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White Dude Knows Best! Above: Men who want to control the bodies of women they deem unfit mothers. Louisiana state Rep. John LaBruzzo (left) and Texas state District Judge Charlie Baird (right).

It's been quite a week for government violation of the bodily integrity of poor women and women of color. First, there was the judge in Texas who set "not having children" as a condition of a woman's parole. (I just linked in the WFR on Sunday, but Cara discussed it at length. Go read her post.)

And today, via several readers, comes the news that John LaBruzzo, a state legislator from Louisiana, wants to pay low-income women $1,000 apiece to get sterilized. Everything about this is so incredibly offensive, I don't know quite where to begin. Let's start with a quote from LaBruzzo:

"We're on a train headed to the future and there's a bridge out, " LaBruzzo said of what he suspects are dangerous demographic trends. "And nobody wants to talk about it."

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Low-income women having children is a "dangerous demographic trend"?! Sounds like the recent round of racist propaganda we saw related to the "Demographic Winter" movie. (Film summary: You should be panicked because brown people are reproducing at faster rates than white people.) But LaBruzzo protests that he is not a racist -- he's a problem-solver!

LaBruzzo said other, mainstream strategies for attacking poverty, such as education reforms and programs informing people about family planning issues, have repeatedly failed to solve the problem. He said he is simply looking for new ways to address it.

"It's easy to say, 'Oh, he's a racist, ' " LaBruzzo said. "The hard part is to sit down and think of some solutions."

It's not as if this country has ever done a good job providing low-income women with the tools and information to make their own decisions. Programs that aim to do that have been consistently underfunded and poorly implemented. So no, we haven't tried all other options. And even if we had, his idea is still completely appalling.

LaBruzzo is correct that it's very easy to say he's a racist. Because, um, he's espousing a historically racist policy. What he clearly deems to be a new and creative solution has unfortunately been around a long time. Compulsory or coercive sterilizations for low-income women, disabled women, and women of color were extremely common up until the 1970s, and slightly less common but nevertheless occurring with regularity the the decades since. The paternalistic attitude that "certain women" cannot be trusted to make their own reproductive decisions is still an underlying theme of a lot of backwards legal and policy decisions. LaBruzzo and Texas judge Charlie Baird are part of this despicable tradition.

I'm in the midst of reading Jeanne Flavin's soon-to-be-relased book, Our Bodies, Our Crimes. In it, she explains the early-1900s roots of how sterilization became the common way of dealing with poor women's sexuality:

Birth control was ruled out due to fears that should it "catch on" among the white Protestant middle classes, their birth rates would be even further reduced. So it came to pass that sterilization emerged as a eugenics strategy.

How far is this attitude, really from LaBruzzo's worries about "dangerous demographic trends"? Flavin also writes,

What is questioned here is the notion that a judge has the right to order them, or anyone, to be sterilized or not to reproduce. This is arguably one of the most difficult premises for the general public to accept: that a woman's reproductive rights--including her right to procreate--are distinct from whether or not she might be a "good" pregnant woman or a "good" mother. These rights reside in her existence as a human being, along with the rights to control her body.

(Emphasis mine.) In her post on the Texas court case, Cara breaks it down further:

If the government has the right to demand that people stop procreating, it means that the government has the right to control our consensual sex lives.  It means that the government has a right to decide who is and is not worthy of the right to control over their own bodies, and who is and is not worthy of the right to give birth.  It means the government has a right to decide what medical procedures people undergo -- from birth control, to sterilization and/or temporary sterilization, to abortion.

It shouldn't come as a surprise, then that LaBruzzo also opposes any woman's right to choose abortion. This is a Daddy Knows Best approach to women's health. In this case, as is often true, the paternalism has a disproportionate effect on low-income women and women of color. Let's hope his proposed policy does not go through, and the Louisiana legislature instead rededicates itself to providing low-income women with the tools to determine their own reproductive futures.

Check out National Advocates for Pregnant Women, which does great work on these issues. I also recommend Flavin's book, and Dorothy Roberts' Killing the Black Body.

Related Posts:
Voices of Justice Now: Sterilization in the Prisons
Do we have the right to decide the fate of disabled youth?
Who's allowed to reproduce?
Sterilize bad parents?
$450,000 granted to 9 women for forced sterilization

Well everything old is new again.  I was reading Hoyden About Town when I came across a link for wet nurses. My initial reaction was WTF….seriously…not in the year 2008.  As a WOC the idea that you can, or should pay someone to breast feed your child is extremely problematic.  For those that aren’t aware, historically it has been white women paying, or forcing  WOC to act as wet nurses for their children. There was a time when breast feeding was believed to ruin a woman’s figure, and therefore rather than risk their sexual appeal, white women of privilege hired dark skinned women, or used slaves to nurse their children.  The other factor that made wet nursing attractive is the detachment that parents believed to be in the best interest of the child in the 1800’s and early 1900’s.  If a child was breast fed by the mother it was deemed that said infant would develop an unnecessary, and unnatural attachment. WOC were also seen as best able to bond with a child, as it was deemed that they had the same mental capacity.

The role of wet nurse reduces women to roving tits, that are available to hire.  For women of colour the association with mammy cannot be dismissed.  Women of privilege hire wet nurses because they want to continue working, and provide the best possible nutrition for their child.  That this is exploitation, so that they can achieve their goals is something that is not considered.  Women of wealth have a history of exploiting poor women to aid in reproduction and child rearing.  When feminists say that women can have it all, the answer is certainly yes they can, if they depend on another woman to do the labour that they are either unwilling, or unable to do.

Outsourcing reproduction, or child rearing is strictly the preserve of the rich.  That women are the ones equally participating in this exploitation is extremely disgusting.  While fighting to be recognized as equal beings in the public sector, reducing women to their biological functions in the private sector is counter to the progress of all women.  Between the rent a womb explosion in India and the increased sale of eggs, reproduction has become big business.

Once something becomes commodified it becomes subject to review and control. Women that are selling their eggs, or working as wet nurses must undergo medical testing and live a life of rigid control.  Their bodies no longer belong to them and instead belong to the family that has bought its capabilities.  Class, once again combines with capitalism to further curtail the activities of women and render them inseparable from the functions of their biology. This is a uniquely female oppression.

Poverty is a feminized condition, and as the economy continues to worsen how many women will make this choice because they need to feed their families?  A choice made within constrained circumstances is not a freely made choice. The companies that profit based in biology and reproduction, trade on the idea of female bonding to obscure the reality of what selling breast milk really entails, the predatory exploitation of the rich over the poor.  Historically the wet nurse was known to reserve her milk for pay, while her own child was forced to live on a substandard substitute.  Upper class women may feel empowered because they are able to mother and work, however what they are really doing is outsourcing labour, while diminishing the source of nourishment for another child.

For a family to function with even one member working a high powered career a support staff is needed.  It is not possible to work 60 plus hours a week and do the the laundry, keep the house clean, nurse and be successful in the working sphere, without having someone in the household to do the maintenance work.  This is why traditionally it has always been understood that when a man is in a high pressure “flannel suit” job he needed a wife.  A wife was as necessary to his success, as his education.  Even though the labour performed by women was socially discounted as recent as the 1800’s, a man could not even secure a business loan unless he was lawfully wed.  It was determined that a man would work harder if he had a family to support, without recognizing the ways in which the wife “he supported” made his labour possible. Today the same sort of situation exists, except now women are looking for their “own wives” as they increasingly embark upon careers that demand a more total commitment.

The advancement of some women on the backs of others is not progress, it is simply the perpetuation of past crimes.  Class and race play a central role in who is designated as ‘woman’ and who is recognized by their biological capabilities.  For women to achieve equality we need to stop serving the needs of the wealthy and embrace communal ideas that would elevate us all.  As long as woman are seen as a pair of roving tits for hire, or a uterus for rent, we will all be subject to the limitations that reproduction causes women.  Wanting a wife and being a wife are too very different things.  Internalizing patriarchy and using capitalism as a tool to oppress makes us guilty of employing the masters tools.  Freedom for all, means all women are more than the sum of our parts.

Cross posted from Womanist Musings

So it has taken me days to filter through all the different things going through my head about Burning Man. For those who have never heard, Burning Man is an annual party that attracts almost 50,000 people around the concept of art, life as art, self-sustainability, self-reliance, hedonism and music and to experience all of this in the desert for 1-2 weeks. Living in San Francisco for the last seven years, I certainly crossed paths with many that were life-long burners and had my own preconceived notions of what to expect. Some of what I had heard resonated, but nothing I had ever experienced matched up to going to Burning Man. What does a feminist woman of color see at Burning Man?

Well first and foremost, the art at Burning Man is as incredible as everyone claims it to be. I always hated those people that said, "sorry man, you don't understand, you have to see it to believe it," and I will spare you such proclamations. However, there is something about the huge scale of the art set in the dustiness of the desert that creates surreal visuals that can't be compared to much else I have seen before. The art made my trip to Burning Man worthwhile.

But, you are in the desert with almost 50,000 people in city built in weeks with streets, neighborhoods, themes and entire communities. Obviously you see much more than art. I will attempt to express what I felt, saw and experienced in the most coherent way possible.

The theme of this year's Burning Man was the "American Dream." Sounds corny, but my assumption was that in a space like BM we would see multiple moments of disrupting what we understand to be true of the American Dream. Perhaps new ways of envisioning borders, critical perspectives on the legal status of human beings or anti-war statements. Well, clearly I got a little too post-colonial fantasy making on myself, because every attempt at playing on the theme that I saw at Burning Man, failed. If I saw another American flag/peace symbol juxtaposition I thought I might keel over. When driving in they had quotes posted from key framers of American democracy, Alexis de Toqueville, Milton Friedman, even MLK. But they didn't have a quote from a single woman. Apparently, woman have never had anything to do with the framing, design or development of democracy.

So what was the role, place, and experience of women at Burning Man? Obviously, I can't generalize, there were so many different kinds of people there I can only elaborate on what I saw and what I felt. The first day I was there, a middle aged doctor, wearing a skin tight leather skirt started a friendly conversation with me. He asked what I do and of course this got into a conversation about feminism, which he was very supportive of, claiming his North Berkeley roots. He stated, "well Burning Man is really a feminist space, if you think about it...." So I did, I took myself to task to think about the idea that Burning Man was a feminist space. As I looked around at all the naked bodies slinking around everywhere. Noting that there weren't many people of color or really many different kinds of bodies. What i saw was thin, white bodies. Most of them weren't totally naked. Usually they were wearing something, like hot pants, or a cowboy hat, showing the rest of their body. I immediately realized that I wouldn't feel comfortable naked. I would stick out, because I was curvy and brown. That didn't feel very feminist.

Playa barbie on the other hand doesn't have this same problem.

Taking my top off to feel free on the playa, didn't feel free to me. It appeared that one of the keys ways for women to participate in the freedom of the playa was to show off what they got. But according to the video above and much of what I saw, I was alone in my criticisms.

So what do they mean when they say Burning Man is a place of freedom? You don't need money once you get there sure. However, you DO need money to get there. A lot of it. Tickets go for 2-300 dollars not to mention the thousands of dollars spent on gas money and equipment to survive in a climate that is not inhabitable. They might as well have said, "we are having a party on the moon, hope to see you there!" The free, liberatory space the BM claims to be, can only be so, if you have the resources you need to get there. When I wake up dreaming of freedom, I am not thinking there is a massive door charge.

So after assessing in my head the bogus hypocrisy of all the rhetoric and politics of BM, I also had no choice but to take to task the dramatic underrepresentation of people of color in music, attendees and art. There isn't much to be said because so few people of color in attendance kind of says it all. Beyond the expense of the trip, they don' do much to make it appealing to people of color. It is not the kind of space where we are made to feel welcome, it is not our space and it was not meant to be. Given that Burning Man must make at least 10 million dollars on the door fee alone, you would think some of that money would go to outreach or funding artists and musicians of color, but it didn't appear to be that way.

This lack of a POC presence also had a strong impact on the music. The majority of the music was trance (mostly psy-trance) house and breaks. Almost all of these forms of music originate in either world of American black music, but there was a total lack of recognition of this fact. More working class, people of color oriented forms of electronic music (dub-step, drum and bass, techno, electro-breaks, hip-hop or reggae) was not to be found, except in a few key places, my people and I were very happy to find. This total lack of inclusion to world music and the music of working class people and people of color felt strategic, even if it was simply an oversight. As much as BM wants to exist in a bubble, let's be real, nothing that happens in the US is in a bubble. If you are having a party and everyone is white, something is not right. Right?

Now this total lack of people of color wouldn't be as startling if there wasn't an over representation of all things people of color. White people on the playa felt very comfortable donning "ethnic" cultural artifacts, styles of dress, architectural and artistic styles. The influences were profound. I saw at least 5 white men wearing full Native American headresses and tribal face paint. This is made worse because Nevada is home to some of the poorest reservations in the country, so not only was this insensitive but it is blatantly offensive (even if it is done in the guise of their version of the "American Dream"). Similarly, I saw many folks wearing traditional Arab dress and wrapping kafiyah's around their heads. In one instance a young man actually took his off when sitting next to us. I will never know if he did it because it was hot or because he couldn't figure out if we were of Arab descent or not, but it occurred to me that he wouldn't have even thought he might run into some folks that might be offended. We caught him in his free space.

It were these key moments that colored the ways that I experience Burning Man, even though I did come back with kaleidescope eyes planning my next years return. For the people of color that were there, it was nice to see them and I can only hope this gets into the eyes of someone that cares enough to take up the task of making BM a more equitable space. I understand that is not the purpose of BM, (frankly, it is not green friendly AT ALL, but we can only cover so much here) but if you are going to unapologetically appropriate different cultures, I think it is important to recognize the broader social, cultural and race implications of such a move. In order to stay true to the supposed progressive roots of BM there must be some recognition to the race, class, culture and gender dynamics at play.

The search for making a culture of their own, the majority white constituency of BM have created a culture of dramatic appropriation, elitism, consumption and lack of inclusion all within the guise of freedom. It is another American holiday like any other and honestly, it is fun. I suppose it doesn't get more American Dream than that, now does it.

Other people have experiences they want to share?

So, earlier in the week, I dropped an email to Cara asking if Feministe had covered exactly what privilege is. It’s a word that is often used (to varying degrees of effectiveness) and often maligned privately in counter blog posts and such. Renee actually beat me to posting on this topic, but since her piece is more of a statement than a question, I think we can host both these discussions and not rehash the same issues.

Racialicious actually explored the idea of privilege through the lens of class a few months ago. I had initially wanted to write a post exploring race and class after I read a blog carnival. Somewhere in the course of the carnival, a writer had talked about racial issues and how they play out in America. A semi-well known author came into the comments, and essentially said “These problems aren’t about race, they’re about class.”

Now, this is a common argument, so I can’t feign surprise. But what bothered me more was the hedging involved in this kind of conversation. Class is an important issue in our society, but conversations surrounding race and class tend to come of a bit disingenuous. There is always this idea of trying to have one system replace the other (racism is dead, the real problem is class; class doesn’t matter, the real problem is race) when the two -isms work in tandem.

Then, I discovered the privilege meme making rounds on the internet, and thought it would be an interesting entry point to the discussion. (This eventually became a series.)

In “Has Class Trumped Race? - Part 1, Understanding Privilege,” we discussed the privilege meme and it’s limitations. Many of my readers mentioned that they were relatively class privileged but their racial background was not reflected in the assumption. Or that some seeming privileges aren’t really privileges at all - it depends on your region, your family, or the school system you attended. I also introduced a second set of questions, that indicated hallmarks of not having privilege.

In “Has Class Trumped Race? - Part 2, Interpreting Privilege,” we dissected more of the privilege checklist, quoted Penelope Trunk on how privilege works in society (from someone who grew up privileged) and introduced different components of privilege:

So we currently have two main components to economic privilege. The material aspect of privilege - which includes always having enough money for the utilities or having extra money for things like field trips, new clothes and AP classes - and the access aspect of privilege, which allows you to gain valuable life experiences.

Do you think that the material aspect of privilege is more important or the access aspect of privilege?

Which one has had a greater impact on your life?

But the third post on Race, Class and Privilege was my personal favorite. And not just because the author of the original meme found our blog and decided to comment.

In “Has Class Trumped Race? Part 3 - Acknowledging Privilege” I put the discussion on privilege into the concept of my personal background. I have decided to reproduce it here, as it still holds a lot of worth and value. (It also lays excellent background for this ever expanding piece on capitalism.) I wanted to excerpt my reader’s comments, but in the end there were far to many insightful ones to pick and choose. So, I am asking for two different actions - to read the piece and leave your comments here (the original ran back in February, so I highly doubt anyone is still paying attention to that conversation) and then to take a minute to review the older comments on Racialicious.

So, without further ado, here’s the piece:

Has Class Trumped Race? Part 3 - Acknowledging Privilege

by Racialicious Special Correspondent Latoya Peterson

As we have seen in the last two posts, privilege is difficult to define.

There is a material aspect to privilege. There is the issue of access to opportunities. There is also the issue of perception of privilege.

One of the main characteristics of privilege is that people generally are unaware of their privilege. Obviously, if you are not disadvantaged in an area, you generally don’t spare extra time thinking about how to fix something that isn’t broken. We tend to focus more on our personal struggles - not where we have personally benefited from someone else’s labor.

During the first two posts, I tried to refrain from making any value judgments about the examples I provided to you. I simply explained a situation. Why? Because the perception of my privilege changes.

Here’s a scenario that was not covered in the assessment:

I grew up in Montgomery County, MD. Since my parents could not afford many of the basic necessities, I was often tasked to help out with household expenses. When I was twelve years old, I watched two children after school and was paid $100 dollars a week. That was mostly taken by my mother, who needed the funds for household expenses. As I got older, school costs mounted. I worked to support myself. My mother provided me with no money for transportation, school clothes, AP assessments, SAT costs or other school expenses. So, there was a period of time in high school where I worked about 30 hours a week to pay for all the things that my friends took for granted. I never got a driver’s license because the costs to get one ($50 for the learners; $250 for driving school; time off from work to take the courses) were too high. I also passed on a lot of wonderful opportunities - like out of town trips - because I could not afford the fees.

Based on the above scenario, would you consider me privileged?

In the eyes of my friends, I was not privileged. My problems were very different from the problems that they knew. I had no expectation of a car when I turned sixteen. I often had no money on me at school, while their parents either gave them allowances or provided cash on demand. Some of my friends worked on the weekends, if at all. None of my friends ever had to contribute funds to the household. Some of my friends took the SAT four times, to maximize their best score. Their parents continued to pay for them to take and retake the test, as well as paying for schools like Kaplan. They could not fathom why I only took the test once.

In the eyes of my cousins, I was ridiculously privileged. I went to school in Montgomery County, where “everyone talks proper.” We had very good schools and free resources. Our schools never shut down because of disrepair or teacher furloughs. At the age of twelve, I was in a position to make $100 a week. I did not ever have to go without a job in school, because not only were jobs plentiful, but safe and easy for me to access. I was able to work a shift from 5:00 PM - 10:00 PM nightly and walk home without the fear of being accosted. I led an extracurricular filled life, with teachers who cared enough about my personal development to tell me about opportunities like Teen Court, Mock Trial, State SGA, Speech Team. I had friends with money and cars and access and they were able to loan me money if I was in a tight spot, or to drive me around when I needed to get somewhere.

We had gotten food from a food bank once that I can remember, but my sister and I never went hungry, like my cousins did. We never had to recycle one bowl of milk so that everyone could eat some cereal in the morning. We never had to deal with a drug addicted parent, as some of our friends did. We never had to deal with that parent inviting people in the house who wanted to sexually abuse us, like some of our friends did. My parents were young, but determined and intelligent. I never had to deal with a parent with a welfare mentality.* While I did have to deal with a depressed parent, I have never had to deal with a parent who was defeated by life.

In the eyes of my cousins - and some friends from childhood - my sister and I were privileged as fuck.

This is why Atlasien’s comment from Part 1 resonated so strongly with me:

My family took a very erratic trajectory through life. We had almost no material possessions and no housing from age 0-6, a privileged middle-class existence ages 6-15, then a sharp dive downwards after a business loss that meant I had to support myself through college.

Overall, though, my immediate family definitely had middle-class privilege. I know that other members of my family (on several completely different sides) grew up in dire poverty and experienced true desperation, hunger and even malnutrition. I’m not going to pretend my temporary hardships were close to what they went through. I had a lot more choices than they did.

Going back and forth on this kind of economic merry go round gives me this very strange, in between sense of privilege. On one hand, I can see very clearly where there were things that I lacked in life that would have helped me to get a leg up. On the other hand, I can also see how things could have been much, much worse. I lucked up in the cosmic crapshoot. I could have the exact same personality, intelligence, and tenacity that I have now, but if I was born to either of my aunts my life circumstances would have been completely different.

All told, I may have lacked in material privilege, but I was able to get access to understand what I was missing; and what I needed to succeed. I also developed one of the other parts of privilege: entitlement.

Entitlement plays a strong role in how we perceive and shape the world. This is why we see people (in the various discussions of the meme) say things like “It isn’t my fault that my parents cared about me enough to do their jobs.” Or “I earned everything I have.” We feel entitled to having “good” parents and entitled to our understanding of the world: where if you work hard and make the most of what you have, you will succeed. This kind of entitlement continues because this is what has been reinforced in our lives, that these things are true, and that if you apply effort to x task, y will happen.

Think about the Penelope Trunk example I referenced in Part 2 (emphasis mine):

But before I launch into a celebration of Sofia Coppola, I need to say that the U.S. is not a meritocracy: Rich people are better connected, so they get better jobs. And rich people who are not well connected tend to get better jobs because they have an easier time envisioning themselves in a successful career than poorer people. An example: My younger brother, now 21, did almost no homework in high school, and he recently landed a job most college graduates would covet — investment banking in Europe.

Was Trunk’s brother connected? Not really. But he could envision himself in a better position. Why? Because he felt entitled to be there - or to be there some day. Therefore, he put himself in situations where he was able to get a job which went with where he wanted to be in life. People who feel entitled are willing to make demands. People who do not feel entitled will pass up conferences, experiences, better jobs - because they do not feel like they deserve what is being offered. People take themselves out of the running because they have convinced themselves that the way they speak or how they dress or their level of education works against them - even if others think they are qualified.

That’s just one example.

We all feel entitlement in dozens of different ways every single day.

When discussing purchasing property with my boyfriend, I shoot down a lot of his recommendations. Why? Because I feel entitled to certain amenities where I live. I cannot imagine doing without a wonderful library system or a grocery store within walking distance or a nice view - even though millions of people live without these things each day. I feel entitled based on my newly acquired economic privilege and the experiences I had with these items in my life.

When walking down the street, I am occasionally moved express my love for my boyfriend. I may kiss him, I might hold his hand, I might tell him I love him. I can do all of these things, and the worst thing that may happen is someone will tell me to get a room. I can think about marriage, knowing that if we chose to wed all we need is a few hundred dollars and the address of the local courthouse. I feel entitled to these kind of feelings, entitled to express my love publicly because of my heterosexual privilege.

Last week, at three o’clock in the morning, I was pissed off. Why? The fire alarm had gone off yet again (twice in one week in the middle of the night) and I was forced to wake up, get dressed, and walk down sixteen flights of stairs to get to a safe place. I, like most of the other tenants in the building, were grumpy and tired and angry at having to go through yet another fire drill. We complained loudly about all the important things we were going to be late for in the morning. A young girl pushed her way to the front to talk to our concierge.

“Excuse me,” she said. “Is this a real fire? Because if it is, my mom is in a wheelchair and she can’t get out of the building.”

Now, I had never even heard the term “ableist” until I got to the blogosphere. And aside from a short stint volunteering at a special needs camp, I hadn’t given a thought to the lives of those who live with disabilities. But I’ll be damned if an understanding of privilege didn’t smack me in the face at 3 AM, that day. While the rest of us were annoyed, walking our way to the courtyard, that poor woman was probably terrified, wondering if someone would come to take her to safety.

My point with the three examples is that we all live with different levels of privilege. Some of these privileges are undeniable - after all, it wasn’t my hard work that gave me body with fully functioning limbs. And this body I take for granted could actually be injured to damaged at any time, robbing me of this privilege - and the feelings of entitlement that come with being able-bodied.

Still, some kinds of privilege seem to be easier to accept than others. While most of us would probably not be offended if a transsexual or gender queer person decided to bring up our cissexual privileges, some discussions of privilege tend to detonate.

So, I have three questions I’ve been turning over in my mind since planning this series:

1. How does entitlement play into the application of privilege?
2. Why do people want to deny or downplay the privileges that they have received?

And, most importantly -

3. Why do the phrases “white privilege” and “economic privilege” spark denials that are so strong, they can derail a conversation?**

—-

* This is different than being on welfare. You can be in need of welfare benefits (or any of the other accompanying social programs) without developing a welfare mentality. The mentality occurs when the system defines who you are and how you steer your life.

** I am specifically not discussing male privilege here. This does not mean I have forgotten or discounted its influence, it just means I am going to wrap that discussion into another post. We already have enough to talk about.

Beauty as power is something that is taught to every young girl. Common adjectives that are used to compliment girls often refer to how pretty, sweet, or kind that they are.  Very seldom do we reward girls for their intelligence, assertiveness, or passion.  As a child becomes a woman she internalizes the idea that is what is most valuable about her, is her physical appearance.  That this is something that will decline in value, often keeps young women awake at night; plotting the best way to take advantage of the small window of opportunity that beauty as a source of power offers.

Feminism has engaged with beauty on many levels. Some feminists feel that performing beauty even to gain personally is internalizing the male gaze.  Others feel that the daily ritual is a sign of their autonomy in that they actively chose which beauty procedures that they will adhere too and which they will reject based on personal desire.  The debate between the lipstick feminists and the I will not subject my body to social discipline feminists has been waged since the 1970’s.

What is beauty without the finery and the flash?  Each season the fashion industry deploys an army of models to inform us how to best maximize on our feminine whiles.  One simply cannot be caught wearing the wrong shade, or sporting a purse that is the wrong size.  On the other side of the equation, you have women that are blissfully unaware of the fashion trends and dress for comfort over style.  These are the “utility women,” who find power in thwarting the seasonal call to the mall.  Utility women take pride in dressing only in what makes them feel comfortable, while at the same time voraciously attacking their dolled up sisters as patriarchal dupes.

Back and forth the conversation goes. You’re a patriarchal colluder says the utility feminists.  Well you’re lazy, jealous and don’t realize that autonomy can be found in many different ways retort the lipstick feminist.  Normally I would refrain from calling two groups of women engaged in conversation a cat fight, but what else can you call it when both sides display such narrow minded western privilege over beauty and clothing?

What neither of these groups ever seem to want to acknowledge is that whether or not your purse cost 500$ and has a DKNY label, or it is a 35$ Walmart find, both are participating in the impoverishment of women globally.  The problem is larger than whether or not you are dressing to please a man.

According to The Feminist Majority Foundation, “Women make up 90 percent of sweatshop laborers. Women are paid as little as six cents an hour and work ten to twelve hour shifts. In many instances overtime is mandatory. In some cases, women are allowed only two drinks of water and one bathroom break per shift. Sexual harassment, corporal punishment, and verbal abuse are all means used by supervisors to instill fear and keep employees in line.

Many of the companies directly running sweatshops are small and don’t have much name recognition. However, virtually every retailer in the U.S. has ties to sweatshops. The U.S. is the biggest market for the garment industry and almost all the garment sales in this country are controlled by 5 corporations: Wal-Mart, JC Penney, Sears, The May Company (owns and operates Lord & Taylor, Hecht1s, Filene1s and others) and Federated Department Stores (owns and operates Bloomingdale1s, Macy1s, Burdine1s, Stern1s and others).

Several industry leaders have been cited for labor abuses by the Department of Labor. Of these Guess? Clothing Co. is one of the worst offenders - Guess? was suspended indefinitely from the Department of Labor’s list of “good guys” because their contractors were cited for so many sweatshop violations.

Other companies contract out their production to overseas manufacturers whose labor rights violations have been exposed by U.S. and international human rights groups. These include Nike, Disney, Wal-Mart, Reebok, Phillips- Van Heusen, the Gap, Liz Claiborne and Ralph Lauren.

When women who are middle/upper class engage in a debate as to whether an article of clothing, or makeup is suitably feminist what they are ignoring is that they are  in a position to engage in this particular conversation, because they exist with class privilege.

A woman who is making less than 1USD per day does not have time to concern herself with whether or not patriarchy is informing her clothing choices.  This woman must deal with trying to provide subsistence for herself and her family under brutal economic slave labour.  Her class location informs her position, as the realities of her daily lived experience extinguish the angst that lipstick/utility feminists engage in.

Regardless of your position regarding performing femininity through make up and or  clothing, what cannot be denied is that any purchase within our capitalist economy is predicated on the exploitation of women.  The cult of I blinds us from the reality that in  our debate about agency and autonomy, we are completely obscuring the degree to which we personally are responsible for the impoverishment of others.  Class position we posit is based on meritocracy, but I must ask, who works harder than a sweat shop labourer?  Though feminism is a movement to end oppression against women, often times the failure to acknowledge privilege leads to the marginalization and exploitation of the most vulnerable within our society.  Class division is not a  flight of fancy, and to ignore the ways in which the Cult of I, turns us into oppressors is to decide unilaterally that only certain women matter.

Cross posted from Womanist Musings

This just in: Turns out the former site of the South Central Farm - where low-income, indigenous/immigrant Latino farmers grew food in the midst of a toxic industrial area for 14 years before being evicted two summers ago in one of the saddest, most maddening examples of private business interests trumping community and environmental good that I’ve ever personally witnessed - is being developed as a Forever 21 warehouse.

You know, that clothing company that was the subject of a national boycott for exploitative labor practices a few years ago? Turns out LA’s supposedly progressive mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa - who campaigned at the then-flourishing farm several years ago and claimed to support it, only to fail to find a way to help save it despite massive community (and celebrity) support, clear social and environmental benefits, and his own celebrated promises to “green LA”–“has received nearly $1.3 million in contributions and commitments from Forever 21 and its executives over the past two years.”

The former site of the South Central Farm has sat vacant for the past two years. The South Central Farmers are now growing food at a new site about an hour outside of LA. They sell food at several farmers’ markets in the area, and they recently set up a CSA. 

(Background: A few years ago, I wrote several articles about the South Central Farm for the late and lamented NewStandard, including this history of how the community has used the land since 1985.)

Enough, a new online project by Dean Spade and Tyrone Boucher:

The ubiquity of capitalism in the U.S. can limit our ability, even in radical communities, to conceptualize creative responses to oppression and injustice. This can manifest both in how we build movements (reproducing bureaucratic, hierarchical, business-type models; packaging and "selling" social justice work to foundations in exchange for grants), and in how we deal with personal finances in our own lives (defaulting to patterns like hoarding, excessive consumerism, and individualism in how we conceptualize our lives and futures and economic security).

We'd like to address some of the ways that class privilege and capitalist dynamics function even within communities and within the lives of individuals working to fight oppression and economic injustice. It can feel taboo to share details about things like income, inheritance, class background, debt, and spending. Silence and secrecy about money make it difficult for us to challenge ourselves and each other when classist dynamics arise. Social conditioning trains us to hoard money rather than share it and build community. We want to get people talking about building shared values and practices around wealth redistribution, because we think figuring out how much is enough, and when to give away money, are key under-discussed questions in anti-capitalist politics.

I know I just added them to my google reader. They also encourage submissions.

Via Feministe

Heads up, Minnesota feminists!

via Poor Magazine:

"I was a formally homeless Mother who once lived in an abandoned building". This was my introduction to Cheri Honkala, Executive Director of the Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC), a coalition of organizations from across the country united in the mission to "abolish poverty everywhere and forever".

As Cheri's words came through the phone I felt an instant connection to her. Having grown up with a Mother battling addiction - evictions, hunger and instability were my constant companions.

Cheri and the PPEHRC foster that same connection in poor people across color lines and across the country. She has been organizing with other poor folks for the last twenty-five years, and on September 2nd, the second day of the Republican National Convention (RNC) in St. Paul Minnesota, over a year of Cheri's full time efforts will come to fruition as the PPEHRC embarks on "The March For Our Lives", what will be one of the largest poor peoples marches ever to take place.

The March for Our Lives schedule is here.

The Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign also has blog, where they're chronicling the process of putting together this mega-march. Check it out.

’cause I’ve been collecting these stories for a couple days.

Fellow guestblogger Renee hits one out of the park: No More Penis Envy. I think I scared my cats laughing so freakin hard.

I am not sure if Nezua is guestblogging this summer but I am sure some of you remember him from last year. He wrote a piece this weekend on age, power, culture, authority and respect that takes a little longer to chew on, but the flavor is rich and the savor lingers long.

A bunch of parents in Fairfax County, Virginia, raised $125,000 to sue the school district for reworking the boundaries so as to integrate the local schools (on an economic basis). The kids were assigned to South Lakes High School, but the parents wanted them to go to the richer Oakton High. It will surprise precisely none of you, of course, that OHS is also whiter. (SLHS: 46% white, 20% black, 16% latin@ and 11 asian. OHS: 67% white, 11% black and latin@.) They argue on the basis of SAT scores for the schools overall, but here’s the thing: when you run the results for white kids in both schools, the SAT outputs are, respectively, 1730 and 1734. This is true on a general basis; in schools that are socioeconomically diverse, minority and poor kids do much better, and white kids do about the same. But, well, what do you really think those parents were suing over? Were they fighting for the right kind of education? Or were they fighting for the right kind of people?

Sir Charles taps into his righteous anger:

So much of the general public, including most of us in the blogosphere, are completely removed from the danger and physical difficulty of this kind of work.  That’s why you hear people talking about raising the Social Security retirement age to 70 — they have no idea what it’s like to hump it on a construction site for 30 or 40 years, no idea what it is like to pick up and lay down cinder block, one after the other for eight hours a day in 90 degree heat or 30 degree cold, no sense of what it takes to walk the iron or hoist re-bar or climb ladders and scaffolding when you’re 58 years old and your back is bad and your knees are screaming and your body is just broken down.  It’s easy for some asshole editorial writer or some glibertarian blogger to talk about working until you are 70 — but my feeling on this is that if the heaviest thing you lift every day is a cup of coffee or a bulky file — just shut the fuck up on this subject.

Preach it, brother.

And let’s wish Cara a happy belated birthday! She thought she was going to get away without mentioning it here, but ha-ha! I will catch up several days later and use my guest-blogging privileges to bring it to light! Take THAT, Cara! (Happy birthday, too. ;))

I have a post coming up that’s riffing off of the complaints in that post. In the meantime, let’s break out the little tooty toys and party hats, and I’ll go get the trick candles…

I find that this charge, leveled against political candidates and other public figures, is not talking about the kind of elitism that separates a snob from “regular Americans” (you know, the white ones [/sarcasm]). When media figures and others of high stature complain of a figure’s “elitism,” they don’t mean, “He thinks he’s better than you” — what they actually mean is, “He thinks he’s better than us.” They are upset because a public figure dares think himself important without paying due respects to the other members of the upper classes.

John McCain and Barack Obama are both elites. So are all the media figures crying about elitism. Whether they sip wine or chug beer, the both of them are far removed from the sort of life I lead, you lead, your neighbors lead, your coworkers lead, your families lead. It doesn’t make a goddamn drop of difference to any of us whether either of them turns his nose up at other figures in the same high class they already occupy. It just hurts the feelings of those higher figures who have toxic levels of self-importance.

They think they can determine what matters to me. I have news for them — they don’t have a fucking clue.