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  • From: <pbunch@cox.net>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Just Not Made that Way
  • Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2010 6:40:22 -0700

I really like this. Ii think that in a steady-state economy doing a lot of
the simple day-to-day things will be an important part of life and one which
we will need to learn to enjoy. I have nothing against the division of labor
as long as it does not alienate us to the degree that we forget how we need
to live sustainably. I am very interested in how we take these crucial
components of life and return them to the place of honor they actually
deserve. Why is it we often think that we are so special that doing the
things that support life in the most fundamental ways are below us? I think
that we forget too much.


---- Tradingpost <tradingpost@lobo.net> wrote:
>
> 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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