Where Freedom Starts: Sex Power Violence #MeToo by Anonymous

Author:Anonymous [Anonymous]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso

This eBook is licensed to John Loughlin, [email protected] on 03/03/2018

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Women Workers Make All Other Work Possible

LATINA IMMIGRANT ORGANIZING AT THE OAKLAND DOMESTIC WORKERS’ CENTER

Magally A. Miranda Alcázar

This is an edited version of an essay that originally appeared in Viewpoint Magazine on March 7, 2017 under the title “The Power of Trabajadoras and the Subversion of Capital: Notes on a Domestic Workers’ Inquiry.”

When Gloria, a long-time domestic worker from El Salvador living in the San Francisco Bay Area, complained about the depression and night sweats she had been experiencing since quitting her job, it was for a peculiar reason.1 She had worked as a personal attendant for an elderly couple in their private home for several years until the elderly wife became so sick she had to be taken to a nursing home for intensive care, and Gloria was left only to care for the husband. She was contracted by one of the couple’s children, a daughter. Gloria loved her job because she had grown to authentically love her clients and, on most days, she joyfully spent most of her waking hours in this family’s home attending to their needs. One day, she left her job and never went back after her longtime client, the husband, tried to force himself on her sexually in exchange for her weekly pay. She shuddered as she recounted the way he placed the envelope on his lap. She felt as though this man had changed from one day to the next. She jetted out of the house without picking up the check she had rightfully earned. Still, it was not the particular instance of sexual harassment that had shaken her nerves, she confessed, but a kind of grief over losing someone she cared for, which had left her feeling bereft and confused.

While the entertainment industry has been the main locus of the #MeToo movement, Gloria’s story illustrates that sexual harassment in the workplace is unfortunately not a remarkable feature of Hollywood. Voices from the anti-violence movement have long called attention to how sexual assault and rape are weaponized for social domination, and that these incidents are exacerbated by unequal power relations rather than simply motivated by some unrestrained sexual desire. The relations of domination inherent in wage labor thus often map too well onto relations of sexual domination across industries.

Still, some have charged that the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment, assault and rape in the workplace has been relatively insular, confined primarily to relatively elite women workers such as actresses, media professionals, and other white collar proletarians. To be sure, the differences are notable. For instance, in the industries just listed, white workers are overrepresented (83.9%), while building, grounds cleaning, and maintenance operations reflect an overrepresentation of Latina/o workers (38%)—workers like Gloria.2 According to a survey by the Southern Poverty Law Center, this demographic tilt has real effects on exposure to harassment and assault: 77% of Latina women say that sexual harassment in the workplace was a major concern.3 So does an absence of citizenship:

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