We are in fairly constant contact with furniture.
Yes, it’s time to sup from the deep, sorrowful well of feminist scholarship and thereby discover previously hidden knowledge. Specifically, regarding the “problematic” nature of preschool seating, on which Dr Jane Bone, a senior lecturer at Monash University, Melbourne, focuses her keen mental cutting beam:
Then there is the ordinary chair, with a seat, back and four legs, usually arranged around a circular table… This chair is ubiquitous. I rarely go into an early childhood environment where there is not some version of this chair. Designed for children, it is sometimes metal, sometimes wooden, either painted or plain, but always – and this is my point – small.
Do try to keep up. This “child-sized furniture, suited to [a child’s] height and weight,” is of course the aforementioned problematic furniture, for reasons that will now become all too clear:
In my first intra-active encounter with the small chair,
Which I’m assuming entails bending one’s knees and lowering one’s buttocks.
I felt that it talked back to me
And what did the tiny chair say?
I felt that it talked back to me about the preschool as a workplace that is gendered, feminised, child-focused and ultimately disempowering.
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