I’ve been teaching women’s history here at Pasadena City College for more than a dozen years now, and throughout that time, have made journals a critical part of the course. It’s a lot of reading for me, but I remain convinced that my own teachers were right when they told me that putting my words down on paper is the single best way to figure out what it really is I think, feel, and believe.
Over these twelve years or so of teaching gender studies, of meeting with countless students in office hours, of listening. of reading student journals and reflecting on what I find there, I’ve noticed some fairly clear patterns. And the pattern that’s in my head this morning is the ubiquitousness of self-doubt and self-criticism that I see in so many of my female students (and youth group kids).
As my students will confirm, I’m fond of insisting that there are “three key points” to be made about virtually anything. (Too much Trinitarian Christianity; too much of the “three-column system” in Kabbalah; too much Hegel… or three divorces. Take your pick.) And if I were to try and sum up all of the negative self-talk I encounter from my students in just three words, it would be easy:
Fat, Slut, Selfish.
Let me be very clear that I’m not claiming that most women regularly beat themselves up with all three of these. For most of my students and youth group kids, one or two of these three words is particularly haunting. The fear of fat is much commented upon, and in looking back over the last twelve years of journals, the best that I can say is that that crushing anxiety about the body has, at least, not gotten significantly worse. Of course, it couldn’t get much worse. (I do notice more of my male students admitting to body dysmorphia and a desire to lose weight or change their shape.)
If the label “fat” still has tremendous power to wound, there are signs that at least among some young women, “slut” is losing at least a little of its force. From what I can tell (and to generalize enormously), we’ve done a marginally better job of helping young women claim ownership of their sexuality. Compared to what I was seeing, hearing, and reading in the mid-1990s, I see slightly more acceptance among young women (and their male peers) of the notion that women have the right to be sexual subjects rather than objects. Of course, as many feminists worry, when it comes to “sex talk” it’s often difficult to distinguish between false bravado and a genuine embrace of erotic agency. One role of feminist mentors (and youth group leaders) is to provide a safe environment where students can get honest about sexuality. It’s in these safe environments that those who are merely “talking big” about their comfort with their sexuality can begin to acknowledge that some of that apparent confidence is a facade; it’s also in these environments that those who are anxious or confused about their own sexuality can begin to unburden themselves.
The epithets “fat” and “slut” have great power to wound. They sting young women when another person slaps them on, but they do far greater damage once they worm their way into one’s own internal conversation. But as awful as these words are when they are used to hurt another, or when they are used in relentless, ugly self-deprecation, they aren’t as debilitating as “selfish.” When it comes to what incapacitates (or at the least, handicaps) so many of the girls and women with whom I work, it’s the tremendous fear that by following their own bliss, by carving out space for themselves, by seeing their own happiness as a fundamental good, they are disappointing others and thinking too much about themselves.
There’s a class and race element to this. First-generation female college students, particularly from immigrant families, often are more likely to get that awful “After all we sacrificed for you, you owe us” speech. What a young woman from this background owes is usually to major in something that will lead to a stable, lucrative career; while pursuing this course, she’s often expected to remain a virgin. Among folks from these lower socio-economic backgrounds, the fear about pre-marital sex is, of course, partly that it could damage a gal’s reputation and turn her into damaged goods. But it’s also a fear that if a young woman gets into a sexual relationship, her academic life will get put on the back-burner. Worse, there’s fear that if she gets pregnant, she’ll keep the baby and drop out of school, and with that decision, her parents’ hopes for upward mobility will be dashed.
Many of these families look to their dutiful daughters to establish beachheads in the middle class. Once established, these dutiful daughters are expected — somehow — to take care of everyone and their brother (literally). Many of these women were raised by mothers who taught their daughters that they needed to perform traditional female duties (cooking, cleaning, nurturing) while also engaging in what was once classically male behavior (earning a degree, getting a “good” job, providing for their broader family). When a daughter’s education is part of a long-term family plan, and when a daughter’s propriety (sexual or otherwise) is keenly connected to that same plan, it’s not surprising that a great many of these young women feel as if they’re “being selfish” when they deviate from the brutally rigid script that they have been handed.
But that fear of selfishness is hardly unique to any one social group. It is, as I said before, ubiquitous. And in the end, it may be the most debilitating of these three “key words of negative self-talk.” While the fear of fat can lead to disordered eating (and concomitant misery), and the fear of the slut label can lead to shame and repression, the fear of being selfish can divert a young woman’s life trajectory. Women from one background might believe that they’re being “selfish” when they major in art history rather than pre-med. They might believe that they’re being “selfish” when they don’t give their parents grandchildren on a pre-set timetable. They might believe that it’s “selfish” to want to go to college far away from home, in order to escape what is often an alternately smothering and alienating environment.
“I’d love to do that, but I’d feel too selfish.” Oh, how rich I’d be if I had a single dollar for each time I’ve heard that from one of my youth group kids, or read it in a college student’s journal. And it’s not just a fear confined to the young; I hear older female students regularly confess this same anxiety — that by placing themselves ahead of others around them, they are somehow betraying the obligation to be endlessly self-sacrificing.
This anxiety is often particularly acute among women from traditional religious backgrounds. And while it is true that Christ calls us to the cross and to sacrifice, too many of us confuse service to family with service to God. Too often, we tell women that by pleasing their parents (or husbands, or children) they are engaged in Christian service. But female subservience is very nearly a cultural universal; Christianity at its best is always countercultural and subversive. The great subversiveness of authentic Christianity lies in its privileging of Mary over Martha, in its insistence on mutual submission in marriage, and the stern reminder that Christ came to divide rather than unite the family.
I don’t like the words “fat” and “slut”, and see no reason to apply them to other folks (or myself), regardless of their appearance or behavior. I do think we are all capable of selfishness, if we define selfishness as ignoring the genuine needs of others in order to focus on ourselves. But most women who feel selfish aren’t. They’ve mislabelled their basic desires for autonomy and independence as selfish. They’ve confused genuine selflessness — which is a commitment to serve the truly needy — with people-pleasing. For the believers, they’ve confused following God’s call (which is frequently to leave loved one’s behind) with meek acquiescence. They’ve mixed up goodness with obedience.
There is no bigger battle that I fight as a pro-feminist educator and mentor than the one against this incapacitating anxiety about “putting themselves first.” There is no greater gift that we can give our daughters and our little sisters than to remind them that following their bliss isn’t inherently selfish.
And someday, my students won’t write in their journals that they loathe themselves because of what they ate, because of who they slept with, because they dared to divert from the plan laid out for their lives by those whose love is so genuine, so intense, and, almost invariably, so crushingly burdensome.
Selfishness is a hard one for me, and I’m a feminist atheist who experiences no particular demands from my family at all. It’s difficult because I know that I am, in fact, pretty self-centered (like most people), and there are definitely times when I behave more selfishly than I should, so it’s not a concern about myself that I can readily dismiss. But there are other times when I can tell that my concern about selfishness is misplaced or inappropriate, and I don’t know if that’s a “being female in our culture” thing or just a “regular human struggle” thing.
Doug Muder’s “Red Family, Blue Family” is a very helpful piece on this subject. Basically, a “Red Family” is one you have obligations to, even when it isn’t convenient. I strongly strongly recommend it–it’s online.
(Sorry this is short; my work firewall has decided that this is a porn site, so I’m at the library on my lunch break. No, it’s not partisan; it had volokh.com as porn for awhile.)
This was an enjoyable read, and I identified with it a lot. I struggle with “what counts as selfish in a bad way,” too.
My mother definitely fits the profile of the woman who expects herself to constantly give to her family. She’s a homeschooling stay-at-home mom. I remember a few years ago, she’d gone out for an early morning hour-long bicycle ride. When she came back, she stopped to ponder aloud if it was good for her to enjoy the “alone time” she gets when riding at 6 a.m. I wanted to shake her and say yes, she’s allowed to do something for herself. My dad bought her a fantastic titanium-framed bicycle to encourage her to get out and ride more often. She does ride with other people frequently, but I swear the only times she’s ever “alone” are when she’s on a solo ride or when she’s grocery shopping for the family. The latter hardly counts.
Meanwhile, I enjoy living alone partly because I know when I get home, it will be quiet. There won’t be other people demanding my attention. I can do (or not) the housecleaning at my leisure. Sometimes I go out to eat by myself, and I enjoy it because I can focus on the food. Not that I don’t also enjoy eating with people, but sometimes it’s nice to just think about what I’m eating. I don’t have to “perform” or balance talking and eating. Somehow the topic of eating out alone came up when I was with a group of local friends, and one of the young women called eating alone “sad.” I suppose it could be “sad” if the person does not want to be alone or had some social disorders that create the aloneness. Perhaps we are socialized to either pity or disdain those who do not need to have people around them all the time. How selfish of them to deprive others of their company, even if temporarily. ;-)
Perhaps we are socialized to either pity or disdain those who do not need to have people around them all the time. How selfish of them to deprive others of their company, even if temporarily. ;-)
A lot are; as an introvert, I prize my alone time and resent deeply it being intruded on by some extrovert who decided I “looked lonely” and took it upon themselves to intrude on my personal quiet time. It irritates me to have to seek obvious seclusion just to have some time to clear my head, collect my thoughts, meditate, pray, or othnerwise reflect on things.
You’d think taking a tabl;e by yourself, away from the crowd, removing other chairs, and spreading your things around so that all the places are “taken” would be a clue, but…
I was explaining why I am a feminist at lunch today to a (male) friend of mine today who, is tentatively also a feminist but doesn’t “get” alot of it.
I told him it boiled down to deprivation: the way that we treat half the world’s population deprives them of the ability to fully use their gifts, and deprives the other half of those gifts being used.
How many talented engineers, architects, scientists, doctors, accountants, economists, statisticians, mathematicians, professors and so on have we lost - and all of the ideas that never occurred - all because of a stupid cultural mandate?
And how many artists, musicians, social workers, teachers, nurses, and so on have we lost - because we have decided that these jobs are not worthy of a livable wage when the person performing them is female?
And how many will we continue to lose now that they are open, but only to those willing to be selfish - either by working when they are mothers, or never having children at all?
The point is that right now, we live in a deprived world. And I for one don’t see the need to keep on doing it.
“A lot are; as an introvert, I prize my alone time and resent deeply it being intruded on by some extrovert who decided I “looked lonely” and took it upon themselves to intrude on my personal quiet time. It irritates me to have to seek obvious seclusion just to have some time to clear my head, collect my thoughts, meditate, pray, or othnerwise reflect on things.”
I am totally with you, Gonzman. I actually try to hide in a corner at Starbucks, or at the library - wherever - when reading or something. I am actually pretty anti-social, and sometimes I feel like I must be a selfish person because of that. Anyway, right now I’m trying to hide from people so that sentence really hit me. :-)
Hugo, if you’re looking for some reading, and perhaps even some reading that might be useful for your students, an article by Jean Hampton (citation below) my Philosophy professor has assigned the last few years in her Feminism & Ethics class, and has gotten good feedback from students about. It’s philosophical in nature, and it has it’s flaws (she arguably crosses the line into victim-blaming, because she’s talking about the concept of some forms of selflessness actually being morally wrong and blameworthy), but it does deal with this notion of selflessness and the place of our own flourishing in moral theory, and talking about the flaws has prompted some good class discussion, too.
Hampton, J. 1993. Selflessness and the Loss of Self. Social Philosophy and Policy, 10(1): 135-165
This is such a powerful post.
Ironically, a great deal of power tends to accrue to the person, usually a man, who encourages people, usually young and often women, to do what they want and not necessarily what their parents and families would like, in the name of liberating them to realize their potential, live life to fullest, etc., etc., etc. It occurs to me that one could get attached to that sort of power.
Indeed, Flippanter. Which is why I distinguish, as best I can, between being a mentor — who encourages a person to find herself, and a guru — who suggests exactly where she will be found.
My off-the-cuff response (oh, how I minimize my comment right away): As one of the chronically self-deprecating, I appreciate your post. It is very college-age specific, but clearly accurate.
So what happens later on? These women grow up, or grow old, or both. Some retain their faith, some don’t.
I was an enthusiastic Evangelical in my student days, but ever a liberal, the return to my Episcopalian roots (in my early 20’s) did not seem like a betrayal. But those sorts of affiliations (there were three there in case you weren’t counting) do not trump cultural realities. Even now, I have a huge struggle about my worth. (See Dorothy Sayers’ “Are Women Human?) I was raised to believe, at some level, that everyone else is more important. When I told my dad that I wanted to be ordained, he said, “Well, I just wish it was your brother saying this to me.” I have a BA in Biblical Studies and Greek and an MA in Theology. My brother (who is very intelligent) did not finish college. (BTW: I did not get ordained, but I have been a Senior Warden!)
Recently, this refrain has been rattling around in my brain: If I tell my truth, no one will believe me. I’m now a firm (jiggly) 40-something, but I feel my truth (aka my story, but stories are always made up, are they not?) is too fantastic, too tragic, simply too unbelievable. If I tell my truth, no one will believe me.
Blogging helps to some degree, but does the inner editor ever take a vacation?
Kudos to you for requiring journal writing. Writing has saved my life. So far.
Interesting how nobody seems to come to America so their kids can become world-famous actors, fashion designers, or even overpaid upper-level managers. How many generations does it take for the “American Dream” to reconcile with reality?
Wow. Found you at sk*rt. Fantastic article.
Well, I know you love getting more data from the frontlines, Hugo. I’m much older then- I’d assume- the majority of your students (28). I’m white, Canadian, middle-class, straight.
My experience with the basic phenomenon you describe is that I too have a trinity of nasty insults I repeat to myself ‘fat, ugly, talentless.’ As I’m an artist and make my living in the creative professions. There may be a divergence in that I don’t contextualize these words as something I actually am, but rather something I cynically believe ‘everyone’ really thinks. The ‘everyone’ is, I think, more the vast heap of ’society’ then individuals. And even sitting here now, in a pretty good mood, I can say things like ‘well, considering that anything larger then size zero is a big fat cow these days, and I’m a size 6, therefore I am fat.’ And ‘well, the standard of all boys I know is that airbrushed starved magazine model is beautiful- is ‘woman’, and if you don’t look like that, you’re a repulsive hambeast’ (dude- actual quote from many boys). ‘..so therefore I am ugly.’ And ‘well, female artists are always told their work is worthless, and their work is always stolen from them, or repressed savagely by male artists and critics, so by their estimation, ALL female artists are talentless because ‘everyone’ says that only men can have talent.’ And so on.
So it’s more that I’m deeply aware that, as Twisty says ‘men hate you.’ Or rather, ‘human beings despise women.’ Which arguably, we do. While this sort of thought process is destructive.. I don’t think it’s irrational. It’s a direct response to a social reality. It *is* horrible, what your students write.. but hell, if you live in a society that hates you, has always hated you, and probably will always hate you just for existing.. what exactly can you be expected to do?
Oh- and an addendum.
Glancing over the other comments, others have said that being a female artist is considered ’selfish’. Because, donchaknow, women are here to serve men. A woman who paints and writes rather then scrubbing skid marks out of some dude’s shorts is a big evil selfish person! ‘Hey- self-actualization and freedom and dreams are only for BOYS, bitch!’ So on.
Arguably me daring to ‘only’ be a healthy muscular size six rather then devoting myself to anorexia so I can be starved to death, and not being arsed to put on makeup or buy impractical clothes, or turn myself into a sexbot- SELFISH SELFISH SELFISH! ‘Hey man, women are only good for looking at and screwing! If she’s not sexy, she’s nothing!’ (more Actual Boy Quotes(tm)). Hell, I’ve got some real beauties from this one loser who was pontificating about how women need to be MORE anorexic, since ’so many chicks are fat. If a few of them die- good! They’re probably too old to fuck by then anyway!’ He finally got around to saying that women were being too selfish by not bowing to their duty to be eyecandy for him.
(And sorry for the double-post. )
I think I just figured out why I can’t haggle down a price to save my life: I feel selfish doing it. I’m as much a bargain-hunter as the next person, but I can’t look someone in the eye and say (in effect) “Your product is not worth as much as you say.” Part of it, I’m sure, is I’ve only rarely haggled. But it’s not just that. My sister, who has even less experience “buying stuff,” finds haggling completely natural.
If I end up doing any shopping in open-air markets in South America or Africa, I better bring along someone who can haggle.
I just posted a link to this in my LJ, as part of a discussion going around there about what sort of fiction might be “unacceptable”. I think it’s illuminating to see that, too, as being (in part) about accusations of “selfishness”: “Think of the children! Think of the rape victims! Think of how it makes the community look! Think of how some random pedophile will react!”
Stop thinking, in short, of what *you* want, what *you* desire.
I spent a lot of my time growing up believing that I was selfish. My mother used to say it to me any time I preferred to read rather than do housework, or eat rather than diet. I’d hear it from other kids at school when I chose not to comply with their expectations of what I should do, and instead did something different. I spent a lot of time being miserable about it, too, because being “selfish” is this bad, bad thing that you’re not supposed to do. Particularly not if you’re female and middle-class.
These days, I’m still female, middle-class, and selfish. I’m just unapologetic about it. I think the turning point for me came when I started realising that firstly, the behaviour which was condemned in me wasn’t even *noticed* when my younger brother performed it, and secondly, all anyone gained from being a doormat was more requests to give more time to more people for less reward. So these days I’m proud to be selfish, self-centred, and unrepentant about either.
It helps, I think, that I have a cast-iron ego, and also that I’ve reached the age (well, over 25 is the nearest guess, but it’s been getting steadily more entrenched since I hit 30) where I’ve realised that no matter what I do, I can’t “win” against society. I’ll never be a supermodel (I’m too short); I’ll never be the perfect housewife; I’ll never be an ideal trophy wife. Once I’d worked out that the game was rigged, it was a lot easier to ignore the rules.
So now I’m selfish. I don’t do things that I don’t want to do. I ignore calls on my time and money which will involve me putting in a lot of effort for little result. I’m childfree by choice (a decision which is directly related to my selfishness, because I know I would resent having children). I’m overweight, I’m a lousy housewife (I don’t like housework; if Himself wants the house perfect, he can do the work - there’s nothing about a broom or a vaccuum cleaner which requires a uterus to be comprehensible), I’m lazy, and I don’t suffer fools gladly. I’m also fairly happy with my life, and I don’t spend ages beating myself up because I’m not perfect, and I don’t satisfy the rules of a game I can never win.
Delurking after many years to thank you for this terrific piece, Hugo. With your permission, I would like to archive it, and also make a few copies for the young people who work for me. (art supply retailer)
As long as women are primarily defined by how well they meet the needs of the people around them, the freedom to pursue their talents, interests and ambitions is subverted. The double whammy you describe is one I see almost daily…an employee working towards the degree in education, despite her passion for art because she needs to be able to “balance” her obligations to her “future”family. Or the regular customer who has turned down lucrative job transfer offers because, as the only daughter, she is expected to be available to care for her still basically healthy, but aging parents.
The pattern is not even subtle. So accepted and embedded are these familial expectations, that often those making the demands are actually offended and bewildered when their own “selfishness” is pointed out.
And women who buck the pattern are punished in a variety of ways, the cruelest of which is the subsequent family strife, and the most obnoxious of which is widespread social criticism. Does anyone else remember Marilyn Quayle’s loathesome lecture on how “women do not wish to be liberated from their essential natures?”
Again, thank you, Hugo. Well done, young man.
As someone who works with young women and has exactly these conversations–
well written. This– and its succinct follow-up– are certainly among your best.
This is such an awesome post - I heartily wish I could be part of whatever classes you’re teaching, Hugo. They’d be way better for me than my current, oh-so-stale diet of boring business classes, I think :)
As far as the occurrence of the trifecta in my life (Random Lurker DID say you’d like more data from the frontlines, so I’m 20, black, and middle- to upper-class…Africanly speaking), it’s been on a steep downturn during the last three or so years that I’ve been in college and pretty much out of reach of my parents and my family. “Fat” and “slut” mostly feature jokingly - I wouldn’t know how to function healthily with my boyfriend if I didn’t think like what the world still quietly (or loudly) insists is a ’slut’, and I think I’ve wriggled free of a good portion of the ‘fat’ hate. I still feel like I starve myself sometimes, but I’m not half as concerned with the matter as I used to be. “My weight will go where it will,” is how I mostly feel now, with an addendum of “I’m damn hot and will be so anyways, so whatever”. There’s fear there still, but I can see it now, clearly outlined against everything else. And it is fading.
Now, as for “selfish”…ahem. I was a Christian roughly two years ago, and wrestling with my supposedly unhealthy desire to stop talking to/escape from my parents and my family, so I’ve called myself this and felt like it a lot. To cut a long story short, I’m now not a Christian, largely accommodating my desire to cut ties from my family, and trying more and more to bite my tongue when I want to call myself the s word. Not that that’s the only thing I stand to be called selfish for - I think I want to be childfree, and think I want to follow my heart by “writing the internet” (okay, so perhaps I need to rethink the ‘writing’ bit of that, considering the grammar of that statement. But it is so apt :D), and am still struggling with all of that. But somehow, in these last few years, I’ve discovered compassion for someone other than people have told me to have compassion for: myself.
Eventually, I believe that compassion will let me strike “selfish” from my internal dictionary, and will help me rub out the residues that “fat” and “slut” have left on the same page.
Thanks for sharing this post with the internet and, by extension, with me.
PS: Do you know how long it’s been since I saw stuff about Mary over Martha; of dividing the family rather than uniting it? All that Republican blather about focusing on the family suddenly takes on a very, very strange light viewed next to what Jesus actually said about Christianity.
magikmama said: “How many talented engineers, architects, scientists, doctors, accountants, economists, statisticians, mathematicians, professors and so on have we lost - and all of the ideas that never occurred - all because of a stupid cultural mandate?”
I ask myself the very same thing every time I think about the stupid cultural mandate known as “affirmative action:” So-called “diversity” initiatives; special scholarships, programs, set-asides, quotas, etc., for women and minorities only, etc., that exclude a large, significant portion of the population (i.e., white males) from enjoying equal opportunity.
True diversity, i.e., diversity of perspective, can be eye-opening, eh?
I ask myself the very same thing every time I think about the stupid cultural mandate known as “affirmative action:”
This is not a post about affirmative action, or men, or whining about having to share all the available spots with people who don’t look like you. What does this even have to do with what Hugo wrote?
Mr. Bad does this a lot.
And gets his ass banned for it, at that. Hugo seems AWOL. It’s a pity that he doesn’t do the bunny video thing for trolling.
I’m trying in vain to connect entitled dude-whining about AA to accusations of selfishness directed at women. Maybe I just need more coffee.
Hey, maybe women are all selfish in the mind of Whiner Dude for taking jobs that- doncha know!- all belong to WHITE MEN! I mean, women are never ever ever ever talented or qualified or- gasp!- more so then a random white dude. Those selfish bitches! Thinking they have a right to get jobs on their merits rather then being the ‘proper’ gender and race. The nerve.
B: Hugo wrote: “There is no bigger battle that I fight as a pro-feminist educator and mentor than the one against this incapacitating anxiety about “putting themselves first.” There is no greater gift that we can give our daughters and our little sisters than to remind them that following their bliss isn’t inherently selfish.”
I was pointing out that most white men, particularly those of Hugo’s persuasion, have also been goaded into the guilt-trip of “selfish” and thus have gone along with affirmative action, etc., instead of rejecting what Hugo calls the “incapacitating anxiety about ‘putting themselves first.’” However, I for one am doing what Hugo is asking women to do, i.e., rejecting the guilt-trip and questioning cultural norms that directly interfere with my right to equal civil rights, opportunity, etc., and at the same time demonstrating that there is considerable diversity in the way these issues are perceived.
Therefore, my post is directly related to Hugo’s thesis, and also to magikmamas reaction to it. Whether or not you agree with it is another story.
Random Lurker: At least I try to be civil about it, unlike you who simply hurl insults. Must be nice to not be banned for such things - were I to post in your style I’d be booted out of here in a second.
You could, you know, try to see things from another person’s perspective.
Mr. Bad, I’m back from vacation and hitting you with a complete ban until, oh, at least the Fourth of July. All of your future comments will be deleted before I even read them.
Here’s a question, looking at this from an alternative view. Being semi-objectivist in my viewpoints I’m all for anybody–male or female–who chooses to pursue a path of enlightened self interest. But speaking specifically of college kids, to what extent are Mom and Dad required to bankroll a son or daughter “pursuing their bliss?” Are the parents obligated to continue writing checks to the college if the son or daughter varies from the path previously agreed to, especially if it’s a path that’s going to lead to one of the “do you want fries with that” degrees?
My own personal view, using my daughter as the example since it’s unlikely my son will go to college: I don’t care what my daughter studies as long as it is something she can actually make a living doing. No “victim’s studies” majors (I don’t much care what she does for a minor), for example, or else she gets to find a way to bankroll college on her own. I’ll support her through college, as long as college is going to provide a way for her to someday support herself. I won’t bankroll her forever.
Hugo,
Well, so much for Christian charity, “diversity,” whatever. If you want to be a boot-licking slave to political correctness, who am I to spoil your party. Bye!
P.S.: Have a great Fourth. Since my mother’s half of the family’s been here since the 1600s, I think I need to remind you (being a relative newcomer and all) of the meaning of the holiday: The Fourth of July isn’t just a day to shoot-off fireworks and get drunk. It’s our Independence Day. You know, the day we revolted from an oppressive monarchy. Much like what we have now under political correctness…
This might be off topic a bit, but responding to The Chief’s notion of `do you want fries with that’ degrees* —
I’m pursuing my Ph.D in philosophy, and I fully expect to spend the next 35+ years closely involved in the lives of college students getting their BA in everyone’s first example of a supposedly useless major. I also happen to be in a department right now with an enormous number of philosophy major undergrads — we had something like 75 seniors graduate a few weeks ago.
I wasn’t around for any of the graduation events, but I do know we send a lot of philosophy majors to law school, to become high school teachers, to master’s programs in social work, and to seminary (it’s a Catholic university). A few of our ambitious students even did the extra coursework necessary for med school.
Philosophy majors are far from unemployable outside of academia. The same goes for gender studies, African-American studies, literature, and other such majors. It’s true that they aren’t going to hired by a Fortune 500 firm for $60k a year right after graduation, but no field is going to do that for more than a handful of its brightest students.
* `Victim’s studies’? Really? Come on, let’s be grownups here.
Yes, “victim studies” is one of those inflammatory phrases that has no place on this blog. Folks, if you’re fundamentally hostile to the goals of feminism, take your comments elsewhere. How many times must I say it?
As to the post….So, the power of these labels is in essence a threat by ’society’- as if that were a single entity - to keep lower class women in their place?
Funny how we teach our kids about sticks and stones, but apparently names do hurt us.
Yes, I’m sure we could all produce an anecdote about the art history major who became a Fortune 500 CEO. That aside, my question still remains: If it’s OK and not selfish (or at least not a bad kind of selfish) for a college student to pursue a degree in XYZ Studies despite what his or her parents wanted, is it OK and unselfish for the parents to then say “OK honey, good luck with that. And you might want to make an appointment with the financial aid office at your college, because we’re taking the college fund and going on a cruise?”
I think that if you want your kid to be successful in a career immediately after school it’d probably be a good idea to insist that they find a job in school and take on some of their financial responsibilities too. If they need help finding an apartment or buying a career wardrobe after they graduate, do that.
It’s good for both the parent and the kid to know what it really takes to be ready for the “real world” in whatever field they’re best suited for. But expecting that picking the right degree alone will provide a good job seems kind of naive in this job market. If they decide they’d like to pursue a non-traditional career, negotiate some level of personal responsibility on their part and future security on your part. They get a good starter job or internship as a student to help pay for tuition and you’ll help pay expenses if they need to do an unpaid internship or something after they graduate.
I went to a good liberal arts school and many of my friends had fairly practical majors. Many of them had a hard time finding work, while I got something right away with my English/Art Education degree. I had a decent amount of work experience on my resume already, but they had student positions and internships in other states that didn’t directly apply. My mom can’t afford to give me any kind of financial support, but I am able to live at home and reduce my expenses, which gives me a big leg up on getting rid of my loans and starting grad school earlier than I would otherwise.
Parents are often right to be leery of kids jumping into an academic field with no thought of its future application, but that just means both the parents and the student should try to learn more about the real situation before graduation comes. Picking the “top 10 most needed” career can help some people, or lead to a job they don’t like in a flooded market. Parents can be not only selfish but very short-sighted if they push their kids into something based only on their experiences and newspaper career articles.
is it OK and unselfish for the parents to then say “OK honey, good luck with that. And you might want to make an appointment with the financial aid office at your college, because we’re taking the college fund and going on a cruise?”
Selfish/unselfish just isn’t a very good axis for this one, because it avoids the real problems with it. It’s their own money; nobody has to support their children once they turn 18. So no, keeping it for themselves is not particularly selfish.
What’s totally assholish is holding up the expectation of college money for years, so that the kid plans his life around being able to go to college with his/her parents’ support, as many kids do, and then yanking the rug out from under them at the last minute because you want to control their course of study, career, and future life. Yeah, you can throw a kid out the door at age 18 and not be selfish — as long as you’ve told them all along, since they were little, that that’s what you had planned. But springing it on them at the last minute to coerce them into an MBA or whatever is beneath contempt.
This is just common sense, really; everybody puts conditions on their financial help, but some of those conditions are reasonable and some are not.
“We’ll pay for college as long as you maintain a 3.2 or better GPA” : reasonable. “We’ll pay for college as long as you keep a part-time job during the school year and a full-time job over the summers to help out”: reasonable. “We’ll pay what we can towards college, but just for four years, so if you take longer, you’ll have to take out loans”: reasonable.
But: “We’ll pay for college if you major in business/comp sci/economics, because we have the right to dictate your career training, and career prospects for the next 50 years”: not reasonable.
If you have a bachelor’s degree from a reputable college in ANY SUBJECT, and you are both presentable and intelligent, you can support yourself in the world without ending up on welfare or in some luridly- and ignorantly-imagined arts ghetto. This is not a secret. Nobody can seriously imagine that you have to be a non-humanities grad to get a good job, so the only reason to be a control freak about your kid’s major is, well, to be a control freak and a jerk.
Normal, non-jerk parents don’t play control games with tuition that way. They just nag their kids until they graduate with a double major, or a humanities major and a comp sci minor, and everybody’s happy.
Great post. Some of my worst struggles (and self-sabotage) have come from applying the “selfish” label to myself, and I have seen that undermining many–if not most–of the other women I know well. In many cases, “selfish” does seem to be shorthand for “not half-killing yourself trying to please other people”, or even “half-killing yourself but not pleasing anyway”. It can be equally fun when people around you are not so open with expectations, so you end up trying to decipher what they really want and feeling selfish no matter what you do, as nothing seems to satisfy. I have seen parents use their ostensible lack of expectations to keep their daughters, in particular, off balance this way, though thankfully haven’t been in that situation myself.
I must say, I was a bit surprised not to see anyone mention what struck me right off about the “coercion through college fund” thing: the original comment is absolutely dripping in privilege. An awful lot of people not only cannot depend on a parental college fund, they have to work to help make sure there is electric light to study by. (And, as I know well, some of them do not go into “practical” courses of study.)
Yes, as long as they are not harming anyone in the process, adults have the right to dispose of their money however it suits them. At the same time, they should realize that–according to the rules one is embracing to wield that privilege in the first place–their privilege necessarily involves some degree of power over other people, and potential to do harm.
I am having trouble putting all my concerns about this kind of situation into words right now without horrible clumsiness. I can say that, at the very best, claims that one is only exercising one’s own rights while using one’s privilege to coerce even nonrelatives smacks of sophistry.
Just want to congratulate you on really reading these journals … so often when journaling is a part of a class it seems the professor is wanting them for some sort of affirmation that the students read the books that were covered in exactly the way they were “supposed” to and got out of it what they were “supposed” to learn. There was even an undercover “journal guide” at a friend’s undergrad (what to write if you want an “A” kind of thing) and another friend of mine did not like a book her prof wrote and her professor sent her to the college counselor! It has been a solid decade since I was in that position, but from former students everywhere thanks for actually reading what is written instead of what you want to see on the page.
nice
Thank you so much for this post. Of all the things I struggle with of myself, “selfishness” brings me the least sleep. I have never been called “slut”, but I have been called “fat” and “selfish” and by far I would rather be called “fat”. But by reading your post, I wonder now if I truly am “selfish” in negative manner, because although I prioritize myself over others I think I do serve those who do have a need.
You have no idea how wonderfully helpful this is.
Its a real eye opener, thanks, really, thanks.
As a predatory male, manipulating women by working over thier self esteem, it’s very useful to know that Selfish, Fat and Slut are three keywords that I can now employ in the negative dialogue I normally conduct with women as I seduce them. Thanks to this clever and useful insight, I expect to be able to sucker in, use, and discard more women per month than ever before.
Cheers
UtterBastard
Did you really neeed Hugo to tell you that - I suspect are really a hermit, and not a successful philanderer at all
I love that you posted this again. I thought I’d read a lot of your archives; musta missed this one.
Please, please, please, help other men to “get it”. You could start with my brother, or go back in time and find my father and my first few boyfriends.
Were you always so intuitive about women’s inner lives, or is your insight primarily a consequence of teaching women’s history for so many years? Any suggestions on how to make men who don’t do what you do equally intuitive and emphathetic?
The real head-spinner is when you find that the thing that makes you feel “selfish” is also the thing that requires you to be most “self-less”: I speak of the choice to stay home and raise a child. I felt selfish doing this because I was not living up to my “potential” as a career woman, because I stopped “providing” for my family, because we don’t have health insurance because I, unlike most of my mommy friends, will not work only to have it. I’m selfish because I want to be with my daughter more than “better myself” by continuing my education or striving for higher career goals. Somehow it feels selfish (and this is some screwed up psychology and societal pressure) to want to give myself up for another person (even to say that is “giving myself up”…which I’m not, I’m living fully into who I am!). Go figure.
Came across your blog in Bing