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About that “strike” . . .

About that “strike” . . .

Last updated on: March 8, 2017 at 12:32 pm by Jane the Actuary

About that “strike” . . . 2017-03-08T12:32:55-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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Trump-WomensMarch_2017-top-1510075_(32409710246)

So there’s a strike today. Did’ja notice? Yeah, me neither.

Seriously, though, this is not a “women’s strike.”

Here’s what women are being urged to “strike from”:

Paid jobs Emotional Labor Childcare Diapers Housework Cooking Sweeping Laundry Dishes Errands Groceries Fake smiles Flirting Makeup Laundry Shaving

Which is a peculiar view of women’s place in the world. It places them as adversaries against men, and, in particular, as adversaries against their husbands/the fathers of their children. What does it mean for a mother to “strike” against changing diapers? If she’s married/cohabitating, maybe she has a conversation with her spouse/partner about how the work in the household is divided — but I don’t think this is what organizers have in mind. And for single moms? Are they to drop the baby off with Dad for the day, regardless of his relationship with mom and baby?

And here’s the platform:

An End to Gender Violence.
All women deserve a life free of violence, both domestic and institutional. Working women, trans women, and women of color face the worst aspects of direct institutionalized violence, be it in the form of police brutality, immigration raids, or day-to-day violence in the form of state policies that create and consolidate poverty in our communities. Against all such state and personal violence, we demand that our lives and labor be treated with dignity for they form the basis of this society.

Police brutality? Sure, as long as we don’t exaggerate its prevalence. Immigration enforcement? Not violence. “State policies that create and consolidate poverty”? Not violence. And none of these are “gender violence.” The one item which could be labeled as “gender violence,” domestic violence, hardly seems of interest with only a cursory mention.

Reproductive Justice for All
We stand for full reproductive justice for all women, cis and trans. We want complete autonomy over our bodies and full reproductive freedom. We demand free abortion without conditions and affordable healthcare for all, irrespective of income, race or citizenship status. The history of sterilization of women of color in this country goes hand in hand with the attack on abortion rights. Reproductive justice for us means the freedom to choose both whether to have children and when to have them.

So I’m a bit puzzled as to what “reproductive rights” would mean for “trans” women. The free abortion demand is about par for the course at this point for this sort of platform. I’m a bit surprised to see the line about sterilization in here, given that this no longer occurs, unless this is actually a reference to pushing poor women onto implants and IUDs rather than providing supports for parenting? But if this is what they meant, this is an awfully vague way of expressing it.

Labor Rights
Labor rights are women’s rights because women’s paid labor in the workplace and unpaid labor at home is the basis of wealth in our society. All over the world millions of women are forced to work for slave wages in dangerous sweatshops and other ‘hell factories’ that kill thousands every year. In the United States 46% of union members are women and a majority of them are women of color. All women, irrespective of citizenship status, sexuality or race, must have equal pay for equal work, $15 minimum wage, including for caregivers, free universal child care, paid maternity leave, sick leave, paid family leave and the freedom to organize a fighting union in the workplace. As working women who hold up half the sky we refuse to be divided over the kind of labor we perform, whether skilled or unskilled, formal or informal, sex work and domestic work.

Here we go: $15 minimum wage, government-paid child care, and various sorts of paid leaves. Funny, they forgot about fully-government-funded care for other sorts of caregivers, e.g., for the disabled and the elderly.

Full Social Provisioning
Decades of neoliberal policies have seen the violent dismantling of social provisioning that has affected all women. While our working lives have been made increasingly precarious, social services that might have provided a safety net against such harsh exploitation of labor, have either been attacked or removed completely. Against these attacks, we demand an expansive restructuring of the American welfare system to serve the needs of the majority, such as universal healthcare, robust unemployment and social security benefits, and free education for all. We demand that the welfare system work to support our lives rather than shame us when we access such rights.

Free, free, free. To be sure, they don’t spell out the desired level of generosity of social welfare benefits, but one presumes that level is “high.”

For an Antiracist and Anti-imperialist Feminism
Against the open white supremacists in the current government and the far right and anti-Semites they have given confidence to, we stand for an uncompromising anti-racist and anti-colonial feminism. This means that movements such as Black Lives Matter, the struggle against police brutality and mass incarceration, the demand for open borders and for immigrant rights and for the decolonization of Palestine are for us the beating heart of this new feminist movement. We want to dismantle all walls, from prison walls to border walls, from Mexico to Palestine.

Here it is! Open borders. Anti-Israel. (“decolonization of Palestine” is not about statehood for the West Bank and Gaza, but refers to the idea that Jews arriving in the area that is now Israel were European colonizers.)

Environmental Justice for All
We believe that both social inequality and environmental degradation are due to an economic system that puts profit before people. We demand instead that the earth’s natural resources be preserved and sustained to enrich our lives and those of our children. The struggle of Water Protectors against the Dakota Access Pipe Line inspires us. The emancipation of women and the emancipation of the planet must go hand in hand.

“Emancipation of the planet”? The planet is not sentient, so cannot be imprisoned and emancipated. And there is no relationship between “environmental degradation” and the equality of women.

The bottom line, as shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, is that this is not a platform about equality for women, but a very specific, very radical, political platform.

Count me — well, out.

image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Trump-WomensMarch_2017-top-1510075_(32409710246).jpg

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