martedì, agosto 30, 2016

Tax time, fuck you time

I needed a tax receipt from Lufthansa for a business trip I made to China last year, so I called them up and asked for one. My son, who was two at the time, came with me as he was still breastfeeding. I explained to the people at Lufthansa - more than once - that I only needed the tax receipt for my portion of the trip, not for my son's, as he is a small child - whose age was apparent in the booking, not least because he was charged less as a small child.

When the receipt came, to my email address, which contains my full name in it just in case there was any lingering confusion who it was for, it was addressed to Herr Godzilla. My son. Who is now three. 

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I needed a tax receipt for extra payments to my son's kindergarten - we pay a little more than the normal monthly city costs, since it's an outdoor kindergarten with one extra teacher, and a supplementary music programme. All of these payments have always been made from my personal bank account. 

I personally requested the receipt - a few times because they have been taking their sweet fucking time issuing it - and once again these requests came from my email address, which contains, once again, my full name in it just in case there was any lingering confusion who it was for.

It was not only addressed, but SOLELY addressed to Herr Baby Daddy.
***
In both cases, I was making these requests to other women. 

STOP. JUST FUCKING STOP. FUCK. You know? It would be one thing to be getting this bullshit from men. They have a hegemony to defend. I wouldn't accept it, but it wouldn't grind my gears nearly so badly, because at least there is something logically self-serving about unreconstructed, unthinking sexism when it comes from a man. 

But when these bits of absurdity float up while I'm dealing with other women - as though something as ridiculous as addressing a tax receipt to a toddler or to a man who did not request it and did not pay for it makes more sense than a woman having Financial Agency and Tax Things to Sort Out even to other women - I start suspecting society is this giant stupid cult we all need fucking interventionist, Scientology-level deprogramming to deal with.