Estelle and the rigors of an uncertain labor market
I’ve been accused of having “femi-nazi” tendencies and of underestimating the influence of feminism. One reason I believe feminism is inherently limited in its influence and appeal is that it tends to focus on female careers. The simple fact of the matter is that the majority of females, like the majority of males, neither have nor aspire anything as highfalutin’ as a career. Both women and men in the labor market are likely to have employment more accurately described as jobs.
Moreover, even when feminism does not focus on careers, it inevitably still focuses on jobs in the paid labor market. The truth is that the paid labor market can be both unsavory and unkind to many individuals of both sexes even apart from questions of discrimination on the basis of gender.
I put up a previous blog called Scott’s Slipping Down Life. Some readers thought the most important part of it was the question of Scott’s sexuality, i.e., whether this man who often is supported by other men and prostitutes himself to them is really heterosexual (as he claims), bisexual, or homosexual. What I found far more important is that he is a man approaching forty who not only has nothing worthy of the title career but has trouble holding down even humble jobs.
Is Scott’s trouble due to having to compete on an equal basis with women in the labor market?
Has affirmative action for women prevented him from earning a living because the jobs he would have had are going to females to make a good impression on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission?
In a word, No. When Scott works normal jobs, he almost invariably works the sort of strength intensive jobs in which he competes for the most part with other men rather than affirmative action amazons. He easily gets these jobs as he has very well developed upper-body musculature. He easily loses them, not because a Wonder Woman appears on the scene but because he shows up drunk or doesn’t bother to show up.
Scott has a weak relationship to the labor market for reasons that have nothing at all to do with feminism. Heck, in one small, even trivial way, feminism may even have helped Scott at one point! Playgirl magazine began publishing at about the time the second wave of the feminist movement was making a lot of waves and was sometimes touted as a magazine for liberated women although I understand that roughly half of its readership (viewership?) is in fact male. Many years ago, a buddy of Scott’s sent a photograph of his handsome buns to that magazine and Playgirl published the picture. Scott may have received a little cash from that.
I have a close female friend who is also often buffeted by the rigors of the labor market and, once again, feminism is neither here nor there although many of those feminists who glorify the nine-to-five job could, and should, take a reality check from her experience and that of similarly situated women and men.
When I first met the friend I will call Estelle, she worked as a telemarketer for a company that sold carpet cleaning. She showed me a copy of the script she read. It consisted of a couple of sentences.
Not too long after that, she no longer had the job although I can’t recall whether she quit or was fired.
I do remember that she left one telemarketing job because she got into a hassle with the supervisor who was upset because crabs had been found on the toilet and was accusing various workers there of having transmitted them.
At one point, she had a telemarketing job in which she called businesses up to sell them postage meters. I wanted to help her with her sales and asked my boss at The Caribbean Star if he would like one. He already had one. I phoned my ex-husband, a professor at Tulane University with the same question and got the same answer.
A depressed Estelle soon told me she had been fired because she had not made enough sales.
Her mood was brighter when she informed me that a dry-cleaning company had hired her. She was upbeat after being on the job for a few days. It was a welcome break from telemarketing because “I don’t have to deal with crabby people all day long.”
Not long after that, she was complaining about the job. She has back problems and being on her feet so much aggravated them. “You have to go real fast,” she added. “My supervisor has terrible breath.”
She quit after a couple of weeks.
I sent Estelle some cash to help her make ends meet.
She got a job selling magazine subscriptions but lost it after a few days because she could not make enough sales.
Estelle worked in a warehouse doing assembly and held the job for about a month. She did find at the assembly and liked it just fine but the warehouse finished the project it was doing and laid all of its workers off.
She got another telemarketing job and did extremely well, even earning a Telemarketer of the Month Award, but then the company closed up.
What is to be learned from Estelle’s experience? Paid work is frequently not the least bit exalted or exalting. As Arianna Huffington astutely noted in her first book, The Female Woman, “There is nothing glamorous about being a file clerk – even at Ms. magazine.”
Doctors, lawyers, accountants, and others may have many years and extraordinary resources go into developing the talents and skills for their jobs but in much of the labor market the training consists of a brief “put it together like this” or being handed a telemarketing script.
Everyday jobs are not about million dollar deals and shining in the spotlight but may be about one supervisor griping about the state of the office toilet seat and another offending a worker with severe halitosis.
Perhaps even worse, the labor market can be a dispiriting place in which more time is spent looking for a job than working at it.
Nothing glamorous about it.
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Stumble It!
December 8th, 2007 at 7:36 am
I see what you mean Denise. Jobs do suck for the most part. Therefore, feminism is not pervasive.
December 8th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Denise: I’ve been accused of having “femi-nazi” tendencies and of underestimating the influence of feminism. One reason I believe feminism is inherently limited in its influence and appeal is that it tends to focus on female careers.”
fourthwire: In fact, you DO have feminazi tendencies, Denise…. and if you believe otherwise, you’re living in a large African river. Frankly, your own sense of logic is amusingly blind, and when presented with logic that doesn’t fit neatly into your little world-view, you take the path that so many others take: you refuse to understand.
And you’re almost certainly an apologist for the feminazis, but you would have to show quite a bit more honesty to accept that point than you have demonstrated to date.
And so I usually don’t take your views and perspectives about men, women, men’s rights, and the ACTUAL nature of feminism any more seriously than I take Teri Stoddard’s.
In fact, to start to pick apart your latest episode of denial, you are only fooling yourself if you believe that “feminism is inherently limited in its influence and appeal” because it “tends to focus on female careers”.
In fact, feminism has a multifaceted agenda, which includes FAR MORE than simply giving women a preponderance of entitlements and privileges concerning careers.
To be sure, feminazis do not wage their war against men and boys in isolation. They work through courts, legislatures, corporations, academia, public schools, the mainstream media, entertainment, and other institutions.
Feminazis are typically hard at work ensuring that men receive no reproductive choice, in case you haven’t noticed. Instead of men having reproductive choice, they are criminalized as “deadbeat dads”. Do you actually believe that the feminazis don’t have their hands in men’s lack of reproductive choice and the increasing criminalization of men? Ever hear of someone called Janet Reno?
Feminazis have been doing their dead-level best to destroy heterosexual marriages in case you have been asleep over the past several decades, by attacking men’s rights to be with their own families, by making divorce as painful and cruel to men as possible, and by making the act of marriage as risky as possible for men… through their lobbying, their legislative efforts, and through their infiltration of the court systems.
Feminazis have turned the subject of domestic violence into a cruel farce where men are always the brutal aggressors and women are always the victim, in case you haven’t noticed.
Feminazis have fought against any legislation that provides men with protection against paternity fraud, while you were out.
Feminazis have made divorce laws so fraught with misandry that increasing numbers of men are turning their backs on marriage…. with severe consequences for the future of Western nations.
Feminazis have fought to keep women like Mary Winkler out of prison after she murdered her husband, but fought to keep men like William Hetherington in prison, after his wife falsely claimed spousal rape against him.
And I could go on providing other aspects where feminazis have fought a war against men, boys, and families, but you ought to be getting the message by now that your statement that the feminazis tended to focus primarily on careers is most amusingly………. pure nonsense.
For someone whose blogs show on a forum such as MND, you apparently do not spend much time actually reading the works of other bloggers, men like Marc Rudov, Dave Usher, Stephen Baskerville, Carey Roberts, and others, on those subjects where the insidious, toxic effects of feminism has corrupted and destroyed far more of our society than simply men’s rights and opportunities in the job market.
Wake up. You’re fooling yourself. And only yourself.
As the feminazis provided the legislative clout to enable women to divorce profitably, have their husbands kicked out onto the street, keep the children, and rape the ex-husbands financially, they helped to create a society where women, particularly unattractive women, could expect to earn their own living.
Are men being displaced from the labor market by women? Undoubtedly this is the case to some extent.
Women are protected as a “minority” in the workplace, provided with preferential hiring, special privileges and entitlements, and can pretty much have male competitors fired or reprimanded at will, unless those male competitors behave very, very cautiously (such as simply not speaking with women on the job unless required to do so).
As for your homosexual friend, Scott – you were the one who brought up his sexual preference; therefore it became an issue of discussion. All that you had to do was to withhold those details…. but you did not. So apparently his sexual preference was important to you as well.
You will undoubtedly continue enjoying your chronic state of denial about the actual nature of feminism, most likely because you prefer not having to consider how feminists helped change the life of William Hetherington forever, and ensure that Mary Winkler is free to enjoy time with her children while Matthew Winkler’s body is stinking up a coffin.
Your feminazi tendencies are easy to spot, Denise. Those manifest themselves whenever I press you about your opinion on equal reproductive, criminal, civil, and social rights for men, after providing you with some fairly basic examples of our society’s present state of gender apartheid.
You usually waffle and need “more time” or a “lengthier blog” to consider those cases where the actual nature of the feminazis is glaringly apparent to anyone of modest intelligence or better and a willingness to understand and accept reality for what it is.
December 8th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
Denise, Denise, what ARE we to do with you. What you say about the drugery of most jobs may be true but to say that Feminism is predominantly -or ‘focused’ – about career is nonsense. **”One reason I believe feminism is inherently limited in its influence and appeal is that it tends to focus on female careers.” **
Fourthwire puts it MUCH more truthfully. Remember Truth, Denise? To even say that feminism is limited in its influence has the perception of a blind person. Or a dissembler.
My criticism comes from someone who likes your wordcraft ability and unusual perception regarding intimate human affairs; one who is prepared to sit with you with a cuppa and enjoy the company of a seemingly interesting woman. But Writers owe a tribute to Truth, Denise. You are stealing from it here rather than paying it. Distorting by claiming a falsity, a ‘focus’ that isn’t. It smacks of feminist mendacity. I splutter in my cuppa.
“I’ve been accused of having “femi-nazi” tendencies and of underestimating the influence of feminism”
Guess why?
Not hard, is it?
Denise, you can do a lot better than this.
December 9th, 2007 at 12:26 am
amfortas said,
Denise, Denise, what ARE we to do with you. What you say about the drugery of most jobs may be true but to say that Feminism is predominantly -or ‘focused’ – about career is nonsense. **”One reason I believe feminism is inherently limited in its influence and appeal is that it tends to focus on female careers.” **
Fourthwire puts it MUCH more truthfully. Remember Truth, Denise? To even say that feminism is limited in its influence has the perception of a blind person. Or a dissembler.
My criticism comes from someone who likes your wordcraft ability and unusual perception regarding intimate human affairs; one who is prepared to sit with you with a cuppa and enjoy the company of a seemingly interesting woman. But Writers owe a tribute to Truth, Denise. You are stealing from it here rather than paying it. Distorting by claiming a falsity, a ‘focus’ that isn’t. It smacks of feminist mendacity. I splutter in my cuppa.
(Denise) amfortas, when the second wave of the feminist movement first broke back in the 1970s, there were a couple of feminist talk-show hosts on the radio. One of them said, “We think every woman should have a career just like every man should have a career.” This seemed like nonsense to me then and even more so now. Many men do not have careers.
Leaving that aside, amfortas, what do you think of the greater points in my blog concerning how for many people — both men and women — the labor market is not glamorous but a dispiriting place? Not only can paid work itself be onerous but it is particularly depressing to often be in that limbo called “looking for work” and that is where people like Scott and Estelle so often are.
December 9th, 2007 at 5:32 am
Denise asks: “”Leaving that aside, amfortas, what do you think of the greater points in my blog concerning how for many people — both men and women — the labor market is not glamorous but a dispiriting place?”"
I have already conceded, m’dear that many – if not most – jobs are a drudge, rather than a career. – “What you say about the drugery of most jobs may be true but to say that Feminism is predominantly -or ‘focused’ – about career is nonsense. ”
I can also concede that many folk shirk and compalin and consistently fail at even the smallest demand placed on their time, skills and effort, and others with a sound attitude often find themselves on a treadmill of finding adequate work that provides.
But, Denise, you started your article by saying “One reason I believe feminism is inherently limited in its influence and appeal is that it tends to focus on female careers. ” The ‘inherent’ limitation is just not so. Feminism doesn’t focus just on careers. Feminism has made so much destructive inroad into our society in so many areas that to talk of limitation is naive.
There are consequences to your initial statement. People infer. May I suggest that as a writer it behoves you to anticipate what people might so easily infer from what you say, even when you don’t intend to imply it. There is a specific audience on MND.
December 9th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
Thank you, Amfortas, for providing your well-timed, diplomatic, and thoughtful comments.
I was pleased to read your “kinder, gentler” approach to attempting to educate Denise, if for no other reason than the likelihood that her apparent naiveté would have led to my increasing impatience with her….. with the eventual intercession by Mike LaSalle on behalf of his blogger or at least his “filter” effectively ending this thread.
It’s inconceivable to me at least, that Denise can be as well-read as she is on other subjects, yet consistently lack an ability to research anything as basic as the actual nature of feminism, given the preponderance of experts on that particular topic among the other bloggers frequenting MND.
Personally, I believe that it would be difficult to NOT absorb at least the fundamentals of that particular topic for anyone taking the time to browse through a selection of Glenn Sacks’ glimpses into the nine kinds of hell that they wreak on Western societies.
Perhaps I am wrong, and Denise is simply one of the more naive bloggers on MND. Or as I have written before, with such a glaring lack of courtesy, “as thick as a brick”…….
But I believe that her apparent ignorance is willful ignorance about the actual nature of feminism, and other men’s rights activist-related issues.
Perhaps feminism, as is the case for so many other women….. is her “golden calf”, with the misery inflicted on men and children a minor price in comparison to the wealth of entitlements and privileges that women reap.
And if that is indeed the case, then Denise has still not learned the value of intellectual honesty, at least when presenting her opinions to a forum including a number of reasonably intelligent and relatively well-informed men.
December 9th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
Fourthwire, why do we persist? I think it may be that Denise has such a bright mind and such insight into the minutae of events. I certainly enjoy reading her crime thingos and personal reminiscences. (Please excuse me talking about you rather than to you, Denise. I will cease here).
Denise, we have all noticed the recalcitrance in you. I don’t see it as deliberate. I see your lapses in regard to some issues, particularly feminism and its damage, as a genuine blind spot. I have tried to speak with you about this before.
But it goes deeper. When someone points out a clear and obvious issue in the words and phrases you use – which have meaning – it is often the case that you skate right over it without even noticing it – as above. You seem not to see the meanings that are likely to be inferred by the ordinary reader, let alone the brighter ones. You are a strange case. I really like you, Denise, as do many others here who take the time to read what you generously give us. You have a strange mentation which I put down to the ‘troubles’ you sometimes speak of. It produces, as a side effect perhaps, a very likable woman but with some inexplicable gaps in insight. An mild autism. I’d still have a cuppa with you though.