The wild shit about "blahhh we need programs to teach the youths to be straight!"

is that's literally what the early 20th century boom in youth orgs was about. https://twitter.com/arthur_affect/status/1319428800929689600

4H is an especially great example. Family farms can't work without shitloads of unpaid women's work. (h/t @gnrosenberg)

This led to lots of farm-raised young women gtfo'ing the countryside. White rural exodus was LED by women.

going on walk brb

*the rural exodus from white *land-owning* families

white tenant farmers left bc they got replaced by machines, & tenants of color left bc of that and/or, ya know, terrorism

real farm history ain't little house on the prairie, it's diverse & tumultuous

The funny thing is deep down the landowning families knew exactly why their daughters were leaving.

When asked "Do you want your sons to stay in farming!" most answered YES

when asked "Do you want your daughters to marry farmers?" they said NO

There was a polite fiction that this was bc being a farm wife was grueling work.

True!

But nobody wanted to talk about WHY: farm men controlled family finances. They spent liberally on things that saved HIM labor, & not for things that saved women's labor (basic plumbing, etc).

It gets worse! A lot of farm goods used to be household chores run by women. Eggs, meat chickens, produce, dairy. It gave farm women a small amt of financial independence.

UNTIL THEIR HUSBANDS STOLE THEIR BUSINESSES

That's the part of the "agribusiness takeover" sob story that nobody wants to talk about.

Women busted ass 1900-1920 & built national cooperative marketing systems to sell goods grown in small flocks & herds.

They knew it was a power struggle too. Farm women active in the poultry business 1900-1920 were adamant that the "separate spheres" bullshit was just about keeping women economically dependent on men, & not healthy.

But at the household level their husbands largely refused to invest in their businesses. They viewed women's work as chores, not business.

Plus god forbid your wife get a shot at out-earning you amirite

Then after WW2 some enterprising dudes figured out you CAN get farm men to invest in these traditionally women-run businesses

if you packaged it in a format farm men understood: a big equipment purchase for himself, where someone else deals with distributing & selling the goods.

That's the real story of most "agribusiness takeover."

It was just fucking men stealing their own wives' businesses.

And since they didn't know shit about poultry or dairy processing or veggies, they had to depend on their agbiz vendors to tell them what to do.

This is the reason landowning families didn't want their daughters to marry a farmer. Deep down they all knew their community was run by hateful, thieving misogynists.

And it's the reason their own daughters left & never came back.

4H & other youth programs were born in an era of existential power struggle btwn men & women in ag.

The goal was to train kids to see any other format of farming besides "one man, one woman, complementary roles (until your man sees fit to consume yours) as unthinkable.

Before the progressive era farm communities had a lot of spontaneous gay/poly/interracial relationships going on & it freaked the upper class tf out.

Their response was to indoctrinate kids w farming = compulsory heterosexuality.

That's why lesbian farmers freak conservatives out SO MUCH.

"how can we farm if the womens are just doing their own shit, us men can't survive without inserting ourselves into women's business oh god"

This info largely drawn from Entitled to Power and @gnrosenberg's book The 4-H Harvest

In conclusion, heterosexuality is a hustle and Rod Johnson is a basic ass con artist who's publically advocating that we program children's sexuality for fun & profit

also, me when people say family farming is traditional & wholesome

*rod dreher

who TF even cares what his name is lbr

well this is doing numbers

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