Elizabeth Wurtzel is a lawyer, and the author of Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America and More, Now, Again: A Memoir of Addiction. She also is extremely misinformed in her latest article on the Atlantic. Wurtzel wrote a piece called, “1% Wives Are Helping Kill Feminism and Make the War on Women Possible,” and in it she says, “Being a mother isn’t a real job — and the men who run the world know it.” I am so angered by this article that I am going to break it down line by destructive line.
Line one: I am going to smack the next idiot who tells me that raising her children full time — by which she really means going to Jivamukti classes and pedicure appointments while the nanny babysits — is her feminist choice. Who can possibly take feminism seriously when it allows everything, as long as women choose it? The whole point to begin with was that women were losing their minds pushing mops and strollers all day without a room or a salary of their own.
Let’s please be serious grown-ups: real feminists don’t depend on men. Real feminists earn a living, have money and means of their own.
My Response: Okay, violence is always an excellent first response. “I’m going to smack the next idiot.” Wow…just wow. I want to grab Wurtzel and shake her and tell her that someone who has a nanny is not a stay at home mom – she is a kept wife. Now is being a kept wife feminist? No. Is being a stay at home mom who spends her entire day looking after her children? Yes. Are they two completely different things? YES! Really? Is she being serious with this article? This is on the Atlantic, and not the Onion, right? Ugh. Moving on.
“Real feminists don’t depend on men have money and means of their own.”
I am a real feminist and I depend on my male roommate to come up with his half of the rent because I have no money because I’m a 26 year old writer.
You know what? I can’t even continue breaking down the article because the more I reread it, the more I want to type in all caps and scream at my screen that Wurtzel is an idiot. She’s an idiot. That’s it and that’s all. Her article is nothing more than Wurtzel standing on her soapbox telling the women of the world that she makes the best decisions and they don’t. Excuse me Miss Lawyer Lady, but I object! I’ve read Prozac Nation, I went to college, I have severe depression, and I …
… work as a writer and I did not cause nearly as much pain and suffering and self-destruction as you did so your opinions and self-righteous attitude can shut up.
There is no place for Wurtzel in the feminist movement. She is not a feminist because she clearly hates women. She likes to make group judgments and take facts and twist them so that she can stand before the masses and say that she is better than everyone else. She is the epitome of everything I loathe about “feminists.” When I put “feminists” in quotes I am referring to women who have so much anger in regards to themselves but not enough self-awareness to own it so they spew it on everyone else. They blame everyone else, they look down on everyone else, they judge everyone else because they can’t take that “all seeing eye” and turn it inward.
Wurtzel is still a hurt, angry little girl who is lashing out at the rich kids that she doesn’t understand. I’m disgusted by this article and by Wurtzel. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go call my male roommate and vent to him because I depend on him to be my best friend and listen to my rants and talk me down from tracking down Wurtzel, tying her to a chair, and screaming at her for 3 days straight. Then I suppose I will email my boss and tell her I can no longer write for this feminist blog because I depended on a male to help me get through something and according to a former addict and fame whore that makes me not feminist. Then I will turn my back on the movement because I disagreed with Wurtzel who is clearly the definitive word on feminists (in her own ridiculous mind).
I mean really—what was this article supposed to accomplish? Were rich wives going to leave their husbands? Were feminists around the world going to start lynch mobs? Were we all going to read this and realize that we’ve had it wrong all along and Wurtzel’s ill-informed verbal vomit should be our new doctrine? Were we going to forget about Susan B. Anthony and replace her with an angry, pill-popping lawyer? No, none of that was going to happen and Wurtzel knew it.
This was her way of publicly bitch-slapping the cheerleader girls she didn’t like. Of angering people she doesn’t even know, of riling up writers and getting them to publish her crap so even more people could read it and be annoyed, and that worked so congrats Wurtzel you ruined a lot of people’s good moods today. Some people aren’t happy unless they are causing drama and spewing hate. Some people just don’t feel worth anything unless they can Google their name and find all the articles that mention them. So, I’ll be helpful and I’ll join the club and I’ll give Wurtzel another backlink. I’ll help her stir the pot and I will inform others about her idiocy and I want people to get angry. I want the pot to boil over with disbelief at this woman’s words. I want there to be a public backlash so that maybe, just maybe she will shut the hell up.
There’s not much worse, to the feminist movement anyway, than a “feminist” like this. You’re right in that stay at home mums and kept wives are two entirely different things. My mum stayed at home, she kept the house clean and she raised her kids with love and care. I won’t let anyone tell me what she did was wrong. Now that all her kids are older, she’s even gone back in to the working world. Sadly I think that no amount of public backlash can shut a person up. Look at Samantha Brick. She pretty much literally said every woman ever is jealous of her good looks. She got a megaton of backlash, and you know how she responded? She said it proved her right.
Wurtzel and her ilk are perhaps the most dangerous women out there … they are the ones giving “feminism” (which, in my definition, is expecting equality to make the same choices as men … no more, no less) a bad name. It’s unfortunate that the loudest (and shrillest) voices are the ones that get the attention. It’s a travesty that identifying as a “feminist” means being equated with the same brush this woman is … honestly, most of us are normal, hardworking, sane people. Well, mostly normal and sane ;-)
For years I worked and supported my husband and child, and now my husband works and supports us.
That’s about as equal as it gets, but I guess that means I’m not a feminist in her definition.
My husband will be surprised to hear that… He’ll also be surprised to learn that he’s not a feminist either. Some of her statements seem to preclude men from feminism. I always thought feminism was believing in equality of the sexes. If men aren’t expected to feel that way also, we’re pretty screwed…