Backlash! Part Deux:Your husband doesn’t have to earn your respect

Your husband doesn’t have to earn your respect - This is a blog post by Matt Walsh, which you should read before you read this, as I'm going to just jump right in.  All in all, I don't think I disagree with Walsh, just that we're coming at this thing from two different perspectives, with two different agendas.  He sees a chicken, and I see and egg, and it's anyone's guess how either one got there in the first place...let me explain:

The "all men are fat, witless, oafs sitcoms" are often panned by feminists, because these same sitcoms tend to:
a) Show an unattractive man with a smoking hot wife (demonstrating the gulf between the requirements for physical attractiveness between men and women), and
b) Perpetuate outdated gender roles, because now not only is the wife responsible for taking care of the children and the house, she is now also expected to take care of her husband, who does nothing but bring home money (and occasionally do some yard-work).
So she's not an alpha-bride, but an overworked subservient bride who has minimal control over her own life and exercises it.  The media's (and, chicken/egg-ly, general culture's) shift toward portraying men as children that must be cared for is just another part of the ongoing backlash against feminism.  For all it seems like this attitude is elevating women, it's really just as degrading to the women as it is to the men - it's hardly different from the Victorian notion of the "Angel in the Household."
(Also, there are an increasing number of people arguing that childhood is a social construction designed to keep women from attaining equal status, because the care of our youth is Just Too Important.  I'm really skeptical of this one, since how you raise your kids is important, but then again, I also recognize that in other times and cultures, children are/have been given more responsibility [including jobs of their own], left to their own devices, raised by professional strangers, etc, and generally grown up to be normal, reasonable adults - and then again, today's kids have seen a 20 pt increase in IQ in just the past few years, probably due to the way we're paying more attention to them.  BUT ANYWAY...)

In Defense of Fandom

Alright so JK Rowling just came out and said that Hermione should have ended up with Harry.  This piece of news has caused the entire internet to collectively lose its shit.  All that shit it had?  Gone.

Now, there have been debates concerning whether anyone cares at all (since the books weren't about romance, but about heroism) and whether this is sort of anti-feminist (relegating Hermione to a "prize" [standard fantasy female treatment] and condemning her to a life playing second-fiddle to Mr. Back-from-the-dead-Chosen-One).  Fandom melts into a pool of, "I told you so!"s, "No!  It can't be!"s, and "Team Harry and Luna forever!"s (I'm on board with that last, but shhh...it's a secret).  Then we get the flare up of, "OMG fandoms, you don't own shit, you're so entitled! Saying you made things better is wrong and bad."

Historically, I've been on the side of the elitists.  The heavy lifting's been done by the author, and the universe wouldn't exist without them, so for someone to come along and expand that universe, in whatever fashion, and claim that they have done something creative seems incredibly lazy.  I was as appalled as everyone else over the 50 Shades phenomenon (I still am, actually, but for different reasons now).  However, after hearing more interviews with the author and seeing more of the fan universe of Harry Potter, I've begun to change my mind.  (As usual, the lead-up to this post has little to do with my actual thoughts, but I'm explaining how I got to this head-space - by picking fights with the internet people in the comments sections of articles like this.)

Working with Our Hands

I've had 3 separate people tell me this week that I should write more often. Not on this blog, specifically, just writing in general. So I'm starting here. I've got a ton of ideas, so I just have to pick one.

Let's go with one that's been on my mind a lot: 1 Thess 4:11-12. I'll quote it here:

"...and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody."

This is a verse that comes up in the article I linked to in "Living the Life," and it's one I've been thinking about a lot lately. It's a verse that I think is particularly relevant in America today, because for all we like to proclaim (loudly) that we're being pushed out of the public sphere, we're really not. Yes, non-Christians are becoming more numerous and vocal, but to say that they're taking over is like a teenager literally believing that the playground equipment has shrunken since she was a child. Christians, in this country, still have POWER. Yet because we have power, and because we have always had it, we seem to think that we're entitled to it. "America is a Christian country!" we shout. We'll do whatever it takes to keep it that way.

BUT
It seems to me that increasingly, "whatever it takes" is meaning standing on corners with offensive signs, legislating other people's morality, shaming those we don't agree with, and generally making nuisances of ourselves. We think, "I'm doing God's work." Are we? Are we minding our own business? Are we working with our hands?