OYENTE

Jacob Snodgrass

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Splinters Audiolibro Por Leslie Jamison arte de portada

Feminism is a false promise

Total
2 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
2 out of 5 stars
Historia
3 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 04-13-25

This story is an obvious tragedy couched as a rousing success for feminism. it isn’t

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Blow Your House Down Audiolibro Por Gina Frangello arte de portada

Great Writing by a Foolish Woman

Total
4 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
4 out of 5 stars
Historia
4 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 04-01-25


Feminism’s Free Pass: Privilege of Destruction
Gina Frangello’s memoir Blow Your House Down: A Story of Family, Feminism, and Treason has sparked plenty of buzz for its raw, unapologetic dive into infidelity, divorce, and self-reinvention—all framed as a feminist triumph over patriarchal shackles. But beneath the applause lies a nagging question: does her brand of feminism, and the modern strain it reflects, amount to little more than the freedom to destroy lives with zero accountability? Reading her story, I found myself less inspired than exasperated—here’s a woman who seems more foolish than liberated, her “arc” built on a privilege she acknowledges but rages against and a narrative that bends over backwards to justify the wreckage.
Frangello’s tale is messy by design: a 20-year marriage to a man who raised her twins, cared for her ailing parents, and provided a stable home, only for her to torch it all in pursuit of an affair with Rob Roberge, now her husband.In the end she casts this as a feminist rebellion, a break from the oppressive confines of domesticity. Yet what stands out isn’t her defiance—it’s the safety net her ex-husband wove, one she leaned on to chase her “happiness.” He managed her mother’s Alzheimer’s and her father’s cancer while she was off with her lover; he held the family together as she dismantled it. This isn’t oppression—it’s a foundation most people would kill for. Her feminism, then, starts to look like a luxury good, affordable only because of the financial and emotional labor she could offload onto him.
This privilege is the first crack in her story’s facade. Frangello doesn’t hide her resources—a writing career, a Chicago house, a partner who kept the lights on—but she doesn’t fully wrestle with them either. Critics have noted this too: her rebellion reads less like a universal feminist cry and more like a middle-class woman’s midlife crisis, one she could weather because the stakes were never existential. Contrast that with women lacking such a cushion—those whose defiance might mean poverty or isolation—and her narrative feels narrow, even indulgent. The transition from stability to chaos was her choice, not her cage, which makes the “shackles” she rails against seem more self-imposed than systemic.
That choice leads to a broader tension in modern feminism, one Frangello exemplifies: the slide into consequence-free destruction. She frames her affair and divorce as a radical act, but the fallout—her ex’s betrayal, her kids’ fractured home—gets softened by a feminist-Marxist lens of escaping oppression. Accountability, when it rears its head, is swiftly decried as patriarchal guilt-tripping. This isn’t unique to her. Across feminist discourse, the push for self-actualization often skips who’s left picking up the pieces—partners, children, even other women. The counterargument, of course, is that women have long been chained to others’ needs, so claiming this messy freedom is the point. But when it’s built on someone else’s back, as Frangello’s was, it starts to smell less like equality and more like a power play dressed up as ideology.
Here’s where the discussion sharpens. You don’t need to burn down the house to fix it. Feminism can—and should—advocate for women and family, challenging skewed male leadership without fracturing society’s building blocks. Frangello’s ex wasn’t a cartoonish tyrant; he was a partner who stepped up. She could’ve redefined their dynamic, not detonated it. Instead, she seems more shackled by modernist feminist expectations—perform radical autonomy, reject the “good wife” script—than she ever was by him. She chose her ex, just as she chose Roberge, so where’s the oppression? The real bind might be her need to fit a narrative that demands chaos as proof of strength, not the men she blames.
That need drives her justifications, and she’s dug in deep. In the memoir, she doesn’t deny the damage—she reframes it as a noble cost of liberation. Her ex’s labor becomes part of the system she’s fleeing, not a debt she owes. It’s a feminist-Marxist sleight of hand: personal wreckage dissolves into a grand tale of oppressor vs. oppressed. If pressed on this, she’d likely argue the real shackles were the cultural pressure to stay grateful in a life she outgrew. But that dodges the kicker: she built that life, thrived in it, then torched it when it didn’t fit, all while leaning on its perks to land safely. The justification holds only if you buy the ideology wholesale—otherwise, it’s a house of cards propped up by privilege and self-delusion.
So what keeps her from seeing it? Probably the same thing that fuels this strain of feminism: a hunger for validation that outstrips introspection. Frangello’s story isn’t foolish because she made hard choices—it’s foolish because she cloaks them in a narrative that ducks the bill. Modern feminism doesn’t need to be a free pass to destroy without reckoning. It can build, not just break, balancing women’s agency with the ties that hold us together. Frangello’s arc, for all its noise, suggests she’s less free than she thinks—trapped not by men, but by the ideology she’s desperate to please.

Modern feminism is simply a desire to wreck one’s life and avoid accountability like they perceive men do. However when you sow wind you always reap a whirlwind. It is too late for buyers remorse.

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Saturate Audiolibro Por Jeff Vanderstelt arte de portada

Great resource

Total
5 out of 5 stars
Ejecución
5 out of 5 stars
Historia
5 out of 5 stars

Revisado: 02-05-19

Good job Jeff. This is an accessible book for our entire congregation to read and understand.

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