The app for independent voices
I like especially her point that “each new word transforms something ordinary, even beautiful, into something suspect.”
Keeping family ties and traditions are ordinary things to do. Important, vital, beautiful, sometimes hard things to do, but ordinary all the same.
I think the term “kinkeeping” sounds quite nice actually! Shame it was twisted.
I understand the impulse to put the label of “unpaid labor” on ordinary things women are typically more likely to do. There are very real motivations behind this, and in some cases I think some amount of payment for women’s unpaid work (mother’s pensions or something similar) could make sense and be beneficial. But insinuating we should be paid for keeping up with Grandma or baking birthday cakes is just…stupid and entitled.
This is reminding me of an older essay of mine about why curating special occasions for children isn't a motherly burden but rather it is a transmission of tradition. I think it is a privilege to get to be the keepers of traditions and heritage. Yes, it takes a lot of work, but that work is worth it, and it is an entirely unique sort of work that women *generally* are more attuned to.
