Owen Jones on Twitter today

[Bouledeneige]

twitter.com/owenjones84/status/1260134887165739009?s=21

A tweet that middle class people should pay their cleaner to not work quickly descended into 'rich women paying poor women to clean their homes.' So frustrating the casual sexism. Why is it assumed women are responsible for cleaning their homes and not men. Most working women who can afford a cleaner do so because they have 3 jobs - their work, their childcare and their household. Why aren't the men they are married to taking more household responsibility?

I despise Owen Jones - but most cleaners are women - that’s a fair assumption.

One of DD’s cleaners in the past was a lovely bloke who looked like an elf with a red beard down to his waist!
Presumably even more outrageous - a woman paying a man to do the menial work?!

People paying people to do other things is how I get all my money and sometimes it sucks and it is exploitative and - yeah capitalism sucks. But I live in it and manage mine, and my children's lives in it and I can't unilaterally fix that right now.

People who think having a cleaner is exploitative better all be marxists. All of them. Seriously working for the revolution. They'd better be haranguing everyone they know who has a business - the guy with a paper shop, the graphic designer etc - that they're immoral too. They want to end it all. now. (just like anyone who whines about donkeys etc better be vegan)

They had better all clean their own houses, too. Personally. I mean it. none of this "well she has more time than me" or "well I don't see dirt" or whatever. I want to know you have a schedule that involves you getting up at 7am on a non-work day to go around the house and do it all, properly, including scrubbing toilets, including emptying the hoover, including changing beds, including behind and under furniture. Seriously. If you do not do this, fuck off and don't care mention cleaners.

There is no existing social contract that means people clean up their own mess. The situation we have is that women do it for free, for men, at the expense of their time and labour, that they will never get back. Ths is unacceptable. It is theft.

If we pay someone else to do it, it will unfortunately be within an unfair system, which is capitalism, because that is how we do everything. However, it is better to pay someone and acknowledge their labour than to continue to rip women off in this systemic way.

I never want to hear a man disapprove of cleaners ever again unless he satisfies the above conditions

I made the mistake of reading this thread last night. It's so stupid. And it's so depressing to see people like Ash Sarkar joining in (not that I expect any better of her).

So, essentially, it seems to boil down to two things:

1. Middle-class women paying other women to clean for them is BAD. Apparently middle-class men don't hire cleaners. No doubt middle-class men are all saints who do their own cleaning. Amirite? Or is it actually that a lot of middle-class men are lazy arses who expect their wives to do their cleaning for them? But that's OK, obviously.

1. It's fine for men to pay prostitutes for sex because prostitution is a free choice freely taken. But paying someone to clean for you is exploitative. Because obviously women who clean are forced into it and don't have any free choice. What made me laugh was all the men saying that women should carrying on paying their regular cleaners while not using them. I guess all the men who use prostitutes are also paying them while not using them, right?

Don't know which is worse, the stupidity or the hypocrisy.

There isn't the same sort of scolding applied when men outsource Man Tasks to poorer men, or even just other men. Fixing cars is seen as a Man Task, but you wouldn't see long Twitter threads about how a good comrade who truly supports the proletariat would fix his own engine, and that's not just because of perceptions of the skill level involved. Even with really obvious stuff like having a golf caddy you just don't see the same level of vitriol.

However, it is better to pay someone and acknowledge their labour than to continue to rip women off in this systemic way.

I agree.

It's also tied in to the idea that if something is a Woman Task then it's obviously low skill and anyone could do it, whereas Man Skills naturally have value and deserve to be paid for.

(I clean my own home but I guarantee that a professional cleaner would do a better job of it in less time because they do have skills that I don't.)

There isn't the same sort of scolding applied when men outsource Man Tasks to poorer men, or even just other men. Fixing cars is seen as a Man Task, but you wouldn't see long Twitter threads about how a good comrade who truly supports the proletariat would fix his own engine, and that's not just because of perceptions of the skill level involved. Even with really obvious stuff like having a golf caddy you just don't see the same level of vitriol.

No, quite. And people pay others (generally men but not always) who are self employed to do minor decorating jobs like painting and wallpapering. Who I think have also been told they should go back to work if they can. Where's Owen's disdain for them?

Many men have an expectation that cleaning will be done by someone else. Usually a wife, girlfriend or other female relative.

In some situations if finances permit the women will outsource it to free up their spare time not spent at work or doing childcare.

Either way though it strikes me that the men just expect it happen somehow and for it not involve them.

I agree that you only see this kind of vitriol towards cleaners ( occasionally childcare too) and not mechanics or dry cleaners for instance where expensive work suits might go weekly.

The point about a capitalistic system is right. It might not be great but most people are outsourcing something to people on a low wage even if it's just a Costa coffee on the way to work rather than making your own.

Exactly. I could make my own coffee too, but nobody is going to lecture me about being a bad leftist if I stop off at the coffee shop on the way to work instead, because making coffee isn't culturally coded as a service women are meant to be providing for others for free.

Today 02:46 TheHoneyBadger

I just hate the smarmy fucker. He spouts so much having had so little real life experience and tells women what they should feel about things that effect them, not him. Do fuck off little boy and stay out of the kitchen where the women are trying to talk

^^This - with bells on.

The point about a capitalistic system is right. It might not be great but most people are outsourcing something to people on a low wage even if it's just a Costa coffee on the way to work rather than making your own.

Exactly. We are all doing this all the time. We pay someone to wash our car, or to weed our garden, to unblock our toilet, or to make our coffee. Next week I have a man coming to clean my oven (we will of course observe social distancing). Is it OK because he's a man? Or because it's an oven rather than a house? Is it bad because I'm exploiting him? Or OK because oven-cleaning is better paid than regular cleaning work?

Unless you live off-grid in a commune, I can't see that you have any choice but to pay other people to perform tasks for you.

I can understand the sentiment about continuing to pay your cleaner not to work because it's 'nice' and women are meant to be nice - right?

People would be incredulous at the idea they pay the mechanic for the car service that had to be cancelled or the hairdressers/barbers appointment they couldn't keep because of the pandemic.

My son's driving lessons ended abruptly in March. He's fond of his driving instructor having got to know him for a year or so. He told my DS he was looking for delivery or supermarket work because his income was now gone. I really felt bad for the guy but would anyone reasonably expect all his pupils continue to pay £50 per week?

I've never been able to get my head around the outrage at having cleaners. To me, a person pays another person to provide a service. It is and should be a straight transaction.

However, I read part of that thread and related ones and what struck me was cleaner after cleaner after cleaner coming on say how badly they were treated. Employers who refuse to buy proper cleaning products (including vacuum cleaners/mops etc), employers who attempt to "test" them to ensure they're cleaning under things etc, employers who follow them around to check they're not stealing things, employers who leave messes for days - eg vomit etc - until the cleaner arrives.

On one v long thread i was reading, only 2 people came on to say they were/are cleaners and their employers were normal people.

So I'm starting to question my base assumption. Yes, I can hand on heart say I've never treated a cleaner like that but it's clear that many many people do. And these cleaners have little recourse clearly otherwise they would not continue working for those employers. And I find myself wondering whether domestic workers are just categorically treated more badly than others. No one asks the handy man or the gardener to do things outside of their actual job? Is it because cleaners are women? Is it because cleaning is not seen as worthwhile? I don' know, but I am questioning my casual acceptance that having and paying a cleaner is just a straight financial transaction.

I had a cleaner(s) a number of years ago when the kids were small and I was working 4 days a week. I used a cleaning company though who brought all their own gear.

It could be argued it would have been better to hire someone local who would have pocketed all the money rather than what the cleaning company paid their employees. However it was very straightforward and as you say transactional - there was no question of the cleaners being asked to do anything outside their remit because I never met them. They also may not have all been women.

The downside is you have to take a leap of faith knowing that total strangers are accessing your property whilst you aren't there but honestly I had zero complaints and the house smelt beautiful when I arrived home. Made me realise my own cleaning skills are fairly sub par.

I read that thread - can't say I was surprised - Sarah Ditum and Janice turner almost always have terrible takes. Sarah even backtracked to making her point about time when she received backlash arguing that a cleaner should clean her house as she doesn't want to stress her teenagers. The whole thing was bizarre.

The cleaners I know - including my own have very lucrative businesses. My cleaner told me that she has so many on her waiting list that if anyone gives her any shit or treats her badly she ditches them.
Good cleaners are lauded by many and not destitute or uneducated or desperate...
Personally I would work shoe shining if it got me enough money to pay for a cleaner , I hate doing it myself so much.
In this house the four adults (including the teens) contribute equally to the cleaner.

@beerincomechampagnetastes - that's true for my cleaner too in that friends were always asking for her details and she always said no as she had too many clients already. And many of those clients were long-standing ones. And while we never discussed it, I assume that as she had options if clients treated her badly she would have moved on to one of the people on her waitng list.

BUT.... I am questioning whether this is the norm. Are cleaners actually being beaten down and treated badly. Who is right in their perception of cleaners? I see them as professionals, doing a much-needed job and treated accordingly. Others see them as desperate women with no choice who are treated appallingly and have little control while being paid badly.

Even with really obvious stuff like having a golf caddy you just don't see the same level of vitriol...

Ooh! That's an excellent point, Prod.

Royalcorgi at 9.28 sums it up nicely.

was given the job of doing the dishes and collecting the paper on my way home from school from the age of nine - is this not common now?

hahaha - IME most 9 year olds aren't allowed out by themselves even to nip round the corner to a friend!

My views on OJ cant be written here.