There’s a weird female blogosphere subculture that I discovered by accident. It may not be news to other people but it was certainly news to me. This will came across as utterly unsisterly but I find these women even scarier than their male counterparts.

There was well-comment-savaged post on fundies say the darnedest things, which reported a blog post including the following:

My kids had the following conversation at the store yesterday, very loudly, and within ear shot of several other customers:
John (4 years old): Barack Obama, and the devil, and the government are worser than anything else in the world.
Isaac (5 years old): Mom, John actually told me that he thinks Barack Obama is worse than the faggots.
Ah, precious moments!
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. – Proverbs 22:6

In my determined naivety, I think these really stunning quotes are usually poes, because I don’t believe such people can really exist. This one seems so far off the human decency scale that it couldn’t possibly be real. Surely?

I followed the link labelled stevenandersonfamily. Argh. It’s genuine.

This isn’t in fact the blog of “Steven Anderson”. It’s the blog of his wife Zsuzsanna (Pause for ten minutes trying to find a way to pronounce that.)

After reading a few posts, your heart actually goes out to Steven Anderson himself. He must have committed some heinous sins for his god to have married him off to this woman. He “pastors what I consider to be the greatest church in the world, and also runs a fire alarm business to support our ever-growing family” He’s working 60 hours a week to support this “stay-at-home Mom” who also home schools their 5 children, the oldest of whom is 7 years old. You can hardly blame him for making sure he’s out of the house.

The blog is a dizzying mixture of straightforward momsy stuff about how to make a baby sling or taco soup with pronouncements that make me instantly think of a smaller-minded and less self-aware version of Mrs Lovejoy in the Simpsons.

For example, how about “Did I already mention that I hate IVF”

….”Infections” is a nice way to say that these women have been rendered infertile by the STDs that run rampant in Africa, diseases that would almost certainly be passed on to the babies created through IVF. Sure, I feel bad that people live in a country where they were probably infected by their own parents, but do we need to continue that cycle of disease through sponsored IVF procedures? Besides, maybe instead of handing out condoms like candy, these people should be taught not to live like animals and sleep with everyone and everything that moves….

Repress that gag reflex. There’s plenty more.

The second reason given was “abortion”. Why any humanitarian organization would pay a woman to have IVF who has previously aborted a baby is beyond me. Obviously, she doesn’t love kids.
I won’t even get started on the “unsafe deliveries” part. It means that deliveries in their hospitals are unsafe because of ancient, dangerous, and dirty equipment. Of course women would fare much safer to just have the baby at home on their own, like millions of women have throughout history. Delivering a baby in Africa is no more dangerous in and of itself than delivering a baby in America. It’s the people who are attending the birth and interfering with it that are the danger.

I guess she’s unfamiliar with historical maternal mortality rates. 100 years ago, death in childbirth was a common hazard for women living in even the most advanced countries. I am also baffled that she has taken the idea that woman are paid to have IVF. The news article she refers to says that doctors are planning to offer “cheap” $200 IVF to women in Africa.

The bottom left of the blog has a list of things to do instead of watching the tv – almost all bible related, where they aren’t homemaking related. I can’t resist posting this list of the projects she’s working on, for its neat encapsulation of her world:

Projects I am currently working on

• taking down Christmas decorations
• writing on a dozen or more unfinished blog posts as I have time here and there
• Knitting little squares of various patterns that I want to teach at our church’s next ladies’ activity
• Sewing matching PJs for all the kids
• Potty training Miriam

These are “projects”? Well, I reckon her projects of teaching her unfortunate kids to parrot her self-satisfied racism and homophobia don’t need any more working on, because she’s already managed to warp their minds to the point that she is actively boasting about it online.

I’ve characterised this as a subculture rather than the character-expression of one simple-minded female because she has loads of links to other similar SAH-moms (stay-at-home, that means) who devote their lives to breeding, homemaking, child-rearing and worshipping a man who is happy to support these hobbies. They also homeschool their kids. I promised myself that I wouldn’t rant too much about these people because their blogged lives speak for themselves. But, some of them really take my breath away:

thegoodoldway for example. Here are a few random quotes:

That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet,chaste, keepers at home, good obedient to their own husbands , that the word of God be not blasphemed. Titus 2: 4-5
I have had a few jobs outside the home over the years. But I am glad that God’s will commands me to be a stay-at-home wife and mom.

We file our taxes in January so we get our tax refund this month and I will be able to finally start wearing skirts and dresses all the time. I still wear sweatpants around the house because I only have a few skirts. I don’t have any dresses as we have been out of church for several years.

I am baffled by the skirts thing and I’m someone who doesn’t even own a pair of trousers or jeans. I have loads of dresses and I’ve definitely been out of church for many years. I hadn’t heard that churches even had a “no women in trousers” dress code… Ah she explains it. For some reason, the god of abraham has decided that women should wear only skirts. And men trousers, I assume, which means that he hated the ancient Romans and Scots and greek soldiers. Why didn’t he take the trouble to kit us out properly at birth then?:

I believe that men should be the head of the household and the provider also. Women should be keepers at home. She should be a good wife and good mother to children and devote her time to her family. That is her job. She should dress in skirts and dresses and dress modestly. She should teach her daughters to do the same.

I suddenly remember that these women have daughters. Sisterly solidarity raises its head again. Those poor girls! Oh, and sons. Human solidarity, then. Those poor boys!

Here’s Rose from Missouri. She has ten kids and three grandchildren. How interesting do you think her day is?

I had my usual day today, got up and made coffee, took Cassie(stepson’s girlfriend) to work over in Kansas(that is a half hour drive there and a half hour back). Started dishes as soon as I got back, fixed hubby something to eat, took hubby to work, went to the store to get some drain cleaner( the drain in the basement backed up). I started fixing dinner about 4:00p.m.( fixed beef stew). Picked Cassie up from work. Did the dinner dishes( yes, you read that right). Steven is watching the idiot box, so I may go someplace and try to read. I haven’t read my Bible yet today. I have been reading 3 or 4 chapters from Genesis a day and the Proverb for the day. I started this on January 1st. …. Later, I have to go pick hubby up from work(he gets off at 11:30), then I’m going to bed. See you tomorrow!

This is pretty representative of the entries. How many dishes washed per day, how much she likes flannel sheets and so on. My heart half goes out to this woman, living a life so dull that bible-reading is the closest she gets to thought. She doesn’t even have one of those stickers that say “since the start of the Iraq war, x babies have been killed(*).” So I don’t want to seem too harsh. But the hideous sticker that says “have you been fooled by feminism” hardens my heart.

And I link to the blog of yet another of this strange sisterhood, called the On a Quest for Plain Living It has a sort of women-insulting parody of proverbs 32 and ends with:

Let us all strive NOT to be like this. We can have so much influence in our husband’s lives if we just allow the Holy Spirit to do a work in our life.

She got this from Christian Homekeeping which has a post on how to be a good wife. It’s as repellent as you might expect.

The term “passive-aggressive” suddenly takes on a real meaning for me. These women get to play house and rule over a small kingdom of offspring by flattering and manipulating the “hubby” into making it all possible for them. There’s no common project shared by equals.

These are women in the 21st century USA – with all the material and social benefits this brings them – who’ve all been to school and who all have equal rights. And they are somehow desperate to roleplay some parodic mix of an old testament prophet’s wife and a 1950s advert housewife.

Do they imagine for one minute that anyone outside their family and friends cares how many points little Jacob got at football or at point they thought it easiest to tidy up on Christmas day?

It’s not that I think childcare and cooking and cleaning aren’t important or that I’d ever mock anyone for enjoying these things. It’s the bizarre view of men and women that they express through how they do those things that enrages me. And their interpretation of childcare can be actively anti-social. Teaching babies to mouth hate-speech doesn’t constitute “care” to me.

(* They mean US abortions rather than living Iraqi babies killed. The latter number doesn’t really seem to bother them.)