Posted by Bitch Lab at 4:27 pm and filed under Politics, So 1998 ::
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“I want success and fame.” Dude, there’s a revo cookin’ in yer kitchen Annoyed
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For what it’s worth, I don’t like Bitch Lab, I don’t read her, I don’t think she’s very bright, and I think the main thing she piggybacked on recently was a comment thread to a post she didn’t author. Nice appropriation, that.
So: Don’t like Bitch Lab? Join the club, and don’t read her. Read the women she rips off instead. They’re better.
So: Don’t like Bitch Lab? Join the club, and don’t read her. Read the women she rips off instead. They’re better.
02-04-2006
Just go ahead and bitch
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[...] Bitch|Lab’s post on how the current argument about whether feminism or technology have done more to free women from the “drudgery” of housework ignores dimensions of race and class as well as the historic construction of notions of cleanliness and morality brought to mind an essay I wrote long ago. At the turn of the 20th century, middle-class women engaged in what was essentially a missionary effort directed towards poor immigrants, establishing “settlements” in poverty-stricken areas like the Lower East Side and offering instruction on diet, hygiene, and good citizenship, all with a healthy dose of moralizing. [...]
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I agree that Friedan’s brand of feminism was limited and elitist. However, she spoke out during a time when women were purposely being brainwashed to “get back into the home” after they had been forced to work during World War II. Many decided they enjoyed working outside of the home, and the 50’s propaganda began in a panic fearing women would replace men in the workplace. She challenged the lies inherent in the propaganda. Friedan is also the co-founder of NOW, NARAL, and several other feminist institutions. She definitely deserves our gratitude for starting a conversation that inspired millions of women to think differently about themselves. Well, I gotta go! Or I would have tried to write this better!
Emma at Gendergeek points to Friedan’s work as emblematic of feminism.
Definitely not emblematic of feminism, but an example of feminist authors who have challenged gendered assumptions about the division of labour that put women in the house with no means of escape.
I’m not unsympathetic to the opinion of Barbara Ehrenreich (and others) about middle class women entering the workforce off the back of underpaid domestic cleaners and childcare workers. However, given the realities of the labour market, and the gendered outcomes of a lack of widespread flexible working, what are women who work long hours supposed to do?
I don’t accept that childcare or domestic cleaning work is uniquely degrading and horrible. All cleaning jobs are underpaid, it strikes me, with a race to the bottom in wages allowed by the huge grey/black labour market. However, domestic cleaning has the benefit that it can be carried out during school hours, which opens it up to women with children of school age in a way that early hours/night shift office and transport cleaning might not be.
I’m sure that working in a factory making convenience foods isn’t something I would like to do. I know that working in a call centre to enable people to do their banking late at night wasn’t something I wanted to do forever. I know that working retail in an overpriced deli wasn’t something I wanted to do forever either.
All of these types of work enable women (and men) to work longer hours and to outsource their catering elsewhere. Catering and retail jobs are grouped with clerical work, cleaning, and caring as the most low-paid, and stereotypically female occupations there are.
So are we saying, then, that all of these jobs are awful and that we should stop our late night shopping, phone banking, and our eating of convenience foods to give these people a break? Or is it just the most stereotypically female domestic work that we should be shamed for paying for, and get back to our houses and do?
[...] Bitch|Lab’s post on how the current argument about whether feminism or technology have done more to free women from the “drudgery” of housework ignores dimensions of race and class as well as the historic construction of notions of cleanliness and morality brought to mind an essay I wrote long ago. At the turn of the 20th century, middle-class women engaged in what was essentially a missionary effort directed towards poor immigrants, establishing “settlements” in poverty-stricken areas like the Lower East Side and offering instruction on diet, hygiene, and good citizenship, all with a healthy dose of moralizing. [...]
There’s another aspect to this, as well:
It *is* possible to find stay-at-home domesticity satisfying (regardless of your gender), *if* you’re so inclined. Waxing the floor isn’t the pinnacle of experience for most people (although is a certain hard-to-define satisfaction in such mundane tasks sometimes, I’ve found, provided it doesn’t become too Sisyphean), but there definitely can be creative pleasures in cooking, gardening, decorating, nurturing pets, full-time parenting–again, if you’re so inclined to begin with. Lord knows it’s bad if you’re shoehorned into such a role when what you really want to do is be a lawyer, or a professor, or a sea captain, or…
And if you’re simultaneously being encouraged to depend exclusively on your significant other to perform tasks that one needs to know how to do in order to survive in this world (pay taxes and other budget drudgeries, pump gas, get a “real” job should it become financially necessary), then it’s a problem when, say, the significant other goes on walkabout, or too abusive to live with, say. Or, as happens sooner or later, dies*.
(*I name those tasks in particular because, poignantly, I remember how at sea my grandmother felt in that regard after her husband of over fifty years died. Luckily she could go to her children for help with these things. I’m sure there are lots and lots of women of that generation who suddenly find themselves helpless and lost. And of course for the men of that generation/culture who outlive their wives, in many cases they find themselves unequipped not only for things like basic housekeeping and preparing meals for themselves, but, more dangerously, for the social/emotional work that previously was the exclusive terrain of the woman. In my family, it’s said that had the situation been reversed, my grandfather almost certainly would not have survived much after his wife had gone, and sadly, that’s probably correct. The problem with being encouraged to be someone’s “other half,” of course, is that you’re not supposed to be a whole person, and ultimately, that tends to not work out so well).
But so say that *is* what you truly want to do, stay home, nurture yourself and/or your significant other(s) and/or children, build connections with the neighborhood, tend to your own knitting and garden. It’s true that in a capitalist society, the fact that one isn’t paid for such endeavors if one “only” does it for oneself and/or one’s household means that it ends up amounting to “lesser.” On the other hand, professional housecleaners and gardeners are usually considered menial laborers. And right there seems to be the gist of the problem: you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. And, *somebody* has to.
Putting aside the question of how feasible this is for most people, it does seem a bit fucked that even the idea of living to make yourself and your household happy, simply, without going into the paid workforce, means you’re “just” a housewife (or househusband, as far as that goes, which is even more disdained).
There’s a book by Jo Brans called “Feast Here Awhile,” sort of an autobiography through food. She’s Southern-born, somewhere between the WWII generation and the boomers. I don’t know much about her other work, but from that one, you get the general sense that she’s liberal and (at least) small-d democratic, middle class, and in many ways typical of her background/generation.
Anyway, at one point, there’s an anecdote about how when she was either a grad student or a beginning academic (or possibly a faculty wife, or some combination), she had occasion to host Adrienne Rich for a dinner at her home. She spends the day making a rather fiddly and complicated preparation of shrimp and vegetables for the special guest. When Rich arrives, or so goes the anecdote, she, Rich, says something to the effect of, Oh, just what I love, a simple meal. No muss, no fuss. Good for you. I get so frustrated and saddened by all these poor women who have so little scope for their lives that they pour all their energy into household tasks, wouldn’t you agree? Why, I met a woman recently who actually made *hand-decorated wastebaskets,* imagine. …Later, Brans excuses herself from the table, and quietly hides the decorated wastebasket behind the homemade shower curtain.
There’s nothing in the book that says or even suggests “And this is why feminists SUCK! BOO-YAH!” or even, “That Adrienne Rich, what a tool,” by the way. But I remember reading it and suddenly clicking on the whole flap about Hillary and the outcry over her “I’m not gonna just stay at home and *bake cookies* comment.” I’d always kind of rolled my eyes over the huffiness that had inspired: get over yourselves, Maries! She’s not talking about you! But now it occurred to me that, yeah, I could see why that would piss people off, and not just because, “oh, poor dears, they just didn’t have the *opportunities* that Hillary and others of her class/time did, no wonder they’re frustrated and envious,” but rather, maybe, also:
“Hey, fuck you, lady! I LIKE baking cookies. What about that, huh? Huh?”
heh. I LOVE you. I can’t wait for time to respond — to Emma as well.
(all that aside, the fact does remain that some jobs are awful and there’s really no amount of reframing that’s going to change that.
on the subway in NYC, there’s a series of ads for a TV show on just that, awful jobs, forget exact title or channel. The most memorable ad says:
“TWO THINGS ABOUT PIGEON POOP. IT CAN SPREAD OVER 60 DISEASES. AND SOMEONE HAS TO CLEAN IT UP.”
–cheers!