Comments on: Context

By: No Feminism of Mine « Off Our Pedestals

No Feminism of Mine « Off Our Pedestals — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:47:12 +0000

[...] above–they’ve just got to be told, by those of us who know better, by those of us up here in the intelligentsia who are ready and willing to speak for [...]

By: How a Short Break Became a Long One « Off Our Pedestals

How a Short Break Became a Long One « Off Our Pedestals — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 12:12:28 +0000

[...] correspondent are okay with me kinda gong line-by-line through it (also, if you haven’t yet, read Lauren’s posts, both of them): The problem with hearing the voices of working people is [...]

By: belledame222

belledame222 — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 07:02:27 +0000

Thanks for posting this, Lauren. And the thing is–we *do* live in a society; even if I happen to be relatively privileged at any given point, it ultimately doesn’t–I don’t want to see my friends suffering. I don’t think it’s a healthy or good state of things where only a tiny tiny percentage of us can even take the basics on Maslow’s pyramid (thanks for that cite) for granted, and increasingly tinier. It isn’t a tenable situation, even if you’re not concerned about the other people, and…yeah, the layoffs are fucking scary, when they’re you.

By: Kristin

Kristin — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 05:34:05 +0000

This is a great post, Lauren. Glad you’re not backing down.

Amanda: You really might do well to give it a rest on the “just jealous” bullshit. It’s really unflattering. And anyway, “I bet you think this song is about you, don’t you, don’t you?”

Daisy:

“Why is class awareness so “dirty” to young people–is it because the neocons were the people who used such terminology during your generation’s coming-of-age?”

*waves* I’m 29. I don’t see this as a “young people” problem per se, but a class privilege one. Older people have class privilege too. And people who are bound and determined to keep it are not likely to “get it” about this. At all. The blogosphere is populated by a majority of young people, sure, but well… Feminism is dominated by well-off white women of all ages and always has been. A few people have picked up on the idea of “intersectionality,” but yeah… What Sarah J said about feminism and Marx.

Anyway, Lauren… Keep on keeping on. You’re exactly right about all of this. Well done.

By: Being Amber Rhea » Blog Archive » Classy

Being Amber Rhea » Blog Archive » Classy — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 03:30:22 +0000

[...] are struggling to keep their jobs, if they haven’t been laid off already. She then wrote another post, which expanded on some of the stuff in the first post. Aunt B wrote a post linking to [...]

By: Sarah J

Sarah J — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 01:17:35 +0000

This. Oh, all of this.

Yeah, I’m so tired of people whose idea of getting through a recession is..what? I mean, they still have the same job and salary they always had. So they might not get their raise? I get out of school in May (and yes, it’s an MA) and I will just have more debt and not even close to a promise of a job.

And I’m still a lucky one.

And Daisy, it often seems to me that the only thing a lot of feminists learned from Marx is to group women into an oppressed class, and completely to miss the economic points.

By: DaisyDeadhead

DaisyDeadhead — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 20:02:39 +0000

Trackback: More on feminism and class

By: zuzu

zuzu — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 03:32:02 +0000

Kathryn, you’re disappearing everyone in New York other than the bankers. And what Kai said — there *are* places in the city where the unemployment rate is in double-digits.

Erasing those places is no better, or different, than erasing the people where you live. The question is, how do we *not* do that? And keeping the focus on class rather than geography is a good place to start. You probably have more in common with someone in Harlem or Yonkers than either of you do with the elites in Washington — who are resisting making the MOTU types pay for their own malfeasance and dragging their feet on measures to make life better for people in Muskegon and Yonkers.

By: Kai

Kai — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:11:50 +0000

If New York had double-digit unemployment right now, it would be a ‘crisis’, but in Detroit and Flint and Muskegon and Elkhart, it’s hardly worth bothering Congress about.

Um…spent much time in Harlem or Yonkers in the past, say, 30 years? There’s no “if” regarding double-digit unemployment. The projects are not basking in Congressional largesse. This isn’t a battle between coast and continent; class lines cross those geographical categories.

By: Kathryn

Kathryn — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 01:31:05 +0000

Lauren, this is a fantastic post. I though the first version was good too. I think one of the things that feeds into the ‘coastal elite’ mentality is that so much of the discussion about the crisis is centered on the coasts (because that’s where Wall Street is, that’s who has power in Congress, etc) and the discussion in the national newsmedia is so detached. Every time I hear a Congressperson or some financial guru say something like “If we don’t do X, we’ll have a disaster on our hands” when over here, in the Midwest, we already have a disaster on our hands, and have had one for awhile. And it seems like nobody’s actually noticing because, hey, we’re flyover country. If New York had double-digit unemployment right now, it would be a ‘crisis’, but in Detroit and Flint and Muskegon and Elkhart, it’s hardly worth bothering Congress about. Bankers can make six figures and own three houses and that’s just their right, but if a unionized factory worker happens to make enough to buy a house and send his kids to college, well, his wages are ‘inflated’ and he has to take pay and benefit cuts as a condition of getting help from Congress. Yeah, I live in southeast Michigan, and I’m angry. It sounds like a lot of us are angry. I see a lot of the snobbery that Linnaeus mentioned, and I honestly think it’s one of the reasons that so much of the country seems ready to write us off.