NPR Boosts ‘Feminist Hulk’ That Says ‘F— Patriarchy...Hulk Smash Gender Binary’

October 19th, 2013 10:34 PM

If there’s a superhero that NPR can get behind, it would have to be “Feminist Hulk.” He doesn’t smash abortion clinic protesters. This hero apparently defends food stamps and WIC subsidies, so the shutdown added liberal luster. The NPR Morning Edition Facebook page merely said “Feminist Hulk!”

“Feminist Hulk is Jessica Lawson, a doctoral student in English literature at the University of Iowa who's also a mother and WIC aid recipient,” writes NPR food blogger Kate Woodsome. “She first started tweeting against sexism in 2010 – her Twitter profile reads “HULK SAYS F*** PATRIARCHY. HULK SMASH GENDER BINARY.’”

Since then, she's been called "the biggest superhero" of online feminism. And she's collected a massive social media fan club with tweets about motherhood, patriarchy and kale — which she's using for good during the shutdown, setting up this online resource to help families find baby food and formula....

The Twitter monster is smashing the shutdown's threats to the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) Food and Nutrition program, which provides food aid to pregnant women and mothers of young children deemed to be at risk of malnutrition. And she's urging her nearly 74,000 followers to help.

Lawson, a 30-year old Smith alumna, described herself to Ms. magazine as a "white, vegan, queer, woman-identified female" proclaimed “writing Hulk feels like a genderqueer practice. Slipping between my voice and his highlights to me the performativity of genderplay. My literary life-partnership with Hulk, while nonsexual, is thoroughly queer.” Among NPR's questions was this one:

Q: Why are you on WIC? What do you say to folks who think it should be defunded?

As a graduate student, I've supported myself the last several years on a combination of part-time teaching, student loans, food assistance, and very careful balancing. WIC was especially important during my pregnancy, as I was trying to stretch out a summer budget while still preparing for the uncertainty that childbirth can bring, and WIC continued to help during some of the scary budget crunches between semesters. And, again, I benefit from a lot of privileges that other WIC parents often don't have, so mine is actually a best-case scenario.

I get weary when I hear people urging poor families to simply lift themselves up by their bootstraps. Just to get from day to day when you are hungry and scared takes extraordinary energy — those bootstraps are already stretched to the max for the task of daily survival. I want to assume good will, and hope that the people who oppose WIC have simply never been in the position to direly need it.

PS: It's easy to understand that Lawson doesn't just back the welfare state because of need. She's a serious leftist that opposes racism, sexism, classism, capitalism, meat-eating, and rigid enforcers of "gender identity."

See this recent tweet (and some older beauts):