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Thinking and talking constantly about how lockdown enforces conservative values at the moment - the primacy of the couple, the biological family, the homestead.
A big freezer, even. I’m living in the most normative way I have done in years - cohabiting in a partnership - and uncomfortable about how that’s being unconsciously rewarded the structure
And so many loved ones living more alternative lifestyles that are essentially being punished by the circumstances or forced to regress back into family units that are not always happy/safe/tolerable
Because when our society is thrown into crisis mode of course it falls back on these ancient structures, naturally it does, but I find it troubling that this is where we end up
Of course I think everyone should do whatever they need to cope in these times - including cooking nice things! - but also look at us suddenly a community of human beings in our homes baking bread (or potatoes, bread is still beyond me)
In the context of the feminist political history that I use to understand myself & the culture it’s not always a comfortable thought
And maybe I wish I could lean into it more easily, but I’m struggling to. Sometimes I feel like I’m at a dinner party and everyone round the table’s hair is on fire and no one is batting an eyelid (Buñuel is currently directing my inner monologue)
I think most people have felt this at some point through this, whatever the trigger - it feels like it’s part of processing the trauma.
I also think it’s important to say out loud that conservative values can be extremely suffocating if they are not your choice, and there is also comfort in some of it, which is why it ‘works’, and that ambivalence is complicated.
