Early Hate

The feminist didn't like that.  She thought that it wasn't right that little girls would have their hearts set on the goal of getting married, to a man, of all things.  I agree with her, although for different reasons.   In August of 2004 the feminist demanded that I remove her name from this page, and she accused me of libelling her and her daughter.   How unreasonable and incongruous a demand that was.  The story had been shown at http://www.feminist.org/other/victread.html but is no longer located there.  However, it still is in the public domain. (Go to "My Five-Year-Old Feminist at the Brides Party," by Kiesa Kay at that page.)   So, what this feminist told me in effect is, "Hear me crow, but don't you dare mention to anyone that I do."

Throughout all of history, in their play children acted out aspects of everyday adult life and, of course, although weddings are a normal part of adult life, so normal that even lesbians now frequently want to partake of such a grand celebration, mock weddings or any other play organized by adults never gave my friends or me much pleasure when we were children.  Fortunately, I have been spared the ordeal of playing at getting married, although I always thoroughly enjoyed myself at any of those weddings that took place in the neighbourhood, or, in the case of my three sisters, in our own house.  My oldest sister (now deceased) was 17 years older than I was and my youngest sister is six years older than I am.  I don't know for sure why we children never played at the game of wedding, but perhaps that is because no adult ever wanted us to do that.  Perhaps that was because the adults in those days simply took weddings to be too serious to ever be considered a game, unlike today.  None of my sisters or brothers and none of my many cousins but one ever got a divorce.

Nevertheless, when I was at the age of the feminist author's little daughter — I grew up in a neighbourhood that was full of children my age —  we never had adults organize how we should play.  The worst that ever happened was that we asked adults to play with us, but that was only within the family and never on the street or anywhere else.  It was more likely that the adults asked us whether we wanted to play with them (that's how I learned to play chess at age 8 and became really good at it before I even finished primary school), or at worst, adults might have told us where to play (never in the flower beds) or when.  That is, we never were allowed to play outside after supper, which wouldn't have been much fun anyway, because then there wouldn't have been any other children available to play with, as none of them were allowed to play outside after supper either.

After supper, in our house as in many houses in our neighbourhood, it was a quiet time, unless we had visitors, which we frequently had.  More often we got our homework checked and had to complete what hadn't been finished.  We talked and asked questions, and I loved to hear the stories my dad told me when we looked through the family album or when I had to help him with the odd chore.  Sometimes, if the weather permitted and if it looked as if there would be a nice sunset, we would go for a walk to watch the trains of barges go up and down the river, but that wasn't until a few years after the war, after all the wrecks that had been sunk in the final days of the war had been cleared and traffic on the river had resumed.

The feminist's daughter had wanted to go very badly, so she, with misgivings, let her.  When she picked her daughter up after the celebration, one of the moms told her that the other girls had wanted to put make-up on, all except the feminist's daughter.  Her little daughter had refused: "Lisa [not her real name] told them that she didn't need make-up to be pretty! She said that lipstick was made out of bat poop, and that bat poop doesn't belong on pretty faces!"  

I agree, I met many women in my life, but for some reason I never appreciated any women more than those who didn't disfigure their features by painting them over.  It always looked to me as if women that painted their faces over were trying to hide something by painting on a facade.  I was quite happy that the wife who picked me as the father of "her" children and as her provider during and after marriage didn't wear make-up, however, I put up with it when she began to use make-up after she became an avid reader of Cosmopolitan and started to follow the blueprint for a liberated life she found in there.

The feminist recounted in her story how she corrected her daughter, that lipstick didn't contain "bat poop" but, rather, "bat guano."  Her little daughter then told how little fun she had at the party, because the other girls had wanted to play with "stupid Barbies," but that she hated barbies with a passion, that she had wanted to go and play outside, but that they had gotten into trouble for perhaps getting their dresses dirty.  Here comes the clincher, the big difference that came out of the rift that feminism created during the last 30 years or more.

The feminist's daughter had said that she didn't have much fun and had been bored.  The little girl's mother agreed with her and said that a wedding isn't really such a big deal anyway, and that besides, she hated to think of her marrying a man.  To which her daughter replied, "A man! I don't want to marry a man! Yuck! I'm going to marry Giselle [not her real name]....Girls can marry girls if they love each other, right?"

Fifty-five years ago, the question didn't ever come up where and when I grew up.  If I would have come out of a mock wedding like that, I would have been bored too, and so would all of my friends have been.  However, if the occasion would have arisen, I would probably have been told, "Don't worry, next time you'll have more fun, besides, nobody should play around with weddings anyway."  However, that never did happen.  Weddings were a serious business, which was why they were celebrated.  They meant something and happened only once in a person's life.  Then it hadn't come about yet that they were considered to be a routine mock wedding that even lesbians or homosexual men would strive to have, nor were they a Hollywood production, neither in kindergarten nor in virtually meaningless occasions celebrated for unfathomable reasons by adults in real life today.

No, weddings truly don't seem to be an attractive goal for most people these days, especially not for men, considering that most marriages will break up, most of them before the children are of age, and that in three out of four cases it is the wife who walks out of the marriage.  No, even today weddings are serious business, so serious, in fact, that I would no sooner let a little boy play-act one than I would permit him to play-act Russian roulette.

The feminist's feelings about it all are similar but result from a different perspective; and it is obvious from the training that her little daughter is receiving that feminists aren't born, they are made.  Although the same is true to a considerable extent of children raised by married biological parents, it stands to reason that those children will be far more likely to be well adjusted citizens whose psychological make-up is fashioned after the biological evolutionary pattern and time-proven, successful model of parenting for which nature evolved us.  It seems that as in many other human endeavours to change nature, in parenting too, man better let nature do what nature does best.  In my mind there is no doubt that the threat to traditional parenting styles is a far greater threat to mankind and civilization than the alleged threat to the rain forests presents.

God have mercy on the poor man who, however unlikely, should have the misfortune to fall in love with a feminist's daughter that was brought up to hate or disdain men.  It's not very likely that he'll have an easy life or that he'll escape unscathed.  However, another concern rises out of this.  What happens to little boys who are being raised by feminists?  Now that adoptions by homosexuals of both sexes are becoming the latest fashion in the program for the make-over of our society, what will happen to girls and boys who are being raised by homosexual men?

Can such children grow into capable, objective mothers and fathers who'll be able to raise children objectively?  Their same-sex parents will most certainly have a captive audience whom they can program and pattern to become like them.  It is therefore very likely that the epidemic of dysfunctional families will escalate even farther.  The worst thing about this is that the children raised by same-sex couples will on average be raised in the most unstable of all "family types," and in the case of lesbian "families," they'll also experience or witness the most violent of all "family types."  Violence between lesbian partners is on average more than ten times the level of violence that occurs between husbands and wives in normal, married families — aside from the fact that same-sex unions of any kind last on average just a little over one year.  Don't look for stability in those children's lives.

Consider the conclusion of what the feminist told in her story about her 5-year-old daughter.  She is proud of her daughter's attitude, because already at kindergarten age her daughter is "starting strong" in the business of being totally independent from men.  Although she didn't use the term "man-hating," it was clear from the context that what she sees in her 5-year-old daughter is a budding feminist who'll be, if not a proud man-hater, at least self-sufficient without needing any men.

Obviously, some of our society's aspects changed very much during the 55-year interval since I was that age.  Others didn't change much at all, in spite of all appearances and any number of instances such as the feminist and her daughter.  When I grew up, every household in the neighbourhood had children.  Every household had a mother.  Some of the mothers were single, but virtually none from choice.  Some of them wore black for years after they had lost their husbands in one or the other of the two great wars.  On account of the enormous numbers of men who were lost (one of every five who went to war, 4.8 million in World War II), these poor, suffering widows had little to choose from the survivors.  There most definitely was a shortage of men of marriageable age.  To boot, many of the surviving men were no longer in prime condition.  They were quite literally damaged goods.  Some where blind, along with having their faces severely disfigured.  Others had various limbs or portions thereof missing.  They truly weren't much to look at.  You should have seen them at the public swimming pools, when all attempts at covering their defects were no longer of any use.  But, they all enjoyed swimming, because in the water they no longer needed their crutches or artificial limbs.

I was lucky, although my father had been severely wounded in the first great war, in the battle of the Somme.  He had to spend two years in a military hospital before he could come home.  He survived until I was 16, always a man who never showed his pain until he died.  I still miss him.  He was a good man and taught us much, even though he was never more than a figure-head in our family, someone who got sent to war to die in the service of his country, or someone who went to work for his family, never having much money in his pocket.  Mom was the real and absolute ruler in our family.  She even was the one who decided what punishment had to be handed out by dad after he got home from work.  She made virtually all the everyday decisions, controlling and spending virtually all of the money that dad brought home, just as the mothers in all the other families of my friends and relatives did.  Still, I never had the impression that she was selfish.  She was a devoted mother and wife, and, just like dad, wanted nothing more than that the whole family was doing well — the children more than anyone else.

Mom had us do much of the work that had to be done in and around the house.  I don't see anything wrong with that, neither do my sisters and brothers.  We were a family of nine.  We all pitched in, most often willingly, because we knew that it was necessary.  Besides, we had a lot of fun while we worked.  My dad worked 5 ½ days per week, for a total of 48 hours.  That was the length of the regular work week at the time, although when he had begun his apprenticeship, the regular number of hours worked per week ranged from 60 to 70, depending on the kind of job a man held.  But, as my dad was a millwright in a company that was the German equivalent of Procter & Gamble, the repair he had to do took frequently place after regular working hours, so that often he worked more than 48 hours per week.

Nevertheless, when he came home he always helped us to finish what needed to be finished, which wasn't very often.  Shared work is done quickly, whether it is digging potatoes, weeding the garden or ripping apart used clothing, so that it could be made over to turn the shiny side of the cloth inside and the lesser worn inside to the outside, so that it would not look so worn anymore.  Often, after mom had kept us busy after school, we would help dad with the things he did after he came home, like mixing concrete to be poured into the form he had made for the production of sidewalk blocks for the garden, installing a new gate or building shelves.  We always cleaned everything, tidied up, cleaned ourselves and then sat down together at the supper table to enjoy our time together as a family, planning what we would do the next day, what we would do farther down the road in life, and never, ever, spoke of hating anyone.

My parents were poor, so poor that sometimes we had no money to buy a tin of shoe polish (a major disaster in a time when impeccable appearances were a must) or a pair of shoe laces, but we all had a lot of love and respect for one another and respect for all other people.  Perhaps that was the main ingredient for the success of all of the children in our family.  All three of my brothers became millionaires, though not I (I was the only one who became divorced).  All three of my sisters married responsible men who did well for their families too.  None of my siblings had easy lives.  We all worked hard for what we achieved and had to overcome many adversities, but none of us or any brother-in-law was ever unemployed for a single day.

My parent's poverty wasn't due to the fact that my dad wasn't a good wage-earner.  It was caused by the fact that his wages had been garnisheed after he refused to declare bankruptcy when the family business he had taken over collapsed during the Depression.  It was a factory that made packaging machines and employed over 70 people.  His take-home pay never was more than the equivalent of about $100 per month after that.  That wouldn't be much of an incentive for many people to go to work, but he did so because he didn't want his children to bear the stigma of being labelled welfare kids, although the level of poverty we experienced was the same we would have experienced if my dad would have stayed home and taken it easy.

The consequences of the collapse of the family business condemned my dad and our family to a life of poverty as effectively as any divorce destroys a family's financial well-being today.  In spite of that, the determination and cooperation of my parents and their children to keep the family alive and well did all of us and our descendants good.  I shudder to think what would have happened to us if dad would have walked out of his marriage.  However, then even more so than now, it was something that few men are likely to do, definitely not a real man like my dad.

The most gratifying outcome of the legacy that our mother and father gave us is that out of the more than thirty children we had — their grandchildren — although all got married, only three became divorced even in today's liberated times.  One of my nephews, my godchild, had his first marriage annulled.  After he had gotten married to his first wife, he found out that she didn't want to have children.

The second case is that of one of my nieces.  Her husband wanted to move to Argentina to become a sheep rancher (she was a registered nurse).  She couldn't talk him out of it and didn't think that it would be a successful plan.  It turned out that she had made a wise decision.  Unfortunately, she died of cancer and her only son was killed in a car accident, along with his grandfather, my second-oldest brother.

The third case is that of another niece.  Her husband was a womanizer to an extent that would have qualified him to become president of his country if his name had been Bill Clinton.  He walked out of his marriage after he insisted that he bring home a second woman to live with them and my niece drew the line at that.  Considering that the ages of my children and their cousins range from thirty to 57 years, that isn't at all a bad record.

From all appearances, the legacy of marital stability is carrying on into the next generation, the great-grandchildren of my parents.  There have been quite a few marriages in that generation, too, but so far I have not heard of a single divorce or separation involving any of them.

As I think about what the feminist told, I can't but wonder how her little daughter's father feels about it all.  Most of all, I wonder if the little girl ever misses her dad.  Does she even know that she has a dad?  One thing is almost certain, she'll grow up fatherless, and I can't help but feel sorry for her and any other child like her.  They'll never have the kind of memories I have of my dad.

It is said that a person never misses what he never had.  That may be true but no more so than that ignorance is bliss.  A child born with only one leg is without a doubt handicapped in a foot race, even if the child doesn't miss its leg.  More than enough evidence exists to prove that even fatherless children who don't miss their fathers are handicapped, too.  Their handicap is in real life, not merely in a foot race.  It is NOT in the best interest of the children to give them that handicap.

Because I wrote about our family in this page, I wanted to verify that my memory didn't fail me in some of the things I wrote about.  Therefore I called my youngest sister and read all of it to her.  No corrections were necessary, other than that she told me a few details of what caused the divorce of the niece that got married to the womanizer.  I hadn't known that much about the case.
    We discussed the role of women in families  She told me:

You know as well as anyone that a country stands and falls with its families. A family is like a human body, and a society can only be as healthy as the bodies of its families are.
    A body must have a head.  There is no doubt that the husband is the head of a family and that the wife comes below him, but she supports him, like a neck.  We also know what the neck does.  Besides supporting the head, it is what turns the head into the right direction.

Well, it's too bad that my sister (she'll be 70 next year) didn't think of writing what I wrote.  She would have used far fewer words than I did.

See also:

• Table of Contents for feminism and related issues
• Feminism For Male College Students: A Short Guide to the Truth

________________________
Originally posted 1999 05 10
Updates:
1999 12 02
1999 12 03
2001 02 02 (format changes)
2002 12 22 (format changes)
2004 08 26 (removed the name of the feminist and that of her daughter that motivated me to write the story on this page.  Although the feminist wrote in a published article about her daughter and mentioned her daughter's name, it is apparently verboten to anyone else to do the same.  Well, what else can I do?  That is feminist re-writing of history in action.  The version of history we get to learn is the one produced by the victorious, by the ones in power.  It wouldn't surprise me at all if the feminist's complaints were to continue and if she were to keep on insisting that I am libelling her.  When injury is perceived by a feminist, the truth is not an acceptable defence.  "There's two theories to arguin' with a feminist.  Neither one works."  — Paraphrased from Cowboy Logic.)
2006 03 04 (added link to Feminism for Male College Students)