Hmmm

Fandom_Wank does have its points - among them, warning me of this before Malice started.

This affirms something discussed in an earlier post... I still want a second reviewing job, and I still hope to juggle the reviewing jobs into something more. I had thought to get a job reviewing a different genre to branch out, test my skills, get more free books.

But obviously I'm not paying enough attention to my chosen genre if less than 24 hours before I head to a large regional con, I'm getting my news from Fandom_Wank!

So here's the deal; I'm throwing my lot in with mysteries wholesale. (Hey, at least it means that I only have to read the eyeball-sporking stuff in one genre.) At Bouchercon and Malice I'm going to look hard at the clubs, magazines, organizations, etc., and I'm going to seriously concentrate on making a name for myself in mysteries.

Rant du jour - The Lie of the Provider

twistedchick found this - The Revealer article about Allan Carlson "fixing" Social Security by weighting it towards families with lots of children and away from single women.

And why don't single women get anything? "In order to save Social Security, Carlson writes, we should reflect upon its pro-family roots: favoring working men and not covering women's jobs, such as teaching, nursing, clerical work or farm labor, because women ought to be encouraged by the state to rely upon their husbands' provision." (emph. added)

Because of course, all women have to be married. Not necessarily happily married, mind you, but paired off with her One Lord and Provider so she won't be a drain on the system out there getting her own education and then taking a job away from a man who needs it to provide for his family. (I can't find the link now, but I've even heard the woman-must-marry argument against gay marriage from an evangelist too; "if the guys can marry each other, who's gonna take care of my daughter?" he wants to know.)

Right now I'm not going to argue about happiness in marriage. I'm not going to talk about the times the Bible talks about homosexuality vs infidelity, or the childfree movement or even feminism.

I'm going to talk about the myth of the provider, the most vicious and most obvious lie ever told by a social conservative. And I'm not just pointing at men here, I'm pointing at Phyllis "My job is telling women not to have jobs like mine" Schaffly, I'm pointing at Beverly "I didn't raise my kids but if you don't raise yours GOD WILL HATE YOU" LaHeye, I'm pointing at the authors of Total Woman, The Rules, Surrendered Wife, and Fascinating Womanhood and their attitude of "we got us a mah-yun, we win!"

All of them spread the myth of the provider.

The myth of the provider says that every woman will find a man to provide for her and if she doesn't, she must be defective or something. Worse, it says that once she has him, he will always provide.

He won't spend all the family money. He won't lose his job and have to rely on her. He won't leave or divorce her.

Already raising an eyebrow? You should. Of course, the radical conservatives will complain I'm a nasty manhatin' feminazi, but we haven't even gotten to the worst, cruellest, most disheartening lie of all:

He is invincible. He is ProviderMan! He will never catch a wasting disease, be in an accident, die! He will be spared all things so that he can Provide For His Family!

The most loving, devoted, and determined man can be brought low due to circumstances entirely beyond his control. But you never hear the radicals talking about that, now do you?

And that, folks, is what we have to hammer back. Argue women's rights and they'll call us feminazis. Argue childfreedom and they'll call us unnatural. But argue from their own point of view, ask about all the divorces, deaths, skipped alimony payments and working disabilities among their own members and then ask how that provider thing is supposed to work. And don't let them say "well, she can marry again." Because outside of this particular context, the word for trading one's bed for one's board is "prostitution," and they're not supposed to be supporting that kinda thing, now are they?