SOUTHERN WOMEN | 2004-11-05
I received a letter from a lady who talked about the treatment of women. Don't get me wrong. She says white women should have white children and be respected for it.
I would like to know how readers, especially female readers, think of my reply:
You're dead right.
The usual stereotype is that Southerners beat their women and treat them like Moslems. Among educated old Southerners -- and that doesn't just mean school educated -- Scarlett O'Hara sounded exactly like the women we knew. Margaret Mitchell certainly didn't feel oppressed.
But Southern women knew HOW to be women. And there is no way in the world I could explain that, nor do I fully understand it.
I feel that if I were a woman, I would hate it. I can't understand how a woman looks forward to a date so much. She's got to spend hours getting ready and then all she gets to do is talk, eat and dance.
She can't even stuff herself like a man can, and if she does, she'll have to go on what a man would consider starvation rations for a week.
How can a woman look forward to the agony of childbirth, take pregnancy, deal with babies and diapers, and be nostalgic about it afterward?
I know all women don't, but so many do, and I will never understand it.
That's because I'm not a woman. And if all a woman had to listen to was me, they would be in full rebellion.
But in the old days, the intelligent class of Southern women wouldn't be anything else. They consider men's big deals to be something they put up with, but not something they cared about.
They weren't men. But the trick was, they knew it.
The women's movement on the left teaches women to be men. The religious right teaches women they are an underclass.
The Christian right has degenerated into what I call Jehovism. It has taken all the worst elements of the Middle East that are in the Old Testament and made them a part of our society.
They've made women dirty and the evil daughters of Eve.
Anyway, that's my general take on it.
But I'm a man, so what do I know?