Tower of Sleep

It’s impossible to write about precarity without writing about gender because undifferentiated labor is reforming along these lines. Lucy’s passivity and her eagerness to please, her vulnerability and blank demeanor would look incredibly strange on a young man. Her willingness to keep treading water without the promise of anything better to come, her ability to communicate nonthreateningly and stay quiet at the right times are parts of what Nina Power describes in the chapter “The Feminization of Labor” in One-Dimensional Woman:

All work has become women’s work, even that of men. No wonder the young professional woman beams down at us from real estate billboards as the paradigmatic image of achievement … At this point in economic time, those character traits [of precarious professionality] are remarkably feminine, which is why the pragmatic, enthusiastic professional woman is the symbol of the world of work as a whole.” (emphasis added)

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I feel like all those “virtues” mentioned in the first paragraph are exactly what I’ve learned from years of work in service, retail, and internship. As Malcolm Harris says earlier in the article, “It’s more important that a worker know how not to ask for a raise, more desirable that she be adaptable than cutthroat.” And it does feel strange to be a young man who needs to conform to these pressures. There’s a reason why virtually all gallery assistants are girls (being a “gallery girl” is a thing, but nobody says “gallery boy”). The flattery and self-effacement that the work requires are more conventionally feminine attitudes. Clients don’t expect it (or even necessarily want it) from a man. These circumstances may be no less demeaning to women, but I suspect they can adapt to it easier (for better or worse). 

The point here is not that men are increasingly at a disadvantage in the marketplace of precarious and immaterial employment, but that all workers are rendered increasingly powerless and deprived of opportunities to actually advance their conditions. How do you resist when you have no leverage?