(no subject)

Last night I read Connie Willis's "Even the Queen" which annoyed the hell out of me for reasons I couldn't quite put my finger on. I chalked it up to the story being dated, since it is from the early 90s.*

Then I sat in bed and realized just why I had this sense of discomfort with it. I didn't like the premise of the story at all-- a society where the norm is to have surgically halted menstruation to the point where women don't even know what it is (I guess it is the 90s, because the discussions had aren't that absurd given that they sound like discussions I've seen online in not especially feminist frou-frou spaces)-- but there was a line that stuck out in my head. "In the first fine flush of freedom after the Liberation, I had entertained hopes that it would change everything [...] Of course it didn't. Men still make more money."

A few years ago when the world was shocked-- shocked!-- that women were still making less than men, people tried to come up with all sorts of ideas to explain this while ignoring the obvious. Women worked less hours and in fields with lower pay. When they couldn't explain why this disparity still stood when you adjusted for time off and job worked, they shrugged and said "well, women are less assertive, so clearly they're not asking for raises!" For several years, terribly earnest people-- mostly men-- told us ladies that we had to stand up for ourselves and demand the raises we so deserved, and here's how to do it.

A study came out recently that said what everyone with an ounce of sense knew: women do ask for raises, as often as men, they just don't get them. People are running out of excuses as to why women are paid less that don't amount to "sexist society." More importantly, the advice often given-- to change jobs to a better paying salary-- is not only wrong for women, but it's actively detrimental to your later earnings.

The most depressing, I think, were the anecdotes on Shakesville in the comments, about personal experience with being paid less that really puts the numbers into perspective.

I read those comments and all but cried myself to sleep that night. I'm single. I will be single for the foreseeable future. I am content with my lot in life in this regard, but the thought of having to make up for this gap, to pay for myself in a world already arranged around a two-income household, scares the hell out of me. Not only am I one person with many of the expenses of two people-- mortgage, insurance on all sorts of things like my car, house, me-- but I am a person who makes less than a person should. It infuriates me to know that even now-- even twenty years after Connie Willis writes this story that lampoons a bunch of straw feminists (I have never heard "herstory" from feminists, only people making fun of feminists, for example)-- I am still discriminated against for reasons I can't control, for reasons that aren't related to the work I do. That half the population is devalued this way and there doesn't seem to be a thing I or anyone can do about it.

So, in a way, Connie Willis was pretty damn prescient. We've reached the point where we've solved what she sarcastically called "the women's issue," we can stop menstruation, but we still can't get society to pay women wages commensurate with the work done.

*I think the other thing that bummed me out about the story was the "personal sovereignty" issue, because those words pinged in my head like a freaking dog whistle. Since I've studied a lot of constitutional law (from a feminist professor, even), "personal sovereignty" is a concept I've seen a lot of. For example, there was a case regarding the sterilization of repeat criminals, and the Supreme Court said "you can't do that! That's a violation of his human rights!" Long, long before the sterilizations of Native and poor women or other undesirable women ended, because "personal sovereignty" just isn't, in US law, an issue that is applied to women. Human rights are men's rights, in the eyes of the law, and I'm not convinced that's changed yet. /Debbie downer