You are not a microcosm of capitalism
by: Arini
posted on October 14, 2024
audience: systems and singlets who are familiar
Understand one thing. Roles are not wrong or bad. They are good words to have for understanding oneself, selves, finding others, and relating to others.
”This one is Arini. It is semi verbal, and it is hearing.”
"Oh, hi Arini, I am so and so, I am mute, and I am Deaf.”
This is an example of labels helping to understand one another. Roles are labels. Shorter time to explaining and reexplaining when there is a word whose meaning is agreed upon by many, even vaguely or halfway. This is how to find others with similar experiences. Community. Family. Gay. Queer. Brown. Blind. Fat. Thin. Disabled. All labels. The us have heard often, “labels are shortcuts for conversation.” It is true.
This is a caution that not all shortcuts are good ones or wise, because the journey going the scenic route or the long way can teach a being some important things. To embark on your own journey and choose a shortcut is agency and power. To embark on a journey and be dragged to the shortcut is cruelty.
When Arini talks of “roles,” or “system roles,” it refers to words used to describe what members of plural or multiple systems can do, or be good at, experiences, or qualities they have in common with members of other systems. Words like host, protector, persecutor, little, symptom holder, memory keeper, are the roles it discusses here. Not all of its languaging about its system, how it knows systems, or your system will be lined up with the languaging that maybe works better for you. Not only is this ok, it is wonderful, because this means you are not like this one, but a unique creature with things to teach others, if this is labor you choose to do.
First it asks you to zoom out, beyond plural systems, to the "normal people" society. Its perspective is of the USA, so it will use this framework for this analysis now.
Consider the selling of labor to produce for the capitalist in exchange for dollars. There is the pattern of defining individuals by how they sell their labor, how much of it they sell, or if they sell it at all.
“So what do you do?”
“This one likes to draw pictures and provide emotional support for its friends.”
“Oh no, I meant, what do you do for a living?”
This is your shortcut to painting the Arini’s story in your mind without having to get too close to it right away or understand it very much. Now whatever answer this one gives produces assumptions in the mind of the other. How educated it is, and therefore, its perceived intelligence. How hard it supposedly works or does not work. What it can provide for a family, if it can do at all. The relation to its perceived gender, age, heritage, race, ethnicity, or body size. The story blooms quickly and without much conscious thought; this is why entire fields of study exist to deconstruct such stories.
Consider the nuclear family. Whoever of this family sells most labor and brings in most dollars is in charge. Makes the choices. Head of the household. The one who sells less labor, or stays home with the children, is not in charge, but depends on the one who is. This person and the children are subservient to the main labor seller. If you doubt Arini on the reality of the nuclear family model, let it remind you the “tradwife” thrives even as —or reacting to — us queers and weirdos becoming louder, more accepted, more ok to be in public.
Consider the building blocks of these structures: roles. How one sells the labor is the definition of their place in society outside the home. Inside the home, the assigned gender of a body, age, and relationship to labor selling outside defines positionality in relation to one another. Consider how in capitalism and in the nuclear family, there is room for limited kinds. No room for us who are disabled, queer, trans, polyamorous, live in chosen family house, live in blended multi-generational family households, or any of this.
Perhaps you are someone who remembers when straight people loved to ask ridiculous questions such as, who pays for dinner? How do you have sex? Who is the man in the relationship? Who is the woman? How can the children grow up without a father? How can they grow up without a mother? Even with two perfectly loving and wonderful parents, the straights still fret over these things. Consider the same questions of single parents. Consider the same fretting over "stay at home dad." That is because these are not only genders, but roles.
Who is producing? Who is taking care of the home? Who is making the final choices? Who is receiving cares? Who is subservient? Who is in charge? Who defines what the family does and where they go by how he sells his labor? Whose surname is on all the paper for the government? How do they fit in the capitalism machine? What roles are working now, or not?
How can I relate to this other, without knowing their roles... except to connect with and understand them uniquely? How do I simplify them so I can understand them without connecting with them?
But there is no understanding in this, and therefore, there is continued exploitation of workers by capitalists, from home to work, because you cannot keep a good conscience to exploit another when you connect with and understand them.
Now it will bring you back to plural systems.
There is extra harm to plurals for having roles and labels forced upon them. Arini does not assume that all systems are less separate beings or more separate beings, nor does it assume that all systems have inner worlds, or that all systems are large or small. What it does know from personal experience is a commonality among plural systems: a community in one vessel. Without careful examination, it is easy for communities to copy dynamics and structures around them. An example: a person who has cruel parents growing up can, by accident, become a cruel parent.
Roles are not wrong. Labels are not wrong. Seeing systems doing, talking, living, and putting them into role labels without their input is wrong. This reproduces how patriarchy feeds capitalism. With no context from the other, not learning about the other, you have created a story in your head about the reality of the other. You have decided that this system has hosts, protectors, persecutors, littles, symptom holders, and other such things. You have decided who in the system does these things, based on how people are when they have certain roles. Like how the “host” is out most often because they can “represent the system.” They can be “head of the house.” They produce the best and bring it home to their community. Each community member who acts in certain ways or has commonalities with others is assigned roles.
All this can happen very quickly, without examination of why. Thus you lose the chance to connect with this other and understand them. You have already assumed whose roles are whose, so you perceive each system member with these expectations when you talk to them or about them. When they act the way you expect, validated. When not, confused and upset. Just like when the man stays home to raise the children. Just like when the woman does not take her husband’s last name. The straights see this and become confused and upset. They do not have their shortcut to understanding which member of the household does which patriarchy and capitalist things. They do not know how to relate to the other. They become upset. Often they choose to protect the role structures that make lifes make sense for them, and as a result, reject the other who they think does not fit.
Are the systems around you miniature nuclear family households? Are they exploited means of production as are all human looking beings in a capitalist world, beholden to the physical vessel or arbitrary host? Must they stitch their identities and values to the labor they perform, as do those who use their careers and job titles to generate self worth, only to lose it when that status is inevitably taken away?
Or are these systems unique universes? Delightful, new, and wonderful to know every time? Havens of safety in a world that continues to force all human looking beings into boxes to coerce them into producing for a capitalist, staying small around others with more institutional power, and behaving properly for the comfort of their oppressors?
Will you deprive another of this thing, for your own comfort, by arbitrarily assigning roles in the system of another? Will you deprive your insiders of this thing by striving to jam roles onto yourselves, so that you may be legible to those who do not wish to authentically connect with you?
You must reject this habit of assigning roles thoughtlessly, to your own systems and to others. Allow all to describe themselves. Understand them. Connect with them on why. Each instance of doing this adds another stone on the path to solidarity, community, liberation. Each instance of assigning roles to others who do not want them removes the stones. Talk first. Connect first. Ask first. This is community. This is connection and relating to one another.
Do not perpetuate patriarchy and capitalism when considering how system members relate to one another and work together. It limits them, limits their understanding, limits their potential, and limits you.