BARBARA KRUGER: FEM Spring 2017

WWWW

EDITOR’S NOTE Unlike our winter print issue, this one does not have a theme.

Despite that, all the people who have contributed to this collection of feminist writing and art have once again shown that at the end of the day we do have a collective mission – to denaturalize power, and to understand how it infiltrates the fabric of our bodies, lives, and even our activisms. This is why our cover story – a conversation with artist Barbara Kruger – is so poignant. Kruger lends this issue a sense of direction with her questions – “Who is free to choose? Who is beyond the law? Who is healed? Who is housed? Who is silenced? Who salutes the longest? Who prays loudest? Who dies first? Who laughs last?”

I am eternally proud of and humbled by FEM writers who continue to engage in this critical thought and turn their focus not just on things that are ostensibly capitalist, racist, etc., but also our own organizing and the way we serve our communities. The Campus Life section in this issue is dedicated to exploring what UCLA – both a university and a corporation – can do to better support survivors of sexual assault. Every time I read what FEM writers have to say, I am reminded that this print issue is only one contribution to a rich tradition of feminist art and writing, not just on campus but in the world.

Our design director, Maddy Pease, continues to be the unstoppable force that makes this print issue happen – and makes my job so, so much easier. This issue is only possible because of the dedication and drive that FEM staff members have. We are growing in numbers every quarter, and now at the end of the year we are close to an all-time high of a hundred staff members.

And this print issue feels like a fitting end to what has been a phenomenal year for FEM. -Tulika Varma

2

B

Truth Justice

3

& The Intersectional Way

4

By Ashley Etemadi that women have the right to explore sexuality freely. They criticize anti-BDSM feminists for shaming women who participate in sexually “deviant” practices that can be individually liberating.

When “Fifty Shades of Grey” came out, the kink community took to the internet to criticize the film Feminism has a alongside the anti-BDSM hordes. However, the complicated history kink community directed their critiques at the film’s misreprewhen it comes to sentation of BDSM culture. Proponents of BDSM argue that BDSM sex. Specifically, the relies entirely on informed consent, in which partners mutually conversation around decide on roles and boundaries, such that the specific sex play will BDSM — practices be self-identified and safe. of bondage, discipline, domination and submisAccording to the Facebook page for a BDSM 101 workshop hosted sion, and sadomasochism at UCLA by the Bruin Consent Coalition, professional dominatrix — has been a topic of much Mistress Justine Cross taught students “how to use BDSM as a way contest. The feminist schol- of understanding the importance of negotiation and consent” at arship on BDSM roughly a time when rape culture is endemic to culture and politics. BDSM splits into two camps: those participants argue that when sexual partners mutually decide on who argue that BDSM has the boundaries of consent before sex, it is less likely that these its roots in rape culture, boundaries will be crossed, accidentally or otherwise, during the pedophilia, and misogyny, actual act. and those who argue that BDSM makes up a valid, consensual expression of sexuality.

But is the BDSM community truly the consent-based safe-haven it claims to be? According to KinkyMinds’ 2013 survey “Consent!: A It is always easy to pick a side. But it is neither wise nor honest study of consent violations in de Dutch BDSM-scene,” 64.4 percent to form a hard and fast judgement on BDSM as a whole since it of the respondents had experienced multiple consent violations, makes up a highly complex and diverse sexual subculture. Never- with at least 35 percent of such violations classified as “abuse” theless, we can take the principal points of the two arguments to or violent. In January of 2012, after the kink dating site FetLife gain a more nuanced understanding on the subject. censored women accusing prominent FetLife members of sexual assault by deleting their online posts, the National Coalition for In the first camp, feminists like Andrea Dworkin and Judith Sexual Freedom revealed a 50 percent higher occurrence of conButler rally behind the second-wave war cry that “the personal sent violation in BDSM circles than the general population. BDSM’s is the political” to condemn BDSM for reproducing misogyny in theoretical emphasis on consent evidently has not been put into the private sphere. This argument focuses on how BDSM largely practice by its participants. revolves around eroticizing mistreatment — or as anti-BDSM feminists would say, eroticizing violence and abuse. When BDSM In her 2015 article for The Daily Dot titled “Why I Left the BDSM was popularized by the “Fifty Shades of Grey” franchise, the film Community,” Ayako Black recounts her introduction to BDSM and was criticized widely, even by mainstream publications like The At- how her first dom partner used “kink to justify actually raping” lantic and Huffington Post, for its glorification of abuse and often her. She explains how she watched with horror as the BDSM comdangerously-fuzzy boundaries of consent. Feminist scholars also munity ignored many consent violations like those that happened critique dominant and submissive relationships like those of “Dad- to her and her friends. Black, a sex-worker who is “100 percent dy-dom” and “Little-girl” for fetishizing pedophilia. Consequently, pro-sex and pro-kink,” argues that the “BDSM community pays the argument follows that BDSM has its roots in rape culture by lip service to consent and negotiations” while ignoring its own eroticizing dominance, and feminists who subscribe to this arguproblems with consent. She writes that “rape culture is alive and ment often criticize practitioners of BDSM as anti-feminist. well in the BDSM community,” in spite of the best intentions.

On the other hand, feminists like Gayle Rubin and Dorothy Allison At the end of the day, it is totally fine to participate in BDSM as defend BDSM practices from a sex-positive perspective, arguing long as we are acting consensually and being safe. We should

not be shamed, or called anti-feminist for personal sexual preferences. These are good lessons from sex-positive feminists.

But the bigger issue is the tangled social ties of BDSM to rape culture and pedophilia. The contradiction here is that the BDSM community claims that BDSM is not abuse, while abuse occurs regularly in the BDSM community. When the BDSM scene claims that BDSM cannot be abuse, discourse on sexual violence is reduced to a false binary: that sex and abuse are always separate, that BDSM and abuse can never overlap because of consent.

The BDSM community’s history of protecting rapists while attempting to police the experience of sexual assault is indefensible. It is important to understand that defending this inclination within the BDSM community becomes cooperative with the active silencing and harm of survivors and victims of consent violation.

For individual consenting practitioners, BDSM can be a tool for sexual discovery and growth. However, the BDSM community must first and foremost defend and protect victims of sexual assault. Members of the community must relentlessly examine their own circles for abusers and abuser-apologists.

5 | Dialogue

In December 2015, J.K. Rowling announced the actors playing the beloved “Harry Potter” trio in the sequel stage play, “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.” As images of the actors circulated around various social media, some fans drew attention to Noma Dumezweni, a Black actress, who was set to be Hermione Granger in the play. “Cursed Child” brought out the worst in some fans, who claimed not to be racist, but found the casting of the iconic brainiac not just unfaithful, but insulting to the book series. Rowling noted, however, that the casting of a Black Hermione was not inaccurate: the book series specified her bushy hair and large front teeth, but never anything about her race. Many fans defended their argument by citing the “Harry Potter” films as a better translation of the character. Though, it is interesting to note that actress Emma Watson, who played Hermione Granger in the films, lacked the trademark features stated in the book. Why then, is it so groundbreaking to imagine one of the most clever, articulate, and generation-defining characters as a woman of color? Why, unless the words Black, Latinx, Asian, or Native American prefix the description of a character, do we assume they are white?

fall into a particular model when converted to the screen.

This is not to say some female characters aren’t white.

For example, it could be argued that Suzanne Collins intended for Katniss Everdeen, the heroine of “The Hunger Games,” to be a white girl, despite being described as having “olive skin.” However, the issue to me, was the description of the actress desired for the role in the movie adaptation: “She should be Caucasian, between ages 15 and 20, who could portray someone ‘underfed but strong,’ and ‘naturally pretty underneath her tomboyishness.’” Limiting the criteria to white women prevents women of color from even trying for these roles, whether or not that is the “look” the casting directors are searching for in the end. It is instances like these that create hope for fans of the books when they hear of upcoming adaptations, and destroy them when the actors are announced. Authors allow ambiguity to dictate the actors chosen for book-to-screen roles, which ultimately result in “palatable” actors that don’t represent their audiences.

So, how do we fix it? We give them a reason not to mess it up in the first place. Promote underrated fiction that represents various groups. Create fiction that represents various groups. I, personally, am working on an urban fantasy writing project with a queer woman of color as the protagonist, but I shouldn’t be the only one.

Give us the trans Latina on a quest to save her family from a three-headed dragon or the curvy Filipina heiress protecting her father’s money from power-hungry thieves.

Don’t give them a reason to muddle the character descriptions; tell them explicitly that these are the characters you are writing. And if anyone hearing this is worried that it will affect the story in any way— it won’t. If they are written correctly, they will be seen as characters before they are seen as any one aspect of their identity.

BW

In middle school, I used to read a lot. I loved getting my hands on whatever Young Adult fiction was gracing the shelves at Barnes & Noble. Whether it be the under-the-table tradeoffs of the “Twilight” books at lunch or the preachings of all of John Green’s quirky romance novels, I loved immersing myself in popular fiction. The best part of any book— for me and for many readers— was always the characters. From the villains we love to hate to the heroes that make us burst into tears at an uncivilized hour, the thing that draws us to our favorite characters is that they are all relatable. Relatability can be anything: their relationship with their parents, their personality traits, or even their choice in sneakers. The more there is to relate to, the more we empathize and see ourselves in them. Usually, authors only specify the personality and unique features of characters, leaving the rest to reader interpretation. So, you can understand why it’s difficult for readers of various marginalized groups to relate to a character from a written work and then see them portrayed as thin, heterosexual, cisgender, and white in film and television adaptations.

After nearly two decades of ingraining the image of a white Hermione Granger into our heads, the introduction of Black Hermione Granger validated Black female “Harry Potter” fans. It did not change the story, but it changed the way we felt about ourselves. We were not put into a mold. We were not regarded as “Other.” We were the brightest witches of our age.

Thank you, Hermione, for reminding me that some of the strongest characters can look just like me.

The growth of female protagonists in YA fiction is heartwarming, to say the least, but those protagonists tend to Gendertainment | 6

A Counternarrative to the Assumed Patriarchy of Middle Eastern Families

By Ariana Damavandi From down the hall I hear my grandfather reciting commands to my 6-year-old brother.

“The knight moves like an ‘L,’ two places one way and one more to the side.”

“Remember, your bishops can never touch the tiles of the other color.”

“Always protect your King; when you leave him out, you risk everything.”

The sounds of clicking and tapping wood fill the silences between his instructions, while my brother repeats the names of each piece and practices their movements. I sit on the floor, eavesdropping from the other room and trying to mimic the lessons on the beige carpeting.

This scene is a classic trope — fathers passing on strategy, knowledge, and control from one generation of boys to the next, while mothers and daughters are exiled to hallways and backrooms.

Given the context of my Iranian, Muslim, immigrant family, it seems even more apt. Or at least, that’s the assumption produced by countless films, such as, “Not Without My Daughter,” “Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot,” and “Towelhead.” In each of these movies, there is the domineering man and the silenced woman presented as the standard in the many differing cultures throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

my grandmother and her nine sisters were always at the helm, even before coming to the United States.

I grew up surrounded by women as primary breadwinners, academics, doctors, artists, and business owners. From my perspective, the women of our family were always the most outspoken, with the strongest voices and the most to say. My opinions were encouraged and my thoughts were valued by our fathers, brothers, and uncles — those who many assume to be the “heads” of the family. My own shy, introverted inclinations were more a point of contention among relatives than my opinionated tendencies.

For me, women’s empowerment was a given, and gender roles were far from strictly enforced. I was not raised thinking my brother was the prized boy that I would always come second to. My grandfather cooked and acted as the homemaker, while my grandmother went to work at her own business six days a week. I was put in an otherwise all boy’s basketball league and urged to play outside, in the dirt, as much as I wanted. My family taught me to revel in my own independence and intellect. The only indication that I was different from my brother was the lack of those faithful chess lessons.

Suffice to say, Middle Eastern families are just as complex as any other family, and there are scores of women who come from a similar background and were raised in the same way I was. They grew up to work, create, and contribute to culture and society, even if they are rarely acknowledged by mainThese portrayals of brown (and mostly Muslim) men in Euro-Amer- stream beacons of white feminism. If Middle Eastern women ican mass media create a general misconception about regional do achieve such recognition, they often share similar stories culture that is then absorbed into larger societal perceptions. Those that somehow coincide with established stereotypes of a supthat elicit questions (i.e., microaggressions), such as “Your dad lets posedly culturally enforced female second-class citizenship. you wear shirts that low cut?” “Are you going to have an arranged Even so, chess playing was still something largely left to the marriage?” “You aren’t ‘practicing,’ though, right?” Though seemingly benign, these perceptions reinforce the idea that to be men and boys of my family. In a way, it became a relic of a Middle Eastern woman and empowered is to be an exception persisting patriarchy and a symbol of the societal assumptions of what my family must be like, because we’re Iranian. But — an outlier. Otherwise, the vast majority of us are cowering at the hands of our abusive husbands or under the unquestionable over the years, this longstanding tradition has started to crumble. My own father has begun to teach me control of our father’s wishes. Didn’t you know we’re married at birth and are never in existence without our the game himself, since the days of listening in male keepers? on my grandfather and little brother. The lessons are more casual than the ones overheard in my But alas, that’s completely unlike my family dynamic childhood, but they’ve made me feel as though the last bit of difference is fading away, and my place and my community as a whole. Those two-dimensional roles consistently associated with Middle Eastern people is solidifying as the head of my own future family. are something I find nearly unfathomable. In my family,

7

7 | Dialogue

e, and the Intersectional c i t s u J , Way Truth

By R obin Miller

8

omic book readers are no longer stereotyped as C “comic book guy” from “The Simpsons”; the multibillion dollar grossing films and widely publicized comic

conventions are a testament to the pop culture phenomenon that is superheroes. The ability to incite interest in people from all walks of life is, in part, due to thousands of characters and storylines that we to choose from and find one that interests you personally. New characters are being introduced all the time, as are writers who deviate from the once white cisgender male norm. This diversification both on the page and behind it is reflective of a cultural shift to put a spotlight on stories told by people who have been historically underrepresented in the medium of comic books and fiction as a whole.

Many characters who are either female, non-white, or queer, have often been very poorly written or lacked adequate authenticity. This often insensitive writing is most likely due to the fact that these groups of people had little to no voice in the writing or editing aspect of the industry during the time that most of the iconic heroes were created. In an industry predominantly run and created by white men, many oppressed groups have been problematically characterized over the years.

It seems that almost all female characters that have been written by men are often delegated to the role of love interests, damsels-in-distress, or face horribly sexist mischaracterizations, all the while running around in completely impractical costume designs.

Female characters are often killed off repeatedly and brutally for the sake of “man pain”; the death of a female character provides an easy and abundant source of angst for male characters. Even though some of the women killed off were heroes themselves, the likes of Mary Jane, Gwen Stacy, Elektra, and Jean Grey have been dying as plot devices for decades. Due to the various ongoing continuities in the Marvel and DC universe many characters habitually die and are brought back to life only for the same fate to befall them again; women especially are “fridged”, that is, killed and brutalized far more frequently than their male counterparts.

When killing them isn’t impactful enough, male writers use rape as a way to further humiliate and destroy female characters. In the critically acclaimed storyline “The Killing Joke”, Batgirl was not only paralyzed by the Joker but brutally raped by him as well; the company’s censors didn’t allow for explicit images but the allusion to her sexual assault was obvious. While there is a market for gritty comics and difficult themes, they are far too often dealt with poorly, and this traumatic plot device becomes the norm for most female characters merely because writers don’t know how to write female character development without using a shock factor.

Poor and borderline offensive writing comes with the territory of characters who have existed since World War II, but just because this is the norm doesn’t mean it should be acceptable and unchanging.

99| Gendertainment

However, in recent years, Marvel and DC Comics have taken strides in diversifying their company by hiring writers from different backgrounds, both in writing style and in gender, sexual orientation, or race, thereby adding diversity to the staff and stories of the company. The goal is to create stories which are not only captivating and well-written but relatable, like heroes who deal with conflicts outside of just the physical realm. Internal struggles are what drive character growth, and comics have never shied away from hard-hitting topics such as drug use, mental health, homophobia, sexism, racism, and prejudice. The key is handling these issues with care and choosing the best writer for the job. This new standard, while aggravating to some older fans, is key to handling socially imperative issues. The medium of fiction does not erase the reality of the issues discussed, and the writing to be as authentic as possible, thus a person of color is better suited to discuss racism than a white writer.

Some new Marvel writers are beginning to offer this much-needed diversity in the comic industry. For example, Yona Harvey, a poet and professor by trade, is now the first Black woman to ever write a solo series for the character of Storm, a staple of the X-Men franchise and one of the most famous African-American characters of all time. Marvel has also hired Gabby Rivera, an openly queer Latina woman to write the new “America” series about America Chavez, who is also queer and Latina.

Not only are both of these women experienced in literature outside of the comic book industry, they are also more qualified to deal with the topics of race and sexual orientation genuinely.

Yet, the introduction of diversity both on the page and behind it has often been called out by some fans as a gimmick. The introduction of Kamala Khan, or Ms. Marvel, disproved this theory by creating a commercial success: a superhero who is a Muslim teenage girl of Pakistani descent. Ms. Marvel’s success is in part due to her writer and co-creator, G. Willow Wilson, who herself is a Muslim woman and is able to authentically deal with themes of sexism, Islamophobia, and coming-of-age struggles in her writing.

The change in the industry is apparent on comic shelves, conventions, and online popularity. Not only are there more titles led by women and people of color with Hugo and Eisner awards to match, but conventions and cosplayers are embracing these new characters and fresh storylines. The plethora of titles to choose from allows any interested reader to delve into whatever character or team they are drawn to in the hopes that the material resonates with them. Fans, both new and old alike, are drawn to these stories because of how they relate to them, the only difference is that now there is a market for an audience beyond the white straight male persuasion.

In the past three years alone, 124 cases of sexual violence and harassment have been reported across all University of California (UC) campuses. Media outlets such as The Daily Californian and Mercury News were able to obtain access to the reports, though heavily redacted, through a California Public Records Act request. The documents described faculty, staff, and contractors who physically assaulted, passed inappropriate comments, or made unwanted sexual advances towards others, from Jan. 1 2013, to April 6, 2016.

Title IX investigations showed that seven percent of the cases involved sexual assault, and twenty-five percent of those cases involved UC faculty. The Daily Californian found that two-thirds of those who violated the policy were dismissed from the UC system — suggesting that one-third of the sexual offenders may still be employed by the UC system.

The University of California sexual misconduct policy states that “[the university] is committed to creating and maintaining a community dedicated to the advancement, application and transmission of knowledge and creative endeavors through academic excellence, where all individuals who participate in university programs and activities can work and learn together in an atmosphere free of harassment, exploitation, or intimidation.”

The policy further states that the university will respond quickly to all reports of Prohibited Conduct, and will take preventative and disciplinary measures as they see appropriate. At UCLA, however, while 25 cases were found to have violated the University of California’s sexual misconduct policy, only 12 of those cases resulted in dismissal, nonrenewal of contracts, or settlement resulting in resignation. The other 13 cases, over half of the cases reported to have occurred at UCLA, resulted in demotion, sexual assault training, a no-contact order with the complainant, or a fine of up to $7,500.

It is very telling that the majority of Title IX cases at UCLA do not lead to any long-term punishments for the perpetrators, regardless of what the UC policy states. UCLA is not unique in this injustice — as of June 15, 2016 there are 246 sexual violence cases under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education across 195 colleges and universities (including UCLA and several other UC campuses) into whether or not each report has been handled appropriately by the school’s administration.

In a recent example of gross abuse of power, UCLA professor Gabriel Piterberg returned to teaching this year at UCLA, despite several reports of him sexually taking advantage of his graduate students. Despite these accusations, he was simply fined $3,000 and was suspended for 11 weeks. Additionally, the suspension only took place two years after the settlement, while he was in Italy for a 2016 fellowship. The consequences Piterberg faced were incredibly lenient and kept quiet by the university. The university even went to great lengths to subdue on-campus protests that erupted after his reinstatement, threatening the protesters with suspension and disciplinary action.

In a statement that was released in response to the criticism levelled at the UC system for its silence on the prevalence of sexual assault on its campuses, UC spokesperson Claire Doan said, “most of the cases included in this record’s release were investigated and adjudicated under policies and processes that are no longer in effect.” Doan went on to clarify that the UC system has been taking steps to improve and change the way Title IX cases are handled, including implementing new system-wide changes.

The majority of the documents that include Title IX investigations, and sexual assault investigations have never been publicly released. Still, it is important that universities are held accountable for their staff and faculty. If they violate the sexual misconduct policy, the university cannot treat them leniently in order to save face. Many systemic improvements must be made with respect to reporting and punishing assault before, as the UC policy on sexual misconduct so proudly states, “all individuals who participate in University programs and activities can work and learn together in an atmosphere free of harassment, exploitation, or intimidation.”

Campus Life | 10

11 | Dialogue

At Women’s March LA a few months ago, I spotted a white woman holding up a pretty, floral sign that said, “Protect Mother Earth.”

However bland the statement, it fit in well with some other environmental signs I had seen there. But then she flipped the sign over, and it declared, in big pink letters, “ALL LIVES MATTER.” That sign accurately depicts much of the mainstream environmental movement. In Euro-America, the movement is dominated by the white, mostly male, elite, and in other parts of the world the rhetoric is controlled by the upper-class elite in NGO’s (non-governmental organizations) or non-profits funded by the same few foundations or corporations (controlled by white men). Prominent, well-funded environmental “activist” groups call for the protection of the Earth, but in the same breath deny or ignore the reality that Indigenous people and poor people of color are most susceptible to the harms of climate change and the forces that caused it (see: colonialism and global capitalism). Some of these groups include the National Wildlife Federation, the Climate Reality Project founded by Al Gore, the Sierra Club founded by John Muir, the World Wildlife Fund, the Environmental Defense Fund, Greenpeace, and Nature Conservancy.

With the exception of Greenpeace, which is run by a white woman, all of these groups are headed by white men.

In his article “The Racist History of Environmentalism” for The New Yorker, Jedediah Purdy traces American environmentalism back to its iconic figures: Thoreau, Gifford Pinchot, and John Muir. Many of these men worked to establish “national parks” and public land after seizing that land from Indigenous peoples. Teddy Roosevelt worked with his lesser-known contemporary Madison Grant to establish “public access” land and supposedly allow the American people to enjoy the wilderness. But they adopted a sort of high-culture “literary romanticism” that, according to Purdy, theorized nature as a way to “escape the utilitarian grind of lowland life and, as Muir wrote, to see the face of God in the high country.” Nature was seen as noble, aristocratic: qualities to be preserved.

And so, Purdy argues that for these aristocratic conservationists, “it was an unsettlingly short step from managing forests to managing the human gene pool.” Roosevelt sent Pinchot as a delegate to multiple sessions of the International Eugenics Congress, and also appointed him member of the advisory council of the American Eugenics Society. Eugenics is the “science” of “improving” the human race by breeding out certain “unfavorable characteristics.”

It was an ideology widely adopted by Nazis during World War II and is closely, if not fundamentally, linked to white supremacy and racial “purity.”

Of course most environmentalists today would go to great lengths to distance themselves from this history. Environmental racism and environmental justice have entered their general lexicon. POC-led grassroots organizing is growing. However, as Purdy points out, the priorities of old environmentalism still weigh down on contemporary activists, limiting the strategies available to them. Major legislation that claims to protect the environment, such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, are hardly written with a special consideration for the vulnerability of poor communities of color.

The problem with the mainstream environmental movement today is that it has failed to adopt an anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-imperialist, transnational feminist perspective. This perspective is essential if the movement wants to do any good at all.

Popular environmental discourse is riddled with the language of neoliberal capitalism. White environmentalists continue to wax poetic about “sustainability” and “everyone can do their part,” imploring us to take five-minute showers, turn off the lights, and go vegan. They don’t realize that their so-called dream of “sustainability” is only an illusion in a capitalist system because capitalism is inherently unsustainable. Capitalism fetishizes constant growth, development, and “progress” — it is easy to see how this might lead to problems in a world with limited resources that everyone does not have equal access to. A new brand of “green capitalism” has emerged, and it leads us all to believe that we just need to buy different (and usually more expensive) environmentally-friendly products, and support incentives for corporations to “cut emissions” (see: carbon trading, full cost accounting). “Green capitalism” claims that we need to simply shift consumption patterns rather than rethink consumption itself.

But environmentalism also has to ask itself some deeper philosophical questions. One fundamental assumption of the movement is that “nature” is a stable category, as is “human,” and that they are both separate. Anthropocentric environmentalism advocates for the protection of nature because it is a resource that can be “sustainably” used.

Ecocentric environmentalism attempts to remedy this by operating on a model that does not see humans and nature as separate but rather a part of one larger system. However, in both modes of thought, there is rarely any critical analysis about how the very categories of “nature” and “human” have historically been selectively applied and withdrawn to justify colonialism and the subjugation of people of color, especially women of color.

Colonialism relied upon ideologies that depict “lands unknown” or terra incognita as exploitable, available, passive, awaiting penetration by the masculine thrust of European science, technology, and development. This schema also includes the people living on that land, seeing them as extensions of it and simply as more resources to be exploited. People of color are seen as monstrous, barbaric, inhumane – images that are still very much alive today.

Remember Darren Wilson’s testimony after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson? He said, “...[Brown] looked up at me and had the most intense aggressive face. The only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon, that’s how angry he looked.”

(Emphasis mine).

This literal dehumanization serves to justify the exploitation and murder of people of color. When environmentalists do not think critically about the “natural” and the “human,” they perpetuate white supremacy. It is easy for white ecocentrists to claim that humans and nature are not separate, that we are just “human animals.” But this discourse does nothing to account for political implications of that statement — what about the already-existing, active and widespread dehumanization of large sections of the human population?

Environmental justice, food justice, and anti-racist movements

12

It’s easy to see why the goals of food justice are radically opposed to the forces of global capitalism. Capitalism aims to create an illusion of a homogenous consumer demand and market a single product to meet that demand, which makes no room for “culturally-appropriate,” “locally-grown” food.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) claims on its website: “U.S. consumers demand variety, quality, and convenience in the foods they consume. As Americans have become wealthier and more ethnically diverse, the American food basket reflects a growing share of tropical products, spices, and imported gourmet products.” But why does this “demand” exist? Where did it come from? I suppose it’s great that some Americans now have access to coffee from Guatemala, bananas from Peru, and vegetables and nuts from Mexico and Chile. But it is well-documented that these crops are grown in large amounts in these countries at the expense of what local communities there need to survive. US-driven global capitalism forces these countries into growing cash Euro-American powers and neoliberal capitalism have cracked open crops for export en masse, draining their resources and leaving their own population impoverished and displaced. and exploited ecosystems and communities all over the globe.

Amor writes: “Coastal communities whose livelihoods are bound with small-scale fishing have their economies decimated by invasive In the meantime, white vegans and environmentalists write lengthy blog posts about the importance of shopping local industries ... with little regard to the long-term environmental at your neighborhood produce store with no recognition of or even short-term social effects. This not only creates a cheap how food justice must absolutely be organized around people labor force dependent on large corporate (and oftentimes illegal) entities ... but also severs the community’s relationship to the land of color, who are more likely to live in food deserts. The USDA also marks poor POC as target consumers of high-fat ... Commercial overfishing disrupts marine ecosystems, threatens the food security of [local] communities ... and effectively renders dairy products and fast food, which are cheaper than fresh these communities environmentally defenseless against the effects produce (easily available to middle-class vegans at their local Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods). In a study published in the of global warming.”

UC Irvine Law Review, Andrea Freeman uses the term “food oppression” to describe how health disparities between AfriBut you don’t see white environmentalists talking about colonialcan-American and Latinx populations and white populations ism and its direct descendent, global capitalism, as the driving are exacerbated by the USDA’s efforts to funnel cheese-heavy forces of ecological destruction. The environments of colonized fast food (Taco Bell, McDonald’s) into low-income communipeoples have been drastically re-shaped by colonial occupation ties. Food oppression, according to Freeman, is “institutional, and exploitation; colonized peoples were forced to give up their systemic, food-related action or policy that physically debilitraditional cropping practices and grow, in huge monocropped tates a socially subordinated group.” fields, cash crops that colonial powers could then export and consume. Amor explains that much of the famine in sub-Saharan Africa today can be attributed to the continuing cultivation of cash Environmentalism is not a politically neutral movement that crops in lieu of food grown in polycropped fields which could have everyone can get behind because “we’re all Earthlings!”

Environmentalism is not about humans banding together to prevented desertification. “protect Mother Earth.” The notion that this is a movement Long story short: when white environmentalists talk about “glob- that somehow unites all human beings and puts us all on the same team is false; climate change and the destruction of al hunger” without talking about colonialism, it’s all nonsense.

Euro-America continues to drain resources from former colonies ecosystems and indigenous communities have their roots in European colonialism and Euro-American imperialist power to power its ongoing capitalist “development,” leaving those and it’s time white environmentalists take note. Environcountries unable to feed their own people. mentalism can be, and should be, a movement that uses an anti-racist, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist framework to Food justice should be – and is slowly becoming – an integral critique and dismantle the scaffolding of global capitalism part of the conversation on environmental justice. Just Food, a itself. Without that, the movement is a meaningless placebo food justice advocacy group, defines food justice as “communities exercising their right to grow, sell, and eat healthy food. that lets white people pat themselves on the back for being “politically active” without actually doing any critical thinkHealthy food is fresh, nutritious, affordable, culturally-approing. It will, at best, only buy us time before the inevitable priate, and grown locally with care for the well-being of the land, workers, and animals. People practicing food justice leads self-destruction that capitalism will bring upon us. to a strong local food system, self-reliant communities, and a healthy environment.” have to be intimately tied together, because environmental policy and legislations on waste disposal and zoning disproportionately affect people of color. For example, most toxic waste disposal sites in American cities are located in low-income neighborhoods, which are mostly inhabited by people of color. The Dakota Access Pipeline was rerouted through Standing Rock when the residents of Bismarck, a predominantly white town, expressed concerns about the pipeline polluting their water. Globally, communities that feel the greatest impact of climate-related disasters are poor people of color in low-lying agricultural communities. In an article for Bitch Media, Bani Amor argues, “There is no clearer indication of which lives matter to a society than how it treats its people in the aftermath of a big storm. Though environmental racism is usually defined as exposure to hazardous environmental conditions due to place-based structural discrimination, it’s timely to focus on the domino effect of factors that leave Black- and brown-majority coastal regions vulnerable to hazards exacerbated by global warming.”

13

Narnia The girls wore woolen stockings beneath their skirts and no one looked up on the walk home when the sky started to cry in scarlet rivulets, staining the snow beneath our feet. And when I started to shiver in my cotton dress and thin tights, she promised me a world where we would rule together, the two of us warm and blushing in our robes and our hands tangled beneath the thick blankets she would keep on the sled. She made promises in the same easy way she painted sweetness on my lips, sugary kisses surprising me when I shut my eyes, dropping cherries between my teeth and twisting the stem in secret. The little knots were presents pulled from fists, like the twist of my stomach when she wrapped our frostbitten fingers together and ran her nails across my wrist. It was all our little joke, these pale smiles and this burning kiss.

But it was when we got close to the shards of light that would be our home that everything fell apart. I never thought of how dangerous it was to build a wonderland in winter, where one day of sun could melt the memories away. The man with the broken face told us it was all wrong, that two queens could not rule the world. And her face shattered and sharpened until I couldn’t remember what we’d whispered about in that sled so long ago, and she told me we couldn’t do this in a voice so cold I almost turned to stone. I tried one last time to hold her hand, press a cherry stem into her palm to make her remember the way she used to love my big eyes, but she trembled into the shadows and now I am holding onto nothing, just our broken crowns and a faint smile. He has her now, and I trace old footsteps down past the light post, slipping a knotted stem into my pocket.

By Lauren Finkle

an iron hand in a velvet glove you must have mãos de ferro calçadas com luvas de veludo she whispered as i slept. the women that live longest have hands de ferro calçadas com luvas de veludo she made me repeat over the steaming cups of coffee we drank as the night turned cold, hers black and mine all creamy sweet. if you want anything in this life, you must never lose your hands of iron calçadas com luvas de veludo, though it will be hard when they break your wrist and call it etiquette. they will swallow the things that smell of danger, and a woman that is all fire and molten metal reeks of too much to handle. so you must have hands of iron wearing gloves de veludo, because they’ll want to marry you off the way they tried to with me, but the iron in my spine wouldn’t have it. so i worked quietly until leaving came easy, and i had enough money to leave that gilded cage. so my granddaughter, to survive in that place, and this one too, take my iron hand in a velvet glove.

Arts and Creative |1414

15 | Arts and Creative

“Who is free to choose? Who is beyond the law?

Who is healed? Who is housed? Who is silenced?

Who salutes the longest? Who prays loudest? Who dies first? Who laughs last?”

These questions, which feel both timeless and relevant to the current political climate, make up Barbara Kruger’s work “Untitled (Questions),1991.” Through her juxtaposition of popular images and introspective questions, Kruger challenges viewers to confront the foundations upon which institutions stand and question their own place within them.

Kruger is an American conceptual artist whose work has been displayed and recognized in museums around the world. She grew up in Newark, New Jersey and studied at Syracuse University and Parsons School of Design in the 1960s. She subsequently pursued a career as a graphic designer and later became a designer at Mademoiselle magazine. Although many have pointed to her experience as a graphic designer, art director and picture editor as an explanation for the approach Kruger takes in her art, she is quick to counter such justifications.

“A lot of people write that I was in advertising,” she says.

“I never worked in advertising ever, and I think, rather than say advertising, I’d rather say the difference between someone working within an art subculture and working within a design subculture for instance...is that design production is client-based on a very direct level. So you, as a maker, or a cultural producer, or what they say in design subculture, ‘creatives,’ basically solve the problem by creating someone else’s image of perfection...When I first started out, no one thought they would sell their work because work by living artists wasn’t bought. So, you know, it’s not like you were advertising yourself or advertising something, you were just trying to create commentary about what it means to visualize, textualize and musicalize the world.”

Kruger also takes umbrage with the art world’s tendency to categorize artists and their work. Although Kruger understands the role of social identities in shaping individual visions of the world, she does not believe that the resulting art should be labelled accordingly. Instead, Kruger’s mission is to create art that explores the way power functions on the basis of gender, race, class and many other determinants. “It sounds like I’m parsing words, but I don’t make political art. I think that categories are ways that people are further marginalized, so you can say ‘women’s

art’ or ‘feminist art’ or ‘Black art’ or ‘queer art’ or ‘Latino art’ or ‘Asian art’. I really contest those.”

Although labels can be perceived as unnecessarily segregating artists, the issue does not take into account the support marginalized groups must receive in order to fight against institutional discrimination. Art historian Linda Nochlin talks about this concern in her essay ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists,’ explaining, “Those who have privileges inevitably hold on to them, and hold tight, no matter how marginal the advantage involved, until compelled to bow to superior power of one sort or another.

Thus the question of women’s equality—in art as in any other realm—devolves not upon the relative benevolence or ill-will of individual men, nor the self-confidence or abjectness of individual women, but rather on the very nature of our institutional structures themselves and the view of reality which they impose on the human beings who are part of them.” The institutions that serve as the foundation of our society were not created with the intention that those who were not both white and male would succeed within them. This is demonstrated by the ways in which those who fell outside those categories were kept from education, training and opportunities within artistic spaces. As this is a systematic issue, as opposed to an individualistic one, it is important that those that still face these barriers form communities so as to create a space for themselves within the art world, as well as those that are to follow.

The art world can, at times, seem hypocritical. On the one hand, it is a space in which individuals can share their life experiences and perceptions about the world creatively. On the other hand, the art world has a culture in which one must be acquainted with its history to understand the messages artists are attempting to present. Many art movements have the mentality that they must ‘kill the father’, or in other words, they must either respond or work against the movement that came before it. As art history is not typically taught as a core class in K-12 schools, most art that is applauded by critics is not generally accessible to the general public.

Kruger contends, “Accessibility is a very variable term.

There is some work which is deeply encoded, which is not accessible to a broad population, and that’s fine. Then there are various levels of coding - you know, some artists are only understood by a very small art audience ... and some by a broader audience. To me, there is no hierarchy. I choose to make work that has broader accessibility only because I feel I am a part of that audience too, and when I first started being around art, I looked at work and I felt that it was a conspiracy against my intelligence or something because I hadn’t crashed the codes. I wasn’t educated in that. But that

16

doesn’t mean that work that is complicated in terms of code isn’t important or good. I think there are so many ways of working and my way is the way that felt most organic with who I am and where I come from.”

The questions that Kruger poses to her viewers are reminiscent of the idea that history tends to repeat itself. In 1989, a new wave of anti-abortion laws arose to undermine the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, inspiring various demonstrations in response. Kruger explains how her frustration with the political order lead to the creation of one of her most famous works, “Your Body is a Battleground.” “‘Your Body is a Battleground’ is again, the same construction of objectification and constraint on women’s bodies [that] was at work...and by the time I went to [the March on Washington ‘89], I was crying because I remember going to a march ten years before as a young girl, going to D.C., and these were the same topics.” Wanting to play her part in working against these injustices, Kruger contacted Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Rights Action League to offer her services in making a poster for the upcoming march. However, the organizations responded saying that they already had their advertising covered.

“I did it on my own and my students at the independent study program at the Whitney museum at the time went around at night, plastering the city... covering billboards all over with this image, and that’s how that happened.”

For many of us today, politically induced frustration and the desire for action feels all too familiar. The history of “Your Body is a Battleground” feels especially significant in today’s context, largely because of the repetitious nature of social movements. In this year alone, we have added yet another women’s march to the long list that has come before it. This is not to say that the efforts taken on by activists are made in vain, but it is a testament to the ways in which power plays a role within our society, and how efforts must be focused if they are to be effective in working against it.

Kruger explains, “Change is very problematic. Remember the Obama poster for change? Change is in itself not a productive or good thing necessarily. We’re in a period of more change now than ever. Change! And it’s change that does away with a lot of bloated, f-ed up conventions, but look what it does with those conventions. The irony is that the one thing that might save us is the very thing that people condemn— bureaucracy. How ironic...Let me tell you, for me, one of the most important things that I can say in this interview is that it is very difficult for me to hear people say that they’re going to vote their conscience, because the world is bigger than their narcissistic conscience, you know? You have to learn as you grow older how power repeats itself, and how you have to figure out strategic ways to impede the most destructive power. Everything works incrementally. The romantic notion of the singular revolution is a very masculinist one. It doesn’t engage the pluralism of feminism, so this was very problematic.”

17

It should not be a surprise to hear that the political sphere has not been kind to the art world. With President Trump’s proposal to entirely eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts, it can feel as though the lack of institutional support for the art world is a reflection of the actual importance art holds within our society. However, the conversations that art creates may be our only saving grace in maintaining the eminence of truth and moving forward from the turmoil that we currently find ourselves in.

Kruger explains, “What I think what art is to a certain degree is the construction of commentary, whether it’s visual or textual or musical, it takes you away from that first level of experiencing this moment to somehow not necessarily replicating it, but touching it with your own subjectivity, and in these times, just the creation of commentary on that level becomes suspicious. I always said years ago under the Bush administration that doubt became grounds for arrest, and what we’re seeing now is doubt being used in the opposite way. I mean I believe in doubt, but now, with the questioning of what is truth or what is news— this is a whole game changer now.”

“This is what’s at stake now,” she continues.

“It’s so interesting because certain issues of contemporary theory really put into question the singularity of truth, and the singularity of history, which I agree with. I think multiple histories should be told as there are multiple subjectivities, but by the taking of quotation marks and putting them around the word truth, we are living that chaos now. That’s how scary and complicated it can be, like who makes truth claims? What are facts?”

Moving forward, the question cannot be whether we need art, but how we could possibly go on without it. At a time in which members of opposing parties refuse to have a dialogue about ideological issues, we need art to better understand realities we don’t get to experience first hand.

By attempting to recognize the issues at hand through a larger context, we may be better able to ask more critical questions, and further uncover answers to these problems. How do we do this?

Kruger responds with, “I don’t know what the right question is, but...it’s about the one I feel the culture and my own body should be most engaged with and pay particular vigilance around because it’s determining the feel of a culture’s days and nights... ‘Who is healed? Who is housed? Who speaks? Who is silenced?’ You know, those are huge questions. So I don’t know that they’re the right questions, but for this body, they feel pertinent.”

We should be skeptical of ostentatious displays of concern for marginalized groups This summer, millions of people in the US will appear for the 47th round of LGBTQ+ pride parades in cities throughout the country. Turnout has been especially high in both 2015 and 2016 potentially for these two reasons: the Supreme Court decision to legalize same-sex marriage, and to show solidarity with the victims of the Orlando shooting. While it is encouraging to see the movement gaining support, some members of the LGBTQ+ community have expressed their disinterest in pride events because they feel that the support from allies, both corporations and individuals, seems to be more ostentatious than genuine. In an article published by the Guardian, Amy Sueyoshi, a lifelong San Francisco resident who identifies as genderqueer, remarks “pride really should be for queer folks. It’s not for straight people to demonstrate their queer-friendliness. I’d like that they do that in their daily lives.” Sueyoshi’s comment highlights what many LGBTQ+ “allies” are guilty of when they attend pride events: using pride as the sole event to validate one’s own status as an “ally.” This undermines the value in being an ally, which is to commit oneself to understanding the struggles of marginalized individuals and consequently using this understanding to aid these individuals in challenging the forces responsible for their oppression. By this understanding, “allyship” which is common at pride events is exposed as often an empty solidarity which treats allyship and activism as an annual trend.

The blatant irony of trendy activism is that it affords “allies” benefits, including increased number of clients for corporations and popularity on social media for individuals, while the marginalized individuals whom activism is supposed to benefit continue to suffer systematic oppression without question. As a result, supposed “allies” remain complicit with these active systems of oppression activism intends to challenge. Using “allyship” as a pretense for personal gain is harmful to social justice movements because it discourages further investigation and reform of these systems.

are trying to take down.” Spade’s description precisely conveys the issue with trendy activism. The U.S. government and private corporations utilize activist emblems to portray themselves in favorable light, similar to how disingenuous allies use activism to decorate their own images to gain popularity on social media or a larger clientele. Both practices are motivated by personal gain rather than a genuine commitment to aiding those who are systematically oppressed.

Jasbir Puar, queer theorist and professor at Rutgers University, coined the term “homonationalism” which details how major institutions display artificial support for LGBTQ+ individuals. One key way in which homonationalism operates is by establishing an additional framework of normativity within which to bind people: homonormativity. Homonormativity fosters an artificial sense of inclusion because it is a deviation from the “former” status quo; however, institutions still act as the gatekeepers, filtering which people in the LGBTQ+ community deserve to be validated based on their own notions of what is acceptable—often cis, white, gay men only. As a result, most other LGBTQ+ individuals outside of these parameters remain ignored. This trend, according to Spade, reinforces existing power structures and “legitimizes the targeting of the most vulnerable.”

Additionally, false expressions of inclusion create an illusion of diversity, where the most normative expression of queerness is recognized; this recognition allows institutions to essentially “check off” their diversity requirement, stopping at the mark which requires the least amount of commitment on their end to reap the benefits. Hence, we can see how the supposed “allyship” of these institutions is disingenuous. The sole purpose of their display of “allyship” is to qualify for the forward-thinking, “progressive” label.

Cultivating a “progressive” image is a key strategy for many major institutions to veil their unethical practices. Spade highlights this is a part of the “counterinsurgency” tactic the U.S. government uses on its citizens. As a part of counterinsurgency institutions strategize to uphold their image and “recast [themselves] as sites of freedom and liberation.” The government suppresses any opposition to its lousy ethical standards by using progressive “advancements” as distractions to re-establish its reputation as one that is aligned with the same overarching agenda for progression as the voices which question it. This deceptive tactic danIn an interview transcript published gerously dismisses the need for critical examinations of the institutions responsion Alternet, trans activist and writer ble for the oppression of marginalized communities, most often the government Dean Spade narrows in on the itself. The government displays “concern” for marginalized communities in order unsettling borrowing of activism to convince citizens that these communities are no longer oppressed because they by “major institutions and are receiving the support they need. As a result, the institution responsible for politicians [who] co-opt ideas their oppression remains uncontested. The government in its current problematic or symbols or words from form is thereby able to thrive unchallenged by repressing any resistance to its left struggles and deploy own reign, similar to how trendy activism and co-opted activism flourish under a them to shore up the facade of progressivism. very institutions of oppression that left struggles A concrete example of these efforts, according to Spade, is the U.S. military’s Politics | 18

recent move under the Obama administration to appear more “inclusive” by allowing women and LGBTQ+ people to serve. This works to convince its critics, along with the rest of the public, that the military is a peace-advocating ally. However, the military stops short of upholding a principle of peace with women and LGBTQ+ people on a global scale; without a doubt, the mass killings of civilians by the U.S. have not spared women or LGBTQ+ people in Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, or Iraq, all countries that the U.S. has bombed this year. While the military claims to be an institution that supports marginalized people, Puar’s ideas on homonormativity encourage us to be skeptical of such a pretense because it is frequently dishonest and often introduces yet another framework of normativity. For the U.S. military, that framework includes U.S. citizens only. Once we recognize how support of women and LGBTQ+ people from the U.S. military is contingent on the basis that these same people are first and foremost U.S. citizens, it becomes evident just how tentative the U.S. military’s allyship is. We can then understand how the military’s presentation of firm forward-thinking values, is merely that: a presentation.

Exploiting LGBTQ+ allyship is not a tactic exclusive to the U.S. In 2005, Israel launched “Brand Israel” to suppress the growing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement for justice in Palestine. The campaign aims to portray Israel as a modern nation, a propaganda tactic interested in cloaking the violent injustice and brutal apartheid regime which Israel enforces on Palestine. One scheme Brand Israel depends on is “pinkwashing,” a term introduced by a Queer, BDS-advocacy group Pinkwashing Israel; pinkwashing is the “cynical” utilization or exploitation of LGBTQ+ rights to cast Israel’s image in favorable light “to distract from and normalize Israeli occupation, settler colonialism and apartheid.”

Palestinian Activists Ramsey Kumsieh and Mikki Stelder state that Israel’s efforts to rebrand itself cost the state 4 million USD in 2016 alone, primarily to promote gay tourism in Tel Aviv and therefore to paint an image of the nation as a queer haven. Gay tourism is a necessary step in re-branding because it validates Israel’s “how can we be xenophobic if we’re pro-gay?” mentality which, according to Chris Godfrey from Out Magazine, is a key component of pinkwashing. Queer people are used as props to satisfy Israel’s claim to progressiveness and open-mindedness that allegedly leaves no room for xenophobia. However, supporting one marginalized community, and minimally at that, does not pardon Israel of its xenophobic apartheid policies. Even so, similar to the U.S., Israel’s domestic LGBTQ+ population faces discrimination with little concern from their government. Through its reluctance to address domestic LGBTQ+ issues and focus instead on promoting international recognition of Tel Aviv as a queer space, the Israeli government discloses its priorities. It becomes clear that its concern for the LGBTQ+ community is nothing more than a gilded display.

Pinkwashing also operates to depict Israel as a best friend to LGBTQ+ individuals, committed to protecting their queer friends from the supposedly dangerous and homophobic Palestinian people. Sarah Schulman, an opinion writer for the New York Times, describes how Muslim people are often branded as enemies of queer people and that the depiction of Muslims as “homophobic fanatics” is used opportunistically to demonize the population. The Israeli government extends this demonization of Muslim people to all Palestinian people. Palestinian people become scapegoats against which Israel must ostentatiously defend its LGBTQ+ population; this tactic works to gain public support in the Israel-Palestine conflict.

This effort to create enemies on the basis of cultural difference is outlined in Lila Abu-Lughod’s essay “Do Muslim Women Need Saving?” which describes how nation-states create cultural “others” in order to normalize and justify violence.

Using the War on Terror as an example, Abu-Lughod highlights the frequent push by the U.S. to use cultural or religious understandings, instead of political or historical ones, to justify their involvement in the War. Abu-Lughod warns that this conceptualizing of war as a product of cultural or religious difference problematically naturalizes beliefs that intervention is necessary to correct the cultural “others.” This tactic is used to persuade laypeople that other racial others are not up-to-date with “modern practices” and require American intervention due to their own incompetence and “outdated” lifestyles. Moreover, Israel’s direct effort to depict Palestinian people as against LGBTQ+ individuals erases the existence of queer Palestinian people. The positioning of queer and Palestinian as two mutually exclusive categories is a distinctly homonationalist ideology. By rejecting the possibility of queer Palestinian individuals, Israel maintains a homonormative framework for those who are “legitimately” queer.

The governments of both the U.S. and Israel are complicit in exploiting LGBTQ+ rights as a means to veil their own ruthlessness and violence. In order to fight the normalization of this practice, we must question whether or not an institution or government is legitimate in their claim of support for marginalized individuals. Spade suggests that a good test of this legitimacy is to question if the most marginalized are offered equal recognition by these institutions. We must constantly ask ourselves: am I supported by the status quo? If yes, am I also a cause that the institution claims to need to support? If yes, how are these realities in conflict? How is it that I am validated by the status quo and still in “need” of support? Consider how this support may be misplaced and instead needs to be offered to individuals without the privileges accorded by the status quo.

As long as these discrepancies in government support remain, it will be important to demand transparency in how exactly the government is supporting marginalized people. We must refuse to sustain and accept such norm which falsify the nature of diversity and inclusion, challenge hypocrisy and disingenuous allyship—only then will we enable true progress.

CAN YOU NOT? A BRIEF POLITICAL HISTORY OF MANSPLAINING

By Jhemari Quintana

“Mansplaining” is when a man, typically an individual identifying as a cisgender, heterosexual male, comments or explains something to a female-identifying or femme person in a condescending and often inaccurate or oversimplified manner. The topics usually reiterated by these male individuals are things that they do not understand or that are beyond the scope of their experiences.

For example, these men have a lower chance of having felt the fears associated with the possibility of sexual harassment and sexual assault, yet dismissively explain to women what their fears “really are.” These cis men will never experience the burden of pregnancy, yet frequently spearhead movements that threaten abortion access and basic reproductive rights. According to the Pew Research Center, women make up a little less than a quarter of all of the seats in the U.S. Federal Government, leaving the more than three-fourths of a male-dominated administration to decide laws based on what these men believe is best.

The word “mansplain” or “mansplaining” is a relatively new term, seemingly originating in 2008 following an article published

by Rebecca Solnit titled “Men Explain Things to Me.” However, mansplainers have always existed; the socialized need men feel to dominate becomes the most prevalent when they are placed in positions of power, such as in government roles. In the context of political institutions, men have long been found guilty of mansplaining to and about their women-identifying peers.

One of the earliest and most famous instances of mansplaining in U.S. politics occurred in 1776 via correspondence between Abigail Adams and her husband John Adams, a letter in which Abigail tells him to “remember the ladies”: “Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could. If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to

foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation...I would desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors.”

John Adams reassures his wife in proud mansplainer fashion, saying: “We know better than to repeal our Masculine systems. Altho they are in full Force, you know they are little more than Theory. We dare not exert our Power in its full Latitude. We are obliged to go fair, and softly, and in Practice you know We are the subjects.”

John’s letter replying to his wife, in its full context, explains how men are actually less powerful than women, given that wives control the household and the sphere of of domestic life. Women need not worry, because though they will never hold a position in government, in the eyes of John Adams, women hold power where it counts.

Abigail Adams refutes this notion in the remainder of her letter to John Adams, seeing through the facade of women being the true “Masters” of anything: “That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friend. Why then, not put it out of the power of the vicious and the Lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity with impunity. Men of Sense in all Ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the vassals of your Sex. Regard us then as Beings placed by providence under your protection and in immitation of the Supreem Being make use of that power only for our happiness.”

Politics | 20

Fast forward to the United States’ (white) women’s suffrage movement. Mr. John B. Sanford, then the Chairman of the Democratic Caucus, wrote a text for a voters’ information manual in 1911 titled, “Argument Against Women’s Suffrage”: “The mother’s influence is needed in the home. She can do little good by gadding the streets and neglecting her children. Let her teach her daughters that modesty, patience, and gentleness are the charms of a women. Let her teach her sons that an honest conscience is every man’s first political law; that no splendor can rob him nor no force justify the surrender of the simplest right of a free and independent citizen. The mothers of this country can shape the destinies of the nation by keeping in their places and attending to those duties...The kindly, gentle influence of the mother in the home and the dignified influence of the teacher in the school will far outweigh all the influence of all the mannish female politicians on earth.”

Like Adams, Sanford makes the shallow claim that because they have domestic “power” as mothers and caretakers of children, women do not need the vote or to be involved in politics. Sanford argues that maintaining the “purity” of one’s home, raising children, and tending to the needs of one’s husband are the ways in which women - as wives and mothers - should gain fulfillment. They need not seek more. Like the right to vote. Or fair wages. Or acknowledgment of their capacities and ambitions beyond the role assigned to them by conventional societal notions of gender.

On February 23, 2017, Laverne Cox went on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews to discuss the rescinding of transgender rights by the Trump Administration. Travis Weber, the director of the Center for Religious Liberty at the Family Research Council, then re-explained what Title IX was during the interview following Cox’s own explanation. As is overly common when confronted with an instance of mansplaining, Weber’s explanation as to what Title IX encompassed was inaccurate:

Not only did Cox address the various aspects of what Title IX comprises, she did so in a way that was much more detailed than Weber’s reiteration: “Several courts all over this country have determined that Title IX covers transgender people. Part of what [Title IX] says is gender, and also gender stereotypes…The reality is, trans people have been using the bathroom for many years without incident.”

Nonetheless, everything appears to be more believable coming from a cis-male.

Mansplaining is not a new phenomenon. However, neither is feminist resistance and the desire for the oppressed to have their voices heard. In recent decades, these voices have started to include more than just women such as Abigail Adams: women of color, queer women, trans women, women of poor socioeconomic backgrounds, disabled women, women of different religions, and countless other women of intersectional identities and experiences have become included in a feminist movement seeking equality for all.

Aside from women such as Gloria Steinem, Angela Davis has been a prominent political activist for the rights of Black Americans for decades, explaining the goals for Black equality to white male individuals who would otherwise misrepresent these goals. U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin, the first openly gay or lesbian politician elected to the U.S. Senate, had to explain she knew how to balance the federal budget for the State of Wisconsin to her male opponent - she did, after all, graduate with a double major in mathematics and political science. The recent waves of political protest, conceptualized and led by women, are steps forward against the silencing of women’s voices, although these movements still have a ways to go in regards to their intersectional goals.

Women know what they need, what their experiences are, and the unique struggles that lie ahead of them. These things don’t need to “President Obama was the one that was gonna mandate this [trans- be explained to them, especially by men. gender bathroom rights] on everyone. Now, localities can decide the issue, and it’s not as clear-cut under Title IX. Title IX is for sex It’s not hard to just listen. Ask any woman. After all, they’ve been discrimination…” doing it for centuries.

22

By Bridget Callahan

By Tina Duong

Reminiscing By Sarah Tan

Names By Meva Himmetoglu

24

Stockholm By Maddy Pease

Dream Manufacturer By Carmen Li

Frida By Sachiko Moran

Magic By Feven Negussie

Torrential By Mina Malloy

26

Done By Marion Moseley

BW

Portrait of Self Portrait By Audrie Francis

Love Trumps Hate By Simone Montgomery

27

One evening during the Great Depression, Walt Disney decided to stand up in front of his staff and tell them the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and the story of how it was to become part of his legacy. It was an epic tale, full of danger and novelty.

At that point in time, the story of Disney and Snow White still had the potential to end in tragedy. Walt Disney was betting his whole company on an enterprise that had never been attempted before, and the project quickly became sarcastically known as “Disney’s folly.”

The Walt Disney Studio built itself on these bold moves that have cemented the franchise’s success and confirmed its unlimited storytelling potential. However this was also the official beginning of Disney’s problematic treatment of female protagonists. Female representation by Disney has traditionally been deeply flawed, with the aforementioned Snow White being a prime example of a passive, broom-sweeping heroine, who left her fate in the hands of male characters.

Disney targets its products to young audiences, and is the most widespread and successful entertainment empire of its kind. The impact of the Disney Princess franchise on female audiences is non-negligible. A research study funded by the Women’s Research Initiative and published in the journal Child Development showed how exposure to Disney Princess media and merchandise correlated with a transformation of children’s behavioral patterns. Notably, young girls who were exposed to the content had imbibed a greater number of gender-conforming behaviors.

In the nineties, the so-called Disney Renaissance gave hope that Disney could bring increasingly more empowering and diverse stories to young audiences while still hitting the box-office jackpot. This was the time when “The Little Mermaid,” “Mulan” and “Beauty and the Beast” were made, slowly bringing female characters with an agenda and an increased capacity to influence their own story to the screen. Most of Disney’s female characters at the time still had some problematic sides to their story: Ariel had to literally give up her voice to become part of the human world and be with the man she loved, while the clever Belle fell for someone despite their abusive behavior. While Mulan has been criticized for the propagation of certain stereotypical views of China, the movie and its protagonist were possibly the most interesting depiction of a female Disney hero at the time as it featured an East Asian heroine bending gender-roles and saving her whole country.

Gendertainment | 28 28

A “Mulan” remake has been announced for 2018. Shockingly, central character Shang is rumored to have been deleted from the plot. Mulan’s posing as a man in the movie gave her relationship with Shang some refreshingly queer overtones, which are now making a lot of fans sorry to part with him. I had a conversation with original “Mulan” screenwriter Philip Lazebnik, who commented on the potential value of such a retelling: “Seeing as the animated feature Mulan was a retelling of an ancient Chinese legend, inspired by a more recent retelling of the legend as a children’s book, it would hypocritical to declare that any further versions are unnecessary or superfluous,” he said.

Disney is in a unique, nearly limitless position to represent and influence, which makes it feel deeply anticlimactic every time Disney announces the production of yet another live-action remake of their old classics. Do we really need to hear Cinderella’s story again? The Beauty and the Beast’s? Some will say that the modernizing of their stories and of the technology used to tell them are justification enough for a whole new go at the fairy tales. True, Disney’s live action remakes have generally been more progressive than their animated counterparts. Yet the remakes, with their female protagonist’s arcs centered on male characters, still seem to set the bar much lower than some of their contemporaries. And really, what is disappointing about these remakes is that they are clearly what Disney chooses to heavily bet on, instead of an expansion of their repertoire of inclusive storytelling.

Their animated stories seem to be on a brighter path, with newer heroines such as Merida and Moana who are neither obliged to see their journey crowned by a wedding, nor to be in possession of twig-thin body parts and demure dispositions. Regardless, there are still so many narratives missing from Disney’s franchise. We have yet to

see a Latina Disney Princess’s movie, (Disney Channel does feature Latina princess Elena of Avalor) or a decidedly LGBTQ+, which are pressing gaps to fill. This year’s “Beauty and the Beast” has been praised for featuring Disney’s first visibly gay character (Gaston’s henchman LeFou, played by Josh Gad). But the praise doesn’t seem to come from the affected audience, probably because the visibility of this character’s sexuality is constrained within a shot that lasts for the blink of an eye, reading more as an expedited “aww” moment aimed at a straight audience than any sort of true progress for the presentation of LGBTQ+ characters in children’s fiction.

A notable parallel trend is the live-action retelling of Disney classics from the perspective of the female villain. “Maleficent” came out in 2014, and “Cruella” starring Emma Stone is set to premiere next year. “Maleficent” was a more daring portrayal that allowed itself to depict a powerful, abused woman’s descent into darkness followed by a journey to self-redemption that came on her own terms and didn’t comprise showing forgiveness for her abuser. Even so, both these movies are ultimately still very safe choices, emanating from a folklore and world that comes with a built-in audience.

Lazebnik added the following: “Of course the recent flood of live-action remakes is in the grand Hollywood tradition of ‘nothing in moderation.’”

And it is true that in the end, these choices are products of the industrial film market. Disney is first and foremost a corporation, and maybe it is foolish to expect anything other than business decisions with an accessory side of artistic justification. The recent remake of “Beauty and the Beast” has, after all, been shattering a few selling records, despite an uneven quality and very minimal novelty in its screenplay. Even then, their relatively speaking more challenging 2016 release “Moana” has done very well at the box office, showing that risk-taking should not be taken off the Disney Princess menu.

Ultimately, it appears a truly diverse Disney Princess future may be longer down the road than desired. Until then, let’s clutch on to the hope that the franchise will return to its initial fearlessness and put its focus back where it is needed, instead of underestimating its audience’s openness and creative appetite.

29

UC System Skimps on Sexual Assault Prevention Training

By Natalie Delpino

Each University of California (UC) campus, including UCLA, provides employees with a comprehensive Sexual Violence/Sexual Harassment Prevention Training Program.

The goal of the program is to teach UC employees about their role in ensuring that the university remains free of all forms of sexual harassment and violence.

The nature of the training varies depending on the staff it is being presented to. Most employees are required to complete video-based training that is delivered online through the UC Learning Center. While video-based and online-delivered training is convenient and cheap, it still contains major issues. Online training doesn’t ensure that the employee is actually watching and engaging with the material since it’s easy to skip through the presentation and complete it without learning anything. Minas, a third-year graduate student in Education who has asked us to only use his first name, explains that “online training is less interactive” and that “there might be scenarios that you would want dialogue.” As a graduate student involved in research, Minas underwent UCLA’s sexual assault and sexual harassment prevention training. Minas’ background in education provides him with the tools to critically evaluate the training he received. He emphasized the importance of having conversations about the issue, and how online training doesn’t allow for that.

sexual harassment and assault, they felt prepared to help their resident due to their own personal experiences and previous knowledge.

They did not think training was the reason they felt prepared to aid their resident.

While they feel the training can assist RAs that have no experience or knowledge, they also feel the training can and should improve.

In-person training is an alternative method for employees required to take online training. It is a requirement for UCLA staff who regularly interact with students. Theoretically, this should allow for more dialogue-based training. However, currently, the in-person training sessions do not incorporate interactivity or conversation. According to a Resident Assistant (RA) at UCLA, who wished to remain anonymous, sexual harassment/assault training is essentially a lecture which lasted a few hours. The RA felt that the lecture was full of vital information, but the lecture format made it difficult to concentrate. “Even as someone very invested in the topic, I found myself becoming distracted,” the RA said. They felt “that a lot of information was not fully absorbed by student staff” due to the long, non-interactive presentation.

UCLA sexual harassment and sexual violence training is incredibly information-based, but doesn’t take into account teaching and presentation methods which could greatly improve the effectiveness of the training. According to the RA, “the short time with the panel and the overly long presentation was the biggest complaint among student staff,” who felt they should have received a better understanding of the protocol and available resources.

The RA also explained that many students would have liked to have a hard copy of or a link to the information of the resources, since after the presentation many wanted to review the information.

The weaknesses of this training is most obvious in how RAs have handled cases of sexual harassment and sexual assault. When the RA had a resident report a case of

The existence of the mandatory sexual violence and sexual harassment prevention training is important.

However, with un-engaging online training courses and ineffective in-person training sessions, the university is now stagnant in creative and effective ways to teach their employees. The training requires numerous changes, yet the university shows not attempts to reorganize.

Minas believes training could include conversations and lessons that discuss gender, sexuality, and the importance of acknowledging that people have different experiences with sexual harassment and sexual assault because of their intersectional identities. Sexual harassment and sexual assault are serious issues that require the proper time and resources. Therefore, the university cannot allow its program to simply be better than nothing; it must be exceptional.

Campus Life | 30