Via Kim@Religiarchy– the funniest thing I’ve seen in weeks. Every time I think the funny has stopped, it comes out again. Pee before watching or you might have a little laughter leakage.
Monthly Archives: April 2008
Fun with thought experiments
I’m with Liss. All I want to do right now is read things that make me happy, like I can has cheezeburger or trashy gossip on Jezebel. Or buy shoes, but I am sooo broke. If I don’t take a break from political misogyny watch for a bit, I’m gonna explode.
But………..
I can never really take a total break. So I thought I’d try something a little more hopeful. I’ve been thinking about movie or tv plots or commercials I would like to see, instead of the standard sexist drivel that is trotted out as genius (Apatow- I’m talking to you). So here’s my list so far, please feel free to add to it.
A movie where a middle aged guy falls for a middle aged woman and it is considered normal instead of empowering for older women everywhere.
A movie or tv show where a poor guy marries a rich woman and they live happily ever after. Usually happily ever after happens only when the woman is poor. When she is rich, the guy inevitably becomes bitter after years of being controlled by his shrewish wife and has an affair with a…. poor woman.
A female heroine (or villain) in an action movie who isn’t tarted up in patent leather fetish clothes. Seriously- you cannot run, let alone fight in five inch heels. You will break your ankles.
A movie or tv show about 30 something women that does not include any laments about how there are no good guys left, that they are all married or gay. Actually, what I’d really like to see is the single, 30 something woman who is the commitaphobe because it’s closer to my reality. But instead of her growing up and settling down in the end, I want her big realization to be that she is just fine on her own.
Any show about a single mom that doesn’t cast her as either a completely self-sacrificing saint or a total abusive nut case. We’re all a little bit of both.
A commercial where men clean toilets. Or ovens. Or talk about how fresh they like their produce to be at the grocery store or they want their laundry to smell like a summer breeze.
A beer commercial where woman drink beer cause they like it, not because they are the magic prize the guys get for opening up a tall cold one.
And I would really like to see an end to the anorexic lollipop look. Do you remember when Lucy Lawless was Zena. She was all muscle and hotness. Now she looks like Lindsey Lohan’s aunt. Women who are naturally that thin don’t look like bobble head dolls (Think Natalie Portman or Kiera Knightly).
Fun with thought experiments
I’m with Liss. All I want to do right now is read things that make me happy, like I can has cheez
The Practical Side of Privilege
I have a deep dark secret to confess. I use my privilege to my advantage and to the advantage of my child. And I have no idea how to fix that without causing harm to one or both of us.
Maybe this would be better explained with examples.
Example One
I live in a poor, working class, mostly black neighborhood. We are not here as part of some early gentrification scouting project. We’re here cause we are just as poor as our neighbors. But even though we are equals in poverty, I know that my voice will carry more weight than the voices of my neighbors.
I get harassed on the street a lot. (See here, and here, and here for starters). Some might say that I am getting harassed cause I am a white woman in a black neighborhood, but I think it’s more that men use whatever means they can to assert privilege. Wealthy men can do that through economic threats. Poor men do it through violent threats (I am not saying wealthy men aren’t also violent, but they generally have better ways of threatening women than with cat calls). I don’t think street harassment is a racial problem, in other words. I think it is a class problem. I do know that the black men who harass me in my neighborhood are PISSED cause I’m not afraid of them (more than a few have yelled that I am supposed to be afraid of the big black man when I have gone off on them for their sexist acts).
So back to my own practical bits of privilege. I always feel much better when I confront harassers than when I let it go. And during my tenure in this neighborhood I have gotten much more assertive. Part of that is because I know that as an educated sounding, white, middle class looking (though dirt poor) soccer mom type- the police will always believe me over a black man. Always. If it comes down to violence I know that in those situations I will win. Period. So I get to be a strong angry feminist with an entire racist police force to back me up. But only here. If I were to go north a few miles, my class status and gender would render me as the unbelievable one.
So, how do I give up that little bit of privilege in a world full of violence and anger directed at me? I know it’s there like a loaded handgun waiting for the time I need to fire it.
Example Two
And then there is my child. My brilliant but poor white male child. Because of the neighborhood we are in and because my child is so white he makes paper jealous, he’s nearly been robbed on at least 3 occasions by neighborhood kids. They think (mistakenly) that cause he’s white he must have money. On one occasion the Kid was pushed around pretty brutally and I called the police. The kids that did it were my kid’s age and because they were trying to rob him while threatening him with violence, these three 10 year old black kids could have been charged with felony assault. Because we are white, our complaints would have been taken seriously. But these were kids being brats, not felons. I told the officer we didn’t want to press charges but we did want to scare the shit out of these kids and their parents. He went to their house and did just that. It was sobering, to say the least, to think that these kids who did something thoughtless and stupid and bullying, could have their lives ruined for it at 10. (None of this means to diminish my own kid’s pain- bullying is wrong regardless of skin color).
In that case, had I let anger and vengeance overtake me instead of reason, those kids would have been seriously harmed by my privilege. And I know that the officer took a case of extreme child bullying more seriously because it was reported by an educated sounding, middle class looking white mom. If I had been black and the bullies were white, that wouldn’t happen. If I had been any shade of brown that wouldn’t have happened.
But how can I give up that privilege when it works towards protecting my child?
Example Three
I’ve written about the problems of race and class divide at my son’s school before. The Kid has a mild motor skills problem that has made him eligible for special education assistance at school. Last year he started middle school and was supposed to have one hour a day of a special study skills class as part of our IEP (individual education plan, basically a contract between the school and I saying what services they will provide). He didn’t get study skills class until May, and then only because I threatened to sue. Last year he faltered hard in his classes. When they did put him into a study skills class , he was ignored because he is quiet and will hide in a corner reading a book. The things that were supposed to happen like homework help and time management planning were ignored. It was more a free hour of nothing time for him.
This year, he is in a different study skills class, one created especially for the gifted (mostly white) kids. He has a teacher who actually pays attention to him and he is improving this year. His counselor has apologized over and over because they just didn’t have the Advanced Placement Study Skills class last year.
I know that he is actually getting help this year because he is in the mostly white class with children from wealthy families. I know that the black and brown kids in his study skills class from last year deserve just as much help and attention as my kid does but they aren’t getting it. And I am afraid to complain about it. I am afraid that if I call them out on this that my kid will go back to being warehoused instead of taught.
So how do I give up that bit of privilege when it will ruin my child’s education?
This is what is meant by systemic ___ism. We can work in bits and pieces to make changes, but until you break the entire privilege system it won’t do any good. Practical necessity will interrupt. Now with those cat callers on the street, if we did away with sexism and racism and classism, then they wouldn’t be yelling to begin with. And those kids picking on my Kid, well they wouldn’t have singled him out for his skin color (this is not a reverse racism rant- it’s the reality of being a minority in your neighborhood) and that police officer would have taken our complaint seriously because it deserved serious treatment and not because of my race and class. And the Kid’s school, well all the kids would have access to all the help they need regardless of whether they are gifted and white or poor and brown.
In the mean time, I can acknowledge my privilege. I can try to give up any non-necessary ways my privilege is used. But it’s always there, like a magic security blanket, keeping me from the worst of it.
In addition to blog crushes
I may or may not be nursing my own real life crush on a very tall, very cute Bulgarian boy (Hi! I told you I was gushing about you. Are your ears still burning?)
And because I had a very lovely weekend (wink wink, nudge nudge) I am finding it terribly difficult to muster my normal righteous outrage, though there is PLENTY to be outraged at. Like…
Obama doesn’t just think women should only have “some control over their own bodies” but he also can’t seem to spit out the word rape when women “sometimes in certain situations may not be able to protect themselves from having unprotected sex”. Let’s see if we can elucidate the point for him. Being forced to have sex that you don’t want to have is rape. It’s always rape. It’s not kinda not being in control. I somehow doubt Barry would call it “being unable to protect himself from having unprotected sex” if he was forcefully fucked up the ass by the deliverance guys.
Oh look- I guess I can dig up some righteous indignation even after all.
Snobbery Is Not A Progressive Value
This is what a feminist boyfriend looks like…
I’m doing a little dinner party tonight so between trying to hide the filth under cushions and making yucatan style picked onions, I haven’t got much time to write.
But this post at Pandagon was just too good not to comment on.
I like boys who will argue legitimate (stress the legitimate part) points with me. I like them a lot actually. But this can present problems. I had one ex boyfriend (okay- cause I know you’re going to wonder- the bastard Russian) who could have long intricate discussions about tons of shit.I loved it. We could talk books or music or politics or art or history without my having to play down my brain. But, when ever it became obvious that I had just made mincemeat out of his long held ideas he liked to throw out complicated math questions at me. See, I’m not a math major. I’m not bad at math, but I’ve never needed to learn much more than the basics and math is an integral part of his career. It made him feel better to make me feel stupid. When I figured out that was what he was doing, I stopped taking the bait.
But he also had the most annoying habit when in the middle of a passionate argument. Have you ever seen those old movies where when a woman becomes to emotional or hysterical, the strong rational guy gives the girl a smack across the face to bring her to her senses? Well he didn’t smack me (cause I would have hit him right back) but he would grab me and kiss me to get me to shut up.
After spending a few weeks together on a trip (in small, confined hotel rooms) I called him on his behavior. I told him it was incredibly sexist to try and shut a girl up in the middle of an argument cause you think she is too passionate in her views. He stuttered, and stammered and finally asked what he should do instead. I told him he needed to grow a pair , suck it up, and deal with it. Expressing oneself passionately is not cause for alarm.
So I guess that my ideal feminist boyfriend isn’t afraid of a passionate girl, and likes housecleaning as much as I like cooking.
If only rape panic were a defense
For some reason, some straight (or semi-straight, or closeted) men think that the appropriate reaction to unwanted sexual attention is violence. They think that it is the height of machismo to threaten to beat or kill an undesirable who has the temerity to insult their obvious manly virility by the mere suggestion that they might enjoy another penis instead of thrusting their manly cock into a submissive vagina.
If only we girls had the same excuse for violence when faced with unwanted attention. Though I would only use the violence on the opposite sex. I think.
Long long ago, when I was a wee naive 18 year old from a tiny, conservative mountain town I worked as the night cashier at a convenience store. I had just made my first gay boyfriend (Russell, a tiny, femmy boy in high heeled boots and daisy dukes) and made friends with my “married” (not legally of course, though for all intents and purposes) lesbian neighbors. I had always been a fairly liberal girl, so I didn’t have any major change of heart by being friends with these people, but instead it just reaffirmed my ideas about letting people live and love as they wish.
Misty and NeNe, my neighbors, had a friend who developed a bit of a crush on me. I had a serious boyfriend who I lived with and this was way before I had any inkling that I might sometimes be attracted to girls, so while her attentions were sweet, they were also unreturned. But she used to come into my store in the middle of the night and read a book while I dealt with drunks upset that I couldn’t sell liquor after midnight. I didn’t lead her on, I didn’t even flirt. But I was happy for the company. I never felt insulted by the fact that she had a crush on me, or in danger of losing all my womanly essence because this girl liked me.
On the other hand- I worked weekend nights at a convineince
Oh and I have such a giant blog crush
Seriously brilliant thinking, especially the way she compares the current election to domestic violence.
But this particular post made me all squirmy in my seat (in a good way). She says the same thing that I said and that Black Agenda Report said, but so fucking eloquently (okay BAR is pretty eloquent too and all these people use way less cuss words than I do)
It may not be PC to say this, but there is a very rational basis for working class white racism that has nothing to do with believing minorities are lesser beings and everything to do with keeping that structural advantage in place. That’s why the cynical claims of the Obama campaign about Archie Bunkers – when the target is actually the guilty upper middle class – doesn’t ring true. Obama himself is no threat. He codes “white”. The threat he offers is not raising up minorities but turning his back on all the working class and failing to enact policies and programs that will help those who are struggling.
Go read her blog and learn something.
Philosophy Friday
So I am in a mood. One of those moods where I need something big and chewy for my brain to work over for a bit. And when I’m in the big chewy brain moods, I tend to lose the snarky.
So instead I thought I would write about one of my favorite political theories- Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony or Gramscian Hegemony.
Gramsci was an Italian socialist (I have a thing for Italian socialists, I also love Pasolini films). He had some awesome ideas about how everyone is an intellectual in that we all use intellect and reason to survive, but not all of us work as intellectuals. For a brilliant man, he was way more of the people than your average high minded intellectual revolutionary.
But back to cultural hegemony, which is the idea that the working class will adopt beliefs that benefit the upper class as “common sense”. We see this all the time here in the way that poor white southerners will vote against their own best interest by voting for the Republican party. We see it in the way that people bitch over paying taxes and refuse to acknowledge the good that taxes actually provide. We see it in the way people who wait months for a check up with their primary care doc in an HMO freak out that universal health care will mean long waits for doctors appointments. We see it in the way that people complain about funding schools in their neighborhoods when they don’t have school aged children (even though better schools directly effect their property value whether they have children or not).
And with this new election, we will see it in the supporters of McCain. We all ready know what a McCain economy will look like. We will see hundreds of thousands of foreclosed homeowners blamed for their misfortunes (when failures that large are ones of the system and not the individual) and the homeowners will believe that it was their own fault they they lost their homes. We will see medical costs skyrocket to the point where health care is 20 percent of GDP, while the number of people who actually have insurance continues to decline. Layoffs will be standard while unemployment will run out (but we don’t count people who have been unemployed so long that they’ve used all their benefits up as unemployed. Officially they are no longer looking for work). The rich will become much richer and the poor will join the military because the only job they can get is as fodder for the 100 year Iraq war. Gas and food and heating costs will continue to skyrocket and oil companies will drill in Alaska and North Dakota and anywhere else they want because we will be so desperate for some kind of relief form high prices. And we will think all these things make sense. And the things that create cognitive dissonance we will dismiss because it doesn’t fit with the “common sense” narrative.
So when you hear things that are supposed to be common sense you need to ask yourself who benefits from this bit of common sense. And it doesn’t just apply to economics. Common sense says that women shouldn’t walk alone at night or they will get raped (less than 30 percent of all rapes are committed by strangers, btw). The only people that benefit by this logic are rapists, because they have an excuse for raping women who don’t use common sense. How about- it’s common sense that women are more nurturing than men. Who benefits from that? Men mostly, it means they don’t have to do as much care work as women because common sense says that women are better at it.
Common sense is rarely common or sensible.