Response to "For Women who are Lonely and Bored at Home."

       Lori must have been busy yesterday, because instead of posting a new blog, she reposted an old one from a few years ago. It turned out to be quite an "interesting" one, so I decided it was worth responding to. 

       The blog is made up of a comment from one of Lori's followers, a man named "Trey." I don't recall seeing someone with this name on her Facebook page recently, so perhaps he was one of the vulgar, verbally abusive men who prowled around Lori's page and launched attacks at women who commented, but eventually attacked Lori herself and was finally blocked. 

       Trey apparently was responding to a woman who shared with Lori that she is often lonely and bored being home all day, and asked Lori what to do about it. Trey's response is filled with nuggets of wisdom and great ideas (heavy sarcasm!): 

First of all, have you asked your husbands if they are pleased with your efforts in the home? Have you asked them if there is anything additional that they would like to see done, done better, or done differently? Have you asked them if they have a preference on how you spend your free time? Have you expressed your concerns to them and asked them to help you come up with constructive ways to use that time? This should be your first step and then comply fully with their wishes.

Of course! The patriarchal solution to everything: ask your husband! He obviously has infinite wisdom and the perfect answer to every question you may have. In fact, this saves you the trouble of ever thinking for yourself at all! And also, how could this woman have forgotten that she is not entitled to any free time of her own? If she has any available moment, it simply means she could be doing more to serve her husband. After all, he's not paying her just to sit around doing nothing all day. Oh wait...

If they do not have a preference and leave it up to you, then ask yourself this: What did the Proverbs 31 woman do with her free time? How did she handle her loneliness? Trick question? Yeah, she didn’t really have any free time to be lonely did she? Her time, that started early in the morning before the rest of her household and ended late at night, was spent doing constructive, beneficial, and profitable WORK that benefited her household and brought good and honor to her husband. It also brought honor, praise, value, and blessing upon herself.

Trey, far from the ambiguous type, doubles down on his idea that women literally should not have any time for themselves. It seems to me the Proverbs 31 woman was sane, something that would not be possible if she had no time to herself. Trey doesn't appear to know the difference between women and robots. 

One of the tragedies of this modern era where women have so many modern machines, conveniences, and stores to shop in, is that they have way too much free time and way too many of them sit around idle and waste the time they are given (being lonely), or try and use it up in useless (socializing and shopping just to shop) and other (playing games on phones or computers) wasteful ways. 

Yes, what a tragedy that we have technology! We would be so much better off still churning butter and hanging our clothes on clotheslines and depending on gardens and livestock to survive. The way Trey sees it, the work of taking care of a home is not an end in itself (done for the sake of having food and shelter), but rather, simply a means to the end of keeping women from having any recreational time. The fact that Trey has the free time to write this nonsense tells me he is the one with too much time on his hands! 

Instead of growing their own food for their family, they use the money that their husbands earn to purchase it.

How horrible! Purchasing food at *gasp* a store! 

Instead of growing the flax and cotton that is needed to make the fabric and then making the clothes that their family needs and possibly selling some to others, they use the money that their husbands earn to purchase their clothes and instead of mending something when it gets a hole, they just toss it and buy new replacements.

It's not enough to grow everything you eat. It's not even enough to buy the materials to make clothes. Trey actually thinks wives ought to be growing the plants that will give them the materials out of which to make clothes! At this point, I have to wonder what it is Trey's ideal husband is spending money on, since all of the family's necessities are grown? Perhaps Trey simply wants to be able to spend his money on toys and luxuries and expects his wife to live the life of an indentured servant in order to support his frivolous lifestyle. 

Whereas in decades and centuries past where the woman worked hard all day long at doing these types of beneficial household activities and ended up contributing so much more to the overall support of the household, nowadays, especially for the stay-at-home wife/mom, EVERYTHING is left to the husband to earn and provide for while the wives sit at home idle, suffering with loneliness and complaining that their husbands work too many hours. Is this really God’s plan for a Christian wife that she has so little to do in her home that her biggest problem in life is dealing with loneliness while her husband carries the load virtually all by himself and his reward is a nagging and complaining wife because he works too much?

Isn't it interesting that the same people who criticize wives for staying at home supposedly "idle" while the husband is left to do all the earning and providing, also condemn women who work outside of the home in order to contribute financially to the family. You can't win with these people. There is no right answer, nothing that satisfies them. They will simply oppose women no matter what they do. 

Here is the bottom line regarding your free time, prioritize your efforts (allowing your husband the final say) and continue to focus on these types of beneficial activities until your free time is all being constructively and beneficially used up.

Once again, if it wasn't clear, women should have no time for themselves. They exist entirely to serve their husbands and male children (since Trey also urges female children to begin to be prepared for a life of servitude!). And, of course, he must throw in the caveat that the wife must never make any decision on her own (even when it comes to something like how to spend her own time), but must consult her husband. If Trey is married, I truly wonder if he allows her to go to the bathroom without asking him permission first. Men like this have egos so large that they cannot stand the thought of not having control of every aspect of the life of another person. 

Let’s face it ladies, 90 percent (or more) of the activities for women at the church INCLUDING women’s bible studies are just social events and are just a WASTE of time. Do you want to spend one to two hours a week cleaning the bathrooms or vacuuming the floors at your local church? This would be time well spent but going up there to socialize and gossip with other women? Not so much. I am not saying that you should NEVER attend a function like this to socialize or never have lunch with another Christian woman, etc. but time spent this way should be considered a luxury and kept to a reasonable minimum. 

Bypassing the completely made-up percentage, yes, you read that correctly: Trey is fine with women cleaning bathrooms and vacuuming, but talking to other people? That's not what women were made for! Time spent socializing is not spent cleaning, so it must be "kept to a reasonable minimum." He doesn't say it here, but of course he would define "reasonable minimum" as whatever a woman's husband wants it to be (even if that means none). 

A word of caution, be very careful going out on the internet and/or talking to other women to see how they have interpreted Proverbs 31 (hint: She wasn’t a career woman.) and what they are doing because there is a LOT more wrong out there than what is right. Read Proverbs 31 in the Bible for yourself. Read it over and over until you have it memorized and then meditate on it for as many hours, days or weeks as it takes while praying to God and asking Him to show you what He wants you to do with the time that you have been given. Then, when you think you have an answer, run it by your husband for his final approval and blessing.

This nightmare would not be complete without a message attempting to frighten the reader away from listening to anyone but Trey. Somehow he believes he is the one who decides what is and is not the correct interpretation of Proverbs 31. He tells women to read it for themselves, but he doesn't really mean that they should come to their own understanding of it. He has already told them what it means and saved them the trouble of thinking about it. And, of course, he reminds wives that they must run it by their husbands anyway. And if a woman's husband decides that the real meaning of Proverbs 31 is that he is permitted by God to have multiple wives and lock them all in a shed and demand they bow down and worship him, who is she to tell him he's wrong? 

       And yet, Lori posts this as a comment so good it is "worthy of its own post." Some of this is (almost) shocking, even for Lori. Did she read it, or just copy and paste it and assume it was divinely sanctioned because a man wrote it? 

       Lori has also failed to notice that she hasn't addressed the original problem at all. The blog said nothing except that women aren't allowed to be bored or lonely, or, more accurately, that it doesn't matter if they are. The same amount of care is shown for women as you might have for an old dish rag; it is useful as long as it serves its purpose but it isn't that big of a deal if it gets dirty and ragged and worn out. 

       Needless to say, women who stay at home or work outside of the home both deserve and need free time, and should not be made to feel selfish or idle or wasteful because of it. And they also need social interaction and companionship (especially one whose husband viewa her as chattel...I doubt they're getting much companionship from him!). Any man who loves his wife would be perceptive to these facts and would want her needs to be taken care of, rather than simply demanding she work harder to please him. But, of course, Lori and her followers carefully avoid all of the Bible verses commanding husbands to love their wives! 

       It's a good thing Trey isn't a stay-at-home-wife. He wouldn't last 4 hours.

Link to the original blog: https://thetransformedwife.com/for-women-who-are-lonely-and-bored-at-home/