I keep on wondering whether I am a bad feminist. Because the truth is, I don’t think daycares in Berlin should open. Not today, not tomorrow – not next week. Not even next month. I think Berlin daycares should stay closed until August – and playgrounds, too. I think this will be hard for parents – and very hard for mothers. But: I don’t think I want to be a feminist if being a feminist means I have to be okay with people dying.
This is what I think, since you asked, should happen: families should be paid extra Kindergeld during corona times, an amount of money so large that it will really help them out – I’m thinking €800, or possibly €1000. Home Office should be offered for everyone, like it should be illegal for an employer to say you can’t do home-office if you think you can. The rules about social distancing should be relaxed so that two families can hang out together, and pay a babysitter to look after, say, four kids at once. I think children who are deemed to be in danger should be allowed emergency nursery school care. And it should be made illegal to fire any parent during corona times – or even up to a year afterwards – for being crap at their job. It should be made illegal to evict any parents from their homes. Parents, and children, should be protected.
Here’s the thing, though: poor people die sooner, even when there isn’t a deadly virus going around. Poor people live less long. Their health is worse, their lives are shorter. Capitalism is unfair. Now we have a deadly virus raging about, and we all know it it’s the poor – and the non-white – who are dying most. Poor people’s immune systems are worse, non-white people get diabetes more – who knows the reasons? We don’t know yet. But what we do know is this: some oft the youngest children to die have been non-white – five year old Skylar Hebert, for example, from Detroit, or Ismail Mohamed Abdulwahab, 13, from Brixton, South London. Germans often tell me they don’t see colour – but surely even German people must’ve noticed how many more of the corona dead are not white than white. And it’s pretty obvious that if we ever do find out more about the Germans who have lost their lives to Covid 19, we will also find out that the poor and people of colour will be dying disproportionately.
And then I realize: they will have to open nurseries, and poor people will have to die, and solidarity with domestic violence victims will be used as an excuse.
But it seems to me like opening nursery schools is now a done deal, at least in people’s heads. The WhatsApp groups, Facebook status updates, Twitter complaints make it obvious – FAMILIES ARE DYING ANYWAY, KIDS NEVER DIE FROM CORONA, SO WHAT THE FUCK, IN FOR A PENNY, IN FOR A POUND WE MIGHT AS WELL REOPEN NURSERIES! We’ll have to see what happens next, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Berlin gives in to public pressure and reopens kitas – and when we do, the people who die will be the poorest.
Sometimes I ask myself whether the anger about kitas being closed isn’t just my bubble, my Facebook bubble, feminist, socialist, but in a modern way, and lots of single mothers. And then I go to the supermarket, meet a neighbour in the Treppenhaus and they say:
“You must want kitas to open, soon, too Jacinta!“
“It’s too soon, isn’t it? We should wait until August.“
“So many children will die if we wait until August. Think of the poor women who are married to violent men! The women will be killed, and their children too! We need to get people back to work. Back to normality. This can’t go on forever.“
And then I realize: they will have to open nurseries, and poor people will have to die, and solidarity with domestic violence victims will be used as an excuse.
If you cared about domestic violence victims, you wouldn’t be fighting for their right to get their kids back in kita, and their husbands out the house. You would be fighting for their right to have a safe home – before, during and after corona. During corona times, there should be emergency women’s refuges set up in empty hotels so women and children in danger can escape from violent husbands. After corona times, some of those refuges should become permanent, because women should always have the option of safety.
If you cared about domestic violence victims, you wouldn’t be fighting for their right to get their kids back in kita, and their husbands out the house. You would be fighting for their right to have a safe home
Also, you are just using these women, their oppression, the violence as an excuse, This is obvious, because if you weren’t, instead of campaigning for all nurseries to open “to protect domestic violence victims as well!“, you would be campaigning for nurseries to stay closed and the emergency care to be extended to children in danger. Out of solidarity with those women, you would accept that you need to stay home, as hard as it is, because others don’t just have it hard, they have it fucking impossible.
But more than that, you wouldn’t think this weird, almost feudalistic thing – working class people NEED to work – especially the men. They need to go out, and they need to work, expend energy, use their muscles and their bodies so they don’t hit their women. Work is good for people, especially the lower classes, they need to work, they need to get out the house every day. They need to work in order to survive (even if it might kill them.)
Keep the kitas closed, squat the luxury hotels and turn them into magnificent homes for women and children, and don’t sacrifice society’s poorest just because you don’t want your kids watching too much TV, and fuck capitalism. And if any of this makes me a bad feminist, then so be it. In fact, if this makes me no feminist at all, I will accept it, for the first time in my 40 years. Maybe I’m not a feminist at all! It’s bad enough capitalist society builds temples on the graves of poor people we have deemed expendable. Feminism shouldn’t join in.
