"They say it is love. We say it is unwaged work. They call it frigid- ity. We call it absenteeism. Every miscarriage is a work accident. Homosexuality and heterosexuality are both working conditions… but homosexuality is workers’ control of production, not the end of work. More smiles? More money. Nothing will be so powerful in destroying the healing virtues of a smile. Neuroses, suicides, de- sexualization: occupational diseases of the housewife."

–Silvia Federici, Wages Against Housework, 1974 (quoted in Human Strike Within The Field Of The Libidinal Economy)

Okay, buying this today.

(via rhizombie)

(Source: f-e-r-a-l)

“hire me! even for free!”

cocothinkshefancy:

Fair Pay For All Work: Why Unpaid Internships are a Feminist Concern

It’s that time of year—across campus, students are checking email and voicemail messages in anticipation of what seems like the golden ticket to success: a chance to commit three months of summer to a low- or unpaid desk job. As we send out cover letters and set up interviews, there’s a low rumble of anxiety: “Hire me! Even for free!”

As many as three-quarters of college students undertake internships before they graduate. As Ross Perlin documents in Intern Nation (recently released in paperback), many of these internships are unpaid, and many are illegal. Interns have no access to benefits and protections. In many cases, they don’t even gain any skills, not to mention any advancement in their career paths.

Unpaid internships are a feminist problem as well as a labor one. Women make up the bulk of unpaid interns: According to one study, as many as 77 percent of unpaid interns nationwide may be female (with some survey bias). The industries women often go into, such as media, fashion, or the arts, tend to rely on freelancers, temps, and other forms of “precarious” and poorly compensated labor, Perlin told me in a phone interview. With unpaid internships, pay disparities between men and women begin before we even graduate from college. Further, according to Phil Gardner of the Collegiate Employment Research Institute, companies sometimes offer two tiers of internships—paid ones to students in male-dominated fields like engineering and unpaid ones to students working in female-heavy fields like human resources. Unpaid interns, in a legal limbo between paid employees and full-time students, are often not even covered by standard workplace protections. In cases of sexual harassment, workplace regulations may simply not apply. As recently as 2008, an intern’s sexual harassment claim was dismissed because Washington D.C.’s anti-discrimination law did not include unpaid interns in its definition of employee.

The disposable nature of the unpaid intern’s position affects the way we view our own worth. Perlin points out in his book that students do not readily think of themselves as workers, even when they are, in fact, logging in hours of paid or unpaid labor. They are likely to justify any experience as an “educational” one—although that experience may be as menial as entering data into a spreadsheet without compensation.

The students I talked with did find that they had acquired skills by working over the summer. One woman told me that her internship had informed the content of her thesis; another said that it helped eliminate arts management as a possible career path. But they acknowledged at the same time seeing no option but to work unpaid, even as they recognized having been overworked considering their lack of compensation. “The thing about theater is you need an unpaid internship to get into [the profession],” said one student who worked as a marketing intern for a theater company in New York. “The people that I want to work for really can’t afford to compensate their interns like private companies can,” said one student who had spent three consecutive summers working unpaid (with a school stipend) in a variety of policy or law positions.

It is obviously not an intern’s responsibility to ensure that the work conditions he or she enters are fair ones. This onus falls on employers, regulators, and schools, which should more clearly inform students of their rights as interns and take a more discerning eye to the postings they offer every year.

But we owe it to ourselves to learn and recognize our rights in every environment we enter, even “educational” and “beneficial” ones. If your internship immediately benefits your employer and does not train you, it may be illegal. Your employer cannot use you as a substitute for regular employees, nor should he or she use it as a “trial period” for future employment. More information can be found on the U.S. Department of Labor website—but be aware that at least one court has rejected these criteria.

This is especially important considering the emphasis on compliance and flexibility in a job market that has become more and more precarious. Unpaid internships don’t just introduce you to an office environment; they teach you to be thankful for whatever work opportunities you may have, even if these opportunities are unfruitful and unfulfilling, as others have noted. It’s similar to what feminist and lecturer in philosophy Nina Power has termed “the feminization of labor:” In an uncertain office environment, we’re all expected to be demure, enthusiastic and flexible—the characteristics of a good secretary.

Work is not good will in exchange for good conscience. Our time and our energy have value. We deserve something more than to work unpaid for no gain—as students, as workers, and as people.

- Madeleine M. Schwartz 

yeah. totally. when i first moved to new york after college a writer at new york magazine offered me an internship, unpaid, but with the promise of a good recommendation. i was too dumb to know that i should do anything possible to make this work, even if that meant also taking a paid job at starbucks. which i did. for a day. they had healthcare! but i couldn’t stand the corporate brainwashing and quit.

anyway, unlike a lot of the kids whose parents were supporting them after college (which may have been less common then), or the kids who just grew up in new york and knew how these things worked (and could live at home and work for free), i just had to suck it up, turn it down, and take a paid job in a related industry.

it took me a few years to get a magazine position and when i finally got to the times i wondered if i could have bypassed all of those years of working at fashion and teen publications—like the guys i worked with at styles had— if i had taken that internship. though the idea of working for free for a male critic at his home still sounds creepy to me. and obviously everything worked out in the end—i wrote a book about a teen magazine, now i’m in grad school, and i’ve had this weird life that i don’t regret.

still, even when i was at fashion magazines i remember people saying “i can’t believe you work here and you didn’t grow up in new york,” meaning, partly, that i was never able to afford the internships that most people with those jobs get before they ever get considered hired for staff jobs. (i would like to remind everyone, for fun, that cat marnell was my intern at teen vogue. and her assistant julie was my student i helped her get an internship once.)

the unpaid internship system totally sucks. though, full disclosure, we had interns help us with our book. we helped them get jobs after.   

(Source: whineandbeer)

"Work is, thus, not just an economic practice. Indeed, that every individual is required to work, that most are expected to work for wages or be supported by someone who does, is a social convention and disciplinary apparatus rather than an economic necessity. That every individual must not only do some work but more often a lifetime of work, that individuals must not only work but become workers is not necessary to the production of social wealth."

Kathi Weeks, The Problem With Work (via cedars)

guess who is gonna stay in bed all day tomorrow with the kindle version (minimum effort) of this long-awaited book until it’s time for my dinner date? 

last night. the usual theorizing and aggrandizing and an epic discussion about the nature of generosity. if they want you to thank them for doing it then they aren’t being generous. if you feel like you have to tell them to thank you for it then it’s already forever ruined. real generosity is always subtle, or maybe it’s obvious, but it isn’t discussed, that’s part of its point. 

then i told aliza that someone had asked me who my ideal man is and i was like, i turned down vogue, i turned down the new york times, when the most popular girls in high school asked me to sit with them at lunch i would smile and say “no thanks.” it has to be more extreme—they could have had power and they really said fuck you to it. for real, body on the line. i guess he’s a community college professor in new mexico? i think i just described mark rudd. it could have been one of those weird metal dudes at the bar tonight, though, i don’t know their backstories. 

cuntext:

J. Lo why are you perfect.

everything, but also when she rips up the “wish you were here” postcard. 

hysteriarama:

TRIGGER WARNING WHATEVER I FEEL GROSS PLZ DON’T TELL MY MOM I’M NOT READY TO HAVE THAT CONVERSATION UGH UGH THIS FEELS LIKE COMING OUT

to contextualize oversharing as a tactic:

- caution, the ways we speak in hushed tones

- being a “shitty person”, carefully measuring our words out to not transgress upon anyone’s hard-won autonomy and safety

- except that that can be silencing, quiet isn’t necessarily safer

- and sometimes we can deal with difficulty, sometimes you just need to say everything that’s bothering you in a space for you won’t be abandoned for it

- not always

- but sometimes

- if we politicize support and care but only in certain contexts then we miss something

- if we support survivors but we don’t support people who just feel bad then we don’t give them space to assert their feeling-bad as something that may be pre-politicized

- for example sometimes it takes us a long time to name rape as rape and violation as violation. the first hint is the feeling bad but when we say the feeling bad we’re being crazy, we’re being hysterical

- in many communities, feeling-bad and oversharing it is only valued and received gently when it’s understood as political

- I’m thinking of all the people I know who would call a rape joke out as fucked but wouldn’t listen to someone vent/participate in a climate of non-venting as normal and healthy and how they are contributing to silence

- because we aren’t finished figuring out how to live together, how to practice intimacy, how to relate, how to resist etc, together

- and feeling awful is relevant

- feeling awful is relevant

- feeling awful is relevant

- I don’t know what it means but it is relevant

How am I to integrate these experiences:

When I was eighteen and had just been assaulted by a friend who I knew and trusted I didn’t call it assault. I was without an adequate language for the mess of grief and betrayal I felt. I did not have the words to call it rape. That came later. At the time I only felt wrecked. (You know this story, why am I telling it to you, you know it)

important. it’s true that it is fucked that certain people think certain things should only be talked about in certain ways in certain spaces. (that is, in the ways and spaces that make them feel comfortable. that is, in therapy, but not an hour after therapy. or ten hours after therapy. therapy or other designated spaces as containers for feelings so they don’t inconvenience other times and spaces and people who only want to be bothered for an hour, once a week, or for however long the meeting lasts.) and the thing about not being abandoned; there are so many ways of abandoning someone. i would also like to support telling a story, or the story, again and again. 

the only way to respond to a decadent crisis is with decadence

• the two days last weekend i spent in bed.
• a drink on monday night with leon, who suggested craft bar, which we were standing next to at the time, but is still impressive in its resistance to graduate school stereotypes, and comes a mere week or two after josh asked, post-brunch, “want to get a glass of champagne at the bar?” more than one. 
• later, drinks at aliza’s to finish up the vodka from the brunch she had for her father. when i arrived she was like “i guess i forgot that most people can’t have brunch in the middle of the day on a wednesday” and i was like “i can have brunch in the middle of the day on a wednesday.”  
• a quick sake that tastes like body fluid last night. i came home early, though, which is uncharacteristic enough to be decadent. 
• made an appointment for a keratin treatment at one of the fanciest salons in new york and said yes when they asked if i want to see my stylist tomorrow, even though that means i can’t change my mind, which, given my current financial situation, edges close to reckless on the willful-reckless scale, but i can’t really function if i’m unhappy with my hair, and now i won’t be unhappy with my hair for a minimum of 6 months.  
• emailed my father and asked for a loan, though before this past christmas i had never taken money from my parents, not as a loan or a gift, during any part of my adulthood, i left the few holiday-related checks uncashed, even during those three months i was a magazine assistant, since i did not want to be indebted to anyone, materially or psychologically, but medical bills change things, and i already spent several weeks being quietly taken care of in a huge house, plus that trip to florida, so it’s a little late for that kind of pride, better to productively and necessarily test my own boundaries.
• got my nails done. overtipped, always. 
• plans in tribeca tomorrow night. 
• decided that it might be an axiomatic truth that the only way to respond to a decadent crisis (2010-2012) is with decadence. on friday i’m having dinner at a friend’s who i think is a real marxist, and who cooked an extravagant organic meal of pork chops and salad and french fries with lots of wine and dessert the last time i was at his apartment, and i think i should run this theory by him. in related news: the next thing i want to read is capital but it’s over a thousand pages, so maybe the timing is wrong, and i’ll just look at the annotated copy of a thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia sitting next to me. 

"i didn't intend my gift to be flirtatious, but i did intend for it to be inappropriately intimate."

bb’s essay “i wish you love” is everything about everything, ie.: 

• she corresponded with someone who spammed her 
• she says that her ukelele cover songs “…got a little out of control. i decided it had become a conceptual art piece.” this is how my conceptual art piece happened, too.  
• “i tend to play dumb with these kinds of things” re: flirting 
• “but let’s face it, i was raising the stakes…“ 
• like and related to magic, generosity, and illusions, i have a lot of feelings about gifts (and gifts and gifts and gifts) and bb is always crucial on gift exchange: “really, I didn’t have any erotic aspirations in regard to mel, but the question does bring me back to lewis hyde and the gift. ’in the world of the gift,’ hyde writes, ‘you not only can have your cake and eat it too, you can’t have your cake unless you eat it. gift exchange and erotic life are connected in this regard.’ the implications that hyde derives from this are deep, and have great resonance in the current political moment. ‘scarcity and abundance,’ he tells us, ‘have as much to do with the form of exchange as with how much material wealth is at hand.’ wealth needs to circulate. for hyde, that’s an inherently erotic proposition. the beauty of the gift is that, like sex, it confounds our sense of what it means to give pleasure and to receive it.” 
• “how many weirdos are out there for you to fall in love with as they croon into their laptops?” 
• the best description of all that is good about performance studies right here: “but in the best of all possible worlds, the recipient feels compelled to do something with the gift.” yes, totally, it is all about doing, and gifts, and also about the best of all possible worlds.  

hannah wilke, laundry lint, (c.o.’s), 1971-73

this is the one i’ve been thinking about the most over the last many months. i love the title’s parenthetical and that the title’s parenthetical is a parenthetical and the number of years spent on this particular performance.

in my ongoing series of irrelevant one-woman protests, i have long (long, long) refused to even glance at a claes oldenburg, because whatever privacy concerns, fuck that guy. i’ll look at his beautiful sculpted laundry lint, though.

my other two favorite wilkes are here and here. her conflation of feminist and romantic despair always tugs deeply at my heartstrings.  

sl33pcr33p:

Fiona Apple Get Gone

How can I deal with this, if he won’t get with this 
How’m I gonna heal from this; he won’t admit to it 
Nothing to figure out; I gotta get him out 
It’s time the truth was out that he don’t give a shit about me

omg why i have i never listened to this song before this moment? the exorcism worked, it’s just that this song is so good. ps. you should bite him, fiona. 

(Source: persephonette)