Has anyone read Caitlin Moran’s How to Be a Woman? This book is so damn good. I’ve been wanting to read it since it came out in 2011, but only got to it last month. Moran is British, she started out as a teen writer for a rock magazine and became an award winning journalist.
There is so much that is great about this book, but here’s a section I found particularly interesting and original.
First, Moran quotes a column from The Guardian called “What I’m Really Thinking” written by a cleaner:
Sometimes…I ponder the ironies of the job: for example, that all the ironing consists of men’s clothing. In a bid to escape domesticity, women are refusing to iron their husband’s shirts. Congratulations: your act of feminism means the job is shunted onto a different woman, assigning her a different rank.
Moran responds:
“I’ve seen this idea put forward a hundred times– that a proper feminist would do her own hoovering. Germaine Greer cleans her own lavvy, and Emily Wilding Davis threw herself under a horse, hands still piney fresh from Mr. Muscle oven cleaner. On this basis alone, how many women have had to conclude, sighing as they hire a cleaner, that they can’t, then, be feminists?
But of course, the hiring of domestic help isn’t a case of women oppressing other women, because WOMEN DID NOT INVENT DUST. THE STICKY RESIDUE THAT COLLECTS ON THE KETTLE DOES NOT COME OUT OF WOMEN’S VAGINAS…
Mess is a problem of humanity. Domestica is the concern of all. A man hiring a male cleaner would be seen as simple employment. Quite how a heterosexual couple hiring a female cleaner ends up a betrayal of feminism isn’t terribly clear– unless you believe that running a household is in some way:
(a) an inarguable duty of womenkind– that, in addition can
(b) only ever be done out of love, and never for cash, because that somehow “spoils” the magic of the household. As if the dishes know they’ve been washed by hired help, instead of the woman of the house, and will all feel sad.
This is, clearly– to use the technical term– total bullshit. There are places that will bleach your anus for you…If you have mines in your field, you can pay someone to risk their life removing them. If you want to watch people pound each other’s nasal cartilage to a pulp with their fists, you can go see cage fighting….And yet, somehow, in the midst of all this, it’s still wrong for a woman in North London to employ someone to clean the house. When I was 16, I was a cleaner…Twenty years later, I now have a cleaner myself. And having a cleaner has nothing to do with feminism. If a middle-class woman is engaging in anti-feminist activity by hiring a woman to do the cleaning, then surely, a middle class man is engaging in class oppression by hiring a plumber?”
Update Great comment from Somebody42:
I think what’s more telling is that, even though the cleaner is ironing the man’s shirts, she blames the woman for having someone else iron them — not the man they actually belong to. Of course, no one will call the cleaner “anti-feminist” for doing so. I realize this is a restatement of your point (a), but it just grates on me so badly!
I came to this rather late, apologies! I found this blog and this post after finding myself on the receiving end of a certain degree of surprise and scoffing after asking around to see if anyone could recommend a cleaner. My friends, liberal and left leaning, male and female, seem to contain a proportion of people who consider that I – a (at least originally) working class person who is relatively socialist, am a class (and possibly gender) traitor for considering asking someone to help me with my domestic chores. This left me wondering about how this ‘feminism’ people were claiming to use to bash me about the head had benefitted me… Here I am, a once working class (apparently having a MSc and wishing to engage a cleaner constitute my renounciation of my working class status), comprehensively educated woman with an intense full time job and a post graduate course to complete. Surely this makes me the recipient of the fruits of many womens’ striving? I could not be where I am without feminism. I consider myself a feminist. Why then are people trying to use feminism and socialism to chastise me? I bless Caitlin Moran for her contributions! Because, essentially, as pointed out above, why would it be seen as shameful for me to engage a cleaner when most people would bat an eyelid at me asking somebody to rip my pubic hair out for me or unblock my toilet? Would anyone bat an eyelid at me sharing my work responsibilities through job sharing? No? Why? Because cleaning is part of my role as a woman? Well f**k that! I really appreciated this blog post, I found myself on the point of tears questioning myself for thinking about engaging a cleaner and berating myself for not being able to cope with doing everything. It was a timely laugh and a timely piece of perspective taking for me. Thanks so much.
Hi blu82,
Thanks for your comment. I am so glad you found it because you should not feel bad, or anti-feminist, or classist, or whatever for getting help that you pay for. WTF? THAT is sexist, IMO. You shoudl read Moran’s book. It is so good.
Margot
I think what’s more telling is that, even though the cleaner is ironing the man’s shirts, she blames the woman for having someone else iron them — not the man they actually belong to. Of course, no one will call the cleaner “anti-feminist” for doing so. I realize this is a restatement of your point (a), but it just grates on me so badly!
Yeah, this ties in with my “straw-feminist” comment. This column was not by a “feminist”.
Hi Tamara,
I actually think it disproves your point. It sounds to me like the cleaner is expressing a feminist point. Most people, feminist and not feminist, think cleaning is the woman’s world.
Margot
Out of interest, here’s a link to the full column at the Guardian.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jun/05/what-really-thinking-cleaner
The cleaner suggests it is anti-feminist to hire a cleaner. Moran says lots of feminists say the same thing but it is nonsense. Of course, I completely agree that this is nonsense. However, I am still left wondering which feminists have ever said that. Does she cite them in the book?
Great point!
I agree with what Moran says, but I can’t say I’ve ever heard anyone saying that proper feminists do their own cleaning before that Guardian excerpt. I haven’t read her book but so I’ll have to rely on you but are you sure there aren’t straw feminists?
I mean to say “these aren’t”.
“I’ve seen this idea put forward a hundred times– that a proper feminist would do her own hoovering. Germaine Greer cleans her own lavvy, and Emily Wilding Davis threw herself under a horse, hands still piney fresh from Mr. Muscle oven cleaner. On this basis alone, how many women have had to conclude, sighing as they higher a cleaner, that they can’t, then, be feminists?
Wait, I’m sorry. Am I going insane or is spelling just that different in England? “Hire” not “higher”, right?
U are not insane, I am. I pounded out these blogs in 2 mins w kids all over me, will fix
Could be a typo. English isn’t my native language but even I see that ‘higher’ can’t be a synonym for hire. 😉