the ch!cktionary

    10 May 2010

    Last. College. Exam.

    Churned out two papers this weekend (both of which wound up somewhat Marxist). Now gearing up for Deutsch at 2pm and then I am done with Harvard.

    Surreal!

    (But not ready to celebrate given the backlog of freelance articles I have yet to write.)

    6 May 2010

    I found this two-year-old blog entry, in which I responded to a then-infamous piece by a NYU student named Jessica Roy who was appalled by the behavior of a few sad young literary men at a gathering of the New York literati:

    Sebastian lives with his parents in a multi-million-dollar brownstone in Brooklyn. There were Persian rugs and chandeliers; the fireplace mantle had pictures of Sebastian wearing a suit as a child. On his parents’ armoire sat a set of old keys and a couple of grams of coke for anyone who might be interested. I felt sad for him, for having all of these assholes in his house who made fun of him for making peach Cosmos. He was an empty trust-fund hipster in his parents’ mansion where all the literary kids came to play.

    Everyone there went to Columbia or Harvard or Yale. They argued over grammar and syntax, the difference between a metaphor and a metonymy. Someone sparked a joint and everyone drank and simmered in their own self-congratulatory pseudo-intellectualism. For the first time in my life I felt intellectually inferior. I could not name my favorite passage in The Recognitions. I was tongue-tied.

    At the time, this is what I wrote about the incident:

    Without telling her what the article was about, I read the above two paragraphs to Kennedy, and she responded, “So … what’s the big deal?”

    I mean, maybe we’re completely desensitized to pretension and intellectual arrogance and all of that, but honest-to-god, the above scene probably has played out before me upward of 20 times in the past three years of college. I have friends whose parents live in lavish mansions and friends who enjoy drugs (legal or not) and friends who regularly discuss linguistics, philosophy, politics, or all of the above during a single dining hall meal. I’m not really sure what’s so terrible about any of that. I’m pretty sure that’s why there is a place like Harvard: so that weird ass kids too smart for their own good have more of the same to hang out with.

    And yes, Jessica complains that people are fake, dishonest, or sucking up to get ahead, but knowing Harvard kids, they could also just be socially awkward, conflict-shy, or assholes indifferent to being treated badly by other assholes. In fact, that probably describes 90% of the people I hang out with. That doesn’t make them bad people nor does it even make them pretentious. I have begun to slowly hate that word because even though I use it all the time to describe my classmates, its implication is that the person being pretentious is showing off just to show off. I know for a fact that aforementioned friends are not trying to show off how smart they are. They just happen to be unfortunately saddled with way too much intellectual curiosity and not enough common sense to shut up when appropriate.

    Jessica goes to NYU, which might as well be Ivy League but without the history, and is clearly a more than decent writer, so I don’t get why she feels “intellectually inferior” in front of these people. I go to Harvard but I don’t know what the fuck a metonymy is and I’m too lazy to Google it right now so I’m just going to ask Kennedy (who happens to be into linguistics) when I finish this blog entry. About 70% of the time, I have no idea what my friends Tripp or Leo or their German philosophy fan boy pals are going on about but it really doesn’t faze me. Usually, I make out the words “Nietzsche”, “singularity”, “Foucault”, and then give up. But does it make them pretentious or even pseudo-intellectual for talking about this shit? No, because even though I find it boring and infuriating that this is what I must listen to while eating an already unappetizing meal, I know that Tripp and Leo genuinely find Hannah Arendt interesting. There’s a reason they’re friends with each other: common, boring interests.

    So that’s why I find it so hard to get riled up about this conspiracy of the literati. None of the people Jessica went to this party with are significant to anyone but a select group of twenty-somethings in New York, just as none of my friends are significant to anyone but a select group in the college policy debate circuit and maybe the Currierwire mailing list. Perhaps Harvard has finally succeeded in brainwashing me, but more likely, I think Jessica’s impression of the influence of Gould, Gessen, and the like is just overinflated.

    I could also be one of those “underage Lolitas in slutty dresses” she’s talking about.

    6 May 2010

    My Life Is A Tragicomedy: A Mid-Finals Haiku

    Hard drive fried. Apple!

    Why have you forsaken me?

    Worst timing ever.

    5 May 2010

    If you weren’t able to make it to Rethinking Virginity, check out the #rethinkingvirginity hashtag on Twitter to relive the conference through live comments and photos from the event.

    You can also read about the conference in the following outlets:

    Educators Challenge Virginity Connotations, The Harvard Crimson

    Rethinking Virginity—And Examining Our Assumptions About Sex, Jezebel (by panelist Lux Alptraum)

    “Queer Sex Doesn’t Count” And Nine Other Myths Uncovered- And Debunked- at the Harvard “Rethinking Virginity” Conference, Feministing (by panelist Lori Adelman)

    Stay tuned for more!

    3 May 2010

    Will be tweeting live from #rethinkingvirginity all day! All attendees are being encouraged to use the official event hashtag, so folks who can’t make it can follow along :)

    Opening remarks (just written) are on in FIFTEEN MINUTES!

    3 May 2010

    I’m mildly surprised this conference is, in fact, happening, but look at that: it’s here! (In about half an hour, in fact.) In any case, if you had any second thoughts about attending, please be enticed by our advance press, which includes:

    “A summit on the state of sexual purity.”
    The Washington City Paper

    “The Rethinking Virginity conference [is] designed to challenge not just the cultural imperative that being a virgin is better but the entire concept of virginity itself. They’ve got a difficult task ahead of them. But it’s an important one.”
    The American Prospect

    “It’s not every day you get a professor from Harvard Divinity School and the editor of Gawker’s porn site Fleshbot in a room together, but that’s exactly what’s going to happen on May 3.”
    Feministing

    Also, be enticed by our free burritos. (Thanks Boloco!)

    Sadly, Professor Griffith won’t be able to make today’s event, but we’ll soldier on. (By which, I mean that I will be sitting in for one of the leading gender and religion scholars in the world. Not intimidating at all! Nope, not even a little.) Say hi if you see me at the conference!

    30 Apr 2010

    Anonymous asked: This is the standard, boring question, but seriously, how do you do so much with only 24hrs and still be able to go to bed--not alone! I'm about to graduate from college and realized that I still destructively procrastinate, don't know how to manage my time, and don't feel like my Ivy League education was worth it.

    Do you know what my initial reaction to this question was? Something along the lines of “BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!”

    If yesterday’s question demonstrated that I am not a model feminist, then today’s will show just how far I am from being the model Ivy Leaguer. (Guys, does no one remember that time I got kicked out of school?) The truth is that I am possibly the worst procrastinator in the history of procrastinating Harvard students. Really, I am. My friends, partner, various professors, and yes, even some editors, can all attest to this fact. That doesn’t mean I don’t work hard. I think I  definitely do, but I also tend to prioritize some projects and assignments over others andI don’t do any more than most people at Harvard. (We’re all overachievers here, let’s be honest.)

    When I was writing my thesis, I essentially checked out of a social life for the month before. Sometimes, I am researching for a freelance article which I view as significant for my portfolio, and my schoolwork takes a back seat until the deadline. When I took classes like Reality Physics (the bane of my existence last semester), I exerted the minimal effort necessary (which, in my case, is still a LOT of effort given my poor comprehension of science). And right now, I’m probably not going to do much “real work” this weekend, because this Rethinking Virginity business is a total energy-sucker and I can’t spare any time until it’s over. But that’s okay, because I figure that this is worth it. That’s what really what counts, not productivity measured in quantity of accomplishments.

    And as a big disclaimer: I’ve never been particularly “academic” in the traditional sense, not even in high school when I prioritized the debate team and the newspaper over classes like Calculus. That’s why all of my friends were unanimously surprised when I came back to Harvard after a year off, took ten classes this year(including intensive German) instead of the typical eight, wrote a senior thesis even though I don’t qualify for honors, AND ran for a board position on a major student organization. But I thought: look, most of my friends graduated last year and I already had one go at Senior Spring. Like you, I want my Ivy League education to feel “worth it”, to not just lengthen my resume but to leave a mark, and to translate my ideas about gender and sexuality into more than just blog topics (by doing Feminist Coming Out Day, my thesis, and the Rethinking Virginity conference).

    More burning questions? Ask them here.

    30 Apr 2010

    Rethinking Virginity Pre-Conference Meet & Greet

    CAN’T MAKE THE CONFERENCE?
    Join us the night before in Harvard Square for a “tweet-up” and meet the speakers!

    Sunday, May 2nd from 8 to 10pm 

    Daedalus Restaurant (Roof Deck)

    45 1/2 Mount Auburn Street
    Cambridge, MA 02138-5053
    (617) 349-0071

    (PLEASE CHECK THE CONFERENCE WEBSITE FOR DETAILS ON NEW LOCATION)

    28 Apr 2010

    The Rethinking Virginity Conference is up on Feministing, and as Chloe Angyal says, “It’s not every day you get a professor from Harvard Divinity School and the editor of Gawker’s porn site Fleshbot in a room together, but that’s exactly what’s going to happen on May 3.”

    Which is totally true. Please come!

    23 Apr 2010

    I have been kind of MIA, because I’ve been planning a conference that is only TEN DAYS away. I’m admittedly rather behind on publicity. So, I’d appreciate your help in getting the word out to local women’s and LGBT organizations, Boston-area student groups, and the general public. If you’re involved with one of the preceding, shoot me an email and I’ll get you our publicity info. Even if you’re not, tweet this (with #rethinkingvirginity hashtag), RSVP to the Facebook event, and forward to your email lists!

    I’m so excited about our line-up of superstar panelists. I kind of see this event as the physical manifestation of my senior thesis (which I still have to send to a lot of you guys — this is on my to-do list). In some ways, this conference is also my weird idea of a final service to Harvard, the site of so much debate over abstinence, and the brand that made my opinion on sexuality relevant in the first place.

    So think of this as my farewell party. Don’t you want to come?

    RETHINKING VIRGINITY
    Harvard University

     

    Is there a sex-positive way to teach abstinence? What are the historical and cultural origins of the virginity ideal? How does a queer person lose their virginity? Does anyone even know what virginity really is?

    From debunking myths to defying norms, the Rethinking Virginity Conference will feature scholars and experts speaking about gender, sexuality, and the elusive concept of virginity.

    For a sneak preview, check out our tentative panels, read about the speakers, and register for free. Confirmed speakers include:

    Lori Adelman (Feministing.com, International Women’s Health Coalition), Lux Alptraum (Fleshbot), Chloe Angyal (Feministing.com), Megara Bell (Partners In Sex Education), Sady Doyle (Tiger Beatdown), Dr. R. Marie Griffith (Harvard Divinity School), Elizabeth Janaik (Center for Wellness at Harvard University Health Services), Dr. Kathleen Kelly (Department of English at Northeastern University), Ellyn Ruthstrom (Bisexual Resource Center), Therese Shechter (“I Was A Teenage Feminist”, “How To Lose Your Virginity”), and Shelby Knox (“The Education of Shelby Knox”).

    Rethinking Virginity Conference

    May 3rd, 2010, 10am-5:30pm
    Boylston Hall, Harvard Yard (Tentative Location)
    Free and open to the public.

    Brought to you by the Harvard College Queer Students & Allies.

    ss_blog_claim=2e43b69a85ddf3d9e1b2923415211607