There is apparently a popular Irish joke of this guy coming to a roadblock during The Troubles. The militants at the roadblock as him his religion and he says "atheist." The militants talk amongst themselves, then ask him "Protestant atheist or Catholic atheist?" It may be a sad joke but it sums up how important one's background is. A Protestant atheist (an atheist of a Protestant background) would have different values, at least when it comes to disbelieving, than a Catholic atheist. And a Hindu atheist would be radically different! Where you come from, no matter how far away you are from it, affects how you approach things now.
The impact of background affects more than just religion, it works with fluid gender and sexual orientation. I strongly identify as genderqueer and my background of woman/lesbian affects my approach today, so I'm most accurately a female-to-queer. Had I come from the background of a man, I'd approach things differently. Coming from an intersexed or gender-free background would have been...optimal. Anyway, I'm usually most comfortable with feminine pronouns, the women's washroom, etc. because I'm used to it. Sometimes I'm frustrated that there are too few non-binary options; it's frustrating enough being perceived as a woman in the first place since this isn't exactly an egalitarian culture! A lot of transsexuals who "successfully pass" experience culture shock as they have to change how they approach things.
I'm usually comfortable functioning as a lesbian since that's my background and it's a lot easier to give the short answer "I'm a dyke" to n00bs than the long explanation "I'm genderqueer and I'm primarily attracted to fellow genderqueers...oh, you haven't heard the term before...etc." And then they get confused when I ogle Chris Colfer...I mean...what?
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Thursday, October 21, 2010
All -isms are Bullying
In the second edition of her book, CUNT, Inga Muscio admits “I am most often aware that I am a woman when I feel threatened...” In the same vein, Simone de Beauvoir quipped that one is not born but, rather, becomes a woman. What unites roughly half the population is not genitals, chromosomes nor hormones and what turns a child into a woman is not menstruation, penetration nor childbirth. No, it's the shared experience of playing second banana, as it were.
Whether you're overlooked because you're a woman or you're picked because you're a pretty woman, the problem remains the same. And this problem has been rampant the world over for millennia; it unites generations of women more strongly than any reproductive function. In this harsh world of competitive and weak human beings, man* needs to make somebody #2 in order to keep himself #1. Who better than not-man? And there are many women who push someone else, a masculine woman or a feminine man or someone else entirely (or even a prettier, more feminine woman!), into #3. This is what puts the “sexism” into “heterosexism”: insecure people pushing down queer people just to ensure that they're the ones rising up. It's bullying, all the -isms are just bullying on a larger scale!
There are women who claim to never have experienced sexism. They're either extremely privileged and cloistered or blind to, well, everything. It begins when parents proclaim upon birth “that's not a penis, bring out the dolls and pink frilly dresses!” for one and “that's a penis, give him a toolbox and blue overalls!” It is a privilege, usually tied to class, to have been brought up and then to continue in adulthood otherwise: not as a #1, a #2 or as any rank at all.
* I don't mean all or even most men, nor even just men in general. Clearly, Phyllis Schlafly has done more to perpetuate heterosexism than RuPaul.
Whether you're overlooked because you're a woman or you're picked because you're a pretty woman, the problem remains the same. And this problem has been rampant the world over for millennia; it unites generations of women more strongly than any reproductive function. In this harsh world of competitive and weak human beings, man* needs to make somebody #2 in order to keep himself #1. Who better than not-man? And there are many women who push someone else, a masculine woman or a feminine man or someone else entirely (or even a prettier, more feminine woman!), into #3. This is what puts the “sexism” into “heterosexism”: insecure people pushing down queer people just to ensure that they're the ones rising up. It's bullying, all the -isms are just bullying on a larger scale!
There are women who claim to never have experienced sexism. They're either extremely privileged and cloistered or blind to, well, everything. It begins when parents proclaim upon birth “that's not a penis, bring out the dolls and pink frilly dresses!” for one and “that's a penis, give him a toolbox and blue overalls!” It is a privilege, usually tied to class, to have been brought up and then to continue in adulthood otherwise: not as a #1, a #2 or as any rank at all.
* I don't mean all or even most men, nor even just men in general. Clearly, Phyllis Schlafly has done more to perpetuate heterosexism than RuPaul.
Women Leaders of the World
Countries that have had women prime ministers: Sri Lanka, India, Israel, Portugal, the United Kingdom, the Caribbean, Norway, Poland, Netherlands Antilles, Pakistan, France, Bangladesh, Turkey, Burundi, Rwanda, South Korea.
Countries that have had women presidents: Argentina, Bolivia, Iceland, the Philippines, Ireland, Haiti, Guyana, Latvia, Panama, Finland, Chile, Liberia.
What's keeping us behind?
Countries that have had women presidents: Argentina, Bolivia, Iceland, the Philippines, Ireland, Haiti, Guyana, Latvia, Panama, Finland, Chile, Liberia.
What's keeping us behind?
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Literacy
If you're female and can read this, thank feminism.
If you're nonwhite and can read this, thank civil rights activism.
If you're below the upper-middle class and can read this, thank socialism.
Literacy is extremely powerful and privileged. Tyrannical ruling classes know well to either limit the literacy of their peons or provide brainless propaganda to them. Out of the oppressed classes, the educated effectively rebel (as opposed to those with nothing left to lose, who lash out and make everyone look bad).
If you can read this, thank the minute probability that you were born into the right time period, location and culture. It is class privilege that allows you to read this now.
If you're nonwhite and can read this, thank civil rights activism.
If you're below the upper-middle class and can read this, thank socialism.
Literacy is extremely powerful and privileged. Tyrannical ruling classes know well to either limit the literacy of their peons or provide brainless propaganda to them. Out of the oppressed classes, the educated effectively rebel (as opposed to those with nothing left to lose, who lash out and make everyone look bad).
If you can read this, thank the minute probability that you were born into the right time period, location and culture. It is class privilege that allows you to read this now.
Friday, October 1, 2010
The Second Sex Part 1
I tried to read The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir a few years ago but couldn't make it past the first 20-some pages. Crazy stuff was going down with my dad at the time and everything that I was reading seemed to refute his arguments (why didn't I just send him a copy? Because I didn't want to participate in the destructive conversation he attempted to initiate). Now that I'm in a much better place, I'm picking up The Second Sex again and can fully concentrate on it.
In the book, British poet and novelist Steve Smith is quoted as saying of de Beauvoir “She has written an enormous book about women and it was soon clear that she does not like them, nor does she like being a woman.” Granted, I haven't made it far enough in the book to have an opinion on that but it strikes me as odd that this is considered critique. In A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, the authors clearly don't like most women. Had I been a straight nursing major rather than a queer art major, I would have loathed women too! Some women aren't aware of their option to live autonomously or they're afraid to take that risk. If anything, de Beauvoir's alleged opinion on women would have supported her cause: why would you want to help people who you think are doing just fine? And sometimes, more often than not if you don't have a good network or haven, it really sucks being a woman.
De Beauvoir states “In truth, to go for a walk with one's eyes open is enough to demonstrate that humanity is divided into two classes of individuals whose clothes, faces, bodies, smiles, gaits, interests, and occupations are manifestly different.” And when the second class uses these signifiers to entice the first class, you get heterosexism. When a member of the first class chooses a member of the second class to be his, he transfers some benefits of his class unto her. And there is intense competition within the second class (see next paragraph). Walking in certain areas will reveal a third class of individuals who combine and/or reject those binary signifiers and are just fine with autonomy.
From there is the idea that most minorities (and majorities...) refer to their class as “we” but that women don't consider themselves as such. Women say “women” rather than “we” except for a few strident feminist situations. I believe that the root of our lack of solidarity is this competition. I've been there, I feared what would happen should my future husband get stolen from me; it's very scary to think that you could lose both a loved one and your elevator out of spinsterhood if a woman better than you comes along. And second-classhood is so ingrained that many women, as stated above, aren't aware of or fear the autonomy of spinsterhood (or a marriage that involves autonomy).
In some circles, women are uncomfortable with my use of “we” in reference to womanhood*. Because I've rejected heterosexism, I'm the Other's Other. It's fully understandable why queer people – including straight couples with “reversed sex roles” - are considered a third gender. If both ends of the gender binary comprise the two classes, then those who don't fit on the binary form a third class. Socially, we queer people don't fit in to their game. We can't relate to the woman who drops out of school to marry young, before she's old enough to lose her man to someone younger, and has kids to entrap him. We can't relate to the woman who picks Danielle Steele over Stephen Hawking because she fears intimidating her man, whose credit card she uses to buy the book in the first place.
What's really sad is how little has changed since 1952 when this was originally published. More posts to come as I progress through the book!
* - my gender is fluid, there are times that I identify as a woman and times that I don't. I am usually perceived as a woman by men and as something else by women, who often end up surprised how much I can relate to them as far as womanhood goes.
In the book, British poet and novelist Steve Smith is quoted as saying of de Beauvoir “She has written an enormous book about women and it was soon clear that she does not like them, nor does she like being a woman.” Granted, I haven't made it far enough in the book to have an opinion on that but it strikes me as odd that this is considered critique. In A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, the authors clearly don't like most women. Had I been a straight nursing major rather than a queer art major, I would have loathed women too! Some women aren't aware of their option to live autonomously or they're afraid to take that risk. If anything, de Beauvoir's alleged opinion on women would have supported her cause: why would you want to help people who you think are doing just fine? And sometimes, more often than not if you don't have a good network or haven, it really sucks being a woman.
De Beauvoir states “In truth, to go for a walk with one's eyes open is enough to demonstrate that humanity is divided into two classes of individuals whose clothes, faces, bodies, smiles, gaits, interests, and occupations are manifestly different.” And when the second class uses these signifiers to entice the first class, you get heterosexism. When a member of the first class chooses a member of the second class to be his, he transfers some benefits of his class unto her. And there is intense competition within the second class (see next paragraph). Walking in certain areas will reveal a third class of individuals who combine and/or reject those binary signifiers and are just fine with autonomy.
From there is the idea that most minorities (and majorities...) refer to their class as “we” but that women don't consider themselves as such. Women say “women” rather than “we” except for a few strident feminist situations. I believe that the root of our lack of solidarity is this competition. I've been there, I feared what would happen should my future husband get stolen from me; it's very scary to think that you could lose both a loved one and your elevator out of spinsterhood if a woman better than you comes along. And second-classhood is so ingrained that many women, as stated above, aren't aware of or fear the autonomy of spinsterhood (or a marriage that involves autonomy).
In some circles, women are uncomfortable with my use of “we” in reference to womanhood*. Because I've rejected heterosexism, I'm the Other's Other. It's fully understandable why queer people – including straight couples with “reversed sex roles” - are considered a third gender. If both ends of the gender binary comprise the two classes, then those who don't fit on the binary form a third class. Socially, we queer people don't fit in to their game. We can't relate to the woman who drops out of school to marry young, before she's old enough to lose her man to someone younger, and has kids to entrap him. We can't relate to the woman who picks Danielle Steele over Stephen Hawking because she fears intimidating her man, whose credit card she uses to buy the book in the first place.
What's really sad is how little has changed since 1952 when this was originally published. More posts to come as I progress through the book!
* - my gender is fluid, there are times that I identify as a woman and times that I don't. I am usually perceived as a woman by men and as something else by women, who often end up surprised how much I can relate to them as far as womanhood goes.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
American History Class
I just finished Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen, the revised and updated version. Despite how much Loewen toots his own horn, it is a great book and I do recommend it to anyone interested in history and/or education.
Loewen bemoans not teachers at all, but the textbooks of American history courses. They gloss over extremely important events, focus on names and dates rather than technological advancements (few people realize how much of our culture exists today solely because of indoor heating, for example), blatantly lie about figures such as Christopher Columbus and Woodrow Wilson, and fade out optimistically after the obvious successful civil rights movement. Not to mention how huge these textbooks are, both burdening students and discouraging anything after WWII getting reached in a school year.
Up until middle school, my classmates and I loathed history class. The textbooks were outdated and were written at what was the high school level in the 70's. Lessons, homework and tests were entirely textbook-based with memorization of names and dates of only the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. This was partly because our teachers were nuts.
I was extremely lucky in getting Ms. B for middle school history. She focused very little on our updated textbooks and, instead, used a variety of effective and fun techniques. We had fantastic field trips, put on plays, made dioramas of violent events and all sorts of things deprived middle schoolers of the late 90's enjoyed. I was already an avid reader, so I researched topics covered in class (and thus converted away from Christianity...) and discovered both Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson. Ms. B was restricted from teaching even more nitty-gritty history by the corrupt and insecure administration of the school, to the point of declaring that the Holocaust killed all the Jews.
My high school American history class was awful due to a burnt-out teacher. The one thing he did right was assign us to read The Autobiography of Malcolm X. The next two history electives I took, one in high school and one in college, were both U.S. 20th Century History. My college art history classes focused more on art than history.
History class can be ridiculously fun! The only people I've met who don't like history are people who haven't seen how insane it is. If someone put a gun to my head and said “if you don't become a teacher, I'll kill you,” history is the only topic I would pick that wouldn't drive me nuts. American history, world history would make me chuck my desk out the window and flee into the forest. Even then, the first few months would be spent correcting previous class' mistakes!
Loewen bemoans not teachers at all, but the textbooks of American history courses. They gloss over extremely important events, focus on names and dates rather than technological advancements (few people realize how much of our culture exists today solely because of indoor heating, for example), blatantly lie about figures such as Christopher Columbus and Woodrow Wilson, and fade out optimistically after the obvious successful civil rights movement. Not to mention how huge these textbooks are, both burdening students and discouraging anything after WWII getting reached in a school year.
Up until middle school, my classmates and I loathed history class. The textbooks were outdated and were written at what was the high school level in the 70's. Lessons, homework and tests were entirely textbook-based with memorization of names and dates of only the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. This was partly because our teachers were nuts.
I was extremely lucky in getting Ms. B for middle school history. She focused very little on our updated textbooks and, instead, used a variety of effective and fun techniques. We had fantastic field trips, put on plays, made dioramas of violent events and all sorts of things deprived middle schoolers of the late 90's enjoyed. I was already an avid reader, so I researched topics covered in class (and thus converted away from Christianity...) and discovered both Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson. Ms. B was restricted from teaching even more nitty-gritty history by the corrupt and insecure administration of the school, to the point of declaring that the Holocaust killed all the Jews.
My high school American history class was awful due to a burnt-out teacher. The one thing he did right was assign us to read The Autobiography of Malcolm X. The next two history electives I took, one in high school and one in college, were both U.S. 20th Century History. My college art history classes focused more on art than history.
History class can be ridiculously fun! The only people I've met who don't like history are people who haven't seen how insane it is. If someone put a gun to my head and said “if you don't become a teacher, I'll kill you,” history is the only topic I would pick that wouldn't drive me nuts. American history, world history would make me chuck my desk out the window and flee into the forest. Even then, the first few months would be spent correcting previous class' mistakes!
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Class
Everything is tied into class. EVERYTHING. Race, gender, sexuality, ability, etc. are all ways of categorizing people into different classes = the haves and the have-nots.
There's even a theory on the classism between MySpace and facebook. Facebook began as a college alum networking tool (CLASSISM ALL OVER THE PLACE) and then gradually expanded. As facebook exploded, MySpace became, well, "ghetto"-ized. Look for yourself; there's no way Tila Tequila could have ever become the queen of facebook. There have been suggestions that Twitter is the next facebook...will the internet gentrify?!?!?
Exceptional education is what brings about class rebellion. Education proves that the system is anything but "business as usual." When African Americans learned of their history through integrated schools and post-WWII resources, the civil rights movement began. When housewives read The Feminine Mystique, they began to reach for the world beyond the kitchen. And so on. Poor schools give weak education and then stay poor because nobody knows any different. And there are lower-class subcultures that reject education on principle: what good will a degree do you in a factory or on a farm? Time and money are better spent on feeding the family.
A lot of people don't get how queers fit into classism. There are a lot of small ropes that tie the two together rather than one big, obvious thing like race or gender:
- classism involves legacies, generations see very little differences. Queers generally breed less than straight people so we don't really have a legacy to pass on.
- heterosexism, the tool of the upper/ruling class to pass on their legacies, restricts both queers (even liberated straight people) from gaining ground and straight people from breaking the mold.
- the social rules of heterosexism make the differences between their straight followers and us queers as obvious as the differences between race and gender.
American classes are separating, what was once a gradient is becoming black and white. While racial minorities, independent women and queer people might become rich, it's extremely unlikely for any of us to become wealthy or powerful (Chris Rock has already articulated this). Sarah Palin may have power over America's straight, white women but it's the power to keep them quiet rather than mobile.
Awareness of class and privilege is the first step to breaking it down. Voting is not enough.
There's even a theory on the classism between MySpace and facebook. Facebook began as a college alum networking tool (CLASSISM ALL OVER THE PLACE) and then gradually expanded. As facebook exploded, MySpace became, well, "ghetto"-ized. Look for yourself; there's no way Tila Tequila could have ever become the queen of facebook. There have been suggestions that Twitter is the next facebook...will the internet gentrify?!?!?
Exceptional education is what brings about class rebellion. Education proves that the system is anything but "business as usual." When African Americans learned of their history through integrated schools and post-WWII resources, the civil rights movement began. When housewives read The Feminine Mystique, they began to reach for the world beyond the kitchen. And so on. Poor schools give weak education and then stay poor because nobody knows any different. And there are lower-class subcultures that reject education on principle: what good will a degree do you in a factory or on a farm? Time and money are better spent on feeding the family.
A lot of people don't get how queers fit into classism. There are a lot of small ropes that tie the two together rather than one big, obvious thing like race or gender:
- classism involves legacies, generations see very little differences. Queers generally breed less than straight people so we don't really have a legacy to pass on.
- heterosexism, the tool of the upper/ruling class to pass on their legacies, restricts both queers (even liberated straight people) from gaining ground and straight people from breaking the mold.
- the social rules of heterosexism make the differences between their straight followers and us queers as obvious as the differences between race and gender.
American classes are separating, what was once a gradient is becoming black and white. While racial minorities, independent women and queer people might become rich, it's extremely unlikely for any of us to become wealthy or powerful (Chris Rock has already articulated this). Sarah Palin may have power over America's straight, white women but it's the power to keep them quiet rather than mobile.
Awareness of class and privilege is the first step to breaking it down. Voting is not enough.
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