Dr. Fokt, my reply got so long I decided to post it as a separate story and refer people back to our conversation. To maintain context, I am also posting my whole reply here as well.
While I did a poor job of making my point, working people is the perspective I was attempting to introduce in my piece on feminism here on Medium.
(https://meraffey.medium.com/dirty-work-and-feminism-c62279d7f1d7)
In today’s society, everyone – without exception – depends on some people doing back-breaking, unpleasant and often dangerous jobs. If no one does those jobs, our whole society collapses. Imagine the chaos without trash collection, sewer cleaners, slaughterhouses, oil, mining, construction, road construction, prisons, high-rise maintenance, and jobs in healthcare, and jobs scraping dead people and animals off the streets, handling body parts, blood, puss, diseased organs, bodily secretions, dead bodies, etc. and so on.
Not only are the people doing society’s “dirty-work” paid peanuts, society treats them like dirt as well. As these attitudes play out in the workplace, they play a large role in the relationship between the sexes.
When I was young, I learned the hard way, that feminism was NOT a working women’s movement. Feminism was driven by upper-class women seeking power, authority, status, and titles that had once been limited to white men (in corporate boardrooms, administration, political circles, etc.) In fact, feminists often told me that I was talking about union issues – not feminism. And they were right; unions have supported working women for a really long time.
By the late 1960s, unions were making it possible for a whole lot of young women, like me, to rise above our circumstances, gain our independence, and/or, earn college degrees (and the titles and power that came with them). Thanks to labour unions, a raise was a raise for everyone who was doing the same job. Since unions kept the focus on work, men, women, straight, gay, black, brown, white, college educated, high school drop outs, etc. rose together. To a noticeable degree, unions also helped reduce nepotism, sexism, and racism in promotion practices as well.
As more diverse people began enjoying fairness in the workplace, they produced results. By the 1990s, we finally started seeing women and minorities in positions of authority, with real power, including earning power. Unions and working people made that progress possible for women – not feminism.
As I’ve already said, the feminism movement has been hindered by internal conflicts, among women. Today, the once unspoken conflicts between upper-class feminist leaders, stay-at-home mothers, working women and single-mothers have finally risen to the surface. Among todays feminists rape, sexual harassment, women’s right to control their own bodies and working issues, is secondary to personal relationship issues like dating, marriage and the division of child rearing and household chores.
As they say, unearned privileges, assumptions and expectations are the mothers of disappointment. Men also experienced such massive confusion, upheaval, and disruption, they don’t even know what a man is anymore. Straight men are finally confronting their own biological reality: Simply put, men cannot have children without a woman’s permission (talk about a threat to patriarchy, that takes the cake).
However, until we resolve the conflicts between women, I see no hope of resolving conflicts between men and women. Today, the conflicts between women – and the conflicts between men and women – are legal in nature (not personal). I am speaking of changes in the family courts that decide child custody, child support, alimony and the division of assets in the event of a divorce. I am speaking of changes in labour law resulting from elite’s coordinated attacks on unions that support working women – and men and LGBTQ and minorities I am speaking of changes in laws that govern healthcare, education, housing, banking, finance, and investments.
I am speaking of changes in taxation that completely remade government. Big subject, but suffice to say, a stay-at-home mother cannot be taxed, because she earns no money – right? However, if a stay-at-home mother goes to work, she starts earning taxable income – right? A working mother needs other women to watch over her children in daycare centers – right? She also needs more dry cleaning, gasoline, work clothes and help getting meals on the table – right? Women working in daycare centers, the food and service industries also earn taxable income – right?
Thanks to women entering the workforce, our local, state and federal government saw a rapid increase in tax revenue – and quickly became addicted to spending it.
As things turned out, upper-class women who ruled the feminist movement were lousy at math and business. By 1980, government revenue had skyrocketed. However, instead of investing those new tax dollars in the women generating them, or their families and communities, politicians began reducing taxes on corporations that paid minimum wage and zero benefits. IOW, women’s earnings went straight into the pockets of the wealthy. Can you hear me ROAR?
As the status of women in the workplace rose, the status of housewives and stay-at-home mothers began to fall. As society adapted, the rules and norms changed. Traditional housewives and stay-at-home mothers often experienced working women’s independence and ability to support themselves and their children as a threat. Men also experienced these changes as a threat to their traditional role as breadwinners, entitled to respect and obedience in their homes.
Today, a lot of women and men who want the traditional stay-at-home roles of wives and mothers (I think they call themselves “Trads”?) are attempting to regain their social status while maintaining their economic advantages by attacking working women and non-traditional families. And make no mistake about it, married people still enjoy economic advantages over single and divorced women (and men). Head of Household on your tax return tells that story very well.
I contend that the workplace is the foundation of healthy social norms, practices, and public policy. This is 2023, and the fact that desirable jobs still depend on someone else doing all the “dirty-work” is insane. I am not saying that back-breaking labour is men’s work. I am not saying women should be doing back-breaking work either. I am saying no one should be doing back-breaking, dangerous, even deadly work.
“Dirty-work” still exists, because working people are not making the decisions as to how our tax dollars are being spent. Instead of arguing over personal relationship issues, what would happen if men and women focused on the work that unites them?
As an industrial designer, I am keenly aware that a huge percentage of our country’s “dirty-work” can be eliminated by technology, science, engineering, and healthy social and workforce policy. Unfortunately, just like the 1960s women’s movement, the same, out-of-touch, inexperienced, navel-gazing elites are driving workforce norms, practices, and labour policy.
Instead of solving serious problems in the workplace, Mark Zukerberg built Facebook and sucked money right out of our paychecks, bank accounts and homes. Jeff Bezos Wal-Mart-ed the living f-ck out of small businesses and towns and sucked even more money out of our pockets. Elon Musk took a thousand years of technological progress and a few billion tax dollars and sent his cherry red Tesla Roadster into space. OMFG.
Genuine progress depends on working people making these decisions – not elites.
If working people decided how AI would be used, would we choose more advanced washing machines and cars, or would we choose to put AI to work doing jobs that are breaking our backs, shortening our lives, and making pain our way of life? Would working people choose more plastic surgery, dental implants, and designer clothes, or would we choose to put AI to work building affordable homes, better schools and hospitals, and dental care for children and dentures for toothless seniors?
I know what I would choose, what about you?
https://meraffey.medium.com/dirty-work-and-feminism-c62279d7f1d7
