Slave Nation - Serfdom in Modern America

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

May 14, 2013

New Reader Alert – this blog is a sequential release of a longer written piece. Each segment works hard to ‘stand alone,’ but inevitably, they make more sense in context, which means reading from the beginning post through to the latest post, which is actually the current ‘end.’ Thank you for stopping by – please leave a comment; it would be great to hear what you think about these ideas. With appreciation, Laurie

Serfdom in Modern America:

Forging Our Own Chains

Back at my desk

Family matters have diverted me from blogging for the past two weeks. Things are calming down - and summer is nearly here. This will be my third summer devoted to a writing project, and actually the second one devoted to Slave Nation. My ultimate hope for this manifesto is to have it published, and here in my daily blogs I am doing the closest, finest editing of the material I have been putting together for almost two years now. Ideally, the blog will also stimulate discussion which will help me to hone my points.

As a result of some of this continuous editing some of the posts you have previously read will have been altered in form, though certainly not in substance. New posting will begin this week, possibly as early as today. Thank you again for reading - and would love to hear your comments on the state of the family in your country, and how women particularly are treated (economically, politically, culturally). Most of all, I would love to hear from both sides of the aisle - are you a stay at home mom? Are you a professional working mom? I know and love people on both sides of that aisle, and would love to take a moment to clarify that I am not in the rabble-rousing (or judging) business. This is a serious discussion about some pretty bad stuff that is going on in this country that is not being seriously addressed by policy makers or by media (except when they can wrangle a juicy Mommy-wars story out of it).

That isn't what this about, here on this blog. This is about the economic, political and health reasons why the vast majority of women would be better off as practicing homekeepers than they are in the wage-earning market place. I provide facts to back up my thesis from reliable and reputable sources, which I will cite as appropriate (please comment anywhere you would like a cite; I do try to embed further info in links, but if I miss something you would like to see - lmk).

Women and children are not doing well in America. Families are not doing well in America. That is what this discussion is about - that and brainstorming about how to change the paradigm.

Here is a link to an article from NBC News, 05.13.13, discussing the economics of staying home, a choice being made increasingly by lower-wage earning women (the majority of working women) who have seen in their own lives that it costs them more to work than to stay home: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/opt-out-or-left-out-economics-stay-home-moms-1C9881635

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

April 30, 2013

Serfdom in Modern America:

Forging Our Own Chains

On Feminism: From Equal to Angel to Workhorse

Equity Feminism is rooted in classic liberal Enlightenment doctrines and aims for full civil and legal (sociopolitical) equality for women. Equity Feminism is a moral doctrine about equal treatment with no reference to biology, and most efforts by first wave feminists can be safely included under the equity umbrella, rather than the more contemporary gender feminism umbrella. (Great quick read on Equity v. Gender Feminism for quick contextualization here.)

First Wave equity feminists were responsible for most of the reforms to working conditions that affected poor women and children who had no legal protections from abuses by employers. Unfortunately, suffrage had barely been won when a new and radical form of feminism, Gender feminism, would change the nature of feminism (which had evolved to be a flourishing and protective union of women demanding sociopolitical equality) to the forebearer of what we see today.

Gender feminism, the darling of the second wave feminist movement, by contrast, is the “genocentric and misandric branch of feminism,” according to Christine Sommers, a contemporary equity feminist who believes that “most American women subscribe philosophically to the older first wave feminism whose main goal was equity for women, especially in politics and education.” Sommers faults contemporary (gender) feminism for ‘its irrational hostility to men, its recklessness with facts and its inability to accept that the sexes are equal but different.” Sommers, of course, is viciously attacked by the majority of gender feminists who currently monopolize the academic field on this subject.

By the time women had won suffrage, Alice Paul (a radical early gender feminist), leading the Women’s Party engineered the first version of the ERA in 1926 and suffrage leaders were outraged. Carrie Chapman Catt, a key coordinator of the suffrage movement, claimed it would strike down much of the needed protective legislation which protected women and children from working conditions in factories. Obtaining this much-needed legislation had been a life-long struggle for many of these women, who believed women needed special consideration because of their role as mothers. The ideal of women’s rights recognizes and promotes the role of motherhood and family in the lives of women; "equal rights" do not.

Fifty years later, inspired by the rhetoric of civil rights, and encouraged by a market-place that courts them, the great majority of feminists now believe that women should be treated as individuals, not as a sex, and that free and open competition with men in the market place is the goal. Gender feminism is a competitive model which asks for no special favors. Unfortunately for the majority of women and their children, the fact is that women cannot, ever, earn as much as men do in a market place where male wages are the standard unit of currency - ie - it takes $1000 'male' dollars to rent an apartment, but takes $1300 'female' dollars (courtesy of the wage gap and how much more time it takes her to earn an equal amount of spending power).

Until women take the reins and use the suffrage that their equity feminist fore-mothers fought for, they are doomed to earn 'female' wages. Until and unless that happens, and I do not believe it will, we need to honestly appraise the landscape of biology, personal choice and family necessities and arrive at strategies that will give women and children, and families, a better cultural model which embraces the necessity and rewards of a culture which supports homekeepers.

Monday, April 29, 2013

April 29, 2013

Serfdom in Modern America:

Forging Our Own Chains

On Feminism - From Equal to Angel to Workhorse

The ascension of Queen Victoria (who called early feminist activities “this mad, wicked folly of Women’s Rights") to the throne made things even harder – much harder – for women as the mores of the era became increasingly more conservative and repressive for women to navigate. During Victoria’s reign, there was an increasing public sentiment of the “ideal woman’ beginning to emerge, including the omnipresent ‘Angel of the Hearth’ stereotype seen in so much art and writing of the era. This rise of middle class morality made it harder for women to obtain work in certain ‘unfeminine’ professions, causing a concentration of female workers in such areas as factory work and domestic service – occupations with long hours and low pay – all predecessors of today’s ‘pink collar’ industries.

Predictably, class became a certain indicator of a woman’s chances in the new Wage-economy market place. Upper class women who had been handed the ‘Angel of the Hearth’ cultural consolation prize (and financial security) in exchange for increasingly limited opportunities in a suffocating era were locked away behind closed doors in the ‘new’ feminine spaces of the middle class home, while lower class women, whose work opportunities were limited to low and unpredictable wages, fell into dangerous waters if they found themselves without a male breadwinner at their side.

An astonishing number of those women without breadwinners found themselves practicing prostitution, a working class profession, in order to feed their children and survive (estimated by the Westminster Review to number an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 women working in the sex business in England between 1857 – 1869). In a fascinating collaboration, prostitution and the double standard evidenced by the increasing emphasis on feminine virtue during a time of rampant vice would collide to form the nascent first wave of feminism.

As prostitution increased in England, syphilis spread rapidly through all sectors of society, and it became increasingly clear to women that there was a grave double standard in place. Authorities introduced the Contagious Disease Acts in the 1860’s in an attempt to stem the spread of syphilis. Under the acts (which had been originally proposed for all women in the general public, and later reduced to apply only to prostitutes who consorted with members of the Army), women could be forcibly taken from the streets to be subjected to humiliating examinations by male doctors for signs of syphilis.

If determined to have syphilis, the women were confined, involuntarily, to ‘Lock Hospitals,’ from which they would only be released once cured, and where they could be legally confined for up to one year. Incredibly, women were expected to pay their own keep in these hospitals, and were often sent to work hospitals to be able to continue to earn wages while confined.

One brave woman went far beyond merely perceiving injustice and feeling outrage: in the first known Victorian-era instance of a ‘virtuous’ women taking up the cause and rights of prostitutes, Josephine Butler, a middle-class mother, led a political campaign begun in 1864 to overturn the Acts in what would become a massive rejection of male right to determine female agency. Butler was also part of a tenacious group that successfully lobbied Parliament to have the age of consent changed from 13 to 16, something all the men in that august body had never before seen fit to do.

Butler’s political organization would eventually host more than 900 meetings of angry middle-class women who were fully aware that the Acts had originally been penned to include them in the random inspections and incarcerations. Since their existence in a culture of supposed virtue meant that the only way they could contract syphilis was through unfaithful, sexually active husbands, women did not fail to see that they could be subjected to random and humiliating examinations and imprisonment for something that their husbands had done. This anger and activism led to the organization of a female political structure which ultimately did defeat the Acts, and left a powerful and politically seasoned framework in place for later First Wave feminists to utilize.

Breaking down barriers to education and professional employment had already formed the backbone of early feminist thought in the 19^th c, with women in the United States and Britain having already gained admittance to colleges and professional schools, but this new outrage-driven movement had an entirely different aspect to it of privileged women acting protectively for other less privileged women.

This protective behavior naturally extended to children who were being increasingly exploited by industry, and true Equity Feminism - authentic Feminism based on women organizing politically in order to protect themselves and other less able women, and children, and to secure equal legal rights for women in the eyes of the law, including suffrage (Classical Liberalism) - soon was headed into its most productive, useful and meaningful years.

Sunday, April 28, 2013

April 28, 2013

Serfdom in Modern America:

Forging Our Own Chains

On Feminism: From Equal to Angel to Workhorse

This all happened at the same time that the Artisan or Guild system, based on apprenticeships, began to negotiate its relationship with the new wage economy. Under the system which had traditionally determined wages male apprentices earned wages with the goal of buying tools and property for the time they became masters with their own apprentices; in contrast, female ‘apprentices’ (generally 'pink collar' type domestic workers) earned wages with the goal of earning dowries. To further complicate matters, at this point in time Europe had been battered by three centuries of death and destruction due to repeated incidences of the plague, of sweating sickness, of cholera, of small pox and finally, of syphilis, so that by the beginning of the Industrial Revolution the population of England had still not regained safe population levels.

In one event known as the English sweating sickness in 1485, over 100,000 people in London died, along with half the populations of Oxford and Cambridge. Mass graves were filled with infectious victims in every city, and populations fell dramatically in all parts of the country, undoubtedly leaving survivors with tremendous collective ptsd, in addition weakened support systems. The sweating sickness would re-occur several more times into the early 1500's, ebbing and flowing over many frightening decades. Even without the waves of illness and catastrophic loss of life to disease, things would have been hard on a society that was trying to build its numbers: from 1350 to 1850 Europe suffered through a climate event known as the 'Little Ice Age,' which led to widespread famine and resultant population declines.

The merging factors of the artisan system culture (the social group which traditionally set wages in pre-wage-economy times), the new wage economy, and the decimated population created a social dynamic which I believe was ground zero from which the original gender wage gap originated. Because population growth was such an important national goal it became accepted practice that wages for women’s work should be kept sufficiently high enough to build dowries (and justify their absence from the family endeavors), but not high enough so that they might remain single – by definition, women’s wages must be too low for them to be self-supporting, because it would negatively affect population growth if women were allowed to remain single; women’s wages must be too low for self-support, in order to ensure that they would marry and have the children which were so desperately needed to rebuild the decimated population.

Additionally, because men had now become the primary wage earners in the family, it became necessary for women’s jobs to have a temporary character to them that allowed employers to prevent male unemployment and to adjust to changing patterns of demand. Women were kept ‘on call,’ as a work force, in order to afford the flexibility needed to keep men employed both in times of high or low labor needs. As a result of this lower wage, and temporary nature of their work, women’s voices in family economies began to decline, as their access to cash diminished and as their domestic contributions became increasing invisible not only to society but to their own families who were generally absent during the solitary hours they managed the home duties.

Further complicating matters and diminishing women’s voices were the doctrines of Coverture, developed in England in the High and Late Middle ages, originating in the Common Law legal reforms of Henry II (1133-1189), and subsequently enshrined in English and American law, until married women’s’ property acts began to be passed early in the 19^th c in both countries. Under the practice of Coverture married and single women existed as distinctly separate legal entities, with single women – femes sole (woman uncovered), and married women, feme coverture (woman under cover) having radically different amounts of control over their properties and assets. These laws, developed in England and transferred to all English speaking colonies, persisted until the 19^th century, forming the body of laws that would govern women in the United States after the American Revolution.

Under Coverture, a single woman had the right to own and dispose of property and to make contracts on her own behalf. Conversely, a feme coverture, a woman under cover (of her husband because they became one legal entity at marriage as only one could be recognized under Common law in legal issues), would have no legal right to dispose of her own property, or even her own wages. She could not make contracts, and was essentially at the mercy of a good or bad husband..

In the United States women were waging a war on coverture from before the American Revolution. Early feminism began here in the United States as equity feminist Abigail Adams penned Remember the Ladies to her husband before the Revolution and pointedly assured him that if they did not remember the ladies the ladies would take up revolution, because their security should not depend on whether or not they had a kind husband, but should be ensured by law. Equity Feminism is a doctrine of ideology rooted in classical liberalism that aims for full civil and legal equality for women based on a moral doctrine requiring equal treatment. The time was right and an avalanche of laws from 1809 (mere decades after the revolution) through 1920 would effectively destroy the institution of Coverture by ensuring women's rights to divorce, protection of personal property, child custody, alimony and admittance to professional schools. Women had won the equity war by the time they won the vote, in all practical, legal ways.

Prior to the Wage economy this would have had relatively little significance for femes coverture in terms of their real power within the family. Their work previously was visible and valued, genderized work did not automatically mean devalued work, and women had more access to cash in the previous barter and family economy. While women may not have had the right legally to buy or dispose of property or to make contracts, they had a voice in their family that was based on sound economic footing, and their goals would have likely been advanced more satisfactorily before the Wage economy than they would have been after, as their voices became harder and harder to hear without the hard cash necessary to back them up (as women began their long uncontrolled slide into institutionalized poverty - along with their children).

Saturday, April 27, 2013

April 27, 2013

Serfdom in Modern America:

Forging Our Own Chains
On Feminism - From Equal to Angel to Workhorse

First Wave feminism, more aptly described as Equity Feminism, was a high-minded response to a need which grew out of the changing economy which allowed serious abuse of workers in factories. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, most work was done within the construct of the “Family Economy,” where all members of the family made their own contributions to the unit’s survival. Work in a Family Economy could be gendered, but not rigidly, and female work was not immediately devalued because it was done in the open and was ‘visible,’ as was all other work in this economy.

In a Family Economy women’s work was often associated with the generation of cash, and with very high public visibility; in a barter society women developed streams of industry (raising poultry, selling excess butter, weaving cloth at home) which brought cash into the family economy. This work was often done communally, with many women working together, even occasionally to benefit one of the group at a particular time – such as would be the case with many women working together to construct a woman’s dowry or trousseau, those household items she would need to bring with her into a marriage in order to establish her new home. On the whole, women were seen in a far more positive light than they soon would be with the origin of a wage economy where they would forever and ever, amen, earn less than men (at least for the almost 200 years so far since this experiment began).

With the emergence of wages and the transition from the Family Economy to the Wage Economy, during the IR we see an entirely different dynamic begin to control the perception of the value of ‘women’s work.’ Ironically, the emergence of a wage economy devalued female domestic contributions by making them invisible to society and to their families. Factory and mill owners needed the cheap labor these females represented, and lured them into low-paying jobs; however, female work was always considered temporary and was always done in addition to responsibilities for domestic work on behalf of their families.

Even though women could go ‘out’ to earn a small wage, rather than produce a product or service at home for cash, that work took second place to their unpaid, unwaged domestic responsibilities at home, which were now done by women alone, rather than in concert with other family or community members (by now other women and most men had now entered factory work and domestic work became a solitary labor for the most part). At this point lower female wages, or lack of wages, ironically contributed to the devaluation of their efforts on behalf of the family, and their attendant loss of status, as the new ‘wage’ mentality automatically devalued work for which no wage was earned, which now meant the majority of all household work. Ominously, women had more access to cash in a barter economy than they would have in the new wage economy.

Another dynamic which emerged as the result of the new wage economy was a change in how wages were apportioned between men and women and how that structure reflected the changing nature and purpose of dowries. Traditionally, dowries were that portion that a woman brought into her marriage. Immediately prior to the IR that would have been possibly a small amount of cash, along with the household objects and items that were invariably provided by the new wife upon her marriage to her new household economy. As women began to enter the factories and earn wages their paychecks began to replace their dowries as they saved their earnings for future marriage.

Friday, April 26, 2013

April 26, 2013

Serfdom in Modern America:

Forging Our Own Chains

On Feminism

From Equal to Angel to Workhorse

A History of the Recent Rights of Women

It would be impossible to write a manifesto calling for women to return to their home fronts without including a discussion of feminism. I quickly discovered that the problem with that proposition is to know whose feminism, in which century, and most importantly, for the benefit of which group, I would discuss. Because there are two diametrically-opposed movements which occurred in the United States across two different centuries with the interests of two entirely different classes of women at their heart, it soon became clear that a simple discussion of “feminism” would be anything but simple.

In order to provide some clarity I will outline “feminist” activity in terms of “waves.” First Wave and Second Wave feminism refer to mostly female-driven social movements during the 1800s, in the case of the former, and in the mid-1900s for the latter. I will discuss how First Wave and Second Wave feminism are polar opposites of each other, and how they should in no way ever be confused as having even remotely similar goals, or target beneficiary populations. Unfortunately, in the rare instances that most people are even aware of First Wave feminism it is unlikely that they would resist the natural temptation to believe it was merely the ideologically similar precursor to Second Wave feminism – known now by the sadly ironic moniker “Women’s Liberation.”

There were significant events leading up to First Wave and occurring long after Second Wave that must be considered in order to begin to see the full picture of where feminism has been, what its separate camps’ goals are, what was accomplished (and how), where both went wrong, and where both are now. Where feminism will go from here is a matter which will deeply affect all Americans in the near future and we all have a vested interest in defining and supporting a type of feminism that strengthens women and families.

In order to do that we need to understand that feminism in one form is good for society, and that other forms of feminism – such as 'Women’s Lib,' the lable applied to Second Wave feminism - is not only destructive, but is not actually true feminism at all (if female-friendly is part of your definition, at least). This mis-named movement has caused almost unimaginable harm and destruction to our families and communities by propagandizing the ‘progressive’ society where both parents in a family work for wages. Sadly, the people who have been most harmed by this powerful, intellectually-dishonest, wrong-thinking movement have been women themselves, followed closely by their children.

A look at the goals of the original feminists will demonstrate that the vast majority of their activism was in pursuit of protective legislation in the Industrial Revolution marketplace for women and children. As the weakest members of society they were naturally exploited by the new manufacturing industry, abuses which were well-documented in the literature of the era. With no laws to regulate wages or working conditions these vulnerable populations were reduced to grave poverty and exposed to significant danger in the workplace.

The early feminists were middle class women who saw these abuses and organized together to persuade male legislators into crafting laws such as the ten hour work day, a minimum age at which children could work, and workplace safety regulations. Many of these early women, such as Annie Besant, took an active role in organizing strikes in factories which led to early forms of unions which gave workers a slightly more fair, slightly less dangerous shake in the workplace.

First Wave feminism originally grew out of the abolitionist movement in the Northeast, and continually championed the causes of oppressed groups as it gathered strength through the 19^th century, ultimately culminating in winning suffrage for women in 1920 with the enactment of the 19^th amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Women had not originally sought suffrage, and in fact the majority of women who attended the first Women’s Convention in Seneca Falls in 1854 were shocked and actually appalled when Elizabeth Cady Stanton first called for the group to strategize toward that end.

Thursday, April 25, 2013

April 25, 2013

Serfdom in Modern America:

Forging Our Own Chains

There are more reasons I will develop further for why we need women to stay home (or men, if their wives earn more - there is no gender angle here except for the absolute fact that women earn less money than men and families should plan accordingly to maximize their efforts), and why there needs to be a revival movement for homekeeping in the United States. One incredibly important reason is the economy, and I will lay out my arguments and suggestions for reversing the two income earner per family trend to the single living wage model, in a conscious, volunteer, social policy implementation at a grass-roots' level. This grass-roots effort would help to stabilize the financial crises that we have suffered through for so many years now by strengthening individual family finances with the end goal being to achieve true sustainability, which cannot be achieved when it actually costs women to more to work than they truthfully bring back to their families.

For the last several years, as we moved further and further into the Second Great Depression which has gripped our economy, the talking heads have assured us that more jobs and more employment are the answers to all problems – the more people we can get earning paychecks, the better! Then we can keep the ball rolling by spending! Higher employment and consumption will save us! I say: nonsense. We need fewer workers, who make more pay and consume fewer things. We need as many people to leave the workforce as possible, leaving more opportunities for those who stay to be able to earn the lost, illusive, living wage that once existed, courtesy of our old friends, Supply and Demand. As mentioned before, this would decrease the amount of taxes available to government agencies, which would have the additional benefit of shrinking government.

What the United States needs is not more jobs, but fewer people competing for those jobs in the labor market. It is time for the country that is famous for “rugged individualism” to quit being so sheepishly obedient to their corporate masters, to reject the philosophy of consumerism, and to carve their own good life out of the morass that the politicians and the businessmen have created.

My final thought for this introduction is to remind my reader that in the United States, the number one predictor that a woman will have to declare bankruptcy at some point in her life is that she has children, so what does that say? This kind of degrading poverty was unknown prior to women entering the work force, and is one of the primary reasons they should reject it for the evil, soul-sucking trap that it is. In short, I disagree with, or would at least amend what Dostoyevsky said about judging a civilization: “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” I think the degree of our civilization can be judged by our female and child poverty rates, by our broken families, by our 41% illegitimacy rate and by our abandoned elders.

In the following pages I will outline and prove how the loss of our homekeepers is crippling us, and then I will present my plans for a strategic female withdrawal from the workforce. This manifesto is a call to families and communities to return to the lifestyle and the quality of life that lifestyle afforded when we had designated homekeepers. That lifestyle has been taken from us to enrich others at our great expense, and it is time to stand up for ourselves by refusing to participate in our own enslavement any longer.