We Was Po', Part III: Choices and Possibilities

I've written about privilege and dealing with it in academia before, so I will try not to repeat myself. This past week I've had a sort of panicky time of uncertainty about my future in the academic world. While discussing Annie Dillard in religion class Thursday, we had a short conversation about her background and how this affects her writing. She was raised in a wealthy family, and my argument was that given this, her choice of a life of pure introspection and writing was possible. People who are raised in low income environments are less likely to assume that such a life is a career choice. Now, this isn't to say that it isn't possible, just that it is not necessarily seen as a choice. The rest of the class did not agree. It was at this moment that I had my crisis point.

How can I reconcile my background and beliefs with a life among people who truly believe that a low SES background doesn't generally cause exclusions from the beginning or that a privileged background doesn't mean more possibilities than low SES? This is the very reason I decided against a graduate career in women's studies. I was constantly interjecting a low SES rural perspective into conversations mostly to no avail. I couldn't stomach the thought of spending the rest of my life beating my head against that wall. Now, true to my fears, I am facing the same issue in religion.

The major problem is what to do about it. I love, I mean absolutely love, the idea of making a living studying religion, writing about it, and teaching people about it. That, to me, sounds like a good time. However, if I continue along this path, will it mean an eventual nervous breakdown when my brain has to repeatedly bash against these issues of privilege? If so, what else can I do? I don't want to do social work, because I fear ending up in some tangentially governmental office being forced to perpetuate a cycle I would rather destroy. Yes, I know there are plenty of other job possibilities within social work, but still...I thought about library science. I do so love books, and I could maybe work in a public library helping kids love to read. I could be a public school teacher, but it's a bit late in my undergraduate career to start that.

We was po', part ii: in which a low SES girl discusses salary...

A friend and fellow religion major posted this chart on his facebook feed today...As Religious Studies people we come in at 12th worst paid, and one of my other loves, Women's Studies (listed as Interdisciplinary Studies), comes in at 15th. His comment was that we don't do it for the money, and that's true. No one becomes a religion scholar hoping to make the big bucks. It just doesn't happen, and if you are someone who thought this, you've been lied to, my friend. So, I agree with him, BUT (you knew that was coming, right?) I have a serious issue with the entire thing...

The starting pay for Religious Studies was listed as $34,700. For someone raised in an upper middle to upper class home, this may seem a paltry amount. However, as someone raised in a lower SES home and an economically depressed area and who spent seven years in an even more economically depressed rural area, I'm here to tell you, $34,700 sounds like a fortune. That is, in fact, almost exactly three times what I made at my retail and hospitality jobs in the aforementioned rural area. As my lovely wife pointed out, I am aware that once you spend all this time and money (that you will be paying back until the end of time) getting a degree, maybe some people expect a lot more. I will also grant you that people from my background do attend college to make a better life than that of family who possibly did not get a degree and spent their lives struggling financially. All of this is true, but when I remind myself of this, there is a little nagging at the back of my mind that still protests...

When I returned to college after my little hiatus, I realized quickly that I had stepped into a world where a large portion of the people were speaking an entirely different language. (For more on this, see my post HERE.) This has not changed over the couple of years since then; it has actually become even more apparent. Now, let me say that the people I go to school with are not all bad; i like many of them, even the ones from this other planet called "well-off." It's just that the further I progress, the more like I feel I'm bashing my head against a brick wall. I dropped Women's Studies as a career path for this very reason. Every single WST class I took it seemed I spent half my time attempting to interject a low SES rural point of view into the discussion. I just could not see spending my entire career doing that. Now I'm afraid that Religion will be the same...

I suppose that given a certain kind of upbringing, 35 grand a year might not cut it, but as for me, where do i sign?

One down, too many to go...

Today Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker overturned California's Prop 8, declaring that it

"the gay marriage ban violates the Constitution's due process and equal protection clauses while failing "to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license...Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples," the judge wrote in his 136-page ruling." (from the Yahoo News article, from which the picture is also taken).

My first reaction is a crazy dance around my living room, all-caps responses to the texts alerting me, and a facebook status filled with many, many exclamation points. This is amazing news!! After all, if the California ban can be shot down by the Constitution, all the others can too, right? I hope so. But I have learned in this fight that it is never a good idea to assume anything...I assumed Florida voters would have enough sense not to pass Amendment 2. I assumed that humans would have more sense and sympathy for their fellow creatures not to protest and say nasty things at funerals. On both counts, I was sadly mistaken.

However, as incredibly sad and beaten-down as I feel everyday about these things, I am given hope today by Judge Walker. SOMEONE sees that we are not trying to destroy anything; all we're doing is trying to build lives and protect those we love, to make those shiny rings on our left hands a true symbol of solidity. Thank you Judge Walker.

Now, please excuse me while I dance!

i must have missed that memo: in which a feminist ponders the "agenda"

while watching mona lisa smile for the hundredth time, i stumbled on a review of the film that claimed it was solely a vessel for the...dunh dunh dunh..."feminist agenda." i have called myself a feminist for as long as i can remember. i think i may have carried from birth the impulse to correct the imbalances and wrongs women deal with everyday. one of my majors is women's studies, whose main purpose is the study of just that. so imagine my surprise at the rumors of an "agenda."

as long as there has been any sort of women's rights movements, there have been people claiming that there are nefarious plots to destroy the family and the world underlying everything. any movie or book or anything really that appears to even slightly support a feminist idea is immediately labeled a part of our insidious plot to warp the minds of all in our path and generally create chaos. this has lead to the demonization of feminism as a whole, to such an extent that women are loath to use the word let alone use it to describe themselves. frankly, i'm tired of it. i may have made the decision to pursue religion instead of women's studies as a career, but that has its owns reasons, which do NOT include not wanting to be known as a feminist. this is not to say that women's studies and feminism have their problems; they certainly do. it is these and not some desire to distance myself from feminism. but that is a topic for another blog...

Book Life 11: Mr. Monk and the Awesome Stories

Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop and Mr. Monk in Trouble by Lee Goldberg

Okay, it is no secret that I love Monk, the show and all of the books by Goldberg. These two are the latest in the series, though there's a new one, Mr. Monk is Cleaned Out, coming in a few months I think. They are awesome as usual. Monk, of course, solves not only the mysteries he's hired to solve but also any others lying about. I love them most because they present this brilliant man who is damn near crippled by OCD in not only a sympathetic light but also a true one. He isn't a joke or a fall guy...he's just Monk.

Pretty

Awesome Spoken Word

Katie Makkai doing her poem "Pretty"...this ought to be required watching for kids...i know i could have used it as a kid...

Let's Talk About Sex: Abstinence and the Preachers of Doom

I've talked about my research on the Quiverfull movement on this blog before, but I haven't gone into one of the more tangential areas related to it--abstinence education. The reason this is on my mind today is a) I just finished a paper a few weeks ago on born again virginity, and b) I'm watching The Education of Shelby Knox on Netflix. Shelby Knox is a documentary about a high school girl in Lubbock, Texas who fought the school's abstinence only policy to try to lower the pregnancy and STD rates there, which were some of the highest in the country. The filmmakers interviewed Ed Ainsworth, a True Love Waits speaker and abstinence proponent; during the course of this interview, AInsworth commented that while he talked about STD's in detail in his presentations, he would never demonstrate how to put on a condom. Then he compared this to showing kids how to use guns.

Okay, first of all, let me say that I am well aware that the only 100% effective way to prevent STD's and pregnancy is abstinence; that is a no-brainer. However, it is incredibly naive to believe that all teenagers are going to save themselves for marriage, and let us not forget that since we in the LGBTQ community cannot, for the most part (depending on where we live), get married, this is effectively saying that we should live completely celibate lives. Neither is realistic. Yes, it would be a perfect world if all teenagers (and adults) for that matter were more careful with their sex lives. STD's, like AIDS, would not be as widespread, and there wouldn't be as many teen and unplanned pregnancies. BUT this is not going to happen. It simply isn't, but these "abstinence warriors" do not want to admit this.

I am not saying that kids should be told that as long as they use protection, it's free love for everyone. However, they should be taught the proper way to use protection, the risks involved in multiple partners, how their bodies function, what STD's are and what they do to you. Unfortunately, many kids don't know the first thing about any of this. Abstinence only proponents claim that if this sort of education were available, there would be more teen pregnancies and STD's, but the evidence shows otherwise. In schools, such as Lubbock, where abstinence is the only line, the rates are much higher than in schools with accurate sex education. Many say that it should be left up to the parents to teach kids these things. Maybe in a perfect world, yes, it should, but the sad fact is that many parents are either unwilling or unable (being products of the same close-mouthed systems as their kids) to provide the education that kids need. As I said in my Mr. Rogers post, kids are exposed to a lot of things, and parenting should be one of those. It is a sad fact that this is not the case, and yet these same parents who are neglecting to tell their kids anything are the ones screaming that parents should have the final line on sex ed at home. Make up your mind. Either parent or allow the school to do it for you, but don't leave these kids to their own devices with no information available. That is dangerous.