This is the midweek edition of Culture Study — the newsletter from Anne Helen Petersen, which you can read about here. If you like it and want more like it in your inbox, consider subscribing. Earlier this year, I posted a piece about how incredibly exhausted parents are right now — and mothers in particular. It’s notable that I can’t remember the piece, because it speaks to just how many pieces there have been. Parents have no safety nets. Childcare is broken.
Is it weird that reading people’s responses made me feel relieved? I share a lot of the same radicalizations and beliefs and I feel like lately all the news stories I see are overwhelmingly about those who want are in favor of radical preservation. I get why but it just makes me feel defeated, like all of these things we want for our country are nothing but pipe dreams. I know I’m not alone in how I feel and what I believe in, but it’s nice to have that reinforced nonetheless.
Annie, I have been radicalized in so many ways. But thinking on this question, and rolling around with it a little bit during last night's bout of insomnia, I came away with this, even cheesy as it sounds: I have been radicalized for love. For how much I still love the world we live in. For how much I love everyone I share it with ... not just people (especially dreamy ones like you), but the winged and furred and clawed and flippered and proboscised and all of it. As ... *ahem* ... irritable as I often get with the choices we all make and how that reflects back on the world, I'm not ready to surrender my love yet. Which for me is a big deal, because I've spend more of my time in these five decades really trying to be a misanthrope and it just doesn't work for me.
I've come to realize I suck at close personal relationships; it's entirely possible that I'm not cut out for the reliance on technology that makes them seem to work for most people and it's too hurtful to me, I don't know. But this kind of arm's length, we're-all-in-this-together-so-let's-make-the-very-best-of-it-and-show-the-fuck-up-for-each-other kind of love? I'm all in. And that is a radical idea, at least for me.
I have almost completely rejected the diet culture around me, including that in my house. I’m changing the way I approach feeding my family and my kids and I don’t respond to my husband’s self-hatred about his body/food, beyond telling him he sounds like his mom.
I have lost faith in my work administration at a public library as well as the larger governmental body we are a part of, as I have watched public services staff pushed into reopening too fast with not enough support by people who are still working from home and not facing what we face. I’m tired of being a performer instead of an information professional, doing five story times a week for the $800 stroller crowd only stops the complaints to admin, it does nothing to support or reach the people we’re trying to reach. I’m tired of the library being a catch-all safety net for every other underfunded social safety net. In between finding lost email passwords and trying to get people to wear the mask over their nose and unlocking the bathrooms and asking people to not drink in the building I’m also supposed to help find jobs, housing, health care, and more while our police threaten to quit (their jobs where they make more than the head of the library) if they have to get vaccinated. A library is my calling but I’ll end up leaving because we aren’t supported the way we need. Not just by admin, but by the county/city/state/community. We can’t do it all.
My kids are in 2nd and 5th grade and this will be their third year of Covid-affected school. We just got over it and I don’t have permission to work from home if/when they have to quarantine when someone in their class is positive. I want UBI and another federal COVID bill like the one in 2020 and I want it last week.
I'll be honest, I'm fairly young (mid-20s) but for a long time I leaned toward the "encroaching realities" worldview. I'm disabled, not from a wealthy background, etc., but I had internalized the fear we're fed that change is bad and, well, things suck now but they can always get worse. ("You're living on ramen and a prayer but there are starving children in Africa who'd be grateful!") And the past 18 months have made me realize that clinging to work/money/some kind of fingernail-hanging security isn't life, and it shouldn't be for anyone. I agree with all of these statements. I'm still a baby radical, and the fear still creeps in some days, but Jesus I hope there are enough of us, and enough radical kindness to swing us in the right direction.
I’ve been trying to muddle through an idea about people trying to build a world around a new, healthier paradigm, and people fighting like hell to maintain the dying paradigm, and then I read this “existing vs. encroaching realities” and that is IT.
The only thing I've *actually* seen happening is women dropping out of the work force left and right, or begrudgingly accepting less advancement because they don't have anything left to give-even though they're still giving it all, and being left out of the boardrooms. I've been radicalized for 25 years, marching in the streets time and time again for 20, and I have lost all faith in anyone for anything but lip service. It's all broken. How 'bout that electoral college we also get pissed at every four years?
If the pandemic has shown us anything, it's that we need universal health care and a UBI like yesterday. We're all struggling in our own ways, and failure now is even scarier than it was pre-COVID. One slip up and your whole world could come tumbling down. The rich have gotten richer at an accelerated pace but 95% of the country is drowning. I watched a video today where someone shows a town in Colorado that has become so expensive that none of the working class can afford to live there, and so there is no one available to work at the boutiques and restaurants. The same thing is happening in Austin TX and in other cities, where people with money (or investors) are moving in and taking over all of the previously affordable neighborhoods, and people are being priced out and forced to move. That's what happened to me - as a single person living alone, I simply could not afford to remain in Austin without getting a roommate, and that would have led to way too much drama since I work from home.
We really do need some radical changes. But I fear that in the next election cycle the fearmongering is going to lead us to more right-wing Boberts and MTGs because Democrats simply do not know how to reach working-class people. Except for Beto O'Rourke. He knows how to do it. I just wish there was a Beto in Missouri because it's a shit-show here and it will likely get even worse with Roy Blunt retiring. I'm actually apprehensive about leaving St. Louis because attitudes towards COVID are so different - I hear that no one wears a mask anywhere, whereas here, even without a mask mandate due to political pressure, people are largely doing what they need to do anyway.
I've been radicalized on housing and anti-NIMBY. The quote "Housing cannot be affordable and a source of wealth. It doesn’t work." hits me like a ton of bricks. I'm a successful elder millennial but I can't afford a house in my city, and I cannot imagine how people without as much money can even exist here. Existing homeowners fight tooth and nail against any development and it's just something I can't tolerate anymore.
I’ve always aspired toward two visions that felt wildly disparate: to become a respected attorney and to become a functionally decent parent of a kid or two (neither of these things have come to pass yet; I’m 26 and that’s totally fine.)
But I imagined after reading your excellent pieces on the relentless, thankless work of mothering (during the pandemic and otherwise) — and by contrast, reading childless women’s thoughts on their seemingly unencumbered professional autonomy and joys — that my resolve towards achieving my second goal would be … diminished.
I am delighted to find that this is not yet the case. I think if anything, what I’ve gleaned from these readings is a clearer vision of how much work our markets and communities impose upon mothers *and* of how much I can do prior to marriage / kids to offset those unjust manifestations of patriarchy. I no longer date people who don’t commit to an equal division of domestic labor or who aren’t willing to interrogate themselves emotionally (in therapy or otherwise), and I have clear expectations of how I want parenting duties to look. I think I’m also finally realizing that the largest burdens of motherhood are not innate to motherhood — nobody’s brilliance or ambition *has* to be subsumed by motherhood and its labors! I don’t want to fall into the cynicism trap that accepts motherhood as implicit subjugation of self. These are conditions our communities impose on us — in our lack of universal childcare, maternity leave, work flexibility, etc. I’m surprised to still feel thrilled to have kids, and to feel galvanized into activism around those issues so everyone (!!) who wants kids can parent with a feeling of security, with the comforts of leisure time, etc.
As someone who was too exhausted to even think when I saw your call go out for these reflections on Twitter…thank you, I needed this today. Stuff like this is helping me actually finally change my relationship to academia—which we’ve all known is burning forever, but as you say, as more people say it and say similar things across many parts of society it feels easier to internalize. As I start a journey on what’s left of the academic job market (lol?), this feels like a huge gift. The prospect of walking away and/or building something new feels not like failure, but a step toward collective health and humanity.
I have left the broken system. After teaching for over fifteen years in independent schools, I have quit. I never imagined that I would teach a President's children, and at one of the country's most prestigious schools, be promoted year after year, and still find myself deeply unhappy. Each year, it got worse. The more credentials I gained, the more I became invisible. Finally, it felt like if I stayed, I was only contributing to systems of white supremacy and patriarchy. And in the pandemic, when violence against Asians weighed heavily on me as a Vietnamese-American teacher, I could no longer teach with my whole heart. My heart was broken. So, this was the first summer since I graduated from graduate school, when I wasn't somehow preparing to teach another school year. My heart has healed a little, and will continue to. I have only made two rules for my future: 1) to never work for a white man again (I have done that for my entire work life, and I think that's enough experience for this lifetime), and 2) to not accept any full-time teaching jobs for at least another year. When I tell people my rules, many are very uncomfortable, and some are worried for me. I let them sit in those feelings, and I don't let their feelings affect mine. I think in this world right now, allowing myself to be where I am, heart-mending and all, is my radical moment.
I feel more confident in my already radical beliefs.
I also am very interested in reading your in-depth elder care piece, but I can’t yet. I can’t risk bringing up those anxieties and feelings. Both my parents are in nursing homes that I handle all the arrangements for. Right now things are stable and reading about the horrible system feels too traumatic. I’m sure I’ll go back and read it at some point.
For now it’s like seeing someone break an ankle on TV and feeling it in my ankle where it was broken before.
So grateful for this post and for everyone sharing their comments - I feel seen!
Community is where I've been most radicalized. I grew up in a household that really emphasized being independent. Which is great in many ways. But the over emphasis on this figure-everything-out-for-yourself/take-care-of-just-you way of being went waaaaay too far. It was a recipe for being hyper individualistic and self-centered. From traveling and living abroad I saw how toxic that attitude can be, and the pandemic turned that observation into a gut punch. Instead of turning in, we should be turning out. Community is showing up and supporting your neighbors; it is UBI, healthcare, housing, paid leave, a liveable wage... Anger at seeing how much of America devalues these things is pushing me to show up, speak up more, step outside my bubble
I was already radical about UBI, shorter work week etc. But I’ve become radical about WFH. Pre-pandemic I was anti WFH. I liked keeping work out of the house. Still do, but not as much as 2 more hours per day with my family. What radicalized me about this was my employer’s callousness toward employee safety during the pandemic and reading (in this order) AHP, Charlie Wurzel, and Ed Zitron. They convinced me so much of showing up was about middle-managers justifying their existence and wanting to exert power over others. What have I done? Become active with my union local and pushed for remote work to continue.
You did this piece so much justice. Absolutely brilliant. The gaslighting is so normalized, as is the fact that this just IS on us. We know it’s been hard for a long time…long before COVID-19 moms we’re having epic fucking breakdowns. And single moms, moms living in poverty, moms living in abusive households or under a racist police state have been screaming in whispers…but now we’re all stuck at home paying attention…because there’s no escaping this reality. In someways that is the best gift we could have gotten for our fellow humans, seeing their struggles as our own.
This perfectly encapsulates the "societal grief" I've been experiencing over the past year. But it feels like as much as my beliefs about how society should function have been radicalized, my idealism and hope that things can change have diminished and I'm not sure how to move forward from here.
From Burnout to Radicalization
Is it weird that reading people’s responses made me feel relieved? I share a lot of the same radicalizations and beliefs and I feel like lately all the news stories I see are overwhelmingly about those who want are in favor of radical preservation. I get why but it just makes me feel defeated, like all of these things we want for our country are nothing but pipe dreams. I know I’m not alone in how I feel and what I believe in, but it’s nice to have that reinforced nonetheless.
Annie, I have been radicalized in so many ways. But thinking on this question, and rolling around with it a little bit during last night's bout of insomnia, I came away with this, even cheesy as it sounds: I have been radicalized for love. For how much I still love the world we live in. For how much I love everyone I share it with ... not just people (especially dreamy ones like you), but the winged and furred and clawed and flippered and proboscised and all of it. As ... *ahem* ... irritable as I often get with the choices we all make and how that reflects back on the world, I'm not ready to surrender my love yet. Which for me is a big deal, because I've spend more of my time in these five decades really trying to be a misanthrope and it just doesn't work for me.
I've come to realize I suck at close personal relationships; it's entirely possible that I'm not cut out for the reliance on technology that makes them seem to work for most people and it's too hurtful to me, I don't know. But this kind of arm's length, we're-all-in-this-together-so-let's-make-the-very-best-of-it-and-show-the-fuck-up-for-each-other kind of love? I'm all in. And that is a radical idea, at least for me.
I have almost completely rejected the diet culture around me, including that in my house. I’m changing the way I approach feeding my family and my kids and I don’t respond to my husband’s self-hatred about his body/food, beyond telling him he sounds like his mom.
I have lost faith in my work administration at a public library as well as the larger governmental body we are a part of, as I have watched public services staff pushed into reopening too fast with not enough support by people who are still working from home and not facing what we face. I’m tired of being a performer instead of an information professional, doing five story times a week for the $800 stroller crowd only stops the complaints to admin, it does nothing to support or reach the people we’re trying to reach. I’m tired of the library being a catch-all safety net for every other underfunded social safety net. In between finding lost email passwords and trying to get people to wear the mask over their nose and unlocking the bathrooms and asking people to not drink in the building I’m also supposed to help find jobs, housing, health care, and more while our police threaten to quit (their jobs where they make more than the head of the library) if they have to get vaccinated. A library is my calling but I’ll end up leaving because we aren’t supported the way we need. Not just by admin, but by the county/city/state/community. We can’t do it all.
My kids are in 2nd and 5th grade and this will be their third year of Covid-affected school. We just got over it and I don’t have permission to work from home if/when they have to quarantine when someone in their class is positive. I want UBI and another federal COVID bill like the one in 2020 and I want it last week.
I'll be honest, I'm fairly young (mid-20s) but for a long time I leaned toward the "encroaching realities" worldview. I'm disabled, not from a wealthy background, etc., but I had internalized the fear we're fed that change is bad and, well, things suck now but they can always get worse. ("You're living on ramen and a prayer but there are starving children in Africa who'd be grateful!") And the past 18 months have made me realize that clinging to work/money/some kind of fingernail-hanging security isn't life, and it shouldn't be for anyone. I agree with all of these statements. I'm still a baby radical, and the fear still creeps in some days, but Jesus I hope there are enough of us, and enough radical kindness to swing us in the right direction.
I’ve been trying to muddle through an idea about people trying to build a world around a new, healthier paradigm, and people fighting like hell to maintain the dying paradigm, and then I read this “existing vs. encroaching realities” and that is IT.
The only thing I've *actually* seen happening is women dropping out of the work force left and right, or begrudgingly accepting less advancement because they don't have anything left to give-even though they're still giving it all, and being left out of the boardrooms. I've been radicalized for 25 years, marching in the streets time and time again for 20, and I have lost all faith in anyone for anything but lip service. It's all broken. How 'bout that electoral college we also get pissed at every four years?
If the pandemic has shown us anything, it's that we need universal health care and a UBI like yesterday. We're all struggling in our own ways, and failure now is even scarier than it was pre-COVID. One slip up and your whole world could come tumbling down. The rich have gotten richer at an accelerated pace but 95% of the country is drowning. I watched a video today where someone shows a town in Colorado that has become so expensive that none of the working class can afford to live there, and so there is no one available to work at the boutiques and restaurants. The same thing is happening in Austin TX and in other cities, where people with money (or investors) are moving in and taking over all of the previously affordable neighborhoods, and people are being priced out and forced to move. That's what happened to me - as a single person living alone, I simply could not afford to remain in Austin without getting a roommate, and that would have led to way too much drama since I work from home.
We really do need some radical changes. But I fear that in the next election cycle the fearmongering is going to lead us to more right-wing Boberts and MTGs because Democrats simply do not know how to reach working-class people. Except for Beto O'Rourke. He knows how to do it. I just wish there was a Beto in Missouri because it's a shit-show here and it will likely get even worse with Roy Blunt retiring. I'm actually apprehensive about leaving St. Louis because attitudes towards COVID are so different - I hear that no one wears a mask anywhere, whereas here, even without a mask mandate due to political pressure, people are largely doing what they need to do anyway.
I've been radicalized on housing and anti-NIMBY. The quote "Housing cannot be affordable and a source of wealth. It doesn’t work." hits me like a ton of bricks. I'm a successful elder millennial but I can't afford a house in my city, and I cannot imagine how people without as much money can even exist here. Existing homeowners fight tooth and nail against any development and it's just something I can't tolerate anymore.
I’ve always aspired toward two visions that felt wildly disparate: to become a respected attorney and to become a functionally decent parent of a kid or two (neither of these things have come to pass yet; I’m 26 and that’s totally fine.)
But I imagined after reading your excellent pieces on the relentless, thankless work of mothering (during the pandemic and otherwise) — and by contrast, reading childless women’s thoughts on their seemingly unencumbered professional autonomy and joys — that my resolve towards achieving my second goal would be … diminished.
I am delighted to find that this is not yet the case. I think if anything, what I’ve gleaned from these readings is a clearer vision of how much work our markets and communities impose upon mothers *and* of how much I can do prior to marriage / kids to offset those unjust manifestations of patriarchy. I no longer date people who don’t commit to an equal division of domestic labor or who aren’t willing to interrogate themselves emotionally (in therapy or otherwise), and I have clear expectations of how I want parenting duties to look. I think I’m also finally realizing that the largest burdens of motherhood are not innate to motherhood — nobody’s brilliance or ambition *has* to be subsumed by motherhood and its labors! I don’t want to fall into the cynicism trap that accepts motherhood as implicit subjugation of self. These are conditions our communities impose on us — in our lack of universal childcare, maternity leave, work flexibility, etc. I’m surprised to still feel thrilled to have kids, and to feel galvanized into activism around those issues so everyone (!!) who wants kids can parent with a feeling of security, with the comforts of leisure time, etc.
As someone who was too exhausted to even think when I saw your call go out for these reflections on Twitter…thank you, I needed this today. Stuff like this is helping me actually finally change my relationship to academia—which we’ve all known is burning forever, but as you say, as more people say it and say similar things across many parts of society it feels easier to internalize. As I start a journey on what’s left of the academic job market (lol?), this feels like a huge gift. The prospect of walking away and/or building something new feels not like failure, but a step toward collective health and humanity.
I have left the broken system. After teaching for over fifteen years in independent schools, I have quit. I never imagined that I would teach a President's children, and at one of the country's most prestigious schools, be promoted year after year, and still find myself deeply unhappy. Each year, it got worse. The more credentials I gained, the more I became invisible. Finally, it felt like if I stayed, I was only contributing to systems of white supremacy and patriarchy. And in the pandemic, when violence against Asians weighed heavily on me as a Vietnamese-American teacher, I could no longer teach with my whole heart. My heart was broken. So, this was the first summer since I graduated from graduate school, when I wasn't somehow preparing to teach another school year. My heart has healed a little, and will continue to. I have only made two rules for my future: 1) to never work for a white man again (I have done that for my entire work life, and I think that's enough experience for this lifetime), and 2) to not accept any full-time teaching jobs for at least another year. When I tell people my rules, many are very uncomfortable, and some are worried for me. I let them sit in those feelings, and I don't let their feelings affect mine. I think in this world right now, allowing myself to be where I am, heart-mending and all, is my radical moment.
I feel more confident in my already radical beliefs.
I also am very interested in reading your in-depth elder care piece, but I can’t yet. I can’t risk bringing up those anxieties and feelings. Both my parents are in nursing homes that I handle all the arrangements for. Right now things are stable and reading about the horrible system feels too traumatic. I’m sure I’ll go back and read it at some point.
For now it’s like seeing someone break an ankle on TV and feeling it in my ankle where it was broken before.
So grateful for this post and for everyone sharing their comments - I feel seen!
Community is where I've been most radicalized. I grew up in a household that really emphasized being independent. Which is great in many ways. But the over emphasis on this figure-everything-out-for-yourself/take-care-of-just-you way of being went waaaaay too far. It was a recipe for being hyper individualistic and self-centered. From traveling and living abroad I saw how toxic that attitude can be, and the pandemic turned that observation into a gut punch. Instead of turning in, we should be turning out. Community is showing up and supporting your neighbors; it is UBI, healthcare, housing, paid leave, a liveable wage... Anger at seeing how much of America devalues these things is pushing me to show up, speak up more, step outside my bubble
I was already radical about UBI, shorter work week etc. But I’ve become radical about WFH. Pre-pandemic I was anti WFH. I liked keeping work out of the house. Still do, but not as much as 2 more hours per day with my family. What radicalized me about this was my employer’s callousness toward employee safety during the pandemic and reading (in this order) AHP, Charlie Wurzel, and Ed Zitron. They convinced me so much of showing up was about middle-managers justifying their existence and wanting to exert power over others. What have I done? Become active with my union local and pushed for remote work to continue.
You did this piece so much justice. Absolutely brilliant. The gaslighting is so normalized, as is the fact that this just IS on us. We know it’s been hard for a long time…long before COVID-19 moms we’re having epic fucking breakdowns. And single moms, moms living in poverty, moms living in abusive households or under a racist police state have been screaming in whispers…but now we’re all stuck at home paying attention…because there’s no escaping this reality. In someways that is the best gift we could have gotten for our fellow humans, seeing their struggles as our own.
This perfectly encapsulates the "societal grief" I've been experiencing over the past year. But it feels like as much as my beliefs about how society should function have been radicalized, my idealism and hope that things can change have diminished and I'm not sure how to move forward from here.