This is a Liberating Motherhood Rerun. I have an archive of more than 1,000 posts I’ve published over the years. New subscribers only see these posts if they go digging through the archives. And because I’ve been doing this for so long, even older subscribers may forget about helpful pieces.
Every Saturday I re-release a random older piece, often with new updates and links. These pieces will be a mix of paid and free posts. The goal here is to offer more value with your subscription, without disrupting my regular editorial calendar. I hope you enjoy and find value from this feature!
“You’re always criticizing me.”
“You’re never satisfied with anything!”
“Stop nagging me!”
“God, why are you so emotional?”
Do any of these complaints sound familiar? They’re a favorite tactic of men who want to escape accountability: ignoring a woman’s complaints, then getting angry at her for her reaction to his bad behavior. This approach weaponizes sexist tropes about emotional, hysterical women, and labels any emotional reaction at all as unacceptable.
Men do this because they are raised from birth to believe that women should never hold them accountable for their actions. Because in a patriarchal society, giving flows in one direction, and women are not entitled to decent treatment from men. So women’s reactions to negative treatment are stigmatized as if those reactions, not the negative treatment, are the problem.
This is the notion behind hatred of feminists, the core belief driving the nonsense the right spews against “woke” culture, and a key driver of many heterosexual couples’ fights.
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