Solidarity

A 1-post collection

Closed for Today

There once was a man in the late 50's who would come home from work to find his wife exhausted and not "in the mood". Everything else was picture perfect. The house looked like it came out of a catalogue, the kids were clean and picturesque. Dinner was a dream... it was just the little lady who was constantly out of sorts.

Every evening, he had the same complaint. "I don't know why you're so tired, you just do nothing all day."

And then, one day, he comes home to absolute chaos. The kids are playing in the yard, still in their pyjamas, looking so messy that they might as well be rejects from a post-apocalypse science fiction movie. Inside the house is worse. His pyjamas are still on the bathroom floor, the bed is unmade, and the stove is cold. There's books and toys strewn all over the floor, there's scatterings of food from where the kids tried to make their own meals. The milk was left out so long that it's gone rotten and the sink is overflowing with dirty dishes and pots and pans.

He eventually finds his wife lounging on the couch with a thick book. Still in her pyjamas and last night's curlers.

"What is going on in this house?" he demands. "What happened to our home?"

And the wife says, "You know that 'nothing' I do all day? Today, I decided not to do any of it."

It's an old joke. Possibly older than the 50's, but it sits well in that alleged 'golden age'. It was only really golden for a very select few, when you think about it for any length of time. But it does illustrate the entire point of the Women's Strike. Fifty percent of the population [or thereabouts] are under-paid, under-represented, and under-appreciated.

It gets worse when you consider the People of Colour. They get an even shorter, shittier end of the stick. It gets even more atrocious if you consider the disabled.

So. In sympathy with the invisible, unpaid, "natural" labor that gets ignored by all but those who actually do it. In solidarity with all who identify as female, all who have better levels of melanin, and all those who need assistance to cope with the world... I am also not working today.

I am joining the Women's Strike. I am wearing red to show my solidarity. This March the Eighth is a day of deliberate non-effort.

I hope you will join me. Because fair pay for all working people needs to be a thing.