Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Sungold = Angela Davis?

So Daisy just bailed me out when I've got too much grading and class prep, and no time to develop a thoughtful post: She led me to a quiz, Which Western Feminist Icon Are You? (Daisy was bell hooks, a very cool result indeed.)

Somewhat weirdly, I came up as ...
You are Angela Davis! You were the THIRD WOMYN IN HISTORY to appear on the FBI's Most Wanted List. You are a communinist, black power-lovin' lady who shook up the United States when you refused to lie down quietly to oppression. You WENT TO JAIL! Wow. You kick so much more ass than Foxxy Brown.
Hmmm. I checked the box for wanting feminism to reflect intersectional analysis. I also consistently checked the one on attitudes toward men that stated "Men are comrades and they're fun in bed." Otherwise, I tried varying a few answers. No matter how else I answered, I kept coming up Angela.

It's mysterious because I'm no communist, not even on those days where my socialist leanings swell and grow. I think black power alone is analytically inadequate just as feminism alone cannot explain the world. I've never been to jail (though I did once pick up a friend there) and while I may well have an FBI file, I'm not sure what the file would hold apart from "friend of people who know people who embrace lefty politics. Oh, and married to a furriner."

Much as I admire Angela Davis' body of work over the years, the one time I saw her speak was an unmitigated disaster. She was trying to use a laptop in her talk, and she was clearly overwhelmed by the technology, to the point where she kept getting tangled up and lost in what she wanted to say. (It was one of those feminist empress-has-no-clothes moments, because most of the audience rhapsodized anyway, even though the talk was largely incoherent, in my not-so-humble opinoin.) I had the feeling she'd have given a fine speech, if only she hadn't felt tethered to the laptop.

But Angela I am - never mind my evident whiteness or lack of kickassness. I'll take it as a compliment. Maybe as a challenge. At the very least, it's a reminder not to let my beloved laptop get in the way of actual communicaiton.

12 comments:

Sugarmag said...

Hey Sungold, Interesting quiz. I took it too, I am Frida. I never really identified with her but I do like her eyebrows. I have eyebrows like that too but they are blond so you can't tell.

Sungold said...

Hi Sugarmag/Frida! Maybe you need to learn to paint, and then you could create self-portraits with eyebrows. Or maybe you could just use eyebrow pencil. :-)

hesperia said...

Oh I would love to have been Frida.

I turned out to be Audre Lorde and a rad/fem which I haven't ever been. Learn something new every day.

Sungold said...

Maybe you've got a secret radfem tendency, just waiting to be unleashed?

hesperia said...

LOL. Well, I certainly have some radfem sympathies.

Sungold said...

Yeah, I sympathize with some parts of radical feminist analyses - but the whole package too often demonizes men. Every once in a while I read the comments at Twisty's, for instance, and I just can't get on board with that level of one-dimensional blaming of men. Yeah, I know the idea is to blame the *patriarchy,* but that's frequently conflated with blaming individual men en masse.

It seems to me that both men and women are diminished when men's basic humanity and capacity for goodness is impugned.

Euchalon Grandy said...

AHHHHH! I came out as Andrea Dworkin, and I'm a guy!

Sungold said...

Euchalon, you'd have made a pretty funny Judith Butler or Gloria Steinem, too - but somehow Dworkin tickles me even more!

Euchalon Grandy said...

It must have been the part where I answered "heterosexual and married", or something to that effect, that made me a Dworkin. How did you get to be Angela, "I'm an albino Republican"? This thing's got to be totally random. Got to say, though, can't think of anyone I'd more like to have a beer with than Ms. Dworkin (OK, her being dead and all would slow the conversation -- I mean were she alive today).

Sungold said...

Um, you must have answered "lesbian but married to a man." That was the total tip-off Dworkin answer!

I'll plead guilty to being albino; Republican, not so much. The next post notwithstanding. :-)

And yeah, it'd be fascinating to meet Dworkin. With or without a beer. But preferably with.

Euchalon Grandy said...

Actually, it was this one: "I am heterosexual. I once believed that marriage equals prostitution, but ended up hitched." (I answered all the questions truthfully). This doesn't sound like Dworkin.

Sungold said...

Hey, that sounds mostly like Gloria Steinem. So something else must have tripped the Dworkin switch.