Lori Alexander: A Submissive Wife Is A Strong Woman

[lilwriter85]

lorialexander.blogspot.com/2012/06/being-selfish-and-manipulative.html#idc-container

Lori's latest posting annoyed the fuck out of me.

[JuJuBee]

It takes strength to not manipulate, control, be selfish and unkind, not fight back, yield your will to his, and serve your husband.

All these posts act like, without having to be submissive, women are going to morph into these nagging and selfish shrews who walk all over their husbands. Is that how these fundie women secretly wish they could be, and only God is holding them back? Why is there never any middle ground of loving compromise?

[Anise]

Seems like in the fundie world, women face another dichotomy: they are either submissive or shrews.

[TXDuck]

But I thought women were weak. So that's why they had to submit. But if it takes strength to submit, wouldn't that imply that women didn't need to submit in the first place? Clearly, Lori is not thinking through all the implications of her position here.

[Koala]

Lori hates women. She blathers on every damn day about how wives are the ruination of marriages and the world's problems would be solved if we all just slapped smiles on our faces and did what our husbands told us to do. She reminds me a lot of Thinking Housewife. Her ignorance just jumps up and slaps you in the face.

[warpedfactor9]

http://lorialexander.blogspot.com/2012/06/dying-with-regrets.html

Forgive me, I couldn't help myself.

Let’s pretend I had no critical thinking skills and no self respect. Let’s pretend I believed in God. I remained married to my jerk of an ex-husband until he finally kicked the bucket at the ripe old age of 81. I served him and worshipped him like a “good Christian girl†and yet he still showed me no respect. He continued to visit his favorite little online adult dating sites and lying about the finances. We barely talked, we hardly ever did anything together. Alas, we had nothing in common anymore. I couldn’t understand what went wrong. After all, I’d done everything God commanded me to. How could a benevolent, all knowing, all loving God allow this to happen to me when I’d done all he asked?

Then it dawned on me. There was no God. And I had no self-respect if I could remain in a one sided marriage for so long. And if I didn’t respect myself, why would anyone else? My choices had been my own and I chose to be an abject slave to another human being. I gave up my dreams, my freedom to choose, and I gave up my own personal power… all to follow the dictates of an entity that may or may not exist. Some years later I die having never fulfilled any of my own personal dreams. I never went to that George Carlin concert in Washington DC in 2007 because I felt obligated to stay home with my mast- err, husband. I never got a government job or saw Tyrannosaurus Sue at the Chicago Field Museum because my husband didn’t sign off on it. I also never saw my children achieve any of their own hopes and dreams because they were busy trying to achieve their father’s.

Now, let’s not pretend anymore. I have critical thinking skills and self respect. The God story never really made sense to me so I discarded it as a fairy tale. I caught my husband lying about money and spending more time with his adult online chatroom than with me and gave him the warning that if it ever happened again, I would disappear from his life like I’d never been. He didn’t believe me. That was 2008. I’ve been divorced for 4 years. I finished my bachelor’s degree, am working on a master’s degree, got a government job. And yes, I went to that George Carlin concert by myself in 2007 and saw Tyrannosaurus Sue in the Chicago Field Museum last November. I have dreams of becoming a licensed mental health counselor, going on a paleontology dig, living in Las Vegas, finding a meaningful relationship built on mutual respect, and having children one day. I also dream of seeing them accomplish their own dreams and not the dreams of their parents.

And how is it that I have been able to do all this stuff with more to come? Because I realized that this is my life and I’m driving this train.

I don’t know about you, but *I* belong to *nobody*.

[DifferentGurl]

Maybe the reason submissive wives are strong is because they need to be strong in order to not hit their husbands when they're being tyrannical jerks.