I Came Out…
…to my parents last weekend and it went surprisingly well!
I took the GRE this morning and mostly kicked its ass (ran out of time on the analytical writing sections; those scores are coming in two weeks, so I’ll see how I did then)! An incidental and unexpected benefit of blogging and participating in the blogosphere was that it made the analytical writing sections easy. The first essay presented two opinion statements and I had to write an essay about one. Taking a position on an opinion statement? A prompt and a blank text box on a computer screen? I am so there. The second question presented a short blurb and asked for an evaluation of its argumentation. Taking apart a poorly reasoned argument? A blank text box on a computer screen? I am so there.
Mimblewimbleoogabooga
I believe that words have power. That not only what I say matters, but how I say it as well, and that it’s necessary to speak and write as precisely as possible. I can’t believe otherwise; I hate generalizations, I hate stereotypes, and I believe bone-deep that how you say things both reflects and affects how you think about those things. My thesis was about the ways in which authors constructed morality, and how those processes were in themselves propaganda, in civil war literature (no, not that civil war, more like these). If that’s not a hairsplitting, obsessive focus on rhetoric, or an ode to ho logos, I’m not sure what is.
So, it’s a shock to run across instances where words are so clearly meaningless and completely divorced from reality. Here are two relatively similar statements:
“human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights”
“The advance of women’s rights and the advance of liberty are ultimately inseparable”
They express similar sentiments, but the first quote is attached to past, present, and future commitments to actively working for women’s rights. The second quote is attached to a reality of disaster for women:
While men have borne the brunt in terms of direct armed violence, women have been particularly hard-hit by poverty, malnutrition, lack of health services and a crumbling infrastructure, not least chronic power cuts which in some areas of Iraq see electricity only available for two hours a day.More than 70 percent of the four million people forced out of their homes in the past five years in Iraq have been women and children. … Many displaced women and children find themselves in unsanitary and overcrowded public buildings under constant threat of eviction.
Meanwhile, rampant political violence has also engulfed women in Iraq. …
Despite — or even partly because of US and UK rhetoric about liberation and women’s rights — women have been pushed back into their homes.
Women who have a public profile — as teachers, doctors, academics, lawyers, NGO activists or politicians — are now systematically threatened, seen as legitimate targets for assassinations. Criminal gangs have joined in. Though rarely reported in Britain, the criminal kidnapping of women for ransom, for trafficking into forced prostitution outside Iraq, and for out and out sexual abuse have all taken root in post-Saddam Iraq.
I think I need to go lie down. What do you do, when speech is devoid of any connection to reality? Bush might as well say, “Mimblewimbleoogabooga,” and it’d carry just as much meaning as anything else he says.
Alma Mater? Not So Much
Yale Women’s Center to sue fraternity for harassment? – Feministing.
Yale Daily News (YDN) article here, “Misogyny Claim Leveled At Frat”, and Yale Women’s Center op-ed here, “Women’s Center calls Zeta Psi’s behavior ‘inexcusable’”
Members of the Yale Women’s Center board threatened to initiate legal action Sunday after discovering a photograph posted on Facebook.com depicting 12 Yale students affiliated with the Zeta Psi fraternity posing in front of the Center with a sign reading “We Love Yale Sluts.”
The picture made its rounds through e-mail inboxes around Yale’s campus Sunday night, enraging some members of the University community offended by what they perceived to be its misogynistic overtones. The men photographed in front of the Women’s Center are Zeta Psi “pledges” — students attempting to join the fraternity.
…
Former Women’s Center Public Relations Coordinator Jessica Svendsen ’09 said she found a group of men chanting “Dick! Dick! Dick!” in front of the Elm Street entrance to the Center, which is located in Durfee Hall, shortly before midnight last Tuesday. Frightened, she decided to take a detour through the Center’s Old Campus entrance, she said.
“I stopped even before I got to Durfee, because I recognized that as a single woman facing 20 to 25 frat boys, I wasn’t going to be able to enter the Women’s Center,” Svendsen said. “This was my first experience knowing that misogyny does happen at Yale — and right in front of the Women’s Center door.”
Sadly, the comments to the YDN article and op-ed are filled with frat boy apologists and misogynist, anti-feminist comments. They’re worth a read, if you’re looking for something stomach-turning.
I hope to god that the Women’s Center does something beyond op-ed and getting the administration involved, because historically, Levin’s administration is complete crap at stepping up to these issues. If they can get the lawsuit off the ground, perhaps it’ll force people into taking the harassment and misogyny seriously. This incident is both, no two ways about it–to stand in front of the Women’s Center in a large body (it’s a small space) with a sign bearing a sexist slur, yelling at people who pass by and deterring women from going into the Women’s Center, is harassment outright. Those who deny say that it’s just a joke or just drunken antics. That’s an excuse, and not a particularly good one–a joke can be harassment, particularly when it’s predicated on intimidating and slut-shaming people.
The campus has a civilized veneer most of the time, but this, the annual racist chalkings on Columbus Day, the defacing of a sign to paint homosexuality as a sin and N.O.G.A.Y.S. on National Coming Out Day 2006, the Yellow Fever and anti-Asian articles in the Herald and Rumpus in 2006, and other events show that it’s only a veneer. What’s more, people generally dismiss these events and the victims–the queers, the Asians, the women, the Native Americans–are dismissed as overreacting and deserving what they got, because the ruckus they raise makes everyone else uncomfortably aware of the ugliness. The university–the student body, the administration, the faculty, the alumni–likes to pretend that misogyny, racism, homophobia, and classism couldn’t possibly happen within its posh, intellectual, educated boundaries, and so it shoves them underground and silences the victims. It’s a stupid, ignorant approach that reinforces said prejudices by not punishing the perpetrators and not airing all our filthy laundry out in the air, to avoid openly discussing why these events happen, what they are, and how we can prevent them in the future.
Fortunately, as an alumna, I have somewhat more power than I did as a student. Until Levin commits to acknowledging that this event was outright harassment and that the university will not tolerate it, I’m not giving them any money. He cares a great deal about the university’s PR, and so I hope you’ll contact the President’s Office and urge him to condemn the misogyny in this frat ‘stunt’ and support the Women’s Center:
President’s Office
Yale University
PO BOX 208229
New Haven, CT 06520-8229
Email: presidents.office@yale.edu
Telephone: (203) 432-2550
Fax: (203) 432-7105
President’s Office student affairs contact:
Nina Glickson
When I was a student, I used to hate that the university ended up in the media all the time, mostly because the issues that popped up in the press were really stupid ones–Alexei Vayner, students having shower sex in Calhoun, soap dispensers in the bathrooms–and surely national news outlets had more important issues to spend their column inches on. Hopefully, this event will come to their attention as well and force Yale into taking actions for progress.
Feminism and I: Part II
Feminism and I: Part II. My experiences with sexism and other forms of systemic discrimination since graduating from college.
In the five months since I finished college and moved out of the rarefied environment of thoughtful, intelligent, analytical academic types, most of whom are liberal, I have encountered more instances of sexism than I did in the four years at university. I was appalled at first and wondered if the world outside academia was genuinely that bad or if I was just having a set of bad experiences because I was living in the wrong part of town, oversensitive to sexism in the New York Times, and generally reading too much into things.
After five months, I’ve decided that the world outside academia genuinely is that bad and that I was extremely lucky when I was in academia, because my fellow students and professors were thoughtful, intelligent, socially conscious individuals. Not all Classicists are like that; I have definitely encountered sexist jerks in the field. But my department had many female professors and some female professors were tenured, and the grad students were evenly split (unusual for the field). Toss in the tendency of much of the department to focus on social history and late antiquity, which often focuses on groups usually left out of scholarly inquiry (women, slaves, foreigners, prisoners of war), and the fact that most of us are routinely insulted for being Classicists, and you have some understanding of minority status from both an intellectual and a lived perspective. I think it inclines us to be whatever the opposite of prejudiced is. Open-minded? Pro-equality? Anti-discrimination? What’s a good term to use? Liberal is too vague and too tied up with political connotations that in today’s America, often have little to do with equality for all people.
But I digress. Since finishing school, I’ve decided that I’m not overreacting and that the U.S. is genuinely full of sexism and other systemic prejudices. I knew it before, but for the most part, it wasn’t something that I had lived. Here are some of the things that have happened in the last five months:
After returning from Istanbul, I cringed every time I had to walk past a boy or a man on the street because I thought he would yell come ons, make me an object for his gaze, invade my peace of mind and identity (I am a human being, a person, not a doll walking by for your pleasure: for you to get off on, objectify, and yell at), and make me worry about my safety. The catcalls happened constantly in Istanbul and for some reason, they got to me more there than they did when I was living in Rome, although sexual assailant aside, all of the men were friendly, not rude, and the yelling was aimed at all the foreigners. The words aimed at me, however, centered on my sex and my looks and made it clear that I wasn’t just a foreign tourist passing by, I was a “pretty girl” with something I could give them (the pleasure of my company, a response to their overtures, a gift of the orange I was eating, the list goes on). There were plenty of boys and men who came up and wanted to go for dinner, go on a date, ask me about my boyfriend, take a picture with me, etc., and I got very twitchy. The most peaceful afternoons I spent were in non-mosque tourist attractions, because no one chatted me up there (aside from the boys in the Hagia Sophia who wanted me to take a photo with them and the security guard who started talking to me). I’ve finally gotten over that reflexive fear, that feeling of being unsafe and uncomfortable in my own skin and wanting to hide, thank god. Now that it occurs to me, I’ve been over it since moving to SF, since, for whatever reason, no one has catcalled me in this city. 1 point in SF’s favor! But in Boston, it did happen: there were multiple times when I was trying to hail a cab and men in cars would leer out the window and yell at me while they were passing, or even worse, stop and verbally harass me until I told them to fuck off. When I walked home at night through the senior center and lower income community housing developments, there was a table of men playing mah jongg on the sidewalk and every time I passed by, they would mutter, “Ooh, it’s the gorgeous Chinese girl again.” Bonus points for objectifying me, exoticizing me, and getting my race wrong! I was angry about these incidents and my reactions always included, “I’m not even wearing anything sexy!” and, “I could ignore it by walking home a different way–but why the fuck should I have to change my route because some assholes are assholes? Why do I have to give in to their behavior and change myself? Why am I the one who gives, and not them? My behavior isn’t wrong, theirs is!” The second reaction, fine. The first reaction, not fine. I should not have to endure catcalls, leers, and harassment, no matter what I’m wearing, and the thought that what I’m wearing should influenced whether or not I get harassed is the logical antecedent to “she was wearing a miniskirt and a bikini top, so she deserved it.” No. That thinking is wrong on two counts. Firstly, no one deserves to be verbally harassed, no one deserves to be treated as a sex object to insult. It doesn’t matter if I’m buttoned up from head to toe in a suit or running in boxers and a sports bra, I don’t deserve to be harassed and neither does anyone else. In this society, I have to expect it, but I shouldn’t. People need to take responsibility for their own actions. Secondly, focusing on my behavior, in this case my clothing, as the catalyst for sexist behavior takes the responsibility off the harassers and puts it onto the victim. It absolves them for seeing a person on the side of the road and going from there to seeing a woman to harass and then to shouting lewd comments and making rude gestures. It makes me responsible for causing, and thus overseeing, their behavior, and I won’t tolerate that. Each of us is responsible for our own behavior and no one is responsible for the man’s decision to mutter, “Gorgeous Chinese girl,” at me except for that man. This line of thinking–putting the responsibility on the victim–is a prominent part of sexism and shows up over and over again: women are responsible for men’s behavior, men can’t control themselves, the rape victim was asking it by wearing a short skirt/going out to a bar alone/knowing a man.
Sexism in the media: this is so overwhelming I feel tired just thinking about trying to organize my thoughts. Where to start? Well in TV, there’s Cuddy’s oversexed, skimpy outfits and ridiculously high heels in House; there’s the abysmal writing of female characters in Heroes; there’s the relegation of female characters to stereotypical roles in Heroes (self-sacrificing mother, jealous wife, victim). In the news, there are the constant articles in the NYT about wives being subservient homemakers; women being appearance-obsessed, consumerist, superficial; women being less happy than men, so they should go back into the kitchen and give up fulfilling careers. In film, there are the beautiful, perfectly made up girls in Superbad that the ugly, social outcast boys were entitled to; the girls are portrayed as objects to get; the boy who wants a thoughtful, respectful relationship with a girl is ridiculed; the girls are portrayed as the Other who are incomprehensible and who break up the true bonds of boy pals; there is the idea that it’s okay and normal to get a girl so drunk that she can’t say no to when you fuck her, so you can get her to be your girlfriend for the summer so that you can fuck her for three months. That last one really, really, really made me angry. It is incredibly fucked up to present raping a girl so you can trap her into being your girlfriend so you can fuck her more as a normal part of being a teenager, a sympathetic situation, and a humorous situation. That made me incredibly angry. What also made me angry is that I thought that if I said anything about it to the male people who told me that Superbad was awesome, they would say, “Boys are just boys,” as if that’s true, as if that excuses promoting rape, as if that excuses anything, as if that’s okay. They would also say that I’m reading too much into things rather than acknowledging that the rape promoting/normatizing message exists, is fucked up, and never acknowledge that their male privilege allows them to ignore the rape promotion as harmless. I think Superbad deserves its own post because the rape message itself could eat an entire book, it says so much about rape: normatizing rape, acquaintance rape, victim methods for dealing with rape, how all of those are important to consider in the context of recent court decisions about rape. In film, there’s also Warner Brothers executive Jeff Robinov’s declaration that female leads are the reason that WB movies have tanked lately and that the solution to WB movies tanking is to stop making movies with female leads. In advertising, TV, and film, there’s the idea that the 18-25 male demographic is the key demographic for spending power, leaving out that there are just as many 18-25 year old females as males and that they, too, have spending power and interests that they would probably exercise if they weren’t ignored and if so much content wasn’t sexist crap aimed at their male peers.
Links roundup
Links: Miscellaneous links that I’ve seen lately and thought were interesting: feminism, sexism, law, academia, climate change, U.S. politics, abortion
NB: All of the Feministe posts have thoughtful and thought-provoking discussion in the comments that are worth reading.
Feministe: always interesting, well written, thoughtful, provocative, and informative. There are good discussions in the comments, too, as the mods allow dissenting opinions through rather than banning them.
I Am Emily X: the blog of workers at the Aurora Planned Parenthood chapter. Anti-life protestors are staging a “40 Days For Life” campaign of protests at Planned Parenthood clinics across the country, and this blog publishes the experience of Planned Parenthood workers, why they work at Planned Parenthood, the daily tally of protestors, and video clips.
Tamora Pearce on WB exec Robinov’s banning of female leads in movies: Why we shouldn’t be surprised by his sexist comment, the lack of movies with strong female leads, sexism in Hollywood’s movies. My thoughts upon reading the post were a) what? But surely there are lots of movies with strong female leads! b) such as The Interpretor, Nicole Kidman was awesome! That movie was awesome! And…and…um…Room with a View…and…uh…huh. c) I saw the remake of Poseidon Adventures on a plane recently and it was sexist (women are useless for anything but crying, having hysterical fits, needing protection, dying, and making sacrifices). d) I don’t see very many movies. e) I’m not missing much, am I? f) Tamora Pearce is absolutely right.
Feministe post on recent WHO study on the effects of outlawing abortion: it doesn’t lower the number of abortions, it just makes them more dangerous and unsafe. Also contains content on the hypocrisy and anti-life nature of the pro-life movement.
Bob Herbert: The Trivial Pursuit: NYT opinion piece contrasting the behavior of Al Gore since the 2000 elections with the behavior of George W. Bush since the 2000 elections and the behavior of Rudy Giuliani at present. As usual, Herbert is insightful and thoughtful, and this time he’s depressing, too.
Congratulations to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore for winning the Nobel Peace Prize for “their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”
On that note, A Prize for Mr. Gore and Science, NYT editorial on Al Gore, the IPCC, the Nobel, climate change, and the U.S. government. Additionally, IHT article on Nobel Peace Prize, quote: In this decade, the Nobel Peace Prize has been given to prominent people and agencies who differ on a range of issues with the Bush administration, including former President Jimmy Carter, who won in 2002, and Mohamed ElBaradei, the director of the United Nations’ nuclear monitoring agency in Vienna, in 2005.
Pennsylvania court recently ruled that forced gangbanging at gunpoint is not rape: the decision reifies stereotypes about what constitutes rape, how a rape victim is supposed to behave, the kinds of women who can be raped (white, upper class virgins) and the kinds of women who can’t (everyone else).
Post and discussion: is there common ground between anti-lifers and pro-choicers on abortion? Consensus answer from both sides: no. You would think yes, because both anti-lifers and pro-choicers want fewer abortions and fewer unwanted pregnancies. However, anti-lifers are usually anti-contraception, anti-sex education other than abstinence education, and anti-women-having-and-enjoying-sex. So their solution for decreasing the number of abortions is to ban it, which drives abortion underground and makes it more dangerous to the women. Pro-choicers support contraception, informative sex education, and generally, giving women control over their bodies and the kind of sex they have. It turns out there’s little room for compromise.
Feministe on Yahoo! dating advice: dating advice is the same old, same old: heteronormative, sexist (makes women subservient to men), and says that the only thing wrong with relationships these days is women.
The Leaky Pipeline: Women in Academia: interesting post, interesting discussion.
Sexism in our everyday professional lives: exactly what it sounds like. Go read it.
Unread Books Meme
I swear, one of these days I will post one of the posts I’ve been meaning to post: Boston Restaurants, Tomato Sauces from Scratch, Penne alla Vodka, Pazzia, etc. I feel like my brain is rotting inside my skull, which is why I can barely string words together into a coherent, meaningful sentence and I feel so lazy all the time, which is why I haven’t been posting the posts I’ve been drafting in my head. I can’t tell if it’s missing school in a way that means I should return or if I just haven’t adjusted to not being in school yet. I’m also sick of evaluating everything in terms of whether or not it’s a sign that I should go to graduate school. I should abandon all of that and throw myself into work for my analyst period instead of not giving it a fair chance because I’m trying to decide what to do in the post-analyst period while I’m still an analyst, but the problem is, if I do end up going to grad school, I have to think about it now in terms of keeping up my languages and applying next year. One thing I can concretely say: I miss studying languages and not reading or speaking another language is what’s making my brain feel like it’s rotting. I haven’t gone this long without reading something in another language since high school, and even then, I did Latin work for NJCL during the summer. It’s been three goddamned months since I cracked open Catullus 64, which was the last bit of serious Latin that I read. Fortunately, I’m getting my Classics books from storage this weekend, which means I can resume beating my head against the Iliad shortly.
In the meantime, though, the unread books meme: the top 106 books tagged ‘unread’ at LibraryThings.com. Bold the ones you’ve read, italicize what you started and didn’t finish, and you’re supposed to strike through what you couldn’t stand, but I’m not bothering. The numbers in parens are the number of readers that tagged the book as unread.
