LIFE & DEATH: FEM Fall 2018

2018 fall

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The search for meaning and the need to create it has everything to do with life and death. What makes a life worth living? What happens after we die? Both questions are unanswerable, but we exist within systems of power that fight to define boundaries of existence. In “Living a Feminist Life,” Sara Ahmed writes: “To live a feminist life is to make everything into something that is questionable. The question of how to live a feminist life is alive as a question as well as being a life question.” In this issue, we offer you a feminist reworking, a disruption, and a transformation of predominant discourses of life and death.

In life, there is a tendency of all things toward death. Death surrounds us and engulfs us in the ordinary and the everyday — we hear about it in the news, we see it imitated in movies and television shows, we read about it in books, we lose family and friends to it.

But Euro-American cultural norms do not offer many opportunities for us to discuss death earnestly. We are not taught to question the religious, political, and medical institutions that seek to define life and death. The politics of life and death asks us as feminists to push the conversation forward through our desire for something different. In other words, the normalization of a neoliberal capitalist empire forces us to chart new cartographies of the political.

Feminism helps us ask: Who has power over life and death? What bodies and cultures are considered more deadly than others? How can we disturb norms of being and nonbeing, self and bodies, space and time? What kind of world can we create out of our desire for a new one? With this issue, we explore these questions and more. We interrogate the authority of Christian epistemology in defining life (pg. 16). We show how heteronormativity exerts control over our lived experiences (pg. 23). We expose how white

supremacy permits redemption for the powerful (pg. 7). We question the authority of a state that requires destruction, violence, and death to persist (pg. 12). We acknowledge the consistent presence of non-being and grapple with pervasive fear of death (pg. 8).

We are conditioned to view the world through a set of strict binaries — what is “good” versus what is “bad,” what is true and what is false, what constitutes life and what constitutes death. A feminist analysis allows us to reject these notions and understand that we inhabit bodies that hover between life and death. In this era of late capitalism, abuses of power cross all political party lines and throw us into a mystifying social matrix, where our bodies collide and accrue remnants of collective pain and suffering inflicted by global imperialism. We strive to fully embrace our scarred forms and bodily decay, to embody misery and transform it, to bust down the walls that inhibit the ways we want to be in the world.

This is my first time working on the print issue as FEM’s Editor-in-Chief. The process is nowhere near easy, but my staff deserves all your praise for the work they do to make FEM the force that it is on campus and beyond. On a personal note, thanks to Tulika Varma for teaching me everything I need to know about being Editor-in-Chief. I cannot thank FEM staff enough for the love and the labor they gave to put this issue in your hands. A publication like FEM could not exist for its 45th year without the spirit of a staff like mine. Thank you to all the writers, teachers, artists, organizers, and activists who guide and inspire us. Consider this issue our contribution to the conversation.

Becca Vorick

Editor’s Note

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6 In Her Beginning

by Katheryne Castillo photography by Joanna Zhang

30 I Was Once the Skinniest Girl in the Room

by Paloma Nicholas art by Paloma Nicholas & Grace Ciacciarelli

8 Redemption Through Death

by Chiamaka Nwadike art by Jenny Dodge

32 Upon Recieving a Prophecy About the Life of My Unexpected Child

by Megan Anderson photography by Emma Lehman

10 Life, Death, and Everything in Between

by Christine Nguyen art by Eve Anderson

34 Till Death Do Us Part ... and Then I Can Finally Live

by Jessica Sosa art by Grace Ciacciarelli

14 The Mental Health Crisis On Campus

by Sophia Galluccio art by Eve Anderson

36 Rise

by Lily Bollinger art by Emily Farag

16 How Life Induces Death: The Logistical Maintenance of the U.S. Military

by L. Verbiniski art by Malaya Johnson

38 Viva y Muerte

by Sarah Garcia art by Monica Juarez 39 Whose Life Is It Anyway?

by Feven Negussie art by Shannon Bolland

18 Apparition

by Kayla Andry photography by Emma Sher 26 Beyond Representation: The Art World’s Guise of Progressivism

by Alana Francis-Crow art by Margaret Jackson 28 Pro-Life or Pro-Christianity?: Secularism and Abortion in the 21st Century

by Victoria Sheber art by Elizabeth Gomez

Table Of Contents

40 The Invisible Queer: Hidden Life in Children’s Media

by Sarah Garcia art by Monica Juarez 42 Interview with Ryann Garcia of @NOTSOIVORYTOWER

by Jhemari Quintana, Madilaine Venzon, & Devika Shenoy photography by Maddy Pease & Joanna Zhang

5 Editor-in-Chief Becca Vorick Print Design Director Maddy Pease Online Design Director Jenny Dodge Arts & Creative Editor Christine Nguyen Campus Life Editor Sophia Galluccio Dialogue Editor Gabriella Kamran Gendertainment Editor Kerri Yund Politics Editor Jhemari Quintana _____________________________________ Assistant Editors Megan Anderson Alana Francis-Crow Lia Cohen Jemina Garcia Victoria Sheber Heidi Choi Feven Negussie Kayla Andry Chiamaka Nwadike Ananya Bhargava _____________________________________ Copy Editors Julia Do Marlee Zinsser Grace Fernandez Leila Modjtahedi Anya Bayerle Amanda Nelson Jessica Sosa Olivia Serrano _____________________________________ Writers Alana Francis-Crow Paloma Nicholas Katheryne Castillo Christine Nguyen Kayla Andry Megan Anderson Lily Bollinger Sarah Garcia Sophia Galluccio Madilaine Venzon Jhemari Quintana Devika Shenoy Victoria Sheber Jessica Sosa Feven Negussie

Eve McNally Chiamaka Nwadike L. Verbiniski _____________________________________ Designers Shannon Bolland Grace Ciacciarelli Monica Juarez Joanna Zhang Eve Anderson Emma Lehman Paloma Nicholas Emily Farag Emma Sher Malaya Johnson Elizabeth Gomez Margaret Jackson _____________________________________ FEM MAGAZINE dictates itself to furthering the application of intersectional feminism to dismantle structures of oppression. We recognize that oppression operates along a multitude of intersecting axes, and we strive to present perspectives that might be otherwise marginalized, erased, or silenced in the mainstream media. We aim to offer perceptive critique of pop culture, report news and current events that we believe are essential to the feminist cause, and provide a space for creative feminist work. _____________________________________ FEM Newsmagazine is published and copyrighted by the ASUCLA Communications Board. All rights are reserved. Reprinting of any material in this publication without the written permission of the Communications Board is strictly prohibited. The ASUCLA Communications Board fully supports the University of California’s policy on non-descrimination. The student media reserve the right to reject or modify advertising whose content descriminates on the basis of ancestry, color, national origin, race, religion, disability, age, sex or sexual orientation. The ASUCLA Communications Board has a media grievance procedure for resolving complaints against any of its publications. For a copy of the complete procedure, contact the publications office at 118 Kerckhoff Hall @ 310-825-9898.

_____________________________________ FIND US AT Website: femmagazine.com Quarterly(s): issuu.com/femnewsmag Facebook: facebook.com/femnewsmag Twitter: @FEMNewsmag Instagram: @femnewsmag Tumblr: femucla.tumblr.com JOIN US apply.uclastudentmedia.com CONTACT US fem@media.ucla.edu

www.femmagazine.com

Finance Director Monica Day Social Media Managers Brenna Nouray Kelli Hsu Video Director Jemina Garcia Radio Manager Marion Moseley Community Outreach Director Heather Miau Social Coordinator Cindy Quach _____________________________________ Special Thanks to Jennifer Ferro & Arvli Ward Front & Back Cover Photography by Maddy Pease

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In Her Beginning WRITTEN BY KATHERYNE CASTILLO PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOANNA ZHANG I was so sick of being bossed around by them Day after endless day, hauling water back and forth, knees bruised and stained by the damp dirt we tended The teasing heavens, feeding off the resentment I radiated

I was at the brink — when I met the snake, on my way to the Euphrates river-lake I began to sneak away among the leaves, to sit and think with It, every eve

You see, I was trapped — corralled in a so-called gracious garden where the days and nights were so predictable, even the Sun and Moon grew tired of the routine Their weary bodies switching shifts at the same sorry hour

It showed me how to dance A smile consumed my lips when I mirrored Its moves, twirling and swiveling my hips All the blue inside of me this soothed

Green engulfed everything, the unduly sweet hue was sickening The dull flowers sagged, the trees cascaded emptiness But nights brought the most dread There were no crickets yet, and the dark silence grew more and more unbearable

Adam was a snore but It was a revival, our laughter and hissing intertwined melodically Sounds so sweet they made lilies bloom in my belly I dreamt constantly of Its silky skin — smooth enough to lick Its revelations were enlightening Secrets of lust and rebellion, divine tales of life in Hell, the heat and freedom sounding so inviting It also told me about what was most forbidden: “Here, to them you will always belong — unless you do something wrong.

In death, our adventure can begin. All you have to seek is sin” But how could I resist?

So, I bit the red velvet awakening and god I had never tasted anything so exquisite in existence It all made sense, why He wanted us so dense, at our expense, it was all a pretense!

The safety of being saved was never worth it All the things I suddenly understood, I couldn’t believe — But just then, the clouds turned black Tyrant Number One was back The Sun and Moon, eager spectators, placed bets on what God would do He first inflicted shame “she’s the one to blame,” He told Adam Death however, He did not condemn “I know of your intent, you silly little girl. You cannot decide your destiny!

I created you, you will never leave me,” He spat venomously, his eyes brimming with jealousy To this day only the stars have complete autonomy And still I crave nothing more unholy than liberation Yes, my fruitless escape led to humanity’s fallen story But it’s not all my fault, I mean — Why would God make life in paradise so damn boring?

Arts & Creative

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Arts & Creative

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Redemption Through Death WRITTEN BY CHIAMAKA NWADIKE ART BY JENNY DODGE CONTENT WARNING: RAPE & ABUSE

Politics

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Historically, cisgender, heterosexual men are awarded many undeserved opportunities to redeem themselves throughout their lifetime, despite displaying a lack of growth or remorse for their actions. Whether they are abusers, rapists, or war criminals, it is easier and easier to recognize when cisgender, heterosexual men are given chances to appear redeemable, even after they have passed, despite the kind of lifestyle they led while alive.

Conversely, let’s examine how a womxn’s reputation follows them their entire lives. Under patriarchy, once womxn tarnishes their reputation by either being a prude, a slut, a bitch, or a feminist, the reputation tends to stick. Numerous womxn throughout history can be named as an example for how their reputations follow them throughout their lives with fewer opportunities for redemption.

Under patriarchy, womxn are forced to live more constricted lifestyles and are often reduced to a label.

This article will explore the various opportunities men are awarded throughout their lifetime, a phenomenon often referred to as “male privilege.” When discussing male privilege, it’s important to stress that male privilege is a consequence of patriarchy, the hegemonic system which offers cishet males more privileges, power, and opportunity. These same privileges are awarded to cishet men to systematically disadvantage trans people, cis womxn, and nonbinary folks.

Consider John McCain, a man whose mass popularity has fluctuated with time. When he competed against former President Barack Obama, McCain’s campaign was centered on the 23 years he spent occupying Vietnam while in the U.S. Navy. He was painted as a war hero who dedicated his life to patriotism and U.S nationalism.

However, he is often quoted using xenophobic and racist slurs to refer to Vietnamese people. Even years after his time in Vietnam, he harbored the same racist rhetoric that motivated him to join the U.S. Navy in the first place by continually referring to Asian people with racial slurs. He is quoted by news outlets such as SF Gate saying that his hatred for Asian folks will last a lifetime. His racist ideology and the violent crimes he committed in Vietnam are romanticized and disguised as patriotism by conservatives and liberals alike.

Months before his death, McCain’s ailing health was revealed to the public as he was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer. McCain’s illness gave him another opportunity to be redeemed regardless of the racist values he held while he was healthier. McCain’s reputation, which once reeked of murder and violence, was given a new scent by liberals to disguise their disregard for the lives he ruined.

Even as his health was deteriorating, McCain worked to steal access to healthcare from millions of low-income Americans. In July of 2017, John McCain voted against the “skinny repeal” of Obamacare, shocking Republicans and Democrats alike. But McCain’s vote was not one for the people or an effort to “save” healthcare. According to the Washington Post, McCain’s vote was merely determined by the fact that he had not yet garnered support for a wider repeal of Obamacare. Regardless, McCain stayed true to his role as a gatekeeper and protector of white supremacy and capitalism. Shortly after the Obamacare vote, McCain voted in favor of the Republican tax bill, which he personally benefited from in multiple ways, effectively cutting taxes for his wife’s $100 fortune and allowing his children to inherit $22 million tax-free.

For example, when Monica Lewinsky’s affair with former President Bill Clinton was exposed, her public reputation was entirely defined by her “mistake.” In the public eye, there is no room for Monica Lewinsky to be a multidimensional person when compared to her male counterparts. Her only mistake was sleeping with a married man, while Bill Clinton himself, is still celebrated as a person and was more easily forgiven by the public. The rigidity of Lewinsky’s reputation is evident through her Wikipedia page which is categorized into three main sections: “Early Life,” “Scandal,” and “Life after the scandal.” Bill Clinton’s Wikipedia page is more comprehensive of his lifetime achievements and milestones. It is very clear who was given an opportunity for redemption and who was defined by the experience, although both were willing adults who engaged in the same actions.

Lewinsky’s “mistakes” have followed her throughout her life to the point of no return. The public rarely allows womxn to make public mistakes or let alone grow from their mistakes. Patriarchy does not allow womxn the room to be multidimensional because it strips all human aspects away from womxn. Human characteristics such as imperfection and development is not a privilege awarded to women. Men, on the other hand, are allowed to engage in violent acts far worse than adultery. Men are allowed to perpetuate violent rhetoric, participate in systems that demonize those outside a socially constructed binary, and are still allowed the undeserved chance to be glorified and celebrated afterwards.

Despite John McCain’s lifetime work in violently murdering innocent people in Vietnam, an atrocious voting record that would make even the devil shake, and persistent racist rhetoric, he was ultimately redeemed through death. The New York times declared him a “War Hero.” CNN referred to him as a “political hero.” When John McCain died August 25, 2018, his past crimes, words, and choices were forgotten and replaced with a shinier, more glorified image. He was no longer the murderer, rather the war hero. He was no longer the man who voted against expanding healthcare for all Americans, he became a man who worked for all Americans his entire life.

An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that John McCain ultimately voted to repeal Obamacare in July of 2017. This version has been corrected.

Politics

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When I was a baby, Life stood above my cradle and rocked me to sleep. My first memories are of her singing me lullabies and letting her long, silverand-gold hair spill down towards me. I remember trying to catch onto those wispy strands of light that hung from her head like my own living baby mobile. People aren’t supposed to remember many things from their infancy, but every night without fail, Life would tell me in her whispery voice: “You are mine. I brought you into this world. You weren’t ready yet, and Death nearly snatched you away, but I saved you. I gave you breath. I held you in my arms. You’re safe, precious. And I promise you I will watch over you every second of your life.”

Life’s possessive words didn’t seem scary to me. She was my savior, my protector. She was the one who banished the shadows from my room when I lay awake after a nightmare. And some nights, when a certain visitor would slip in, she’d turn around and raise her arms to shield me from them. That visitor, that monster crawling from the depths of fear and despair — that was Death.

Life, Death, and Everything in Between WRITTEN BY CHRISTINE NGUYEN ART BY EVE ANDERSON CONTENT WARNING: SUICIDAL IDEATION I couldn’t see much from behind the curtain of Life’s hair. The little glimpses I saw of Death were of a broad-shouldered figure swathed in a black cloak, skeletal thin fingers reaching for me only to be stopped by Life’s ferocious glare. And Death would say in a husky voice that sounded like silk sheets over a coffin, “She was almost mine, you know. She will be mine, one day.”

And Life would say, “Not today.”

Growing up with Life and Death around was as normal to me as breathing.

They were like an extra set of relatives; Life was a second mother, or First Mother as she liked to say, and Death was like a creepy uncle whom I avoided more often than not. As a child, I clung to Life’s skirts and hissed at Death whenever he walked by. I still hadn’t seen his face, but I didn’t need to see him to know that I didn’t like him.

Death terrified me. He was the dark stranger in the alley, the nightmarish shadow howling at my windows at night, the person whose very name would send shivers down my spine. Life used to tell me over and over again, “Don’t talk to him. Don’t think about him. Don’t look at him. You’re mine, not his, and I will fight to keep it that way.”

Arts & Creative

11 She never told me not to be afraid of him.

Things changed when I entered my teens. I still loved Life the way any child adored its mother without having to think about it. Yet I couldn’t help but strain against Life’s protective hands. Her hair, once so beautiful to me, seemed to become gilded chains. Whenever I grew angry at a teacher, frustrated with college applications, or just sick of the whole world, Life pulled me into her arms and tucked my head into her neck, right against her hair. I wondered at the irony of my greatest comfort becoming my greatest burden.

I’d catch Death leaning against the side of my house sometimes. And when being suffocated in Life’s hair — being smothered in her love — became too much for me, I’d sneak out and talk to him.

The first time I approached Death, I was still scared of him. As if he could taste my fear in the air, Death chuckled softly and gracefully dropped into a sitting position on the ground. He pulled off the hood of his cloak and I saw his face.

He was beautiful, the planes of his face sharp and angular, yet fitting together like a stained glass window. His hair was black, like the shadows that accompanied him, but when he moved his head, I could see streaks of gray and blue and purple flashing through, reminding me of colored lights in nightclubs. And his eyes, oh, his eyes. They were two pools of ink that beckoned me to come closer, to swim in their depths and drown there.

Death just tossed his head back and laughed quietly, exposing the pale column of his throat, saying, “Nice to finally meet you, sweetheart. Sit if you like, or stand. I’m not going to hurt you.”

I stood, that first time. I thought I could intimidate him, tower over him the way he used to tower over me when I was a little girl. Standing above him made me feel powerful.

“Why are you always hanging around me? I’m not yours,” I said.

Death shrugged. “I’m everywhere.” He lay back against the wall, staring up at me. “And you’re right, you know. You’re not mine.” Then he smiled at me, and heavens above, and his smile made me want to tear his cloak off to wrap us both inside of it. “But you will be, one day.”

Somehow, his words didn’t frighten me, only made my pulse flutter. His words weren’t a threat; they were an offer, a promise. He felt like the freedom Life didn’t allow me to have. From then on, I sat beside Death whenever I snuck out to talk to him.

We played the game like that for years, Life fluttering around me during the day like an annoying moth, and Death waiting patiently outside for me to come see him at night. When I went to college, the change in our dynamic became more pronounced.

College was just so much. So much to see, to learn, to do. Life, who once coddled me and protected me from every little thing, now demanded I grow up, pushing me to work harder, move faster, moremoremoremoremore. I’d leave her plotting and planning and charting out the course of my life back in my dorm. I went out to clubs at night because they reminded me of Death’s hair, and they were the antithesis of the world where Life wanted me to be. I’d lose myself in dancing. Life’s nagging made my heart and head ache, but the pulsing of my weary feet against the dancefloor felt like relief. Sometimes, Death would join me, twirling me in his arms and resting his fingertips on my hips.

One night, when I was so, so very sick of Life — and, to be honest, of life — I pulled Death in closer, pressed his cold, bloodless hands against my heart, and said, “I want to be yours.” I thought he would do it, that he would take me for his own and let me sink down into eternal sleep.

But he didn’t. Instead, Death gently pulled me off the dancefloor and out of the club. He carried me back to my room, where Life was already asleep on top of several calendars and event planners, and tucked me into bed.

“You should get some rest,” he said, brushing his fingers over the dark, bruise-like circles beneath my eyes. The ends of his hair — when did his hair get so long? — tickled my cheek as if he were peppering my face with butterfly kisses. “I’ll still be here later.”

In the muted moonlight shining through my tiny dorm window, Death’s whole body looked softer, more curved and feminine and comforting, than before.

I didn’t get married after college, not to my first boyfriend, not to my first girlfriend, not to any significant other. I didn’t need a partner, regardless of what their gender — or lack thereof — was, and I certainly didn’t want one with the way Life hung all over me.

Life was practically my husband, I joked to myself, after coming home from a long day of work at the dance studio. I’d turned my passion for dance into a career, one that I loved, but that wasn’t enough to satisfy Life.

“You should be doing more than just wasting your life teaching kids,” he’d tell me. As I’d transitioned into full adulthood, so too had Life changed, as if shedding femininity in favor of masculinity. He was still just as beautiful, still just as protective, but rather than the comfort I’d found in Life’s fierce attitude, I now only felt annoyance.

“And speaking of kids, you should think about having some. There’s still time left for you to get married and have babies. Your biological clock is ticking, you know, and you should hurry up before it’s too late.” Life would nag, on and on, and I’d stand above him as he sat at the coffee table, hunched over more planners and calendars. He’d grumble and nag and plot some more; all the while, I’d ignore him and wrap his hair — still long and silvery-gold — around my finger like a wedding ring.

And I’d look out the window to my apartment balcony, where Death leaned against the railing. I wasn’t sure whether Death was a man or a woman, and Death didn’t care to specify, other than to say that they are everything and everyone at once, so it didn’t really matter what I called them. Now though, Death seemed to like it when I used “she” and “her” as their pronouns, and they said referring to them as a woman was fine.

When I got tired of Life’s demands, I’d go out to the balcony to sit with Death. She was always careful to make sure I wasn’t too close to the railing, which wasn’t very stable and could break with enough pressure.

“Why don’t you just take me?” I asked her. Death’s hair, still shadowy and colorful, framed her face in a bob cut, so when she tried to let her bangs fall forward to cover her eyes, I could easily reach out and tuck her hair behind her ear. “Don’t hide from me,” I told her. “Please, I just want to know.” Death met my gaze. “You aren’t ready yet,” she said.

“Don’t give me that,” I said. “I get enough of that ‘you have so much left to do’ spiel from Life.”

“It’s not about what’s ahead.” Death placed her hand over mine, and even though she had no pulse, even though there wasn’t any blood running through her veins, her hand felt warm. “It’s about right now. You’re content now. You have a job you love, and an apartment that feels like home, and you’re happy without a spouse. You’re happy,” she said, squeezing my hand gently in hers. “And I’m not going to take that away from you. You should only come to me when you’re ready.”

Arts & Creative

12 “When will I be ready?”

“When you’re ready to let go.”

Looking at Death, at my cozy apartment, at my dance shoes lying by the door, at the soft, star-studded blanket of night above us, I understood that she was right. I wasn’t ready. And when I leaned my head against Death’s shoulder, I knew I would only get married to someone gentle, someone caring, someone who didn’t pressure me. Someone like Death.

Though I still saw Life in my later years, he was less involved, less insistently present, as I no longer needed a protector. Death hovered in the background though, reassuring me every time I went to talk to her and telling me to take all the time I needed, all the time I wanted. She’d still be there.

On my deathbed, Life and Death both stood above me. I was older then, my hair almost as silver as Life’s. Maybe I hadn’t done everything I planned to do, but I was content with what I had done. I was proud of the life I built and I was content. I wasn’t afraid to let go.

Life’s hand slipped into mine, but it was Death that he looked at when he spoke. “I think I understand now,” he said. “I — maybe it wasn’t enough to satisfy me, but it was enough for you, and that’s what matters.” He pressed a kiss to my palm, letting his hair hang down towards me the way it did when I was a child. “Thank you for all the years we had together,” he said. And then he let go of my hand.

On my other side, Death laced her fingers between mine. “Are you ready, darling?”

“Yes,” I replied. “Yes, I am.”

“Then let’s go,” she said. “Onwards to your next adventure.”

And as the darkness took hold of my body, it felt like being wrapped in Death’s beautiful, beautiful, soft hair.

Arts & Creative

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“Your Eyes as Honey“

BY GRACE CIACCIARELLI

Design

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Mental health is a topic that many deem important, but is often overlooked, underfunded, and dismissed. Given that an increasing mental health crisis is spreading throughout the United States, practicing mental wellness is proving to be integral in improving one’s well-being. The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) reports that approximately 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. experience mental illness in a given year, while only 41 percent of adults with a mental illness received mental health services in the past year.

University students are continuously feeling the adverse effects of mental illness, particularly due to the burden of skyrocketing tuition prices, pressure to succeed in academics, and dismal post-graduate opportunities. According to the Association for University and College Counseling Center Directors survey, about 95 percent of directors who surveyed students with significant psychological problems say that mental wellness is an increasing concern on campus, and 70 percent of directors believe the number of students with mental illnesses increased in the past year.

The Mental Health Crisis on Campus WRITTEN BY SOPHIA GALLUCCIO ART BY EVE ANDERSON NAMI notes that despite the availability of effective treatment, “there are long delays — sometimes decades — between the first appearance of symptoms and when people get help.” It is especially important that colleges provide mental health resources for their students, as approximately half of all chronic mental illnesses begin by the age of 14 — three-quarters by the age of 24 — placing college students in a historic moment of heightened psychological vulnerability.

Granted, UCLA does offer mental health resources — the largest among them is UCLA’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS). Students who have UC SHIP or another accepted insurance policy qualify for CAPS services and other UCLA resources, such as Campus Assault Resources and Education (CARE), the UCLA Consultation and Response Team, and the Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center.

Campus Life

15 In a 2016 press release, UC counseling centers described a 54 percent increase in students seeking access to mental health services since 2007, with 13 percent of UC students receiving campus counseling services in 2015 (suggesting 5,844 UCLA students treated).

The UC pledged to hire 85 more clinicians across the University of California campuses, predicting an average increase of 9.4 clinicians per UC. The press release stated that “the University of California is taking action to address the issue [of increasing mental illness in students and increased demand of mental health resources] … to increase access to mental health services, reduce wait times for students, and complement outreach and prevention efforts.”

In an apparent attempt to fulfill its promises, the UC implemented the #UCLAWellness Initiative Referendum. The referendum is meant to expand the health and wellness services at UCLA through CAPS and Undergraduate Students Association Council (USAC), but puts the burden of funding on its students — charging each of them $6 per quarter, regardless of services used or the quality of services received.

therapist per month since 2016, as noted in a 2017 statement by Jamie McDole, vice president of University Professional and Technical Employees, the union that represents UC counseling psychologists among other UC employees.

Given a lack of diverse clinicians to choose from, and a lack of clinicians in general, students are increasingly subjected to services focused on accommodating students’ short-term mental health needs, rather than much needed long-term care. The inability to build a relationship with a therapist over time, or find a therapist prepared to meet a student’s needs, leaves students with a subpar mental health resource.

Another barrier to proper mental health care is the yearly limit CAPS places on counseling sessions for students. In an attempt to alleviate long wait times and overwhelming demands, the number of free counseling sessions offered at CAPS for UC SHIP holders dropped from ten session in 2015 to six in 2016 — three during the academic year and three during summer sessions. Students without UC SHIP have a $15 co-pay and a yearly limit of three sessions. Some are referred to the Behavioral Health Services in Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center if they require long-term treatment.

As of 2017, however, UCLA has 44,947 enrolled students and the CAPS website lists only 47 clinicians and psychiatrists on staff, with a supporting staff of approximately 20 clinicians in training and administrative support. Despite the UC’s efforts, their services are still clearly falling short for students.

In September of 2017, as part of the Depression Grand Challenge, a campaign to cut depression rates in half by 2050, UCLA offered free 15-minute mental health screenings. Students diagnosed with mild depression were offered an online program, and those diagnosed with severe forms were connected to UCLA counseling services.

While an admirable attempt by UCLA to meet the overwhelming demand for mental health resources, the online program is impersonal, and students should be able to receive in-person counseling if they so wish. The screening is designed to solve short-term problems instead of long-term problems, but people who are deemed low-risk still deserve treatment, particularly to prevent the potential for increased severity. Additionally, 45 percent of students screened at UCLA through the Depression Grand Challenge were identified with at least mild depression or anxiety, and only 23 percent of those students used the campus counseling service.

During this year, students reported waiting up to a month-and-ahalf to see clinicians, expressed dissatisfaction with their care, or did not bother seeking out mental health care due to bureaucratic red tape. Part of this issue results from CAPS losing an average of one

Students are filling the hole left

by UCLA’s lack of mental health resources. An abundance of clubs that focus on destigmatizing mental illness, treating mental health, and promoting mental wellness have emerged on campus. Clubs such as Active Minds, a national organization aimed at changing the conversation surrounding mental health; Bridging Minds Through Art, a student group connecting the mental health community through the use of artistic expression; Psypher, a organization promoting the mental and physical well-being of UCLA dancers by using movement as a way to express and discuss mental health; and OUTlet, a weekly dialogue series that explores how mental illness is experienced within queer communities, are examples of student organizations bridging the gap left by the UC. CAPS has proven to be ineffective in treating the needs of UCLA students, and UCLA students have taken charge of the situation themselves to provide and advocate for the care they need. Students are stepping up in ways that UCLA has yet to match.

While admirable and necessary, providing the (free) time, labor, and effort to better the mental health resources on campus, students should be able to focus on their studies and extracurriculars instead of supplementing services the university needs to provide for them.

Campus Life

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How Life Induces Death: The Logistical Maintenance of the U.S. Military

WRITTEN BY EVE MCNALLY ART BY MALAYA JOHNSON

Every year, the United States’ media and entertainment industry churn out depictions of the U.S. military which are action-based, gory, and sensationalized. No doubt images and news clips such as these have laid down the expectations for many in the U.S. of what a military presence looks like. We are conditioned to consider only these most obvious or visible depictions of violence as responsible for the murders that the U.S. military death machine commits.

Behind the graphic, on-ground action, however, is what military officials and scholars refer to as “logistics.”

Logistics is the detailed planning that goes into perpetuating and sustaining war. In her book, “The Deadly Life of Logistics,” Deborah Cowen describes how logistics has gained importance following the rise of more advanced war technologies after World War II. “Logistics,” Cowen writes, was once a “practical afterthought” and has since become the “calculative practice that defines thought.”

Logistics define how militaries move and distribute supplies, feed and house personnel, and a variety of other important tasks. Flourishing after industrialization permitted advancement in technologies of war, logistics is the menial, quotidian work which maintains and keeps war organized while equipping armies in mass. Essentially, logistics is a vital source of life for the U.S. military death machine.

In Michel Foucault’s essay, “The Right of Life and Power Over Death,” he notes a historic paradigm shift in power and control.

Foucault highlights that nation-states formerly relied on the threat of death as a secure strategy of control, while more recent strategies rely on managing and policing a population’s life chances and life conditions to exert power. The state dictates what populations are worthy of protection, and this relationship is described

as dissymetrical. In other words, any effort corporate interests or the nation-state undergoes to be recognized as “human” – think corporate social “responsibility” or “your country is your friend” – requires a “nonhuman supplement” to compare itself against.

This nonhuman supplement is a scapegoat, a demonized person, population, or group for the U.S. to claim as a “biological threat” to the nation-state.

Jasbir Puar’s “Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times” highlights the tactical construction of a nonhuman supplement by the United States. Puar argues that one scapegoat in the U.S. is queer people of color from a number of countries in the Middle East, which the U.S. is currently occupying and bombing. Framing folks of color oversees as homophobic terrorists is a strategy of the U.S. government that Puar points to as a goldmine for U.S. justification of violence and war. Cowen agrees that it is through these deviant-labeling framings that “massacres have become vital.”

This dehumanization is not only done abroad by the U.S., but domestically as well, as seen by any attack on state-labeled “deviant persons” who are constantly targeted and surveilled by the police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). By examining the United States’ distorted and convoluted framing, it becomes clearer what the preservation of life means for its existence as a nation-state. It means mass murder, genocide, mass-incarceration, and war. Situating the nation-state as a life form normalizes murder and all of these violences. This humanization of the the U.S. nation-state is a violent one and murderous one — it dependents on the dehumanization of other lives, of civilians in the U.S. and abroad.

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Apparition WRITTEN BY KAYLA ANDRY PHOTOGRAPHY BY EMMA SHER

Every night, in the amber-soaked light of the bedroom, he appears.

His decaying mouth contorts into bruised speech and hardened contempt.

Ashen arms reach for my ruptured throat, torn and smashed into pieces.

I drift away slowly and violently as he starts to disappear limb by limb.

Hands evaporate into ink-drenched nothingness and depthless eyes fade from my vision.

Dust collects on the flower-patterned lamp in the bedroom, while photographs crumble and yellow.

Scabs replace cuts and certain words begin to lose their edge.

In the harsh, scorched sunlight of day I emerge— trembling and solid, dilated pupils fixed to the horizon.

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Life

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MADDY PEASE

&

Death

SPECIAL THANKS TO: GRACE CIACCIARELLI, GABI KAMRAN, BELLA SMITH, NIS HAMID, AND MONICA DAY

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Beyond Representation: The Art World’s Guise of Progressivism WRITTEN BY ALANA FRANCIS-CROW ART BY MARGARET JACKSON

Museums, and the art world in general, have a huge representation problem. Only 3 to 5 percent of the art in major European and U.S. permanent art collections is created by women, and in New York City’s art galleries, only 12 percent of the art is created by people of color. But before we leap to the conclusion that this issue can and should be solved by simply filling museums and galleries with art by women, people of color, queer people, etc., we must think beyond demanding “diversity” and “representation” from the art world. By looking at the violent colonial history of museums, the disastrous effects elite art spaces have on their surrounding communities, and the ties that the art world has to deadly industries like oil and the military, it becomes clear that the problem with the elite art world cannot be fixed by simply “including” more marginalized artists and curators. The art world functions under the guise of cultural preservation and education, but, in reality, it functions as an appendage of the U.S. death machine that preserves and perpetuates the violence of colonialism and capitalism.

By looking at the history of art institutions, it becomes clear that museums have always glorified and contributed to colonial pursuits.

Museums were originally constructed for colonizers to display art and other cultural items they stole from “conquered” lands. Often, the bodies of colonized peoples themselves are put on display — Australian colonizers used museum spaces to display the severed heads of Indigenous people. Today, according to German news site Deutsche Welle, there are over 1,000 skulls of people from Rwanda and Tanzania that are currently in storage at the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin. These skulls were hoarded by anthropologists and collectors during Germany’s colonization of East Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries. Museums were spaces for “human zoos” in which living people of color were enclosed within fences and put on display alongside animals. Through the display of stolen objects, bodies, and deeply othering imagery of colonized peoples, museums play a crucial role in manufacturing the hierarchy of “savage” and “civilized.” Many of these bodies and items are still on display or archived within contemporary historical and art spaces.

Museums also have deep monetary ties to toxic industries and institutions. Art Exit, a group of artists committed to exposing the art world’s insidious connections to transnational capitalist for-profit exploitation, conducts and disseminates thorough research on this subject which they often present on their popular Instagram account @art.exit. They recently published an extensive chart on their Instagram tracing the deep ties that the Whitney museum has to deadly institutions. The Whitney museum was founded by the great-granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt, one of the richest people in U.S history. Three of the Whitney’s prominent trustees have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Donald Trump and the Republican National Convention. The former executive director of the museum was also the vice president of the Oracle Corporation, an information management company whose clients include the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Department of Defense (and UCLA). One of the trustees, Pamela G Devos, is related to Betsy Devos, the current U.S. Secretary of Education, who has rolled back Title IX regulations and rescinded protections for transgender students. But, ironically, the Whitney Museum exhibits art created and curated by marginalized people, with exhibits such as one entitled “An Incomplete History of Protest: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1940-2017.” But the Whitney museum is not an anomaly in the for-profit art world.

Our very own UCLA Hammer Museum was founded by the ultra-wealthy Armand Hammer, the owner of the massive oil company Occidental Petroleum. According a list of donors to the George

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27 W. Bush campaign published in 2005, Occidental Petroleum contributed $250,000 to George W. Bush’s second inauguration.

Occidental Petroleum actively inflicts violence on people — they attempted to drill on U’wa land in Colombia, spilled toxic chemicals in Pennsylvania leading to a 2,000 person evacuation, and sold land they used as a hazardous waste dump for a school to be built on, leading to increased rates of cancer among the children. The Hammer Museum often prides itself on being a space for progressive art, featuring exhibits like “Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1950-1985.” The museum has even featured art by Andrea Bowers, whose work focuses on protest and the relationship between environmental degradation and colonialism. Her recent installation in the Hammer Museum was about the Dakota Access Pipeline, an oil pipeline installed on the Standing Rock reservation by several energy transportation companies. This construction disregards the sovereignty of the Indigenous people living there by crossing their ancestral land and ignoring the extreme risk of oil contaminating the water. It seems deeply contradictory that a museum founded by the owner of an oil company would display art featuring statements like “water is life,” “no fracking way,” and “women and the earth have to tolerate a lot.”

Not only do museums and galleries still preserve and display art objects acquired through violence and profit off marginalized people’s struggles — they also perpetuate that violence in a multitude of ways. For example, the art world plays a key role in gentrification, a modern-day form of colonialism. The insertion of elite art galleries into low-income communities is a crucial preliminary step in the process of displacing long-time members of these working class communities (often communities of color) from their homes. Gentrification relies on white supremacy; the whole system rests on the idea that a community is “improved” when middle class (primarily white) people ”rebuild” a “bad” neighborhood. One of the main ways in which an area is made more appealing for middle class, white communities is through the insertion of art galleries, a process called artwashing. Once a trendy gallery pops up in one of these so-called bad neighborhoods, the hipsters start trickling in, landlords raise the rent, and people are forcibly driven out of their homes as rent rises.

Artwashing also disregards the fact that these communities have their own vibrant art and culture by criminalizing or devaluing the art they create and working to replace it with museums, galleries, or murals.

Gentrification is often carried out by young people on the political left because it functions under the guise of “progress.” Many of the people who drive working class communities of color out of their homes don’t think of themselves as racist or misogynistic. Often, the art in gentrifying galleries and museums even display ostensibly anti-racist or feminist messages. Like many other industries rooted in neoliberalism, the art world makes its exploitation of colonized people’s work and bodies more palatable by displaying and marketing art that brings awareness to social justice issues. Museums and galleries are shifting their language and mission statements to focus on “diversity,” shielding the disastrous effects they still have on surrounding communities, as well as the entire world.

How do we make sense of the conflicting information the art world presents to us and the information it hides from us? It becomes more and more difficult to believe that art institutions truly have a “progressive” mission at heart, given their colonial and capitalist histories, their contribution to modern-day colonialism through gentrification and funding of the U.S. military, their links to environmental destruction, to violence against Indigenous people, to the police, to violence against women and trans people — the list goes on. In reality, museums function as spaces for wealthy people to

display their personal art collections while also generating a profit.

For example, the Broad Museum in Los Angeles is made up of over 2,000 works from billionaires Eli and Edye Broad’s personal art collection. Unlike storing money in a bank, the longer art is on display in these institutions, the more people see it, so the works increase and accumulate monetary value. In other words, museums function as a way for rich people to get richer. When that art is about marginalized people’s struggles, billionaires are literally making money off people’s pain.

Given this information about the ties the art world has to violent systems of exploitation, what does it mean to see art displayed that professes institutional support for social justice movements? It often means that the marginalized artist(s) and the art they create are tokenized and fetishized within the sterile space of the museum. It is enraging that these colonial, capitalist spaces profit off of art about the conditions of the oppressed, while artists from such communities are disproportionately victims of police brutality and criminalization. In a recent Instagram post regarding the famous “End White Supremacy” piece at the Hammer Museum, Art Exit points out: “When a well established white artist makes a painting that says ‘end white supremacy,’ it gets museumized, framed, protected by the police and and sold for possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars, most likely to some rich white guy. When someone spray paints ‘fuck white art’ on a gallery gentrifying and displacing families in his neighborhood, the cops get called.” Museums love to present this idea that you can “curate away racism” (to borrow the language of the Instagram account @socialpracticemafia) when in reality, these institutions are profiting off of real people’s pain without doing any actual work to alleviate this pain.

Elite artists often present themselves as creators of radical work, but their actions reflect where their radical politics stop. For example, artist and UCLA faculty member Barbara Kruger, whose famous work features bold graphics and text with feminist slogans such as “Your body is a battleground” or “I shop, therefore I am,” seems to exclude working class people and people of color from her feminism. According to Defend Boyle Heights — a group that combats gentrification in the Los Angeles community of Boyle Heights — Kruger knowingly crossed the picket line at a Boyle Heights art gallery boycott against art galleries that contribute to gentrification.

In other words, Kruger may produce art that seems feminist and anti-capitalist, but displays her work in elite art spaces like the Broad Museum in Los Angeles and ignores the harmful impact of these art spaces.

Groups like Defend Boyle Heights, Art Exit, and Boyle Heights Alliance Against Artwashing and Displacement are doing critical work to combat the harmful impact of the neoliberal art world. One critique these groups often face is that they are “anti-art.” But why would we ever want to accept the colonial, capitalist definition of what art can be? Why would we ever want to limit ourselves to producing and sharing art in the sterile, elitist, hierarchical space of museums? Why would we want the experiences of marginalized people to be fetishized, consumed, and sold among elites? Art is and can be illuminating, healing, community-building, inspiring, educational, and much more. There are countless artists in the world who create work that isn’t limited by the archaic, insidious art world. So who really needs museums? To be more explicit, who are museums really serving?

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Pro-Life or Pro-Christianity?: Secularism and Abortion in the 21st Century

WRITTEN BY VICTORIA SHEBER ART BY ELIZABETH GOMEZ

is to say, a deeply held religious commitment to man’s will as the absolute.” To him, there need not be a scientific approach or other “pragmatic considerations” in the abortion debate since the issue comes down to religious belief.

“A truly welcoming society must be a culture of Life,” former President George W. Bush said upon signing the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act in 2003. “We must appreciate the dignity of Life in all its seasons … and look toward the day when every child, born and unborn, is welcome in Life and protected in law.”

This bill prohibits a form of late termination of pregnancy called “partial-birth abortion” — a derogatory term used by opponents of abortion because of its grotesque (and inaccurate) imagery. The justification for passing this bill is steeped in the rhetoric of life. For decades, the abortion debate has dichotomized citizens into two groups: pro-choice or pro-life. But who defines “life,” and why should that definition be privileged in a secular, democratic society?

We must look at the definitions and colonial history of “pro-lifers” to answer these questions. Only then can we analyze whether Christian thought ought to dominate the abortion debate, especially since it inflicts violence on marginalized bodies to varying degrees.

For the most part, it is the Christian right wing that takes the “pro-life” stance. The National Right to Life (NRL) is the oldest and largest prolife organization in the U.S., often setting the terms for other pro-life groups. It began as a Catholic organization but has become less sectarian in recent history. In their mission statement, the NRL declares its goal “to protect and defend the most fundamental right of humankind, the right to life of every innocent human being

from the beginning of life to natural death.” They go on to quote the Declaration of Independence, arguing that “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are fundamental values to every American.

Similarly, Scott Klusendorf, president of the Life Training Institute — which educates the public on how to “save lives” — writes for The Gospel Coalition and many other Christian organizations in order to explain how best to defend the pro-life stance. He explains the term in a logical syllogism: the first premise is that killing an innocent human being is wrong, and the second premise is that abortion kills an innocent human being. Therefore, he concludes that abortion is wrong.

While these two sources prove the logical relationship between religion and the political “pro-life” stance, some individuals strictly appeal to an emotional religious viewpoint.

A blogger for the popular website End Abortions Now reflects the general disregard for logic in the abortion debate, writing “pragmatic considerations [of abortion] are ineffective in addressing what is ultimately a heart issue which

What all these pro-life sources tell us is that abortion is murder and should be illegal. Although pro-lifers agree with this conclusion, there has always been disagreement between Christian leaders about when “life” actually begins and whether ethical abortions can exist.

In the Bible, the first instance of life occurs in Genesis. God “created man in His own image … male and female He created them.” There is no sexual act in this creation of humanity — of life. This leaves Christian theologians with a convoluted definition of when “life” began. The birth of Jesus occurs in a similar way. The Virgin Mary is visited by the angel Gabriel, who tells her she is pregnant with a son. In response, she asks, “how can this be? I’m a virgin,” to which Gabriel responds, “The Holy Spirit will come to you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” The two most significant acts of creation in the Bible give no indication of where life begins on the timeline of conception of and pregnancy.

In fact, there is nothing in biblical scripture which directly speaks to abortion or the definition of “life.” Instead, pro-life advocates quote passages in the Bible such as Exodus 21:22-25, which states that “if men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished.” Pro-lifers interpret this to mean that if a husband ought to be punished for killing his wife’s baby in the womb, all people should be held to this standard. It wasn’t until the first century that Christian texts took a direct stance on abortion. Even then, Christian theologians still debate the exact point at which “life” begins in the womb.

One of the first known instances of a written pro-life argument occurs in the Didache, a first-century anonymous Christian treatise. It directly states, “do not abort a fetus or kill a child that is born.” What this text does not address, though, is when a fertilized egg becomes a fetus.

Early Christian theologians like St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas build off this argument. They believed that life progresses from a “vegetable”-like state to a human one, and once a fetus is an animated human, it is unethical to kill it. While more specific, these men are as vague as the Didache, as there is still no consensus on how to identify a human “soul.” This vagueness allowed for the death and destruction of many women’s bodies, especially women of color in light of later colonialism. The modern Roman Catholic Church specified this process of ensoulment beginning in the 19th century.

They believe that upon fertilization the embryo is infused with a human soul, so any type of abortion is murder.

However, not every sect of Christianity agrees with this sentiment. Despite the lack of consensus on what “life” means, all pro-life groups believe in the abolishment of abortion to some degree and have taken to the courts with their arguments.

Prior to the 1973 Supreme Court

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29 case Roe v. Wade, abortion was considered a states’ right in the U.S. Only one major anti-abortion group existed, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and its Family Life Bureau. After 1973, a wave of pro-life organizations like the Christian Coalition of America began to call upon politicians to ban abortion.While the political stances of each anti-abortion campaign varied, what all the groups had in common was their religious foundation, boasting members from the dozens of Christian sects. Birth control expanded for white women in this time as a means to prevent abortion, but women of color and working class women did not have the same access to this medication. This created a paradox: women of color could not prevent pregnancy but were shamed for unintended abortions. Furthermore, post-Roe pro-choice arguments largely ignored this experience of women of color. Mainstream white discourse did not address the sterilization of incarcerated women or the fact that Puerto Rican women served as test subjects for birth control, facing the possibility of sterilization, sickness, or even death. Not only did women of color not have access to birth control — they were dying so others could have access to it.

In the 1990s, abortion became a par tisan issue, sharply dividing Democrats and Republicans into a pro-choice or pro-life stance. Newt Gingrich was one of the first to do so. He was elected to be Speaker of the House in 1995 and, while in office, took a hard position against abortion.

This led the way for the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Though it was vetoed twice by former President Bill Clinton, the bill became law during Bush’s administration.When abortion was debated in the 1970s, during the era of Roe, it was a social and medical problem, not a political one. Since then, a candidate’s abortion stance has become a dividing line of party preference.

Lee Edelman’s book “No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive” is another useful tool for understanding the intersection of the abortion debate and heteronormative claims about “life.” In this essay, Edelman outlines the consequences of “reproductive futurism” for the queer community. This term refers to his belief that all politics are motivated by society’s desire to create a better future for their children.

He writes that politics “remains, at its core, conservative insofar as it works to affirm a structure, to authenticate social order, which it then intends to transmit to the future in the form of its inner Child.” Our very conception of the future is tied to this image of the Child — a metaphorical image of society’s posterity — and all political discourse boils down to a conversation centered around the future of our children.

We need only look to pro-life organizations to confirm Edelman’s theory. Most pro-lifers specify that abortion is the death of a child. For instance, Randy Alcorn, a popular Christian author, writes, “even if abortion were made easy or painless for everyone, it wouldn’t change the bottom-line problem that abortion kills children.” Similarly, Bush’s speech on the passage of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act focused on welcoming children into the world. This is a sentiment echoed by most prolife organizations and politicians: pro-choice supporters are not only murderers but specifically baby killers.

Understanding that the pro-life stance on abortion is heavily influenced by Christian epistemology, or theory of knowledge, we must analyze the consequences of “life” being defined in protestant religious terms.

French historian and critical theorist Michel Foucault wrote about biopolitics among other things. Biopolitics is a useful tool for understanding how institutions control populations through the “subjugation of bodies.” In “The History of Sexuality,” Foucault describes biopower as “power that exerts a positive influence on life, that endeavors to administer, optimize, and multiply it, subjecting it to precise controls and comprehensive regulations.” It is a form of disciplinary power that specifically appeals to life in order to control entire populations. According to him, the Church regulated this power in the medieval period, and governmental institutions began to exert this power in the modern period after the birth of liberal democracy.

In the abortion debate, we see a synthesis of religious and governmental institutions attempting to exert a form of biopower. The regulation of sexual acts, and ultimately abortion, is at the core of biopolitics because this control attempts to define what women do with their bodies. All legislation related to women’s health, such as recent attempts to defund Planned Parenthood, are examples of controlling women’s bodies, which Foucault would argue is merely one manifestation of biopower at large. Less desirable, non-white bodies are pushed even beyond this because of white supremacist institutions that enforce racial hierarchies. The government exerts different amounts of control on female bodies given this racial hierarchy. Angles Davis outlines in her article, “Racism, Birth Control and Reproductive Rights,” that women of color began to distinguish between being “pro-choice” and for “reproductive rights” because of the racial discrimination in the 20th century abortion debates.

In “Discipline and Punish,” Foucault describes another form of power exertion: “sovereign power.” This form functions through

violence and death, through the taking of life rather than the control of it. Sometimes, he refers to it as “thanatopolitics,” or the politics of death, rather than the biopolitics of life. Sovereign power also exists today because, according to the Guttmacher Institute, 23,000 women die every year from unsafe abortions. They also found that only 37 percent of women in the world have access to legal abortion without restrictions. For people of color, the numbers are even worse.

The abortion rate of Black and Hispanic women is five times higher than white women. In short, Foucault may argue that the pro-life, Christian stance on abortion — that abortion is death/murder — is merely a way to control populations of women around the world. This sovereign power disproportionately affects women of color, echoing Davis’ sentiments about the history of reproductive justice. The sterilization of incarcerated women — primarily women of color — is the antithesis to abortion access. While white women fight for the choice to not give birth, women of color fight for the opposite.

The problem with reproductive futurism is that it marginalizes those who cannot or do not want children such as sterilized women or queer couples. Like abortion, non-heterosexuality is seen as sinful by right-wing Christians. To them, both abortion and queerness disrupt the future of the Child. Edelman concludes that, under this framework, the queer community will always be seen as not “fighting for the children” and, consequently, they remain outside of any political realm. To him, “queerness can never define an identity; it can only disturb one.” He believes, then, that the queer community should focus on a discourse of ethics rather than politics; queer theory should embrace the unintelligibility and disruptiveness of their position within society. If the abortion debate continues to center around the figure of the Child, the queer community will be further marginalized.

The question of abortion is not simply a matter of life and death. It’s a question of who gets to define “life” and “death” in the United States government. Unless the U.S. embraces the intersectional discourse of reproductive justice put forward by women of color decades ago, we will continue to face the problems that people like Foucault, Davis, and Edelman predicted. We must examine the history of this inherently political discourse in order to understand our own participation within these political structures. And if we ever hope to uphold Bush’s belief in a “culture of Life,” we must all understand where life begins in the first place.

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It all began with a simple plan: cut 500 calories out of my diet each day, lose a pound each week. Easy as pie (which, funnily, was one of my “forbidden foods”). And I did just that. Skipping breakfast, avoiding desserts. I watched the number on my scale go down, and I felt like I was in control. I wanted more, so I ate less. Cut 600 calories.

Snacks were to be avoided at all costs. Some Cosmo article mentioned that snacking is a primary source of weight gain. If I was hungry, I gulped down a liter of water instead, believing I could trick my belly into feeling full. Cut 700 calories. Mom and Dad were catching on.

I Was Once the Skinniest Girl in the Room WRITTEN BY PALOMA NICHOLAS ART BY PALOMA NICHOLAS & GRACE CIACCIARELLI CONTENT WARNING: EATING DISORDERS They asked me what I had for lunch at school, if I’d finished my plate at dinner. To calm their nerves, I’d bake elaborate cakes and cookies and pies at home, showing them that I was okay— that I was eating.

But I never ate any of the baked goods. I’d throw them away in the trash cans at school. Cut 800 calories. My period disappeared. I told my friends I was drinking “too much soy milk,” and that it fucked with my hormones. They knew it was bullshit, but they went along with the lie for me. Cut 900 calories. Bedtime became eight o’clock because I couldn’t bear to be awake and hungry any longer. Cut 1,000 calories.

I had trouble standing up.

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31 Within 6 months of turning fifteen, I lost 50 pounds, 5 inches off my waist, and cut down to eating only 1,000 calories a day. The average child should eat at least 1,600 calories a day.

I didn’t know I was anorexic until someone told me. My high school counselor, bless her, called me into her office one day during class. She told me that she was contacted by a couple of my teachers who noticed a drastic change the past couple months. My attention faltered, and I rarely participated in class. I wasn’t performing my sun salutations in yoga with the same chutzpah. The person I was at the beginning of my freshman year — dominating Socratic seminars in English — was not the same person seated in her office, denying that something was wrong.

I have never loved my body. I don’t think many people reach that stage of enlightenment in their younger years. Middle school was a rude awakening. Breasts sprang from my prepubescent chest like moles from the ground. Stretch marks traced my hips like stencils. It felt like everything about me was changing so fast against my will.

During this process, I compared my body to that of “other girls”— ones who fit in Brandy Melville tank tops. “One size fits all” my ass.

High school threw me for another loop. I had six classes a day, tests and quizzes every week, and college on the brain. Everything seemed to be piling up so fast — I felt helpless. That’s when I subconsciously chose to control another facet of my life, one more malleable: my body.

Calorie counting became my cigarettes: a ritualistic, temporary rush with potentially fatal consequences. There’s a twisted pleasure that comes with being the skinniest person in the room. I’d never felt so powerful and so weak simultaneously.

into my diet. You don’t know the ecstasy that is eating chocolate cake after three years.

With the weight gain came my zeal for Ethiopian food, my love of photography. Community service became one of my passions once I mended enough of myself to help others. I discovered daily pleasures, like making fun of Ms. Zazlov, after school trips to Bob’s Market with Caoimhe, and maybe

even some harmless (one-sided) flirting with a teacher. But I digress. *** My disorder revolved around the restriction of food, yet it was all I could think about.

When my next meal was coming, how much I was “allowed” to eat — would reach my “calorie goal” for the day? It was only when I stopped obsessing over food that I discovered other parts of myself, the things that make me me.

I’m never going to stop being anorexic. My illness does not disappear like a common cold. Sometimes I feel fat.

Sometimes I kick myself for eating two servings of food. And that’s OK. Because, while I have those moments, I also have moments of strength. I wore booty shorts around campus yesterday. I ate three meals each day this past week. And, hey, I’m writing this piece.

I couldn’t have gained the weight back if it wasn’t for the loving people in my life. Mom and Dad, thank you for cooking my favorite meals to inspire my appetite. Kobe, thank you for sharing your lunch when I’d “forgotten” my own. Thank you to my friends, who loved and accepted me throughout the refeeding process.

And, finally, to the little prick who called me a “hippo” in the seventh grade: fuck you.

Later that day, after meeting with my counselor, I looked in the mirror and finally became cognizant of the damage I’d done. My cheeks had sunken to the bone, my wrists were the size of silver dollars. My breasts and hips had disappeared completely. I looked down at the scale and cried: I weighed 94 pounds. *** They don’t tell you how much it hurts to eat again. After years of starvation, my body forgot what it feels like to be full.

Searing pain pulsed through my belly, pulling at my insides.

I almost vomited my first meal. But I kept eating.

I tried therapy with a teen eating disorder specialist. She asked me why I was starving myself. She tried to place the blame on my parents, the people who helped me the most. Idiot. I decided it was up to me to get better.

I drank muscle milk, ate steak, reintroduced sugars and grains

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Upon Receiving a Prophecy About the Life of My Unexpected Child

WRITTEN BY MEGAN ANDERSON PHOTOS BY EMMA LEHMAN

I was told your skin will be burnt by more UV rays than mine.

I hope this means you will spend more aggregate days under the sun and not that the ozone layer will completely destroy itself while you are alive.

That’s all it said though.

I wish I could tell you they gave me more.

But worry not, I’ve devised lesson plans to occupy our time. The first covers drums. We’ll learn exciting rhythms — tresillo, clave, and the heartbeat — soon you will pick up rhythms everywhere — how I step down the stairs. How your grandmother steps the same trajectory.

you like sugar. You’ll have a wit quicker than your hands can beat down on our small set. And you can hit the beat quick.

You invent new rhythms, devising and deriving them from places no one would expect, but that I now find impossible to get out of my head: slipping into the bath, egg running down the side of the bowl, the constant light provided by a late night living room light bulb, the porcini mushroom left old on our kitchen counter.

We’ll start early. I’ll move your little baby hands in a ba da dum ba dum badum bababbababa dum ba ba da ba ba ba da dum dum

You grow rhythm as the planet contracts, in wondering about your making and words like “unexpected.” What can you expect from me? Well, I can promise you’ll grow rhythm in recycling and the upkeep of plants.

You’ll grow it in small tangible action and in trying and trying and grow it ingrown; you’ve got rhythm in your veins.

Dumdum, I’ll call you. Only because

Second, we bring our attention to the melody.

Arts & Creative

34

Till Death Do Us Part ... and Then I Can Finally Live It happened while I was rewatching “Grey’s Anatomy” a while ago with my sister. We were in one of the first seasons and all I could notice was the ridiculousness that two of the show’s main characters, Meredith Grey and Cristina Yang, deal with in their respective heterosexual relationships. Both spent the first few seasons diminishing their exceptional skills in neurology and cardiology to let their business (and romantic) partners take most of the glory in their joint medical discoveries.

How could two of the show’s most powerful female leads be so limited in their love lives? Shonda Rhimes wrote these characters to be headstrong, intelligent, competitive, and competent women. Yet, when it comes to their romances, both women are stuck in the shadow of the men they’re with. Cristina cracks and eventually leaves under those pretenses, while Meredith is forced into domesticity after showing that she can tolerate being in her lover’s shadow.

While examining other popular 2010s television shows, I realized that this trope is a common one. “How to Get Away With Murder.” “Teen Wolf.” “Jane the Virgin.” All these programs have rather bold and unapologetic female characters who remain strong and independent when the focus isn’t on their love life. But in couplings, they lose some of their light, giving in to the gender roles and patriarchal standards set before them.

In “How to Get Away With Murder,” the main character, Annalise Keating, is forced into a life of stress, struggle, and secrets all because her husband had too much trouble keeping it in his pants. In “Teen Wolf,” after three seasons of coming into and owning her role as the best leader in her family’s secret hunting group, Allison Argent is reduced to Scott’s forever love in her death scene. In “Jane the Virgin,” Petra, a female lead who’s possibly more bold than the titular character, is portrayed as a stuck-up rich

girl whose daily activities involve plotting to steal back Jane’s baby daddy.

Meredith Grey transforms from a great medical program intern who got her wits from her equally skilled mother into the new girl who scored the great Derek Shepherd. Cristina Yang goes from being the smartest and most accomplished intern in the cohort to being the girlfriend desperate to save her more powerful boyfriend’s career.

Annalise Keating goes from being the best and most sought out law professor and lawyer to covering up her husband’s wildly inappropriate infidelity with his students. Allison Argent

WRITTEN BY JESSICA SOSA ART BY GRACE CIACCIARELLI

goes from being the lead hunter in her family’s pack to being the one that got away from her first love Scott McCall. Petra goes from being her husband’s equal in hotel operations to the ex-wife who cannot get over her ex-husband.

All five of these characters are presented to the audiences as women who excel in each of their professions, never let anyone talk down on them, and make sure people know that no one else can do what they do. These traits provide a new experience for a viewer who is used to the Rachel Greens and Lorelai Gilmores of the small screen. To make these features such an integral part of the essence of these characters is to subvert the normative portrayal of heterosexual women in popular television. Even if these strong, female leads are in relationships when they are introduced in the series, the writers make it a point to show spectators that these leading ladies are whole and fully-developed people on their own. Putting this boldness as a supporting pillar in their existence lets viewers know that the fierceness of these characters is not a phase for a random filler episode.

But, even with all the emphasis on their strength known, the audience is still left with the tired portrayal of a typical heterosexual romantic relationship. The women are forced to let the problems or accomplishments within their relationships eclipse the successful endeavors they achieved on their own. They are pressured into expected gender roles. They are coerced into domesticity. These women who have been painted as these magnificent beings on their own are diminished into so and so’s girlfriend or wife.

While these programs want to show the heterosexual girls of society that it’s more than okay — even aspirational — to be strong, independent, and a general badass, they cannot let their extraordinary characteristics loose when in love. On their own, they can be the greatest and most important woman alive. But if they ever catch themselves in a relationship, it’s basically game over for them. In love, all they can achieve is whatever their male partners will allow.

Heterosexual relationships are so confining for these characters that they have to die to save what’s left of the reputation built for them outside of love narratives.

It’s almost as if love is the fatal flaw of each of these female leads.

These leading ladies appear so perfect that a viewer is forced to think that these characters’ fierce and unapologetic attributes are too good to be true. Writers often spend a significant amount of time building up the strength of these characters before unnaturally forcing some sort of Achilles’ heel to keep the series “interesting.” In this case, love is the answer.

If this is all a girl can achieve in a heterosexual relationship, it is a dismal future indeed.

Gendertainment

PHOTOGRAPHY BY PALOMA NICHOLAS

SPECIAL THANKS TO: EVE ANDERSON, EMMA SHER, &GRACE CIACCIARELLI

36

Rise I have not cried haven’t felt the ripping of my throat clean open my anguish: a mad surgeon unconscious, I am dissected tear me open, sew me up I return to life each day and to death each night I listen to the news like an addict in search, I suppose, for a howl like my own but each day is less than what I knew before sometimes, I’m glad She’s not alive to hear the men talk the way they do I’m glad She doesn’t hurt from my pain She never knew what he did. when I speak of Mother I speak of God, the only one I know, I worship allow a terrible prayer to dribble from my mouth like water from the drowned. at times I wish for death at times, I feel it is the only thing I understand these days I watch the vines on my balcony wither and wilt born, cursed, in a time of decay I watch the kings on TV and the blade created to roll the monarch’s head now in his own hands I dig up my sword buried in the backyard prepare for battle my sisters and I paint each other’s faces don our bloodspattered armor take up the burden our mothers have carried for us a thousand years at last, a mighty holler tears from our lips we sweep the land like flood and lift ourselves, a greater triumph than any ark two by two, we lance and struggle until we suffocate the flames we prey but not like predator we pray but not like the drowned we pray like spirit, we pray like those who have seen death like my Mother, who glared into her own mortality and swore She would go down screaming we rise like oceans to the moon we rise like forests from the earth we rise like mountains of a thousand years I have cried! and though I lie awake in death come morning I rise to meet the light, and savor creation on my tongue like prayer

WRITTEN BY LILY BOLLINGER ART BY EMILY FARAG Arts & Creative

38

Vida y Muerte

WRITTEN BY SARAH GARCIA ART BY MONICA JUAREZ

Hace mucho tiempo, there were two goddesses who couldn’t be more different from one another. Their nombres were Vida y Muerte.

Vida was a goddess who carried the essence of life in her every step.

Las flores bloomed solely from her sheer presence, her brown body radiating with the power of el sol. All, mortals and immortals alike, yearned for her affection and attention, so that she might look upon them and rejuvenate their souls.

Muerte, on the other hand, was a goddess who ferried those same souls away to the afterlife when death came for them, one way or another. Those same flores wilted and died when her skeletal feet touched the earth. With her long cloak and scythe, she could claim the souls of an entire village if the occasion arose. The mortals felt pain and despair when she took those they loved away, so their eyes sprung tears like fountains, and they began to revile her at the very mention of her nombre. Even the gods avoided her — as if she would bring the stain of death upon them as well.

Everyone, in both the earth and the sky, feared her; all, except Vida.

Since the creation of el universo, Vida y Muerte have been lovers. With the dawning of the light, Vida leaped forth into being. And with the dark, so did Muerte. Vida set her eyes on her opposite, bones and all, and knew immediately what she felt was amor, unconditionally. When their gazes locked, Muerte longed for her just the same. In this moment, amor itself was breathed into existence.

were cruel and had teamed up to deliver suffering onto them all.

Vida ignored the slander and insults, but Muerte could not bear to see how the mortals now hated her cariño because of her. And so, she tore herself away from Vida and severed the connection between them as she did often between the mortals’ bodies and their souls.

Vida tried to stop her, regain what had been lost, but Muerte ran and hid from her so she would not be tempted to return.

Vida searched tirelessly for her cariño, all día y noche, to fix her own aching corazón. And with this distracting pain, both goddesses failed to perform their usual duties in the mortal realm. El universo lost its balance, everything spun out of control, not only from their inaction, but also from their broken amor as well. El día y la noche did not arrive as expected. The sky lay trapped in the transition from dark into light. The mortals’ crops began to die, for barely anything could flourish without the strong rays of el sol. The weather halted in its tracks and created a permanent chill. The mortals despaired over the lack of change, saddened from never witnessing the stunning brightness of el sol or the boundless beauty of las estrellas.

And even worse came the mortals’ pain when Muerte never stopped by to carry their souls away. Suffering multiplied, bodies turned immortal without a means of release. Comida lacked, starvation grew rampant, but death never came. More living bodies in the same limited space. Agony with no esperanza of recovery in the afterlife. Meaning was taken from all life as it now existed without un fin.

Vida y Muerte spent almost all their time together.

Their connection

was undeniable.

Being apart felt wrong, as if el universo explicitly forbade such a thing. As el sol traveled across the sky, Vida would take Muerte’s hand in her own and twine rosas inmortales with her bones so her cariño could look upon las flores without killing them. And when el sol set below the horizon, Vida y Muerte would lie together as Muerte swung her skeletal hand across the sky, bringing forth la luna and las estrellas for them to gaze at as one.

The other gods felt jealous at the sight of them both, walking and holding each other close. For how could Muerte capture so much of Vida’s attention, when she seemed so unworthy in their eyes? To them, it seemed unfair. A trick must have been pulled over Vida for her to choose this path. So, un día, long after the mortals were created, the gods sent them all a vision of Vida y Muerte together, side by side and obviously in amor. The mortals raged, displeased to see their relationship. They sent prayers up to the sky, for all the immortals to hear.

They told of their fury, boasting their new belief that Vida y Muerte

As the mortals and the immortals saw all this come to pass, both groups finally recognized their error.

They all once believed Vida y Muerte to be complete opposites — unfit to be with each other for what they brought in their union. But truly, they were needed together because they only worked as one through their bond. To apologize, the mortals threw a grand celebración to honor Vida y Muerte. Fiestas blossomed in the streets, colorful and inviting of death. Treats, like sweet ones in the shape of calaveras, were crafted, as well as other goods. The mortals flocked to the cemeteries where their loved ones lay buried in graves, decorating the tombstones and leaving their treats to honor the lives the dead led before with purpose.

And the gods, reflecting on their mistakes, combined their powers to create a beam of holy light, pointing right to the location of Muerte.

Vida rushed to her cariño’s side as soon as she saw the light, grasping the bones of Muerte’s fingers in the warm flesh of her hands. Vida took Muerte before she could protest to look upon the mortals and bear witness to how they changed, how they now saw their amor not as suffering but an integral fact of el universo.

Muerte looked on all the festivities and smiled, reassured that both her cariño and herself were accepted and revered once more. Lifting her scythe in one hand, she called forth the souls of the dead and allowed them to visit the living loved ones honoring their graves — her blessing of gracias for their celebración. And in the palm of her other, Vida y Muerte kept their grasp entangled as they healed their severed bond, light and darkness, skin against bone, limbs entwined forever as one in un laberinto de rosas inmortales.

Arts & Creative

39

Whose Life Is It Anyway?

At Dartmouth’s 2018 commencement ceremony, Mindy Kaling speaks poignantly of her post-grad checklist: “Get married by 27.

Have kids at 30.” She immediately follows this with the revelation that her daughter was born without a man in the picture or a wedding ring on her finger. By all of our dearly-held patriarchal institutions, this is a failure. We discourage disrupting the established order of domesticity. However upholding the vitality of the nuclear family is an old-fashioned idea that is not only a symptom of generational complicitness, but a product of the greedy and invasive entity known as the entertainment industry.

Picture your favorite classic romantic comedy. Let’s say it’s “Sixteen Candles.” A happy ending sealed with a kiss between Sam and Jake Ryan over a birthday cake. Let’s make it more complex. A dystopian film: “The Hunger Games.” Katniss and Peeta get together and have two kids. Another happy ending. Two radically different stories, but they end the same: girl gets the boy. The latter pushes the envelope further, creating an idyllic family even in a post-traumatic setting. Harmless, until we map out an unrealistic model for our lives based on this fictional yet ingrained timeline.

Dominant and recognizable pieces of film and television are curated through a Euro-American lens. When it comes to home life, the screen emphasizes marrying young and producing two-point-five kids — maybe even a dog to boot. But these seemingly happy endings are toxic idealizations and exclusionary narratives.

Often, the characters centered in these narratives are white and heterosexual, to only name two facets of their identities. Hollywood’s representation problem has been addressed time and time again, but the conversation doesn’t expand on happy endings and how when couple does get together in a film or series, there usually isn’t a person of color or queer pairing involved. “Friends,” for instance, ended its ten-season run with most of the six leads finding happiness with romantic partners. Funnily enough, in its ten-season run, there were two women of color who were love interests, and neither, of course, were featured in the series finale. And the show certainly never gave hope to see a gay couple either, despite countless jokes about everyone perceiving Chandler as gay.

Heteronormative structures give media a blueprints for ideal lives, such as prioritizing marriage before childbirth. If you marry and you’re a woman, you must marry a man, and then have a child.

This idealized structuring of time doesn’t take into consideration queer couples, nonbinary/genderqueer people, people who can’t have children, or those who don’t even want them. At the root of this demand is “restricted desire,” something that Elizabeth Freeman describes in “Time Binds.” Freeman explains how “restricted desire” was cultivated by imperial powers, dictating people, particularly women, to only crave domesticity and devote themselves to Christianity. Desires outside this limited bubble are labeled as sin,

WRITTEN BY FEVEN NEGUSSIE ART BY SHANNON BOLLAND

thus becoming the foundation for the institutions we now recognize as the hallmarks of a “happy ending.” Not to mention, “restricted time” doesn’t even extend to queer/nonbinary people. Collectively, this is all wrong, but media does a good job of weaving expectations with colonial roots into cutesy rom-coms under the pretenses of an exemplar modern life.

Delving further, these narratives participate in the erasure of “queer time.” “Queer time,” as Judith Halberstam defines it in “In a Queer Time and Place,” is a nonlinear way of conceptualizing time that incorporates the social and cultural disparities between various identities. Disparities such as how a heterosexual couple would have an easier time marrying and having children versus a queer couple’s path’s would be undoubtedly complicated by homophobia throughout the marriage and child-having/adopting process.

“Queer time” also advocates for unlearning fixed milestones. Markers of a well-lived life include going to college, getting married, buying a house, having kids by their early thirties, but only in that order. People who have children before marriage or start undergrad in their forties, for instance, are deemed unusual or unsuccessful according to heteronormative time. Media is, of course, a major proponent of this institution.

The establishment of the happily ever after is exclusionary of so many identities, including aromantic and asexual people because of the primacy it places on romance. And, sometimes, in an effort to center romance, film and TV tends to sideline or exploit these identities, such as fat-identifying people losing weight for happiness and people with disabilities “healing” in films. “This doesn’t happen in 2016’s “Me Before You,” because it sacrifices its paraplegic lead for the sake of a tear-jerking love story and Louisa, the able-bodied protagonist, to find her happy ending without him. The narrative only stresses the importance of sustaining the heteronormative timeline, which does not have room for the “burden” of a disabled love interest and can only foresee a palatable future for the able-bodied character.

All this isn’t to say I don’t enjoy films or shows where the two protagonists jump into each other’s arms at the end. I do. And it doesn’t mean I won’t root for them to get together. It means there is a harmful condition to be recognized: the endorsement of outdated concepts of romance, marriage, and family. Without understanding how these repeated images glorify a specific lifestyle, it is easy to feel pressured, inadequate, and helpless. Kaling put it best when she said,“Don’t be scared if you don’t do things in the right order or if you don’t do some things at all.” The positive twist of having no representation is not having to follow the beaten path, because there is none laid out for you. It’s easy to stop living life like it’s a race against a clock when you remember it’s unscripted.

Gendertainment

40 “Won’t somebody please think of the children?!” Helen Lovejoy exclaims in “The Simpsons” episode from 1996, “Much Apu About Nothing.” Despite the line’s satire, American children’s media took the lesson quite literally. Many parents still behave like Helen Lovejoy, believing they must protect the minds of children from any force considered mature, immoral and corrupting. One such force is queerness.

During my childhood, I never observed LGBTQ+ representation on either the big or small screen. I only witnessed cisgender and heterosexual characters and romances, conditioning me to think in heteronormative ways. As a bisexual woman who was aware of my identity early on, this did not produce healthy, self-assured feelings in me as a child. I have no memory of my parents, relatives and other adults actively speaking against the LGBTQ+ community around me, but I still felt that something must be wrong with me because I possessed no language about queerness. Shame and self-loathing welled up inside me because I believed I was the only “abnormal” person in my limited worldview.

Such feelings are not uncommon among LGBTQ+ children, which can lead to tragedy when those emotions are heightened enough to impact mental health. According to The Trevor Project’s “Facts About Suicide,” “LGB youth seriously contemplate suicide at almost three times the rate of heterosexual youth…[and] are almost five times as likely to have attempted suicide compared to heterosexual youth,” while “40% of transgender adults reported having made a suicide attempt. 92% of these individuals reported having attempted suicide before the age of 25.” The sharp difference in rates of suicidal

The Invisible Queer: Hidden Life in Children’s Media

WRITTEN BY SARAH GARCIA ART BY MONICA JUAREZ

ideation between LGBTQ+ and cisgender, heterosexual children demonstrates the absolute necessity of validating LGBTQ+ children’s identities from an early age and showing them that their lives are just as valuable as those who are cisgender and heterosexual.

One way to combat early heteronormative conditioning is to positively and actively represent LGBTQ+ characters in movies and television. While this may appear as a superficial method to some, major links have been established between marginalized children’s consumption of media and self-perceptions. In Ebony M. Roberts’ 2004 article “Through the Eyes of a Child: Representations of Blackness in Children’s Television Programming,” Roberts argues that “television is a child’s early ‘window’ to the world” and that “starting around age 4, children take what they see on the television screen as trustworthy information.” This is vital for showing how children accept what they see as truth and can thus be easily influenced into accepting certain views about others or themselves.

In relating her specific argument to Black children’s experiences watching television, Roberts concludes that “Black people and culture were better represented” in the children’s show “Sesame Street,” which could “create feelings of pride and personal identification” in Black children. On the other hand, when studying “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers,” the White Ranger, a white male himself, was valued over the other Rangers, who were women and people of color. Roberts saw this as communicating “the message that ‘white is right,’ or in this case, more powerful,” leaving a negGendertainment

41 ative moral for Black children. The influence of television and other children’s media significantly impacts the socialization of children who do not fit into the favored categories of white, cisgender, or heterosexual. Creating more LGBTQ+ characters in children’s movies and television is a potential progressive step for this self-image issue.

However, similar to what Roberts’ study indicates for Black characters, it is not the lack of LGBTQ+ characters that is the problem, but rather the already existing portrayals of queerness. My early conception of never seeing LGBTQ+ representation was simply not true.

Two anime television shows I watched were 1992’s “Sailor Moon” and 1998’s “Cardcaptor Sakura.” Both of these programs depicted queer characters and relationships, with Sailors Uranus and Neptune in the former and Tomoyo, Syaoran, Touya and Yukito in the latter. But in the late 1990s to early 2000s, LGBTQ+ youth in the U.S. like myself were never given a chance to witness so much queerness on television because censorship and English dubbing transformed these characters into cousins or close friends.

Because of the American viewpoint and political stance that we must “think of the children,” optimistic and affirming LGBTQ+ representation was eradicated in the 1990s in a practice that persists to this day with world powers like the United Kingdom censoring “Steven Universe,” as Teresa Jusino of The Mary Sue reported in 2016.

However, queerness is not only erased and hidden in translations.

This erasure occurs in films and television shows that boast of LGBTQ+ representation without following through. LGBTQ+ characters are increasingly announced through “Word of Gay,” a trope defined by the online wiki TV Tropes: “When Word of God [the writer or other creative figure] explains that a character was actually LGBTQ outside of the series, choosing to keep them Ambiguously Gay (at most) in the actual story.” The most famous example of this is when author J.K. Rowling of the “Harry Potter” series told fans that Albus Dumbledore had really been a gay man all along. Other movies and television shows that perpetuate this trope include “How to Train Your Dragon 2” with Gobber, “Zootopia” with Judy Hopps’ neighbors, “The Legend of Korra” with Korra and Asami and “Voltron: Legendary Defender” with Shiro and Adam.

While these productions are arguably well-intentioned attempts at representation in children’s media, hiding the characters’ queerness in canon and only introducing these identities through outside comments conveys a feeling of shame and parallels to being “in the

closet.” This secrecy also does nothing to benefit LGBTQ+ children since they probably don’t know that these characters are queer without being told so or doing their own research. With the Word of Gay trope, creators try to have their cake and eat it too by giving brief hints at LGBTQ+ representation without offending parents who must “protect” their children from queerness.Two of these instances, Dumbledore and Adam, embody the “Bury Your Gays” trope as well, which states that LGBTQ+ characters cannot be happy and must die in fiction to satisfy those who find queerness “distasteful.”

These combined tropes both fail to endorse queer life over queer death.

Queerness has not always faced total erasure and censorship in U.S. children’s media. “ParaNorman,” “In a Heartbeat,” “Adventure Time,” and “Steven Universe” all offer very clear and unhidden queer representation. Efforts need to be made to introduce more transgender and genderqueer characters into children’s movies and television shows, but all the previous examples indicate that children’s media can portray queer life to a young audience without always worrying about losing money from conservative households.

LGBTQ+ children receiving support from their parents and other caregivers is clearly a vital factor that cannot be ignored in this self-image discussion. According to the 2017 National School Climate Survey by the GLSEN, “LGBTQ students whose parents engaged in advocacy with their school, overall, had better well-being, including higher levels of self-esteem and lower levels of depression.” Parental acceptance fosters healthier attitudes in LGBTQ+ children. Abandoning the notion that children must be “protected” from the dangers of queerness also contributes to this betterment. If LGBTQ+ children feel acceptance from both their caregivers and entertainment, their mental health could drastically improve.

Helen Lovejoy’s “Won’t somebody please think of the children?” line gives the false impression that, when society thinks of children, they imagine them all as exactly the same. But children with marginalized identities do not fit into the accepted cisgender, white, able-bodied, neurotypical and heterosexual paradigm that is implied here, especially when they belong to a group that children are said to need protection from. By explicitly representing queerness in children’s media, perhaps LGBTQ+ children can finally imagine themselves not as villains threatening the innocence of childhood but rather as young people looking forward to bright futures of queer life and not death.

Gendertainment

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FEM Newmagazine’s Madilaine Venzon, Devika Shenoy, and Jhemari Quintana met up for an interview with Ryann Garcia, one of the creators of the social media activist account, @notsoivorytower. During the interview, Ryann discussed her background, the idea behind Not So Ivory Tower, and the importance of women of color in academia supporting one another.

Madilaine: Can you tell us about yourself? About your undergraduate career, where you got your master’s degree, and why you decided to come back to UCLA for law school.

Ryann: I was admitted [to UCLA] for the Fall of 2009, and I came straight out of high school. I knew I wanted to study religion since I was 14 or 15 — I just knew I wanted to be a professor, and I wanted to choose a job where I could be in school the longest, which was so naïve of me. I don’t come from a particularly religious background, but I took a world religions course in high

Interview with Ryann Garcia of @notsoivorytower INTERVIEW BY JHEMARI QUINTANA, MADILAINE VENZON, & DEVIKA SHENOY PHOTOS BY MADDY PEASE & JOANNA ZHANG school, and I remember being really interested in Hinduism and Buddhism.

We watched the film “7 Years in Tibet,” and that’s when I learned about the Dalai Lama, and the Tibet situation, and I was like, “Whoa, this is a thing that exists? Actual genocide is happening in the world, right now?” So I came here [UCLA] knowing I wanted to do that. I double majored. Religious studies was my primary, and classical civilizations was my secondary.

My concentration was, I guess you could say, Asian religions. I did a lot of classes through the Asian Languages and Cultures Department, and then I ended up doing a senior honors thesis with someone in the department. I wrote about modern Tibetan self-immolation as political protest. My idea of studying religion was always from the view of studying social change. I never took sociology classes, but I guess, from that lens, I was looking at the political movements that were happening, the social movements that were happening. Senior year was a lot. I loved the research I did. My advisor was really harsh on the research I had done. I needed to be pushed. I needed to do the research. Once I did that, she was like, “You’re ready for grad school.”

Campus Life

44 I did end up going to Yale after my gap year. My concentration was Asian religions. I knew one other Latina student there — she’s actually my co-founder of Not So Ivory Tower, Barbara Sostaita. We met at orientation and kind of held each other down while we were there. That time was a very interesting time to be at Yale, because during the fall of 2014, the Ferguson protests were happening which hit me like a ton of bricks, being a graduate student, and going through this process of becoming “woke,” understanding and unlearning all of these toxic behaviors and things that I thought about myself, and things that I thought academia was and should be. There were times during that semester when I thought, “I’m going to fail out of my classes, I’m gonna fail.” That was so hard because the summer before moving to New Haven, I had so many nightmares, about showing up to class and them going like, “We made a mistake, you’re not supposed to be here,” or showing up without a pencil or paper, or showing up late to class. My imposter syndrome was off the rails during that time. As women

him. I had to watch that. “If he can’t do this, then, why can I? How can I?” It’s not that I thought I couldn’t do it. It was more like, should I do it? Should I put myself through this for that? Should I put myself through this for a seat at that table? It was really unsettling to move across the country, come to Yale, and be like: “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

of color who come from similar backgrounds, we’re always second-guessing ourselves. [The University is] where we really feel like we need to prove ourselves. I spoke to someone, and they mentioned how at the end of the two years I was no longer scared about speaking out in class. I officially became the “angry Brown girl” by the time I graduated.

The summer [between] those two years, I was able to get funding to study abroad. I ended up going to India, and I was in Dharamsala for about two months. I got to study with locals. They were not trained teachers. They were just Tibetans living in exile who needed money. It was really tough because they wouldn’t let me speak any English. It was a lot. I hate telling this story, because it sounds like such a cliché — “girl goes to India and finds herself” — but I really do think I learned so much about experiences that I was reading from academic texts all the time. It really brought my academia to life and made me feel so restricted and so comfortable in my ivory tower, just sitting there in these buildings with these portraits of white men staring down on me. You know, I can’t even eat lunch in peace without these white men staring down at me in the dining hall.

I knew what I wanted to do, but that first semester was so heavy for me that I was starting to reconsider things. My advisor was the only one who taught Tibetan Buddhism at Yale, and he was what we think of as a “professor.”

He was this privileged white man with all these years studying this one subject. He got to live in India for seven years because he had the privilege to do that. I would never have the privilege to do that. He was publishing and doing all these great things, and all the students loved him. And he ended up not getting tenure because someone in our department just didn’t like

During that time, I started to discover a lot of social media activism, and I was really intrigued by it. I didn’t want my own platform at that time, I really just listened to other people. I really learned to just listen to other people and be quiet when my voice just didn’t need to be out there. That was a big lesson in unlearning a lot of toxic behaviors. I was so motivated by all of these social movements that started happening, and that’s when the veil started lifting. I was like, “Oh my God, everything is racist! Everything is sexist!” You can’t ever look at anything the same way again.

I was left with this: “What the hell am I doing? Why am I studying classical

Campus Life

46 sutras? It’s not helping these people at all.” It’s not what my academia was ever about. It was never about the pursuit of taking other people’s information and putting it in a book. You cannot just extract someone’s whole experience and exploit it for yourself. And that’s what academia is. They asked, “Why aren’t you studying your own people? Why are you studying us?” And I was like, “I don’t know.” I didn’t have any answers to any of these questions. I just knew that I needed to do something more hands on.

When I was at Yale, I worked for two different families, babysitting the whole two years. One couple were immigrants, and they were both physics professors. The other couple were both Yale Law alumni. The mom in that couple was a professor at the law school, and the dad had a practice in the city. That summer I [told the mother that] “my dad wants me to go to law school, “Yeah, my dad wants me to go to law school. But I’ll never be a lawyer. I could never do that. I could never exploit people. I’m a good person.” She said, “You know there are other things you can do with a law degree, right?” And I was like, “What? I wish I could help immigrants, and I wish I could help the Tibetans, and I want to help the Natives!” She told me that she was an immigrant from Ireland. She was a big advocate for human rights. She told me to look into it and ask me questions. I think at this

point I thought I wasn’t smart enough to go to law school. I had just gotten my degree from Yale? I graduated with honors and had gotten mostly straight A’s, and I was still second-guessing myself? All this work I did to unlearn these behaviors, and I still have [those feelings] now, in law school.

I think a few months before graduating, Barbie and I were sitting in the Div School cafeteria and we were just so sick of it all. She mentioned, “You know when we talked about having a social media platform for women of color?” I said, “Yeah.” And she said, “Do you want to do it?” And I said, “Okay.” And she said, “Okay, I was thinking Not So Ivory Tower.” And I said, “Yeah, that seems right. That definitely seems about right.” And in that moment, we made the Instagram, we made the Twitter, we made the Tumblr. We wondered what we wanted to post. Everything saved in my phone is from this life experience. So it just started like that. It’s so cool, because I could see the stats on that account, and we have followers in Canada, the UK. It’s obviously disproportionately women followers, but we still have the men there. We still have white women following us, but if they step out of line, we don’t deal with that. It’s really a space where we don’t have to educate people. I don’t want people to feel like they need to do that labor on the blog or on any of the posts, or anything like that. It’s community, and it’s about a space for us. I’m really open to other people viewing it,

but being quiet. I had to go through that lesson of being quiet and listening and learning from other people, and I think other people should have that opportunity too. I really want people to connect, and we could all cry into our textbooks together and be miserable together, and laugh at our pain together. And that’s kind of what it’s about. It’s about this big network of all these women of color in academia.

People are connecting on social media. People will tell me, “Oh yeah, I send my stuff to my sister, or my best friend all the time.” And yes, this is what we wanted. Yes, we post ridiculous things all the time, and yes, I clown on white people all [the] time, but ... we like, need it? And it’s so fulfilling to hear people talk about it, and to hear [that] people were really affected by it. Barbie and I are so conflicted all the time because we actively expose how horrible academia is, but at the same time, we kinda agree on this view that you need to learn the colonizer’s language so you can learn to perfect it, so you can learn to outsmart them. You need it to take them down from the inside. And a lot of people don’t have that view – some are like, “Academia is BS, I don’t want to have anything to do with it.

It’s elist. It’s classist.” And of course it is. But you need people like us to do heavy lifting to make way for bigger changes. There are people who totally

do that work outside of academia. It’s really about learning this language and subverting it and repurposing and redistributing it. That’s what Barbie tells me all the time; you really gotta go in and subvert the white man’s language. Subvert their tools. Our platform is trying to redistribute these ideas of how we go through academia.

Devika: If you were to reflect on your experiences in higher education, what resources, support systems, and opportunities do you think you were provided as a woman of color, and how did those compare to what you saw being handed to white women or men in the field?

Ryann: I was so conflicted about this idea of affirmative action coming out of high school because everything I ever heard was, “Affirmative action is like reverse racism” – which doesn’t exist. I was so confused because my dad raised me with this whole ethic of “Work hard, work hard, work hard.”

I work hard. I work hard, and I deserve to be here at UCLA. I’ve come a very, very long way.

At Yale, it was not so much about the institution reaching out to me and helping me — it was about the student groups and being involved in the

Campus Life

47 student movements. Reaching out and being like: “You need to come be with us. What do you need?” It was that community. That was kind of the moment I realized I needed to seek out what I needed because the institutions don’t give a shit about people of color. They are not going to reach out to us and make sure we are getting what we need until we raise our voices and become angry. And they are like, “Woah, woah, woah.

Calm down. You guys are protesting and getting crazy.” That is why there are so many student demands by students of color, and I think slowly we are making progress in the institution. I think [these] spaces do exist but they are not always visible to us. [Universities] admit students of color because they want to put us on their brochures, and they want to show the world how diverse they are. But when they get us here they do not want us to do anything else.

Jhemari: I think you actually touched on that earlier, when we were talking about learning the language of the colonizer. The theme for this FEM issue is life and death, so a question we want to ask you is: What is at stake for women of color attending grad school, attending an elite university institution, and learning the language of the colonizer in order to forward a better future for all of us?

color.” [I read] their tweets and I want to repost all of them because they are amazing. So, I got more into the Twitter thing, but it is harder to keep up with the blogs. We would do “Women of Color in Academia Wednesdays” [posts], but we fell off the train with that just because it was kind of difficult. There are good Cardi B and Beyoncé memes that Barbie posts.

She is really into the crying Kim Kardashian stuff and Kris Jenner ones. I like to poke fun and clown on white dudes a lot. The ones that are us crying through the pain are the most relatable, like struggling to wake up in the morning.

I feel like once people start me on these subjects I really cannot stop. I could really go forever and I have a lot of feelings about it. I feel like the work and the anger never ends, and we have to utilize our anger to do these types of things when we are constantly told to be respectful and polite since we are in academia. I was a different person back then. It takes a lot of struggle. A lot of tears and frustration, and I did not have a lot of close friends and I had to seek that out. I wish we did the blog when we were in school, but I needed the transformation. It really keeps me going and I love it.

Ryann: I have this attitude just walking around campus when I think about everything I have been through. I feel so grateful, and I feel that I am walking with so much on my shoulders, not a burden, but I feel so powerful now that I have reflected on so much in my life. Like where my ancestors came from, how could they even have ever imagined me being here? How could they have ever imagined me being in a place like this? These institutions were never made for us. We can acknowledge this now, but we are reminded constantly and it is very aggressive the way the universities do it.

[In] every library and every building and even in the law school, there are pictures of white people staring down at you as you are studying in peace, and I feel the burden of this task, but I feel very powerful [knowing] that I am here.

I am constantly reminding myself to check myself, to remember that I am privileged to be here. I was raised with the idea of “Work hard, work hard, work hard,” and “You are in school because you work hard.” But no, I am here because I have the privilege and the opportunity to work hard and be here to decolonize the academy and institution, [breaking] down the ivory tower. This is hard work, but we were given a path led by our ancestors, and we get to do this sacred work of breaking down the institution.

That’s something special I didn’t walk with when I was an undergrad, and now I do, and I remind myself that when I am crying over midterms. So many people need a break from academia, or decide never to come back, and I respect and get that, because everyone’s form of survival is different, and for me I think it is the work I need to be doing. I know it is something I have the ability to do, and it feels like an obligation for me — an obligation towards women who still can’t do it, who still can’t survive in academia and uphold their mental health, or who do not have the opportunity or privilege to work hard.

We are working for all these people, and as much as we are in the academic world, I think that people of color are constantly reminding themselves to be connected to the outside world. We are are working harder to bring this back to our communities in a way. I want to avoid the savior or condescending role that academic language brings, and I think there is ways we can transform what we take from the institution and bring it back to the community. How we become leaders, and learning when our voices are appropriate to be there and when not.

Devika: So, what are your favorite memes from your account?

Ryann: Oh my god. Right now I am really digging the Frodo memes. Barbie is good at pulling stuff from Twitter. I recently jumped on her account and I was like, “Wow, we follow so many amazing scholars and women of Campus Life