Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

Just Not Made that Way
Sharon Astyk, Casaubon's Books
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/53428

Madeline Holler at Salon has a rather cute essay about her failures at 
becoming a radical homemaker. On my first quick skim through it (it was sent 
to me by several readers, so thanks!), I was inclined to give it a total 
pass, because I found myself rather liking Holler, and sympathizing to an 
extent.

At least she was trying to live on a comparatively lower income. At least she 
made the yogurt. If she really hated it, well, at least she was sort of 
trying to live up to her principles - something all of us have a tough time 
doing. I may make my own bread, but I have my own hypocrisies.

...I left it up on my screen, though, for a few minutes, and happened to read 
back through it again, and the second time it troubled me more. Yes, it was 
cute. Yes, she gets some credit for trying. And yes, few of us can fully 
separate ourselves from the status issues we've been inculcated with, and 
confessing that is ok, even good. There's no reason for all of us to be 
walking around pretending that we don't sometimes feel crappy when we look 
poor.

And yet, where have I heard this one before? Why does this part sound so 
familiar to me?

...Oh, wait, I remember. I've heard it from assorted guys over the years, who 
just grin and shrug and say "I'm just not good at doing laundry." Or "I never 
get the diapers changed properly, they always leak, so my wife does it." It 
reminds me of an ex of mine who, when I asked when it would be his turn to 
clean the toilet he said "I just don't notice the toilet and you do." 
Mmmmhmmmm...

But this isn't just about men. This is about privilege - and privileged women 
do it too. "Oh, I just never get the floors as clean as Maria does!" "I don't 
have the patience to be with my kids all the time, plus I didn't spend so 
many years in graduate school to wipe noses all day."

There's a kind of willful incompetence that is endemic in our society, and it 
is the territory of privileged folks who characterize basic, functional human 
work as something you need a special gift for. And this serves them well As 
long as you don't know how to do something, and can naturalize your "flaws" 
as just "how you are made" you don't have to apologize for the fact that you 
are sticking someone less privileged with your work. In fact, you can totally 
sympathize with them, and totally care about justice for people just like 
them - at the same time that they get paid badly or treated badly for doing 
work you could do too.

If these are innate personality factors, there's no reason to ask the 
question, why is it that Mrs. Sen is always so much better than you at wiping 
behinds, and why it is your wife doesn't have the same problem with diaper 
leaks?

In a society that in no way stigmatizes most kinds of manual incompetenece, 
these naturalized categories manage to reinforce divisions of class and race 
and social justice. Thus, Madeline Holler can totally share Shannon Hayes's 
values and take full credit for that sharing.

The problem is that she's just not radical enough in her makeup - she just 
can't help dying inside because someone has a better car than she does. But 
she's a really good person and wishes she was different - she really, really 
cares. And presumably, even though she can't actually lactoferment cucumbers, 
her caring extends, then to the industrial food worker (probably not white) 
who will lactoferment the pickles she eats. She presumably cares about that 
person's class and social standing, and justice for them - just not enough to 
do anything about it.

And as long as this is purely an issue of personality, of hating or loving a 
particular kind of work, and the right to only mostly do things you just 
love, that's cool. But this only works because you leave out all the context, 
and all the things that can be conveniently unsaid. After all, she tried 
making the yogurt. She didn't enjoy it. It wasn't as good, and that's where 
her responsibility stopped. .

Except that not liking domestic labor does not mean your family stops making 
use of domestic labor - in fact, all of us use a whole lot of it. And it 
always has to get done by a person - there are no robot maids. Holler would 
rather die than lactoferment her own cucumbers, but there's no evidence that 
she and her family don't eat pickles. She doesn't want to make bread, but she 
presumably eats it. She can't keep a basil plant alive, but she speaks of 
salad caprese in way that suggests she likes to eat basil.

By framing this as a purely personal issue "some people are just made in a 
pickle-making kind of way" and as a matter of competence "I couldn't possibly 
grow a cucumber, that must be the territory of other people, raised on farms, 
whose social status is already determined..." we led implicitly to assume 
that the pickles that she then eats will be grown and made by people who just 
love growing cucumbers and making pickles - that there is a natural sorting 
into "pickle people" and "nonpickle people" in the world, and that this is 
good and just and everyone is happy. Except, of course, that's bull.

Maybe Holler is one of the rare people who is sufficiently affluent to buy 
every single thing she owns ethically. Maybe she gets her bread from the 
local craftsman-baker and the pickles from the farmer's market where there's 
someone who lovingly grows and makes them - those people exist. Maybe she 
gets everything that way - fair trade and ethically produced and local. The 
problem is that the pickle maker and the craftsman demand a fair prices for 
their labor, and that's hard. It is hard when you also have to buy a more 
expensive hybrid, pay the Nanny social security, make sure the lawn guy gets 
a living wage from the service... Living fairly is pricey if you are going to 
pay someone else to cover all your domestic labor.

The thing is, most people don't have that kind of money, but there's nothing 
magical about our lives that made the hard domestic work go away - we still 
eat, we still use the toilet, we still have to get things cleaned, managed, 
taken care of. So we pay people to do this work - but almost none of them 
make a truly living wage. Maybe we make our choices in one place, buying the 
good bread, but then we cut corners in another, not paying a full wage to the 
Nanny or buying the cheap mayo. We spend a lot of time pretending that the 
whole industrial system isn't fully of poorly paid people less privileged 
than people like Holler, and that we're not participating fully in it.

So what happens if Holler's family has money issues (which she leads us to 
believe she does) and not enough millions to pay everyone fully and fairly - 
like most of us. Will her pickles be made by people who love pickle making 
and are innately talented at growing them?

Well, maybe. But odds are not. Holler's family's pickles will probably be 
grown and picked by migrant laborers working for virtual slave wages in the 
hot sun. They won't get paid for any that don't fit the precise 
specifications of the pickle factory, even if they do the work of picking 
them. They also can't miss work, often have inadequate sanitation, can be 
fired for being sick and often deported for being them.

The pickle pickers get exposed to pesticides and get physical injuries from 
squatting in the field, always under high pressure to harvest more and more 
for the pickle companies. It may well be that these folks (it is entirely a 
coincidence that they are not white, of course) always and only dreamed of 
being migrant laborers, and think that's what they are best at, and dream of 
for their children. It may also be the only kind of work they can get, even 
though they are not innately talented at it - maybe even less talented than 
Holler is at this.

The pickles will be made by poorly paid food workers who stand for many hours 
sorting cucumbers or with their hands deep in brine that causes sores and 
makes their skin break out in rashes. They will get repetetive strain 
injuries from sorting cukes. It is possible, of course, that they love this 
work and dreamed their whole childhood of being a pickle maker, of the pride 
and status that comes with doing that for a major corporation. It is also 
possible, of course, that they didn't.

Again, it will be totally a coincidence that the people who do this are 
poorer and often not white. And total coincidence that they get paid so very 
poorly, and probably drive worse cars than Hollers - after all, they should 
have been born the kind of people who hate pickle making and feel ashamed of 
their cars!

Now again, we know that Holler shares the values that Shannon Hayes has, the 
goals that she articulates in her book about trying to achieve a more just 
society. We know this because Holler says so. In fact, Holler presumably 
believes deeply in them. And she's willing to keep believing just as hard as 
she can that these values are really important. She's definitely out there 
caring, all day long, and even spends some time each day feeling bad when she 
hears about injustice, I'm sure. And because she's done the hard, exhausting 
work of caring and feeling bad and believes that things should be better, she 
totally should get a pass from the fact that she's not actually doing 
anything to deal with issues of the environment or social justice. Anyone who 
feels that hard should definitely get the credit!

Now radical homemaking is not the only possible solution to the problems of 
the world, but it is one part of one - a way of taking responsibility for 
your own consumption and your own messes. If you are not affluent enough to 
pay people fairly for their work, if you are not going to be able to buy the 
pricey hybrid, maybe you can still do something besides waiting for your 
lottery number to come up so you will then be able to save the world. You 
could make your own pickles. You could drive less. You could scrub the coop 
toilets. It might not always make you feel good. You might not always like 
it, or feel that it was work worthy of your august self. And yet, it might 
still be the right thing to do.

Moreover, it might not be an issue of competence, personality or affluence at 
all. Sometimes it is a matter of right and wrong For example, I don't like to 
sew. Given a choice, frankly, when my kids rip a pair of jeans, I'd like to 
throw them out and buy a new one, rather than spend fussy hours repairing 
them. But those jeans came from cotton, grown in the third world, heavily 
sprayed by chemicals that contaminate the soil. They were made by shop 
workers who were also tired, and also put in long hours. If I go buy another 
one, I support the industry, I support the cotton spraying and the child 
labor and the sweatshops. I know that. So let's think - whose pain and 
suffering is more important, mine or the 15 year old girl in the sweatshop? 
Mine or the peasant farmer in Benin spraying toxics without even a mask? I 
might have to spend a whole half hour doing something I really hate - 
obviously, it is me who needs liberation. Besides, I suck at sewing.

Of course, that's because I'm allowed to suck at sewing - this isn't rocket 
science, but because no one ever made me learn (ok, I'm pretending that I 
never had my seventh grade home ec teacher, bless her), it is just too hard 
for me. Never mind that there are plenty of things that I'm not particularly 
talented at that I've somehow managed to learn to do over the years. Never 
mind that we assume that everyone, barring a disability, regardless of 
mathematical talent, needs to learn things like arithmetic and basic algebra, 
and that even people with disabilities that make it hard for them need to 
learn to read and write. We never ask "are you talented at these things, 
honey...no, ok, pass."

I'm sorry, but any idiot can grow a basil plant. Any idiot can make pickles. 
Any idiot can bake a loaf of bread. Any idiot can repair a seam. You may not 
like these things. You may find it frustrating and difficult to master the 
skill set, and you may hate being bad at them for the time that it takes to 
get good. Trust me, I'm right there with you. You may not choose to do them 
because you may find other ways to live ethically in the world than doing 
them yourself. But you do not get to pretend that they are just too hard for 
you. You do not get to pretend that you are just not the kind of person who 
loves picking cucumbers, and that the people who do it for you do it from 
love and joy. You do not get to pretend that those people are not fully real, 
you do not get to erase the environmental, personal and economic harm you do 
in the system because you don't want to do something...
(2 July 2010)