On feminism and elitism---what is sticking in my craw...

It has taken me some time to get to the point where I could sit down and write about why I am so angry with Hillary and some of the people who support her. I want to address the rhetoric of her campaign. The propensity to sling labels around indiscriminately and to make assumptions about those who support Obama. I hope this doesn't get too long but I want to address the idea that anyone who supports Obama cannot be a feminist or is elitist.

I want to address both of these topics by way of telling you about myself. I grew up in a rural community right smack in the middle of America. Our family was dirt poor. My parents grew up during the Depression, born to families of little means. My father was one of 14 children and my mother one of four. I am one of eight. Of my four grandparents, only one had graduated high school. The rest had made it through grammar school or had no formal education at all. One of my grandfathers signed his name with an "X" when he conducted business. My father made it through eighth grade when he quit to work and help support his siblings. My mother graduated from high school. My father went off to the Great War after lying about his age to enlist and returned home after being wounded. He and my mother were married shortly after he returned. His life was hellacious as was ours. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when I was a small child and he could be extremely abusive when he decompensated. He was in and out of mental health institutions throughout my childhood and seemed only to be well enough to help create another child. He couldn't hold down jobs for long. And before you get judgement about my parents, I will point out that we were all born before the birth control pill was invented and there were no mental health support services for the families of those with CMI. You toughed it out.

We lived outside of town in an old house that had been renovated following a fire. We owned no car and many a day I walked barefooted into the town located a mile and a half away to buy a loaf of bread, a couple of pounds of hamburger. I hated the times when I needed to bring home milk. It was heavy and the road seemed interminably long. We wore hand-me-downs and went barefooted all summer because we could only afford new shoes once a year at the beginning of the school year. We received surplus commodities and food stamps when those came out. We worked odd jobs to pick up bits of change here and there when we were kids--mowing lawns, babysitting, raking, etc.

In the middle of this, my mother taught us that the only chance we had to better ourselves was to become educated. She pushed both her sons and her daughters to achieve academic excellence and told us that no matter how far we went, we could not leave each other behind. She told us that we could be whatever we wanted to be if we only put our minds and energies to our goals. Better yet, she taught by example. No matter how bad things got, she continued to work away at completing a bookkeeping certification program, studying late into the night. She made us all learn to take care of ourselves in all aspects of our lives. I can swing a hammer as well as my brothers can cook and sew. She read to us and took us to the library. We would bring home stacks of books and would pour over them for hours. I used to read with a flashlight under the covers after I was supposed to be sleeping. Mom would drill us on math, spelling, and made us practice grammar. Sometimes I still see diagrammed sentences when I close my eyes.

I went on to marry and have children with a Middle Eastern man, who is now deceased. In my late thirties, I married a man of West Indian descent. I love my mother's spirit of generosity and her acceptance of others. She welcomed into our family my husbands, and sisters-in-law of Phillipino and Mexican heritage. She took to her heart stray young'uns from the community and we have an extended family of brothers and sisters of the heart. She taught us tolerance and respect for others, no matter what their means. That "there for the grace of God go I" and that your lot could always be worse that it is at the present time.

We all have been successful in varying degrees and by our standards. The greatest accomplishment of my life is my education. I have three college degrees, which I worked hard to get. All but two of my brothers have college degrees. We are proud of those achievements because they were made against great odds. My status has never been higher than lower middle class and will never be. I felt I had arrived finally. I was a member of the working class, complete with the training that society demands of me to be productive.

My point in sharing my story is to explain why these labels of "elitist" and accusations of being anti-feminism that have been tossed around are deeply offensive to me. By working hard and educating myself, I have become "elitist" by some definitions of the term I've seen on this board. By refusing to leave my brothers or spouses or my son behind as we attempt to move foreward as a nation, I am not a feminist. I would like to think that my fellow Democrats can acknowledge that striving to acquire knowledge and use it does not make one "elitist." That want all to rise does not make you anti-feminist. I was taught better than that. I know in my heart that I am right about this. Either we all rise together or we all will fail together. I am very offended that I have been hearing Democrats adopt this language and apply it to other Dems. It is wrong.

When I consider Obama's story, I find some striking parallels to my own life. The stigmas are different, but the heart and will of the mother is the same. The teaching of the value of education and striving to do the best you can is the same. The lessons of caring for others and helping others is the same. Lessons of tolerance and acceptance for all is the same. The belief that there is a fundamental goodness in humans and that we should aspire to our better selves is there as well. All the derision and ridicule does not take away from the integrity of that vision or its sincerity.

I needed to give voice to my discontent. It has been bothering me because I know that Obama's story and my story are repeated in our land. Many of us have overcome much to get where we are and have done it through hard work and with integrity. Most of us are "working class," no matter what the color of the collar. Most of us believe in equality and justice and fairness. Let's practice it and drop the divisive labels.

It's a transference that is actively promoted by the GOP. And we can all see what happens when the anti-intellectuals are in charge.

Worked my own way through too, although I endured nothing as brutal as you describe. Great post.

:yourock:

This really cut to the heart of the matter. When you know it's possible to come from dire circumstances and make something of yourself, you can't help but admire someone else who did something similar, and wants to help others do it, too.

I hear you. My story isn't quite like yours, and yet there are parallels. My mother was divorced when I was six. My father was an old-fashioned con man who deserted us only after absconding with all our money. My brother worked two paper routes and we lived in my grandparent's basement while Mom went back to school to get her degree. She went on to get a master's degree and taught for over 30 years. She insisted that I become a teacher as well, and to apply myself to school. I was able to get into one of the top high schools in the nation (a university lab school with no tuition), graduate in the top 10% of my class, and to go on to graduate from the university with high honors (went to university on scholarship). The key to anything in life is hard work and education. Just because you get them doesn't make you "elitist".

The sad thing is that you know the Clintons agree with you. Look at Bill's story. But they will say anything to get a vote.

One of the major complaints against the feminist movement from the very beginning is that it only cared about the upper middle class female - that it was more like self-help "actualization" than about the reality of women's lives who were not wealthy enough to stay home in comfort and be miserable because of it.

I'm from the south and my grandparents were dirt poor during the depression. The way out of this sort of poverty is education. I think some of the resentment about "elitism" is among those who weren't able to go into white collar jobs after an education and have found that this nation has abandoned them since Reagan.

Hillary or nothing nonsense. Alot of people have been abandoned, particularly through the Bush years, and voting for McCain will not help that. I have been mad enough a few times to threaten to vote for Nader myself, so I know it happens. But it's not something we should do if we care about our own lives and especially those of our children (and all the other children out there). This country is on the wrong track. Even if it comes down to an Obama/Clinton or Clinton/Obama ticket I will still vote it. I don't think it's the strongest, but it's far better than choosing McCain.

Edited because I forgot to add that I loved this thread. Thank you to the OP for sharing. I come from rural blue-collar myself - my parents were factory workers. But they were well-paid for being high school graduates and we never lacked for anything. I put myself through college/grad school and now my children live a life I could barely dream of. So, that may make me a latte elitist, but the thing is I care about all the other kids out there too. I remember what it was like to have opportunities, despite coming from a working-class background, and I fear that kids today just don't have those chances. Now the gap is spreading so far between rich & poor, jobs are scarce, and hardly anyone can afford health care. We have enough wealth in this country to change this & we need to do so now.

Bartels did a study at Princeton about Income Inequality and over 50 years of presidents, the democrats were always better for everyone except for the top 1% in income 3/4 of that time. One in four years the republicans threw a bone to the middle/working class.

This doesn't seem to matter if you choose a prez b/c you'd like to have a beer with him. Personally, I'd rather have a president that can kick my ass because he's so smart and cares about democratic issues.

--way beyond the cost of living, and far less help from the government. How many of us, like me, say we worked our way through college but also had the benefit of those 2% interest NDEA loans? My parents couldn't afford to contribute anything, but with the benefit of scholarships and low interest loans I could take care of the rest with my own work.

than $1000 a semester. I had the GI bill because my dad is a disabled war veteran (that contributed about $400 a month) and I was able to pick up part-time jobs along with grants and low-interest loans. Granted it was 20 years ago, but I came out with less than $5000 in debt total for my undergraduate education from a solid state school. The only real debt I racked up was in grad school, but that is different because you are training for some type of specialty.

The other crazy thing is medical expenses. I remember when I started working in Washington DC at entry-level jobs and all my medical expenses were covered, with very small co-pays for prescriptions. Now we have over $700 coming out of my husband's check every month just to carry medical for our family, before the high deductibles and co-pays. We feel it at our income level, so I know others are having a horrible time trying to keep up with it. We need some type of single-payer option NOW.

and the view from here is pretty twisted sometimes. Don't you also feel deep inside that no matter how old you get or how well you do, you'll never be anyone but that young person you started out as? Deep down inside I know that I'm still a barefooted girl staring across a dusty field to the highway beyond and wondering where all those people in the cars are going and longing to go with them.

We are returning to an era when only the wealthy have access to higher education. :(

Witness Gloria Steinem and Geraldine Ferraro. And nowadays, the resentment is about the inability of affluent white women to see the reality that the vast majority of women STILL do not have access to any kind of real power, whether on our own or through our families, and that elevating Hillary to the presidency will not do a damn thing to improve our lives.

These women in the feminist movement left America behind by ignoring those women who did not fit into that narrow demographic they occupy. We are all a part of the greater whole.

this post-
the truth it embodies

and the person who wrote it.


Thank you for this Skidmore


:hug:
blu

the "Great War" refers to World War I. It's what it was called before the second one happened.

You said what I was feeling but so much more eloquently than I ever could have. I have a similar story but with the details a little less drastic. It boggles my mind that me, this person who at one time received food stamps and lived in the "projects" would now be considered "elitist" because I have an white-collar job, live on the west coast, and support Obama for president.

'elitist' we are. If someone posts that they can't go canvas because they have to finish their latte, I take that to mean your story is their story too.

Your story and Obama's story IS the American dream. The Republican party (and others)have tried to make it like he doesn't have that in his history so they swipe him twice by saying he's not patriotic and elitist.

I would wish that you could send that to the Obama campaign and that he could read it. It's exactly what we ALL should be attuned to, imho.
:applause:

and I wanted to say that your story touched me deeply. Your mother is the kind of inspiration that I hope and pray I can be for my own children.

I know this doesn't address the real point of your post, but I just felt I needed to say it... give that mama of yours a hug from me!:hug:

People fail to understand that single parenting is a reality for many women in legally recognized marriages. It's difficult being both mother and father to children, being the one who always says no without reinforcement from another parent. Funny how kids always remember the noes. My son one time told me I never said yes when he asked for something, but always said no. I made him keep a log for one week of his requests to me and how they were answered. He never complained again and came to an understanding that the noes were to requests I could not meet financially or were given in risky circumstances for him. I had to chuckle when my daughter did the same thing with her son recently.