A Mess,

I mean, imagine you're like, an office manager for a small firm. You're not getting a hell of a lot of respect and reward for your job, because nobody is in this system, and also because "the woman who answers the phone," is virtually invisible in this society. Your roommate firmly believes the kitchen sink is Dish Storage and yet also gets salty if you go ahead and stack her dirties in the dishwasher and clean them with your own, like make up your mind. You don't really have advancement prospects. You went and got a classics degree because people pumped you up all through your childhood with Follow Your Dreams, but what the fuck are you going to actually do with it? Museum? Archivist? Gonna need different degrees for that, and you've got student loan debt, and besides, you'd probably have to move to a higher cost of living area and try to make it on an entry level salary—do you really want to do that?

But there's fiction, and there's influencers (also fiction), and there's recipe bloggers, and there's almost a general miasma of reactionary sentiment that says: Opt Out.

Frankly, sounds lovely, you think. Opt Out How?

Well, all you need is to find a loving and powerful man. (This does not immediately trigger alarm bells, every Disney movie has told you that true love is The Solution, so it's got a certain resonance.) And then you split the work, you let him take care of the headache stuff (it's okay, he's into it) and you concentrate on Creating A Perfect Environment. Fuck dirty dish roommate anyway, this place will be Yours, and it can be Perfect, and beautiful, the pace of your life will change from frantic to leisurely, and you can spend the time to do the little artistic things that you've always wanted to try. I mean, all those influencers and recipe bloggers are somehow finding the time to shave fresh nutmeg onto their artisanal hot chocolate with a glowing smile, so doesn't it follow that you could take the time to actually look into textiles a bit? Maybe even, if you're lucky, get a loom? As it is, you've pretty much abandoned the idea of doing any serious fibercrafts as a hobby, but if you could opt out of work, you can do it, can't you? And I mean, yes, you'd end up having kids, but you were always open to kids someday, and the propaganda says that these kids would be well behaved and not sticky and grow up having fun with a big yard and a dog (and maybe you wanted a dog when you were little and dreamed of that sort of life for yourself, it sure would be lovely to give such an idyllic childhood to another human being). Doesn't it sound nice?

Of course the propaganda is built around several significant lies, starting with the idea that doing housework is somehow a less work-like sort of work than what you're doing now (but that's a lie you've pretty much grown up with, if housework was real work men would do it and people would get paid for it). Also the idea that your Good Man will always be good to you so long as you hold up your end of the relationship (but that's also a lie you've grown up with, True Love is always idealized and nobody talks about why marriages end—except by sometimes speculating that "she let herself go" and he cheated as a consequence of that failure).

step two: in your diffidence, leave many half-drunk glasses of water around your apartment

step three: your cat, who is stupider than any other mammal on earth, living or dead, starts drinking from your many abandoned water cups

step four: the cat now believes these are for her