the ch!cktionary

The Saudi Marathon Man : The New Yorker

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 15:50:37 -0400

The Saudi Marathon Man : The New Yorker:

A twenty-year-old man who had been watching the Boston Marathon had his body torn into by the force of a bomb. He wasn’t alone; a hundred and seventy-six people were injured and three were killed. But he was the only one who, while in the hospital being treated for his wounds, had his apartment searched in “a startling show of force,” as his fellow-tenants described it to the Boston Herald, with a “phalanx” of officers and agents and two K9 units. He was the one whose belongings were carried out in paper bags as his neighbors watched; whose roommate, also a student, was questioned for five hours (“I was scared”) before coming out to say that he didn’t think his friend was someone who’d plant a bomb—that he was a nice guy who liked sports. “Let me go to school, dude,” the roommate said later in the day, covering his face with his hands and almost crying, as a Fox News producer followed him and asked him, again and again, if he was sure he hadn’t been living with a killer.

Terrorism is as much what we inflict upon others as it is what is inflicted upon us.

Boston

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 16:51:28 -0400

I couldn’t get out of Boston soon enough when I was in the midst of leaving the country in January. I wanted nothing to do with the city any longer, and I felt like there was nothing left for me there. But of course there’s something I left behind, or I wouldn’t be this upset, this much of a wreck that I interrupted a family dinner to shove a smart phone in my boyfriend’s face.

Surprisingly right now, I actually miss Boston. I even wish I were there. I feel something I didn’t think I was capable of feeling anymore. Homesickness. Powerlessness. I don’t know, but I feel something and that is more than what I can say for most days. I called the first friend I could think of in Boston, and the number was busy because every number in town is busy, and then I called my best friend, a native Bostonian, who now lives in New York. And I guess there is, after all, something I’ve left behind.

The only thing I want at the moment is to be able to see and hold my friends, to sit in my old apartment (now occupied by strangers), to be on that street I took for granted. We went every year to the marathon. We’ve waited at that finish line, me and the dog. Our apartment was two blocks away. Patrick has even run that race, back in 2008. I’ve passed that intersection hundreds of times over the course of the past few years, so many times that by the end, I didn’t even really register it anymore, because that’s how numb I was to it all. That’s how shut down I was in January. But I don’t feel numb anymore. I feel something, that’s for sure. I feel something.

I wanted to let you know that your blog has been a great source of comfort to me, though I've only popped in from time to time in the last few years. I was also socially ostracized in college (on a much smaller scale) when I was unhappy. Since then, I've felt that I'll never regain the confidence that I'd need to pursue my ambition of becoming an academic, a belief that my ideas could matter. Your passion and courage are so inspiring. They make me think I could be stronger, too.

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 12:19:00 -0400

I think you’ve already demonstrated your strength by sharing this story (which I have been terribly tardy in responding to - my apologies). Hopefully, in writing me this message, you can recognize that the people who ostracized you were wrong in their actions and especially in their opinion. Your ideas DO matter. This note mattered to me, and I’m sure it will matter to someone else who is reading.

I have been told many times that my work and writing are passionate and courageous, but if I am brave, it is only because I am continually humbled and inspired by others who have overcome far more adversity and emerged even kinder and more loving than before. There are so many people I have had the privilege of knowing (both online and in real life) who have shared similar stories of exile and rebirth. And these are mostly regular people - not sex bloggers or hardcore activists or folks who are even necessarily political. Sometimes, all it takes to be made fun of is to be poor, disabled, a person of color, a survivor of sexual/psychological trauma, queer, gender non-conforming, or just plain weird or “crazy” by typical standards of society.

The thing is, most of us are weird, most of us are born with both privileges and handicaps, most of us spend our lives trying to make sense of the suffering we witness or endure in the world, but few of us manage to avoid inflicting suffering upon others, few of us manage to ease the suffering of others. As Albert Camus noted, “Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.” And it’s precisely because I know how difficult it is to live in this society (no matter what position you might occupy in life) that I have tried to share a bit of my experience. Honesty and open-heartedness and empathy are some of the few tools at our disposal. Writing is simply my way of wielding these tools. I am certain that you will discover the right ones for yourself.

"In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 11:46:49 -0400

“In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”

- Albert Camus

Why I Don't Support The Human Rights Campaign

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 12:00:00 -0400

Why I Don't Support The Human Rights Campaign:

I’ve been harping on this organization for years, but it hasn’t exactly made me popular among my gay friends. Here’s why this incident (in which a HRC staffer tries to silence a trans activist) doesn’t surprise me in the least:

1. The HRC is first and foremost a political action committee, which means that they want and have always prioritized broad mainstream support, both financially and politically.

2. They have historically excluded, minimized, or simply ignored trans people (as well as other marginalized queer folks) in their agenda and have shown many times over that they have no qualms about abandoning equality for all in favor of equality for some.

3. Its leadership consists almost exclusively of privileged and white gay men. Its corporate partners are led almost exclusively by privileged and white (though not necessarily gay) men. Despite historic criticism of the organization’s lack of diversity, nothing has changed in the last decade. Because the HRC is not interested in anything changing.

4. I know from personal experience that they do not train their staff or volunteers on sensitivity toward trans issues even after all the controversy post-ENDA.

5. The HRC will negotiate with the Devil and sell out just about anyone if it fits their schemes. Would you trust a group like that with your social security benefits? You shouldn’t.

The organization has demonstrated time and time again that it feels no accountability toward major segments of their supposed constituency (trans or young or poor or non-white), so I find it fully plausible that this incident occurred and that the HRC is trying to cover its ass rather than admit that the largest lobbying organization for LGBT rights in the country is really more concerned about staying in power than actually challenging the power structures that currently exist.

In conclusion, you will not find an equal sign on my Facebook or anywhere else. I think it’s hypocritical and ignorant to allow the HRC to represent the entire American queer agenda, so long as the organization continues to devote the great majority of its manpower, influence, and money toward marriage equality alone - a goal which (long overdue may it be) frankly changes very little for the most marginalized and most ignored parts of the queer “community”.

The Symptoms

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 08:50:00 -0400

I spontaneously threw up again last night, the culmination of a migraine that had been building up for the past few days. I don’t know what it is with my body.

I wasted away this fall, to the point where it became visibly noticeable. The worst of it was in August/September, when I dropped about ten pounds (approximately a tenth of my body weight) in a single month. It taken me a long time to recover. I guess my appetite went awry around the same time I got depressed and anxious and had a kind of breakdown.

After we left the East Coast in February for our California sojourn, I started experiencing food cravings again, but I also got nauseous whenever I consumed meat. I could barely eat any tacos, sushi, Chinese BBQ, all the things I associate with home. Patrick’s been vegetarian since he finished his dissertation (on food production) last May. But it wasn’t until California that I started doing the same. Like everything else that’s happened with my body, this is involuntary.

And then there are the sleeping issues, the weirdly intense dreams featuring people I thought I’d long forgotten. I wake up with aches and pains, despite the fact that I spend an hour or more stretching everyday. Sometimes, I get claustrophobic in bed. Sometimes, I feel like I can’t breathe properly. There were entire days I spent on the verge of tears this past fall. The last time it was like this, it was 2008 and I’d been humiliated in the most public fashion possible. I haven’t been humiliated this time around, but I’ve been deeply disappointed.

I stretch so much these days because I had to stop doing yoga regularly this fall. Then the last time I attempted it (in New York City in early February), I fainted half an hour into the class. That’s never happened to me before in all the time I’ve been practicing, and now I don’t feel like doing yoga again, which I know is stupid.

I think I know what this is all about, but if I don’t know how to express it, how to be honest about it, not just to myself and to Patrick but to the other people in my life, then how am I supposed to gain back everything I’ve lost, both physically and emotionally?

I wish I felt like there were something in America for me to return to. But I don’t - not at this moment. I feel like I’ve done everything I can over the past few years to help the people in my life become better versions of themselves. I feel like I can’t care about anyone the same way anymore. I don’t miss my friends the way I thought I would. I don’t miss my life or my work or my old apartment. I don’t miss who I was either. That’s the thing I miss least.

I’m not angry, not anymore. And I’m not without hope either. But I do feel blank, like there isn’t much I left behind.

I think I miss having expectations of people, having ideas of who they would become, having hopes and dreams about a common future. I don’t know what my future holds anymore, but I feel like I can’t wait for the past. I feel like I’ve been waiting and waiting for something or someone to change. And the only thing I can change is myself.

"The choice to follow love through to its completion is the choice to seek completion within..."

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 09:23:51 -0400

““The choice to follow love through to its completion is the choice to seek completion within ourselves. The point at which we shut down on others is the point at which we shut down on life. We heal as we heal others, and we heal others by extending our perceptions past their weaknesses. Until we have seen someone’s darkness, we don’t really know who that person is. Until we have forgiven someone’s darkness, we don’t really know what love is. Forgiving others is the only way to forgive ourselves, and forgiveness is our greatest need.””

- Marianne Williamson (via humanflower)

I feel silly writing this, but here goes. Several years ago, we had a soc class together; we were in the same section (with Patrick as TF). I'd heard of your blog and read a little of it; I judged you. Today, something reminded me of all that and I thought I'd check it out. I read about your depression and I felt normal and unashamed for the first time in 3 years. I couldn't believe it. I was inspired. To be healthier. To work harder (or at all, again). Thank you. :)

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 12:34:07 -0400

Don’t feel silly - this note made me feel better about a lot of things (both past and present), so I’m glad you wrote it even though I have no idea who this is.

We’re all guilty of judging other people, and what I’ve come to realize since I left college is that more often than not, we are really just judging ourselves. Cruelty to others is too commonly a manifestation of self-hatred. Maybe that’s why I’m able to take criticisms less personally and treat strangers more kindly these days. I actually like myself and I want everyone else to like themselves too.

(And it does help to be reminded that there are those who once judged a younger me and who have since reconsidered their original opinion.)

So, thank you for your honesty. I’m glad that reading about my depression made you feel less alone. I’m sure that your message has made someone out there feel less alone as well.

Departure/Arrival

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 09:16:00 -0400

Left Williamsburg shortly after 4pm.

Puked on myself/the luggage/cab en route to the airport.

Got on flight around 7pm. Plane taxied for 45 minutes.

7+ hours later … disembarked to snow and below freezing wind chill.

Maneuvered luggage to train station. Waited an hour, got on, transferred to another train, got off.

Got picked up.

Ate breakfast.

Still smell like puke as of this post. (It’s a little after 2pm in Germany).

So I guess my “leaving home” or “leaving the continent” was not nearly as triumphant an endeavor as originally envisioned.

Given the completely last-minute and disastrous nature of my first visit to Germany, I really shouldn’t be surprised that this is how my new life starts.

On Saying Hello

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 19:57:00 -0500

“Certain conquests made by the soul and the mind are impossible without disease, madness, crime of the spirit.” –Thomas Mann

I could say that my sparse blogging is the result of being on the road or overwhelmed with assignments, but neither have stopped me from journaling before and there is plenty I write these days that I don’t post. This blog isn’t for journaling, though. It used to be, when I wasn’t as public a figure, when I started this as a scrapbook of my remaining college years, when I was still considered what we then called “early adopters” - but whatever this site has morphed into, intentional or not, no longer serves my writing. I’ve deprioritized what I care about for far too long, and now I feel like I owe an explanation to someone, maybe to myself.

I’ve wanted to write a goodbye post for a while, but there never seemed to be an appropriate time to write it or to post it and what I really feel like I need to do is explain myself, which is not so much of a “goodbye” but a “hello”. And how do you say hello to people who think they already know you?

I am not even talking about readers anymore.

My blog was a selfish endeavor when I started it. I was trying to heal myself and fight back with text, and for a while, what I was doing felt authentic even if it was different from my Sex And The Ivy writing. At some point, blogging stopped being about healing. It became only about fighting back. And maybe that’s when I started being selfless about it - maybe to a fault.

How are you supposed to write freely when you are in constant fear of what might happen to others as a result? I don’t allow myself to mourn for lost friendships anymore, because I see what happens to those who can’t handle betrayal. I don’t think I’ve ever loved myself enough to protect myself from getting hurt. My own self-preservation is learned.

I wish I allowed myself the kindness of peace a long time ago, but I never believed then that I deserved it. I never believed I deserved anything. Never the fame, for one, and then the infamy - well, that was just terribly confusing. It’s funny that so many people seem to think - even if they don’t say it - that I’m moving to Germany for someone or something other than myself. As if I could still envision a life here.

No, this is actually one of the first things I’ve done for myself in years. I was supposed to live in Berlin during the summer of 2010. There was a plan: a couple of languid months with the dog and mountains of books and bustling flea markets. And back then, I didn’t believe in fate or absolutes or God, but I did believe that I would go crazy if I didn’t live in Berlin that summer. And I didn’t end up living in Berlin, and I did go crazy, except I don’t think it was just for that summer and obviously, my unrest was about a lot more than a vacation.

You can break yourself with unwant. I no longer think about what that lost summer means for who I am today, but ever since, I’ve always felt fragmented, like there was a part of me that didn’t make it back to Boston. I changed. I changed because I had to in order to survive. Because for people like me, there is really only one alternative and that is not a route I will take.

Maybe I’m lucky to have lived interesting enough a non-fiction existence that I can’t even talk about it transparently without getting pilloried by both left and right. I have allies, of course, but they’re pilloried too, and I’ve certainly encountered my fair share of agents and producers who think that my unlikely truth is more marketable than any fiction. Friends or foes? You can never know. Another reason why I wouldn’t mind my blog dying a nice, quiet death. Less lying around for the opportunistic scavengers idiotic enough to believe I did this for money.

There were so many trigger points over the past year, so many instances in which I promised an unknown someone, “Okay, this is the last time I do this to myself”, and in the end, of course I kept going. I kept doing things and going on and on and on until I couldn’t anymore. I felt like I’d made a Devil’s Bargain, except it was one with myself, because I knew that stopping meant confronting that I didn’t know what I wanted anymore. That what I wanted was something I gave up and that I had given it up willingly because I didn’t care enough about myself.

Maybe I always knew this but chose to ignore it. Maybe instead of simply forgiving and forgetting, I had to have the peace of not remembering what hurt so much in the first place. It’s a funny thing, the business of forgiveness. It’s an act of kindness toward others, but most of all toward oneself - and only in undoing my purposeful forgetting have I realized how the worst of these wounds have been self-inflicted all along.

Barnard Center For Research On Women: Young Feminism and Beyond

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 21:12:00 -0500

Barnard Center For Research On Women: Young Feminism and Beyond:

After seven years in New England, I’m leaving Boston for good on Wednesday and moving to Germany in March.* Before I bid adieu to the East Coast, I’m making a pitstop at the Barnard Center For Research On Women in New York City to participate on a panel about young feminist activism.

I’ve spent the last few months writing less publicly to reflect privately on whether and how I can better serve the causes, communities, and people I’ve come to love during my time at Harvard and in Boston. What this means in practice: less time spent on the Internet, tweeting, Facebooking - and in its place: listening, thinking, journaling, surprisingly learning things I never thought I’d need or want to learn. Taking a break has helped me reflect on the work I’ve done (as part of a movement, as an individual) and the work I hope to do in the future.

Naturally, I thought this conversation at Barnard would be a lovely way to end my time in America, and I also liked the idea of being able to see friends and readers before my departure. I’m planning to spend February on the road in California, Lunar New Year with my mother, while the contents of my apartment/life got shipped to Berlin. So, when a bureaucratic error almost forced Patrick to leave the country last week, I cursed immigration laws, sort of freaked out, and almost cancelled everything in order to fly the coop literally and figuratively.

Needless to say, I’m glad that didn’t happen and that Harvard worked it all out. Because otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to say goodbye to all these lovely people :) Whether you’re a real-life friend or an online acquaintance or first-time reader, details are below - please, please, please come and say hello to me and spread the word and invite your friends.

FEMINISM AND BEYOND: Young Feminists Take on Activism and Organizing
with Lena Chen, Jessica Danforth, Dior Vargas, Sydnie Mosley ’07, Julie Zeilinger ’15, and Dina Tyson ’13

January 30, 2013 | 6:30PM
Event Oval, The Diana Center | 3009 Broadway, New York, NY

Young feminists have long battled invisibility. Countless media articles bemoan young women’s lack of activism or suggest that movements that “go viral,” like SlutWalk or Occupy Wall Street, have come out of nowhere. In fact, feminism among young people is as active as ever, constantly pushing boundaries both inside and outside feminist communities and engaging with issues new (privacy in the digital age, universal healthcare) and old (racism, rape). Young feminists today are consistently building coalitions and questioning narrow interpretations of what makes a feminist issue. This activism is local and transnational; in the street, in the classroom, online. It frequently engages with multi-layered identities and challenges itself as much as it shakes up the wider culture.

In this panel, moderated by Dina Tyson ’13, five feminist activists discuss their areas of interest, what they see as the major challenges for feminist movements, how organizing today compares to that by previous generations, intersections between feminism and other approaches to social justice, and how to build coalitions that can enact structural change.

This event is free and open to the public. Venue is wheelchair accessible.

Image courtesy Ennuipoet on Flickr, BY-NC-SA.

IUDs: A Gyno's Best Friend?

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 21:24:12 -0500

IUDs: A Gyno's Best Friend?:

“According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), use of IUDs by female ob-gyns is three times greater than that of the general public.”

Not that it’s a competition, but I humbly predict the public will soon follow. Since I switched from the Pill to the IUD in 2009, I’ve heard more and more stories from readers and friends about people clamoring to get them - some even go as far as crossing the border to Canada, which frankly impresses me. Trend or cult? I don’t think the IUD is going to get any less popular (and I think a lot of readers would agree).

My text and soul are one and the same, and I make no Faustian...

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 23:22:00 -0500

My text and soul are one and the same, and I make no Faustian bargains.

Last Stop: Barnard College/New York City

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 12:04:00 -0500

Last Stop: Barnard College/New York City:

Getting ready to show my apartment today - so bizarre, but I’m just five weeks from moving out. New York is one of my last stops before I go onward to California (where I’m visiting family as my stuff gets shipped to Germany). In late January, I’ll be in NYC to say goodbye to friends and talk to people about book stuff. A final opportunity to get face-to-face time with so many people - it’s all a little overwhelming. I’ll also be speaking at Barnard College on the 30th - probably my last event for a while. I’d love it if any readers would like to attend. Please let your NYC-area friends know that this is happening :)

Young Feminist Activism Today

A panel with Lena Chen, Jessica Danforth, Sydnie Mosley ’07, Dior Vargas, and Julie Zeilinger ’15

Wednesday, January 30, 2013, 6:30 PM
Event Oval, The Diana Center

As long as there has been feminism, there have been young feminists. On the street, on college campuses, and online, young people have worked to break down oppressive systems and nourish creative communities that honor the worth and dignity of all involved. Young feminists continue to labor on a daily basis to change policies and perceptions around reproductive justice, policing and the prison system, popular culture, gender-based harassment and violence, sexuality education, and much more. With this panel, BCRW continues a decades long tradition of examining the forefront of young feminist activism with this group of dedicated activists under 30.

I don't want to live this world anymore.

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 13:11:00 -0500

I mean that in the least suicidal/extraterrestrial way possible.

Just did a segment on HuffPost Live about the United Nations...

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 15:57:06 -0500

Just did a segment on HuffPost Live about the United Nations declaring contraception a human right. You can check it out above :)

Sabbatical

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 16:21:23 -0500

Two months of not being on email has made me realize how little I need email. If you need me, call, text, or if you must, resort to Facebook. My auto-responder will be on until the end of the year.

I’m in no state to be working on my book right now, so I’m refocusing my energy on projects that have fallen by the wayside and reconsidering some ideas that I had filed away in case of a creative drought. Some examples of things I have on the list for next week:

Finish an article on the Affordable Care Act, the first assignment I’ve taken in ages (since I desperately need to write something, really anything, unrelated to the book)
Watch at least one movie (promised a friend I’d see Conversations With Other Women, also would like to rewatch Mysterious Skin)
Retype some more of The Bell Jar, which I need to reread for research purposes anyway
Catch up on contracts, forms, mail all that boring life stuff I’ve just ignored
Make a dent in my two-foot tall clothing pile

I really wanted to have a draft of this book done by now, and in fact, it’s been almost exactly a year since I decided to turn what had previously been an idea for a memoir into a fictional novel project. It’s become a much larger, more artistically challenging undertaking as a result, but I also think I’m a better writer and a better person because of it. I continue to be extremely grateful that I didn’t write a memoir or sell the movie option to my blog at age 20 when I lacked both business sense and a sense of self. On the other hand, I’m not able to just take off to the woods (or even to my mother’s house) for an uninterrupted six months of writing - I have a boyfriend and a dog and roommates and, well, people beyond myself to think about. And that’s a really hard position to be in when I’ve been literally trying for years to write this story and don’t feel like I can move on - emotionally or otherwise - until I get this out and get out of Boston.

In other news, I am doing an informal farewell tour that involves eating everything that I won’t be able to eat in Berlin. (Fish tacos are on the top of my list.) I’m trying to fit in a DC trip in December, spending January in California to visit friends and family, speaking at an event in New York at the end of January, and packing up my life in February. I’ll be out of the country by the first week of March.

This has been such an emotionally and physically exhausting year that I need more than a vacation from life. I need a new life, and I need 2012 to be over. I mean that in the least apocalyptic sense possible.

Loretta Ross on the origin of the term “Woman of Color”: Y’all...

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 15:03:57 -0400

Loretta Ross on the origin of the term “Woman of Color”:

Y’all know where the term “women of color” came from? Who can say that? See, we’re bad at transmitting history.

In 1977, a group of Black women from Washington, DC, went to the National Women’s Conference, that [former President] Jimmy Carter gave $5million to have as part of the World Decade for Women. There was a conference in Houston, TX.

This group of Black women carried into that conference something called “The Black Women’s Agenda” because the organizers of the conference—Bella Abzug, Ellie Smeal, and what have you—had put together a three-page “Minority Women’s Plank” in a 200-page document that these Black women thought was somewhat inadequate.

So they actually formed a group called Black Women’s Agenda to come [sic] to Houston with a Black women’s plan of action that they wanted the delegates to vote to substitute for the “Minority Women’s Plank” that was in the proposed plan of action.

Well, a funny thing happened in Houston: when they took the Black Women’s Agenda to Houston, then all the rest of the “minority” women of color wanted to be included in the “Black Women’s Agenda.” Okay?

Well, [the Black women] agreed…but you could no longer call it the “Black Women’s Agenda.” And it was in those negotiations in Houston [that] the term “women of color” was created. Okay?

And they didn’t see it as a biological designation—you’re born Asian, you’re born Black, you’re born African American, whatever—but it is a solidarity definition, a commitment to work in collaboration with other oppressed women of color who have been “minoritized.”

Now, what’s happened in the 30 years since then is that people see it as biology now.

You know? Like, “Okay…” And people are saying they don’t want to be defined as a woman of color: “I am Black, “I am Asian American”…and that’s fine. But why are you reducing a political designation to a biological destiny?

That’s what white supremacy wants you to do. And I think it’s a setback when we disintegrate as people of color around primitive ethnic claiming. Yes, we are Asian American, Native American, whatever, but the point is, when you choose to work with other people who are minoritized by oppression, you’ve lifted yourself out of that basic identity into another political being and another political space. And, unfortunately, so many times, people of color hear the term “people of color” from other white people that PoCs think white people created it instead of understanding that we self-named ourselves. This is term that has a lot of power for us.

But we’ve done a poor-ass job of communicating that history so that people understand that power.

(Transcript courtesy of Racialicious.)

"What does writing teach us? First and foremost it reminds us that we are alive and that it is a..."

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 14:36:34 -0400

“

What does writing teach us?

First and foremost it reminds us that we are alive and that it is a gift and a privilege, not a right. We must earn life once it has been awarded us. Life asks for rewards back because it has favored us with animation. So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.

Second, writing is survival. Any art, any good work, of course, is that. Not to write, for many of us, is to die.

”

- Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing

Virginity at Harvard | The Harvard Crimson The Harvard...

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 15:35:00 -0400

Virginity at Harvard | The Harvard Crimson

The Harvard Crimson’s magazine quoted me in this week’s cover story on student perceptions of virginity and the state of campus sexual politics. Sadly, I think that there’s still a tendency to think of sexuality in terms of an all-or-nothing/virgin-whore dichotomy, which is exactly how people end up being shamed no matter what their sexual practices actually consist of.

My stance has always been that these misconceptions and prejudices arise out of a collective unwillingness to talk about sex and our own desires (as well as our inner conflicts). In hyper-competitive environments, the self-consciousness and fear of failure that students feel toward academic achievement is totally reflected in how they negotiate their interpersonal relationships as well. It’s easier to judge others when we aren’t comfortable with our own sexuality. And in the end, that lack of transparency is what breeds insecurity in everyone, regardless of whether they’ve decided to stay abstinent or hook up,

Check out the whole piece for a sense of what sexual activity is actually like at Harvard today.