Feb 22, 2008 00:04
so i just don't get some of the people here. a girl basically got upset at me for thinking she was middle class. if you read this already, then don't bother reading, i'll put it under a cut. just this girl is doing nothing to help the swag major stereotype.
so in my psychology of women and gender course we divided into groups, and each group had a different topic (being Christian, or heterosexual, or from a nuclear family, male, white, etc). we had to think of what the privileged person could do in their group that they wouldn't really think about it. my group was class/ses, there are three of us. the first thing i said is that you don't have to think about your food, in the sense of what am i going to be eating and can i stretch it through the week. and so we go on like this, it's mostly me and this one girl (the one i end up getting into a tiff with) are coming up with the ideas, the other one is silent.
so i say at one point, you can have odder pets, or do things that are normally considered weird but that you can do it because you have the money. she goes "can we not use the paris hilton types any more. let's talk about more middle class things." can i just say one thing great job getting mad at me for making an assumption about you, but you totally just made one about my thought. i was never thinking of the slut, i was thinking of someone like teddy Roosevelt who had a pet alligator or something like that. but fine, i don't have a problem shifting the focus. so we sit in silence for a couple of minutes, and i say, "you know i think part of the reason we're having a hard time coming up with ideas is because we are from the middle class." and what i meant, and maybe it got lost in translation somewhere is what this other girl said later on in class, is that "you don't like it when you have to realize your own privilege because you've grown to think of it as a right, and it makes you uncomfortable to acknowledge the people who aren't as well off as you are."
shit hits the fan. she goes "well why would you assume something like that?"
"well think about it, you usually tend to look up to the people who are above you." again maybe not clear, but we're not coming up with the middle class ideas at all, just upper class.
"because people here are going to be from the middle class." which is true of most college students, because the upper class is less than 5% of the population.
"that's not true, 40% of my friends are from the middle class." so basically your friends totally represent the entire 2600 student population.
"ok, well, most people here are middle class."
"there are people here from the working class."
"yeah, but they're not most of the students." this is also a really prestigious and expensive school so of course there are so many working class girls here. i totally saw them with their coach bags and Chanel sunglasses.
"well maybe it’s just the people you hang out with." and i can't remember exactly what she said, but it tipped me off to her thinking she is upper class and so are most of her friends."
i admit to knowing some upper-middle to upper class girls who go here, they are not most girls here.
"we have the largest scholarship fund." are you proving my point or yours?
so we kinda move on...
i say how where i went to school it was with girls bordering on upper class and those who just came out of the ghetto. and that occasionally people would be curious as to what the pseudo-upper class girls were wearing. this is just to help with the fucking assignment.
silent girl now speaks, "don't you think that when people were looking up to you they were also hating you?"
when did i say that people were looking up to me!? when did i say i was upper class!? why are you making an assumption about me, after you got so mad at me for making one about you!? and i'm sorry but if you're thinking about paris hilton and you hate her, you're also thinking what you can do with all that money. so you are looking up to her because you are envying what she has and you don't. so yeah that's a part of looking up to someone. but where did you get the idea that i was upper class? especially since i said i worked in a department store, most of the people who work there are not upper class.
i really didn't get it. i just wanted to get the fucking work done, i don't understand why you need to get upset at me about this. especially when you are making assumptions about me. i'm not fucking upper class, i'm middle class. and i'm sorry if you're "upper middle class" you are just middle class imitating the upper class.
this is not the first time i've had a problem with this girl. the first day of class we had to say what we thought a feminist is/looks like/behaves like, and would we consider ourselves one. i said i would not call myself a feminist because of the negative connotations and that i do not agree with all of their ideas. not sure why that made me horrible right away. but somehow we talked about politics, i said i preferred obama over clinton mostly because i find him more charismatic. i'm willing to bet she thought it's because he's black, i'm black. not too much different from her supporting clinton. but i will admit that is part of the reason why i like him. i do agree with the fact that it would be great to have a woman in the white house (same for a black man) but that even though clinton makes me feel uncomfortable i would still vote for her if she is the democrat leader. so that pissed her off for no real good reason. we haven't spoken since, and it's not like i'm speaking my mind all the time in class, in fact i have barely said anything that was challenging to what has been said, so i don't know why she has to be so rude.
so it's just weird that she would try and show how she is oppressed, but then she tries to raise herself up. it just doesn't make any sense. i would love nothing more than to curse her out.
so i decided if we end up in a group together again, i'm just going to say: "look, we have gotten into arguments before and i just want to deal with the work. i don't want to have spend most of the time with you being mad at me for the same thing that you are doing to me. so if you can't deal with that lets find other groups to work with."
so yes, very fun day.