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After hanging up the phone and thinking hard for a few moments, gender studies concentrator Angela Lingenberg ‘17 admitted she was having difficulty understanding why her impenetrably dense elaboration of “intersectional and constructed gender identity” wasn’t getting through to her father Jim, a welder, and mother Laura, a shift manager at the local CostCo.
“I’m telling them, point by point, that gender is totally distinct from sexual identity and networks with all these other constructed norms," explained the junior, scratching her head at the thought that her mother, who recently started working 10 more hours a week to help make up for the gaps in her daughter’s financial aid package, couldn’t make sense of the barrage of jargon directed at her. “For some reason, it just doesn’t seem to be sinking in. I totally get that my dad didn’t get to go to college because he had to start working and supporting his family, but you shouldn’t have to attend an elite university to be able to understand that the war movies he likes traffic in a toxic masculinity and re-instantiate the military-industrial complex.”
Angela added that her dad, one of the leaders of his local welder’s union, should understand better than anyone the abstract words and concepts she picked up in her seminars and repeated back at him. She expressed genuine confusion that her mother didn’t see why she couldn’t just say that she “didn’t really connect with” Hillary Clinton without acknowledging the years of coded language that had socialized her to think that.
“It’s kind of sad,” said Angela. “They’re so complicit.”
Jim and Laura mentioned how proud they were of their daughter, and that they were glad she got the opportunity to learn so much that they never did.
