless she feels like making some crock-pot surprise and usually cleans on the weekend. She brings in probably 90 percent of our family’s income. My dad cooks dinner for our family every night, does laundry and vacuums, and runs a stained glass business out of our house. Yet somehow my parents have an equal relationship.

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I think I need to change some stuff in this. It isn’t very rant-like, and sort of wanders around. I will work on it and update it later. Writing is hard work. Also I'm not saying the girl in the cartoon is a nasty little brat. Her predicament is all too true.