tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8743841912028246535.post2487369727810972569..comments2023-10-10T06:48:40.299-03:00Comments on the feminist librarian: real-life adventures in class, gender, race, and sexualityannajcookhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17573723390785613915noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8743841912028246535.post-63179310754219920812012-12-01T19:45:21.144-04:002012-12-01T19:45:21.144-04:00Thanks Molly, for both your kind words and thought...Thanks Molly, for both your kind words and thoughtful reflections.<br /><br />In terms of parents and feeling safe, it's interesting because my dad is one of those "things will generally turn out okay" kind of people while my mother worries a lot ... but I do think both of them expressed general confidence that we kids were competent to take care of ourselves in basic ways. And I don't remember a LOT of gender-differentiated anxiety about our movements in the wider world (I did a lot of independent travel as a teenager, for example). The handful of times my dad raised safety concerns for me he didn't with my brother, I pushed back with the hubris of teenagerdom ... and we usually arrived at some sort of compromise. <br /><br />I'm not sure where I got my fairly out-sized sense of entitlement to be myself in the world ... I basically think if people have a problem with who I am and where I am, bodily or otherwise, it's their problem not mine ... provided I'm being polite about it. I think part of it is just the personality I was born with, and partly it comes from growing up in a family where we had a voice, and experienced our parents helping us advocate for ourselves in public spaces. As home-schooled kids we had to answer questions concerning "why are you here at X and not in school?" all the time ... so maybe learning from a very early age that we got to assert our right to be in public spaces during the school day contributed to my sense that I could say "I have a right to be here, don't harass me." <br /><br />But I'm also mindful, always, that class privilege meant I lived in a neighborhood where it was safe to be relatively unsupervised a lot of the time, and that as a white middle-class girl and later young woman I wasn't going to be profiled by police, etc., in ways that would make asserting my right to public space a dangerous activity.<br /><br />I don't know why I haven't experienced much sex-and-gender based harassment. Hanna claims I simply don't notice when it happens, which is a possibility, but I notice cat calls and shit when it happens to people around me, so I'm not sure it's that simple.<br /><br />Anyway -- all food for thought.<br /><br />(And yes, the lanterns were pretty!)annajcookhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17573723390785613915noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8743841912028246535.post-86396504587921012702012-12-01T16:46:11.319-04:002012-12-01T16:46:11.319-04:00Ugh. I'm sorry you got cornered a bit there. I...Ugh. I'm sorry you got cornered a bit there. I have a lot of fear in situations like that--and I Do "have a husband."<br /><br />It's funny--you generally feel safe, I feel a little unsafe pretty much all the time, and I wonder what many many factors create that distinction for two women of about the same age. I know we've had different experiences; I wonder if our parents' relative sense of their own safety in the world and ways/degrees of worrying about us as young children (and specifically as little girls) is at play here, as well.<br /><br />Neat about the path of lanterns, though!Mollyhttp://www.firsttheegg.comnoreply@blogger.com