Driving is Political

I try not to watch the national news because it gets my blood boiling like nothing else. Tonight ABC World News covered soaring gas prices ($4.50 in Bucktown). They speculated that prices are raising because of increased demand in China. One reporter exclaimed "More people are driving in China everyday!" Shocking, other people in the world want to live like Americans. How dare they.

I do not own a car. I have not for over five years. Now granted I have lived in fairly large metropolitan areas, but I have not even missed it. I think that Americans rely much too heavily upon personal vehicles and that this privilege has been ideologically constructed as a necessity to increase consumption and make oil companies, and the governments in bed with them, rich. Face it, someone is getting rich off of this, that is how capitalism/neoliberalism work. The news program also alluded to the possibility of recession from these rising costs. It seems to me that if people change their lifestyles these costs wouldn't be so painful.

Frankly, I hope gas prices do keep going up. And I am not saying that because I want anyone to suffer but because I think that only under the most dire circumstances will we as Americans come up with alternatives. Oil is not a sustainable resource, this is not debatable. One day it will be gone and in the meantime it is polluting our environments and making city air almost un-breathable.

I have found biking to be a wonderful alternative. I love the wind blowing through my hair and the breeze on my face. I love cruising past cars stuck in Chicago traffic and getting everywhere faster than I do on public transit or when friends offer rides in their cars. My bike cost $40 at Working Bikes Co-operative and requires minimal maintenance. I have heard every argument in the book for car usage instead of bikes and my best argument is that I have managed for five years without a car with no trouble.

Because I love this blog and because it offers many practical tips for people who wish to reduce dependence upon their cars, I think you all should check out Chicago Bike Blog. A lot of her tips apply to folks in any city. Most importantly, check out 50 Ways to Leave Your Car. Don't let the mega-hetero-patriarchal-white-supremacist-imperialist-corporateocracy drain all of your savings and your health! Ditch your cars because it is a major political statement!

Kurt Cobain's Interrogation of Hegemonic Masculinity

I am taking a course about construction of celebrity in America this quarter and one of the things we were assigned to read was Kurt Cobain's Journals. I had never really thought about Kurt in an academic way but I felt as though I had an intimate relationship with his music in high school. Reading his writing and listening to his music in the context of this course really made me think about the way that he did gender or rather the way that he queered gender and pop music. It is a topic I didn't even realize I was interested in until this course. I wrote a paper about these things and my professor suggested that I think about this as a topic for my thesis especially considering there is so little work to this effect out there. It would be very cutting edge. Or something. Anyway, I thought I'd put the ideas out there and see what others think. Here is a chunk of the paper:

“Yeah, all Isms (sic) feed off one another but at the top of the food chain is still the white, corporate, macho, strong ox male. Not redeemable as far as I’m concerned. I mean, classism is determined by sexism because the male decides whether all other isms still exists (sic). Its up to men. I’m just saying that people can’t deny any ism or think that some are more or less subordinate except for sexism… I still think that in order to expand on all other isms, sexism has to be blown wide open…but there are thousands of green minds, young gullable (sic) 15 year old boys out there just starting to fall into the grain of what they’ve been told of what a man is supposed to be and there are plenty of tools to use. The most effective tool is entertainment” (Cobain, 117).


I am not sure if I started listening to Nirvana when I was a freshman or sophomore in high school but it was somewhere in there. 1999 and 2000 proved to be formative years for me as I had just entered the public school system from a very sheltered home and tiny Catholic school. My body was changing, my friends were changing, I discovered feminism and my relationship with my parents transformed. It seemed that overnight I had gone from their overachieving perfect daughter to an angsty and rebellious teenager. Kurt Cobain’s angst-filled voice, nihilistic lyrics, and grungy guitar appealed to me immediately. To make it even better his appearance and lyrics made my parents and teachers writhe. When I listened to Nirvana in high school it was a purely pleasurable experience. I would drive around my small town with my friends with Nevermind cranked all the way up on the stereo. I had posters of Cobain all over my locker and my bedroom. I thought he was so dreamy…

When I saw that we were studying Nirvana for class this week, I pulled out all of my old albums and listened to them all again. I even found my old posters! Reading Nirvana in a critical academic environment felt like a kind of violation. Listening to this music has been so intensely personal and intimately tied to my budding high school sexuality. Experiencing that music again after so long brought out many of those emotions. I feel that it is important to foreground my own personal experience with Nirvana before attempting an analysis of their work. I am a particular person with a particular experience in a particular time and space.

One thing I certainly never noticed as a teenager that I noticed immediately as a graduate student in Women’s and Gender Studies is that Kurt Cobain had a knack for challenging notions of hegemonic gender. His performance of gender is at least non-normative but I would argue that it is also queer. Cobain’s body was small and not hegemonicly masculine. His ripped up old clothes and occasional ironic cross-dressing posed a challenge to the authoritative heteropatriarchy that rules American culture.



Through his angst-filled, corporeal and occasionally disgusting lyrics and non-normative attire he queered gender and popular music. In his Journals and lyrics, Cobain seems to have an obsession with the physical body and with the disgusting, the unpleasant and the painful. Particularly he writes about gastrointestinal functions and dysfunctions. I remember being very troubled by the lyrics to “Heart Shaped Box.”

“Meat-eating orchids forgive no-one just yet
cut myself on angel hair and babies breath
broken hymen of your highness I’m left black
throw down your umbilical noose so I can climb right back.”

Meat, being a representation of a dead body is juxtaposed with the very genteel and feminine images of orchids, angel’s and babies breath (being both a flower and symbol of femininity and a representation of innocence and beginnings of life). Cobain weaves high culture, transcendental religious spirits (as opposed to bodies) traditional beauty and femininity with the so-called low brow culture, the profane, the guttural, the corporeal. In connecting these seemingly opposite things he poses a challenge to Victorian social order that values masculinity, rationality, objectivity and denial of the body over femininity and being present in one’s body with all of its grossness and potential for failure.

Updates

I am overwhelmed with the amount of research and writing I have to do over the next two weeks. I promise many posts as soon as this quarter is over. Some of the things I am writing about for my finals include:
-feminist blogs as activism and social justice
-dr. phil as a celebrity
-my experiences teaching social justice to tenth graders

I will be sure to post some excerpts from the Dr. Phil paper and possibly from the blog paper here.

I will also be addressing the insidious comments that I received on my Grand Theft Auto posts. Despite their offensiveness and lack of critical consciousness I did allow them past moderation to show the need for feminism in today's world. Anonymity allows for a really terrifying honesty. I will discuss those comments (which I am still getting, btw) in detail when school is done.

Finally, I am thrilled to see that feministing linked to this site on their blog roll! Yay! I am so proud and honored to be recognized by such an amazing group of feminists who are really enacting positive social change through their writing and community building. Thanks!!

More on Why I am Angry About Grand Theft Auto IV

Though I have made an unofficial rule not to respond to commenters who lodge personal attacks against me, Lost Turntable makes some reasonable arguments. Of course, that does not mean that I agree, but these are criticisms that I anticipated. I was going to just post this as a response in the comments section, but since it is so long and I spent so much time thinking it all out, I am going to post it here along with the original comment. I also hope to generate a larger dialogue.

The Lost Turntable's original comment:

I really wish people would do a little research before criticizing this game, especially since if there is plenty to criticize if they just did a bit of damn research.

First of all, stop calling it a 'game' in quotations. You not liking its subject matter doesn't make it any less of a game. I don't call a movie I hate a 'movie.' It does make you look like a pretentious jerk though.

Now to address your other points one by one:

1. I am angry because this 'game' romanticizes, decontextualizes and glorifies male violence against women and against other men.

Well, at least you mentioned that it has violence against men too.

I think playing up the violence against women aspect is a cheap shot. It romanticizes violence...period. Women are rarely singled out as targets in this game and never because they are women.

2. It portrays women as the sex class (willing and available) and men as autonomous agents with full subjectivity (as long as they are hegemonicly masculine).

This is partially on target. But while women are portrayed in an overly sexual manner, the men are portrayed as overly violent. If you are arguing that the game only views women as women if they are engaging in submissive sex acts, then you must also say that the game says a man must be violent in order to be a real man. Neither are good.

2. I am scared to live in a culture where this is considered a viable form of entertainment.

Don't know what to tell you there. There's worse than GTA out there, sorry to burst your bubble.

3. The protagonist of Grand Theft Auto IV, Niko Bellic, fucks women, seemingly all prostituted women, and then brutally murders them immediately afterward if he so desires.

Enough with the killing prostitutes shtick. Yes, you can have sex with hookers in GTA. You can also murder anyone on the street. Ergo, you can kill hookers. Reading any more into it is kind of silly. Also, whenever you do have sex with a hooker Niko immediately says to himself what a disgusting, worthless scumbag he is. It's not a rewarding experience.

Furthermore, Niko Belic actually goes on several dates in the game, and often they do not end in sex. He never forces himself on anyone and the sex with these women is always consensual. Conversely, if the gamer treats the women like shit they stop talking to you. Saying that Niko only has sex with prostitutes is wrong.

4. Young men all over the country (and beyond) will learn that the value of women is their capacity to provide male orgasm.

Any guy who plays this game and comes to that conclusion is already fucked in the head. If anyone sees the hookers and strippers in GTAIV and is then enticed to pursue them in real life, they're going to be in a for a real letdown when they discover just how gross, sickening and depressing both those worlds usually are. The idea that young men will take away any ideas like this from this game is an insult to the intelligence of the human race.

5. I am angry that abuses of women are not taken seriously; are not seen as major social problems. In this culture of domination the murder of a prostituted/raped woman cannot be taken too seriously. Yet in video game culture it is not seen as a problem. Stamp an "M for Mature" rating on it and move on.

Wow...um...wow. Get a grip. Yes, violence against women (or anyone for that matter) is wrong and should be taken seriously. But the idea that this game encourages it or even dismisses violence against women in the real world is about as accurate as saying that it will cause an increase in violence against pigeons (a sidequest in the game is to shoot pigeons, much like a scavenger hunt).

6. It seems worth examining the otherness of Bellic here as well. Admittedly, I am no expert in gaming or gaming culture, I have only played a few in my life and have never been amused by their seeming androcentrism, exclusivity and extraordinary violence...Bellic is depicted as 'foreign' and/or not white. It enables white American men to play the game and distance themselves from the extraordinary violence that they are enacting upon women and other men. "Oh American men do not murder, rape or pay for sex!"

Okay, nearly everything you say here is flat out wrong, and there's so much misinformation and all-out insanity here I don't even know where to begin.

First of all, not all games feature "androcentrism, exclusivity and extraordinary violence." Pick up a game of Sonic The Hedgehog, or better yet the genius Portal (which features a strong, intelligent female protagonist) to see the error in that statement.

As far as the "otherness" of Belic, it's only an issue in that both his past and the fact that he is not familar with America are major story points. The past three GTA games have featured American protagonists who were all just as violent as Niko, and Tommy Vercetti, the main character of GTA: Vice City was more violent, misanthropic and just plain morally repugnant than Niko ever could be. Niko's actually a fairly complex character.

Your argument that the game uses foreign "otherness" as an excuse for violent acts is without base and unequivocally wrong. Like it or not, there's nothing Niko does in this game that is worse than anything the American characters in previous games have done in the past.

It's amazingly obvious that your knowledge of this game, and gaming in general is based almost entirely on what others have told/shown you. Because throughout your poorly written diatribe holier-than-though manifesto you fail to mention the biggest point about the GTA series, which is that they are all broad satires, poking fun at everything from our country's fascination with gangland culture, reality TV and even the music industry. If you took the time out to play the game you might find out that there is some pretty bold pro-feminist commentary in it. For example, there's a radio commercial in GTAIV for a reality show called "America's Next Top Hooker" which brilliantly lambastes our culture's obsession with reality television in a way that also exposes the outright sexism that seems to run rampant in it.

All that being said, there is plenty to dislike about GTAIV. I am uncomfortable with some of the racial stereotypes in the game, and the fact that all the game's homosexual characters seem to be out of a 1970s sitcom also bothers me. However, I am also aware that it is a game. And I don't worry that anyone playing the game will walk away from it more racist or homophobic than they already were. They might actually laugh, see the ridiculousness of the game's stereotypes and walk away from it less prejudiced than they were before. I do hope that in future installments the game continues their critique of cultural stereotypes by turning it on its head (i.e. having a macho gay gangbanger or a female gang leader who takes advantage of her men).

Finally, know that unless you actually sit down and play the game, most gaming fans will refuse to take you seriously.

And rightfully so.


My response:

1. I refer to GTA as a ‘game’ in quotation marks not because I think that it does not possess the inherent qualities of a video game by our cultural definition of that concept but because I am displeased that such a violent, misogynistic activity is considered to be a viable mode of entertainment!
2. I made sure to mention, more than once, that I am not an avid gamer. In fact, I have never actually played GTA IV, though I have played earlier versions.
3. The difference between men and women in a white supremacist, capitalist, imperialist, patriarchy (that you do not seem to see) is that women are valued only for their sex, as the sex class. This makes violence against us more insidious. In the real world women are raped, beaten, assaulted, etc. DAILY. Put in this context, portrayals of violence against women by men is not just a coincidence or accident; it maintains patriarchal domination by convincing men and women that it is normal and inevitable.
4. I think we are wholly in agreement that hegemonic masculinity and its hyper violence and limited options are not good for men or women.
5. I would NEVER argue that GTA is the worst form of violence against women “out there” but that doesn’t make it any less problematic. Isn’t that the whole point of cultural criticism? I am not trying to pick out the worst representation of gender in ALL of mass media but rather to present a rich tapestry of similarities of those myriad representations and their complex relationships with one another.
6. “Enough with the killing prostitutes shtick. Yes, you can have sex with hookers in GTA. You can also murder anyone on the street. Ergo, you can kill hookers. Reading any more into it is kind of silly.”
Again, isn’t that the whole point of cultural criticism? Yes, you can kill prostitutes and I think that that is a huge problem. And it isn’t just me. Murder, assault and violence against women are very serious social problems. I cannot even keep track of the numbers but according to RAINN, nearly 1 in 4 women are sexually assaulted in their lifetimes (the number is no where near that for men). I don’t feel the need to go into the whole significance of cultural context and gender terrorism again. Please, read this post.
Assault and violence against prostituted women is also rampant in the real world. Normalizing it by turning it into entertainment can only add to this problem.
7. If it is true that Bellic does not exclusively have sex with prostituted women, then I gladly retract that statement.
8. “Wow...um...wow. Get a grip. Yes, violence against women (or anyone for that matter) is wrong and should be taken seriously. But the idea that this game encourages it or even dismisses violence against women in the real world is about as accurate as saying that it will cause an increase in violence against pigeons (a sidequest in the game is to shoot pigeons, much like a scavenger hunt).”
Again, I am not saying that GTA is the cause of all social ills, only that it contributes to them by normalizing the propping up of one category of human at the expense of another (and, apparently, animals). Also, I would argue that not enough people take this violence seriously enough and that is why it is such a social ill and not taking it seriously maintains patriarchal rule by making it appear natural and unchangeable.
9. “First of all, not all games feature ‘androcentrism, exclusivity and extraordinary violence.’ Pick up a game of Sonic The Hedgehog, or better yet the genius Portal (which features a strong, intelligent female protagonist) to see the error in that statement.”
I never said “all games,” only the ones I have played.
10. “The past three GTA games have featured American protagonists who were all just as violent as Niko…Like it or not, there's nothing Niko does in this game that is worse than anything the American characters in previous games have done in the past.”
This only serves to prove my point further. That Bellic is depicted as a non-white man at this particular time in American history when immigration is such a particular issue, especially considering that the other protagonists have been white, seems even less coincidental.
11. “You fail to mention the biggest point about the GTA series, which is that they are all broad satires, poking fun at everything from our country's fascination with gangland culture, reality TV and even the music industry.” I sure hope that all of the teenage boys (and girls) playing this game are hip to the oh-so clever satire of GTA. Though in my experience (which, as a high school teacher, is plenty) this is not the case.
12. “I don't worry that anyone playing the game will walk away from it more racist or homophobic than they already were. They might actually laugh, see the ridiculousness of the game's stereotypes and walk away from it less prejudiced than they were before. I do hope that in future installments the game continues their critique of cultural stereotypes by turning it on its head (i.e. having a macho gay gangbanger or a female gang leader who takes advantage of her men).”
Again, I will concede that I have not played the game and do not know the subtleties. I am always glad to hear about characters that defy stereotype and characterization. I am just concerned that such a sophisticated understanding is beyond a significant portion of the players of this particular game. And again, I understand that I can only speak from my experience.

"What Do You Call Them?"

Does anyone else think that this Playtex ad campaign is more than a little creepy?

I am particularly unamused by the videos entitled "What do you call them?" I knew it couldn't be long before corporate America reappropriated the feminist rhetoric of The Vagina Monologues, turning it into the same old sexist bullshit, to sell bras to women.

Particularly irritating are these:
"Husband Pleasers." (As if breasts exist solely for the pleasure of men, not for the women or their offspring.)
"Money Makers." (Because women have been taught throughout history that the only way for them to make it in patriarchal economic systems are through their subjugated and sale-able sexuality.)
"Puppies." (Because women are constantly dehumanized by being relegated to status of animals. And we all know how animals are treated in this country.)
"I've been asked to shake the money makers on the subway a few times." (Trivializing the terrorism that is street harassment. I have heard too many stories at the Holla Back Chicago site to think that this is cute. The most recent contribution "I Never Feel Safe" is especially telling.)

I Am Angry About Grand Theft Auto IV

I am angry.

I am angry about a 'game' called Grand Theft Auto IV. I am angry because this 'game' romanticizes, decontextualizes and glorifies male violence against women and against other men. It portrays women as the sex class (willing and available) and men as autonomous agents with full subjectivity (as long as they are hegemonicly masculine). I am angry because this is the result of living in a patriarchal, ethnocentric, xenophobic, homophobic and, yes I'll say it, woman hating culture. I cannot understand this 'game' as anything other than that.

I am scared to live in a culture where this is considered a viable form of entertainment. The protagonist of Grand Theft Auto IV, Niko Bellic, fucks women, seemingly all prostituted women, and then brutally murders them immediately afterward if he so desires. Bear in mind, of course, that 'he' is controlled by the player. Young men all over the country (and beyond) will learn that the value of women is their capacity to provide male orgasm. That is all.

I am angry that abuses of women are not taken seriously; are not seen as major social problems. In this culture of domination the murder of a prostituted/raped woman cannot be taken too seriously. Yet in video game culture it is not seen as a problem. Stamp an "M for Mature" rating on it and move on.

It seems worth examining the otherness of Bellic here as well. Admittedly, I am no expert in gaming or gaming culture, I have only played a few in my life and have never been amused by their seeming androcentrism, exclusivity and extraordinary violence. Bellic is a Bosnian immigrant in search of "The American Dream." I think it is relevant that in a game produced and developed by plenty of white men, Bellic is depicted as 'foreign' and/or not white. It enables white American men to play the game and distance themselves from the extraordinary violence that they are enacting upon women and other men. "Oh American men do not murder, rape or pay for sex!"

In a time when immigration is such a heated issue, Grand Theft Auto IV must be placed within its proper cultural context. It is not an accident that Bellic is a violent, over sexed, thuggish immigrant.

I am Disappointed with Stephen Colbert

Today I am going to wag my finger at Stephen Colbert. Hell, I might even put him on notice.
I love The Colbert Report. I do. It is hilarious and sometimes subversive. It is a wonderful political satire with a progressive edge. But as I have mentioned before, these progressive television personalities are often blinded to their own male privilege. On the April 16th episode, Colbert had the Philadelphia Eagle's Cheerleaders dancing around his stage while he oogled them. Now I understand that his show is a satire but I have to say, I don't see anything funny about women being treated like objects. Especially in light of this post from Shakesville.

Institutionalized Racism and My Very Favorite Show

Image Via

As I have probably mentioned before and almost certainly will mention again, sometimes being a feminist cultural critic means recognizing the sexism/racism/classism/agism/ethnocentrism/etc in the things that you love. I guess I couldn't do what I do if I didn't love popular culture as much as I sometimes hate it.

The X-Files has been my favorite show since I was in seventh grade. I was a devoted fan right until then end. Every so often I have a renaissance and I spend a few weeks re-watching them all. I love the show so much that I have never really been critical of it because it is my private guilty pleasure. I watch it when I am sad or lonely or sick or just procrastinating and I don't want any pesky analysis to get in the way of that pleasure.

All of that being said, I have noticed something very upsetting about the portrayal of non-white people on the show. First of all, most of the characters and certainly all of the main characters are white. When we do see non-white people they are almost always men and they are almost always perpetrators of violence. Most disturbing though is the eerie pan flute music that always seems to be playing when non-white people are on the screen. It is most obvious in episodes about Native Americans but is very clear (at least in the first few seasons) every time a black man is the perpetrator. What is most disturbing about this is that in the episodes "Fearful Symmetry" and "Shapes" (and others I am sure) the same music is played when wild animals, especially dangerous ones like cougars and wolves (or werewolves), are on screen.

Now I am no ethnomusicologist (maybe someday...) but the racism implicit in this portrayal is palatable. This is pretty much the definition of institutionalized racism and dehumanization. It isn't immediately obvious and many media consumers wouldn't think twice about this very clear correlation because it isn't as obvious as a "coloreds only" sign. But it is just as dangerous, if not more so, because it doesn't evoke the passionate response that overt racism does.

Also, OMFG!, in the process of researching this I discovered that an additional X-Files film is in production. I am so there on opening day!

Phone Sex

My roommate and I have the same cell phone. We also have the same problem concentrating on our homework.....

I Have No Words.....

Dehumanization? Via Gizmodo.

Suggestions?

Sorry for the lack of updates lately. I am just getting started on my finals. Graduate school does not leave a lot of time for writing about popular culture here! However, I do get to do just that in my research which is why I am so completely in love with school.

On that note I am wondering if you all can help me with one of my research papers. I am interested in looking at representations of transnational bodies in American mass media. I have written about Gwen Stefani and her Harajuku Girls before but I think it is very relevant to this research. I am curious as to who else you all think might be relevant. I plan to peruse the archives of Racialicious to see what they have written about but I thought I'd open it to my dear readers (like feminist gal and kat) since they have been so helpful in the past!

If the project is a success, I'll post high lights here.

"I'm already pregnant so what other kind of shenanigans can I get into?"

Image Via

I finally saw Juno. I think I am the last feminist alive to see it but I am not a big movie goer. Not really in the mood to go into an analysis of it but I enjoyed it a whole lot. If not for the atrocious indie-gross sound track I'd even go so far as to say I love it. By the end I felt like I was going to puke if I heard one more f-ing mopey guitar riff.

Maybe I'll write more later but for now I'll just say that I LOVE any movie about teenage pregnancy that does not make the young woman look like a victim. Yay!

"You're Fat and You Need to Ride Your Bike"

Somebody sent me a link to this video at my HollaBack Chicago site. WTF?

Is Feminism Colonialism?

When I would discuss feminist issues, my ex would occasionally argue that feminism is no different than colonialism. He would compare me to a missionary going into another country to spread Christianity. The same comparison works for other types of colonialism as well. Though I quite fervently disagreed with him, my globalization, transnationalism and gender course has caused me to rethink my position.

The authors that we discussed in class tonight argued that liberal and radical feminisms (or, arguably, 'first wave' and 'second wave' feminisms) were exclusive and dogmatic. They often represented 'women' as a homogenous category in order to lobby for change either within the system or outside of it. The post-structural and post-colonial/third world feminist critique of these feminisms is that they really only benefit middle to upper class white women in the United States and parts of Europe. Making feminism into an exclusive club limits the voices that we hear and the progressive change that we can affect. And of course, it made feminism irrelevant for so many women!

I have long considered myself to be a post-structural/post-modern/quasi-socialist feminist with Marxist leanings (take that!!). But I am starting to wonder whether all feminisms by their very nature as political movements aren't just additional forms of colonialism. If we give feminism a certain set definition and we hold on to some utopian vision, whatever that might be, then we must believe that our ideology is superior to others and our goal must be to sway all people to our position. Why spend so much time reading, writing and re-writing theory if this were not true?

When I write for this blog I am trying to convince anyone who will listen that there is something wrong with American media; that portrayals of gender in media are hurting people and that feminist analysis can help. And I do firmly believe that. Of course, as a post-structuralist I believe that there are many layers of meaning embedded in every image and that interpretations of images and their effects are wide and varied. Still I wonder if my strong ideological stance as a feminist does not mirror the ideologies of the Christian missionaries or the European colonists. In fact, I think that the argument could be made that feminism isn't all that different from some religion only it is less centralized and much less organized.

This thought is really frightening to me because I have been recovering from Catholicism since I was sixteen and I certainly don't want to utilize similar techniques for disseminating knowledge that I believe to be enlightening. But I wouldn't be a feminist if I didn't think that feminism could or would improve the lives of anyone who embraced it.

One of my classmates suggested that we just need to remember to check ourselves. That if we never settle into a comfortable ideological position and constantly challenge our own beliefs we can avert some of those tendencies. She also suggested that we need to remember to see ourselves as part of the system for better or for worse. Imagining ourselves as transcendent is the epitome of modernity.

I am not sure I have any answers to offer here. Tonight my feminism experienced a major challenge. I guess that is a good thing.

How Privileged Am I?

Got this survey from Racialicious. They do a pretty good analysis of the problems with this survey but I found it interesting anyway. Anything in green is a true statement for me.

If your father went to college
If your father finished college
If your mother went to college
If your mother finished college
If you have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor (All of the above actually)
If you were the same or higher class than your high school teachers (Exact same)
If you had a computer at home
If you had your own computer at home (When I was in college)
If you had more than 50 books at home
If you had more than 500 books at home (I probably do now... or will by the time I get my degree)
If were read children’s books by a parent
If you ever had lessons of any kind
If you had more than two kinds of lessons
If the people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively
If you had a credit card with your name on it
If you have less than $5000 in student loans (way, way, way, way more)
If you have no student loans (HA!)
If you went to a private high school (elementary school)
If you went to summer camp
If you had a private tutor
If you have been to Europe
If your family vacations involved staying at hotels
If all of your clothing has been new and bought at the mall (My mom was thrifty)
If your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them (HA!)
If there was original art in your house
If you had a phone in your room (Do cell phones count?)
If you lived in a single family house
If your parents own their own house or apartment
If you had your own room (I have been very lucky to always have my own room)
If you participated in an SAT/ACT prep course (Probably should have)
If you had your own cell phone in High School (Just senior year)
If you had your own TV in your room in High School
If you opened a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College
If you have ever flown anywhere on a commercial airline (Never! Really!)
If you ever went on a cruise with your family
If your parents took you to museums and art galleries
If you were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family