The Emotional Labour of Performing Motherhood

Being a young university student with lofty aspirations of academia and published writing from a Berlin apartment, I naturally became a nanny for my third unglamorous job. Despite the inflation of qualifications and the impossibility of getting a job with just a lowly bachelor’s degree, no such restrictions exist in the world of casual childcare. Instead, being a cis female grants you immediate acceptance into someone’s home to look after their Precious Little Ones for ten hours every Thursday.

Despite my total lack of experience with children under age nine, I rocked up on my first day feigning confidence to nanny a four year old boy and two year old girl. And I was shocked at the amount of… things one must do.

Morning tea time, simple right? Just set up the high chair, put on bibs, make sure each child gets their preferred colour of plastic crockery, mediate arguments about who gets which cookie, regularly wipe hands and face with baby wipe, the two year old needs a nappy change, but by the time of return the four year old has thrown the food everywhere and yoghurt was definitely a bad idea. Change clothes for both children, set up with toys so you can have an undisturbed fifteen minutes to clean up food, wipe down chairs, table and floor, sweep, wash dishes. Remember to make children drink water!

Going to the park, easy. Pack spare clothes, nappies, towel, baby wipes, bandaids, tissues, water, jackets and raincoats into pram. Somehow convince children to wear helmets. Help two year old ride scooter with one hand, push pram with other hand, and endure glares from strangers because the four year old isn’t stopping properly before crossing the road so I’m clearly a bad child carer. Play “Lion King” on the slide for an hour at the park. I need to pee, cannot leave the children alone so convince children to come to gross park toilet block with me. Convince children to come into cubicle with me because they will otherwise literally run away. Children are too tired to bike and scooter home. Put children into pram, push pram with one hand, bike with the other and carry scooter on back. Four year old wants to bring the pram inside to play with it, pram does not fit through the front door. Endure ensuing tantrum. Remember to make children drink water!

In all my various jobs and volunteer gigs, never have I gone home so utterly exhausted, covered in various kiddie excrements, dishwashing water and mud. Never have I performed so much physical and emotional labour for other humans; waitressing, seminar presenting and camp-leading do not compare. I earned twenty dollars an hour.

My nannying experiences demonstrated two distressing facts of the gendered reality of childcare in our world. Firstly, the complete and utter refusal of society to recognise non-educational child care as labour. As work. As fucking difficult. Mothers are expected to do this crap every single day for several years for free. Paid maternity leave for a handful of weeks cannot possibly be counted as legitimate pay for the burden of child care, especially when the labour reaches into the night with breastfeeding, colic babies and scared toddlers who accidentally watched Doctor Who. The fact that cis women have historically been primary caregivers, that they will do it without pay regardless, and that they get enjoyment from raising children does not stop childcare from being incredibly difficult, and a barrier to earning enough money to live.

The disregard of childcare as a legitimate form of labour has everything to do with the devaluation of women and non binary people as social contributors. Paying women for their work requires actually admitting that women are important, and that their labour deserves appropriate value. Shunning childcare into the murky depths of “women’s business” removes their literal sweat and tears from the public eye and ensures men maintain social precedence as the ones who perform the “real work” and actually contribute to society. Childcare is pitted as beneath men; too simple and intellectually unchallenging to warrant effort from the big brains and brawny muscles of hard working dudes.

The reciprocal is in effect too; jobs that require working with children are deemed less valuable than other professions, evidenced in the negligible pay of teachers in the public system. I easily imagine that this occurs in part because why would we pay child carers and children’s educators a decent wage when mothers already do this stuff for free? Shockingly, I would argue the answer is to… pay women, and primary caregivers of any gender.

The other horrifying truth that passed before my metaphorical eyes during my nannying stint was to observe how good I was at being a “mother”. With emphasis on my nonexistent experience with toddlers, I figured out within the first few hours what needed to be done and how to do it right. Changing nappies felt like second nature, I became a pro at cleaning a kid-wrecked kitchen halfway through the first five minutes, I quickly developed a mental checklist of all the stuff to pack should we leave the house. And to be perhaps problematically essentialist for a moment, I could not imagine any of my male friends performing motherhood as well as I did without guidance. From playing with dolls, from having homesick kids on camp literally handed over to me to deal with, from being told women are natural mothers, I am incredibly good at childcare. There need be no further qualification for nannying than being cis female because we are so shaped as career mothers from birth with no other virtue than having a vagina and identifying with the ensuing feminine gender.

Being assigned female at birth is a one way ticket to being conditioned to effectively performing motherhood. When faced with a childcare problem, something inside me told me I should know how to deal with it. So I just… did. Men aren't so relentlessly told they can care for children, in fact they’re often explicitly told they are incapable; that nappies are a dealbreaker, that dads are goofy pals to their kids who can provide such minimal domestic labour that they exclusively order pizza for dinner. This does a disservice to men, who should be able to be primary caregiver, who should connect to children with meaningful emotional integrity and who should actually aid their partners in the division of domestic labour.

Child care deserves the social value of any other highly demanding job. Just because the labour is emotional in nature does not mean it comes free, and just because it is primarily performed by those brought up as feminine does not mean it is worthless.

The Lesbian Beauty

From neck down, I am the ultimate “filthy feminist” - untouched body hair, no bra, and occasionally I bust out the wide legged three-quarter pants which apparently strike fear into the hearts of snowflake meninists. But curiously, the Tumblr worthy image suddenly stops at roughly my chin. From there up, I am the capitalist patriarchy’s dream girl. My face is covered in hundreds of dollars of skincare and makeup, hair products for my curls which I can’t bear the thought of shaving off, and semi-permanent eyelash and eyebrow tint. I’m well aware that half the lotions and potions I smear on my face twice a day every day don’t actually work and that I was just drawn in by the pretty white packaging and the promise of buyable beauty. I’m well aware that make up is gendered, inherently oppressive, and even my glittery, bright pink smokey eyes aren't “artistic” enough to escape the conventional beauty standard conformity they embody. I could go on about how much I enjoy blending eyeshadows, the coolness of fresh foundation when it touches your face, but I’m well aware that if I didn't feel societal pressure to wear makeup I probably… wouldn’t.

I know this because when I’m heading out to somewhere I know I will see attractive people - or might see attractive people - I will wear more makeup than if not. Because I’ll do my hair up nicer if I’m in the company of people whom I care what they think of my looks. Because I’ll make sure my eyelashes and eyebrows are freshly tinted if I won’t be able to wear makeup - at the beach, or an overnight gig of some description. And it’s oppressive; the money, the hours of sleep I miss because I’m applying concealer in the morning or removing mascara at night, the stress of planning ahead for beauty routines on the go. They’re small, but they add up into a daily life where your confidence and your desirability are contingent on the money you spend on little bits of silicone and coloured pigment wrapped in plastic.

Essentially, my build-a-girl self project has so far failed in seceding the male gaze. “The male gaze” simply denotes that attractiveness, specifically of cis women, is defined by what men enjoy. Beauty is not objective, and in this society beauty is constructed by and for straight men. By not-so-radical extension, the beauty and fashion industries are geared towards making women desirable to a male standard. Every Dove advertisement, every strappy red piece of lace with bows on it in Bras N’ Things tells me I’m not particularly beautiful, but I could be if I spend money on the right things. “Beauty” is toxic, and I’m swimming in it.

The indicator of success in escaping the male gaze would be when I stop feeling proud of my conventional beauty. When I stop being smug that I have the “right” kind of butt, the “correct” fashion sense (one that shows off said butt), and “flattering” makeup. When I stop mentally linking men who want to kiss me with men who think I’m “beautiful”, because I will understand that I cannot trust men’s standard of what “beautiful” is.

I met a girl who was not “beautiful”. Her hair was a mixture of short and oddly shaved, she wore low-rise jeans and a terrible button up shirt, her eyebrows were pale. And in the saga of being maybe sort of kinda a little bit queer sometimes, I thought she was gorgeous. Where the expectation for blonde eyelashes is to coat them in mascara because it frames the eyes better, where the norm is long hair falling suggestively over a girl’s shoulders, I thought her face-bareness and hair-shortness was one of the best things I’d ever seen.

There is a long history of lesbian fashion as a political statement and an identifier. Queer writer Judith Butler recounts walking down the street in a poorly fitting brown suit, and being yelled at “you look like a lesbian!” to which she answered “Well, I am”. Lesbians have been called “ugly” for forever and a day because “ugly” is the antithesis of “beautiful”. And “beautiful” means desirable to straight men.

Lesbian beauty is perhaps the most radical defiance of the patriarchy because it does not conform to the male gaze. Women who are beautiful to other women will not buy beauty products or wear mainstream clothes created for male tastes because they have no interest in being attractive for men. Conventional beauty is useless when male validation has no place in your life.

There is a danger in conforming to the male gaze - looking desirable for men invites unwanted touch, or the feared stare of boys who think they own a pretty body. Being “beautiful” is scary and painful and tiring and dehumanising. But women will not hurt you or force you to change your body to something more porn-worthy; I feel an incredible sense of safety in the presence of lesbian beauty. The expectation of spending my time, my money, of submitting myself to the pain of plucking, ripping and scrubbing disappears, and I am allowed to be a full human.

I will probably continue to wear makeup, to tear hairs from my eyebrows and be enticed by “thigh firming” workouts offered at the pilates studio. But this is because I will probably continue to be attracted to men, and swallow the bullshit beauty standards they enforce.

Hannah

Sports Culture Will Never Care About Women

I was waiting for the 64 tram to Caulfield on a Friday afternoon, the one I catch most weeks to go to Shabbat, and it came ten minutes late. Grumbling to myself about Swantson St traffic, I got on and was visually assualted by bright orange pamphlets strewn all over the tram reminding commuters about changes to tram timetables on Friday 28th September due to the public holiday. Ah yes, it’s labour day or something. As the tram trundled through Flinders St Station, I was confused by the masses of bodies in either black and white or yellow and blue swarming the CBD streets. They were all headed east, ah yes, there’s a big footy game or something. And then two and two finally made four and I realised that the entire state of Victoria gets a public holiday on Friday in honour of the AFL grand final (which I later found out was in fact played on Saturday so I’m still unsure what the fans at Flinders St on Friday were actually doing). Labour day makes sense; workers’ rights are pretty cool. But I couldn’t shake the slight discomfort of that fact that my tram ride, my weekend, my entire university semester timetable was centred around a football game.

A football game.

A handful of men running around an overpriced patch of grass kicking a ball in front of a stadium of fans who either paid exorbitant memberships or committed a mid-tier crime to nab a ticket. Whenever I complain about the footy I’m met with eyerolls about Sydneysiders or boring women or filthy feminists or some other significant aspect of my identity. Footy’s great! And anyone who disagrees is an imbecile who doesn’t appreciate Melbourne culture. And if you’re worried about the whole gender thing - which you shouldn’t because that’s dumb and annoying - it’s ok because there’s a women’s football league and some people are actually slightly interested in it!

But you cannot separate AFL from gender. You cannot separate sport from gender. There have been increasing measures taken to equal the literal and metaphorical playing field in recent years in regards to pay rates and women’s leagues, but feminising sport is a weak attempt at squaring the circle of an inherently masculine activity. Because with the current cultural standard of what we perceive as “good sport”, women will never be as good as men. Their games will never be as interesting to watch and the crowds will never pay the same amount for a ticket.

Whilst acknowledging the incredible biological diversity within one binary sex, as a generalisation people with XX chromosomes develop less muscle than those with XY, have shorter limbs, smaller hands and feet. Stepping outside of biological essentialism, women’s physical bodies are heavily affected by sexist socialisation. If you’ve been told your entire life that smallness is the epitome of feminine attractiveness, your mind will internalise this to the point where you feel unable to reach outwards into space to catch a ball because you subconsciously know that space does not belong to you (further reading: Throwing Like A Girl, Iris Marion Young). Saying that women are less able to play sport well unfortunately isn’t so much a misogynistic comment as simply stating the truth. However the factor missing in any conversations about women’s AFL, the Matildas or the Hockeyroos is that women’s subpar performance on the field does not at all reflect poorly on femininity. Rather it is our fault for glorifying activities in which only men are actually able to do well.

A quick Wikipedia gander reveals that sports probably originated as military training exercises, both in terms of fitness and team bonding. Rifling through my own limited general knowledge on the history of sports brings to mind the Ancient Greek Olympics, and that one story of how Oedipus accidentally killed his father with a discus and then had sex with his mother. Either way, it is pretty clear to see that sport was literally invented by and for men. Women were only included in the Olympics in 1900, and only in tennis and golf. Sporting activities were created specifically to cater to men’s abilities - long legs are good for running, big hands are good for handling balls, testosterone is good for lifting weights, and so these are the skills most cherished in sport. We’ve created the standard for “good sport” exclusively around what men can do, which coincidentally is what women aren't so great at. When the cultural consensus is that the best bit about cricket is hitting big fours and sixes, and the biggest talent in basketball is dunking balls, naturally we are less interested in women’s games where female bodies struggle to meet these expectations. If we as a society decided that the most coveted ability in cricket is constant blocks, with minimal opportunities for a score, perhaps we would value women in the Ashes. But this is not the case; we assume the standards of sport are objective and genderless, which places shame on women for being unable to match men in activities specifically designed to suit male bodies.

The glorification of sport directly translates to the glorification of men. At the expense of women.

When the biggest global event is the soccer World Cup, when the Olympics costs more than the annual budget of the United Nations, when an entire state has a public holiday for a single football game, we reiterate that this society values men’s physical abilities above all else. Giving women equal pay for equal play or supporting their leagues is a bandaid solution for a much deeper problem - femininity can never be desirable in sport; the best female players are the ones who most closely resemble men in their physical capabilities. The only viable option is to lessen our mindless worship of sport, to recognise that we teach ourselves to hate women when we laud a culture that will never value female participation.

My response to this idea is to remove myself from sporting culture, to shrug off the AFL and politely decline when someone offers to explain the rules to me. I stick to physical activities that value my body - gymnastics, circus, dance, rock climbing, yoga and pole. Occasionally I am a Bad Feminist, and sit in my undies with a bowl of ice cream watching the Ashes, but ideally this too will be removed from my life. Sporting culture hurts women. Hurts our ability to be taken seriously, to be valued as contributors to a national culture, to have our bodies respected. The grand final public holiday is shameful, and reducing the value of masculinity in sport should be our obligation.

A Space of One's Own

“Why do you have a separate girls’ chat for your friend group? Surely that creates a bad divide, I thought you guys were striving for equality?”

My initial reaction was to agree, such binary segregation usually sets a bad standard for social interactions, encouraging people to stick to their assigned gender and roles. But I paused when my gut suddenly informed me that actually I really like our gals’ chat, and the thought of getting rid of it in the interest of creating a more inclusive environment seemed… wrong.

I realised that I value this chat as a specific place where I can talk to other girls, where I can share, query, gossip, laugh, or just feel like there’s somewhere special for me to belong. I value having a space for people just like me.

In intersectional feminism, the concept of “space” differs slightly from its everyday colloquial use. Including but not restricted to a physical area, a “space” for marginalised folk is a time, a forum, a physical, linguistic or emotional place to be themselves. To share their experiences with people who live in similar circumstances, and to take a breather from the struggle of navigating a society which is built to exclude minority identities. Queer spaces, trans spaces, black spaces and women’s spaces exist to provide safety and comfort to people whose everyday experiences with cis-heteronormativity, white supremacy and the patriarchy make them feel unsafe and uncomfortable.

My women’s spaces, whether they be gals’ Whatsapp chats, girls’ nights, the women’s bathroom at a club or even just the five minutes you pull your friend into a room to ask an opinion on an outfit are all places I’ve joined or created for myself to feel comfortable within. Perhaps I am ultimately conforming to gender stereotypes that will harm the autonomy of my self expression in the long term, but these “girly” moments are times when I have looked at the patriarchy, shrugged, and made myself a home. Unlike the family structure which was built on a system of literal fatherly dominance, unlike the education system which continues to value “masculine” skills and the male voice, my gals’ chat was made by women, for women. When the rest of society ascribes “femininity” to women and then puts them down for conforming to “girliness”, my women’s spaces allow me to act the way I choose - or admittedly potentially the way I’ve been taught - without judgement and without fear of ridicule or violence. All marginalised folk require their spaces; it’s often the only time and place available for self exploration, which is something people whose identities are validated by wider society often take for granted.

Incidentally, these same reasons explain why minorities are upset by majorities’ attempts to claim equal rights to their own spaces. Gay pride parades exist because of a very real need to create a space for the LGBT+ community; our society as it stands simply does not provide it. The subsequent demand for “straight pride” to “create equality” fails to understand that the literal entirety of society is a space for heterosexuals. Heterosexuals do not fear discrimination or violence for their sexuality, and so do not require a safe space. Men do not regularly face jokes whose punchlines rely on the assumption that men as a gender are dumb, and so do not require a space where they can assure themselves that they are strong and capable. White people do not face stereotypes as criminals, and so do not need a space to take back their culture and positively redefine it.

When boys ridicule me and my girlfriends for having “girls’ time”, I’m jealous of the patriarchy that makes them feel like the space they occupy every second of the day supports them, encourages them and loves them, because I can only achieve this by making it myself.

Feminism Made Me Queer

When counting my privileges, of which there are many, I’ve always acknowledged how nicely I fit into the dolled-up Heterosexual Dream. Rom-coms are basically porn for my almost shameless wish to meet a Heath Ledger-esque babe and go on spontaneous romantic road trips. Depictions of love and sex in Hollywood have always represented me no matter how toxic, and I find conversations about hookups and relationships accessible without fearing ostracisation.

Understanding this, a while ago I made a tiny change in my lifestyle. I started to use the word “partner” instead of “boyfriend” or “husband” when referring to (seemingly very far away) future relationships. It began when I decided that Marriage Is Awful And I Shall Not Partake In It, and the inherently patriarchal word “husband” irked me. I found myself relishing in the ambiguity of such gender neutral language, enjoying the moments of hopefully educational discomfort when my interlocutor would look me up and down trying to decide if I was a lesbian. Eventually my word choices of “partner” and “they” became solidified enough in my feminist activism that I was bothered by other people using masculine language, asking me if I have a boyfriend, or making incredibly annoying comments about what a future boyfriend might think of my “aggressive” feminism. My unease at this gendered language eventually vocalised itself, and I developed a little voice in my head that indignantly yells “Hey! What if I have a girlfriend?” I didn’t want to make a statement about my sexuality, I just thought the assumption of straightness was problematic, and I wanted to call it out.

This small, everyday activism developed alongside my long term project of deconstructing myself; trying to identify how I’ve been moulded, shaped and twisted by the patriarchy, dismantling those aspects of my personality, and rebuilding them with as much autonomy as my Objectified female being can muster. Despite Simone de Beauvoir’s very sound theory that it is impossible for women to transcend the patriarchy, nevertheless I try. I try pretty damn hard. I’ve stopped shaving, wearing bras, eating meat, saying slurs like “slut” and “gay”, stopped ascribing to concepts of virginity and marriage, and a plethora of other problematic norms. Eventually, I saw that disentangling myself from the patriarchy is a process of seeing myself as a real person. As a Subject, to be philosophical about it.

For now I will simply assert that the patriarchy, at its core, denies female personhood. Women are quite literally not seen as worthy humans; we are not capable leaders because our voices aren’t deep enough, we are not good mothers if we re-enter the workforce but are not good members of society if we stay at home, we are not professional unless we wear makeup and bras, we are not pretty unless we are thin. Growing up in such a world, the path of least resistance is to agree. The easiest thing to do as a woman is to hate yourself, and hate other women, because that’s the “cool” thing to do; idolising masculinity is the key to success.

On the flipside, loving yourself as a woman is a radical act. As much as I seem to be quoting pastel pink watercolour posters on Tumblr, there is an incredible truth to this statement. When our cultural norms of cosmetics, gendered toiletries and secretive language define our social relationship to vaginas, pubic hair and fat, wholeheartedly loving the supposedly “gross” female body is inherently countercultural. When being “not like other girls” is a compliment because “most girls” are boring and superficial, genuinely caring about and loving women is a defiant act. After years of slowly shucking my internalised self-hatred and seeing myself as a real, important human, I began to extend this to other women. Instead of staring at girls’ stretch marks in disgust, I tried mentally congratulating them for their confidence. Instead of rolling my eyes at the “social-climbing-bitch” in high school, I tried to see how her friends mistreating her caused a distrust in genuine female friendships. I like to think that I’ve reached a point where I consider the girls in my life to be just as talented, complex and interesting as the boys I’ve always admired.

There was a girl on a summer camp who I thought was so cool. I wanted to be friends with her because I really cared about her, and the interesting things she talked about, and the awesome way she did her hair. She started to have a strange amount of airtime in my head, and the subsequent internal reflection went like this:

Me to myself: “What’s going on here?”
Myself to me: “You have a crush on her.”
Me to myself: “Interesting.”

It was something of a non-issue, we ended up being friends and it was nice. I had about three simultaneous crushes on various boys on that same camp, and life continued as normal. I didn’t think of myself as being gay or bi or queer and I still don’t, though perhaps I should, considering subsequent feelings for other girls.

The conclusion I’ve come to is that in my feminist mission to love women, I ended up… loving women. In my project to use more gender neutral language, I found myself comfortable with the idea of dating a girl. This is not a new idea, Adrienne Rich’s 1980 essay “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” theorised a “lesbian continuum”, wherein female bonding as a radical defiance to the patriarchy is a natural expression of fluid sexuality, but the concept of lesbianism as sexual essentialism is a deterrence to women embracing these feelings.

I don’t relate to the gay narrative of suppressed emotions finally unveiled by a coming out process. This is a valid and important narrative, but what is less talked about is the incredible fluidity of sexuality. And moreover, the active choices we make that affect who we are attracted to. I maintain that if I were to stay stuck in my fourteen year old anti-feminist ways, I would never feel attracted to the girls I do today. It was only in my conscious choice to see women as powerful, beautiful and sexy that I developed romantic feelings towards them. Sexuality is usually linked exclusively with ideas of identity politics, but my wayward crushes don’t impact my identity. They’re just a byproduct of the emotional vulnerability that occurs when a woman decides to defy her sexist socialisation.

I Am a Boring, Humourless Feminist

An easily forgettable guy on Tinder dropped a reference to The Book of Mormon, and I had to admit I’ve never seen it. As he was raving about it I played along nicely, commenting how some of my friends are fans, maybe I’ll go one day. Then he mentioned that its brilliance stems from it being written by the same people as South Park. I wanted desperately to be The Cool Girl, to join the comradery born from a compatible sense of humour and a love of small round cartoon characters swearing their disproportionate heads off.

But I couldn’t, because I hate South Park.

Even writing that sentence in the privacy of my own room surrounded by broken eyeshadow palettes and wayward embroidery needles, I can feel the glares and eye rolls of boys who are much more cultured than me, who understand quality satire in ways I never shall and whose taste in musicals is validated by the Tony Award.

But first let me explain: I hate South Park because I don’t find it funny. It’s too crude for me; I cringe at the obscene sexual references, I’m uncomfortable at the excessive swearing, and the slapstick violence leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I’m glad the show calls out transphobia regarding Caitlyn Jenner, for example, or undermines gender roles, but I don’t enjoy it, I don’t laugh. However mine is the incorrect attitude, the attitude of boring feminist girls who don’t have a sense of humour and who don’t find appeal in the shock factor of a song about raping babies.

Roxane Gay’s essay collection Bad Feminist critiques Caitlin Moran’s publication How to Be a Woman for its lack of intersectionality and implicit racism. She almost sadly notes that the New York Times and many others gave it rave reviews, overlooking its problematic attitudes towards Muslim women because it’s funny, and apparently humour is otherwise dead in feminism and “we love the narrative of feminists as humourless”. At first I was miffed by this characterisation, it must be a totally misguided act of misogyny to think that feminism is a bunch of droll, boring chicks who enjoy sapping the fun out of life itself.

But it is accurate; I have no sense of humour. I am boring, unfunny, cynical and, what’s that term? Oh yeah, a “PC Police”. Because I don’t like South Park, or American Dad!, or Family Guy, TED, 21 Jumpstreet, Sausage Party, or jokes that come at the expense of marginalised people (which is most of them).

This humour is seen as objectively amazing, and disliking it makes you objectively boring. But this humour is also objectively masculine. How can I be desensitised to a joke about shoving a fist nonconsensually up someone’s asshole when I’ve been taught to fear dark streets, bars, public toilets and quiet beaches in case of rape? How can I laugh at slapstick borderline sexual violence when I have been so strongly and successfully conditioned to be terrified of it? An excess of the F word is not funny when I associate it with drunk men getting physical and scary.

I only speak for myself but allow me to make a generalisation and say that women are not in a position to find this humour funny.

I will not apologise for being humourless because it is incorrect; I simply demand jokes that require more creativity, more social awareness than falling back on tropes of putting others in positions of pain or humiliation.

I love Brooklyn Nine-Nine, I laugh aloud minimum three times an episode and definitely have a crush on Jake Peralta, though potentially only because he’s such a nice Jewish boy. Featuring two black men, two Latina women, a homosexual male, a bisexual female and a Jew in the main cast, Brooklyn Nine-Nine has as much diversity and sociopolitical commentary as South Park, but without the violence and uncomfortable edginess. Amidst slapstick and witticisms, the show addresses pretty serious issues of racialized police violence, homophobia and a lack of female leadership in the NYPD. Of course, Brooklyn Nine-Nine still doesn’t have the same amount of social status as the aforementioned shows and movies, and I conspiratorially hypothesise this is because the humour is too “nice”, too “feminine”, and femininity immediately devalues the worth of media. In the same way chick-flicks are looked down upon in comparison to their masculine cop-show car-chase shoot-up equivalents (Clueless and Bridesmaids are taken less seriously than Die Hard or Fast and Furious), the loud and rough edged masculine humour of South Park trumps the tactful hilarity of Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

If I spend the rest of my life known as the downer who calls out her friends’ inappropriate jokes, the black hole who sucks the fun out of harmless adult cartoons and the unsmiling, dull robot feminist, so be it. But let it be known that my feminism wants nothing more than hilarious TV shows, woke stand up comedy and laughter til I cry.

Moreover I want this kind of humour to be seen as valid. There are gendered “rules” for humour, gendered standards for what is funny, and because I am feminine and because I am feminist I will continue to be boring until these roles are dismantled.

Stay funny,

Hannah

Traditional Family Structures and Other Problematic Things

Blood is thicker than water, friends come and go but family always endures, there is no greater love than a mother’s love, yada yada. People may disagree on smooth versus crunchy peanut butter, diet coke or pepsi max, Republicans or Democrats, but the one immortal truth that appears to bind all society together is the value of family. In classic contentious Feminist Fatale style, I’m here to say that family is extremely overrated, and kind of problematic.

The general concept of a family is pretty harmless, just a bunch of related people loving and supporting each other. But I’m specifically referring to the traditional structure of a typical nuclear family with a married couple and a handful of biological children. For forever and a day, this construction of a family has been a social tool to keep strict hierarchies of power, and somewhat unsurprisingly the main benefactors are the men and the heterosexuals, whilst the sufferers are… everyone else.

The first thing to look at is marriage. Two people signing a government contract and placing metal rings on each others fingers is not exactly the pinnacle of “nature”. Marriage is very much a social idiosyncrasy that has become so steeped in tradition that the idea of not getting married is strange and apparently “unnatural”. And potentially the reason marriage has become so successful and important in our societies is because it does an excellent job of reinforcing gender roles which keeps power within the male institute. Although this sounds very doom and gloom and over-reactionary, if you step through the history of marriage, it’s surprisingly terrifying. In Classical Rome, daughters were the explicit property of their fathers until marriage, at which point they became property of their husbands. A wannabe husband would have to offer a suitable dowry to the father in order to receive the daughter’s hand, and of course she never had a say throughout the entirety of the process. In fact, not much changed for several hundred years in Western culture, because by the Victorian era marriages were conducted roughly the same. Basically, women were objects to be bartered and sold by their fathers; for the right price, some bloke was allowed to have sex with her, and virginity upon marriage was of utmost importance. Interestingly, both Stalinist and Nazi social policy included a return to strict "traditional family values" such as encouraging women to have multiple children for the State and to ensure women keep the "good" Soviet or German home under control while men conscript to fight for the fatherland.

Until varying stages in the 1900’s depending in which country, marital rape was legal, women were expected to agree with their husbands vote, women’s wealth (if they had any in their own name) became property of their husband, and women were forbidden from receiving custody over a child in case of divorce or insufficient finance. Essentially, marriage seriously sucked for women. Like, seriously. Although the suffrage movement addressed some of these issues, a celebration of the institute of marriage validates this objectifying and often violent history and its attitudes towards women.

And in fact, I’m going to go ahead and say that marriage still sucks for women. The role of “wife” carries expectations of performing disproportionate amounts of domestic and emotional labour in comparison to the role of “husband”, being primary caregiver to children regardless of career or other personal ambitions, and sacrificing her social life for the isolating company of her family - as if two, three, or four other people can satisfy all your interpersonal relationship needs.

And of course there is still the ongoing issue of the queer community being completely excluded from the norm of marriage, further ostracising them from mainstream society by denying them what is supposedly the best way to officiate your relationships with other humans. Once again - celebrating marriage and it’s role in the “perfect” family structure completely invalidates the experiences of gay, trans and aromantic people and their partners.

Children also suffer from this strict and unforgiving environment. Little girls grow up observing their mothers and are subtly conditioned into understanding that this limited existence is their inescapable birthright. For boys and children of other genders too, the family structure enforces very strong gender roles, encouraging the damages of both femininity and toxic masculinity, or the notion that gender is a set and binary thing. On another note, if a family is dysfunctional or abusive, children’s experiences of neglect are invalidated by the strong social narrative that family is the best, most important and most perfect thing in the world; for them it simply is not.

What I find most amusing about many anti-same-sex marriage campaigns is that they worry what legitimising gay couples could mean for the future of the traditional family structure. In my opinion, it is exactly this model of human relationships that causes much of the sexism and homophobia in society, and anything that attempts to challenge it is very much needed.

I Will Not Be A "Respectable Feminist"

I’m really not the biggest fan of the patriarchy, shockingly enough.

I feel feeble talking in a male dominated group. I feel helpless when a man makes unwanted sexual advances, and inevitably smile nervously and walk away quickly. I learned early on how to hate other girls and despise femininity. I was terrified by my own body as a sexual entity and my first period was traumatising. And when I see the daily advertisements telling me to spend money on a new cream because my face isn’t pretty enough, or movies where the main female role is a sex-toy sans character development, or talk to a guy who somehow thinks we don’t live in a rape culture, I feel angry. Writing it plainly here like this, anger seems like a reasonable emotion to feel about the inundation of being devalued and degraded. But I forget one important thing:

Girls aren’t meant to be angry.

Anger, no matter how rightful, is an unacceptable trait for a female to have. She must be crazy, nuts, hysterical right from the core of her dysfunctional uterus. Men are the ones who ball up their fists to fight, who yell in a somewhat pleasing deep register, who think with their erections and start wars, right? Girls’ conflict techniques are different - we express dissatisfaction with gentle calmness and negotiate cooly, and would never make an unreasonable generalisation. Women who do get angry, who do lash out and yell and huff are clearly the “crazy feminists”, the dreaded creature of extremism, hairy legs, braless tits and shrill, man-hating cries.

In my many feminist discussions with friends, not-really-friends, and random people who said something annoying, I’ve often come across the notion of the “respectable feminist”. When talking about #notallmen, or the validity of making generalisations about men, white people, cis people etc, or the role of violent protests, there’s always that one voice that pipes up “yeah but any respectable feminist wouldn’t actually believe that”. This is usually followed by a sideways glance, a challenge in my direction. Exhausted and burnt out I usually ignore it, but I’m here now to say that if being a “respectable feminist” means watering down my values to appease the delicate sensibilities of men, then I want none of it.

Respectability has always been a tool used by people in power to delegitimise the voices of marginalised folk. The suffragettes, the bra burners of the seventies and intersectional feminists now have always been described by their naysayers as crazy, out of line and unreasonable. If you talk too loud, if you cite anecdotal evidence rather than often unavailable statistics, if you look a man in the eye on Q&A to tell him that he is interrupting you, you are no longer respectable. So what we see is that the only “respectable feminist” is the ineffective one, the one who panders to the needs of men and feebly challenges the most superficial layers of sexism. This narrative also rings true for anti-racisms movements; MLK himself damned “moderation”, calling for radical action for radical change. The “respectable PoC” concedes to white supremacy, and asks only for tokenistic changes in legislation rather than attempting to overhaul a systematic hatred of blackness.

I’m tired of being told my feminism is contradictory, hypocritical and useless because I refuse to back down from challenging theories, like the construction of gender and the responsibility of All Men for sexism. Apparently I’m pushing men away, but if a boy feels threatened and insecure purely because I have found power and comfort in my rights as a woman, then I do not need to pat his head and say “well maybe reverse oppression can exist sometimes”. He needs to grow up.

I do not need to take part in conversations that drain, frustrate and hurt me if I do not want to simply because it would not be “respectable” to deny “the other side” a chance to have airtime. I do not need to defend my legitimacy as a feminist because some people feel threatened by the things I have to say. I do not need to remain calm in an argument to make a valid point. I do not need to respect an opinion if it is damaging to me, to women, to queer people, to People of Colour or to disabled people.

I will never apologise for caring, and I will always be emotional about issues that affect my life.

Why White People Should be Accountable for Racism

I went to an academically selective high school, where over eighty percent of the students were Women of Colour, mostly from India, China and Vietnam. I always did well in class but was by no means ever the best student; the classes were full of incredibly gifted girls and competition was fierce. However when the school prefects were elected, I was one of seven white girls out of the overall twenty.

Despite the undeniable competency of every prefect, it was telling to see such a disproportionate racial landscape amongst the supposed elites of the school. The atmosphere at my school was always incredibly inclusive and active in its feminism, and yet somehow white girls were always seen to be more capable, more deserving and more suited to leadership than their Asian counterparts. The implicit bias and internalised racism of the voters was clear; from a lifetime of seeing only white politicians, white lead actors and majority white teachers, it is easy to see how a narrative of white people’s inherent leadership ability pervades even the most socially aware, multicultural microcosm that was my school.

And although I may have been elected regardless of skin colour, it is irrefutable that this atmosphere of subliminal racism elevated my chances of becoming a prefect.

I like to think that I am an ally to anti-racism; I listen to my friends of Colour and their everyday stories of discrimination, I read articles on race politics and White Supremacy, I don’t tell racist jokes and I call other people up when they do, and I write feminist articles acknowledging and exploring the intersections of race. But the day of prefect elections, the systematic racism of 21st century Australia benefitted me. Massively. I have “Prefect 2016” on my resume, I met politicians and public figures at school functions, and had more opportunities to come up with a believable excuse to skip class during the really boring parts of Hamlet. Despite strongly advocating equality, feminism, and all those lovely ideological words, my Year 12 was made so much better because I am a white person living in a racist society. In fact, my whole life has significantly benefitted from that fact.

It doesn’t matter how angelic your intentions are, as a white person in a country with a colonialist history and racist present (read: police brutality, mass incarceration, fewer job opportunities, disproportionate representation below the poverty line, and the list goes on), you inescapably reap the benefits of other people’s disadvantage. Because my white teacher implicitly - and racist-ly - assumed Asian girls are very quiet, I was usually called on to answer a question in class. Hence, my report card glowed that little extra with comments about how actively I participate in class, my marks rose, I was offered places on academic teams, nominated for awards etc. All these “merit based” accomplishments of mine were to a degree merit based, but to a larger degree than I care to admit, handed to me because I stood out as one of the few white girls; one of the few girls who “deserved” it.

I am not writing this in a fit of self hatred and degradation; I am proud of my school achievements and thankful of a life full of opportunities and respectful interactions with police officers. But the idea that only “some” white people contribute to racism is useless. Who even are these “some” white people? Cops who shoot black people in America? Jurors who sentence Aboriginal Australians to harsher sentences than their white counterparts? But their racist thought processes didn’t appear from nowhere. The accountability surely extends to anyone who helped created a society that looks at a black man and thinks “criminal”. Surely anyone who ever told a joke about an Aboriginal guy stealing a TV shares responsibility for making it just that little bit more socially acceptable to assume people with dark skin are always poor, dangerous, and will likely steal your stuff.

Or even for a white person who takes every care and measure not to contribute to this myth, every time they are not pulled over for a Stop n Frisk and an Indigenous person is, they inadvertently comply to the overall system of racism. Because for every cocaine-snorting white boy who gets away with it while a black man is aggressively searched and jailed for possession of marijuana, the trend of mass incarceration, the narrative of black people’s inherent link to crime, the police distrust of black people is driven just that little bit deeper.

But when we claim as white people that “I had nothing to do with it”, we allow everyone to assume they also fall under that umbrella; no one ever willingly thinks of themselves as racist. So when you have literally everyone shirking this responsibility and denying this characterisation of society, nothing gets done about it - it’s always somebody else’s problem. 

Every white person needs to understand that we are accountable - that we are probably racist. That doesn’t make us bad people. I, for one, think I’m at least half a good person. But it does make us accountable to our everyday actions, and responsible for pulling up the white people around us, becoming better allies and all that positive, good vibes, feministy kinda stuff. If you experience the world with all the safety and opportunities of being white, then you must also accept your obligation to level our incredibly unequal society.

Hannah

The Other Side of the Argument?

I’m having a lovely car ride in Sydney peak hour traffic, listening to ABC’s Triple J, when I hear the news group “Hack” announce they will host a segment over whether or not we should change the date of Australia Day. Two thoughts immediately occured - firstly, “duh we should change the date, or just cancel it”, and secondly, “Triple J, we know you’re politically alligned with the progressive left wing, why are you even bothering to give equal airtime to the right wing? Why are you giving conservatives a space to promote their regressive ideas?’”

Obviously, this argument comes with the precedent that conservative ideas are counterproductive for social equality and progression, but hey, this blog would be an empty shell without that paradigm.

Very often, progressive organisations or movements provide open panels and discussions on leftist issues, and invite conservative interlocutors to create a two sided conversation. Although this sounds lovely and fair and democratic, I actually see many problems with this model of publicly discussing feminist ideas.

When the Australian government provided equal funding to the “yes” and “no” campaign for the (thankfully cancelled) marriage equality plebescite, when SBS and every other left-wing news company under the sun continually invites Trump supporters for interviews, when white Australian patriots have a centre seat on a change-the-date-panel, I do not see an even, open minded platform of discussion. I see conservative opinions given space in places they do not need to be, with the inevitable impact of progression being held back as panelists have to spend expensive commercial TV airtime politely explaining that Indegenous Australians are systematically disadvantaged by a lingering colonialist and racist Australian culture, rather than addressing the actual issue of January 26th.

Ultimately, these discussions hosted by progressive institutions go absolutely nowhere while the right wing somehow manages to publicly endorse only their own views in their topical debates - Fox News rarely features a leading left wing thinker to provide an alternative view on the issue at hand.

Why this disparity? The first thing that comes to mind is some convoluted form of respectability politics. Which is basically just a buzzword for “the Left and the oppressed are expected to pander to what a power majority decrees as ‘respectable’”.

We live in a world where the right wing has always been the archetype of what is polite, respectable and acceptable, especially when discussing politics. Martin Luther King addressed the problem of the “White moderate”; the White person who denounces racism in the quiet privacy of their home, but criticises any radical, violent or loud protests as “unneccessary” and “impolite”. The fact that successful, empowering conversations about implicit biases in police brutality, or the responsibility of all cisgender people to be accountable for transphobia, are constantly shut down because they threaten and challenge the privilege of social majorities causes the Left to strive for acceptance within a conservative world. This inevitably means sacrificing the impact of Radical, important ideas for a more politically central, “respectable” discussion in the hope that it will draw in a conservative audience. There is definitely credit in reaching out to a wide demographic, but I see a problem when every Leftist forum feels it necessary to trade off their values for public respect.

Firstly as stated before - I view these discussions as extremely stagnant. Hack’s January 26th discussion came to the conclusion: “maybe it’s bad. Maybe it’s good.” Perhaps if the panel held a variety of opinions from across the broad and diverse spectrum of “the Left”, the conversation would have quickly established the issues with celebrating a day of invasion and oppression and begun to constructively discuss possible alternatives or critique the general Australian attitude towards Indigenous issues. Secondly I find it extremely disempowering that progressive values are deemed less worthy of airtime and respect than their right wing counterparts. When feminist ideas are denied a popular space to exist in society, it sends a message that feminism is not as legitimate as conservatism, despite the former actively empowering and bettering many people’s lives.

Ultimately, space in a public forum is the most important way for minorities to express their experiences and opinions, and attempt to enact change within their societies. But when these spaces are infringed upon by a pressure to conform to conservative standards of “respectability”, our conversations are prevented from achieving their goals.

Hannah

The Jews and the Left

Depending on your levels of privilege, The Left is either an empowering revolutionary forum of ideologies, an idealistic security blanket for naive university students, or something along the Stalinist spectrum. While I’m sure anyone could poke holes in this definition, for the sake of this thesis: “The Left” as both a social consciousness and an economic belief system strives to align itself with the systematically oppressed in order to equalise global power structures (and it’s also flipping awesome). However when the power dynamics of a group rapidly changes, the Leftist attitude becomes tumultuous; confused and sometimes contradictory. In the case of Israel and modern Jewry, I can’t help perceiving current Leftist ideology as uninformed, and kinda flawed.

Throughout human history, Jews have been a pretty trampled group, constantly deprived of security, respect, and self determination. And in the aftermath of the Holocaust, the Leftist moral alliance with the Jews became mainstream, funding a Jewish State and revising history textbooks acknowledging the previously silenced Jewish struggles, for example the hushed-up Russian pogroms and exile from England. As a rule, the early State of Israel was widely supported by the Western Left, but the Zionist’s position as the darling of the Left was short lived. Nowadays, universities are plastered with pro-Palestinian posters and calls to action, and claiming to be a Zionist will gather dirty looks in feminist circles. And in many ways, this attitude has an extremely valid background.

In my opinion, the 1900’s saw an unwillingness to criticise Israel, and for many decades the State has been afforded far too much official blind-eye in its military aggression and treatment of the Palestinians. I definitely maintain that Israel committed war crimes in the 1982 Lebanon Invasion and the Devil Reincarnate AKA Ariel Sharon unfairly avoided apt punishment. I also view the settler movement in the Occupied Territories as amoral and illegal, and am not entirely opposed to critiques of Israel as an Apartheid State. These violations of human rights and international laws went by almost unnoticed for half a century, and it is definitely within the “role” of the Left to bring the previously overlooked oppression of the Palestinians to the fore of social issues. However the tried and tested “us vs them” approach to supporting minorities against their oppressors has villainised Israel, and by extension the Jews. This is… problematic.

Intersectional feminist discussions around conflict between ethnic and racial groups equate Whiteness with oppression to accurately create the historical context of power dynamics, which is important when society refuses to hold White people accountable for their actions. But in relation to the Conflict, I have noticed an implicit feminist view that the reciprocal is equally valid - that oppression equals Whiteness. By this understanding, because Jews are the oppressors in this context, they therefore must be White. I don’t want this article to spend paragraphs explaining the existence of modern anti-Semitism - it should be enough to assert that Jews face very real discrimination and oppression in every corner of the world. But I do want to say that it is not anyone’s place to call Jews White.

The “white” status of Jews has been up in the air for decades; in the USA and the Anglo diaspora, many Jews have achieved total assimilation, and are sometimes an active part of their State’s establishment. Some individual Jews, often successful and non-religious (i.e. myself), validly call themselves white, but I think it is a gross misunderstanding of historical and modern Jewry to generally assert an inherent Jewish Whiteness. Firstly, Ashkenazi (European) Jews are not the extent of Abraham’s supposed descendants. Sephardi and Mizrachi Jews from the Middle East and Africa are People of Colour, and already deal with issues of erasure in the face of a Euro-centric view of Jewish history and culture. Even within the Asheknazi community, the Holocaust did a pretty good job of reminding Eastern and Central European Jews that they are not White, and with the recent rise of the alt-right in Hungary, Germany and France, that sentiment is clearly thriving. Essentially, there is a very significant population of Jews whose history, culture, decimated family trees and identity crises are flatly invalidated by the Leftist claim that Israel’s agenda is White Supremacist, and its implication of Jewish Whiteness.

Perhaps it is partially this attitude that has weakened the Jewish alliance with the Left, as there has been an undeniable shift of modern Jewry away from progressive connections. In America, Jews were historic democrats and had a strong alliance with Black communities especially in the Civil Rights Movement, but these connections have become weaker in recent years. This trend is likely also influenced by increasing acceptance into anglo middle classes and the conservatism that breeds from assimilated stability, but Left’s lack of nuanced understanding of Israel and its valid significance as a State for the Jews has only served to push them further away.

As someone who wishes to see a world run entirely on left wing politics (a socialist feminist benevolent dictator would be lovely too), I’m worried by any potential for the Left to lose its credibility - there are already too many bigots slamming it for unnecessary reasons, we don’t need valid reasons as well. Ultimately there needs to be a greater understanding in socialist and feminist circles about the uniqueness of the Conflict and the importance of recognising that broad social narratives of the world simply cannot reasonably apply in this area. Criticism of Israel and support of the Palestinians is necessary, but doing so at the expense of a multilayered understanding of a very complex political situation and a very vulnerable people is just unhelpful.

Hannah

Bras Shmas - Why I Stopped Wearing Them

It was a bright sunny evening (Australian daylight savings) and I went to the bathroom to have a shower. I was wearing my favourite bra and a tight singlet, and I took a minute to admire my reflection - my boobs looked fantastic. But as I got undressed I avoided looking in the mirror. I didn't want to see my actual breasts, the asymmetrical ones that don't hang perfectly straight with a small ravine of cleavage. And in the enlightening moment in the middle of Shower Thoughts I realised "damn, I hate my body." At roughly the same moment, I also thought to myself, "I should do something about that."

So I wear less bras now.

Here's the thing about underwire bras: even if they're not push-up or padded at all, they are shaped in a perfect circle - the conventionally beautiful breast shape. Breasts naturally hang down and slightly outwards, but the standard shape of a bra pushes them up and in, so they sit perky and cleavage-y. Of course, this is fine if it doesn't mess with your body image, but in my experience when you spend the vast majority of your day only seeing yourself with "perfect boobs", your real body can seem like an unpleasant surprise.

There is also the feminist view that bras are a patriarchally enforced form of bodily mutilation. While I don't think this is necessarily true for all women, some of whom find bras empowering, helpful, or just enjoyable, I started to see more sense in this belief. When I started wearing only soft bralets or just no bra altogether, I immediately noticed the difference in taking them off at the end of the day. Suddenly there was no longer a sense of relieving my breasts from a tight and painful 12 hour grip, and no longer deep red marks along my ribcage. Instead, taking off a bralet feels like nothing; like your breasts have been happily chilling out all day wherever they feel like. I felt like I'd spent five years hurting myself every day, only to end up with a crappy booby image (geddit?).

Of course for some women, cutting down on bras is not an option. Bras can definitely make life easier and less painful - at a 10D it still took a few months to stop feeling painfully unsupported - and bras can make you look and feel fabulous. But the Aesop-style moral-to-the-story is that it's always good to analyse your actions; are you doing something because it genuinely makes you feel good about yourself, or are you just doing it for the sake of it? Is it actually making your life better or is it making you feel shitty? How many of your actions are self-driven, and how many are demanded by the patriarchy? If you can find ways to make your actions intentional and completely autonomous, life is lookin' good.

Xx
Hannah

"Honey I'm Home" - Unfair Division of Domestic Labour

1950's America is iconic of domestic gender roles and sexism, the classic image of White Husband coming home at 5:30 pm sharp, putting his hat on the hatstand and sitting down to a hot meal prepared all day by White Wife. We like to think that these rigid gender expectations have relaxed - and to an extent they have - but although we (grudgingly) accept women in the corporate workforce, we continue to assume that household labour is the female sphere.

Last Sunday was Father's Day, and it was no better day to understand exactly how we are conditioned to believe that "men work in real jobs" and "women work at home". As I was walking past the local primary school on Friday, I saw kids carrying their Father's Day artworks - decorated paper ties. And as we know, nothing screams professionalism like a phallic tie. This came at the tail end of several weeks of TV ad campaigns for Bunning's drills sales ("perfect for dad") and half-priced soccer balls. Suits, power tools and sport; the trifecta of masculinity. The message was clear, dads do work. They're earning lots of money doing tough days at the office, and then they're outside playing hard, or in the shed making something really cool. This is in stark contrast to Mother's Day advertising, with perfumes and soap dishes and flowers, which funnily enough are all items for the home. And the primary school kids trot home with decorated paper aprons instead of ties. A lifetime of these messages surrounding us inevitably results in a subconscious - or very conscious for that matter - assumption that domestic labour should primarily be carried out by women.

Here's the thing: domestic labour is labour. Cleaning, washing and cooking take just as much training, skill, and blood-sweat-and-teary hours as sitting at a desk planning new streets, or running administration for an office, or any other middle-range "corporate" job. As indicated by many people's complete inability to categorise laundry by material, or cook a decent meal, domestic chores are work; requiring knowledge, skill and time. Raising children takes the level of labour to the next level - as a "job", it's on par with lawyers, doctors and financial advisors in terms of importance, hours and skill level. However all this domestic labour is associated almost exclusively with women; ironing and booking Billy into Term 2 soccer training is a specifically female role. And worse? It is unpaid labour.

Ha ha ha ha no.

The gender wage gap actually significantly stems from this social mindset. Women are managing to make their way into most realms of the corporate world, and there is an increased awareness of the importance of equal pay and equal job opportunities for women. However on top of their corporate jobs, women are expected to undertake hours of unpaid domestic labour while their male counterparts don't, save the tokenistic drive to Billy's soccer game on Saturday mornings. A woman may be well qualified and eager for a well paid marketing job offer, but the hours are 9-5 Monday to Friday - her kids finish school at 3:10 and she can't afford a 5 day per week nanny. Who would cook or pack lunches or do the laundry? As a result, women take on jobs with fewer hours, lower pay, and hence are viewed by their employers as less deserving of a promotion. This has nothing to do with women "wanting it less", or "prioritising children due to a biological maternal instinct", and everything to do with enforced social expectations. Women who do take on full time jobs instead of doing their household "duties" are characterised as heartless, cruel mothers. Meanwhile, it seems completely out of place to ask your husband to be home at 3 to look after the kids on Mondays - Wednesdays, which is a fair division of domestic labour.

As usual, the most effective way to even the playing field is to re-educate men and recondition their behaviours, rather than burden women with trying to change the world when the world won't listen. Boys need to learn that cooking, laundry and nannying are work just as much as operating an excel spreadsheet. They need to understand that this work needs to be respected, instead of dumped onto the "weaker sex" as menial and worthless chores. From there, domestic labour can start to become un-gendered, and we can build an expectation for men to share household work with their female counterparts. Like most feminist This is How to End Sexism manifestos, this course of action ends up benefiting men, as spending time with your children and being involved in running a household is destigmatised for males, resulting in better family relationships and emotional health.

Women should be able to take on as little or as much work as they wish, and be paid and appreciated for their time and effort.

Comment below!

Hannah

Suck it Up - Women are Expected to Deal With Pain

In an American ER room, men wait an average of 49 minutes to be treated for abdominal pain, but women wait 65. With countless stories of women's abdominal pain being disregarded in a professional medical setting, there seems to be a trend where female pain is not taken as seriously as male pain. When you look at the way society incorporates pain into women's everyday lives, it start to make sense how this phenomenon occurs. From natural instances like childbirth and menstruation, to socially constructed practices of underwire bras and violent pornography, women are told from every angle that they just have to deal with pain quietly and obligingly; it's the cost of being female.

Of course, it is easy to point out that childbirth is inevitably painful - the patriarchy can't be held accountable for the reality of biology. While it's true that this excruciating experience is naturally exclusive to women*, the pain of childbirth is treated almost as taboo. The chauvinist model of the woman in labour behind closed doors while the husband sits outside smoking a cigar is indicative of how women's pain is often silenced; it does not even need to be acknowledged by a "loving" husband. Coupled with this, we are all aware of childbirth, and aware that most women experience a point where they are lying in a bed screaming for perhaps several hours. It is not a wild train of thought to consider that this image of "woman" informs the sexist assumption that women are weak and have a low pain tolerance, especially when our association of men and pain is a snarl and a grimace on the battlefield; a much stronger reaction, and more worthy of social respect. Essentially, although the pain of childbirth is natural and only afflicted on those with female reproductive systems, the social attitudes and assumptions we have created around it make a solid base for further sexist reaction to women's pain.

Menstruation, again, is a biological fact of life that few people with uteruses and vaginas can escape. However period paid, found to be in some cases as painful as childbirth, is hardly ever taken seriously as a medical issue. Period pain has only relatively recently been acknowledged or talked about - periods themselves have only recently been acknowledged or talked about - and whether due to a lingering taboo, the refusal to take female pain seriously, or a mixture of both, women often receive eye rolls when the complain of menstrual cramps. Extreme pain isn't something most people "get used to", even if the same crippling cramps occur every month, each time will be as severe and debilitating as the last. And yet, women are expected to learn to live with it - society won't bother make room for women to take sick leave, trial period pain-relieving medicines or prescribe medicinal marijuana.

This same notion is apparent in other areas of women's lives, like underwire bras, high heels and Brazilian waxes. Although these are ultimately "choices", the pressure from society to have perfectly perky breasts, look "professional" in work-appropriate heels and be totally hairless means that women often unwillingly subject themselves to painful beauty procedures or fashions to appear socially acceptable. The pain of having your pubic hair ripped from your skin is simply a fact of female life, and red welts under your breasts are just another day as an average woman. Some feminists regard waxing and restrictive underwear as bodily mutilation, perpetuated by the patriarchy's toxic beauty standards that encourage women to hurt themselves. Society has constructed beauty standards and gender roles to endorse pain, because women should learn to accept that feeling pain for the benefit of others (read: guys who care about length of pubic hair) is expected of them, and it is impolite to complain.

Women are told to expect pain when on their periods, and aren't taken seriously when they do. Women are told to expect pain when first having sex, and are shamed for being prude when they do. Women are told to wax and pluck and laser, and are laughed at for screaming at the salon.

Women spend their whole lives being told to regularly expect pain, and to not make a fuss about it. So when females are in serious pain, people won't take them seriously because they're being "weak" by not fulfilling their proper role of silent sufferer. Meanwhile, a man complaining of pain will create immediate concern because men would never overreact or exaggerate, unlike that bitch over in the maternity ward who yelled for a spinal block. In some cases, pain may be an inevitable part of having a uterus. But if we can be concerned for the man with kidney stones, we should be concerned for the woman with endometriosis.

Comment below :)

Hannah

Male Rape Victims are a Feminist Issue

In almost every discussion about rape culture, a wild Meninist will inevitably seek to disprove it with a tokenistic mention of male rape victims; if men are victim of sexual abuse, it must mean all feminism is wrong, right? What this argument is missing is the understanding that male rape victims are very much a feminist issue, and the abuse and discrimination they suffer stems from the same social standard of hyper-masculinity and weak femininity that created a rape culture in the first place. The reality is a trend of emasculating men who have experienced sexual abuse, and instead of countering feminist claims of a rape culture, it further proves and adds weight to the importance of dismantling this toxic attitude towards sex altogether.

Boys are taught to be sexually dominant; to demand and expect sex from any body at any time. The socialisation starts pretty much immediately, with boys' baby onesies saying "lock up your daughters" or "future ladies' man". Our perception of masculinity is intrinsically tied to an uncontrollable sexual libido and the glorification of male sexual exploits, explored in more depth here and here. And when society subconsciously equates this to an understanding of the ultimate "man", it estranges male rape victims. Men are expected to want and to enjoy sex 150% of the time, and the notion that a man was forced into a submissive, powerless position challenges the very core of what we have evolved to recognise as "manly". Society's response? Emasculate male rape victims.

Because on the flipside of hypersexual masculinity is a passive and sexually powerless characterisation of femininity. Femininity has never been a desirable trait in humans; those who associate with maternity, softness, and a love of sewing which is obviously linked to oestrogen levels are systematically disadvantaged and perceived as weak and incapable. There is a tendency for the patriarchy to declare any person who challenges its standards as "feminine": gay men are feminised since they do not fit the ideal model of a cis-het masculine man, evidenced in the feminine traits of "camp" fashion and speech inflections. By the same token, male rape victims are feminised because their experiences of abuse in an area where men are "meant" to dominate goes against the patriarchy's image of masculinity. The shame of being associated with femininity effectively silences male victims, and creates a problematic social attitude towards male survivors of disbelief and scorn at their lack of enthusiasm for sex.

Ultimately, the issues that face male rape victims such as lack of shelters and support networks, silenced voices and damning social response originate from the patriarchal standard of hyper masculinity and its acceptance of "animalistic" attitudes towards sex. This same socialisation is directly responsible for creating a culture where women's bodies are reduced to objects to please the men, and consent is secondary to male sexual entitlement. 93% of offenders are male (Australian Bureau of Statistics - Recorded Crime - Offenders, 2013-14), and this statistic makes sense when we realise that the issue creating a rape culture is centred around masculine notions of strength and power, which pushes men to act upon their expectations of sexual dominance.

Women are more likely to experience rape, but the existence of men who have also experienced sexual abuse only further sheds light on the social mentality that creates a culture which allows rape to exist as an epidemic.

Comment below,
Hannah