About me, and a little about the author

Hi ladies! I'm Elizabeth at That Married Couple. I am soo excited about this book club and am loving the introductions! Just think, we haven't even gotten to the book yet!

For my stats: 27 year old married to a wonderful husband. No kids yet, but hopefully that will change this year! I'm originally from Missouri and crave moving back to the Midwest. I went to Texas for grad school, where I met my husband, and we moved back to Pennsylvania, where he's from. Actually, we now live in the same house he grew up in, as my MIL passed away this past Easter and we moved in with his father in August.

I grew up Protestant (Disciples of Christ denomination), was always certain that my future husband would be changing denominations to join me (a non-Protestant was unthinkable), and was horrified that the man who would become my husband was Catholic and didn't want to change (even though he wasn't practicing when we started dating! the nerve!). It took a lot of prayer, tears, study, and temper-tantrums before finally the Holy Spirit opened me up to the fullness of the faith. I fell in love with it and entered the Church this past Easter.

I have been in school my entire life. It's getting a little old, so I can't wait to finish grad school this spring. I'm keeping my eyes open for jobs, but after I graduate I'm really hoping to become a stay-at-home mom. This is a complete 180 from where I was a few years ago, when my then-boyfriend informed me that he thinks it's good for the mother to stay at home when the children were young - I was appalled! Since then I've come to see what a great opportunity it is, so I'm praying we will be able to conceive and have a child in the not too distant future!

Have you noticed yet that I tend to ramble?

Okay, and about feminism. I always kind of wanted to be a feminist, in the yay-girl-power, I'm-just-as-tough-as-a-boy way, but was simultaneously terrified of the "feminazis." Since learning about New Feminism and the writings of John Paul II, I have become infatuated with the concept, and truly believe it's the right way to go. I'm certainly not an anti-feminist, since I believe especially the first feminists procured a lot of important rights we were being denied (hello suffrage), but I think the movement has been commandeered by a few radicals who are taking things too far. I think some keys to improving it is to (a) truly love other women and (b) actually love men, too. But I'll stop before this tangent gets too long, as we have plenty of time to discuss this kind of stuff!


I'm really excited about this book, because I read another of this author's works: Marriage: The Dream That Refuses to Die. I was very impressed with Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. (Do you mind if I shorten it to EFG on here?) I also learned a lot about her history in the introduction and afterward, and thought you might be interested.

EFG started out as "a leading Marxist-feminist intellectual who identified herself as a nonbeliever" and was a founder of one of the first women's studies departments. Nonetheless, she was extremely honest and objective in her pursuit of truth. Her compatriots were furious when she abandoned secular liberalism to become pro-life and eventually Catholic. "If her pro-life advocacy angered many liberal intellectuals, her outspoken defense of marriage and traditional norms of sexual morality made them apoplectic."

The intro was written by one of her students, who on the surface was completely the opposite of EFG at the time, and she raved about the openness of EFG to opinions and theories different from her own. EFG was a woman who was willing to follow wherever the data took her, even when it departed dramatically from what she had originally adhered to. I'm really looking forward to reading more of her work!