Creepy Catholic Website Explains Why Women Shouldn't Go to College

By Lindy West  |  September 12, 2013 | 3:20pm
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If you’re an 18-year-old adult woman on the fence about whether or not your parents “should” “let” you go to college, fret no more! The internet provides, as always, in the form of this staggeringly terrible listicle from FixTheFamily.com (which, as far as I can tell, is a machine where you put in Catholicism and the ramblings of a sexually dysfunctional medieval barber-surgeon come out). Their advice? KEEP THE WOMAN-PROPERTY AWAY FROM THE DANGEROUS THINK-BOOKS.

I could just go through and make fun of all the idiotic contortions this Catholic dad goes through to justify his stance that women should be barred from higher education—but, oh dear, he’s expecting it (ad hominem attacks!!11!1!!!!1):

Both of these positions we have are a threat to the trophies of the feminist agenda, so the rejection we receive is always emotionally charged and ends up insulting, since once explained logically, the opposition runs out of substance and is only left to hurl insults and presume and misconstrue this practical wisdom into some chauvinistic evil.

Oh, okay. I wouldn’t want to “misconstrue” your statements like, “women should submit to their husbands” as “chauvinistic.” Sorry for my insubstantial, illogical insult-hurling! (I always soak my insults in menstrual clots before I hurl them to make sure they’re fully emotionally charged.)

Instead, since Raylan Alleman tooooootally knows everything I’m going to say already, how about fuck that guy. I don’t even want to talk to that guy. I want to talk to that guy’s daughters, and the daughters of all the other controlling, oppressive fathers (and complicit mothers), religious or not, who spend more time thinking about their daughters’ vaginas than their brains.

Dear good Catholic daughters, and daughters in general, and anyone who has ever come into contact with the teachings of a kookooroo like Raylan Alleman:

1. You do not have to obey.

It’s okay if you don’t believe me right now—I’m just going to keep hammering this one point over and over again for the rest of my life, just to do my part to ensure the message is there, steadfast and unequivocal, any time someone needs it. Contrary to what people might have told you, your life is yours—not your father’s, not your husband’s, not the Pope’s, not some radical internet creep’s. People who come at you with shit like this are liars with their own best interests in mind, not yours:

My personal impression is that the day-to-day grind of a job is below the dignity of women. In a way, it is like being a hired hand, as result of the fall and the penalty for original sin.

The “personal impressions” of Raylan Alleman, self-appointed internet lady-wrangler, are irrelevant to your life. You get to do whatever the fuck you want, within legal boundaries. You can still hold yourself to the moral code of your choice, immerse yourself in the church of your choice, marry someone whose faith you respect, and so on, but your church’s jurisdiction over your life ends where your personal liberty begins. “Obedience” is part of the lexicon of slavery, and that is precisely how Raylan Alleman is using it. Your purpose is to stay home, stay tethered, stay ignorant, and stay harmless. Have more babies! Clean some stuff! Avoid critical thinking—it isn’t your place (besides, we wouldn’t want you getting critical of your husband and your life). Avoid going outside and making a mark on the world with your radiant brain and agency—that’s your husband’s place.

Well, fuck that. It is your place. Every place is your place. You are a human being and you have just as much a right to thrive and grow in any place you choose as some man who didn’t do anything exceptional except be born. These places were built on your back too. You were born too and this is your life and you can do what you want with it. Obey yourself.

2. You do not have to take life advice from a man who thinks it’s in your “best interest” to bind you in an eternal union with a barely constrained rapist.

Did you watch that video, up above? Did you hear the part when the dude goes:

Men will allow for pretty much anything that women will. It’s a male weakness and a female power. Very few men can restrain themselves and control themselves with a woman, but most are going to respect a woman who’s going to respect herself.

Any time you hear someone say something like that, make a mental note that that person is an irredeemable monster with a butt for a head. Because what that statement means is that if a man rapes you, it’s because you didn’t “respect” yourself enough. That is NOT TRUE. DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS SHAMBLING BUTT-MONSTER. If a man rapes you, it’s because he is a rapist. And statements like “very few men can restrain themselves” are pure rape apologia that rapists ‘n’ friends use to validate their own abusive behavior.

It is my hope that some day you’ll find a community (of your choice!) full of vibrant, wonderful, supportive, trustworthy men who enrich your life—instead of what Raylan Alleman wants for you, which is to spend your life quivering in terror that any man you meet might be all hopped up on ragtime and exposed ankles and violently assault you because the nape of your neck didn’t seem “self-respecty” enough. That is not a person who’s invested in helping you.

Oh, also, if you are assaulted by a predator (or, of course, if you choose to have recreational sex), you are not tainted or broken or diminished in value. You are the same person with the same worth and anyone who tells you otherwise thinks of you as less than livestock (even cows get to bone). Those people are terrible! Clearly! Trust yourself instead.

3. Keeping women (and other marginalized groups) obedient by denying them access to education is not without historical context, and is not beneficial to anyone but powerful men.

Yeah, this is like the oldest trick in the book. That’s probably why people promoting this trick are actively trying to keep you from reading books.

4. You can have a career and a family.

You can have one or the other or both—whatever you want, presuming you can afford it (a lot of people can’t, so I guess those people are just ungodly hellbound fucks!). There’s nothing wrong with choosing to stay home with your family, as long as that’s actually your choice. Lots and lots of happy women have both jobs and children, and what really facilitates that balance is when they have spouses who are willing to share domestic duties. So…if you’re interested in that kind of a relationship you probably shouldn’t marry a dude who thinks that feminism is “the evil work of Satan.”

The society is so fixated with the feminist ideal of women having to have a job and provide an income to have worth.

No. “Society” is not fixated “with” women having jobs and incomes—women are fixated on it. Because being great at something and being compensated for it is satisfying and rewarding for a lot of us. I love my family with a borderline annoying intensity, but the satisfaction I get from being good at my job and (I hope) contributing to the world is a unique joy that I would never give up. Don’t sell yourself short. If you want a job, get a Roomba and go to work, and don’t let anyone make you feel guilty about that choice.

Oh, also, you are allowed to love and marry a person of your same gender, if you want. And both of you can work, if you want. JUST BASICALLY WHATEVER YOU WANT IS COOL.

5. College is valuable. But you don’t have to go to it. But you should if you want to.

Raylan Allemand very generously allows his women to visit the local library, as long as they wrap themselves in a tarp and breathe through a reed:

Today, anyone can learn anything they want with the vast library system across the country and with the easy access of the internet.

But that statement isn’t actually very true at all. There are things that you learn in college that you can’t just get from the internet or wandering around a library with no guidance. You don’t just consume information willy-nilly in college—you’re taught which information is legit and which is spurious, and you’re taught how to synthesize and think critically about that information in productive ways. In STEM fields you are taught complex technical skills (or so I hear—I just did poems and stuff). All of it is really pretty awesome.

And, yeah, a lot of people have sex in college (or find themselves in “a near occasion of sin”—which, apparently, is only a concern for girls), but a lot of other people don’t. Again, adult humans get to do whatever they want with their own genitals and the consenting genitals of other adult humans.

This is no small matter we’re dealing with here. Is a degree worth the loss of your daughter’s purity, dignity, and soul?

If you believe that sexual contact will have some impact on your immortal soul, then go ahead and don’t have sexual contact. College doesn’t have to have any effect on your own personal convictions. And anyway, it’s not like you’re much safer from “near occasions of sin” at church. Or…is sex only bad when it’s had consensually with a peer?

By the way, it’s also totally cool if you don’t want to go to college. Plenty of upstanding citizens and incredible geniuses don’t go to college, or don’t graduate, or go into fields where a diploma is irrelevant. Play it by ear. Whatever.

6. You can tell that this dude’s points don’t make any sense, right?

Like, look at that video. You can see how slowly his neurons are transmitting just by watching his face. He is a meat-robot programmed by bad people. Does this argument really make sense to you?

So what normally happens with this setup is that those lazy men who are looking for a mother-figure in a wife are very attracted to this responsible, organized, smart woman who has it all together along with a steady paying job with benefits. So if he wants to go to work he can, but if not he can always fall back on her income. Or if he “doesn’t want to have to answer to anyone” he can start his own business, and it doesn’t matter if it fails or succeeds or makes enough income because again she’s there to help. The bottom line, HE is only supplementing HER income, but he’s supposed to be the provider. These are very strong stresses on families that I have observed to consistently repeat themselves over and over. What she did that was looked upon to be the “responsible thing ‘just in case’” ends up being a self-fulfilling prophecy because of the type of man she married.

So, women shouldn’t go to college because then they might become too competent, which would tempt lazy men to hypnotize them with their dong-juice:

Once she becomes sexually active with him, she releases hormones that mask his faults, and she remains in a dreamy state about him…and thereby less tempted to be critical of him.

And then the dudes marry the women for their bitchin’ dental plans and live out the rest of their lives playing video games, safe from horrid female criticism within their hypnotic oxytocin goof-bubbles.

If that completely ridiculous, baroque hypothetical is your #1 reason why women shouldn’t go to college, then, I don’t know, you could probably stand to take some persuasive writing courses. In college. #inception

Kind of off-topic, but also:

Like anything that is subsidized by the government, the cost of a college degree is inflated.

😐 No. What? Like “anything that is subsidized by the government”? That’s why you shouldn’t take economic advice from people who were home-schooled by people who were home-schooled by people who think college is just one big Marxist jizz fountain.

Look. I could go on (and on and on—the website is a goldmine), but I really don’t need to. I just wanted to provide a quick dose of humanity as a counterpoint to the Raylan Alleman school of oppressive garbage, on the off chance that somebody out there could use it. You only get one future—don’t let Applehead O’Hypnodong define it for you. He really, really sucks.

Love,

Lindy

 
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