There was a time when cleanliness was viewed as “next to godliness.” That clearly has changed. It is now apparently next to white supremacy. While it would be impossible to discuss all of the wacky scholarship being published today, Loyola (Chicago) Professor Jenna Drenten is a standout with a new theory that “cleanliness” is a “cultural gatekeeping mechanism” with “racist,” “sexist” and “classist” roots. It turns out that the sweet spice rack that your kid brought back from shop is actually a stratified, structural vehicle for white supremacy and male dominance . . . unless you keep it messy. Otherwise, you are pushing racist, sexist “pantry porn.”
Cleanliness has historically been used as a cultural gatekeeping mechanism to reinforce status distinctions based on a vague understanding of “niceness”: nice people, with nice yards, in nice houses, make for nice neighborhoods.
What lies beneath the surface of this anti-messiness, pro-niceness stance is a history of classist, racist and sexist social structures.
She warns others not to fall for “pantry porn”:
Magazines like Good Housekeeping were once the brokers of idealized domestic work. Now online pantry porn sets the aspirational standard for becoming an ideal mom, ideal wife and ideal woman. This grew out of a shift toward an intensive mothering ideology that equates being a good mom with time-intensive, labor-intensive, financially expensive care work.
Pantry maintenance is a new area of racism and sexism for Professor Drenten. Before she went after domestic Bull Connors, she blew the whistle on video gaming with papers on “Video Gaming as a Gendered Pursuit” and “More Gamer, Less Girl: Gendered Boundaries, Tokenism, and the Cultural Persistence of Masculine Dominance.”
Well if she said it she is nuts.
Every great journey begins with a single step. — Chinese proverb
Loyola Professor Jenna Drenten has decided in her infinite wisdom to push the “pantry porn” agenda. Lovely. Good Housekeeping magazine should submit Professor Drenten for their Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for Socialist of the Year. Thank you, Jonathan, for an excellent article.
I think too many universities have hired unnecessary affirmative action types who serve no real purpose in education but need something to justify their useless research into anything that will create division. Pantries now, and what is next? A well organized underwear drawer? I enjoy my 2 pantries…one for everyday items and one for longterm stock items – and all labeled (surely a mark of white supremacy.
When in college, I was on my way to class one day and overheard a couple white girls gabbing while they walked. One said she was in a hurry after doing her laundry one time so she just threw all her underwear in the drawer without stacking it. The next week she realized that she had worn all the underwear without stacking it, so she never bothered to do that again. It made so much sense, I couldn’t wait to tell my mom.
“I enjoy my 2 pantries…one for everyday items and one for longterm stock items “
Make sure you have designated bowls for the cheerios and donuts to maintain privacy and keep them separate from the penne pasta.
As clever as you sound, you fail to realize the ease such organization gives you when you are busy. It saves money and time, now that is a good thing in and of itself, plus the added benefit of cleanliness (I once lived in a nice Brooklyn highrise on J street and it was infested with cockroaches hence forth anything and everthing goes in a sealed container). It is fun today reading all the replies and envisioning just what sort of home in which each of you live – call that white supremacy if you will.
Whim, my quip was not criticizing neatness but rather the ideas promoted by the demented professor. I like neatness and am sorry I gave you the wrong idea.
Brooklyn was my entry into the world of married life. Unfortunately, where we lived was problematic. The cockroaches held the building up, and the rape-murder on the first night was not comforting. It provided me with knowledge. Work hard and get the h-ll out. The lesson left me quite comfortable.
Sorry for the confusion but you are absolutely correct, Brooklyn was a nightmare. We sold the condo and moved to northern New York and work from home now. The air is clean, the place is safe and the people aren’t insane (red part of NY lol). And I think that all this moron of a “prof” is doing is cementing the fact that minorities are less clean and organized – what was she thinking (or not thinking).
Ask your Mormon buddy to show you his pantry and then the LDS community pantries, and then their silos.
If you’re into pantry porn, then you’re gonna need to see your doctor after 4 hours.
It has been my experience that radicals like Jenna don’t make good spouses, anyway. Women who insist on being miserable drive away healthy men, and so their lives are just one Soy Jack after another.
No wonder, then, Soy Jack sees philandering as just another blood sport. Commitment and tradition are a joke to him. He reduces everything to illicit sex, just like modern art reduces everything to parody.
Very lonely people, really. It’s not a fluke that radicalized girls are reported to be so unhappy.
What’s the over-under on whether our resident Leftists will show up today to defend this hokum?
So many grifters.
These days, basically anything good is denounced as white supremacy. Math, cleanliness, and . . . showing up to work on time:
https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_bias_of_professionalism_standards
Here is a representative sentence from the above: “In the workplace, white supremacy culture explicitly and implicitly privileges whiteness and discriminates against non-Western and non-white professionalism standards related to dress code, speech, work style, and timeliness.”
And the author is serious. In the ideology of these nutty “scholars,” God is a white supremacist.
Diseases like diphtheria, typhoid, and whooping cough, and others, were eliminated because of three public health factors: better food, cleaner water, and a clean living environment, before vaccines were invented. Cleanliness is, obviously, an important survival factor and leads to better health for everyone. Attacking cleanliness is ignorant, but what can you expect from politicized grifters like the professor. Check out these photographs. https://dissolvingillusions.com/graphs-images/#Photos
KBigg – but survival and better health are racist, dontcha see?
This person earns a salary for this, fathom that. White, privileged, liberal harpies never disappoint in their ever more clinical levels of insanity in their ever more hermetically sealed bubbles of existence.
I’m sure when she goes on vacation she picks the dirtiest place she can find, only one star air bnb for her. 🙄🙄 No, wait, she doesn’t, because she and her fellow white, privileged, elites are obviously the exception. This only applies to the peasantry. 🙄🙄 Dazzle us with your intellectual and moral superiority, oh shrew. And say, ‘Hi!’, to your housekeeper.
As a volunteer fireman, I have seen my share of the non-racist pig stys. So I guess by this evidence we have conquered racism! Who would have thought that those dirty backwoods hillbillies flying confederate flags were promoting equality.
She sounds like a racist pig
She IS a racist pig.
I’m sure Black women will be overjoyed to learn that having a dirty, messy kitchen is part of their cultural heritage.
Professor Turley is onto something here. This is becoming the written version of Libs of Tik Tok. What a great idea! It is sort of racist however to let other people, like the Great Unwashed, know what lefties are foisting on to the public at large. The Great Unwashed…rather apropos to our topic today.
The woke cancer continues to work its way into every part of the body politic.
Exactly! It’s a different take on the great reset. The Marxists understand our body politic can be healed, if they slow or stop attacking it.
This systematic assault has only one desired end; to kill enough of our American culture so that it cannot be restored. Even to the point of returning to the state of nature.
Only then can they turn us into their idea of a Marxist utopia.
The greatest harm you can do to your own case is to exaggerate it, thus giving your opponents an easy, free shot to impeach you as an untrustworthy advocate. Morons like Drenten don’t realize how much they desensitize normal people to “racism” and “sexism” by applying those labels to things every rational person recognizes as benign.
Honestly, you’ll find more wisdom from the guy that’s been sitting at the end of the bar for the last 6 hours.
If you want to ruin your weekend, know that Biden is using your money to pay for her doctorate.
There really is no limit to the stupidity of the left.
Huh? What? Having a clean pantry is a bad thing? What about brushing your teeth? Showering? Sounds racist to me. I guess the good professor has run out of things to think/write about. However, on the bright side, I am sure she is generating a lot of clicks,,,,
^Professor Drenten, that is
And just another example as to the utter worthlessness of academic degrees these days. In my opinion, if you didn’t get your degree pre-mid 1970’s your degree is usually worth little to nothing.
That goes for graduate school too, including law school.
Yeah, I’m just waiting for that DEI affirmative action brain surgeon to work on my loved one. Yikes just look at the tools biden has put up for appointments – compentency must not be a critical factor these days, just skin color and gender dysphoria.
Yesterday, there was an article stating that brushing your teeth prior to going to the dentist was a sign of white supremacy and structural racism.
Amazed at what passes for scholarship these days. This is beyond ridiculous
There is no such thing as scholars anymore. People are just learners.