women's studies, week 7

I'm sitting here, killing some time and eating a big bag of Sour Patch Kids. I have absolutely no willpower when it comes to Sour Patch Kids. Soon, my tongue will be numb, my jaw will be tired, and I will regret eating so many. I definitely need portion controlled Sour Patch Kids. Good story, Kris.

I met with LD last week and told him that women's studies just isn't for me. It's too theoretical and too abstract for me. For example, I knew that this wasn't for me during the third week, when our professor asked us to define and think about the difference between sex, sexual, and sexuality. Seriously, if you can't even get me to contemplate sex (something related to my research interests), then there's no hope. Last week, we actually talked about the meanings of interdepartmental, intradepartmental, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary. I don't actually remember what was said, but I did write this all down so I could share it with you. (you're welcome) Wait, there's more: We also talked about how A studies B with the methodology of C. Next week should be a better class since we're going to have our own happy hour. With wine and hard liquor, how can it be a bad class? All right, here is this week's post:

A common thread of this week’s readings is culture, nationalism, and identity. Some things that I kept in mind as I was reading are who gets to be a citizen, who is considered a citizen, who may reproduce citizens, and is citizenship synonymous with full personhood?

One of the things that Ferguson does in his text is discuss how national liberation struggles perpetuate heterosexist, racist, and sexist practices. Though these efforts purport to liberate people and preserve positive cultural values, they instead uphold a culture that has a normative bias and perpetuate hegemonic practices. Ferguson uses his discussion of the Moynihan report to illustrate how liberal black nationalists united with conservatives to repress black women. Due to a discourse of black matriarchy, liberals were opposed to female headed households for sexist reasons, while conservatives were both sexist and racist. Both of these groups sought to regulate black women, and black women suffer from policies that are both sexist and racist. Black women were constructed in a way that blamed them for impeding and going against the ideals of equality of opportunity, liberty, and competition. It was believed that the African American nonheteronormative relations were the antithesis of the guiding US values. Therefore, welfare state policies operate to impose a heteropatriarchal culture upon African Americans.

Fraser and Gordon trace the genealogy of dependency as a keyword of the U.S. welfare state. Dependency has always been equated with subordination, but its meaning became democratized with the rise of industrial capitalism. The meaning of independence was central in economic and political discourse, and wage labor was associated with independence. The usage of independence and dependence became gendered and racialized; therefore, the term dependency was suitable only for people of color and white women. Fraser and Gordon go on to discuss the rise of the welfare state and its two-tiered track. Dependency continues to be a racialized and gendered term, as well as stigmatized. Welfare dependency is considered to be a pathology and behavioral syndrome.

What is interesting to me about Fraser and Gordon’s article is how it can be applied to notions of citizenship and full personhood. Historically, citizenship was a masculine status and independence and employment were prerequisites. When we consider this, we can see how independence was associated with citizenship and dependence was not. Not only did the constructions of independence and dependence prevent white women and people of color from attaining citizenship status, formal barriers were also in place to exclude them.

Even though formal barriers to citizenship were lifted, we find that women and people of color on public assistance still do not attain full personhood status. Work is still a signifier of independence, and society constructs dependency in a way that stigmatizes those who receive welfare state benefits. It is believed that there is something inherently wrong with those who need public assistance, and because of this dependence, they are not truly deserving of full personhood status.