Spare me the compliments of colonialist wankstains

[nanila]

I have been thinking, off an on, about a comment I heard Jacob Rees-Mogg (UK Conservative politician, pro-Brexit) make on Have I Got News For You (topical BBC “comedy” panel show) a few weeks ago.

He remarked, in an off-hand smiling way, “Nannies are indestructible.”

This provoked little from his fellow panelists other than some raised eyebrows and swiftly moving on to the next topic. I would dearly have loved to have seen someone call him out on it, however, because to me, it tidily encapsulates the kind of thinking that informs our more privileged elected officials.

“Nannies are indestructible.” Let’s pick that apart a little, shall we? You’re saying that people who choose a certain career are all of such physical and mental endurance that they are unbreakable. A career that is traditionally underpaid and underappreciated. A career that, in the past, many would not have chosen freely, but would have been forced into purely by necessity. A career that has traditionally - and still is - predominantly taken by women. A career that often required* one to endure physical and mental abuse not only from one’s charges, but from one’s employers.

So what you’re saying, Jacob Rees-Mogg, is that you think these people, these often young, habitually oppressed and usually female people, can endure anything. Any sort of mistreatment you throw at them, whether it be verbal insults or piss-poor pay, they can be assured of accepting and carrying on with their lives. Never mind that the only alternative, for them, is probably “starve to death on little or no income”.

This throwaway remark, by someone who thought he was paying a compliment, says a lot about the entitled thinking of imperialists. It is this kind of thinking that enables slavery.

* I really hope this can be entirely put in the past tense, but the cynical side of me is willing to bet otherwise.

Comments

[recessional]

From being a nanny: you'd be amazed how many people you'd THINK would go to the well paid women with Options deliberately still go for the vulnerable women with control built in. Or even so very deliberately target one with just enough education to know that they're never going to get offered this much money from anyone else and that they don't have the back up, and then paying them well while treating them like shit.

I mean there are also many wonderful families to work for. But there are also people you'd think that of? Who then show how close they've always been to the vicious side, and how deliberately they aim for "help" they can control and take advantage of, while finding ways to assuage what conscience shows up.

[hilarita]

Indeed. My cousins both started their careers as nannies. They were working for properly rich people, and they were still at the mercy of their employers. Some were excellent, and appreciated my cousins as employees and as people, and others were utter shits. They were being paid (often well), but often, as you say, the working conditions are shite. My cousins were privileged enough that they could get out of the shitty circs and get better employers, and eventually, different careers and their own family. Jacob Rees-Mogg's attitude shows that this probably hasn't changed much.*

* I find the Rees-Mogg family hard to take seriously after some of the If cartoons from the late 80s, which depicted Willam Rees-Mogg as 'Mogg-Rees', a cat in a gimp suit who curled round the ankles of Margaret Thatcher...

[recessional]

Honestly there have been points where I deliberately took a lower paying job over a higher paying job because I could look at the family and go "....yeeeeeeah." And there was a point where I wasn't on-file with any agency at all when there was almost a sense of "I wouldn't work for any rich family that would hire me" because if someone who COULD afford going through one of the agencies were trying to hire me, unless there were a few VERY specific markers*, they were out to be able to hold shit over me and like, noooope.



*My background is weird, and I can recognize people from similar backgrounds but. XD