If there’s one thing that people just never seem to understand, it would be that me being at home for all of these years has nothing at all to do with housework. Whether I spend 5 minutes or 6 hours a day doing housework is completely irrelevant. You always see people attempting to justify the position of “stay at home mothers” by means of what money they might make doing the same jobs outside of the home. They’ll say things like “stay at home mothers spend x amount of time washing dishes” or “x amount of time running the kids to school and x amount of time cooking and sweeping floors,” and etc—etc—etc— But what is never mentioned is that women working has nothing to do with housework but everything to do with independence from men.

I cry all the time at work, but not because I “don’t want to work.” It has nothing to do with that. I could get on my hands and knees and scrub my house from top to bottom, and while I might complain about the work itself, I would be happy. I would be happy because I was doing something that was worthwhile. Sweeping my own home and doing the dishes and scrubbing down the bathroom and doing the laundry for my own household has value and merit. I’m “going somewhere” when I do those things even if I do them day in and day out. What is the value and purpose of me doing those things outside of the home? If I was a man it might have more value and merit because it would enable me to move up in the world, have power and independence and provide for a family or something. But I’m not a man, nor do I want to be a man. I don’t want to be “powerful.” In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I’ve always felt happier being powerless.

When I was younger I loved working. I loved going out and making money and having independence. But that all changed once I became a wife and mother. After I became a wife and mother I began to break down in tears (the same as I’m doing right now, even after all these years) at the very thought of going out and making my own money. It’s not because I’m somehow “lazy” or any sort of bullshit like that. It’s because I feel the femininity inside of me. It’s because I don’t want to be independent. I wanted to be feminine and nurturing, depending on a man and having my sexuality belonging only to one man.

They push the two-income model of families on all of us because they don’t want women to be dependent on men, and that’s what it’s all about. If women went home, then men could control women via money and the regulation of women’s sexuality by making women dependent on men. Me being home all of these years has never been about housework, it’s been about me depending on a husband to care for me, and me having paid employment of any kind (even part-time) destroys all of that, and that is why women have to work in our society. That is why it is pushed on us. Because if women didn’t work, especially after marriage, then feminism couldn’t exist.

I wouldn’t mind making less than a man, if I knew that it was generally accepted and understood by society that men were supposed to be taking care of women. Not at all. I don’t want to be any man’s “equal,” and I would never want to be in a position of power where I was some man’s boss or anything. It wouldn’t feel right. The first thing that happens when I’ve ever been attracted to a man is that I feel like I want to submit to him, to be taken care of by him, like I’m safe with him and don’t have anything to worry about. It’s just this natural instinct that I feel when I feel that polarity and attraction. I don’t want to be independent. That’s why I never went out and worked, and that’s why the thought of working sickens me and makes me cry my eyes out. Because I feel it, I feel it so deeply inside of me, that femininity, as if it determines everything about me- and I love it.