I write in hopes of fostering a world where women can adequately support themselves before marriage, after divorce or being widowed or in place of marrying a man, among other goals.
I got married at age nineteen to another nineteen year old and we didn't have much to start with. I had a traditional marriage where two people are partners because they marry young and start with nothing and build a life together AND I got divorced because I was diagnosed with a deadly genetic disorder and my ex husband agreed with planet Earth that people like me don't get well.
I'm the statistical outlier who saw something else, so I divorced him to save my life. I'm not even angry that he agreed with all of medical science and doctors, though I got vastly better, suggesting I'm right.
If I hadn't gotten divorced and experienced firsthand how shockingly hard it is to try to make it as a woman in a man's world, I would probably be all "I think this is FINE. It seems to work just FINE if you are a good person and play by the rules."
At least until later when I might have eventually changed my mind, but probably too late to have any hope of fixing MY LIFE.
Because I think heteronormative culture shafts most women financially, sooner or later. Divorce shafted me sooner than being widowed likely would have but last I checked women typically outlive their husbands and typically spend their final years living in poverty no matter how comfortable life was while he was still alive.
My writing is NOT intended to justify abusers abusing people.
My writing is NOT intended to suggest that it's understandable for a woman to marry well under circumstances that boil down to her abusing him because she's only after his money and doesn't actually care about him.
What you leave out covers the fact that I mostly try to not harp on a long list of things that fall under "Awful people hear only what they want to hear and intentionally twist your words no matter how carefully you say it."
Child Abusers Lie links to a couple of pieces about the fact that abusers abuse people, also written by me.
Access and Opportunity is a piece about how child molesters victimize specific children because they CAN due to having opportunity. If you are a well-heeled man, let me suggest Nutrient Dense and some best practices for reducing the need for women's work at home so you feel less desperate to remarry post divorce or whatever because you can take care of yourself to some reasonable degree.
The F Word is about fraud within marriage. If you are a woman and didn't realize you were gay when you married well because the only thing you find EXCITING about a man is a big income, I'm for the decriminalization of prostitution and if you uphold your end of the bargain, not my business.
But my writing is NOT intended to say "You have a RIGHT to be ANGRY and take it out on the man paying your bills! Plus anyone else you run into and feel like crapping on!"
If you CHOOSE to marry well as your easy button answer for having a materially comfortable life, well, uphold your end of the deal. You know that includes cooking, cleaning and SEX.
If you have a problem with that, make OTHER choices. There are plenty of people in the world with vastly harder circumstances, such as living someplace where being gay is illegal.
I have some suggestions for them, too, and, no, it doesn't involve taking advantage of a hard working man and then being an abusive bitch to him because YOU don't want to admit you are gay and don't actually want to WORK for a living.
This blog is in part about having character even though I'm a woman. It's IN THE TITLE. Please don't pretend I never said that and act like my writing is somehow justification for YOUR shit.
Other people may see it as a feminist space, but I don't much use the word feminist because I feel that's a word that describes women trying to have male coded careers. I'm trying to develop ideas like A Female Pattern Career Plan.
Although done as a comedy, the 1980 film 9 to 5 ends with an idealistic work scenario showing disabled people, women and others thriving at work because three women secretly took over after more or less accidentally kidnapping their "sexist pig" boss.
It's a COMPLETELY unrealistic movie of radical change on a very short time scale. It's the kind of change that typically takes decades to make happen, not weeks or months.
But it's sort of a shorthand capsule of what I'm working towards, while realizing that like Susan B. Anthony -- who died in 1906, fourteen years before women got the right to vote that she worked towards -- I'm unlikely to see those results within my lifetime.
I'm seriously handicapped and my dream is to adequately support myself via paid work without being a sex worker or marrying well as my solution and writing is something I am capable of doing in spite of my challenges in life.
If you value my work, please pay me.