I.
Does a truly innocent diversion exist? Does class enter into it? In what ways is shame subject, perhaps invisibly, to patriarchal dogma and assumptions made by the dominant culture?
I must know!
II.
Today I did a bit of reading on social classes — see Wikipedia for a quick rundown. The article first breaks down the general social strata for class distinctions:
* occupation
* education and qualifications — Like occupation, I think one’s social class based on these criteria are largely dependent on the kinds of communities one lives in.
* income
* manners, fashion and cultural refinement… Bourdieu suggests a notion of high and low classes with a distinction between bourgeois tastes and sensitivities and the working class tastes and sensitivities.
* wealth or net worth
* power — On many levels I find the idea of “power” very subjective. This generally means the freedom with which you can move through the world and conversely, the restraints that you are able to put on others’ movement. Whether or not these contraints are symbolic and whether or not these symbols carry real weight — or merely rhetorical weight — is up for grabs,
* ownership of land, property, means of production, slaves…
* political standing vis-à-vis the government
* reputation of honor or disgrace
* social prestige, as from an honorary title, or association with an esteemed groups or people
* Language, the distinction between elaborate code, which is seen as a criterion for “upper-class”, and the restricted code, which is associated with “lower classes” — Since I’ve graduated from college I find myself far less likely to use “upper-class” standard English, breaking often into slang and idiom. Might this say something about me?
* race
* age
* gender
* sexual orientation
I was particularly interested in the stratum models of class, mostly because of my current employment status. Fussell’s model fits each of my jobs into wildly different categories: 1) web design is solidly middle-upper class, 2) my day job is easily middle class to high-prole, whereas 3) my night job is solidly mid-prole. What does it say that I hold three jobs and still can’t pay rent?
By Linda Hirshman’s working feminist women model, I am the lumpenproletariat. I am the bitches that aren’t worth “saving,” us “single parents at Wal Mart.” I get to work, and work, and work, and nobody’s writing a manifesto for me and mine.
Is this contemporary feminism?
Several months ago I wrote a blogger I deeply admire about the courage she had to write about her personal poverty issues. I fell all over myself apologizing for using words like “poor.” But it is what it is, whatever you call it. It’s running to the electric company to get the lights turned on before the kids get home from school, begging the grocery store to hold your food while you leave to find money to pay for it, wondering what kind of cheap labor you can do to make a buck to get you through the end of the month, dipping into your kids’ college funds because you can’t hold out. College? It’s wondering whether you can afford the doctor, or the medicine, or the time off, or the rest. It’s knowing you can do other things to help yourself, but feeling emotionally paralyzed.
I grew up in an upper-middle class family, and I know the tribulations that come with this privilege. Always appear to aim upward lest you be called a loser. Belong to the right political party, attend the right functions, keep up with the Joneses. OKP, NOKP. Take out a second mortgage, don’t let the neighbors know about your child’s drug addiction, hide the credit card bills. Attend every school function. EVERY school function. Smile. Appear, appear, appear.
A trial is a trial. They’re all fucking difficult.
Part of the mythology I allude to is not only that pleasure is reserved for the financially secure, but that pleasure is inherently a distraction from our activist work. Mythology redacted. Feel free to focus your jaundiced eye on my person when I claim to like something for its own sake. That’s your bag to carry, not mine.
III.
I firmly believe that Jill’s tongue-in-cheek ownership of the phrase “fun feminist” — a term which should be banished to the high hills along with Hirshman’s “lumpenproletariat woman” — was received so bitterly because of people’s perception of her class status and embrace of femininity.
Welcome to the feminist blogosphere, where no one is allowed to process out loud without having taken a firm stand. Here we are, you, me, and the embodied feminist. Some asshole libertarian blogger said she was hot. Another asshole libertarian blogger said she was fat. Bimbo, dyke, floozy. Maribou, lace and lingerie. Slut, slut, ho, ho, privilege, silence, and ostracism. And the feminists gathered ’round, asking, Well, what was she wearing? What are her “concessions” to femininity — if “femininity” is frivolous and dishonest? Jill responded with another post, and plenty piled on to remind her that “fun” is not fun if patriarchal. This week, Lubu wrote:
See, one of the lessons I learned early on as a cub was that women have to justify every. got. damn. thing. we do. We’re supposed to come up with some justification for the simplest activities, the basic fabric of our lives. We even have ready-made templates for the pantomimes we’re supposed to engage in… Even for strangers. For anyone who questions us. There are pantomimes on just about every female-oriented subject under the sun.
Why did Jill feel the need to defend herself? To apologize? To confess? True shame™? Shame brand mascara™? Shame brand clothing™? Shame brand feminism™?
What is the feminist pantomime template?
IV.
We can follow this “too bourgie” process right to the root, right down to things even the most virtuous of progressives can’t deny are oppressive. Think beyond hairless bodies and designer handbags: All of industrial culture is oppressive. Industrial culture is hateful, wasteful, violent, racist, misogynist, and murderous, and we live in it.
You are complicit when you wear that t-shirt. You are complicit when you put a new ream of paper in the xerox machine. You are complicit when you drink a coke. You are complicit when you take a hot shower. Pretending you are somehow exempt from moral culpability for the oppressive state in which we live is disingenuous at best, delusional at worst. We have got to stop erecting pedestals for ourselves to sit on.
How invested are we in pooh-poohing other social classes when we can offer a leg up? How much time and energy are we willing to invest in the minutiae of someone else’s wardrobe — in the name of feminism? How closely do we want to align ourselves with Ann Althouse and Linda Hirshman?
Critique, critique away, but check your own assumptions at the door. Or as kactus puts it:
I’m not saying let’s all put on our pretty faces, our middle-class ooh-arguments-are-so-icky faces. Argue. Disagree. Disagree strenuously! Jesus, have the courage of your convictions and stand up and be a fucking woman about it (this is my pep talk to myself), but does that mean you have to go at your opponent with knives and darts and what-the-fuck-ever-else weapon you have at your disposal? Is the point to make a point or is it to say “hey, look at me! I’m so amazing at throwing words all over the place and making them stick like spears! And cuz I’m righteously angry it’s ok!”
V.
All of us have shifting relationships to classed experience over the course of our lives. Do we tell our stories to claim solidarity? Build credibility? Are we so cynical to think so? It is tiresome to watch others attempt to claim moral high ground by arbitrary rules, to dismiss a person’s contributions to the community because of the class they were born into or the grooming habits they practice.
To be blunt, who gives a fuck? If we dismiss every woman who marries and changes her name, who has children, who wears a bra, who works in a corporate atmosphere, who “concedes” to someone else’s notion of “traditional” “femininity,” or owns an identity we otherwise find distateful, we have a very, very small movement.
I, for one, am deeply disturbed by our propensity in the feminist blogging community to privilege one class experience over another, whether that means romanticizing poverty or hailing the “bourgie” lifestyle. Part of feminism is the commitment to take responsibility for class inequality and share resources, material and intellectual.
__________________________
It’s time to move past Feminism 1.6 in the blogosphere and start creating resources for a wider audience. Let’s do that. I would like to start a larger project to share these experiential resources and I’ll need help from fellow feminists of all stripes. Who’s with me?
rock on. filed under “things I wish I’d said.”
Wow, Lauren, this is a great post.
As someone who grew up in poverty and who has enormous and uncontrollable student loan debt because I *believed* as a wide-eyed teenager that assuming said debt would somehow grant me financial viability, I can really appreciate the way you use shame to frame your thesis. Because it’s shameful to work in a corporate atmosphere where well-to-do people look down on me and it’s shameful to return my progressive circle of friends who do arty things for a living and smoke hand-rolled cigarettes while I stand there kicking my Payless (TM) business casual loafers into the asphalt. Just as it’s shameful for all of us to write about the horrors of this administration and the imperialistic direction this country is headed in while we operate within the oppressive system, drinking Miller High Life and staring at a laptop that cost probably more than much of the world’s working poor earn in a year.
Your idea of a larger project is intriguing. I’m with you!
Pretending you are somehow exempt from moral culpability for the oppressive state in which we live is disingenuous at best, delusional at worst. We have got to stop erecting pedestals for ourselves to sit on.
Zowza! You were busy while I was watching that documentary on Black Box Voting. Count me in.
Aunt B. at Tiny Cat Pants and I have been talking along similar lines these past couple of days, btw:
http://tinycatpants.squarespace.com/journal/2006/11/2/in-a-perfect-world-i-would-have-original-ideas.html
and she’d linked back to an earlier discussion which feels relevant:
http://tinycatpants.squarespace.com/journal/2006/10/18/hedonism-revisited.html
Spot on, Lauren. Great post.
Count me in, too. Mulling this stuff over with Belledame222 has been really useful to me just for sounding out and solidifying my own opinions. I have to believe that a lot of folks would also find it useful.
Jenny Dreadful, I’m with you on the student loan nightmare.
Great post, Lauren.
I firmly believe that Jill’s tongue-in-cheek ownership of the phrase “fun feminist” — a term which should be banished to the high hills along with Hirshman’s “lumpenproletariat woman” — was received so bitterly because of people’s perception of her class status and embrace of femininity.
Yep. Add her youth and attractiveness (and Manhattan life) into the mix. I share Jill’s class status but not her embrace of femininity, borough of residence, youth or attractiveness. And I get a pass, somehow. I can talk about my pubic grooming habits all the livelong day, and nobody bats an eye. I can talk about my sexual habits, nada. Talk about hiring a housekeeper or buying a couch, no reaction. But Jill gets a bikini wax, and suddenly, she’s the anti-feminist.
That this whole thing came up again, and was every bit as bitter and destructive, while I was gone from the blog is not really helping with the wanting to come back thing.
Yeh, I think zuzu is right. There is a lot of resentment going on, many kinds, many ways. And I’m not saying this to say, oh, no one -should be resentful- -or- that it is somehow Jill’s (or anyone’s) “fault” for being privileged (yeah, that word) in so many ways. It just is what it is.
What was useful out of that first pass through all this, when Jill took it on, was this: that part of the resentment, i think the part that we -can- do something about within the context of these discussions, came from the frustration of many people at feeling not heard. So, I mean, I liked when La Lubu and earlier kactus and zan and some other people started broadening the discussion to say, okay, to wax or not to wax; but if you don’t actually have $40 to spend in the first place it’s yet another ballgame, so the waxing thing is basically Greek to some of us.
But that’s different imo from saying, which some other people were, i think, effectively: yes, you -are- a frivolous, materialistic, bad feminist (bad person?) because this is how you elect to spend that money: on classically femme accoutrements, on “ornamental luxuries.” LL’s right to open up the analysis: this comes from a lot of internalizd collective shit in its own right, the Puritan/Calvinist legacy, for one (which is -not- the same thing as saying that women who simply -don’t- shave, enjoy blowjobs, yadda, are “puritans”), how in fact classism works in a lot of different ways, and (I extrapolate) while it may reflect a certain myopia to write about the choice of whether to buy expensive heels or expensive flats as thought everyone had the wherewithal to even be making that “choice” (which, by the way, i am not saying that Jill or zuzu were, especially; just that that -is- a thread that happens in these discussions, in our culture in general, this collective pretense that -there is no such thing as class or even real economic disparity,- which is a big part of the source of some peoples’ frustration, sure) it’s also dubious to lecture another woman about how she should or shouldn’t “indulge.” Maybe that tube of lipstick is the bright spot in an otherwise thankless day for a woman; who are you (general you) to tell her she’s selfish or hurting the “cause?”
so, in short: i think maybe the (a) way forward here is what in improv we used to call “yes, and.” (as opposed to “yes, but,” or “no, not that way, this way.”) “I feel frustrated at the amount of money I end up spending on grooming rituals for the sake of ‘looking professional.’” “Yes, and at the same time, personally, I feel doubly frustrated when i do it and then i turn around and some other feminist is yelling at me because i gave in to patriarchal conditioning or whatnot.” “Yes, and me, I’m just making the decision as to whether to buy soap or toilet paper, never even mind razors; and boy, let me tell you, a steady diet of this sort of thing takes its toll; and yes, I get the appearance business, too, in the following way…”
also known as “amplification.” It’s not either/or, it’s both/and. “Now, girls, you’re both oppressed…”
…and, and, that is also not the same as saying that such and so experience is -the same as- this other one. Actually what would be really terrific would be if we could get a bit away from the whole “mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the most oppressed of all.” I mean, if we’re gonna be competitive (and i don’t think it’s possible or even desirable to get away from that altogether, personally), at least let’s be more conscious about it, and maybe do it about something that’s more -fun- than -who’s most miserable,- ffs. Because, while part of -that- is about what i was talking about with Aunt B (there’s an ideological basis for this hierarchy of oppression business, which i won’t get into here)…again, i think a lot of it just boils down to: we all want to be heard.
We all want to be heard. And while there may -really- be an “economy of scarcity” in many material, “real world” ways, one thing that really isn’t actually in limited supply is validation. Listening, affirmation. Particularly collectively: it’s the Internets. -someone- out there is gonna hear you, okay? -Someone- “gets it.” It’d be great if more people “got it” more of the time, and maybe that’s something we can all work on, but honestly…this, -this- is not something that -needs- to be fought to the death over. Being heard. Hearing. It really is possible that we -all can be heard and understood.- That much, at least, I believe. No, of itself it doesn’t solve the real world issues we’re trying, eventually, to grapple with and even change; but it’s a start. Not sufficient, but necessary.
One other big problem as i see it here is blurry boundaries. -Really- blurry boundaries. That business where (on her own blog, riffing off the Jill/Molly business, though) Vanessa wrote about how she, personally, feels more comfortable in heels and a skirt and some other woman came in to say, basically, “no you don’t! or at least you Haven’t Found the Right One (pair of pants) yet. don’t try to tell -me- how your body feels! I have that same type of body! I have that same -body!- -I- don’t feel that way, and you are contradicting the Theory, which -I- know is The Truth, so -you must be wrong.- About how. You. Feel.”
It’s that sort of thing that sends me screaming for the hills, i gotta say; that way, truly, madness lies. I don’t know -what- that is, (although i have some thoughts), but i suspect ultimately neither feminism(s) nor any particular sociopolitical ideology quite covers it.
by the way, personally i didn’t actually see this round as -as- bitter and destructive as the last one; maybe biased because i’m in it this time; but from here it looks/feels like it’s mostly one person who’s doing most of the mm not very helpful stuff. Who may never truly “get it,” for a bunch of reasons, and useful and fun an exercise as it’s been to use her obtuseness to hone my own thoughts, maybe it’s time to just let it/her go, i am thinking. that may end up being true for some other people as well; so be fucking it, you know…
I just really loved this post.
Hirshman’s analysis of sexism was destroyed by her explicit refusal to consider disparate impact as a huge part of sexism. She was stuck on the overt stuff, and it caused her to leave out a lot of women–and even excuse discrimination against them.
To be blunt, who gives a fuck? If we dismiss every woman who marries and changes her name, who has children, who wears a bra, who works in a corporate atmosphere, who “concedes” to someone else’s notion of “traditional” “femininity,” or owns an identity we otherwise find distateful, we have a very, very small movement.
We have a small and comfortable movement, since it’s comprised of all the people who get to choose those things with fewer consequences.
You know, there are a lot of parallels between this battle and the struggles between different transpeople; the “You’re too queer!” “You’re not queer enough!” “You have privilege!” “No, you have privilege!” There’s infighting over the same (very much class- and race-inflected) problems of public face, priorities, obligations, and image control. The battle, for example, over whether to declassify gender dysphoria as a medical condition.
It’s less destructive, I think, because many of the previous major players are just tired. Lull in the blogosphere, or maybe it’s just me.
Speaking of moral false dichotomies, there’s also all the vegetarian/vegan analogies I keep hearing (and, ahem, speaking of class inflection)–they seem to forget that there’s nothing inherently bad about wearing lipstick, any more than there’s something inherently good about wearing sweat pants. It’s not like saying that eating animal flesh is wrong. It’s like…saying that eating soyrizo is wrong because it looks like animal flesh and therefore supports a cultural system under which animal flesh is edible. Then you get into uber-strained arguments about consumer habits.
Oh, and also: great post.
It’s not like saying that eating animal flesh is wrong. It’s like…saying that eating soyrizo is wrong because it looks like animal flesh and therefore supports a cultural system under which animal flesh is edible. Then you get into uber-strained arguments about consumer habits.
Heh, indeedy.
I’m in. Thanks, Lauren.
Count me in.
I particularly agree with your point about no one being allowed to PROCESS in public (ie on their blog). We are all works in progress….I feel a little afraid on my blog to state vague thoughts and wonderments because they Aren’t “all thought out”, and it is likely that I will get tons of shitty feedback. (I still intend to WRITE about things I am thinking that are half-baked…if I can ever get the damn thing to WORK right! I DID figure out how to load photos finally though!)
I remember Twisty once was gung-Ho about the Lady Rollergirls, then decided, no, they are using sex appeal in a patriarchically mandated way so they AREN’T great/fun Feminists….she actually CHANGED HER MIND! I think that sort of thing should be allowed…we should be allowed to be IN PROCESS when we are thinking and writing and living. GOD what a better place this world would be if people felt OK about going “Oops! Good point, criticizer…maybe I am wrong!” instead of feeling they have to DEFEND themselves (like a bunch of Republicans!)
HAHAHA
I think back to the terrible blog moment when T.Rex felt he had to be defensive and said “don’t talk back to your betters” to a blogger of color….OUCH! It would have all been so much better if those involved had just said, “Wow. You are right. There should be more people of color included. We are sorry, we didn’t intend to be racist. THank YOU!”
I think that one of the problems with Feminism is that, it is like this LONG FUCKING JOURNEY of realizing how much you have internalized your oppressors. People tend to be touchy about things they feel they have learned at great personal expense. We are all on this journey of realization…..some women are just at the point of saying “Why shouldn’t I make the same amount of money as a male doing the same job?” and some have gotten to the point of thinking “All my life I have been twisting myself into knots and starving myself and ripping out my pubic hair with hot wax just so I can resemble a porn actress more closely.WTF?” I think these discussions can become heated because people are passionate about Truth. But we can do without the Ad Homina attacks FOREVER. I think that should be a RULE!
KMTBerry, I agree. I think that changing your mind or processing in public is important.
On Feministing recently (I can’t remember the post or the author), one of the writers linked to a site and just said, “I don’t know what I think of this.” Immediately a commenter wrote, “You call yourself a feminist and you don’t know what to think of that?! It’s OBVIOUSLY sexist…”
We should give each other space to process–because who we once were has made available who we are now. Getting pissy with everyone who doesn’t automatically think the right feminist thing at exactly the same time as all the other feminists is going to alienate people and piss them off and stop them from processing in a way that’s going to create intellectually sound, well-thought out ideas.
“Part of feminism is the commitment to take responsibility for class inequality and share resources, material and intellectual.”
Absolutely, I for one, grew up upper middle class only to drop out of sight in my late teen years after leaving my dysfunctional homelife. A typical scenario for millions of women might I add.
I was raised in a world where priviledge was known but not openly acknowledged, (considered in bad taste) where throwing around evidence of one’s Ivy League education was just one of the many subtle codes used to distinguish us from the ‘others’. Then I became the ‘other’ before I had the chance to get my adult membership card into the upper middle class. Be a woman who challenges the patriarchical status quo of a typical American family and find yourself stripped of identity, family, support and all that goes with it.
I became the ‘other’ I was trained since birth to regard as my patronage, as my charge, the ‘others’, those less economically as inferior and incapable. And now I have been told I am all that and more. My children have grown up in it and have absorbed the lies and accepted them however subconsciously as truth.
One thing that I have found that distinguishes me most from those who grow up in poverty is the sense of entitlement to be heard. No one ever told me I was not important, or that my opinions were not worthy. No one ever ignored me, pretended I didn’t exist or treated me like an idiot, or questioned my motives, NO ONE when I was growing up.
When I was an activist with women of welfare like me, one thing I noticed; so many felt no entitlement to speak, accepted as the rule that no one would value, listen to or consider their thoughts or words. I was and still am most greatly distressed at this more than anything. If people’s will to fight; if they don’t even feel entitled to get to the finish line, they will forget about the race entirely. They give up and resign themselves. I won’t.
I preach like this because I know that no one understands what its like to sit on the bottom, like a mouse sleeping in its hole knowing that one day the footfall of the elephant might crush its house, unless they’ve been there.
I try to tell people my story and tell them where I come from so they can see and hear the voice that is forever told to shut up. I write on blogs and share (and preach some say) to take back my voice that was robbed from me, make people listen and hear me when everyday they turn a blind eye from me or a jaundiced eye to me.
Share yes, share and that means that those who hold positions of status or power should also share, share information about what they speak. Clue us ones who haven’t had the priviledge or opportunity that you had to sit in on specialized lit classes or foreign language, higher math or any other higher pursuit, that I for one, had to give up hope a long time ago of ever enjoying or attaining.
I don’t understand when you write in French, but I want to. I don’t know more complex equations, or know of great literature that every well educated person should know.
Also, please understand that I don’t have the luxury of spare time in my efforts at survival, especially struggling with a small business. Yes, I am doing my part, I have a small business in an area (construction) where few women are. I have braved single motherhood. Please don’t assume I don’t know the big picture, I just didn’t have the time read Hirshmann (hell I can’t even afford to buy her books) or any other Latest Feminist Theory or Writer.
By the way, in that vein, what about a book/trading kind of thing? Like a co-op by mail? I can’t afford to buy the latest books, but if I bought one that others don’t have and read it, maybe I could pass it on to someone who has something else worth reading and on and on?
Just thinking. Want to make this “I’m in” pledge real.
Beautifully said. Thank you.
Hi Lauren,
I grew to hate the new face of feminism but reading the blogs is helping me to understand why and maybe giving me possibility for making peace with third wavers.
I’m 48 so that’s part of it. I come from a community of feminism that was fun and in yer face and inclusive, filled with rich girls and poor girls, earth mothers and tragidiennes and we were engaged with one another whether marching in the streets or bandaging a bruised and wayward sister following a rough night with her abusive ass-hole boyfriend.
There was none of this bullshit about make-up and class and style, people were accepted for where they were and it went without saying that some would be college types, some would be working poor, or have problems with men, or be strippers, prostitutes, have issues with drugs, alcohol, with self-cutting, with money, but we all feminst activists and the academics made everyone read Freud, that’s missing now too, but in my day we were tearing apart psychoanalysis, seeing it as the driver of misogyny. We were “Sassy” activists, we had fun fucking shit up, and the range of education in the women went from high school drop out to PhD, and the range of effectiveness from taking on sexists on the Phil Donahue show to chronic unemployment, but the academic stars would drive you to the welfare office, we were in it together cheering each other on, drunk or sober, rich or poor, white or not, actualized or dysfunctional, it was about ruling as women, experimenting, and playing with our pedagogy, style and presentation. I wore slips everywhere while Madonna was still in diapers, you could do that– show up as a street punk one day, do Yoko Ono the next, be a princess a while then morph into a scruffy farm hand because outfits were fun, it was all about liberation and that includes play and performance. We were all fuckin poets. We changed our community, we brought Sonia Johnson to town and gave Sting a massage.
I don’t know what’s become of that. I can’t stand the current, stingy, judgmental face of feminism. I feel y’all stole it from us old-timers.
I remember the first feminist I met who left me scared and cold, here in Austin, we had just finished doing an action and sipping cappucino at a coffee house. Billie Holiday came on the sound system and this women went off on her–”Oh my man I love him so, you’ll never know, all my life is just despair, but I don’t care, when it takes me in his arms…he beats me too, what can I do..Oh my man I love him so…” And this feminist was disgusted by Billie Holiday qua Billie which pointed to her animus with the non-rational in general, and that’s a big part of what’s missing for me. Ach. I’ve gone on too long and probably failed to make much sense.
But I absolutely despise feminism’s new values and do appreciate the fact that there is a conversation.
beautiful post. yay! I just submitted a proposal to WAM entitled Bitches on the Margins which basically calls for a strategy meeting on creating an alternative feminist community, which i think you’re proposing here. anyway, i hope something awesome spawns from this post…
>One thing that I have found that distinguishes me most from those who grow up in poverty is the sense of entitlement to be heard. No one ever told me I was not important, or that my opinions were not worthy. No one ever ignored me, pretended I didn’t exist or treated me like an idiot, or questioned my motives, NO ONE when I was growing up.
…one thing I noticed; so many felt no entitlement to speak, accepted as the rule that no one would value, listen to or consider their thoughts or words. I was and still am most greatly distressed at this more than anything. If people’s will to fight; if they don’t even feel entitled to get to the finish line, they will forget about the race entirely. They give up and resign themselves. I won’t.
I preach like this because I know that no one understands what its like to sit on the bottom, like a mouse sleeping in its hole knowing that one day the footfall of the elephant might crush its house, unless they’ve been there.
…Share yes, share and that means that those who hold positions of status or power should also share, share information about what they speak….>
This is all really, really, ringing some bells for me.
My story isn’t quite yours–I am fortunate in having a better relationship with my family of origin than a lot of people with similar paths (still strained in ways, but…yeah, i’ve been fortunate); but parts of this are close enough that i’m really feeling it. also i’m blessed or cursed with a lot of empathy/ability to vicariously experience (which is not the -same- as actually living it, i do understand; but i still feel safe in saying i’ve had twitchier antenna a certain obsessive-compulsiveness that add up to ability to tune in, sometimes); and have been witness to kind of a lot these past few years. (My best friend could probably -really- relate to your story).
I will also now acknowledge that my biggest gifts have been TIME and a room of my own; and it’s true i protest these things being taken away harder i expect than someone who’d never been accustomed to such things.
anyway: yes, I’m in, too, if that wasn’t clear.
I like the idea of a book trade. (One more gift which I’ve only just started taking advantage of: living near the NY Public Library). I also like the idea of a kind of…what, book of the month/reading group? i know the radical feminists have been doing such things for a while now; i’d like to start “our” own traditions of this, if “us” means “the big tent of feminists and progressives, all denomonations who are interested in interchange.”
“I will also now acknowledge that my biggest gifts have been TIME and a room of my own; and it’s true i protest these things being taken away harder i expect than someone who’d never been accustomed to such things.”
I am glad to see my words resonated with someone. I don’t think anyone can get accustomed to having no time or space of their own. Its not accustomed, its silent resignation, which eats at the soul and the self slowly and painfully like a cancer that one cannot heal or tell anyone about.
I wonder if the book trade could happen on a blog basis, like “So and so has x book and will send it to the PO Box of so and so..”
Such action requires trust. If there is anything a movement must have first and foremost is trust, trust and committment.
flawedplan: I came in on the heals of what you speak of, having parents both engaged in the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement, I always saw speaking out and challenging the system as the thing to do. But unfortunately, people have been brow beaten the last thirty years into thinking conformity is the new rebellion.
ALso, on the book thing, a blog would allow people to post their comments, reviews so to speak, on whatever book they read so other people could put in for it if interested.
I can’t organize something quite like that, but I do have a ton of books behind me that aren’t being read. There were plenty of people out there who were interested in trading music and gave their addresses via email when I was at Feministe. If someone else were to organize that kind of book trade I’d be in. I have the mailing addresses of several other bloggers and we’ve sent each other stuff from time to time. I just got some old zines/books a few weeks ago — but a formal book trade would require some commitment from at least one organizer.
Maybe do one test run and see where the weaknesses lie?
This is the first blog of yours I’ve read, and I AM BLOWN AWAY. I’ve been scanning blogs, looking for some sort of UNITY, yet have been surprised to find so many divisive and isolating comments instead. Your message is spot-on.
And to say one small thing about being poor… I have been poor. VERY poor. “Lost job, disbaled husband, pregnant with no insurance and one other kiddo, on food stamps and getting coolers and crates of food driven 100 miles from family” poor. House foreclosed; car reposessed.
My Christmas present to my husband was $8, in $1 bills, that I managed to save from redeemable cans (hard to find road-side in Maine in December!!)- I gave it to him Dec 24th so he could go to Goodwill to get presents for our daughter. He also got me a crossword puzzle book that I treasure almost 10 years later. Every year, we put $8 in every stocking SO WE NEVER FORGET, and we always help others when we can.
Because I may have been poor- but I never lost my humanity. And I remember that whenever I see someone who is poor now.
rock on, Lauren. I would love to see people actually working together instead of criticising each other. It would do my heart good to be able to believe that I’m not evil just because I’m middle class (well, if I had to rely on my own resources, I’d be fucking poor, but I’m spoiled by my upper-class parents who bail me out when emergencies happen, so it averages out) or straight, or white, or whatever.
I always wonder if there are other people out there who feel like me. Who feel like they will always be The Enemy, no matter how hard they try, because of who they are (or what they are). I know for me there are people I’ve had to drop from my blogreading despite their skill and passion simply because I can’t handle hating myself that much. And that, in my evil-oppressor opinion, is a detriment to the causes we’re trying to work for. Glad to know I’m not alone - pieces like this are a big reason why I come here.
(that and the fact that Lauren came to my little blog - my response was something like, “OMG! *THE* Lauren!” I thought I’d won the blogjackpot - I mean, a *real* blogger commenting on my stuff!)
Great post, Lauren. And flawedplan, I love your comment. It would be great to get back that sense of “we’re all women in this together.”
The other day I read some young feminist who said, actually said, that it was time to “declare total war” — not on the patriarchy, but on other feminists, those of a different stripe. Holy fucking shit.
Well, Violet, the People’s Front of Judea certainly hates the Judean People’s Front more than it does the Romans. It’s not a new development, or even one that’s unique to feminism. Ideological purity is the privilege of the incredibly powerful, who can enforce their will on everyone, and the completely powerless, who have nothing to lose from schisms. Feminism is neither.
Usually, the more solidarity your movement requires, the more it’ll schism. “We’re all in this together” is exactly what’s causing this behavior. When you expect other people to have solidarity with you, you’ll be so hurt when they disagree with you on something that you’ll split with them. It’s not a coincidence that the social movements that are based on “We’re all in this together” are those that schism that most. Although the Judean People’s Front was originally a joke about the left, it remains funny if you tweak it to be about Christian fundamentalists (e.g. joke #1 here), who have the same expectation of solidarity.
All told, excellent, thought-provoking post. I think your larger point stands, and I’ve really enjoyed the comment thread so far. However, I do take small issue with one particular statement you made (and really, this is, I think, a peripheral point in your argument):
While I think that you are correct about the state and culture we live in being oppressive, what I read here sounds like assigning collective guilt. That argument, I think, doesn’t really hold very much water. It was exactly the impetus behind Ward Churchill’s comments in Some People Push Back. Do we regularly ignore the effects of our actions to live our day-to-day lives? Yes. But honestly, I don’t think my drinking a coke or wearing a t-shirt is any different from a feminist woman getting a Brazillian. Just as women cope with the reality of patriarchy by behaving patriarchally, we all cope with the reality of industrial capitalism by participating in it. And just as women aren’t culpable for, say, being raped because they dressed one way or another, consumers aren’t culpable for consuming. Honestly, what’s the alternative, short of revolution?
But honestly, I don’t think my drinking a coke or wearing a t-shirt is any different from a feminist woman getting a Brazillian. Just as women cope with the reality of patriarchy by behaving patriarchally, we all cope with the reality of industrial capitalism by participating in it. And just as women aren’t culpable for, say, being raped because they dressed one way or another, consumers aren’t culpable for consuming. Honestly, what’s the alternative, short of revolution?
Tim, this ain’t a disagreement, this was my point! Why are we beating up on ourselves for being products of the society we live in when we could be doing something else? Are these conversations, these connections, important? Well, yes. Of course they are. But they aren’t all of what feminism/liberalism/progressivism/environmentalism/-ism has to offer.
There are alternatives, is all I’m saying, and we do ourselves no favors by maintaining these false dichotomies.
Ok, now that makes a lot more sense. Didn’t really fit with the tone of the rest of the post, which was part of why I wanted to drag it out.
I wholeheartedly agree - I’ve never liked the whole “you belong to/participate in x so you can’t really be feminist/liberal/progressive/environmentalist/etc” brand of argument. Glad we’re on the same page there. Objection withdrawn. =P
Well, further, I think part of it is the weight of what we really want the world to look like, and the feeling that if we aren\’t tackling everything at once we aren\’t doing anything. (The conservative argument against American feminism/-ism, etc. is that we aren\’t doing enough to tackle everything at once.)
My belief has always been that we should do what we can with what resources are available to us now. Keep the over-arching philosophies in mind while we work to change our personal sphere of contacts, but don\’t attack yourself for not adhering, or being able to adhere, to the dogma du jour; and don\’t worry about justifying why it is that you cannot, for whatever reason, utilize the resources that are easily available to others. Just do what you can, now.
Stupid backslashes.
my itty-bitty voice in my tiny corner of the blogosphere is in. i’ve been reading you here since you starting blogging again, and i’m glad to hear this emphasis on unity as ultimately more important than in-fighting. it sounds overly simplistic to put it that way, but i think when you boil it down, it is almost that simple.
it can be a fine line between challenging each other and needlessly cutting each other down, you know?
Who’s with me?
I’m in.
This is a fantastic post Lauren. I’m really glad that I found this site. I have missed you ever since you left Feministe.
Every time I see the phrase “fun feminist” I automatically read “fake feminist”.
and after so many years of busting ass for The Sisterhood, being called a “fun” (to mean fake) feminist really makes me mad on a personal level, to the point of blinding me to any useful dialogue or critique.
I’m in. And I’ve got some work to do overcoming my own class resentments.
Beautiful.
Project? I’m in.
I’m not sure exactly what “being in” will mean in practice, but I’m in.
on a related note, have people read this post over at Mind the Gap! ?
http://mindthegapcardiff.blogspot.com/2006/10/how-do-i-look-thoughts-on-feminism-and.html
“How do I look? Thoughts on feminism and white middle-class femininity”