Rebbeca Solnit's now famous "Men Explain Things to Me" struck a distant chord when I first read bits of it. Stuck in the world of science where discovery is key, and my own knowledge was limited, I did not experience condescension as often as appropriate teaching. Then after some time angry at the capitalist distortion of American health care, I decided to become involved in leftist politics. I'm not sure I could have met such a group of arrogant classist condescending sexists had I joined the fascist right wing. Obviously, I'm not the color of person who could find out...But I have come to believe the academic left is actually often an impediment to progress. I sat down to write a blog about this topic only to discover Solnit beat me to some of my conclusions...
Fortunately for her she probably hadn't had the same number of leftists explaining her political situation to her, or at least she didn't let on if she had. Solnit criticizes the radical left's extreme rhetoric as pointless. She quotes Micahel Eric Dyson who astutely notices that "What is not good are ideals and rhetorics that don’t have the possibility of changing the condition that you analyze. Otherwise, you’re engaging in a form of rhetorical narcissism and ideological self-preoccupation that has no consequence on the material conditions of actually existing poor people.”
I would add that what is also not good is condescendingly explaining people's condition to them. People who have never experienced certain levels of oppressive political conditions bizarrely seem entitled to sacrifice those that do in the name of their own political self aggrandizing. A large part of the problem is straight up ignorance about how the real world works. People from entitled backgrounds are so used to the world bending to their will they forget that other powerful people also have strong wills, and often armies to back them up. Hence the university educated professor can call for methods of class revolution without any consciousness of all the consequences of his methods: many of which might be negative for the very people he purports to lead a revolution for. Because they have never personally confronted people with real power- often their own relatives- they are unaware of the extent to which powerful people will abuse their power. Sustainable victories against the ruling classes will most often be incremental if they ever come. Those of us who live in the lower half of the power equation are often concerned with scrapping by: making our own existence survivable in a world utterly indifferent to us at best. We aren't all interested in sacrificing ourselves to prove a political point.
On the other hand, talking back to our self appointed leaders results in rigid thought policing that could only be described as ironically humorous if it were not tragic. A perfect example of this nonsense is my the rhetoric ex-husband. I don't use his name, or tell identifying story after story of his laughable "feminism" in order to avoid the legal ramifications of doing so, not because it isn't hysterically funny. A feminist academic type, he used to lecture me about my lack of feminism. I spent lots spent my spare time volunteering with female war refugees. In my experience as a volunteer doctor with female war refugees this population is the frontline of every kind of violence against women and all it's ramifications even after they move away from conflict zones. In spite of my dedication to these women, my ex-husband constantly chastized me . My utter lack of concern over upper middle class white women was alarming to him. He once chastised me for looking down on women who take advantage of the global classed/gendered labor divide to elevate themselves. Apparently I should have been looking up at women who abuse migrant laborers taking care of their children, because they were "career" women. According to him I also should have been looking up to women who had no children at all...because they were more successful, according to him. I had to politely and patiently explain to him over and over that not everyone in the world measures success in dollars. "Marx said the primary thing is the job, the work" He would say as if Marx were the source of all truth in the universe. Just for the sake of historical irony, I will point out that Karl Marx had seven children.
If you don't notice the sad trend of "successful"women living empty lives you are either in a coma or a leftist committed to some imaginary world of leftist ideas. In reality men and women have not achieved anything close to equality. We aren't even held to the same standards. Try imagining a woman even as creepy as womanizing oversexed heroes like Martin Luther King or Ghandi, and you will immediately see my point. No such nonsense exists. That may actually be a good thing, but it proves how far apart we are. The real breaking point is no longer sex though, it's children. Yes, some women are allergic to children; but by and large due to the psychotic demands of the American style workplace, women who want what men have: the chance at rewarding work and family are tremendously disadvantaged. Many women therefore make some compromises in terms of achieving what they want. Only men and wealthy women are arrogant enough to assume that they know which compromises would have been better for most women take. Not so coincidentally, these privileged classes (men and women with money) are often interested women making in the compromises that benefit men and the wealthy classes the most. In the leftist male fantasy world first wives should preoccupy themselves with supporting these men financially, then step aside when men are successful, as they can now be traded in for younger prettier versions that produce children. It sounds like the anti-feminist fantasy; but every man I know trying to achieve this female nightmare tells me he is a feminist. If he is really feminist he won't have a first wife, because "marriage is patriarchy" or some vapid slogan like that...marriage of course implies shared responsibility between a man and a woman over their actions together, and what feminist wouldn't want women to be given with ALL the responsibility for everything? I know such men must be feminists because they explain feminism to me.
Of course by explaining, I only mean attempting to dictate. I thought of typing out a tirade on my latest run in with the leftists thought police; but I have decided it is counterproductive. What I have come to realize is that many organizations of leftists aren't as problematic as I imagine them to be. They are in fact nearly irrelevant; even if they don't realize it.
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