Harry Potter and the Bhagavad Gita, and Why I Hate Some Feminists

I'm a dork and I wholeheartedly relish that fact.  I was with some friends today and we were talking about the Bhagavad Gita, 2,000 year old Hindu text that discusses a huge variety of topics that include the different states of happiness.  Someone asked how would a person know if they were happy - in return I asked, "Could you conjure up a Patronus on the spot?" And then I likened the Gita's idea of passion (which I'm more declined to interpret as greed) to a fat kid on Halloween: MUST. HAVE. TEH CANDIES.  OMNOMNOMNOMNOM.  So that's the identity of mine that I love, the one familiar with cultural references but intelligent enough about "important" things (read: scholarly) to save myself from becoming a pop culture trashcan.  It's that intersection that I dance on and I love it!  

That's the dorky part.  But I realized something today.

Ever since I started interviewing for women's colleges I've resisted the feminist narrative (also my new favorite word) that women are oppressed and there's a glass ceiling.  In my life, I have always felt privileged and never felt like there were men holding me back or evaluating me in a particular way because I had different body parts.  There were gender stereotypes to deal with, yeah, and I still encounter those ("Girls are more picky than guys in buying shoes"), but it's not like I personally have ever felt like I've been marginalized for any reason.  

Because of this, I don't normally define myself as a feminist.  I understand the various, numerous, feminist rhetorics that include marginalization, oppression, the need to be Amazons to overcome the male suppressors, and the desire to break away from the patriarchal, western society in order to create a definition of "woman" that isn't totally bound in the gender binary.  I get it!  And I adhere to it, to a degree, as all feminists do.  I'm not saying feminists are evil or should be scorned, and even the definition of "feminist" is problematic because there isn't one, single definition that all women adhere to.  Some are like me (I prefer to think I'm either moderate or a humanist interested in women's roles), others are more extreme, others are less extreme.  

My real problem is with feminist scholars because the one's that are GOOD are few and far between.  The feminist rhetoric that bothers me so much seems to come from their theories and their studies.  Recently I did a paper on Women in Vedic India.  The usual story is that women were oppressed and little more than receptacles for their husbands' seed and domestic drones.  But one writer did an article on menstrual taboos in India and I recoiled.  Not only did she employ the whole "oppression, voiceless, rendered helpless" story, but she used the menstrual taboos and twisted the contents of the Vedas (another ancient Indian text) to suggest that, once-upon-a-time, India was matrifocal (women based, focused on mothers) rather than androcentric (all about the guys).  It's a common rhetoric, the idea of the Golden Age past (in her case, matrifocal India) that once existed, the crappy present (women in India are still utterly oppressed today), and the Utopian future that can resurrect the Golden Age (women will be more powerful then men because we're more natural and more in tune with nature and can make babies!!).  As a feminist the author made it clear that she longed for an age where women were in power, as a scholar she strives, possibly too hard, to create a basis to legitimize that return and I have SERIOUS problems with that.  

If there is anything that I long for, in terms of gender theory, culture, economics...anything, it's balance.  A balance of power in which both sides are equals.  I ask too much, I know, and I agree that women have been bound in a masculine society (white males wrote the western history textbooks, it can't be helped) and need to escape that somehow, but something has to take place, where the stereotype shifts so that men and women are on equal footing in every aspect.  Is that even possible?  

In the Pond

I tend not to update this blog unless there's something I truly want to say or express, something that needs the medium of writing to form a logical and coherent examination of the topic at hand.  As much as I admit this is a blog to record a personal journey, I try to steer clear of anything truly emotional so I can remain objective.

The topic I'm attempting to examine?  My own cultural identity.  

Outright, I'm American.  Born and raised.  I remember (vaguely) when Clinton was first elected and the legacy of McDonald's and 90's alternative rock is as ingrained in my DNA as 9/11.  Honestly, "Where were you when the towers fell?" has become my generation's equivalent to "Where were you when Kennedy was shot?" - a question so uniquely American that I wonder if it has any significance anywhere else.  

Before I go on, I have to point out that I've been living in England for the past month, and this is my second long-term stay (the first was for nine months, three years ago).  I have adopted this country as my own home and it has adopted me.  More than once my boyfriend has told me that I was born on the wrong side of the Pond and I've had an American tell me I had a "very British aura".  I drink more tea than any British person I know, I innately adhere to the British sense of courtesy (ex. drowning man says "Excuse me, could you possibly give me a hand if it's not to much of a bother?" as opposed to "HELP ME, DAMMIT!!!!!"), and am more inclined to laugh at Monty Python and Rowan Atkinson than I am Jeff Dunham or Carlos Mencia.  Since arriving in London a month ago, that British "identity" has expanded to prefer certain British word choices over American ones ("torch" for "flashlight", "hob" for "stove"), to accept British music as "better" than American music, and to simply be more British in general.  Although that last item is frustratingly vague.  To my point - living in America I have always felt like I was on the wrong side of the Pond, that I had a different sensibility than my fellow American, and living here I find myself easily slipping into a British cultural identity.  Tea and torches and rain-soaked cobbled streets?  Yes please!

Is this a good thing?  Maybe.  It certainly helps me feel less exotic among British people - instead of being a Dodo among magpies I'm just a mocking bird among magpies.  Slightly different, but not enough to cause a fuss.  But I'm still American!  Down to the core and that can't be changed!  There's a sense of individualism, a sense of speak up and getting straight to the point (cursing for emphasis if need be), that can't be found in Britain.  And though I am not as loud and outright as some Americans, I still feel the need to fly an American flag out among the Union flags and blare Sum 41's "Fat Lip" over Adele.

Much later:
Post to remain unfinished.  I forgot the exact train of thought but I still am aware of how..."other" I am, both in the States and in England.  There's a kind of rock n roll sensibility about America.  It's the alternative American narrative about personal freedom, not freedom in the symbolic sense that seems to be constantly employed in political rhetoric, but the simple freedom in being allowed to do what you want with your life.  The narrative that includes the idea that you wear denim and t-shirts because you're casual and comfortable and free, that includes the spaces where everyone knows you but you can still be quiet.
Maybe, then, it's not the American narrative that I adhere to in any sense, not even the one I've created just now.  Maybe it's the JUNEAU narrative that I secretly adhere to (if you're a stranger reading this blog, I lived in Juneau, Alaska for nine months prior to my time in England): the story that talks about the coldest, shittiest weather with the longest, darkest nights that suddenly transform into the best weather with the longest, brightest days; the quiet people who wear denim and extra-Tuff boots and heavy coats because in the face of nature they stand strong; but they respect and love the nature around them, they're proud of the mountains that tower above them, the winds that threaten to tear the city of 30,000 apart, the choppy sea that isolates them, and the constant rain and fog that clings to their skins and souls; the artists who band together and CREATE to protect themselves and other from the gloom; the rock n roll sensibility that means going to a bar and having a beer and listening to a band (whose members all do this because they work for the government during the day) try to bang out "China Grove"; the people that just...wholeheartedly take you in so that you find yourself napping on their couch for Thanksgiving or eating halibut and watching crappy movies with them; the people that put "Southern Hospitality" to shame.
I guess that's it.  I'm not American after all - I'm Alaskan.  And it doesn't matter if the people in Alaska don't consider me Alaskan or if the people I met there don't even remember me, it's the Alaskan narrative that I hold close to my heart, even while I'm in Britain.  And it makes sense, because I'm just like Alaska: American, but so distant from everyone else's definition of "American" that I might as well be foreign.
Glad I cleared that one up.  :)