yup… “sober drunks”… as much of an oxymoron as “woman-hating-feminist.” this will be our lesson for today.

feel free to close this window and open your browser to another site if you’re already finding yourself disturbed. no offense taken here, trust me.

***disclaimer*** i’m not one who typically uses my website as a place to preach or step up on a soap box and address a reasonably large issue. this is my place where i share things about me, my life, my family, and our experiences… oh yeah, and wine (i’ll get more into that in a moment.) i am most definitely not one you will find writing about how one “should or shouldn’t” raise their child, because christ almighty, if there’s one thing i’ve learned since becoming a mother it is this… what works for one family may not necessarily work for another. whatever you (as a mother, in this case) need to do to get through your day to care for and protect your children and yourself is your business and your’s alone.

that being said, there are plenty of websites and blogs out there with different agendas, some with hidden agendas (google them yourselves, i’m too lazy to link you too them all.)

one particular site, more specifically one particular post from this site has had me reeling for days now. and since this is my place, i’ve chosen to address it here.

i’m not a big name blogger. i’m not anticipating being deluged with the hate mail that some of my friends receive. but i am a voice. and i can’t not say something.

i’m disheartened at the moment with regards to blogging… and it’s really getting under my skin. this weekend, i found myself knocking on the door of complete pissed-offed-ness with regards to the hate that spews out of some people’s fingers as they type. what bothers me the most is that these people are women… women judging other women, women blaming other women, and women accusing other women…

diane schueler aside (i’m not touching that one with a 10 foot pole), women such as stefanie wilder-taylor (with whom i happen to correspond regarding our children and their feeding issues) has become a household name; but not because of her remarkable writing and successfully published books, not because of her own personal endeavors and life circumstances she lived through and has overcome, not because of her being a pioneer as a mother of three while juggling everything i just mentioned… but because she has made a personal choice to lay off the sauce.

whether the stars aligned when both stories hit the newspapers or not, both have been scrutinized in a way that saddens me as a woman and a mother. i applaud wilder-taylor, she knows i adore her, respect and admire her. and i cannot imagine what her day-to-day must be like… in the same way that she cannot imagine mine, nor can becky sharper who wrote (what i consider to be) this piece of garbage, equating alcoholism with anti-feminism.

sharper writes, “This kind of ignorant glorification of heavy drinking as a quasi-feminist, liberated act crops up in the mommy blogosphere too, including blogs like mommywantsvodka.”

that sentence in itself is ignorance at its best, and took me to my currently heated state of pissed-offed-ness, not only because i consider becky, author of mommywantsvodka, a friend, but because it just doesn’t make sense… “ignorant glorification of heavy drinking as a quasi-feminist???” quite honestly, as a woman… as a proud feminist myself, i’m offended by the grotesque judgment in this statement.

i have been publicly blogging for a short amount of time (less than 1 year even) yet within that amount of time, the community that i am a part of, have witnessed, befriended and embraced in the blogosphere is one that i’m proud of.

i think it’s fair to say that most bloggers, male and female alike, have found some sense of community as a result of their blogging. c’mon, people who share commonalities will most likely hang out, whether it be in real life, on twitter, or through commenting on writer’s blogs.

and yes, the masthead of my own website with a cartooned version of me holding a baby bottle in one hand and a glass of wine in the other has linked me to other moms i now consider to be dear friends… (some of them drink, some of them don’t but shh, don’t tell.) the fact that i have a “wine of the week” posted at the top of my link bar has connected me with people (who drink and who don’t but want to bring a bottle of wine to a friend as a house-warming gift… *gasp*).

you, sharper, have sadly succumbed to what the media wants right now… creating something out of nothing. only you have done so under the guise of being a feminist, which sickens me.

women and drinking… men and drinking… DUIs… alcohol and anti-feminism are two entirely separate entities, yet you argue that “because of the injustices and expectations of our patriarchial society, women are more likely than men to be stressed, depressed, in pain, etc. Society just wants us to pretend it’s not happening, the way they want us to ignore so many of the ugly realities forced upon women. If there’s any outrage here, it’s the outrage women should feel about the chauvinist image of mothers as household saints who couldn’t possibly be tempted by demon liquor, or the even more chauvinist (and sadistic) idea that a woman’s lot is inevitably going to be hard, so she should suck it up and suffer instead of seeking comfort in the bottle.”

once i finished laughing at the above quote, my husband and i began to candidly discuss this and he brought up a good point with regards to freedom of speech… he referred to the following analogy, “you can walk around and swing your arms all you want, but then you hit somebody… and it’s a different story.” but people like this (sharper)… see people swinging their arms, walk up, get hit… and then say “YOU JUST HIT ME!”

i couldn’t agree more with my husband. not only did sharper run into people swinging their arms, but did two things that disgust me… 1) created something out of nothing and 2) expressed ugliness towards women though referring to yourself as a feminist.

so before writing my own response to all of this, i went back to my own feminist roots… to betty. i honestly thought to myself “what would betty do?” (to answer, she would NOT have made a WWBD bracelet.)

in betty friedan’s The Feminine Mystique she writes (in reference to women’s magazine stories profiling the conventional), “And this New Woman, less fluffily feminine, so independent and determined to find a new life of her own, was the heroine of a different kind of love story. She was less aggressive in pursuit of a man. Her passionate involvement with the world, her own sense of herself as an individual, her self-reliance, gave a different flavor to her relationship with the man.”

“different” sharper… not better or worse… not him vs her… “different.”

a commenter by the name of ashley (you can find her blog here) posted the following, “Why not support other women in a positive fashion, by offering sincere commentary and offering to help when you see there is a problem? There are so many other ways human beings (and I’m not even going to dip into the feminism pool) can support and encourage one another. Instead, you chose – in this post, anyhow – to be vicious and negative.”

so with that… to ashley… to becky (mommywantsvodka NOT sharper)… to stef… i raise a glass to each of you, for finding what works for you as mothers, as women.