Thought Experiments

For this thought experiment, imagine you are a child. You have arrived at the self-knowledge that you are transgender or gender-variant. You learned about transgender people online, and talk about it with others in a forum for an online game you play. Your family doesn't talk about queer subjects. You told your mother and while she didn't react with hostility, she made it clear that this was something you would need to wait until you were older to act on. It might just be a phase! You'll feel different when you're dating and looking to get married. Your father will not understand, she says, and her concerned hugs quiet your tears but do nothing for your anxiety. You reach out to a teacher you trust and they sadly recite some kind of policy, wrapped in "I'm so sorries." You don't know who else can help you. Your online friends give tips on transitioning in secret until you can run away, but you're afraid of being caught by your father and being yelled at or worse and running away or getting kicked out seems like a death sentence -- you depend on your parents for everything. You don't feel safe coming out in school without a teacher's support. You feel trapped, scared, and despair starts to creep in.

Ways the family is harming you:

• You are closed off from others who might be able to care for you (privacy)

• You must do what your parents say because you depend on their support (domination)

• You cannot express your new gender because of your family's expectations (gender roles)

Ways family abolition seeks to change this:

• Without the absolute privacy of the family, others from the community can provide care.

• With the means of survival provided for, you can choose new caregivers and escape those who are hostile to you.

• Assembling a chosen family who celebrates your authentic self without gendered expectations of you.

For this thought experiment, imagine you are a parent. All but the very wealthy can afford to have a parent at home full-time, and so both you and your spouse have jobs. You'd love to spend time after school with your kids, but since your workplaces have no remote options, your children go to private childcare until you get off work and pick them up. You're tired when you all get home. Getting dinner ready, homework done, clothes washed, everyone cleaned, and getting rest for the next day leaves so little time to have fun and be an active part of your children's lives. If you're a woman, you're probably doing the bulk of this work without acknowledgement or compensation. You don't have a lot of time or energy to socialize outside the home, though you wish you could. You've sacrificed so much to be a parent and sometimes it's overwhelming. You feel like a constant failure, unable to have the perfect home you've seen on TV or at your (slightly wealthier) neighbors. But what can you do? Outside help isn't coming and you're legally obligated to these duties.

Ways the family is harming you:

• Too much is expected of you: maintaining steady employment and taking care of your own and others' material needs leaves little time for recreation, joy, romance, and creativity

• You cannot leave. Shirking the responsibilities of parenthood comes at a social, legal, and financial cost.

• You are alone. The privacy and obligation of the family isolates us -- physically, in separate homes, and socially, by being the monopolizing source of care.

Ways family abolition seeks to change this:

• The tasks of social reproduction -- laundry, meals, childcare, etc. -- are taken care of in the commune according to each's need.

• You can leave. Children are supported and provided for by many people, redundantly, so the obligations of parenthood are truly voluntary. Because anyone can "do mothering" -- provide the care necessary for children -- those who cannot procreate biologically can be part of children's lives.

• You are not alone. Care and support are abundant and interwoven with life in the commune, where social relations have been emancipated from the warp of scarcity and the atomization of the family and life under capital.

For this thought experiment, imagine you are being abused by your intimate partner. You live with them, and no longer want to. You wish your friends would have warned you, but your partner always dotes on you in front of others while treating you worse and worse behind closed doors. You would start mild conflicts about the usual stuff -- money,  social obligations, plans -- but their responses became chaotic and intense. Eventually, any misstep provoked verbal abuse and later physical harm. You can't move back in with your parents. Your friends can't support you, at least not for long -- they're struggling too. You wish there was a way out, but you don't even have a car of your own to sleep in. You fear that leaving your partner will make you struggle to survive. You fear it enough that you doubt your decision to leave.

Ways the family is harming you:

• The family is a site of violence. Power imbalances, workplace pressures, and the scarcity of the means of survival under capitalism are fertile grounds for interpersonal violence and sexual / labor coercions.

• Intimate relationships usually happen in private, where few people can see abuse happen or affect any change upon learning of it.

• You may depend on your partner to afford housing, food, and other essentials...trapping you.

Ways family abolition seeks to change this:

• Your survival in the commune does not depend on your relationships with anyone. You can leave your intimate partner the first moment you feel unsafe and the commune will provide new housing and any other support you need.

• Less time spent in private spaces means that others in the commune will see how your intimate partner treats you. Without the taboo and privacy expectations of the couple form, more people are willing to ask after your safety.

• With the means of survival in abundance, the drudgery of work replaced with better, communal forms of work (well, at least fairly distributed and needful drudgery), and rigid gender roles overturned, abuse and coercion should be as rare as practically possible.

For this thought experiment, imagine you are disabled. You used to work, but cannot anymore. Your disability requires intensive healthcare and other support from your parents. You get a small amount of benefits from the state, but you know that you risk losing them if you marry or even live with your long-term partner. Your parents are not consistent in assisting you, and sometimes it's clear that they're less attentive when you complain, or they're mad at you. This means you have to tread carefully, editing yourself heavily, and present a cheery face. You feel caged, trapped. You have a closed-off view of the future. You don't have many options and depend heavily on others for your survival. 

Ways the family is harming you:

• Individuals who cannot work cannot purchase their own means of survival. State aid is also very meager, meaning that you are dependent on a wage earner, and their expectations, for your survival.

• Care is privatized within the family by default, homes may be isolating, cutting you off from full engagement with the world outside.

• Disabled people are subject to the procreative, productive logics of capitalism and its appendages in healthcare, the courts, and the family policing system which determine who is allowed to create families and have babies.

Ways family abolition seeks to change this:

• The commune would provide directly for the material, social, and medical needs of disabled people.

• Care would not be isolated within the family, but interwoven into the social fabric of the commune.

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For this thought experiment, imagine

Ways the family is harming you:

• The pressures and expectations to maintain waged employment in a co-habitating relationship are high and the job you seek is subject to shocks and whims of the market, meaning that you'll probably take what you can get to avoid long periods of unemployment.

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Ways family abolition seeks to change this:

For this thought experiment, imagine

Ways the family is harming you:

Ways family abolition seeks to change this: