Ecofeminism

Recently, the French magazine Marianne had an article entitled, "Quand l'écologie renvoie les femmes à la maison" or, if you prefer, "When ecologie sends women back to the home." Thomas actually started reading the article first, and then brought it to me and said, "Here, read this sentence:"

On se met à faire son pain soi-même, on bat le linge avec des noix de lavage (à l'efficacité proche de zéro.) Certaine adoptent la moon cup... They start baking their own bread, they wash their clothes with soapnuts (with an efficiency of almost zero). Some of them start using a moon cup...

We looked at each other an laughed. You see, I bake our bread, we've used soapnuts in the past, I'm an ardent fan of the mooncup... I was intrigued to read the whole article later. The gist of it is this:

The author rejoices that questions of ecology are affecting our everyday decisions more and more. However, she (because it's written by a woman) expresses alarm that on a practical level, this trend touches mostly women, and that the result often is that women are abandoning the workplace. It's true that if you're going to (gasp) breastfeed and (ugh) use washable diapers and (the horror) bake your own bread, you don't really have time to have a full-time job on top of that. The author qualifies this as a "return to the Stone Age", saying that we younger women are adopting practices that our mothers and grandmothers were more than happy to leave behind with the invention of disposable diapers, powdered infant formula, etc.

It's funny because Marianne is a left-leaning magazine, politically and socially speaking. And in France, the trend described is most common among left-leaning people. The magazine is adressing a trend within its own camp, not pointing fingers at something outside its own sphere. This is different from in the States. When I think of breastfeeding and cloth diapers, I picture a group of good conservative Christian women gathered for prayer, coffee, and a coupon exchange. Oh, I guess the good Mormon women do that, too. Here, that's often not the case. The moms I find with whom I can compare cloth diaper styles often have radically different ideas than I do on certain social issues.

I think that the author makes 3 erroneous assumptions. First, she seems to believe that any woman in her right might will and should feel more fulfilled in the workplace than at home. Faced with these women who choose otherwise, she is forced either to blame the workplace (women still are denied the best jobs) or to look for a psychological reason to explain this behavior. And she quotes psychologist after psychologist who talk about an idealization of the natural state, rebellion against how they were raised by their own mothers, and so forth and so on.

Second, she paints a black-and-white picture where, one generation ago, every woman went joyfully off to work every day thanking her lucky stars for the invention of powdered formula, disposable diapers, and babysitters that allow her to do so. This picture may have been more true in France than in the States (France has historically the lowest rate of brestfeeding in the world, for example), but even here the situation is not so clear-cut. I for one, having been breastfed and having worn cloth diapers (not that I remember), find myself much more with a desire to copy my own mother. I'm sure a those same psychologists could have a heyday with that, too.

Third, and perhaps equal in importance to the first assumption, is the idea that any marriage will probably end in divorce. She decries a woman putting herself in a financially dependant situation, reasoning that she at all times needs to be preparing to find herself alone. In other words, she must always be preparing her own divorce. I guess that that mentality is among the best ways to assure that your marriage WILL end in a divorce.

What's more, the author seems convinced by an economic model where I MUST work to pay for the diapers I don't have time to wash, the milk I don't have time to give, and the bread I don't have time to bake. I'm sorry, but there have always been women who are not convinced by this and there always will be.

Thomas is planning on writing a letter to the editor that will begin, "I confess, I am a jerk." Because he's obviously trodding in my rights and oppressing me.

I guess I'll sign of with this thought: "Help, I'm being oppressed!"