Resistance

My friend Dave recently posted on a social channel:

“How many times each day are you witnessing your mind in resistance? #lifecoach #lifecoaching #personaldevelopment #mindsetshift #perspective #selfimprovement #life #lifehacks #wisdom #intentionalliving #choices #thoughts #selfdiscovery #selfdevelopment #awareness #resistance #resistanceisfutile #StarTrek”

It was accompanied by the quote: “Resistance is futile,” referencing the Borg from Star Trek. I found this triggering. Perhaps I’m ascribing meaning, but as my friend is a coach, I assumed this was a personal growth mantra—the idea that you improve yourself by “leaning in” to resistance.

Resistance to dishes

Someone joked in the comments about resisting the dishes. I get it—nobody likes doing them. But I didn’t find it funny. Maybe it’s easier for men to laugh? For me, resistance to tasks like dishes feels heavier, a clash between personal expectations and systemic pressures.

That’s the stain of capitalism and patriarchy

The things I resist often reflect a clash with capitalism and patriarchy. The idea that our counters must be spotless, the dishwasher run, and everything neatly tidied... I used to try to keep up.

Before industrialization, people ate off of stale bread and fed it to animals afterward.

It was only with the rise of modern marketing—Mr. Clean, shiny appliances, and consumer culture—that these routines were framed as moral imperatives. Domesticity became a measure of a woman’s worth, reducing her humanity to how well she maintained a home.

“Only from a capitalist viewpoint being productive is a moral virtue, if not a moral imperative. From the viewpoint of the working class, being productive simply means being exploited.” ― Silvia Federici

And the stank of white privilege

The expectation of domesticity has? been shaped by both gender and race. During slavery, people of colour were forced into roles as caretakers and housekeepers for white families, their labour exploited to uphold white standards of cleanliness. Even after slavery, domestic work remained racialized, underpaid, and dismissed as unskilled.?

Today, unpaid domestic work is still seen as “natural” for women, while paid domestic work, often done by racialized women, is undervalued. As a white woman, I might be praised for keeping a tidy home, while the same work, done for pay, is treated as menial.

As a mother of children with disabilities, I know the exhaustion of invisible, unpaid labour. After my own work and advocacy, I still have to do the dishes. I often think about those who clean other people’s homes all day, only to come home and start again.

"Housework, after all, is virtually invisible: 'No one notices it until it isn’t done – we notice the unmade bed, not the scrubbed and polished floor.' Invisible, repetitive, exhausting, unproductive, uncreative – these are the adjectives which most perfectly capture the nature of housework." ― Angela Davis quoting Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English

Performative domesticity

My mother always talks about finding Zen in everyday chores. I tried that—like Betty effing Crocker—but like so many women before me, this was not fulfilling and I felt disassociated and needed meds.

These systems were never built for fairness. They were designed to extract as much as possible from women, people of colour, and especially those at the intersection of both. They demand not just physical labour but emotional labour too—the expectation that you will perform joy in the task, that you will find fulfilment in the act of cleaning, or take pride in your ability to endure it.

And since men have taken on more housework, there continues to be a disparity between the types of jobs they do, with women overwhelmingly being responsible for cleaning the toilet or doing the emotional labour.?

This is why I resist. Not because I hate doing dishes or refuse to fold laundry, but because of the weight of these expectations. OK, actually, I hate those things.?

I must admit, I can’t help but feel sad that I can’t afford a cleaner anymore. I find myself in a bind: unable to devote the attention to my career needed to seek higher compensation because so much of my time is spent doing invisible labour.

So when I feel nauseous emptying the sink trap, it’s not just because it’s gross.

You must pick your allegiances

Before my twins were born, I was a machine--a model of efficiency. Ruthless towards my own ADHD tendencies, I overcame my deficiencies through sheer willpower. When they were born, my responsibilities became untenable. My own expectations were impossible. And I loved them more than the dishes, more than my work, more than my husband, more than myself, if I'm honest. I had the slow down. The sleep deprivation made me hallucinate, for years. Under those conditions, you have to choose your battles to survive. I chose them.

Billionaires don't do dishes

Should I suppress this resistance and gaslight myself into compliance while being manipulated by a system designed for billionaires? Resistance may be futile because the system is rigged, but that doesn’t mean I have to embrace discomfort. I’m allowed to question, to complain, and to feel. Resistance isn’t something to suppress—it’s something to probe with curiosity.

Finding peace?

You know what gives me Zen? Paper plates or waxed paper in baskets! Doing laundry once a month instead of letting it dominate my days. Refusing to sort cutlery. Lowering standards. Divorce. These acts of resistance restore my soul.

And yet I am forced to contemplate: some of these acts of resistance were manufactured in a factory in China by people with sore hands and very long days.

What flavour of resistance?

When my friend posted his comment, it also made me think, “what kind of resistance?” Resistance can be healthy—when your boundaries are triggered, when you sense injustice, or when your body resists productivity because you’ve already given too much.??

Some resistance might seem fruitless—like fear of public speaking. But even here, I’d argue the rush to “process” resistance is shaped by capitalism, not truth. Nature doesn’t ask us to lean in when we feel resistance; it tells us to run. That instinct—to move, to react—is sacred. We can do hard things when we are ready.

I often wonder: before capitalism, did we feel resistance in the same way? I’ve never felt resistance to picking berries, but if I had to do it every day in industrial fields, wouldn’t it become unbearable? Our ancestors didn’t pick berries endlessly; they did it for a few weeks each year, when the berries were ripe. I’ve never felt bored in nature.

Nature deprivation?

I’ve never felt resistance when building something with my hands. Sometimes I criticize myself, though—perhaps because of hyperphantasia, where the images in my mind are a patchwork of unattainable ideals from a million pictures I’ve consumed while doom-scrolling. Is that self-critique a kind of resistance? Resistance to being vulnerable? To be judged?

For me, it’s a sensory clash. Technology has shaped an unrealistic standard for what I should aspire to create, and the gap between what I imagine and what I produce feels insurmountable. Still, I cherish the images I hold in my mind—that rich coalescence of so many pictures and ideas.??

I’ve been taking a pottery class and the radical act of making something from clay has been unbelievably restorative. I’m in the studio with saved TikTok videos, trying to emulate what I am seeing and failing, but still loving the process. I invited some coworkers to join me IRL and connecting around a table while we do something we’re not great at yet is… magical.

Maybe the challenge is not to reject technology entirely but to reclaim it, to find ways of integrating it into our lives that honour our humanity, connection, and communion with the natural world. Can we have better dishwashers please, so I can spend more time outside? Laundry machines that fold and put away? Or lower standards??

Borg or cyborg?

And then there’s the Borg. The phrase “Resistance is futile” carries such weight because it embodies dehumanization and submission to a collective that erases individuality. The Borg are terrifying not just for their hive mind, but for what they represent: absolute control and the obliteration of personal agency. I like my autonomy. They are evil, no question. Yet their philosophy forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth—our obsession with personal growth and individual satisfaction, while seemingly the opposite of the Borg’s collectivism, may also contribute to the systems that exploit us.

Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto offers an alternative lens. Haraway reimagines the cyborg not as a tool of oppression, but as a symbol of hybridity, resistance, and possibility. The cyborg defies binaries—human vs. machine, individual vs. collective, feminine vs. masculine, and even nature vs. culture. Where the Borg warn of collectivism taken to extremes, Haraway’s cyborg invites us to transcend rigid categories and envision systems that embrace complexity and interconnectedness.

It’s not about rejecting everything we know—it’s woven into the very fabric of our existence. The answer lies in the spaces between, where resistance and possibility meet. You feel it in your gut. We are powerful already.

The joy of resistance?

Capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy thrive on rigid hierarchies and the relentless separation of self from collective. The expectation to find joy in labour, or turn resistance into self-improvement mirrors capitalism’s insidious demand for constant productivity and compliance. This burden falls disproportionately on women, who are tasked not only with unpaid domestic work but also with bearing the emotional weight of striving for personal and professional success. As if motherhood weren’t enough.

Resistance, in this system, often feels futile. It is co-opted, exploited, and sold back to us as marketable self-help. Yet resistance doesn’t have to be futile. Resistance can be a wake up call to dismantle systems that devalue our humanity and to envision new ways of living rooted in compassion and pragmatism.

The key, then, is not to suppress resistance but to honour it. To see it not as failure or weakness, but as a necessary response to an unjust world. Resistance may not always feel productive, and that is good. It is essential. It reminds us that we are human, that our labour has meaning, and that our discomfort is often a signal that something is deeply wrong.

I sat and wrote this essay because of a feeling of resistance. I could have unloaded the dishwasher or checked something off my endless list. Instead, I chose to revel in that resistance—to let it guide me.

And for a moment, it was glorious.?