Pride

I fixed my stove today. I didn't just replace a burner. I had to replace the thing that the burner sticks into. So, I had to cut wires, strip wires, combine wires, cap wires, and melt some thing over the capped wires. To do this, I had to purchase wire cutters. I had a knife-like thing that enabled me to strip the wires. I repaired my stove. I am very proud of this.

Comments

[Jeff Wild]

You should have mentioned "stove fixing capabilities" to your list above -- "not male, but white, upper middle class, Ivy League education, able bodied, straight enough for government work. I don't think myopia counts against me; does height? I'm not quite 5' 2"

Though, would a person of privilege really have to fix their own stove?

[Bob Allen]

I am reminded of a couple of women I dated who dumped me in part because I wasn't "handy" around the house. I explained to no avail that guys who work with their hands are the ones who can't find real jobs. To my working class mind, real work is done in the mental sphere. Physical work skills are devalued, yet take on another life, Baudrillardian simulacra-like in the female imagination...

[Jodi]

The class issue around physical and mental work is crucial. I've heard some men in academia express a sense of intimidation or even a kind of threat to their masculinity when engaging with contractors, builders, men with the knowledge and ability to work with their hands, like this is more masculine than mental work. But, perhaps these guys are expressing this from a different class position.

I will affirm the other life of physical work skills in the female imagination. For me, at least, it's absolutely true.

Jeff--could it be that the privilege appears in my pride in doing this rather than, say, matter of fact acceptance of doing it or even shame in doing it? Here's what actually happened. I called someone to fix it. The phone got cut off and then they didn't answer when I called back. So, I went to the local store that sells appliance parts, thinking I could just get a new burner. The guy there looked at the burner and told me I needed the new thing that the burner sticks into it and that I could rewire it myself. So I did (with ensuing since of enormous accomplishment). At any rate, I only ended up going there because of the phone situation--I was too impatient to wait. I wonder if this since of impatience and demand for near immediate satisfaction is a widespread American thing, a product of a culture of immediacy, or if it has class dimensions, or if it's just me.

[Bob Allen]

Notice the myriad pathways between "pride" and "privilege"- you can bet the contractors, despite (defensive?) macho posturing were in awe of the academic's privilege: to paraphrase you, "I work with my hands because I deserve to work with my hands".
I think the dominant class reifies false consciousness which transcends gender and goes to the heart of our insecurities- as an industrial worker, it bugs me that some academics dare to question the very notion of false consciousness. It is realer than real, but "hyperreal" has a phony pomo ring--open any newspaper, the dominant class frames every issue. This morning a Lincoln Nebraska paper headline read: "Worker's Families Hope For Best, Prepare for Worst" in looming Goodyear tire strike. In my world, it would read, "Workers, Families Steel Themselves to Deal Blows Against Tire Bosses". Of course workers are presupposed to be timidly hoping and praying-for what? For business as usual, for the wheels of capital not to be interrupted.
I have coined a word, "patriarcho-bourgeois" to describe effects of bourgeois ideals which highlight patriarchal frames- leather clad biker chicks, etc, as if militant feminism is being erased from our collective memory- production of false consciousness.