bulleted list of… bullet points

• I can’t take a feminist seriously if she takes a condescending tone towards traditionally female activities like crafting in order to make some otherwise valid points about the marketing practices of e-business sites (in this case: Etsy) (responses at Jezebel, Magickal Realism, 11D, etc.).
• In that article, Sara Mosle implies that an educated stay-at-home-mom’s non-work taking care of her family and home is really not worth as much as, say, a similarly educated corporate attorney’s paper-pushing (or, wait, perhaps I shouldn’t make unfair and exaggerated or even blatantly false blanket assumptions like that to make a point?):

the Etsy.com seller is often a married woman with (or about to have) young children, with a higher-than-average household income, and a good education. These should, in sum, be highly employable women. So, what are they doing, often pursuing hobbies, or working only part-time, on Etsy?

• So, I wanted to make a list of the things that, in my year-long experience as a very highly educated stay-at-home-mom I have not been paid to do. Off the top of my head, thus far I’ve been a professional caregiver, nurse, nutritionist, cook, psychiatrist, physical therapist, event planner, project manager, personal assistant, early childhood development expert, singer, professional photographer, and I assume eventually I’ll also play the role of schoolteacher. I work a full 168 hours per week because as a parent, I’m on duty even while sleeping: if baby wakes up whenever, at the very least I have to make a decision about whether or not I need to do something about it. Together with her father, of course – we are parents: our child is our responsibility, this is how it is, nothing wrong with it. The difference is that he also works outside the home and society puts an actual monetary value on that work. We are both only not working when we hire someone, for money, someone who is not our child’s mother, to do the things that I, as my child’s mother, do most of the time without ever getting paid a cent. Mosle seems to imply that there’s nothing wrong with this and fails to notice that doing so very nearly invalidates any other point she’s trying to make.
• What I always find funny is that I’ve fulfilled many of the job functions I list above above in various jobs I had. For example: I was a project manager, psychiatrist, web designer, marketing team, event planner, personal assistant rolled into one in a particular management position I once had and was paid pretty well for not much more than 40 hours a week and always being stressed out because no one’s life was ever improved by what I did, least of all mine.
• Right now, there are several people whose lives are better because of what I do, myself included.
• To imply that traditional women’s work, conducted in the home, is worth less than traditional men’s work outside the home is quite simply misogynist. And it does nothing to solve such very real problems as a childless woman being 100% more likely to be hired for the same job as an equally qualified woman who happens to be a mother (via Jezebel).