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Mark P #fundie thinkinghousewife.com

This is an interesting article, but I disagree with the beginning: “Over the last 50 years, America has witnessed the cultural ruin of its women. When women fall, an entire way of life and civilization itself are not far behind.” The reality is that the cultural ruin of America was caused by women. Specifically, women’s political, sexual and financial freedom is largely responsible for the decline of the West and not some abstract “culture.”

We harp a lot on liberalism, but what is liberalism but female thinking unbounded? I finally understand what that famous author meant when he said that civilizations die by suicide. Every civilization at the peak of its power, prosperity and wealth, and in a moment of decadence, emancipates women and, in a few short decades or centuries, it collapses. Babylon did it. Sparta did it. Rome did it. Now America will do it.

The basic problem with cultural discrimination is that it requires a theory or theories about how the world works. To have theories about how the world works requires making generalizations that are tested by, and adjusted to, reality. Women are diametrically opposed to generalizations. Why? To avoid having the analytical power of the generalization applied to womens’ physical appearance or other characteristics.

What all women implicitly understand, but are loathe to admit, is that 90% of a woman’s value is embedded in her physical appearance. Men choose women largely on looks based on a sliding scale of what men want and what they can get. The problem for women is that physical appearance is not only determined at birth, but it has a limited shelf-life. Whatever advantages women derive from looks do not last.

Now, when women were married at 20 and, a short time later, busy with their own children and families, the impact of this knowledge was limited. Family life occupies its own sphere and kids suck the narcissism out of women. With women competing in the world with men, this worry about appearances blooms to a neurotic high. Women are never certain if their success is the result of “who they are” or how they look. Consequently, this neurosis permeates every sphere of life within which women operate.

This is how you get a female police officer telling an investigator in the Berkowitz case that “Jews and Italians date, too.” Or, Maureen Dowd’s permanent screams on why society no longer finds her attractive. Or, the articles about the new standards of (chocolate) beauty established by Michelle Obama.

Women are at war with themselves and their short-term, pragmatic, narcissistic neuroses have swallowed the Western world.

Debra C #fundie thinkinghousewife.com

I would call him a heretical Pope. (That is not to imply that Evangelical leaders of various stripe do not merit the same charge.)

“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me.” John 14:6.

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Matthew 28:19-20.

“And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” Acts 4:12.

Any Pope or Church leader who asserts that all “religious” roads lead to heaven is sure to suffer the sentence set forth in Matthew 18:6, following:

”But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” Matthew 18:6.

And the greatest sin is the sin of unbelief: in denying that Jesus is God and that Jesus alone is the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Essentially, the Pope is insinuating — as did President George W. Bush who said so explicitly in a video-taped interview with Charles Gibson — that Islam’s Allah is the same “God” that Christians worship.

May the Pope, the theologically liberal Evangelical “leaders,” and all other heretics of the true Church be brought to their knees in repentance and contrition for their blasphemy against the Holy Spirit; Lord have mercy on them.

Marissa #fundie thinkinghousewife.com

On the topic of swimwear, I used to go to the public pool on a near daily basis as a child, and I always noticed that it was the girls in bikinis who were uncomfortable with themselves, as Mary noted. The girls in the one-pieces were the ones usually having fun in the water, while the boys always stared at the bikini girls and seemed to harass them. I didn’t understand why boys would stare at girls so much at the time, but something in me became determined never to put myself on display to be stared at or harassed in such a manner.

Later on, I became aware of the effects of nearly naked flesh on boys, and I always thought it manipulative and unfair that girls and women would take advantage of men and boys like that, and then complain about it. Additionally, I had an arrogant attitude that no one was going to look at me unless they earned the right to, so I kept myself covered; my “uniform” until my mid-20s was always loosely-fitting jeans and t-shirt. I even swam in such a getup! Yes, it was heavy! Now that I acknowledge my femininity, I wear prettier things such as blouses and skirts, but swimwear stumped me for quite a while. My search was made more difficult by the fact that I am a little bit on the heavier side, and most of the modest options I found just didn’t go up to my size. I thought I would end up having to buy a rash guard and long surf shorts, which is what my husband wears.

Laura Wood #fundie thinkinghousewife.com

You say, “So their bitchy attitude was defensive.” Perhaps, but over-confidence, an awareness of one’s primal power over others, is probably at work in many cases. A bikini is an act of aggression in its own way. I realize many girls don’t mean it that way.

"Persistent behavior becomes habit or second nature. The emotional hardening that began on the beach in scanty followed many girls whom I knew into their twenties and beyond into their adult lives."

True. Immodesty makes women mean and callous.

Laura Wood #fundie thinkinghousewife.com

Many people are drawn to atheism not because of the philosophical arguments for it but because they are egalitarians suspicious of any form of hierarchy. They are not just suspicious of hierarchy, they are downright uncomfortable with it. This suspicion and discomfort make prayer almost impossible. After all, prayer is the act of addressing an infinitely higher being.

The egalitarian who attempts to pray is similar to a man dressed in a T-shirt, jeans and baseball cap appearing in the court of a king. To the man in the baseball cap, the regalia of the court is absurd and embarrassing. He may approach it with the interest of an antiquarian visiting a museum, but not as something real. The trappings and ceremony are so unnecessary. But more than that, the authority of the king makes the egalitarian intensely uncomfortable. He can either ridicule the ceremony that surrounds him or feel how primitive his own position is, which would be a shattering discovery.

The egalitarian finds it difficult, if not impossible, to pray. (I am referring to serious praying of course, not the squishy, self-centered emoting, in which God is a guy in a baseball cap too, that often substitutes for it today.) The problem with this is that God often does not communicate with a person until the person communicates with him first. This puts the egalitarian in a bind. He cannot discover God because he cannot speak to him.

For the egalitarian who truly wants to pray but feels that to do so is alien and foreign to him, there is a solution.

He must present himself in the court and say nothing. Even with his baseball cap on.

He should, as St. Francis de Sales once wisely advised, stand in this magnificent court like a statue and simply offer his presence. That is the first step for the person steeped all his life in equality to learn how to pray.

Laura Wood #fundie thinkinghousewife.com

They definitely can’t do it on their own now. For one, they have those tests and pass rates imposed by No Child Left Behind (or No Child Left Alone); these hold blacks to similar standards as whites and are a virtual mandate for cheating by principals and teachers. Standardized tests do have value for largely black schools, even more so than for white schools, but the standards should be changed, with basic skills reinforced throughout elementary and secondary school.

Secondly, black political groups aren’t motivated, and will probably never be motivated, to start a revolution in education not founded on racial grievances. There is also widespread parental indifference.

You ask, “Why must someone or some institution (government, e.g.) set something up for them?” Because it’s the right thing to do and blacks are unlikely to do it entirely on their own. I’m not a supporter of our public education system, but paternalistic education of some kind, education not founded on white guilt and not indulgent of lawlessness or misbehavior, makes sense for blacks. A libertarian approach isn’t reasonable for all groups. That’s a vague answer, but until we let the idea that racial differences matter, in education especially, we can’t work on the details.

I should add that all education is not worthy of the name unless it takes into consideration the totality of the person. That is as true for blacks as for whites. Modern state-run education denies the spiritual dimension and the immortality of the soul.

Laura Wood #fundie thinkinghousewife.com

THREE extraordinary developments in women’s fashions have occurred over the past 100 years. They are so widely accepted that most people barely notice them anymore. They are:

1) The gradual acceptance of pants. Once exclusively reserved for men, pants were completely embraced by the 1960s and are so universal now that a first violinist in a major orchestra in my area sits with her legs spread-eagle during the performance. She is wearing pants and is considered free to sit in any position.

2) The rise of informality. Everyday clothes worn 100 years ago would be considered special occasion dress today. Even nuns wear T-shirts and jeans.

3) The striking increase in revealing clothing. Unisex pants lead to camisoles and other forms of public lingerie, clothes that are unambiguously feminine. College presidents and congresswomen even wear low-cut blouses.

These changes have not liberated women. Far from it. They have confined them. They have encouraged women to ape men. They have caused them to lower themselves, especially in the eyes of their children, as a pseudo-man is necessarily inferior to a real man. They have created a world that is less beautiful and less ceremonious. Sixteenth-century peasants dressed with more dignity than wealthy Western women today.

All of this is by way of introducing a remarkable document on this subject. No one has expressed the consequences of these changes better than one particular man writing 52 years ago. Giuseppe Cardinal Siri, the Archbishop of Genoa, wrote a prophetic letter to local clergy in 1960 on the subject of the increasing appearance of women in “trousers.” Archbishop Siri maintained that the adoption of masculine dress by women would ultimately spell disaster:

When we see a woman in trousers, we should think not so much of her as of all mankind, of what it will be when women will have masculinized themselves for good. Nobody stands to gain by helping to bring about a future age of vagueness, ambiguity, imperfection and, in a word, monstrosities.

When a sense of the eternal feminine is lost, there is a flattening of society. He wrote:

The consequences of such violations are not a new outline of man, but disorders, hurtful instability of all kinds, the frightening dryness of human souls, the shattering increase in the number of human castaways, driven long since out of people’s sight and mind to live out their decline in boredom, sadness and rejection. Aligned on the wrecking of the eternal norms are to be found the broken families, lives cut short before their time, hearths and homes gone cold, old people cast to one side, youngsters willfully degenerate and — at the end of the line — souls in despair and taking their own lives.

His letter, posted at Catholicmodesty.com, is well worth reading in its entirety. These are extreme words, but all of it has come true.



Laura Wood #fundie thinkinghousewife.com

I disagree. Pizza as we know it represents the death of civilization. Fast food is spiritual starvation.

In modern times, the end of civilization is not chaotic, but orderly and convenient. On the surface, it is smoothly functioning and even appealing. But the sky might as well be falling and barbarians might as well be rushing into our homes. So serious is the loss of civility, beauty, courtesy, wonder, and love - all the things that distinguish human beings from animals and civilization from mere survival.

Pizza is just bread with tomatoes and cheese, and I agree with you that there is nothing objectionable about that in itself. As an occasional treat, especially when it is homemade, it is not bad at all. But in its pervasive, modern, industrial foamboard incarnation, pizza is animal feed. It is so radically inferior to the simple boiled cabbage and potatoes of your parents’ childhood that it’s impossible to consider them in the same category. One is denatured factory fare. The other is field and sun. One is a cash transaction. The other is mutual aid. One is sloth. The other is labor. One is commerce. The other is love.

Your grandmothers took cabbage and potatoes, cut them up and then made them into food for their families. They might even have grown these foods in their own gardens. (Regardless, the cabbage and potatoes they used would have been much higher in nutrients than the cabbage and potatoes found in most stores today.) Your grandmothers were not paid workers when they did this work. They were not making food for strangers. Even if they made these things poorly, there was something personal about their neglect. Your parents sat around family tables to consume their cabbage and potatoes. Their small portion of beef on Sunday was part of a time-honored ritual, part of a day devoted to leisure even for the poorest man. And when people feuded at the table or disagreed with one another, even when children misbehaved, there was something personal about their interactions. They talked and cooperated. They did more than grab slices from a greasy box and eat them with their hands. They didn’t sit in a communal dining hall sipping soda with strangers. They didn’t watch television with the cardboard boxes splayed before them. The shared cabbage was more than food. It was the rhythm of nature, the struggle for existence and human order. It was a meal with form and structure. Food has an ethical dimension and simple food is not necessarily coarse when part of a shared ritual.

At the end of the meal, that greasy box sits on the table. Does anyone think fondly of it? Will anyone wistfully recall the greasy pizza boxes of their childhood the way they might recall their grandmother’s simple noodles or the roast beef that infused the house with its smell? I remember once showing up at my grandmother’s house when I was a child and she made me a simple ham sandwich with ham she had roasted the day before. It was one of the best meals I have ever had in my whole life. There was something mysteriously good about it.

Fast food and convenience wraps, paninis, nachos and McMeals have dumbed down food preparation so much that many people have no cultural memory of dishes like cabbage and potatoes, meals that are cheap, satisfying and extremely easy to make. It takes about 20 minutes and $5 to make a meal of cabbage and potatoes, not counting the time spent shopping. It’s an excellent meal, as long as the cabbage is not overcooked. I could easily eat it five nights a week.

The English-speaking world does indeed have a history of good food and fast food is a radical break with this history, as different from the food of the past as Soviet architecture is from a gabled and turreted Victorian building or a small thatched cottage. The French and Italians are more sensual and intelligent with food, but the English-speaking world historically fed itself well, with the different ethnic groups expressing their ties to the past and their connection to land and sea in their own ways. Meat pies, biscuits, fresh cheeses, simple vegetables, homemade breads with fresh butter, broiled fish, roast potatoes - these are all traditional British and American soul food. In Victorian times, even a humble, middle class family might put a white tablecloth on the table for a weeknight dinner of any of these simple things.

One in three Americans is now obese and the country’s disastrous weight gain parallels the growth in convenience foods. I disagree with those who think large numbers of people can stay in good health on fast food that is lower in carbohydrates or healthier in other ways. There can be better fast food and it doesn’t need to be as devastating as it is, but fast food will always be incapacitating. People forget how to fend for themselves and lose a sense of their own physical environment, even their own bodies.

“Animals eat; only man dines,” said the cooknook author Isabella Beeton. What we eat makes us who we are:

The nation which knows how to dine has learnt the leading lesson of progress. It implies both the will and the skill to reduce to order, and surround with idealisms and graces, the more material conditions of human existence; and wherever that will and skill exist, life cannot be wholly ignoble.

Laura Wood #fundie thinkinghousewife.com

A GROUP of Catholic nuns began a well-funded bus tour yesterday to campaign for more federal monies for the poor. While the most vulnerable members of society suffer the ravages of the sexual revolution and the loss of the sacred, these leftist sisters of mercy insist what people need most is government charity. Confirming the image of America’s religious sisters as political hucksters, these nuns are committed to a desacralized society. Pray for these foolish revolutionaries. They know not what they do. Their minds have been steeped in Kumbaya.

Laura Wood #fundie thinkinghousewife.com

Bring back tea parties, please. Girls getting together to celebrate the girl bond with over-the-top partying and pampering seems so much forced fun and desperate escape. I recently met a middle-aged woman who was going on a cruise with dozen or so other women her age. Mind you, they didn’t represent an organization that was gathering around a cause. I could understand that. They were just having a girl vacation and leaving their families behind. It sounded dreadful. Women aren’t meant to travel in packs.

[later comment]

Yes, it is important for women to socialize with each other and it is good for them to get away from their families if they do it in the right spirit. I wasn’t referring to things like lunches out or baby showers. I’m talking about hedonistic girl gatherings.

My mother never expressed a desire to vacation without her husband or her children. I’m sure she wouldn’t have chosen a trip with twelve friends when we were young. A few friends maybe.

Laura Wood #fundie thinkinghousewife.com


WHEN Sally Ride was set to fly on the space shuttle Challenger in 1983 and thus become the first woman in space, Gloria Steinem said, “Millions of little girls are going to sit by their television sets and see they can be astronauts, heroes, explorers and scientists.”

This was of course a ridiculous statement. How many little girls had ever wanted to be astronauts? About as many who longed to be soldiers or fighter pilots. In other words, very few. Steinem’s real point, in keeping with her intense dislike of women, was that women should want to be astronauts and there was something wrong with them if they didn’t.

Ride, who had a warm, radiant smile and is said to have served ably in her two missions in space, died Monday at the age of 61. For all the fanfare that once surrounded it, Ride’s story will likely fade into history and her life ultimately inspire very few girls. This will be so not only because women do not excel at space science or the physical demands of space travel as men do but also because, as Ride’s obituary proved, she did not lead a full life. Ride was in a lesbian relationship with a childhood friend for 27 years.

To her credit, Ride did not make her lesbianism public and was private about her personal life in general. Her sister and the woman with whom she had a relationship, Tam O’Shaughnessy, have released the information to the world and now Ride has the double distinction of being both the first woman and the first lesbian in space. O’Shaughnessy was Ride’s friend since the age of 12. Ride was briefly married to another astronaut, but they were divorced. So while Ride accomplished much in her career, thanks in part to the spirit of affirmative action, she seems to have never fully emerged from childhood.

The only good reason for a normal woman to go through the grueling rigors of becoming an astronaut is that NASA is a great place to meet men. Ride’s life, however, does not even offer that slim hope to little girls, that wonderful compensation for dreary days in a control cabin. Ride flew into space but never experienced other thrills that are as great or far greater. She never gave a man such necessary and life-sustaining love that he was able to do great things, such as fly into space. She never looked up at the stars with her own children and encouraged their wonder. She did not pass on her love of space to a son or daughter or grandchild.

Though she performed capably in her public position as a Role Model of the Century, Sally Ride’s example will likely be the exact opposite of what NASA and Gloria Steinem predicted. She will serve as a reminder of at least some of the very good reasons why women don’t want to be astronauts. The vast majority of women would sooner love an astronaut than be one. And given that most men are destined to perform inglorious jobs for most of their lives, women will come to see that the dream of conquering space rightly belongs to men.

Matthew H. #fundie thinkinghousewife.com

The movies that Hollywood puts out today are often decadent and evil. They glorify sadism, depravity, and nihilistic violence. They are modern-day versions of the Roman games.

Hollywood isn’t just making crap; it is degrading characters that used to be good and decent. Batman used to be a worthy superhero instead of a sick freak. The 1960's Batman was clean and wholesome. The show was campy and juvenile, too, but it wasn’t a study in abnormal psychology. Batman was an honest and true hero, not an angry recluse fighting his “inner demons.”

Hollywood is tearing the fabric of our civilization. Pop culture is an important and powerful thing, it isn’t just “entertainment.” For a lot of people, it’s really important. Their families have been destroyed, they don’t go to church, the community institutions that used to bind people to one another have faded away or been forcibly broken up — to these people, pop culture isn’t just light amusement; it has real meaning. In many cases they have little else.

It kills me that a mainstream movie like Dark Knight Rising is a horror show of sadism and decadence. The release of a new blockbuster movie used to be a fun, and largely positive, thing. Whether it was the new Star Wars movie, Rocky III, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, etc., these movies were festive and fun.

But the Boomers changed all that. Starting in the early 1990’s, with The Terminator, the movies became “dark” and started to feature orgies of sadistic violence and killing. In my opinion, the Batman movies are the worst of the lot. I have always been repelled by them.

I am sorry for the kids who went to see this trash, and of course I am deeply sorry for those killed. They didn’t know any better – they are victims of our decadent and depraved popular culture. They were raised in a moral wasteland and don’t know any better than to celebrate movies like this. It is terrible that they were killed, they were just innocent kids. But Hollywood is doing an evil thing by putting out movies like this.

The sick freak who did this was incited by the movie. It spoke to him because it is sick and twisted, just like he is. He wouldn’t have done this at a showing of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Maybe he still would have become a murderer, but he would not have identified so strongly with the movie. I believe that movies like this create guys like that. There will always be troubled people, but school shootings and massacres by lone gunmen are a relatively new phenomenon. If the culture was healthier, guys like this would probably not fall so far. If their home lives were messed up, they’d find solace in something else. They certainly wouldn’t have their sick fantasies excited by “mainstream” entertainment like the new Batman movie.

But in our atomized and decadent culture of today, no one stops them from sinking into depravity and insanity; on the contrary, they are bombarded with images of torture and cruelty and death everywhere they go. So yes, I do blame the movie for the deaths of those kids.

Laura Wood #fundie thinkinghousewife.com

Female writers have done so much in the last two hundred years to destroy the things that are most important to ordinary women that a case is to be made for a period of prolonged female silence similar to the days when the best women authors wrote with male pseudonyms. As a female writer, I would happily oblige if it meant that the vast majority of feminist harpies would retire or perhaps start a writers’ colony on a deserted island.

Laura Wood #fundie thinkinghousewife.com

IF WOMEN knew the truth about the causes of breast cancer, would they behave with such silliness and immodesty at breast cancer fundraising events such as the recent Moonwalk in London? Would they be so enthusiastic about supporting the organizations that are, if not lying to them, at least consistently downplaying the truth?

The truth is, feminism causes breast cancer.

Abortion, delayed childbearing, childlessness, lack of breastfeeding, the birth control pill – many medical experts agree these phenomena, all abundantly supported by feminists, are connected to the striking increase in breast cancer in Western women.

Laura #sexist thinkinghousewife.com

If all this is true, what are these women protesting? As I said, they are frightened. There is such a thing as rape, and they cannot process that reality. They have no way of understanding or making sense of it – and so they protest against it, hoping that outrage alone will make it go away. They want a world in which rape does not occur. Such a thing is not possible. However, there is a way to gain safety. A woman can protect herself against rape not by staging protests, especially protests defending sluttiness, but by earning the protection of good men. Men protect women against men. The sensible woman’s path in a dangerous world is to earn the protection of good men.

Laura #fundie thinkinghousewife.com

There will always be a minority of women who dislike being mothers. They are freaks of nature. They are not necessarily to be blamed for their lack of maternal feelings. But they are to be blamed for celebrating abnormality. Rizzuto, like her feminist sisters, complains that society has standards for mothers at all.

Laura Wood #fundie thinkinghousewife.com

Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon poses here with the newborn baby of her lover, Christine Marinoni. The Daily Mail refers to the baby, who was born last week, as the couple’s son, expecting readers to swallow nonsense whole and slide down the rabbit hole of artificially-created insanity without raising the slightest objection or cry for help.

Nixon, who plays an emotionally sterile wife in the Sex and the City movie, says, “I’m just a woman in love with another woman.”

Despite her madonna-like pose in this photograph, Nixon is a typical anti-mother of our times, a person who has violated the most basic terms of motherhood.

Homosexual “parents” are similar to the Baba Yagas of ancient fairy tales who stalked children in the woods. They may not have pointy noses or broomsticks. They may not live in tiny cabins surrounded by fences made of human bones. But they are just as hostile to the young, snatching away their innocence and security, stealing them from their tiny cradles. Deliberately to deprive a child of a father, to arrange his conception the way one might arrange a major purchase, to raise him in a home without a man, cut off from half his kin and exposed to the shame of having two “mothers,” is nothing less than child abuse.

What has happened to the hearts of lesbians? They are shriveled and turned to stone.

Laura Wood #racist thinkinghousewife.com

EVERY YEAR, since 1957, Queen Elizabeth II has delivered a televised Christmas message. A comparison of her first address from Sandringham with this year’s message is a study in contrasts and the downward slide of the British monarchy. In the first message, a sober 31-year-old queen reflects on the unsettling pace of technological change and warns of grave moral peril. The habits and principles of the British people, upon which the commonwealth relies, are in danger.

In last month’s message, the Queen makes no mention of moral decline, though 1957 seems innocent and virtous by comparison. She praises team sports, which she equates with the King James Bible as a vehicle for bringing about world harmony. The speech includes video clips which suggest the most talented and promising people in Britain and the commonwealth are black. Soccer, not a moral and upright people, is the answer for multicultural Britain. Well, what else can the Queen say? Everything she feared might happen in 1957 has come true.

David Lee Mundy #fundie thinkinghousewife.com

A Fairy Warning

"During our recent trip back to the states, we made a visit to Disney World. Of course my young daughters wanted to meet the princesses. Not all the princesses, mind you, since they’ve never seen “The Little Mermaid,” “Aladdin,” “Mulan,” etc. We explained, to the consternation of our immediate family, that we don’t watch those movies because those girls are not modest and don’t obey their fathers.

The line to meet the princesses was surprisingly short. The longer line was for meeting the fairies. To one unfamiliar with the fairy phenomenon, it was shocking. Who would want to meet a fairy over a princess? But apparently that’s the way these days.

I asked my immediate family, “What sort of role model is a fairy?” They flit capriciously about pursuing their own self interests. They aren’t burdened with responsibilities or any concerns beyond the moment. Princesses, meanwhile, are expected to marry princes as well as to bear and raise offspring.

I tried to explain in greater detail but was pointedly told to shut up and enjoy the ride. And, I guess that about sums up our impression of America after a four-year absence."

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