My America? But how?

In the last year or two, there has been one overarching, almost overwhelming fact that has cropped up again and again in my observations of the world around me: we are in deep trouble. I'm not just talking about the seeming proliferation of natural disasters and citizen uprisings alluding to the Second Coming (boy, would my face be red if that were to come about). I'm talking about the state of American society.

I'm very lucky in that I'm Caucausian and middle class, but I'm oddly unlucky in that I'm also female. As I grow older, I am becoming more and more aware of the conflicting forces that push and pull on my psyche. As an aspiring academic, I'm entering into a temporal sphere that is forcing me to make some very fundamental decisions. On one hand I want a family, but on the other, there's no way I could sacrifice my dreams and what I've accomplished so far for an outdated understanding of what it means to be a woman...right? Do I stay in academia and push through to get my PhD? Do I want to get married and have children before I'm 30? Is any of that feasible while pursuing my PhD?

Back when I was an undergraduate, one of my professors confided in me that she felt that other female professors looked at her askance because she had three children, a pretty phenomenal feat for a professional woman. She wondered out loud what her life would have been like if she had taken a few years off instead of diving straight into graduate work. What's funny (or sad) is that while she might have been the anomaly within the Ivory Tower, women who choose to pursue their professional careers and forsake the traditional female roles of mother and wife get the same treatment within dominant society. Women who choose to pursue their careers and end up in their 30s and 40s without a husband are subject to quiet mutterings about their sexual orientation, because there is something that strikes society as simply weird about a woman who does not conform to the societal expectations.

The most recent and striking example I can think of is that of Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan. During her confirmation hearings, it was never stated outright, but there were little comments by newscasters or commentators about her marital status. (I suppose the same pressure can be exerted on men, but I'd have to ask my esteemed colleague about that.) Ed note: I've been informed that people DID engage in outright speculation regarding Kagan's sexuality; I don't remember hearing anything like that so I didn't want to say something without proof...that's for the Sarah Palins of the world to do, not overworked academics! /snark

Recognizing these societal pressures, I began to think about how they came about. Why does society dictate these pressures, these desires that masquerade as needs? If Peter Berger is to believed, the reason American society is in such a dire situation is precisely because we, as Americans, made it that way. We can rage against the machine all we want, but without being cognizant of the fact that we, as members of society, are in a dialectic WITH society, then effective change can never be brought about. Gandhi was not wrong when he said "be the change you want to see in the world." That personal change is necessary precisely because of our daily interactions with society and our unique yet utterly normal roles as cultural producers.

Put another way, we make the grammatical rules of our societies, and then those rules act back upon us. If we chafe and labor under these rules, or recognize that certain institutions, methodologies, or ideologies are potentially harmful in the long run, then it is not enough to sit around, pontificating and intellectually masturbating until the sun sets. We must take some sort of action for ourselves, our communities, and our society if the dominant social values are to be affected in any way, shape, or form.