February 3, 2012

Jay Michaelson, like many who are both queer and spiritual, speaks of fear. For years he concealed his homosexuality from others and from himself, convinced that coming out would spell the ...]]>

By A. GRACE STEIG

February 3, 2012

Jay Michaelson, like many who are both queer and spiritual, speaks of fear. For years he concealed his homosexuality from others and from himself, convinced that coming out would spell the end of his Jewish life. Instead, as the writer told an audience seated in Yale’s Slifka Center, “it was the beginning.” A Yale Law School grad and author of four books on religion, Michaelson was here on a book tour for his newest work, God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality. In God vs. Gay, he dispels the myth that the titular conflict exists, arguing within the framework of a literal interpretation of the Torah and New Testament. Michaelson discusses the sexuality of women as well as men, carefully and repeatedly noting that their cases should be addressed independently. A pious lesbian may be surprised, relieved, or disappointed to learn that her sexuality goes almost unmentioned, invisible, in Jewish and Christian religious texts. To his credit, Michaelson opens up the conversation about women’s absence from the texts. His central lesson for us, based on literal and historical textual analysis, is that God loves queers. This message should reach powerfully to a generation of budding lesbian, bisexual, and queer religious girls.

The messages in the Torah and New Testament are very different for a gay woman than for a man. There is a relative silence on lesbianism, as most Old Testament passages taken to preclude homosexuality in fact address only male-specific sexual acts. Take Leviticus 18:22, perpetually cited in Jewish discussions of homosexuality, which Michaelson translates in the following way: “And at a man you shall not lie the lyings of woman: it is a toevah.” The passage neglects to make an inverse command prohibiting women from lying with women. It addresses only male-male anal sex. And even more precisely: the word toevah, meaning a taboo associated with a specific group of people, is linked to cultish practices. Its historical context is indispensable to the reading of the text; as stated in Deuteronomy 23:18 and 1 Kings 14:24, the Canaanites practiced cultic orgies, in which both female and male prostitutes were used in sexual rituals imitating goddesses and gods – the real object of concern for an elective monotheism. In line with the Commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” Leviticus 18:22 forbids only specific cultish sexual acts in order to guard against idol worship. Thus, this passage should not be taken to condemn homosexuality in general. Neither this book nor any in the Old Testament forbid, or even mention, lesbian acts.

Within the texts, unique in directly addressing female queer sexual acts is a passage in the Christian New Testament. In Rmans 1:26-27, speaking of “shameful lusts” that the pagan Romans acted upon, the apostle Paul writes, “Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.” It next addresses men who “committed shameful acts with other men” and as such is taken to prohibit all – female and male – homosexual acts. This passage, according to Michaelson, is in fact less about same-sex relations than about gender roles. In his interpretation, the problem is not that women have relations with other women, but that, based on the assumption that one partner needs to take a “dominant” role, one woman is acting masculine and thus improper. In a modern context, Paul’s teachings that women must necessarily be meek and defer to the other sex are no longer taken as truth, except on the peripheries of Christianity that still regard women as unfit for leadership positions in the workplace, church, or home. This passage is a condemnation of lesbianism only if we view it as a condemnation of any power for women. As Paul’s words form the sole passage that addresses female-female sexuality, there is no strong case to be made against lesbianism in an age where Christian women gain political power.

Yet if a condemnation of lesbians is absent, so is the mere mention of lesbians. There are beautiful examples of a nonsexual love between women, such as the devotion of Ruth to Naomi in the Torah, evident in her pledge, “Wherever you go, I will go.” Their tender bond should be read as an affirmation of female love, emblematic of a general acceptance of love outside the confines of a heterosexual marriage. Yet lesbian sexuality is invisible in the texts. In biblical times, same-sex sexual acts did not define an identity. Further, women’s erotic acts were not even considered sex, to the Jewish scholars in biblical times whose phallogocentric discourse defined sex as penetration with a penis. Equating gay women with men, and considering same-sex desires indication of inherit gayness, is an anachronistic concept. Queer women may be troubled that their love and sex are not mentioned in the texts. If lesbianism is not an identity recognized in the Torah or Bible, how should women reconcile the blossoming of their spirituality with that of their queer sexuality?

Michaelson’s answer, which he finds in the texts, is that for many people they are two essential ways of expressing love. Passages abound proclaiming God’s compassion and love. As pronounced in 1 John 4:8, “Anyone who fails to love can never have known God, because God is love.” To deprive ourselves of love, we are also depriving ourselves of God’s love. In contrast, the acceptance of one’s identity and feelings is holy. As Michaelson stressed to the assembly in Slifka, “A loving God could not want the tyranny of the closet.” Instead, we should read the texts as affirming our freedom to explore and express our love. Glimpsed through these written messages, God’s wish for us is a loving, spiritual life.

I beheld the blossoming of life and love in one brave girl’s experience. In seventh grade, that clichéd-because-it’s-true time between childhood and adulthood, I attended a friend’s bat mitzvah ceremony, the symbol of a girl’s passage into womanhood. A young Conservative Jew, very small on the bimah, she delivered an eloquent and simple oration on the topic of homosexuality in the texts. She explained that the impetus in Old Testament times for heterosexual relations was a high birth rate to counteract the very low survival rate; an urgency that is no longer applicable to the world with its medical advances. At the time, this girl was in the process of coming out as bisexual, and her conclusion, six years ago, was the same as Michaelson’s: God loves and accepts queer people. Here was a female blossoming into womanhood before the eyes of the seated, amazed congregation. Having dispelled the falsities that too often plague religious queers, including Michaelson well into his adult life, this young woman was filled with a spiritual and personal love that dazzled us. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all girls could mature healthily and free of self-doubt? Her goal, Michaelson’s goal, is an understanding and experience of this spiritual love, available to all.

A. Grace Steig is a freshman in Yale College. She is a contributing writer for Broad Recognition.

January 29, 2012

On the Bulldog side of the party thrown by the Yale and Harvard Clubs in London for the Game this past fall, we started the night hopefully, talking about the ...]]> By ALICE BUTTRICK

January 29, 2012

On the Bulldog side of the party thrown by the Yale and Harvard Clubs in London for the Game this past fall, we started the night hopefully, talking about the decision made by our star quarterback to lead his team to likely defeat instead of pursuing a Rhodes interview. National news coverage praised Patrick Witt for providing a much needed antidote to the Penn State scandal – for surely, this golden composite of brain and brawn was the pinnacle of “good” character. While most of us speculated about whether the choice might have been made for the optics as much as for Yale’s athletic glory, we were proud to have the feel-good student-athlete story of the year on our side of the field.

And there is a chance that at least one woman heard her community telling her that her voice and her body were of no consequence as she watched the man who assaulted her falsely held up as a hero.

The now infamous expose published in the New York Times last week tells the rest of the story; in fact, following an informal investigation into a sexual assault charge, Witt “decided” to stick with his teammates, knowing full well that the Rhodes Scholarship is awarded on the basis of character as much as academic merit. His PR team has exploited the ambiguities allowed by a confidential procedure and institutional secrecy to say that because Witt withdrew his application just before the Rhodes Trust reconsidered its offer, the serious accusation of sexually assaulting another student had no impact on the proceedings. To my mind, this is a poor defense:  the fact that Witt beat the Trust to the punch does not mean that it was not swinging.

In the aftermath of the Times article, there has been shock – how could we have been tricked into celebrating a likely rapist? There have been the usual myths bandied around about lying, vindictive women, despite the fact that this woman chose a forum that, as Witt’s representatives have gleefully pointed out, would never have resulted in a formal or public punishment for her attacker. And immediately following that, there has been much shooting of messengers. The Times has, on reasonable grounds, been accused of weak journalistic standards, and of wrongfully violating confidentiality agreements. The Yale Daily News has, on reasonable grounds, been accused of weak journalistic standards for not violating confidentiality agreements. And Yale has been criticized for hiding the serious allegation of sexual assault behind these very same confidentiality agreements.

The stigma that attaches itself to all parties in a dispute of this kind, which has been handily demonstrated on comment boards across the Internet this week, indicates the importance and value of a confidential option. I believe that public prosecutions are a powerful tool for placing that stigma squarely on the shoulders of rapists where it belongs; however, I do not think it is fair to force those who, through no fault of their own, have been violated to stand on the front lines of a ruthless and ugly battle. The woman who accused Witt of assault wanted confidentiality, and Yale was absolutely correct to respect her choice.

Even so, Yale is guilty of deeply inhuman, and I might even go so far as to say abusive behavior,  if they allowed the world to celebrate a man they knew to be credibly accused of a very serious attack on another student. Yale has remained resolutely silent on the question of whether it would have been willing to re-endorse Witt for the Rhodes Scholarship after the Trust discovered the allegations against him.  If Witt was guilty, and the University has any kind of moral compass at all, it could not have done so.

I do not know the specifics of the confidentiality agreement in question, but I am certain that, in that case, Yale would have been able to correct the record without violating any of its terms. The University’s Office of Public Affairs has mastered the art of stonewalling even after issuing extremely provocative statements, and the ability to say “No Comment” is chief among its talents. But, as we well know, the University did nothing. A strategic silence both avoided the revelation of yet another sexual scandal and allowed the University to benefit from some good press in a long year of negative coverage. Yale, acting in its own self-interest, gave no thought to the female student who had complained.

Let us think of her now. Although we do not know for sure, it seems extremely likely that this woman legitimately felt that she had been attacked by Patrick Witt – I can think of few reasons for falsely instigating a secret, non-punitive complaint. In countless reports and initiatives and emails, Yale had told her that it cared about victims of sexual violence, so she told the University when she was attacked. She had been harmed and she trusted Yale to help her. But although she had been brave to make the complaint at all, she has received the message that she has not been brave enough. Her punishment for going to Yale instead of the police was to watch the man who had attacked her be turned into a hero while the University sat smugly, silently, with one proud hand on his shoulder. During frequent comparisons to the Penn State scandal, she was forced to hear over and over again that Patrick Witt was the antidote to the rapes at Penn State, that he was the “anti-rapist,” even though he had violated her.

A jolt of horror runs through me every time I think about this woman’s experience in the fall; the silence of the University made me, along with the rest of the Yale community, complicit in it. She lived a viciously public version of the experience that faces most victims of rape and sexual violence – watching as their injuries become reasons for further attack while the responsible parties, the rapists, continue to get the support and the sympathy of society. Yale personified the reason that rape is such an under-reported crime when it heard this woman’s story and then promptly swept her under the rug. By allowing her attacker to be championed, Yale told this woman that her pain was less important than his success.

I have no doubt that many will respond to this column with protests that I am not giving Witt due process by even entertaining the possibility of his guilt without knowing what “really” happened. I agree that Witt should be treated as innocent until proven otherwise; it is the mere possibility that this is an accurate version of events that is horrific, and that is unacceptable. In order to assuage my fears, and to manage what is becoming yet another blot on its good name, Yale needs to find a way to explicitly say, “We did not sit back and let you celebrate a man who we knew attacked another student for a ‘noble’ choice that he didn’t have. We did not choose to perpetuate a story that boosted our public relations at the expense of treating a woman who had been attacked as if she mattered. That is not what happened.” And it needs to say, “We would never let that happen.” Given the University’s history, told by Alexander v. Yale in 1980, Naomi Wolf in 2004, the Title IX investigation begun last fall, and by countless women who have passed through its gates, I am unhappily suspicious that Yale might be lying out loud if it tried.

Alice Buttrick, YC ‘10, is a former associate editor of Broad Recognition.  She is the manager of the Rhodes Project, a London-based charity.

I may sound like a party-pooper for this, but I feel compelled to get it off of my chest.  First, I’ll say that everyone should go see ...]]> By RODNEY “J PROPHET” REYNOLDS
January 23, 2012
Warning: may contain movie spoilers

I may sound like a party-pooper for this, but I feel compelled to get it off of my chest.  First, I’ll say that everyone should go see the new movie, Red Tails.  In a lot of ways it’s a really good movie.  With almost unparalleled graphic effects it aims to tell a story that follows Tuskegee Airmen, a group of African-American World War II fighter pilot heroes who defied odds to make substantial contributions in significant victories of that war.  This movie is particularly unique because it is the first to feature an all-black cast in a major action film.  Yet, I must say I was incredibly disappointed and misled by it.

This movie is touted as a litmus test for major Hollywood movies with an all-black cast.  It’s supposed to be the one to show how black casts can be widely appealing and overcome the narrow scope of foreign market value, but there were NO black women in this film!  Upon realizing the absence of black women during the movie (and the inclusion of only two women) I was deeply troubled.  Does this mean black women have no worth when it comes to markets? Is the representation of women, particularly black women, so insignificantly worthless that they have little to no role in this “catalytic” enterprise?

I’ve heard the argument that including black women would have disrupted the storyline.  I’ve heard the argument that the script had been revised so many times and a storyline with a mother, wife, or any other black female loved one could have gotten thrown out in the many edits.   I’ve heard the argument that the movie takes place almost solely in Italy so black women wouldn’t have been around.   I’ve heard the argument that this was in the 1940’s during war-time and women just weren’t on the front lines.  I hear these arguments, yet they honestly don’t make much sense to me.  Perhaps I am too blinded by my disappointment to be “logical.”  My sensibilities regarding this movie are not necessarily rooted in reason.  To suggest that black women were not a part of this story by saying they would have disrupted the storyline is offensive.  To posit that black women weren’t around is appalling.  Women were certainly around in spirit, in heart, in memory, and in reality.  In most war movies we hear about the family at home, or see representations of nurses, or women are depicted in pictures or flashbacks.  In this film there was no sufficient presence of black women!

The one mention of Ray Gun’s wife and child at home, to me, was inadequate.  If the filmmakers  used time in the film to flesh out a love affair between one of the pilots and a native of Italy, then wouldn’t there have been time to provide a “flashback” to a pilot’s family?  There wasn’t time to show a picture of a pilot’s mother and include an explanation of her importance in life?

I must admit I am personally invested.  My fiancée is a strong black female actor and I am saddened to know that in what seems to be credited as the first all-black casted movie by a major movie distributor she wouldn’t even have been considered for a role.  To think that I’ll have to tell my daughter that the first all-black action movie to be produced by “Hollywood” didn’t feature someone who looked like her is devastating.

Don’t get me wrong. We’ve come a long way.  I appreciate the struggle this movie underwent in order to get out.  It is, indeed, a stepping stone for black film and black actors.  I, in no way, want to diminish the significance of a story this film does tell.  I applaud the work of the people who produced it.  I sincerely thank George Lucas for his candor regarding the battle to make this movie happen in spite of the obstacles of racism.  And I certainly applaud the powerful performances of Cuba Gooding, Jr., Terrence Howard, and Nate Parker among others.  But it is incredibly difficult to overcome my feelings of being misled and disappointed by the absence and silencing, yet again, of black women in this African-American story and in the American story.

Rodney J Prophet Reynolds is DC ’10, MDiv. ‘13.  He is an IGR Recording Artist from Mt. Vernon, NY.  You can also follow him at facebook.com/jprophetghostwriter, jpghostwriter.tumblr.com, and twitter.com/jprophetpap.

January 3, 2012

Dear Kelly Clarkson,

Firstly, thanks for “A Moment Like This.” Really. I danced to it with my junior high boyfriend at my Bat Mitzvah and it was a very special three minutes.

Secondly, I want ...]]> By ALEXANDRA BRODSKY

January 3, 2012

Dear Kelly Clarkson,

Firstly, thanks for “A Moment Like This.” Really. I danced to it with my junior high boyfriend at my Bat Mitzvah and it was a very special three minutes.

Secondly, I want to talk about the whole Ron Paul thing for a minute. I’m all for musicians advocating for their beliefs and challenging listeners to engage politically. However, that doesn’t mean that you’re not accountable for making good, informed positions—and for recognizing that you don’t get to play Mr. Potato Head with candidates’ policies. You endorsed Ron Paul on your Facebook page, which you’re deservedly getting some shit for because he’s a racist, homophobic lunatic. I appreciate your identification of the aspects of Paul’s platform you find appealing—namely, his consistent demand for small government—but you don’t get to just vote for the compelling parts of a candidate. If you think Ron Paul should be President, you need to be comfortable with all of the baggage and dangerous ideology he will bring into the Oval Office. Sorry, no, you can’t “support gay rights, straight rights, women’s rights, men’s rights, white/black/purple/orange rights,” as you claim, and also vote for Ron Paul because you like some of the other things he says and he’s not Mitt Romney.

Ms. Clarkson, I apologize if this is coming out harsh. I think that maybe I have some pent up anger about a lot of the conversation surrounding the GOP candidates, particularly by self-identified feminists. If I have to hear one more person talk about how great Jon Huntsman is, just because he seems a little less crazy and has said some OK things on a few issues, I will be forced to kick some serious pro-life ass. Whatever you think of Huntman’s demeanor and immigration policies, he’s anti-choice and anti-queer rights. And that’s not something we can ignore. Given the last few years of assault on women’s right to choose, a candidate who has publicly pledged his support for a “right to life” amendment would be tremendously destructive to the health and wellbeing of women in America—and possibly around the world, with a reinstatement of the Global Gag Rule. Further, losing the momentum gained by the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and state legalization of same-sex marriage due to a homophobic president would be a huge setback for queer Americans.

Huntsman, of course, doesn’t have a shot at the nomination, and neither does Paul. Yet the popular willingness to paint them as rational, smart folk we can trust denies the risks that their anti-feminist and homophobic policies—which are shared by all major GOP candidates—pose to women and the queer community. Reproductive justice, queer rights, and racial equality are only three topics feminists should care about, but they are way too important to overlook because a candidate seems clever (Paul) or moderate (Huntsman) in comparison to the rest of the field. It’s rough when a politician you partially like has some crazy, stupid ideas, but you can’t dismiss those concerns when endorsing or voting—and if you can’t find a GOP candidate whose policies you can stand behind, maybe its time to look elsewhere. Ms. Clarkson, you need to face the details of Paul’s racism and homophobia, and all Republican feminists need to wonder whether their two alliances are compatible, at least in this election cycle.

I’m not saying, Ms. Clarkson, that you have to agree with every single policy of the candidate you vote for; such a demand would be unrealistic. But if you’re going to vote for Ron Paul, you have to be willing to face up to the fact that you’re prioritizing some abstract idea of “small government” (though how is a platform that supports a national redefinition of life libertarian?) over the rights of women and queer people. And self-professed feminists voting for a Republican candidate need to recognize that they are sacrificing one allegiance for the other—and need to be willing and able to justify that.

I voted for you during American Idol, so I know we’ll work it out for this election, too. Keep in touch–

Love,
Alexandra

Alexandra Brodsky is a senior in Yale College.  She is the executive editor for Broad Recognition.

It seems fitting that in the four years leading up to 2011, the accolade of Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” went to a dictator, the ‘leader of the free world,’ the holder ...]]> By EMILY VILLANO
December 31, 2011

It seems fitting that in the four years leading up to 2011, the accolade of Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year” went to a dictator, the ‘leader of the free world,’ the holder of America’s financial purse-strings, and a corporate CEO billionaire (Putin, Obama, Bernake, and Zuckerberg, respectively). And, in keeping with this particular honor, which up until 2000 was almost uniformly “Man of the Year,” those four, highly influential persons are all men. The cover of this year’s issue is striking, therefore, both because the face of 2011 has come to the fore by subverting these traditional modes of influence—protesting dictatorship, faux democracy, financial and corporate power—and because it is the face of a woman.

The cover image is taken from a photograph shot by Ted Soqui, a freelance photographer, of Sarah Mason, both of whom were participating in the Occupy L.A. protests. The two were lock-armed during a demonstration outside a Bank of the America in L.A, preparing for arrest, when Soqui took the photo. In the photograph, Mason’s yellow knit beanie and the red “99%” scrawled across her bandana mark her as a member of the Occupy movement. Yet in Time’s posterized version, the image evokes a Muslim niqab, linking Occupy to the Arab Spring, and the pair of feminine eyes, brows set in firm resolve, emblematizes protesters from Athens to New Delhi, Moscow to Mexico City. In BBC journalist Paul Mason’s astute breakdown of the current social movements, “Twenty reasons why it’s kicking off everywhere,” written back in February, bullet point number five reads: “Women very numerous as the backbone of movements. After twenty years of modernized labour markets and higher-education access the ‘archetypal’ protest leader, organizer, facilitator, spokesperson now is an educated young woman.”

As the “year of global indignation” increasingly gains steam and breadth, it has borne out Mason’s analysis. Cryptome, a website devoted to freedom of speech and information, has posted a series of photographs entitled “Women Protest Worldwide,” revealing women at the forefront of every facet of the year’s socials movements.  Defying conventions of feminine docility, the women pictured are aggressive and uncompromising. Filipino women throw mud to demonstrate against the power of oil companies; a young Greek woman opposing austerity measures withstands tear gas; female Occupiers spar with police. In those societies where women’s bodies are most policed, it seems especially meaningful to see women placing theirs on the line. An Indian woman sprawls her body across railroad tracks; a veiled Egyptian woman wags her finger and yells at a riot security guard; covered Orthodox women march before Parliament in Bulgaria.

Beyond the rank and file, women stand at the helm of many of the year’s largest movements. Camila Vallejo embodies Mason’s ‘archetypal’ protest leader. A 23-year old college student, Vallejo has commanded the attention of Chile since May of this year as the leader of a Chilean student movement demanding education reform. Combining charisma and public appeal with an incisive ideological critique of neoliberalism, Vallejo drives students to protest on her celebrity alone. Across the ocean, 32-year mother, journalist, and activist of many years Tawakel Karman leads the Arab Spring. She was thrust into the spotlight this year when, after witnessing the Tunisian demonstrations in January, she called for similar protests in her home state. Her subsequent arrests only further galvanized the nation, spurring demonstrations that culminated this November in an agreement by the Yemeni President Saleh to cede power within the month. This year, Karman became the first Yemeni woman, and only the fourteenth woman ever, to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts.

The tactics of some woman protesters exploit traditional gender conventions. For example, in February, Asmaa Mahfouz, a young Egyptian woman, roused support by playing on a culture of masculinity. Her webcam broadcast urges, “If you think yourself a man, come with me on January 25th. If you have honor and dignity as a man, come. Come and protect me, and other girls in the protest.” Yemeni women demonstrating in January wore headbands that read “housewives,” implying that their demands ought be heard because they conform to societal standards of respectability in women. At the other end of the spectrum, the Ukrainian activist group Femen has drawn attention to such diverse issues as election fraud in Russia and the lack of female representation in Ukrainian government with heavily sexualized and provocative topless displays.

Other woman protesters have been forced to fend off attempts to delegitimize their claims because of gender. Vallejo and Karman present just two high-profile examples. Much media coverage and attention in Chile has been devoted to Vallejo’s appearance. Described variously as a “student siren” and “flowering power” by a press fixated on Vallejo’s nose ring, as a “babe” in trending Twitter feeds and Facebook groups, the world sometimes seems more interested in Vallejo as a pretty face than a protest leader. But Vallejo has sublimated such superficial attention into genuine change, stating, “You have to recognize that beauty can be a hook. It can be a compliment, they come to listen to me because of my appearance, but then I explain the ideas.” In Yemen, President Saleh’s regime tried to discredit Karman by distributing a doctored photo of her alone with a male colleague and issuing statements that denounced woman protesters for mixing with men. Yet the strategy backfired, with Yemeni protesters asserting that female honor was better upheld by protesting the reigning government than obeying it.

The question remains whether increased participation and visibility for women in these social movements will translate into concrete gains for women. This question has sparked particular anxiety for woman protesters of the Arab Spring. Tunisian women, for example, have expressed fear that the Islamist party empowered in the wake of the revolution will compromise their rights. At an October forum discussing the future of Arab women following the Arab Spring in France, Iranian activist Shirin Ebadi warned that women may be closed off from power despite their revolutionary role. “You are making the same mistake Iranian women made. We thought we could demand women’s rights after the revolution,” she says. However, women are resisting the rollbacks. Just last week, Egypt saw the largest demonstration by women in the country’s history, protesting the violent treatment of woman protesters, and reclaiming a voice for women who have been almost completely excluded from the country’s new power structures.

What’s certain is that the protests of 2011 display the power of women to influence the course of history. As Karman states, “If you go to the protests now, you will see something you never saw before: hundreds of women. They shout and sing; they even sleep there in tents. This is not just a political revolution, it’s a social revolution.” Of course, a full recognition of the power and influence of women is still a ways off. Of the four “Runners-Up” to Time’s technically genderless “Protester,” the only woman included, Catherine Middleton, has the great distinction of marrying a powerful man, and, presumably, influencing women’s hat-wearing worldwide. Here’s to those women who, in 2011 and before, wore headpieces inscribed with political slogans instead.

Emily Villano is a junior in Yale College.  She is an associate editor for Broad Recognition.

December 30, 2011

TRIGGER WARNING: This is a personal essay about depression and suicidal thoughts.

On January 12, 1982, Maya Tanaka Hanway, then a Yale undergraduate, jumped off of the Arts and Architecture building. When I walk home ...]]> By JULIA CALAGIOVANNI

December 30, 2011

TRIGGER WARNING: This is a personal essay about depression and suicidal thoughts.

On January 12, 1982, Maya Tanaka Hanway, then a Yale undergraduate, jumped off of the Arts and Architecture building. When I walk home at night from a library or a friend’s dormitory, especially under a winter sky, I am sometimes thinking of this woman who, thirty years ago, found her pain so terrible that she decided to kill herself. Her story feels so familiar: I understand how she tried to paint but couldn’t, how she must have struggled through her classes and distanced herself from her friends, how, maybe, she wandered through this city in search of an elusive peace.

But my days now are, mostly, good, and have been for months – which is surprising, rare, and precious. My struggle with depression seems to, for now, have been won. Each moment pushes away the memories of the worst months of my life: the February I forgot my high school locker combination because I had missed so many days of classes; the March I slept under thin sheets in a hospital bed; the April I spent driving the same dark roads listening to the same sad songs until certain curves sang certain words.

It’s no great secret that many young people, and many people at Yale, struggle with depression. Last month, I watched a friend pack and leave Yale after a suicide attempt, wishing I could somehow express how I would a thousand times rather say goodbye knowing I would see him next fall than never see him again. I have left so much unsaid – so here I hope to offer a reflection on my own experiences: a voice and a story, though not an explanation or an apology.  I also offer the necessary disclaimer – that my experience is my own and one of a white, straight, cisgender woman with one certain kind of mental illness.

“The search for love continues even in the face of great odds.”

When bell hooks taught at Yale in the 1980s, around the time Maya Tanaka Hanway committed suicide, she walked past this graffiti-ed proverb each day. The words are gone, painted over in stark white on some wall I will never find.

In the end, it is love – and time. Who knows, though, if there will ever be enough time, or if death or resignation will win out? The search, after all, is always long, but terrifyingly so when one is depressed. Now I call this campus and this city home, as I have learned to dwell within my own mind. It is a place where I have found a certain kind of love and things that I do not want to surrender to illness.

“To be honest would be to give myself away.” – Julia Lurie in the Yale Herald

I have considered myself a feminist since I was thirteen, when I came across the word and found it obvious that women should have, as the phrase goes, political, social, and economic equality with men. I was young and lonely and precocious; I knew that girls found me intimidating and boys found me confusing; I wanted to be pretty almost as badly as I wanted to be the smartest person in the room.

I grew into the word and idea of feminism. I’m sure that I found feminism appealing – and necessary – because it explained, on a level that the Catholicism of my childhood couldn’t, why I felt so bad about being a girl; why I was alternately obsessed with changing the world and changing the size of my thighs; why there were so few girls in my calculus class and why the boys never picked me as a partner.

“And it felt like a winter machine you go through, and then you catch your breath and winter starts again…”  – Dar Williams, “After All”

When my adolescence was shattered by depression, I wasn’t expecting it. As much as I could be sensitive and introverted, I was also the girl who did it all – which made the situation all more devastating when I could do almost nothing at all.  My junior and senior years of high school were spent more in darkness than in light – in more pain than I would wish on anyone.  I was left to contend with sadness that ached my body and clouded my mind, always carrying  a tremendous sense of guilt and failure. I came of age in this way, not through love or drugs or music, but inexplicable and incapacitating sadness.

I was placed on involuntary leave weeks before my freshman year at Yale was to begin.  Between that summer and the autumn when I actually did begin my first year here, there were many months when I felt certain that I would never come to Yale. I believed that I would have no choice but to forfeit my acceptance and wander through young adulthood, unable to maintain any kind of a normal life and achieve the things I had assumed I would. I alternated wildly between a seventeen-year-old’s ridiculous overestimation of herself and a devastating insecurity that left me confident in nothing but the belief that – one day – I would take my own life. Logic, for the depressive, is a complicated thing. I was trapped between the have-it-all optimism of the girl-power generation and the bitter reality that I couldn’t get out of bed. So I spent a year at home, working and volunteering, finding people who understood when I would disappear for weeks at a time, staying up all night or sleeping for days, thinking, tracing the streets of New Haven in my mind.

”There is a terrible loss of dreams and inescapable damage to friends, family, and self… a sense of being only a shadow or husk of one’s former self; an unshakable hopelessness.” -Kay Redfield Jamison, Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide

The simplistic modern explanation of depression as a chemical imbalance failed to satisfy me. Because as much as depression is impersonal – that is, it affects people without regard to their class, age, background, or gender – it is also a terribly personal experience: isolating, incapacitating, and, frankly, terrifying. There’s little that statistics about medication efficacy or platitudes about recovery can do to soothe someone who was in my position.

As much as depression tore from me – months of my life; a year at Yale; friendships and self-confidence – the smallest things hurt the most: the twenty pounds I gained, eating alone late at night, the high-school boyfriends I never had, the awkward silences when I lied about my happiness, the poems I wanted to write but somehow couldn’t, and seeing my friends succeed at the things I was supposed to be doing, and wondering if I ever would.

Maybe I did have an inescapable genetic legacy. My family history reveals women like me – those I know and those I will never know. A great-aunt who took directionless late-night car rides to nowhere and a cousin lying in a hospital bed, her body devastated by anorexia. My mother, in her senior year of high school, tallied the days her mother spent in bed until the number was too high to count.

These stories are not unique to my family; struggles of the mind, of course, often take a different shape for women, and it is a terrible sisterhood that we share. We are more likely to be sexually assaulted, more likely to bear the burden of unwanted pregnancy or single motherhood, and more likely to attempt, though not complete, suicide. The issues of body image which have tormented so many of my friends  – a body too short or tall, too sharp and angled, too soft and round – are by no means uniquely female, but they are a particular burden for women. Our attempts to define our sexuality beyond the virgin/whore dilemma are rarely simple. Postpartum depression affects an eighth of mothers, who are in turn often told that they are simply bad, cold, selfish parents who don’t love their children enough. And we are more likely to be discredited for our struggle, shamed in our weakness, labeled histrionic, overemotional, and unstable.

“But once someone is a clinical case, once someone is in a hospital bed … his story is absolutely and completely his own.” – Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

Misunderstandings of mental illness abound, but if there is one theme that I would like to argue most specifically against, it is that the sad woman is somehow mysterious and alluring. Let me be perfectly clear: there is nothing sexy about having the underwire taken out of your bra, being watched while you shave, being seventeen and on a children’s unit and eating Froot Loops and playing bingo. If anything, being depressed is the opposite of what I personally find attractive: depth, confidence, ambition. Yet this trope persists: no one would have read Prozac Nation if Elizabeth Wurtzel hadn’t been so damn hot.

It continues to frustrate me that popular understanding of women’s depression is limited to The Bell Jar and other similarly sensationalized, not to mention outdated, portraits. A woman’s vulnerability, they seem to say, is somehow evidence of her allure; depressed is just another word for coy. I assure you, real mental illness doesn’t exist to satisfy a fetish. The troubled history of women and psychiatry is only reinforced by these concepts of the mercurial, irresponsible, self-absorbed woman who so clearly needs intervention to return to the realm of acceptability. Too often, women are the patients and men the authorities.

And if we’re not sexy, we’re selfish. We fail to be the whore and we also can’t get the selfless Madonna quite right. Selfish is one of the worst things a woman can be, and what is more selfish and self-indulgent than to be unable to carry on with one’s relatively comfortable, uncomplicated existence? Feminism did not absolve me from this guilt. It became even easier to think of the massive, overwhelming problems in this world and find my own struggles shameful and insignificant.

“Some people protest carrying signs. Some people protest by making activist radical music. Sometimes people try to just make it through a day and not kill themselves, and that’s their activism for right then, because that’s all they have.” – Kathleen Hanna

I thought that to prove myself a feminist, I needed to be making immediate change, making statements, making demands of the world; many mornings, I could hardly will myself to make it through the day. Feminism is about agency; depression took that from me. Feminism is about community; depression left me isolated and alone. Feminism is about working for the good of the world; depressed, I believed that the only thing I would ever do to better the world was to kill myself.

“For… Emma Bee Bernstein… whose biggest strength and weakness was feeling everything like a stab in the heart.” – Nona Willis Aronowitz, in the introduction to her and Emma’s book Girldrive: Criss-Crossing America, Redefining Feminism. Emma died by suicide before the book was completed.

I believe that – that feeling so deeply it cuts through your mind and even threatens your sanity is both a strength and a weakness. It is not a shameful thing to feel, and feel deeply. The only error is to believe that we are alone in our rage, grief, confusion, or passion.

In trying to make peace with my mind and to carve a space in the world where I could at least survive, I was able to believe that there was a place for me within feminism. I believe I have survived – both in the most obvious sense and in the greater, spiritual one – because I have been welcomed into communities even when I find myself distinctly unlovable. My communities have largely been feminist ones; feminism begins at the idea that each woman is worthy and that she does not deserve her oppression or struggle. I can only say that feminism is a source of courage to argue with those who tell a woman that she isn’t thin enough to have an eating disorder; wasn’t suicidal enough to “mean it;” wasn’t sober enough to have been raped.  Feminism strengthens the voice which will allow no one to define our most challenging and personal of experiences. I found great solace in a movement that took my struggles as legitimate, and, yet, did not use them as an excuse to diminish my humanity. It is somehow possible, I learned, to be impatient with the world and yet patient with oneself.

“Thirty years later, I walk around campus, and see young women and men who have no idea how beautiful they are. They are beautiful in their newness, their idealism, and their open hearts.” – Camille Thomasson, in a 2010 remembrance of Maya Tanaka Hanway

If you need time off, take it; if you need to talk to a therapist, talk; if you need to confide in a friend, confide. If you are struggling, my heart is here for you. I wish that, in the great tradition of women sharing their stories, we could have a cup of tea or sit cross-legged in a park and speak. I want nothing more than for these conversations to be had, and not in the echo chamber of the depressed mind or within the glaring white walls of a hospital; I want them to happen among friends and among feminists. For as much as feminism changes the world, it must first change the self.

“The girl at her music sits in another sort of light, the fitful, overcast light of life, by which we see ourselves and others only imperfectly, and seldom.” – Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted

The girl at her music, the girl at her protest or her elementary-school tutoring, the girl at her English class or her biology lab, the girl drinking black coffee in Blue State: the girl, the girl, this girl. This is for Maya, this is for Emma, this is for everyone I have ever wanted to tell but couldn’t. In the end, I believe most strongly in the stubborn power of the human heart, and that the heart that breaks will someday save another.

Julia Calagiovanni is a freshman in Yale College.  She is a staff writer for Broad Recognition.

December 28, 2011

According to the LA Times, the average American woman wears size 14 clothing. Almost all advertising, though, features women less than half this size. Los Angeles based company American Apparel, ...]]> By CHAMONIX ADAMS PORTER

December 28, 2011

According to the LA Times, the average American woman wears size 14 clothing. Almost all advertising, though, features women less than half this size. Los Angeles based company American Apparel, however, recently decided to feature larger models than their usual  HYPERLINK “http://store.americanapparel.net/rsals310.html” half-naked, size zero waifs.

American Apparel called out for “bootylicious” and “booty-ful” “curvaceous” women to submit photos of themselves and asked the public to vote for their favorite models. One plus-size woman, Nancy Upton, was troubled by the campaign and took matters into her own hands. Upton entered the contest with subversive photographs of herself eating. She held a cherry pie to her crotch, poured chocolate syrup into her mouth, and even bathed in ranch dressing. News of her entry buzzed across the Internet, and Upton racked up the most votes of all of the women in the contest.

In a Daily Beast interview, she stated that American Apparel “has always gone above and beyond other companies in objectifying women” (remember their creepy CEO?) and felt that this contest, with all its “overused euphemisms for fat,” was a weak apologist attempt to encourage plus-size women to buy more of their merchandise.

American Apparel, in the end, did not crown Nancy Upton “The Next Big Thing.” Instead, Iris Alonzo, the Creative Director of the firm, wrote an angry email to Upton, stating, “It’s a shame that your project attempts to discredit the positive intentions of our challenge based on your personal distaste for our use of light-hearted language, and that ‘bootylicous’ was too much for you to handle.”

Never mind. Nancy Upton is not “The Next Big Thing.” In fact, she’s not a “thing” at all. She’s a person, and as she put it herself, one too  “XLent” for them anyway. Nancy Upton stood up to a world of fashion consumed with curating and objectifying the female body, and that’s why I want to be her when I grow up.

Chamonix Adams Porter is a freshman in Yale College.  She is a staff writer for Broad Recognition.

Despite cultural shifts and the rise of equality, most would-be parents still strongly prefer boys to girls. While this trend is most persistent in 2nd and 3rd world countries such as China and India, ...]]> By ANTONIA CZINGER
December 5, 2011

Despite cultural shifts and the rise of equality, most would-be parents still strongly prefer boys to girls. While this trend is most persistent in 2nd and 3rd world countries such as China and India, a 2011 Gallup poll reveals that boys are still by far No. 1 in the United States as well. The problem: this sex preference both devalues the life of girls and can cause dangerous gender imbalances. In order to upend this problematic trend, the magazine Fastcompany has attempted a creative solution: it recently challenged some top advertising agencies and designers to create an ad campaign to “rebrand women” and garner support for the birth of female babies. But what does it mean to “rebrand women?” What are the inherent risks involved? And can these risks be avoided to create an effective and powerful campaign?

There are those who cringe at the very idea of marketing baby girls, and they have a point. Babies are human beings, not commodities to be sold, and it makes sense to worry that ads would blur this distinction. Since “marketing” often objectifies and stereotypes, they fear this well-meaning campaign may nevertheless subject baby girls to similar treatment. However, the goals of these ads differ dramatically from those of traditional ads. When a woman is “marketed” to sell a product, she is used as stimulus to achieve a certain end. When Paris Hilton strips down to her underwear and eats a hamburger, she is used to pique the consumer’s interest in sex to spur a purchase. In contrast, these ads neither arouse the viewer nor push an external product. Instead, they are intended to dispel negative misconceptions about women that obscure their true value.

Ads need not objectify or demean their subjects. For example, the relief agency CARE uses female subjects and the words “I am powerful” to promote expanding opportunities for women in need. Although the issue in those ads is “aiding” versus “having” the girl, they similarly foster a desire to engage with the female subjects shown. Obviously, the challenges involved in creating respectful pro-baby girl ads are thornier than those CARE faced. When advocating for the value of an entire gender one can easily fall into the trappings of stereotypes. Additionally, there is the risk that people see these ads and decide to try for a girl simply because she is portrayed as “trendy.” Therefore, these ads must not only portray women with respect, but also take care not to limit the value of women to a few privileged representations and avoid trendiness.

While avoiding the perpetuation of harmful female stereotypes, these ads must also take into consideration their effect on baby boys. Boys are facing new challenges in this more equal, postindustrial society and also need our support. As Fastcompany pointed out, girls outperform boys in school, and while it is great that girls are doing well, the gender gap itself is not. Consider: in a 2010 psychological study conducted by Bonny Hartley and Robbie Sutton, boys as young as seven thought they were less focused, able, and successful than girls. If boys look at these pro-baby girl ads and think they are undervalued, they are less likely to fulfill their potential. Moreover, they may turn to sexism in order to reconfirm their identity and feel empowered. These ads must avoid alienating boys in order to prevent backlash and foster an accepting community.

The criterion for successfully and respectfully “marketing women” is difficult to meet, so it comes as little surprise that not all ads generated by the Fastcompany challenge succeed. 72andSunny literally turns girls into accessories by showing us a fictional IPhone app called Girlify. The Cramer-Krasselt campaign perpetuates negative stereotypes by using made up statistics (i.e. boy’s are 75% more likely to set something you love on fire) that reinforce the idea that boys are too rambunctious and that little girls must be docile and sweet. Luckily for Fastcompany, other ads do seem to meet the criterion and successfully promote baby girls. Leo Burnett defies stereotypes about women by picturing Amy Poehler with the words “My father wanted a boy. He did not think girls were funny.” Everybody Shout’s second ad, featuring stick figures in various sex positions, uses a clever tagline to effectively make its point without pigeonholing either gender (“It doesn’t matter how you do it. Just do it for her.”—promoting both female babies and female pleasure).

Advertising can be a powerful tool for empowering baby girls and bringing about greater equality. However, potential ads must be screened carefully to avoid the many harmful risks.

Antonia Czinger is a junior in Yale College. She is a contributing writer for Broad Recognition.

November 22, 2011

What’s the opposite of a silver lining?

Whatever it is would be an apt description of the recent rejection of the Personhood Amendment by Mississippi voters. The aspiring amendment to the state constitution failed at the ...]]> By BENJAMIN MILLER

November 22, 2011

What’s the opposite of a silver lining?

Whatever it is would be an apt description of the recent rejection of the Personhood Amendment by Mississippi voters. The aspiring amendment to the state constitution failed at the ballot box by a wide margin, surprising observers who had expected the buckle of the Bible Belt to adopt the extreme provisions grounded in the principle that a fertilized egg should possess the full rights of an individual. The amendment would have criminalized abortion (even in the case of rape, incest, or danger to the mother) and forms of birth control that prevent implantation of fertilized eggs, including the “morning after” pill and intrauterine devices. It could even have forbidden doctors from administering chemotherapy to pregnant cancer patients.

In part because of its extremity, the amendment revealed fault lines in the typically undivided pro-life corps. (Nice for liberals to be the unified ones for once, isn’t it?) Some worried that it went too far; even Governor Haley Barbour nervously ruminated, “It says ‘life begins at fertilization or cloning or the functional equivalent thereof.’ That ambiguity is striking a lot of pro-life people here as concerning.”

Others understood the strategic risk the amendment posed to the national pro-life cause. The National Right to Life Committee opposed the Mississippi amendment and has declined to advocate personhood amendments across the country. Because the amendment flies in the face of Roe v. Wade (even granting the restrictions imposed by  Gonzales v. Carhart) its passing would have drawn immediate and forceful legal challenges. Being bound by precedent, federal courts would have been compelled to overturn the amendment. The worst-case scenario for the pro-life contingent would have been a Supreme Court ruling reinforcing Roe and, in all likelihood, expanding its protections.

The current Court is more conservative than the one that decided Roe. Still, the NRLC—a far more politically savvy and long-term-thinking organization than Parenthood USA, the brawn behind the amendment—recognizes that the overturning of Roe is unlikely at this time. Far more probable is that a challenge to the amendment would have induced the Court to draw starker lines, possibly undermining existing abortion restrictions in various states and making the amendment a Trojan Horse for abortion rights.

So should you celebrate the failure of the Personhood Amendment? Well, that depends on how risk-averse you’re feeling. The national status quo is safe for now, and we’ve avoided the unlikely but possible overturning of Roe. On the other hand, another abortion case will make its way to the Supreme Court sooner or later—and how conservative will the justices be then?

There may yet be a genuine silver lining. The fundamental insight the NRLC has either already discovered or must discover is that the law is not their best tool for change. America has always done a poor job of legislating social values, especially on the federal level. (The possible exceptions, like Civil Rights Act of 1964, occur when core values of a minority prove incompatible with national sentiment.) The temperance movement only came to that understanding too late, after Prohibition had taken its toll. So, abortion rights opponents, take it from an abortion rights supporter: cultural differences are best resolved through cultural movements. The alternatives are either destructive, divisive, and ultimately doomed legislation, or civil war. Alcohol abuse declined in the decades after the end of Prohibition because of a broad and sustained cultural reform effort, not because of legal finagling. If Mississippi nudges the pro-life camp in that direction, we should all be grateful.

Benjamin Miller is a 2010 graduate of Yale College and a contributing writer for Broad Recognition. More of his essays can be found at Like Them That Dream.

This arti­cle does not nec­es­sar­ily reflect the views of Broad Recognition.