Friday, July 8, 2011

Links & Bits for 7/8/11

The Mental Burden of a Lower-Class Background (Sociological Images)
I don’t feel ashamed of my background any more, because I’ve achieved enough proof of upper-middle-class success — a Ph.D., a tenure-track job, the knowledge that Brie is fancy cheese and not, as my grandma thought upon seeing it for the first time, fish bait — and some useful theories, like the idea of cultural capital, to help me make sense of what’s going on.*
What a Bastard The World Is: The Feminist Politics of Yoko Ono's Personal Song (The Curvature)
What does it mean for men and women to need each other when men cannot fully respect and women cannot wholly trust? What does it mean for women to love those who were never taught to see them as fully human? And what does it mean, too, for women who are oriented towards partnering with men to leave them behind, when these dynamics keep perpetuating themselves? Is that liberation? What can liberation mean in this context? Can there be true liberation if it is absent of love? Can there be true love if it is absent of liberation?
Sex, Scripts, & Single Ladies (The Crunk Feminist Collective)
Bottom line for me: the show is not great, but it does prompt some interesting questions about race, class, gender, and sisterhood, in addition to having a slew of foine—yes, foine—guest stars and an easy, breezy plot. I’ll be watching, with a crunk feminist critical lens of course, for now.
* I included a link to this article not because it's the most nuanced, but because I think there were some important points raised, though the author came off rather classist herself. I think there's a better article in here somewhere, with more insight -- maybe mentioning the ways we code switch to make ourselves more "acceptable" in middle-class society.

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