embracing Commodity Status as a Woman — to Protect Your Children

1. Own the Label Before It Owns You

Society has already branded women: objects, caregivers, consumers, breeders, “assets” in labor and family court. Pretending otherwise leaves you vulnerable. Claim the title of commodity with awareness so it becomes armor, not shackles. When you define your value openly, institutions lose the leverage of dehumanizing you behind closed doors.

2. Monetize Your Identity Intentionally

• Skill commoditization: Turn every lived experience into transferable, marketable expertise (wellness, resilience, advocacy, trauma education).

• Body commoditization: If your body is already reduced to labor and appearance, reclaim agency — decide how it’s used, whether that’s through entrepreneurship, content, or art.

• Narrative commoditization: Tell your own story publicly so courts, media, or institutions can’t sell it for you.

When you profit from your own identity, you deny the system the chance to profit off it without consent.

3. Build Economic Moats

Commodities are traded in markets. If you accept that status, your goal is to create your own market instead of being traded on theirs.

• Build networks of mothers and women who trade resources, childcare, food, and education.

• Create side hustles that funnel income directly to you, not to institutions.

• Teach your children to see money as energy, not authority — so they never equate self-worth with wages.

4. Weaponize Visibility

Invisible commodities are most easily exploited. By being loud, present, and unapologetically seen, you force systems to think twice about extracting from you or your children. Visibility creates accountability, and accountability protects.

5. Reframe Motherhood as Strategy, Not Sacrifice

If women are treated as property, motherhood becomes the ultimate transaction in society’s eyes. Flip it:

• Motherhood as leverage: Build platforms, businesses, and networks rooted in maternal authority.

• Motherhood as power currency: Demand respect through visibility, education, and refusal to stay silent.

• Motherhood as shield: By showing you’re willing to commoditize yourself, you draw the fire away from your children.

6. Teach Children Anti-Commodity Awareness

By embracing your status openly, you create the chance to teach your children how NOT to be commodities:

• Show them how you convert dehumanization into empowerment.

• Expose the mechanics of commodification: advertising, courts, education, media.

• Give them language for systemic oppression so they can’t be groomed into silence.

7. Turn Exploitation Into Negotiation

If you know you’re a commodity, you also know you’re a negotiator. Every demand on your body, time, or story is an opportunity to ask: What’s the price? Who pays? What’s the return? By framing interactions this way, you force the system to treat you as a vendor, not a victim.

8. Embrace Dual Identity: Commodity + Creator

Yes, society treats you like an object — but you are also the one who creates, nurtures, and sustains. Embrace the paradox: play the commodity role when it’s strategic, and the creator role when it’s sacred. This duality is what ensures your children grow up aware of how to protect their own sovereignty.

The Wake-Up Call

Until laws, courts, corporations, and governments stop commoditizing women, the most radical act is to claim it consciously and use it as a weapon. The more you lean into the fact that you are seen as a product, the more power you have to decide the terms of the exchange. That awareness is what shields your children from being sold into the same system — because you’ve already disrupted the trade.

If You’re Going to Be Treated Like Trash, Sell Your Skills to the Highest Bidder

1. Stop Seeking Validation, Start Demanding Value

Society already devalues women, mothers, and caregivers — pretending otherwise just keeps you in denial. Stop expecting recognition for your worth. Translate your worth into invoices, contracts, and payments. Validation is free; value is compensated.

2. Identify Your Transferable Assets

Even if the system frames you as disposable, you carry skills it desperately needs.

• Survival Skills: multitasking, crisis management, resourcefulness.

• Healing Skills: emotional labor, nurturing, conflict resolution.

• Creative Skills: writing, storytelling, problem-solving.

• Advocacy Skills: speaking truth, exposing corruption, networking.

Commodities don’t choose their category — but you can choose your market.

3. Never Give Away What the System Exploits for Free

• Stop “volunteering” your labor where institutions profit.

• Stop “explaining yourself” in systems designed not to listen.

• Stop “overgiving” in relationships where reciprocity doesn’t exist.

If they’re going to treat you like trash, make it expensive trash.

4. Play the Market, Don’t Get Played

Your goal is not to be liked — it’s to be paid.

• Pitch your skills to companies, brands, and individuals who benefit from your expertise.

• Create your own offers online and monetize your lived experience.

• Use platforms that reward visibility rather than silence.

Commodities rise in value when demand increases. Position yourself where you are in demand.

5. Exploit the Illusion of Choice

Society will hand you scraps and call it freedom. Choose strategically, not sentimentally.

• If you must work, work where you’re respected least but paid most.

• If you must fight, fight where your voice has reach (online, networks, public).

• If you must conform, conform publicly — but build your exit privately.

6. Build Trash-Proof Boundaries

Trash gets thrown around because it’s uncontained. Contain yourself with boundaries:

• No free emotional labor for those who devalue you.

• No tolerance for systems that drain without return.

• No access to your energy unless it’s exchanged for respect, money, or loyalty.

7. Alchemize Disposability Into Freedom

If society insists you’re disposable, flip it.

• Disposable means you owe nothing.

• Disposable means you can walk away without warning.

• Disposable means you can reinvent at will.

The very thing that makes them treat you like trash can make you untouchable.

Bottom Line

You can’t stop people from treating you like trash in a society built on commodification. But you can decide whether you rot in the landfill — or get recycled into pure profit. Sell your skills, set your price, and walk out of hell with their chains melted into cash.

Carey Ann George