The Chelsea Handler Childless Woman Upset: Other Conservatives Wrongly Conflating Married Motherhood with Womanhood or Happiness, Meaning, Purpose

The Chelsea Handler Childless Woman Upset: Other Conservatives Wrongly Conflating Married Motherhood with Womanhood or with Happiness, Meaning, or Purpose

After entertainer Chelsea Handler uploaded (Link): a Tweet with a video of herself listing the numerous ways she enjoys life due to being childless – I didn’t see anything in the video mentioning abortion – a lot of other conservatives jumped to shame and scold Handler for being happy about being childless and publicly expressing that happiness.

Others have said that Handler had two or three abortions in the past. The fact that Handler previously had abortions does not change the substance of my problems with conservative reaction to Handler’s video.

I am pro-life, not pro-choice, so I don’t agree with Handler’s actions to terminate her pregnancies.

However, again, I don’t recall Handler’s “happy to be childless” video advocating abortion or mentioning anything about abortion.

I don’t think her video criticized or shamed women for being mothers or for wanting to be mothers.

The only possible, even remotely “anti motherhood” take away one can get from her video is that mothers – assuming they are good, non-abusive mothers – invest a lot of time in child-rearing, but Handler doesn’t frame it in an anti-motherhood way.

It’s Okay For Women to Be Childless at Any Age and to be Happy About Being Childless, Just Like It’s Okay For Mothers to Be Happy About Being Mothers

Handler was just showing ways she has more free time because she doesn’t have to participate in childcare – which is not the same thing as being “anti-motherhood,” or telling other women they are wrong to be mothers.

It’s perfectly fine for a woman to be single and childless and to be happy about it.

Women can and should find meaning and purpose apart from marriage and motherhood. It’s unhealthy for any person to wrap up all their happiness, meaning, or purpose into one identity, station of life, or role.

If you are a married mother, your children will grow up, move out, and seldom visit you once they’re gone. Your husband may develop dementia, abuse you, or cheat on you, so that you will be without emotional support or you will have to divorce him.
In all these situations, you will be left with yourself, by yourself, and god help you if you never forged purpose, identity, happiness, or meaning apart from a spouse and children.

There’s no reason to criticize or shame an adult, man or woman, for being single and childless and for being happy about it and posting about it.

My fellow conservatives often push motherhood (via podcasts, tweets, magazine articles, church sermons, blog posts, etc) to a loopy, creepy, fevered pitch, about how super awesome, fulfilling, and wonderful motherhood supposedly is – but goodness forbid a childless woman lists or publicizes the ways she’s happy with being childless – and do so without criticizing motherhood or mothers. That’s a huge double standard.

I also didn’t agree with Handler’s mockery of single women who choose to remain virgins until marriage or to remain chaste (I blogged about that (Link): here a few years ago).

Unfortunately, in the midst of criticizing Handler, a lot of conservatives today were conflating “womanhood” to married motherhood. 

However, a woman remains a woman regardless if she has a child or is infertile, childless, or childfree, or whether she wants to have children or not.

It’s Only A Culture War When the Right Does It by Matt Purple

It’s Only A Culture War When the Right Does It by M. Purple

(Link): It’s Only A Culture War When the Right Does It

Examples:

The New York Times says America’s battles are spreading to other countries

May 18, 2022
by Matt Purple

[The piece opens by discussing the polarization of the topic of transgenderism in Australia; the American paper The New York Times is upset that a Liberal (right of center) Aussie party member has spoken out against things like biological men being on women’s sports teams, etc.

American leftists, like those at The Times, like to believe that squabbling over social issues is unique to conservative Americans only, that social justice issues are of little to no concern to other nation’s conservative groups.]

…In the end, the left sighs, all it wants is for its cultural revolution to be accepted wholesale and for all opposition to be silenced.

The problem is that, first of all, none of this is true. … [The author cites how other nations have elected their own populist versions of Donald Trump, or have had similar protests in other nations that are similar to ones put forward by American conservatives in the United States.]

… Can it even be that some foreigners care as much about culture as we do and would like to have their democratic say?

Run with this stuff long enough and it starts to sound like an American chauvinism all its own. We are not the only country that has ever arched an eyebrow at a trans flag.

Chicago Church ‘Fasting from Whiteness’ During Lent by Ditching Hymns Written by White People

Chicago Church ‘Fasting from Whiteness’ During Lent by Ditching Hymns Written by White People

The following news story is an example in how far left liberals, Democrats, progressives (Christian and non) have ramped up the Culture Wars in the last few years.

It’s not just mainstream evangelicals, conservative Christians, or Republicans who are fighting the Culture Wars now – those groups, the conservatives, evangelicals, Republicans, etc, are now reacting to the Culture War issues STARTED BY, and maintained by, liberals and progressives.

Nothing says love and tolerance like shaming White people for being White – which is what progressives do constantly. (I’m being sarcastic. It’s odious and gross to shame White people for being White.)

If you want to build up Black people or (Link): Black culture by incorporating more Black-written hymns at your church, that is fine by me, but do not so so at the expense of other groups, such as Whites.

That anti-Racism garbage, where CRT promoters believe that being “anti-racism” (Link): means discriminating against White people (and doing so indefinitely!), is wrong.

Progressives keep wanting to shame White people for being White, until they then veer into their weird habit of depicting Black people as being White.

I refer to the progressive tendency to skip back and forth between defining “White” to mean “light skinned person” to defining “White” or “Whiteness” as being “Western culture and ideals,” or “disagreeing with Marxism and other far left views and far left hobby horses.”

This means, if a person with dark skin disagrees with far left politics, the far left deems that person “White adjacent.”

This is how we end up with some (Link): very bizarre news headlines where Black conservative or Black libertarian men and women are referred to by far left liberals as being “White.”

The following is shameful and antithetical to the Christian faith – but this is a relatively small to moderate problem of a much-larger problem with far left views about racism:

(Link): Chicago church ‘fasting from whiteness’ during Lent by ditching hymns written by White people

The church also reportedly erected a sign promoting the fast

by Andrew Mark Miller
April 2022

A church in suburban Chicago has told parishioners it will abstain from performing any music that is associated with White people during the season of Lent.

“In our worship services throughout Lent, we will not be using any music or liturgy written or composed by white people,” the website for the First United Church of Oak Park reads. “Our music will be drawn from the African American spirituals tradition, from South African freedom songs, from Native American traditions, and many, many more.”

The statement continues, “For Lent, it is our prayer that in our spiritual disciplines we may grow as Christians, united in the body of Christ with people of all ages, nations, races, and origins.”

I’m a Conservative Immigrant Ready to Challenge the Woke Left – and, No, I Won’t ‘Go Home’ by Helen Raleigh

I’m a Conservative Immigrant Ready to Challenge the Woke Left – and, No, I Won’t ‘Go Home’ by Helen Raleigh

(Link): I’m a Conservative Immigrant Ready to Challenge the Woke Left – and, No, I Won’t ‘Go Home’ by Helen Raleigh

Excerpts:

For those immigrants who reject its doctrine, the woke left has only detestation

by Helen Raleigh

The woke left has long professed that they love immigrants. But in truth, their love is conditioned on whether the immigrants accept its woke ideology. For those immigrants who reject its doctrine, the woke left has only detestation.

The Culture War is a Leftist Offensive

The Culture War is a Leftist Offensive

I am not in agreement with all opinions of this author on other subjects, but on this one, yes, I sure am.

Republicans and conservatives used to participate in the Culture Wars (I’ve spoken out against this in older posts on this blog, such as this one or this one from 2013),
but in the last few years, it’s been the left, the liberals, and the Democrats, and the “Never Trump” Republicans who have been initiating and perpetuating the Culture Wars in the United States – but they keep acting as though the evangelicals, the Trump voters, conservatives, or Republicans, are behind the Culture Wars.

(Link): The Culture War is a Leftist Offensive

Democrats have become more extreme on social issues, and they aren’t prepared for the backlash.

July 8, 2021
by Peggy Noonan

The word now is radicalized. So many people feel pushed to the edge and are pushing back.  Go to social-media sites and search “school board meeting” adding descriptors like “explosive,” “outrage” and “chaos.” Parents are rising up. New York Democrats just picked an anticrime former cop as their mayoral nominee.

Other signs that suggests a spirit of having been radicalized: Longtime alliances based on natural affinity are loosening.

Conservatives by nature support and respect the military. That’s changing among some of them, or at least becoming less reflexive, under the pressure of changes of political correctness and a woke brass.

… There’s a sense in America of a continuing political realignment, that it didn’t all start and end in 2015-2016.

I think that what happened last summer, when the streets erupted and statues toppled, is being answered now with a pushback – a quieter one but no less consequential.

…. [Author Kevin Drum wrote a recent editorial on his blog.]

He titled the piece bluntly: “If you hate culture wars, blame liberals.”

A Vaccine Or This Marriage: Conspiracy Theories Are Tearing Couples Apart

A Vaccine Or This Marriage: Conspiracy Theories Are Tearing Couples Apart

Ha ha ha haaaaa! And marriage-idolaters such as Al Mohler, and secular and Christian “pro nuclear family” organizations like to assure me, and try to brainwash me, to believe that marriage makes people more mature, giving, and ethical – and that it will “fix” society! LOL!

Marriage-idolater Bradford Wilcox has written articles in the past year to try to convince people that marriage makes people weather the Covid-19 virus fall out better than singleness.

Please understand, though, that the following is from left-leaning Huffington Post, and they will, of course, as liberals and leftists do, try to portray anyone who may have legitimate fears or concerns of coronavirus vaccines as being “conspiracy” crackpot kooks.

(This, from the same people who said when Trump was in office, that they’d not use any vaccines that were rushed out under or by the Trump admin. For example, see this CBS news article or this one from CNN. You liberals and Democrats have not been consistent on this vaccine situation.
You liberals and Democrats were against the vaccines before you were sniping at conservatives to hurry up and get vaccinated already.)

(Link): A Vaccine Or This Marriage: Conspiracy Theories Are Tearing Couples Apart

“He said if I take the vaccine I could pack my bags and leave his kids here.”
by Jesselyn Cook

For Lucy, a 59-year-old metastatic breast cancer patient from Washington state, getting vaccinated against COVID-19 was a matter of life and death.

After undergoing aggressive chemotherapy for months, the coronavirus almost certainly would have killed her.

Yet as relief washed over her upon receiving her final Pfizer dose in March, she knew she’d have to keep it to herself. Her husband had begged her not to get the shot.

The Nuclear Family Was A Mistake – by David Brooks – and Related Links

The Nuclear Family Was A Mistake – by David Brooks – and Related Links

If you want to get right to it, here’s the main link:

(Link): The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake by David Brooks  – via The Atlantic (off site link)

Before I paste in excerpts from that editorial by David Brooks below, I wanted to say a few words, and I will be pasting in any relevant links about the Brooks piece even farther below that.

I’ve been saying on this blog FOR YEARS many of the same things that Brooks has outlined in his essay.

Some of what I’ve been saying on this blog for years now includes:
that Christians and conservatives have turned Marriage and The Nuclear Family into idols,
that they have placed weight upon both that the Bible never did, and in the process of advocating marriage, these conservatives and Christians have marginalized the never-married, the divorced, the widowed and the childless or childfree among them, and this is wrong.

The Bible does not teach that marriage – or parenting – are going to “fix” society, or that being married or becoming a parent is necessary to make a person into a moral, upstanding, responsible individual.

If you’re a conservative or a Christian who keeps sounding the alarm about falling marriage rates, you need to accept reality for what it is: most people now are either single and childless by choice or by circumstance.

The United States is simply never going back to the June and Ward Cleaver family structures in mass droves that existed in the 1950s; (Link): so get over it already, and stop trying to punish or guilt trip anyone and everyone who doesn’t marry or have children.

The Biggest Loser in the Alabama Election – Christian Witness by M Galli

The Biggest Loser in the Alabama Election – Christian Witness by M Galli

I thought this was a pretty good editorial – not that I’m on board with 100% of it, but with maybe 98% or 99%. I’ve written a few similar to it on this blog, such as (Link): this one.

Both the right wing and the left wing get stuff wrong, but both sides are usually pretty loathe to admit it. The left and right wing (the extremes on both sides) are flip sides of the same exact coin, another fact they don’t like to admit.

FWIW, I was a Republican for many, many years, and I’m conservative to this day, though no longer a Republican, and I was really put off by the number of gung-ho Republicans on my Twitter who were stumping for this Moore guy (though I said nothing to them about it; I scrolled by their pro-Moore tweets without saying a thing to them about any of this).

They don’t care that he was possibly a child-predator, they’d rather have a sexual pervert in Congress than a Democrat.

I’m not a Democrat fan myself, but as for me, I’d take the Democrat politician over the kid-diddling Republican any day of the week, thank you. I find Democratic politics ten times less objectionable and odious than I do a 32 year old man preying on 13 year old girls.

If I remember right, Moore lost to the Democrat and refused to concede defeat for a day or so after the election results were announced. I still believe the women who stepped forward to say Moore tried to fondle or date them when they were teens.

I have no idea how some of the Trump-bots I follow on Twitter – though they may be nice people in other ways – were able to so vehemently support a guy who was so obviously guilty of being a cradle-robber. But day after day, I saw them tweet content in support of Moore and content questioning the women victims who stepped forward to tell their stories.

But your average liberal Democrat can be just as blind to defects in their own perverted, sexist political candidates as well.

(Link): The Biggest Loser in the Alabama Election – Christian Witness by M Galli

Excerpts:

No matter the outcome of today’s special election in Alabama for a coveted US Senate seat, there is already one loser: Christian faith. When it comes to either matters of life and death or personal commitments of the human heart, no one will believe a word we say, perhaps for a generation. Christianity’s integrity is severely tarnished.

The race between Republican candidate Roy Moore and Democratic candidate Doug Jones has only put an exclamation point on a problem that has been festering for a year and a half—ever since a core of strident conservative Christians began to cheer for Donald Trump without qualification and a chorus of other believers decried that support as immoral.

The Christian leaders who have excused, ignored, or justified his unscrupulous behavior and his indecent rhetoric have only given credence to their critics who accuse them of hypocrisy.

American Christians, Liberals, Liberal Pet Groups, and Persecution

American Christians, Liberals, Liberal Pet Groups, and Persecution

(This post has been edited and updated, especially towards the bottom, to add more commentary or links)

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For about the past year, I have thinking about blogging about this topic but put it off until now.

I have seen liberal Christians, ex-Christians, left wing Non-Christians, and moderately conservative Christians complain or mock American Christians who claim that American Christians are being persecuted in the United States due to being  Christian.

In the past, I’ve seen liberal Christian blogger RHE (Rachel Held Evans) comment on this subject on her blog, on her Twitter account, as well as the Liberal, quasi- Christian, Stephanie Drury bring this up on her (Link): “Stuff Christian Culture Likes” Facebook group from time to time (edit: see updated post about the hideous “Stuff Christian Culture Likes” Facebook group (link): here).

I’ve also seen moderately conservative Christians I am acquainted with discuss this in Tweets or on their blogs.

To reiterate a point I’ve made before, I do sometimes agree with SCCL’s Drury on some issues, and I even periodically Tweet her links to news stories I think she may want to share on her Twitter account or on her SCCL Facebook group.

However, I totally part ways with Drury on some topics – like this one.

The view of liberal Christians, ex-Christians, liberal Non-Christians, and even some moderately conservative Christians, is that American Christians are not under persecution in the U.S.A. for being Christian, or for practicing Christian beliefs.

I am not sure if the liberal or moderate conservative disagreement on this issue pertains to semantics (the terminology involved), or if they are actually blind and oblivious to the harassment that Christians, especially conservative, or traditional valued, Christians, face in American culture.

It is my position that American Christians do in fact face harassment – especially from the left wing – in the United States for being Christian, for wanting to practice their faith and carry it out in public, and for defending it in public.

If you are a liberal who objects to the term “persecution,” how about, instead, the words or phrases, “harassment,” “bullying,” “picking on,” “hounding,” or other terms?

I do not see American Christians getting a free pass in the United States to hold certain views or to practice their beliefs.

The left (and I’d include severe anti-theist atheists here, on this point, regardless of their political standing) insist that Christians keep their Christian faith walled off, private, and separate from all other areas of their lives.

Why Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Aren’t Fighting the Culture Wars by D. Linker

Why Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Aren’t Fighting the Culture Wars by D Linker

(Link): Why Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Aren’t Fighting the Culture Wars by D Linker

Excerpts:

Sept 2016

by D. Linker

The most momentous thing about Monday night’s presidential debate wasn’t anything Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton said. It’s what they didn’t say.

Not a word was spoken about abortion, same-sex marriage, religious freedom, “family values,” or any other issue championed by the religious right over the past few decades.

America’s Lost Boys by S. D. James (Why Men Are Not Marrying)

America’s Lost Boys by S. D. James (Why Men Are Not Marrying)

I don’t know how much of this I agree with, but it does pertain to topics I blog about frequently, so here it is.

I keep seeing conservative Christian men blame feminism for delayed marriage among men, and at least one Christian sociologist blamed Christian women for declining marriage rates, because he feels that single Christian women are unwilling to marry Christian male porn addicts – he argues they should marry porn addicts anyway (for real; see this post).

Yet another article I (Link): linked to previously blamed porn addiction – that men are getting their kicks from nude women online, so they don’t feel the need to date real life women.

This article is citing immaturity for why so many men are not marrying (the single men supposedly want to play video games all day long).

An older article on my site that I linked to (Link): blamed the poor economy.

(Link): America’s Lost Boys by S. D. James (Why Men Are Not Marrying)

Excerpts:

Where have America’s young men gone? According to Erik Hurst, an economist from the University of Chicago, they haven’t gone anywhere—they’re just plugged in.

In a (Link): recent interview, Hurst says that his research indicates that young men with less than a four-year degree (according to virtually all data, that’s an increasing number) are spending their days unemployed and unmarried, but not un-amused.

“The hours that they are not working have been replaced almost one-for-one with leisure time,” Hurst reports. “Seventy-five percent of this new leisure time falls into one category: video games. The average low-skilled, unemployed man in this group plays video games an average of twelve, and sometimes upwards of thirty hours per week.”

Hurst goes on: “These individuals are living with parents or relatives, and happiness surveys actually indicate that they [are] quite content compared to their peers, making it hard to argue that some sort of constraint, [such as that] they are miserable because they can’t find a job, is causing them to play video games.”

The Myth of the Good Ole Days by A. Bevere

The Myth of the Good Ole Days by A. Bevere

Here are just a few excerpts from this other blog. Please click the link to visit the other blog if you’d like to see the entire article:

(Link): The Myth of the Good Ole Days 

Excerpts:

There is no such thing as the good ole’ days. It is a myth constructed by people with amnesia who have forgotten or have chosen not to remember the problems and perils of earlier days. Allow me to offer some evidence:

-An estimated 20% of American children live in poverty today. More lived in poverty in 1900 and an estimated 20% lived in orphanages because their parents couldn’t afford them.