When USG announced that rapper / actor / comedian / writer Donald Glover, aka Childish Gambino, would be headlining Princeton’s spring Lawnparties, online Prince reactions were mixed: everything from “Ugh, not another rapper” to “OMG YES BEST THING EVER” to “Wait, who?”

I happen to fall into the camp of people who not only have heard of Gambino previously, but who are pretty darn excited that USG is bringing him here. Disclosure: I may or may not have written “CHILDISH GAMBINO” several times on my Lawnparties survey.

But I understand some people’s frustrations. It is unfortunate that in the past we have diluted the quality of Lawnparties with one-hit wonder has-beens (see: Wiz Khalifa) instead of consistently bringing actual up-and-coming talent (see: Gambino). It is also unfortunate that we seem to have only two main genres representing headliners for the past few years: pop and hip-hop/rap. This doesn’t take away from the fact that Gambino is a talented artist (a mastermind, if you will).

EXHIBIT A: Freaks and Geeks (The only time poet e. e. cummings has been name dropped in rap history? I do believe so.)

While some may criticize the misogyny and gleeful vulgarity that seemingly comes with his territory of rap (a whole other post in it of itself), you can’t deny this guy’s rhymes are clever and his energy is exuberant.

But if you take a look at his other work, you might notice something rather peculiar about Gambino’s verse, which brings me to the main reason I’m writing this post:

EXHIBIT B: Bonfire

EXHIBIT C: You See Me (the smoking gun of all songs)

Childish Gambino, apparently, likes Asian girls. A lot. Enough to put something about Asians in almost every song in his entire album. And at a school like Princeton, though by no means UCLA, his racial comments on all ends of the spectrum (“I’m down with the black girls of every single culture / Filipino, Armenian girls on my sofa”) are going to catch people’s attention. So, let me just head off this discussion on one front.

“Don’t you find Gambino’s ‘Yellow Fever’ sort of creepy/insulting?” My response: Is it really Yellow Fever? Do Gambino’s shout-outs to Asian girls imply he’s got a fetish? Victoria Yue of Hyphen Magazine certainly thinks so, and she does a good critique of his lyrics, so I won’t rehash her thoughts. But I’d challenge this notion on several fronts.

First, as someone who listens to their fair share of popular music, I find that rappers tend to give shout-outs to all types of women–and by all types, I mean black and white (and sometimes Hispanic). While the obvious feminist response is, “rappers should stop objectifying women altogether!”, a small part of me can’t help but wonder, “are Asians somehow exempt from being called sexy?” In the words of Sojourner Truth, “Ain’t I A Woman?” Don’t I Deserve To Be Objectified Too? (Wow. That’s all sorts of problematic.)

Of course, (East) Asian women are totally objectified in our culture–as cutesy secondaries, old grannies with thick accents, dragon ladies, weird submissive sex things, etc. But rarely are we viewed as honestly attractive people, and even more rarely by rappers from the hood. For me, I can name off the top of my head only two specific shout-outs to Asian women in popular rap music: Outkast’s “Lucy Liu” name-drop in “Hey Ya,” and Ludacris’ “How Low,” but just once. (Angry side note: Luda’s official music video actually censors the word “Asian” at 1:57, as if it were some explicit reference. I kid you not. How low can you go?)

So, as a result of this sort of “Asian invisibility,” Childish Gambino’s unabashed trumpeting of Asian sexiness along with other races is seen as bizarre and questionable. Granted, his praises are targeted only towards females– let’s not get started on the frustrating annihilation of Asian male sexuality in this country– and are also predominantly lacking in South Asian representation, which speaks to something else entirely about how we label the term “Asian.”

“But he didn’t just give a shout-out to Asian girls! He wrote a whole song about one specific race!” Okay, so you’ve never heard Black Eyed Peas’ Latin Girls? Or White Girl by Young Jeezy? Or Hurricane Chris’ Halle Berry? We should be critiquing those as fetishes as well. The fact is, singling out a group for a song does not always a fetishist (nor a racist) make. But it does raise some interesting questions about how women are portrayed in the media in terms of their race (again, another blog post).

Edit: I’d also like to deconstruct the notion that guys, especially white guys, who “like Asian girls” are fundamentally creepy. This knee-jerk reaction is rooted in racist and sexist assumptions. For instance, if the average male admits that he “has a thing for Latin girls,” he might be met with at most eyerolls and titters; if he admits he “has a thing for Asian girls,” he is met with horror and revulsion. The underlying principles at work here are that a guy who prefers Latin girls is seen by society as succumbing to the (stereotypical) sexuality and sensuality of Latina women; a guy who prefers Asian girls is seen as preying on their innocence/demureness– because Asian girls can’t possibly be sexy. That is, if a guy likes an Asian girl, it has to be for some nefarious reason having to do with an outdated stereotype that Asian females are shy or look like they’re 14. Society plays into layers of these stereotypes by giving Latin-loving males a pass (reinforcing a hyper-sexualized view of Latina women) and demonizing Asian-loving males. It’s the 21st century, people. The men who prey upon Asian women’s shyness, fewer and farther between, will find that most Asian women brought up in Western societies (even the demure, shy ones), are smart enough to recognize a creeper when they see one. And to those who seek comfort by using their purchasing power/colonial male privilege to find girls in Asian countries– those guys are the real scumbags. Not the dude rapping about educated Asian girls from a high-ranking public university.

(Edit 5/10/12: One commenter astutely points out a potential misreading of my last paragraph. I amend this with a more nuanced statement: I don’t think guys who happen to date Asian girls in foreign countries are scumbags who abuse their power and privilege. I think guys who abuse their power and privilege to date Asian girls in foreign countries are scumbags. Semantics count on this one. And really, ANY guy from ANY country using money or power to purchase or coerce ANY girl from ANY country, is a questionable person at best.)

Now, Gambino has explained his actual relationships with actual Asian women before (starting at: 5:05):

He claims that the politics of dating black and white girls has made him weary. Hyphen writer Yue calls him out on making Asian girls into agency-less political punchlines.

I see it slightly differently. I think that an Asian girl fixation fits with Donald Glover’s stage persona. Childish Gambino, as a personality, can only be described as “The Nerdy, Maligned Black Kid Who Strikes Back And Gets His Swag On.” In the same way it makes sense for Ke$ha to be a drunken sleeze, and for Lady GaGa to be strangely sexually androgenous, it makes sense for the nerdy gangster, hyper-masculine parody of Gambino to sing the praises of Asian women in the way gangster rappers do of other females. It’s a performative representation of a part of himself that, as a creative artist, he should be allowed to do.

A good point brought up by another Asian writer is that Asian girls (and guys) seem to like Gambino. Is this the worst form of internalized sexism/racism? Or are they simply responding positively to the fact that, as the writer puts it, Gambino “raps more about Asian women than most Asian American artists rap about Asian women.” (Case in point, Far East Movement, our most recent Lawnparties guest.) The idea that we can appreciate representation even in arenas as fraught as rap music, points to perhaps a changing dialogue of gender, race, and sexuality. It brings to mind the topic of male objectification (to combat prejudice, do we objectify nobody, or everybody?). Of subjectification. Of consent and power dynamics and sexual choice. Perhaps the solution is to recognize, as Simone de Beauvoir puts it, the ambiguity of our being as both subjects of and objects in the world.

In the meantime, I’m really excited to see Gambino live.

Early this month, a British morning show did an interview with Amanda, a young woman who had recently ended a 10-year relationship with a drum kit and was now in a long-distance relationship with the Statue of Liberty. I found out about the story—as well as the sexual orientation it represented, objectùm-sexuality—from a Jezebel post. The brief post wittily wrapped the story up as “a non-traditional twist on a very common story: High school girl falls in love with drummer because she likes his shape and recklessness, comes to her senses and ends up in a relationship with a solid woman.” I thought the whole thing sounded pretty funny, so I watched the video. And I had some thoughts.

My first impression was intense shock at the poise of the hosts. Maybe things are different across the pond, but the first thing I expect when I hear “talk show” and “anything even remotely outside normative behavior” is: cringe-worthy disrespect. So the fact that the hosts were able to introduce Amanda’s relationship with the drum kit without any jokes about beating or tapping was astounding to me.

The interview started with Amanda explaining that she was attracted to objects based on their different geometrical shapes. As far as the drum kit went, she didn’t anthropomorphize or name it. She did take it to bed, but, she said, “I just like to cuddle” and the drum was “just like a teddy bear.”

The Statue of Liberty was different. Amanda did think of the statue as feminine, even nicknaming it Libby. And her attraction seemed to go beyond the geometric. Of her feelings for Lady Liberty, Amanda said, “I just love the way that she looks and I love what she stands for. I love her history. I love everything about her!”

Overall, I found the segment a surprisingly balanced look at a type of non-normative sexuality that I, personally, had never heard of. Even the psychiatrist seemed hesitant to pathologize objectùm-sexuality. The first thing she said was “It’s not really a medical condition, it’s an orientation.” But what stood out to me the most about this segment was how resistant Amanda’s experience seemed from normative ideas about love and sex. To clarify, I don’t mean that Amanda herself resisted norms. What I mean is that it seemed nearly impossible to talk about Amanda’s sexuality in the ways we usually talk about sexuality.

The interviewers, as polite as they were, clearly struggled to translate Amanda’s sexual experience in a way that would make it correlate to normative sexuality. When Amanda talked about how she fell in love with the geometric shape of the drum kit, a host tried to compare that to liking the feel of an ergonomically designed phone. Upon hearing how the drum kit (unsurprisingly) didn’t “do” anything to make Amanda fall out of love for it, but it was Liberty’s appearance that caused her emotional change, they joked about Amanda’s “unfaithfulness.” When Amanda talked about how she’d like to watch the sunset with the Statue of Liberty, a host mentioned how difficult this would be due to the statue’s size. “You can only get so close,” he said, putting his arm around a hypothetical companion.

At one point, an interviewer asked Amanda if her relationship with the Statue of Liberty included a sexual element. Amanda responded, “There is an intimate attraction to her but that is only a very small part. A lot of the part is how she makes me feel and what she’s done for me. She reciprocates to me. She doesn’t put her hands around me but she makes me feel really good inside.”

The hosts’ questions and comments were all geared at comparing Amanda’s experiences to what seemed to be the two closest things: aesthetic appreciation for an object, and a sexual relationship with another human. But neither of these possible comparisons can ever really work. What Amanda felt for the drum kit and the Statue of Liberty was a combination of those feelings, or something else entirely.

I was particularly struck by the way the word “love” was used to refer to all these different feelings. We use it foe different feelings all the time, of course. You can “love” a meal, a sexual partner, a parent, a friend, a location, a pet, and a variety of other things without ever confusing your feelings for one with your feelings for another. But the expansiveness of the word becomes really apparent with Amanda, who “loves” inanimate objects the same way I might “love” persons … except not, because my crushes aren’t geometrically based. Though, I guess, that could correlate to attractiveness. Except, that’s not right, because I usually want to do more than cuddle with the person I’m in love with… So maybe it’s sort of like asexuality? Although, didn’t she say there was something like sexual attraction?

You can see how easily it gets messy. We use terms like “love” and “sexuality” to refer to things that can sometimes be completely incomparable. It’s confusing, but I wouldn’t say it’s a bad thing. Frankly, some things should be confusing. What’s more problematic, I think, is acting as though things are the same because they’ve been given the same name.

The “we’re just like you” argument has been extremely popular in LGBT rights movements and has also come under heavy criticism by some queer thinkers. While I believe the argument can be useful, I don’t think it’s the best one for creating real social change. When same-sex marriage happens, for example, it will never be opposite-sex marriage, for the basic reason that it is between two people of the same sex. By the same token, granting Black Americans citizenship did not make them the same as White Americans. Even after generations of civil rights advances on the race front, recent tragedies like that of Trayvon Martin are clear examples of differential treatment. I believe that what we really need is for the differences between social groups and experiences to be recognized but dealt with in fairness rather than discrimination.

A woman being in love with a fence is not the same as a man being in love with a man. Neither of those is the same as a girl being in love with a boy. None of those is the same as a third-gender person being in love with two men and a woman.

And that should be OK. The fact that the relationships are different doesn’t mean that any should be privileged above the others. But, being different, each relationship will have different needs and follow a different course. And some elements of one relationship may be totally alien to elements of another.

What if, instead of separate but equal, we worked on together but different?

Just a thought.

What do you think? Is the girl in love with the drum kit just crazy? Are all kinds of love really the same? Or should we give up on the shared terminology entirely? Let us know in the comments!

Jezebel article: http://jezebel.com/5892953/woman-breaks-up-with-drum-kit-for-the-statue-of-liberty

Original video (only viewable in UK): http://www.itv.com/thismorning/life/amanda-whittaker-in-love-with-the-statue-of-liberty/

Website for Objectùm-Sexuality Internationale: http://www.objectum-sexuality.org/

Recently, there has been growing public sentiment that college is not always the best plan after high school, and in fact can damage a person’s creative and financial progress in the long run. Just look at the New York Times article titled, “Why Go to College at All?” to see a long list of reasons why college does not adequately prepare students for the ‘real world’ and how college stifles a person’s innovative ability in handling life’s questions.

The purpose of college and who is able to attend such institutions have changed with the progression of American society. When the first American college was founded 1636 in Massachusetts, college was restricted to only wealthy young white men and were affiliated with a certain Christian denomination. Now, with greater resources and a wide variety of disciplines to choose from, virtually all people who want to go to college, whether public or private, can do so. Yes, the rising cost of college is a big issue, and colleges across the country as well as the government should look to ease the burden on families who wish to send their children to college. But to discount college entirely goes beyond the financial debate and reflects growing American pessimism and anger toward a traditional avenue of success that has seemingly failed to do what its promised: to help you land a well-paying career and to help you accomplish the American Dream- the white picket fence and the shiny car in the driveway.

College is not a perfect institution; there will be failures and disappointments, and the path after college may not be as straightforward as we would like. However, the greatest advantage of college is not necessarily the diploma, but the people we encounter, the relationships that we build, and the self-confidence that comes with setting one’s schedule and goals without the help of one’s parents. College shouldn’t be about the size of your paycheck, and I believe the real underlying issue behind this attack on college is a growing sense of selfishness and a “Me First” attitude that makes taking the four years to get a degree seem counterproductive and pointless.

The beauty of a liberal arts education is that one is able to explore different fields in a classroom setting without worrying yet what our ‘boss’ thinks and how our performance will affect the company. Our success is not reflected by how much we earn, but how well we ourselves choose to use the knowledge we gain to better the world. The fact that in your average politics class you could be sitting next to people from different cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds offers a great way to engage in conversations that can truly change one’s perspective on issues, maybe even for the better. College offers a unique forum for progress because everyone who goes there already admits that they lack knowledge and are willing to learn and to help each other grow in enlightenment, which creates wiser and better people. As a junior in college, the best lesson I have learned is that interacting with people and making the effort to speak to professors is the best way to succeed, and college is the great place to learn those social skills that you will need later in life.

We can’t all be the Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerbergs. College offers us the opportunity to drop all pretenses and to truly engage in vigorous learning without fretting about making a living. Of course there are brilliant people from all walks of life who succeed without college. However, no one can succeed on his or her own, and college is the best place to find mentorship and camaraderie in one’s quest to build confidence and knowledge in facing life’s challenges and creating a better future. College should be encouraged and made affordable to all people in the United States, because at the end of the day, it is the people around you who determine your quality of life in society.

So, Matt Bomer came out, I guess…

As some of you may know, on February 11, 2012, Matthew Bomer, star of White Collar (a USA Network television series), received a Steve Chase Humanitarian award for his work with charities helping in the fight against HIV/AIDS. In his acceptance speech, Bomer thanked his “family: Simon, Kit, Walker, Henry.” Kit, Walker, and Henry are Bomer’s children. Simon Halls is the man with whom Bomer has been rumored to be romantically partnered. Hence, in openly recognizing “Simon” as part of his “family,” Matt Bomer, effectively, came out as gay.

At least, that’s how most of the reactions took it. E! Online’s report on this story is titled, “Matt Bomer Comes Out as Gay Man,” directly stating this conclusion, right off the bat. Huffington Post expanded that a little bit in their article “Matt Bomer Comes Out As Gay: ‘White Collar’ Actor Thanks Partner Simon Halls, Kids At Awards Ceremony.” Now, I’m not going to attempt to argue that Bomer is not gay; as far as I can tell, all the evidence suggests that he is. I’m also not trying to get into the argument about whether or not non-straight stars have a responsibility to come out and help break down the widespread assumptions of heteronormativity. (Though, I think those could be great discussions to have in the comments or elsewhere.) Rather, I’d like to take some time to problematize a couple assumptions I’ve seen in the discourse about Bomer’s coming-out and that I think pop up in discussions about sexual/gender minorities too often.

In the speech, Bomer did not explicitly state that he and Halls were romantic/sexual/domestic partners of any sort. If we know that Kit, Walker, and Henry are Bomer’s children (which isn’t entirely clear from the speech, but can be verified elsewhere), we only know that Simon Halls is someone else Bomer considers part of his family. It’s not even entirely clear that Halls lives with Bomer, let alone has anything to do with the raising of Bomer’s children. From this much information, the two men could be relatives or close friends. Immediately concluding that they’re together in some intimate way and parenting the three kids together actually involves a number of assumptions.

Even knowing that Bomer and Halls are raising children together tells us nothing definite about the nature of their relationship. As rarely as it’s discussed, it is, in fact, possible for two people who are not romantically involved to raise children together. We often think of a family as a man and a woman, in love, with babies. Opening that up to non-heterosexuals, we can conceptualize a family as two people, in love, with babies. But there are more, different types of families than those. What about grandparents, aunts, uncles, or cousins who live in the same household? What about intimate relationships between more than two people? What about parents who aren’t together?

Co-parenting is a little known family arrangement in which two (or more) people raise children together, but are not in an intimate relationship with each other. Often, co-parents are free to pursue intimacy outside of the relationship, which is focused on their roles as parents. This kind of arrangement isn’t very well known, but it’s about to gain some exposure from the upcoming movie, Friends with Kids, about two friends who decide to enter just such an arrangement to avoid the negative impact a baby can have on a couple’s relationship. Being that this is a mainstream romantic comedy, I think it’s safe to expect that the two characters with the baby will get together in the end. But there are real people in long-term, non-sexual co-parenting relationships, and, from all we know about Bomer and Halls, this could be the case for them.

But really, you might be thinking, what are the chances of any of that? Two guys, together, with children—we’re pretty sure they’re a gay couple. OK, but there’s still a major problem with that. Even if we know that Bomer and Halls are, in fact, intimate partners, we still can’t just jump straight to the conclusion that either of them is gay. Gay men are not the only men who partner with men. As in so many cases of a same-sex relationship, the possibility of bisexuality or some other queer orientation seems to have been completely ignored in this discussion. Bomer has never explicitly identified himself as the “gay man” that E! and the Huffington Post define him as. For all we know, he could be bisexual, or pansexual, or attracted to publicists, or just into people whose names start with S.

A lot of this may sound pedantic to those of you who have experience with LGBT organizations and activities. Of course behavior does not equal identity. Of course families come in all shapes and sizes. Of course we shouldn’t make assumptions based on few facts. A lot of us repeat these talking points over and over again in workshops and panels and dialogues. And yet, again and again, these ideas go ignored, even in the most pro-LGBT spaces.

People want to know things and they want to know them definitively. When we’re not entirely sure how to categorize something, it’s a lot easier to just throw it in the box that seems closest. And when something doesn’t fit into any of our boxes, we get confused and angry, often trying to force it somewhere it doesn’t fit or ignoring it altogether. With sexual and gender identities, there are going to be a whole lot of cases of things being unclear or just not fitting. I think a lot of us know that, but we really need to work on how we deal with it. Paying lip service to the ideas of queerness, nonconformity, and non-binary identities isn’t really helpful if we go on making sweeping assumptions from a couple facts. We all need to make ourselves a lot more comfortable with being unsure, with not quite knowing, and with allowing people to define themselves on their own terms.

Bomer is partnered with a man, so he must be gay, the logic goes. That may well be true. That may well be untrue. Honestly, it doesn’t matter much to me. But I hope I can encourage you to think a little more about the ways that kind of logic might not be so logical after all, not just when a star “comes out,” but in your everyday interactions.

References:

Matt Bomer’s award acceptance speech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=SpXHJFVnW8Q

E! Online on Bomer’s coming out: http://www.eonline.com/news/marc_malkin/matt_bomer_comes_out_gay_man/293928

Huffington Post on Bomer’s coming out: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/13/matt-bomer-comes-out-gay-thanks-partner_n_1272997.html

Friends with Kids trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Bd2UQmJ_DwI

One article about co-parenting: http://blogs.babycenter.com/mom_stories/01162011-no-sex-no-marriage-just-kids/

A common mantra of the body positivity movement is, “Everyone is beautiful.” While this idea sounds like a refreshing alternative to the body hate that accompanies overvaluing certain body types at the expense of others, I think that it actually feeds into the culture of female objectification and promotes an unhealthy sense of self.

Let me be nitpicky first. “Beautiful” is a superlative term. If we’re using it strictly in the physical sense, then by definition, not everyone can be beautiful! If everyone is beautiful, then “beautiful” loses its meaning. I understand that the spirit of the mantra is that there are different ways to be beautiful, such that one can be beautiful even if one doesn’t fit the cultural notion of what constitutes “beautiful.” But, even so, to say that everyone is physically beautiful is to say something patently, obliviously untrue.

Encouraging everyone to think of his or herself as beautiful is just another way to value appearance over any other personal quality, to hold style over substance. We women are caught in a double bind between being criticized for taking our looks too seriously and being dismissed if we don’t attain a standard of appearance that deems us worthy of consideration. How is telling everyone that they are beautiful going to help to get rid of this catch-22? Instead, I think it reinforces the idea that beauty is the personal quality that should take precedence in judging people.

If anything, I posit: why should “ugly” be such a scary word? Body positivity activists are reclaiming the word “fat;” people with mental disorders are reclaiming the word “crazy.” Similarly, non-beautiful people should not feel bad about saying that they are not beautiful.

Furthermore, we should be fighting to divorce the ideas of beauty and worth. That’s not to say that one’s beauty can’t be part of one’s self-worth; anything at which one excels, even if it’s not something totally in one’s control, is something to feel good about. But let’s take intelligence as an example. You and I both know that “You’re stupid” is not nearly the insult that “You’re ugly” is. Why not? Because intelligence is not nearly as intertwined with worth as beauty is. I want “You’re a genius” to be just as much of a compliment as “You’re beautiful.” I want being average-looking (and accepting oneself as such) to be something to be acknowledged in as detached a way as one can acknowledge being of average intelligence. Beauty should be one of several qualities, equal in significance, that contribute to our idea of self-worth or to our attractiveness. Surely, I want everyone to have high self-esteem, but I don’t want it to be under delusion.

I’m fully aware that this opinion could just be my thin and white privileges showing. And before any trolls look me up on Facebook, I don’t think I’m beautiful. (See? I said it.) The point is that making everyone feel beautiful is not the solution to body hate. The solution is to take beauty off its pedestal and to place it among the array of other abilities and personal qualities for which we can appreciate a person.

A few days ago, my friend Jane[1] and I were discussing a transgender boy she knows and the relationship he has been in since before his FTM transition.  Jane noted his decision to keep his genitalia “female” and asked, “When they have sex, does it count?”  I asked her to clarify and she said, “I mean, his girlfriend, does she think of him as a boy?  Does it count as (straight) sex?”

I have no idea how to answer these questions, and I am fairly sure that they don’t come up often in mainstream society.  This conversation made me wonder what Jane was taught in school, what most high school students learn.  Are students told about transgender people? About homosexuality?  What does the average American teenager learn about sex and sexuality in public school?

Surprisingly little, I have discovered.  According to the Guttmacher Institute, a non-profit organization formed under Planned Parenthood, 7 out of 10 US teenagers have had sex by their 19^th birthday.  This is less than in 1988, by the way.  Disturbingly, about one third of teenagers between 15-19 have not received any formal instruction about contraception.  46% of male and 33% of females haven’t received instruction about contraception before they first have sex!  And abstinence-only education has increased more than twofold since 1995, to one in four teenagers.

If the rates of contraceptive education are so low, imagine the state of education about sexual minorities.  We don’t have to just imagine; scholars Diane Di Mauro and Carole Joffe trace the history of sex education in the US over the last century and document the growth of conservative sex education, particularly during the George W. Bush years.  They condemn the “Religious Right’s” emphasis on traditional gender roles and abstinence-until-marriage as sexist and ineffective strategies to combat teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs).  However, Di Mauro and Joffe also implicate ordinary Americans for our failing sex education system: “Closely related to the issue of adult attitudes toward youth is the profound discomfort and ambivalence toward speaking about sexuality that in general prevails between parents and children and, by extension, between teachers… and students. In fact, in spite of the sexual saturation evident in the media and popular culture in the United States, public discussions of the relative merits of comprehensive education versus abstinence-only education are curiously absent.” Why is this dialogue “curiously absent”?  And what should we propose?

First, we need to conceive of sex education as more than a means to an end (decreased teen pregnancies and STIs).  Sex education is the right of American adolescents to know about their bodies, the risks they face, and the many ways they are free to express themselves:

In terms of youth, this sexual rights approach to sexuality education would, by necessity, bring adolescents themselves to the foreground as the primary beneficiaries of such programs. In this view, sexuality education would ensure access to an educational opportunity for youth that went beyond teaching about risk behaviors and preventive measures to assisting young people in the process of self-actualization and in becoming capable of maintaining mutually respectful and sexually satisfying relationships and experiences with others. (Di Mauro and Joffe 82)

Would this type of education freak some parents out?  No doubt, but that is why we need it most.  Homophobia and ignorance come from allowing children to grow up uneducated.  Sex education does not mean encouraging sex, it means increasing knowledge and tolerance, the awareness of difference.  For this reason I propose increasing sex education in public schools, ensuring it informs adolescents about sexual minorities, including intersex, transgender, gay, and bisexual people.  Americans cherish the right to free speech, and we have stifled the speech of sexual minorities for too long.

Di Mauro, Diane and Carole Joffe. “The Religious Right and the Reshaping of Sexual Policy: Reproductive Rights and Sexuality Education during the Bush Years.” In Moral Panics, Sex Panics: Fear and the Fight over Sexual Rights. 2009. Ed. Gilbert Herdt. New York: New York University Press.

Guttmacher Institute. December 2011. <http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/FB-Teen-Sex-Ed.html>.

When I first saw “Shit Girls Say,” I didn’t get it. The video was just a guy in a blond wig, saying random things I’ve heard a lot of people say, including my parents, my brother, my uncles, and my grandparents. I didn’t laugh, but I didn’t really take offense either. I just found it confusing and subsequently didn’t wish to keep up with the slew of “Shit that X say” videos that followed.

That is, until “Shit White Girls Say…to Black Girls” popped up on my tumblr feed. I immediately found it much more intriguing than the original. My first response: TOO REAL. But seriously. I’d heard these things before. I’d heard almost every single thing.

It starts off with a black girl, Chescaleigh, in a blond wig saying, “Not to sound racist…” in various locations.  Experience has taught me that anything started with this phrase is probably going to be racist. The “white girl” being portrayed in this video was saying things strikingly similar to things people told me back home. Throughout middle and high school I consistently yielded questions about my hair, cringed every time someone called something ghetto, and was told that I wasn’t really black. This video just captured so much of my life, in only two minutes.

This was the start of a new “Shit that X say to Y” trend, parodies of parodies if you will.

More and more of these videos are hitting the web and addressing “shit people say” with regard to many different identity categories. There is “Shit that Straight Girls say to Lesbians” and “Shit Girls say to Gay Guys.” After I posted “Shit White Girls Say…to Asian Girls” and “Shit White Girls Say…to Arab Girls” on my Facebook wall, a friend asked if I was just fighting stereotypes of these groups by stereotyping white girls. I responded by saying I didn’t seek to generalize or stereotype because I didn’t think all white girls said these things, but based on my experience, many definitely have. I share these videos with my friends (and my parents…my mom related to the hair questions in Chescaleigh’s video) because I think they’re great examples of microaggressive behavior. Microaggressions are small actions or comments that aren’t necessarily meant to be overtly racist (or sexist, or homophobic, or abelist, etc) but still are rooted in discrimination and often have negative effects. They include microassaults, microinvalidations, and microinsults. They’re generally not talked about because, if confronted, the perpetrator would likely claim that they weren’t being offensive, or the complainant is just oversensitive.

I first heard of the term microaggression a little over a year ago, and I was so glad to hear there was a name for what I’ve been experiencing for most of my life. As a black woman who has lived in predominately white communities my entire life, I’ve grown accustomed to hearing things like, “you’re black? I forgot.” “ I’m Sicilian, so we’re basically the same!” “You got into Princeton? Ah, well. You’re black.”

I always told myself I shouldn’t be offended. These people weren’t racist. They were my friends, and they didn’t dislike me, and definitely not because of my race. But for some reason, they just felt the need to point it out, and rather often, even when it’s completely unrelated to anything going on. I still don’t understand why people think these types of comments and behaviors toward any group are okay. I’m thankful I don’t hear these things as much anymore. At Princeton, I spent time around people who are likely also used to this behavior and thus don’t generally act in the same way toward others.

As far as I’m aware, most of these videos are based on actual experiences of the creators. As Renee Martin of the blog Womanist Musings writes, “Calling people liars because their lived experience makes you uncomfortable is a sign of your privilege.  It is not divisive for a marginalized person to talk about their lived experience and encouraging them to sweep it under the carpet denies the isms that they are forced to negotiate.” She’s right. People who aren’t used to confronting their privilege often take offense when they’re called out on it.

Perhaps a better title would be, “Things some Girls of the Mainstream culture and race say to some black girls.” But that’s a lot to type into a search bar. Later iterations of these videos avoided stereotyping “white girls” by titling their videos “Stuff people say” “Shit everyone says” or “Stuff they say.” These videos have pointed out microaggressions toward uncdocumented youth, sex workers, and rape victims. This meme has become, in some cases, a powerful tool to address discrimination and prejudice. After reading some commentary on the original Shit Girls Say videos, I better understand how it is problematic, given its gender essentialist nature and the fact that co-creators believe it’s not as bad because they’re gay men. But I think these latter videos are indeed fostering a conversation about subtle racism and, although it is often unnamed amongst most viewers, microaggression.

I encourage anyone watching these videos to think about how many of these things they’ve said or heard, and reflect on how your “not to be racist/homophobic/sexist but…” comments are affecting people. Your actions and words can affect and offend people even if they don’t identify as part of that group. As Renee Martin writes, these videos  “challenge those of us with privilege to think about the everyday problematic elements of our speech.” I wholeheartedly agree, and hope that more and more people will think twice about what they say, and try to avoid saying more “shit.”

http://www.avclub.com/toronto/articles/shit-girls-say-cocreator-graydon-sheppard,66974/

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/1101493–s-girls-say-video-a-viral-hit-for-toronto-duo#article

Note: An honest, open, frank conversation about sex, race/ethnicity, and kink is about to follow. If you are comfortable with this, proceed. If you are uncomfortable with this, you are commanded to proceed.

As the bastion of the preppy WASP stereotype, Princeton and much of the Ivy League seem unsurprisingly sparse in discussions about the intersections between our sexual desires and our race, gender, and other identities (minus perhaps, in the Beyoncé class?).

So, I recently chatted back and forth with the lovely writer, acclaimed BDSM/kink educator, and International Ms. Leather 2010 Mollena Williams. A speaker at the IvyQ conference at Brown a month ago, Mollena and her blog “The Perverted Negress” (“It ain’t just the hair that’s kinky”) have tackled all sorts of difficult subjects about kink, sex, and love–difficult sometimes for even her fellow kinksters to swallow (innuendo intended). This is an opportunity for a conversation about when race, kink, and college collide.

Let’s start with the basics. How do you define “kinky”?

In general, I’d say kinky is any type of interaction that is outside of the standard societal norms for sexual intimacy, contact, and satisfaction. It doesn’t have to be anyone’s definition but yours. Some people think anal sex is kinky because it is non-standard. For some it’s not even worthy of a bat of an eyelash, but to them, having sex missionary-style in the dark WOULD be ‘kinky’ because it is non-standard.

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
by any other name would smell as sweet.”

Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

Oftentimes, the names that we ascribe to things, to individuals, do change our perceptions, and if we seek to ascribe names and labels to everything and everyone we interact with, then we consider them in light of one of the aspects of their being: their humanity, their gender, their religious affiliation (or lack thereof), their occupation, their age, their ethnicity, their parents, their university, their social status, their economic status &c. These different ascriptions, these different names, may not change the person, but they do explain things differently to the same ears. If I consider the same individual’s story in light of her being a human, I may understand her positions differently than if I considered her in light of her religious affiliation, her occupation, or her feminist tendencies. And when we speak, do we speak as humans? As gendered individuals? As products of our social and economic upbringing? Do we speak as students? As teachers? We’ve each a good deal of names, and in what name we speak, or in light of what name we listen may not change the substance of what we say or hear, but it certainly can change our approach dramatically.

One woman cannot speak for all women, but she can speak for some as a woman, and she can speak as a human for some humans, and she can speak as a believer, for some believers, and she can speak as a student, for some students, and as a teacher, for some teachers. I am not only a gendered individual: there are far too many names for me, living, as I do, as a product both of my nature and the circumstances of my nurture. In this way my “feminism” is only a fraction of who I am, but, as it is one of my “names”, I can call upon it in every occasion or circumstance that I find myself in– and this treatment of that name, as a name among names– is, I believe, the healthiest way for feminism to prosper.

Like any other “name” or ascription, feminism is a lens with which to view the rest of life, and it is in this spirit that I propose we ought to approach feminism, not as an issue of “women”, nor as a question distinct from the question of society and humanity—but as integral facet of the culture of any society, an important medium with which to view social justice in its entirety.

To focus on a distinct name of an individual’s being is not to dismiss the rest as unimportant or secondary, or deny that the individual is a product of all of those names and classifications which befit that individual in his circumstance, but to choose to recognise that that name is an important area to draw focus to in a given setting. It is important thus to consider that the level of importance that each name, that each lens, that each facet of social justice assumes varies as settings vary. In certain places, and in certain times, the need to emphasize womanhood is necessary, while, in others, perhaps the lenses we ought to look through to achieve social justice are the labels which ascribe to us our humanity, our socio-economic statuses, or our political or religious affiliations. Because while feminism is an important cause of social justice, it stops being about justice when the advancement and empowerment of women comes at the expence of their (and others’) humanity or other causes of social justice—in which case, we need to chose a different focus, we need to re-orient and prioritise.

Feminism, for me, in as much as it is a cause of social justice, shall remain a relevant name to publicise and use as a label so long as that area of social justice is failing—and indeed, as a “feminist”, I yearn to meet the day when this name becomes irrelevant.

Two articles in Sunday’s New York Times (2/5/12) about the problem of funding public education from state budgets make it clear that so long as the rich are able to pay for only their own children’s schooling, the poor will continue to get second-rate educations.

In “Taking More Seats on Campus, Foreigners Also Pay the Freight,” Tamar Lewin reports that increasing numbers of full-paying foreign students on college campuses offer a solution to dwindling state education budgets.  She reports that this year, there are 57,000 foreign students from China alone, up from 10,000 in 2007.  Foreign students contribute $21 billion a year to the United States’ economy.  According to Lewin, Michael K. Young, the president of the University of Washington, believes that drawing money from abroad is the financial solution to education funding.  Furthermore, President Young believes that due to globalization there is no longer a reason to accept an American student before a foreign one.

Yet Young does not address a crucial point.  From the standpoint of diversity, having foreign students in American classrooms is potentially a broadening experience for all students, both American and foreign.   But by bringing in only full paying students from abroad, there will be no socioeconomic diversity among the foreign students and decreased socioeconomic diversity among the American students.  A student sharing his or her life experiences from urban China who can afford to pay the out-of-state tuition costs each year represents an extremely small minority of the Chinese population.   The GDP per capita in China, according to the CIA World Fact Book, is only $8,400, which means that Chinese students who pay out-of-state tuition rates are paying almost four times the Chinese income per capita.  (In contrast, the GDP per capita in the US is $48,100, which is almost twice the out-of-state tuition rate.)

Thus, the increasing presence of rich foreign students is doing nothing to address the fundamental problems with the cost and funding of higher education. Furthermore, if state universities begin allowing in-state students to pay the out-of-state tuition fee, an idea about which Young says, “It does appeal to me a little,” then any notion that the American higher education system is a meritocracy will disappear.

The education crisis facing higher education actually starts in the earliest years, and affects elementary, middle, and high school education as well.   According to the New York Times’ article “Pennsylvania Schools’ Financing Fight Pits District Against ‘Charter on Steroids,’” the impoverished Chester Upland School District draws 70% of its budget from state funding, whereas the nearby richer Radnor Township draws only 10% of its funding from the state and 83% from real estate taxes.  This article highlights the inequalities faced by impoverished areas but unfortunately the current governor puts the blame on the mismanagement of money by such districts rather than on a system that allows the better off to buy their children a better education, even within the public school system.  This inequality will persist so long as school funding relies on local taxes rather than state or federal taxes.  This inequality in our education system that starts at so young an age shows that the belief that in America there is equality of opportunity is a lie.

Education is a human right, yet it is one being denied to Americans without means.  We should not look to the wealthy of China (or anywhere else) to solve our fiscal problems; we should look instead to a more equitable distribution of wealth here and to proper funding of education for all.