The Urban Grind

Or to put it another way, “How to be the most helpful slave you can be for me and my baby.”

All throughout history, women from different cultures and religions have been marrying (or not) and having children. Yet in this day and age, many women who do that feel they are entitled to make demands, and treat people around them like servants. An example is the disgusting reality show “Bridezillas,” which I had the misfortune of catching at my sister’s house, as the TV was on in the background.

First off, these women were hideous shrews, and just plain misserable human beings. How they managed to bamboozle some poor schmucks into proposing marriage, I have no idea.

But I have the feeling that once they manage to marry, they would issue a whole laundry list of assignments for anyone foolish enough to befriend them, just like this woman did.

We are beginning to settle into a routine with our sweet baby girl and have visitors. [Parent] and I put together a list of “helpfuls” if you would like to come over and help us out during this transitional period into parenthood. Please visit this google doc:

Dear friends and family,

The following helpful list are the kind things that we will remember and appreciate forever. This is what [Parent]‘s body and soul needs, and will be most helpful for our bonding with the baby. By devoting just a few hours doing one of these things, we will get the support and rest we need with our newborn in the house.

Love,
[Two Chill Parents]

1. Ask us what groceries we need around the house and bring them to us. We likely need toilet paper and milk.

2. Drop off a big super greek salad with grilled chicken. We will dress it ourselves at home. Or, drop off frozen homemade food like lasagna we can reheat later.

*Allergies/intolerances include: Soy anything (including tempeh and tofu), carrageenan, guar gum, gum acacia, xanthan gum, carob bean gum (anything with the word GUM in it), lentils — Please read labels. Many of these ingredients are in store bought food.

3. Come over at about 2 in the afternoon, hold the baby while I have a hot shower, put me to bed with the baby and then complete one or more household chores, such as:
-fold laundry
-scoop the litter box
-take [our dog] for a well deserved walk or run around the neighborhood or park
-clean the kitchen or the bathroom
-vacuum

4. Come over at 10am, make me eggs, toast, and ½ a grapefruit. Clean my fridge and throw anything out that you doubt — don’t ask me, just use your best judgment. Clean the kitchen stove and the kitchen floor.

5. Come over in your work clothes and vacuum, dust, clean the litter box, and then leave quietly. It might be too tiring for me to chat and entertain, but it will renew my soul to get some rest knowing I will wake up to a clean, organized space.

6. Take [our dog] for a well-deserved long walk or run around our neighborhood or Prospect Park.

7. Come over to fold laundry or clean and give [Parent] a break so she can go enjoy some r & r, go to a coffee shop, a bar, or something else fun. Vacuum and fold more laundry. Clean the litter box.

8. Make a giant pot of vegetable soup in our kitchen and clean the kitchen completely afterwards. Then take a big garbage bag and empty every trash basket in the house. Reline the kitchen garbage can with a fresh bag.

On the most recent cover of Time magazine, a woman is shown openly nursing her three year old boy. I’m not going to post the picture here since it’s immodest. But you can see it here if you’re curious.

First off, let me just say that I don’t care if a woman breastfeeds or bottle feeds her baby. Breastfeeding has plenty of benefits. But not every woman can do it. And what I really can’t comprehend is why the act of breastfeeding seems to turn some women into raging exhibitionists. I mean, it’s not like their babies are going to drop dead if they go in a private room, or use some kind of cover. It’s as if they’re seeing “Look at me! I’m holier than thou!” As I see it, this kind of attitude is typical among many of today’s women who seem to want special attention for doing something women have been doing for thousands of years. So what I have to say about all this is, if you want to breastfeed, go ahead. But just cover up, and stop getting in peoples faces! I don’t want to see your breasts.

And speaking of breasts, these militant internet nursers go on and on about how the breast is only for feeding babies, and that there’s nothing sexual about them, etc.

Wrong!

If there’s nothing sexual about the female breast, then why are they all over men’s porno magazines (among other private parts)? Is it just a “social construct” invented by patriarchal male societies to make men be attracted to the female breast? (Pardon the left wing jargon.)

NO!!!!

Contrary to what feminists would have everyone believe, straight men are made that way. Men and women are *not* the same.

Anyway, Rush Limbaugh has his own improved version of the Time magazine cover which I don’t think goes far enough:

Actually, I think a more appropriate picture of Barack and Michelle Obama each sucking on one of Lady Liberty’s breasts.

The Marine Corps, bowing to the pressure to become politically correct, is now moving women into combat roles.

The Marine Corps, the most male of the armed services, is taking its first steps toward integrating women into war-fighting units, starting with its infantry officer school at Quantico, Va., and ground combat battalions that had once been closed to women.

The moves — announced by Gen. James F. Amos, the Marine Corps commandant, in a message sent to all Marines on Monday night — are intended largely to study how women perform in formerly male-only units, and reflect new Pentagon rules released in February allowing women to serve closer to the front line.

The new Pentagon policy continues the ban on women serving as infantrymen, Special Operations commandos and in other direct-combat positions. But it has opened the door to thousands of new jobs for women, who represent about 15 percent of the force.

This smacks of military affirmative action to me. So what about the differences in upper body strength between men and women? This one former Marine infantry officer doesn’t see it as a big deal:

Greg Jacob, a former Marine infantry officer who is policy director for Service Women’s Action Network, an advocacy group, said he was concerned that the corps might try to use data from the physical tests to prove that women are not strong enough to be infantrymen.

But he also praised some of the new measures, saying that putting women into more front-line jobs would help advance their careers. “It puts women in a position where they are more likely to be in an expeditionary or combat role, which in the future will be looked at when it comes time for assignments and promotions,” he said.

In other words, it’s all about equality of outcomes. With this rationale, the fact that Marines have always been male, is just plain sexist, never mind the strength required in a combat zone. So even it means dropping standards, that’s just too bad (snort!) After all, these women have their careers to think of.

But don’t just take it from me. Here’s what one man on a military forum had to say:

I spent 5 years in support units. Here are some observations I think are relevant to this matter:
1. I saw exactly two females complete forced marches carrying all their gear. I recall a handful completing marches if someone else carried their ruck, weapon, K-pot, LBE, etc. AND had a crew of Soldiers verbally encouraging them. The vast majority of females I saw on forced marches fell out and went on sick call around the 2-4 mile mark.
2. I can’t recall ever seeing a female successfully operate a crew served weapon off of a weapon range. In short order they collapse and go on sick call if they had to do anything more involved than pull a trigger.
3. During my stint, I observed a number of enlisted females holding MOSs which involved manipulation of heavy gear (vehicle mechanics, fuel handlers, etc). With rare exceptions they were ineffective as they couldn’t deal with heavy objects. After a couple rounds of sick call they would get shunted into light and/or administrative work.
4. I don’t recall seeing a female willing or able to drive a vehicle larger than a HMMWV.

5. Very VERY few females I observed could deal with lack of bathing facilities for an extended period without suffering from a massive drop in morale.
6. No female I met was able to march with gear, operate a crew served weapon in a field environment, drive large vehicles, go without a shower for a couple days AND perform adequately in a MOS requiring some level of strength.

7. In due time most female Soldiers I worked with would maneuver themselves into traditional WAC jobs such as clerk/typists, admin assistants, etc. Ironic, huh?

I think we all can agree this is it. If the Marines will let females into grunt officer training, they will have to graduate them in adequate numbers whether qualified or not. From this the rest of USMC combat arms and Army combat arms will open too. I suspect we will see just what I saw in Army support units. You’ll have a handful of female grunts unable to perform. They will manipulate their way into “cush” jobs in company orderly rooms, battalion and higher staffs, etc. Despite this the handful who stay will advance despite not developing professionally. And everyone is just going to have to suck it up.

By now, we’ve all heard of, or read about Democrat strategist Hillary Rosen’s uncalled for attack on Ann Romney.

Now I just want to say a few things about these feminists who attack stay at home mothers.

First off, I thought feminists were supposed to be “pro-choice.” Silly me! I see that only applies to whether or not women should abort their babies (and you know how much feminists LOOOVE discretionary abortions). Otherwise, they believe all women should dump the few kids they have into government funded day care while they work 80 hour weeks in pursuit of the corner office. And when these kids get older, these feminists want them in public schools, no matter how dumbed down and unsafe those places are. In fact, the only women feminists believe should not be working are the welfare broodmares such as this woman, and more recently, this woman.

And speaking of welfare, check out what one commenter on the New York Times website had to say in a follow up article about stay at home mothers:

I wish a single stay-at-home welfare mom would write in and say how important it is that she stay home and raise her children and how she cooks and cleans and looks after their well-being. Would everyone agree that this is a noble pursuit and would we hear how much better it is that they do so? The fact is that there are many, many single moms, whether by choice or through death, divorce, or otherwise, for who this conversation is ridiculous.

Anyway, after Ms. Rosen was thrown under the bus by Obama and his minions, she’s finally apologized. She said the following to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer:

UPDATE: Hilary Rosen appeared on CNN Thursday and explained her comments further. “If I had a do over what I would be saying is that Mitt Romney should not be on the campaign trail saying to women that my wife tells me how it is for women out there because people of wealth sometimes take for granted some of the niceties that they have in life, and the Romneys are people of wealth.”

Wolf Blitzer asked her what she would say to Ann Romney. Turning to the camera, Rosen said, “Mrs. Romney, I applaud your decision to stay home and raise what are obviously five wonderful boys. This is not about stay-at-home moms versus working moms.”

Continued Rosen, “I think your husband needs to stand up for women’s economic struggles and so far we have not seen how he’s going to do that on the campaign trail. It hasn’t come out of his mouth and maybe it will at some point, but this is a distraction that his campaign is forcing on the American people to avoid his record on the issues.”

“I didn’t hear an apology,” said Blitzer.

Rosen responded that she had sent out an apology earlier. “Well, I assume that Mrs. Romney saw my apology this afternoon, but if not, I apologize. Working moms, stay-at-home moms, they’re both extremely hard jobs. I know, I’ve shared them both, and I’m sorry if that offended you.”

Speaking for myself, if I ever had children, I would ideally want to stay home with them. I wouldn’t want them in some government run daycare center. However, given how the American middle class is taxed relentlessly, and given how our manufacturing jobs have nearly all gone overseas, and how illegals are now taking jobs once done by Americans, staying at home is not always possible for many women. THAT is what I think Romney should be focusing on when it comes to women.

What does a woman in her mid to late 40′s, who has had years of fertility treatments in a desperate attempt to have a child do when she discovers she’s pregnant with twins or triplets?

If your answer is “celebrate and be happy,” then you’re dead wrong.

For some self-absorbed women, it’s all about “me me me me me me!!!”

Never mind that they’ve spent years trying to conceive. And never mind the fact that they should have known that with fertility treatments, they could end up with multiple fetuses. Instead of being grateful for finally being able to have children, these vile (and most likely liberal) women choose a procedure called “reduction,” where only one or two of the multiple fetuses is aborted. After the woman can only deal with having one child (snort!). Get a load of one such woman:

As Jenny lay on the obstetrician’s examination table, she was grateful that the ultrasound tech had turned off the overhead screen. She didn’t want to see the two shadows floating inside her. Since making her decision, she had tried hard not to think about them, though she could often think of little else. She was 45 and pregnant after six years of fertility bills, ovulation injections, donor eggs and disappointment — and yet here she was, 14 weeks into her pregnancy, choosing to extinguish one of two healthy fetuses, almost as if having half an abortion. As the doctor inserted the needle into Jenny’s abdomen, aiming at one of the fetuses, Jenny tried not to flinch, caught between intense relief and intense guilt.

Check out her excuses.

“Things would have been different if we were 15 years younger or if we hadn’t had children already or if we were more financially secure,” she said later. “If I had conceived these twins naturally, I wouldn’t have reduced this pregnancy, because you feel like if there’s a natural order, then you don’t want to disturb it. But we created this child in such an artificial manner — in a test tube, choosing an egg donor, having the embryo placed in me — and somehow, making a decision about how many to carry seemed to be just another choice. The pregnancy was all so consumerish to begin with, and this became yet another thing we could control.”

{snip}

Jenny’s decision to reduce twins to a single fetus was never really in doubt. The idea of managing two infants at this point in her life terrified her. She and her husband already had grade-school-age children, and she took pride in being a good mother. She felt that twins would soak up everything she had to give, leaving nothing for her older children. Even the twins would be robbed, because, at best, she could give each one only half of her attention and, she feared, only half of her love. Jenny desperately wanted another child, but not at the risk of becoming a second-rate parent. “This is bad, but it’s not anywhere as bad as neglecting your child or not giving everything you can to the children you have,” she told me, referring to the reduction. She and her husband worked out this moral calculation on their own, and they intend to never tell anyone about it. Jenny is certain that no one, not even her closest friends, would understand, and she doesn’t want to be the object of their curiosity or feel the sting of their judgment.

So it’s better to kill her unborn child for fear of not being the perfect mother? Puh-leeze!

Now check out one Shelby Van Voris, who was pregnant with triplets when she wanted only one child.

…Shelby Van Voris was pregnant with triplets when she discovered this for herself. After she and her husband tried for three years to get pregnant, they went to a fertility doctor near their home in Savannah, Ga. He put Shelby, then 30, on fertility drugs, and when that didn’t work, he ramped things up with injections. By then, her husband, a 33-year-old Army officer, had been deployed to Iraq. He left behind three vials of sperm, and she was artificially inseminated. “You do weird things when mortars are flying at your husband’s head,” she said. She soon found out she was carrying triplets. Frantic, she yelled at the doctor: “This is not an option for us! I want only one!”

Notice how it’s all about “me me me me me!”

Her fertility specialist referred her to a doctor in Atlanta who did reductions. But when Shelby called, the office manager told her that she would have to pay extra for temporary staff to assist with the procedure, because the regular staff refused to reduce pregnancies below twins. She contacted three more doctors, and in each case was told: not below two. “It was horrible,” she says. “I felt like the pregnancy was a monster, and I just wanted it out, but because we tried for so long, abortion wasn’t an option. My No. 1 priority was to be the best mom I could be, but how was I supposed to juggle two newborns or two screaming infants while my husband was away being shot at? We don’t have family just sitting around waiting to get called to help me with a baby.”

Assuming this woman is happily married, don’t you find it odd that she describes her pregnancy as a monster? Also, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, shouldn’t she have known that one side effect of fertility treatments is multiple fetuses? Yet she went ahead with the treatments anyway? Whatever happened to taking responsibility for your choices? And to top it off, she was was happy after the procedure.

She paid $6,500 for the reduction and left Evans’s office incredibly relieved. “I went out on that street with my mother and jumped up and down saying: ‘I’m pregnant! I’m pregnant!’ And then I went and bought baby clothes for the first time.”

Here’s what reduction entails:

…The procedure, which is usually performed around Week 12 of a pregnancy, involves a fatal injection of potassium chloride into the fetal chest. The dead fetus shrivels over time and remains in the womb until delivery. Some physicians found reduction unnerving, particularly because the procedure is viewed under ultrasound, making it quite visually explicit, which is not the case with abortion.

Read the rest here if you like.

What would we do with without psychologists and their research?

It turns out that despite feminist indoctrination and sensitivity training, men still view bikini clad women as objects. Men are just built that way.

This is just one more reason to cover it up by the pool, the beach and the workplace.

I knew something like this was bound to come out sooner or later. Remember, it was liberal journalist Nina Burleigh who said she would service Bill Clinton just for keeping abortion legal. Now that we have Mr. Hope and Change in the White House the liberal women are once again embarrassing themselves and their poor husbands.

The other night I dreamt of Barack Obama. He was taking a shower right when I needed to get into the bathroom to shave my legs, and then he was being yelled at by my husband, Max, for smoking in the house. It was not clear whether Max was feeling protective of the president’s health or jealous because of the cigarette.

{snip}

Many women — not too surprisingly — were dreaming about sex with the president. In these dreams, the women replaced Michelle with greater or lesser guilt or, in the case of a 62-year-old woman in North Florida, whose dream was reported to me by her daughter, found a fully above-board solution: “Michelle had divorced Barack because he had become ‘too much of a star.’ He then married my mother, who was oh so proud to be the first lady,” the daughter wrote me.

There was some daydreaming too, much of it a collective fantasy about the still-hot Obama marriage. “Barack and Michelle Obama look like they have sex. They look like they like having sex,” a Los Angeles woman wrote to me, summing up the comments of many. “Often. With each other. These days when the sexless marriage is such a big celebrity in America (and when first couples are icons of rigid propriety), that’s one interesting mental drama.”

{snip}

One woman wrote that when she couldn’t get to sleep at night, she “lay in bed and thought about the Obama girls in their rooms at the White House. I thought about Marian Robinson up on the third floor. And about Barack and Michelle, a couple who clearly have a ‘thing’ for each other, spooning together in bed. It helped me relax.”

Here’s how I see it. These are the kind of women who would be for gun control, against American asserting her military might, and against boys acting like boys. They seem to be against masculinity in general, since their type believes that men and women are “the same.” So let them see a decent looking man who mouths the correct liberal bromides, and they turn into teenage girls.

I especially like Roissy’s commentary.

BOTY candidate right here. Imagine being this bitch’s husband and reading this quote from your wife in the paper. I bet she showed him the article, proudly pointing out where she was quoted publicly humiliating him. “Here, honey, check this out. I’m in the New York Times!” The poor, wretched beta would probably work double time to win his wife’s approval, when he should be doing just the opposite — kicking her cottage cheese ass to the curb.

And just for the record, I think President Bush is much better looking than Obama. He’s certainly more attractive than Bill Clinton. But does that mean I would EVER embarrass myself writing what the author of this article did?

NO!!!

These women clearly have way too much time on their hands.

I found an interesting blog post, via Ace of Spades about how the women at the Feministing blog have decided to say no to having children.   Now there are many reasons for a woman not to want to have kids.  However, the reasons the author gives are collectivist in nature. But I guess that’s to be expected, since feminism is really all about big government, leftism and collectivism.

…Family is the social institution that ensures unpaid reproductive and domestic labour, and is concerned with initiating a new generation into the gendered (as I analyzed here) and classed social set-up.

I can tell right now that this woman never studied economics.   Marriage is not a business.  The purpose of a business is to make money.  Therefore any employee hired by such a business will have to contribute at least three times the amount of his or her salary in terms of output.   Otherwise, it makes no sense to keep said employee.

Also she very predictably brings up class. The fact is, not everyone’s abilities are the same, and not everyone is a brain surgeon. People just starting out their careers will naturally make less money than those who are already established. In America, we have equality of opportunity, which means a person can educate himself and freely look for work, where he can rise according to his abilities.   Equality of outcome is a completely different story. Nowhere in our constitution is such a thing guaranteed, as much as the feminists and leftists would like it to be the case.

Not only that, families prevent money the flow of money from the rich to the poor: wealth accumulates in a few hands to be squandered on and bequeathed to the next generation, and that makes families as economic units selfishly pursue their own interests and become especially prone to consumerism.

Hate to break it to you, but this is America, where we’re still allowed to do what we please with our hard earned money. So if families want to spend their money on their children, as opposed to say helping welfare crack whores with ten kids, or gambling it away, that’s their prerogative. Spending money on one’s kids is certainly not squandering.

So it makes sense to say that if the world has to change, reproduction has to go. Of course there is an ecological responsibility to reduce the human population, or even end it , and a lot was said about that on the blogosphere recently (here, and here), but an ecological consciousness is not how I came to my decision to remain child-free.

We’ve got a real Gaia worshipper here!  I’d like to see her saying this directly to a woman on welfare with ten kids, or to an illegal alien about to have an anchor baby.  Where should I send the flowers to after this author gets killed for bringing up such a thing to these groups of women?

Because reproduction is seen as a psychological need, even a biological impulse, that would supposedly override any rational concerns arising out of a sense of responsibility, ecological or otherwise, I would like to propose emotional conditioning to counter such a need or impulse to reproduce. Using my own life as a case study, I conclude that I came to a resolve not to reproduce through largely unconscious emotional reactions . I like children, but every time I fantasized of having one, I felt pangs of guilt over how for this ‘impulse’ of mine, someone else would have to put their body on the line.

This author would put the communist Chinese and their one child only policy to shame.

I used the word ‘felt’ to indicate how there wasn’t much rationalizing on my part. And this feeling went way back: I was raised in an extended family setting with a lot of women, and as they got married, I noticed their lives becoming either extremely stressed (if they chose to work) or extremely limited in their scopes, and sometimes even threatened in a pregnancy. This feeling was reinforced when people’s indifference to women’s condition frustrated me.

Who’s forcing her to have kids? If she feels so strongly about it, she can always, either go on the pill or get her tubes tied.

Another feeling came from growing up near the poor: married people become much less charitable when they had their children to ‘take care of’, which means expensive schools, football clubs, game consoles, etc., etc.

Uh hello, when you’re married and you have children, they ARE your priority. It does NOT take a village to raise a child! It takes a mother and father who are married to each other. And if these families want to send their children to private schools, so what? Should they be forced to keep their kids in crumbling public schools where they can get murdered or raped, so you can have your precious equality of outcome?

Now on another note, I think it would be safe to say that this Feministing blogger is an Obama supporter.  I wonder if she thinks Obama is “selfish” for having two kids while his own brother lives in a hut in Kenya on $12 a month, and his illegal alien aunt Zeituni Onyango lives in housing project in Boston.   I notice that one on the left has asked why Obama has not helped his relatives.

…Because of the social premium on marriage and family, the poor also have children, only their children have no future and can easily be exploited by the economic system.

No you have it backwards. Getting knocked up out of wedlock and dropping out of school are the easiest ways to become poor. And it’s not “exploitation” when a person doesn’t have enough marketable skills as a result of freely dropping out of school.

…If families are for raising and ‘taking care of’ children, what about the poor and their children? With high incidence of domestic violence, child abuse and ‘juvenile delinquency’, there are little ‘family values’ that the underprivileged can realistically talk of. Because of the social premium on marriage and family, the poor also have children, only their children have no future and can easily be exploited by the economic system. If families are for raising and ‘taking care of’ children, what about the poor and their children? With high incidence of domestic violence, child abuse and ‘juvenile delinquency’, there are little ‘family values’ that the underprivileged can realistically talk of.

As the saying goes, “If you can’t feed ‘em, don’t breed ‘em.” Any single mother that shacks up with different men and gets knocked up by an assortment of “baby daddies” is just inviting trouble with her kids.  As for ‘juvenile delinquency’ having a father around who’s married to the mother, and teaching the child morality by example should go a long way.

Also, there is such a thing as free will, which the author of this post conveniently ignores. No one goes around holding a gun to womens heads saying, “Sleep around, drop out of school, and pop out kids you can’t support, or else!”

Thus as I realized how the cultural imperative on starting a family was unfair to women and the poor, I felt an instinctive aversion to it. That is the emotionally conditioned response that could override our responses to needs and instincts that make us want to reproduce. And if we rule out the biological ‘instinct’, which is strictly only to have sex and not to reproduce, my case for saying no to reproduction becomes much stronger.

Let’s see how she plans to enforce this no reproduction rule.

First, let me start by saying that I have no problem with breastfeeding, as long as it’s done discreetly. If I were to have a child and breastfeed it, I would just go into another room to feed it. And if that’s not possible, I would cover up as much as I could, or do some pumping in advance. What’s the big deal about that? No one has ever said women aren’t allowed to breastfeed. After all lots of things are natural. But that still doesn’t mean they should be done in public. There’s a time and place for everything.

So with that being said, I just don’t understand how the act of giving birth, and breastfeeding turns so many women into a bunch of such exhibitionists that they throw modesty out the window. I mean it’s not like they never ever knew that human breasts produce milk. So what’s the big deal? Why, is there the need to expose their big lactating breasts to anyone with an internet connection? Of course they’ll then criticize men for only viewing the female breast as a sexual object. Uh HELLLOOO! Men are not the same as women! If female breasts weren’t sexual objects, they wouldn’t be plastered all over Playboy, Penthouse and other mens nudie magazines.

Also, Facebook has every right to decide what they kind of photos they want on their site. So instead of protesting outside of Facebook’s main office, the smart thing to do would be for these women to start their own breastfeeding web site.

Hat tip: Roissy in DC

Here’s an ad put out by JC Penney’s ad agency. Many of you will consider it sexist against men and I can certainly understand it. But on the other hand, women need to be more up front in terms of how they wish to be treated in a relationship. Personally, if any man I’m involved with gets me a toaster, or some mundane, unromantic gift for my birthday, or our anniversary, I would seriously considering dumping him. This is not about being a gold digger at all. A nice card, a bouquet of flowers and/or a sushi dinner would be perfect. Women have only themselves to blame when they accept boorish behavior from their partners, and then wonder what happened to all the romance.