Living a Feminist Life

We have to refuse to support the system that sucks the blood, vitality, and life from the limbs of workers.

It is hard labor to recognize sadness and disappointment when you are living a life that is meant to be happy but is not happy, which is meant to be full but feels empty. It is difficult to give up an idea of one’s life when one has lived one’s life according to that idea.

Happiness as a form of emotional labor can be condensed in the formula: making others happy by appearing happy.

To be a feminist can feel like being in a different world even when you are seated at the same table.

Concepts are at work in how we work, whatever it is that we do. We need to work out, sometimes, what these concepts are (what we are thinking when we are doing, or what doing is thinking) because concepts can be murky as background assumptions.

obedience is associated with good cheer: to be willing is to be happy to obey. She is happily willing or willing happily.

Any feminism that lives up to the promise of that name will not free some women from being arms by employing other women to take their place. Feminism needs to refuse this division of labor, this freeing up of time and energy for some by the employment of the limbs of others.

This is how to become feminist is to be assigned as being willful: you are not willing to recede.

She is too busy getting ready for her party. So much sadness revealed in the need to be busy. So much grief expressed in the need not to be overwhelmed by grief.