and while i am at it

[piranha]

ranting, that is, here's another one. :)

betsy posted a link to an article about the failures of "choice" feminism, and i came out of reading it with a diametrically opposed view to hers.

lots of interesting stuff in that article which i will completely ignore. but it misses one huge area despite touching on it, and misses is so badly that it mostly self-destructed in front of my eyes.

Half my Times brides quit before the first baby came. In interviews, at least half of them expressed a hope never to work again. None had realistic plans to work. More importantly, when they quit, they were already alienated from their work or at least not committed to a life of work. One, a female MBA, said she could never figure out why the men at her workplace, which fired her, were so excited about making deals. “It’s only money,” she mused.

*ding*. it's only money. it's only a job. it's not as earth-shakingly important as some make it out to be, unless one loves it -- but not everyone will love it. and if one has the money (inherited or married into) to avoid the workplace in which one doesn't actually love anything, heck, why not? because most work SUCKS. if more people could afford not to work, guess what? they'd be staying home! they'd be volunteering their time for different things. they'd be learning new things and play with them for a while. they might still work, they might even still feel duty to do some boring work, but not 8 hours a day, most of their working lives.

i don't have children. but i've left the rat race. and i am never going back. i'd cut back all the luxuries in my life before i'd go back. i might even choose to live as a hermit in the woods before i'd go back.

The family -- with its repetitious, socially invisible, physical tasks -- is a necessary part of life, but it allows fewer opportunities for full human flourishing than public spheres like the market or the government.

you know? i used to believe that. hey, i was a workoholic. work was exciting! the work, not necessarily the jobs. there is so much soul-deadening crap in the average workplace, i am glad to be out of it. and while i don't want children, listening to people like ailbhe talk about the joy and stimulation they get from being with their kids makes it sound a heck of a lot more interesting than many jobs women are stuck with who do work outside the home. i get so much more fulfillment from staying at home, even without kids. repetitive tasks? yeah, they're good zen. socially invisible? in circles who adore the fly lady? ha. they're visible enough for my taste. physical tasks make me feel accomplished; they have well-defined beginning and ends, and i can stack up a pile of stuff that says "that's what you did today!". after 4 decades of intellectual labour with much of it wasted on proprietary bits of code that don't do anything important i am coming to like menial tasks. they're easy. they leave room to think. and they're a small part of my life because i don't accept keeping a spotless house as my goal in life. the rest of the time i have free to do with as i please.

a common thread among the women I interviewed was a self-important idealism about the kinds of intellectual, prestigious, socially meaningful, politics-free jobs worth their incalculably valuable presence. So the second rule is that women must treat the first few years after college as an opportunity to lose their capitalism virginity and prepare for good work, which they will then treat seriously.

or maybe women will continue to choose to opt out of this particular game that's designed by -- oh, look! men. why not look a little closer at the grail of the capitalist work ethic and whose idea that is, and why?

this is where the article fails incredibly badly. there is no deeper analysis of what exactly satisfies women and why. just an assumption that being a working (just not working at home!) part of capitalist society is better, because the other path involves -- ewww -- cleaning, such low-caste stuff. oh yeah, and because it wastes the efforts of feminists, and makes it harder for those women who do want the executive jobs. i appreciate the sentiment, but i think patronizing other women's choices is still wrong, and elevating stock brokers over janitors is classist. society could in fact function just fine without the former -- but if nobody did the cleaning, welcome to hell.

Housekeeping and child-rearing in the nuclear family is not interesting and not socially validated. Justice requires that it not be assigned to women on the basis of their gender and at the sacrifice of their access to money, power, and honor.

this is one of the largest problems! and the writer of the article doesn't even see it. indeed, feminism has failed SAHMs; by not convincing this society that the work of making a home and rearing children is just as important (if not more so) and just as fulfilling (if not more so) than the work of an international business lawyer. because if society got its priorities straight, men would learn to feel that way, and more of them would choose that path, believe you me.

for me it's been the depression that conked the workoholic over the head and changed everything, not a child. but it's resulted in a similar attitude. because having time to hang out with the paramour and the *poing*, and really talk about what we think, and float in the ocean, and volunteer my time for various causes, and play video games, and write, and socialize over the net with far-away friends, and banter together, and learn new things about the world and share them, all those things are much more fun than working 95% of jobs. immeasurably more fun. and more enriching.

capitalist society can eat my shorts. this family's life is way better.

Comments

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

I think there's a lot of middle ground here. Yes, staying home (or spending outside-of-work time doing the running of a home) is a valid choice, for anyone. Yes, it sucks that it's not a real choice for most women. But mainly my reaction is a lot like yours. Yes, it's only money. No, my value doesn't depend on what The Man tells me my value is. I'd venture so far as to say I have more influence and value raising kids (or keeping a peaceful, happy home; or blogging to change the world while I do contract work from my living room; or...) than I ever could as a bank teller or even a bank president.

because having time to hang out with the paramour and the *poing*, and really talk about what we think, and float in the ocean, and volunteer my time for various causes, and play video games, and write, and socialize over the net with far-away friends, and banter together, and learn new things about the world and share them, all those things are much more fun than working 95% of jobs. immeasurably more fun. and more enriching.

capitalist society can eat my shorts. this family's life is way better.

*applause*

For me, it was a conscious decision at the age of 16 to never put work over my happiness, and I've never gone back. 24 years later, I'm still a temp, and I'm still happy with where my life is. I don't have all the material things I might want, but no one does (exaggeration, but not by much, I'd venture), and so what? I have a family that loves me, I've never spent more than a few months at a job I hated (while looking for one I didn't), and I know that as little as I'm living on now, I have lived on less and could do it again. There's a peace about that that can't be replaced.

A relative of mine lives in a million-plus-dollar(US) house with a spouse and eight kids. I shudder to think what would happen to all of them if their one source of income suddenly dried up (and with my relative's high blood pressure and cholesterol, that's not an idle worry). If my income suddenly dried up, it would only take getting a burger-flipping job to save me from eviction. That's true wealth.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

*nod*. i didn't quite make my choices at 16, and not that consciously, but they're born out of being 16 and poor, and not finding that to be the biggest problem of my life then. i did make conscious choices about not working again at a job i hated after the first job i really hated. and i haven't. when i was a workoholic i really really loved my work. and it hurts to have lost the ability for that particular work. but hey, i can do so many other things.

i don't want that many material things. i might find them shiny, and i might acquire them if i have the money, but if i can't, then i won't, and won't feel the worse for it. and the ones i have acquired i can sell! :) the thing i like most about having money is spreading it around. which is why i never saved a lot, even when i made oodles.

i like living at the level where a burger-flipping job can save me from eviction. better yet, the boat will mean safety from eviction, *heh*.

do you ever worry about getting old? that's the one that's creeping up for me more lately. well, not just old, but decrepit, *snrk*. though just old will limit the ease with which i can get a job, i am sure.

[brooksmoses]

Hey, did you see the rant leback posted about this article last night? It seems like you're not the only one who had this reaction to it.

I know lilairen also has a general grump against the flavors of feminist who told her that she was failing herself and the entire feminist movement by wanting to be a stay-at-home mother rather than having a career, too.

[wiredferret.livejournal.com]

I had much the same reaction -- who says that earning money and working are success?

As I didn't point out in betsy's blog, because she knows me, I am the partner working out of the house, and my male partner is the primary childcare provider, but I still don't understand how his job is less important than mine. I couldn't do my job if he didn't do that.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

who says that earning money and working are success?

Men have been saying it for a long time. Many of them have shaped their lives around it. Surely it must be true! And what could be a greater feminist triumph than adopting the standards men have held for generations?

(I should note, for anyone who doens't know me, that this is sarcasm.)

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

for a very narrow value of success, that being able to eat and live indoors, earning money is success. i am a big fan of eating and living indoors.

blah blah blah flourishing blah blah. i think she's blowing smoke there.

[leback.livejournal.com]

In California, a homemaker married to a software engineer with a $100k/year salary is earning $50k/year. That's more than enough to eat and live indoors, even here in the SF Bay Area. I will grant that she loses a significant chunk of her income if the marriage goes under (though probably with adequate severance to continue eating and living indoors for quite some time), but people with market employment can lose their incomes too, especially in this Age of Outsourcing.

It is a fact that homemakers have a tougher-than-average time making career changes when they lose their incomes, but I think that's a problem with the employment market's biases against homemaking, not with homemaking itself. Unfortunately, employers who buy into views like Hirshman's about what homemaking involves tend to grossly undervalue homemaking experience in potential employees.

(Hi pleonastic! I'm not sure if we've formally met. I wandered over here on a tip from brooksmoses.)

[(Anonymous)]

I think that there are also some problems intrinsic to homemaking itself which make career changes difficult.

First, the skills are often not readily transferable. For example, while some homemakers do do gourmet cooking, the vast majority produce pedestrian meals which wouldn't cut the mustard at a restaurant. I think here the main problem is that homemaking involves far too many skills: child rearing, cleaning, cooking, purchasing, inventory control, social coordinator, personal secretary, guidance counsellor, and so on. As a result, the homemaker becomes a jack of all trades but master of none.

A second problem is that homemaking is practiced informally and without any official oversight. As such it is nearly impossible to use it as a reference. "I raised five kids and kept the whole family organized" sounds great, but how is a prospective employer to know if it is true or if it was done well?

Neither of these mean that a homemaker *can't* change careers, but I do think that they make it more difficult for zir than for someone coming from a more narrowly focussed job within a recognized organizational hierarchy.

[mayaknife.livejournal.com]

I hate auto-timeouts.

*sigh*

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I am so with you.

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

at the sacrifice of their access to money, power, and honor.

I felt more *honor* staying at home and raising my kids than I ever have dealing with the total bullshit of the working world. Home with my family is still the only place in the world where I'm not overanalyzing every little thing to determine when I'm being lied to or gamed.

Gods, that makes me angry.

[swerved.livejournal.com]

capitalist society can eat my shorts.

The day I win the lottery and can afford to not worry about a job and bills and the money I want to travel and experience what the world has to offer, I'll be saying the same thing. :)

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

yes yes yes yes yes exactly yes.

until then, i'm going to have a job and worry about bills and money.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

i think part of the whole "choice" equation is personal psychology.

i was really poor early on in life, the paramour grew up in a lower-middle-class family. my mother was insane. my parents didn't argue about money, they argued about insane things. the paramour had a perfectly normal childhood with parents who were pretty normal, and did normal things, and argued about money (his mother "not having to work" was a big deal) and later his dad's drinking (he wasn't abusive). i came out of adolescence yearning for psychological security a whole lot more than for financial one; financial survival seemed relatively easy. the paramour was over on the flipside of that. when we met, i was about to chuck what little was left of my once promising and lucrative systems analyst career and sail around the world; zie had zir own house and was working on an ulcer. zie could not have freely chosen what i had chosen, not at that point, not psychologically (though of course nothing stood actually in the way). i don't know that i could have chosen realistically what zie had chosen; i cannot plan a debt of $200,000+ into the future; it would worry me sick, it would wear me down.

conversely if i have a 3-months financial cushion i feel perfectly secure; zie doesn't. i don't think either of us has fewer actual choices, but some choices seem less "real" to one or the other of us. we now live a whole lot more cheaply than zie lived then, in a place that's more beautiful, doing mostly what zie likes to do (no more ulcer), making enough money to keep 2 people alive and with a roof over our heads -- and we could cut that quite a bit more and will, once the boat is finished (that's where all the extra money goes now). there are changes that have to be made, but they have to do with my psychology, not with the viability of how we live now.

once zie wanted to be a millionaire by 40. the *poing* probably will be, *heh*. i'll never be one (unless we win the aforementioned lottery (which we hardly ever play)). we're opting partly out of what's normal for society; the *poing* feels most secure right smack in the middle of it; on my own i could opt out much, much further. different kinds of security.

i foresee that as i get old, i will worry a whole lot more. but i don't want to spend my life until then working towards that happening. because tomorrow might never come. if it does come, i might pay the price one day, but man, i will have had a good life.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

i strongly believe that one important thing to learn is that it doesn't take winning the lottery. and i've learned that. i've made oodles of money, and i've made very little money, and looking back i travelled and experienced more when i wasn't making the oodles.

if "what the world has to offer" is viewed in terms of what today's celebutantes enjoy, then yes, one has to win the lottery to get there as a regular person not endowed with parents who build hotel empires. but the world has to offer a lot of other things, and they don't all cost a lot of money. one needs to know how to look, and one needs to make different choices, carve out some special niche for oneself. i am not sure one ever does it completely without worries, but i can't say i didn't worry at all when i made oodles either.

it helped me a lot to read stories by people who opted out of the usual. it might help you, or not. :) might be worth a try.

[swerved.livejournal.com]

I can understand what you mean when you say a lot of things don't take a lot of money, and I agree. Of course, I'm not likely to make a lot of money anytime in the near future, so that's not something that's an issue anyways. *G*

What I do want money for though is to travel. I'd love to just pick up and start travelling and learning and never stop. That's a lottery dream, of course, but I'm still travelling and learning in the meantime, just not as frequently. I suppose my dreams for travelling are rather grandiose, but they're insistent buggers and won't go away. :)

And about the choices needed to live outside of the capitalist norm? Yeah, I like reading stories about people who've done that, and hopefully one day I'll be able to do the same. For now though, work and toil it is. I shouldn't complain too much, my job right now is not nearly as onerous as some I've had, and it gives me extra time to do what I like.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

why do you feel that travelling is a lottery dream? i used to travel a lot (i've seen most of europe and fairly in-depth, and then went to the US (been to all but 6 states), and i didn't ever win the lottery. :) also, many of the people i met while travelling had even less money than i did. there is a whole "globetrotting on a budget" culture out there. so hey, good news!

[swerved.livejournal.com]

Hey, that really is good news. :)

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

fishie, you're making me think of you as female. it's making my brain hurt. :)

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

mine too! :)

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Such articles often make me very cross and unable to offer anything useful to the conversation, because I come from a very long line of women who never had the slightest bit of choice in the matter.

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

it was pretty hard to slog through the sections on the sex and the city kind of women. those are not my circles. nobody i know can just blithely ditch their job after getting married; the shift to staying at home and rearing kids requires lots of hard thinking and accomodations, and most women do return to working out of the home after the children are a little older. where i come from it's peasant background; not a whole lot of choice there.

when i look back on my family, what restricted the women's choices more than anything -- once they were a step away from the farming -- was religion. best thing i ever did was to chuck that.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think being Catholic was a big part of that. Women had big families whether they wanted children or not (and my paternal grandmother hated children. And no divorce. That definitely limted their choices, because all those mouths had to be fed, and their father wasn't contributing to the feeding you couldn't ditch him and get a better one.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

I agree with you 100% on this. The article made me so angry, I started to feel nauseous.

[ailbhe]

Yup, that's me, not a feminist again. Why the hell do I spend so much time working on the household divisions of labour, then?

A.
Who can vacuum AND THINK at the same time. Wowee! Imagine how rich I could be if I did something ultimately pointless in an unrewarding but lucrative sphere! After all, I was earning 50% more than the average graduate wage as a school dropout of 19. And now I earn nothing! (But man, you shoulda heard the pitter patter of tiny feet - "Sh, Daddy, Mammy's asleep, isn't she?" - this morning).

[firecat]

I agree. I posted most of my more specific thoughts over in leback's journal.

Oddly enough, it was a mood disorder that changed my attitude about working, but not directly. When I was unmedicated, I kept my full time corporate job even though I didn't love it because I was too anxious about money not to. When I became medicated I suddenly realized I didn't need it, so I quit and went freelance instead. (I do like working for money, but I don't like doing it full time and I don't like doing it in an office.)

[kmd.livejournal.com]

or maybe women will continue to choose to opt out of this particular game that's designed by -- oh, look! men. why not look a little closer at the grail of the capitalist work ethic and whose idea that is, and why?

Exactly. This is precisely why I, a dyed-in-the-wool feminist have never joined NOW. Their mission statement and much of their political action boils down to "we want what those men people have!"

Feh. Thank you for this.