Pecan Pie

Behind the Official Story

We all practice some form of subjugation in our day to day lives. Every person is aware (some of us more than others) of the need for impression management. I need to make sure that he, or she or whomever understand who I am…in the way I want. Maybe not full reality, but the reality I wish to create.

    I’m not a Kardashian, but I use her make-up techniques. You’ll see me how I want you to see me…and then you’ll thank me for it.

As the country moves through the current election cycle, we see candidates, men who are rich, white, clearly part of the “1%”; men with great access to the overall power structure.

(This clown car, this shitshow, this obnoxious display of wealth, power and my frustration.)

These men carefully construct the type of perception they would like the American people to have. When their back stage or off stage attitudes come forward; for instance, in Mitt Romney’s gaffe “I can’t have illegals working for me, I’m running for president for Christ’s sake!” it is obviously a break in his personal, elite mentality and the projection he would like to emit to the people. The projection that he is “one of them.”

One of Scott’s points, particularly profound, is the addition of the Jamaican proverb “Play fool, to catch wise.” Things are not always as they seem and the oppressed are, as institutional ethnography says, experts in their own lives. Rarely, if ever, are they as unintelligent as the dominant force purports them to be, but maintain their own impression management as a means of survival and personal dignity. Dorothy Smith** has reminded us in her criticism of patriarchal attitudes and societal pressures that those who are oppressed, those outside the power structure are often those best able to apply critical analysis to that structure.

I’ll invite the Republican elite to remember this about women, our place in a democratic society, and our power as a voting bloc come November.

While reading Scott, I made a note, “The more wide the divide of the power (between subordinates and dominants) the greater the mistrust (particularly of the subjugated by the elites). I wonder if this is because of a hidden (internal/off-stage dialogue) acknowledgement of wrong-doing?” But, just as we cannot make assumptions of authenticity of the subordinate discourse, we can neither make assumptions of the internal attitudes of those in power without talking to those in that class.

The hidden transcript is a pervasive narrative of the subordinates that, while it takes place in the discourse of that which happens off-stage, is the undercurrent of the front-stage activities; the “elephant in the room” that is never acknowledged in that area of discourse. These off-stage narratives are places where the subordinates rehearse their lines, their discourse of revolt, where they practice “speaking truth to power.” (As best they can.)

A thing I believe most of us do.

(We are all, with few exceptions, subordinates to someone or something)

We rehearse our feelings and wait for that specific rightness of timing, as Mrs. Poyser; allowing us the opportunity to speak for others in our situation and giving the “little guy” an opportunity to reject being a leaky barrel. It is the difference between yelling at the pundits on the television and picking up tent to join OccupyWallStreet.

The Public Transcript as a Respectable Performance

The domination of one group over another is work. We don’t acknowledge it. We avoid it. We demonize anyway, but the facts remain the same. It limits the freedom also, of the elites in power, and reduces their own ability to “be themselves.” They must constantly reinforce their power, never flinching, for fear that the “fourth wall” may be breach and the whole illusion of who should or should not be in power will be broken.

In essences, the domination of the subordinate is a shit job. Everything about the power structure sucks, more for the subjugated, but in some sense, for us all.

Many displays of power are necessary to maintain the status of the elites; Scott asks how many? As seen in the dictatorships in the Middle East and North Korea, it can be decade’s worth, and then some. The ways in which subordinates are framed in the public discourse reinforce the rules. In the current discourse, even NPR labels the Syrian resisters as “rebellious pockets” rather than other terms such as revolutionaries or protestors.

Large displays of grandeur and power regurgitate the system to both the subordinates and the dominant classes, as both are consumers of such pageantry. In North Korea, where growth has been stunted as a result of horrible malnutrition, the people are almost completely brainwashed of any independent thought (at least, according the National Geographic’s expose by Lisa Ling “Inside North Korea“) and yet the government has resources to put on a huge display of military might in the front stage. In this instance, it could be posited that many in the subordinate class may no longer have a hidden transcript in their off-stage. The Dear Leader is pictured everywhere, He may always be watching, the perpetual all-seeing eye that denies the people of any off-stage at all.

This Big Brother, Orwellian type of control is noted by the Scott through the story of Owen’s silent monitor. This silent monitor uses a method of judgment that equates work (or allegiance to the Dear Leader, in the case of N. Korea) with strength of character. This one type of assessment, the assessment of work and productivity only, excludes other types, much in the same way that standardized exams in K-12 education judge the knowledge of students to the exclusion of all other types of possible learning assessments.

Lastly, Scott mentions through the example of Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant”*** that this pageantry and front-stage performance is so important, that even the health and well-being of any one member of the elite party come secondary to the maintenance of the status-quo. In the story, it is not the fear of dying and becoming a trampled grinning corpse that worries the narrator, but the fact that the Indians might laugh at him, upsetting the natural order of the hierarchy his class works so hard to protect.

I haven’t subjected to you all to any academic wax-sociologic in a while, so…hey!

*This writing is in response to the work of James Scott on resistance and state formation. I’d encourage any and all to take it up, it’s brilliant, brilliant reading.

Scott, James. (1990). Domination and the Arts of Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press. (Pp. 1-16, 45 – 70, 136 – 183)

**Dorothy Smith. Get with her.

***Orwell. Shooting an Elephant

Here we go again!

I’m on food stamps so my opinion doesn’t matter.

Let’s reiterate…

I have…

Worked since I was 15 years old.

Paid into the system for over 15 years.

Work in the dean’s office of a respected university.

Earn an income from that same university.

Plan to use my loan dollars to earn a PhD from those federal dollars.

Paid into the system that supplies those dollars.

Am engaged to a man that supplies taxes to those dollars.

OWE TAXES EVERY YEAR EITHER TO THE STATE OR FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND PAY WILLINGLY!

So.

Is this thing on, Morans?

#smdh

I’ve had a long standing interest in public service. I’ve worked on two campaigns, one as a volunteer and one as a paid consultant. Both were personally very enriching and I genuinely enjoy the proud feeling I get from being part of the process.  I love voting (especially since my precinct is so small and old people voting is adorable!)  I get frustrated when I find I’ve missed a local election.

All politics is local. -Thomas “Tip” O’Neill former Speaker of the House

Me, Rockin' the Vote

I’ve said for a while that when my youngest starts school, I’d like to run for the school board. I think I have good ideas, I’m smart and I also think I have a perspective usually lacking on small school boards. I’d love to sit on a city council, run for state office or maybe more.

I also have a “you love me or ya hate me” personality! I’m made for politics!!

Of course, you and I know that will never happen. Because, even though in Italy a porn star can run and win a seat in public office, in America we punish those who ever think about sex.

Why won’t it happen? I think I’d be great for a genuine liberal bid. I’m educated in social problems, have genuine empathy for all people, hell, I can even find worth in those who truly have the least character of any human on the planet. (Which would bode well for our theistic friends, yes?)

But there’s all these things in the way.

I like sex.

I’ve had two abortions.

I’m pierced, tattooed and *gasp* kinky.

I’m on (dun, dun, duuuunnnnn) FOOD STAMPS!

I’m also kind of an elitist, I love gay people, people of color, people from other places, not so much kids and well…

The Big.Bad.Worst.Terrible.Awful.

ATHEIST.

But, I wonder, couldn’t I relate to more people? I’m a woman, so I’m used to patriarchy. I’m white and hopefully understand the ridiculous privilege I’ve been granted by chance. I’m atheist, so I can relate to religious minorities fighting to have their voice heard. I value education, as evidenced by my own. I’ve been a single parent, gone through divorce and learned how to co-parent with my ex-husband. I have a non-traditional relationship with my partner. I was a breastfeeding “Nazi”. I read C.S. Lewis who’s on my shelf next to Dawkins.

I love to cook, too.  With butter. And BACON! (SRSLY, who wouldn’t vote for me based on that?!!)

I dunno. I feel like I have a diverse background…I feel like more people who are like me should run. People who’ve grown up in a way that is wholly different than generations prior, who understand globalization, plurality and fundamental human ethics over other political ideologies.  Over any ideologies.

It makes me sad that it would hurt my family more for me to serve my community in a public office capacity than it would for me to be an academic (which I love, but that’s not the point.)

I’m rambling.

What do you think?

So, wordpressdotcom has made it possible for us to blackout our blogs tomorrow in protest of SOPA/PIPA proposed legislation.

As a researcher, I’d like to add RWA to that as well.

So, tomorrow, my friends, you shall get no pie.  I’m sure you’ll understand.

P.

Daniel Fincke over at Camels With Hammers has a really great post today about Schrödinger’s Rapist, an article written by a woman explaining to men that, while we understand you “probably” wish us no ill will, our entire lives have been cultivated by a society of patriarchy, rapist sympathy and virgin v. vamp mentality that makes it really hard for many of us to just accept your platonic advances.

Many of us have experienced so many overt, unwanted, sexually over-toned encounters that being a bitch to you is just second nature. Many of us have been sexually assaulted multiple times and often by men who started off by “just being friendly.’

However, and I think this is where the libertarian/anarchist influence of my wonderful partner comes in; I’m not big on making people conform. I’d much rather restrict the social capital so severely of those who refuse to progress that it makes it so advantageous for them to change that they do. They have to. Evolution at work!

SCIENCE!

Disclaimer: I don’t mean for businesses, or government, or public spaces…those things should always be free of prejudice and comfortable for all people to be in, no matter their gender, race, creed, and yada yada yada.

I’m into…shaming or calling out, for lack of better terms (sort of like Greta does here when misogyny rears its super ugly head on her blog) when people act like asshats.

Here’s the thing. People are going to be jerkfaces. Fact.O’.Nature.

The only way to get them to stop is to remove so much social capital that they can’t help but change. I’m usually not into shaming, ostracizing or “othering”; goes against my social science nature and against my empathetic handicap that keeps me from getting in the face of f*ckwads many, many a day.

But…

That does not mean I don’t think it doesn’t have its place.

So may negatives, so little blog space.

I’m not sure that men who can’t realize their actions might be taken out of context should change. I’m certain that minority races should not change for my white, overly privileged benefit and I doubt that evangelical fundamentalists will ever change to make me more comfy.

So be it.

Don’t change. (If you’re a person of color, please don’t change. Any Caucasian who crosses the street on looks alone can go eff themselves.)

Here’s the thing.

If you’re a dude and you’re making me uncomfortable…I’m gonna be a first class bitch to you. And yanno what? You should be okay with that. If you’re not, I’m okay with that. I’ve got a place to rant about my experience and shame you to def on the interwebz. I’ve been groped too many times in a bar, raped by too many men who were my “friends” or “lovers” and been too often shamed myself into laughing at your chauvinistic and really bad (if I may say so) jokes at the expense of myself. So, I’m just sayin’, Bless your heart…bitch.

And…if you’re an intolerant fundamentalist, well, guess what? We’re here, we love the queers, we lost the “god-fearin’” part a long time ago and, well, you should probably get used to it.

Don’t change.

No. Really.

The world will.

In the end, it’ll be you bitching about being the minority and you know what?

I’ll probably stand up for you that day…

Even though you’d never stand up for me.

Baylor University has a lot of things. A Baptist foundation. A great football team. And the only sociology of religion post-graduate program in the country.

*le sigh*

One of the major considerations for me applying to Baylor, besides how it will affect my family for me to move so far away, is how does an atheist survive in such a religious environment? I previously attended Shorter University (formerly Shorter College) and it could be said that’s where irreligion began to take hold. In looking around Google for some insight into the secular student experience at Baylor, I found the article in the Baylor Lariat below, written by a professor of theology at the school.

Atheism’s moral philosophy not consistent with Baylor’s mission

I started to go through this article point by point and then I realized something. The entire premise of this article is based on atheism as its own religion or philosophy. But, we all know it is not. Atheists, just like Christians, Muslims and Jews, have varying opinions and degrees of empathy, intelligence and negative attitudes about a number of things. Why don’t atheists give as a whole? Well, we do, but one reason we wouldn’t might be because there isn’t some huge atheist “church” we all rally behind. We give of our time and volunteer hours to the number of causes we believe in that are available for us to give to. My family gave to Toys for Tots this year, last year I gave to an individual friend in desperate need in conjunction with a group of friends, before that I gave to a cause that helps find adoptive families for special needs children. Sometimes when we give as a group, we are rejected outright.

Atheism does not have answers to why we should be kind, though biology does a pretty good job with that or what the meaning of life is, because atheism only says one thing much in the same way that theism says but one thing. There is no god. That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less. Theism says but one thing, there is/are god(s). Secular humanism, atheistic Buddhism, Catholicism, Jainism…these are philosophies and theologies that might answer these questions asked by the professor. Atheism does not.

So, the strawman argument here fails miserably. I’d be happy to answer any questions asked of me about why I think empathy and giving and kindness are a good idea or what I think the purpose of my life is, but those things are not informed by atheism, because atheism does not inform. It only explains one aspect of a person and that is they do not believe in a god. That’s all. No matter how hard the religious try, they cannot force us to adopt theology, even one without god. I don’t want to be informed by a philosophy and I don’t want to be forced to turn one belief I have into a whole dogma…and I don’t know any other atheists that do either, frankly.

Maybe before spouting the horrors of an “atheist worldview” one might choose to understand what “atheism” means, that it actually lacks a worldview, especially a professor of theology at a renowned university, no?

Dear Reader,

You’ve done all this last year.  I just write, er, blather on incessantly, and you’re kind enough to read.  Thanks and YAY you!!

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,200 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.