Feminists in general need to stop disappointing me, especially Valenti and rape apologist extraordinaire, Naomi Wolf.
Valenti needs to take her cis-gendered, middle-class, thin white lady view of Feminism and, errr, shove it. It's difficult for me to even type that, but it still needs to be said.
I will admit to this though. I had a student in one of my first Creative Writing classes, a young, gorgeous girl with killer pipes, who began the semester very pregnant, and ended it by taking a single day off from school to have the baby. I had the gall to ask her if she intended to breast feed, and when she said, "No, I don't want saggy tits," I gave her a hard time about it. I told her what a wonderful bonding experience it can be, and she just rolled her eyes at me. I found myself feeling sorry for her, that she wouldn't have the opportunity to connect with her child the way I did with mine.
None of this, of course, was any of my business. And since that time, I've tried to, not so much check my privilege at the door (because it's always there, whether I choose to acknowledge it or not), but realize that privilege and prejudice exist side by side, one informing the other.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2011-03-06 12:02 am (UTC)Feminists in general need to stop disappointing me, especially Valenti and rape apologist extraordinaire, Naomi Wolf.
Valenti needs to take her cis-gendered, middle-class, thin white lady view of Feminism and, errr, shove it. It's difficult for me to even type that, but it still needs to be said.
I will admit to this though. I had a student in one of my first Creative Writing classes, a young, gorgeous girl with killer pipes, who began the semester very pregnant, and ended it by taking a single day off from school to have the baby. I had the gall to ask her if she intended to breast feed, and when she said, "No, I don't want saggy tits," I gave her a hard time about it. I told her what a wonderful bonding experience it can be, and she just rolled her eyes at me. I found myself feeling sorry for her, that she wouldn't have the opportunity to connect with her child the way I did with mine.
None of this, of course, was any of my business. And since that time, I've tried to, not so much check my privilege at the door (because it's always there, whether I choose to acknowledge it or not), but realize that privilege and prejudice exist side by side, one informing the other.