12.12.00, 10:23
a.m. || a rambling discourse about virtually nothing
"'I don't care what other people do in their life. I just don't want
it shoved in my face.' You've heard this. Have you ever said it
yourself? How worldly and blase this sounds, and what a damaging lie it
can be. News from the real world: for all my wishing, and for all the
mealy-mouthed piousness I hear, the day has not yet come when Queer is
taken for granted. I certainly wouldn't mind if most people found queers
'flaunting it' as boring as I find straights flaunting it, and as boring
as I find the constant barrage of hetero advertising tease: here's some
pussy, buy a beer." -- God Is My Co-Pilot, Straight Not LP on
Outpunk Records, 1993
For my next Punk Planet column I wanted to write a critique
of contemporary mainstream feminisms for their failures, but rethinking my audience -- i.e.,
mostly (not all) white, middle-class punk rockers with no
particular definable set of politics-- and my recent forays to
the Punk Planet forums is making me wary of critique. How
do you get an audience to come along for the ride (to interrogate riot
grrrl, for instance, for its narrow focus) when you can't be guaranteed they've ever been on the horse (what if they always
thought riot grrrl was just a bunch of "dumb
girls" anyway)? That is, I'm not sure that I can assume
that the reading public of Punk Planet
(despite
the magazine's left-leaning editorial policy, articles-wise)
is even (or evenly) feminist-friendly. There are posters to
the messageboards and some of the other columnists who will argue
that "a fetus is a human being," "welfare is for losers," "men are genetically
programmed to go for young teenage girls in quantity," "blacks
commit more crimes," and "people of color who cry 'racism' all
the time are just whining." I'm hoping fervently that these views don't
represent
the bulk of the readership, but
would I be
surprised if they did? And in a more
forgiving mood, I would guess that while most don't necessarily share
these views, it's quite possible they just don't care either
way, and would rather read personal tales of apartment woes, friends' weddings,
and the search for love in the Big City. You
know, all those supposedly "universal" tropes, ha ha.
As my friends could tell you, I have this
crisis every two months when my deadline looms.
On a related note, pedagogical crises regularly come up around
teaching ethnic studies. I don't think that we should simply teach our
students about their "heritage" or instill a non-critical pride (i.e.,
cultural nationalism) and expect that we might hedge our bets
during some amorphous "later stage" with some critical theory and
critique. Women's studies, same scenario. But the problem is this:
while I don't believe in the "great women, great achievements" narrative
(or its ethnic studies parallel), there still regularly occur
debates about whether or not women have "achieved" anything (i.e., see
the argument around the Western literary canon) that almost
require a list. There are ways to reframe the question and toss
it back at the questioner, but it's a risk whether or not you'll
be, well, understood. If I asked, "Well, what are the historically
contingent social and material conditions of being able to write a
so-called 'masterpiece'? For whom was education and literacy an option,
and who had access to publishing means? How did dominant political and
philosophical discourses about women and their worth affect the
reception of women's writing? et cetera," would I get a blank
stare, or a snorting "Genius exists independent of society"? Is it
really easier to list a grudgingly acknowledged list of European elite
women writers (Viriginia Woolf, Mary Shelley, George Sands)?
My frustration lies with getting my students and readers from point A
to point C, without having to do B (which I might later have to
deconstruct).
It's quite possible I'm making no sense here at
all.