Catfight alert! News at 11.

Two of my favorite women are having an online tiff about conservatism and the patriarchy, thereby giving me the perfect opportunity to show how chauvinistic and out-of-touch I am.

In the red corner, we have Karras, leading with the "tradition hurts women but that's okay because it does lots of other good stuff"-line. I believe back in the old country we called that "being a collaborator", but nevermind that for now.

Meanwhile, in the blue corner, we have Rittelmeyer sallying forth with her old "tradition isn't cool unless it hurts"-standby. Furthermore, both of them make use of the mildly disturbing "women being oppressed is kinda hot, and don't forget we can be real bitches about it"-meme; which manages to be both creepy and unhelpful at the same time.

Sadly, both of them manage to miss the important point that if traditional gender roles are in danger of destroying "women's ambitions, rights, and very souls," this means that tradition has already failed. The entire point of tradition is that it shapes the ambitions and souls of those who partake in it -- the entire premise of traditional gender roles was that motherhood was a good and virtuous thing for women to do (in fact better and more virtuous than any other possibility). Women didn't need to be crushed or oppressed; they believed in this as much as men did.

When I was younger, more left-wing, and more foolish, I once had the following conversation with a traditional woman:

Me: "Why do you stay at home instead of getting a job?"

Her: "Because I want to."

Me: "But you're being oppressed!"

Her: "No I'm not."

That's what tradition looks like, people. The idea Rittelmeyer seems to cling to that we ought to throw ourselves at the feet of some tradition existing out in platonic space with which we have no relationship; since after all "once we've picked out a catalogue of acceptable gender roles we ought to give them some teeth", is worse than incoherent ('picked out a catalogue of acceptable gender roles'? Who the hell does that?) -- it's sinful and the cultural equivalent of suicide.

This is not to say that some traditions aren't inherently better than others, some just are. On the other hand, arguments for perverting and breaking our identity so that we might better fit in cannot be justified on the grounds of tradition or conservatism. One of the advantages of not being a Protestant is that I can believe that God's truth may take different forms for different cultures, and that the really important revelations were considerably more abstract than whether or not my wife should stay at home.

Rittelmeyer and Karras both need to take a good hard look at what they mean by "traditional gender roles" and why they think that they're important. If the answer looks like something quasi-utilitarian having to do with family and children, they should figure out other ways of achieving the same ends in their own culture. If, on the other hand, the answer looks like "I read it in a big list of rules this one time," they should consider what Jesus might have said if he'd been born in Nubia.

Either way, the term "tradition" is being seriously misused.

$.02 from the Patriarchy