Kelley wrote:
>
>
> Her answer to the problem isn't to have everyone stop using domestics,
> remember. She is speaking _only_ to feminists who hire domestics.
I have nothing to say on this part of the argument _as far as Ehrenreich is concerned_, because I haven't read her book. _On this list_, however, it isn't really Ehrenreich's position that is at issue but the position taken by various people supporting what is (wrongly or rightly) alleged to be her position. Also (and again it is the position of participants in this thread, not Ehrenrich's position, that is in question), I'm wondering if the somewhat pickwickian category of "feminists who hire domestics" constitutes a very useful topic of discussion. I simply don't know who they are and what their individual positions are. Or to put it otherwise, I would intgerpret "feminists who hire domestics" in nominalist terms: it doesn't name anything real ("real" as used by either Aristotelians or Marxists).
> She
> thinks it's a bad idea because she thinks it drives a wedge between
> professional/managerial women who are feminists and women who do manual
> labor. I don't think this is the problem she makes it out to be, but I
> do agree with her that feminists have had to deal with the fact that
> those who speak and write about feminist issues have tended to reflect
> the interests and concerns of professional/managerial women, often
> excluding the voices of lesbians, poor women, women who do manual
> labor, women of color in the US, and third world women.
Probably this introduces an issue which simply has to be hashed in terms of practice and isn't amenable to elist discusssion. I let my subscription to _Radical America_ lapse shortly after this article appeared. And it does not seem to me that "poor people" is a useful category either.
Within the kind of movement you discussed in your exchange with Justin these kind of concerns become live concerns. Within the present context they only contribute to endless arguments about "lifestyle radicalism." Even if one agrees with either Ehrenreich or her (friendly)interpreters on this list, it is an agreement that goes nowhere, since action on it (at the present time) can only occur in the isolation of the individual household.
Carrol
>
> Kelley
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk