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I ran across it because Courtney Milan engaged briefly with one of the related threads and its comments.
Anyway.
Who is Gilman?
Charlotte Perkins Gilman has a wikipedia entry and “The Yellow Wallpaper” is (or at least was) required reading for all kinds of college students Back in the Day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Perkins_Gilman
I will decline to summarize. I did not ever actually read her while I was in high school or in college.
My long-time readers are aware that while I have All Kinds of Issues with All Kinds of Things, I am a huge believer in creating and maintaining and living in a Beautiful Home with the various accoutrements thereof — all the things that drove Gilman mad at least until she escaped them. Of course, _I_ created my homes after the society I was born into and in my own particular circumstances the creation etc. of my home(s) was in no way dependent on a or any man or men (at least not particular ones — I do recognize how interdependent we all are).
My more detail-oriented readers _also_ know that I don’t think everyone should have to participate in this nonsense, even tho I very much intend to continue to do so. I’m constantly irritated by the pressure to home ownership, single family homes, yards / lawns, cooking one’s own food / having a kitchen. I really believe that group homes are awesome, especially if they come with staff, at least enough to maintain and enforce a chore rota.
Whatever. Let’s get back to the guy on the bird app.
https://twitter.com/goodguyguaranty/status/1558950110062678018?s=21&t=ZBouKbWDe5rRpZoKJZ3FnA
Argument is pretty simple: it would be cheaper if we did not make every housing unit have a kitchen, and we’d all eat better and have more time for the stuff we cared about if we collectivized the provision of food. It is _exactly_ the same argument as Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s _The Home_, Chapter 7, “Home Cooking”.
Here:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/44481/44481-h/44481-h.htm
When Gilman wrote her diatribe against women / mothers and letting people decide what they wanted to eat based on what tasted good to them, we were sort of at a high-water mark for optimism about science and industry, and also, we did not yet know about celiac, food allergy, etc. Also, if you read the wikipedia entry about Gilman, you know that as much as I love blah blah domestic bullshit blah, Gilman hated blah blah domestic bullshit blah.
I think Gilman has a point. I think that account on the bird app has a point. I do think a lot of the criticism is telling on itself, when they read the word “restaurant” and imagine tipping.
I mean, _most_ restaurants do not involve tipping. The word that comes after “fast food” is “restaurant”.
Anyway. Gilman was apparently worried about stimulants and sugar (to be fair: and opiates); I’m worried about salt. But yeah, if you fix the salt, and cater to/for dietary constraints (religious, allergy, philosophical blah blah fucking blah), I’d be totally willing to quit cooking for myself and eat in the collective kitchen.
Altho I might work harder to figure out how to participate in the collective cooking, because I’m not sure I’m willing to give up cooking _completely_. When I have eaten all my meals out but breakfast, I started to think of my own cooking as a favorite restaurant which had closed.
I have no idea whether the account on the bird app was trolling people or not and honestly, I don’t really care. As we move relentlessly from the household-of-five of _The Home_ to the households-of-one of Sweden, we should definitely revisit ways to support people not having to cook for themselves.
ETA:
If you look at the price per square foot in Manhattan, and think about how many meals you could pay for at cheap restaurants for the square footage devoted to kitchens —even tiny ones — you can sort of see where that account on the bird app is coming from.
Anyway.
Who is Gilman?
Charlotte Perkins Gilman has a wikipedia entry and “The Yellow Wallpaper” is (or at least was) required reading for all kinds of college students Back in the Day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Perkins_Gilman
I will decline to summarize. I did not ever actually read her while I was in high school or in college.
My long-time readers are aware that while I have All Kinds of Issues with All Kinds of Things, I am a huge believer in creating and maintaining and living in a Beautiful Home with the various accoutrements thereof — all the things that drove Gilman mad at least until she escaped them. Of course, _I_ created my homes after the society I was born into and in my own particular circumstances the creation etc. of my home(s) was in no way dependent on a or any man or men (at least not particular ones — I do recognize how interdependent we all are).
My more detail-oriented readers _also_ know that I don’t think everyone should have to participate in this nonsense, even tho I very much intend to continue to do so. I’m constantly irritated by the pressure to home ownership, single family homes, yards / lawns, cooking one’s own food / having a kitchen. I really believe that group homes are awesome, especially if they come with staff, at least enough to maintain and enforce a chore rota.
Whatever. Let’s get back to the guy on the bird app.
https://twitter.com/goodguyguaranty/status/1558950110062678018?s=21&t=ZBouKbWDe5rRpZoKJZ3FnA
Argument is pretty simple: it would be cheaper if we did not make every housing unit have a kitchen, and we’d all eat better and have more time for the stuff we cared about if we collectivized the provision of food. It is _exactly_ the same argument as Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s _The Home_, Chapter 7, “Home Cooking”.
Here:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/44481/44481-h/44481-h.htm
When Gilman wrote her diatribe against women / mothers and letting people decide what they wanted to eat based on what tasted good to them, we were sort of at a high-water mark for optimism about science and industry, and also, we did not yet know about celiac, food allergy, etc. Also, if you read the wikipedia entry about Gilman, you know that as much as I love blah blah domestic bullshit blah, Gilman hated blah blah domestic bullshit blah.
I think Gilman has a point. I think that account on the bird app has a point. I do think a lot of the criticism is telling on itself, when they read the word “restaurant” and imagine tipping.
I mean, _most_ restaurants do not involve tipping. The word that comes after “fast food” is “restaurant”.
Anyway. Gilman was apparently worried about stimulants and sugar (to be fair: and opiates); I’m worried about salt. But yeah, if you fix the salt, and cater to/for dietary constraints (religious, allergy, philosophical blah blah fucking blah), I’d be totally willing to quit cooking for myself and eat in the collective kitchen.
Altho I might work harder to figure out how to participate in the collective cooking, because I’m not sure I’m willing to give up cooking _completely_. When I have eaten all my meals out but breakfast, I started to think of my own cooking as a favorite restaurant which had closed.
I have no idea whether the account on the bird app was trolling people or not and honestly, I don’t really care. As we move relentlessly from the household-of-five of _The Home_ to the households-of-one of Sweden, we should definitely revisit ways to support people not having to cook for themselves.
ETA:
If you look at the price per square foot in Manhattan, and think about how many meals you could pay for at cheap restaurants for the square footage devoted to kitchens —even tiny ones — you can sort of see where that account on the bird app is coming from.