WARNING! I am going to talk about feminism

This blog post is a trick. You are expecting amusing anecdotes about my most recent disastrous attempts to navigate life in England. I’m actually going to talk about social constructions. Feel free to roll your eyes. (Okay, let’s put this in perspective. 1. I’ve been pretty good about keeping Feminist Jesse in the box for a while. 2. Study abroad is supposed to be about understanding a different culture from your own, and I haven’t talked about differences in English and American (or just UEA and Dickinson) ideology at all yet. 3. No one wants to talk about American Studies in real life. I’ve been forced here.)

Okay, so now that 99% of the people reading this have rolled their eyes and gone back to Facebook, everyone that continued reading gets ice cream.

I’ve been thinking about the function of a blog recently because I’m taking a class called American Autobiographies, which is sort of what my blog is. One of the issues we’ve talked about is that the autobiography assumes an audience (i.e. my parents, friends from Dickinson, church ladies, new friends from UEA, I really have no idea who I’m writing to anymore), which further assumes that the writer thinks they’re important enough to have an audience (i.e. the entireties of America and England in apostrophe). According to this class, autobiography is supposed to be quintessentially American, but if you think about it autobiography is also the ultimate self-absorbed book (It’s literally shouting “My life is interesting and important! I represent other people like me. You should be like me.”). Anyway one of the main American stereotypes I’ve heard and worried about since I got here is that Americans only know and care about themselves and that everyone else should know and care about them. It had me worried for a while, but I’ve reconciled it to the idea that American culture is self-absorbed (years of American history in schools with very little about the rest of the world, American news coverage with very little about the rest of the world), but American people don’t have to be. Then, blogs are different from regular autobiographies because they’re online so they have weird internet social conventions, namely people get to rant and muse self importantly… which is what I have decided to do today (mostly because I don’t feel like talking about my trip to Ireland a.k.a. my long overpriced holiday to the Gatwick airport. We’ll get to that later).

Things that have been driving me nuts:

1.      UEA has an American Studies department but no English Studies department. One of the main points of American Studies is to understand the ideologies and paradigms that your culture operates under. That way you know why you think about certain things the way you do, and it’s easier to recognize when your opinion is informed by a social construction (really simplified example: If no one ever talked about the way women are portrayed in magazines, readers would think they were supposed to look like that). Another major point of American Studies is to understand all the really horrible things that have happened as a result of our culture’s ideologies and paradigms (i.e. racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.), and try to not do them again/fix them. I don’t understand why England would study America and not themselves. I’ve had to pull teeth to get anyone to talk to me about racism or classism in England and there is absolutely no way those things don’t exist. It’s interesting to look at my culture from another culture’s perspective, kind of voyeuristic actually, but I don’t see how it is helpful to the English.

2.      Every time I ask about the curriculum for English history in primary schools people just talk about World War II. When I ask about imperialism in India (the place I am studying next year), people just say that their school kind of glossed over it because it’s not a proud moment in English history. I know that America likes to downplay a lot of its less proud moments (i.e. Thanksgiving is a celebration of the Indians and pilgrims getting along, not a Trail of Tears remembrance), but we talk about slavery obsessively in primary school. I’m trying to figure out where British people get their sense of British identity and British history from. It’s not like everyone I talk to is unself-aware or ignorant, so people must be getting it from somewhere.

3. England does not have a written Constitution. I have no idea what the basis of their laws or their basic rights revolve around. America is obsessed with liberty and justice for all and individuality. What is England obsessed with? Tea?

4.      Chav. I talked about the word chav in one of my earlier posts. It stands for council house associated vermin, and as far as I understand it, it basically refers to what Americans call “white trash,” or “ghetto, lower class.” I’m not convinced that we can ethically use the word chav with the disdain and condescending amusement that seems acceptable here. It refers to a specific social class that has a negative connotation. It’s complicated for me to understand because working class in America has been treated as a less privileged identity and a negative identity. In England, so they claim, working class has less to do with how much money you have and more to do with social signifiers (the type of clothing and hairstyles you think are fashionable, the type of car you drive). Supposedly, since a rich person can be working class and an upper class person can be poor (although of course money helps), it should mean that there are no privileged classes. I don’t really believe this though. Otherwise people wouldn’t worry so much about looking chavvy in the first place. Earlier this year Dickinson had a huge controversy over a themed party, South of the Border, in which people apparently dressed up as Mexican stereotypes. No malicious or offensive intentions, but offensive results. The same week that this was happening at Dickinson, the LCR (that’s basically like the UEA hub) hosted a “Chavs and Emos” party. It’s a dangerous territory. Certain things are actually offensive and unethical, and certain things are just annoyingly politically correct. I’m not sure which side “chav” falls under yet. (Side note: I’m defining “political correctness” as different from prejudice. Political correctness is censorship of things that do not actually do damage to a group. It’s just under the guise of prejudice and it gives people an excuse to be prejudice by whining about how stupid political correctness is).

5.      I hear people use “gay” as an insult at UEA all the time. That’s not politically incorrect; it’s actually harmful. (To be fair, I think I might just be shocked by this because at home I’m around more American Studies majors who have studied and written papers on why it’s offensive. I'm sure its equally prevalent in America and England).

6.      I have not figured out the role of alcohol in this country yet. I’ve asked around and people say that binge drinking is a major subject in England specifically. (Obviously binge drinking prevalent in American colleges, but there is even more at English university). I also get a weird sample because I go to university. Binge drinking is going to occur at a higher rate in an English university than England as a whole. That being said, Tuesday and Thursday are the big party nights here, even though most people have classes in the morning. But it’s totally normal to stay in and watch a movie on a Saturday night. I don’t get it.
I do like the casual drinking culture a lot better. Pubs act as meeting places, so it’s more normal for college kids to have a drink for reasons other than getting drunk. It’s a lot more social and a lot healthier than the system that underground drinking in the United States promotes. It’s also safer for people who do binge drink. People who need medical attention for alcohol don’t always get it because friends don’t want to get them in legal trouble.

7.      Being in an English university makes me realize how much American institutions coddle their students. Dickinson is an artificial extension of childhood. Food (from a cafeteria that cooks it for you), housing, access to a gym, access to clubs, access to health care, access to academic speeches, and access school wide social events are all included and mandatory to pay for in Dickinson tuition, even if you don’t use them. (I’m not complaining. I love and miss all these things. I’ve never appreciated them so much. I am going to every single academic lecture, joining every club and political movement, and going to the gym every day, and going to the health center every time I sneeze my senior year). Because all these things come as a package, it’s so expensive to pay that it is assumed that your parents help foot the bill. Tuition at UEA is really cheap and then you pay for everything else separately. So a lot of people can afford to pay for it themselves. They also come out of college knowing how to cook and balance a checkbook. I really like this. It’s a pain (especially because England loves making me wait in 32 unnecessary queues and file paper work for everything), but it prepares you for Grownupland so much better.

Okay, I’m done now. I don’t mean to seem negative toward England. I still love it, and some of these things are just observations, not criticism. It’s just that I study ideology and inequality and am trained to look for these things. (Also, I’ve pretty much only talked about awesome things up until now). Also, I don’t really have an arena to talk about them because the American Studies department here only wants to talk about American ideology.

Anyway, I promise to resume with more ridiculous tales in the next post.

P.S. You’re not really getting any ice cream.