So, I’ve been over at Dr. Bitch’s site, generally writing essays and making myself at home. Putting my feet up on the sofa, even. There’s a discussion of stay at home momism, which was sparked by an article by Linda Hirshman. Ms. Hirshman tsk tsks the privileged women who are opting to stay at home with their kids, because if the elite are doing it and flushing their educations down the drain of “lifestyle choice”, it makes it that much harder for other women to enter into the workplace. Since I’m an opt-out feminist, I took some issue with her. Although not with her statement of the problems of wage gap in society, but with the statement of the solution. I’ve been hanging around defending my own choice all day… We’re all under the weather anyway, and so there’s been not much moving off the couch for either Ripley or I, and Tate, he likes to sleep.

Essay alert.

Anyway, to get up to speed. I believe:

• Obsessive focus on career is personally soul destroying for me
• Materialism isn’t the only way to value things
• Valuing materialism and career over self-sacrificial, nurturing work is in fact a misogynistic hangover
• I’m a pinko who believes in enough social net to protect those who are contributing non-materially
  -> combined with teaching our female children that they CAN compete in the marketplace
  -> and making sure the work-at-home people understand how to protect themselves in their relationships
• When rich white women go to work, often poor black women do the undervalued house work
• The biggest current problem is not valuing any work which provide non-monetary rewards or is caretaking in nature
• Combined with the other biggest problem that the woman is traditionally expected to serve in this place of economic sacrifice.

But what Hirshman suggests only vaguely addresses the second problem, and reinforces the first problem. I don’t have much to argue with Dr. B’s essay – in fact we’re very much on the same page regarding the second shift and the glass ceiling of housework – but I think that Hirshman’s article is extremely problematic.

Of vast societal concern is the seemingly utterly unchallenged assumption that having financial power is the ONLY WAY TO POLITICAL POWER, which I think should be a fucking call to arms that the “democratic” society is utterly broken. Because EVEN IF women make up half of the everything that pays well, they’ll be *rich*. And unless something changes, white. And what the fuck do rich white women born into privilege understand of the lives of poor brown women? (Those who are caretaking their kids? For long hours as the rich white women work the expected long hours of the well positioned?)

Put enough money in anyone’s hands, and they start believing they’ve “earned” their privilege. Just because we have ovaries doesn’t mean we’re immune to that.

Further, Hirshman pretends to care about whether those of us who are staying home are “flourishing”, which is utter bullshit. She conflates child rearing and community building with vacuuming and being a sexbot, which shows that she doesn’t understand the job. I think she’s bought the Republican system of thinking, and I think it’s horrific that she expects that we should be “earning” our voice by putting in a 70 hour work week – she disparages part time work, or working not in your field, or any alternatives to the grind because she acknowledges that these forms of participation do not Fortune 500 CEOs make. I would have called her radical, yesterday, but I think the problem is that she’s not radical enough: she sees the American way of doing things and believes that it’s the only way of doing things. She thinks that 70 hour work weeks are inescapable. Us lazy ladies who lounge around at home because we can are gender traitors, eh?

Because Hirshman believes that if women were more represented in the elite, they’d ask for things that women want politically.

What the hell do women want politically?

I want transition houses, and health care, and public schools which are filled with excellent teachers. I think these things help POOR people, and I come from poor. I accept that women are often more poor. These things allow poor people to move more fluidly through the job market – and out of abusive relationships and job situations – because they’re not tied by terror and the reality of needing to provide a roof or a doctor to their kids.

Is that what Maggie Thatcher wanted politically? Fuck no. Come on. Maggie was a woman, and she made it, and good for her: but she was a rich woman with a rich woman’s concerns. Rich women exist and have privilege and we shouldn’t shit on them for not being women: but we also shouldn’t pretend for a second that they have any clue what it is to be a woman anywhere else in the world where there isn’t societal privilege due to money.

Further, she minimizes women’s choices. Why? Because in our privilege, we have responsibility. Which I agree with, actually, but where she gets off suggesting that all those who are opting out are doing so with no overall thought to our responsibility is a bit precious. Right, lady, and we should all be told whether or not to gestate fetuses on some other person’s agenda, too, because we’re too ignorant to understand the societal ramifications of our actions. Bite me and blow me and send me to the moon.

I can show her a laundry list of how I attempt to help other women without working an 60 hour week to manage a software development house, but she doesn’t ask, does she? It’s not an article where she’s found stay at home moms who call themselves feminists and ask them what they’re doing with their privilege, or asks them to examine their relationship dynamics.

On the other hand, all this did challenge me to discuss my situation in more depth with my partner. Because I’ll tell you a secret – I’ve been hoping he doesn’t notice the awesome deal we have….

I’ve been allowing myself to enjoy a state that I am Utterly and Completely Aware that I’m enjoying because my partner thinks he’d be an utter moron at it. I have been relying on his internalized concept of maleness, PLUS his shame over that maleness, to accept his decision that “…he’d prefer to be working his job because he’s so good at it and he’d suck at the home thing, and anyways, everyone would wonder what the fuck was wrong with him, was he broken that he’s not working?, and he’s a shitty cook and no-where near as organized and he hasn’t thought about it all as much as I have and he’d probably fuck the kids up and be bored all day anyway.”

I’m in a place of economic disadvantage. I’m sacrificing earnings and power to be a stay at home parent. This is the pressing question I’d like to put forward: Is Arwen An Idiot? Or is there satisfaction, nay, payment, in that work?

Man. I work my own hours. I evaluate my own performance. I am free to envisage society in the microcosm, I’m programming complex organisms, I answer to myself, I can catch a nap when I want, I can go play soccer in the afternoons and take time to blog, and I have time to read, I am interested in my kids, I enjoy the creativity of cooking a meal, I have time to think about who I am and what I want, I construct community, I have time for (housebound) activism, and on top of it all I believe my work is vital. Perhaps cooking a good meal for my in-laws is economically valueless – but I’ll tell you this; if John died, I’d have no trouble asking for help from his family and making damn sure that those family connections were kept strong for my kids. Would John? Ask my mom? Get up in her face if she wasn’t making time for our boys? Probably not. I do that work.

And it IS work. That’s the devalued part. Women’s work is WORK, people, and the Second Shift exists because women do a lot of it: but the work is important society. It’s fun too. It’s payment on a deep level, fun on a variety of levels.

On top of that, I know my own competence and it’s at the EXPENSE of John’s. I know where our money is and I make most of the decisions; I know I can cook a meal, raise a child, keep a social schedule, do basic plumbing, build a functional if crappy piece of furniture, find a home, make a home, format a computer, solve an equation, do our taxes, consider philosophy, go to university, and work a career. I’m utterly aware of my rounded competence as a human being and I’m able to rest on that.

(Women who have no sense that they can also make some inroads into a man’s world are by necessity unable to make a choice. These women are and were abused by a system that assumes genitals are equivalent to interest: and you have to have interest to make the SAH life fulfilling. That is the case. I think Hirshman does the unpaid care worker a further disservice by ghettoizing and stigmatizing their work: it’s fucking slavery to work an abusive job for a drunk who beats you, and to add the idea that what you do is worthless and the rich women ought to be better than you just adds fuel to the fire of your own self-hatred.)

Anyway, I got to make a choice.
I’ve had both kinds of pay.
I’m aware of my own abilities.
I’m aware of the scope of my interests.

And I’ll tell you, I don’t think that the solution is to make sure that all women are trapped by the same macho-capitalistic-bullshit that men are trapped by – something that I’ve blogged about reacting to Daddy Chip but which needs to be further expanded in the feminist sphere. Because the one thing I didn’t really elaborate on is that second form of payment, that competence, the community, working all day with those that you love, working all day not for the bottom line in a way that’s holistic to your entire life is awesome sweet; and some of us are choosing it at an economic disadvantage because the paycheque is ultra-good. And I have been hiding it from my husband, because I don’t want him to get wind of that and ask for gender equality. Heh.

Economically, he’s in a place of privilege: societally, he’s in a place of privilege. The fact that I speak to gender issues more than he does specifically point out his privilege. The fact that I haven’t gotten up in his face about it specifically point to my own deviousness regarding MY privilege; the pay that goes with the economically undervalued ‘woman’s work’ and my wish not to have to give it up.

So, yes, Ms. Hirshman, I probably should be working. But probably only a 25 hour week. John can do the other 25. It’s the fifty hours he works anyway, and we’ll take a hit since neither of us will advance as quickly, but he’ll get the other paycheque, too.

We probably won’t, though. I’ve admitted my deviousness, but unless John specifically asks to be let into the party, I’m not going to insist. Besides, it is true and mitigating that John hearts his job and I don’t heart mine. That John hearts his job is in part his socialized construction of maleness, for sure. That I heart staying at home is for sure due to some socialized construction of femaleness – I’m allowed to like it, for one. That I don’t really like my career in a fulltime way is more due to the headspace I was in when I picked it. I made a mistake and married (through University) the weekend career because it drove a flashy car, but man, the conversation it makes is a little dull…

I do finally recognize, though, that I should get John contributing to spousal RRSPs – probably to my advantage given the years I’m taking out of the workplace and his future earning potential v. mine. Other than that, our money sharing is equitable. We don’t have tons of disposable income, but when we do, I think we’re doing all right at covering both our needs. Thank Dr. B for that!