the political

Lately I’ve been thinking about how important “the political” is to me. Once I find a political element to something, or something I thought was sort of bland is politicized I’m immediately more fascinated with it. And I’m speaking really broad terms, not “political” in the sense that abortion is “political,” but political in the sense that a piece of art is more appealing to me if it is political, or something else. Is it that I’m turned off by most female cancer awareness campaigns because they fail to connect to the political past that birthed them? I know that I care about making sexual health knowledge available to those its kept from because its regulation is political . Is my focus, maybe obsession, on the political the reason I have never volunteered at a soup kitchen, or really participate in any plain old “volunteerism,” but still consider myself to be working toward a greater social good (yes, I’m very fuzzy, and vomit if you need to) by doing all the feminist-y stuff I do like directing The Vagina Monologues (which raises lots of $$ for services for women who have experienced violence)? I guess being a volunteer victim advocate for a local group that works with and supports rape victims is volunteering, but it doesn’t really feel like it.

And recently some research has been published that TFA graduates are less “active,” in terms of voting, volunteering, etc, than people who are accepted and decline the offer and people who drop out before their two years are up. I was just accepted to Teach for America, something I’m really proud of and excited about. I found this survey really interesting, and while my interactions with TFA and corps members are relatively few considering how much I’ll be working with them in the next 2 years, I have an idea about this survey. I’m guessing that the people who get into TFA are big picture people. In a lot of ways, their model selects for big picture people. I’m a big picture person, and often I’m not really satisfied with volunteer/civic opportunities because they don’t offer a chance to really change all that much. I am constantly frustrated by the lack of (obvious) options for activists or socially concerned people – how many emails do I have to send to my conservative senator to make him vote for a pro-choice measure? Is that even possible? So not to make excuses for people, but maybe TFA grads are 1. employed in social activist orgs, so they feel less motivated to give more time to another cause or 2. jaded. Let me end up in the first category please!

I know that little actions can add up, and I know that the inherent good of helping someone out shouldn’t be poo-pooed (which is what I sort of just did), but I can’t help looking for more unique, challenging, and potentially high-impact opportunities, and I guess that means getting political.

This summer I freaked out at the way the problems of the young, disadvantaged girls were de-politicized by a local organization. The idea there was to fix the girl, and maybe that’s all that can realistically be done. This semester I wrote papers about how some issues are de-politicized, need to be politicized, etc etc etc etc. But when I’m revisiting Their Eyes Were Watching God  and I find out that Zora Neale Hurston’s work was discredited and forgotten for not being political enough for a black woman writer in the first half of the 20th century, and that Alice Walker had to resurrect her and defend her for not being political, since she still clearly contributed a lot to American literature and scholarly work and African Americans? Then I question how political things really need to be, and whether or not I care too much about it.

cross-posted at typical leigh

Disclaimer: This post was written by a Feministing Community user and does not necessarily reflect the views of any Feministing columnist, editor, or executive director.

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