It's 4:30 am and my cats woke me up. I'm laying here trying to get back to sleep and a thought just popped in my head. I'm not sure how eloquent I'll be, but figured I'd post before I forget.
We've talked about the intersection between female reproductive rights and workers rights a lot lately because of the recent court rulings. It got me thinking that there's a lot more intersectionality to explore.
The root thought is that your only value is what you can produce. You have no intrinsic value. Everything is seen through the lens of consumption. Are you consumable? Then you have value. Can you produce labor? Can you produce offspring? Then you are a consumable resource to be exploited.
Here's where I'm going to lose some folks, because I'm going to talk about animals and it might make you feel uncomfortable, but bare with me because there is a point. This post isn't able going vegan, I'm just using it to illustrate a point about exploitation that's relevant to labor.
People often ask me why I don't use wool or eat eggs. After all, sheep don't die when they are sheared right? Chickens don't die when they give eggs right?
Chickens don't die when they lay eggs, but since there's only value in females, most males are useless and they are disposed of almost immediately. What happens after a hen stops laying eggs? Does it get to live it's best life after producing all it's life? No, as soon as it's job is done they have no value but the very flesh on their bones.
Domesticated sheep are bred to produce so much wool that they will overheat if they don't get sheared. Do you think they had this problem before domestication? No, they were bred to produce something useful to humans at the expense of their own health. When they stop producing fine wool they cease to be of value except for the flesh on their bones.
You and I are the same as all the chickens and sheep out there. Can you produce something? Then you have value. When you stop producing, you cease to have value. The concept of exploitation is so firmly rooted in our culture that we don't even question it. We normalize exploitation and by normalizing it, we become exploitable ourselves. Make no mistake, if our culture didn't abhor cannibalism, you'd be turned into steak and rump roast when you're no longer able to produce labor and offspring just the same as any sheep.
I don't have any solutions here. I'm not even advocating veganism. I'm just thinking about the systems of exploitation all around us and realizing that it permeates through a lot of our values. It's difficult to challenge exploitation without first recognizing it in our lives. It's difficult to talk to some folks about labor rights or reproductive rights, because we're indoctrinated early in our lives to normalize and ignore exploitation.