Horizontal sabotage
The Fee
The invisible cost a woman pays every time she tries to move.
It is not a vague metaphor. It is measurable. It shows up as time lost, as energy spent justifying what should need no justification, as opportunities turned down before they were even considered. The tax does not appear on the invoice. It appears in the life that got narrower without anyone being able to point to the exact moment it happened.
The question the book asks
What it is
This book offers no solutions. It proposes no therapies. It does not end in embraces or manifestos. It does not summon sisterhood as if it were balm available in a jar. Sisterhood, where it exists, is a difficult and fragile achievement, not a starting point.
What this book does is narrower and harder: to name. To name the parts. To name the functions. To name the incentives. To name the price. To make the complete inventory of a machine that works best when nobody describes it.
The method
Each essay in this book starts from one concrete sentence. A sentence that circulates between women, repeated at kitchen tables and in HR offices, that sounds like good sense and works as containment.
- 01«It has always been this way.»
- 02«Don’t make it complicated.»
- 03«You should be grateful.»
- 04«A real woman.»
- 05«I managed on my own.»
- 06«Don’t expose yourself.»
- 07«I’m only telling you this because I care about you.»
Small sentences. Precise instruments.
The seven veils
The seven veils this book examines are not spiritual. They are operational. Each one works as a distinct mechanism of containment.
- 01Tradition disguised as love
- 02Inheritance passed on with no will
- 03Competition installed with no referee
- 04Silence imposed with no decree
- 05Guilt handed out with no court
- 06Surveillance exercised with no contract
- 07Duality that turns each woman into half of herself
Seven layers of a system you cannot see because it blends into the air.
The twenty-one essays
Seven movements of three. Every one of the twenty-one opens on one concrete scene, the mechanism, who operates it, who profits from it, closing, with no redemption.
- 01
- The economy of “always”
- The generational watchwoman
- Tradition vs trap
- 02
- The inheritance nobody asked for
- “If I managed, so can you”
- Breaking the cycle (or not)
- 03
- The invisible accounting
- Exhaustion as debt
- Who is entitled to rest?
- 04
- The access fee
- The compulsory smile
- The humility trap
- 05
- The price of visibility
- The empty table
- Envy disguised as concern
- 06
- The goalpost trap
- Postponed happiness
- Who profits from the promise?
- 07
- The false choice
- Who defines “a real woman”?
- Beyond the divide (or is there no way out?)
What the tax is paid in
The tax has no receipt. But it has memory. And memory, unlike a receipt, does not get lost in a drawer. It stays in the body. In the posture. In the voice that hesitates half a second before stating what it knows.
This book is for you if
- You have been told “it has always been this way” and had no answer.
- The sentence that held you back the most did not come from a man.
- You work an entire shift that nobody counts as work.
- You are tired, and you feel you have to justify the tiredness.
A taste
When the sentence that stops you from moving forward comes from your mother, your colleague, your closest friend, the system no longer needs guards. It has volunteers.
Take the book home
Twenty-one essays, seven veils, about sixty thousand words. Immediate PDF, yours to keep and to return to.
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Do not expect comfort in these pages. Comfort is, precisely, one of the mechanisms the veils use to stay in place. Expect clarity. Cold, if need be. Unpleasant, if unavoidable. But clarity. By Vivianne dos Santos.