The L Word

L Word preview.

I have to say that this really irked me, a real let down compared to the hype. I don't want to slag on Jill, but we are the same age and I'm trying to figure out, why so much of me wants to agree and yet I can't. Is it the fact that she appears to live in a world of striving upward mobility --and that's the problem? I'm not saying it's wrong for her to have done so. I am thinking that this might account for the different perspectives -- at least in part. Someone pointed this out at her blog, in the comments section. Living in the lower 25% gives you a different perspective: you never feel dependent on a man. Well, you do. What you know is: you are dependent on one another to survive, to have the basics, just to squeeze by.

And I'm not clear: the only enemy is men? Really? Am I asking too much of a blog post? I dunno.

But I'm thinking that, if anything, I'm a slave to a wage. I'm a slave to someone, man or woman, who's willing to pay my for my labor. I can't imagine a world where I'm not wondering what power and authority are thinking about me. I can imagine a world, though, where men aren't thinking much about me per se, where, if they do, it won't matter.

Still, what I can't envision, at least not with the tools I'm offered in the above link, is a world where I won't be a slave to having to earn a wage and, thus, subject to The Gaze (and, here, to my friend who asked, The Gaze isn't about men, it's about the Big Other. But more on that later.

I was in a feminist department in grad school. I'm here to tell you that it doesn't change much with feminist women as your boss. Some dynamics are different, but what I wore still mattered, it was just a different 'mattering'. But I still had to perform, be on display, etc. etc. And no, I'm not going to blame it on internalization of patriarchy or anything of the sort. I'm definitely not going to chalk it up to unique personalities.

We living in a system where the goods are limited. By goods I mean _everything_: approval, social status, money, things, time. Everything.

Think about it this way. When I taught sociology of work, the first day of class, we'd talk about grading. To that, there was always the usual grumble. One day, I ran with it. I said, "Well, hey, let's just give everyone an A. As long as you come to class, do your work, write your papers, you get an A.

Awesome. The students were thrilled.

Then I said, "Wouldn't be cool if the whole department did that? Everyone got As?"

"Yeah Bitch, that would be so totally awesome. Everyone in the department, including majors, gets As. Wow! Let's start lobbying to see to it that the entire school gets As."

And they would be all abuzz about how great that would be. After all, students at an elite liberal arts college knew that it didn't matter what they learned, it was about their connections after college as to what kind of jobs they'd get. That was consistently confirmed for them by siblings, parents, and alum. College was just a hoop you jumped through, more important for the social connections you made or the reputation of the school than the actual stuff you learned at school. Everyone knew that. It's not what you know, but who you know.

Then I said, "Well, hey, after, say, 5 years of everyone at this college getting As, where would the reputation of this school be?"

Oh. Long faces.

You see? Grades have to be doled out in a certain way, otherwise an A would be worthless. As have to be limited for As to mean anything in particular. And, if we are anything at all, we are meaning making animals. What does it take to make an A mean?

Not A.

And there you have it. That's the system we live in.

It's one where we can't all have the best, well-paid jobs, where we can't all get As, where we can't all have the most highly-trafficked blogs.

We live where the goods are limited -- that's where we are. The goods are limited, they are scare, they are doled out, not generously, but in a miserly way.

Whether they are limited for real or artificially or some combination -- it doesn't matter. The goods are lmited. The system simply doesn't work without the scarcity, without the lack, without the limit, without them empty, without the competition for a job, with the competition for a wage, for a freelancer's salary, for anything.

You own your own business? You're competing for customers. You write books? You're competing for the best contract, for the best publishing house, for the best readers, for the most money, for the widest audience, for the best reviews by the most important reviewers. March, march, march. We throw our bodies, our minds, our hearts, our souls under the juggernaut, listening to our bones crack and our organs explode. March march march.

You think the worst thing in the world is to sell your fingernail for advertising space? Would you sell your opinion on your blog? Aren't you doing that every single fucking day? So you can be the most linked to blog on other people's blogs? So you can watch the traffic and the stats grow? So you can sell blogads? So you can be important, listented to, read, heard? so you can influence people? I'm not saying any of those things are bad in and of themselves. I am saying, though, that they are scarce goods and it's time to ask yourself why?

The goods are limited.

But more: We are all, whether we like it or not, slave to someone paying money for something we make, do, think, feel, write, teach, opine. We sell a piece of ourselves every single day to earn that buck to pay that bill to buy those groceries to fuel that habit to see that movie that everyone's talking about.....

Buy the dildo.
Buy the vibrator.
Buy the sperm.
Buy the cock.

Rotate.

We live in a world where the goods are limited. And those goods include social status and identities, don't they? The goods are limited. The IT is this, not the other. It is that over there, not the other way over there.

That's how they are limited.

A not A. I am not that there. I am not that here. I am not that. I am not that under here. I am not that up there. I am not that over there.

You can not say, I am this here, without implying that you are not that over there.

I am a not.

For, in that limit, in that lack, in that empty, in that nothing -- that is where the I lives.

I am not.

The economy of desire as lack, as limit, as empty, as nothing.

I am not.

The goods are limited. We live in world where we believe that some women are whores and some women are, well, women -- because dog knows, if we let every so-called woman in to be called that name, women, then where would we be? That wouldn't do, because some of "them" might be here, near me, and I'd have to call them something other than "not me."

Some of them still have to be relegated to the sidelines, to bear the burden of social dope, complicit with patriarchy, women who know not what they do, women who perform for men, who wouldn't know how to be for themselves and other women if they tried, duped by patriarchy. Poor dears.

You want to talk about angry and sad?

let's talk.

Speaking of which, I was pleased to see that, while a few feminists don't think Bitch is really one of them (you know who you are), feminism is still a top draw at Bitch | Lab for 2005!

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