I *can't* get back in the kitchen.

Sometimes I see people talking like the basic lifestyle dichotomy facing women is whether they want to work or be a housewife. If you work and you're a mother you're "having it all," which really means "having it both." Feminists want women to be able to work the same as men, and anti-feminists want women to "get back in the kitchen."

The problem here is that I didn't make some big feminist choice to go to work; no one gave me the chance to be a housewife. I've never dated a guy who could afford to support me at home. (Actually Benny was pretty loaded, but he didn't even want to be seen with me, there's no way he'd've gone for marriage.) If I have kids I'm 90% certain I'll "have it all," not because I'm some superfeminist but because it's that or raising them in a studio apartment eating ramen. I don't think most people these days are rich enough to support an entire family on one income.

This isn't new either. In the 1950s--which were kind of an anomalous time incidentally, not the way of the world up to then--40% of married women with school-age children worked outside the home. I'm guessing that some of them were feminists but most of them just needed the money.

I don't think being a stay-at-home mom is a bad or anti-feminist choice, but I think some people sweep under the rug how often it isn't an available choice. There's still a lot of people out there arguing that men should make more because they have to support families, or people talking about "having it all" like it was brave or selfish. Discussions of a "woman's proper place" are meaningless without considering that a lot of women--poor women, but also single women, divorced women, lesbians, most childless women, most older women--couldn't get supported by a man if they wanted it.

This is why women's rights are necessary--not because we want them but because we need them. Equal pay and fair treatment in the workplace aren't about some lofty ideal, they're about getting by. Women need to be seen and treated as people because most of us don't have any options besides trying to succeed as people. When you don't have a rich husband to fall back on, being a working woman isn't a lifestyle, it's just living.

Maybe I'd love to get back in the kitchen (I wouldn't, but anyway), but if I did, there wouldn't be any food there.