Back to the grindstone.
Dishes, laundry.
#homemaker #domesticlabor

A quotation from Alcott, Louisa May:

«
Housekeeping ain’t no joke.
»

Full quote, sourcing, notes:
https://wist.info/alcott-louisa-may/70730/

"What happens when the only way to ensure the survival of the people you love the most is to leave them behind? That’s a choice no one should have to make, and yet it is the dilemma of overseas workers everywhere, no less so than in the Philippines, which exports about a fourth of the world’s 11.5 million migrant domestic workers, a predominantly female army of nannies, maids, and cooks. "—Amy DePaul

https://longreads.com/2023/06/15/filipino-laborers-workers-sacrifices-family-duty-reading-list/

Here's an entire article from the Guardian on how men piss at home and whether or not it's "natural" for them to stand or sit. It goes through health reasons -- apparently stand-pissing causes piss-mist to settle in toothbrushes and sitting is better for men's backs.. It goes through evolutionary reasons -- apparently scent-marking is unrelated to stand-pissing.

The whole thing is pros and cons of stand-pissing from the POV of various "experts" and also men talking about their personal prefs. They have physiologists arguing over which position is healthier for men, they have physicists measuring coefficients of splashiness, they have lawyers discussing men's legal right to stand-piss, and so on. They have men saying "I like it!!!" It's a triumph of journalistic both-sides neutrality.

And yet never once do they mention the most important issue, which is who cleans the fucking bathroom? Men who are physically able to clean their own toilets but don't and are physically able to sit but still insist on stand-pissing are making a social choice with complex implications that aren't t even mentioned here, not discussed at all, not even to be superficially dismissed. They slso don't ask any women for their opinions about how men piss at home.

I sit-piss now mainly because I clean my own bathroom, but I would even if I didn't. Somebody has to clean it and why would anyone create unnecessary work for someone when it can be avoided with zero effort? my wife usually cleans the living room and I don't gratuitously mess that up just because I don't clean it. How psycho would that be? None of the pissers interviewed share the reasons for their choice of pissing-mode, but the work involved in cleaning must be a factor in many cases.

One effect of framing this as a question of competing expert opinions rather than of communal household organization organization is to erase labor from the discussion completely. This supports capital's empire by reinforcing the idea that labor is a fungible commodity rather than a gift of love, a communal contribution, anything but a tool of capital accumulation. Another effect is to reinforce the idea that experts know more about household labor than the people who run the fucking houses. Blech!

#Capitalism #StandPissing #SitPissing #SitzPinkler #Toilets #Urination #Men #Women #DomesticLabor #HouseholdLabor #CommunalLabor #SecondShift #TheGuardian #HomeEconomics

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/feb/20/the-splashback-scandal-should-all-men-sit-down-to-urinate

…nurturing and maintenance jobs hold the world together. Their social worth is inestimable. The women of Iceland made that point dramatically one day in 1975. All the women in the country, paid and unpaid, took a day off and gathered together for a discussion of women’s rights. In the words of one observer, “the wheels of society came to a screeching halt, and no one questioned the value of women’s work again.”

#feminism #domesticlabour #domesticlabor #systemsthinking

http://donellameadows.org/archives/thoughts-while-cleaning-the-living-room-domestic-work-is-undervalued-but-it-doesnt-need-to-be/