It's like ... slavery-lite. Fundamentally what's the difference between Lola's role and a common role of a wife a hundred years ago?* And second – a dangerous question – is it necessarily wrong? I ask not to lead one to believe to think that it isn't, certainly there are aspects which are unquestionable immoral, but is there room for such a social construct? More importantly, answering why not in a robust way could make the societal goal of maximizing each individual's personal freedom a little closer.
* not that every wife was treated like a slave or that there aren't still women who are
There never wasn't room for unpaid domestic labor, insofar as cultural acceptance of the role. The economy has stagnated the incomes of so many people for so long most cannot afford, on a single salary, to provide living arrangements for such a job plus children.
There is no room in a civilized society for bondage and servitude through violence. Eudocia in this story was never given the choice until she had lived the slave life so long she was no longer able to adapt out of it, and that is fundamental to any moral discussion.
Strangely, it seems if you give people the necessary tools to have an option, ie, a public education, then nobody seems to willingly choose this lifestyle. There is no real barrier to stop someone from the street knocking on my door and asking to be my surrogate housewife for free, as long as they are doing it of their own free will.
What is important to remember is that Eudocia's behavior was conditioned through coercive violence. She never had the chance to live for herself. She was forced through threats and abuse to be the person she was, as a product of an environment that gave her no reasonable alternative. We should never wish that on anyone.
>There is no room in a civilized society for bondage and servitude through violence.
Absolutely, I think the point I'm trying to make is that slavery or something a whole lot like it has existed long since explicit buying and selling of human lives ended. To make an inappropriate cultural reference, many different situations "just sound like slavery with extra steps"
> a product of an environment that gave her no reasonable alternative
I think a whole lot of poor people in America and the world beyond don't really find themselves it conditions much different than this sort of slavery. Coercive violence and lack of choice not excepted. The illusion of choice and freedom that a tiny wage give doesn't necessarily make liberty real, it just makes slavery a little more difficult to recognise.
The Fine Article mentions a number of times where Lola was not allowed freedom of movement. She had no freedom of movement, no pay (or ability to direct money), no personal life, no say in what she did, and was kept in place by fear. It certainly wasn't the common role of a wife a hundred years ago to be kept from a dying parent, for example.
The nature of her labour is not what made Lola a slave; it was the circumstances around that labour.
I am not readily finding citations, but I recall one of my history professors stating that the veil was heralded as a vast improvement for women in terms of freedom in some parts of the world because, historically, women in a lot of places left the house twice in their life: Once to get married, a second time to get buried. The veil allowed them to at least leave the house.
I don't think you know as much about the history of women as you think you do. This is probably not due to personal defect. Most history focuses on the accomplishments of men out in public. The lives of women tend to be more private and a lot of it just does not get recorded or noted. But I am a woman, I have been a history major, I did the homemaker and mom thing for a lot of years and I have had a class in the history of women and have read books out of personal interest on both women's history and the history of slavery.
The role of a wife and mom is often not as different from Lola's as you seem to assume.
> I don't think you know as much about the history of women as you think you do.
Well, I know enough to know that 'women only left the house twice in their life' is an outlier, not a yardstick. You can just as easily point out nomadic herder groups where there is almost zero gender power imbalance, with the women and men sharing equal power, and it's just as wrong to suggest that that is somehow historically representative as 'normal'.
I'd call a woman that was kept to a house and never allowed out to be a slave anyway. Well, perhaps a 'prisoner' if not forced to do work.
> The role of a wife and mom is often not as different from Lola's as you seem to assume.
My point was that Lola was a slave not because of the kind of labour she did, but because she was forced into that labour and not allowed freedom of movement. The list of things I wrote wasn't meant to be a canonical description of what defines a slave, but parts of her life that defined it for her. Unlike wives (who by definition at least have a husband), Lola had no-one and no permission to even try. She didn't even have a bed to sleep in when the others did. But in history, some slaves were encouraged to have families, homes, beds. Some slaves historically did get some pay, and likewise direct money. The article even describes slaves that owned their own slaves.
The mistake the GP made was confusing role with circumstance. Just because Lola's role was mothering, doesn't mean that mothering is slavery.
An awful lot of women have so little real choice that they are de facto forced into the role of mothering.
It boggles my mind that with all the years I have participated in good faith on this forum while largely failing to make the business connections I came here to make that men on this forum can say this sort of stuff to me with a straight face. I was one of the top students of my entire state in high school. I have six years of college. I worked for a Fortune 500 company for over 5 years. Yet I continue to be frustrated in my attempts to figure out some way to establish a successful and profitable business, but you are telling me women are free to choose something else at will in a world where men typically make more money than women and being a woman is a huge obstacle to breaking into business or otherwise having a serious career.
There is a reason an awful lot of women throw their hands up and either go along with marrying well or go into sex work. If my medical situation did not preclude sex work as a viable option for me, I would have thrown in the towel years ago and just moved to Nevada where that is legal.
The odds are very much stacked against women having career success like a man. To some degree or another, most women get a large portion of their money from a man they are either related to or sleeping with. Thousands of years of progress has not fundamentally changed that fact.
I thought this was a reasonable and strikingly good faith comment. I do not know why it is receiving such punitive downvoting. Thank you for sharing your historical perspective.
Generally on the right track, but ham handed in delivery.
If you really want to engage such ideas in public effectively, it helps to up your game in terms of framing. People tend to be unforgiving and will tend to remember what they thought you meant and will tend to not give you a second chance to clarify. There are a number of people on HN who are quick to vilify people as presumed MRAs etc. Due in part to the generally high education levels here, it is a tough crowd.
The heartache in Lola's story is not the bit about her caregiving.
You ask what the fundamental difference between Lola and last-century wife? Hiding her from public view and not letting her out of the house seems like a pretty big one. Refusing to let her visit sick and dying parents seems to be another. Expecting her to sleep on the couch or the laundry looks like another. Not letting her have friends outside the family seems to be yet another. There's tons of differences if you look beyond the kind of work she spent her life doing.
I'm not trying to trivialize slavery but force a recognition that's there's a hair's breadth difference between many instances of being a domestic slave and very many instances of being a housewife. One is demonized and the other is celebrated.
The way you hear a minority of Bible-enthusiasts talk about the role of a wife is in _no way_ different than the slavery described in the article.
While there may be some similarities, "no difference" is way too far. Even the most extreme fundamentalist at least in principle is going to acknowledge that Paul wrote in Ephesians that as Christ loved the church a man should love his wife as his own body. And in a more practical sense I can't imagine most of even patriarchal husbands would let their wives' teeth fall out and deny them dental care.
Having a servant who is paid but is well-cared-for is problematic, but not necessarily wrong. Having a servant who is abused daily, made to sleep on the floor, kept away from her family, forced to work when sick, denied medical care for no good reason, and not allowed to leave is blatantly obviously wrong. There's nothing but physical/sexual violence distinguishing this from the horror stories of the pre-Civil War American South.
That much at least is pretty black and white, and even 100 years ago that was not the default state of most wives, so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, and I'm certainly not sure what you think is "lite" here.
Slavery-lite strikes me as a very unfortunate neologism.
I think you are putting too much emphasis on the formal status of wives a century ago, and not enough on actual social mores, but regardless of whether that is so, it is not much of an argument for what is right.
I am so confident that a robust case against slavery, that is also applicable to this situation, has already been made, that I will take my chances that someone calls "citation needed" on me.
* not that every wife was treated like a slave or that there aren't still women who are