Cleaner Controversy

This is an old news one but it popped up on Facebook again today and although I ranted about it elsewhere I decided a blog post was probably still called for.

The story in question surrounds a 'controversial' photograph of a female cleaner being 'made to' remove pro-International Women's Day graffiti from steps at Oxford University; and the university being 'forced' to apologise for their 'gaffe' (please pay attention to all the sarcastic quote marks here)

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-43335030

1) The cleaner's gender.

• Cleaners are stereotypically women as more women take part-time low-paid work. This is not a marker of social class, intelligence, capability or 
• Has anyone asked the cleaner what their gender identity is? I am biologically female and I am agender. I will use female pronouns in this blog to avoid confusion but this is an important point.
• The assumption that as a woman she would support International Women's Day and be offended by being 'made to' clean up the graffiti. Or perhaps conversely the assumption that a male cleaner would NOT support IWD and would not be offended by the task. personally I would have been 'offended' by the twat who wrote the graffiti that I then had to clean off.

2) Being made to clean up the graffiti.

• Literally complaining about her doing her job here. 
• I've seen comments assuming that she has no choice but to work as a cleaner - assuming she has no choice in her employment, assuming she has no qualifications or skills - that may indeed be the case, many cleaners ARE unskilled and most are not earning a decent wage BUT it's still a gross assumption. I earned a degree while working as a cleaner. I have known cleaners who do the job as 'pocket money' and a way to keep fit and active. Some are mums who just want something outside the home, some are older women just killing time before claiming their pensions, others have a well-paid spouse but still want independence.
• I've seen comments that a cleaner works INDOORS ONLY...obviously the commenter has never done cleaning work. I worked in a school and did tasks such as carrying classroom furniture into the playground to scrub it all down. There were also comments about it being one of the coldest days of the year which I find incredibly condescending - like women, by biology or gender identity, shouldn't be working outdoors in the cold; this is not equality.
• I've seen comments about it being 'the patriarchy' in action - men making a woman do a menial task. See above comments about the irrelevance of her gender in the argument. Also, we do not know whether she was told to clean it off or did so as part of her regular duties, we do not know the gender of any person telling her to clean the steps, we do not know the gender of the person who wrote the graffiti.

3) The acceptance of the graffiti.

• Apparently writing in chalk all over stuff is an 'Oxford tradition' and therefore acceptable. I thought Oxford was supposed to be a world's best educational institution so why are they legitimising childish and illegal graffitiing?! Next it'll be defending pub brawls as cultural property...
• Somehow being chalk rather than spray paint makes it acceptable.
  Yes, chalk is a better medium for drawing on a surface that isn't yours - for the very relevant point that it's EASIER TO CLEAN OFF - but mostly I think that if you want to make a political statement you should be doing it without defacing someone else's property. I REALLY don't like graffiti, can you tell?! I think it can be an amazing artform but unless it's done well and with consent I do not approve.
• The fact it's "Happy International Women's Day" rather than an expletive or a crude outline of a penis makes it acceptable. IWD is not a greetings card holiday which people go around saying this phrase to each other. I wonder if there would have been a similar outcry if it had been a black cleaner scrubbing off the phrase "Joyous Kwanzaa" or a Muslim cleaner removing "Eid Mubarak"?
• Being a political statement doesn't make it somehow better than other graffiti - "Loz woz ere" or whatever. I believe in equality but the presumption that women are somehow inevitably disadvantaged in a world of men is not something I either agree with and I think it is potentially very harmful. I literally just read this article* where a man is making light of his experiences as a domestic violence survivor and I can't help but think that's because of the way men are disadvantaged in our society. Men are frequently not taken seriously regards sexual assault and domestic violence, they are less likely to win custody of their children, they get less support during many scenarios such as when diagnosed with breast cancer. Inequality works both ways and cannot be resolved by feminism.
  *http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/girlfriend-sword-attack-scared-living-poop-article-1.3876246
• Mostly I think that you do not draw or write, in any medium, on something which is not yours. My dad is arguing against me painting a mural on the side of his shed despite the fact that it's an ugly breeze block wall which forms part of the boundary wall of my garden. I wouldn't dream of painting on his property (in the sense of (i) on the grounds of his property or (ii) off the grounds on a side that isn't mine - like the roadfront side of his garden wall) but I have doubts as to whether he can control what I do on my side of the line. It's HIS shed but it's also MY boundary. If I wanted to drill holes in it and put up trellis I'm reasonably sure I could... It'd be the same with painting your side of a garden fence on a boundary you do not own.