[lbo-talk] Servant culture

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

At 1:43 PM -0400 8/12/03, Doug Henwood wrote:
>>You mean Barbara Bergmann employs cleaners, nannies, and other 
>>servants or that she has statistical evidence that confirms that 
>>feminism caused a larger proportion of American families to hire 
>>cleaners, nannies, and other servants than before?
>
>Bergmann proudly said she'd been using maids for 40 years. She's 
>quite explicitly, and often amusingly, bourgeois and proud of it. 
>She doesn't like it when feminists get too wrapped up in class. She 
>actually criticized a piece in The Nation that advocated a federally 
>funded windmill program to generate clean power as being a 
>transparent ploy to get the votes of white male unionized sheetmetal 
>workers. Several femecon'ers denounced me for having brought up 
>Ehrenreich's argument (and it is an argument, despite your 
>parenthetical sneer):
>
>>I'm interested in finding out if Ehrenreich or anyone else can 
>>provide evidence to support her argument (if it can be called an 
>>"argument").
>
>My crime was citing a feminist to criticize feminism.

Wouldn't Barbara Bergmann and those who have her incomes hire maids 
even if they were not feminists?  Or would they refuse to do so if 
they were not feminists?

In any case, Barbara Ehrenreich isn't talking about this or that 
feminist, or even a minority of feminists.  She's talking about 
feminists in general and impacts of feminism on production trends 
(e.g., trends in employment in personal service production) and 
consumption habits (e.g., purchasing cleaning services).  For her 
generalization to stand, she would have to prove a causal relation 
between an increase in feminism and feminists on one hand and an 
increase in employment of cleaners and nannies on the other hand in 
the sense of the former causing the latter.
-- 
Yoshie

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