5 Random Thoughts

1. Everyone thinks the feminist movement happened because of white women writers and activists like Gloria Steinem, Simone De Beauvoir, and Betty Friedan. But it didn’t happen that way. It wasn’t that sexy. Rather, it was economic. The white middle class was having a harder and harder time maintaining itself. A middle class lifestyle is expensive. You have these huge mortgages. Two car payments have to be made. The fucking living room has to be redecorated. Then you have to pay for your kids’ college tuitions while saving up for retirement. At a certain point, during the 60s, white male suburbanites said to their wives, “Look, I can’t do this by myself anymore. You gotta get a job. You gotta pull your own weight here or I’m gonna die from a heart attack at 50.” So the wives started working too. But they were hardly revolutionary; if anything, they were behind the curve on this one. Black women and working class white women always had to work beside their husbands. They never had the luxury to be stay-at-home moms. I mean, don’t get me wrong: I love the intellectual feminists; they’re eloquent writers and very inspirational. However, they were hardly the core.

2. My Thursday afternoon women’s support group is the only real face-to-face socializing I have in my life. I love it. The only thing I noticed, though, is that there’s a lot of empty talk and whining without any attempt to get real solutions. It’s weird. It can be very supportive and emotional, but it’s meaningless. I mean, Monica’s lamenting the fact that she’s been with the same guy for the last 15 years and during this time he’s cheated on her five times. Five times?! She’s crying and crying about it, but nobody’s asking her why she’s stayed with this loser for so long. What is she getting out of this? Fifteen years is a long time to be dating someone. Dating is what you do in high school and your early twenties. It’s not where you want to be when you’re 40 years old! And then there’s this other woman whose name I can never remember. She loves to hear herself talk and can hog up the entire 90 minutes without anyone making any attempt to shut her up. In our last meeting she went on and on about her stupid cat and how it’s a shame people don’t hold the door for others anymore. Who cares?! Why are we putting up with this? This happens a lot. People crying about their horrible, fucked up childhoods. Just move on already.

3. But back to the whole women’s issues thing. I’ll always be a feminist and I think most people, men or women, are even if they don’t realize it. But does feminism, the way it has evolved, address the issues in my life? So much energy is spent talking about how women are hitting a glass ceiling at the office, never getting the corner office or their own parking space in the corporate garage. This is so far removed from what I’m concerned about. I mean, I’m not climbing anywhere so there’s never been a glass ceiling to hit. And then you see these successful businesswomen getting together for lunch, talking about the diamond rings they’re going to buy for themselves without men or a marriage to necessitate it. Is this what feminism has come to mean? That now women can be materialistic, corporate assholes just like their male counterparts?

4. At first I was really alarmed about the rise in hate groups in this country. I still am, but now I feel really bad for them. They’re poor white people who have been poor for generations and they’re sick of it. The world is changing so rapidly and they’re afraid, correctly, that they’re being left behind and nobody cares about them. So they’re afraid AND angry. The white-supremacist movement is the only thing that really addresses their needs, as misguided as it is. In the last election neither Obama or McCain talked about poverty. They only addressed middle class concerns. But the more I read about the white supremacist movement, the more I see how much they have in common with radical Muslim terrorists. This is what naturally happens when frustration and rage becomes organized. There should an international Poor People’s Party that incorporates the socialist ideals of these hate groups with the commonality of poverty of people all over the globe. Everywhere you look, in developed countries and undeveloped countries, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poor. Poor white Americans have more in common with textile workers in Thailand than they do with their better-off brethren.

5. The secret history of the American educational system is very interesting. I didn’t know until I went to grad school that in the beginning of our Republic, school teachers were primarily men who were very learned, intellectual, and passionate about their profession. It was a calling and they wanted to change the world by making Americans well educated. But this bothered those in power. They were afraid of what that would mean, to have an informed public. For example, coal miners might read about Marxism and form unions. People would question the practice of forced child labor. Things like that. So they got rid of these men and replaced them with women who were poorly trained, had not gone to college (many times having only an 8th grade education themselves), and became teachers only because they were merely spinsters and didn’t have a husband to take care of them. Naturally, the quality of schools in this country plummeted and teaching became less respected. Salaries for teachers decreased as well. That was intentional. It’s only fairly recently that men have returned to teaching in public schools so that now we have men and women entering this profession who are properly trained, college educated, and passionate about what they do.