Womens Unpaid And Often Unacknowledged Labour Literally Props Up Just About Everything And Its So Taken

Women’s unpaid and often unacknowledged labour literally props up just about everything and it’s so taken for granted it’s rendered nigh invisible, to the point everyone, including the women doing the work, reproduce these systems automatically without even realizing it’s happening.

And even in leftist/progressive spaces and homes,falling into gendered divisions of labour can happen insidiously even when there’s a concious effort to avoid it.

I encourage everyone, not just men, to think about how this plays out in our everyday lives both in the labour around us we take for granted and in the labour we’re actually performing.

And this includes mental and emotional labour as much as physical. If you and your wife split physical housework 50/50 but she’s the only one keeping track of your family calendars, picking out gifts and remembering cards for birthdays, making the grocery lists, doing social and emotional work to maintain your social/familial relationships, etc, then it’s not truly 50/50.

And contrary to popular belief, this mental work is exhausting and tolling, and not something that women are naturally more innate to have the capacity for. It’s often something that falls to us/on us.

vegans making honey a bee labour issue is the funniest thing imaginable because like, you picked the one animal that has already unionised

'Untitled (Polka Dots - Providence, Rhode Island, 1976)' 

I was just thinking, “I bet Francesca Woodman woulda liked Tumblr.”

One thing is like to see as much as possible of in fandom is interpretive pluralism. Which is to say there’s more than one way to see the story onscreen, because the story is also happening to you. You watching it creates the story you experience, which is different from the story I experience. Sometimes the story I get on a rewatch is different than the story I saw the first time! Not because I got it wrong, but because I’m at a different place in my life, and I connect with different parts.

I write about the story I saw onscreen, but I believe deeply in plural stories. Was Stede an absent dad because of trauma, or did Mary shut him down every time he tried to engage with the kids because the way he did it annoyed her? (Did the pirate game give them nightmares or was she projecting?) Is Stede unaware of his crush on Ed, or knows what it is but thinks it’s unrequited or unsustainable or that he doesn’t have the courage to make it love? Is Ed unmasking who he’s always been as he becomes gentler, or just discovering a person he could become given safety and time? Is Izzy going to learn kindness or is he becoming Captain Hook? Would everything have been joyous if Ed had kissed Stede in front of Jack, or saved him from Chauncey, or did Stede need to go home first to get free?

I hope the answer to all of those can be yes. I hope however they play it onscreen, we keep writing the stories this story is becoming in our own hearts. I hope we give them every possible understanding and becoming and ending. And I hope we treasure that in each other’s work. The joy of fandom is making a thousand stories for love of one.

On 15 August 2021, one year ago this Monday, the city of Kabul fell to the Taliban. I’m marking this anniversary because it is an event that shattered the lives of so many people I know— people who continue to persevere in the face of fear, despair, uncertainty, and grief. 

A huge amount of journalism has been produced about the U.S.-coalition withdrawal, the fall of Kabul, the abandonment of Afghans, and the humanitarian crisis that is ongoing in Afghanistan right now. Here, I’ve gathered just a few pieces that I particularly recommend. Please consider reading these.

George Packer: “The Betrayal.” The Atlantic. 

ProPublica: “Hell at Abbey Gate: Chaos, Confusion, and Death in the Final Days of the War in Afghanistan.” ProPublica

Eliza Griswold. “The Afghans America Left Behind.” The New Yorker. 

Dan Lamothe and Alex Horton. “Documents reveal U.S. military’s frustration with White House, diplomats over Afghan evacuation.” Washington Post. 

Ben Smith: “How the U.S. Helped, and Hampered, the Escape of Afghan Journalists.” The New York Times. 

James Landale and Joseph Lee: “Afghanistan: Foreign Office chaotic during Kabul evacuation - whistleblower.” BBC. 

Mark Townshend: “‘Shameful’: Afghans who helped UK abandoned to a life of fear under the Taliban.” The Guardian. 

“Last Days in Afghanistan: Reflections on the U.S. Withdrawal.” The New York Times. 

Christina Goldbaum and David Zucchino: “Taliban Rewind the Clock: ‘A Woman is a Helpless and Powerless Creature’” The New York Times. 

Alive in Afghanistan: a ProPublica initiative to continue covering stories from Afghanistan. 

Zan Times: A woman-led human rights-focused news site covering life in Afghanistan under the Taliban.

***

I don’t want to participate in the portrayal of Afghanistan, and Afghans, as exclusively a nation and people of suffering. Some of the funniest people I have known in my life are Afghan. The Afghan students I know have continued posting on Facebook and TikTok even as their nation fell and they became refugees. They write poems. They read poems. They make memes. We should care about Afghanistan not because it is so extraordinarily indigent or abject in some sense, but because it is not: because there is so much to it that is lost through the act of not-caring.

It's so easy to laugh, so easy to hate—it takes guts to be gentle and kind.

The Smiths, “I Know It’s Over,” 1986