(no subject)

[damselfish]

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

Comments

[hypnerotomachia]

I loved "Even the Queen"--actually the whole anthology; I ran across it in college as a fundamentalist in the 90s, and it's one of the books I credit with waking me up--for the exact reasons it depressed you. And yes, it depressed me too. It put a name to things I'd never realized or thought about before reading it. I loved it for the same reason I loved "The Women's Room." They singed me, frosted me, torqued me. The women in "Queen" never even think that maybe their cycles' ending was just another tool of men to sell them something, make them do something, remove them further from themselves, like that big subset of women who don't feel human unless they get Brazilian waxes and fake tans and Botox injections. "Queen" sounds so much less outrageous now than it did in the 90s before reality TV, but back then it was absolutely stunning.

All we can do is continue to ask the hard questions, elect the people who'll respect our rights, and demand justice; the majority will never willingly surrender power in any respect (religion, women's rights, gay rights, name it) and will have to be pulled and carried every step of the way. I wish I had answers or ideas for you, but all I can say is that I commiserate and hope you don't let this steamroll you. It sounds like you're studying law, and you sound like you will be great at it. Good luck. (Found you on latest... hope that's okay?)

[damselfish]

Found you on latest... hope that's okay?

Definitely! Especially when the response is so awesome and thoughtful, it gave me a lot to chew on.

I actually googled Connie Willis + feminism because I was wondering if I was having some kneejerk humorless feminist response to the story, given that my friend who recommended it to me found the story "groundbreaking" and thought I'd love the humor. She's older than I am (she read it in high school) and your response along with hers makes me think the story doesn't speak so well to someone of my generation as yours or hers. Because when I read it, "[t]he women in "Queen" never even think that maybe their cycles' ending was just another tool of men" read as a mockery to me, because of the Cyclist who cried "patriarchy patriarchy!" and the women claiming to have chosen to stop their periods for all sorts of "periods are gross and suck" reasons, which totally removes the decision from the patriarchy and places it in the hands of women. They had their reasons, they did it, reasons that "the patriarchy" can't wrap its head around. I've seen a lot of discussions just like that online-- women want to stop their periods because of hormone swings, because every reason listed in the story-- but it was framed in a body-hating way that made it hard to appreciate the absurdism when I hear Periods Are Gross Amirite all the time. Then they go and enforce it on their daughters which sent the whole world to creepytown.

So in some ways, I still found it pretty outrageous. Probably because it skirted close to Poe's law-- both sides sounded like the caricatures I often see mocked so the characters themselves didn't come across as particularly absurd to me because I'd seen them before, but it was outrageous for positing a society where people don't even know what a period is (and I had such a visceral reaction to the idea of shunts omg I don't even know where to start). But that's probably because I grew up at a later time, after women like Willis had broken into the SF sphere and laid the groundwork for women like me, and some of the frames of reference no longer exist for me to really "get" it the way women a generation previous to me did. I did get to decide to stop having a natural period and hormone swings-- for a decade now!-- and, frankly, it is such a tiny issue in the grand scheme of things. But Willis was right that a lot of people want to sit down and declare feminism's work done: women can work they can vote, what else do they want? God, they're so uppity.

And I will be more than willing to admit that I may have interrogated the text from the wrong perspective and was just too grossed out by "shunts" to give the story a fair shake.

the majority will never willingly surrender power in any respect

That is such a concise way of summing up the problem, but also depressing. Because it's true; being nice at the majority has never historically worked for anyone.