by Moira Weigel
It would be difficult to account for all the works of Marxist and feminist theory that have influenced my thinking about gendered forms of labor. But I want to acknowledge the ones that have been most important to me.
Arlie Hochschild first defined and described the phenomenon of “emotional labor” in The Managed Heart, a sociological account of the work performed by flight attendants and debt collectors. That study and her more recent book The Outsourced Self have deeply shaped my perspective on these matters. So, too, has the work of the feminist activist Silvia Federici. Her essay collection Revolution at Point Zero provides an overview of her thinking on how capitalism exploits women. Her fascinating history Caliban and the Witch offers a longer view on how modern economies have subjugated female and nonwhite bodies, making their work seem like part of their nature in order to justify expropriating its fruits from them.
Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex stunned me with the scope of its ambition. Its argument for understanding women as an underclass that must “seize the means of reproduction” gave me new perspectives on fertility and ways of child rearing, as well as on the history of feminism more broadly. The writings of Angela Davis on sexism and racism in the United States provided me with an invaluable framework for understanding certain limitations of the liberal feminist movements whose history I was taught in school. Her classic volume of essays Women, Race, & Class crystallized many things for me about how these categories intersect. So did the essays of bell hooks, particularly those collected in Feminist Theory and Ain’t I a Woman. The friend who first recommended hooks’s beautiful book All About Love to me described it as “a field guide to still being able to experience love under capitalist patriarchy.” Its prose is more graceful and moving than that makes it sound. I strongly recommend it to everyone. Approaching the subject from a different direction, Laura Kipnis’s Against Love gave me rich food for thought.
Below is a list of bibliographic information for the books I have mentioned, as well as other scholarly works that I drew on during my research.
Almeling, Rene. Sex Cells: The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.
Aschoff, Nicole. The New Prophets of Capital. New York: Jacobin/Verso, 2015.
Bailey, Beth L. Sex in the Heartland. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.
______. From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988.
Bartell, Gilbert D. Group Sex: A Scientist’s Eyewitness Report on the American Way of Swinging. New York: P. H. Wyden, 1971.
Bernstein, Elizabeth. Temporarily Yours: Intimacy, Authenticity, and the Commerce of Sex. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.
Bogle, Kathleen A. Hooking Up: Sex, Dating, and Relationships on Campus. New York: New York University Press, 2008.
Boyd, Nan Alamilla. Wide Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.
Chauncey, George. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940. New York: Basic Books, 1994.
Cherlin, Andrew J. Labor’s Love Lost: The Rise and Fall of the Working-Class Family in America. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2014.
______. The Marriage Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.
Cohen, Lizabeth. A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America. New York: Vintage Books, 2003.
Coontz, Stephanie. Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage. New York: Penguin, 2006.
______. The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap. New York: Basic Books, 1992.
Cooper, Melinda, and Catherine Waldby. Clinical Labor: Tissue Donors and Research Subjects in the Global Bioeconomy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014.
Cowan, Ruth Schwartz. More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave. New York: Basic Books, 1983.
Davis, Angela Y. Women, Race, & Class. New York: Random House, 1981.
______. Angela Davis: An Autobiography. New York: Random House, 1974.
D’Emilio, John, and Estelle B. Freedman. Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America. New York: Harper and Row, 1988.
Faderman, Lillian, and Stuart Timmons. Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, and Lipstick Lesbians. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.
Fass, Paula S. The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920’s. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.
Federici, Silvia. Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2012.
______. Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 2004.
Freitas, Donna. The End of Sex: How Hookup Culture Is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused About Intimacy. New York: Basic Books, 2013.
Fronc, Jennifer. New York Undercover: Private Surveillance in the Progressive Era. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
Gould, Deborah B. Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UP’s Fight Against AIDS. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
Grant, Melissa Gira. Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work. New York: Jacobin/Verso, 2014.
Halberstam, David. The Fifties. New York: Ballantine Books, 1994.
Haraway, Donna J. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991.
Hochschild, Arlie Russell. The Outsourced Self: What Happens When We Pay Others to Live Our Lives for Us. New York: Picador, 2013.
______. The Managed Heart: The Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.
hooks, bell (Gloria Watkins). Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. New York: Routledge, 2015.
______. Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism. New York: Routledge, 2014.
______. All About Love: New Visions. New York: William Morrow, 2000.
Johnson, David K. The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Kessler-Harris, Alice. Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Kipnis, Laura. Against Love: A Polemic. New York: Pantheon, 2003.
Lawrence, Tim. Love Saves the Day: A History of American Dance Music Culture, 1970–1979. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003.
May, Elaine Tyler. Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War, rev. ed. New York: Basic Books, 2008.
Meyerowitz, Joanne J. Women Adrift: Independent Wage Earners in Chicago, 1880–1930. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.
Peiss, Kathy. Hope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.
______. Zoot Suit: The Enigmatic Career of an Extreme Style. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.
______. Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986.
Penny, Laurie. Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution. New York: Bloomsbury, 2014.
______. Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism. Alresford, U.K.: Zero Books, 2011.
Power, Nina. One-Dimensional Woman. Ropley, U.K.: Zero Books, 2009.
Ramirez-Valles, Jesus. Compañeros: Latino Activists in the Face of AIDS. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2011.
Rosen, Ruth. The Lost Sisterhood: Prostitution in America, 1900–1918. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982.
Sears, Clare. Arresting Dress: Cross-Dressing, Law, and Fascination in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014.
Serano, Julia. Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity. Emeryville, CA: Seal Press, 2007.
&nb
sp; Shilts, Randy. And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987.
Talbot, David. Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror, and Deliverance in the City of Love. New York: Free Press, 2012.
Thurber, James, and E. B. White. Is Sex Necessary? Or, Why You Feel the Way You Do. Garden City, NY: Blue Ribbon Books, 1929.
Turner, Fred. From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.
Wallace, Michele. Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman, rev. ed. New York: Verso, 1990.
Weekley, Ayana K. Now That’s a Good Girl: Discourses of African American Women, HIV/AIDS, and Respectability. PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 2010.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I should probably thank everyone I have dated or who spilled the secrets of their own dating lives to me. But they know who they are.
The real inspiration for this book was my friendship with Mal Ahern. It grew out of a period of intense collaboration that we spent reading, writing, thinking, talking, and often staying together. Mal contributed key ideas, salient facts, astute edits, and spot-on jokes; from the beginning, Labor of Love was her labor, too. I cannot imagine what my life would be like if I had not met Mal. Thank you.
I also want to thank The New Inquiry, which published the essays that grew into this book, and everyone associated with it. I feel very fortunate to have encountered people with their ambition, generosity, and intelligence. I am especially grateful to Atossa Araxia Abrahamian for being a top-notch editor, interlocutor, and running partner, and to Sarah Leonard and Rachel Rosenfelt for their friendship and support.
Thank you to my agent, Chris Parris-Lamb, who understood at once what I wanted to do with this project, helped me see it more clearly, and shepherded it along. I am so glad that Emily Bell, my brave and brilliant editor, took it on. She steered me deftly through the tricky process of revising and refining heaps of research, and her vision for the book gave me confidence. I feel lucky to have had her by my side.
I wrote this book in the New York Public Library’s Frederick Lewis Allen Memorial Room. Thanks to Jay Barksdale and Melanie Locay for making my time there possible. Thank you also to my advisers at Yale University, who put up with my working on this alongside my PhD, and particularly to Dudley Andrew, Harold Bloom, and Katie Trumpener, who stunned me by reading a monster first draft within days and offering detailed, helpful feedback.
My mother-in-law, Mathea Falco, was an unfailingly enthusiastic and insightful first reader; her encouragement kept me going. When my delightful father-in-law, Peter Tarnoff, laughed at something, I knew I had to keep it in.
My dear friend Hesper Desloovere endured my talking about historical dating endlessly, generously read and commented on chapters, and provided invaluable moral support. Rebecca O’Brien and Lauren Schuker Blum did the same. Mike Thompson was just the cheerleader I needed when I needed reassurance.
Thank you to Marco Roth for having always encouraged my writing and, though he probably does not remember it, telling me long ago that I should try my hand at love and polemics. To Shirin Ali for keeping me sane. To Ava Kofman for reading and helping me get my facts straight. To Joanna Radin and Kate Redburn for offering expert insights and advice. Jenna Healey generously offered guidance on researching the history of the idea of the biological clock. Other women contributed their intelligence and experience in many ways: Ana Cecilia Alvarez, Kate Siegel, Tess Takahashi, and Tess Wood.
I owe my parents, Bill and Kathy Weigel, big-time for falling in love, bringing me into being, and then reading more books to me than any human should have to read to another one. I am deeply grateful, as I am sure they were, to Eileen Folan for teaching me to read myself. Ever since I declared my intention to become a writer of historical fiction at age six or seven, these people have supported and believed in me even though I didn’t. My younger (and cooler) sister, Julia Weigel, has been my steadfast partner in crime and beloved consultant on psychology, biology, and Kids These Days.
Only Ben Tarnoff can know how much I owe him. For gamely discussing the ins and outs of my most arcane finds and cockamamie theories. For being my go-to American historian and policy expert, not to mention in-house editor. Smarter, kinder, and funnier than I imagined a person could be before I knew him, Ben makes every day of work into a joy.
INDEX
The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.
abortion
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, see AIDS
Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man (Harvey)
Ade, George
Advice to a Young Tradesman, Written by an Old One (Franklin)
Advocate, The (magazine)
Against Love (Kipnis)
AIDS; and black community; and Centers for Disease Control; communities’ response to; education; Kaposi’s sarcoma as sign of; and Latino community; service organizations; and sexual discourse; women with; see also human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)
Amazon.com
America Online (AOL)
American Pie (film)
American Psycho (film)
American Revolution
American Society for Reproductive Medicine
Amsterdam News
anarchists
Anderson, Chester
Angell, Robert Cooley
Angels, the
Aniston, Jennifer
Ansari, Aziz
Anticlimax (Jeffreys)
Apatow, Judd
Arthur (discotheque)
Ashley Madison
Ask for It (Babcock and Laschever)
Associated Press (AP)
Astaire, Fred
Atlantic, The
Atomic Age: anxieties of; see also Cold War
attraction; signals of
Austen, Jane
Autostraddle (blog)
baby boomers
Baby Project
Backpage
Back to the Future (film)
Baltimore Afro-American
Bambara, Toni Cade
Bankhead, Tallulah
Barker, Colin
Barnard College
Beach Boys
Beats
Beauty a Duty (Cocroft)
Bedford Reformatory
Bee, Molly
Behr, Peter
Behrendt, Greg
Berea College
Berkeley Barb
Berkeley, University of California at
Berkowitz, Richard
Berlin, Irving
Berlin Wall
bestiality
Beverly Hills
Beverly Wilshire Hotel
Biderman, Noel
Big Brother and the Holding Company
Biological Clock, The (McKaughan)
Birds of America (Moore)
birth control
birthrates
Bischoff, Dan
bisexuality
Black and White Men Together (BWMT)
Black Bear Ranch
Black Cat Café
Black Panther Party
Black Power movement
Blake, Doris
Boesky, Ivan
Bogle, Kathleen
Bond, Pat
Boston
Boston Globe
Bourdieu, Pierre
Bow, Clara
Brag! (Klaus)
Brenner, Richard
Briggs, Charlie
Broadway Brevities (film shorts)
Brown, Helen Gurley; conventional attitude of
Brown, Louise
Bryn Mawr College
Buchanan, Patrick
Buckley, William F.
Bucknell University
Buick
B
ureau of Investigation (BOI)
Bush, George H. W.
Bush, Nathan
Buster T. Brown’s (singles bar)
Callen, Michael
“calling”
Calling Class
Calling Era
Campus, The (Angell)
Canby, Henry Seidel
Capote, Truman
Career Girls
Career Women
Carmichael, Stokely
Carnegie, Dale
Cavanah, Claire
Centers for Disease Control; AIDS crisis response of
Challenges (Girls Club of Santa Barbara)
chaperones
Chaplin, Charlie
Charity Girls
Charmers, see Shopgirls
cheating
Cheetah (discotheque)
Chicago; sex education in
Chicago Eight
Chicago Record, The
Chicago Tribune
Chicago, University of
Chicago Zoo
child care
Childs (cafeteria)
Choices (Girls Club of Santa Barbara)
Chotzinoff, Samuel
Christopher Street (magazine)
Cincinnati
Citibank
civil rights movement
Civil War
Clap, Thomas
Clark, Dean
climate change
Clinton, Bill
Clock-Watchers
Cocroft, Susanna
Coeds
Cohen, Richard
Cold War
College Men
Columbia University; Health Education program
Coming of Age in Samoa (Mead)
Compton’s Cafeteria
Conceive (magazine)
conservatives; Christian; on in vitro fertilization
consumerism; eroticized; and sex products
contraception, see birth control
Cooper Do-nuts
Cory, Donald Webster (Edward Sagarin)
cosmetics
Cosmopolitan; Cosmo girls
Coyote, Peter
counterculture; sexual exploitation in
Covey, Stephen
Craigslist
Crotchet Castle (Peacock)
Cruise, Tom
culture wars
Cusack, John