Darcy Lockman at The Atlantic warns wives against the danger of feeling gratitude in Mothers Shouldn’t Be Grateful for Their Husbands’ Help
Gratitude is a brand of benevolent sexism, a force that repels change. To offer thanks for whatever contributions men happen to make reinforces the implicit idea that parenting is women’s work, that 65/35 is a very fine place to stop. For too long, women have paid for this imbalance with their well-being—financially, emotionally, existentially. Only once gratitude is relinquished for righteous anger will gender rules in this realm be rewritten. Then we can land somewhere different: not grateful, only glad.
H/T The Question
Gratitude and thankfulness are amazing in what they do for the grateful person. Just telling God what you are thankful for can lift your spirits immensely.
No wonder people that hate God hate gratitude.
In a similar vein, I have used the “why are you being miserly?” question on my wife on occasion and it definitely caused a reaction. She didn’t like hearing I thought she was being that way.
It’s deep programming for women to think like this Atlantic writer nowadays. If I have my three kids solo, and some random woman compliments me on watching them, my wife always reacts with indignation when she hears about it. “I never get compliments and I have the kids most of the time!”
I do compliment her on a job well done at home. Not over the top, but she responds well to acknowledgement.
I do what I can to counterprogram my daughters.
Since ungratefulness is the opposite of joy, this explains alot.
Biblically speaking, it really should not a partnership at all to raise the children (or anything else). It is that Dad’s work, the Dad’s mission. The wife should be his helper in this and whatever other tasks he needs help to be done. She is to do what he asks. And he should be grateful to her for the help.
If my wife thanks me for helping, I always correct her and point out that it is my work and she is helping me. When she cleans the house, I thank her for cleaning my house.
I am not helping her. She is helping me. It is an important distinction.
My wife is thankful, and also (in general) happy. I think these two things go hand in hand.
Or to agree with @Chris Nystrom, ungratefulness is the enemy of joy.
I pity these women who are actively *trying* not to be thankful. But this is what you’re forced into as an atheist. Chesterton puts it this way: “The worst moment for an atheist is when he is really thankful and has no one to thank.”
Her attitude makes perfect Feminist sense.
Who is grateful to an Automatic Teller Machine for providing cash on demand? Who is grateful to a vending machine for delivering a bottle of liquid? Who is grateful to a rented mule for carrying a huge load that strains its back?
As their slogan says: “Feminism is the radical notion that women are people” ( and men are not.)
“Ungrateful feminist” is a redundancy.
I don’t think I can agree, I mean pastors give thanks all the time…. for women, to women…
Restore the patriarchy, restore Christianity.
Yes women, don’t be grateful, instead be full of spite and anger. That’s sure to work. Please, give me moar!
You can help Darcy, and females like her, out by NEVER giving them ANY reason to be grateful whatsoever. Nip this problem in the bud. Are you listening Darcy? 🙂
NotaBene says:
June 18, 2019 at 12:40 pm
My wife is thankful, and also (in general) happy. I think these two things go hand in hand.
******************************************************
Mine too. One of the things that attracted me to her after she introduced herself to me was that she was so happy and had one of those 1,000 watt smiles. She still does.
And she still thanks me even for the littlest things.
This reminds me of a funny story.
I remember going out on a double-date with a college buddy of mine.
We were listening to some music in the car on the way to the restaurant. He and I were talking about together about the rock band Seven Mary Three, and a new released song of theirs called “Waters Edge” which was about a tragic kidnapping, rape and murder case of a female victim in a small town. A year or so after Soul Asylum released “Runaway Train”.
In the car, the girls commandeered that entire topic and conversation, as they are apt to do from time to time.
Girlfriend#1: “Oh yes. That is is such a sad song. Have you read the lyrics??”.
Girlfriend#2: “OMG, yeah, I now. It’s just evil! God, that there are monsters like that out there…so creepy!. And I just hate apathy!”
Girlfriend#1: “Yeah, apathy is just terrible! God, I hate when people are apathetic!”
The two of them then looked over at my friend, Paul, as he was the one who introduced the unsavory subject in the first place.
Paul never failed to introduce levity at every opportunity he could, and with perfect timing.
His hands on the steering wheel, eyes on the road, deadpan:
Paul: “Yeah, you know, I just really couldn’t care less about things like that!”
Girlfriend #1 & #2: (in stereo) “You f*&k@ng asshole!!!!!!” And GF1 punched his right arm.
I just died laughing.
Women in general tend to have a huge blind spot for common sense and even the most elementary examples of cause-and-effect for human behavior. All the more remarkable when you consider the male-female distribution of students of psychology.
If women are going to revoke common courtesy and genuine gratitude toward men, then they should not be at all surprised when apathy and indifference pervade. This is already happening frankly. And enough women are only now starting to panic about it.
@Chris Nystrom us correct about a man’s mission. Also, speaking anecdotally and from experience, the far side of support is not gratitude or gladness. When man offers not 35/65 or even 50/50 but, say 80/20 or 90/10 “support,” the wages of that choice are not paid in gratitude or gladness but in resentment, lost respect, lower perceived status, divorce, shared custody, and a new step-father. Better for father and child for him to really own it.
I liked what you said @Chris Nystrom
I do agree with the previous comments.
The interesting thing about gratitude it that if you already have it within you for the world outside of you, there is nothing quite like it.
The other great thing is that you can call gratitude into existence -if you want it.
It doesn’t matter if your flight got delayed and everything thing is going to shit.
Having gratitude – from meditation, prayer and reflection – I consider it a superpower.
You feel really good inside.
I rather doubt you would even notice all of the negative Darcys surrounding you.
AR,
You should be grateful that ATM or vending machine existed and could meet your need/desire. You don’t have to worship something to be grateful.
Far more women would be happy in life if they were grateful however. Too many take your view that they should expect/demand what they receive, not that they should be grateful for it.
Going to bet she’s also often at least a little bit of a bitch toward people she considers beneath her like clerks, baristas, etc.
Yesterday I reread David Stove’s essay on the Intellectual inferiority of the Female Sex. Along the way he observed that nature has a ‘just so’ propensity. Swift animals do not have great protection, strong animals are less fast and so on. Likewise he observed the two sexes have different abilities. Raising children which seems to come so naturally to women does not require great brainpower but chasing down and capturing food that does not want to be eaten requires cunning and skill. Good luck then I say to Miss Lockman in overturning at the request of the leftist elite who employ her millenia of evolution.
Sexism I observe from Google Ngram is a word unknown to literature before 1970 and has apparently been declining in usage since the mid-nineties. I am always suspicious of words and concepts that popped up only yesterday. Indeed, Gender was a word that always related not to person but to language. The misuse and invention of terms unknown to the Greeks, the Romans, the Christians and Shakespeare should always incline one to the view that the wool is being pulled over ones eyes and for nefarious purposes.
Women like Lockman talk of equality but their equality looks a lot more like unaccountable privilege. We men might of course just take women like Miss Lockman at face value and withdraw all that support.
Countless times, I’ve seen women fuss and cluck around in a house when their husband is relaxing on a Saturday afternoon. This is so they can drive up the percentages from 65/35 to about 90/10. The husband is watching ball and all of a sudden it’s time to clean the grooves in the window panes or something. This is to max out indignation and be angry in what they see is a justified way. It’s pure hostility but the three hours of pointless busy work allows them to be hostile in a cognitive comfort zone. The man was a pig for watching TV and relaxing, meanwhile they are heroes both overthrowing and being victimized by the patriarchy. Victimhood and heroism being synonymous states these days. Housework is an easy, relaxing and relatively brief activity when it is not being used as a seed planted for divorce.
The husband is watching ball and all of a sudden it’s time to clean the grooves in the window panes or something. This is to max out indignation and be angry in what they see is a justified way.
Two things come to mind:
First, “emotional roller coaster”, there is a real dopamine hit for many women in being obnoxious this way. Providing the emotional roller coaster in some other way will often satisfy that need, leading to less obnoxious behavior.
Second, “fitness test”, a man who resists the orders of Old Bossy / Old Yeller and does so with humor & an attitude of amused mastery will become more attractive to the woman.
Some women can be taught to control their mean streak, but it takes constant reinforcement by the teacher…
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Here is another miserly wife. She states that it is wrong to give her husband sex as a gift. No love, everything is transactional for her:
“Let’s be clear: I’m no stranger to bargaining with my husband. We negotiate with each other on a daily basis. If he changes our baby’s diaper, I’ll walk our dog. If he cooks dinner, I’ll wash the dishes. If he picks up wine on his way home from work, I’ll brush our child’s teeth.”
https://www.romper.com/p/no-i-most-certainly-do-not-owe-my-husband-sex-for-fathers-day-64568
My understanding of the way God ultimately controls history is that He permits wicked people and wicked movements a certain amount of leeway because he is ultimately using them to open up the possibility of building something greater.
So what good thing might arise out of feminism? (Assuming civilisation survives it at all.)
Here’s my guess: it is that, without the necessity of promising to do so and without the need for social shame, wives will learn to obey their husbands.
And if this happens there’ll be scope for real gratitude when they perceive they’re being treated fairly.
@Bee: Correct. That kind views sex as transactional rather than affirmational (e.g. pleasure and positive reinforcement for both the man and the woman). Sadly, many men do too.
@Bee:
Ms. Miser’s husband probably asked for a car, then beer and wings, because he knew he dare not ask for sex. (See, he’d been trained over the last several years of marriage not to ask for that.)
Anyone besides me notice how all of this pious garbage reads like a news release from an authoritarian regime built on hate?
Evil has a certain “sound” to it: vicious, strident, and miserable, with a phony formality of language dressing up brutality to make it presentable. It seeks to spread its misery, preferably by force, disguised (“lipstick on a pig”) as virtue.
@constrainedlocus
“Women in general tend to have a huge blind spot for common sense and even the most elementary examples of cause-and-effect for human behavior.”
A woman I barely know, to whom I am not attracted, recently blasted me out of the blue: she (never-married, long past childbearing) is so overflowing with love that it requires a worthy man, and I ain’t it.
Cause and effect time: my objective worthiness notwithstanding, I’m guessing she has no idea how many “worthy” men she’s chased away.
So, Darcy Lockman, Us men are now expected to wife you up and get no gratitude for doing so? Let’s see: My pay cheque is shared, my freedom taken. I’m put under a regime of constant threat from the government through Family Law and the Domestic Violence industry, lose my home, my children and my future.
And for this, I get not the slightest bit of gratitude.
Okay, tell you what, I – in statistical numbers, won’t wife you or women like you, up. In that way, you’re happy and I’m happy. Deal?
It’s been said on this site before: Feminism has exposed Women’s true natures. We don’t have to pretend anymore.
Opus says:
June 18, 2019 at 3:30 pm
>I am always suspicious of words and concepts that popped up only yesterday. Indeed, Gender was a word that always related not to person but to language. The misuse and invention of terms unknown to the Greeks, the Romans, the Christians and Shakespeare should always incline one to the view that the wool is being pulled over ones eyes and for nefarious purposes.
http://paulgraham.com/say.html
Women lacking in gratitude? How exactly is this news to anybody?
Real news would’ve been a hack(ette) like Darcy Lockman who writes for a MSM rag showing gratitude, however passing and incidental, to a man. Granted, I’d never for a minute believe it to be sincere, but even the grudging instant would be newsworthy.
Anonymous Reader says:
June 18, 2019 at 12:44 pm
I think we have a thread winner!
The truth is they build no objects that exist in the physical world. If they had gratitude for what men do they would sée a world completely built by men and not them showing them the total con of feminism. They leave home every day recieve monies yet basically do nothing. They live in home yet have zero ability to build or repair. They all drive cars none can replace a tire.
Women used to have a world that received lots of gratitude and men did not understand. It was cooking they have nearly completely abandonded this. Men blow women out of the water cooking now. If a guy at work tells me my wife cooked this i immediately have a negative reaction from my whole life experience. No thanks i dont want my afternoon ruined with the taste of a half ass prepared meal stuck to the roof of my mouth i didnt bring a tooth brush today.
Most men i know if they tell me hey come over for a beer and my wifes cooking, i am not coming over! I cant lie to them oh tastes great. They intentionally cook garbage to show how feminist they are.
This is a little off-topic, but I noticed something this Father’s Day. People on Facebook are thanking their single mothers for acting as fathers, because their fathers were absent from their lives.
I searched online and there’s a number of articles written about this topic on the usual feminist websites:
https://www.scarymommy.com/happy-fathers-day-single-moms/
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/happy-fathers-day-to-mom_b_3431043
https://www.theodysseyonline.com/happy-fathers-day-to-my-single-mother
https://thoughtcatalog.com/mariah-lawson/2016/06/a-thank-you-letter-to-my-mom-on-fathers-day/
https://thoughtcatalog.com/shari-baldie/2017/06/happy-fathers-day-mom/
Gratitude is all about good manners. And good manners don’t cost you a damn thing.
@locustsplease said: The truth is they build no objects that exist in the physical world
Perhaps some women for the past 75 years built no objects that existed in the physical world. Their loss. For thousands of years prior to that, women did indeed create objects that existed in the physical world. I grant you that they were and are not generally the same objects that men made, but they were still objects, and they still existed, and they were useful to folks other than the maker. Much of this female industry still goes on in third-world countries, and some in first-world countries.
Women and men are different. That is a good thing. Men make the objects that they make and women make the objects that they make, and they are not the same. And it is good that they are not the same. Why would we need two different sexes if they both made exactly the same things?
Doilies; afghans; quilts; clothing worn by boys, girls, men, women, and some dogs. Canned fruits and vegetables; candles; tablecloths; wicker baskets; persian rugs; jewelry; play dolls; potato salad; mincemeat pie; goose-down pillows. Other people.
@ Nystrom
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard this particular line of reasoning. The first time was from a pastor. You would be (or maybe not) surprised how close this is to “servant leadership”. It takes very little time for a woman and her white knigits to make the intellectual leap to “well, its all your job and I’m just your helper, right? You should get right to it then. I´ll be sitting on the couch. Bring me another bowl of ice cream.”
Bee: Here is another miserly wife. She states that it is wrong to give her husband sex as a gift. No love, everything is transactional for her
She sees her husband as a classic Beta Provider. Were she marred to an Alpha, she’d want to have sex with him. But as she dislikes sex with her Beta Provider, he must provide some other value for it.
@Dylan Sexton
That is a great link. Even so I believe both Copernicus and Galileo were wrong. Have you ever seen curved water? If you fly from London to Los Angeles you fly over Greenland and the snowy wastes of Canada and down the western side of the U.S.A. rather than across the Atlantic and across America which is what one might expect from a globe earth. On a flat map however the route one takes makes perfect sense as the shortest route. Some beliefs such as flat earth as the linked article indicate merely provide amusement – one is assumed to just be a bit odd – others however have true believers reaching for their pistol.
Gratitude is linked to happiness. I.guess this explains why I’ve never met a happy feminist.
I think we might be blaming hypergamy in a lot of cases for the poison that comes from the distinct lack of gratitude. Hypergamy has always been with us. Men and women always want to mate as high up as they can and are tempted to leave when a much better offer comes along. We’ve seen that for all of recorded history. What we have not seen is the extreme bitterness and resentment that comes with feminism.
People who have little or no gratitude often tend to simply discount their blessings and focus enviously on the best things out there. That’s what a lot of women are essentially doing. Yes, hypergamy and solipsism are aggravating factors, but when you get down to it most of the women that get complained about in the manosphere have a lot in common in their attachment to resentment (and even bitterness) and rejection of gratitude as a core part of who they want to be.
It’s depressing to see how common this Atlantic writer’s attitude has become. My wife and I thank each other and compliment each other all the time. Feminists think that they have to be as abrasive as possible, that nothing short of unpleasantness will “work.”
Here is another miserly wife. She states that it is wrong to give her husband sex as a gift. No love, everything is transactional for her:
I’ve been acquainted with two women with such attitudes whom God saw fit to teach lessons to by taking away from them, by means of “the Grim Reaper,” the husbands they neglected, mistreated, and took for granted (what a merciful blessing from a loving God! The old joke about husbands dying before their wives do because they want to comes mind). In both cases the abrupt change in attitude was remarkable, once the reality of their loss set in (I also confess to feeling a powerful sense of Schadenfreude toward both women).
Far be it from me to give advice to the Almighty, but taking blessings away from the Ungrateful and Rebellious (rather than simply withholding them) is a disciplinary technique that seems greatly underutilized.
So what good thing might arise out of feminism? (Assuming civilisation survives it at all.)//
When the hordes of diversity are ransacking most all of Western civilization the only women that survive will be those with a strong husband to protect them. Only then will the foolishness of feminism be apparent to these women.
This goes both ways, if she never thanks you, by words or other means for your sacrifices and/or work, make sure you are equally miserly with your gratitude to her. I think that most will know this is a blantant double standard, and she will not accept it as men are forced to, in the least.
When the hordes of diversity are ransacking most all of Western civilization the only women that survive will be those with a strong husband to protect them.
Eh, not how things have gone historically at all. Women are a resource to the invaders. The men get killed, and male children — females get preserved, and either raped or forced into slavery/slave marriages. They survive. Women are also wired to adapt to this scenario given how prevalent it was in the violent past that was plagued by inter-tribal warfare — see Rollo Tomassi’s writings about “war brides” for example. Women generally survive that kind of thing for the most part — the men get wiped out, though.
When the hordes of diversity are ransacking most all of Western civilization the only women that survive will be those with a strong husband to protect them.
Rather melodramatic image. The reality is different. Women can and will bond with abductors.
https://infogalactic.com/info/Stockholm_syndrome
Here is a pointer to Rollo’s brief essay on “War Brides”
https://therationalmale.com/2011/10/03/war-brides/
Women are not men with boobs. Their survival strategies are not at all the same as men’s, and studies of maternal DNA (mtDNA) prove it.
Nothing personal, this is just how things are.
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Women are a resource to the invaders. The men get killed, and male children — females get preserved, and either raped or forced into slavery/slave marriages.
There was a great scene in season 2 of Game of Thrones. The queen and her ladies are hiding in the castle dungeon while a battle rages outside. A guard has been posted. He’s there to kill the queen and ladies if they should lose the battle. That way, the enemy won’t have them.
It’s mentioned at the 45″ mark.
It’s a very unsentimental and Machiavellian scene. It shows that lords would sometimes have their own ladies killed to prevent them from falling into enemy hands.
This is early Game of Thrones, before it became corrupted with magic, feminism, and kick-ass warrior women.
Clemsnman,
When the hordes of diversity are ransacking most all of Western civilization the only women that survive will be those with a strong husband to protect them.
False. You want to create a world where whiteknighting is valued. It will not happen, particularly when they can take the husband’s resources via alimony and CS.
Only then will the foolishness of feminism be apparent to these women.
False again. This is extremely blue-pill thinking on your part. You have zero knowledge of female psychology.
For starters, women are quick to switch sides when it becomes obvious that the invaders are winning.
For example, US cuckservatives started the ‘War on Terror’ under the expectation that women were so oppressed by Islam (the religion they were under for 1300 years) that Islamic women would be extremely grateful to US cuckservatives for liberating them. When no such gratitude was forthcoming, cuckservatives were baffled, but still did not re-evaluate their beliefs.
This one appears to have taken Darcy’s advise. She’s not grateful for nothing. Man up boys. Who’s going to man up this one? The pastors want you to.
I actually clicked on the Atlantic link and was then invited to read the article, “What Ruth Bader Ginsburg Taught Me About Being a Stay at Home Dad.”
Parody is just impossible nowadays.
I’d also like to point out that women are much, MUCH more miserable, depressed, suicidal, and medicated than at any known point in American history. And the downward trend started in the late 60s and early 70s with radical feminism. “Okay, so we’ve screwed ourselves up and we all hate our lives and want to die…but let’s forge ahead with even more radical feminism and erasure of gender roles! Surely we will ‘land somewhere different; not grateful, only glad.'”
@Isaac
For a decade, circumstances forced me to live in places where “woke” women were the rule. All of them were miserable; almost all were either on anti-depressants, or openly wished they were.
The few traditional-family women didn’t need chemicals. Many seemed to thrive and derive tremendous joy from husbands, children, and domestic lives.
But joy is poison, these days. Happiness means betrayal of the sisterhood or whatever other SJW struggle you’re re supposed to be “down for.”
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Bee says: “Here is another miserly wife. She states that it is wrong to give her husband sex as a gift. No love, everything is transactional for her.”
I am only a lurker but isn’t this comment completely contradictory? How can you conclude that she considers sex transactional right after noting that she does NOT want to have a sexual interaction with him that is cast as her “giving” him “a gift?”
I read the link to try to figure out what I might be missing and her whole point is that she does not consider sex to be transactional.
To the “50/50” ladies:
OK, how about this: Let’s be like roommates. I’ll take care of myself, you take care of yourself. I’ll buy my food, prepare it, and clean up after myself, and you do the same (with your earnings.) Same with clothing and other property. Buy it yourself, wash it yourself, keep your things in order, and I’ll do the same with mine.
Pretty sure that this will make their heads explode, because the vast majority of the “housework” and “necessities” in any married household are for the benefit of the wife.
Not quite sure how to relate to “childcare”, but I have a feeling that these women would actually be quite reluctant to cede 50% of significant interactions with the kids to the man; just look at the custody battles. Women even in healthy marriages are always afraid that the father will come across as more “put together” and “cool” than her, and therefore monopolize the contact with the children as much as they can.
re: housework — note that women always make the fundamental assumption that everything THEY demand be done is necessary and of equal benefit to both spouses. In economic terms, we’re talking about utility. Since they assume equal utility, they ignore the benefit side and focus only on the “cost” side — how much work each person does.
But of course, men don’t get the same utility (benefit) from housework. Look how they live as bachelors. Once there is a very basic, low level of clean, they get no marginal utility from additional housework. When wives bitch that men aren’t doing “their share” of housework, what they are really complaining about is that husbands aren’t doing extra work that only benefits the wife.
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