Kate Harding, writing at Broadsheet:

So many obligations are heaped on the shoulders of women, and it is pretty much impossible to fulfill all of them even if you completely neglect your own needs. Of course, trying to tend to your own needs means even fewer of those obligations fulfilled, and there are cries and admonishment of selfishness and failure and responsibility to others waiting for you should you assert your right to self-care, because by asserting the right to take time and energy exclusively for yourself, you are stealing time and energy that belongs to others.

Sleep is a contested act in American society (perhaps in others too, but I can only speak to the US): getting little of it becomes a point of pride; getting a lot of it is a symbol of laziness, selfishness, sloth, dirtiness, carelessness. People are expected to perform amazing tasks on as little sleep as possible, which is completely counterintuitive, because most people are going to perform worse with insufficient sleep — consider it a generalized manifestation of the supercrip phenomenon: exactly the people who are least supported/enabled to do something are the ones who are expected to do it better than normal people.

Better sleep would surely benefit many of us, but why?

According to Leive and Huffington, the main benefits realized are in service of others; the main beneficiaries are the people around you. Or, if you see the benefits, they are benefits that stem from an obligation to others, any self-benefit remaining firmly subordinate to the “greater good” of one’s family, colleagues and community members.

We should be well familiar with the concept of women as public property. Women’s bodies, women’s time, women’s possessions, women’s decisionmaking capacity, women’s self-determination — just about anything a woman possesses, though she doesn’t really possess. Rather, she is allowed use of something that is under her care but not her ownership: it belongs instead to the people around her.

Feminists are familiar with the idea that our society considers female reproductive organs to be public property. A woman’s vagina should be available for all comers (men), and simultaneously be unavailable so as not to waste its value to its eventual sole owner (a man). A woman’s uterus is to be used for the good of the human species/civilized society: the right kind of women are to reproduce as much as possible, so that their kind remain the dominant group in both pure numbers and in overall power. (On the other hand, the other kinds of women are called upon to perform the rough, menial work necessary to uphold modern society, while not polluting the human species by reproducing themselves.)

But honestly, public ownership of women extends so much further than their reproductive systems.

No woman is allowed to assume ownership of any part her physical self, her time or purpose: it is still an “indulgence” for a woman to eat anything more substantial than a leaf of lettuce, still “sinful” to enjoy less than 100 calories of overprocessed puddings and crackers. It is still somehow selfish to take a long bath or to sit and rest for an hour’s time, still slothful to refrain from moving, working, pushing, rushing every single moment of every day.

Women’s work, in general, is under-valued and un(der)paid — and it is uncompensated precisely because women’s time, their energy, their effort, do not actually belong to the women themselves, but rather to the rest of the world. It is theirs to use whenever, however, and however much they wish, and isn’t it ridiculous to suggest they should pay for the use of something that belongs to them in the first place?

This is all part and parcel of living in a patriarchy, a predictable result when society relies upon a person’s gender to determine hir position in society, the things sie will do, the roles sie will play, the direction hir life will take. But gender is not the only variant in play here. In fact, I believe that gender is actually secondary here to another factor — it is merely one avenue of manifestation for our cultural construction of health.

Surely you have heard of the theory that gender is not an inherent trait, but a performance. This theory is definitely not without flaws, but I bring it up in hopes that it provides a familiar framework for a discussion on the social construction of health.

Health, you see, is not merely an inherent trait. Health, instead, emcompasses a variety of factors, including a person’s intrinsic qualities but also the environment in which they operate and their everyday behaviors.

Health is not just what a person is. Health is also what a person does. And what drives a person to do something is not wholly internal, but rather is largely influenced by external factors.

Gender, for instance, is both an internal sense of being and something we do for other people, something we do because we want other people to think about us, react to us, in certain ways. And the things we do, and the expected reactions to them, are different depending on which culture we are operating in — dependent on where we live, on our ethnicity, on our class background, on any number of other things. What it means to wear certain types of clothing is different in different cultures. What it means to speak a certain way is different in different cultures. And so on.

This framework is — I hope — useful for understanding what health actually is.

The form “health” takes is different depending on the expectations of the culture you live in.

The ultimate importance of that so-defined “health” is different depending on the expectations of the culture you live in.

The role “health” plays in the culture, what “health” means in that culture, the way the people of that culture interact or engage with that idea of “health,” are different depending on the expectations of the culture you live in.

What you do to achieve “health” is different depending on the expectations of the culture you live in.

How your health affects your position in life, your economic opportunities, the support that is offered for you to live the kind of life you desire, are all different depending on the expectations of the culture you live in.

(And yes, all of this is just as true in a culture that makes use of the scientific method and sees itself as cool and rational. What is investigated, and how, and how the results are interpreted, and what lessons are drawn from those results, and how those lessons are applied in everyday life — all these things must grow out of the culture they happen in! )

Health, then, is not merely a personal state, but rather a cultural fulfillment. Health (of whatever kind) is expected of you, expected by the people around you. Your health is not your own, but instead belongs to your family, your community and your wider culture. You must achieve and maintain (whatever kind of) health, not because it benefits you personally, but because you will have deeply failed your fellow members of society if you don’t.

And this is what underlies the problematic aspect of Leive and Huffington’s statements. They are not suggesting that the sleep deficit for women is a problem because the woman herself feels fatigue or cognitive dysfunction. They are suggesting that the sleep deficit for women is a problem because the woman cannot fulfill the expectations of health — and the performance of duties that rely on that state of health — that society has for her. They are suggesting that the sleep deficit for women is a problem because then that woman personally fails her family, community and country.

Here, then, her lack of sleep lays bare her duty to society based on particular qualities she holds. But the disparity between her duty and her male peer’s duty would not exist if all of us did not have a duty to society to achieve and maintain a certain kind of health.

And Leive and Huffington, purporting to be advocating on women’s behalf, do nothing but reinforce the same system that screws women disproportionately when they center a woman’s obligations to the people around her over the personal experience of the woman herself.

And here, I hope, feminists will understand what disability activists mean when we talk about the supposed obligation of mentally ill people to submit to (certain kinds of) treatment for the sake of the rest of society — or what fat acceptance activists mean when we talk about the supposed obligation of all people to be as thin as possible for the sake of the rest of society — and so on.

Eating “healthy” (as determined by mainstream cultural wisdom, largely controlled by wealthy white temporarily-abled folk) is not done solely for oneself. Neither is “exercise” (of course, what counts as physical-activity-that-improves-health is controlled by the same people who control what counts as food-that-improves-health). Participation in the paid workforce is not done solely for oneself — we are, in part, fulfilling the obligation of “responsibility” (which is a component of the health performance, because when health is lacking, the ability to work declines — so work, then, is a demonstration that you are fulfilling your health obligation).

When a person neglects to fill a health-related obligation, there is someone there to remind them of the cost to the rest of society. We’ve all heard figures on the cost of obesity, the cost of heart problems, the cost of low employment rates, the cost of suboptimal nutrition, the cost of insufficient sexual education, the cost of lost sleep… wait, that sounds familiar. Anyway, the cost might be in dollar figures, might be in time lost, might be in persons participating in x activity, or might be more intangible: work decisions, relationship challenges, judgment, problem-solving, creativity… wait a second, didn’t we just hear that? Oh yeah.

And that’s what’s wrong with this angle. Ladies, you are hurting your families! You are failing your communities! You’re dragging all of society down with you! When all you have to do is get an extra hour of sleep — seriously, how selfish are you, staying up to get the dishes clean after your kids have gone to bed so that they’ll have clean bowls to eat cereal out of in the morning?

Except that the entire reason women are getting less sleep than they need is because they’re busy fulfilling their obligations to the rest of the world. The entire reason women are getting less sleep than they need is because they’re required to be well enough to handle multiple shifts, every single day, for their entire adult lives. The entire reason women are getting less sleep than they need is because they’re required to get up at stupid o’clock every morning to handle all the things they’re required to do before going to work (including the obligations to project an image of “health” — to look and smell fresh and clean, to be sufficiently hair-free, to wear attractive clothing, to possibly spend time putting on a face full of makeup and making her hair look presentable — all which are wrapped up in appearing healthy to the people around you), and when they get home from work they still have to do the laundry and make the dinner and wash the dishes and pick up the floor and wipe down the kitchen and bathroom counters and possibly wrangle kids or partners all the while –

– and then they are getting chided by self-proclaimed women’s advocates because they spend too much time doing things for other people, and not enough time doing things for oneself… for… other people…

And it’s impossible to separate the demands of womanhood from the demands of ability. It’s difficult to differentiate the hierarchy of value imposed on people of different genders from the hierarchy of value imposed on people of differing abilities.

I’m sure you get, by now, how women get completely and utterly screwed in this situation. But I invite you to imagine, then, how disabled people get completely and utterly screwed by this situation — and then I invite you to imagine how a system that did not value people differently due to their differing abilities would also remove a lot of the pressure that is currently dumped on women.

A system of equal access, opportunity, value, for people of all types of abilities, would be radically better for people currently oppressed under this gender-based system.

And when you reinforce the ability-based system of oppression, you make things worse for the women living under it.

… just sayin’.

(Cross-posted at FWD/Forward.)

I’ve had a handful of names throughout my life.

I was born “The [Mom's Maiden Name] Girl.” My mother had not yet picked out a first name for me. She was living in a hole-in-the-wall shack in a poorer town in agricultural central California — it was where she ended up after my father kicked her out upon discovering her pregnancy. Get an abortion or hit the road, he said. I knew this as a child, but it wasn’t until I grew older that my mother also informed me that he was threatening to beat her, to punch and stomp on her stomach to forcibly terminate the pregnancy. He tried to send her out with no belongings in a scrap car — which was to get her from her then-home on the northern border of Oregon to her adult sons’ home in central California. That’s over 900 miles. She was 43 years old and not in the best of health. My oldest brother — something of a giant — had to gather some friends to physically threaten my father for him to make sure that she was able to make the trip safely.

I’ve never had a moment’s contact with him. My mother claims that when I was around six years old, he called her, having “dropped by” and wanted to take me out for some ice cream with his new girlfriend (with whom he had been involved during the short months my mother was married to him). Fearing for my safe return, she refused. And never heard from him again.

During my first months, my adult sister lived with us — she has told me stories of having to brush cockroaches off of me while I slept. And it wouldn’t be until I entered adolescence that my mother and I settled down in a permanent home: before that, there was not one residence I was able to stay for more than a single year’s time; we hopped around looking for the lowest rents, and spent time living in spare rooms in each of my adult brothers’ homes (three times with one, once with the other).

When I was five years old, my mother married a long-time family friend. When she did so, he legally adopted me, claiming to be my father and being added to my birth certificate as such — whether my mother just went along with this or actively sought it for reasons of future security, I don’t know. Regardless, my name at the time changed from [Mom's Maiden Name] to [This Man's Name].

A little less than a year later, after struggling with him over finances — he wanted her to continue working to support his retirement, with no support for either her nor I — she divorced him. And there, a problem cropped up: in order to get my name changed back to my birth name, she would have to go to court to prove that he was not, in fact, my biological father, and have him removed from my birth certificate. As a newly single mother, she did not have the resources to take on that task. So, even after the divorce was finalized, I remained [This Man's Name] — and she kept that name as well in the interests of having the same name as her daughter.

And that name remained mine for the rest of my childhood, adolescence and early adult life. I hated it. I hated the sound of it, I hated the man it came from, I hated the way he had treated her, I hated the way we were stuck carrying his family name despite having no ties to this family whatsoever.

Ever since I can remember, I have been very eager to get rid of that name.

And ever since I remember, I have been wholly uninterested in weddings and traditional family life. I had no interest in boys or girls as a teenager. I never dreamed about “my day,” about dresses and flowers and music, about honeymoons and housewifery.

Part of that, especially as I grew older, was that I had a distinct sense of my undesirability. I wasn’t interested in anyone else because I thought no one else would be interested in me. As I grew more aware of my health and struggled with my increasing limitations, I never even entertained the idea that anyone could ever be interested in me — not to kiss me, not to hold my hand while we walked through the mall, not to cuddle, not to call me “girlfriend” or “go steady,” not to live with me, not to propose to me and certainly not to legally commit to be stuck with me for the rest of their life. Who the hell would want that? I was a burden; my health was growing worse; they would have to help take care of me, and I wouldn’t be able to contribute to the household enough to count as an equal. So obviously, I wasn’t on the market. It never even got as far as whether or not I wanted to be: it was simply a matter-of-fact acknowledgement of a reality that would never change, and thus there was no point wasting energy trying to change it.

All this is to say that I wasn’t dreaming of changing my name as part and parcel of the supposedly-universal little girl’s dreams of wearing white and being pampered and fawned over and having pretty pictures taken in rolling green fields. I never had those dreams. I just really fucking hated that name.

So before changing my name as part of an adult relationship ever became a possibility, I had three names to contend with. My father’s name (which I’ve never officially carried), my mother’s maiden name, and that other man’s name.

And not a single one of them was a name I wanted any part of.

My father’s name? Sounded pretty cool phonetically, but it was the name of a man who threatened to beat my mother, cheated on her pretty openly during their short relationship, had some pretty serious class bigotry going on, and was by all accounts — including those of his other children, the half-siblings who wanted nothing to do with me — a complete asshole. Yes: there’s a name I want to adopt!

My siblings (on my mother’s side) actually shared a completely different name — they were from a different father — my mother’s severely abusive first husband who thankfully died in a motorcycle crash, and every single member of my family is convinced it was for the better.

And then there’s my mother’s maiden name. The name shared by my aunt and uncle and family up in Oregon, the name I was born with, the name I went by for my first five years of life.

It doesn’t matter. I don’t fucking want it.

I want nothing to do with any of those names. I grew up in a severely emotionally controlling and manipulative family and experienced abuse to the point that I am just being introduced to the idea that I may have PTSD by my counselor. (I protested, and she said “OK, well, we don’t have to put a name to it, but…”) I have pretty bad dissociative issues I am only just beginning to explore; I escaped with moderate to severe anxiety disorder and panic attacks that don’t qualify as panic disorder only because instead of being random, they are triggered by contact with my family. I fit every other qualification.

I was stuck at home with a mother who afforded me no space to develop an individual self, unable to make it on my own away from her because of my disability. I couldn’t work, couldn’t afford rent, couldn’t live independently. I pushed myself to return to college earlier than I should have — after I dropped out the first time and spent months housebound — cutting short my recovery time, just to get away from her. I lived for a year on Social Security disability (after I was approved), $7500 in needs-based college grants and several thousand more in student loans before everything started to run out — money, my ability to continue school and maintain grades high enough in a busy enough schedule to qualify for further student aid — and I couldn’t stay out on my own anymore.

And then I spent a very painful and traumatic six months stuck in close contact with an abusive mother who was keenly aware that she was losing her grip on me and escalated the abuse accordingly.

And then? I was able to move 2500 miles the hell away from all that shit to live with… a man. Whom I married. And whose name I took.

I was able to move to a place I wanted to move to, to live with this amazing person I wanted to live with, who loved me dearly, who was respectful and affectionate and treated me like a whole person, a person of my own whom he just so happened to be enamored with, whose family was warm and welcoming and accepting and easy to be around…

I was able to choose where I wanted to be, who I wanted to be there with, who I wanted to be, what sort of life I wanted to live…

I chose the family I wanted to be a part of. I built the life I wanted to live. It’s a life I just so happen to love deeply, a life that has given me so much more opportunity than I ever had on the other side of this country, thanks to the person I chose to build it with.

That person? Is a man.

I took his name.

I don’t think that’s a capitulation to patriarchy. I don’t think that’s a compromise of my feminism. I think that is a demonstration of my feminism.

I have a name now. It is mine.

It has been a rough several weeks for me. I was called back to my job on October 7. Around the same time, I developed an awful headache whose symptoms were entirely unlike my normal headaches (in kind; severity was … severe, but so are my normal ones) and only in the past two days has that faded — leaving in its wake a severe fatigue that actually came close to preventing me from writing six-digit numbers on applications at work yesterday.

Of course, when I am emotionally burned out, my body crashes. Serotonin screwup, adrenal fatigue, other stuff? I don’t know. And it has been a very emotionally turbulent two weeks. The temperature dropped without a warning, and the sudden winter weather has been an unfortunate sensual reminder of the awful personal events I went through last year, starting in October. It’s like I’ve been dropped into my own life one year ago, even as things have resolved or improved or smoothed out on that front… it ties only with my summer stuck in California as the worst events of my life, intense and injurious, dropping me into suicidal periods that (fortunately) ended up only scaring the hell out of me, rather than killing me.

And it has been a pressure of intense, high stress. I don’t know why I thought it would be safe for me to raise my voice in concern on very high-profile matters. Maybe the outrage finally got to be so strong it couldn’t stay quiet any more. But I did, and I can’t take it back now. It makes me wonder why I bother, ever, becoming involved in any space, rather than remaining in the background, quiet and invisible, slipping just out of notice. I can protect myself that way. It’s safe there.

Several people in my life, including at work, over the past several weeks who have been like watching flashbacks of my own life during its worst periods. Echoes. There’s the major and severe, mimicking the deeply abusive behaviors I could never escape from. And there’s the passing, the minor, the couldn’t-possibly-be-their-fault — speaking habits, common phrases, facial expressions — though, to be honest, even those wouldn’t be triggers if they didn’t come immediately after the behind-the-back scheming, theorizing about conspiracies, the twisting, the lying…

Why did I ever think I could do this? Why? What could I ever criticize? I am not just imperfect, you must understand. I am broken. Broken, broken. How can I ever expect to speak critically and not have that eye turn back on me? Why do I? When did I lose those self-protection skills? I used to know how. I used to remain highly disciplined.

But something gave me strength and security. And sometimes, that’s the worst thing a person can be given.

I don’t even know who my real self is. I never have. I’ve walled her off, time after time, building stronger and higher and deeper, covering my tracks, looking over my shoulder, making sure that nobody even knows she exists… if she doesn’t exist, she can’t be harmed.

I don’t even know whether she exists anymore.

I am going back to tag all my photos. I have wanted to get my collection organized for over a year now.

Of course, this means going back through all my photos before I moved out here, too. From March 2004 through December 2006. It felt much longer than it seems, typed out like that. Feeling trapped. Controlled. Cut in half, the only person who loved me 2500 miles away. My friends, so loving, but my social circle so wrapped up with my family that I have not been able to keep up those beautiful relationships since the move.

It hurts. The good things hurt. The bad things aren’t documented, with few exceptions (me staring glassy-eyed at the camera with a distressed smile, forced to pose with my family at the church event celebrating my class’ graduation, where my family threw a fit because I spent some of my time with my friends and their families, and they felt betrayed). But I remember them immediately when I see the smiles. Because the happiness was never unfettered. The happiness was desparate, tenuous, fragile, aware of its own brevity. There was no such thing as a moment of happiness that was free from all the pain. It was all baked together, inseparable, each a part of the other. I could never have happiness without knowing it would bring even worse pain as soon as it ended, and knowing how soon it was set to end…

And now here I am, cut off from the life I had, no contact with anyone except the occasional email to my mother (though she seeks me out daily, by email, calls to my husband’s phone, invitations to myspace and twitter and facebook, finding my accounts by association with my friends) living a totally different life, much calmer, freer, and finally now able to feel happiness… unguarded.

I had to have my shield, then, and it had to be strong, and always ready. My self, the person I truly was, was holed up in a fortress deep inside, very small, restricted, not allowed to explore, grow; too dangerous. I was saving it, unable to nurture it, but protecting it for the day when I might be free from the constant assault, safe.

Here I am. I don’t need a shield here. I have, in fact, grown accustomed to living  without the weight of the armor, always protecting. Grown accustomed to just living, just doing, just being what I am, and enjoying it.

But whenever I dip into my past, I find that I am vulnerable again. I have to fumble for that shield. Shit, I forgot it. Shit shit shit shit. Overwhelmed, crushed under the weight of everything rushing back.

I lose touch with the world I sit in, right now, in this chair with the windows open and streaming in light and noise from outside, the locusts foreign to me when I moved here, my cat sleeping comfortably on the floor, the kitchen in a mess as we reorganize where we keep the spices and the dishes. The kitchen where I can cook, now, without fear that I will be yelled at, guilt-tripped, physically pushed aside, my work taken over, can’t even put a pot of water on to boil without it being changed, always wrong, never able to do anything and have it just be mine.

This kitchen now, where I enter, I pour my tea from my refrigerator, I put my pot of water on to boil, I take my box of pasta down from the cabinet over the sink, I clear the dishes out of the drainer and put them away. And that’s that. No one behind me to move everything I set down, chastise me, ensure I am never allowed to do a single, small, petty little thing for myself.

I am caught up in the old kitchen. Where my hand is grabbed as I fry up the pork for tacos, held, and another hand does the same thing I was just doing, while telling me that I was doing it all wrong. Where I find my pot of water mysteriously moved, set on different heat, on a different burner, after having been yelled at from the living room about doing it wrong. The laundry in the back, where I am instructed on how to operate the washer as I try to set a load of clothes to wash, even though I have capably done my own laundry many times, I am assumed to never know, never understand, never be capable, never be self-reliant, always someone else’s burdensome extension.

Going through these pictures of the good moments, the fun, the smiles and sun streaming, this is where I am, caught up, again guarded.

And suddenly I start, and wake up. And realize that the person I am waiting for to come home is not my mother, but my husband. That it has been a year since I have seen my mother, and a year and a half before that. I have not set foot in California in two and a half years — now the same amount of time between when I finally got my first digital camera and when I packed all my belongings in flimsy cardboard with layers of packing tape and stepped on to my much-anticipated one way flight from LAX to PIT.

I am sitting here as the locusts make their locust-noises, I hear the rhythmic hum of the ceiling fan in the downstairs neighbors’ bedroom, I see my cat sleeping peacefully on the unvacuumed carpet and the bucket of cleaning supplies ahead of me. I realize that I have a bed not fifteen feet from where I sit, a nice queen size bed with a memory foam topper, in which I sleep every night, happy and secure, with my husband. Happy. And secure. Unguarded.

It’s a hard transition.

Written originally for my stint at Feministe at the beginning of July; been working on it bit by bit ever since, but suddenly it has become topical again.

Part I: The Personal

Note: I’m going somewhere with this. Please keep your mind open as you read, because I will be coming back in Part II with a concept that may seem to conflict with your initial reading of Part I. Thanks.

Understanding my background is essential to understanding my understanding of these things. And so we go.

My brothers and sister, between them, share two diagnoses of bipolar disorder, one of schizophrenia, two of those with psychosis, and all three have severe depression and/or generalized anxiety disorder. That is only what has been diagnosed by mental health professionals — D* was only diagnosed by way of being taken to prison and has not seen a doctor otherwise in decades.

My mother never saw a mental health professional and never will, but she shares most of the symptoms my siblings display, and my own mental health professionals have agreed with me that if there is a diagnosis to give her (with all requisite caveats), it would be borderline personality disorder.

1.

My brother D* had the worst situation of the family. He was the first to go to jail: when he was taken to court for some sort of licensing issue, he refused to give his name. Wouldn’t speak. And so they put him in jail. And he stayed there for eight months before relenting so that he could just go home.

How long would you stay in jail for a principle?

I love Michelle Obama. It’s honestly quite hard not to like her. When I knew hardly anything about her, I liked her based on what little I knew. When I knew quite a bit more about her, I liked her just as much.

And I love her even more for saying things like this.

There were several unforgettable moments in the Obama campaign—Barack’s impassioned speech about race, the DNC finale at Invesco, Madelyn Dunham’s death just before her grandson became president-elect—but none meant more to me than a two-minute bit of tape, a simple but monumental exchange between Michelle Obama and Soledad O’Brien.

In her interview with Michelle, Soledad circled around the issues placed at the center of every discussion about female identity by second-wave feminism. O’Brien wondered how Michelle felt about following a dream that wasn’t hers. She asked about leaving a “high-powered and highly compensated” career.

Michelle acknowledged the challenges. She graciously offered that she missed her colleagues and her work. But, she continued, she could always find another career. With only the slightest hint of irony, she said if she had more time, she might bemoan the loss, but she “had a lot on her plate” and what she was doing was “pretty significant.”

I thought, “You go, girl!” As if working with the love of her life and the father of her children to become the first family of the United States while radically transforming the world as we know it isn’t the most empowering choice a brilliant and self-determining woman could make.

But the real moment came in the next beat, 30 seconds that remain forever etched in my mind as the final blow to an ideology in which women’s empowerment is narrowly defined by financial independence, emotional autonomy and professional advancement.

O’Brien went in for the kill, the coup de grâce of second-wave feminism. “But sometimes your career helps to define who you are,” she said, probing.

“It doesn’t for me,” Michelle said immediately. “What I do in my life defines me. A career is one of the many things I do in my life. I am a mother first. Where do I get my joy and my energy first and foremost? From my kids.”

This has been a point of contention for me since I discovered feminism years ago. I was struggling with my disability, in the simplest, truest sense of the word: I didn’t know how to handle my life. I was in too much pain to participate in pretty much any regular outside-the-home activity. Certainly I couldn’t work. And yes, I felt judged for that. I felt like a bad feminist for “staying home.” Especially when a long term relationship with a man entered the picture.

More broadly, adult life in this society is centered around work for pay. One’s job is a central defining aspect of one’s identity. If not the specific job, certainly the act of working, cashing your paycheck, and paying the bills. The environment you work in, interaction with your coworkers, dealings with the public, dealings with your boss, the physical or mental effects your work has on you. For most people, work takes up a majority of their waking hours. How can those hours not be an important part of who you are?

Higher-class white feminism has wholly embraced this in recent decades as women made the move into the workforce. This is unfortunate, because it is alienating. It is alienating to many people and many groups. It is alienating, as I touched on, to people with disabilities who are unable to work. It is alienating to people in the lower classes for whom the idyllic “career” is a fiction, or at least a very distant and unreachable phenomenon. It is alienating to people for whom the pursuit of more wealth and more power are not the end-all, be-all to life. Hell, it’s alienating to people who just plain don’t much care for their job and who wish not to have their lives defined by it.

A person’s job, their industry, their field of study, can be part of their identity. Again: for many people, it’s a pretty big part of your life. That doesn’t mean it has to be the biggest part. And if it’s the biggest part for you, well, congratulations: don’t assume the same for every other person.

If you’re still not getting it, for a change of perspective, try rereading that paragraph replacing job with parenthood.

Get me now? Good. Moving on.

I don’t particularly think feminist theory values work for pay as the defining aspect of egalitarian womanhood, as such. But anyone reading this blog should be well familiar with the reality that the feminist movement is afflicted with (rather, more accurately, afflicts) a variety of prejudice, preconception, misconception, and general dysfunction. A movement is made up of people. Messy, imperfect people, who soaked in all sort of prejudice, preconception, etc. as they grew up in a messy, imperfect society. And here we are.

The thing about this work, issues of social justice, is that we cannot remove the mistakes and start over with a clean slate. It’s not that easy. We are working with complex, shifting, messy, organic beings, and the immaterial force they create when they are brought together.

And sometimes, the solution that is best to address a problem in that messy world is not the solution that would be best to address that problem — excuse the phrasing — were all other things equal.

For a time, financially privileged white women felt a very real force at work around them: the dictates of their social class preventing them from participating in work-for-pay. This, whatever their privileges might otherwise be, was not fair. And so feminists fought against it. And, in a limited sort of way, they won. Now women are accepted in most fields of work-for-pay. They’re allowed to be not just the secretary but the attorney. They’re allowed to be not just the nurse but the doctor. And though it’s laughable to assert that sexism in the workplace is largely conquered (ha!) they earn much more respect than they might’ve fifty years back.

But here’s the thing. When this subset of women had their worlds cordoned off, reduced to a fraction of what they could be were they not so imprisoned, what was the problem?

By this, I don’t mean “Was it actually wrong?” I mean, instead, “What is it that made it wrong?”

Was it that women weren’t allowed to experience that world of work-for-pay (and, largely, the prestige that came with it) for themselves? That seems to be what feminism has settled on, in practice. Feminists fight fiercely when anyone threatens their place in the industry. And they are fiercely offended when anyone reduces them to their traditional purposes: child-making and -rearing, house cleaning, looking pretty, existing only for the whim and betterment of their men. And often the response is much like that of Melissa (whom I mean not to put down; it’s merely the example at hand) at Shakesville a few days back:

I’ve worked or been otherwise acquainted with married men who told me their wives were gorgeous, thin, good in bed, big-breasted, etc., long before they told me their wives’ occupations, or any other bit of information that wasn’t designed to convey how awesome the men were because they’d scored hot wives—just another accessory like a car or a great flat in a trendy neighborhood.

Why is it that when feminists seek to define their identity as women free from patriarchal constrictions, they almost always default first and often only to their occupation?

What is it that made that restriction wrong?

I submit that what made it wrong was not the specific area forbidden to women: it is that they were forbidden from an area — any area — that could contribute to their personhood and identity, that would allow them to contribute in return to their families, communities and wider society. The wrong is not that (this subset of) women was forbidden this particular aspect of self: the wrong is that (this subset of) women was forbidden any particular aspect of self.

Considering this, we round out the picture of what, exactly, work-for-pay means to women. It is something a large set of women were denied for a long time, or severely restricted, a system of coinciding and contradictory reward and punishment, a system in which women simply could not win. They saw that the system was flawed, and they worked, hard, to change that system.

But their sights were limited. They could not scrub the slate clean. They could only clean up some of the mess, then build on what they had left. So we find ourselves here. Some of the fiercest feminists are also the most accomplished professionals, and they have no reservations when it comes to defending that place for which they’ve fought so hard. But in doing so, maybe they — we — have let that part of ourselves consume the rest of us. Maybe we lost sight of the rest of our lives. The so, so many other things that we do, that are so important to us, but which are not nearly so highly valued when reflecting on our own identity.

Do you identify yourself, first and foremost, as a member of a certain profession? Why? Is it really the most important part of you?

Can you see the cracks in that facade? Do you see the classism, lurking in the assumption that everyone (who matters) excels at one thing in high school, then studies it in college, perhaps masters it in graduate school, and then moves straight into a career in that very field? Do you see the ableism, lurking in the assumption that everyone (who matters) works, and that it is always money from employment that pays for a person’s shelter, food, heat and cooling, yearly two-week vacations and bar tab? Can you see how even gender relations aren’t instantly righted with affluent white women’s entrance in the work field — lurking in the existence of the second shift, the fact that a spouse and family is considered a downside when hiring a woman but a plus when hiring a man?

These things aren’t the fault of women who work. But maybe we shouldn’t treat the importance we give to work-for-pay so uncritically. Maybe we shouldn’t pretend that we actually did wipe that slate clean.

What else do you do in your life? I’ll bet you there’s a lot of things. I get a maximum of five waking hours outside of work on weekdays and even I have many more parts to my life than my work. My husband, my cats, my geographic home, painting, blogging, hockey, design, my love of sweets and grains and tea and homemade stroganoff and mac n cheese and tacos, my family, my husband’s family, my friends, my favorite music, dancing for myself when nobody’s around, the joy of movement and the peace in rest…

I invite you to reflect on your own life. My bet is you’ll find much that challenges this idea that work must be a primary aspect of self for women who strive to be free.

And with that foundation, maybe we can begin to explore the worlds of all the other billions of women who weren’t white enough, financially secure enough, healthy enough, anything enough to be a part of that feminist movement. But it’s ok — I’ll give you some time to digest first.

See, it’s an acronym, but it sounds like a snake. Ffffsssstttt. OK, I am easily amused.

When I began work at this full-time job, I asked my doctor if I could increase my Vicodin dose to 3/day.

I don’t take them strictly on schedule, but it averages out to about that amount. I’ve been taking Vicodin this way for half a decade now. I began at 1.5 pills per day, average, which barely allowed me to make it through two semesters of college, earning 15 credits altogether. Since then, punctuated by periods of rest and inactivity, I’ve started my first job ever, six to eight hours a week; then moved on to my first Real Job, twenty to thirty hours a week; then spent some time stutteringly employed before beginning this job, the much-talked-about nine-to-five, with a real salary and my very own desk. Up until that last, my painkiller use increased, overall, to 2/day.

Which is surprisingly stable, considering Vicodin is a narcotic painkiller typically used for acute, not chronic, pain. Most doctors (the ones who at least pretend to care, that is) are eminently afraid to prescribe the Vikes for chronic pain, fearing tolerance, dependence, even abuse. (The last cannot be fairly grouped in with the first two, but that’s another post.) It’s very, very easy for a patient taking narcotics on a regular basis to build up a tolerance, needing more and more to less and less effect, which can head to a very dangerous place very quickly. And this fear on behalf of doctors is eminently understandable.

But here’s my problem. I already take a shitload of other medications. And I’m close to maxed out on each of them. I could probably increase my dose of a couple meds modestly, but I have been very careful not to approach that max, fearing what I know is inevitable: some crisis, some downturn in health, when I need something more to help out, but find that I have already exhausted all my options.

And the non-pharmaceutical treatments? Yeah, look, I’ve been living with this condition for twenty-three years now. I know sleep hygiene intimately. I have to pay very close attention to how I sit, to what I wear, to how I move, to how I speak, to where I go, to what I carry — every second, of every day, because I have identified many of the things that make my pain burden worse. And I avoid those things, so that there’s less pain to treat in the first place.

I make sure to get enough physical activity, but not too much. And the right kind, for the right amount of time. I’ve learned to balance on the edge of the knife, constantly monitoring everything around me, everything I do, every tiny movement I make. It is a complex, nuanced, organic dance, on the tips of my toes while juggling all the hundreds of concerns every healthy person needs pay no mind to whatsoever. And if I slip, I have to know how to react swiftly to regain that balance right away — because it’s a hell of a job to build that balance from the ground up all over again.

I’m already doing just about everything I possibly can be doing. And it’s not enough to allow me some semblance of a normal life. And, ideals and expectations of normalcy be damned, I have to do more than that. I have to push forward. I have to keep going. I have a husband. We want a home and a family. And for the here and now, we have bills to pay. And my own emotional health demands I get-up-and-do. I go stir-crazy sitting in the house by myself every day. I want to go out and do something. And we aren’t privileged enough to be able to afford for that to be art classes and volunteering.

Because of all of this, I take Vicodin. Anybody who wants to fight with me at this point about it can go suck a rotting tree stump. It’s my fucking life, and I know what works for me. Piss off.

***

Two and a half months ago, now, I asked my doctor to increase my dose to 3/day. I did a lot of thinking and I really felt like that would be a sufficient number. Over the first couple weeks I settled into a schedule. One half pill when I woke up in the morning, and thereafter one half pill at every two-hour interval (conveniently coinciding with my breaks) until the work day was done. Considering I wouldn’t need as much on the weekends, that left me a bit of a buffer, just in case.

For the first month and a half, that worked great. I got my first refill right on schedule. I was proud of myself.

The last month, though, threw me a bit of a curve. I got several headaches, which meant increased use. (My headaches are such that I have no other way to address them — I have to take medicine, or it will get much, much worse.) And I was a little incautious about it. I was still adjusting to this new schedule — where I spend approximately four waking hours not in a work environment every weekday — and trying to make sure I would be able to sustain the work I was doing.

So, this week, a week before I was due for my next refill, I ended up a little short. Officially, I ran out of medicine halfway through yesterday. And I had to ask my supervisor if I could go home — for the rest of the week.

Fortunately, I am limited-term. I have no benefits. As such, there is no leave to deal with. But I skip work at the grace of my extremely understanding sup. I can’t abuse that privilege, or I may not have a job to come back to.

My doctor won’t let me refill a day early. I think he is becoming concerned. And, again, I undestand why. But.

I’m concerned myself. The past couple weeks, during which I saw this whole ordeal coming, I have been chewing on things. And I’ve decided not to pursue the highly-unlikely-to-happen-anyway permanent spot in this office. (Thank Rendell for that. They could lose five clerical employees and they’d be lucky to be allowed to hire back one.) So long as I stick the job out until its end, I have recall rights next fall. And I am moderately likely to be able to collect unemployment in the intervening months. It won’t be much, but it’s income.

More importantly, it’s income that affords me a chance to rest. I really don’t think I can handle doing this year-round. More and more, I am grateful that the hiring freeze came down. It took away my chances at a permanent state job. But it meant I jumped at the chance for this job when it came down the line. And all things said, this looks like a good deal for me. Work full time through the winter — rest in the spring and summer. And thinking long term… it’s the best chance I have to be able to keep working through pregnancy, childbirth, and early motherhood. It gives me a schedule. Life rarely works out on schedule, but I’d still have a chance. I wouldn’t have to be altogether out of work.

In the meantime, I am sitting at home and resting. I see my doctor tomorrow, and we will talk over my options. Because I want my life to be sustainable. This is the best chance I’ve ever had at that goal. And I don’t want to lose it.

Sissie quit taking her Insulin and went into almost a coma, she is so stupid, she said the Insulin was making her fat, so she quit.

Sigh.

for Christmas, i sent my mother a gift card for a local grocery store (she was already in awful shape financially — add in a ballooning ARM and a serious recession and things get pretty bad). i asked if the locations were any good (there were takeovers going on when i was moving two years ago). her reply,

“yes we are going to Food 4 Less they built one on North Court, you can only go there in the daylight, too many shootings”

mmmm, home.

i work in an office now dealing with those same people, those people everyone is so afraid of. the poor people. and especially those who are racial minorities (well, actually racial pluralities where i grew up). you know, the trashy people, the ghetto people, the gang members, the baby mamas and welfare queens.

when i moved out on my own in 2004, a four hour drive from anyone with whom i had even acquaintance, i was warned profusely about the dangers of being a young, single girl out on her own. in public or in my home – no matter, it’s all dangerous. really i shouldn’t be going at all, because you never know what could happen to you, you know, around them.

living in orange county i found in my college peers a strange aversion to using the free-for-students bus system to get around. the system was clean, safe, with good frequency and practically no point at which there wasn’t a stop within a mile at most. but these kids just couldn’t bring themselves to use it. my roommate was without her car for one day, just one day, and she skipped classes altogether rather than take the bus to school and back. my conversation with her made it quite clear why. she felt it was beneath her. and, my curiosity piqued, i found similar attitudes in many of my classmates through my time there.

why? what is it about the bus that makes it so untouchable? it’s not the bus system itself – again, impressively clean, incredibly easy to use, and free! throughout the entirefuckingcounty! no – it wasn’t a systemic problem. it was a problem of proximity. proximity to them.

and, ok, it annoys the shit out of me.

you aren’t going to die of the ghetto cooties if you find yourself within a couple yards of a poor person. they aren’t going to bite you. stop acting like you’re passing through the lion cage at the zoo.

this middle class obsession with “safety,” with where’s a “good” area to live, and especially where is an acceptable place to raise a child, with the very heavy implication that allowing a child contact (especially regular contact!) with the cooties-carrying poor folk is tantamount to abuse – it drives me absolutely upthefuckingwall.

i’m just tired of it. look: i grew up with Those People. hell: i grew up being part of Those People. and though i am mostly comfortable financially now (it’s nice, having a husband who can work full time, not having to rely on anemic disability benefits) we still live surrounded mostly by Those People. Those People are my people.

and i say this as a moderately conventionally-attractive skinny young white chick who dresses and behaves like a solid member of the middle class (trust me, i learned how to “pass”) – all the things which supposedly make contact with Them so dangerous – as long as you aren’t stupid (you know, the old flashing-your-cash cliche), you can walk among Them and make it out alive. because really, when you get down to it – look: They are the same species you are. you can even breed with one and produce fertile offspring! (well, i guess that’s not that much of a revolution – it seemed to be about the only purpose the higher classes [that's you too, mr. middle man] had for direct contact with Them throughout history…)

anyway – if you understand these people as people, and learn a little common sense (that is, not limited to “stay away altogether”) you’ll do just fine. even if you’re white. even if you’re middle class. even if you’re a chick. even if you’re all of the above!

and maybe if more of “Us” started treating “Them” as, well, us (and not in that fakey feel-good liberal way) maybe we’d find out that there’d be much less reason to stay away from Them than we thought.