I’m doing some reading before writing a significant idea post that will probably serve as jumping-off point for the book I am slllowllly working towards (The Woman Citizen). As part of that, I read Jenny Brown’s marvelous Birth Strike: The Hidden Fight Over Women’s Work. (NOT an affiliate link; you can also find it on Amazon if Kindle is your thing.)
Birth Strike told me little I had not surmised, but only because I been thinking about the issue of women’s work (including reproductive labor) for some time. Certainly, I have long regarded the idea that the gestation slavery movement has anything to do with punishing women for having sex or biological ignorance to be willful, comforting self-deception: the sadists, the stupid, and the ignorant are useful idiots, used by those who will exploit them as well. Rather, reproductive slavery is very likely the archetype for all other forms of slavery, including racial slavery because women’s work is the warp and weft of all human societies.
What Birth Strike does, magnificently, is expose the reality that women’s underpaid / unpaid / unrecognized labor is colossally valuable, child-bearing and rearing most of all. Many of us, of course, already suspect this, but Ms. Brown lays it all out in clear, crisp, well-documented prose: not for her, thankfully, is the willfully-convoluted academic writing of many an otherwise-interesting book. This book rewards your attention, even more because Ms. Brown offers suggestions for women to organize to exploit our profound labor power.
I strongly encourage you to read this book, then act.