Reflections on Elliot Chapt 10... and Katje's Truck-Smashing

As promised (though a bit late) I'm posting about the second half of the Elliot reading for Global Feminism here. There's several overlaps and intersections between my finishing this week's reading and the world beyond the classroom. I'll explain as I go.

From my reading in chpt 10 of the Elliot: The Land of Real Men and Real Women: Gender and EU Accession in Three Polish Weeklies (Graff, 2004) I found Graff's arguments about gender talk to be especially interesting (e.g. “gender blindness” “gender crisis” “return of the real man” “renegotiation of the sexual contract” “crisis of masculinity”, etc.) Below is a snippet from the chapter regarding the media's preoccupation with masculinity, feminity, and sexual orientation in conjunction with Poland's nationalistic discourse (p. 199).



Looking back at the reading, I see that Polityka, Newsweek, and Wprost produced distinct visions of gender within specific discourses on nation and state, focusing on heterosexuality, fertility, and tradition. We see with this specific example that cultures around the globe continue to communicate mixed messages about women’s changing positions in society, whereas there is a certain pride and/or shame toward histories and national identities that hedge(d) upon patriarchal.



The dialectical relationship of both genders within the power structure of the state (as Dr. Gajjala mentioned during class) relate to the heteronormative "natural order" that Graff continues to challenge (as well as the three publications.) This is sort of what I want to address in my own little realm of the earth and my naive perspective on women's empowerment.....

So, this will be a stretch, but come along with me in my scatter-brained thought process.....



My younger sister crashed her truck into two trees during our interesting discussion in class on Tuesday afternoon. It happened around 3:20p. Here's an idea of the damage (it's totalled):



Not knowing that she was serious when she texted me what had happened, I quickly called her back right after we let out (about an hour later.) For a moment everything stood still until she told me she was ok. Although she was jostled around quite a bit, there were no serious injuries (she was by herself.) The fear soon dissipated and I was able to concentrate on hearing about the vehicle damage and how she would tackle the new conundrum set before her: WHAT TO DO???

Almost instantly, Katje was forced to renegotiate her standing within a system that, similar to the traditional Polish discourses exemplified by the media in 2004-2005, would not necessarily empower her to decide what to do as an adult woman in a "free" country. It seems quite simple-minded and elitist for me to focus on this example when there are more immediate concerns (boohoo the American consumer driving her SUV has such a "problem" to contend with right?), but from my perspective, her identity only allows for a few options when contending with fixing her truck on her own. I'll explain this better.

As a single female, college graduate (who paid for her own education) living in a state with one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation, Katje is fortunate to be gainfully employed and driving the truck to start with. The loan she was paying back was of higher interest because of other credit issues she had incurred by taking out college loans. In the land of "the American dream", a college education is supposed to lead to a well-paying job, one where, if you total your truck, you can usually go and work everything out within a few days on your own, affording another vehicle to replace the one that was damaged (by way of the insurance that was required.) Yet, this is not necessarily the case for Katje. In this capitalisitc, patriarchal system, she may not have as many options due to her "decisions" about what to drive, where to work, what to study at the university, and how to afford this all on her own income (because a "modern" woman wouldn't be doing herself any service by depending on her father or another man to help in sustaining her.)

So what does she do now? Take out another loan to "get ahead?"

I don't know if any of this makes sense or not, but I thought at one point there was a connection between the reading and my Midwestern example....

And BTW Katje's a pretty decent driver in the snow. Maybe it was the fault of the vehicle manufacturer... or the road commission for not having funding to take better care of the ice on the country road... or the property owner who couldn't afford to maintain the trees near the road where she slid off.

I'm just glad she's alright... and that she can somehow get to work so she can pay all this money back to live in a flawed system where she may or may not be deemed "empowered."