The dignity of dependence A feminist manifesto

The world is the wrong shape for women... It?s not just that my body is the ?wrong? shape or size. As a woman, I am smaller than most men, but as a person, I am too big because my identity extends too far beyond my own body. In pregnancy, my bulk is obvious, but after the umbilical cord is cut, I am still attached, just less obviously. Women, more than men, are physically marked by relationships of care. There is the care that only I can provide?blood for a baby in utero, milk for the child taking her first steps, a chest for her to lay her head upon and hear the familiar lub-dub of my heartbeat?the first sound she knew. But beyond that, there is care that I want to provide, which is disvalued and distrusted because it is technically possible to delegate. Women?s bodies and relationships are shaped by dependence, which makes us exceptional and unwelcome in a world that expects men and women to be autonomous (or at least to pretend to be). A world that is unwilling to acknowledge dependence as foundational to human life is unable to treat women as equal in dignity to men. It can make space for women only insofar as they find ways to hide or ameliorate the problem of being women, which is to say, the problem of being tied to those who depend on us. Women?s bodies are treated as strange and abnormal because we are not cleanly divisible from the world around us and the people who depend on us. We are not ?buffered? but are porous, with a fuzzy boundary between our self and the other. Our openness is written on our bodies during pregnancy, when a mother and her child exchange blood through the placenta. There is not a direct connection where the mother?s blood vessels plug into her baby?s circulatory system. Rather, the smallest capillaries of mother and child lie tangent to each other, and nutrients and oxygen diffuse across the gap. The most intimate connection still involves a small separation. In our other human relationships of care, the space between us isn?t measured in micrometers. There is more freedom to move, but that means that caregivers also must commit to a more active choice to sustain the one who depends on them. Because we are human, we still belong to each other, even when our bodies are not directly entangled. Only women make these connections viscerally and literally, by lending our blood and our bodies to a child. Men also respond to the need of the vulnerable, but the shape their self-gift takes is different. In a full and flourishing life, a man?s ties to those who need him make it obvious that he is not solely his self . But many men and women live more narrowly, shortchanged by believing in a narrow definition of ?normal? life as autonomous life. When human beings and human bodies are expected to exist in isolation, women and men are asked to prune the connections that tie us to others. What makes us most human, the dependence in which we all begin our lives, is viewed as strange and passing?a problem to get over. (excerpted from chapter 1) Excerpted from The Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto by Leah Libresco Sargeant All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.