My coworkers complain when we can’t assign homework over Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. As if somehow this interferes with their ability to teach their classes.
My coworkers complain that our Muslim students get to leave class to pray Salat at noon. Like, we have maybe one Muslim student every two or three years – thus far, all extraordinarily respectful and lovely kids! – and they slip quietly out of class to pray.
My coworkers find all this infuriating. “Imagine,” they cry, “If a Christian kid asked to do that.”
I calmly explain, every single time, that a Christian kid would never HAVE to do that, because every single Christian holy day is a day off school. Good Friday. Easter Sunday. Christmas day. Our entire country interrupts its financial and educational systems – schedules its WEEKS – around the Christian prayer customs and seasons.
God forbid we temporarily unclip the rope barrier and leave an opening for someone whose religious traditions vary from our own.
my mom: you don’t need to wear that much makeup we are only going to the grocery store no one is looking at u
me: well if you’ve heard of Foucault’s concept of the Panopticon u would realize that as citizens of a capitalist western society we are all surveilled and constantly viewed and judged 247 and even when we are not in a public place, privately we subconsciously monitor our own selves, our appearances, our social interactions, we discipline ourselves and conform this is how the modern day surveillance state works someone is always watching or else u are always constantly painfully aware of ur own self. also can u buy me $50 foundation
lavenduers 