I Just Can't Help Myself: Still More Caitlin Flanagan

As usual, it took me a little while to realize what was wrong with this Caitlin Flanagan essay (in case you don't feel like clicking, it's the one where she says she's going to have to become a Republican even though she supports the environment and gay marriage and immigrant rights, because the Democrats don't accept her because she stays home and loves her traditional marriage, and all the people writing about her book are accusing her of being a Republican anyway, just because she stays home and loves her traditional marriage) (thanks to Laura for the link).

There are two problems here. Well, actually there are a lot of problems, as some of Laura's commenters suggest, like Flanagan's basic hypocrisy in construing herself as a traditional stay-at-home mom, when in fact she works, albeit from home, has a full-time nanny, and never does housework. But, more specifically, when Flanagan writes about her life, or about gender issues in general--no, let's call a spade a spade, she does not write about gender issues, she writes about women's issues, because there is nary a man in her writing, unless he is a disappointed man whose wife is not giving him what he needs, or her own happy, satisfied husband (and we won't mention the blow job thing)--when Flanagan writes about women's issues, she begins with the fact that she stays home, but she never stops there. She inevitably goes on, whether it's via the topic of working mothers (bad) or teen sex (bad), to bashing feminism. And that's where a whole lot of Democrats, and I would guess some Republicans too, get pissed off.

The second problem, is that she never, ever, writes about supporting the environment and gay marriage and immigrant rights. I had no idea. Nobody had any idea. And you might ask why we should know and why we should care, and you might be right. But you might not, because if someone's main schtick is to bash feminism, and she never writes about any other political issues, then, based on the knowledge we have of her politics, it seems at least somewhat reasonable to believe that she might not be sympathetic to other progressive values.

And here we get to what is good, if infuriating, about Caitlin Flanagan: she is complicated. But if she doesn't show us certain facets of her complexity, she can't really blame us for not taking them into account.