The Week the Wasps Came
Wasps, violent men, State of Marriage survey, husbands who mom shame, and a new offer for subscribers
Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash
In This Newsletter
Intro: The week that a metaphorical and literal wasp both came for me
New offer for subscribers, and how Substack will look going forward
Feminist Advice Friday
I’m writing this from a safe house.
I have a male family member with a history of aggression and a large stockpile of weapons (Not my husband; my husband is spectacular). He’s been aggressive toward me for a long time, but it’s always been an amorphous sort of aggression. I didn’t feel like I was truly in danger.
I’ve lived with his threats in much the same way that you might live knowing that there’s a hornet’s nest in your backyard. You know there’s a danger, but you also hope it will be ok. And the prospect of stirring the hornet’s nest to get rid of it feels a lot more dangerous than just living with it and hoping.
That’s what it’s been like for me with this family member for years. Except it finally came to blows. He gathered his guns and announced he was coming for me. So my family and I fled to a safe house.
What’s been most interesting to me is how the people in my life—acquaintances, Facebook followers—have reacted to this incident.
For months, they told me I was overreacting to this person’s threats.
“He doesn’t really mean it.”
“What did you do to trigger this?”
“He means you no harm.”
And then, when the threats finally escalated to the point of imminent danger, you know what people said?
Of course you know, because if you’re reading this newsletter, you have a good understanding of how we respond to male violence in this culture.
“Why didn’t you do something sooner?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why didn’t you ask for help?”
This is how we respond to violent men. First we tell women they’re crazy, hysterical, and maybe deserve it. And then, when the man acts on his violent threats, we ask women why they didn’t do anything.
Somehow it’s always the woman’s fault.
Maybe it’s not a coincidence that, as the metaphorical hornet’s nest in my backyard stirred to life, I adopted a wasp this week.
It wasn’t intentional.
Paper wasps build nests in the spring made of chewed up debris and spit. The nests start with a single foundress, who then attracts additional wasps to join her colony. By the fall, they are murderous and dangerous. In spring, they are docile. The rumor is they can recognize faces, including human faces—a fact I find both endearing and terrifying. I do not relish the idea of making a negative impression on a wasp who then declares me an enemy.
Our paper wasp challenger appeared on the back deck building a nest. My husband didn’t know what to do, so he knocked her house down. I suppose he thought she’d conclude this was a bad neighborhood full of criminals, and that she should leave.
She did not leave. So my husband captured her in a plastic tub, not knowing what else to do. He sealed the lid, and we weighed the value of mailing her to Donald Trump or leaving her in the yard of someone we dislike. Normal people would have killed her. We were prepared to weaponize her.
The next morning, I went outside to check on our new wasp comrade.
She was gone.
The tub was still sealed. I have no idea who let her out, and worried she might be watching me in the distance, plotting vengeance.
She promptly reappeared, and I somehow captured her again. I returned to my back deck gardening, then heard buzzing. I looked up. It was the wasp.
She buzzed up to my face, hovered a few inches from me, and made intense eye contact before zipping off into the unknown.
And so it has gone for several days. Humans recognize faces, too, and I recognize this wasp now every time I see her. This morning, I saw her in my house. It didn’t even bother me. I just grabbed a cup, pushed her in, and shoved her out the door.
I don’t know how this is going to end, and I realize that befriending a wasp who keeps trying to break into my house seems unwise. But I’ve never liked the idea of killing little lives solely because they are inconvenient, or we fear what they might do. I respect wasps, and I’d like to believe they’re not all determined to sting me.
#notallwasps, and all.
Change in Substack/New Offer for Subscribers
Anyway, sharing this drama from my own life has gotten me thinking about how I use my Substack newsletter. I want to be able to share a bit more of my personal experience, but that requires me to somewhat limit the audience. I also want to become less dependent on Facebook. In the last week, Facebook has continuously warned and banned me for “hate speech” for crimes such as saying men should do housework and rape is bad. Meanwhile, men and white supremacists spew whatever venom they desire, completely unchecked.
I need a place to post where I will not be censored. I need a more direct way of communicating with fans and followers. And also, if I’m going to keep producing at the level and frequency folks have become accustomed to on Facebook, I need to make some money from this work.
I believe that calling out all the little ways misogyny colors our lives is really important, and it’s not something I want to limit. I’ve heard from so many women that my work encouraged them to leave abusive spouses or demand better. I don’t want that to change. But more and more, posting has become a second job—a job I love, but one which takes away from my paid writing.
So I’ve wracked my brain about how I can monetize this while still giving people access to important work, and here’s what I’ve come up with:
Twice a month, my Substack newsletter will go ONLY to paid subscribers. This twice-monthly newsletter will contain entirely new content, with a strong emphasis on advice, how-to guides, and expanding upon the feminist philosophy I post about on Facebook. A subscription is just $5 a month, and I’m going to offer a number of incentives to subscribers.
What You Get if You Subscribe to My New Paid Substack
If you want to support my work for $5 a month, then I’m going to offer a number of incentives going forward. Here’s what they are:
On May 1, I’ll begin releasing the results of the State of Marriage survey. The results will go to my Substack subscribers a week before I post them online.
Paid Substack subscribers gain access to the private, moderated, troll-free Liberating Motherhood support group. It’s a place you can post questions and seek advice free from the prying eyes of husbands, friends, and colleagues. Once you’ve signed up for a paid membership, simply navigate to the page, answer the quick membership questions, and you’re in.
Paid Substack subscribers will gain access to new, exclusive content that I post only to Substack.
You’ll be able to comment on my newsletter free of trolls, since only paid members will be able to see the content.
I’ll share information and tips from the rest of my paid writing and advocacy—including data on childbirth, reproductive justice, health, and more. Think of my newsletter as a sort of one stop shop for interesting information.
You’ll also be helping me have the time and resources to create more content, and better content.
If you want to subscribe as a paid subscriber, just click here.
Feminist Advice Friday: My husband shames me for my parenting. How can I save my marriage?
A reader asks…
My husband and I have a huge ongoing dispute about our children—a toddler and an infant. He thinks I’m making them too dependent, coddling them, spoiling them, etc. All because I breastfeed our baby, don’t leave our toddler to cry it out, and don’t spank, etc.
He thinks I should be training them for more independence. He has also recruited his family into this fight, and they now routinely criticize my parenting, or tell me my kids are never going to leave my bed. I can’t leave the kids with my mother-in-law because I know she will spank them to spite and hurt me. And now I’m worried my husband is going to do the same.
Do I have to change my parenting and leave my babies to cry to stay married? He thinks I need to “listen to him, too,” and keeps telling me I’m “not prioritizing his needs.” I really don’t know what to do or where to turn. Can you help?
My answer:
This question really boils down to one sentence, and one sentence only:
You are worried your husband is going to hit your children to hurt you.
This is a stunning level of abuse. You are being abused. I need you to sit with that realization before you read any further.
Your husband is abusive.
And he may become dangerous—to you, your children, or both. He is already undermining your mental health.
So let’s get to your question, keeping in mind that your husband is an abuser:
Isn’t it amazing how confidently wrong some men can be? Your husband is advocating for an objectively inferior parenting style, yet he condescends to you and shames you for your superior parenting.
Mansplaining at its finest.
There’s plenty of room for reasonable people to disagree about parenting. But the evidence is clear: spanking is harmful. Babies cannot be spoiled. And if you want to and are able to breastfeed, that’s great for your child.
Your husband is right that someone here needs to be left to cry it out, though. I agree with him on that.
I’ve found that if you give them a bit of comfort, explain what you’re going to do, then close the door and don’t return till morning, the whining is minimal.
I’m talking about your husband, of course. If he thinks your baby needs to sleep independently and you don’t want that, let him try it first.
Oh, what’s that? He doesn’t want to?
Hrm.
Imagine that.
Anyway, I’ve found a couple of rules can be really helpful for these parenting disputes:
A person’s right to weigh in on parenting decisions is directly proportional to their involvement in those decisions. You keep talking about what your husband says you should do. What is he willing to do? Anything? No? Then he doesn’t get a say. Children have two parents so that those two parents can nurture them together—not so that one parent can dominate and manipulate the other into doing all the work for them.
When a person advocates objectively harmful parenting practices, the correct thing to do is to disregard those practices out of hand. I’m not talking about minor disagreements about whether to use timeout or take away privileges. When the evidence is clear, and only goes in one direction, the person who ignores that evidence doesn’t get a say.
Likewise, if one parent is unwilling to educate themselves about parenting, then their opinions can be discounted out of hand.
Spouse comes first. People who are not raising your children do not get a say in your parenting, especially when their advice involves undermining your self-esteem and advocating for an inferior form of parenting. Recruiting family members to shame the mother of your children is abusive, full stop. He’s trying to hurt you, and hurting the mother of your children hurts your children. Read that a few more times if you need to. This man is doing something to harm you without regard for the effects it has on you or your family. What kind of person does such a thing?
On the surface, the answers all seem so clear. Ignore your husband. Ignore the abuse. Know that your husband is, frankly, a fucking dolt.
Of course, it’s never as easy as that, is it? You married this man for a reason. You love/loved him. You’re probably hoping to get back to whatever you had when you first got together. And maybe you’ve listened to enough emotional abuse—from your husband, from the people he recruits to mom-shame you—that you’ve come to believe you deserve it.
This sort of mom-shaming serves a clear purpose: it convinces mothers they are fundamentally unworthy, that their “failings” are their own fault. It convinces mothers they are unlovable. And this, in turn, conditions them to accept whatever shoddy treatment the men in their life dish out. Mom guilt is a sexist tool designed to control women generally and mothers specifically. Your husband is laying on the mom guilt as a tool of control.
Once you see this for what it is, a path becomes clearer.
In continuously shaming your parenting, your husband attacks the very core of who you are. And he depicts himself as an authority, gaining the upper hand, even though his parenting knowledge is clearly deficient. One of the most common tools of abusers is to disrupt your core relationships. Your husband is attempting to disrupt your relationship with your children. He’s jealous.
So what do you do?
I think you need to start by considering the question you first asked me: Do I have to leave my babies to cry it out to stay married?
I don’t know. Maybe.
But what I do know is that, even if that works for a while, sooner or later there’s going to be something else. Once he knows he can threaten you to control your parenting, the threats will increase. So too will the intrusion from outsiders.
The fundamental question here is whether it is fair for him to threaten your marriage because of a parenting disagreement that does not involve abuse—and specifically, to threaten your marriage because he is so ill-informed about parenting that he wants you to physically assault your baby and toddler.
Why is saving your marriage your primary concern here? You need to focus on saving your children.
I’m not judging you. I suspect this man has so warped your perspective that you cannot see his abusive threats for what they are. So I understand why you might think this is a minor dispute. It’s not. This is someone trying to control you, and threatening your children to gain the upper hand.
Please begin making a plan to leave. This is not going to get better. And this man is only making your life worse. You and the children will be better off without him.