SMS: As a non-feminist,
Why?
As an example, what about wage inequality. Is this due to ingrained sexism or due to persistent patterns of behaviour along the lines of gender - ie women rather than men take long maternity leave and raise children. If the latter is the case, then is this itself a sign of sexism or are there institutional barriers that prevent a freer interchange of traditional roles.
Clearly, the fact that raising children, caring for ill/aged parents, etc. are seen as not worthy of being paid well is a problem. Feminism, at its best, is about deep systemic changes to the way we see and value human beings, as is the best of Queer Theory, and it is deeply threatening to capitalism as it is currently constructed. Bear with me as I try, as an experiment, to explain my view of the US using the admittedly flawed analogy of a family group living in a house. Better yet, I'll make it a (slightly angry?) fairy tale:
Once upon a time there was a big fancy house on lovely large piece of property in a very safe neighborhood. The realtor was thrilled to point out that, after they got rid of some pesky squatters on the property and dug the foundation, what you had was perhaps the primest of prime real estate in the world, with beach front on 2 ½ sides. Some modestly wealthy and modestly sane people lived in modestly comfortable homes behind, to the north. Large bodies of water on the 2 ½ sides conveniently functioned like a moat. And, although there was a "bad neighborhood" southwest of the home, the perimeter was well protected by barbed wire and friendly rentacops who liked the money the fancyhomeowner (we'll call him, George) paid them to guard his property. And although he really hated those people south of the barbed war, George liked the fact that they would come up and do his gardening, care for his children, even construct his favorite consumer item (of which more later), for very low wages.
Although 8 people live in this house . . . well, actually there are lots of other people, but a lot of them distrusted the people George hired to count them and they've decided George's house is so crazy the only thing that makes sense is to hide out in the corners-the attic, the basement, a brambly patch in the corner of the garden. Anyway, although there are at least 8 people living in this house, George alone makes all the important decisions (see the percentages of the legislators in this country) and in his monthly budget he decides that one of the five children must starve (approximately 20% of all US children live in poverty), and two of them will not get an adequate education, in order for him to afford a curious habit, his need to fill the house with guns-n-ammo and top-flight security systems. (George gave his parents a permanent holiday looking out the southeast window at the moat, and has them convinced they're living the high life since they get a 20% discount on their rooms.)
Now many of his neighbors consider George to be completely paranoid. People call from across the sea to tell him: don't worry so much! You've got two big bodies of water and those quiet northern people to protect you-not to mention that your house is filled to bursting with weapons! But George has a hearing disability, or it may just be a listening disability, and moreover he believes you can never be too careful. Besides, its his money, he believes, despite the fact that it's all sucked in to his home by a pneumatic tube system he helped install that he calls "free enterprise."
So, every month George buys a new, better security system. Thus, pretty much all he does is read the latest books and articles about the latest systems to produce better security. (When he does have time for some entertainment, its usually movies about ways that people find to use these weapons and future weapons to more effectively kill the invisible people and control women. George loves to see people killed.) Especially after some crazy guy broke two of his windows last month and the expensive systems he'd already paid for completely failed to detect it! Meanwhile, one of the two women adult women living in the house (okay, women are not 66% of the adult US population, but they are more than 50%, and to support someone like George it generally takes two women earning only about $.70 for his dollar . . . and they're both being fucked by George). . . .
One of the two women, as I started to say, is a recent immigrant from the Southwest, we'll call her Maria (and that's what George calls her, no matter what her name is, because, although there have been six different women in her position during the last 3 years he can't be bothered to learn her name). She is making all the clothing and doing all the childcare, but gets barely enough food to eat, sometimes has to sleep in the hallway, and if she gets sick, they can't afford the doctor.
The other woman seems to be well-fed, but, alas, she has a particularly tragic problem: she is invisible to most people, most of the time. She talks and walks around but most people really can't see her. It's no one's fault, really. Of course, this is very frustrating for her, but people warn her that if she gets angry it makes George uncomfortable, and, worse still, when this happens she immediately becomes invisible again. Recently, however, she's discovered that she seems to be least invisible when she's saying things that sound like things George would say. Then she's almost completely visible to almost everyone.
George doesn't like Maria and the Invisible Woman to get together and talk. So, when he thinks about them at all, it is only to tell both of them that the other woman is not to be trusted. Sometimes they both tend to believe him, alas. After all, things are so noisy and crazy in this house, what with troops passing through periodically, and people being locked up everywhere, particularly if they don't look like George. Everyone in the house gets confused sometimes. And Maria will lose her job if she talks up. Besides, she has to spend a great deal of time caring for the children and looking for crumbs off George's table. She doesn't really have time to complain about having to sleep in the hallway.
Meanwhile, of course, the man keeps buying guns. Truth be told, George is not so powerful as he appears. He himself seems to be controlled by some men who, rumor has it, live somewhere on the property, but who are carefully concealed behind a gated fence and protected by a large number of George's rentacops. These shadowy figures sell all these guns to George, not to mention his collection of cars. Now these guys are really powerful. He will get very angry if poor "head of the house" George doesn't keep buying more and more guns. In fact, last month George had to kick one of his children, the starving one, of course, out of her room because he needed that space to stockpile his armaments. Thank goodness she's skinny so she can sleep in the hallway with Maria . . .
That's my flawed analogy for why the fucked up world of the US needs feminism more than ever.
Why aren't you a feminist, SMS? |
