It amuses me endlessly how you seem to think feminism is bra-burning, man hating, and traditional values rejecting, and thus take your little pokes while your women friends stubbornly reject the label.
Feminism is simply believing that women have the right to make choices about their own lives, rather than having those choices made for them, and that men and women have equal rights. Shocking, I know!
Feminism is the right to choose to work outside the home, or not. It is the right to choose whether or not you wish to have sex (even with your husband). It is the right to ALL those things that historically only men have been permitted by society to claim. I’ve never understood why you apparently find it so comical or offensive.

I have several friend who keep chickens, and I’m all for it. Femivore, however, is the worst word I’ve heard since operationalize.

Your Name above, are you on drugs? I don’t recognize this cartoon. “bra burning”? Really?

Your Name,
The whole “feminism is about choice” slogan is easily knocked about, but it’s fairly useless without understanding why you feel compelled to make the choices you do, which comes from a spirit of inquiry–the sort of spirit Rod actually endorses.
I think Rod would be the first to question whether anyone, male or female, has the right to claim ALL those things society has long permitted.

This is good. Conservatives make a mistake, I think, in clucking at women who do not want to be housewives. There’s nothing conservative or traditional about the contemporary houses women are now asked to manage. The household used to be a productive place, not solely a consumptive one. Good on these ladies for taking steps to make it so again.

Well, everything old is new again; see Proverbs 31: 10-31.
But I have to agree with Dangermom: femivore? Really??
The herbivore eats plants.
The carnivore eats meat.
The omnivore eats both plants and meat.
So, what does a “femivore” eat?
Egad. Back to the etymological drawing board at once, please.

One more thumbs down for femivore, but otherwise a good article. I would so like to see the household once again become a center of production rather than consumption. I read all the “Little House” books as a kid, but reading Farmer Boy again as an adult (to my kids) was mind blowing. The extent to which this fairly prosperous farm produced nearly everything they needed to live a comfortable life was so far removed from our modern experience. At the end, a family discussion about the merits of farming vs. plying a trade in town is related. It was kind of sad to realize how much the fortunes of the independent farm family have declined. Almanzo decided — rightly for his time — to stay in farming. These days, his parents would probably have pressed for him to learn a trade.

Self sufficiency and industriousness are not new. This whole homesteading idea is not new either. Many crunchy, conservative and liberal, homeschooling moms have been doing this sort of thing for a long time. Just go look at homeschooling magazines ten years back and further and you’ll see a whole movement way ahead of this curve.

Chicken keeping as a feminist act
Yikes! I hope this sickness doesn’t spread to my local. Then my boys won’t tend the birds anymore, and the girls/wife sure won’t because it’s for wackos, so I’ll have to do it.
Every once in a while, everyone loses their collective minds. This article is one of those times.

So, what does a “femivore” eat?
True femininity.

As a home schooling mom, this made me realize that the same things could be said of me (and many of my home schooling friends) as about the chicken keepers (and I will add, that some of those home schoolers are homesteaders too!).

Cultural wars over how one comes to the decision to raise chickens.
Wow.

It must be Your Name’s time of the month.

Mdavid, I have an honest question for you: do you approve of the description of the worthy wife in Proverbs 31:10 and following?
I ask because I honestly can’t see why you would object to women keeping and raising chickens. It’s something women have done to help a family’s income for quite a long time–where does the phrase “butter and egg money” come from, anyway?

Erin Manning Mdavid, I have an honest question for you: do you approve of the description of the worthy wife in Proverbs 31:10 and following?
That’s certainly not an honest question, so I won’t dignify it with an answer.
I ask because I honestly can’t see why you would object to women keeping and raising chickens.
I honestly can’t understand what you are talking about. Reread my post. What I’m clearly worried about is that I am going to have to start feeding and tending our chickens if I want fresh eggs once my family gets wind of this new cultural movement where raising chickens becomes a new feminist status symbol for women (who know know zip about country living, natch). Shiver. I just hope they stick to burning bras.
Mac, Cultural wars over how one comes to the decision to raise chickens. Wow.
Thank you! Sanity exists; I was concerned for a bit…

What I’m clearly worried about is that I am going to have to start feeding and tending our chickens if I want fresh eggs once my family gets wind of this new cultural movement where raising chickens becomes a new feminist status symbol for women (who know know zip about country living, natch). Shiver. I just hope they stick to burning bras.
It’s like reading The Onion where they make up some wing-nut. Unfortunately, MDavid is probably all too true.

Actually, mdavid, I’d think you’d be in favor of this–a movement of intelligent women turning their energies toward home and family instead of outside careers. And Shannon Hayes isn’t a know-nothing when it comes to country living–she and her husband make their living from farming.

Peter, that’s exactly what I thought of, because The Onion has already done it!
“Women Now Empowered By Everything A Woman Does”
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/women_now_empowered_by_everything
Seriously, if people of any gender want to embrace a good crunchy conservative practice like raising chickens, that’s great.
If the practice has to be labelled as “feminist” before women will do it, hey, I can live with that.
If a woman who has to have some outlet for her “feminist” agenda can find it in raising chickens, that’s real progress.

What’s the use of me workin’ so hard?
I got a gal in the rich folks’ yard.
They kill a chicken,
She sends me the head,
She thinks I’m workin’,
I’m layin’ up in bed.
–Woody Guthrie

“Femivorism is grounded in the very principles of self-sufficiency, autonomy and personal fulfillment that drove women into the work force in the first place.”
Well, if that’s the case, that might be a problem. If that’s what the “femivores” (such a vile locution) are looking for, I worry that they may expect to be as disappointed with chickens as some feminists have been in jobs. Thinking about personal fulfillment in terms of autonomy and self-sufficiency rather than community and self sacrifice is a recipe for disappointment and alienation.
On the other hand, I’d venture that raising livestock at home and other productive work-at-home activities are probably more solid bulwarks against excessive autonomy and self-obsession than most of the typical workplace jobs in our service economy.
And it is definitely an improvement for stay-at-home wives to get back to the traditional home economy. I think Forestwalker hit the nail on the head: The household used to be a productive place, not solely a consumptive one. Good on these ladies for taking steps to make it so again.
I agree completely.

I recommend “The Egg and I,” Betty MacDonald’s 1940′s hilarious memoir about her experiences with her husband trying to raise chickens on a farm in Washington state.
I also recommend being a bit slower to judge — the women who raise chickens, the women who put on suits and go to the city to work in offices, the New York Times, and the other comment-posters. Sheesh.

Hey Anonymous, and when you say, (especially on this one), might as well just sign in as “coward”:
“If a woman who has to have some outlet for her “feminist” agenda can find it in raising chickens, that’s real progress”
I guess raising children ain’t major enough as a “feminist” agenda. So what’s on your “masculinist” agenda today, a wad of tobacco chew? grafitti? arson? gang banging? Or do you prefer computer hacking, ponzi scheming, and the usurpation of God’s name for global violence?
So please, if you really need some outlet for your “masculinist” agenda, it would be real progress if you would instead just sit around and complain about women.

Awww, Rod, not Betty. Germaine would be ok, but not Betty – Betty didn’t see any point at all to the domestic sphere and thought women should get out of it.
Funny, I just posted on this over at my blog, too, mostly about the degree to which I don’t think that getting out of the Mommy wars dynamics represents an act of feminism. What Shannon Hayes is writing about is a truly significant kind of feminism – Peggy Orenstein, who wrote the article, however, seems mostly to be talking about something else.
Interesting set of readers you’ve got here – bra burning? Really? How…arcane.
Sharon

Judith . . . For The Win! ; )
Those interested in historical accuracy–which I trust would be everyone here, she said with just a trace of sarcasm–may want to check out Snopes.com to view the status of so-called “bra-burning” as a myth.
http://www.snopes.com/history/american/burnbra.asp
Recently anointed “resident radical feminist” by a charming fellow commenter, I myself would raise chickens in my back yard if zoning regulations permitted it, but they don’t. However, I wouldn’t see it as a radically transformative act, or one uniquely suited to women. For some very interesting discussion of related issues, I recommend the blog “No Longer Qivering” at
http://nolongerquivering.com/
The missing “u” isn’t a typo, because, as the site owner puts it, “There is no ‘you’ in Quivering.” It’s run by one of the women profiled in Kathryn Joyce’s expose of right-wing patriarchal religion, “Quiverful.” She and some of the other women who blog there found it necessary to extricate themselves from a lifestyle of household production by women. There’s a dark side to it, one rife with perhaps unintended consequences for women who cut themselves off from the modern world to grind their own flour, wear headscarves and bear a child every year or two. The simple life has given much satisfaction to some, including Sharon Astyk and, presumably, Mrs. mdavid. Nevertheless, for women I think it should be approached with prudence and caution.

Anon, The Onion has already done it! “Women Now Empowered By Everything A Woman Does”
Dude, that’s absolutely perfect.
Way back in the era of real women, they had a dozen kids and worked their *ss off washing clothes, working a garden, milking the cow and collecting eggs, all while running the social life of the village. Then one day, they became empowered, and started working down a list:
a) vote
b) work
c) education
d) free love
e) birth control
f) mini-skirt
g) divorce
h) gender-neutral language
i) free love
j) refusing sex
k) combat
k) free porn
l) tramp stamp
m) topless
…
…
z) raising chickens! An old tiresome chore has now become empowerment.
Their great-great-great-great grandmothers would be proud (or ashamed, I don’t know which ).

Sig, about your comment:
“I myself would raise chickens in my back yard if zoning regulations permitted it, but they don’t.”
It took those of us with underground chickens 3 years, but we got the zoning regulations changed. Now, us chicken owners are legal and out of the closet, and I learned a huge amount about how legislation gets passed in the process.
What worked in my community may not work for yours, but anyone who is interested in what we did can email me at jlsylves at kiva.net

Good grief, Mdavid, women getting the right to vote and/or access to greater education leads inexorably to topless tramp-stamped oversexed combat-boot wearin’ chicken raisin’ feminists? Horrors, and so forth.
And I was serious in my question, because honestly I can’t figure out where you’re coming from on this. It’s fine for a woman to raise chickens if her husband tells her she ought to, but not fine for a woman to do so on her own? Or is it fine for a woman to do so on her own, so long as she doesn’t think it’s empowering or anything like that?

After reading this article, I realized that I know someone that fits this category – - – Femivore. That aside, 150 years ago, I think it was just what most women did: keep a vegatable garden, tend chickens, make home made soap — I’m lost here! BTW, missed you all today!

Judith,
Glad to see your careful and well-reasoned ad hominems. I see I touched a nerve.
Apparently I have to spell it out with less subtlety:
If your imaginary tobacco-chewing, gang-banging “masculinist” can be persuaded that taking responsibility for a family is a crucial part of the “masculinist” agenda, I’d call that progress too. The point is, when people turn away from gender wars toward things that help to strengthen the family, that’s good for everyone involved – most notably the children. I’m not sure how this line of reasoning makes me a “masculinist”. (But if it does, I’ll happily embrace it).
Raising children IS a noble calling, one which women deserve great praise for. Unfortunately, raising the public perception of motherhood is not high on many feminists’ agenda these days. Rather, they seem to be the ones implicitly denigrating stay-at-home mothers. If they can redirect their energies toward raising chickens instead, that’s good for everyone involved.
As I said before, I’ll even (grudgingly) put up with women claiming victory in the gender wars if that’s what it takes to get them to care about what’s good for everyone involved.

raising the public perception of motherhood is not high on many feminists’ agenda these days. Rather, they seem to be the ones implicitly denigrating stay-at-home mothers.
I’d say you know next to nothing about feminism and what feminism has been saying about valuing motherhood since the 1960s. Fsminism has been about choices and that “women’s work” at home should be valued, but also that women who don’t want to stay home should be valued an treated fairly.

The Especial Anonymous:
“Unfortunately, raising the public perception of motherhood is not high on many feminists’ agenda these days.”
Yeah I know what you mean. I used to be a Court Appointed Special Advocate. Some of these men had 5 or 6 children with different women, and had no idea where they were. Obviously raising public perception of fatherhood is not high on many masculinists’ agenda these days.
“As I said before, I’ll even (grudgingly) put up with women claiming victory in the gender wars”
While in your self constructed battlefield, be careful who you shoot.

Sigilaris, there are some interesting overlaps between leftist feminist subsistence movements (which long predate chicken keepers – Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen and Marie Mies’s _The Subsistence Perspective_ and Mies and Vandana Shiva’s _Ecofeminism_ are probably good primary texts) and the Quiverfull movement, but this is the first time it has been structurally implied that I’m part of the latter. There’d be a number of objections there – I don’t have enough kids, I’m a Jew, not a Christian, I’m a leftist feminist, not a conservative, I live in a highly egalitarian household… but hey, close enough for jazz, right?
Sharon

Whoa there, Sharon–I know who you are, and had no intention of lumping you in with the Quiverful movment! My apologies if I left that reading of my comment open. Yes, I agree that there are interesting overlaps between the groups you mention. My cautionary admonition was not aimed at you, but at what I believe to be a number of readers of this blog who would find a Quiverful-style life congenial on first look. I wanted to urge that women examine the costs and benefits carefully before they start down that path. I think your “highly egalitarian household” is essential to implementing back to the land strategies (or whatever your preferred term for what you’re doing might be) in a way that doesn’t disadvantage women. As has become obvious, not all the readers here believe in egalitarian households. Unequal burdens for women are what I’m cautioning against, not your set-up. As for chicken-keeping, I don’t see why it’s necessary to tag it with any ideological markers.

Whatever makes women happy makes me happy because all of life is about nothing but womyn and how they feel. Why our sole purpose on this earth here is to ensure that womyn are fullfilled in their careers, their roles, their choices, their rights and there infinite array of products and cremes and savs and other soothing items designed to make them pleased. Now thanks be to God they can even be happy chicken farmers because they have deemed it okay.

“Feminism is simply believing that women have the right to make choices about their own lives, rather than having those choices made for them, and that men and women have equal rights. Shocking, I know!”
LMAO! Since when did a man have the right to make a choice about whether they would work or not? I wil believe that we women truly want to be equal when:
1) we make the next logical step from “My Body My Choice” and fess up and admit that since a woman’s body is her property, and a fetus is her property and she has the right to terminate a pregnancy without a father’s consent, that the choice to carry a pregnancy to term and have a child is likewise her choice, then fathers should also be able to make their own choices and if they don’t want a child, choose not to pay child support or have the govt force them to pay it, thus prioritizing the woman’s choice over the man’s and actually forcing him to finance her choice
2) Women have to register for selective service when they turn 18 and can be drafted into national service in time of war if necessary. Until this happens, women will not be equal citizens.

Karina_b,
I absolutely agree with both points, #1, and #2. Good to read something intelligent, especially after the brainless blather that was posted just before your post.

Brainless Blather? Couldn’t you be more clever. When all is not any longer just about you then brainless blather may become just humor designed to make a point. But then maybe feminists do not understand humor. . Only a feminist could find a way to equate chickens with idealogy. Nothing is anymore just about life. Everything is analyzed disected and disturbed until it just becomes meaningless. Back to the coven, back, back….you would be welcome back when you do not need any longer to take yourself so seriously and might join the rest of us in what is just simply sometimes a hard row for all. Life is about living. Doesn’t really need to be war all the time…..