I have heard many people recently dismissing the influence of society and popular culture, saying it doesn’t really affect us as individuals, or that it doesn’t have to (the old myth of the meritocracy and individuality: we choose to be influenced, HA). This small excerpt explains why this is not the case. Even if you choose not to follow the national culture, and limit its influence in your own life, it still affects you. This is why:

“The national culture defines conventions and lends meaning and coherence to individual experience.”

This is why national trends matter, why they affect and impact your life even if you defy them. This is why it is not enough to simply say, “I am not opressed/repressed” or “I am not sexist” and take no further action.

We DO have a national culture, one that devalues women and children and their experiences. One that is cut-throat, measures success only by dollars and not by values, one that is, above all, CONSUMING. We are consumers, and we consume. Everything and everyone around us. We are all little individual digestive cells within the great American horde, the massive gluttonous beast, and we are eating up the world like a slow but steady python, leaving nothing left.
We Americans don’t seem to be able to grasp that we are sending a collective message to a) every other American citizen, and b) every government and individual in the world — and that collective message is one of consumption, opportunism, and greed. It is not about death and destruction so much as indifference — we don’t WANT people do die or the resources of this world plundered, we just don’t care if they are as long as our goals are met. We don’t see that we are sending this message because each of us sees the variety and disparity of messages amongst individuals and groups, so we do not think we are acting collectively. But we are. We are a nation of over 300 million people — the rest of the world doesn’t see the sub-groups. Hell, many of US don’t see more than a dozen sub-groups, which doesn’t even come close to encompassing the true variety of America. But this doesn’t matter. They, and we, just see “Americans” and “American popular culture”. And it is not a pretty sight.

Changes in your own life are not an end, they are merely a springboard. One of us cannot make a difference if we are the only one trying, the only one stopping and thinking and beating our lonely drum. We can only make a difference as part of a whole, as a group. And the only measure for success is by whether our national culture reflects our changes.

Feminism will be dead when it is no longer necessary, and it will be no longer necessary when women — and men — are no longer exploited, no longer raped spiritually, mentally, and physically; when we are no longer forced into categories based on genitals; when it is not genetics but choice and ability that determines the path of your future. When the meritocracy is REAL, and when human life has a basic, intrinsic value that is not determined by the marketability of one’s talents or your mental and physical abilities, but by the fact that you are human, and alive, and deserve dignity and respect and self-determination, PERIOD.

When this happens, feminism will not be dead, it will simply be — ascended into culture, a basic element of existence, a block in the foundation of our society. It will impact more than women, it will impact the world. If done right, it will not be about consumption, about freedom based on what you can buy and value based on objects you own, but about simple acceptance of your value. All feminists have ever wanted was to be taken seriously.
Part of that future involves a radical shift in American values. When will we stop consuming the air, water, and earth as if these are inexhaustible resources, an infinite supply? When will we stop consuming people — their bodies, their lives, their souls — as if these are insignificant?

Will we change?

* This is an adaptation of the above title for publication in OAH Magazine of History, for the July 2004 issue.

The Devil’s Advocate in Mellryn’s brain: But how do you know marriage sucks? You’ve never been married.

Mel: I’ve never been in a car wreck either, and I don’t need to be, in order to know that car wrecks suck. It is a simple conclusion based on my observations of car wrecks and hearsay about other car wrecks. In virtually every instance I’ve seen personally and heard others talk of, being married ruins the relationship.

Devil’s Advocate: So you’re not even going to try marriage?

Mel: Like I said, I don’t need to be in a car wreck to know it would suck. I don’t need to be in a car wreck to know I don’t want to be in one, and I don’t need to get married in order to know I’d be unhappy and regret it.

Devil’s Advocate: Seriously though, how do you know if you don’t try it? Are you going to take the bad experiences of other people and let them interfere with you being happy?

Mel: Being married wouldn’t make me happy. It would make me feel trapped. Being married just makes it a huge pain-in-the-ass to leave the person you’re married to if you want to, so you end up putting up with someone you love(d) being a pain-in-the-ass, when you wouldn’t have otherwise, because it’s MORE of a pain-in-the-ass to leave them than to just suck it up and put up with their shit. If you’re married, your significant other has to push you to a really unhappy point in order to make you willing to plow through the legal process of leaving them (which, in case you haven’t picked up on it, is a huge pain in the ass). Marriage results in relationships turning into a cost-benefit analysis, instead of being about caring and loving the person you’re with. Relationships, intimate or not, shouldn’t be a cost-benefit analysis. That just sucks.

Devil’s Advocate: Isn’t comparing a marriage to car wrecks a bit disingenuous? And insulting to married people, to compare their marriage to a car wreck?

Mel: Perhaps, but being insulting is not my intention or my point, it’s merely an unfortunate side-effect.

Devil’s Advocate: I concede that some marriages turn IN to car wrecks, but not all marriages are like car wrecks. Would you stop driving because of the fear of getting into a car wreck?

Mel: No, marriages don’t automatically turn in to car wrecks, they just set up a situation where getting into a car wreck is almost inevitable. Like drunk driving. Driving while drunk increases the chances of you doing something incredibly stupid and dangerous a thousandfold. (Ok, I’m not actually sure what the exact statistics of impairment and it’s affect on accidents and their seriousness are. Think “hundredfold” if it makes you feel better.) And it decreases your ability to react in time to avoid disaster and serious harm to yourself and others. Worse, most people who drive drunk probably think that they’re “fine” in terms of driving straight and reaction time, because your perception of your drunkenness is thrown off by the fact that your judgment is compromised by your drunkenness. Some people do it and get home without a scratch. Those people have thus learned that driving drunk may not have consequences, which increases their chances of doing it again, which increases their chances of hitting and killing someone/something. It’s a vicious cycle.

Marrying has the same affect on your relationship as driving while drunk does on your reaction time and likelihood of getting into an accident, and when you do, getting into one involving serious injury and damage. It skews your judgment and makes you apathetic and complacent. You think everything’s fine, but other people who are sober (usually unmarried people) can see you swerving all over the road. And maybe you get home fine, several times. But eventually something bad will happen.

Devil’s Advocate: Comparing marriage to driving while drunk is disingenuous too, almost as much as that hated “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” analogy you hate so much. Women are not cows to be bought and having sex is not like “milking”. Getting married is not the same as driving drunk in terms of disaster and harm inflicted, because driving drunk is much more likely to result in a terrible accident than getting married is to result in a terrible end of your relationship. If the divorce rate is a measure of the success of a marriage, then you can look at it positively as a sign that 50% of marriages succeed. How do you explain that many successful marriages?

Mel: No, the analogy isn’t perfect. That’s the biggest problem with analogies, is that there are no two situations which exactly resemble another enough to be used properly. But neither is using the divorce rate as a measure of a marriage’s success a good idea. Just because you haven’t divorced doesn’t mean the marriage is good, or works, or is successful, or makes both partners happy and better off than they would be if they weren’t married. I am convinced that those relationships that are happy and successful marriages succeed in spite of the fact that they are married, not because of it.

Devil’s Advocate: So you’re going to stop driving in the hopes of avoiding a car wreck? You won’t get married?

Mel: No, I am still driving; I am still in an intimate, committed, possibly “forever” relationship. I’m just not going to drive while drunk, because I want to avoid a car wreck, and driving drunk greatly increases the possibility that a car wreck will happen. Ergo: I’m not going to get married because I want to avoid the apathy and disconcern resulting from marriage, because of the affect that such apathy and disconcern causes on a relationship. I am not getting married to avoid increasing the possibility that my relationship will end up being a fount of misery and a source of dissatisfaction and pain.

But I don’t think my previous postings reflect the true depth of awareness I’ve ascended to in the past few short months. Maybe I’ll bring them back one day…they were good, just…shallow. Young. And yeah, maybe I am young, though I’m vain enough to think I’m not that shallow, but there’s so much MORE to what other feminist bloggers are saying, so much more substance, that it inspired me to “take it to the next level”.

Sure, it’s irritating to seem to be forced to choose between being attractive and being taken seriously. Sure, it sucks when guys catcall and make boobs comments and evaluate my looks, even if I don’t know who the fuck they are. And yes, I still get pissed off when a girl says she’s “fat” because she can manage to pinch some skin between her fingers.

But honestly, that’s just the feminism springboard. I’m now diving headfirst into the pool.

I have declared my Women’s Studies major.

And I’m going to use as many horribly cliché metaphors as I possibly can. Bwa ha ha ha.