Entitlement

I went to Cowboy Monkey last night to see Shipwreck, Page France, and Headlights, all excellent local bands you should check out. But I had a really creepy experience that had a lot to do with entitlement and sexism. I was sitting at the bar keeping track of all the winter coats and paraphernalia of the group I was with, who are all bigger fans and had gone up to the stage. I noticed this older (30-ish) guy walk around me, looking at me, and sit down behind me. I switched seats so I could see the stage better, and to consolidate the stuff I was watching. One of my friends came back and sat down in my old seat and we chatted a bit over the music. Out of the blue the guy puts up a hand and manages to slur out between swigs of his drink, “You know, I could say something about the two of you…” “what? Go ahead.” He mumbled incoherently and we exchanged a few words. But there were two things he managed to say clearly that really disturbed me. Very early on he said “You know, I just can’t help it if you’re a hot woman and I’m just, you know…” This kind of thinking is so irritating on so many levels. One, it blames me just for being female while absolving him just because he’s male. Power imbalance, anyone? Two, dude, get some self respect. Do you really have that little self control that you can’t close your mouth when someone is clearly being hostile and avoiding you? You really think that little of yourself?

The second thing he said, with astonishing clarity and force given his intoxication, he said while my friend had gone to warn the bartender that if they didn’t stop serving the guy she was going to have to deck him, because he had started trying to touch me. “It’s just, you know, it’s, -- You can’t, legitimately, challenge me. You know it.” “Says who?!” I replied, mouth agape. He didn’t have a response aside from an eyeroll, and then she was back and I told him, in no uncertain terms, that he had to go somewhere else at the bar.

This kind of thing is why I can sympathize with feminist separatists. Regardless of whether every man has this kind of mindset, it is clearly a virulent strain of sexism that persists today, the kind that says that a man who chooses to treat a woman as a human being entitled to some kind of dignity is just restraining himself, offering her charity, and that he could rescind that at any moment he chose. He remains in power because he can choose how to treat her. It would be easy to just say that this can’t be fixed, that we can never undo something so pervasive and we should just start over on our own.

But then I think that ties into allies of all kinds. Men are supposed to be women’s allies in the fight against sexism. But they could choose to take back their power at any time. In thinking about my own status as middle class and white, it makes me understand why people who aren’t would be suspicious of me.

Realistically, I know that allies of historically oppressed groups have often been instrumental in creating change. Alliances across groups can be powerful things. But I still think it takes a certain amount of trust, or faith, in other people to make things work. And I guess I’m not really sure where that comes from, or how to build it.

The other thing that really bothered me about the whole thing was that it kind of ruined the whole concert for me. From that point on I had to be on watch, just because I was female and had left my house. And I did so with good reason- within the next half hour he walked past me twice more, looking me up and down both times and then came back a third time to go around behind me and slowly creep closer. I didn’t even realize he had done that until my girlfriend said “oh my god is that him?!” to which I turned around, found him within six inches of my face, and grabbed the wrist of the hand he had just put on my back, slammed his hand on the bar and said “GO! It’s a big bar, get away from me!” Today he probably doesn’t even remember doing any of this, and I’m still on edge. There’s that power imbalance again… What can we do about it?

Hello lovely people. We picked a name today!!

FIST. Feminists Instituting Social Transformations. I included visual aids (on the right). Love is a good "feminist instituting social transformation"-ing. How appropriate.

In other news, I just saw Jackson Katz give his talk (I think it was called "What Will It Take"). He's quite a talented orator and he touched on some really important points. I think it will be shown on tv at some point because a local affiliate was taping it. I'll keep my eye out for it, because you NEED to check it out. I always find it particularly invigorating when someone who enjoys a certain amount privilege uses their position to promote the vocies of the unheard, thereby beating the path and making the trail that much easier to walk when those very voices are granted and/or forcibly take their visibility.

I attended a fantastic lecture at the end of last semester given by Robert Jensen, a feminist professor at University of Texas. He talked about the issue of critical whiteness studies. He kinda also reiterated this idea that social movements can benefit from sympathetic and ideologically vested alliances who exhibit characteristics of privlege to further their message in ways that the oppressed group sometimes can not do. Am I making sense? I'm thinking out loud so its all rather muddled. Like for example, white men have historically been given more voice than say other oppressed groups, so if a white man is to use his privlege of 'authorship' that has been endowed by normative hegemonic discourse in a way that furthers the progress of those oppressed groups then he is actively resisting and maybe also working to create a new discourse. But what Im getting at is......what does this look like, and what does this comes to mean in terms of a capitulation to hegemonic normative structures (ie: the master's house)? How strong can a resistance be if it is still recognized by those who subscribe to 'the master's house'. Or maybe you need a way to get in the door before you can gut anything. I don't know if I've even acurately conceptualized the metaphor, shit Im lucky Im even wearing my shoes on the right feet.

Thats enough of that. This girl keeps staring at me at the library because Ive just been talking out loud to myself for like 20 minutes. Hah, she thinks Im crazy!

Anyway, Jackson Katz....cool guy, cool mission too.

Peace and Love.

Alanis Morissette does 'my humps'

Saw this on AOL news...had to give props to the lady who constituted the better part of my 4th-6th grade musical indentity. classic.

I should be doing homework, but this is way more constructive.

In my attempt to delay studying further, I found this photo and thought I'd share it...for those who don't know Spanish its translates "My body is mine."

In other randomness, lately Ive heard on three separate occasions an appeal to the idea that you can be too politically correct. I don't know if this is a broadly held view or if it even holds any merit. Where is this logic coming from? Is it only coming from the mouths of those who embody the very notion of white heteronormative privilege....those who see 'political correctness' as some kind of burden? Does it stem out of corrosive and utterly ABSURD/FALSE idea that we are in some sort of post-feminist movement or post-civil rights movement moment?

I just googled, 'too politically correct' and the 4th website listed was a DI article from Feb 20th 2007 about the racist mascot which i wont even go into on this post....aside from being complete and utter bullshit, I think it does a little to illustrate where my ruminations are coming from...(http://media.www.dailyillini.com/media/storage/paper736/news/2007/02/20/Letters/Becoming.Too.Politically.Correct-2729843.shtml).

Right now, Im leaning toward the notion that the ones who use this argument that you can be too politically correct are the ones who need to readjust their focus and look through more than just the lens of privileged ignorance. I want to get into this more, but my brain hurts and I gotta study.

Holler.

ps: Coalition Against Coke Contracts is doing a phone bombing to the chancellor tomorrow to remind him that the UIUC community doesnt want Coke on campus. If you want to make a call the number is 217 333 6290. Drop him a line about your concern about the unversity's silence about the matter and about how you aren't down with corporations that put profit over sustainability and safety...something alone those lines.

pps: The GEO is also having open office hours either on the Quad or in the Union, I think from 11-1 tomorrow. So if you wanna show a little love over there, I bet theyd appreciate it.

my weekend getaway.

So this weekend I had the pleasure of spending some time in Oxford, Ohio on the Miami-Ohio campus for a little water polo action. Yo seriously, I felt like I had stepped into the Midwestern Martha's Vineyard. I have never seen so many pastel colored men's sailing shorts in my life. I read a little bit of their student paper and they have a whole week devoted to conservative ideology and politics called "Conservative Week". This campus had 'old boys club' written all over it. While I concede I was only there for 3 days, I felt a certain air of white upper-class homogeneity within the throngs of designer sports jackets and spring dresses.

But I digress, my real point here (I've got one) is that I saw a makeshift "shantytown" that students were (I think) living in for the weekend to raise funds for Habitat for Humanity. It was made out of cardboard and tarp and about 4 or 5 people were sitting on fold out lawn chairs with a collection box on the corner of the street. I think they were staying there overnight because the structure looked sound enough and at around 1am, they were still around. An applaudable effort, right. A good cause, with a nice bit of activism enshrined around it, one would think at first glance. But as I got to thinking about it more, there's a great deal of privilege going on in this situation. While I support their efforts, I feel like it almost trivializes the severity of the international issue of 'spontaneous housing'. People who live in these 'shantytowns' don't have the privilege of shooting the shit with their friends while sitting on lawn chairs chatting it up on their pink Razr cellphones on their college campus into the wee hours of the morning. No, for real 'shantytown' dwellers, their lived reality is that of real poverty. When the weekend's over, these kids get to go home to the luxuries their social status allots for them. And so yes, maybe a makeshift shanty is one way to make the issue visible to these privileged MU college kids but at the same time how can you attempt to transcend the historical and social contexts which come to constitute such realities and make them fit serenely onto the corner of your lovely quad for two nights, and leaving the issue at arm's reach until next years fundraising season starts again. Maybe that's the point I'm trying to get at, I feel like these issues shouldn't be so easily paralleled through a weekend's indulgence in campus activism. I don't know, I might sound cynical. I understand their aims are probably just but the whole thing rubbed me kind of the wrong way. Maybe it was the irony of the pink razr amidst the the meager cardboard shack. Who knows though, maybe I'm looking at it too harshly? I guess something is better than nothing...