The Baliocene Apocrypha

Without descending into that particular admittedly-broad debate, we can start with - "pretty sure Feanor was less evil than either Eol or Maeglin, at least."

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...I wrote most of a long anguished essay here, and then deleted it, because it wouldn't have been helpful to anyone.

Let it suffice to say:

Culture can do some things, and cannot do other things.

Only a very small number of people are intellectually and temperamentally well-suited to living by counterintuitive, restrictive codes of behavior. This is especially true if you're talking about the kind of codes that require sincere principled engagement on a regular basis, rather than rote dutifulness. The fact that any remotely-defensible kind of morality qualifies as a "counterintuitive, restrictive code of behavior requiring sincere principled engagement on a regular basis" doesn't change this at all.

Many more people than that have cultural or emotional reasons to want to feel like they are extremely moral.

You absolutely could not get large numbers of elite women to accept being dependent on marriage for their security and well-being. That kind of dependence makes you vulnerable to terrible life-destroying catastrophes, and pushes you towards otherwise-intolerable bad relationships (because your BATNA is so bad).

going to the office to be in meetings with intelligent adults about things that matter

Most of the irl moms I know of who continue to work either do so because they actually love their jobs or actually need the money (and finagle some way to make the expense of day care make sense). Some jobs really are great, but most jobs *are* just jobs, even if you enjoy it. Jobs are expected to come and go, but your marriage and family are forever, or at least should be

Not that SAHMing can't be a slog, but your husband only has one wife and your kids only have one mom, so they need you in a way that your workplace doesn't. Imo raising new members of society is extremely important work

I think the situation described in The Feminine Mystique IS real and IS a problem, though. My mom suffered from it and it seems to be the result of a lack of outlets and social contacts outside the home than a lack of a professional career as such. You CAN get that stuff from your job, but a job isn't necessary or sufficient

(1) I am also an upper-middle-class white person on the East Coast whose social circle consists largely of other upper-middle-class white people on the East Coast. For whatever that's worth.

(2) I mean...yeah. Women are not averse to being SAHMs, when circumstances make that a plausible-seeming thing to be. Why would they be averse to it? Work sucks, for the most part, for most people! Being at home with your family is much better! Being at home with Netflix and video games is better! This is not hard to notice!

The question is: what are the boundaries of "plausible-seeming" in our current culture?

It's one thing to be employed and employable, meet a guy you like, have him demonstrate his reliability and long-term devotion, and then agree to let him support you. This is the upper-middle-class SAHM path of today.

This did not stop a lot of queers and queer allies from objecting to the so-called misgendering anyway, and demanding other pronouns.

Now part of the problem I see here is that there's two conflicting impulses which came from the same direction: 1) the increasing demand for a quasi-singular specific "they" as the new nongendered pronoun which could apply to everyone, 2) the rise of "nonbinary" and "third gender" and similar self-identification from people who demanded to be described as exclusively "they", thereby re-gendering that pronoun.

This sounds like a shitpost, but as I understand it, DC started charging people under 16 very leniently (good!) but then various criminal organizations responded to incentives (predictable!) and started specifically recruiting 14-year-olds to do carjackings because they would basically never get in serious trouble for it.

I think that specific problem has abated somewhat, but it did require a certain amount of targeted enforcement in response. I haven't looked into details but I assume the same thing is going on with the teen curfew—there's a specific uptick in violence and vandalism that they're trying to get under control.

He will go to Fairyland And ride the mountain ways; Fine companions will he have To last his summer days.