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A Review of the White House's Report on Campus Sexual Violence

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[Content note: sexual assault]

I wasn’t really paying much attention to the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault because I think that that kind of stuff makes a lot less of a difference than good old-fashioned grassroots activism, but I did pay attention when RAINN, an organization that I otherwise really respect the work of, sent the Task Force its recommendations, which ridiculously stated that we should stop blaming this whole “rape culture” thing and recognize that sexual assault is caused by individuals. Amanda Marcotte takes this down quite well here.

So when the Task Force released its first report recently, I decided to read it and see how useful it was and whether or not it followed RAINN’s lead in trivializing the role of culture and socialization in producing widespread sexual violence.

Here’s what the report gets right:

1. It acknowledges that schools have a strong incentive to avoid publicizing sexual assault statistics:

For colleges and universities, breaking the cycle of violence poses a unique challenge. When a school tries to tackle the problem – by acknowledging it, drawing attention to it, and encouraging survivors to report – it can start to look like a dangerous place. On the flip side, when a school ignores the problem or discourages reporting (either actively or by treating survivors without care), it can look safer. Add to this the competition for top students or a coveted spot on a college rankings list – and a school might think it can outshine its neighbor by keeping its problem in the shadows.

We have to change that dynamic.

The same thing happens with mental health, hazing in the Greek system, and basically any other problem faced by college campuses. It’s good that the Task Force seems to realize that universities aren’t exactly going to fix this problem out of the goodness of their hearts.

2. It acknowledges the importance of social norms about sexual assault.

Social norms research reveals that men often misperceive what other men think about this issue: they overestimate their peers’ acceptance of sexual assault and underestimate other men’s willingness to intervene when a woman is in trouble. And when men think their peers don’t object to abusive behavior, they are much less likely to step in and help.

This is part of the report’s recommendation for bystander intervention programs, which are a good first step but have a number of problems that I’ll discuss in the second section of this post. Notably, the report never uses the term “rape culture,” not even in this section, but that’s the sociological term for what it’s getting at here. People think that rape is okay and/or that certain things that are rape are not really rape and are therefore okay.

What this section doesn’t mention is that teaching people that sexual assault is unacceptable isn’t just important for getting people to step in when they see sexual assault (or harassment, or coercion) happening; it also helps prevent sexual assault directly. As has been pointed out numerous times, rapists rape because they think (well, they know) that they’re not going to face any consequences for it.

3. It emphasizes research and evidence-based prevention approaches.

According to the report, the CDC plans to convene a panel of “experts” (by which I hope it means researchers) on sexual assault prevention to discuss best practices that will then be put into place. And the Justice Department’s Office on Violence Against Women plans to evaluate prevention programs used on campuses to get data on their effectiveness. The report also lists three universities that have committed to research projects about campus sexual assault, though it’s unclear whether or not they are receiving grants for the research.

4. It recommends that campuses provide confidential victim advocates to whom students can disclose sexual assault without having to initiate a formal investigation.

I know many people’s version of “feminism” is raking survivors over the coals for choosing not to report their assault to the authorities, but this is crucial. Contrary to popular belief, a survivor who has nowhere to go to discuss an assault that will not initiate a disciplinary or criminal investigation will not go ahead and tell someone who will initiate a disciplinary or criminal investigation; they may not tell anyone at all. And students who initially do not want to file an official report may decide to do so after receiving compassionate and trauma-informed support from a confidential professional. The Task Force’s report correctly emphasizes the importance of empowering survivors by letting them decide what happens after they disclose an assault rather than making that decision for them.

5. It discusses how trauma can impact survivors and how school officials should be trained to respond to it.

Some common victim responses (like not physically resisting or yelling for help) may seem counter-intuitive to those unfamiliar with sexual victimization. New research has also found that the trauma associated with rape or sexual assault can interfere with parts of the brain that control memory – and, as a result, a victim may have impaired verbal skills, short term memory loss, memory fragmentation, and delayed recall. This can make understanding what happened challenging.

Personal biases also come into play. Insensitive or judgmental comments – or questions that focus on a victim’s behavior (e.g., what she was wearing, her prior sexual history) rather than on the alleged perpetrator’s – can compound a victim’s distress.

Specialized training, thus, is crucial. School officials and investigators need to understand how sexual assault occurs, how it’s perpetrated, and how victims might naturally respond both during and after an assault.

Therefore, according to the report, the Justice Department plans to develop a training program to help school officials involved with sexual assault investigations understand trauma and sexual assault. And I hope that the bit about “questions that focus on a victim’s behavior” (or, what we call “victim blaming”) focuses not just on the fact that it’s hurtful, but that it’s unnecessary and counterproductive. Whether the victim was wearing a revealing dress or has had consensual sex with the rapist before has nothing to do with whether or not a sexual assault has occurred.

6. It puts all this info on a single website that students, university administrators, and anyone else who wants to know can access: notalone.gov.

Granted, I don’t know how many students are even going to realize this is a thing, but I’m still glad it’s a thing.

And now, here’s what the report could’ve done better:

1. Not using female pronouns for sexual assault survivors.

Although the report explicitly mentions male survivors several times, it often defaults to female pronouns. Why? This is so unnecessary and such an easy thing to fix. Just use “they.” Anybody who seriously has a problem with that grammar can deal with it easier than male and genderqueer survivors can deal with being erased.

2. Not treating campus sexual assault like it happens in a vacuum.

While I understand that this particular task force was created to address sexual assault on college campuses, it seems remiss not to mention that campus sexual violence doesn’t happen just because it’s a college campus. There are factors that make it more prevalent there, sure–alcohol use, the entitled attitude of many athletes and fraternity members, the close-knit social circles that make it difficult to accuse someone of sexual assault–but these factors also play out elsewhere. There’s a whole blog basically dedicated to showing how they play out in tech culture, for instance.

But it’s difficult to acknowledge this without using that dreaded term “rape culture.”

3. Specifying incentives for universities to complete the campus climate surveys.

As I mentioned earlier, the report points out that universities have a strong incentive not to do this, and that they will be provided with an evidence-based survey that they can use. The report also states that the task force will be looking at ways to legally compel universities to do it, but I wonder why they didn’t just include incentives for doing it voluntarily (perhaps distributing some of the grant money that way, for instance).

4. Implementing a simple way for those who are interested to keep track of the Task Force’s efforts.

Much of the report concerns future plans for research and implementation, and it mentions several times that updates will be posted on the NotAlone.gov site. However, looking over the site, there doesn’t seem to be a way to keep up to date on this. There’s no blog. There’s no “news” section. I actually take this pretty seriously because I do intend to follow these efforts, but I don’t know how besides watching the same blogs I always watch.

5. Less emphasis on bystander prevention or more caveats about it.

Okay, I get that this works in at least some cases. But first of all, bystander intervention asks students to expose themselves to danger by taking responsibility for another student’s choice to threaten, coerce, or assault someone. Men can intervene more safely than women, but 1) the programs target students of all genders; 2) even for men it’s not always safe; and 3) there won’t always be a male bystander. There won’t always be any bystander, in fact. In many campus sexual assault cases, the victim left willingly with the assailant because they did want some sort of sexual contact with them, but then the assailant presumed that to mean that they have a license to do whatever. (Because rape culture.)

I didn’t really see anything in the report about other prevention methods, such as teaching students what sexual assault actually is (contrary to popular belief, it need not involve both a penis and a vagina). To be fair to the task force, that section of the report emphasized the need for more research on prevention, so I’m not condemning this too strongly. It does seem (at least from what I’ve read of the research) that bystander intervention has been tested more than other types of prevention initiatives, and therefore there’s more evidence for it at this point in time.

6. Even more transparency.

In accordance with the Task Force’s recommendation, the Department of Education released a list of 55 universities currently under investigation for Title IX violations. However, all it gives are the names of the schools, not what they’re actually under investigation for (besides, well, violating Title IX). Maybe there are legal reasons why they can’t release even a very general statement about that, as it is, the list is not very useful. There are tons of schools on it. (And, incidentally, there are definitely a few that should be but aren’t. Before you pick a college to attend, you should definitely google its name + “sexual assault.”)

I guess it’ll take time to see whether or not this will be more than a purely symbolic gesture. I think it has the potential to be, at least insofar as universities carry out the recommendations. While I don’t have an extremely in-depth knowledge of how university administrations work, I’ve been involved with campus activism enough to know that there will be staff (and students) at many campuses who desperately want to see these ideas implemented, but they may not necessarily receive support from the upper-level administrators who can make it happen. It pains me when I see sexual assault prevention and health promotion staff get lambasted for “not doing enough” when they’re almost always trying to do everything they can with the limited power they’ve been given.

And the reason those upper-level administrators aren’t always supportive isn’t because they’re Evil or don’t care about sexual assault; they’re generally people with lots of types of privilege who can afford not to think about these things constantly like some of us do. But there’s limited time and money, and there’s a lot to be lost if you’re one of the first universities to publicly and loudly take a stand against campus sexual violence. There shouldn’t be, but there is, and I’m glad the Task Force is trying to address that.

~~~

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A Review of the White House's Report on Campus Sexual Violence
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Sexual Assault Is Not A Force Of Nature

Miri, , , , , , , 28 Comments

A creatively annotated screencap of Yoffe's Slate piece.
[Content note: sexual assault, victim blaming]

Remember my intent piece? This week we saw a great example of what I was talking about. Slate’s advice columnist, Emily Yoffe, wrote a piece that can basically be summarized as, “I don’t intend to blame the victim or anything…but here’s why women shouldn’t get drunk or else they’ll get raped.”

Frankly, Slate has been on a disturbing trend lately of publishing needlessly provocative articles with even more needlessly provocative headlines. I find this tactic patronizing and harmful (s.e. smith has a great piece about it). I expect more from progressive media outlets.

So, I’m committing to not sending Slate any more pageviews, but I also feel that this article is very important to discuss. So, here’s a PDF of it that you can read. And here are some great responses that have already been written by Jessica Valenti, Ann Friedman, Amanda Hess, Roxane Gay, and Feministing’s Alexandra. (Seriously, read those first, because they get into the nitty-gritty details of why Yoffe is wrong and I’ve decided not to reinvent the wheel here.)

Almost as infuriating as the inaccuracy and poor reasoning exhibited by the article is Yoffe’s insistence that we as a society are “reluctant” to tell women to prevent their own rapes. I have nothing but contempt for people who take popular, extremely widespread ideas and try to pass them off as something new. But I don’t believe that Yoffe is really so clueless as to believe that telling women not to drink so they don’t get raped is controversial in our culture at large.

Rather, she seems to be aiming her article at the progressive community as a sort of plea for us to be “reasonable” and stop getting our knickers in a bunch over some so-called victim blaming. The solution to sexual assault is just within our reach and yet we won’t reach out and grasp it because of some silly political qualms.

Except that rape survivors do not grow up in cozy progressive bubbles where nobody ever gives them harmful, useless “advice” that makes them feel like shit.

They get it from everyone. Families. Cops. Teachers. Educational posters. Friends. College orientation. TV shows. Magazines. Advice columnists. There is no shortage of people telling women not to drink or they’ll get raped. None at all. It is a long and storied tradition that Yoffe is joining.

Yoffe comes across as though she thinks her views are unpopular because people just can’t handle the truth. But sometimes, opinions are detested and ridiculed not because they’re just 2 BRAVE 4 U, but because they’re wrong and harmful. Yoffe does not examine any of the negative externalities of telling women not to drink or else they’ll get raped, so here are some:

  • Rape survivors who were attacked while drinking may feel (even more than they already do) that it was their fault–as if coping with the rape itself weren’t enough.
  • Cops will focus on telling women not to drink rather than on finding their rapists.
  • Believing that rape is the result of an individual failing (on the part of the victim, not the rapist, no less) rather than a systemic problem, people will fail to organize meaningful collective action to end sexual violence.
  • Assuming that they’ll be blamed for drinking, survivors will be less likely to go to the police or reach out to others for emotional support.
  • Gender inequality will be exacerbated. Men can drink but women can’t? What kind of 1950s bullshit is this?
  • This is the most important one. Rapists (or would-be rapists) will know that they are not going to face any consequences. This, not any lifestyle choice on the part of the victim, is one of the biggest reasons people rape.

We’re accustomed to thinking of people or organizations or perhaps even institutions as harmful, but ideas and opinions, many believe, are “just an idea” or “just an opinion” and should be respected no matter what.

But they can be harmful. They can have negative consequences. Yoffe’s do.

I’ve seen a few people online defending Yoffe’s piece by saying that binge drinking culture is dangerous and that we need to talk about it. Yes, we do. But Yoffe is not contributing anything useful to that discussion, either.

People seem to worry more about binge drinking when it’s women doing it. Men have been binge drinking since alcohol entered human culture. For women in Western societies, however, partying and drinking a lot–especially without the company of boyfriends or husbands–hasn’t been a socially acceptable option until relatively recently. Sometimes equality means that risky or unhealthy behaviors that had previously been restricted to one gender are now available to everyone. It’s unfortunate that this means that more people are doing the thing, but that’s part of what it means to have an equal society. Promoting inequality is not, in my opinion, a justifiable way to reduce unhealthy behavior.

So, the problem with binge drinking is not that women do it too. There are a lot of interesting and important issues around alcohol in our culture, such as:

  • many people feel that they need alcohol just to be comfortable socially
  • there are relatively few social options for non-drinkers, especially in college and generally before people start having children
  • if you’re interested in certain things, such as sports or live music, alcohol is often part of the package
  • many people lack access to or knowledge of the mental healthcare they need, so they self-medicate with alcohol
  • if you don’t drink, you are likely to be pressured to drink
  • it is socially acceptable for men to use alcohol to manipulate women sexually

But Yoffe is not discussing these issues. In fact, she completely ignores that last item, which is crucial.

Yoffe treats women who get drunk and then get raped like people who get drunk and then throw up. Throwing up is a natural consequence of drinking too much. It’s a physiological reality. If you don’t want to risk throwing up, be very careful about how much you drink, or don’t drink at all.

Being raped is not a natural consequence of drinking. It happens because people (especially men) are taught that you can and should use alcohol to get sex. They are taught that drunk people are “fair game,” “asking for it” by getting drunk. Whether she intends to or not, Yoffe is participating in this education.

Sexual assault is not a force of nature or a law of physics. It may not be fully preventable, but neither is it something we have to resign ourselves to living with, the way we accept the fact that our bodies need oxygen or that things fall when dropped.

Many people–Yoffe’s intellectual predecessors–used to accept many things that we’d now consider unacceptable, such as women not having the right to vote and husbands being legally allowed to beat and rape their wives. But others throughout history have fought and dedicated their whole lives to making things better. There is nothing courageous about stating that that can’t be done. Rather, it’s the definition of cowardice.

Advising women to prevent their own rapes is not brave. It is not original. It is not edgy. It’s the damn status quo.

Sexual Assault Is Not A Force Of Nature

The Oberlin Hate Crimes Are Not "Just Trolling"

Miri, , , , , , , , , 35 Comments

This past year, Oberlin College, generally known for being liberal and inclusive, had a series of bias incidents–or, more specifically, hate crimes. Notes with swastikas were left in mailboxes, flyers advertising minority groups were defaced, signs were put up with ethnic slurs on them, and several students were physically assaulted or chased by people making derogatory ethnic comments. It all culminated when someone was seen on campus wearing, I kid you not, a KKK costume.

Recently, it’s come to light that the two students who did it were supposedly quite liberal. One worked on the Obama campaign and was apparently involved with some local anti-racist group. Some conservatives have seized on this as evidence that the bias incidents were just “a hoax.” Angus Johnson writes:

The Daily Caller cites Bleier’s support for Obama and his membership in an anti-racism organization as evidence that the hate crimes were false-flag hoaxes, but the student allegedly told campus police that he was simply trolling — that he performed the acts as “a joke to see the college overreact to it as they have with the other racial postings that have been posted on campus.”

He concludes:

A sustained campaign of bigoted vandalism that has the intent and effect of provoking fear and panic among the members of your community may be a hoax, but it’s also something else.

It’s a bias crime.

Oberlin’s official response to the speculation about the perpetrators’ motives is excellent:

These actions were real. The fear and disruption they caused in our community were real. While Oberlin College takes great pride in its historic and ongoing commitment to diversity, inclusion, and respectful discussion of ideas, we draw the line at threats and harassment of any kind.

We will not tolerate acts of hatred and threats of violence regardless of motivation. We are proud of the way our community came together to respond to these incidents with education, discussion, and reflection. As Oberlin’s people have since our founding in 1833, we will continue striving to make the world better for all through education and discourse based on reason, facts, and respect.

At first, I was a little surprised that people think it matters whether or not the perpetrators were “joking” or “trolling.” The harm was done, right? But then I wasn’t surprised anymore, because I realized something.

These “trolls,” and everyone who complains about “political correctness,” are misunderstanding what we mean when we talk about hate speech. They think we’re trying to tell them that certain words are Just Bad, the way social conservatives think that premarital sex or masturbation are Just Bad. They think we’re operating from a framework of moral absolutism, in which anything that isn’t “politically correct” is Just Bad regardless of its consequences or the intentions behind it.

They think that we believe that shouting the n-word in a forest where nobody hears it as just as bad as shouting the n-word in the lobby of the Black Student Union.

What they’re missing is the fact that there are actual humans who feel hurt, excluded, marginalized, stereotyped, or even afraid for their safety when they encounter hate speech that targets them.

We had a bunch of racist incidents at my undergrad school while I was there. Nothing quite as serious as the Oberlin incidents, but enough to rile the campus up and provoke administrative response. I saw the toll that it took on my classmates who were targeted. I watched them go from feeling like a part of the campus community to feeling like nobody wanted them there. I watched as their peaceful, powerful demonstrations against campus racism were deemed “divisive,” while wearing blackface (yes, that happened) to a Halloween party was apparently not “divisive.”

Hate speech is ethically wrong because it hurts people needlessly and accomplishes no good, not because the words are Bad and you just shouldn’t use them.

Likewise, as funny as you might think it is when university administrations respond strongly to hate speech (and as ineffective as their methods might be, which is a worthwhile aspect to critique), they’re not doing it because they’re Holier Than Thou Liberals; they’re doing it because it’s their job to ensure that they have a campus where everyone feels safe and welcome, and where everyone can devote their attention to learning and enjoying themselves and not to scrubbing racist graffiti off their doors.

That’s why it doesn’t matter why the students who blanketed their campus with hate speech did it. It doesn’t matter whether or not they were trying to make some Brilliant Point About the Human Condition. It doesn’t matter that they seem to have contributed to progressive causes in the past, or that they were trying to make fun of the administration rather than harass their fellow students.

It doesn’t matter, because you don’t know why someone wrote “No N*****s” on your bathroom door. It doesn’t matter, because no matter what the intent was, you and your identity have been used without your consent to make a joke or a statement. You have become a football lobbed by bored white boys at a university administration that they take issue with but can’t be bothered to address in a responsible, mature way.

Your painful history–the enslavement and abuse of your ancestors, or their internment and murder in concentration camps–are just a prop in a skit that you never auditioned to act in. The words that were invented specifically to make people like you seem less than human are now used to make some sort of grand statement about how we “overreact” to things.

When it comes to hate speech, I really don’t care how you feel in your heart of hearts. Maybe you really, really love women and Blacks and gays and Jews but just think it’s soooo funny when everyone gets up in arms about a swastika in a professor’s mailbox.

I’d encourage you, then, to find a way to indulge your idiosyncratic taste for humor in some way that doesn’t involve hurting and terrorizing others.

The Oberlin Hate Crimes Are Not "Just Trolling"

812 Miles

Miri, , , , 11 Comments

Mile 1

Of all the car doors I’ve shut in my life, this one feels the most final.

Mile 31

I can finally breathe properly for the first time in days or weeks (I’m not sure). As soon as we got on the road, I instantly felt better, so instantly that I’d call it miraculous if I weren’t already so familiar with my own patterns.

The last fourteen or so hours have been some of the worst of my life. I was up till past 3 AM, crying and panicking too much to sleep. Everyone I knew nearby was either out of town or asleep, not that I’d ask to see them even if I could. I wanted to quit everything. I regretting signing my New York lease more than I’d ever regretted anything. If only, I thought, I could unsign that piece of paper, drop out of grad school, go home to Ohio, get a boring job, and never have to leave anyone or anything again.

I was online and made a bunch of rather miserable tweets that you can probably find if you wanted to, and luckily there were a few people around to talk me down from it. I suddenly remembered that my friend Andrew had, earlier that day, brought me a chocolate muffin and I’d left it in the disheveled kitchen. That got me out of bed, and I mechanically walked–though it felt more like crawling–through the ghost of an apartment until I found it and brought it back with me. For some reason this made all the difference.

But the morning wasn’t much better. I got less than three hours of sleep. I woke up at 6 AM when my alarm went off and realized this was not a nightmare. Through the gaps between my drawn curtains, I saw that it was sunny, beautiful out. My soon-to-be-former home was waking up and starting the day with complete disregard for whether or not I would be there by that day’s end.

I could barely open my eyes all the way and I cried about everything. I cried when I saw my room completely empty, I cried when I had to throw away some things that wouldn’t fit, I cried when I walked down the street to get a bagel (with lox), I cried in the shower, I cried when I hugged my roommate (and friend) goodbye.

For one morning I was the world champion of crying. I could cry at literally anything. I could cry about taking my apartment key off of my keychain. And I did.

Mile 85

I’m lucky that the biggest moves of my life–from Israel to Germany back to Israel and finally to the United States–happened before I was 7 years old. I was too young to understand what I was losing, too young to remember more than the fuzziest outlines of the architectures of my former homes.

The only time I start to understand is when I visit Israel and walk through its streets. Suddenly, unbidden, an alternate universe unfolds in front of me and I start to wonder–who would my friends be? Which cafes would I write in? Would I even be a writer? What would I sound like, speaking Hebrew fluently and without an accent? How different would I look and dress? What would I study?

(All I know about that alternate-universe me is that they would still call me Miri, because that’s how Israelis abbreviate my name.)

And I start to mourn a self that could never be. I idly consider moving back, even though I know it wouldn’t work, I could never get back what I’d lost.

But the life I’m leaving now is not hypothetical. That me existed. I had friends here. I had routines. I had places I loved to go. I pelted my friends with snowballs and read by the lake on summer evenings and cried on benches surrounded by gardens that were more beautiful than I felt I deserved.

I loved people there, and I was loved.

Mile 116

There’s not a single cloud in the sky in northern Indiana today. We drive past fields of soybeans and ripe corn, interrupted here and there by patches of woods. The sunlight flashes off of silos and tractors standing idle in the fields. Occasionally, there are solemn wooden barns in various stages of disrepair.

Soon enough these landscapes will be a sight as rare as a good bagel outside of New York.

Mile 147

But actually, the second-worst part of this morning was the shower. After we’d packed everything into the van, my dad and I each took a shower so we wouldn’t be all sweaty and hot in the car. He went first, then went to wait outside. I took my shower and couldn’t make myself get out of it.

Not that I’m by any means an expedient showerer on the best of days or anything, but this time I really, really, really didn’t want to get out of it. At the other end of that shower awaited the rest of my life. After I got out of that shower and got dressed, there’d be nothing left to do but to say goodbye and get in the car and leave. There would be no more excuses. I had thrown away everything there was to throw away. I had vacuumed very carefully. There was no way to delay it anymore except have a tantrum and refuse to go like a four-year-old.

I didn’t do that. I turned off the water with shaking hands, leaned against the shower wall to try to catch my breath, dried off, reapplied my clothes, and left.

Mile 165

My dad wants to prove to me that the iPhone car adaptor he has is jacked up, so he tells me to play some music. He has an idiosyncratic music taste (everything from classical to Amy Winehouse), so I went with something safe: the Russian music I grew up with.

The song is called “We’re Leaving” (except in Russian) and I obviously chose it on purpose. I can’t do it justice in translation, but I’ll just say that it’s a sweetly optimistic song about leaving and going somewhere you know you’re loved, but leaving behind people who love you too. There’s also some stuff in there about not really knowing what lies ahead, and about understanding that time will heal you, and about, basically, getting your shit together and helping other people. So, needless to say, it’s at least a tiny bit relevant to my particular situation.

It also talks about how quickly time always passes when you’re about to leave, or when someone is about to leave you. That’s the part that always hurt me the most about leaving. I’d know that I have just a week left and that it’s killing me, but that soon I’d feel like I’d do anything to still have a whole week left. And then there’s a day left and it’s killing me, but soon I’ll wish more than anything to still have that day. And then an hour, and then half, and then no time at all.

For the last few weeks I’ve been terribly worried that when my dad arrived to pack up my things into the van, they wouldn’t fit, or some other calamity would happen and we’d fight about it and arrangements would have to be made and it would be a huge mess. This thought was extremely stressful, but there was little I could do about it because I couldn’t exactly visualize how much space the van would have or how much space my things would take up once they were all packed up.

But then my dad showed up, looked over my things, and made absolutely no comment about the glaring possibility that they would not fit and a Disaster would occur. We carried the stuff down the stairs quickly and easily because I’d packed it into many small boxes rather than fewer large ones. It fit into the car easily, without anything fragile being squished, and with space to spare. I was sort of dumbfounded.

Then during the drive my dad mentioned to a few people on the phone that I’d packed very well and everything had been easy, and I realized an embarrassing truth: I had been hoping that the things wouldn’t fit and there would be fights and it would be a Disaster.

After all, it would delay the inevitable moment when I’d have to leave.

Mile 247

This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Harder than any academic program, harder than hiking the Negev in August, harder than band camp in 95-degree heat, harder than applying to college or grad school, harder than any breakup, harder than getting into (and staying in) treatment for depression. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. There will be harder things in the future, but for now this is it.

Mile 293

Last night at some point I went on a bit of a rant about sexual assault and victim-blaming, because it’s been on my mind lately since I’m completely terrified of going anywhere alone in New York after 11 PM.

As I tried to explain to someone who has never had to worry about it: imagine going through the WORST thing that could ever happen to you, and imagine knowing that no matter how it happened–no matter HOW–people you love, people with legal and social authority, people with power would blame you for it. The first words out of their mouths would be to blame you. No matter how it happened. You could be sitting on your fucking couch in your ratty sweatpants, eating popcorn, when it happened, and they would tell you that maybe you were sitting too attractively.

That, to me, is worse than the sexual assault itself. Much worse. I can probably deal with physical pain and trauma, but the social isolation that will follow is a different beast.

That, to me, is why it doesn’t actually matter that New York is totally safe these days and come on stop acting like it’s such a terrible place when it’s totally not anymore. (I know that. I love it, after all.)

If I get raped or mugged in New York, people I care about will ask me why I was out alone in New York. Full stop. If I get raped or mugged in New York, my options are 1) hide this from people I care about, including lying about any injuries that result, or 2) get blamed.

That many people find it acceptable that half of the world’s population is terrorized and trapped indoors at night by the threat of gendered violence is a testament to the dismaying power of cognitive biases to create and perpetuate oppression.

Mile 423

The Midwestern farmlands have gradually turned into nearly-unbroken deciduous forests and lazily rolling hills. The sun is setting. I’ve just eaten chicken nuggets with barbecue sauce, which I generally end up eating at some point on just about every road trip.

I mentioned once before that the first time I went to New York City on my own, it was for a stupid reason. I’ll elaborate: it was for a guy. The same one I could barely make myself stop hugging back in Chicago this morning. (Was it really just this morning?)

That was the reason I went, but it wasn’t the reason I stayed. New York eventually helped me rediscover the person I used to be, before depression and before I started clinging desperately onto people in an attempt to avoid the misery I felt. I used to love being alone. I used to take long walks and write for hours rather than in short bursts. I used to treasure my own company. I used to need no one else to have fun.

In New York I started doing all these things again. During the summer that I spent there two years ago, I’d hole up in bookstores and read entire books in a single city. One time I walked from Battery Park all the way to the northern end of Central Park: nine miles in a day. I took the bus to Rockaway Beach alone. I sprawled on the grass in Central Park alone. I even went to Times Square alone, although in Times Square you can never be alone.

As terrified as I still am of being alone in the city, I know that it’s my favorite place in the world to be alone.

Mile 482

For the past four years I’ve believed earnestly that coming to Northwestern/Chicago was a huge mistake, one of the biggest I’d ever made. Although over time I stopped imagining what life might’ve been like had I chosen better, I never really stopped believing that it had been the wrong choice.

Until last night. Only last night, sitting on a cold rock at midnight while Lake Michigan danced beneath me, did I realize that it had not been a mistake, and I had been in exactly the right place, and there was no reason to regret anything.

But all I could do with that realization was go home, try to sleep, wake up early, and move far away.

Mile 692

It’s dark now. We’re driving through the mountains in Pennsylvania. They’re black silhouettes against a slightly less black sky, full of stars I’m not going to see again for a while. We’re not talking much anymore, but my dad is playing me some music he’s discovered recently.

We thought that love was over,
That we were really through
I said I didn’t love him,
That we’d begin anew
And you can all believe me,
We sure intended to,
But we just couldn’t say goodbye.

This brings up all sorts of memories of my now-former life and I almost choke up again.

Mile 743

For the first time this entire trip, we hit traffic. We inch forward painstakingly until the traffic jam clears up. It does so right as we pass the “Welcome to New Jersey” sign. Go figure.

Mile 789

I can tell we’re close. The sky is a dark, dirty orange, and more and more signs for New York City are zooming past us.

Now I’m thinking that this is a huge mistake, that I shouldn’t have moved to New York or I shouldn’t have decided to study social work or neither. I know why I feel this way, though. The move is triggering memories of college, of how sure I was that Northwestern was the right place for me to go and journalism was the right thing for me to study, of how dearly both those decisions ended up costing me.

But I have to keep reminding myself that this isn’t like that. I did my research this time. I found out what the social work curriculum is like and what my professors research and what services Columbia offers and what I can do with my degree and what sort of starting salary I can expect and which agencies Columbia works with to provide field placements and how to get licensed to practice therapy afterward and whether I can transfer that license to another state should I leave New York and how much it would all cost and how long it would take me to pay back the loans and what loan forgiveness programs are available and so much more.

I researched New York, too, by traveling there so much and visiting different parts of it and becoming very, very well-acquainted with Google Maps. While my love for the city is probably not very rational, my decision to move there was very much so. I did my research. I will not have to regret this. I will not.

Mile 800

In the distance, I see the skyline.

Mile 810

We’re speeding over the Hudson River on the George Washington Bridge. Literally speaking, I know what lies before me (it’s Manhattan), but other than that I have no idea. I might love it, I might hate it, or–most likely–I will have some complicated combination of feelings about it.

I do know that across that bridge will be a graduate degree, maybe even two. Across that bridge, barring any huge setbacks, will be two licenses that will allow me to do the work I want to do. Across that bridge are people I love, people my family has known for years and years. Across that bridge are people who will eventually mean the world to me, but I haven’t even met them yet. Across that bridge are the places I go every chance I get.

Across that bridge is a city where the lights never go out and the trains run all night. Across that bridge is a city I know is home, even if I don’t feel it quite yet.

But the rest is largely a mystery. In a few minutes I’ll be there.

812 Miles

On Memories Of Former Homes

Miri, , , , , , , , , , , 7 Comments

The market is swarming with people on Friday afternoon. Tables covered with piles of fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, eggs, bread, and household goods beckon as their owners shout their prices into the din. Feral cats dart beneath the tables, dodging people and cars to snatch scraps of food. Shoppers haggle: “Ten shekels for this? No way. I’ll give you eight.”

If you listen closely, you’ll hear Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, English, and probably more. You’ll see men with kippas and black hats. You’ll see women, including young girls, with every inch of skin covered but their hands and faces, and women with miniskirts and crop tops. You’ll see schoolchildren shopping for their families and old men and women dragging bags of groceries on their own. There will always, at any given moment, be an old lady standing at the curb and shouting at a bus driver because the bus route has changed, and the rest of the passengers are shouting to her which bus to take instead.

More than anything, you’ll notice the heat. It beats down from the sky and rises from the pavement, seeps out of buses and cars and into your body like a poison. It’s a dry heat, which may seem like a small comfort, but it makes all the difference.

Past the market stalls and down the mountain, the Mediterranean glimmers. By this time of year it’s nearly impossible to actually swim in thanks to the jellyfish, but if you swim in the bay you’ll be fine.

The hours pass and the market starts to shut down. By the time the sun is setting, the whole city has slowed nearly to a stop: buses don’t run anymore, stores have closed, and the last few stragglers are rushing through the streets to get home. As night falls, the smell of freshly-baked challah flows out of open windows along with the prayers and songs of Shabbat.

To you, this may be unfamiliar and weird and even uncomfortable; to me, it was home.

~~~

When I was 13, I returned to Israel for the first time since my family moved away seven years earlier. That trip, at the time, meant absolutely everything to me. It was a chance to rediscover my history and heritage. It was a vacation from the boredom and bullying that made up my school days. Most of all, it was an escape from the horrible new feeling–not even just a feeling, but a way of being, really–that had seeped into every little corner of my life. Six years later, I would learn to call it depression.

Those two weeks in Israel caused mood swings the likes of which I’d never experienced before (but that would become too familiar over the following nine years). I felt ecstatic to be back in what I then considered my Real Home and full of wonder at the things I was seeing and learning. Being there caused a flood of old memories to resurface and I delighted in them.

But at the same time, I balked with increasing fear and horror at the idea of returning to my miserable American existence, which I was certain I could cure only by returning to Israel after high school. (I did not, obviously, know about antidepressants.)

Although I knew I’d miss the food and the stunning beauty and the beach and all that, what I knew I’d miss the most was just that feeling that I had there, that unmistakeable thereness.

I told my mom in tears that I was terrified of forgetting what it was like to be there, and in response she told me about a trip she took to southern Russia as a teenager, a trip that grew fuzzier in her memory over time, but that she could never truly forget. Maybe the details were gone, but the essence was not and never would be.

Somewhat comforted, I tried to capture the “thereness” in any way I could. I associated it in my mind with certain smells and songs. I kept a detailed diary. I took photos. I recorded it in poems.

Ever since, I’ve been chasing that feeling.

~~~

Summer is probably the best time of the year to be in Ohio. It’s hot and muggy as hell, but everything becomes soft and beautiful in the summer. The fields of ripening corn ripple over hills left by glaciers long ago, and the streams that wind through the woods–assuming they haven’t dried up–are perfect for dipping your feet into.

My mom and I, and later my siblings once they were told enough, would often explore the paths that lead through these woods. Many of them separated different subdivisions from each other, or they were part of school grounds or parks. One such path led to a mysterious mansion far away from any other houses; another was strewn with paintballs that my little brother eagerly collected but that my sister was for some reason terrified of.

Summer in Ohio is anything but quiet. Cicadas can keep you up at night if you’re not used to them, and early in the morning you’ll be woken up by neighbors tending to their lawns more meticulously than my family ever did. Once or twice a week we’d drop whatever we were doing because we’d hear the ice cream truck coming down the street, and that was our favorite summer sound of all. (That, and the lifeguard’s whistle when breaktime ended at the pool.)

For a good twelve years or so, that’s how all my summers felt. Nowadays they’re quite different.

~~~

More wisdom from my mom: the summer before I started college, I was dating my best friend and we were about to go off to different schools. Although I’d spent the previous summer in Israel, away from my then-boyfriend, this was the first time I’d be in an indefinitely long-distance relationship and I wasn’t taking it well. His school started a month before mine did, so he was the first one to leave. My mom told me, explaining that my anguish was perfectly normal: “It’s always harder to be the one who stays.”

Maybe that’s a small part of the reason it’s so much easier now for me to love places than people. With places, I always get to be the one who leaves. Places don’t “grow out” of me and leave me; I grow out of them and leave them. People change suddenly, without warning; places usually change slowly and very predictably, if you know anything about sociology.

That’s not to say that my relationships with places are easy or simple. It took me a long time to understand that I love my town in Ohio in some way. It was painful to realize that I couldn’t stay there and still be myself. It was even more painful to come to Northwestern and realize that what I thought for five years would be a safe haven was actually rather cold and unwelcoming, and not the sort of place I would ever learn to belong in. Yet there were things I loved about it too.

When I was little I played a game with myself. It was very simple. All I did was pay careful attention to my surroundings and pretend that I was seeing them again after having been away for a very long time, perhaps because I’d been transported to a magical alternate universe and had just now found my way back (I liked fantasy novels as a kid; can you tell?). This game made me see ordinary things like my house or my backyard through an entirely new lens. I was able to make myself feel as though my boring white-bread neighborhood was the most amazing place in the world, simply by pretending that I’d been forced to leave it for a while.

Later on, that actually sort of happened. No, I didn’t get transported through a wormhole to an alternate universe; I just went back to Israel for a whole summer (the aforementioned summer). When I returned to Ohio, I instantly fell in love with it in a way I never had before. It was so green. So quiet. So comfortable. I could understand the language strangers spoke to me. How had I ever taken that for granted?

I never really lost that feeling, and I carry it with me now as I move to a place that’s almost as different from Ohio as Israel is.

~~~

Everyone whines that they hate snow, but you can feel the energy pick up on campus as the flurries turn to snowflakes that grow bigger and bigger. Just a few hours ago it was sunny and above freezing, but that’s Chicago weather for you.

As Deering Field turns from green to white, students on break from class (or maybe just skipping) show up to throw snowballs and make snowmen. Past the field, Deering Library towers imperiously like a set from Harry Potter. In fact, we’d often jokingly call it Hogwarts.

If you walk past the library and down to the lake, you’ll see the hundreds of huge rocks that line the coast. Most of them have been painted by students to celebrate friendships, relationships, student groups, or just their lives at Northwestern in general. Sometimes I see marriage proposals, sometimes I see my favorite song lyrics, sometimes I even see Russian words; I’m not sure which of those makes me happier.

Ever since I first saw the painted rocks the summer after my seventh-grade year, I knew I had to get into Northwestern and paint my own rock someday. I managed the first half of that, but, for some reason, not the second.

~~~

You might think that, as a person with depression, I tend to focus and ruminate on the negatives of things. Although I do that sometimes, I also have a remarkable ability to find the positive in just about everything. Usually this ability serves me very well; although I’m fragile during transitional periods and dislike change, once I’ve had some time to process things I’m able to adapt to just about anything. That’s because I find the good in it.

Ironically, though, when I’m depressed this turns into a sort of weakness. Like a lifesaving medicine that becomes a deadly poison in overdose, my happy memories of past homes become so potent during depression that they rob me of my ability to appreciate the present. When I’m depressed, I’m tortured by these memories, which play over and over in my mind like faded old movies that I can’t turn off. I remember the most insignificant little things: the worn-down steps to my grandma’s apartment building in Haifa, the porch swing on the deck back in Ohio, the hard and scratchy couch in my old dorm where I’d watch football games on TV in the fall, the sound of kids jumping off the diving board at the pool my family went to (still goes to; I’m just not there anymore), the snow falling around University Hall, the taste of a sudden mouthful of Mediterranean water, the slam of the door to the garage when my parents came home from work, the music of my high school marching band echoing through the muggy summer night.

I think of these things without wanting to and I hear the same cruel thought over and over: You will never feel these things again.

I have these memories, but the places they come from are lost to me forever.

Oh, sure, I could return, physically at least. I have returned. But the feelings are gone. That thereness is gone.

~~~

Another season, another (very different) campus. It’s a summer night in New York City and I’m sitting in front of Columbia’s Butler Library and crying for too many reasons to explain. Students–my peers, theoretically–walk past me in chattering groups and I wonder for the millionth time what’s wrong with me. I’m finally exactly where I wanted to be and somehow it still feels awful.

After a while I pick myself up and walk somewhat mechanically off of campus onto Broadway. The sun has just set, which in most of my previous homes would mean that things have either died down or will shortly. But here, the city is just coming to life. The restaurants around campus are still full. People are standing around in front of bars and on street corners talking. The 24-hour pharmacies and grocery stores and diners (I’m still amazed at the idea of a 24-hour anything other than Burger King or 7-Eleven) are full of customers.

The night is warm, but not hot, and I feel better.

There are, right now, over 8 million people in this city who are just like me and also not like me at all. All of them have, at some point, been as terrified and lonely as I am right now. All of them have places that they love and miss. All of them have friends that they rarely see, or might never see again. All of them have parts of their pasts that they wish they could relive, and parts of their pasts that they wish they could forget, and maybe even parts of their pasts that they wish they could both relive and forget, if only because forgetting would end that burning need to relive.

It’s hard to feel alone when I think about that.

~~~

People tell me that the new memories I’m making can replace those old ones. That the new home I’ve found makes up for the loss of my previous homes. It doesn’t, just as new friends can’t replace the ones I’ve lost. Love just doesn’t work that way.

For what it’s worth, I’m glad that I’ve moved to a place that I adore so much. I’m glad that I could live here for the rest of my life and still be learning new things about it all the time. I’m glad that I’m a just a subway ride away from sprawling parks you can get lost in and from some of the loudest, most crowded city streets I’ve ever seen, from stores that sell the food I grew up with and stores that sell food I’ve never heard of or tasted before.

But those memories continue to haunt me and I know that I have to live with them somehow.

The best I can do is to try to capture them in writing so that I don’t have to carry their weight on my own, but it seems that I can’t. At best, writing provides a facsimile, a movie-set version of landscapes that were endlessly deep and rich. They didn’t end with a painted backdrop.

Sometimes I feel like I’d give anything for just one more day to inhabit these old places, homes, selves, lives. I want to feel like I felt when I lived there. I want to feel like the person I was, even though I don’t actually want to be that person anymore.

Isn’t there any way I can come back?

Most of all, though, I don’t want to lose yet another home. But it’s too late. I made the decision to move months ago, and even if I’d chosen to stay in Chicago, it wouldn’t have been the same. College is over. Those lazy days in coffee shops and bookstores are over. Running down the hall or down the stairs to see my friends is over. I will never again feel like I felt when I did those things, and I will never again be the person who did them.

I have to keep telling myself this so that it’ll sink in, even though telling myself this feels like shit. Otherwise I’ll keep feeling like any minute now I’ll wake up back in my old apartment and realize that this whole New York thing was just a weird and kind of scary dream, and it’s time to throw on some clothes and get to class.

But the funny thing is that someday this, right now, is what I’ll miss. Someday the memories I’m making right now will have a “thereness” of their own and I will miss them just as terribly as I miss Israel and Ohio and college now. Someday I’ll look back on my first days and weeks in New York and smile and cry about them.

It is probably true that whenever I travel between these four places in the future, I will simultaneously be leaving and coming home. I’m trying to make my peace with it, as awkward as it feels.

It’s weird, isn’t it? Loving more than one person feels completely natural to me.

Loving more than one place, though, feels like betrayal.

On Memories Of Former Homes

What We Write About When We Write About Hookups

Miri, , , , , , , , , , 49 Comments

Every few months the New York Times (or another similarly-positioned publication) prints an article about how Women These Days Are Having Casual Sex And It’s Ruining Things. The articles are often framed just progressively enough to get progressives to eagerly share them over social media because anything about casual sex that’s not from Fox News must be interesting, right?

No. It’s the same story over and over, and it misrepresents what casual sex is really like.

First of all, only a certain type of woman is ever interviewed. The newest offering from the NYT starts out: “At 11 on a weeknight earlier this year, her work finished, a slim, pretty junior–”

Stop right there. Why are they always “slim” and “pretty”? Why are they always middle-/upper-class? Why are they always white? In fact, why are these stories only ever written about women, and not about men? How do men feel about casual sex? (You might think the answer is obvious, but that’s just because you haven’t talked to enough men.)

In fact, interviewing a more diverse group of people might provide insights about hookups that are more profound than “sometimes skinny hot girls have casual sex.” For instance, Black and Latina women are sexualized–presumed to be “overly” sexual–based on their race. How do they view casual sex? Asian and Indian American women are desexualized–presumed to have little independent sexuality–based on their race. How do they view casual sex?

Poor women are sometimes sexualized, too, and they also face more challenges if their hookups lead to STIs, pregnancy, or sexual assault. How do they view casual sex?

Disabled women are presumed to have no sex drive, but they do. How do they view casual sex? How do they overcome the stereotypes that people have about them?

Fat women are stigmatized by many people, and also fetishized by some. They’re expected to be “grateful” for any sex they can get. How do they view casual sex?

Older women who still want casual sex are looked down upon because this is something that “kids these days” do. They’re expected to be married with children already. How do they view casual sex?

Queer women are often considered either promiscuous or sexless, depending on how people have categorized them. Asexual women, when they are even recognized to exist, are assumed not to want any sex ever for any reason. Do some of them have casual sex? How do they experience it? Trans* women face a unique set of challenges when it comes to finding partners. Do they feel pressure to out themselves to potential partners? Do their partners ever view them as not “really” women?

Polyamorous women may have only casual sex, but they may also have a committed partner, too. They may have several committed partners. They may have a committed partner and a few friends that they hook up with. What’s casual sex like when you get to come home to your spouse afterward?

Isn’t this all a lot more interesting, relevant, and important than interviewing the same types of women over and over?

One might argue that there are separate articles written about sex from the perspective of these types of women. But how come, when we talk about “hookups” in general, we’re always talking about straight/white/thin/attractive/well-off/able-bodied women? Why are women who don’t fit into these categories relegated to other articles, ones that don’t get published in places like the NYT and the Atlantic?

Furthermore, these articles generally present the same narrative about how and why people have casual sex. From the one linked above:

Ask her why she hasn’t had a relationship at Penn, and she won’t complain about the death of courtship or men who won’t commit. Instead, she’ll talk about “cost-benefit” analyses and the “low risk and low investment costs” of hooking up.

“I positioned myself in college in such a way that I can’t have a meaningful romantic relationship, because I’m always busy and the people that I am interested in are always busy, too,” she said.

“And I know everyone says, ‘Make time, make time,’ ” said the woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity but agreed to be identified by her middle initial, which is A. “But there are so many other things going on in my life that I find so important that I just, like, can’t make time, and I don’t want to make time.”

I absolutely do not doubt that some people, perhaps including this “A,” really do conduct a “cost-benefit analysis” to determine what types of relationships to have. However, based on everything I know about the way we make decisions, I’ll say that that’s not usually how it works. Usually, we make decisions based on emotions, and then we come up with post-hoc rationalizations for those decisions. Often this happens subconsciously.

A previous NYT trend piece on casual sex, meanwhile, blamed hookup culture on the fact that people just don’t know how to do anything different:

Many students today have never been on a traditional date, said Donna Freitas, who has taught religion and gender studies at Boston University and Hofstra and is the author of the forthcoming book, “The End of Sex: How Hookup Culture is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused About Intimacy.”

Hookups may be fine for college students, but what about after, when they start to build an adult life? The problem is that “young people today don’t know how to get out of hookup culture,” Ms. Freitas said. In interviews with students, many graduating seniors did not know the first thing about the basic mechanics of a traditional date. “They’re wondering, ‘If you like someone, how would you walk up to them? What would you say? What words would you use?’ ” Ms. Freitas said.

Predictably, that piece also blames technology:

Online dating services, which have gained mainstream acceptance, reinforce the hyper-casual approach by greatly expanding the number of potential dates. Faced with a never-ending stream of singles to choose from, many feel a sense of “FOMO” (fear of missing out), so they opt for a speed-dating approach — cycle through lots of suitors quickly.

That also means that suitors need to keep dates cheap and casual. A fancy dinner? You’re lucky to get a drink.

So, young people have casual sex because their cost-benefit analyses have told them that it’s more optimal than relationships. Or because they don’t know how to not have casual sex. Or because the evil technology makes them.

What’s missing from this picture?

Many people have casual sex because that’s what they want to do.

This is a story you never seem to find in the NYT. You’ll have to go to blogs for it, probably because it wouldn’t play well to the NYT’s audience. One of my favorite pieces along this vein is from xoJane and it’s called “I Used To Give Out Sex Like Gold Star Stickers (And I’m Glad I Did).” While I’m a little weirded out by the metaphor of “giving” sex like some sort of reward (different strokes for different folks, though), I can really relate to the basic message of the piece. For instance:

Several years ago, on a long walk through the English countryside, Lucy and I were struggling to define our sexual standards. We weren’t wait-until-marriage types, or even wait-until-exclusivity. Yet neither of us would say we did much in the way of soulless jolly-grinding.

We were somewhere in between: we had sex with friends we liked and trusted, almost as a prize for being awesome. It was our seal of approval: “You’re an attractive and accomplished person, and I admire you. Congratulations! Gold star for you.”

Gold Star Sticker Sex is the opposite of no-strings-attached. It’s shared in the same way you might have shared a deep, dark secret in high school…or one of those BE FRI/ST ENDS necklaces in 2nd grade. It’s not a romantic commitment, but nevertheless, it comes from a loving place — a desire to enhance intimacy.

You will never find this type of sex in the NYT trend pieces. There, sex is of only two kinds: Meaningful and Committed, or Meaningless and Casual. But why can’t casual sex be meaningful, affectionate, intimate? Why does casual sex need to be with someone you don’t like “in person, sober,” as A says in the latest piece? Why can’t it be with someone you’re close with and adore, but just don’t want a serious relationship with for any number of reasons?

I think I know why these pieces always interview women. They think they’re reporting on some new and edgy phenomenon (they’re not) or writing about it in a new and edgy way (they’re not), but they’re actually repeating the same tired narrative about women and sex.

Namely, women don’t really want casual sex. They do it because those stupid shallow guys don’t want anything else. They do it because they don’t know what’s good for them. They do it because they’re too tragically busy for meaningful human connections. They do it because they have conducted a cost-benefit analysis, the results of which have determined that a relationship would not be optimal at this time; the marginal utility of casual sex is greater than the marginal utility of a relationship. They do it because they don’t know how to do anything different.

But they don’t really, really want it.

Casual sex is meaningless. Casual sex makes you feel empty inside. Casual sex makes you forget how to have a Real Relationship. Casual sex leads to rape. Casual sex is unfulfilling. Casual sex is cold and calculating (see: cost-benefit analysis). Casual sex is no way for a woman to live.

If you think this is an original idea, you’re quite wrong.

I’m not sure that these reporters deliberately set out to write this story over and over like so many Sisyphuses with their boulders. I’m not a professional journalist, but I spent a year studying to be one, and I remember what it’s like to try to collect interviews and assemble them into a coherent narrative. To be specific: the interviews that felt out of place, that couldn’t be woven into that narrative, were left out.

A college woman telling you that she’s had opportunities for relationships but turned them down because casual sex is just too fun and fulfilling would not “fit in.” A 40-year-old woman telling you that her loving husband doesn’t care if she’s out hooking up with someone else a few nights a week would not “fit in.” And, for that matter, a young man telling you that he’s having casual sex not because HORMONES but because he’d like to figure out what he’s looking for in a partner wouldn’t fit in either, because men are only supposed to have casual sex because their penishormones make them.

We need to change the way we talk about casual sex. It needs to be more inclusive, both of people and of narratives. Writing the exact same story again isn’t just boring; it’s bad journalism.

~~~

Further reading:

What We Write About When We Write About Hookups

The Letter I Didn't Write

Miri, , , , 13 Comments

[Content note: depression, suicide, self-harm, eating disorders, sexual assault]

This is a long and intensely personal post about college, which I graduated from today. I’m writing it more for myself than for you, so feel free to skip it if you come here mainly for the political rants and psychological babble.

A few weeks ago I got a Facebook invite about a book that some students were compiling. Any current Northwestern senior could contribute a letter, anonymous or not, about their four years at Northwestern, addressed either to themselves four years ago or four years from now. This fall, incoming freshman will receive a copy of the book.

I waffled for a few weeks, finally convinced myself that I had nothing to say, and let the deadline pass.

Of course, that’s not true. I had plenty to say, but I knew that if, four years ago, I had received a letter from my current self about my college experience, I would’ve packed back up and ran the fuck away. Why do that to an innocent freshman?

If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

I’ve heard this for my entire life, and it’s the little voice in my head that so often keeps me silent. But usually I can ignore it, which is why this blog exists.

This time it worked. While I won’t say that I have nothing nice to say about my four years at Northwestern, most of it is not very nice. So I stayed silent.

But now it’s my graduation day, and, as with everything else in my life, I can’t fully process or move on from these four years without writing about them. Besides, this is my blog, not anyone’s book meant to provide inspiration and guidance to a new generation of Northwestern students. This space is mine, and this is the letter I didn’t write.

~~~

Continue reading “The Letter I Didn't Write” →

The Letter I Didn't Write

Small Things You Can Do To Improve Mental Health In Your Community

Miri, , , , , , 26 Comments

[Content note: suicide, mental illness]

A few weeks ago Northwestern lost yet another student to suicide. There’s been pressure building all year for improved mental health services on campus, and I think that pressure will soon culminate in real, helpful changes on campus.

At the same time, some have been saying that what we need is not better mental healthcare services, but changes in campus “culture,” such as a reduction in the stigma of accessing mental healthcare and an increase in our willingness to discuss mental health which each other.

I don’t think that these things are mutually exclusive; I think we need both. People whose troubles are relatively minor will benefit from increased openness about mental health on campus without needing any improvements in mental healthcare, but those who suffer from serious mental illnesses–the kind that can contribute to suicide–need more than just supportive friends and professors. They need treatment. Right now, it’s becoming clear that many of those people are not getting the help they need.

Echoing these debates, a blog run by Northwestern students called Sherman Ave posted a piece called “A Reflection on Death, Privilege, and The College Experience.” (Sherman Ave usually sticks to humor, but this time it poignantly diverged.) The author wrote:

In writing these words and thinking these thoughts, I do not believe that a “call to action” here ends in throwing more money toward psychological services. As much as I believe that funding of psychological services at this university should be increased, I would hesitate to claim that another few thousand dollars would have stopped Alyssa Weaver and potentially Dmitri Teplov from committing suicide. Rather, I encourage everyone reading this article to think carefully about the state of those without the privilege of stable mental health.  We should seek to sympathize with members of our community instead of ignoring them for the sake of convenience. If we have the tremendous power to come together in grievance of a lost classmate, then there’s absolutely no reason we shouldn’t be able to show the same love and solidarity for that classmate before they give up on our community.

And a commenter responded:

I agree with the need to come together to “show the same love and solidarity” to members of our community who need or want support and communication from others, but what does that practically mean? I find myself asking–how can I, as one person, contribute to a positive dialogue that moves our community towards supporting each other in the face of hardship? How do I even “identify” someone who needs my help? Or how do I make myself open to facilitating healing in my peers?

I don’t think there’s any easy answer to this. Practically speaking, changing a culture is like voting–it’s pretty rare that the actions of a single individual make an immediately noticeable difference. Westerners are used to thinking of themselves as individual agents, acting on their own and without any influence from or effect on their surrounding culture, and this is probably one of the many reasons it’s so difficult for people to even conceive of being able to make an actual impact when it comes to something like this.

You don’t have to be an activist, a therapist, or a researcher to make a difference when it comes to mental health. The following are small things almost anyone can do to help build a community where mental illness is taken seriously and where mental health is valued. Although I’m specifically thinking about college campuses here, this is applicable to anything you might call a “community”–an organization, a group of friends, a neighborhood.

1. When people ask you how you’re doing, tell them the truth.

This is something I’ve been really making an effort to do. This doesn’t mean that every time someone asks me “What’s up?” I give them The Unabridged Chronicles of Miri’s Current Woes and Suffering. But I try not to just say “Good!” unless I mean it. Instead I’ll say, “I’ve been going through a rough patch lately, but things are looking up. How about you?” or “Pretty worried about my grad school loans, but hopefully I’ll figure it out.” The point isn’t so much that I desperately need to share these things with people; rather, I’m signaling that 1) I trust them with this information, and 2) they are welcome to open up to me, too. Ending on a positive note and/or by asking them how they are makes it clear that I’m not trying to dump all my problems on them, but I leave it up to them to decide whether or not to ask more questions and try to comfort me, or to just go ahead and tell me how they’re doing.

2. If you see a therapist or have in the past and are comfortable telling people, tell them.

One awesome thing many of my friends do is just casually drop in references to the fact that they see a therapist into conversation. This doesn’t have to be awkward or off-topic, but it does have to be intentional. They’ll say stuff like, “Sorry, I can’t hang out then; I have therapy” or they’ll mention something they learned or talked about in a therapy session where it’s relevant. The point of this is to normalize therapy and to treat it like any other doctor’s appointment or anything else you might do for your health, like going to the gym or buying healthy food. It also suggests to people that you are someone they can go to if they’re considering therapy and have questions about it, because you won’t stigmatize them.

3. Drop casual misuse of mental illness from your language.

Don’t say the weather is “bipolar.” Don’t refer to someone as “totally schizo.” Don’t claim to be “depressed” if you’re actually just feeling sad (unless, of course, you actually are depressed). Don’t call someone’s preference for neatness “so OCD.” These are serious illnesses and it hurts people who have them to see them referenced flippantly and incorrectly. One fourth of adults will have a mental illness at some point in their life, and you might not know if one of them is standing right next to you. Furthermore, the constant misuse of these terms makes it easier for people to dismiss those who (accurately) claim to have a mental illness. If all you know about “being totally ADHD” is when you have a bit of trouble doing the dense reading for your philosophy class, it becomes easier to dismiss someone who tells you that they actually have ADHD.

4. Know the warning signs of mental illness and suicidality, and know where to refer friends who need professional help.

You can find plenty of information about this online or in pamphlets at a local counseling center. If you’re a student, find out what mental health services your campus offers. If you’re not a student, find out about low-cost counseling in your area. If you have the time, see if you can attend a training on suicide prevention (and remember that asking someone if they’re okay or if they’ve been feeling suicidal will not make them not-okay or suicidal). Being aware and informed about mental health can make a huge difference in the life of a friend who needs help. This doesn’t mean you’re responsible for people who need help or that it’s your fault if you don’t succeed in helping them–not at all. It just gives you a toolbox that’ll help you respond if someone in your community is showing signs of mental illness.

Learning about mental illness is also extremely important because it helps you decolonize your mind from the stigma you’ve probably learned. Even those who really want to be supportive and helpful to people with mental illnesses have occasionally had fleeting thoughts of “Why can’t they just try harder” and “Maybe they’re just making this up for attention.” That’s stigma talking. Even if you didn’t learn this from your family, you learned it from the surrounding culture. Studying mental illness helps shut that voice up for good.

5. Understand how social structures–culture, laws, business, politics, the media, etc.–influence mental health.

If you learned what you know about mental  health through psychology classes, your understanding of it is probably very individualistic: poor mental health is caused by a malfunctioning brain, or at most by a difficult childhood or poor coping skills. However, the larger society we live in affects who has mental health problems, who gets treatment, what kind of treatment they get, and how they are treated by others. Learn about the barriers certain groups–the poor, people of color, etc.–face in getting treatment. Learn about how certain groups–women, queer people, etc.–have been mistreated by the mental healthcare system. Find out what laws are being passed concerning mental healthcare, both in your state and in the federal government. Learn how insurance companies influence what kind of treatment people are able to get (medication vs. talk therapy, for instance) and what sorts of problems you must typically have in order for insurance to cover your treatment (diagnosable DSM disorders, usually). Pay attention to how mental illness is portrayed in the media–which problems are considered legitimate, which are made fun of, which get no mention at all.

It’s tempting to view mental health as an individual trait, and mental illness as an individual problem. But in order to help build a community in which mental health matters, you have to learn to think about it structurally. That’s the only way to really understand why things are the way they are and how to make them change.

Small Things You Can Do To Improve Mental Health In Your Community

Six Months

Miri, , , , , , , , , , , 15 Comments

Every New Year’s Eve, I write a post about the year that’s about to end. When I was younger, I mostly used these posts to talk about significant things that had happened to me (getting a boyfriend, losing a boyfriend, getting into this or that program or college, and so on), explain what I’d learned from them, and make resolutions for the future.

Looking back over my resolutions from past years is kind of sad for me now. It’s both unsurprising and depressing how many of them concerned random metrics that I’d allowed the world to value me by–GPA, weight, stuff like that.

These were always the resolutions that I was never able to keep.

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions anymore, mostly because my resolution would be the exact same every year: do better, be better.

Over the last few years, the theme of depression has completely taken over these New Year’s Eve posts. In 2010 I wrote about being diagnosed and recovering. That was the first time I wrote about depression publicly, and I’ve continued doing so ever since.

In 2011 I wrote about relapsing and trying to find a way to carry on. At the end of that post, I wrote this:

A few days ago. I’m walking near Union Square in Manhattan. The sun has nearly set and the wind is chilling. I hear a man begging for money.

“Can you spare some change?” he’s saying, over and over. The passerby walk past him and he says, “That’s okay. Maybe next year.”

I put a dollar bill in his cup and he says, “God bless you, miss. I really mean that.”

He says happy New Year, and I say happy New Year too.

And then I continue on my way.

Maybe next year.

Today I returned to that exact spot. Not on purpose or anything. I’m in New York for the week and that spot just happens to be located next to my favorite bookstore in the world, the Strand.

And even though it was cold and I’m not in a particularly good mood today, I realized: the “next year” that I’d been dreaming about has come to pass. That year was 2012.

The end of December marks six months since my depression symptoms suddenly abated last summer. Psychologists seem to agree that at the six-month mark, remission officially becomes recovery. I don’t know what this means other than that I get to say that I’ve recovered.

I feel like I should have some Good Insights about how to recover from depression, but I really don’t. Medication helped me deal with the worst of it, but it stopped working after a while. I never managed to find a therapist that helped, but I’ll keep looking.

There were a number of amazing things that happened to me this year, some of which I attribute to my recovery. However, the interesting thing is that they all happened after my symptoms stopped, not before. Stuff like getting involved in the atheist movement, meeting my best friends and my partner, growing my blog and moving to FtB, finally deciding what I’m doing next year (getting a masters in social work), and so on. My life has changed so drastically over the past six months that I sometimes wonder if recovering from depression somehow opened me up to let all of this in. But I don’t know.

People who suffer from depression are constantly being exhorted to Look On The Bright Side and Be Open To Love and all that stuff, but here’s the thing–I was unable to do any of these things until my symptoms had eased up. I would never have been able to be outgoing enough to meet all the awesome people that I’ve met, and although I’ve been a good writer for a while, it got much easier to handle criticism and promote my blog once I didn’t feel depressed anymore. And while I hope my partner would stick with me if I had another depressive episode, the person I was half a year ago probably wasn’t someone he would’ve been interested in. Sad, but true.

I’d bet that the connections I made after I recovered are a large part of the reason I’m still doing so well, though. Without them, maybe I would’ve relapsed quickly. My writing, my friends, my partner, and even all the random acquaintances I’ve made while blogging are like a large safety net, giving me something other than myself and my moods to focus on when I’m not doing very well. My future, which is starting to clear up and coalesce into an actual set of plans, is always on my mind, reminding me that the college life I’ve never liked is finally ending soon.

I wish I could tell you how I got to that place I was at six months ago, ready to connect with the world in a genuine way for the first time in years. Maybe the illness had just had enough. Maybe I started getting enough vitamins or something and some random chemicals in my brain balanced out. I don’t know.

More likely, though, all the stuff I was reading and writing was finally going to my brain. While feminism certainly can’t cure serious depression, it really got to the roots of a lot of the issues I was having that were contributing to my depression. For the first time, I started to understanding that, yes, I can be serious. I can be critical. I can be passionate. Being these things doesn’t keep me from being a kind, loving person that others can actually appreciate, and it doesn’t have to make me an outcast. In certain social circles, of course, it does. But fuck those social circles. Seriously.

Feminism also showed me what I can expect out of my friendships and relationships. I don’t have to put up with the mean-spirited jokes, I don’t have to accept the shrugs and cold shoulders and eye rolls. I don’t have to deal with people who cancel plans at the last minute and treat me like their own personal therapist without ever offering any support in return. I don’t have to pretend to laugh at sexist, racist, and homophobic comments made “ironically.”

And so I stopped. For a while, this meant I had less friends and had to be more picky. This is fine. As it turned out, I left just enough space in my life for a loving, loud, affirming bunch of feminists to walk right in and become my dearest friends.

There are times when you need to compromise. I don’t expect to have the perfect job in the perfect city any time soon, if ever. I will probably always have a bit too little money. If I find a good enough apartment in a good enough neighborhood for a good enough price, I’ll take it. The thrift store clothes will do just fine.

But when it comes to friends and lovers, I will not settle. Ever. Again. When it comes to my writing, I will say what I want.

My happiness now does not come from the academic achievement I used to yearn for. I never did lose that weight. Those resolutions were all bullshit. When I see people getting these things, I sometimes reflexively feel jealous and then I remember:

I have beaten an illness that consumed my mind for nearly a decade, and I beat it without any of that stuff. For six months now I have been happy, sometimes so happy I could cry, without any of it.

The clock will tick on, six months will turn into seven and then eight and then more, and maybe someday I will lose count of how long it has been since I found myself again.

Happy New Year.

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New Year in New York.
Six Months

How It Feels To Shed Your Skin

Miri, , , , , , 11 Comments

Being a young and mobile person is a bit like having a never-ending case of whiplash.

I don’t have a single identity or home or social circle; I have many, and I’m constantly leaving one for another and feeling like the skin that has been grafted onto my preexisting skin is being ripped off and the resulting wound is replaced with another.

There is my life at school, which is the busiest and most visibly meaningful (but actually probably the emptiest) life of them all. There is who I am with my family in Ohio, and who I am when I visit my intended future home, New York City. I am someone else entirely apart from all these people with my long-distance partner (first one, then another) when one of us is visiting the other.

Leaving each of these is like heartbreak. At that moment it feels like nothing is deeper and truer than who I am in this place, with these people, at this point in time. I tell myself over and over that once I get to my destination I will become that person and it’ll feel normal again, but no amount of telling it makes it feel true. It is always like leaving myself and becoming someone else, someone I don’t want to be. And upon arriving I briefly experience the sickening feeling of having become someone I dreaded becoming just a few short hours before, across a few state lines or perhaps a two-hour flight away. That feeling squeezes me by the throat and then finally slinks away and I grow comfortable and complacent in my new (old?) skin.

Shortly before leaving I often grow aloof and distant from the people I’m with, and this breaks my heart even more. And probably theirs. It pains me, but it seems better than letting myself stay close for those final hours, which would mean letting them see me collapse in tears as I imagine being torn away from them by whichever car, bus, train, or plane is doing it this time.

There is a certain courage that you need to let someone wipe your tears away, and it is a courage I rarely have these days.

The reason I need courage is because there is so much to be afraid of. People misread the particular mix of emotions I feel when I’m leaving and assume that I must be pathologically attached to them or confused about where I “belong” (why the hell do I hate Ohio so much but invariably lose control of myself when leaving it?). The truth is, yes, I get very attached to people. But I don’t think there’s anything pathological about the way in which I get attached. I think the difference between me and people who aren’t depressed is that, sometimes, the way you keep from being depressed is by choosing not to acknowledge the enormous amounts of pain and pleasure that others can give to you, and living as though you are truly independent.

Whose way is better? I can’t say, but I know that I’m incapable of ignoring the bonds between myself and the people I love for the few hours it takes for me to leave. And because I can’t ignore them, having to sever them over and over and then splice them back up and sever them again, every couple of months, feels like the worst thing in the world.

Someone pointed out to me recently that the same theme keeps coming up whenever I tell the story of my life, how I came to be so depressed, and how I eventually (mostly) recovered. That theme is disconnection. My worst misery is when I feel disconnected from people, society, and life itself. It’s when I feel misunderstood by the people close to me or when I feel like an outsider (this happens often to me; if you read my previous post you can see a little snippet of it). Or when I feel like I just don’t understand the people around me and why we can’t seem to agree on anything, or when I feel like I have no traditions to give shape to my life, or when I feel like I’m not “fully” any of the things that I think I am–feminist, atheist, Jew, Russian, Israeli, woman, student, activist.

(In my better moments, I realize that, well, of course I’m not “fully” any of these things. Nobody can possibly fit some hypothetical Aristotelian prototype of any of these things. The very nature of such identities is that the pressure to belong and conform is significant and that we will always wonder if we’re really measuring up to what we’re “supposed” to be.)

On the other hand, the greatest happiness I’ve ever known is feeling connected to people and ideas and places. It’s the feeling I had at Skepticon. It’s reading a brilliant book or article and feeling completely in sync with the author. It’s holding someone I love close. It’s discovering that my partner and I both hate Michael Cera and love Los Campesinos! and agree on virtually every ethical and political issue that we care about.

Given this, it’s not very surprising that I have such difficulty with transitions. Of course, everything is ultimately temporary and change is part of life for everyone, but this much temporariness and this much change is just too much. That whiplashy feeling I get every time I have to switch identities and hop across state lines is a sign that someone like me just isn’t made for this lifestyle.

I have strategies to help me cope with it, of course. I always carry things from one place to another to help me remember who I am when I’m somewhere else. I have stacks of notebooks from other times. I almost never recall old memories.

Mostly, though, I write. Telling you this right now is the only thing that’s helping.

A while ago, I wrote that the happiest day of my life up until that point had been my older brother’s wedding, because I got to spend a whole day focusing entirely on other people and not on myself. My new sister-in-law read it and replied that she felt much like I did when I was younger and that once you grow a bit older and start to settle down, it gets easier. Not necessarily because Change Is Bad, but because people like me are at a stage in our lives where we are basically required to focus on nothing but ourselves. Our education, our needs, our desires, our constant criss-crossing of the country in search of opportunities. Once you’re able to turn that focus outwards at other people, that feeling of disconnect subsides and real, lasting happiness–not the kind you might get from parties or straight As–can take its place.

I hope she’s right. I hope that after I’ve finished all of my degrees and chosen a city to live in, life will stop jerking me around like this every few months. I hope that I can finally build a network of friends and acquaintances that will be more or less stable. I hope that the people I spend time with will have known me for longer than a few months. I hope that my work will feel more meaningful than my schooling.

I hope, because tomorrow I will rip myself out of one skin and shoddily sew myself into another, and the person I am right now, as I write this, will already be just a distant memory.

How It Feels To Shed Your Skin