Wednesday, July 02, 2008 - Posts
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The whole Yearning for Zion case left me creeped out. The feminist in me finds polygamy in general a little creepy, but even more so when young women—girls even—are married off to more powerful older men. The mother in me hates the way they kick out the boys to make the numbers work, and I'm saddened by stories that the children apparently grow up without toys or anything else that might inspire their imagination. But the civil libertarian in me also gets creeped out when the state oversteps its bounds and removes children from loving homes on grounds of child abuse wherein the "abuse," it turns out, is largely having a weird religion.
So this story from the Salt Lake Tribune (via the Drudge Report) brought a smile to my face. The hundreds of children who were taken from the YFZ ranch have been returned to their mothers, but the mothers have been advised not to return to the ranch. They are renting apartments and trying to feed their families, and—contrary to one of the arguments against polygamy, that it increases the welfare roles—the women are trying to make it on their own. So some of them have launched a Web site to sell the modest garb that their sect requires. One of the mothers is quoted in the story thusly: "They accuse us of [relying] on welfare, but that's untrue. We like to be busy and learn to meet our needs—out of ashes growing lilies."
I'm still creeped out by the FLDS, and I probably will stick to Old Navy when I need to stock up on kids' clothes, but I admire the heck out of these women for trying to make a go of it in a way that allows them to be true to themselves.
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I'm struck by this debate because in many ways it perfectly encapsulates something I've been feeling lately. As a 20-year-old girl (woman?!) who aspires to a career as a conservative journalist, I find myself agonizing over where I'll find my place professionally.
I've spent several summers working in journalism, and I've always thought it's better to be a conservative in a liberal pool than to hole myself away with a bunch of neoconservatives. But sometimes I feel like I don't get credit for that. I've found that at many news outlets, conservatives are written off as either stupid or delusional. Smart conservatives tend to be regarded as interesting conversation pieces. Experiences such as those have me toying with the idea of dyeing my hair a few shades blonder and throwing myself into a career as the next Ann Coulter.
Emily may be right that there's more immediate glory for women who play "truth-teller" against feminist tenets. My own critics would probably label me that way, and in truth, in my short writing career as a college undergraduate, I probably have gained more attention than I otherwise would have because of my willingness to bash one popular feminist cause or another. Still, I like to think that I'm taking those stands because I'm searching for intellectual clarity, not because I like attention. (On a related note, I won't even tackle the Larry Summers reference of earlier posts, because then we could be here awhile.)
Suffice it to say that I worry every day that I could fall into the peroxide trap of some of the Fox News extremists (though those women do dress well). Maybe other conservative women are not as idealistic as I am, but I think we might need to cut them some slack, "ka-ching, ka-ching" and all. If we don't, there really is nothing keeping these new conservative voices from diving into the right-wing deep end—yes, I acknowledge there is a very troubling conservative deep end. Once that has happened, the landscape of media could become even more polarized than it is now and even less effective. And that's a problem I'm eager to avoid.
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