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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Just Not Made that Way
  • Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2010 22:03:06 -0600


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)






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