That’s it, that’s the post.
But I’ll elaborate.
I’m reading a feminist scholar for some of my research. I’m not especially far in, but given my research interests, I really can’t get away with not reading this book. However, as I read the acknowledgements in the frontmatter, I became increasingly irked.
Writing workshops in exotic locales? Leisurely evenings cosying up with intellectuals over wine? Prestigious conferences in far-flung places? Hang on – does this person have kids?
So I googled. No, this person does not have kids.
They’re very adamant about enabling the safe and community-led rearing of children, but also that child-rearing is not the be-all end-all of a woman’s existence. It’s not that I disagree, but my focus is radically different.
Let’s start with a different foundational premise: Humans have developed – nay, inherited – a mammalian social contract surrounding the bearing and raising of children. This contract is millions of years old. It’s in place precisely because raising children to adulthood without them dying is hard, actually.
The labour within this social contract predominantly falls to women. This is because women not only grow the child and undertake the labour of bringing the child into the world, but they also – at least until the advent of reliable formula alternatives – sustain the child with their body. So no, whilst motherhood isn’t the sole reason for a woman’s existence, any woman choosing to have a child will by default be burdened with the lion’s share of the labour mandated by this social contract.
So it literally doesn’t matter whether or not an individual woman chooses to have her own biological children. This mode of motherhood of course isn’t for everyone. By all means make the most of the time and money you gain by not having children.
But what are you doing to ease the burden of women parenting children?
Don’t you think these women also have interesting things to say? Don’t you think these women would also appreciate the opportunities you have? Don’t you think these women also deserve their own money and time? How are you helping them?
Really this extends to any woman in a caring profession, which are consistently undervalued compared to more male-dominated professions. Why is the emphasis on getting more women into traditionally male professions, instead of properly valuing women’s work? Why isn’t there a mass drive to get men into female-dominated professions?
Who’s going to pick up all the slack caused by women abandoning the caring professions in favour of better-remunerated work? Women are. Specifically, mothers. Often the poorest, most oppressed, most vulnerable mothers.
Who’s going to liberate them? Are you, with your ethnographic fieldwork in Tahiti or whatever? No, you are not.
As PJ O’Rourke said, ‘Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.’
If you’re not explicitly and vocally liberating mothers, your feminism is utterly, utterly worthless. Go suck on that while you down wine with other intellectuals privileged enough to have shirked any meaningful burden surrounding the propagation of our species.
Sonya Blanck writings 