I Look Down On Women Who Troll Women With Husbands And Kids And I’m Not Sorry

CA01866As a woman, and as a woman with a husband and kids, and as the editor of a website dedicated to parents I am pretty familiar with click-bait. The other day Thought Catalog published an article that is easily recognizable as click bait, entitled I Look Down On Young Women And Kids And I’m Not Sorry. 

Ladies and gentlemen, ready your pitchforks. Grab your popcorn. Cue the feigned moral outrage.

The article is dumb, it’s just that simple, but it’s controversial enough that it will get everyone all up in arms and lead too all sorts of ragey comments like:

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I get where these readers are coming from. You can’t publish something like:

You will never have the time, energy, freedom or mobility to be exceptional if you have a husband and kids.

I hear women talk about how ”hard” it is to raise kids and manage a household all the time. I never hear men talk about this. It’s because women secretly like to talk about how hard managing a household is so they don’t have to explain their lack of real accomplishments. Men don’t care to ”manage a household.” They aren’t conditioned to think stupid things like that are ”important.”

And not get ragey comments.

As an editor, I think Amy Glass does a great job. She has a strong point of view and that view is unflinching. It’s also an unpopular point of view because it’s so damn misogynistic and hateful.

Amy gets an A for writing some rage-bait, and an F for her opinion.

It’s easy to be an asshole on the internet. I’m an asshole on the internet. As most writers can tell you, spewing a mess of bile is easy compared to writing something that has merit, that will make people think, that will change perceptions or make someone laugh or cry or call them to action towards all the bullshit injustice in the world.

Saying that women who choose to be moms and wives rather than being a doctor or an engineer are not as important as women who do choose those paths isn’t a new notion, it’s something that women contemplate and struggle with and face everyday. It’s something that women who are wives and moms, outside of any other path, have been guilted for and criticized for and negated for their entire married and child-raising lives.

We hear you Amy, but it’s not like we haven’t heard it a gazillion times before, by writers a lot more eloquent than you.

I love me some ragey click bait. I love scandalous ideas and train wrecks and car crash journalism as much as the next person with an Internet connection and some time to kill. And I think every woman should be allowed to have her opinion, no matter how “wrong” and misguided I feel their opinion is.

It’s fine that this writer doesn’t see raising a family as being valuable. As someone raising a family I feel differently. But I just can’t muster the energy to care about fighting this notion when I have laundry to do.

To me that’s a lot more important that arguing with someone bloviating on the internet.

(Image: getty images)

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