Washing machine liberated women most?

reply to post by Blogstalker


i understand that having children is sometimes difficult for some women but that hardly equates to the pill being more liberating to all women than the washing machine.

i believe most women find being pregnant a pleasurable experience overall and having children a positive experience, regardless of how many they have. labor is a bitch, no doubt, but it only happened once a year-ish.

laundry happened twice a week, was hard and painful, and you were mostly pregnant or breast feeding doing it.

besides, if all else failed, falling out with your man stopped the pregnancies, nothing stopped the laundry.
there's no contest.

reply to post by pieman


But the pill control how much laundry by letting women control how many children they had.

And don't get me wrong, I wanted the children, and had them when i wanted them thanks to a variety of birth control.

Hmmm...
As usual the moment I see these posts I get unbelievably angry...read it...and then kind of have to agree with the logic!!! ARrghh....I hate to say it...

However, it could be argued that the washing machine did the opposite! If it was never invented then I wouldn't be expected to be superwoman!!!!!!!!

I remember how my mother used to spend entire days washing, starching and Ironing clothes.

Yes I was a child in the 60s and my mother didn't have a watching machine.

Yes she was a slave of her daily chores, specially with two babies after my brother and me and dozen of diapers to wash.

I also remember my grandmother's house in the country were they used to take their loads of clothing to the local water stream to wash, first the clothes was beaten on rocks, scrub on metal boards all with soap that will made your hands raw.

I am grateful that I never had to go through all that and I don't' know what I would have done without my washer and dryer.

Even when the trips to the water stream was fun for me as a child.

So my personal experiences as a child tells me that indeed washing machines liberated women a lot.

Originally posted by _Phoenix_
We all disagree with many of the past social treatment of women.

But I have been wondering lately, are women happier now!? Really??

Or where they happier in the 30-50's? When women were women, and men were men?

It's just something that popped up in my head, at what time where women in general happier?

what about men? Are they happier? Because I have no idea haha.

[edit on 10-3-2009 by _Phoenix_]

I, too, miss defined gender roles. Nature made us this way for a reason, and now that the reason is less relevant, we have to force ourselves to become something we're not.

Frankly, I like girly girls. Down with ladettes!

Originally posted by majestictwo


Girls I know this is a touchy subject
I got to say we have new washing machine simply because there was a huge rebate to buy a water wise machine. Its more complicated than the shuttle to drive if you don’t know how but fortunately my wife preprogrammed some favorites into its memory and now I can drive it. – Only if I have to.
I think the Vatican is wrong the cell phone has liberated us all or do I mean tied us all down.
Anyhow, Girls I know this is a touchy subject but what do you reckon?

Liberated....

That depends on from what.

On the question of the pill:

The funny thing is people underestimate the power of natural family planning we've used for a very long time here in human history, as well as the natural birth control breastfeeding provides.

Yes, childbirth was dangerous. If you couldn't control your pregnancies, eventually something would go wrong, unfortunately either with yourself or the child you've been carrying.
But its funny; about the same time the pill came about we made wonderous strides in women's healthcare...childbirth actually became so much more dangerous when we moved from the midwife to the male physician around the turn of the century...and it right around the 60's the natural birth method came back into play and it all seemed to go uphill again in terms of childbirth mortality.

reply to post by Iamonlyhuman


is there something women haven't been liberated from? i honestly cannot think of a single thing.

reply to post by awake_awoke


is that your opinion or do you have some sort of statistical data to back up what you are saying? can you go into more detail about the decline of the use of midwives in the first half of the 20th century and the consequential rise in birth complications?


[edit on 10/3/09 by pieman]

I guess it depends on the era of reference. The modern oven opposed to an open fire is probably pretty good too.

Back to modern day education is right up there. The chances now for women to educate are better than ever – so I’m putting forward “the chance for equal education”
MJ2

reply to post by pieman


Yes, I can. Its no real secret...basically around the turn of the century the wealthier women chose to use male physicians for childbirth as opposed to midwifery. Midwifery was considered to be for the "poor" and was villified as such. Also, there was no schools or regulation regarding Midwifery so it was considered "unsafe". These male physicians really had no real obstetrical training until about 1930...there was one or two textbooks available and they used every intervention possible, necessary to that patient or not, as a "routine" for childbirth. It caused much more damage to the woman...I won't get into exactly how it all went down on here but basically it paved the way for infection and fever. And like I said before around the 1960s and 1970s obstetrics improved drastically.

www.midwiferytoday.com...

books.google.com... _result&resnum=4&ct=result





[edit on 10-3-2009 by awake_awoke]

Nope. Sorry, Il Papa, I would say the Pill.
What the washing machine allowed is for women to do laundry every day instead of spending one day on washing, with perhaps another for ironing, another day for baking bread, another day for washing floors, another day for sewing/mending, etc.
Woman were told by advertisers, that one spot meant drop the whole outfit in the hamper, wear an article of clothing two hours and put it in the laundry basket--wash, wash, wash, use those laundry products!

What we must understand is the nature of traditionally female work. "Female" work is cyclical in nature, it needs to be repeated. To wit, a woman's work is never done, so the old joke goes. Laundry is cyclical, a shirt does not stay cleaned but must go through the laundry process repeatedly.

"Male" work is "get 'er done!" An engine has a problem, it gets fixed. Mowing a lawn might be cyclical, but one can minimize lawns.

My husband (second marriage for both) came from a marriage with traditional work assignments. Since he now is a househusband, he has taken on the job of cooking (which he loves, as he loves to be creative in the kitchen--in fact, I now stay out of the kitchen, out of the way :lol. He was not "allowed" to cook under the previous arrangement. What he can't get over is the fact that kitchens (or bathrooms, etc) don't stay clean; he took over cleaning, too (which is why I lovingly lowered my standards of cleanliness, figuring if it's ok with him it is ok with me, I don't nag )

Women have always had to work "outside the home" or contribute to household income. Female "liberation" was about male "liberation", too, as it allowed for thinking "What if?" without ridicule or society pressure to conform For my husband, what if he wanted to cook? I have known men who sewed family clothing, e.g. For a female, what if she wanted to become an engineer, a doctor, a construction worker, race a car, etc.
Men had the trouble with liberating themselves, not women.

reply to post by desert


Yeah the only problem with that is the slow erosion of his masculinity, which is presumably what attracted you to him in the first place. You're a woman, you're programmed to look for a protector and a provider, and if he is now neither one, you'll look elsewhere.

reply to post by Blogstalker


I am referring to the era of the 20th century as stated in the OP.

I the 21st century women being able to afford their own washing machine is partly due to men purchasing them all those years ago in the 20th century and providing a lot of women more time therefore becoming more liberated.

My mother refused to "open her legs" (her words, not mine) when she got married unless she had a washing machine for all the nappies. My father swopped his car for a scooter to start a family.

[edit on 10/3/2009 by nerbot]

reply to post by The Last Man on Earth


man, that is so offensive.

it begs the question, is your masculinity so flimsy that you feel washing up bubbles will erode it.

reply to post by nerbot


Maybe men invented them so women could have more time do other things for their men.....

As for nappies, I don't know how old you are but for me luckily there were pampers..not to get into the environmental pros and cons of either. I found them very liberating. Change, roll and toss. Done and dusted.

Having my own car has been very liberating, if I was able to be a stay at home housewife, but had to give up my car, I don't think I could do it.

I absolutely believe what liberated women more than anything in our history is the invention of the bottle so women were relived from nursing babies - then they had freedom!

The notion that women caused inflation by working is ridiculous - whoever hasn't figured out yet that our entire economy is controlled needs to catch up on what's been happening for the past hundred plus years. That the vatican is talking about washing machines is ridiculous. Women have been totally been put down since the witch hunts of europe which lasted over a few centuries and wrested of their natural skills in midwifery and herbs/healing.

In North America they weren't allowed to attend the now required medical school - so it was completely usurped from women - which isn't even the big problem or issue - it's that all this is controlled and manipulated and then they heap all the guilt on "us". "We're" polluting the environment; "we're" the ones causing inflation. BS! (Belief Systems!)

But it all works to keep us divided and distracted very well, doesn't it!

reply to post by Blanca Rose


Way to quell my fears that my future wife will care more about my job than me.

Second line.

reply to post by Blogstalker


The washing machine was invented by a woman.

Google it.

reply to post by The Last Man on Earth


My husband is indeed my protector and provider! He protects my self-respect and dignity and provides me the utmost freedom to be the best I can be. And I do the same for him.

He admits that what he has shed from his masculinity over the years is stuff that needed to be shed, like driving like an ***hole (using a car to demonstrate "power"), feeling a need to constantly one up someone (the ole "my missile is bigger than your missile"), acting crazy from getting drunk, etc.

I had to get over the idea of a man as my lifetime security blanket. I thank God that I had the education to be able to support myself, allowing me to leave a previous marriage with my self-respect and dignity, and very little in the way of tangible items.
OTOH I know of cases where a young mother was widowed due to accidental death, and, again, Thank God these women had the skills to obtain gainful employment to provide for herself and the children.

What attracted me to him in the first place was his ability to be self-employed (responsibility!) along with qualities of being a gentleman, being of good moral character, and soooo much fun to be around. The fact that I love his looks is just a bonus to me! What attracts people to each other may be different, but bottom line we are our own best friends. We really are Yin yang.

It wasn't easy to find him...took a lot of work, in fact...I struck gold with this man...so, believe me, I won't be turning him loose!

reply to post by nerbot

Errr, NO....MEN liberated women the most. Who paid for the damn things eh?

How can you tell that the wife has died ?

The sex is the same but the laundry 's piling up

[edit on 10-3-2009 by moocowman]