Push(back) at the Intersections

The time has come, gentle readers, to say farewell, because every good contract must draw to an end, and this is the end of mine. I have really appreciated the opportunity to interact with all of you over the last two months, and I think we've had some excellent, if sometimes contentious, discussions.

It's clear that a lot of readers started thinking in new ways, and I appreciate everyone who took the time to read, comment, email, link, discuss offsite, or do all of the above. My goal with this series was to challenge dominant narratives in pop culture discourse and feminism, and I'd like to think that as each of you settles down in the next few weeks, months, years, to listen to a new album, crack open a freshly released book, watch a television pilot, this series will trickle through to you. You'll think not just about the depiction of women, but other issues, like race, fat, disability, class, sexual orientation, transgender identities.

I would be remiss in talking about pushback against intersectional critiques of pop culture without discussing my long and tormented relationship with the Fox hit Glee. To put it bluntly, I hate Glee.

Yet, a lot of feminists, including some of the staff here at Bitch, love Glee. The show is regularly celebrated on feminist sites, people post videos of their favorite moments, and everyone likes to talk about how great it is.

The reason I don't like Glee is pretty simple: The show has some of the most horrifically troped depictions of people with disabilities I have ever seen. The show's also been criticized for having a lot of problems when it comes to race and gay teens, but I want to focus on the disability aspect today, because the critiques of this show from the disability community have been universally ignored by the feminist community when it's not busy dismissing them.