The Swimsuit Issue

BUZZSAW FEBRUARY 2015

The Shave Debate pg. 24

Reveiw: Inherent Vice pg. 33

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News & Views

View: Swimsuit Issue pg. 6

THE F-WORD

Buzzsaw presents...

BUZZSAW: The Swimsuit Issue

EDITORS’ COMMENT

The Swimsuit Issue Fuck the patriarchy.

The Swimsuit Issue is Buzzsaw’s take on feminism. Instead of a magazine full of half-naked women, we have a magazine full of stories that critically examine women’s issues and the feminist movement.

Buzzsaw strives to go beyond the stereotypes — rather than bra-burning and man-hating, this issue explores the many facets of the movement, including whose voices are welcomed as part of action and discourse.

As many celebrities and politicians shy away from association with feminism, others fight to join in the conversation, from stayat-home moms, to racial minorities, to transwomen, to meninists. Feminism isn’t just a movement; most feminists see it as a way of life. Just how many aspects of everyday life are touched by feminism?

On college campuses across the country, sexual assaults and harassment are notoriously underreported. In an effort to provide more support to victims of sexual violence, Ithaca College has launched SHARE. Though the college and Ithaca community provide a wide variety of resources, many students aren’t aware of how to access them, or even that they exist (Sexual Violence on Campus, pg. 12).

As globalization continues to pervade all aspects of society, the manner in which the feminist movement is approached has taken on an international lens. Transnational feminism requires a respectful and understanding approach — recognition that different cultures have varying expectations and goals for what feminism is and should be (The Feminist Exchange, pg. 15).

A red carpet precedent has been set and hammered ruthlessly into stone that appoints female celebrities’ outfits as the pinnacle of importance. Who they are wearing is more important than what are doing (Who Are You Wearing? pg. 31).

When people experience sexual assault, their choices are temporarily taken from them. But in many cases, survivors work to raise their voices against the violation of their bodies. Faith comes alive in the powerful performance of “IX”, a poem both written and given by Malika Giddens (Seesaw, web).

Section dividers by Ryan Somelofske Ryan Somelofske is a junior Film, Photography and Visual Arts student. This is his artist statement.

I hate America. I hate the suburbs. I hate Olive Garden. You probably hate me. If so, I hate myself. But I most definitely hate you.

Because we are all plastic.

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BUZZSAW News & Views Upfront

Taylor Barker Jessica Corbett Natalie Shanklin Ministry of Cool Kellen Beck Prose & Cons Robert S. Hummel Sawdust Grace Rychwalski Layout Chelsea Hartman Art Lizzie Cox Website Lexie Farabaugh Christian Cassidy-Amstutz Seesaw Jennifer Jordon Social Media Copy Editors Production

Advisor Founders

Kaley Belval John Jacobson Jodi Silberstein Alexa Salvato Evan Popp Angela Pradhan Celisa Calacal Melissa Symanski Jeff Cohen Abby Bertumen Kelly Burdick Bryan Chambala Sam Costello Thom Denick Cole Louison

Buzzsaw is published with support from Generation Progress / Center for American Progress (online at GenProgress.org).

Buzzsaw is also funded by the Ithaca College Student Government Association and the Park School of Communications.

Vanguard Printing is our press. (Ithaca, N.Y.) Buzzsaw uses student-generated art and photography and royalty-free images.

Views expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of the editorial staff or of Ithaca College.

Feedback and contributions should be sent to buzzsawmag@gmail.com.

Front and back cover art by Lizzie Cox with image courtesy of Alex Vonbun Center spread art by Claire McClusky Table of Contents art by Kelsey Fons

Write Us Our magazine exists to inspire thoughtful debate and open up the channels through which information is shared. Your comments and feedback are all a part of this process. Reach the editors by email at: buzzsawmag@gmail.com

Table of Contents Seesaw ..........................................................5 Print media is dead, check out multimedia on the web.

News & Views .................................................6 Current events, local news & quasi-educated opinions.

Upfront .......................................................11 Selected dis-education of the month.

Ministry of Cool ........................................30 Arts, entertainment and other things cooler than us.

Prose & Cons ............................................37 Short fiction, personal essay and other assorted lies.

Satire threatening the magazine’s credibility since 1856.

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BUZZSAW News & Views

Sawdust .......................................................44

buzzcuts

Resources for Victims of Sexual Harassment & Assault in Ithaca Ithaca College

• ithaca.edu/sacl/share/ • Center for Counseling and Psychological Services: 607-274-3136 • Office of Residential Life: 607-274-3141 • Hammond Health Center: 607-274-3177 • Office of Public Safety: 607-274-3333 (24/7) • Office of the Chaplains: 607-274-3103 • Title IX Coordinator Tiffani Ziemann: 607-274-3300

Cornell University

• share.cornell.edu • Cornell Police: 606-255-1111 • Gannett Health Services: 607-255-5155 • Victim Advocacy: 607-255-1212, victimadvocate@cornell.edu • Title IX coordinator, nosexualmisconduct@cornell.edu

BUZZSAW: The Swimsuit Issue

City of Ithaca • The Advocacy Center: 607-277-3203, 24-hour hotline 607-277-5000 • Cayuga Medical Center: 607-274-4443 • Planned Parenthood, Sexual Assault Resource Center: 1-888-810-0093 (24/7) • Ithaca Police Department 911 or 607-274-6570

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/7)

IX

After two years of writing and contemplation, Malika Giddens premiered her spoken word poem about her experience of sexual violence and the strength that followed at the Mr. & Miss Ithaca competition. She agreed to share her powerful work with Seesaw in this video.

CONTAMINADA

Contaminada or Contaminated explores the environmental conflict between the Lake Uru Uru and the Desaguadero River communities and the mining company “Inti Raymi� in Oruro, Bolivia. Many women living in these areas are particularly affected by the mining pollution, and are fighting to change the process of mining industries in order to protect their crops and families.

DEFINITIONS OF BEAUTY Taking a twist on the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, Seesaw took portrait photographs of people in their bathing suits and asked them about their definitions of beauty, demonstrating the complexity of the word.

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News & Views

www.buzzsawmag.org/seesaw/ www.buzzsawmag.org/seesaw/

Why Even the Swimsuit Issue?

A look at where it started and who it features Maddison Murnane, Staff Writer

BUZZSAW: The Swimsuit Issue

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he Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue was first introduced by editor Andre Laguerre in February 1964 to fill the gap in the lack of sporting events being covered in the month of February. This is questionable considering that during the year of the first publication the IX Winter Olympic Games were occurring in Innsbruck, Austria. During these Olympics about 1,091 athletes were competing in 34 different events; is this not enough for you to write about, Sports Illustrated?

Sports Illustrated has always loved models, but not female athletes. In a study conducted by the Department of Sociology at the University of Louisville, out of the 716 regular issues published between 2000 and 2011, only 35 of them featured female athletes.

The ratio of men to women coverage has not always been this dramatic though. The asymmetrical coverage began when big business became more important than the actual sporting event or story of a player. When this happened, sponsorships and money began to rule the sporting industry and of course the priority started to go to popular men’s sports such as basketball and football.

Valarie Hanson, a student at St. John Fisher College, conducted research on this topic and wrote, “The Inequality of Sport: Women < Men.” Through her research she spoke with professors who were experts on the matter.

Sports Illustrated’s biggest downfall is that the “decisions [are] made by men,” said Pat Griffin, former professor at Massachusetts University, in Hanson’s study. Griffin conveyed men essentially rule over the sports media industry and control how much and what kind of coverage women receive.

“A woman who is athletically tal-

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ented and doesn’t show herself off in a sexual manner represents a ‘butch’ woman, a manly woman for lack of a better phrase,” said Hanson.

Issues such as this are one of the contributing factors that have led to eating disorders becoming the number one mortality rate of mental illness in the United States, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders.

To combat criticisms of Sports Illustrated’s disregard for athletic women, SI for Women was published.

The magazine had a short life, running for only 20 publications due to a lack of investment. Why should sports, which are considered equal according to Title IX, be separated in the media?

But the madness of the magazine does not stop there. For the 50th anniversary edition, Barbie, the doll of choice for so many young girls for over 50 years, was featured on 1,000 covers. Mattel, the toy company that created Barbie, was completely behind this campaign and started using the trendy slogan #unapologetic.

“Barbie claims that her appearance in the magazine strikes a blow for female empowerment,” according to a statement on the Mattel website.

Did Barbie really have a say in her cover image or even the bathing suit she wore?

Not only does adding Barbie to the line-up of models create a bad influence for young girls and allow the magazine to succomb to consumerism, it also insults women athletes as well as other female readers of the magazine.

To combat the unrealistic expectations upheld by the magazine, Kate Upton, a two time cover model of SI Swimsuit, stopped the crazy dieting and decided to embrace her “healthy” body because she was not happy with how modeling for Sports Illustrated made her feel.

“I’m not a toy, I’m a human, I’m

not here to be used. I am a grown woman, and you need to figure your shit out,” Upton said to Elle Magazine.

I love the fact that Sports Illustrated celebrates female beauty, and of course women should be able to flaunt what they have. The problem lies within the coverage done by the magazine. They only cover a specific body type while omitting all those who do not fit into their qualifications.

However, Sports Illustrated isn’t completely in the wrong with this year’s Swimsuit Edition. The magazine announced on Feb. 5 that it will feature one plus size model out of the 24 chosen for the magazine.

Her name is Robyn Lawley, a size 12 model, and she will be wearing a swimsuit that she designed herself.

“I don’t know if I consider myself as a plus-size model or not,” Lawley said to Time magazine. “I just consider myself a model because I’m trying to help women in general accept their bodies. ” Although the average American woman is a size 14, this is still a step in the right direction for the magazine. This is an effort by the magazine to allow more women to feel beautiful in their own skin and not be held to such high expectations. I know that it helped me feel comfortable in my own skin. ___________________________________ Maddison Murnane is a freshman journalism major who knows what beauty really means. You can email her at mmurnane@ithaca.edu.

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S

A Year and a Half Into ICC

Students’ thoughts about their experiences in the program Katie Malnati, Contributing Writer Katie Malnati spoke with freshmen and sophomores about their experiences with the new Integrative Core Curiculum, a news set of liberal arts requirements. According to Ithaca College’s website, “The program is designed to help students develop skills in integrative thinking, critical and analytical problem solving, and reflective learning.” The college implemented the ICC during the Fall 2014 semester. Incoming students pick from one of six themes (Identities; Inquiry, Imagination, and Innovation; Mind, Body, Spirit; The Quest for a Sustainable Future; A World of Systems; and Power and Justice), and will then take diversity, quantatitive literacy and writing courses that coincide with their respective themes.

1.) Are you glad that Ithaca College has implemented the ICC program?

2.) What has been your best and/or worst experience with the program?

3.) How do you think Ithaca College could improve the ICC?

Sunita Williams ‘17 Documentary Studies and Production 1. “I have mixed feelings about it because it really conflicts with my major and minors I want to do.”

Michele Hau ‘17 Culture and Communication

Nick Kelliher ‘17 Voice Performance

3. “I guess the one drawback, especially right now, is that there is a very limited course selection in which people can take classes, and I’m not necessarily sure if that is a step in the right direction because it seems very inherently limiting.”

1. “As a music student it forces me to expand my horizons and I missed academia so it’s good to acclimate to different subject areas, especially ones that I’m not familiar with.”

Ilyssa Ernsteen ‘17 Theatre Studies

1. “I like the theme and the idea is good, but there are so many cool classes in different themes that I wish I could take.”

2. “ I had to take solar systems/ astronomy and would have failed it if I didn’t declare it pass/fail and I only took that class because it fit my theme.”

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News & Views

Kellie Hodso ‘18 Film Photography and Visual Arts

City Works to Combat Homelessness

Obstacles include affordable housing, addiction and mental health Evan Popp, Staff Writer

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thaca service agencies are working with city officials and the Tompkins County Department of Social Services (DSS) to keep as many people off the streets as possible and provide supportive services for the current homeless population this winter.

Kevin Sutherland, City of Ithaca chief of staff, said the city government is aware of around a dozen people currently living on the street.

Jamie Williamson, public information officer at the Ithaca Police Department, said the law prohibits a person from spending the night on public property. However, he said the enforcement of this law is not always practical if the homeless shelter is full.

“There may not be any openings in the shelter,” he said. “We as police officers have to weigh each incident and make as reasonable a decision as practical regarding what to do about someone sleeping in public.”

Sutherland said he believes homelessness has decreased in the city over the past couple of years. A lot of the credit for the reduction has gone to the Rescue Mission, which runs a homeless shelter on State Street.

The shelter has maxed out its space to get as many people off the streets as possible.

BUZZSAW: The Swimsuit Issue

Access to State Street shelter

The Rescue Mission took over the State Street shelter from the American Red Cross in March of 2014, according to an Ithaca Voice article from Nov. 2014. In that article, Dan Sieburg, chief programs officer at the Rescue Mission, said the Red Cross had been sheltering an average of six to seven people a night. However, he said since the Rescue Mission took over, the shelter has been housing up to 20 people a night.

Deborah Dietrich, executive director of Opportunities, Alternatives

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and Resources of Tompkins County — a nonprofit that assists current and former inmates and their family and friends — said the Rescue Mission has been much more open than the Red Cross about letting anyone in need stay at the shelter.

“The Rescue Mission just kind of opened their doors,” she said.

According to numbers gathered from the Human Services Coalition of Tompkins County, in 2014 the number of bednights — one individual housed in a shelter for one night — increased by 170 percent over 2013.

Kathy Schlather, executive director of the Human Services Coalition of Tompkins County, said the increase is a reflection of the Rescue Mission opening its doors, and not necessarily an accurate barometer of whether the homeless population increased or decreased in that time.

Schlather said her agency counts the number of homeless individuals each January. She said although the results of that count for this year have not yet been processed, she expects the current number of people living on the street in Ithaca to fall between 10 and 20 people. However, Schlather added the number of people living on the streets isn’t constant and often depends on the weather.

“If you were going to do a [homeless] count in August, when people are much more comfortable staying out, you’d find a lot different numbers,” she said.

However, despite more people having access to shelter, Dietrich said the Rescue Mission shelter can’t solve the problem of homelessness alone. She said because the Rescue Mission has opened its doors to so many people in need, the shelter is running into capacity problems and fire code laws, which prevent it from taking in more people.

In addition, Dietrich said the shelter received a cut to the funding it received from DSS in 2014. Sutherland

said the Rescue Mission shelter is the only night-to-night shelter available in Ithaca.

Affordable housing crunch

A contributing factor to homelessness in Ithaca is the city’s lack of affordable housing, Sutherland said.

An article in The New York Times from April of 2014 listed Ithaca as having the 11th rent prices relative to median gross income out of 90 cities where median rent, not including utilities, was more than 30 percent of median gross income.

Sutherland said to address this problem, the city needs to develop in all areas of housing.

“We have to be looking to build more housing, and that means in every sector, including in affordable housing,” he said.

Schlather said the reason the price of housing in Ithaca is so expensive is due to high demand coupled with low supply. She said the city has a vacancy rate of 0.5 percent, meaning just half a percent of housing units are unrented.

However, one of the often overlooked aspects of the lack of affordable housing is the problem lowincome families can face in finding housing inexpensive enough and will fit their entire family, Nancy Burston, associate director of the Human Services Coalition, said.

“Anytime you have one, or two, or three, or four kids, it makes it hard because then you have to find affordable housing that’s big enough for a family,” Burston said.

Burston said there are cheaper housing options available in the outlying towns surrounding Ithaca, but that the problem then becomes access to reliable transportation. Dietrich agreed with Burston’s assessment, saying reliable transportation is necessary because most of the area’s services are found in Ithaca.

“From our clients’ point of view,

the biggest problem is transportation,” Dietrich said. “We’re spending more on bus passes than we ever have.”

Additionally, the lack of affordable housing in the city is one of the factors that has led to the creation of settlements of homeless individuals in Ithaca known as the Jungle. “[The Jungle] is city-owned property where homeless individuals have found that no one gives them a hard time,” Sutherland said. “They’re kind of secluded, yet they’re within city limits.”

Sutherland said city government is in constant contact with DSS regarding how many people are currently residing in the Jungle as well as what services might be available to those living there. Williamson said the IPD also works with the city to make sure the area stays safe.

Problems of mental health, addiction

Programs in place

Aside from the immediate aid provided by the Rescue Mission shelter, Sutherland said there are other safeguards in place to protect the homeless population. When the temperature is below 20 degrees and the shelter is at capacity, he said homeless individuals can talk to DSS about being put up in a hotel for the night.

Sutherland also said DSS has a program where it helps pay for apartments for people living on the street. However, Sutherland said there are multiple requirements to be eligible for the program, and the money DSS provides still falls short of paying for housing in Ithaca.

“The price that DSS is able to offer isn’t enough to afford something in the city of Ithaca,” he said. “And there are individuals who would stay in a location in the Jungle to be close to the food and daily services that are available.”

Dietrich said the Ithaca area has improved its services for the homeless population over the past decade, citing the building of the Chartwell House by Tompkins Community Action, which provides

housing for men recovering from alcohol and drug related issues.

She said TCA also recently opened another house called the Magnolia House, which houses women recovering from substance abuse.

TCA participates in a program with the Ithaca Housing Authority known as Section 8, Schlather said.

Section 8 provides housing vouchers to those who qualify financially for housing assistance. Under the program, people in need of housing won’t pay more than 40 percent of their adjusted monthly income toward rent. However, Schlather said the program is backed up, with a long waiting list.

In addition to these programs, Dietrich said six cottages were recently built in Newfield to provide housing for homeless men, with plans underway to build a dozen more cottages.

Despite all the programs in place, Dietrich said more can be done. She said there is a glaring lack of transitional housing in Ithaca — housing that accommodates inmates recently released from jail. Dietrich said she believes transitional housing could help in reducing the recidivism rate in Ithaca prisons.

“We have a core group of repeat offenders, and I believe with transitional housing… we could reduce that core group,” she said.

She said currently, many inmates end up being housed in the outlying communities around Ithaca. However, she said this approach doesn’t allow inmates to be integrated back into the community.

Schlather said she believes there needs to be increased funding at both the state and federal level to provide additional supportive services to the homeless population.

“We talk a good game about wanting to get people help, but it takes money to be able to build and provide services to people,” she said. _______________________________ Evan Popp is a freshman journalism major who won’t be going out into the Jungle in this weather. You can email him at epopp@ithaca.edu

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News & Views

One of the issues many people within the homeless population face is addiction to alcohol and other drugs, as well as mental health problems, Schlather said. She said the problem of affordable housing is well-known around the city, but it’s not the only factor contributing to homelessness.

“The people who are homeless have some kind of substance abuse problem or mental health issues, which keep them from maintaining stable housing, and may keep them from being able to maintain employment… it’s all a package,” she said.

One of the problems with the current shelter system is the lack of a “wet shelter,” Schlather said. She said a wet shelter is one that accepts people who are still drinking and using substances, as opposed to a “dry shelter,” which prohibits the continued use of these substances.

“People deserve a safe place to live and not everybody is going to be able to be working on abstinence,” Schlather said. “Even people who are not working on abstinence, they also need to be warm and sheltered and fed.”

Dietrich said technically there are no wet shelters in Ithaca. However, she said the Rescue Mission shelter has been much more open about accepting people still using substances than the Red Cross. Dietrich agreed

with Schlather, saying the city needs an official shelter for people who aren’t yet ready to quit using substances. She said this is especially important for people coming out of prison, who have a hard time following too many rules and regulations.

“There are a lot of people who would come in from the cold to something with support services if they’re just treated like decent human beings and not made to comply with excessive numbers of rules and regulations,” she said.

Sutherland said many of the current programs in place to help the homeless population require an active effort by participants to get clean and sober and deal with mental health issues.

“Those are issues that many people face and some have lost everything because of it,” he said of addiction and mental illness. “And the only way they’re going to get better is if they choose to and are willing to accept help.”

IPD Introduces Citizen’s Police Academy

Residents have the opportunity to learn about police activities Tylor Colby, Staff Writer

BUZZSAW: The Swimsuit Issue

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rom Feb. 25 to April 15, the Ithaca Police Department will host its first-ever Citizens Police Academy, a decision that has piqued the interest of Ithaca activists who want more involvement between the community members and the IPD. Jamie Williamson, public information officer of the IPD, said the eight three-hour classes will be “a combination of lecture and interactive activities” regarding the department’s functions, resources and programs, with the intention of creating more awareness and dialogue between the police and the greater Ithaca area.

“The goal of the eight-week-long IPD Citizens Police Academy is to create a better understanding of the daily activities of police officers who serve in the Ithaca community, to strengthen the relationships with the community and the officers, and to enhance the police services that are provided to the Ithaca community,” Williamson said. “These goals will ultimately help police officers to create a safer community in which to live, work and grow.”

The classes will be led by certified police instructors from the IPD, Tompkins County Sheriff’s Department and Cornell University Police Department. The IPD will be accepting 20 applicants.

In the wake of numerous cases of police violence toward unarmed citizens of color over the past year, dialogue about race relations in the United States has increased, particularly in regard to the people of law enforcement and predominantly black communities. In response to this, Mayor Svante Myrick issued an eight-point plan for “Excellence in Policing,” a policy for department reform that includes implementations like cameras on police vehicles, an increase in police staffing and “improved community outreach pro-

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gramming.”

If the mayor’s plan is carried out in full, Myrick said it “will greatly enhance the ability of the Ithaca Police Department to deliver high quality, community oriented services.”

Although most efforts by U.S. police departments to pacify the situation have resulted in animosity from many black communities, some departments have made efforts to create more transparency in order to encourage better police-community cooperation.

Ithaca is not the first city to launch classes such as these; the New York Police Department implemented a CPA program in 1993, and it has been running biannually ever since.

Other CPA classes are run in most states across the country.

Tyrell Stewart-Harris, predoctoral diversity fellow in the writing department at Ithaca College, worked as an ethnographer, studying innercommunity behavior and local government changes in the diverse yet heavily segregated Oak Park, Illinois.

Stewart-Harris said whether or not the CPA is an effective means of integrating the community with the IPD, it is nevertheless a common and effective method of convincing locals of the department’s increased community engagement.

“These are very general governance policies,” Stewart-Harris said. “You invite people into the government, and you give them something to do, they feel like they had something to do whether or not they did, and they share that information with the community. It’s a very common way to get people on the side of public policy changes.”

Lynne Jackier, local civil rights activist and blogger, said she will be taking part in the CPA in order to participate in the IPD’s effort toward community policing, a practice characterized by a police force in close contact with the everyday citizens in

the district.

“This is something being offered by the police department as a way for community members to learn about how the police department functions,” Jackier said. “I feel like I need to know more before I can be helpful.”

Audrey Cooper, director of the Multicultural Resource Center, a nonprofit organization in Ithaca that brings awareness to social issues pertaining to race and diversity. Cooper said the CPA does not address the full scope of community involvement, they having no reciprocal means of communicating with officers who for the most part live outside of city lines.

“I understand police have a job to do, I understand that at times it can be pretty scary and unnerving,” Cooper said. “But for some of us, also working and living in the community, seeing the way certain situations are handled by police can also be scary.”

Jackier also said, the IPD would also benefit from knowledge about the community to further their relationship with individuals in town.

“I think there needs to be a sister program that helps police learn about communities in our town,” Jackier said. “Especially communities that carry a lot of anger and mistrust of police in general, there are reasons for that. There are things that happened to these people in their lives, and police officers need to learn about that.” ___________________________________ Tylor Colby is a junior writing major who knows what it takes to defend the city. You can email him at tcolby1@ithaca.edu.

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Upfront

UPFRONT. UPFRONT. UPFRONT

Selected dis-education of the month.

Sexual Violence on Campus

Examining reports and resources available to IC students

Kaley Belval, Seesaw Editor

BUZZSAW: The Swimsuit Issue

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ccording to the Rape, Abuse & Incest Network, “one out of every six American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime.” In 2003, the organization states, 90 percent of victims of these types of sexual assault were female. Unfortunately, many of these incidents occur on college campuses.

The 2014 Annual Security and Fire Safety Report, which can be found on Ithaca College’s website under the Office of Public Safety and Emergency Management, seems to suggest the college does not face a problem with sexual assault. In 2011, there were four reported forcible sex offenses that took place, all in residence halls. In 2012, there were three reported forcible sex offenses that took place, also all in residence halls. In 2013, there was one reported incident of fondling, which took place in a residence hall.

That same year, there was one reported incident of statutory rape, which took place on campus property. Not only that, but there were six cases of dating violence on campus, four of which took place in residence halls and 15 incidents of stalking, 10 of which took place in residence halls.

Based on national reporting statistics, it is unlikely that these reported numbers accurately reflect how many incidents of sexual assault actually occur at Ithaca College — as is the case at campuses across the country.

Once a student experiences sexual assault or harassment, he or she may not know where to turn. Surrounded by society’s misperceptions of victimblaming and who may qualify as a “victim,” the student may hesitate to talk to others about the experience.

Not only that, but he or she may be unaware of the resources available to them as well as the nature of their privacy. The decision to report their experience can be an extremely difficult and personal choice, yet some students may not even know where to go.

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At Ithaca College, the first step for accessing any type of information about sexual assault and harassment policies, or even potential people to talk to, is to visit the Sexual Harassment and Assault Response & Education website, www. ithaca.edu/sacl/share/. A recent initiative of the college, SHARE defines sexual violence, rights and responsibilities, while giving students access to information about reporting and non-reporting options as well as prevention and education.

Among other definitions on the SHARE website, sexual violence is defined as, “Physical sexual acts perpetrated against a person’s will or when a person is incapable of giving consent,” for example, due to the person’s age or use of drugs or alcohol, or because an intellectual or other disability prevents the person from having the capacity to give consent.

The definition continues: “A number of different acts fall into the category of sexual violence, including rape, sexual assault, sexual battery, sexual abuse and sexual coercion. Sexual violence can be carried out by school employees, fellow students, students from other schools, or third parties. Sexual violence is a form of sexual harassment.”

If a student sees this definition and realizes that they have experienced one of these incidents, he or she has a number of resources available, such as filing a criminal or judicial report, attending counseling, receiving medical attention or going to a support group.

If a student decides that they want to pursue a criminal or judicial case, they would do so through the Office of Public Safety, which would then launch an investigation.

Terri Stewart, the director of the Office of Public Safety and Emergency Management, wants students to know that there are a multitude of resources available to

them through her office.

“We are a resource, so you can contact us and hypothetically walk through any kind of scenario and we would talk about the resources or get someone connected to the resources or provide information or work directly with anyone who calls to try to get them that,” Stewart said. “Whether that’s counseling, whether that’s medical attention, but also be able to walk through options of criminal or judicial proceedings or processes.”

One of the most important aspects of the criminal process for students to recognize, she said, is that physical evidence needs to be collected within the first 24 to 48 hours following the incident. Based on all of the evidence provided throughout a criminal investigation, Public Safety consults with the District Attorney’s office in order to determine the likelihood of criminal charges. However, the student has complete control over whether they want to move forward with a criminal or judicial case.

“The survivor really has the ability to say, ‘I’m not sure if I should pursue this criminally. I don’t know what that means, I’m not sure that I want to pursue this judicially because I don’t know what that means for me or for the accused,’” Stewart said. “And so we’ll walk through some of those options, but we will investigate so that at any particular point in time, if the survivor decides that they want to use those, go either one of those directions, that we would be positioning them to do that.”

If a student wants to report the incident, but does not necessarily want to pursue legal or judicial action, they can do so through the Title IX coordinator Tiffani Ziemann.

“I just definitely want people to feel comfortable reaching out to myself or, you know, anyone else to get connected on campus,” Ziemann said. “Telling somebody is really the

“It’s really important for students, or people, to have choices. And that’s what happens, particularly if they’re feeling like they didn’t have a choice in whatever has happened to them.

And so we are giving them those resources.”

- Tiffani Ziemann, Title IX Coordinator at IC

cause we’re creating a place where people feel like they can speak out and they can say something,” Ziemann said.

“They can be supported and then hopefully over time that would shift and our numbers would go down because legitimately we’re becoming a safer campus, that people aren’t tolerating this, that people are recognizing it.”

If a student would rather avoid the reporting process altogether, there are a number of confidential options both on and off campus that students can use without the involvement of Public Safety or Judicial Affairs. The Hammond Health Center, the Chapel, Counseling and Psychological Services, along with The Advocacy Center and Planned Parenthood downtown all provide private support services.

Kristi Taylor is the adult community educator at the Advocacy Center, an organization based in Ithaca that provides services for survivors of sexual and domestic violence.

“Our advocates are going to approach a situation non-judgmentally, and really allow that person to guide what their needs are, so it’s a helpful place,” Taylor said.

“And all of our services are free, so there’s no need to have insurance or anything out of pocket, which can be really helpful for students.”

The Advocacy Center has a confidential 24-hour hotline, which can be utilized for anyone who is looking for help, as well as support groups and one-on-one meetings for both legal and emotional support.

“I think the big takeaway is for students to know that even though we’re off campus, the services are available to you,” Taylor said.

“We really want people to feel that

they’re not alone, that people believe you and that there is help available.

And so while it can be hard to pick up that phone, just know that you’re talking to a safe person on the other end who can walk you through all of your on campus and off campus choices and options.”

Another great resource available to students is Ithaca College’s Center for Counseling and Psychological Services, which offers confidential one-onone counseling as well as a support group for survivors of sexual violence.

The group meets once a week and offers a space for students to openly express their experiences and how they are moving forward with people who endured similar challenges. While these services are not for everyone, they offer a variety of options for survivors that may be able to provide some support.

Sexual violence is an extremely damaging experience with consequences that can last a lifetime. The main priority of each of these resources is to ensure that the survivor has a support system, no matter which option is chosen. ____________________________________ Kaley Belval is a senior documentary studies major. You can email her at kbelval1@ithaca.edu.

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first step for us being able to provide support and we want to be able to do that.”

Within her position as Title IX coordinator, Ziemann has multiple responsibilities. The first is to provide community education about sexual violence. Her second job is to help students understand the resources available to them and ensure they are receiving the support they need.

The third aspect of her job is to look at trends of sexual violence or harassment on campus to remove current threats and prevent similar ones in the future. Whether a student wants to figure out what they experienced, file a criminal report, or be connected with support services, Ziemann works one-on-one with her or him in order to ensure that their needs are met.

When a student speaks to a faculty or staff member about these types of incidents, they are required to tell Ziemann that the student reached out to them. At that point, the student will be contacted by Ziemann, but whether they choose to continue the reporting process with her is up to them. She said she just wants to make sure that they have all of the information and support they need, whether or not they want to pursue anything further.

“It’s really important for students, or people, to have choices,” Ziemann said. “And that’s what happens, particularly if they’re feeling like they didn’t have a choice in whatever has happened to them. And so we are giving them those resources.”

Beyond providing students with options, Ziemann said that in the long term, Ithaca College’s goal is to increase reporting of these types of crimes so that it can lead to a safer environment for all students.

“We want this to be a campus, a culture of reporting so that maybe for a couple years it looks like our numbers go significantly up because students are coming forward, but that might be a good thing be-

Women and the Web

Dismantling the patriarchy with every keystroke

Samantha Guter, Staff Writer

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f you log onto Facebook nowadays, you’re more than likely to be bombarded with links, articles, BuzzFeed quizzes and more. One of the main topics more and more viral sites like BuzzFeed, Thought Catalog, Upworthy and Bustle are writing about is feminism.

Modern feminism has taken to the internet as one of its main forms of spreading the message of dismantling the patriarchy. A quick Google search of “feminism” results in more than 37,000,000 hits — everything from memes to “craftivism” to quizzes to GIFs to photo projects exists with a feminist bent. Emma Watson’s HeForShe speech at the UN released in the fall of 2014 spread across Facebook like wildfire. FCKH8, an organization in support of equality and LGBTQ+ rights, released a video of “Potty-Mouthed Princesses Drop FBombs for Feminism,” which exploded across the internet in late October 2014. BuzzFeed asked its users in February to submit responses to the question, “Tell us what sparked your feminist awakening.”

Despite the increase in awareness, some experts express concern that the feminist internet buzz undermines the seriousness of the movement. A 2013 Huff Post/YouGov poll found that only 23 percent of women and 16 percent of men considered themselves feminists, but the internet may be changing that number.

The internet has provided a space for feminists to connect and bond across nations. Wikipedia has pages dedicated to both “cyberfeminism” and “networked feminism.” With the explosion of social media in the past few years, feminists and other social justice movements have seized the opportunity to share their message with the world.

Vanessa Valenti, co-founder of the site Feministing.com, said the term “viral feminism” takes on many different names.

“I’ve heard of many variations —

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‘online feminism,’ ‘Twitter feminism,’ et cetera,” Valenti said. “I define online feminism as a feminist innovation that harnesses the power of online media platforms to discuss, uplift, and activate gender equality and social justice.”

In today’s feminist movement, sometimes referred to as “fourthwave feminism” in historical and academic circles, the internet is a key player in spreading information.

According to feminist activist Jennifer Baumgardner, in her book F’em: Goo Goo, Gaga and Some Thoughts on Balls, the “fourth wave” really began in approximately 2008, coinciding with the 2008 primary elections.

“A critical mass of younger feminists began expressing themselves.

They were tech-savvy and gendersophisticated,” Baumgardner wrote.

Feminists moved on from zines and punk shows to blogs, Twitter, Facebook and their own websites.

“Social media is basically the town square of the feminist movement,” Dana Edell, executive director of SPARK, which stands for Sexualization Protest, Action, Resistance, Knowledge, said. SPARK is a “intergenerational feminist activist space” where girls and women of all ages, nationalities and ethnicities can collaborate to take action on issues that impact women’s lives by organizing trainings, lectures, and, films, as well as facilitating discussions and other action projects.

“We could [not] exist without technology and the internet,” Edell said of her organization. “We communicate daily in a private Facebook group — girls from eight countries and throughout the United States — and also we have two online chats every month, and we try to do various video conference calls as well.”

The benefits of the internet and its use in all types of social justice activities are huge, Valenti said.

“The internet allows us to create a bigger and rapid kind of activism; never in the history of activism have

we been able to mobilize thousands of people in a matter of minutes,” she said. “The internet also allows us to reshape and reclaim a lot of sexist, racist, transphobic content we see in the media, by allowing us to create new creative media that subverts that.”

But spreading the movement online does have some drawbacks, as some feminist experts have noted.

“Social media also has its issues — trolling and online harassment is rampant and specifically targets women,” Edell said.

These are problems that continue to exist in the present day, especially because it is so easy to disguise your identity on the web, Valenti said.

“Online harassment and online misogyny is pretty prevalent, especially because the internet allows for anonymity,” she said.

One of the most aggressive turns feminism has taken, especially in the Tumblr-verse, is a casual attitude toward misandry. Selfies of women drinking out of “male tears” mugs consistently get many likes, comments and reblogs. The popularity of cross-stitched patterns declaring support for “misandry” surrounded by flowers concern some members of the movement who think extreme ‘jokes’ encourage and reinforce the stereotype of “man-hating feminazis,” or feminists who want to eliminate the men completely.

Valenti said most feminists use misandrist terms in jest.

“I know a lot of feminists, and I have never met one who is an actual misandrist,” she said. “When talking about misandry, it’s usually in a humorous way to mock the men’s rights activists and other haters who like to think that we’re intent on the destruction of men, which is ridiculous.” ___________________________________ Samantha Guter is a junior journalism major who spends her spare time Googling feminist gifs. You can email her at sguter1@ithaca.edu.

The Feminist Exchange

Establishing feminist connections across borders

Charlotte Robertson, Staff Writer

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teen, an online journal that focuses on arts, culture and politics.

Rizkalla’s family is originally from Egypt and she identifies as an EgyptianAmerican feminist. She said Egyptian feminism is different from American feminism because it has not yet progressed as far.

“They have to fight for the basics — the things that we already have,” Rizkalla said. “It’s almost like Egyptian feminism is still in what America would have called its ‘second-wave feminism.’”

Second-wave feminism took place in the 1960s and ’70s and focused on issues such as reproductive rights and sexuality, making it a more radical movement than first-wave feminism.

First-wave feminism began in the late 19th century and focused on women’s suffrage. Feminist scholars now claim the United States is in its third-wave of feminism.

Laws often dictate the rights that females have in the United States through issues such as suffrage and reproductive rights. In other countries, such as Egypt, female dress and behavior are not determined by legislation. Instead, women are influenced by society’s norms.

“There are cultural and societal expectations for women to act certain ways,” Rizkalla said. “Though it isn’t legislated what a woman can and cannot wear, women in Egypt still cannot wear short sleeves and tank tops in certain areas.”

Rizkalla said she believes the United States needs to continue to work toward equality and fully fix American problems before moving the focus of inequality to other countries, though she said she does believe different feminist communities can work together.

Rupp agreed and said if Western feminism were to infiltrate international societies, it would be more or less a form of imperialism.

“What is crucial is to recognize that those issues play out differently for women depending on their social locations,” Rupp said. “The concept that Western feminism is the model that should spread elsewhere in the world is itself a form of colonialism that overlooks indigenous forms of feminist organizing.”

Rupp said she makes sure to emphasize that acknowledging the value of diverse models of feminism does not eliminate the overlap of certain issues between different cultural communities.

“It is not to say that there are no issues, such as reproductive justice, control of women’s sexuality and violence against women that affect women of different races, classes and nations or that there are no issues that cross from the global North to the global South,” she said.

Rizkalla said she believes feminist groups from around the world can work together, despite their cultural, and sometimes ideological, differences.

“American feminists should reach out to Egyptian feminists, but I don’t think it should happen through American foreign policy,” Rizkalla said. “American feminists can reach out, but they need to understand the history of Egyptian feminism and the present social climate beforehand.”

Rizkalla also said Western women need to understand that what Western culture may view as oppressive may not align with what Middle Eastern women think is oppressive.

“For example, Western women need to understand that the hijab is not inherently oppressive,” Rizkalla said. “Denying women the right to choose how they dress is oppressive. Western women need to understand that some Middle Eastern women want to wear the hijab.”

Rizkalla said she believes it is through understanding and forming a sense of community that women can be internationally beneficial to one another and the transnational feminist movement.

“It shouldn’t be just Western feminists reaching out, supporting the idea of the American savior complex,” Rizkalla said.

“The feminist movement should have facilitation of ideas and support that transcends religion, color and borders.” _______________________________________ Charlotte Robertson is a freshman integrated marketing communications major who asks the question, “Who runs the world?” and always answers, “Girls.”

You can email her at crobertson@ithaca. edu.

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hether it was Beyoncé’s body literally silhouetted by “FEMINIST” on stage or Malala Yousafzai receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, it is clear that in this past year feminism has received international limelight.

The global presence of feminism has a name: transnational feminism. Transnational feminism is not a new concept but has become increasingly visible as globalization continues to grow and transform.

Leila Rupp is a feminist studies professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She specializes in the study of women’s movements, sexualities and transnational history.

“My work has focused on the history of transnational organizing among women from the late 19th century through the Second World War,” Rupp said. “I wanted to know how and why women came together across national borders — what they saw themselves as having in common, how those definitions drew borders that included some women and excluded others, what issues were central at different points of time, how women build communities across vast distances and what difference their actions made.”

Though the term “transnational feminism” is regularly used, some scholars, like Rupp, prefer the term “transnational feminist activism” or the “transnational women’s movement.”

Rupp said she believes these alternate terms imply the collaboration of feminists from different parts of the world without assuming that all women in all countries are necessarily working toward the same ideals of liberation.

“The concept of transnational feminism assumes that those who identify as feminists in different parts of the world have common goals that can be worked toward together,” Rupp said.

“What those goals are and what feminists share differ across time and have always been contentious.”

Ruth Rizkalla is a student at New York University who founded Twelve Nine-

Get Off Our Turf

Transwomen fight for admission to female-only spaces

Alexa Salvato, Staff Writer

“Dear Smith College Board of Trustees and President McCartney,

BUZZSAW: The Swimsuit Issue

I am writing this open letter to express my strong and continuing support for Smith College’s female-only admissions policy… Being a woman is not a spiritual or metaphysical experience. It is not a feeling and it is not a performative utterance. Being a woman is a lived experience with material consequences.

Smith’s admission policy must reflect some clear limitations on male gender identification, lest the social category ‘woman’ become entirely meaningless.”

—“An Open Letter to Smith College about Transwomen,” Elizabeth Hungerford, Smith College ’00

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t a time when feminism is finally beginning to incorporate the voices of transwomen, there are many self-defined “radical feminists” who are rejecting these women on the basis that they are not women at all. These feminists have been given the unflattering name “TERF” by trans-supportive feminists, meaning

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“Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist.” However, few, if any, radical feminists actually identify with that name.

Rachel Ivey, who runs the radical feminist blog, Bend It Till It Breaks, said TERF “is a term used as an insult, and more importantly, used to shut down discussion.”

Ivey said she thinks discourse about these topics, regardless of how disparate opinions are, is important. “[TERF] is a term used as an insult, and more importantly, used to shut down discussion. When someone uses that term, it is clear to me that they have not begun to understand what radical feminists are saying, they do not understand how gender functions and how it differs from physical sex, and more than that, it indicates that they are not interested in gaining an understanding of those things,” Ivey said. “It’s a term placed onto us by those who want to speak over and silence us.”

In contrast, many liberal feminists recognize the idea popularized in Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, published in 1990, that gender is performative. Gender is constructed, Butler claimed, through the repetitive performance of activities that have come to be associated with the different genders. Each individual has their own intrinsic gender identity.

Ivey explained this view in her video “The End of Gender: Revolution, Not Reform,” and then contrasted it with the radical feminist view.

Radical feminists believe that gender isn’t only sorted into the man/ woman binary, but that it is in fact a hierarchy.

“Gender is not a binary,” writes Lierre Keith, a well-known radical feminist, quoted in Ivey’s presentation. “It is a hierarchy… It divides us in half. That half is not horizontal — it is vertical.”

These radical feminists believe that individuals changing changing their own presentation of gender is irrelevant. Ivey said, as a woman,

she experimented with changing her style of clothing to being more “masculine” at times.

“I could not escape gender by changing myself because changing my appearance did not change the fact that I was socialized into the sex class called ‘women’ against my will,” Ivey said. “The fear and desperation that comes from that is not something that someone would choose, and it was not my fault… No one innately chooses that identity; no one is innately subordinate.”

Justin Kilian, a transwoman and activist student at UMass Amherst, said she believes no one would choose the marginalization that comes along with identifying as a woman.

“Anyone in their right mind would not intentionally put themselves into marginalized categories of female and transgender if that’s really not who they were. That’s not a logical thing,” she said.

Becoming a woman, a process that differs for individual transwomen, is often a difficult and complicated journey, and it is self-directed.

Kilian said “transitioning” is an entirely individual process that doesn’t always affect changes in clothing or makeup. Although most transpeople change their pronouns, not all change their names. Kilian decided not to change from her birth name when she transitioned.

“I don’t believe in changing your name if it’s not an internally motivated thing for you. So, I don’t feel a [different] internal name, but people expect me to have a more feminine name,” she said.

The same goes for changing presentation. Many feminists like Ivey criticize the idea that an individual’s change of presentation can change their inner gender.

“The problem in that lies — per se, wearing makeup or dresse — that’s not something that just trans women do. That’s something that cis women do too. And there’s a lot of

on the phone was very helpful and said I was going to have to get a letter for my gender therapist, and I was going to have to get all of my gender markers changed, and I was going to have to get a note from my doctor,” she said. “I could tell they had this very specific idea of what a transwoman was that doesn’t align with every woman’s reality.”

Kilian did not end up applying.

Many young transwomen do not have the resources to begin their transition, physically or in their public identity, until they are older; high schools or parents are often unsupportive, and the process can be expensive.

As Smith College’s student organization “Q&A: Trans Women Belong at Smith” states: “Most school districts are free to prohibit students from changing the gender markers on their records for any reason they like. Very few states have formulated guidelines for school districts to follow. Schools can make up whatever requirements they want—like seeing a gender specialist or changing legal gender markers. These actions are not financially or logistically accessible to most trans high school students.”

When Kilian was accepted to UMass Amherst, located only about 20 minutes from Smith, she got involved with Smith’s “Q&A,” an oncampus group that has been holding demonstrations, educational initiatives and working to pressure the administration to be more inclusive. This semester they are trying to garner national attention, particularly that of Smith’s funders and alumni. Kilian said at this point, they want to “impact how the system works as a whole… [That means creating] a lack of funds being given to the school to keep it going.”

Kilian said she does understand why so many “feminist” women are wary of transwomen, especially of their inclusion in traditionally “women-only” or “female-only” spac-

es.

In the eyes of these activists, Kilian said, “[Transwomen] are either purposefully changing our bodies to act as agents of patriarchy to interrupt women’s spaces, or, a more nuanced approach, we are perpetuating stereotypes about women by existing — and I can see where the concern in that lies.”

Speaking of “female-only spaces,” Ivey said, “Female people are a distinct social class with unique experiences, and like every other distinct group, we get to claim and define our own space and exclude people who do not share our specific, unique experiences.”

The lifelong oppression of those born as “female” is central, in Ivey’s view, to that experience.

Kilian disagrees. It is important to include transwomen in women’s spaces, “because we are women, and you can’t have a ‘women’s space’ unless it includes all women.”

“I think trans women in particular can really benefit from being in women’s spaces because our particular womanhood is so desecrated, completely trashed in the real world,” Kilian said. “If you can find a safe space where you are free of sort of this sexist influence on daily life, that kind of pushes women’s colleges to be a space you benefit from, that you really discover your own voice and foster your identity as a woman with other women. You get to develop your ideas of womanhood with other women.” ___________________________________ Alexa Salvato is a sophomore journalism major who supports self-directed and personalized paths to womanhood. You can email her at asalvat1@ ithaca.edu.

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women who don’t do that too, who don’t wear makeup or that clothing,” Kilian said. “Your presentation and how you dress have nothing to do with who you are.”

Additionally, transwomen have an additional threat if they do not “pass,” or appear at a glance to look like other people in their gender. According to 2012 statistics from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, 50 percent of reported hate murders were transgender women. The threat increases if they do not pass easily, as random strangers in their lives can tell that they are trans. Many assailants find their very existence an insult, and claim that it motivates their violence.

“Not ‘passing’ is extremely volatile because if you don’t pass, per se, you are in very real danger everywhere you walk,” Kilian said.

With all of these additional threats against transwomen, why wouldn’t all feminists automatically come to their defense? Kilian said she believes that “fear” is what motivates these radical feminists to continue to exclude transwomen from their spaces.

“I feel for them because a lot of it comes out of fear,” Kilian said. “A lot of hatred comes out of fear. It doesn’t necessarily make the actions that you’re taking excusable by any means.”

Kilian has been working for inclusion of transwomen in women’s spaces as part of the struggle at Smith College to make admission for transwomen an easier process.

Currently, anyone who identifies as a woman is eligible for admission, but the admission process is complicated for transwomen. When applying to schools, Kilian said she called Smith to see how the application process works.

“My friend said I should try to apply to Smith, and I didn’t really want to, but I figured I’d just call the offices anyway. I asked how I, as a transwoman, would apply. The lady

Who Wears the Pants?

A personal look at challenging gender roles in lesbian relationships

Jodi Silberstein, Staff Writer

BUZZSAW: The Swimsuit Issue

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y roommate Sari Stifelman, a senior at Ithaca College, met Beth* on Tinder. Just over a week after their first date, Beth asked, “So who do you think is the guy in this relationship?”

“I think we’re both just girls,” Stifelman replied, but the conversation continued. Beth attempted to label their actions and behaviors as feminine and masculine. Stifelman paid for the date, a masculine trait, according to Beth.

Beth admitted to needing a lot of attention, which she characterized as feminine, but Stifelman has a very feminine fashion sense, convoluting the whole situation.

According to Margaret Nichols’ study, published in 1990, Lesbian Relationships: Implications for the Study of Sexuality and Gender, “Lesbians in the 1950s often assumed rigid ‘butchfemme’ roles in their couple relationships, and the butch-femme phenomenon seems more related to an imitation of existing heterosexual models of relationships than to the formation of erotic attraction.”

Since the 1950s, lesbians have been given more social liberties, giving women a chance to diverge from the imitation of their hetereosexual counterparts. Stifelman said she considers herself femme, and although one of her previous relationships had conformed to the rigid butch-femme model, in Stifelman’s eyes, she and Beth were femme-femme. “For the time that we spent together, we both equally paid our way if we’re talking strictly monetary. It was very much equal,” Stifelman said.

Nichols also wrote, “It appears that many lesbians cherish committed relationships as the most important aspect of life and attempt to incorporate feminist values of equality into their partnerships, although not always with more success than heterosexual women or gay or hetereosexual men.”

Finding equality is a struggle in any relationship, but perhaps the issue here is the definition of equality. While it can be a very objective concept — who

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pays for what and how often — it is the emotional equality that can often be most difficult to achieve: who opens up to whom and how much.

According to the study Lesbian Dating and Courtship from Young Adulthood to Midlife, published in 2002 by Suzanna Rose and Debra Zand, “Participants cited four major categories of uniqueness [compared to heterosexual relationships], including freedom from gender roles, heightened intimacy/ friendship, the rapid pace of lesbian relationship development, and the effects of prejudice.”

The 38 lesbians aged 22 to 63 involved in this study cannot speak for all lesbians — and certainly not college students living in a world very different than it was fifteen years ago — but the study’s findings highlighted issues that are still relevant: “How lesbians convey and interpret sexual attraction is an interesting question, given neither woman is likely to have been socialized to assume the initiator role… 50 percent indicated on the gender role measure that they ‘always’ or ‘almost always’ waited to be asked for a date.”

So while a majority of women were taught at a young age that men make the first move and women are the reactors, it can be inferred here that the other 50 percent of women in this study do initiate dates with other women; it’s equal, 50/50.

But what is that first move exactly?

According to Rose and Zand, there are two ways lesbians make initial contact, “direct verbal declarations” and “nonverbal proceptive behaviors,” the latter being more common.

When I found myself at the bar this summer making the sort of eye contact considered to be nonverbal proceptive behavior, I knew I was making a move, but I had not considered my tipsy flirtation with this woman to be the first move toward something more serious.

It was when she approached me and verbally flirted back that led me to believe it could be something more.

Perhaps to the outside eye, this woman, taller than I and dressed entirely in menswear, who had offered to buy me

a drink that night, would presumably have been the man in the relationship.

But as we spent more time together, her society-defined masculine behaviors mostly of the monetary variety were canceled out by our emotional intimacy, which we did our best to keep equal.

When I asked her one day why she always insisted on paying for everything, she said, “I like to take care of someone and paying is a material way to do that.”

It was not because she felt she had to take the stereotypical masculine active role, but because she just wanted to be kind.

While this woman’s outer appearance remains largely androgynous, her behavior toward another women is entirely situational. “It depends on the degree of which I’m under the influence, my mood, and the degree of how attractive I find a girl,” she said.

She admits to using more nonverbal proceptive behaviors than direct verbal declarations and said, “People used to joke that all I had to do was stand at the bar and girls would come to me.”

But again, when I met her, roles were reversed, and she approached me. It’s situational, though she said assumptions are often made that because of her appearance, she will take on more masculine stereotypes.

I think the best way to answer the question of whether gender roles exist in lesbian relationships, is to refer back to what Stifelman said: “I think we’re both just girls.”

Appearances and behaviors are all just attempts to be happy with who you are as a person and to share that happiness with another person. In other words, the labels are futile; we both wear pants. *Name has been changed to protect identity. ______________________________________ Jodi Silberstein is a senior journalism major who loves pants and believes everyone should be allowed to wear them.

You can email her at jsilber1@ithaca. edu.

The White, Straight Ladies Club

Expanding the feminist movement beyond heteronormativity

Jessica Saideman, Contributing Writer

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nomics,” published by Feminist Economics in 2007, Danby noted that when feminist scholars write about the “family,” it’s often described as a heterosexual cisgender couple as the model for analysis. “These texts assume a social order in which people grow up, get married, and settle down to raise children,” Danby writes.

There is also a fair amount of mainstream feminists who distance themselves from the queer community, in part because of the “manhating lesbian feminist” stereotype.

Christina Scharff, a lecturer at King’s College with a PhD in gender studies, analyzes this response of feminism through a lens of queer theory, which analyzes society by looking at how it constructs gender and sexuality.

In Young Women’s Negotiations of Heterosexual Conventions: Theorizing Sexuality in Constructions of ‘the Feminist’, a 2010 study published

by BSA Sociology, Scharff writes, “Queer theory critically interrogates ‘a priori relationships among sex, gender, and sexuality.’”

Scharff was interested in how the idea of a feminist was constructed.

She interviewed 40 women between the ages of 18 and 55 to explore what the image of a feminist is to women. Scharff investigated the reasoning behind three stereotypes of feminists: hating men, being unfeminine and being a lesbian. When asked why the lesbian stereotype came to mind, some women alluded “to a perception of lesbians as somewhat non-human by arguing that “‘they are not looked upon as people.’” In the study, when a woman was describing this phenomenon, she could barely even say the word “lesbian,” because it was such a taboo to her. Scharff found that lesbianism often had “abject-status” in the discussions with these women.

This means that in these discussions, lesbians were placed with a negative, unpleasant connotation.

Queer women, and lesbians in particular, are also seen as a threat to “the heteronormative patriarchal order,” according to Scharff and other queer theory scholars. This is the order in which social norms and societal standards are based on a heterosexual family structure, with men being dominant. Women who are not heterosexual do not support this family structure, which threatens to collapse these gender roles altogether. This fear of not being taken seriously because of association causes some feminists to distance themselves from queer women.

Natalya Cowilich is the head of Spectrum, a group at Ithaca College dedicated to discussion of LGBT issues within the community. She said she has encountered feminists who say, “I’m a feminist, but don’t worry, I’m not a lesbian.” Cowilich said this effectively almost puts down the queer community.

When she brings up feminism or queer issues in feminism in conversation, Cowilich said she often encounters people who claim she is being confrontational, but they eventually discover they actually agree. “It’ll just be phrased in a way that will seem conflicting, though we’ll want the same thing,” Cowilich said. This ‘same thing’ is a concept of feminism driven by equality, which means recognizing queer women within the framework of feminism and expanding the movement to include all women, not just white, straight, cisgender women. ___________________________________ Jessica Saideman is a freshman cinema and photography major who is so over feminism that focuses on white, straight, cisgender women. You can email her at jsaideman@ithaca.edu.

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ith the internet as an amplifier, feminist discussions reach a wide audience.

However, many discussions of feminism in these circles of the mainstream only concern straight, white, cisgender, able-bodied women. The discussions around this issue are often called heteronormative.

Heteronormativity is the cultural bias that assumes that being straight is the norm, and prefers heterosexuality over other sexual orientations.

Many gender and sexuality experts claim heteronormativity is applied everywhere, especially in schools.

Jane Ward, a gender and sexuality studies professor at UC Riverside, and Beth Schneider, a sociology professor at UC Santa Barbara, claim heteronormativity oppresses youths and encourages low self-esteem and depression among those who identify outside of it.

Kate McCullough, a professor at Cornell University, studies queer and gender theory as applied to American literature. She said the way for feminists to be inclusive is “the more dialogue that happens, the better.”

The most typical response when talking about queer issues and feminism, McCullough said, is “Why are we still talking about that, we’re over that now, aren’t we?”

She also said feminist theory “has been justifiably criticized as being heteronormative, which is to say being implicitly focused on a heterosexual subject.” She said this can often result in being critical of society through a heterosexual point of view.

Colin Danby, an economics professor at University of Washington, points to heteronormativity particularly in feminist economics. In an “Political economy and the closet: heteronormativity in feminist eco-

Chains & Whips Excite Me

BDSM and sexual role-play can pleasure feminists

Sarah Chaneles, Contributing Writer

BUZZSAW: The Swimsuit Issue

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n media, BDSM and role-play are often portrayed in unrealistic and sexist ways.

Meredith Clarke, a senior at Ithaca College, said she believes Fifty Shades of Grey — the movie, inspired by the book series, was released Feb. 13 — is based on an unhealthy dominant and submissive relationship. If the main female character, Anastasia Steele, were, “confident and communicative and all of the things you should be in order to have a healthy sexual relationship, it would be fine, but she’s not,” Clarke said. “She’s as submissive in life as she is in the bedroom, and the lines between real life and sex life are not drawn, and it’s completely unrealistic.”

The most common sexual roleplays involve BDSM — bondage, discipline/domination, submission/ sadism and masochism — and are paired with boundaries, rules and safewords.

While all genders can play submissive roles, role-playing scenarios more frequently consist of women being dominated in violent and degrading ways. Particularly in the case of rape fantasies, there is much debate over whether they are sexist and perpetuating rape culture, or acceptable because those involved are acting out a rape under consensual terms.

In an interview with CityBeat, Tristan Taormino, a feminist author, sex educator and pornographic film director, said the only way to get familiar with our authentic sexuality is to let go of what we’re told is normal so that we can find out what really turns us on. She said she often finds herself assuring people seeking her advice that their fantasies are not something to be ashamed of and that many people share similar desires.

Simply putting on a costume can change a person’s view of his or her

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sexuality. Jared Fink, a freshman at Ithaca College, played Frank N Furter in the Macabre Theatre Ensemble’s 2014 production of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” He said he related this to sexual role-play as he was crossdressing in such a sexual atmosphere.

“I had never before worn women’s clothing, so it was a surprisingly liberating feeling to put on these clothes in front of a non-judgemental group,” Fink said. “As a straight male wearing clothing unassociated with my gender, it made me question why certain practices such as this were viewed in such a negative light.”

Participating in role-play can cause emotional release and fulfill desires. Clarke said she believes

sexual desire is an uncontrollable, innate need that needs to be addressed in some way.

“Being in a role-play is so engaging physically, mentally and emotionally,” Clarke said.

She said role-play has helped her build connections with partners.

“Maybe it’ll last for a summer, maybe it’ll go on for two years, maybe it’ll be just that one time, but that’s a real connection that you can’t deny,” she said. “It makes you feel alive.”

Clarke said she identifies as a feminist, which she defined as “a woman who knows what she wants, and isn’t afraid to voice her opinion on it, talk about it openly and then get what she wants.”

In terms of role-play, “submissive” is a sexuality, not a personality, Clarke said, and “if what you want looks like something that’s not feminist, you have to understand that it’s all about intentions.”

Anna*, a senior at Ithaca College, said she plans out role-playing sessions ahead of time, in detail, with her partner — a common practice for those who pursue this type of sexual activity.

“The big thing is consent,” she said. “We always talk about what we’re going to do, and we never cross any lines … We never do anything that we haven’t already established is okay.”

Like Clarke, she criticized claims that BDSM is anti-feminist.

“I think the big thing that feminism teaches is that women can choose what they want, and I think being into the submissive aspects of roleplay, it’s not that you’re perpetuating the stereotype of the submissive woman, it’s more that you are choosing the role,” she said. “If someone else is forcing you to do submissive role-play, then that’s not role-play, and that’s not feminist.”

Image by Adriana Del Grosso

Caroline Fresh, a sophomore at Ithaca College, said “sometimes the line blurs for me, and I don’t know if I’m actually being degraded or if I’m just being degraded,” as part of the role-playing. Despite the occasional confusion, Fresh said ultimately, “it doesn’t matter what’s being said, there’s always the underlying layer of trust.”

Fresh used a three-step planning process for role-play: “You discuss what exactly are your dos and don’ts and what you feel comfortable with,” she said. The second step is the actual role-play, and the final step is a debriefing period, during which Fresh and her partner discuss how it went.

Fresh emphasized that during all stages, “there’s always the opportunity to stop it immediately” with safe words.

“This is what I want, and I don’t care if it’s not what society wants feminists to want,” she said. “I’m allowed to have my own sexual appetite. As a woman, you’re entitled to what you like in bed, and if that’s being spanked and being called a whore and other darker things, then that’s your right as a human being.”

Some pornography websites, such as kink.com, include interviews with the people in the videos before and after the session. These interviews allow participants to explain that the session was completely consen-

sual, and to discuss what they particularly enjoyed. However, in most pornography, BDSM and role-play are made to look spontaneous, and there isn’t always a clear understanding that the situation is only okay because it’s in role-play.

In her interview with CityBeat, Taormino said, “Is there porn out there that’s degrading and offensive and humiliating and stupid? Absolutely.” However, she also emphasized that not all porn can be characterized as such: “I think the major problem with anti-porn feminists is that, within their arguments, porn is one monolithic thing. Porn is not a monolithic thing,” she said.

Though not all porn, including role-play porn, is degrading, porn that is or that blurs the lines can have negative consequences for sexual expectations.

Connor*, male sophomore at Cornell said, “I think that those who haven’t had a proper sexual education can be led astray by this porn — believing that women should be treated as sexual objects ... but that certainly doesn’t apply to everyone.”

He echoed a common critique of pornoghraphy’s handling of BDSM — it can perpetuate rape culture, because women are often being objectified in the role-play and consent isn’t always perceivable to the viewer.

In an interview with Thought Cata-

log, Taormino said when the mainstream media depicts porn, they often stick to stereotypes and perpetuate the idea that all pornographers are “sleazy creepy guys with cameras who want to take advantage of these underage girls they pick up at a bus stop, who feel like they don’t have any options, and they’re going to be coerced into doing something they don’t want to do.” She said, “You never hear about people who came away from porn not scarred or traumatized or messed up.”

Many of those who engage in BDSM and role-play — whether in their personal lives or in porn — claim it encourages people to focus more on the actual sex and exploration, and rather than just as 20-minute porn videos with questionable consent on the part of women. *Names have been changed to protect identities. ___________________________________ Sarah Chaneles is a sophomore journalism major whose sexy dreamboat is not a Christian Grey. You can email her at schanel1@ithaca.edu.

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A Man’s World

Looking at the meninist side of things

BUZZSAW: The Swimsuit Issue

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he year of 2014 saw the rise of a movement that had seemingly been forgotten among other modern issues.

Feminism received an increase in popularity last year that took most social media platforms by storm. Despite the immense amount of support for the movement, some opposition has arisen. Specifically, an anti-feminist countermovement called ‘meninism’ has been gaining notoriety for its views.

There is an argument that meninism was created by men who see feminism as a largely anti-male movement.

Among this opposition there is a common misconception that society values women above men and that the issues feminists bring up are groundless. Other fallacies about the movement are that all feminists hate men, they do not believe in equality and sexism does not exist in modern culture.

The meninism movement first showed up in 2001 on a then-popular website about feminism called feminist.com. It was used to describe a group of men dedicated to supporting feminism but recently transformed into an anti-feminist movement.

One of the first wide-scale mentions of the anti-feminist version of meninism was during 2013, when the hashtag #MeninistTwitter started trending on Twitter. It originally started as a group of men creating parody posts about the difficulties of being a man in the 21st century. However, as its following increased, followers began to see the posts in a serious light and called themselves “meninists.” The current most popular Twitter account, @MeninistTweet, boasts about 691,000 followers with subject matter ranging from complaints about having to hold the door open for women to generalizations about women’s needs.

Rider Farris, a freshman student at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, followed the meninism Twitter during its early stages because of the double standards it pointed out. However, he said now it has gone too far.

“The main thing is that people need to

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see it as a joke,” Farris said. “Although I do believe that the original things they were posting were pointing out double standards, a lot of it has gone too far.

People just need to relax – both guys and girls.”

YouTuber Kat Blaque, whose video about meninists has received over 55,000 views, said she found much at fault with the entire movement. “[Meninists] are honestly a little scary, because I can’t help but feel, looking at these people, like they’re really missing the point,” Blaque said. “They’re missing that feminism is about equality and that there are many areas where men fit into the discussion on feminism, and they’re criticizing things that feminists talk about constantly.”

Blaque said she has seen satirical posts about male survivors of rape posted by meninist accounts. She said it bothered her to see the perpetuation of ignorance surrounding male victims of rape. According to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, about 3 percent of American men have experienced an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime.

In October of 2014, a female gym teacher at a New York City high school was charged with statutory rape for the alleged sexual abuse of her 16-year-old student. Feedback for this crime was mainly in support of the woman, and commenters expressed feelings of jealousy and anger toward the male student. Most of the comments were in support of the gym teacher, claiming that the student was lucky and that she shouldn’t have to go to jail.

It was this type of audience that further fueled the satirical meninism movement. Despite modern meninism being a relatively new concept, men’s rights activists, commonly referred to as MRAs, and the Men’s Rights Movement, referred to as the MRM, have been around before the modern meninist movement.

The MRM started due to concern over men being victims of extreme discrimination and is believed to also be a countermovement to feminism.

MRAs have been repeatedly criticized over the years due to their direct oppo-

sition to feminist goals. Anger toward MRAs grew to such a point where the MRM organization A Voice for Men was forced to change the location for their conference in June 2014 after it gained so much backlash that the venue demanded they pay $2 million of insurance. There was even a petition that gained about 3,500 signatures, asking the hotel to cancel the event. With A Voice for Men having a reputation as the most well known MRM organization, such a negative response proved how far feminists would go to prevent this from gaining more attention than it already had.

Despite the massive amount of controversy surrounding both the meninism movement and MRAs, it is important to note how new these concepts are.

Although meninism is now seen as hateful and anti-feminist, its initial meaning was completely different.

On feminist.com, meninism is described as “a global organization of men that believe in and support the feminist principles of women’s political, social and economic equality.” The website details five goals of meninists, including, “We are opposed to all forms of misogynist behavior and sexist attitudes,” and, “We understand the need for men to participate in the women’s movement and help end 2,000 years of men’s patriarchy.” The description ends by asking all “meninist men” to join them and to submit their own letters of support to the page.

Blaque said she found the shift in meaning to be understandable but still incredibly discouraging.

“It’s now on both ends being seen as a movement for men who don’t understand feminism and probably hate women,” Blaque said. “It’s an unfortunate change, but things change – it’s the nature of language. I think we would need a strong group of men who identify as feminists to use the term again in order for it to be taken back.” _______________________________________ Kalia Kornegay is a freshman journalism major who thinks meninists are from Mars and feminists are from Venus. You can email her at kkornegay@ithaca.edu.

Photo courtesy of the Planned Parenthood of the Southern Finger Lakes

Kalia Kornegay, Contributing Writer

New York’s Day of Action

Activists gather in Albany to support reproductive rights

Photo courtesy of the Planned Parenthood of the Southern Finger Lakes

Liz Alexander, Contributing Writer

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A featured discussion point of the day was the Women’s Equality Agenda, which addresses widespread concerns, from accommodations for pregnant women in the workplace to the end of housing discrimination against domestic violence victims. In the New York State Senate, the WEA has been passed for all but the bill’s final plank on reproductive rights. This deletion has created a standstill in the New York Assembly, which will not attempt to put the agenda through until all of the provisions have been passed in the Senate. The final plank, guaranteeing a woman’s access to safe and legal abortion, is intended as a protection against any decisions made at the federal level. It would secure reproductive freedoms to New York women in the case of Roe v. Wade ever being overturned.

Christine Sadowski, executive director of the Orange County’s Young Women Committed to Action, spoke of the conflict that this halted situation creates.

“If we separate and go with the eight [provisions], we are leaving on the table one of the most core concepts,” Sadowski said. “On the other hand, we have for domestic violence victims the potential to help them

Editorial Note: Liz Alexander participated in the Day of Action event in Albany.

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nly a few days after the 42nd anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, Family Planning Advocates of New York State held their annual Day of Action on Jan. 26 in the statehouse building. Despite a harsh snowstorm in the forecast, advocates from every corner of New York and from a wide range of ages gathered in Albany to make their voices known to senators and assembly members on matters of women’s equality and reproductive healthcare. Donning bright pink scarves and ties, their colorful presence brightened the corridors of the Capitol.

Participants congregated in an open hall centered around a sweeping granite staircase, a part of the statehouse known as The Well.

Planned Parenthood affiliated educators tabled with information on contraceptives and other health center resources.

Community educator Leah Addario of Glens Falls, New York, spoke of the high teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection rates plaguing Albany, as well as the atmosphere of being employed in a field where opposition makes itself known on sidewalks outside of the workplace.

“We actually have anti-anti protesters,” Addario said, describing those who counter the picketing. “It really boosts our morale to see the support from the community that we do have.”

with very little political effort.”

Additional legislation in the works with ties to women’s equality include the Boss Bill and Paid Family Leave Insurance Act, as well as senator and assemblymen membership to the New York State Bipartisan Prochoice Legislative Caucus. The Boss Bill is intended as protective means from decisions similar to the Hobby Lobby ruling, granting women the freedom of choosing their reproductive health care without having to worry about losing their job as a result. Paid Family Leave would relieve employees of the difficult and unavoidable choice between staying at home to provide care to a family member and going to work to provide financial stability. Currently the NYS Bipartisan Pro-Choice Legislative Caucus has more than 70 members and intends to create a community that maintains and encourages women’s access to comprehensive reproductive healthcare.

New York State Sen. Liz Krueger, one of the members taking part in that dialogue, said she is confident in the future of New York’s reproductive legislation, despite the hurdles these bills are facing.

“We saw that at the state and federal level, there was a movement starting to gain steam, taking away reproductive rights that people have fought for,” Krueger said to the audience of advocates. “Unlike most, we are not going back in New York State.” ___________________________________ Liz Alexander is a freshman environmental science major who is tired of politicians trying to regulate her body. You can email her at ealexander@ithaca.edu

Modern Motherhood

Exploring where traditional roles meet the feminist movement

Claire McClusky, Contributing Writer

BUZZSAW: The Swimsuit Issue

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eminism is often defined as the belief that people of all genders should have equal rights. However, some people who follow the traditional roles of femininity and masculinity have not been as overtly supported by the feminist movement because they live in ways associated with the patriarchy.

Researchers Suzette Dyer and Xuanqi Liu had a journal entry published in the Woman’s Study International Forum. These traditional roles, as explained by Dyer and Liu, are when motherhood is about physical and emotional care for children and often putting their own desires aside for their children, while for men it is breadwinning.

However, those who follow these roles are often excluded from the feminist movement.

Francesca Hodge is a freshman at Ithaca College who identifies as a feminist. She said while feminists work for equality, exclusion is only counterproductive and all people have value.

Dyer and Liu’s study found that it is a trend for women to participate in roles men have had, but men do not seem to be pursuing the traditional roles of women.

Anne-Marie Slaughter, the CEO of New America Foundation, said in her TED talk both of these statuses are valued to some extent, but “stayat-home” mother roles are often devalued. According to her speech, there is an association between the relationships between heterosexual monogamous couples in which men and women have traditional roles in the patriarchy. Sometimes people assume the woman is only in that role for a man to do what he wants. In response to these notions, Slaughter said negative assumptions of relationships and choices is quite harmful to the feminist movement because it neglects the fact that women can have a say in their relationships and devalues the

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motherly work of these women.

In 2009, the American Association of University Women conducted a study that analyzed the earnings and student load debt burden among a nationally representative sample of college students one year after graduation. In order to keep as many variables as possible out of the analysis, most of the students were 23, single and childless, working full time, attended similar colleges and universities and earned similar grades. The findings support that roles held by women are less valued by U.S. society than the roles held by men. The majors and occupations that had overrepresentation of men often had more earnings within that first year out of college. AAUW found that after only one year out of college, the average annual ear nings for

women only make up 82 percent of that for men.

Feminist philosopher Alison Jaggar explained in her book, Feminist Politics and Human Nature, that since the rise to capitalism, men’s roles have had higher value comparatively. In the U.S., the jobs men have held have continuously had higher pay. Women have been pushing into this kind of work but men have not shown as much interest in roles held by women. According to Slaughter, in order to get gender equali t y ,

Image by Lizzie Cox

“No matter what someone’s lifestyle is made up of, they can support a cause.”

Brophy agreed and said men who fit into patriarchal roles can also have a place in feminism.

“I think anyone can truly support the feminist movement,” Brophy said. “I’m a straight, white, middleclass male and I support it because I see it as a movement that simply supports choice, regardless of what your choices are.”

Feminism has had many waves. In each wave, motherhood has played a part in the way views have been shaped about women, their roles, their relationship to men and the movement in general.

Slaughter said women with traditional roles, whether in their family, their social lives or at work, ought to be more highly valued in society in general. She said giving attention to the value of traditional roles women hold gives the feminist movement more legitimacy because the feminist movement should be about choice. ___________________________________ Claire McClusky is a freshman film, photography and visual art major who doesn’t dodge her mother’s phone calls. You can email her at cmcclusky@ithaca.edu.

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Upfront

Cox

‘women’s work’ needs to be viewed more highly.

Meg Roney Jones works in health care, a field of female overrepresentation, and is a mother of two boys.

She said she tries to promote ideals of gender equality in her home.

“We all have roles we may play due to our gender or identity – abilities and perceived stigmas,” Jones said.

“I don’t believe any of these things should lead to a person having different expectations placed on them or rights granted or denied. Just because someone wants to act or dress a certain way, does not have to mean anything about their gender-based belief system and their beliefs about anyone’s rights in society.”

Liu and Dyer wrote in their journal entry that gender is a performance of speaking, acting and relating to others. According to their study, gendering tasks lead us to respond based on gender identity, which accounts for division of unpaid work.

Social institutions, such as the family, are made up of gendered roles that can and have been identified.

Alex Brophy is a student at Nazareth College whose mother has stayed home to take care of children and the house most of his life. “[She] was almost always home for myself and my brother and sister, and I think that played a huge role in shaping who I am, and I am extremely grateful that my mom raised me my entire childhood,” Brophy said.

Brophy said his mother chose to stay home, but occasionally chose to go to work.

However, Hodge said she thinks it is okay for women to follow traditional roles rather than choosing to pursue professional careers and that these women can still be strong advocates for the feminist movement.

“It’s really up to women to decide what they want to do in their lives, and if they want to stay at home and raise children, then that’s definitely their prerogative,” Hodge said.

BUZZSAW: The Swimsuit Issue

Vanity Hair Exposing the shave debate

By Jamie Swinnerton

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ports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition 2015 started causing buzz before it even hit the shelves due to the cover model pulling down her suit bottom into some dangerous territory. Business Insider went so far as to call it “possibly the magazine’s most scandalous cover yet.” While the viewers’ eyes are drawn to her pubic area, there’s one thing that’s very clear. There is absolutely no hair down there.

Upfront

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Image by Francesca Toscano

BUZZSAW: The Swimsuit Issue

Back in 2010, a study was published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine that looked at how often women shave off their body hair. “Pubic Hair Removal among Women in the United States: Prevalence, Methods, and Characteristics”* asked more than 2,000 women of ages 18 to 68 to take a survey detailing over a period of a month how often they shaved and whether they partially or fully shaved unwanted pubic hair.

Only 12 percent of participants in the 18 to 24 age group indicated they did not remove hair using one or more of the method options provided, which were shaving, waxing, laser removal and electrolysis. The study also found that as the age ranges grew, so did the number of women who did not shave.

Looking at media today, in television shows, movies and advertisements, the dominant image of beauty for women is a hairless one. Lisa Wade, associate professor and chair of the sociology department at Occidental College, wrote in her article “Women in Apocalyptic Fiction Shaving Their Armpits” that shows like The Walking Dead, which takes place in a post-zombie apocalyptic world, makes sure their female characters have smooth underarms.

Wade said this shows just how averse society is to the idea of a woman with hair in places it naturally grows. But it didn’t used to be like this. Actress Sophia Loren, often considered one of the most beautiful women to have ever lived, did not shave her underarms.

Today, however, it is nearly impossible to find a female celebrity open to growing their body hair.

Carla Golden is a professor at Ithaca College and a long-time feminist who teaches a course titled Psychology of Women in the Department of Women and Gender Studies. She said she believes society’s aversion to body hair on women is about fitting into a narrow idea of what is seen as beautiful.

“I think there’s a beauty ideal that’s put forth in mainstream media,” Golden said. ”It’s not just about hairless... it’s thin, it’s a certain sized breast, it’s a certain shape of eye, it’s a certain clarity of skin. There’s a look that’s sold as beautiful.”

Golden said over the years, feminism has become more mainstream.

During second-wave feminism, in the ’60s and ’70s, activists would grow out their body hair and refuse to wear makeup, identifying these beauty prac-

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tices as part of a system that oppressed women by insisting they would always be beautiful. Golden said feminism is about challenging power relations between women and men. Second-wave activists did this by rejecting the beauty standards that women are still expected to follow. In 1968, second-wave feminists protested at the annual Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City. They created “No More Miss America,” a list of 10 points about the event that they were against. Their very first point critiqued the oppressive practices that the pageant represented. They compared the pageant to a stock show, with animals being judged solely on physical characteristics. According to the document, women are forced to compete against each other daily for male approval, “enslaved by ludicrous ‘beauty’ standards.” Internalized misogyny was part of the system that they rejected, and they saw it displayed in pageants like Miss America.

Today, Golden said she thinks society has become even more gendered.

“There’s an attitude today that if you have a body part that isn’t perfect, you should fix it,” Golden said. “It’s not just that you’re supposed to look your best; it’s like an imperative that you fix yourself if you can.”

One of the easiest ways for women to “fix themselves,” or become closer to the beauty ideal, is to shave off unwanted body hair, she said.

“Subsequent forms of activism have reclaimed femininity, and reclaimed beauty, and made the argument that ‘hey, you can be feminine and beautiful and that doesn’t bear on you being a feminist,’” Golden said about current ideas from the feminist movement.

But Golden also said she doesn’t think these things can be personal choices for self-gratification only.

“If you were to do a survey, I bet 99 percent of women on this campus — I could be wrong — would say that in the summer months they shave,” she said. “When you find something that so many women do, it’s got to be something other than personal preference.”

According to the 2010 study, 39.4 percent of women, aged 25 to 29, participated in partial body hair removal.

For women in the 18 to 24 age group, it was 29.1 percent.

Compared to second-wave radical feminism, Golden said today’s much tamer version of feminism is the product of commercialism finding young girls to be a new market at which to target products. She said “girl power” promotes the idea that girls are strong, but not necessarily feminists.

“Girl power media culture shrinkwrapped femininity with feminism,” Golden said. “It took second-wave feminism – way, way, way diluted it – and turned it into girl power. Rah-rah, girls are great; girls are strong. And it sold that.”

Golden said the problem with girl power media feminism is that it doesn’t promote this idea for gender equality.

“They don’t quite see that it’s a sexuality focused on being attractive to men, as opposed to ‘What do I like?

What’s good for me?’” Golden said.

Breanne Fahs, a professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Arizona State University, has conducted several studies about the socialization of body hair removal today. Her piece in Psychology of Women Quarterly, Perilous Patches and Pitstaches: Imagined Versus Lived Experiences of Women’s Body Hair Growth, studies women’s real and imagined ideas of body hair standards. The results of the study suggested that the pervasiveness of body hair removal for women in the United States had transitioned from “an optional form of Image by Claire McClusky

man for television and film, and he said he finds body hair attractive.

“I can never peg why I’m attracted to hair on women, but I can say it’s appealing to my eye, touch,” he said. “I enjoy everything there is to enjoy about it.”

Peebles said he is aware of how against the grain this attraction is.

“I think my opinion about it isn’t popular at all, but I do think it’s a growing one,” he said.

He said from what he has observed online, body positivity has been a growing trend. As for Peebles’ partners, he said only one has had a negative reaction to this unorthodox attraction.

“All others I mentioned it to were often relieved, intrigued, surprised and usually very receptive,” he said. “Generally its always very, very scary to tell them. If a woman thinks her body hair is disgusting, how will she see you if you tell her you think it’s attractive?”

He said his favorite place to see body hair is on a woman’s legs, but he’s not picky.

“I’m appreciative of every active or non-active follicle there is on her because it’s the way she is and the way she’s supposed to be,” Peebles said.

“The world has imposed enough on the female body; I’d feel just wrong trying to make specifics in my attraction to it.”

He said he himself does not have a lot of body hair and is very aware of how he fits into the beauty ideal set for men. He said not having body hair doesn’t make him feel any less of a man.

“Hair is neither masculine nor feminine in my opinion,” he said. “It’s human.”

Beauty standards give a different impression, but Golden said she doesn’t expect the beauty ideal will ever go away.

“The best I would hope for would be an expanded definition of what counts as beauty,” she said.

An older study from Fahs, published in the journal Feminism & Psychology in 2011, is titled “Breaking body hair boundaries: Classroom exercises for challenging social constructions of the body and sexuality.” The study is based on an in-class extra-credit assignment she posed to her students.

They were asked to engage in non-normative body hair behavior. Male participants would shave their faces, legs

and chests. Female participants would not shave anything. After 10 weeks of this non-normative body hair behavior participants wrote reflection papers about their experiences.

“I personally think that growing out body hair is an experience all women should try, in part to see how their bodies are socially controlled but also to reimagine their sense of freedom about their bodies,” Fahs said. “I encourage it as a form of experiencing, not just imagining, gender non-conformity.”

Fahs’ experiment began in 2008 and was inspired by a lengthy discussion of women’s pubic hair removal with a group of all-female students. Three self-identified radical feminists out of the group of 12 offered to try out this social experiment. When the 10 weeks were up, all three reported that they struggled with self-confidence due to the social punishments and social exclusion they faced.

Fahs said she believes part of the reason there is such a strong reaction to body hair is because throughout history it has been associated with power.

“Hairy people are considered powerful,” Fahs said. “Women, thus, are required to shave, socially speaking, because we associate femininity with powerlessness.”

All subsequent groups that participated in Fahs’ experiment reported the same negative reactions. When all of the reaction papers were analyzed, Fahs found the disgust with body hair crossed race and class dimensions.

This is the reality we face – a society conditioned to dislike certain features with such gumption that it affects even the most confident individual’s self esteem, as Fahs’ students discovered in her study. But Fahs said these classroom studies are about more than just body hair. According to the conclusion of her Perilous Patches study, “Conversations about body hair hold up a mirror to otherwise unseen aspects of gender and sexuality, making the seemingly benign (‘‘fluffy tufts,’’ ‘‘fuzzy patches’’) suddenly endowed with the power to unsettle and transform.” *Stephanie Sanders, PhD, and J. Dennis Fortenberry, MD, MS _____________________________________ Jamie Swinnerton is a senior journalism major who is sick of being told what to do with her body hair. You can email her at jswinne1@ithaca.edu.

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body modification to a relatively universal expectation” placed upon them.

Fifteen women in the focus group from the study said they believe removing body hair was a personal choice, as opposed to a requirement.

Only two out of the 20 women in the group thought that shaving was a requirement.

Rachel Huley, a sophomore Ithaca College student who identifies as a feminist, said she believes shaving is a choice.

“It’s a totally personal preference,” she said.

Huley performed in the Vagina Monologues on Feb. 15 as a woman coerced into shaving her pubic hair for her husband’s enjoyment, something she’s never done before and does not feel comfortable with. But that’s the character’s view of body hair. Huley, on the other hand, said she prefers to shave, but does not appreciate being told that she should.

“I once was sleeping with this guy and he was like, ‘It’s been a while since you shaved, huh?’ And I was like, ‘Bitch, I only do it during bath time,’” she said.

Her partner then suggested that she could leave a “landing strip.” Instead she chose to grow out her hair and shape it like an arrow.

“The only person that matters on the case of my vagina’s hair is me,” she said. Huley said this particular partner no longer communicates with her.

Although she and the character she played in the Vagina Monologues have different preferences when it comes to body hair, Huley said she can still relate to this monologue.

“She is sassy, but unfortunately succumbs occasionally because she wasn’t sure of her own worth, which I can definitely identify with,” she said.

“I do love hair; I love all of the possibilities and the protection, but I find [not shaving] personally uncomfortable.”

Golden said she thinks women today don’t see themselves as enslaved by beauty ideals and they believe they have the freedom to do what they want to their own bodies.

“Hey, this is the legacy of feminism – that we can impose these standards upon ourselves,” she said. “Women have internalized this shit that you have to be beautiful.”

Some men, however, prefer body hair on women. Gary Peebles is a stunt

OL. MINISTRYofCOOL. MIN BUZZSAW: The Swimsuit Issue

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Arts, entertainment and other things cooler than us.

Who Are You Wearing?

Female aesthetics take precedent over their work

Celisa Calacal, Contributing Writer

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movement.

Freshman Jacquelyn Kazim, member of Ithaca College’s Planned Parenthood Generation Action, said the feminist movement is about women choosing how they act and what they want to do. She said while it may be a goal for some women to look nice, it is not every woman’s goal.

“This constant focus on how women dress and how they look says that is what you have to do to be a woman and to be a proper woman,” she said.

To worsen the matter, the question “Who are you wearing?” appears in other variations, like, “What is your workout regimen?” or even, “Were you able to wear undergarments?” The implications of these questions raise eyebrows at the perception of female celebrities. The fact that reporters still believe it pertinent to know how Anne Hathaway physically trained for The Dark Knight Rises suggests a continued backwards thinking of a woman’s bodily appearance.

This trend has placed entertainment journalists under scrutiny for asking superficial questions to female celebrities while devoting more in-depth questions to males. Female celebrities are hardly ever asked about their works or opinions, only their appearance.

This implies an inferiority of female celebrities compared to their male counterparts, despite the rising success of females in the industry.

The lack of attention on a woman’s work neglects her talents and work ethic. Because reporters choose questions based on what they believe their audience will want to know, it suggests that the general population only cares about a woman’s physical beauty, which is far from the truth.

The Representation Project, a movement dedicated to combating gender stereotypes, began the Twitter hashtag “#AskHerMore” in February of last year to bring attention to and enact change in the way women are treated at awards shows. Many

Twitter users who participated in the conversation demanded that reporters ask questions recognizing talent and work ethic instead of questions that focus on appearance.

The questions asked on the red carpet are not the extent of the problem, for the aftermath of such celebrity-studded events continues to perpetuate the issue. Magazines immediately publish issues surrounding the “best dressed” and “worst dressed,” online tabloids create compilation slideshows of the women and television shows like Fashion Police dissect women’s appearances from head to toe in the span of an hour. The primary dilemma lies in the continued acceptance of these programs as viable forms of entertainment.

Kazim said the popularity of these types of publications creates a woman-against-woman mentality, since women are the ones reading these magazines to make themselves feel better.

The focus on a female’s physical appearance can be detrimental to young girls who look up to these women. Reducing intelligent and successful women to beauty pageant contestants continues to stress the archaic idea that beauty ideals are the most important goals for a girl to aspire to. Emphasizing these standards can foster insecurity in girls who feel they do not meet these ridiculous beauty standards.

“They get this mentality that all their worth will come from how they’re dressed,” Kazim said.

The manner in which celebrity journalists talk to female celebrities impacts the daily treatment of women.

“It continues to affirm for us that we are constantly put in a position of being a kind of object to be looked at,” Fischer said. ___________________________________ Celisa Calacal is a freshman journalism major who doesn’t dress to impress you. You can email her at ccalacal@ithaca.edu.

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Ministry of Cool

sharply dressed E! News reporter stands on the red carpet awaiting the latest red carpet arrival. The celebrity is Angelina Jolie, dressed in a floor-length ruby gown that skims the floor of the red carpet. The reporter waits as Jolie strides over, and after exchanging formalities, pops the question: “Who are you wearing?”

This is often the first question female celebrities are asked during red carpet events. This trend has continued for so long that it is an expectation of any entertainment reporter to ask this question and the celebrity to come to each reporter with the name of the designer.

Tahlia Fischer, women’s and gender studies lecturer at Ithaca College, said the wearing of designer dresses is part of a statement about fashion culture and class.

“Problematically, this puts the actress or the musician in a position of having to discuss their physical appearance and by extension their beauty, and it has very little to do with why they’re there in the first place,” she said.

With a thriving feminist movement fueled by celebrity feminists, the emergence of new gender equality organizations such as HeForShe and the growing influence of the feminist voice of social media, people are paying more attention to the treatment of women; the women of the entertainment world being no exception.

People are questioning the underlying intent of such sexist questions and the social ramifications on the perception of women in entertainment. Solely focusing on what a woman is wearing reinforces the stigma that the only important characteristic of a woman is her appearance. When women are branching out of their old social roles, this continued emphasis on beauty and appearance can be detrimental to the feminist

Leslie Knope, Primetime Champion Network television’s first foray with a feminist lead

Alexa Salvato, Staff Writer

“I am a goddess, a glorious female warrior, queen of all that I survey.

Enemies of fairness and equality: hear my womanly roar!”

BUZZSAW: The Swimsuit Issue

G

e n u i n e empowerment of women is seldom present in our culture. It’s often distilled to the trite “girl power!!!” merchandise of youth.

Self-empowerment is considered to be indulgent. Even if a woman does think she’s beautiful, it’s bitchy to proclaim it. It’s even more bitchy to express deep, meaningful anger.

Then how the hell have we been blessed with Leslie Knope for the past seven years? Probably, as always, thanks to her creative circumventing of the patriarchy.

Knope (played by Amy Poehler) is the protagonist of NBC’s Parks & Recreation, currently in its final season. The show chronicles a crew of small-town government employees and their leader, Knope, who refuses to give up under any circumstances. Although Knope is a politician, she only has one core value: love. This includes love for her career, her husband, her town and especially her friends.

This might not sound too crazy.

If you are a woman, or maybe have met one, you know women are just as complex as Knope is with ambitions and affection for all of the above fields. But, network television has never been given a Leslie Knope before.

Jack Powers, associate professor of television-radio at Ithaca College, said, “There’s the age old questions: Do television programs reflect society, or help shape society?”

“Comedies typically are way ahead of the progressive curve,” he said.

Parks & Rec is direct. There’s an episode (“Pawnee Rangers”) where Knope starts a renegade girl scout-esque troop, because her BFF/libertarian counterpart Ron Swanson starts a boys-only outdoors club. When the men in sanitation say they refuse to hire

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women, Knope corrals her intern April into working in sanitation for the day (“Women in Garbage”).

She inspires the city manager to create a Gender Equality Commission in city council, and only men show up. Her intern April tells him his gender equality commission is a real sausage fest.

“Oh, my God,” Chris responds.

“You’re kidding me. I just assumed that some of the departments would send women. Oh, my God. I am part of the problem.”

When Knope goes to a strip club with her male co-workers, she adamantly declares, “I’ve gone on record that if I had to have a stripper’s name, it would be Equality,” (“Tom’s Divorce”).

Many women on TV look like Knope. She is white, thin, straight and middle-class. She is blond and super-cute. Hell, she works for the government. If she’s an activist, she’s pretty mainstream, working within the system to change what she can.

We’ve been given women who seem like Knope, too. The immediate parallel is 30 Rock, created by and starring Poehler’s pal Tina Fey. Fey’s Liz Lemon was a feminist too but portrayed much less flatteringly. She calls Valentine’s Day “Anna Howard Shaw Day” after the famed suffragist, but always with bitterness. She shoves a sandwich into her mouth and shouts, “I can do it! I can have it all!” But, it’s obvious she can’t. Like Knope, she struggles to achieve success in her career and is constantly dealing with shitty guys.

She embodies the stereotype haunting women characters that they can’t ever really be fulfilled in their lives; they’ll always want food, men or career advancement, or to be thin or liked, and they’ll never quite feel satisfied.

That’s what’s revolutionary about Leslie Knope: she is satisfied.

“Leslie does have it all, doesn’t she?”

Powers said. “She leads a fulfilling life.

Whereas you always got the idea that Liz Lemon did not, that Liz Lemon was always wanting for more, typically in

the relationship department, and typically in the idea that she was going to be single and never going to have children and never have somebody. And we don’t have Leslie with those same concerns.”

Getting shit done in the bureaucracy of her local government is challenging, but Knope does it.

Like Lemon, she often overworks herself, deteriorating into a complete mess. But, she has a foundation — friends who love her, a supportive partner and employees who pull together when she needs them.

Knope’s friendships with other characters are the show’s foundation as much as Knope’s. She has endless support for her best friend, beautiful-tropical-fish Ann, who loves her right back. She becomes a mentor for her intern, April.

These relationships are not often portrayed in mainstream media. She is close with her government-hating superior, Ron, who is her opposite, but they respect each other.

Parks & Rec isn’t the only progressive show out there, and it certainly isn’t the first show to turn the tide on a social issue, explained Powers, who has worked with the producers of Modern Family.

“We have a show like Modern Family,” Powers said, “[that] even among conservatives — liberals were already on board with gay marriage — but that show, it has been identified as a show that made a difference among conservatives in accepting how same-sex relationships between men are seen… So, yeah, it makes a difference.”

For every little girl watching who sees Leslie Knope, loved and loving, with Madeleine Albright’s portrait on her desk as she eats waffles unapologetically doused with whipped cream, her dreams might be a little closer too.

Alexa Salvato is a sophomore journalism major who keeps a picture of Poehler and Fey on her desk. You can email her at asalvat1@ithaca. edu.

Nice Guys Finish Last

Male entitlement to female bodies

Ethan Cannon, Contributing Writer

T

Sometimes nice guys will express their frustrations through anger.

A Facebook image that primarily circulated in 2011 displayed a letter addressed to females that included: “Why the fuck when you get a good GREAT guy you ignore him…you constantly wonder where the good guys are. They’re out there…I’m just letting you know that you’re the ones making us scarce.”

Statements like these are not uncommon today. Perhaps most disturbing is the similar language used by university shooter Elliot Rodger in an online video posted just before his execution of several women outside of a sorority house. The Daily Beast contributor Anthony Chu wrote, “I’ve heard Elliot Rodger’s voice before. I was expecting his manifesto to be incomprehensible madness — hoping for it to be — but it wasn’t. It’s a standard frustrated angry geeky guy manifesto, except for the part about mass murder.”

Nice guys believe a relationship or sex is something that can be earned.

Once they’ve earned it (in the case of nice guys, by being nice), they are owed a romantic or sexual relationship with whoever they have been nice to.

When they are unsuccessful and do not receive what they believe they are owed, anger ensues. Why have some men adopted this incorrect line of thinking? Their anger is indicative of an issue that cuts much deeper than a few men’s ability to get laid: It is a symptom of a culture that objectifies women, teaching men that women and sex can simply be earned.

The objectification of women is pervasive in our culture, and it’s unsurprising that we are exposed to it daily. It is in our living rooms where media portray male protagonists who are always able to win the hearts of women. We hear it in music where women are objectified and viewed as representations of success. In the popular rap song “Ill Mind of Hopsin 4,” Hopsin raps, “Life was lame, I had to pay money to fuck a whore/ I couldn’t pull a damn anorexic bitch in a tug o’

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war/ But then I made enough money to fund a tour/ Now the ladies show me the goodies under their Wonderbra.”

It is in the online rantings and anger of nice guys who have begun to view women as objects who owe them sex rather than human beings who don’t owe them anything.

The sentiment is also present in today’s hookup culture, where Rebecca Plante, Ithaca College associate professor of sociology, suggested women are “constructed as valued sexual objects.”

The origins of entitlement are hard to pinpoint and have been around for an extraordinarily long time.

Plante said: “There are complex dynamics at work. Women have been subjected to socially constructed misperceptions of themselves for centuries. Where might any young man get the idea that he is entitled to sexual access to women? From a complex melding of immediate culturallymeaningful reference points, mass media and pornography and our long history of misogyny.”

Moving forward, Plante suggested both men and women must, “Make some conscious choices to resist the idea that anyone benefits from the otherwise dehumanizing process of being objectified.”

Otherwise, our culture will continue creating the nice guys it despises so much. _________________________________________ Ethan Cannon is a freshman televisionradio major who, astoundingly, treats women as people. You can email him at ecannon1@ithaca.edu.

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Ministry of Cool

he saying “nice guys finish last” is not new. But in recent years, it’s taken on a new meaning within pop culture. Today, a nice guy is someone who claims they are incapable of becoming sexually or romantically involved with women for the simple reason that they are nice. They believe women always pick arrogant jerks and, as long as they are nice, they will be trapped in their everlasting virginity.

This idea has launched academic studies attempting to prove whether women prefer nice guys or jerks, ranging from Edward Herold and Robin Milhausen’s study titled “Dating Preferences of University Women: An Analysis of the Nice Guy Stereotype,” to a study conducted in 2008 at New Mexico University, which “proved” that nice guys have sex less often than “bad boys.” AskMen. com felt the need to post an article aptly titled “The Player: Be A Nice Guy and Finish First,” reassuring nice guys that they can pick up girls. It is also the reason why feminists have taken to the internet in droves, condemning the foolishness and misogyny of so-called nice guys. This is an issue many take very seriously, and for good reason.

When considering the claims of nice guys, the first thing to note is the glaring issue of what it actually means to be nice. Many nice guys seem to equate being an asshole with simply being confident.

While making the point that not all women are the same or attracted to the same type of man, feminist Emma J. Doyle wrote in her article “Regarding ‘Nice Guys’ and ‘Why Women Only Date Jerks’- A Critique of a Masculine Victim Cult” on Feministing.com, “We have to separate ‘nice guy’ and ‘good guy’ from ‘submissively polite guy.’ You can be assertive and nice, and it seems like some people confuse being a nice guy with being a sycophant or a clingy dude.”

Being nice is possible without sacrificing confidence and emotional stability, and it’s possible to be confident and cool without being a jerk. Some men who label themselves as nice do not see the issue like that. They blame lack of success not on any personal failing or emotional clinginess but on what they see as women’s lack of judgment and natural attraction toward assholes.

Im

RAW SAW

BUZZSAW: The Swimsuit Issue

Inherent Vice

FROM THE

“There is no avoiding time, the sea of time.”

All of the characters in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice struggle against time. They live in 1970s Southern California in the wake of the Manson murders and stuck in the middle of the Vietnam War. They are trapped in one decade resisting the next, deluding themselves in order to block out the painful reality: Their old idealized world is gone, if it even existed in the first place.

If that all sounds too grim, don’t worry; Film Review Anderson and Thomas Pynchon (whose book is the source of this story) mask the inherent Joel Kalow darkness with a poignant sense of humor.

Contributing Writer Inherent Vice is closer to Airplane! than it is to Apocalypse Now, an absurdist comedy full of memorably bizarre characters, led by Joaquin Phoenix’s Larry “Doc” Sportello. Doc is a mumbling, stoned, sorta-kinda genius private investigator. His main flaw, beyond smoking enough pot to make Cheech and Chong blush, is his inability to turn someone in need down. Within the nearly two and a half hour time frame, Doc picks up a bevy of cases that run the gamut from the personal to the professional, all of which tie into each other in some convoluted way.

The story begins with his ex-girlfriend, Shasta Fay Hepworth (Katherine Waterston), who hires Doc to find out what’s going on with Michael Z. “Mickey” Wolfmann, the married man she is sleeping with. Things get more and more complicated from there, as the story introduces heroin-addict saxophone players, Indochinese drug cartels and a mysterious cult of dentists led by a never-better Martin Short. The most memorable of the cavalcade of twisted ’70s caricatures is Josh Brolin as Lt. Det. Christian F. “Bigfoot” Bjornsen, a civil rights violating cop/part-time actor who hates hippies almost as much as he loves chocolate covered bananas. Brolin is a

34

comedic tour de force, acting as the shadow that Sportello casts, the Belloq to Doc’s redeyed Indiana. Most surprising, however, is how the character ends up supplying a heavy amount of the film’s heart and soul, turning a seemingly one-note character into a cautionary tale of the evils of abuse and betrayal.

The plot is similar in structure to another great stoner-noir, The Big Lebowski, which itself is indebted to the Raymond Chandler adaptation of The Big Sleep. In other words, it is more or less shrugged off, rolled up in a zig-zag, and smoked up straight by the audience. This makes the film difficult to follow, but in doing this, Anderson is able to convey Pynchon’s paranoia that reflects the new era’s unease, best seen through Sportello’s frequent nervous glances and general jitteriness.

There is a scene in Inherent Vice toward the end, wherein Doc and Shasta sit in a car on an absent highway. Anderson captures them in the dark with a medium two-shot done in a single take, an inviting, intimate moment between the two former (perhaps future) lovers. Shasta talks about how disconnected they are to the rest of the world, as if they are underwater, while Doc mumbles in half recognition. The seriousness of the moment is undercut by the cue of Chuck Jackson’s “Any Day Now” and Doc’s gentle smirk.

Inherent Vice is a treatise on the everchanging nature of America, of where we were and where we are going, a scary topic that lends itself to an over-the-top sense of humor, as if to compensate for the dark horrors of reality. Yet, it cannot be said that Anderson’s film leaves the audience feeling powerless; instead, it sits next to us in the dark, chuckling quietly, making the gloomy unknowns before us just a little bit lighter.

Björk Vulnicura Album Review

Sohpie Israelsohn

Sleater-Kinney

Contributing Writer

No Cities to Love Album Review

Sophie Israelsohn

Contributing Writer

suspending the building complexity and, true to the arc of the album, Björk pulls it all back, internalizing it just before the potential event of release. It’s refreshing and contrary to what she did with “Pluto” (Homogenic) and “Human Behaviour” (Debut). However consumed and broken she felt, Björk defends: “I did it for love / honored my feelings,” (“Black Lake”).

Layered instrumental harmonies become increasingly electric and aggressive in “Mouth Mantra” in the latter half of the album. “I was heard” is repeated as the background texture grows to a level that nearly overpowers Björk’s voice. There is a struggle for release, for the respect that she begs for in the opening “Stonemilker,” serving as a reminder of the motives that are present in the album.

Heart-wrenching, Vulnicura could arguably be one of the most fluid, incorruptible concept albums Björk has released. The record is a perfect contrast to her previous records where complexity was invited and signature. With this record, Björk changed her mold to something that is so perfectly empty and simple; where there is a contrary freedom in exposure.

With this album, Björk continues to write with intensity and honesty. Vulnicura is Björk revisited, however broken and vulnerable, beautifully devastating.

A decade-long hiatus can be a drag for fans, but it’s a comfort to know that SleaterKinney is back with a new record, No Cities to Love, just as tell-it-like-it-is as ever.

From the first guitar lick and progression of the opening track, “Price Tag,” it is clear they are going to do everything they can to make the wait well worth it.

More modern in its less-heavy percussion and higher-registered, melodic electric guitar, the second track, “Fangless,” brings back an unsurprising classic rock vibe.

Its symmetrical structural compositions, consistent harmony-declaring bass lines and choir of “ooo’s” at refrains, are unabashedly familiar. These qualities create an easiness and simplicity where it’s understood what is being said without the instrumental background being uncomfortably elaborated.

“Fangless” flows practically seamlessly into “Surface Envy,” so much so that any separation between the two at all seems unnatural. However, in contrast with its preceding track, “Surface Envy” is far more electric and aggressive. Much of the timbre stays the same in terms of the guitar line, but the texture as a whole is impeccably thickened. It brings a back-to-business, busy sound that requires a passionate response.

Sleater-Kinney is conquering the juxtaposition of hard and soft in this record.

Each song builds a crowded, heavy rock composition, with smoother, more melodic

breaks in alternation. The title track “No Cities to Love” is the reestablishment of Sleater-Kinney in alternative-rock, a warm homecoming.

“A New Wave” is the perfect, mellifluous mix of aggressiveness and spunk. As the fifth track, it may be the apex of the record with the perpetually applicable and refreshingly positive declaration, “No one here is taking notice / no outline will ever hold us / it’s not a new wave, it’s just you and me.” Sleater-Kinney hasn’t yet compromised light-heartedness for purposelessness. At first listen, the fade-out at the end of “A New Wave” was disappointing.

But perhaps an abrupt ending would have proved more of a cop-out than the layer of guitar solos that were instead provided.

Surely no one would be surprised if SleaterKinney’s skills of balance are the result of natural talent. At no point in the album does a track feel out of place. There is a rather symbiotic relationship between the grungepunk and contrasting melodic sections.

By the end of the record in “Gimme Love,” Sleater-Kinney lets loose; very reminiscent of the Sleater-Kinney that wailed on “Entertain” from The Woods in 2005.

“Fade” is a culmination of qualities from each track; combining the heaviest guitar with ballad-like lyrics and harmonized solos.

It couldn’t be a better end to a smoothly contoured record.

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Ministry of Cool

The release of Björk’s Vulnicura had fans debating whether they were satisfied in their expectations or completely surprised. The Björk of albums past hadn’t held anything back. Knowing that much, perhaps what was more shocking than the leak itself was what had to be said this time around.

Capitalizing on her intelligent, not-soborderline orchestral arrangements, Björk opens her ninth studio album on a dense bed of low strings, and begins her first verse contrastingly staccato. The track, “Stonemilker,” is thought-provoking — if not in the way Björk asks, “What is it that I have / that makes me feel your pain / like milking a stone / to get you to say it,” then absolutely thought-provoking in its ethereality.

The fourth track, “Black Lake,” could be the most emotionally painful song on the album. Running over 10 minutes, plenty of room is allowed for the texture to develop and thicken while at times remaining respectfully bare and free of harmonic distractions. Björk exposes another motive of the album: her wounds, “[her] pulsating body / suffering being.” She wastes no time revealing herself at her most vulnerable and she never sacrifices honesty for simplicity.

There are instances of palpable silence

Reclaiming Consent

Anonymous

BUZZSAW: The Swimsuit Issue

C

ollege culture is known as a place where people hook up, where connections are made in an instant and passion comes and goes. Casual sex and drunken flirtation rule the game, leading to good stories and sometimes regrettable mistakes. This was something that I never experienced, but had only observed, until recently.

I met a guy that I had never seen before at a party a few weeks ago. I thought he was cute and as the night progressed, we talked more and more.

Some tipsy flirtation about classes and — you guessed it, feminism — turned into a compliment and a kiss, which became a sleepover, complete with more flirtation and even a little snuggling. But when I woke up the next morning, I felt nothing. Not good, not bad, just… nothing. So much nothing, in fact, that I couldn’t even remember the name of the guy laying next to me.

After Snapchatting a friend to tell her of the ridiculous situation, he finally woke up. We exchanged pleasantries and he left, with an awkward goodbye. Watching him walk out, my roommates asked me how it was. Thinking back on a night of respectful and good sex, I shrugged

36

my shoulders. “That’s it?” They were dumbfounded. “Didn’t you get his number? Why don’t you have more feelings about it? Most people are at least excited.”

The thing is, in this college culture of no-strings-attached hookups, no one thinks about the people who are disconnected from their bodies. The people who don’t assign as much meaning to sex because that meaning was robbed. Because four months ago, I was sexually assaulted by a guy that I had just started dating. Nine months ago, I was sexually assaulted by my longtime boyfriend. And since then, I have felt that my body doesn’t belong to me. When the choice of what happens to your body is taken from you, so abruptly and without warning, there is a separation that many people, including my roommates who don’t know that either situation happened, cannot understand.

Having sex with this new guy and completely detaching from anything else related to him was so easy for me. “But don’t you like him?” Some of my friends asked me the next day.

It’s not that he wasn’t attractive or that we didn’t have a good time, but it was a small victory for me in the battle to bring my body back into my own control. It may seem counterintuitive, but the experience actually proved to

be one of healing and empowerment in the face of all of my recent trauma.

As a woman, I have been socialized to think that sex has to come with emotions. The thought is difficult for some people, my single female friends included, to see how a single woman such as myself could have a comfortable sexual encounter without developing a desire for a relationship.

Even in a college setting, where men and women supposedly have casual sex all of the time, there is an underlying assumption that women should, for one reason or another, want more. Think about all of those romantic comedies and TV shows — how many women are shown actually engaging in casual sex, wanting nothing more from their male counterparts?

But as a survivor, the ability to engage in casual sex under the guise of being a single woman in college who isn’t looking for a relationship has offered me a new form of freedom. Although it is not typical of all survivors, this becomes another coping mechanism to get through the pain and regain a new sense of identity. It is allowing me the opportunity to reclaim my body as mine through taking control of my own consensual sexual experiences, one emotionless interaction at a time.

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Prose & Cons

&CONS. PROSE&CONS. PROSE&

Short fiction, personal essay and other assorted lies.

Twenty-Six

BUZZSAW: The Swimsuit Issue

By Amanda Livingston “One. Two. Three. Four. Five.”

Annie’s fingers circled her soapy head over and over. She counted and whispered the numbers quietly, the hot shower water running down her back. She had to make sure she did it correctly.

“Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.” She closed her eyes. She had to rub shampoo in her hair in that spot exactly twenty-six times. Twenty-six. If she moved her hands or paused, she would have to start all over, and she still had to shampoo the rest of her head and brush her hair and her teeth and make herself breakfast (a yogurt that had to be eaten in exactly eleven spoonfuls and two pieces of bread toasted to perfection and a small glass of orange juice, no pulp, placed on the breakfast table with a clean cloth napkin, and arranged with the yogurt on the right, the toast on a plate in the center, the orange juice behind the plate) and put on her clothes she had picked out last night in the order that she always did it in. And then she would be late, and Chris would be mad because he would be late too (he had to drive her now since they had sold the Civic last month and she couldn’t drive herself.).

“Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen.”

Chris knew how particular she was. He knew that she couldn’t function if she didn’t wake up at exactly 6:22 a.m. during the week, 9:45 on the weekends. He knew that she always had to double- and triple-check that the door was locked, and that before bed if she didn’t set her alarm, then brush her teeth, then take her medication, then turn off the light, then get under the covers, in exactly that order, she had to start over and do it all again.

“Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen.”

Recently, he’d been getting frustrated with her. He would get mad when she would take so long when opening a door, because she had to place each one of her fingers, one by one on the doorknob before turning it. He would sigh in exasperation when she took too long brushing her teeth in the morning (brushing each part of her mouth carefully for twelve seconds, and then placing her toothbrush just so next to her toothpaste and floss), and yelling at her when she took longer to come to bed because she had to double and triple check she locked the door at night. She didn’t understand why he was so angry, and it frightened her.

“Eighteen. Nineteen.”

Something had changed. He used to admire her for her precision, for her tidiness. He loved her for it. While she was getting ready in the morning, he would come up behind her while she was brushing her teeth and put his hands on her hips. “I love you,” he would whisper. “I love you, you know that?”

She would have to start all over but it seemed okay then because he loved her.

And now something was different and he didn’t like it; he didn’t like her. She couldn’t change, and she didn’t understand why he wanted her to.

“Twenty.”

There was a rapt knock at the door.

“Annie!”

Chris’ deep voice boomed through the bathroom. Annie felt the walls shake. She froze and stopped counting, stopped washing her hair. Her arms fell to her side, hands clenched. Her eyes widened.

“Annie, we’re going to be late. Get out of there!”

“No. No no no…” Annie whispered.

It was happening again. She felt a tingle up her spine, down her arm. Something was crawling under her skin, she couldn’t get it, nothing felt right. She had to start over or it wouldn’t go away. She needed exactly twenty-six and she’d only gotten to twenty and nothing would be okay until she got to twenty-six, the tingling wouldn’t go away, she wouldn’t be able to feel, her skin was going to fall off and she would be nothing but her insides and she would be nothing until she counted all the way to twenty-six.

Chris banged on the door with his fist. “Annie, I swear to god,” he shouted. Annie could feel his voice caging her in, the wall of the shower and the curtain were going to fall on her and she was going to die, she was going to die unless she got to twenty-six. “I gotta get in there and get ready too, ya know. Just unlock the door, god dammit.” She had to get to twenty-six.

She closed her eyes and raised her hand to her scalp, her hair still full of soap. The banging on the door of the bathroom continued.

“One.”

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This Weekend Last Summer

by Christian Cassidy-Amstutz The smell of artificial butter in the hallway and the burning gasp of vodka then whiskey then beer and vodka again while the cold in darkness makes my cheeks stony like coral, weak like sponges. Memory diverges starry, t-shirt nights in which I always manage to dodge summer thunder from the back of my bike the world depopulated darkened roads hemmed by motionless cars, empty unused sidewalks people sun sleep the air here smells like cardboard boxes time feels tired day is to sleep night to walk

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Prose & Cons

I usually donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t remember what I smell but bad popcorn in a hall like weed is hard to forget

BUZZSAW: The Swimsuit Issue

Metropolis

by Grace Rychwalski

The city.

I stared down at it through my window. Blurs of red and white sped by, drivers and passengers headed somewhere else. I started to wonder where all of these blobs and faceless humans were going. To sit dejectedly at a filthy club somewhere, wondering where they went wrong? To celebrate whatever miniscule victory recently occurred in their mediocre lives? Wherever they were going, I quickly realized it doesn’t make a difference. No matter where they were headed, they would leave it eventually, whether they adored it or it made them retch.

Pedestrians of all sizes, shapes, and classes glided along the sidewalks: fat businessmen in suits, fit yoga instructors, awkward teenagers who reminded me of a not-so-distant self. Some of them were alone, but most were together, their voices loud and declarative as they communicated in their own, invented languages. I couldn’t decide if they were drunk or just happy.

I’ve heard some say that this is the epitome of beauty: the lights, twinkling like multi-colored stars across the cityscape, the magical taste of the night air, the solidity of the concrete as it presses against the soles of your shoes. They say it emits a feeling like no other; one that flickers in the pit of your stomach, darting back and forth with excitement and anticipation.

I would’ve said that was bullshit.

We’d been there for three months at that point. Three grueling months of sirens keeping me up at night, covering my mouth as I passed reeking manhole covers, and having to say, “No thanks, man,” to a drug dealer every time I passed an alleyway. I wanted nothing more than to be back in suburbia — no matter how much I dissed it while I was there. I took those quaint, quiet nights for granted, not realizing just how relaxing “boring” could be.

I even found a way to miss the acrid smell of cut grass and pine trees that set my allergies on fire.

I’m not even sure if it was actually the city that pissed me off. I just really wanted to go home. But I knew that wasn’t a possibility anymore. I was stuck here until I could figure a way out. I could run, but I would have nowhere to go. Besides, I was already running, uprooted from my home and forced to hide out in this shithole of a city. Doesn’t it cancel itself out at some point? Even so, I couldn’t survive on my own. I knew that much. So, there I was. Trapped in my own escape.

As I growled in disgust at the thought, I heard the front door open and close. Everything moaned and creaked in that goddamn apartment.

“Zachary?” Phoebe’s voice rang out.

I sighed. What does she want now? “Yeah?”

No response.

“Yeah?” I repeated, giving my voice an agitated lilt.

Again, nothing.

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered, going out to the main area. I surveyed the open foyer, containing all to be found in the glorious grime that was our apartment. The living room was nothing but a loveseat that had a putrid stink – something like spoiled milk – and looked like it had contracted the chicken pox, dozens of crusty, darkened stains littering its cushions. The dining room was really just an arbitrarily placed dining set that was begging to be put out of its misery, the metal legs of the chairs and table dented and rusting. The kitchen had what looked like the filth of a thousand tenants, its crevices caked with mold and food residue, and was unbelievably cramped onto the left side of the open space. I still question how we ever lived in that hellhole; my mom would have sobbed at the sight of it.

Phoebe was unpacking sorry-looking groceries from plastic bags, her back toward me. I watched her transfer already-wilting lettuce, bulk orange juice, and a package of “family size” chicken tenders with a large “INSTANT REBATE” sticker on it from the bags to the refrigerator. Her chestnut hair, pulled up in a ponytail, was starting to come loose, wisps of it dancing around her head and face like the branches of a willow tree. She wasn’t much older than I was, yet, somehow, she had grown so much more than I had. She was the mature one, the caretaker, the rock. I started noticing lines forming on her forehead about a month after we moved. Worry lines, my mother used to call them. I always thought it was just a euphemism for wrinkling skin, but maybe she was right.

Phoebe always did worry about everything, especially me. After moving there, though, I noticed our dynamic falling apart. What were we, anyway? Siblings? Best friends? People mistook us for a couple more often than I would like to admit. Whatever we were, I felt us pulling away from one another. It was my fault, really. I wanted to be left alone, and she refused my wishes. She just wanted me to be cared for.

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D R O P L E T S

by Samantha Brodsky Your love has made me despise the rain How it sounds like a crowdâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s steady cheering Against the roof and the gritted cement And how we always end up in it Standing in our miserable clothes Mouths agape like gasping fish Shooting arrows with our sharp tongues Because we love the way our own voices Thrash against each other like hammered metal.

Your love has made me cherish the dark How its empty holes drive us together The way its vastness folds us into ourselves the way A car window echoes faces over blurred landscape And how our fingers manage to lock even if through The draped blackness our restless eyes cannot The blaring silence cools our tangoing thoughts As we devour each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hearts like ravished wolves Falling asleep thinking about the rain.

Prose & Cons

41

The Ratchet Dance

By Nighttrain Schickele

BUZZSAW: The Swimsuit Issue

A few months ago there was a dance, and I had a ball.

Oh … It wasn’t very fun when the dance was actually in session. I didn’t find much comfort until the music was dead and everyone was lining up for their coats. I suppose I enjoyed being the fool of this dance; one of the few pimples of the crowd, pulsing his arms like a child on a rollercoaster, struggling to raise his hands. Or maybe I didn’t look so foreign. Yeah, maybe I looked like someone who tried new things. Whatever the appearance, I was clearly someone challenged by any movement other than side-step-side-step-side-Clap-NO-claps-just-steps.

Some of my friends would be at this dance. Well, one friend, who had three friends, who could make it look like I had at least four friends. And as I did the ‘friend-math’ in my room, I stood naked in the mirror, calculating the fun/regret ratio. I knew I wasn’t the only one in the vicinity of a half-mile standing naked in their room, wondering what to do next in life. Go to the party? Or stay put (and naked)? I suddenly remembered that I had an elixir of sorts; A red antidote that a couple of drunk girls had left in my wardrobe last Friday.

They came into my room and asked me to find George, because one of them wanted to kiss George – I was not George, nor did I know George. But I told the kisser that she just missed him, and that George had died an hour ago. They stumbled into each other, laughing into my drawers and kneading pairs of my socks like they were grip strengtheners. “Where is the body, sir?” I could have laughed at the whole charade, but I answered them straight: “I dismembered George and provisioned his limbs to six different washing machines.”

My sense of humor was not prized among women, let alone humanitarians. But forces of the universe consoled me for my social hairiness and left a small gift — deep in my underwear drawer, three gulps of Hawaiian Punch with a stingy whiff of backwashed rum.

“Give me strength … Lord!” And I hatched it down, hopped in some skin-tight pants and walked as slow as a monk into the ultra-amplified, electric Hellhole that is ‘Dance.’ I didn’t fit in because, well … I felt like I didn’t fit in. But I put my hands up and lip-synced the words like a Japanese Power Ranger.

“Club gon’ up. Onna Tuesday — anna huuehuuneeh ana get laid.”

I could see familiar faces in the clump of bobbing heads, which were coming loose off their necks like golf balls glued to the ends of a hundred whips. I came close to scuffing sneakers white enough to be sent from China in the last hour. Three boys were bouncing on their knees like John Lennon in concert, except they had a megaphone, screaming into a microphone.

“In looove with the coa-coh co co … Annaana neba don’t know.”

Pelvic thrusts pumped four feet wide. Rumps wiggled like James and the Giant Peach in yoga pants. It was bananas, and I kept to myself and grinned with my face to the floor and my elbows up like I was alone in my room, dancing (and naked). Soon, one of these peaches began to clap like a bat’s sonar, honing in on my waist like a large fruit in heat.

Now, reader, if you have ever used the phrase “it was bananas” then perhaps you also wondered “is it rude not to hump her?” or, on the receiving end, “am I supposed to be humped?”

A red ball-cap behind me, with jeans tighter than goatskin, made an intimidating “tsk tsk,” audible through the digital peaking of our deaf DJ. He pushed me into the fleshy, sweaty, spongy offering that was, to be clear, a woman’s butt.

After the dance, my friend found me in the coat line. She didn’t tease me for my humpage etiquette. No one did. But several proud smiles, usually found in the eyes of parents, applauded me out the door.

I told her “goodbye,” and that “it was a real ball.” And, my dear reader, if you’ve ever used a phrase like ‘real ball’ awkwardly tucked beneath your arm, you probably get someone you fancy, now and again, to laugh.

I didn’t really enjoy any of that. I walked home by myself.

But I put my hands in the air.

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Through All Time

By Kellen Beck

The great fallen magnificent in their death throes; flimsy beacons of a cold decay.

The retreat of green against the coming of the frost.

A torrential onslaught pushing, fighting against the glorious.

The silent saviors, martyrs of time armored and armed, herders of the weak, sculptors pushing and pulling.

The ironic preservers; an unending defiance against the imminent, against the tides and winds.

Through all Time.

Prose & Cons

43

SAWDUST. SAWDUST. SAWDU BUZZSAW: The Swimsuit Issue

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Satirical articles threatening the magazineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s credibility since 1856.

Glass ceilings installed to ensure corporate balance

Jackie Kazim, Staff Writer

T

he buzz-phrase “glass ceiling” has been become more and more popular as riled, unsatisfiable feminists fail to realize that they should be grateful they are even allowed out of the house in this day and age. However, the glass ceiling debate highlights a very real issue present in corporate America: How are female employees expected to really understand their lack of privilege if they can’t see exactly what they can’t have?

This issue has been brought to board of director meetings across the country. The media company Misogyn Inc. is the first to have come up with a viable solution: the implementation of transparent glass flooring within its main headquarters. The new flooring is utilized on every floor aside from the bottom, which is reserved for any and all female workers.

“It’s made me really understand my privilege on a whole new level,” Ash Hole, a commercial editor at Misogyn Inc., said. “I definitely understand that I am more likely

to have a higher standing in life because of a lack of barriers and stereotypes for my sex. It’s fucking awesome.”

When asked how the new renovations have impacted his professional workflow, Hole confessed that it does become distracting at times.

“When I’m editing, heading to the bathroom, or re-filling my coffee cup, I sometimes find myself looking down below at the female workers,” Hole said. “I wonder if I could cut a small hole in the glass and have my spit land on Janice, the typist whose work station is below my office.”

Another great distraction to several of the male workers comes from the females’ styles of dress.

“It’s hard to concentrate sometimes when you know you’re at the exact angle to just peer down and see into women’s shirts,” producer Dim Wit said. “They just really want our attention and will dress in any way to get it. It really brings down the professional atmosphere.”

When this was brought to the attention to the company’s board of directors, a possible solution

Image by Grace Rychwalski

of having all female workers wear bright orange jumpsuits to preserve modesty was put on the table. They all thought on it briefly before deciding that the enjoyment the current dress code brought outweighed the potential drop in productivity levels.

To ensure that the full message of the new renovations came across to all employees, the company decided to hold a special event last week.

Arming their faithful male employees with gas masks and rubber gloves so that the increased estrogen would not prevent them from performing at top marks, they allowed a select group of female workers to spend an hour above the glass ceiling to see what could have been if they only hadn’t obtained that extra X chromosome.

One such lucky woman was interviewed, but I forgot to write down her name because she’s of no real importance when you think about it. While I spoke with her, she said she worked as a secretary and tried to show me her “Filer of the Month” award (a piece of paper with cute clip art on it), which is apparently a very big deal within the below-the-ceiling crowd.

“I’m absolutely blessed to have been given those 60 minutes with the upstanding members of this company,” she said. “It turns out that all the furniture really is made out of gold.”

According to CEO Richard Wad, this entire project was paid for by eliminating paid maternity leave and health care benefits to racial minorities. This was to prevent any of the high-standing white male workers from having to take a cut on this year’s bonuses. ___________________________________ Jackie Kazim is a freshman film, photography and visual art major who knows better than to question the infallible authority of white men.

You can email her at jkazim@ithaca.

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Sawdust

6.

Putting Them in Their Place

God Talks to Us Again

The Holy Father delivers plague of Tweets after Oscar snubs

Jordan Aaron, Contributing Writer

S

hortly after the 87th Academy Award nominations were announced, Our Creator — the Alpha and the Omega Himself — God (@MelGibsonsBFF) took to Twitter on a rampage of his largest scale since the 10 plagues. Upset with snubs for Ridley Scott (Exodus: Gods and Kings) and Darren Aronofsky (Noah) for best director, God tweeted, “Damn u oscars.” He continued, “Y is every1 talking bout Ava DuVernay and Selma snubs? The directors of my films were all men, and even they couldn’t get nominated! SMH #ifivoted.” He continued with some rather sophomoric taunts as well: “Y u guys care? Girls have cooties anyway!”

God was unsettled by the snubs for best actor in a motion picture.

“And wtf is up with all these acting nominations? My actors were white too! I even had white guys playing

Egyptians! #snub.” God, who, like famous Hollywood producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein, is known to be very omnipotent in the film industry, has also lashed out at the SAG Awards for electing Birdman for best ensemble cast, tweeting, “Why does it matter if Birdman has gender diversity if I created everyone in my own image??? #ihatethesagawards #hollywoodriggingisforreal.”

This year’s outburst signals God’s desperation for recognition as it is now 11 years since a biblical film has won a mainstream award (The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson).

God does have some weight to his argument, though. It appears that, rationally, it is unnecessary to overthink gender and race roles in Hollywood. This year’s biblical films were all well made, leaving the question: Where did they really go wrong? Clearly having all white male casts, despite the African and Middle-Eastern settings, was not

BUZZSAW: The Swimsuit Issue

BY LIZZIE COX & TILDEN LINCOLN

46

the issue. Was it simply that this year was a banner year for film?

Or, rather, perhaps it’s a sign of the times, demonstrating that general public doesn’t fear God quite how they used to.

Realizing He doesn’t have much ground in the first place, as atheism is a rapidly growing belief, God later apologized on Twitter. He said, “I beg salvation 4 offending any of the Oscar nominees in my posts; I AM not WHO AM meaning 2 demean their talents (which I gave them)”.

Buzzsaw has reached out to God for comment, or a sign, or anything, but is still waiting for a response — as per usual. ___________________________________ Jordan Aaron is a freshman cinema and photography major who sins on Saturday and (sometimes) begs forgiveness on Sunday. You can email him at jaaron@ithaca.edu.

Fists Full of Doritos, Hearts Full of Hope The epic, inspiring struggle for men’s rights

Bronwyn Bishop, Staff Writer

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are able to take advantage of men like that? I gave these girls what they wanted — companionship, friendship and a shoulder to cry on when they were on their period.

And they wouldn’t even repay me with what I wanted — sex. Does that sound like a fair or equal relationship to you?”

Richmond’s plight is certainly compelling, but he’s not the only group member with a frustrating story to share. Treasurer Chad Weatherby, 21, is a classically handsome lacrosse player with a movie-star smile, but even he admitted he’s been going through “a dry spell” with the ladies.

“It used to be I could just walk into class and girls would start falling all over me,” he said. “But lately it’s like they’ve turned on me. Girls who would have fought over me back in high school keep turning me down ‘cause they think I’m sexist.” He shook his head. “Like I could be sexist. I think girls should be able to vote and shit, you know?”

In an attempt to win back his favor with the women who once worshipped him, Weatherby turned to a 2005 book called The Game, in which journalist Neil Strauss detailed the methods for attracting women he learned while studying pick-up artists, or PUAs. Weatherby shared one of these methods: “When you first meet a girl, you give her a backhanded compliment that makes her feel bad about herself, so you’re automatically the one who has control. Like, you’d say, ‘I think it’s great that a girl your size is wearing such a tight dress — it’s really brave, you know?’” Unfortunately, Weatherby said this strategy hasn’t worked for him so far. He’s hasn’t given up yet, though, and he still browses Reddit’s seduction forum daily to look for new tips.

As the meeting progressed, three more of the group’s 10 members shared stories of victimization at the manicured hands of the matriarchy. One member, Simon Carter, who the others look to as the group intellectual, even presented some damning statistics that lend scientific credence to the MRAs’ arguments.

“Facts can’t be prejudiced,” Carter said, a neatly dressed 40-year-old with thinning hair and a meticulously groomed pencil

mustache. “Women only hold 19 percent of the seats in the House of Representatives. What does that tell you? It should tell you, gentlemen, that women simply don’t have the same drive and ambition that men do. They’re just not intellectually qualified to run a country, and yet here they are pushing to get more women in politics.”

“Look, I’m not a misogynist,” Carter continued. “I’m a realist. Numbers don’t lie. The feminazis are trying to force their biased perspective into everything, but if you dig deeper you’ll find hard evidence that women aren’t fit for leadership.” The other members nodded in agreement.

All too soon the meeting was over, and the men had to go back to their daily lives, courageously dealing with teasing from people who don’t understand their struggle. In the face of such oppression, it’s easy to see why they’ve banded together.

As women continue to break new ground in politics, science, business and the arts, man’s role is steadily dwindling. Soon, they might not even have control over almost every aspect of society anymore — and for the brave MRAs and their supporters, nothing is more terrifying. ___________________________________ Bronwyn Bishop is a junior televisionradio major who’s waiting for a meninist to sweep her off her feet and put her back in the kitchen. You can email her at bbishop1@ithaca.edu.

Sawdust

e live in an age of rapidly increasing social justice awareness, with social media helping to create a new generation of activists.

Hashtags such as #CancelColbert and #BlackLivesMatter have transcended Twitter and become part of mainstream culture discourse, and more and more young people are proud to participate in movements like feminism, antiracism and LGBT rights. Recently, a new social justice movement has risen that seeks to give voice to one of the most marginalized groups in the world: men. Brave men’s rights activists are speaking out on Reddit and 4chan, in locker rooms and frat houses, in freshman philosophy courses and on World of Warcraft Forums. These men are tired of losing their safe spaces — video game tournaments, record and comic book stores, the government — to aggressive feminists. Their sandwiches are unmade, their sex drives are unsatisfied and they won’t take it anymore.

Most discussion of men’s rights takes place on the internet, but there’s one group fighting for the cause right here in Ithaca: the Tompkins County Men’s Rights Association. I decided to attend one of their meetings to learn more about its efforts. TCMRA president, 24-year-old Kevin Richmond, presides over the meetings, which take place in the basement of the home he shares with his mother.

Dressed in cargo shorts, a hilarious “Cool Story Babe” t-shirt, and a stylish fedora, Kevin explained how he first became attracted to men’s rights activism in high school.

“I used to be a feminist, actually,” Richmond admitted. “I held doors open for girls and stuff. I was nothing but nice to every girl I talked to. I taught them about my interests, like gaming and high-tech weaponry, and I let them talk about makeup and kittens. But I eventually figured out that no matter how nice I was, those girls kept hooking up with jerks from the football team instead of me.” He paused, choked up at the memory, and reached for a handful of Doritos.

“I said to myself, ‘How can I go on living in a world where women

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#NotAllWomen

Texas community stands against feminist injustice

Image by Grace Rychwalski

Kathryn Paquet, Staff Writer

BUZZSAW: The Swimsuit Issue

B

elieving that young girls are in desperate need of a more well-rounded education on what it means to be a woman in today’s society, 33-year-old selfprofessed “Windex lover,” Chelsea Miller recently advocated the creation of a new youth organization, “Future Housewives Against Feminism,” at the Round Rock Community Center outside of Austin, Texas.

“The girls really need to know that they can grow up and become housewives if they want to,” Miller said. “There are men all over the world who need us to clean their bathroom mirrors and bring their suits to the dry cleaner. I don’t want these girls to make the mistake of getting pulled in by the feminists

48

and becoming men-haters.”

Miller gestured to a group of young girls nearby, participating in an exercise with Barbies. “They have to make Barbie say nice things to Ken and fold his laundry,” she explained.

“Remember girls, not all Kens! You’re going to want to re-fold that pair of pants, Christine.”

Miller, who was born and raised in Round Rock, says growing up with a father and brother she loves has given her quite a different perspective on feminism than other women. “I know some women don’t have great relationships with the men in their lives – maybe they were slighted by an ex-boyfriend, or overshadowed by an older brother or something like that,” Miller explained. “And then maybe feminism is something they think they need in order to cope with their own problems.”

However, Miller said the idea of feminism just doesn’t apply to her. “I like washing my husband’s clothes, and I genuinely enjoy wiping down the toilet seat after him,” Miller explained. “I love being a housewife, and feminists want to take that away from me. They want us all to go to medical school and law school and leave our husbands to fend for themselves.” The idea of making her husband do the dishes and Swiffer the kitchen floor, Miller confessed, is unbearable.

Aubrey Carver, a seven yearold elementary school student and member of Future Housewives Against Feminism, is greatly enjoying her time in the organization. “Mrs. Miller feeds us snacks and lets us play with toys,” Carver explained.

When asked about her own views on feminism, Carver had plenty to say:

“I love my dad and my brother, so I am not a feminist.” Miller smiled at the young member in approval.

“Not all men!” Carver yelled, before running over to Miller to accept a chocolate chip cookie.

“We’re going to make a real difference here,” Miller beamed.

“We meet every Tuesday, and we’ve already got a lot on our plate. Just next week, we’re holding a cleaning supply drive. We’re going to be giving away dustpans and vacuums to housewives in need,” she explained.

Miller says the main goal of her work with Future Housewives Against Feminism is to inspire the young girls not to feel pressured or oppressed by the agenda feminists are pushing. “I want these girls to know that it’s okay to love and take care of the men in their lives, despite what the feminists say,” she explained. “I want them to grow up knowing that it’s okay to enjoy watching The Bachelor, and it’s okay to think that Robin Thicke is a lyrical genius for creating ‘Blurred Lines.’ I mean seriously, that song is amazing.”

Miller said she hopes to see Future Housewives Against Feminism spread to schools all over the country. “We need to stand up to the world and show that not all women are feminists. Some of us love men, and just want to cook them steak dinners.” The group’s meeting concluded with a pledge of allegiance to Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting, who Miller referred to as “a true genius and inspiration.” ___________________________________ Kathryn Paquet is a senior televisionradio major who firmly believes in other people policing her body. You can email her at kpaquet1@ithaca. edu.

The Only True Feminists

Tina and Amy prove they are absolute authority on equality

Michele Hau, Staff Writer

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tanding tall and proud on the Golden Globe stage in their stunning and elegant ensembles that could easily pay for any struggling college student’s tuition, Amy Poehler and Tina Fey embody the pinnacle of everything that is right in Hollywood: they are our feminist heroes, our patriots, and our martyrs.

Both women have proven that white women can in fact make it in the business, even though much of their success was not derived from the big screen but rather inside cozy television screens hidden within the lackluster homes of the American middle class.

Besides the free booze and ego gratification that comes from attending one of the most heavily publicized TV and movie awards shows of the year, everybody goes to the Golden Globes to acknowledge the accomplishments of the systematically oppressed and marginalized groups in popular media. And through the sheer presence of superduo Fey and Poehler, the 2015 Golden Globes ceremony was transformed into the ultimate feminist awards show.

Riding the socially-liberal progressive rollercoaster, the Hollywood Foreign Press tipped its hat to two new TV shows honoring the marginalized and underrepresented: “Jane the Virgin” and “Transparent.”

Regardless of those accomplishments, the best moment of the show was when the feminist queens took the stage,

Image by Hristina Tasheva

first episode of “30 Rock” saying, “Affirmative action was designed to keep women and minorities in competition with each other to distract us while white dudes inject AIDS into our chicken nuggets,” with the added intention to help the public realize that all struggles are important and inherently in proportion to each other.

Despite the fact that “30 Rock” has been over for nearly two years, Tina Fey is still by far one of the greatest female writers, producers, and actors mainstream media has to offer. When asked what her secret was, she quotes herself playing Liz Lemon in the episode titled “The Fighting Irish” saying, “I pretty much do whatever Oprah tells me to do.”

Feminist god status is no stranger to Amy Poehler either, as the seventh and final season of “Parks and Recreation” comes to a close. Leslie Knope is finally getting around to building a park, only after running for city council, getting married, obtaining a more than stable income, creating Galentine’s day, as well as giving birth to three triplets and fostering a productive community of civil servants along the way. In essence, “Parks and Rec” has broken the glass ceiling, demolishing every stereotype as to what a white female protagonist is and can be.

However, at the end of the day, both goddesses of sitcom leave middle class audiences questioning if there is a need for female representation on screen anymore. In fact, many are wondering if it is okay to go back to male dominated entertainment pieces now that the two pioneers have obviously proven that women are indeed human beings capable of great things. ___________________________________ Michele Hau is a freshman culture and communications major who hopes she’ll be able to bag her a rich one. You can email her at mhau@ ithaca.edu

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Sawdust

daringly making fun of the dethroned king of comedy, Bill Cosby. Standing in solidarity for female victims of sexual assault across the nation, Fey and Poehler proceeded to make rape jokes in order to fight misogyny in the comedy industry. While some viewers claimed that the dynamic duo were being disrespectful towards those who are victims of sexual violence, and specifically those allegedly drugged and raped by Bill Cosby, others believed that shock is inevitable in comedy and that what Fey and Poehler said was “not that bad,” especially considering that the jokes came from already victimized white women.

As the crowd of influential celebrities listened to Gina Rodriguez’s acceptance speech on why having diversity on TV matters, the two hosts made sure that a positive female Asian-American representation would help carry the show. Heavily stylized with geisha makeup, Margaret Cho joined the hosts playing Cho Young-ja, a fake member of the Hollywood Foreign Press and North Korean autocrat.

Gliding stringently across the Golden Globe stage in her North Korean military uniform and speaking tyrannically in a deep accent, Cho’s performance was so realistic and authentic that some celebrities believed that Cho was actually a North Korean official and felt their sense of security slipping away, calling for backup security immediately.

While some found Cho’s bit to be a little too close for comfort, others expressed outrage, believing that the hosts were intentionally misrepresenting Asian-Americans and perpetuating harmful sentiments against North Korea. In order to neutralize the situation, Fey quoted Tracy Morgan in the

Work It, Girl!

BUZZSAW

The feminist’s guide to the perfect beach bod

O

Rachel Mucha, Staff Writer

kay, ladies. We may be experiencing sub-zero arctic temperatures right now, but soon enough the sun will emerge and summer will be upon us. It’s time to start getting serious about your bikini body!

Here are some helpful tips to look amazing this summer.

Step One: Pick the right suit for your shape

Tankinis, bikinis, one-pieces … it’s all a little overwhelming. Which is the right suit for your body type?

Take a look below.

Apple-shaped: Wear whatever you want Pear-shaped: Wear whatever you want Hourglass-shaped: Wear whatever you want Ruler-shaped: Wear whatever you want Girl, your body is gorgeous and you can rock any kind of swimsuit.

BUZZSAW: The Swimsuit Issue

Step Two: Know Proper Hair Removal Etiquette

Regular bikini wax? Brazilian?

Hollywood? Or would Nair be good enough? Hair removal is a crucial part of every swimsuit season. Every woman should be as smooth as a baby seal, right? WRONG! Listen up, ladies. Waxing is painful. Shaving is a major pain in the ass and is actually dangerous, especially if your hand-eye coordination is not what it used to be. So put down that razor for good. This season, rock the hairy leg look. We are mammals, and mammals have hair! Plus, think how much more pleasant your beach experience will be without all the meatheads ogling and harassing you. (We are NOT sexual objects, thank you very much).

Step Three: Hit the Gym*

*But only when you feel like it.

Don’t get stressed out about trying to fit workouts into your schedules.

I get it, girls. You’re all super busy studying, working, doing everything that men can and just being overall awesome. So if you can only get to the gym once a week, don’t worry too

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much about your beach physique. If you want an easy alternative to the gym, maybe do some bicep curls and push-ups in your spare time so we can all fight the patriarchy together.

Step Four: Get the Perfect Shade

The beginning of the summer is always so rough; after months of minimal sun exposure, you’re surely as pale as the Ithaca snow. How should you remedy this? Spray tan? Tanning beds? Trick question, NONE OF THE ABOVE. Tanning is ridiculous and super dangerous. You think being golden brown is sexy? You know what’s not sexy? MELANOMA! Your skin tone is beautiful no matter the shade. Must I also mention the hypocrisy of telling white girls to be darker but dark girls to be whiter?

Everyone needs to get their act together. Don’t let absurd American beauty standards control the way you live your life. Be better than society! (Friendly reminder to get any strange moles looked at by your dermatologist immediately.)

Step Five: The Ultimate Beach ‘Do

As the days tick by, getting closer and closer to summer, you probably fall asleep with visions of yourself with those perfect beach waves, frizz-free and shiny. Open your eyes.

This is nothing but an absurd delusion conjured up by the evil, money-hungry hair product industry.

Between running in and out of the ocean, playing beach volleyball, and laying in the sand and reading some Joan Didion, your hair will surely be a tangled, frizzy mess. Embrace it!

You don’t go to the beach so you can look pretty to please frat boys.

No matter what, I’m sure all of you are going to have a great summer because women are fantastic and do wonderful things. And remember, the only makeup you should carry with you is mace disguised as lipstick, which you are fully within your rights to use on any cat-callers. ___________________________________ Rachel Mucha is a sophomore journalism major whose bangin’ thighs could totally crush the head of any misogynist. You can email her at rmucha1@ithaca.edu

ASKS WHY…

People hate angry, hairy feminists (coming from an angry, hairy feminist) First things first, if you’re a feminist and you’re not angry, chances are you aren’t really a feminist. The mere concept of the constant injustice dealt to women across the globe, especially women of color, is enough to get my blood boiling, and it should get yours boiling too. Anger is what fuels every movement against injustice. Why should feminism be any different? Oh wait, I know why: men want to keep women complicit and women develop internalized misogyny based on that. God forbid I show any sort of emotions. I might just be on my period, right?

As for body hair, I guess my opinions don’t matter if I decide to rebel against unfair standards set against me because of my gender. Don’t get me wrong, ladies — if you shave, more power to you! Once you realize that shaving is a whole bunch of BS fed to us by men who claim that they have a “biological tendency” to like “younger” women and thus “want us to be clean shaven to resemble prepubescence,” you’re able to do whatever you want — for yourself, not for them or their pseudo-pedophilic societal beauty standards.

Finally, saying you’re “all for equality” and then creating a dichotomy between yourself and us “angry, hairy feminists” to ensure this drunk guy you’re talking to is still going to fuck you tonight is inexcusable.

Feminism is about all-inclusive intersectionality and battling for the rights of women, not hiding behind your internalized misogyny because you’re too afraid some sexist asshole is going to criticize you for standing up for your sisters.

Your angry, hairy Sawdust Editor, Grace Rychwalski

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BUZZSAW: The Swimsuit Issue

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