‘Sofia Coppola feminism’, and its close relative ‘hipster feminism’ is a phrase being used by some bloggers to describe the phenomenon of the feminism of the privileged – who mean well, but really, they have no idea of the pyramid of suffering that their comfy positions depend on.
Super Babymama, (via Donna) illustrates this and the massive class differences and gaps in perception that still exist between American women in the US, in response to a Pandagon. post by Roxanne on tourism and ‘ugly Americans’.
(Speaking of which, I saw a prime example puking up his guts outside one of my former favourite Amsterdam coffeeshops last week. Yes, it’s spring again. But I digress.)
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I don’t begrudge those with money their money. Depends on how they got it, and except for the very wealthy I’d imagine most people who have saved enough to do a bit of travelling for a week or two probably worked hard for their stuff. So let ’em go on their jaunts.
One commenter, though, said what I’d been thinking:
I don’t usually comment, but this post somewhat bugged me, because it’s written only from the perspective of someone who has the freedom and resources to “acquire” foreign cultures firsthand. Sure, it must be nice to have an illuminating conversation with an Indian woman over breakfast in the Himalayas, but most people in America will never be able to do that, not necessarily because they don’t want to, but because they can’t afford to. Until everyone can afford a trip around the world, “remote control acquisition of culture” will remain the best way to find out about non-American cultures for a lot of people.
Whoo boy! That brought out the middle class defensiveness in some people!
And Amanda said this:
I’m sorry, but your comment aggravated me, seeing as how you are privileged enough to use a computer to make it. Until everyone has that opportunity, I don’t see why you should get on the computer and just comment. It’s very insensitive.
Oh bullshit, Amanda. Just…bullshit. And I suspect you know that was some bull, so maybe you were being post-modernly ironic or something. But then again–well, fuck that.
This “you can’t be too broke or you wouldn’t have a computer/tv/fat belly/car,” business is such tired nonsense. You know as well as I do that not everybody who comments on a blog is doing so from their super-fast deluxe home internets system; lots of people get internet at their jobs. Lots of people use computers at the library. Lots of people had a bit of extra money, one time in their lives, and bought themselves a computer, and just hope that the damn thing keeps working cuz they’ll probably not be able to afford another one any time soon. Lots of people maybe got a computer as a gift. Or their internet access is underwritten by some government program.
The point is that those of us with limited resources, or those of us with no resources, deserve to have those little luxuries that make us happy just as much as the rest of the world. And if we decide to do without this, in order to have that, because having that makes us happy, then fuck you for questioning our right to that little bit of what the middle class has. Perhaps you’d like to see us all pay less rent on our little apartments and team up together, real old-school, five families to a flat and a toilet down the hall. And then we’d be authentically poor enough to spit out an opinion that fucks with your comfort zone.
Well, quite.
Even when at my absolute poorest, a lone parent over my head in debt and late with the rent, I paid for internet access. I got my first computer, a 286, through a very cheap deal and used nearly all my student grant to pay for it; the eventual replacement was bought with a very unexpected small legacy. Through all the late phone bills and cutoffs I kept the connection going because I realised it was important to my and my children’s future that we be computer and and internet literate. It was an investment and it proved a wise one. I have to say that to accuse someone of being insufficiently deprived because they can access a computer may be one of the more condescending, asinine online remarks I’ve read recently and smacks of blinkered complacency.
There are those self-described liberals and feminists who are so smugly enamoured of their own particular copacetic niches in life that they fail to acknowledge the reality of others’ situations and their right to choose how to best employ their own meagre resources to their own and their families’ best advantage.
Equal access to computers and the internet is essential to lift people out of poverty because in this modern global society, to be out of communication, to have no access to digital media, no mobile phone or landline or email address, is to be a non-person, as that exchange so amply proves.
Still, Superbaby Mama is anxious to bridge the divide and in the interest of furthering feminist amity offers the tourists commenting on Roxanne’s post a unique tour of her home town:
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For entertainment we’d have our choice of sitting on the porch and listening to my neighbor’s radio playing salsa, or my other neighbor’s radio playing R & B, or maybe the random hothead behind tinted windows, driving down the street bumping Jay Z.
I could point out the weed house, and its awesome history of having been a weed house for the entire 12 years I’ve lived here. How many nickle bags do you suppose have changed hands on that porch? I could take them on a guided tour of the street memorials that pop up, here and there, sad reminders of gunfights past.
For the horny guys, there’s no shortage of working girls, most of whom have been walking the neighborhood so long they’ve watched my kids grow up. Rosie, Woodie-woo, Cheyenne, Dellia, always good to run an errand for you if there’s a dollar at the end of it. Always good for a blowjob in the front seat of your car if there’s a dime at the end of it.
And before my tourists leave, I’d impart some good old-fashioned local wisdom on them, so they can feel truly enlightened. Something like, “don’t believe that guy hanging out at the gas station who says he just needs 50 cents for a phone call,” or, “the best place to buy arros con gondules is at Pueblo foods over on Holton.” Maybe I’d even let them touch my daughter’s exotic, curly mass of hair, and exclaim over how smart and well-spoken she is.
I think that would be a vacation to remember. Don’t you?
Indeed it would. I’d go further and make it a mandatory six weeks every summer in a poor urban neighbbourhood as soon as the temperature hits 85 degrees and the kids are out of school. That might exercise the empathy muscles a little bit.
