#looking up all the different cohousing projects in my country that are all just failing

[crabs-with-sticks]

The possibility of aromantic living situations

Busy this Valentines Day as an aroace person thinking about the relationship between capitalism, family structures, and property (very normal thing to think about I know). In a book I read recently, The Mushroom at the End of the World; On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, she talks about one of the goals of capitalism is scalability. Scalability is about making sure that a unit can work on every different sized model. Endless growth is an important part of capitalism, and if all your 'units' are the same size, you can easily create the same thing, just bigger, only requiring more of the same parts, rather than creating new parts. E.g. if you have a square block, you can create the exact same shape just bigger (read: making more money) if you have four more of the same square blocks.

The nuclear family is one of those squares that forms the basis of so much of society from housing to child raising to everyday finances. It is no secret that the nuclear family (mum, dad, and kids) is seen as the ideal and moral family structure in most of the west. And colonialism has had a big part in exporting this to other places around the world. But for many people, especially aro folks, this structure just doesn't fit what we want out of life.

And I've just been thinking about how that idea of the nuclear family is related to property and wealth and how it disadvantages queer folks. In the country which I live in, there is a massive housing crisis and owning a house is a pipe dream for many because of the cost. Property is culturally seen as probably the main way in which you build wealth/capital because you don't get taxed on it (there is no property/capital gains tax) and there are SO MANY tax benefits for landlords its insane. So when housing is linked so majorly to wealth and capitalism it makes sense that you would want it to be scalable.

And what is the most scalable living/family structure? The nuclear family. So, since housing is market driven, theres no incentive to create other types of houses/living situations except those designed for the nuclear family. Because property/housing is so ingrained in capitalism, that its an investment, and you want to be going for a big portion of the market.

This just creates an endless cycle of property enforcing traditional nuclear family structures, and nuclear family structures enforcing property. Because there is no incentive to provide anything different and there is limited ability to be anything else. And even if a person, or developer or whatever wants to create something non-typical (e.g. cohousing and coliving, at least in my country) because its not scalable or market friendly, good luck finding a bank to give you a loan, or a developer to work on it, or hell even the government to have proper land classifications to make such a project possible.

It just frustrates me so much as a non-partnering aromantic person because I feel like I have no options and I have to fit my circular shape into a square just so that people can build a bigger model of the exact same thing. And I think its something that we don't talk enough about in the queer community, and that we make ourselves into these square blocks because there is no other way to be, and in doing so just enforcing the very structures that oppress us.

So anyway, rant over. Hopefully my brain dump made sense and resonates with some of y'all. And go read The Mushroom at the End of the World, its really eye opening.