"Woman, the New Social Problem"

My far-flung friend Gail O'Hara linked to this piece by Meghan Falvey called "Woman, the New Social Program" on her Chickfactor site. It starts out plenty satisfying, tearing up some of the most prominent and irritating new arguments about what women are supposed to do with their lives (see: Maureen Dowd, Caitlin Flanagan), but then it really takes off when she connects the issue not only to gender but to class, and to all people, not only women. Love and work are unstable; love and care become commodified.

In our private lives, the transformation is just as profound. Our default serial monogamy, our noncommitment and obsession with self-refashioning—these resemble nothing so much as casualized employment. Economic and romantic life converge, in a register of profound insecurity defined by constant movement—in and out of capital markets, jobs, relationships.

Here's the rest.