This piece really influenced my thoughts on the interlinking of patriarchy and white supremacy but also the interlinking of patriarchy and class and the interlinking of patriarchy, class and white supremacy.
It’s seriously important.
When Your (Brown) Body is a (White) Wonderland by Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom
Also as a sex worker and former domestic worker, you know what’s FUCKED about being a live in domestic?
That “almost but not quite” a part of the family dynamic that goes on. You’re like a dog to them, they expect to have bought your loyalty and love entirely, while to them you are replaceable if you become inconvenient.
You wanna talk about exploitive paid intimacy, let’s talk about your nanny, let’s talk about your maid.
But y’ know there’s the sister who drunkenly crashes her car through the side of your garage at Thanksgiving and tries to hit on your teenage daughter’s boyfriend and says shitty passive aggressive things about your body constantly and calls you selfish when you won’t chauffeur her everywhere after her license gets suspended and borrows your clothes and doesn’t return them/returns them with stains you don’t even want to think about… So I mean yeah we’re all sisters, but like some of us are going to have to really sort out our behavior before we can expect to get invited to family barbecues again
One of the reasons I distrust systems where people doing “valuable” work get paid more (even under a supposedly socialist system) is that there are so many types of unpaid, unacknowledged forms of labor done by oppressed people that are vital to the functioning of society but are rarely if ever really acknowledged as valuable and like some of these are forms of labor some or many of us are cool with providing, but we just want them to be acknowledged as valuable skills that not everyone has, and like I just don’t trust society to start acknowledging them because we have a “socialist” system.
Like emotional labor, domestic labor, aesthetic and logistical labor to just make things “nice”, being the ones who think of shit like “oh people will want the stiffer paper plates for the sloppy joes” or whatever, like it doesn’t seem that necessary until you try to run anything without someone thinking about that shit and then your event and space is a mess and no one wants to be there or be involved.
The nice little touches, feminized stuff, aesthetic stuff, supposedly impractical shit about making spaces and experiences just a little more pleasant actually makes a world of difference.
Feminized labor is like the User Experience department of the entire world and you better fucking respect the UE department, but also like I think there are so many tiny little things we’ve never thought of as “real labor” that I don’t trust anyone to catch every little act that needs to be compensated and so you’ll still have the valorized fields getting paid extra and those of us who are just quietly expected to get the coffee dealing with everyone’s shit.
Cause like 1. Male strippers, escorts and so on exist. They just mostly see men.
2. Even if you got to see women, lol, no you wouldn’t, and not cause the women are unattractive or whatever, but because you don’t get that it is absolutely not at all about you. You’re at work, you’ve got to do work, meaning emotional and sexual labor to get your client in and make them happy and it’s not about your ego or personal satisfaction and like not in a way that “I love pleasing women” guy (ugh ugh ugh hate hate hate that guy) would like. Like if you were a dom, it’s like having to act like you really really want to watch your online sub drink a glass of her own pee, or like nothing would arouse you more than grabbing a lady twice your age who wears really headache-inducingly strong perfume and sticky hair product by the hair and stuffing your sweaty socks in her mouth or having a sub announce she steals one of her coworkers used kleenex out of the garbage and having to act amused instead of grossed out.
Or if you were a stripper you have to act like you’re super duper interested in and impressed by her job as a mid level manager at costco while having to keep every conceivable part of your body hairless and gyrating sexily close enough but not too close to her groin.
Or like if you were cam model you’d have women popping into your room, asking for your dick size, and then calling you a liar cause you won’t show them till they pay you.
(other sex workers feel free to add)
Like being kind and emotionally open with another man isn’t what I’d call a radical act but it is what I’d call a good start.
About their political ideas until you get to their treatment of women… like how can you be so radical and not get it?
It’s like they don’t feel liberated if they can’t keep women oppressed
If it’ s a compliment you wouldn’t give to one of your dude comrades, then it’s a compliment you probably shouldn’t give to your lady comrades (or comrades of other genders)
In fact maybe just don’t comment on your lady comrades appearances unless you’re really close and know each other well.
Saying “oh I have no maternal instincts”
Which besides being a thing men never have to say to defend their choice, implies that the idea that women must and should be the primary caretakers for children is so deeply ingrained that women who are not suited to that role are not allowed to have kids even if they might want them.
Your lack of class analysis means your radicalism is just liberalism with more wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Thoughts From The Peacock Angel 