Katie Miller Is Welcome To Quit Her Job And Stay Home And Raise Babies If She Likes
As a feminist, I absolve her of the obligation to have a life outside of the home.
Once upon a time, there was a gal named Kate. Kate Douglas Wiggin to be exact. If that name sounds familiar to you, it is because she was the author of the book Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm — a book about a bright, creative, driven young girl from a large, poor family of farmers who is sent to live with her two aunts because her family is unable to support her any longer. One aunt, Jane, is kind and supportive. The other aunt, Miranda, thinks she will never be anything because she’s just like her lazy dad and is mad because they didn’t get the sister who was more skilled at cooking and cleaning. But Jane and lots of other people keep encouraging Rebecca and eventually she wins an essay contest that helps her to buy Sunnybrook Farm and rescue her family and then, yadda yadda yadda, we’ve all seen the Shirley Temple movie, she gets a job, she sells the farm so her family can survive and Miranda ultimately changes her mind about the girl and leaves her everything after she dies.
It’s a pretty feminist book for that time. But Kate Douglas Wiggin was not a feminist. Sure, she had access to more education than most other women had at the time, never had children, and she was vastly more successful and well-known than her husband, but she was no feminist. In fact, she was very actively opposed to women’s suffrage — weirdly claiming that women ought to be “strong enough to remain slightly in the background,” because “the limelight never makes anything grow,” and that it was “more difficult to be an inspiring woman than to be a good citizen or an honest voter.”
Oh, the irony.
I tell you the story of Kate Douglas Wiggin, because today we are here to discuss another Kate. Katie Miller, to be exact.
Katie Miller is a former United States Department of Homeland Security deputy press secretary and the current wife of sniveling cartoon villain Stephen Miller, who shares her disdain for feminism as well as her obvious hypocrisy.
She also has a podcast.
And this Katie, like so many other Katies and non-Katies before her, uses her platform to tell other women to shut up and her job to tell other women they don’t need jobs and should just stay home and make babies.
Over the weekend, instead of spending time with her beloved family, Katie Miller took to X to share these thoughts.
Feminism failed to liberate women.
Women were told we needed to work to be as successful as a man.
We were told we had to chase the next pay raise and climb the corporate ladder.
The most fulfilled a woman will ever be is raising babies in a house full of love.
Family is the ultimate bedrock of civilization. My legacy is my children, not my job title.
And yet, the question remains, if all Katie Miller needs to be fulfilled is “raising babies in a house full of love,” why she has a goddamned podcast in the first place.
To be clear, feminism didn’t “tell women” they “needed” to have a job. That is not how anything works or worked. The point was always that women are the ones who should decide what to do with their lives and that, if that involves work, then they should be treated fairly and paid fairly at work. It’s not actually that hard! Perhaps if we had the labor protections that the Left wants, more women who do want to stay home would be able to do so. But we don’t.
Feminism wasn’t about promising anyone anything. It was not about promising anyone that their lives would be better or more fulfilled because no one can do that for you. As far as work goes, a large number of women in the 1950s and ‘60s were suffering from what was called “the problem without a name” or, as Betty Friedan put it, “the feminine mystique.” They were doing all of the things they were told they ought to — they were being Susie Homemakers and Donna Reeds (except for Donna Reed who ran all of her shit) and they were not happy. That is why they were taking loads of Miltown (an early sedative). The point isn’t that one thing or another is specifically going to make anyone happy, but rather that people ought to be able to pursue whatever it is that makes them happy. My mom stayed home after I was born, one of my best friends doesn’t work, and they’re no less feminist than I am — because making the choice that’s best for you, personally, within your ability to do so is what it’s all about.
But what’s interesting here is that Katie, like those women in the 1950s, is clearly not happy or satisfied just being a wife or homemaker. She couldn’t hack it. She doesn’t have to work; surely Voldemort makes enough money to support her and their children. But she had to start a podcast to be fulfilled. She had to be in the limelight and make her thoughts known. There are times when she would not have been able to do that, and when her ideas would have been dismissed not just because they are bad ideas, but because she is a woman. Because of feminism, she can be sure that this is what we are judging her on instead. Isn’t that nice?
It’s clear that neither she nor her husband have the slightest idea what was even happening in these times they idealize so deeply. Because also last week, Stephen Miller went and tweeted “Watched the Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra Family Christmas with my kids. Imagine watching that and thinking America needed infinity migrants from the third world.”
Of course, as we all know, both Martin and Sinatra were the children of immigrants from Southern Italy — which, at that time, was pretty much considered the “third world.” Or, as one cartoonist put it “the slums of Europe.”
Frank Sinatra’s mother, Dolly, for the record, was a feminist and a suffragist who chained herself to city hall in support of giving women the vote, and also earned the nickname “Hatpin Dolly” for performing illegal abortions. Unfortunately her feminism did not extend to Frank, who was unbelievably shitty to both Lana Turner and Ava Gardner, sent divorce papers to the set of Rosemary’s Baby because he didn’t want his child bride, Mia Farrow, to work (they started dating when she was 19 and he was 48), and was accused of rape by at least one woman. Though I’m pretty sure none of that had anything to do with him being the child of immigrants.
The time to which these freaks want to return is fictional. Katie Miller’s depiction of feminism is fictional. The only people going around promising rose gardens “if you just do what we say” are people like the Millers, who are ignorant enough to believe they have all the answers for other people. Work isn’t going to make everyone happy, and not working isn’t going to make everyone happy, because we’re all individuals with different wants and needs. Not having immigrants in the country isn’t going to make everyone happy, because most of us aren’t actually that petty or obsessed with living in a world where everyone does what we want them to do.
Also, unfortunately, not everyone is always going to be in the financial position to do what would make them most happy. And they’re a whole lot less likely to be able to make that kind of choice when people like the Millers are in charge.
The liberation promised by feminism was never about telling women what they needed to do to be happy and fulfilled. It was always about choice. It was about women having the choice and the freedom to pursue what they believe will make them most happy and fulfilled. Katie Miller wants to take away that choice and insist that every woman on earth can be happy with the exact same life — a life that she herself has eschewed.
I don’t want Katie Miller, who is, again, in the financial position to not have to work for the rest of her life, to have this podcast just to make feminists like me happy. I am okay! I don’t need her to do anything for me. As a long-time feminist, I am thrilled to release her of this burden, and if the thing that would make her happiest would be to stay at home and raise her children, I think that’s exactly what she should do.
EARLY LID AND OPEN THREAD as we prepare for tomorrow, when we count down the year from noon to midnight. See you then!
A new When Harry Met... Sketchy Pigeons.
Today it is a NY flashback
https://open.substack.com/pub/ziggywiggy/p/when-harry-met-some-sketchy-pigeons?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
Wait!
Wait wait wait!
I believe the MAGA acceptable response to Katie is, “Quiet, piggy!”