I Have Got a Dun Cow and You Can Make Good Cheese: Are Women Holding Us Back?
Sharon October 8th, 2009
“Sukey will you be my bride? Say yes if you please
For I have got a dun cow, and you can make good cheese.
I have got a little pig, and you have got a sty.
Sukey, will you marry me?
Oh aye, by and by!” – Traditional Nursery Rhyme
When I started participating in peak oil and climate change discussions in 2003, let’s just say that the whole thing was much more of a boy’s club than it is now (and in some measure it still is). And one of the laments I most often heard was “we men would be glad to change our lives, but our wives won’t let us – they still want all the trappings of affluence.” Or “No woman will date a man who just wants to farm and grow food.” Whenever I heard these claims, I would laugh and think about how much some women I knew were struggling to get their husbands to give up their creature comforts.
But they keep recurring. Recently Dmitry Orlov wrote about how hard it is to please a woman – in this case, his wife, who wants more creature comforts than a simpler life can provide – and he terms it not so much as how to please his particular wife, but women in general:
“I have thought about this long and hard, and came to the conclusion that it all comes down to a very basic question: “How to please a girl?” After all, any modern, progressive, educated and attractive person begins to scoff if you take away her flush toilet and substitute a bucket, or if she has to go shopping leading a donkey, or if, instead of a shower, she is invited to go and stoke a sauna. From time immemorial status in society has been determined by access to luxury goods. As society becomes richer, luxuries turn into necessities. And when society starts to grow poorer again, it turns out that there is no going back. That is, there is a way back, but it is blocked by the innate tendencies of our clever species. My wife and I spent two years living aboard a very attractive and practical yacht slightly less than 10 meters in length at the waterline, and although the wife understands everything very well, even she cannot stop herself from casting a sideways glance when a yacht like Abramovich’s walks past us, and from making some comment, like “Oh, now this I understand, this is the real thing!” And there is no point in explaining to her that what we have here on board is a very high level of civilization, while Abramovich is just an ordinary consumer. It is very hard, gentlemen, to change the lifestyle, but not change the woman! If someone succeeds in this, then he is a hero and a genius, and we should all learn from him. In the meantime, we are going to live in an apartment, and put the boat on the hard, and install all sorts of solar panels, water heaters, and other technological junk.”
Orlov phrases this in much the same way that many men have phrased it – male attractiveness is tied up in their ability to provide, and women want to be provided with a lot more than men. And that’s probably a fair analysis in some ways – male status is both more and less fungible than female status – female status tends to be heavily tied to physical beauty, and if you don’t have that, there aren’t a lot of ways of compensating. Male status tends to offer a range – you can be extremely attractive, extremely bright, extremely competetive, physically extremely strong and aggressive, or drive a really nice car – but for men who are not affluent and not unusually competetive or attractive, the whole thing rather sucks (I once had a lengthy debate about whether you are most hosed if you are a tall, heavy, extremely bright woman or if you are a beta-male, short, bald male – I concluded in the end that both rather suck if you are looking for love – and that I won the lottery with Eric.)
Now my readership is more than half female, so this sort of thing only occasionally shows up in the comments here – although it still does now and again. But recently I’ve seen this sort of lament elsewhere, and it seems, more frequently - and I’ve seen a new variant of this – people lamenting that more women aren’t like me! I’ve seen it mentioned in several blog posts and essays, and have gotten a few emails from husbands complaining about their wives and comparing them to their (idealized) version of life with me and my canning kettle.
My husband’s comment on the question of whether all women should be like me was “It would serve the men who say that right if they were.” (This is why I am married to my husband, because always says the right – and funny – thing.)
I admit, given that I spent most of my younger years wishing that I was like some other woman (someone beautiful and graceful, ideally), the idea that I’ve set up as anyone’s model partner is just plain funny to me. But it is also a little troubling – it is one thing for someone – male or female – to wish that *they* had my farm life (preferrably without the loud herd of children and probably without a whole of other realities that come with it) or my skill set. It is another thing for someone to wish that their *wife* was like me.
A compelling example comes from Greg Jeffer’s farm blog, in which he rants about the culture of femininity and divorce that keeps farm-wantin’ men in Boca in line. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the compliment, even if I don’t agree with a good portion of his commentary:
So I thought I’d ask the question – are women really more reluctant than men to take on a new way of life? Are women more attracted to creature comforts and more afraid of the future? Is this a gender thing at all? I should note that among me email collection on this subject, I have at least two emails from lesbians, complaining that other lesbians talk about sustainability but don’t really want to live it, and one from a gay man complaining that gay men are all mostly concerned with status and affluence, and don’t want to live sustainably.
My own take on this is that while collapse as a whole, with its radical dislocation of male roles and providers, is probably scarier and more destructive to men than to women; volunteering to live a low energy life probably is more frightening to many women than to men – and for pretty good reasons. Because there’s an excellent chance that the reality is likely to be that the practical burdens of hauling groceries home on a donkey, emptying the composting toilet bucket and stoking the sauna are likely to become the wife’s chores. I don’t think it is an accident that in many cases (and from what I know of him I am explicitly exempting Orlov from this), that the men making these complaints tend to be traditional sorts who don’t share in the household labor equitably. Nor do I think it is coincidental that many women married to more traditional men are unthrilled with the vision of a low energy future, and a return to the bad old days, in which “men may work from sun to sun, but women’s work is never done.”
There’s a very funny description of this idea in a 2008 essay in Brain, Child about Shannon Hayes and her forthcoming book on Radical Homemaking (full disclosure, Shannon contacted me about being interviewed for the book, but somehow it never happened – she lives and farms half an hour from me and I can’t believe we’ve never met 
) that probably describes the nightmare vision (and a fair bit of the reality) that haunts most women who think about a sustainable life:
“You’re up before dawn. The cow is giving birth in the barn, the turnips are rotting in their beds from all the rain this harvest season, your organic cotton tampon has given way in the night. Your fourth child is teething, and the sourdough starter needs to be turned. You haven’t worn makeup, earned a paycheck, contributed to a 401K or signaled the waiter for another round in five years or more – and you couldn’t be happier. You’re a radical homemaker and loving every minute of it.” (Brain, Child p. 32 Fall 2008 – and thank you Cindy, for sending this to me!)
My laughter was the laughter of recognition, but how on earth would I blame any woman for the bark of laughter that ends with “as if!” Even for a woman with a full partnership with their spouse (and the reality is that women still do a majority of childcare, domestic labor and household management, so radically upping the scale of those chores will, in most cases, fall on the backs of women), in many cases, there is the underlying fear of divorce or widowhood. A society that encourages divorce esssentially requires them to have their own money.
This is where I find Jeffer’s analysis most troubling – and where I least want to be held up as a model for women. Those women in Boca may just be concerned about their nails, but for most women who aren’t millionaires, the fear of adding domestic chores is this – there are only two ways to do it. First, you give up sleep, freedom, time off and do the work at night, after the kids are in bed, after you come home from your job. Or two, if you can and have that luxury, you give up the job – and know that if your spouse is disabled, if they die or, most likely, if you get divorced, you will be radically impoverished, and often left with the kids, if any. Women with children suffer more after divorce in terms of loss of fiscal security, and they recover more slowly, and to lower levels (do not get me wrong, I know that men often lose full access to their children, and that the stakes are high on both sides).
The culture of divorce is dangerous for both sides of the coin – and a tough nut to crack. No one wants people in abusive or destructive marriages trapped there – which is what you get when you stigmatize divorce, or make it more difficult. But no one wants what we’ve got now, either – it isn’t good for men, for women, for children, for families, or for the hope of the kind of deep and stable communities that we need going forward. I don’t disagree wholly with Jeffers on this point, but I don’t quite know what to say about it either.
And this is why I don’t particularly take it as a compliment to hear people say “oh, I wish women were more like you.” Because the only way it works to be more like me is to be more like me *AND* Eric. Right now, I’m working, and today is Eric’s day off. Tonight we’ll be having dinner guests, and this weekend we have more guests coming. While I work, Eric got up, fed the kids, milked the goats, dressed the kids, did dishes. Now he’s taking the three kids to Agway to buy goat vaccine and chicken feed, stopping by a farmstand to pick up brussels sprouts (mine are still small), coming home, reheating last night’s dinner (which he made early in the morning before going to work) for lunch, homeschooling, rebuilding the sukkah that blew down in the wind, grinding cornmeal and making cornbread for tonight’s dinner and sweeping and tidying the house, before taking all four kids to Hebrew school, and trying to sneak some paper grading in around all this. Like me, the man has a full time job, and a farm, and four kids.
Now this is awfully impressive. I’m impressed with him, and very few people meet us without realizing that I’m no wonder woman - I have a wondrous husband and a very fortunate marriage.
The work that he is doing, I did yesterday, when it was my day for the farm and the kids with the kids – but the fact is that you cannot offer a call to arms to women to come back to the kitchen unless everyone else goes with them. If all of this domestic labor were entirely my responsibility, there is no freakin’ way that I’d be able to do it alone – my husband is a full partner in our domestic arrangement – and not a traditional partner, who does the heavy “guy stuff” but isn’t there for the endless daily cycle of chores. I’m not afraid of laundering the cloth diapers, because I know my husband will change the diapers and rinse them out first. I’m not afraid of taking on canning, because I know he’ll be homeschooling the kids.
Moreover, I’m able to take on not-very lucrative jobs like farming and writing because I can trust my husband deeply – I know he’s not going to leave me for another woman, I know that I can trust and rely on him. So if I don’t contribute to a retirement account or pay that much into Social Security, I know barring death or disability, he’ll be there with and for me. He’s not going to pick a pretty face with an air conditioner or a nicer farm – this is a permanent marriage. I can’t say how I know this, merely that I do. But if I wasn’t sure, if I wasn’t really sure that I’d seen his worst parts and he mine and we could do this, I’d be afraid to give up more reliable sources of income and take risks. And no matter how deeply I trust him, trust isn’t really the operative issue when it comes to death, illness or injury, which can happen to anyone. I am taking a risk – and a lesser one than a woman who doesn’t write and doesn’t have a foot in the formal economy.
I think any man or woman, but especially a man, who dreams of a homestead needs to ask himself who he thinks will be doing the canning, the washing of the chicken manure off the porch and laundering those cloth diapers. I do not claim that all men dream of a homestead where the domestic work is magically taken care of by a perfect wife, just like someone’s insane fantasy about who I am (which bears little resemblance to the actual me), but it is worth making sure you don’t have that dream – and making sure that your spouse, male or female, feels absolutely sure that you have done everything you can to ensure that this life will be secure.
But while that gives a sense of why women might be less inclined to choose a low energy life, I’m not sure it really answers the larger question posed – are there more men out there who dream of living a low energy, sustainable life? Are women more attached to their creature comforts, even adjusting for their perfectly reasonable fear of being stuck with all the work, or getting covered in dirt and then being dumped for some nice clean woman?
I can’t run a statistical analysis here – my own readership tends slightly towards the female, and the stories I hear are much more about the trouble of getting husbands to change than wives, but I know it works the other way too. It is certainly women who do the majority of the shopping and consumer culture – one study found that women either made or influenced 90% of all purchases – and not just the things stereotypes would assume, like food or clothing, but also cars, tools and homes and home repairs. The culture of shopping is, in a large measure, a female culture. In that sense, there’s certainly some truth in this.
But so is the culture of making a stable home, of feeding people, of tending to basic needs. For women, much of that has been integrated deeply into a consumer culture – you feed and clothe the people you love by shopping, perhaps by careful bargain shopping. You make a home by buying products and researching good schools. You tend needs by having the right things on hand. But I think the reason this is so deeply tied to consumer culture is that the other, more traditional ways of doing these things have been taken from us – and disdained. Retail therapy exists, of course, but I think it is worth asking to what extent it is a response to a gaping absence in our way of life, rather than an ingrained gender distinction.
The same might be worth asking about women’s preoccupation with male status and affluence – it is probably true that we see in affluence a measure of a man’s ability to supply stability and to provide for our family. But do we see that in status symbols like cars and fancy houses because we are anthropologically cued to respond to any kind of flashy affluence, or because the traditional symbols of the ability to provide – a piece of land, a healthy body, gentleness with children, a goodly number of goats , facility with a spear, good mammoth barbecuing skills – are mostly gone, and we are using false cognates to substitute for something we could instinctively find superior? That is, money is only status in a society that has discarded self-provisioning – will more women like men with dirt under their nails if self-provisioning makes a comeback?
What I do think is that male status markers change much more rapidly and fundamentally than female ones do – to use one example, think about the degree to which modern society largely eschews male violence. Male physical prowess hasn’t been entirely overcome – but male aggressiveness has in some measures. Instead of physical aggressiveness, status markers for men now emphasize economic aggressiveness, and domestic violence, while still a painful reality, is no longer as normative as it once was – in fact, most of the women I know believe that men who are gentle to women and children are more attractive than those who aren’t – something not up for discussion when violence between spouses and by parents was concealed as normative. The rise of geek culture contains in it a truly radical overthrowing of masculine models – now some people may argue that this is emasculating, and certainly there are still plenty of women attracted to the physically aggressive alpha type. But I still would argue that there is a fundamental shift under way – we are selecting for gentler men as a society. This is non-trivial, if only partly underway.
Female status markers are much more fixed – standards of beauty have changed over time, but the fact of female beauty has tended to eclipse other factors - much as I’d love to see intellectual brillanc and the ability to make good cheese as major drawing factors for dating women, I’m not expecting it anytime soon. If there are to be changes, I think that it is more possible to change markers of male status – that is not to say that this is easy, merely that it is more viable.
The really good thing is that we all exceed our genetic programming sometimes – witness the fact that I have an adorable, wonderful husband who thinks I’m beautiful, even though I’m not, and also really likes that I’m smart and mouthy. I know a number of poor, short, bald men married to women who like them just that way, and find affluent guys with nice cars to be assholes. A big part of the problem is finding the match – if you married on grounds other than your mutual taste for digging carrots, the discovery that digging carrots is part of the deal is going to be problematic. Nor do we want this to be another unattainable standard – as in “Now I’ve got to be sexy, blond *and* milk a cow?” Or “Now I’ve got to have ripped abs, provide her with a lovely home and get up at 5 am to pick rutabagas?”
Such a process will take a long time. And since most of us didn’t pick our spouses on the grounds of their agrarian gifts (I have got a dun cow, and you can make good cheese), I suspect there will, for a long time, be men and women, each of them lamenting that men in general, or women in general, or the ones they meet or marry don’t seem to value the same things they do.
Sharon
- adapting in place , orlov , women
- Comments(84)
I’m 100% with you on the “I’m already doing more than 1/2 the blanking work around here, and you want to me keep chickens, have a larger garden, and you think it’s about time we had another child — do you want me to castrate you with a cold spoon,” school of thought. I think a lot of women can’t face the idea of having more work, esp. when they imagine their husbands boasting about their (ie the man’s) mini-farms.
But I think that men who chose their wives with a view to how she looks on their arms, are, by defaut, most of the time chosing high-maintaince women.
Yeah, a few lucky guys are going to get a woman who won the genertic lottery, and looks great no matter what, but most are either going to get a woman who knows that part of the unspoken marriage bargin was that she have lovely hands, and that now the rules are being changed — the time and effort that went into keeps the hands nice is to be spend wring laundry — and wait, one day soon the kiicker of “you used to have such nice hands — can’t you do something about them,” is going to come up.
Now, I might be completely wrong on this. A woman who lasted 6 weeks in a marriage some twenty-five years ago has about as much business telling other people how their relationships work as — as what? Perphas as the newly retired husband who follows his wife about all day telling her how she could do the housework more efficently.
So, I’m not going to swear that my theory is right, but it seems to me that what you marry is what you get. After all the woman who marries a man because he makes a lot of money isn’t in a postion to complain that he’s never home when he was working 80 hour weeks before they were married — where does she think the money comes from.
Unlike Sharon, Im not tall — but I’m heavy, and while not about to revent calculus, enjoy a good bull-fest. You may say it’s sour grapes, but I never wanted to change enough to meet what seemed to be the expectations of the men I met in order to be a desireable partner. (20 years of that was in the NY publishing community, so it would have taken a certain amount of radical surgery.) Now that the new desireable women seems to be one who gets her hands dirty, isn’t afraid of human shit, doesn’t mind left-overs, likes cold rooms and prefers old clothes –
we’ll you may yet get an invite to the wedding…
providing he has the cast iron cooking pots, the strong back, and knows 20 different ways to cook beans.
MEA
P.S. I also want a donkey: could we name he Neddy?
I can address this only from the perspective of the single mother. I had thought that from a dating perspective, a woman who can cook, can, raise protein, and be a good mother might have some value. Thus far, I haven’t found that to be true. Maybe it’s a matter of intimidation – one man I dated said that I was “more of a man than he was.” I tend to agree that we are in a time of indistinct gender roles, and that leads to reticence and hesitation. So I’ll just keep feeding the rabbits and chickens, and hope for the best.
I think that most women today are already very, very tired. And they think that homesteading is very, very hard. If you are just starting out it can be extremely difficult. As you have stated it takes more than one person to juggle everything. You really do need a small village to get everything done!
hmmm..i don’t think it’s a gender thing. i would take the farm life in a heartbeat, but my husband is the one who scoffs. it’s a catch 22 here. he has (for the time being, anyway) a decent job; that has allowed me to be able to stay home and raise our son and grow some food and cook dinner and make art and do all that traditional stuff. there is a part of him that would like that agrarian life, but he/we are so entrenched in the formal economy, he can’t even fathom unplugging from it. i personally think it’s riskier to stay put…he also can’t quite picture a life without his beloved television. for a split second, i pondered doing it alone. financing fell through, and it won’t happen. frankly though, i am 50, and strong and fit, but i don’t know how much i could do alone, particularly the starting up part.
most of the people i talk to, male and female, wouldn’t want that life–not because of reduced status or haggard looking spouse/self. they just can’t fathom doing that much work. i think it’s less about status than it is about people getting off their fat asses and doing some work. seriously, when i started ripping up the yard to dig beds to grow food, people said to me “you know, you could pay someone to do that for you.”
I think all philosophers and bum pundits should be required to have a PhD in Folk Literature, before they’re allowed to open their silly mouths.
This old argument about men and women is way past ancient; all the cultures I’m familiar with have at least one story about it. And they ALL have the same discovery at the end of the story- the man finds out that the woman’s work is at the very least as hard as his- and completely different, so he’s lost and a fool when he tries to do it.
Those stories are partly for entertainment, around the communal fire- but also very very much for the transmission of accumulated wisdom.
THE ANSWER to the problem….
lol. Ok, not the answer; but something that would help-
Sharon, in your spare time, you need to organize regional Green Marriage Fairs – week long festivals specifically designed to bring people in need of a compatible spouse together.
Some old world places still do this- maybe another community practice worth reviving?
Think of the publicity! Think of the money you could make! Think of the work! Think of the headaches!
It is perhaps a good side note that the reason women see the work in homesteading is because we are more aquainted with it. I remember when we looked at enlarging our garden from 300 sq.ft to about 750 sq. ft (it is now somewhere around 4000) and I had to break it to my husband that he would have to help with the garden. I had just spent a growing season doing all the planting, picking, weeding and preserving for our little garden and knew that I couldn’t double that while still working my full time plus job and seeing the kids at all. The thought that he would have to help had not occured to him – only that he would like to have more fresh vegetables to cook with (he is clearly the better cook of the two of us). To his credit, he pitched in and we have double the garden a couple of times since then. It was, however, a conversation that could have gone a different way.
Thank you for pointing out that the homestead must be a partnership and that the real root cause is not as much gender as a lack of trust in one another.
In situations where the fault is seen to belong to another, I usually find that I’m ducking my own responsibility. I rarely find I get closer to my dreams when I blame another for my lack of progress. The only person I can control is me. I have my goals and I need to move towards them regardless of others. Right now, I’ve met a woman who shares my dreams and my philosophy. We’ve talked about division of labor. And the truth of it seems to be is that we both have to step up more. Both of us have suffered losses in this last month and it’s scrambled our productivity. It takes a lot of forgiveness and acceptance. It’s never HER fault; it’s not MY fault. We are human beings trying to accomplish something difficult. Something in this position (which is not expressed in a confrontational manner), garners respect and with that, others can see a new lifestyle and perhaps become less fearful of it. Usually it’s simply fear of change and the unknown. We have our work to preach to other than the choir, but it can be done without flogging; the choices of the future may be much more starkly foreboding.
david
I own my own homestead/farm, live off-grid, can do all the traditional “women” stuff- the canning, cooking, knitting and the like- AND plenty of the traditional “male” stuff, but I sure haven’t noticed the men lining up in droves to take up with me. Of course I live in a very rural area and I can’t say I know of any eligible single men in any remotely feasible age range…… well a few drunks but I’m not going there.
It sure has seemed to me looking around that the women that I know that are in secure relationships all seem to be very high maintainance but their husbands/partners must love it or why would they be there?
Guys may SAY they wish they had women who would live the homestead life etc etc but reality seems to tell another tale to me…..
As a six foot tall, large, intelligent woman married to my own rocket scientist turned math teacher I fully understand and love geek culture. We see each other as people instead of walking gender roles.
I have an automatic jerking-back-from-a-hot-stove reaction to such glib mens’ cries of women being too superficially self-absorbed to homestead.
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/hood/shirt.html
“Oh, Men, with Sisters dear!
Oh, men, with Mothers and Wives!
It is not linen you’re wearing out,
But human creatures’ lives!
Stitch — stitch — stitch,
In poverty, hunger and dirt, 30
Sewing at once, with a double thread,
A Shroud as well as a Shirt.
I immediately thought of Carla Emery when you spoke of the possibility of divorce and being left with the children/homestead. Which says to me that even the men who fantasize about having a homestead and a more traditional life may just simply get very tired of living their lives in both worlds – the informal and the formal economies, and find a woman who demands less of their time, even though that same woman might demand more of their money. If you’re only working one full time job doing whatever for a paycheck instead of two jobs, with one being farming, you’re still ahead of the curve timewise.
I’m the one in my marriage who wants to live the homestead life. DH howls about any changes I make in that direction initially, but eventually sees the benefit once it proves to save money, or the quality of ‘x’ is so much better, that he is won over. I do have to say, though…I don’t wear makeup when we are just working around the house, but if there’s even a possibility of going to the feedstore let alone town, I have makeup on! I remember very clearly the women who would go through life wearing curlers and a scarf and that image repulses me to this day. I don’t want to be that woman! If you are the homesteading man, who wants to come home to that??
Right now I’m the one working the two jobs, with two more on my plate; DH was let go from his job in September two days after I took a nearly $600/mo pay cut so I could move to a day shift. So now, I won’t be around more during daylight hours anyway since I have to find extra work to make up the difference. If DH was as enthusiastic about housework as I fantasize, and as motivated to learn to preserve as well, this would be much less of an issue than it has been in the last month. So I guess that as in your essay, DH is more of a traditional man when it comes to actions, although he is very progressive in his outlook. It just depresses me to think I indebted us to better my education so that I wouldn’t have to work two jobs anymore, and DH still likes using credit cards, and I still have to work two jobs…gah.
I do agree that extremely intelligent opinionated women are intimidating to men as well as to other women. There is definitely a culture even still of women being pretty but silent.
I don’t know what the answer is, either.
kerrie:
“most of the people i talk to, male and female, wouldn’t want that life–not because of reduced status or haggard looking spouse/self. they just can’t fathom doing that much work.”
Ah. That happens.
So, Sharon, in your spare time, you need to organize Regional Green Apprentice Fairs…
lol.
An awful lot of the heavy crazy work comes from inexperience and foolish uninformed dreams.
Spending 6 months to a year with an established couple would cut that dramatically.
It’s a big philosophical shift for some people. One of the main reasons Spouse is not here anymore (Spice is plural, you know) is because- after 2 hours of kneeling in the garden weeding tomatoes together- I would stand up, and stretch- and make some dumb comment like “wow! Look at the gorgeous thunderheads!” And I totally meant it. And Spouse’s only reaction was to be pissed off; rain would mean some of the weeding was wasted, more work… etc.
She couldn’t change, though we tried for 23 years. Some way to test drive the lifestyle, before jumping off that cliff, would really help.
Renta-Farmsteads?
I find strong indipendant homesteading women both intimidating, and inspiring. They motivate me to do better. I would happily share a life wiht one.
Certainly what I get from that quote from Orlov is the sense of an unequal partnership and an unequal (and deeply patronising-of-women) view of the world. I agree with you that for this sort of lifestyle to work well, all involved need to be pulling their weight — and if a woman already feels concerned about the ability of her male partner to pull their weight domestically, she might well have even more doubts about how well he’d manage if the chores got harder.
I’d challenge your assumption about female beauty necessarily always being the relevant standard — firstly, I’m not sure that that has necessarily always been true across all societies, and secondly, “beauty” can vary according to other standards (I’m thinking for example about a book I was reading recently about Highland crofters in the early part of the last century, where ‘beauty’, it was suggested, had more to do with solidity than anything else!). Plus I think that (at least in some circles) intellectual brilliance is more of a factor than you’re suggesting here.
(Mind you, I am undoubtedly biased by the company I keep
)
FWIW, in my relationships I’m the one who’s interested in increasing sustainability & growing more of our own food & so on, and my male partners are interested but more likely to want to keep the luxuries…
I agree that standards of beauty vary an awful lot, and are culturally constructed – sometimes they involve strong, hefty dairymaids, or women, as my great-grandmother once said of me “built to pull the plow when the mule fall down,” and sometimes women with atrophied feet who can’t even walk. The problem is that it seems mostly to be beauty – not that no men like smart women, but that this is a minority, rather than majority preference.
sharon
Greenpa — has current Spouse left? What about your Sprout?
MEA
When I was dating in college, for some dates I put in contacts (took off my glasses) and wore makeup. The menfolk seemed to like the pretty image, but I found I hated every date I did that for. Then I wised up and started dating men who would go out with me for who I was. It didn’t take very long after that to catch a spouse who understood I was a doer and not arm candy.
for homesteading we have each taken on our pet projects with the other helping as asked. but still, I find that even though he is done before the sun sets… I am still running to get things done until bedtime. A good friend put it this way.
“Men are built to handle 1 shift. Women are built to handle 2, but often try to handle 3.”
I think that there is more to this argument than just the Gender Thing.
Take a look at my wife and I. We are both pretty behind the lifestyle change project, even if she’s better at it than me. However, both of us have the experience that we find it harder to sacrifice luxuries and creature comforts for the family than we did for ourselves. We had a long distance relationship for many years, and lived in separate states fairly poorly. And each of us was GOOD at sacrificing the luxuries, status symbols etc for greater goals. FOR OURSELVES. We knew which sacrifices we were basically OK with, and which really hurt. But then when we lived together we found that it was much harder to sacrifice things for BOTH OF US. After all, when the other says, no fine we can use the cheap toilet paper, or no we don’t really need 2 vehicles any more or whatever, do they really mean it or are they taking one for the team or do they secretly resent it or what. It is very hard to have the level of honesty and communication about which sacrifices one is OK with for a larger goal, and which hurt more. Because they all hurt some, and there is plenty of incentive both to exaggerate or to underexaggerate the level at which they hurt. Certainly I like to bitch about the inconveniences in my life to blow off steam, but I can tell in my own heart which are momentary annoyed grumblings, and which are rarely expressed longings for things I dearly wish for. So when my wife complains about, oh say cutting back on paper usage, is she really OK with it and just grumbling, or is it really bugging her?
I don’t think women want particularly consumer goods more than men do, but I do think that it is harder for 2 people to give up normal or assumed consumer goods together, than it is for either of them to do alone. Kids complicate the issue further. How do I know how OK the kid is with a particular sacrifice for a greater goal? They are likely to have troubles knowing themselves, and have troubles communicating effectively if they do know, and are far more likely to be immaturely manipulative about the whole thing. And deprivations that adults can accept, become things that bring child services into the picture if kids are involved. I remember at least one journalism article about Sharon Astyk determined to portray her as a bad mom because of the choices her family has made. If one’s lifestyle takes one outside of familiar norms for the community, there is far more likely to be a backlash if children are involved, and there are more mechanisms in place for enacting the backlash. I suppose in my case I was very willing to let other people judge me as a “poor and weird” man when single, but much less willing to let them judge me as an “inadequate” father, once I was a family-man.
So I think it is harder (but not impossible) for 2 people to shift their lifestyle to well outside the norm, than it is for either of them alone to do so alone, and harder still for a whole family with kids to do so. And that is even before we get to differences between males and female, or between alpha males and beta males, or sports/business male culture vs geek male culture, or between stay-at-home moms vs career moms, or the mommy wars, or any of the many ways in which US gender roles are fragmented and changing.
Hmm, I seem to remember a TV show with a catchy tune and a pig named Arnold . . .
Oh, and I want a donkey too.
On the broader question, I suspect a lot of it is what you get is what you have. And unless you choose a mate for adaptability etc., when you pick what is desirable in the now (pretty nails, abs, whatever), then you can’t really expect that he/she will suddenly develop or want to develp the skillset and mindset that go with a different future especially when looking forward, not everyone sees that future on the horizon.
Plus if the guys out there looking for farming mates come across like Jeffer in his linked blog post and the gals looking for farming mates come across more like Sharon, I think I can see why they are not forming a partnership regardless of how the work is split.
The other evening I went out to pick green beans. My partner wanted to know where I was going to pick green beans, apparently not noticing all summer two relatively large bean teepees in our tiny suburban yard. But he’s got really great nails (guitar nails that is) . . . and the weeds are getting pretty tall so maybe the story is not entirely fair.
I’ve seen your picture. You are hot, so stop fishing!
(Now post your husband’s picture, please.)
Brian, I agree with you in some measure, but I don’t think that the non-gender factors you mention really are what are primarily in play here when these gentlemen complain about their wives and women in general, honestly, so I’m not totally sure how relevant it is – interesting, but maybe not relevant to something that is being framed in gender terms.
I agree with you about the children – it is harder to be weird when kids are involved. With a partner, I think it works both ways for us – you worry more about the sacrifices the other person is making, and there’s a real temptation to soften up to make people you love more comfortable, but there’s also a sense where this is a lot easier with another person affirming you and backing you up, too? Just as people use support groups to give up alcohol or eat less or whatever, it is really helpful to have a spouse around who supports your goals – and I think in some ways it makes some kinds of discipline easier, not harder, because you have the pleasure of shared engagement. In the net, I think I’ve got it a whole lot easier than someone living entirely on their own – no, they don’t have to worry other people’s feelings, but I don’t have to go out and attract anyone else, and I don’t have to live it alone.
Susan, but the whole point of the women in the curlers and scarves was that they were wearing *curlers* that is, doing crazy uncomfortable and unattractive things for beauty – which apparently applied only to certain circumstances, not their spouses. It wasn’t letting themselves go – it was the opposite, sort of like keeping the best lingerie in the drawer for a special occasion – which never comes for thirty years.
MEA- “has current Spouse left?”
No! Sorry for the confusion. It was a joke between my current spouse and I, that I would call her Spice, the humorous plural of Spouse, since she was #2. So then we started calling the mother of my sons Spouse, and the mother of my daughter Spice.
Perfectly clear to me!
Spice is still trapped here with me. A couple years ago, I was able to kid her- “so, here you, all your parent’s worst fears come true. Barefoot and pregnant and living in a shack in the woods.”
She cracked up.
I solved the “problem” by partnering with a woman–and one who had been reading Mother Earth News for years when we met in 1976.
My main problem is getting ahead of her so that she doesn’t get everything done before I do my share.
Wow! Am I lucky or what?
Sharon … once again, words fail me. You have hit so many nails on their little heads with this post that I’m going to have to read this at least three more times to fully digest it.
Wow.
Greenpa — glad all is well. Let’s leave it at that, rather than trying to work out your nomenclature.
Dveej, Wow, that’s awfully flattering. If you’d like to see the husband (and pictures of the cute baby goats, and the cute little humans that go with me), I do have pictures up at facebook. (You can also verify that the picture you saw of me is actually of me
). If you friend me, you can see them – I just put up a favorite of Eric from a couple of years ago.
Also, if you google me and new york times, you’ll get the times article. The awesome dude with the scythe in the picture is Eric.
Sharon
“Because the only way it works to be more like me is to be more like me *AND* Eric”
Sharon. You’ve hit the nail on the head with this one. My husband and I are both on the same page with downshifting and we are an excellent team. I earn the money for the moment and he’s at home being the domestic god that he is. At some stage, our roles will shift as children come along, but we are not stuck in the traditional roles and have no such expectations of each other and that’s why it works.
Hummingbird, I think my mother is living proof that the magic of lesbianism does not automatically get you out of this
, since she was the one who originally “wasn’t going to eat eggs that came out of a chicken’s butt” (what other kind are there again?), but I’m glad it works sometimes! 
.
Sharon
Well, the duck butt ones are pretty good.
Count me in the group of women who wish their husbands would change. I am FAR more interested in the issues of this blog than my husband ever will be. Interestingly, I’m also the employed member of the family and he’s a stay at home Dad. As time goes by, he’s doing more around the house, but he’s never going to can, garden, or raise chickens (which we might actually get, but he’ll have nothing to do with them except when I’m on business trips. And then it will likely be our kid(s) anyway.). He’s the one who couldn’t live with the lowest level of satellite TV and had to upgrade after trying it for 2 months. He’s the one who has to have the big screen TV, the heat up high when we’re sleeping, clothes dried in the dryer, new clothes not thrifted ones, processed foods, etc etc etc. He’s willing to do things that don’t take a lot of extra time or money. And he will hang up my clothes to dry (although only sometimes our kids if it’s not too much trouble). And he’s agreed to some things like organic milk (but again only for me and the kiddo) and fresh veggies and fruit.
Wow…do I know the women some of these quotes are describing. I am regularly told by their duplicates that they don’t know how I put up with my husband, my living conditions, my lack of stuff, or my lifestyle. This from women who do more re-decorating, carpet replacing, furniture shopping, clothes hogging, gas guzzling, and running around to dozens of department store in one year than I have done in 30 or more. They have no regard for conservation, respect for nature, or give one little thought to self-sufficiency, world events, or where their food and water come from. It is all about dumping the items purchased in the Spring, cleaning out the house, and replacing it all again by Fall. They don’t like dirt, are immaculate housekeeppers, or hire it out in all likelihood, and consider it punishment to have to be outdoors or to have to cook a meal. These gals do not understand or want to be a part of the planet I come from and are always trying to convince me how bad my life is. P.S. speaking of planets I’ll make a political commentary..”what the heck are we doing imploding the surface of the moon” as reported in today’s media updates.
Like Mia and AnnMarie, I’m the primary wage earner, and I find myself doing the traditional male thing of lying awake nights fretting about whether I’ll be able to keep paying the bills, while my DH does the traditionally female things of doing (or not) the regular housework and grumping at me ’cause I canceled the pay TV. DH has so far refused to let me have chickens because he would have to take care of them when I’m away, so he sees it as a burden imposed on him. OTOH, I got him to help start the garden not by asking HIM to lift a finger, but by insisting that *I* was going to take the time to do it. It wasn’t long before he was out there helping. Seems to me that the sly way to get a partner involved, if you have a partner worthy of the name, is to start doing whatever you want done yourself and wait for them to pitch in voluntarily. These husbands who wish that their wives would do X, Y, and Z tacitly assume that the wife has more free time than they do and can more easily take on an extra burden, which might or might not be true.
A most excellent reality check!
There are enough excuses for a marriage to become difficult – why add on this whole whine about the wife keeping you from being green.
Powering down is hard for just about all Americans, most of us are soft and de-skilled. Most of us have a whole lot of 5-stages-of-grief to cycle through before being able to settle down into productive powering down and re-skilling.
Blaming that on gender is just a useful illusion that keeps these multimillionaires from being green (ROFL).
If they were actually serious they would buy their unabomber cabin somewhere (without jet skis and saunas and boats) and build their sustainable life. Until they do (hey, on their own free time if need be) I just dont want to hear the complaints!
If it requires sending the wife off to Paris for a month or two, just do it. Get her out of your multimillionaire hair and get down to the business of doing a DIY composting toilet, mucking the goat barn, cleaning crap of the eggs for breakfast, etc. Living the Life Sustainable, as it were.
Denise – guess you didn’t know the Loonies had oil, huh?
Orlov shouldn’t blame all women because his mate-selection criteria failed. Maybe look into his own psyche a little bit.
How sustainable and self-reliant is living on a *yacht* anyway? You certainly can’t produce much of your own food (except fish), or much of anything else, so you’re reliant on the cash economy to pay for everything from food to fuel.
Some of what is powering geek culture is the economic power of being a geek. And some of it is living in a stable, rule of law country. I don’t need a violent man to protect me from the other violent men.
As a single, never married, no kids, got my own house kind of woman, I’ve been reading about sustainability and peak oil and permaculture & stuff. I’m in that gray zone, I’m not consumer product obsessed, but I can’t step out of it entirely. I have a job in IT and drive to it. I looked at the bus/light rail and it doesn’t get me home from work when I leave at 7PM. I don’t watch TV, and last winter kept my house at 55 / 60F, which is radical by suburban/urban standards. I opt out of the advertising culture as much as possible, but know that I am influenced by it anyway. I shop at thrift stores, but drive there, etc.
I got to reading about peak oil from getting gardening books on xeriscaping (drought tolerant landscaping) to permaculture to PO. And I’ve talked to a few friends about it, but frankly am still at the what the hell am I going to do stage. I am one person making the changes to my life and home by myself. And it’s work. There skills I am rusty in and skills I never learned. There are mental & physical health issues that need to be taken care of. I can see the possibilities, but also get paralyzed by the work that’s involved. If I were married and he wanted to radically change the nature of our lives? He’d have to do the bulk of the work at first.
In every field there are guys who are bombastic and arrogant. The blogs you linked to seem like those kind of guys. I’ve read Holgrem’s books, and tried to read Mollison’s books. Mollison seems like a real jerk and I can’t get past that to read his books. Also, I think Holgrem is the better writer.
I am a flawed human, but will not put up with anyone who does not think I am their intellectual and social equal. And guys who say (basically) women are the ones holding us back from x, y, or z are not my kind of guy. Sure there are also a lot of high maintenance irritating women in the world, I don’t talk to them much either.
I’m glad you write about the domestic work your husband does. And you have hit the nail on the head when you say your lifestyle works when it’s the 2 of you, in a relationship of trust, doing the work.
My husband and I are just ending our first year in the experiment of homesteading. We generally hold 1.5 “normal” jobs, have a 3yo running around and have been accused by our neighbors of “out-countrying the country folk” in what we’ve attempted this last year. It has been a ton of work, but more satisfying than any job we ever held.
The catch for me, and the reason I am commenting, is that I can on one level understand why women would be wary of the homesteading life and partnership: pregnancy. The work to run a household this way doesn’t go away when one of the partners has horrible morning sickness and can’t keep meals down, or has sciatica and can barely hobble around much less carry water to the chickens. It has been eye-opening this summer for me (I’m 8mo pregnant now) to think about frontier women keeping a household and garden together, mostly alone, while pregnant. Hauling water, pulling weeds, digging potatoes, carrying loads have all become difficult to manage, and with the spouse busy enough with cutting and splitting and stacking wood, laying fence before winter, moving irrigation line, building a new chicken coop, some chores (especially garden management) have fallen by the wayside. Even with a supportive and full-partnership kind of spouse, it is a life that takes effort and energy and sometimes neighbors or family pitching in on the effort (this coming weekend is turkey butchering weekend, for example). It is immeasurably satisfying if the ability to see the benefits is there, but is still daunting. For people who have always lived a city or suburban life, the hurdles seem so much taller.
Beer.
Nothing like a home brew for converting folks to the cause.
Or maybe home-made Thai food with organic veggies from the former lawn.
The food brings people around.
Even I think that I am nuts, sometimes, so I’m willing to cut folks some slack on that.
I can’t think of many places except the American frontier where a woman was expected to be a farmwife in isolation — in the US there were hired girls and in the UK and Europe farm servants, not to mention unmarried daughters, widowed sisters, maiden aunts, poor cousins, and neigbors. There was a program in England where people lived (for 3 years, I think) as if it were c. 1600, and the women commented that you had to rely on neighbors in the days around childbirth.
Much of the “I won’t have a wife who works outside the home” talk came from a time when trying to work in a factory or down a pit was the kiss of death for a woman already keeping a home with a young family. I don’t know how many frontiers women were worked into an early grave.
On a sort of related note, a friends husband came up with the plan that she should contine to homeschool their 4 children (8 and under) AND work as an RN at night, freeing him from having to hold a job so he could go to graduate school. Not all men, obviously, are such jerks, but here is some one who doesn’t grasp the concept that women, too, need to sleep.
MEA
My exhusband was a traditional man, didn’t want me to work. When I twigged the marriage was never going to work and decided on divorce (no easy decision for a devout Catholic, no matter what some men say), he wanted both houses (marital+investment), all his super and savings (since I had “not contributed” during the marriage) and expected a share of the inheritance we knew I would be getting from my aunt. Hmm.
My current man has less wealth than I, and offers me what he has, while not wanting any of mine. We are both trying to develop my property to provide food in our old age. We are downsizing (if that’s possible from this small size already) and relocalising and *I* keep telling *him* to get rid of stuff and not waste $$ on frippery. Hmm.
I think those comparisons say something about wealth and division of labor. No, I don’t think women are the problem, maybe in some relationships it might work that way but not all.
For the record I think division of labor would be a good thing IF, and it’s a big IF, neither side was devalued. Feminism arose because women’s labor and lives were devalued. It’s the devaluing of women’s lives and labor that led to feminism, any truly sensitive man (like mine) does not devalue the life or labor of his lady love.
I don’t want to go back to some aspects of pre-industrial, pre-feminist life because of the implications for me personally. I suffered horrendous PMS and periods, and the Pill is wonderful, for the quality-of-life aspects apart from the contraceptive side. My g-parents had an outside thunder box and I have less-than-happy memories of learning all about periods in that salubrious setting as a 12 year old. So no, there are some things we women DON’T want to go back to.
I have noticed a misogynist attitude on many sustainability sites and blogs, regrettably, and it’s good to have this discussion here Sharon.
Thank you for confronting Dmitri. He is one of my heros, and I was appalled by his recent post. What I think it comes down to is that we all need to grow up. Even Dmitri. Spouse is not mummy or daddy. We are no longer to be served like spoiled children. We must contribute. Survival is difficult. The media says differently, and that is exactly the culture we are loosing. As a general rule of thumb, do first whatever is uncomfortable, painful, and tiring. Now you have grown up. Repeat. You now have the qualifications to survive and to care for that/those which you love.
Have you read Kunstler’s recent novel? The whole thing was a search for mummy, mummy, mummy. He found her and she has no choice but to serve him, now life will be perfect. Read the commentaries to his posts. He collects mummy-boys. No doubt, there are plenty of daddy-girls around, too.
Do you want to sell a lot of worthless crap to a lot of people for a lot of money? Flatter them. Tell them they are special and deserve it. Treat them like rich, spoiled children. Do it quick before the whole system collapses. Works every time.
One other thing. I quit full time work 2 years ago to work part time. I’ve just done 8 weeks of full time while my boss was away and I’m EXHAUSTED ….
I can not run even a fledgling homestead and work full time (my man does not live here all week so I still have 3-4 days a week of being a single woman with a paid job and a homestead to run).
Once we get it up and running properly, will I have more time for paid work? I doubt it.
If he lived here full time, would things be easier? Maybe, but he still has his paid work to do.
All I know is it’s the unrelenting daily routine that wears me down. If I had to eschew all the labor saving devices (eg auto washing machine) would that be better? No. I still recall my mother’s mother hand washing. I don’t have time for all that.
In my case, my husband and I both agree that moving out of the city and finding some land to do small-scale farming would be a great idea. He is supportive and helpful in helping me realize my dream of a homestead in the city, but mention of livestock (chickens, goats) does incite much eye-rolling and sighing on his part. I do tend to bite off a bit more than I can chew. We raise as much food as is feasable on our small city lot and have torn up our front yard and part of the back to grow veggies and put in edibles anywhere I can find room. However, we are a bit limited in time that can be dedicated to projects because of our two little kids.
While I did look for a mate who was self-reliant, homesteading wasn’t exactly foremost on my mind when I was in my “seeking” phase. Back then, I’d never heard of Peak Oil. And true, if I had come across a guy who lived in the middle of nowhere, raised his own food and pooped in a bucket, I might have cast him aside. My criteria now are different and we can only work with what we’ve got. I’ve always been a pretty simple person and not interested in monetary things (When we got married, I wanted a $36 silver wedding rings and my husband had to talk me into gold.). For gifts, I don’t want frippery, I want useful things: solar food dryer, cast iron pots, gardening implements.
As a society, we have become so essentially dependant on luxuries that it is extremely painful to do without. Let’s face it: we’re wimps. For those who have never become accustomed to such things as central heat, daily hot showers, washers/ dryers, cars, I think it’s much easier. There are certainly things I could be doing to “adapt in place” that I’m reluctant to do. Gee, just being a mom of two little kids (who, by the way, don’t sleep) and breastfeeding for 5 years straight, working part-time outside the home and gardening on a sizeable scale seems, at times, like more than I can handle. So, I admit, there’s a discrepancy between the idealized “pioneer mommy me” and the real me. Then again, I try to give myself a break because the learning curve for these essential “back-to-the-land” skills is huge! I was not raised dirt poor, but my parents’ families were pretty close.
I don’t think that a return to simplicity or giving up luxuries is a gender issue, though I must admit, I know more men who live or HAVE lived pretty austere lifestyles:without running water, not bathing for weeks at a time, living in VW vans for a year or more…that kind of thing. On the other hand, I know women who chop wood, prepare all meals from scratch, grow gardens, cloth diaper…I think there are some gender tendencies, but it would be wrong to lump all women in the “craves luxury” category.
Firstly, thanks Sharon for a fine website.
Secondly, I mostly blame the men, and being one, feel entitled. I think Jeffers is a perfect example of one side of the problem. I couldn’t count how many times I have heard men moaning about how they can’t seem to get (whatever) from women, all the while sitting in the same room with a woman who would, but who is also somehow beneath their consideration.
Also, to jump off the deep end and go homesteading in the face of our current culture requires a lot of determination, and the men I know who have done it tend large toward hard-ass. Almost as if privation was part of the fun. So I’m not surprised they have trouble attracting mates.
As for me, I’m working on it. My wife & I have 40 acres 7 miles from our house in town, and we got 1/3 acre of wheat planted just before the rain this week. We have a mediocre garden that suffers from lack of attention & manure, but I still manage to preserve a year’s worth of jams, and a few months of salsa each summer. My wife bakes a killer sourdough, and we haven’t bought bread (except as a novelty) in 3 years, even though we eat it all the time. So life is good.
And that is what I find most refreshing about your website – the recognition that the only way forward is not to harangue, but to demonstrate that a simpler life is actually more satisfying, even if it is difficult.
Eric
Look, I guess I get to try to defend Orlov a bit. First, a small yacht is a pretty damn sustainable life style if it has a sail, and Orlov’s does. Life on a small ship (such as one with a waterline under 10m) is extremely efficient and low energy, but is low on creature comforts and certainly not to everyone’s taste. My dad had a 26ft hunter once, and that is certainly nowhere near millionaire territory. Moreover anyone willing to live full time in a ship with a waterline under 10 meters, is living very close to the bone, a very stripped down low-energy, essentials only life, far more so than the vast majority, and probably closer than anyone here.
Second, look at what Orlov is actually saying. First, he’s giving an INTERVIEW these are off the cuff remarks. Second, look at the surrounding material, Orlov is being funny in his own very dry very sarcastic way.Heck, he’s answering a question about cars and religion! with his usual nonsensical, silly, but with a grain of truth underneath it, and dressed up as sober fact style. I can’t speak for Kunstler’s mummy-needin’ or Greg Jeffers. Orlov’s point is not really about how hard it is to please a woman, even if he uses that for humor, it is about how hard it is to please a human, about how, and I’m quoting now “From time immemorial status in society has been determined by access to luxury goods. As society becomes richer, luxuries turn into necessities. And when society starts to grow poorer again, it turns out that there is no going back. That is, there is a way back, but it is blocked by the innate tendencies of our clever species.” From a male point of view, like Orlov’s and Davydov’s it is usually about pleasing a woman, from a woman’s point of view it might be about pleasing a man, but the real point is about boundary lines between luxuries and necessities. He isn’t even being condescending to women, he juxtaposing his little 10m boat, with less living space than the tiniest apartment, and probably worth less than many cars (E-bay has 10m boats in the 5000$-20000$ range), with Abramovich’s biggest yacht in the world worth 500 million$, with a 557 ft water line and something like a dozen decks. This thing is probably more than 10,000 times the size and value of Orlov’s little ship. OF COURSE his wife is going is going to be impressed by Abramovich’s ship! I would be! Even knowing full well why I was on the little ship, and that mine was more sustainable in the long run. Dmitri says “and although the wife understands everything very well, even she cannot stop herself from casting a sideways glance when a yacht like Abramovich’s walks past”. Orlov’s point is not that women are consumerist at heart, it is that “even she” who lived on a 10m boat for 2 years!!!! can’t help but be impressed. That the best of us, can still be wowed by luxury, that luxury has an appeal that it is difficult for human nature to resist.
Thus, third, I think the gender spin is a little bit of a red herring here. I agree with Orlov. Human nature has a lot of troubles taking a luxury that has been re-coded as a necessity and coding it back to being just a luxury. Wealth and power have a lot of appeal regardless of one’s gender. Sacrifice is hard even when it is the right thing to do. Casting these facts in terms of “who has it worse when we all have to sacrifice, when we all have it bad” can be counter-productive. Sure, gender issues are part of the picture too, sure gender inequalities can easily play out in descent situations. But that isn’t what Orlov is talking about. Heck Sharon asks “Are women more attracted to creature comforts and more afraid of the future? Is this a gender thing at all?” And my take is no it isn’t a gender thing at all (or much), and women aren’t more attracted to creature comforts or more afraid of the future. But it is a status thing, and a mate selection thing, and a luxury thing, and a making one lifestyle out of two people thing. Gender typically gets tangled into all that, even if gender isn’t the real driver.
Sharon, maybe Jeffers is “complain [ing] about their wives and women in general,” but I just do not believe that is what Orlov is doing here. Certainly I do occasionally complain about my wife or women in general, or about my kids or kids in general, or about folk in my town or Americans in general, and these are usually either intended as humor, or are mere grumbling, rather than anything deeper. Now when I complain about humans in general THEN I can get some real misanthropy going!
This is a pretty loaded topic.
I have to say that I think we as women have been taught that our power lies in our ability to consume- it can be difficult to get out from under that yoke. I feel extremely fortunate in that I grew up in a back to the earth hippie household in which, frankly, gender roles were pretty blurred. Looking back, I remember my mother doing more canning and my father cut more wood- but my father also appeared to change virtually all diapers and did a lot more general child care. I don’t think that living a sustainable life means that women have to fall back into traditional roles.
@ MEA, my neighbor has a donkey, hand gentle that greets me daily over the fence when I feed my pony. He *claims* Mr. Wiggles (I call him John, an intact stud burro) is for sale, for $200.
@ Sharon,
I think it is more likely that a couple is “coasting”, getting by without real commitment or real communication, when one wants to change their lives and blames the other for holding them back.
I haven’t seen a lot of emphasis on character, on ethical and moral living, or honorable investment of self in their partner among the affluent. Many spend so much time in recreation and incidental “obligations” they barely have time to greet each other a few times a week, let alone grow and nurture a relationship. There are exceptions, I know, but most affluent people hang out with affluent people – and that shapes their values, their choices, and what they see as desirable or worth their while.
I do think there is some historical influence active here. I think men are often seen as responsible for security. The engagement ring is a tangible, redeemable chunk of resources – two months wages, supposedly. The fancy car, the naked ambition, the social recreation – these are things women might examine to determine whether the guy can provide the resources or security (social position) to make a satisfying life.
Guys might look at a gal to determine if she is “good enough” – the shallow might rely on appearance, or at least depend on their friends and family agreeing that she is “good looking”.
I happen to think that character, discipline (will to complete a task), honor and honesty should be the starting points, that one should have a very good understanding of a potential mate’s standing in the community, and their reputation for character, before every beginning to get together. It likely seems old fashioned, but I thought the point was that the modern roommate-level of relationship isn’t working that well.
A couple would have to start out looking for a traditional-role type mate, and live together appropriately, to achieve a “farmer guy, housewife gal” mating. I actually don’t see anything wrong, if that is how the skills and aptitudes work out for a couple. Cross training is essential – she should expect help in the house when prepping for company, when there is illness or injury, and she has to be able to lend a hand with about anything that needs done. I grew up on a farm. I know couples that manage everything from both working the fields and hiring a housekeeper, to no one getting much farm work done (they plan for this, get the minimum done, and are satisfied with a modest result).
Changing lifestyle to be what you call sustainable, Sharon, is as alien to Main Street America as living on the Space Station might be. When I look at the way humans hang onto habits and repetitive activities, from a good work ethic to alcoholism and drug abuse, to eating disorders, I have to ask – why would you think you can easily change someone else? Change is measured in discomfort. Achieving a new equilibrium, whether a change in diet, change in work habits, change in community position and social stature takes time, takes will and motivation, and takes luck, timing, and support.
If someone is interested in sustainable living, and they are true in their loyalty and affection – and responsibility – for their mate, how can the mate *not* know of their interest? From what I have read here, anyone at any time or place can begin to “adapt”. If your mate isn’t in tune with starting to make changes – say, cooking from staples, building and rotating the pantry, rethinking “comfortable” indoor temperatures and clothing adaptations – what in the world are you thinking? This isn’t rocket science, and working with your mate is fairly simple – you have a working relationship, and work to understand each other’s needs, or you still have so much to learn that sustainable living is *not* your first priority.
I firmly believe that forming a couple is a community function. You should join together to interact with your community *as a couple*. So in addition to the internal couple dynamics that need to adapt to sustainable living, there are the social and community relationships that should be addressed. From simple things like learning to be responsible about lending and borrowing tools, to making the effort to know your neighbors.
Leaving Boca Raton for a life without the standard TV-ad consumer orientation is a radical lifestyle change. In terms of the Tarot fortune telling cards, “the old life ends, to make way for the new life.” Endings and changes are scary. And, really, no one enjoys surprises (well, except for puppies and ponies, if they really aren’t all that much of a surprise).
Sharon, anyone that thinks having a wife already skilled and experienced in living a sustainable life – I have to agree with your guy – deserves the shock and dismay of what that means for his/her responsibilities and changed expectations. Having someone to depend on as you *learn* to live the new life style to help examine and understand the choices and changes, would be a much more rewarding experience. Now, if you were to be arranging marriages for your children with suitable mates, those mates would be lucky as all get out. A farm *can* be a wonderful place for raising children with character and self esteem. A farm can be an especially good family environment with good parents.
I don’t wear makeup, I am low maintenance to the point where it is easier to call my style ‘lazy.’ I would LOVE to live on a homestead, but I’ve never dated anyone as enthusiastic about the idea. When I started dating the BF, I mentioned as many of my “hippie tendencies” as possible, I tried to inject humor into it in case my ways were not his cup of tea. I think if our path led us to a homestead it would be me gently dragging him by the arm, with emphasis on the gentleness. To be fair, though, I have friends of both genders in similar situations.