Re: [Fwd: Re: AUT: Re: Selma James Name Change]

[Katha Pollitt <kpollitt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks for your post, Harald. I think we're talking past each other a
bit -- New York sarcasm meets Swedish seriousness? I didn't mean that
Selma James adopted WfH because she was oppressed by CLR james.  Quite
the opposite!  I meant (pure speculation, even invention on my part)
that she was a trophy wife (i.e. much younger  consort of a big shot, )
who pretended to be an oppressed housewife in order to have an
acceptable leftwing identity.
 I'm sure CLR James's first two wives found it most amusing.  But in all
this I am treating these people, most unfairly, as if they were
characters in a satirical novel.

  About your other points: of course i agree with you that if you want
your husband to do his share you have to make encouraging noises, not
give orders and criticize. But when men give orders, women often follow
them, and when men criticize women often take it to heart, have you
noticed? So you need to ask why is it that men, but not women, need to
be cajoled and cosseted to do some very ordinary boring no-bit-deal
thing, like the shopping. I think it is because the man thinks the woman
is asking a favor, which he has a choice about.  Whereas he thinks he
himself has a right to the services of women. And many women accept that
they are the low partner on the marital totem pole. It's a man's world!
   My father often complained about my mother's cooking (it was pretty
bad), but she never said, fine  cook it yourself, chef Boyardee! She
just kept on turning out those overcooked weird meals, and he continued
to eat them.( And she made MORE money than he did! But in a lower status
job.) This wasn't just because everyone had been socialized to accept
their gender role and derive comfort from it.  It was because he was the
Important Person in the family. The man! His time mattered more than
hers. And obviously he felt this way too, or he would have cooked the
occasional dinner instead of watching the news on TV.
  I feel that you are trying to explain the greater drudgery of wives
without  taking account of sexism.  which isn't just that men and women
are socialized to be and feel different, but that HE is superior. What
famous thinker said every binary opposition conceals a hierarchy? Light,
dark; good, bad; man, woman. That's the problem!


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