From One Survivor to Another

On “welfare” and the language surrounding it

Today in my WGS class, my friend browngurlwfro talked about her research on the welfare system in Cincinnati, Ohio. Welfare in general is pretty messed up in this country. There’s policies in place where they only give you benefits if you undergo sterilization (eugenics for poor people, am I right?), and other policies where if you have a second kid you don’t get benefits for that kid, AND you get less benefits for the first kid, or you get more benefits if you marry the father of your children, or you get less benefits if you’re a man because of patriarchal expectations that you are the breadwinner. It’s all a big mess and it varies state by state.

What really struck me, however, was this realization I had about the language surrounding welfare. I don’t know why I’ve never thought about this before— it seems kind of obvious.

First of all, “welfare” is a very broad term that describes multiple social support programs, including:

• Medicaid/Medicare
• Head Start
• Food Stamps (WIC, EBT)
• Disability Payments
• Unemployment (in some states this is a separate program, in others it falls under the same category)
• Section 8 public housing

This is a HUGE umbrella term that describes a lot of things that people are now using with the economic downturn— especially unemployment benefits.

I’ll be honest— I’d never thought of myself as someone who was once on welfare, because I didn’t realize medicaid (KCHIP in my state) fell under that umbrella. It’s also kind of fucked up, because my family was apparently poor enough to be at the very bottom of the KCHIP sliding scale and not have to pay anything for doctors or medication, but we still didn’t qualify for food stamps, housing assistance, or Head Start. I’m assuming that this is because my mom is not a citizen and was on a visa— which is probably racist, and is just ridiculous because it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy of forcing poor people of color to keep on being poor.

This all makes me wonder: how many people out there are on “welfare”, but don’t actually realize it? Because it has taken me forever to just have someone flat out say that X program falls under this category— no one talks about it, which is another problem of its own. There was a post on Sociological Images a few weeks ago on this, but now it’s been taken off with no explanation. It has some pretty surprising statistics, though.

Oh, and also, apparently welfare programs are known as “entitlements” in bureaucratic/law circles, which is a whole other fucked up thing in itself. It’s not an entitlement if you need it or your family will starve to death. So ridiculous.

here’s a very obvious list for Occupy Wall Street

What will happen if we critique the Occupy Wall Street movement and create dialogue on gender, sexuality, race, nationality, colonialism, and disability:

• The movement will suddenly explode into a million pieces and unravel overnight (because PoC, women, GSMs, and other minority groups are totally trying to support the man and they’re all traitors).
• The movement will suddenly stagnate (because minority groups are totally incapable of doing this work and they haven’t been in active resistance for centuries).
• The movement will break into a hundred different factions (because the only way something like this works is if everyone is exactly the same and we all share the exact same views). 
• The movement will be seen as unorganized by the general public (because the best way to get the 99% on your side is to homogenize it and erase all individual need and difference, amirite?).

What won’t happen ever, not even a little bit, it we if we critique the Occupy Wall Street movement and create dialogue on gender, sexuality, race, nationality, colonialism, and disability:

• The movement will come to better represent the 99% it claims to stem from.
• We’ll have a greater number of minds and perspectives from which we can draw strategies for change.
• If things go far enough, it will end in a change that uproots the entire system and benefits everyone, rather than a simple “regime change” that only benefits a few privileged people.
• People will have the opportunity to grow and learn more about themselves and others.
• People will actually get what they need.

Oh wait I got the list names backwards

Paula Rothenberg fails.

in response to Paula Rothenberg’s Snatched from the Jaws of Victory: Feminism Then and Now, which we read in my WGS seminar class (I think because the professor wanted us to rip it apart, not because she agrees with it).

[trigger warning for some slut shaming and discussion of rape culture]

At the beginning of this piece, Rothenberg mentions these women who wore shirts that appeal to a patriarchal, domineering sexual gaze. Later on, she brings this example back, and, in the context of feminism as a movement which sought to give women the right to personal decisions, she argues that although these are personal choices, they empower by appealing to the male gaze—they hardly break down or challenge the social systems around the wearer. Later near the end, she uses a similar example of the charitable organization which, in its efforts to fight poverty, decided to give women business attire. 

This feels like a contradiction to me; why is it that the women wearing shirts that read “dirty girl” or “discipline me” have cultural agency and are meaningful in perpetuating patriarchal norms, whereas giving women business suits is considered a foolish way of attacking poverty? Perhaps giving women suits is also a way of appealing to patriarchal standards of politeness and formality, but when you are poor and struggling to get by on food stamps, I don’t think you’d care too much about capitulating to certain standards to survive. This argument could also be racist and classist, because who has the (most) agency and ability to surpass codes of formal dress and politeness? White, middle class people. The fact is, suits are exorbitantly expensive, sometimes in the hundreds of dollars (a few weeks of food, rent for a month even), but they are often required to get certain jobs—or at least to increase one’s chances. Perhaps Rothenberg, in her university position, has forgotten this.

This reminds me of a similar conversation a few weeks ago when some woman  students at a university decided to start a pole dancing club.  Is pole dancing laden with patriarchal sexual connotation about women as objects for male consumption? Yes. But did those women care? No—in fact, they did it because they wanted some kind of healthy activity, and pole dancing actually requires a lot of athletic prowess. These women were not becoming strippers because of this club; they became healthier and it gave them something interesting in their romantic relationships.

This is where I have a big problem with some feminist practice. In our conversations about rape culture, the point is argued over and over again that it shouldn’t matter how women dress or act; no one deserves to be raped. The problem, we argue, is not that women are “asking for it”, but that there’s a dangerous culture in which women are dehumanized to the point of being less than human. The problem is not with women dressing a certain way; it’s with the men who perceive women as objects. So why is that when it comes to these shirts that we suddenly turn right around and start blaming the woman, and not the person with the sexist gaze?

The problem is not that pole dancing or wearing a “discipline me” shirt are somehow innately, essentially sexist acts; it’s the cultural meanings that have been constructed around them that are problematic. This kind of thinking is also troubling in that if we suggest a brand of feminism that is only well-dressed, quiet, and comfortable, then we’ve basically come full circle back around into puritanical, conservative mannerisms. It suggests that there are “rights” and “wrongs” in feminism, which opens up a giant can of worms surrounding dualistic, western style thinking; is the world really as simple as this or that, or should we be dissecting these choices and create possible alternatives at the same time?

p.s.: I am also skeptical of Rothenberg’s reliance on judicial systems/class action lawsuits, as well as her very…essentializing, all-encompassing “we” and “women” statements. Feels a lot like what Andrea Smith calls out as white woman feminism that relies on patriarchal justice systems to do its work. Is the justice system really the only choice? I think not. Rothenberg seems to have a serious lack of faith in women and their ability to decide for themselves, as well as to create the change that they want. And her argument about feminism not working because we now have lots of eating disorders and plastic surgery? That’s not a fault of feminism; it’s the backlash in response to it. That’s proof that feminism is working. The increased visibility of these issues is also because of feminism.  The post partum depression argument? That’s the work of patriarchy extending its reach to control women and women’s mental health (as it has done so for centuries), not the result of feminism.

so in my women & african americans in politics class, there are two privileged white republican dudes

and it’s funny, because we are at berea college, which is 60% female and 30% people of color. so when these guys tried to argue that taxing the rich more is unfair, or that poor people just aren’t trying hard enough to not be poor, pretty much everyone else in the class disagreed with them and told them that they were wrong.

if you wanted to protect rich white dudes in the top 2%, you shouldn’t have come to the first interracial, co-educational school in the south. come on now. the system isn’t even working for you if you met the income qualifications to come here.