{"id":71257,"date":"2015-07-19T14:04:39","date_gmt":"2015-07-19T22:04:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=71257"},"modified":"2015-07-19T14:04:39","modified_gmt":"2015-07-19T22:04:39","slug":"what-open-marriage-taught-one-man-about-feminism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=71257","title":{"rendered":"What Open Marriage Taught One Man About Feminism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A HREF=\"http:\/\/nymag.com\/thecut\/2015\/07\/what-open-marriage-taught-one-man-about-feminism.html\">Michael Sonmore writes<\/a>: Before my wife started sleeping with other men, I certainly considered myself a feminist, but I really only understood it in the abstract. When I quit working to stay at home with the kids, I began to understand it on a whole new level. I am an economically dependent househusband coping with the withering drudgery of child-rearing. Now that I understand the reality of that situation, I don\u2019t blame women for demanding more for themselves than the life of the housewife. <\/p>\n<p>Still, as a man, I could, if I wanted to, portray what I\u2019m doing as \u201cwork,\u201d and thus claim for myself the prestige men traditionally derive from \u201cwork.\u201d Whenever I tell someone I stay home with the kids, they invariably say, \u201cHardest work in the world.\u201d They say this because the only way to account for a man at home with the kids is to say what he\u2019s doing is hard work. But there\u2019s a subtext in the compliment that makes it backhanded: We both know no one ever says it to a woman. Mothers care; fathers provide care. The difference is crucial. Despite my total withdrawal from the economy and the traditional sources of masculine identity, I can still argue I am a provider. I provide care.  <\/p>\n<p>In this way, my masculine self-image was stretched but not broken. Diaper bag notwithstanding, I was still a Man. It wasn\u2019t until my wife mentioned one evening that she\u2019d kissed another man and liked it and wanted to do more than kiss next time that I realized how my status as a Man depended on a single fact: that my wife fucked only me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Sonmore writes: Before my wife started sleeping with other men, I certainly considered myself a feminist, but I really only understood it in the abstract. When I quit working to stay at home with the kids, I began to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=71257\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[142],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feminism"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71257"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71258,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71257\/revisions\/71258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}