Wednesday 26 January 2011

She missed a bit...

The delightful Laurie Penny grinds out a splendid article using the CiF template. It is almost poetry in the way she effortlessly strings together every leftie half-truth she can think of.

She warms up the crowd by bunging in a good old fashioned untruth under Myth 1, i.e. "In recent years, both men and women have found that their working hours have increased...", but let's skip to the fun part at Myth 2:

Myth 2: Men work harder, longer hours than women

Men do work longer hours in many industries – but only if you subscribe to the view that paid work is the only work that counts. Women's unpaid caring, childrearing and domestic labour contributes tens of billions of pounds to this economy...


It is quite true that women do most of the housework (whether that's 'fair' or 'unfair' depends on your point of view. I find that Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage applies here as much as anywhere else) BUT...

a) Who says it's unpaid? Most couples pool their income and/or share expenses, and on a rough and ready basis, I would hazard a guess that women who do little paid work and most of the housework benefit from stuff like, ooh, rent or mortgage payments, utility bills, weekly food bills etc to just the same extent as their husbands (who by definition, must be paying for all this). Quite how they split the bit that's left (to the extent that there is any left), I do not know, but isn't that up to each couple to decide for itself?

b) If you're a proper hardcore feminist, why stop at "caring, childrearing and domestic labour"? Why not add: "provide sexual gratification to an uncaring and thankless brute of a husband"? Apparently proper call girls charge over a hundred quid a pop for full sex, and that's with a condom, so if you multiply it all up, that's probably about fifteen per cent of GDP or something, and must vastly outweigh the value of a bit of vaccuuming or something (which women largely do because they value cleanliness far more than men do).

11 comments:

Electro-Kevin said...

I love the fact that when I'm under the car covered in shit I'm 'tinkering' or when I'm trying to get a root out of the ground in the garden I'm 'pottering'.

Any technical job such as repairing the boiler or wiring I've heard ladies say "I'll get a little man in to do that."

Three years apprenticeship "...a little man." !

And so such things of huge value are taken out of the reckonning.

Dick Puddlecote said...

Ah, but if a value was put on sex, it would technically class wives/girlfriends as sex workers with no choice, meaning that Laurie Penny and her chums would have to try their damnedest to stop them doing it.

And that wouldn't play very well to female voters, would it? ;)

Ed P said...

Penny is unlikely to have any first-hand experience of male/female domestic divisions of labour, as she is a homosexual. Perhaps she is basing her mental dribbling on her parents' relationship? Hardly cutting edge, is it?
But I enjoy reading her waffle as entertainment, awarding myself points for every bit of left wing bias she embeds. Best score so far is 25 in a one page "article"!

Mark Wadsworth said...

EK, if you have to repair the family car yourself then you are clearly an unpaid domestic slave. I suggest you contact Laurie P and get her to fight for your rights.

DP, I was just following her logic in the light of the fact that she is lesbian* (as Ed P points out) which I had assumed people would guess from the way I worded it.

Ed P, of course she has no first hand experience, neither does she understand 'comparative advantage' or 'division of labour' or 'couples sharing income and expenses', but that makes the article all the more enjoyable.

* Are we still allowed to say 'lesbian' or is that considered derogatory?

James Higham said...

If you're a proper hardcore feminist, why stop at "caring, childrearing and domestic labour"? Why not add: "provide sexual gratification to an uncaring and thankless brute of a husband"?

[Chuckles to himself]

Steven_L said...

Lesbian is fine MW, that's why you have LGBT groups in trade unions and things, the L stands for lesbian.

I've noticed that since the new equality laws came in, all the posters at work advertising the black workers groups have changed their definitions of 'black' from '... and anyone that's not white' to '... and anyone from any other ethnic background'.

So I could join the black workers group now.

Mark Wadsworth said...

JH, always happy to please.

SL, I was torn between "a lesbian" (noun) and "lesbian" (adjective).

Wolfie said...

2b) I got a Google Calendar reminder for that this evening.

Anonymous said...

15 percent of GDP already!

Which means, all we need to do is increase it by a fifth to add 3 percent to the economy!

It's the answer to the recession...

Scott Wright said...

AC:

"It's the answer to the recession..."

Totally separate debate but bringing sex work to the fore as a legit business activity would help with the economic situation as well as the safety of those working in the industry, we can't beat it so why continue to try.

Scott Wright said...

"a) Who says it's unpaid? Most couples pool their income and/or share expenses, and on a rough and ready basis, I would hazard a guess that women who do little paid work and most of the housework benefit from stuff like, ooh, rent or mortgage payments, utility bills, weekly food bills etc to just the same extent as their husbands (who by definition, must be paying for all this). Quite how they split the bit that's left (to the extent that there is any left), I do not know, but isn't that up to each couple to decide for itself?"

EXACTLY!!

I earn more and therefore contribute a larger share to the household bills and then what's left works out at roughly equal amounts of cash to use on personal stuff. I know not everybody does this but its something which just becomes more and more widespread as time goes by, what the stupid lefties don't realise is they cannot rush the evolution of attitudes, things are changing slowly but surely, trying to force quicker changes only makes people push in the opposite direction and works directly against their cause....

who knew.. lefties are dumb...