Investing in Communities Undermines Private Patriarchal Ownership of Women
All American systems and economic policies are built on the assumption that women’s free labor is the only rightful social infrastructure
Conservatives rally against any and all investments in community based infrastructure designed with the primary mandate to meet human needs in service of patriarchy - the for profit private ownership of women.
This is why conservative messaging focuses on accusing any and all life supporting policies and investments as communist instead of proposing any policies that could meaningfully address the myriad of social issues we face today.
This is why conservatives demonize women’s free will with degrading and patronizing paternalistic messaging in hopes of seducing women into willingly abandoning their own needs and potential in service of acting as the sole infrastructure of domestic labor, reproduction and childrearing, and meeting all human needs without compensation or reciprocation in care.
All American systems and economic policies are built on the assumption that women’s free labor is the only rightful social infrastructure.
In our last posts, we discussed the biological history that allowed patriarchy to form and how patriarchy is the keystone inequality that all systems of exploitation and supremacy rely upon and grow from. Patriarchy’s core fantasy of unearned male supremacy is the rotted core of all of our social crises and the frontline battle for the soul of social order.
In the conservative, patriarchal worldview, government only exists to support, protect, and advance the interests of male capital owners. The conservative ideal of small government is minimizing social investments and opportunities for communities to develop structures of cooperative care with the primary mandate of mutual support in meeting basic human needs.
The more labor, stress, and socialized insecurity that can be politically and culturally leveraged against women, the easier it is to maintain their patriarchal role as a male owned means of production.
This is necessary for capitalistic channels to maximize profit from selling back access to meeting basic human needs and to overburden women with all labor related to human life to de facto relegate them to the domestic sphere in service of narcissistic male fantasies of innate superiority.
The more labor, stress, and socialized insecurity that can be politically and culturally leveraged against women, the easier it is to maintain their patriarchal role as a male owned means of production.
It’s critical for patriarchal ideology to seduce women into willingly adopting trad wife lifestyles of submission to be a means of production and not an individual person equal to the men who benefit from her labor and reproductive investments.
When seduction fails, they must rally the seduced to promote unrealistic propaganda of the lifestyle while also mobilizing to disenfranchise women politically while removing their basic human rights to health care and bodily autonomy.
Women mobilizing to exert their individual and collective confidence in their innate and cultivated value against this backdrop of target state violence and endless insecurity inducing propaganda and capitalistic exploitation is a big problem for patriarchal security.
In response, we’re seeing the rise of philosophical wannabes like J.D. Vance and Curtis Yarvin seeking to polish the turd of masculine laziness and deficiency that requires women to make life happen for men without any compensation or recognition as some edgy, forward facing political solution to the basic fact that humans have f*cking needs.
HUMANS have needs. Meaning, men are required to participate in cooperatively meeting those needs. But that’s work and men are lazy. Truly, gobsmackingly lazy. The average man can’t summon the intrinsic motivation to cultivate their own potentials and contribute to society.
Instead, they demand to be bribed to participate in the labor force with promises of passively receiving a woman to sexually pleasure them, mother them, and pretend to be inferior so he can pretend that he’s innately stronger without actually having to do the work of developing strength or cultivating knowledge and basic life skill sets.
These hateful losers spew long winded diatribes of biological essentialism and assertions that the only value a woman holds in this world is her capacity to produce life (to maximize the population of laborers and soldiers for exploitation) and submit to serving men’s needs as a mothering, sex kitten, nanny, maid, nurse, elderly custodian, and aesthetic housekeeper.
It’s incredible that these ivy league educated assholes have never had an original thought in their lives. It’s why all of their ideology and policy proposals boil down to women being solely responsible for meeting human needs and as such, every man is entitled to own at least one as a domestic sex slave servant. Also, all men must submit to a monarch. Seriously - these dudes love monarchy and it’s so, so, so dumb.
Someone send them a cardboard Burger King crown - maybe that’ll be enough to satisfy their cosplaying desires. Because cosplaying as intellectuals with any unique ideas or insights sure as shit isn’t panning out.
Really, beyond the hateful incompetence and desperation to shore up their patriarchal fantasy of superiority where men’s refusal to learn how to meet their own needs and cultivate the intrinsic motivation to contribute to society instead of stewing in their own filth, neglected potential, and porn addictions - I just can’t stand how f*cking boring these “intellectual” men are.
And these f*cks have the audacity to question what value women hold in this world!
Federally Funded Childcare During WWII
Alright, so now that I’ve talked my shit - let’s revisit a time in American history where the federal government successfully invested in community infrastructure and then dismantled it.
During WWII the federal government actually did fund and subsidize child care across the board. Since they needed women to work in factories for the war effort, there needed to be a community organized childcare solution, right?
So Congress passed the Lanham Act - which allowed communities to apply for federal funds to set up and locally administer child care centers. All of these centers were community organized and run - they were structured to meet the needs of that specific community.
Most of these daycare centers were run in church basements and community centers - communities used the funds to upgrade, retool, and staff their already existing public spaces.
The mothers paid 50 - 75 cents per child, per day - which in today’s money would be about $13 per child, per day.
At first, most women were super skeptical about leaving their kids in daycare and worried that it would negatively harm their development. But they needed child care to work to contribute to the war effort, so they gave it a shot.
The overwhelming majority of exit interviews and reviews conducted by the federal government found that these skeptical mothers were really impressed by the experience and said it was tremendously beneficial for their kids and for their own selves. It was a net positive for absolutely everyone.
These centers were designed with the flexibility to meet needs - offering extended hours of care to accommodate the around-the-clock workforce and nutritious, free meals for the children. Some even offered high quality pre-prepared meals for the mothers to purchase to bring home.
It truly was about meeting needs without extraneous profit engineering. About 600,000 kids were cared for in these local daycares.
The mothers paid 50 - 75 cents per child, per day - which in today’s money would be about $13 per child, per day.
When the war ended, the government eliminated all funding. Despite their initial skepticism, thousands of parents petitioned the government to keep these care centers going - they were a net positive in every regard. Still, the funding was removed in service of forcing women back out of the workforce as men returned from war to assume for profit ownership of the household.
In the 1960s and 70s, parents once again fought to get this community infrastructure reinstated - some of those parents had absolutely been cared for in the WWII centers and wanted it for their own families. Especially to support working class families where both parents had no choice but to both work fulltime to keep the lights on.
Did you know Nixon beat his wife?
So, in 1971, Congressed passed the Comprehensive Child Development Act to provide federal funding for locally administered daycares.
President Nixon vetoed it. He said because the Soviet Union had nationally funded childcare, Americans could not. Nixon said that the bill would “commit the vast moral authority of the National Government to the side of communal approaches to child rearing over the family-centered approach.”
Which is code for women are the sole infrastructure of family, child rearing, and meeting human needs. Whether they like it or not! This ideology believes women are undeserving of community resources. The family centered approach means women are exclusively responsible for meeting all needs without compensation or rest from duty while the husband works 40 hours a week and that's that.
Oh, did you know Nixon beat his wife? Pretty brutally sometimes - she was hospitalized from a beating following his resignation, but it wasn’t the first unreported incident of domestic violence. The press was aware of the allegations that Nixon beat his wife earlier in his career and after his resignation, but had decided against reporting on it since it was a family-centered approach to violence, unworthy of public scrutiny.
Anyway, if America could afford to subsidize essential child care infrastructure during WWII, then we sure as shit can now. Don’t talk to me about the deficit while implementing corporate tax cuts and military budgets that go unchecked and unaudited. If we can invest in endless war machines and corporate tax breaks, then we can invest in child care centers.
Plus, federally funded, locally administered child care centers would be a boon to every local economy. If mothers had flexibility in affordable support, they could take part time college courses to gain the skills to re-enter the workforce or launch their own small businesses once their children were school age.
It requires us to disengage from patriarchal mindsets that community resources aren’t meant to support and benefit the lives of women and children. It requires us to value all of the children in our community - not just our own. We can make these investments and they will benefit every community - socially and economically.
They could have a few precious hours to indulge their own individuality - through self care, adult social connections, trying new hobbies, or just sitting in silence in a park to enjoy people watching without being interrupted by tending to someone else’s needs.
Women could have a reliable space to care for their young children a few hours a week that would enable them to prioritize their own health. How many small fitness businesses would receive an influx of committed members? A mother could drop off her kids for a few hours to go to a yoga class and do the family’s food shopping in peace and then return home nourished and refueled to pour all of that positive energy back into her children.
How many local catering businesses could see a massive boon by making healthy, pre-prepared meals available for purchase at these child care centers? Mom buys two trays of lasagna made from scratch by a local skilled chef and has alleviated the pressure of cooking for one night and received the mental security of knowing another tray is in the freezer on reserve for whenever needed. No preservatives or chemicals from the mass manufacturing - locally cooked, healthy, fresh meals that support the family, the mother, and the local economy.
I’m saying it would have cascading positive effects - in terms of boosting personal health and fulfillment, the quality and strength of marriages, and the radiating local economic opportunities that would ensue.
I don’t believe it’s the state’s job to raise children, but I do believe it is the state’s responsibility to federally invest into local community infrastructure that subsidizes the cost of high quality, highly accessible childcare options for all families.
It requires us to disengage from patriarchal mindsets that community resources aren’t meant to support and benefit the lives of women and children. It requires us to value all of the children in our community - not just our own. We can make these investments and they will benefit every community - socially and economically.
It’s not the state’s job to raise children, but it is the state’s job to invest in local, community driven infrastructure to help meet the needs of families and children.
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