On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 4:12 AM, shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com>wrote:
> So, I went to the feminist book club meeting last night. We'd read
> Alexandra Robbins' insider account of sororities. I had to laugh, of the
> twelve women in the room only one had any experience with them and she'd
> been in a historically black sorority at UVa. She was irritated with Robbins
> for putting black sororities on a pedestal, as if they were models of
> service and women's bonding. On her account, the same hazing, boy-crazy,
> drinking, drugging, anorexic/bulimic behavior goes on, it's just very
> strictly hidden.
>
> But she had to struggle to say this in a room of women, the majority of
> whom were white and wanted black sororities to redeem the racism and sexism
> of the white sororities. If it wasn't so inappropriate applied here, because
> Spivak has scoffed at the notion that women of color in the west should ever
> be called or call themselves 'subaltern', I'd still want to say, "Can the
> subaltern speak?"
>
> Some of the women most offended by the book, particularly those who wanted
> to address the racism of the sororities, did not want to hear T's account of
> what *really* went on in HBSs.
>
> I'm not sure how we got on the topic but we were talking about inequality
> in schooling. Someone mentioned that she was happy to pay taxes as long as
> it wasn't being spent improperly. Someone mentioned AIG. But then the women
> of color in the room brought it directly to the issue that the white women
> were too careful not to discuss: naw, there are some people ripping off the
> system. And they'd point to people who were on welfare, collecting section
> 8, when they could work if they really wanted to. etc.
>
> One of them went on a rant about a neighbor who has a learning disability
> and is not staying home at 6 months into her pregnancy. She's pissed b/c she
> has three kids and has to go to work. She was saying all this while sitting
> under the picture of Che that decorated her living room.
>
> Of course, I sat there and, after reading The Great Financial Crisis,
> thought: so, if they 'earn' their 8x8 project flat by working, like you had
> to work your way through college, what if there aren't enough jobs anyway? I
> eventually said this at some point, mentioning that there's no way we could
> have full employment in this system. Someone piped up to say they'd heard
> this too. But then it was something like 5% was 'normal' -- and those 5%
> would and should encompass the deserving poor: the schizophrenics, the
> disabled, etc. the rest of 'em needed to get off their ass and *earn it*
> like they did.
>
> My blood boiled through a lot of it -- the poor bashing, the welfare queen
> bashing. It's amazing to me that even in a room where the operative
> definition of belonging to the group is being "progressive" that after
> welfare deform, we still have welfare bashing.
>
> i know I shouldn't be amazed. I still am.
>
> At some point I said something, in what I hoped was a more innocent, what
> about this? posture than i normally pull off: "well, reading about these
> people who basically wanted to buy a house with a loan so they could flip it
> in 4 months and make $50k doing nothing, isn't that the definition of the
> American dream of being rich: sitting around doing nothing, collecting money
> for it?"
>
> I have resisted Dwayne's interpretation of what went on in feminist
> bloglandia, thinking that it was more a devolution into Teh Crazee that was
> peculiar to this group. But as I sit in this group and realize what the
> definition of feminism appears to be, I think you are probably right. The
> class analysis stuff I put out, as weak tea as it often was, just flipped
> people right the hell out.
>
> What reverberated the whole drive home was how the woman who'd worked her
> way through college while in the military said this about the book: "I can't
> believe this is how women treat each other. And they pay to have 'friends'
> who treat them this way? When people tried to get me to join a historically
> black sorority, I didn't want to pay to have friends. Now I'm really glad I
> didn't."
>
> Yeah: this is how women treat each other. And it goes on while we're
> sitting in a feminist book reading group, only the women we're shitting on
> are on the wrong side of poor.
>
> shag
>
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