Thanks for saying all that, I know I for one definitely relate. I remember that horrid gut wrenching pressure of trying to juggle. But isn’t that one of the things we need to be discussing as women?! Why are we not asking for a world where our feelings about needing to be there for our kids are accommodated not penalised like trashpony ’s experience.I also have contradictory feelings about those years. My preference would have been to work part-time but finances didn't allow it. So I went back to work full-time after my statutory 3 months of maternity leave. At that time, feminism hadn't yet visited the ElizabethofYork household, so as well as working full-time, I also did all the domestic stuff and all the after-work childcare including getting up two or three times every night.
It was a torrid time. I remember sitting in my front room one night with a crying baby, thinking about work the next day, and wondering why the fuck I ever wanted children.
Thanks for explaining thatJust a little more on interpellation to - hopefully - demystify the term a little.
An example of how interpellation might function in the discussion here is looking at the role of advertising. (Judith Williamson's Decoding Advertisements is a great book on this, if dated)
Obviously advertising's primary function is to sell us stuff.
...but equally obviously the vast majority of commodities aren't sold/bought merely on a utilitarian basis (most stuff functions as well as most other simialr stuff in this regard).
So, the problem for advertising is how to get us to "choose" their product over other over comparable products. Cars, banks and fragrances are typical examples. They portray an idealised image of what they intend the customer to identify with (or to aspire to identify with) and through the act of consumption we can then identify as that idealised image (literally sometimes, "I'm more of Mac user personally..."
Of course, everybody doesn't buy everything, and wouldn't even if they could afford to. So, that moment of i"dentification with" that allows for the transformation into "identification as" is where I would locate interpellation as occuring in this secnario.
This only works if we have structures of socially understood meaning that we can use to read these idealised images, and the advertisers can use to write these idealised images. This where semiotics (to use another bit of jargon) comes in. There is a language of signs and signifiers that we are immersed in from birth, all around us, all the time (the "Spectacle" as Debord argued). Look at that "products for fragile masculinity" thread for lots of examples of crude signifiers of masculinity.
This language of signs includes (but is not limited to) the blue/pink binary, male and female roles and archetypes omnipresent in the media. It includes stuff like baby changing facilities being in the womens' toilets, not the mens'. That may be changing now, but we've all grown up with that message. It includes images of domestic labour almost always being carried out by women (and when it is by men, it's presented as "not quite right"), all that everyday sexism stuff too. You'll all have loads more examples I'm sure.
So, yeah, that's interpellation (and beyond) from my pov.
Thanks for saying all that, I know I for one definitely relate. I remember that horrid gut wrenching pressure of trying to juggle. But isn’t that one of the things we need to be discussing as women?! Why are we not asking for a world where our feelings about needing to be there for our kids are accommodated not penalised like trashpony ’s experience.
I almost understand this. Can you just say it again in a slightly different way once more? (maybe with an example?)^^ the above is Butler’s route into performativity within feminism, of course. By performing the roles allotted by society to women, a woman interpellates those roles and thus becomes them.
I think there's a couple of concerns (of mine) with this...
First, that it could easily be manipulated into a return to the more traditional confinement of women to domestic and emotional labour as mothers (and wives).
Secondly, it could be equally easily be simultaneously manipulating the father's role as more distant, less caring etc. and adding to the stigma that men face for "doing women's work".
Just a thought.
I'll shut up again for a bit now, give others a chance.
Sure.I almost understand this. Can you just say it again in a slightly different way once more? (maybe with an example?)
My husband never did fuck all. And in all my friends and family I don’t know a single man who fully pulls his weight compared to the woman. Maybe it’s just me and all these men do actuallyI can only talk about my own experience, obviously. Before we had children, my husband and I discussed the fact that I'd have to go back to work full time afterwards, and he agreed that he would take on his share of the childcare and domestic duties. I believed him.
The reality was very different. I think because his own family background was very traditional, with mum staying at home and doing the domestic stuff, and dad going out to work. So he had no role models or any other example. He honestly didn't realise that stuff needed doing. He never thought about who did the cleaning, shopping, cooking - it just sort of "happened". So when he became a father, he didn't seem to understand that HE needed to be doing some of it!
Of course, I asked him time and time again to help. (the dreaded "nagging"!) And he'd help for a while, but then forget again. So I had to ask again. And again. In the end it was easier and more peaceful if I just did it all myself.
He'd come home from work, and sit down and relax. I came home from work and started the domestic and childcare duties. And he didn't understand why I was constantly tired and fed up.
Even now, we don't have children at home, but he thinks of his weekend as relaxing time, whereas I spend my Saturday shopping, cleaning, doing laundry, and all the other boring shit.
Well, don’t forget that they are also subjectified as men. Men also have allotted roles within the patriarchy, meaning they also interpellate these roles.My husband never did fuck all. And in all my friends and family I don’t know a single man who fully pulls his weight compared to the woman. Maybe it’s just me and all these men do actuallywant to share the care really and are just lacking the opportunity due to patriarchy
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Feminism or what was the second thing? Welcome btwsometimes i just wonder that what comes first ? feminism ? or own men ship ?
I don't want my feelings about needing to be there for my kids to be accommodated so much as more social pressure on men to do domestic labour.Thanks for saying all that, I know I for one definitely relate. I remember that horrid gut wrenching pressure of trying to juggle. But isn’t that one of the things we need to be discussing as women?! Why are we not asking for a world where our feelings about needing to be there for our kids are accommodated not penalised like trashpony ’s experience.
Exactly. I am a but ambivalent about the idea of a career. I have never had one - just half a century of working...as has my partner. This is just something we do (and try to evade). However, we both live in a home with offspring, pets, laundry, shopping etc...and sharing the domestic stuff equitably has as much impact on our sense of fairness, identity but also externally realised value of such work. By caring, cleaning, picking up, wiping mouths and bottoms, mending scratches and drying tears, I think my partner is a better, nicer, kinder person than someone removed from the domestic sphere which occupies 2/3rds of our lives. It sounds a bit wet and wishy-washy because thus stuff has no value (in the eyes of capital) but culturally, emotionally, socially, the role of nurturing is, I believe, as essential and valuable as any team managment in a 'career'.I don't want my feelings about needing to be there for my kids to be accommodated so much as more social pressure on men to do domestic labour.
Thanks for saying all that, I know I for one definitely relate. I remember that horrid gut wrenching pressure of trying to juggle. But isn’t that one of the things we need to be discussing as women?! Why are we not asking for a world where our feelings about needing to be there for our kids are accommodated not penalised like trashpony ’s experience.
O yes, I agree. It certainly overwhelmed me in a way no amount of (paid) labour has come close to doing. Of course, children were never just cared for by one person (the idealised mother) until comparatively recently. Our private and domestic lives are always mediated by the public life of work, economics, politics...and in an era where work no longer guarantees enough income to allow for a non-working parent, while also fracturing the extended family connections because we are all expected to be continually mobile, the hard, but essential work of raising each generation, has become squeezed into badly fitting compartments.It's too much for one person, either men or women, looking after children.
Of course, I asked him time and time again to help. (the dreaded "nagging"!) And he'd help for a while, but then forget again. So I had to ask again. And again. In the end it was easier and more peaceful if I just did it all myself.
My husband never did fuck all. And in all my friends and family I don’t know a single man who fully pulls his weight compared to the woman. Maybe it’s just me and all these men do actuallywant to share the care really and are just lacking the opportunity due to patriarchy
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Thanks so much for this. I didn’t get Althauser’s example but I do now. I’m still not convinced that interpolation is the whole answer for those feelings though. But I do understand the argument now so thanks.Sure.
Do you get Althauser’s example, first of all? His point was that if there is a crowd and a policeman calls out, 9 times out of 10, it is the criminal the policeman is after that will turn around. This process is more complex than it looks. The policeman is representative of the state and its laws. Any authority he carries that differentiates him from any other human being is because other people recognise this authority. They literally recognise the embodiment of the authority of the state. The criminal turns round because he understands that he is breaking the laws of this state, he recognises that those laws should apply to him too and thus he turns around. But the act of turning around itself cements in his own head the idea that the laws are valid and that the policeman’s authority is valid. The criminal has accepted the laws apply to him and becomes (this is the important bit) subjectified by them. He is subject to the laws (in other words they apply to him) and he is a subject of the law, in the sense that he is subservient to it.
So how does that apply to feminism? Butler’s big play on this was what she called performativity. You absorb from before you have consciousness what it means to be a woman. The “laws of society” regarding womanhood. At some point, there is the equivalent policeman moment — you are in a situation in which you must respond to something. When you do so by performing a role that you have observed as being part of being a woman, you become subject to the applicability of that role to you and you become a subject of womanhood. This is what gives you the subjectivity of being a woman, which is what (I think) Butler would interpret by you saying that you are doing what you feel to be “natural”. It feels natural because you have internalised that role.
Really good description! Thanks for taking the timeSure.
Do you get Althauser’s example, first of all? His point was that if there is a crowd and a policeman calls out, 9 times out of 10, it is the criminal the policeman is after that will turn around. This process is more complex than it looks. The policeman is representative of the state and its laws. Any authority he carries that differentiates him from any other human being is because other people recognise this authority. They literally recognise the embodiment of the authority of the state. The criminal turns round because he understands that he is breaking the laws of this state, he recognises that those laws should apply to him too and thus he turns around. But the act of turning around itself cements in his own head the idea that the laws are valid and that the policeman’s authority is valid. The criminal has accepted the laws apply to him and becomes (this is the important bit) subjectified by them. He is subject to the laws (in other words they apply to him) and he is a subject of the law, in the sense that he is subservient to it.
So how does that apply to feminism? Butler’s big play on this was what she called performativity. You absorb from before you have consciousness what it means to be a woman. The “laws of society” regarding womanhood. At some point, there is the equivalent policeman moment — you are in a situation in which you must respond to something. When you do so by performing a role that you have observed as being part of being a woman, you become subject to the applicability of that role to you and you become a subject of womanhood. This is what gives you the subjectivity of being a woman, which is what (I think) Butler would interpret by you saying that you are doing what you feel to be “natural”. It feels natural because you have internalised that role.
My dad (non biological- he took me on cos he loved my mam) already had sons with his ex wife before I was born. He was submerged in traditional roles of being the breadwinner and had very little to do with the bringing up of his sons. When I was born he of course did not think he'd have to help out with my care, cos that was womens work. Now he's not a prick my dad, but that's all he knew. One time my mam went away and left me with him and he had to feed me, brush my hair, dress me and had no choice but to take me to the shops in my push chair. I remember him saying years later how awkward he had felt pushing a pushchairMy husband never did fuck all. And in all my friends and family I don’t know a single man who fully pulls his weight compared to the woman. Maybe it’s just me and all these men do actuallywant to share the care really and are just lacking the opportunity due to patriarchy
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Really good description! Thanks for taking the time![]()
I need to lower my game. I’m letting the side down.