A nice chalupa is slowly cooking in the crockpot, Kipp is playing in the backyard with his friend Riley, and I have had a few moments to re-read (but much more attentively this time) Caitlin Flanagan’s “How Serfdom Saved the Women’s Movement.” Michelle reminded me of Flanagan’s article in my post below and now seemed a good time to apply some critical thought to the piece--although I am a little late in the game here. (I remember thinking, back in February, that Miki had a fascinating reaction to Flanagan's article, but that I, myself, conked out in bed late one night trying to read the meandering thing.)
Mentally and physically refreshed this morning, however, I read the article carefully and started to write vehemently, but I brought myself up short by the realization that I do not know one single woman who has a nanny. I don’t know any of these supposedly professional-class working women who are getting ahead on the backs of their third-world nannies. I don’t know any of these supposedly affluent stay-at-home mothers who are indulging in their adult lives and feeding their famished egos thanks to the efforts of their underpaid domesticas.
It’s not my world, and while I’m not saying that such a world doesn’t exist—Flanagan apparently lives in one—I scarcely feel able to comment intelligently on something I haven’t experienced, not even on the pages of a blog.
Sure, it makes me feel superior to imagine that these sort of morally repugnant straw-women exist, but once I’ve snapped out of such fairy-tale thinking, I try to resist making generalizations. Every individual situation is so varied, so nuanced; it all comes down to a question of emphasis and motives and those are difficult, hidden things to judge, if it is that judging is required.
So, I’m not going to knock down straw women here and now. I’ll let Flanagan do that as it is one of her strong suits. But there are a few issues she brings up in “Serfdom” that I have experienced and would like to comment on, not least of which is her definition of domestic tasks as “shit work".
Time to check the shit, I mean, the chalupa.
4:01:13 PM 
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