Re: Nationalism is Always Gendered

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

Margaret wrote:
>Now that "family values" is in the mainstream, I think the left
>should appropriate it and use it to include: reinstatement of
>welfare, raising of minimum wage, national health care, day care, a
>shorter work week, paid parental leave for longer terms, measures to
>support seniority and the high late age-wage curve, more assistance
>for in-home elder/disability care, tax credits for people (women)
>helping family members at home, etc. . . . . I plan to use the term
>as explicitly as this in my next book, unless good theorists like you
>find some reasons for me not to.

I think that one of the reasons why national health care, day care,
elder/disability care, etc. have been difficult to achieve is that these
things have been thought of as primary responsibilities of "families"
(which translates into "women's work"). Therefore, I think it will be
exceedingly difficult to propagandize leftist solutions with the rhetoric
of "family values." We have to offer them as public goods for every
individual (with or without families), not as consumer items for families.

Besides, doesn't the term "family values" make you think of such cheesy
things as combo meals at McDonald's, Disney movies, "buy one get one free"
coupons, and the like?

We need to struggle over the term family (what it has been, what it is,
what it means, etc.), as things stand now, but why buy such ugly words as
"family values" (though in a sense quite appropriate for what nuclear
families have meant to capitalist imagination)?

Yoshie