Monetisation is, in spite of I am.

Monetisation is, in spite of I am.

 

It is interesting that to get to fully understand how the society works structurally in regards to sexism, we need to undress ourselves of all our stocked prejudices, hoarded throughout our lives and hidden under the romanticised terms like naivety and innocence.

Women have long been capitalised as stock for the maintenance of patrilineality. No wonder this has been the rule, especially after the spread of Christianity, in which the Holy Trinity includes only males (i.e. the father, the son and the Holy Spirit). Women have been relegated to invisibility for millennia, even though their bodies are incredibly valuable to human kind. However, for their invisibility, they could only be monetised once, that is in marriage. After that, her body would become property of the husband’s family, to do with her as they wished, and to produce males, of course-- the real valuable being that can be monetised from for his whole life.

 

Honesty be told, men are not well treated in this patriarchal society either. They have freedom, if they are free. They have justice, if they are on the right side. Have they a true soul, however? Or do they romanticise their own prison in innocence, by subjecting their selves to grandiloquent circumlocution? When do they practice their humanism? Perhaps, only individually, whenever they can gain the blessings of a God-like or an un-God-like immortality in name.

No, I am not a man hater, although I do criticise them. How can I hate men, when I have a son I love? Do not confuse my thoughts, when in truth all I despise is monetisation of human lives and thoughts. Monetisation of food and animals too, meanwhile many fellow humans die of starvation. And that all comes from the same source, and it’s vile. Honour, greed and hoarding. The unholy Trinity: the true sins of our patriarchal society.

 

The whole of the capitalist society has been created to fit men. All the health advances so far have been to treat the male body only. As for women, they are a mystery to be paid no attention, as long as they can keep their sole function, which is to care and breed.

Women can hardly keep up, dealing with period pains, children and parents to look after or even dealing with unsolved chronic illnesses that affect them more often than men. In addition, the more individualistic and fragmented the society is, surely the more the women will struggle, and I don’t think we can be more individualistic than we are to this day. On top of that, the super women that do keep up with men in the unfair work environment also have to be extremely strong mentally, to deal with social mining, sometimes for not being able to or not wanting a family. It seems almost impossible, if not a utopia, to be equal in this unfair society and women who want to feel as valuable as men, but in many ways cannot achieve this goal, end up with feelings of depression and self-loathe.

In the bare reality of things, the only real choice a woman has in her material life is either sacrifice or resignation. A choice that can only be consciously made if she removes the veil of innocence and naivety from her face. And whatever difficult path she finally chooses, she will definitely be criticised by her surroundings. It is the apogee of hellish individuality; that is for sure. Nothing really supports a woman but herself. Her solitary, dependant, unstable self. Even so, she still cares and men should be truly thankful for that. More so, because in her caring is the answer to all our troubles. 

Care is not something that can be well monetised. Either because love can’t be bought, as they say, or because it is a stigmatised job, for women only. Even so, still here lies the way out of our individualistic self-impoverishment. Every individual in this world, either man or woman, can be and move forward because they have had someone who cared for them, in some way or another. We don’t have elderly people being abandoned in the streets like useless piece of equipment simply because someone chose to care for them. And, most of the time, this someone is a woman, for the greatest part because the patriarchal society believes it is her job, the un-monetised job, I mean. That way she cannot be materially free.

Although in many cases she is unfortunately dependant financially, I believe that by finding her value in the un-monetised world or paradigm and consequently fighting for this un-monetised world, without expecting moral support, the woman, and also the men who thereupon follows, can find the way out of this hellish paradigm of living, even though slowly. It is not resignation. It is the contrary. It is finding value not in what men do, but in what we as women do. Finding value in what the women’s body can give us and understanding the female body, instead of trying to follow men’s body as a universal model. The value we give ourselves matters, and that not counting on stock interests, bank interests or religious interests. Whether we can monetise our lives, or how much, does not influence on our value as a person. It may seem obvious to some people, but our capitalist society works by closely relating one to the other. And many people suffer for that.

Everything that cannot be monetised is so valuable, please believe me. An extract of a poem is much more valuable than any millionaire or billionaire businessman, who sold his soul to fit in the best he could and survive as the fittest, at the top layer of this horrible pyramid of self-oppression and dehumanisation.

The answer is to be, disregarding monetisation. Like a homeless man or a hermit, who duels in the home of his soul, but even better would be in a community of equals that support each other. We can always fight for a more hopeful future and it starts by looking for a different, counter-current path. Definitely not by competition, though. And I don’t want to compete with men, as I don’t want to sell myself for the highest bid, without thinking, and wait for a freedom in money that will never come. I don’t believe that work ennobles men, and even less women. What ennobles men and women is care. And I want to care. Care for myself, my family, and other women and be cared for.

By Karinna Alves Gulias