Trash and Transitions | Spring 2016 by Grinnell Underground Magazine [GUM]

WELCOME TO THE GUM rosie o’brien ‘16

I don’t know if this place is more than just a factory. I can’t tell anymore. Does my confusion as a senior member of the student community make me trash? Is this sense of ambiguity just part of transitioning away from this place? (I say this as a well-seasoned—onemightsayburned—fourth year who’s seen some shit, namely the Crane Metamarketing debacle that took away #nolimits and replaced it with #grinwell…but I digress.) Welcome to this edition of the Grinnell Underground Magazine, where a record number of student contributors are actively describing their personal level of “burned” by writing about their experiences in and outside of the bubble. As I scrolled through my classmates’ Facebook rants and sad comment conversations on the Day of the Posse Email—announcing the end of our partnership with the Posse Foundation—I finally opened my eyes to the paradox of the small liberal arts college. Neoliberalism (which aims to increase private profits and false individualism) directly threatens our “Pioneer” mission as an alternative space where learning and community are supposed to come first. Students here, particularly students of color, first-generation and international students, increasingly face the danger of being turned into a statistic. On the other hand, we

also acknowledge that institutions across the U.S., no matter how “social-justice oriented,” are undeniably designed to treat students like customers, treat faculty like machinery, and hire staff as grease for the wheels. What’s even worse than this contradiction between interdisciplinary learning and the harsh exchanges of capitalist education is the painful reality of watching this community tear itself apart because we think we are the problem. Instead of naming global economics, imperialism and the history of the land-grant university as the root of our contemporary problems, we blame each other, “The Administration,” and cornfields. What the heck?? Maybe we should be blaming the people who colonized this land and destroyed the prairie in order to found this damn college in the first place! I will concede—Grinnellians (residents and College-affiliates alike) do have a good sense that Something is Different about this place. I’ve heard students release endless streams of curses at this place for all that it lacks, but admit that they’re glad they chose Grinnell because at least the people here “get it.” What do we get? Do Grinnellians “get” that everywhere in the world around us, we see hatred and inequality taking up more space than love, justice and reparations? Do we “get” that here at Grinnell we are struggling

to commit to the latter, and we love this place because at least there is a struggle in the first place? We may be absolute trash sometimes, but we don’t keep up a blind acceptance that these problems are out of our hands like many other institutions in this country. Like, at least we openly criticeze racist dining hall dishes… Coming back full circle, I think this issue of our magazine inspires, more than any other issue so far, the sense that something beyond our campus bubble makes us who we are. This is the first GUM issue that actually takes place outside the incestuous Grinnell College cauldron of self-hate, self-love and self-gov, in a scrap yard just south of town. Let’s think about it this way: literally take a pencil right now and cross out the words “self,” and think about that transition as you go about your day on campus seeing way too many familiar faces and way too few __________________ . (insert word of choice)

I refuse to believe that Grinnell College is simply a marketplace intent on churning out “innovators,” and the problem might be that the College refuses to believe it too. Anyway, enjoy this edition of our fan-flippin-tastic magazine! I’m out.

GUM STAFF 2016 anna tuchin ‘19 clare roberts ‘16 takshil sachdev ‘19 rosie o’brien ‘16 elliott maya ‘18 tim burnette ‘19

IN WHICH I SWALLOW 4 THE CONTENTS OF A GARBAGE BIN clare roberts ‘16

THE YOUKAI IN MY 5 CLOSET john mcnamara ‘18 RISE OF THE FEMALE 6 SOULMATES clara trippe ‘18

RELIGION AND 7 INTELLECTUAL EXCLUSION jillian rix ‘19

BEER DIE 8

anthony stellish ‘15.5

HOW I GOT 10 THIS SCAR elliott maya ‘18

30 FOOD JUSTICE sarina farb ‘16

32 VEGANISM IS NOT THE NEW “-ISM”

toby barrata ‘17 & olivia queathem ‘17

33 THE OTHER VEGANISM anthony wenndt ‘15

34 A YEAR TOO LATE anonymous

35 SGA: BLOOD merlin matthews ‘17 36 SAD, MESSY, ANGRY TRUTH anonymous 38 GOLF NOT SUICIDE ethan evans ‘19

A LOVE LETTER TO 12 MY FRIENDS anonymous

39 THE FIELD GUIDE TO LETTING GO clara trippe ‘18

YOU ARE NOT 14 GRINNELLIANS patrick armstrong ‘18

40 VANITAS VANITATUM josie sloyan ‘18

TRASH & TRANSIIONS 16-27 FASHION SHOOT

42 FROM STR8 TO STR9 sophie kornbluh ‘16 & john ghallager ‘17 [trash aesthetic: still not getting that self-gov is not just about the self, generally not doing laundry] [transition aesthetic: leaving this place with slightly more damaged livers, even more confused than when we arrived]

front cover design by steven duong‘19 back cover design by fintan mason ‘18.5

IN WHICH I SWALLOW THE CONTENTS OF A GARBAGE BIN clare roberts ‘16

“Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday’s homeopape. When nobody’s around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you go to bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up the next morning there’s twice as much of it. It always gets more and more..... ‘No one can win against kipple,’ he said, ‘Except temporarily and maybe in one spot, like in my apartment I’ve sort of created a stasis between the pressure of kipple and nonkipple, for the time being. But eventually I’ll die or go away, and then the kipple will again take over. It’s a universal principle operating throughout the universe; the entire universe is moving toward a final state of total, absolute kippleization.’” --Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

you’re trash inside. wrecked, when at least after another fallout those voices in your dreams have found ‘their only one.’ you stink and rot, feeling your insides and outsides as worthless; jokes on you, a supposed unfinished metamorphosis, but those wings you tried to fly with said “special snowflake syndrome” you’re bending over backwards to taste the leftover cumshot that you feel isn’t worth your time, “aren’t i worth more?” you say, but it’s really all you deserve. you have hurt people, violated them intimately, and you make them want to forget you. and you want to forget that they feel this way about you. so go back to some bad habits, some new chemicals, knowing that it’s futile. it’s not really starting over so don’t lie only the stench of inevitable failure is what surrounds you in your sleep a nightmare only happens when you wake up look at those permanent hangnails and bloody cuticles. there is a difference between escapism and fantasy born from creativity. Guess which one you’ve been up to? and then you run until the sweat and tears are indistinguishable, right? You can add bleeding feet into the mix if you are a creative little fucker. There’s a paperclip in your ear because you are sick of losing earrings, and will soon start to endorse safety pins as well. Bodies were meant to be modified and crafted just as much as minds should be. Say what you want about the benefits of ego death, but too much chaos decomposes our brains.

THE YOUKAI IN MY CLOSET john mcnamara ‘18

When I was growing up, I was introduced to a game called Perfect Cherry Blossom, downloaded onto my computer by a family member. I remember it being very hard at the time, and most certainly not something a young child would ever be able to beat. Fast forward a few years, around high school, and I found myself stumbling into the same game. I found out it was part of a larger series called Touhou, which was a number of “bullet hell” games that were notoriously hard. Mainly, the games focused on conflicts between humans and supernatural creatures, more easily referred to as “youkai”. The music was amazing, the character design was great (the character art, not so much, considering it was drawn by a single drunk guy) and the stories were interesting. However, what really reined me in was that the entire cast was female. Yes, every single one of them. (Okay, there’s like ONE guy but he wasn’t in the games available for Windows anyway.) Now don’t get me wrong here—I’m not saying I stuck around because I was attracted to them all. I am very much incredibly gay, but these games helped me realize that. More specifically, the fandom for Touhou helped me realize I was gay. (Incredibly gay. Just making sure we all remember that.) Given that the cast of characters was all female, this greatly affected the composition of fanfiction, which as we all know is one of the three pillars of fandom, along with fan art and shipping wars. Instead of the overwhelming heterosexual pairings one would see in mid-2000’s fanfiction for about any given fandom, every romance-oriented document was tagged with three distinct characters: F/F. As I read through scenario after scenario of popular and unpopular ships, I experienced something that many people today are still fighting for: Fucking. Queer. Representation. The characters were interpreted in a multitude of ways, but as someone blossoming into puberty (read: tumbling down the ugly tree) I was able to see a thousand different queer relationships. Healthy, unhealthy, unrequited, pining, angst, and happily ever afters (Also murder? There were some weird pairings). This helped me to normalize the idea of same-sex relationships to an incredibly comfortable extent. I began to question the ideals that had been drilled into my mind by society, as well as my own sexuality. I had been told time and time again that boy went with girl, and that was it—there were no other options, and any deviation was ridiculed. It didn’t help that my only understanding of romance was the heteroromantic variety. I wasn’t quite sure what romance was, considering I had never allowed myself to acknowledge having feelings for guys, and at one point I tried asking a girl out through a letter in her mailbox in class. When she told me no, I crossed out her name and put someone else’s, and then put that letter in their mailbox. Needless to say, it did not end well. However, seeing an entire community accept and encourage the production of same-sex fiction was something that allowed me to feel better about being gay. It allowed me to sit down and seriously talk to myself about what it meant, and how I didn’t necessarily need to change because of it. Even better, I didn’t have to tell anyone. It wasn’t until freshman year of high school that I came out to my parents, which was thankfully incredibly easy. They didn’t care one bit. (Well, they did in the good way. You know what I mean.) My family helped me ease into my identity, and through a variety of rocky and unsure relationships, trials, and tribulations, as well as a boyfriend who cheated on me with three other people (fuck you, James) I settled into what I am now: Incredibly gay, incredibly cute, and still pretty bad at Touhou games.

THE RISE OF THE FEMALE SOULMATES clara trippe ‘18

I’m a strong proponent of Galantines day. Ever since I saw the perfect, simple love between Leslie Knope and Ann Perkins, I’ve loved the opportunity to hang out with my cool female friends over a nice brunch. We’ve had the tradition for a few years now, starting from a freshman year of college that was largely a relationship desert, and it seemed right, instead of sad as most alternative Valentines plans end up, because our friendships weren’t a consolation prize for romance in any way. There is something truly special about female friendship: syncing up on your periods and ripping into whatever poor male friend is nearby, an understanding of the importance of getting ready to go out just to feel the relief of taking off tights and eating ice cream later in the night, and how you will both somehow fall into a conversation of how dumb boys are, every single day. Ok, actually I’ve been training the men in my life to participate in that last one and I’ve been successful with friends, my brothers, and my father, but the point is this: I’ve always prioritized my lady friends. However, as I grow older I notice myself falling into a pattern. This year’s Valentines brunch included a significant shift in the makeup of our group. Most of my friends had a significant other, were on their way to having one, or had just gotten out of a relationship. We were no longer a bunch of single gals enjoying each other’s company, we were a relationship friend group. And there I was, sitting at the end of the table, with all the romantic experience of a fichus. This is unsurprising. In high school, I would watch my friend group go through the fluctuations of single and involved, all while I remained unattached. Eventually, my friends were all in serious relationships, ones that really took priority. While I was always important to them, hangouts shifted from one on one girl time to me subtly competing with the boyfriend to see who was cuter: me and my friend or my friend and her boyfriend. When I got to college, I was excited to find a blank slate, where pretty much everyone was single purely

because they didn’t know anyone, but alas this was only a temporary state. As proven by brunch, I have returned to homeostasis: the role I was seemingly born to play: the single friend. I could say I was trying to change this, but that would be a lie. On weekends, I’ve been getting a lot of pleasure out of executing the perfect Irish Goodbye, which, if you are not familiar, is where you leave a party without anyone noticing. When completed correctly, you will note the texts from your friends the next morning, ranging from “I lost you last night” to “are you alive” to “stop doing that fucking Irish Goodbye shit just because you have red hair doesn’t make it less annoying.” But seriously, leaving a hot, crowded party by yourself? Oh my god, better than sex. Still, I’ve never felt real desperation about my perpetual singleness. I find the thought of being committed a lot scarier than the thought of dying alone. In high school there was pressure to find a boyfriend, as if it was a measure of success or self-fulfillment, but now I find more people, women especially, desiring to be single. And while it’s true that women are more career oriented, I think that there are other factors than merely being integrated into a workforce. More and more, media has been portraying female friendships that are real and true and entirely important. The Bechtel test has risen in popularity, and friendships such as Lorde and Taylor Swift and Amy Poeler and Tina Fey are covered by red carpet interviewers. In the comedy show Broad City, Abbi and Ilana illustrate this trend brilliantly, in which their friendship mirrors what the modern conception of a relationship is. They spend time everyday with one another, they share their day to day events, and they rely on one another. These depictions don’t treat female friendships like an intermediary relationship, unlike a lot of classic rom-com depictions. They aren’t just something you engage in to keep yourself entertained until you find the love of your life,

they are lifelong and fulfilling relationships. The feminist implications of this are apparent. It’s becoming rapidly less cool for girls to proclaim that they only hang out with boys because girls are “too much drama.” Awesome women are collaborating all over, from Grinnell’s own hella dope punk band Alien Girls to the women of SNL’s hilarious girl band music videos. Primarily female spaces aren’t justplacesthatwomengetpushedintobecause they can’t break through the glass ceiling, they are sought out. It’s less about breaking into the boys club and more about forming your own damn club. Because of this, content is being created to satisfy women instead of pandering to the male gaze, which encourages more representation of women of color and queer relationships because content’s end goal is not to be the white, straight, expressionless male fantasy girl. If this image of ideal womanhood is knocked down, it could make the world fundamentally safer for women. There would be less effort put towards fitting that role, one that is inherently objectified, and young girls wouldn’t be as pressured to enter male-dominated spaces such as frat parties, places that are dangerous for women. Time and time again we are told that to be single on Valentines day is to be sad, or lonely, or a failure. More often than not, Valentines specials show a woman that has been so focused on her career she is bitter and unfulfilled, or male characters picking up“desperate”women who will latch on to any guy that hits on them. On Valentine’s Day, I was surrounded by creative, strong, intelligent, and beautiful women that challenge me and encourage me to be my best self everyday. They have taken care of me when I hurting and I have done the same for them. I’m over the shitty idea that romantic relationships, especially hetero relationships, are more important than friendships. I’m over people shaming women for not prioritizing romantic or sexual relationships with men, or asking them to be ashamed if they hang out with mostly women. My girls are real, and important, and they are not a consolation prize.

RELIGION AND INTELLECTUAL EXCLUSION jillian rix ‘19

I could be the poster child of the anti-theistic movement. I’m a Catholic-turned-atheist scientist, graduate of an all-women’s Catholic high school and product of a religious family. That being said, I continue to be shocked by the way in which the beliefs of religious students are treated on campus. Since my first week of classes, I’ve heard transubstantiation (the belief that Jesus is physically present during communion, typically held by Catholics) compared to clinical insanity or mental instability, heard classmates feel judged for reading religious texts in public, and been discouraged more than once by peers from taking a religious studies course. Grinnell is so wonderfully accepting in so many ways and forms: why, then, are we so vehemently opposed to considering religious points of view as an integral part of striving to understand cultures and viewpoints that differ from our own? Visible religious diversity is minimal throughout campus, and acceptance of that diversity is surprisingly equally absent. Feeling accepted as a religious student on campus remains a challenge many students have to face and overcome. In an analysis of religion within a secular society, religious studies professor Nicholas Tonti observes that “the views of Christians are associated with fundamentalism, that unenlightened andignorantlydogmaticreligion,which is impervious to science, reason and compassion.” No student should feel as if their views are discarded by the Grinnell community, especially because

they are lumped into a perception of religion as fundamentally opposed to reason, rationality or science. Finding a middle ground for learning and discussion between religious and atheist, even antitheist students on campus, then, requires that religions and the importance they have within the lives of students become more evident and widely understood, and remains critical in terms of creating a campus where all students are included in learning. Suppose, for a moment, we remain ignorant to the problem of the acceptance of religious students on campus. If you’re a Grinnell student, you probably care about understanding politics and understanding the perspectives of others and understanding history; this is evident by the fact that so many students choose to learn a language or study abroad. I would argue that it remains impossible to do so without accepting the massive role that religion has played in the evolution of human culture as a whole. Wars were fought, countries divided, and literature inspired by the religious beliefs individuals have held for centuries. Regardless of what beliefs you hold about whether or not religion should have been a part of history and of the formation of our society today, it’s undeniable that it has done just that. Allowing the Grinnell community to remain insulated by a bubble of empiricism and extreme liberal adherence to rational beliefs only perpetuates naivety of a massive cultural phenomenon. We’re missing out on an entire genre of interesting

and complex components of global culture by not giving religion a place in campus discussions. If you’re religious. If you think religion is total bullshit. If you’re agnostic. Grinnell can’t continue to claim “global awareness” if we aren’t aware or tolerant of the way 83.7% of the global population thinks and lives their lives (PEW Research Center, 2012). We can’t be an inclusive school if we consistently discredit our peers for their beliefs and contributions to campus discussions. I’m not arguing we should all go to Bible study or change our minds about our personal religious beliefs. We should simply be willing to listen and consider the perspectives and practices of our religious peers, acknowledging their points of view to be equally valid and valuable in a diverse learning environment. “The Global Religious Landscape.” Pew Research Centers Religion Public Life Project RSS. N.p., 16 Dec. 2012. Web. 20 Apr. 2016. Tonti-Phillipini, Nicholas. “Religion in a Secular Society.” Quadrant Magazine Sept. 2008, 52nd ed., sec. 9: 82-85. ATLA Religion Database [EBSCO]. Web. 15 Nov. 2015.

“I WONDERED TO MYSELF, HOW DID THIS THING GET THERE?” “HOW DID I GET HERE?”

BEER DIE

anthony stellish ‘15.5 As I graduated Grinnell College, I found myself with an unexpected set of credentials in addition to my diploma. Hanging next to my degree was a beer soaked, tattered piece of cardboard marked with tallies that had been hung in a frame two sizes too large using dental floss. I wondered to myself, how did this thing get there? How did I get here? For those that are unfamiliar, this is an exposé of beer die, one of the most binge-inducing drinking games out there. The primary topic I want to explore is the structure of the game in a psycho-social sense and its implications. My first impressions were anything but positive. For one, you’re encouraged to drink until nearly bursting. On top of that, the games are long, sometimes absurdly so. Then there are the rules: 1. It’s a gentlemen’s game (sic) 2. You cannot say “five,” instead one must say “biz” 3. Myriad drinking penalties (see Fig. 1) 4. “Splashes,” which describe the die successfully thrown into the opponent’s cup. Fig. 1

Although the game is certainly not reserved for gentlemen, the ubiquity of this claim among players in Grinnell and online (see Wikipedia) is but the first example of its machismo. Simply put, it is a competitive, coordination-based game of censorship where the primary goal is to sling a small white cube into an opponent’s vessel. It does not take a philosopher to recognize the apparent analogies between sex and “splashing”— this becomes even more apparent when “splashes” are referred to as “splooges” (also on Wikipedia). In the end, your opponent gets wet from the penetrative force of your projectile all the while you experience a wave of euphoria whereby

players and spectators alike applaud you for having gotten it in. All of this ends up on the “splash board” which records how many cups you’ve, well, entered. With the banality of this aside, the structure of beer die essentially promotes not only an atmosphere dedicated to discrete motor capabilities, but also one of psychoanalytic importance through the forced censorship of speech. As Lacan claims, the symbolic realm of speech as a developmental stage that culminates in identification with the father and the outside world, which can also be likened to a process undergone through the concentrated authority of the father within capitalism. Here, the space that beer die generates is a re-working of the already existing structures of repression within our society, specifically a reproduction of patriarchal capitalism. It uses the same tactics by eschewing free-form speech and forcing individual players to pre-consciously transform “five” into “biz.” New beer die players will have to make this effort intuitive through practice and any experienced player will attest to the difficulty of first adapting to this rule—some may end up having to censor all numbers to keep from blacking out. Furthermore, the act of drinking impairs the higher cognitive faculties in the conscious mind making exclaiming the unmentionable far easier. This results in a test to see how deeply the contestants have prepared their psyches in relation to the structure and rules of the game. Once this process of repression is codified, the preconscious can effortlessly sublimate libidinal energy flows to meet the normative demands of the gentle(person)’s game. Now all you have to worry about is saying “biz” in class. As Freud thought, some degree of repression is necessary for society. Within the game of beer die as well, it becomes obvious that one must conform to a set of rules in order to play, but the extent to which one must comport becomes exaggerated in the face of excessive consumption. This becomes obvious when the balloon that is your stomach fills to capacity and you have one-“bizith” left in your cup. Nevertheless, the rules demand you consume ever

more. This is where you begin to drown in the excesses afforded to you, which meld with the repressive forces that lead to your inevitable inebriation. As you have it, the apparent excesses of capitalism, which brings you the freedom to choose what is always the same, is really an empty shell disguising the scarcity behind the activities, and quality of booze, from which to choose from. In the end, the main question becomes, should we drink Rolling Rock or High Life tonight? Now you might say that all activities have some degree of capitalistic sentiment or repressive structures. You’d be right. But the next time you throw the die, take a moment to meditate upon it all. That’s the most fun I’ve had with the game which can actually lead to some deep conversations and good times, provided you choose your company wisely. Ultimately, beer die is a more complicated microcosm of society, as with many things. And even though there are some issues regarding what would be called hypermasculinity, not all beer die players are men (certainly not gentlemen) , which means there is an opportunity to challenge a lot of these notions granted we give our attention to them now and again. With this in mind, I found my time on High St. as a sort of performance art where we consumed bottom shelf alcohol for the whole neighborhood to see while slowly getting sick and fat. Now that I think about it, only weeks prior to my introductory beer die game, I’d unintentionally found myself in a similar situation of performance art where I’d sat on a recently purchased couch from Goodwill that we were unable to transport next to the highway eating fried chicken from KFC across the street. We got a few honks and cheers. But, perhaps I took the game too far. Taken altogether, my time out of class could be seen as a revoltingdepictionreflectingcommonconsumer habits back at America, although unwittingly. Perhaps my gluttonous foolhardy nature got the better of me. Or maybe, just maybe, I’ve realized the Nietzshian ideal of making yourself into a work of art. If you don’t believe it, the proof is in the frame.

HOW I GOT THIS SCAR elliott maya ‘18

cw: racism, violence so i’m in all of these classes, right? liberal arts classes at a private, midwestern, liberal arts institution. boutique classes with names like American Whiteness and Politics of Emotion. classes filled with the same fifteen pasty faces interrupted by the occasional person of color, the occasional other brown person who makes eye contact with me on the first day of class after the white girl in the corner, let’s call her helen, decides to educate the class on what it means to be marginalized, followed by either a plea for the two black kids in the room to personally educate her on being a better ally or some backwards connection to her own struggles of being a lesbian. classes like that. classes that make white people feel really good about themselves. i’m in all these classes and after every session i attend i feel a little bit more of me being drained out into the atmosphere. one time after class a white girl, let’s call her carol, stares me in the eyes after i talk about my own experience as a mentally ill black female-bodied person and asks me to consider how my vocalization of my problems is isolating. on this campus, they don’t understand how the world sees me. at nineteen i am liable. at fifteen i am a liability. at thirteen i am a hoodlum. at nine i am a nuisance. always, i am a nigger.

i’m going to tell you a story about the scar on my forehead. it’s almost gone now, but the outline of it still haunts. the scar on my forehead is the size of my thumb nail. it is warped, a noticeably darker color than the rest of my skin, closer to black than brown. it is rough to the touch and disturbing, scraggly and sharp-edged like a birthmark, and with twice as much baggage. i love touching it; it is a visibly ugly marker about myself. i hate touching it; it is something visibly ugly about the white society i live in. at nineteen my brother stands before a panel of white men. he holds his body still like ice; even his breath is cold, coming up in spectral puffs between his full lips. behind him i watch the muscles in his back go taught at their raised voices, how he strangles the urge to bring his hands up in cautionary defense. he knows what these men want to do to him, even if they have not quite figured it out themselves. more importantly, he knows what they will do to him if he gives them the chance. i watch my brother try not to sag beneath the invisible chains their mouths hurl onto his shoulders. i don’t want to blink; i could lose him in the time it takes for the darkness in their hearts to slip behind my eyelids and out again. my eyes strain open and forward from where i lay, face down, in the grass. the wound on my forehead aches. later, when it heals into a faint triangular shadow just below my hairline, i will not be able to forget the blank look in

the officer’s eyes when he crouched in the grass next to where he had thrown me and told me don’t you dare move a fucking muscle. the grass irritates the cut. i watch them pat my brother down, again, the muscle of his sharp jaw clenching with every rough push. he tells them, again, that we live just a few blocks down the street, that we were born in this city and were just on our way home from the baseball field. we had been walking beneath the lowlamps and talking about stories, the power of words and magic. as if by that same magic the men had appeared, and once again we are reminded why we love stories in the first place: they fool us into thinking we have power. my writer’s notebook is in my backpack with the shiny new pen my brother had given to me as a present a few days ago, and when my brother mentions it as proof that we weren’t doing anything other than writing and talking, one of the officers comes over to me and searches me. he lays the notebook on the grass, almost gently, and takes the pen. i already know i will not get it back. i try not to think about the last time a white man laid his hands on me without asking, also days ago, at a san diego club, where a twenty-something put his hands up my dress and jammed two fingers inside me without asking. i try not to remember the genuine surprise on his face when i lashed out, as if he simply hadn’t fathomed that i (black female chubby) wouldn’t

want him (white male athletic). i try not to remember the way he looked at me -- like he owned me, like no simply wasn’t in my vocabulary. i want to vomit and scream and rip myself up from the ground all fury and frenzy and animalistic vice, i want to be the big black ugly monster these men are looking for, and i want to devour them, badges and all, and show them how it feels to be treated less than. my brother, though. he’s better than me. he’s the levelheaded one. he’s always been steady and put together. that’s why he’s standing and i’m shivering in the grass -- they saw the rage on my face and put me down like a dog. as my brother repeats our alibi again one of them circles him, looking for something i will never see. i wonder what white men see when they look at him. what catches their eye first -- the quicksilver bucktoothed smile, the laugh lines, the black hoodie, the class ring, the dreadlocks, the slight frame, the dark skin? i wonder if it is more of a case of what they don’t see. no white skin. no badge. no power. the absence of supremacy draws a great white ‘o’ on the center of our high foreheads, and every few centimeters there is another ‘o’, and another, great white hollows hedging in our perceived lack like rows of shark’s teeth, or the rings of a target. our lack brands us casual victims. they see our victimhood before our personhood. in a loud voice the officer in the middle asks my brother why we are out so late.

he tells them again that we were just out for a walk, and then he says, in a quiet voice, “are you going to let us go?”

wind. when we got home we took turns showering and went to bed without a word.

they do, eventually, after riffling through our clothes and huddling in a circle to talk to themselves. one officer hauls me off the ground and tells me to brush myself off. they get into their cars, white headlights burrowing holes into my grass-stained chest, and then they are gone. just like that. just a series of bright pinpricks fading into the night. afterwards,irememberthenighttasting thick and sweet like jasmine. i remember the way my arms and shoulders itched from close contact with the wet grass. i remember the burn of salt at the wicks of my eyes. more than anything i remember the careful way my brother did not look at me, the silent breaths he took, the cemented set of his shoulders and the single, tremorous shudder that ran through the mountains of his back like an earthquake. i remember him taking my hand and squeezing, once, and i remember the taste of bile that bubbled up at his signal.

here is what we don’t speak: the way i crawl into his bed that night to hold him because there is no certainty that i will be able to touch him in anyway that isn’t beyond a coffin come daylight. the way my brother’s lip stretches with each splintering smile as i hold him. the way blackberries grow ripe in his skin and the way his smile shines like its own solar instrument. that night the officers call him kid and boy and you but his name is kamal. meaning perfect. complete. whole. a gift given by god.

one squeeze for how powerless we were. one squeeze for the sudden chill the night takes on. we held hands throughout the long walk home. we walked in silence, the only sound a clamor of crickets and the rushing of the occasional car. if either of us shivered, it was blamed on the

i lay in bed, in the dark, for hours, restlessly awake long after he’s dropped off to sleep, running my hand over the scabbing cut on my forehead, and when i close my eyes i imagine blood seeping from the wound, washing over my entire body, swallowing me up in so much red. the next time i see helen, or carol, or rebecca, or bethany, or laura, or jill, or whatever the hell their name happens to be that given day, i probably won’t tell her this story. but it will be there, maroon-colored and pulsating, throbbing at the surface of me, fluxing in time with her white rhetoric.

m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorryi 12 m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorryi m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorryi m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorryi m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorryi m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorryi m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorryi m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorryi m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorryi m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorryi m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorryi m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorryi m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorryi m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorryi m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorryi m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorryi m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorryi m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorryi m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorryi m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorryi

A LOVE LETTER TO MY FRIENDS anonymous

cw: sexual violence

the Grill can see us.

The second-hardest part of my rape was telling my rapist what he did to me.

“Hey, so, are we ok?” he asks. I can’t answer. I don’t know if I’m ok. I’ve spent all day working on an art piece and being extremely, extremely confused. I tell him, “I wasn’t… comfortable. With everything that happened. Last night. I don’t know.”

“Maybe we should talk about last night,” he says to me in the dining hall, smiling kindly. I know exactly what he means by that; he means that we’re two friends who hooked up, but nothing is going to happen in the future, and maybe we should talk about what it means that we’re two friends who hooked up. You know. Grinnell hook-up culture. Grinnell stuff. I tell him to meet me at the swings outside of Younker in an hour. This request seems to confuse him, but I want to be somewhere secluded where we can really talk, but no way in hell am I gonna be absolutely alone with him. If anything happens to me, the people in

Except that I do know. I know exactly. The same scene runs over in my head over and over. Lying on the floor of his room, naked, having told him many many times that I wanted to go home and yet being too drunk to make it happen, having his strong athletic body hovering over my tiny one, asking me “are you on birth control? Never mind. I’ll just pull out.” Not waiting to find out if I’m on birth control, not waiting for any reaction of any kind, he enters me and I have to literally push him off.

“What do you mean you weren’t comfortable?” How do I do this? How do I explain the dull emptiness I’ve felt all day as that scene plays over in my head? Over and over. Just like me telling him that I want to go home. Over and over. This conversation, the one on the swings outside of Younker, was hard. But it wasn’t the hardest part. That title goes to the realization, months after the fact, that not only did my rapist not know that I was raped; none of my friends did either. In many ways, this was entirely my fault. I didn’t have the words to describe it. “Yeah, something happened that night, but it was… weird.” To me, those words encompassed every emotion that I didn’t know how to say. To

i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not so 13 i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not so i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not so i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not so i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not so i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not so i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not so i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not so i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not so i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not so i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not so i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not so i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not so i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not so i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not so i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not so i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not so i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not so i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not so i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not sorry i’m sorry i’m not so me, that sentence was able to describe the fear that I felt at the time and the shame I felt afterwards. It was able to describe my growing discomfort with my femininity and sexuality, the fact that I barely masturbate anymore because I don’t know how to understand my body as a location of MY sexuality, only a location for other people’s. “I don’t really know what happened that night.” To me, that was good enough. What other words are there? When you aren’t sure that you pushed back hard enough, and besides that, he’s sorry, so you don’t know if you can call it “rape.” When that word has been stricken from your vocabulary, what word can encapsulate the dissociated feeling of having no control over your own body and not even wanting that control? I had no words other than “a little weird.” And so of course I felt betrayed. I had told my friends, hadn’t I? That my old friend, that their current friend, had

raped me. And they didn’t care. They went out partying with him. They went on a spring break trip with him. People talk about “triggers” post-assault, but seeing my rapist in the dining hall couldn’t trigger me half as badly as seeing the goofy Harris pictures that all of my friends would take with him. Dear ex-friends, I am sorry. I’m sorry that I couldn’t tell you what had happened, and yet expected you to understand anyways. I’m sorry that I blamed you for my own communication barriers. I’m not sorry that I had panic attacks when spending time with you, based on the fact that I knew that at any moment he might walk through your door. I am sorry that I didn’t tell you why my panic attacks were getting worse. I’m not sorry that I decided to cut you out of my life. It was for my health.

I’m sorry that I took out my pain on our friendship. Dear ex-friends, I still care deeply about all of you. I hope that every one of you knows that you can come to me in a crisis and I will always be there for you. I wasn’t always, since I didn’t know how to be around you. I hope that you all know that I’m sorry. But I need you to understand that I just couldn’t take it any more. Dear Grinnell Community, Keep an eye out for people. Sometimes people just don’t know how to explain what’s going on with them. It’s not your responsibility to decode everyone’s speech, but please be compassionate. Grinnell is a rough place, and sometimes people simply don’t have the words to explain why until much later.

YOU ARE NOT GRINNELLIANS patrick armstrong ‘18

I was sitting in Bob’s last night and overheard a conversation that went a little something like this: “Oh, did you hear that someone was killed by the train?” “No. Were they a Grinnellian or just someone from the town...of Grinnell?” “Just a townie.” “Oh, weird.” End of conversation. I’m taking creative liberties here but the impact remains the same. Grinnell College students, for the most part, don’t give a shit about the town or the people who reside in it, the actual Grinnellians. If it had been a student that died, a quiet would have taken the room and a wave of melancholy would have permeated the atmosphere. But don’t be sad, it was just someone’s father who lives less than a mile away from you, who will most likely make less money in their lifetime than you will in the next 10 years. Don’t worry, their child probably isn’t one of the Grinnellian Elementary Schoolers who is on free or reduced lunch (50% of them are, by the way). And seriously, not a problem, you’re out of here four years after NSO so why give a shit about the town, the Grinnellians, or perhaps, dare I say, bridging the gaping chasm between town and college and making a shred of difference for people who are as underprivileged and oppressed as those you read about in your Sociology class. It’s disgusting. Grinnell is a stratified town, segregated economically. South of Highway 6 is populated by working class and poor Grinnellians,

and north of Highway 6 is populated by middleclass and rich Grinnellians, along with College professors (separating the two is important)1. The rift is not only between classes but between affiliations. There are College affiliates and non-College affiliates, and within the latter group, there are middle class and there are working class and poor Grinnellians. Everyone sticks to their groups from preschool onward with little deviation.

I grew up here, on Elm, and I don’t even consider myself a Grinnellian. I don’t consider myself a Grinnellian because my parents ain’t from Iowa and they work at Grinnell College (well, one of them ). Compared to most kids in Grinnell, I had a bomb-ass childhood with travel and cool games and under most circumstances I was set for faculty brat-track friendships and opportunities. Reading during recess and other shit like that.

I went to Pink Tower, a Montessori haven for faculty brats where I stuck rocks up my nose and ate Japanese food on international food day. Many of my classmates went to Fairview, Bailey Park or the “College Preschool.” From this foundation were we, a class of sub 200, already distinguishing ourselves from one another in terms of rigid social classes. Everyone’s parents hung out together, everyone stuck to their activities, everyone developed their own concept of life in Grinnell. For some it was waiting for their parents to fall drunkenly asleep so they could watch adult swim while others were being read Harry Potter. Some grew up the latter, and over time they developed to become the former, because Grinnell is a small rural town with few resources for medical care and mental health. This scarcity applies to both Grinnellians and to Grinnell College Students, alike. Well, at least you all are here for only four years, with breaks and summers.

However, my disability made me gravitate to the kids who were othered like I was. Bryce Lidtka was my first friend because he was a pig farmer who wasn’t raised to make fun of kids with metal legs. GB Montegomery was my best friend because he had seen some shit in his native Sierra Leone and in Grinnell we came to an unspoken understanding that we were different from everyone else. Gage Grutz was one of my best friends too. He moved here from Dubuque. His brother was 19 and already had two kids and they shared a deadbeat father and an incredible mother who ran the whole show herself. I caught glimpses into what was shielded from my eyes before--portraits of the othered and the different of Grinnell. A small town with an unfathomable diversity of human experience that is perpetually ignored bystudents.

A kid in my 8th grade class said, as he opted out of a field trip for lack of interest, that he had never left Grinnell in 14 years. He gave up. At 14, he wasn’t the only one.

And, well, life went on. We all grew up, our infinitely complex and beautiful life stories unfolding together in this small town where we had firstkisses under the stars, sex on prom night, birthed kids who we love, smoked pot in the corn and got our Oldsmobile Cutlass’s stuck in the Broads

where we drank skunk beer and thought about getting out of our little town, more than any of you could imagine. The world was small, our lives were small but that does not make them negligible. Our experiences as Grinnellians matter and do not deserve to be erased by the overprivileged tonguesofjadedandcalluscollegestudents who are getting paid to learn, then, to subsequently make more money than most folks in this town could imagine. You call yourselves Grinnellian and call us Townie. Townie. Grinnell College’s very own classist and elitist slur for the lower class residents who live in the town they so thoroughly loathe because it doesn’t have everything they want. No Chipotle means worthless. One coffee shop equates to hell on earth. Cornfields, cornfields, cornfields. Colorado > Iowa. “I know NYC is so much better than Iowa” insert sad emoji to denote that you aren’t satisfied. The world is full of almost innumerable types of geographies and landscapes, you could have chosen a different school, a different state. Coming to Iowa was a choice. You made this choice, you deal with it. Sometimes when someone says ‘townie,’ they look to see if I care, and I don’t. It’s a funny little word made up by the college students just like “selfgov” and “wellness”but its meaning and connotation coupled with the schoolwide appropriation of the title “Grinnellian”robs the citizens of Grinnell their title and totally ignores their experience and identity. “Maybe some

townie stole my bike.” “I don’t know... some townie.”“Yo, these weird ass townies were at our High Street party, you know, the party where we all tried to fuck each other while obliterated on Xanax, Keystone, purple kush and my Adderall, for no reason?” “Oh yeah, I remember that one, yeah that one.” “What are they doing here.” See, most of you come from big towns and cities. A small town is something different, important and utterly beautiful. My class experienced four deaths during our tenure in high school and we came together to publicly mourn those we lost. The choir sang, we cried and held one another. That is a community. That is how a small town works and grows: with a common heart and a common soul that fundamentally strives for betterment and happiness for all of those involved. Grinnell College pales in comparison. It is full of knowitall hipsters who clamor for their right to self-govern, which precariously amounts to the ability to get stoned whenever they want. Racial diversity, the plurality of sexual orientations and fluid gender identities are all important facets of this campus that the actual Grinnellian community lacks understanding of, and doesn’t often know how to approach them. The value of those students, their experiences and how they could integrate with the community is absolutely lost because everyone is apparently blinded by East, Sixth, Park and 10th. We live in a goddamned box. I can’t say that nobody helps, that’s not fair. There are some people who reach out, but it’s not nearly enough. You want a psychiatrist? Maybe coordinating

with the town would help, instead of prying at the inconceivably tight drawstrings of the trustees’ purse. You’re here for 4 years, you make it count or you don’t. If you don’t, you chose not to. There are ways to integrate with the community. There are ways to check our privilege as students and help develop a positive relationship with the Grinnell community--which is strong and, at times, incredibly beautiful and compelling.There’s a community meal! There’s a food bank! We did can drives in High School, are we too good for that now that we’re in college? There is so so much we can do, but we have the blinders on 24/7 because we make being a student at this College a fundamentally selfish vocation. If anything, stop calling yourself “Grinnellians” and us “townies.” If you don’t know about Cunningham’s, Happy Days or Mr. Meldrem, you are not a Grinnellian, simple as that. You are students, and you are temporary. Make a change and try to be at least remotely less shitty to the town because Grinnellians are stuck with it in any form it takes, and you are not. With 10% of the population being students, you have the power to fuck things up or make a positive change. I suggest we put our money where our collective social-justice mouth is and impart change on the community that is, quite literally, a stone’s throw away. 1 There are nuances, of course, to this discrepancy but for the sake of brevity I will generalize. It’s not as if anyone who is not native to the town would know, anyways. does, but both of them did for quite a while.

TRASH &

TRANSITIONS

PHOTOGRAPHERS

MODELS RADHIKA MALAVIYA GABRIELLE MATTHEWS VIVIAN CHESLACK REED ESSEX DYLAN WELCH ELLIOTT MAYA MIKAYLA FINDLAY CLARE ROBERTS ANNA TUCHIN TAKSHIL SACHDEV

ROSIE Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;BRIEN SOFIA MENDEZ RADHIKA MALAVIYA GABRIELLE MATTHEWS

PHOTOS TAKEN AT SAM BERMAN & SONS SCRAP YARD GRINNELL, IOWA

VEGANISM ON CAMPUS --The following three articles are a compilation of opinions sent to the GUM following a week of tablingoutsidethedininghallsponsoredbystudent group Advancing Animal Compassion Together

FOOD JUSTICE: THE REAL VICTIMS sarina farb ‘16

Imagine this scenario: You suddenly find yourself transported to a time or place where public stonings are legal and are a socially accepted form of capital punishment for things like adultery. I’m certain that most people who are concerned with social justice would agree that, regardless of cultural traditions, stoning someone to death for a non-violent offense is absolutely abhorrent. Now that you are in this place, imagine that a public stoning is happening in front of you, and hundreds of people are throwing stones at a woman accused of adultery. Regardless of your place in the crowd and whether or not you throw a stone, you realize it will likely not make any difference to the suffering and terror the woman is experiencing. You also recognize

awareness of, and end a largely invisible injustice in society: the exploitation, domination, and use of non-human animals for human desires. This includes the use of animals for food, fabric, transportation, and entertainment. Non-human animals are sentient beings with rich emotions, who, much like us, desire to live their lives on their own terms, safe from harm and premature death. That said, I recognize that most people do not yet see using animal flesh and secretions as an injustice. For me and some other vegans on campus though, we feel like we are witnessing something akin to a legal and socially accepted stoning that no one else seems to see. When we speak up by tabling, and postering, we are simply trying to share with others what

exploitation, objectification, and property status of non-human animals. For as long as animals are chattel property, human economic and personal interests will always outweigh the animals’ interests.

that you have no hope in that exact moment of getting this stoning called off.

we see, and stop a culturally condoned injustice.

What do you do?

Over my four years at Grinnell, people have raised a number of issues regarding our efforts. Some feel that our discourse promotes food policing, harmful neoliberal rhetoric, and offensive analogies. So I want to be clear about why we do what we do. To really understand, it is important to look at this issue from the victim’s perspective–in this case, the animals that we breed, raise, confine, and kill at our whim. And yes, meat, dairy and eggs all inherently involve exploitation and harm regardless of how sustainable and“humanely”they were raised and killed. We make choices for the animals we own based on how we benefit most. We dictate when they breed, when they are weaned, when they are separated from family members, inadvertently when and how they will die. So our group’s issue is not with Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), but rather, with the

vegans often provide meat, dairy and egg alternatives and talk about diet so much. But I want to be clear: veganism is NOT a diet! It is an ethical principle that exploitation of non-human animals is wrong, which applies to all parts of our life–including what we eat, wear, and participate in. Diet is just the main area where every individual has a chance every day to make a statement about who they are and what they stand for.

Do you say, “My one stone won’t make a difference,” and join the group mentality? Or do you sense that even though your choice won’t have any effect, it would still be wrong for you participate? I believe it is clear in this scenario that we have a moral obligation NOT to participate in the stoning, and that regardless of the direct physical impact of our choice, our non-participation makes a strong statement that we reject stoning people to death. Now lets change this scenario up a little bit to discuss a social injustice that our own society currently accepts as normal. I am a leader of the student group Advancing Animal Compassion Together, and we organize a variety of events and campaigns. Our group’s fundamental goal is to raise

Overwhelmingly, the biggest use of animals in society is for meat, dairy and eggs, so while our goal is to end all animal exploitation, our focus often goes straight to the food system. Furthermore, both as individuals and as a society, we are most invested in animal exploitation for food because so many of our daily practices and traditions are directly constructed around consuming animal flesh and secretions. Thus many people are very emotionally attached to this exploitation. This is why

I value a variety of different tactics and forms of activism in social justice work, including focusing on individual choices and action, as well as institutional divestment and systemic reform. I think social change results from a multitude of angles and both top-down and bottom-up approaches have their place. I find it problematic to assume that promoting personal lifestyle choices are part of a harmful neoliberal rhetoric, or that personal action has no impact on oppression in our society. Supply and demand is very real, especially for things

like meat, dairy and eggs, because we literally vote with our fork three times a day. Furthermore, this “personal choice doesn’t matter” narrative only serves to absolve individuals of the personal and moral responsibility to align their actions with their values. Such rhetoric can even be harmful by disempowering many individuals by suggesting their actions cannot make a difference. However, adopting a strict vegan ethic is not just a simple boycott or mode of ethical consumption. Rather, our promotion of veganism is about making a loud, clear, personal and political statement (as with the stoning scenario) that we reject the exploitation and use of animals for reasons of culture, convenience, and palate pleasure.

the exploitation of undocumented human farm laborers, until we create a paradigm shift where our society no longer considers animals to be property, such institutional approaches will fail to create real change for the billions of beings exploited and slaughtered for meat and dairy. Institutional and moderate reform such as divestment from CAFOs does nothing to challenge the property status of animals. So instead, we run educational and outreach campaigns such as tabling outside the dining hall to challenge the notion that animals are objects to make food and fabric from. Each and every one of us holds immense power. Encouraging and supporting individuals in adopting a vegan ethic is fundamentally what is most important. We are confident

contrast, the irrelevant criterion of species is still providing the justification for non-human animals to be harmed to benefit those with more power (humans). We need the vegan movement today to change the societal notion that that it’s okay to own and exploit beings. The root of all oppression stems from“othering”groups of individuals based on these irrelevant criteria. A true intersectional approach must recognize that speciesism* as a form of sanctioned discrimination is no different than racism or sexism. Every oppression is unique, but suffering is still suffering, and killing is killing. However, the parallels I am drawing here are between systems of oppression and the attitudes of the oppressors.

While much of the organizing and current social justice work on campus is focused on building power networks and coalitions to find strategic institutional targets to address widespread systemic injustice, our group has chosen a different approach for addressing animal oppression. This is primarily because there are critically importantdifferencesbetweennon-human animal oppression and the oppression of humans within our capitalist system. While most already regard all humans as individuals with explicit rights (which are not always respected), we still collectively view and treat animals as property. Additionally, it is entirely possible to produce plant foods and other goods without intentional exploitation, yet it is impossible to ever produce animal products without exploitation, since the products are literally made from the bodies of oppressed individuals. Under this framework it becomes clear that while divestment strategies may be more impactful in addressing things like

that institutional change will follow, once public perception of animals changes. For now, we are simply here as messengers speaking up on behalf of the defenseless victims whose screams are ignored. We cannot FORCE anyone to stop supporting violence and exploitation, we are simply pointing out that consuming meat, dairy and eggs is directly forcing exploitation and violence on others. What you chose to do with this information is up to you.

So please, think of the animals, who are individuals that don’t want to die or be ripped from family members, before you eat bacon or ice cream. And if you ever have questions, comments, concerns, or would like support in going vegan, please reach out to me personally or our group, Advancing Animal Compassion Together [aact]. We are more than happy to provide resources, answer questions, and give you our full support.

So when we encourage you to go vegan or say that veganism is the social justice movement of today, that does not mean that we think racism, sexism, homophobia and other forms of human discrimination are solved. It is only a recognition that we have at least come to a point with those movements where race, gender and other irrelevant criteria no longer provide a culturally condoned basis (in the U.S.) for individuals to be harmed in order to benefit those with power. However, in sharp

*Specieism is essentially the discrimination and exclusion of individuals from our moral community based solely on their species and whether or not they are human.

VEGANISM IS (NOT) THE NEW “-ISM” toby barrata ‘17 & olivia queathem ‘17

In the week before spring break, there was considerable discussion on this campus about veganism and encouraging students to take part in veganism. This is a continuation of what we have seen in our past three years here — this includes graphic depictions of animal killings and conditions directly outside the dining hall; comparisons to rape, stoning, and homophobia; as well as general online guilt-filled rhetoric to encourage students to try giving up animal-based products. While we agree that there are issues regarding animal cruelty and abuse that veganism does address, these methods in pushing the vegan issue on campus are harmful to students and to the community overall. Some oftheseapproachesmightseemacceptable to raise awareness of the harms of eating and using animal by-products. However, the dangers that these extreme comparisons bring to this campus are not worth it. There are students on this campus who have issues with food. Disordered eating and a plethora of food allergies are present on this campus and make simply getting access to healthy and safe food difficult. Personally, I’m allergic to gluten, wheat, barley, rye, sesame seeds, and soy. My diet in the dining hall consists of Chex and skim milk. Guilting me, and other students like me, into further restricting my diet is not helpful for my health, mentally or physically. For students who have disordered eating, being faced with graphic images or posters that force them on a dramatic guilt trip can be enough for them to turn around and leave the dining hall, without eating at all. There is enough food guilt involved in simply eating within a society that favors the thin without adding in animal-based guilt. Not to mention that a movement that can only attract new members via guilt-tripping is a movement that really needs better methods of recruitment to its cause. Now, perhaps those reactions seem like a fair threat — not eating is better than taking

part in the system! If you believe that, this article isn’t for you; personally, I think that survival on this campus is the number one goal, and for some that means eating dairy or meat — or eating anything at all. So, my argument isn’t that veganism is bad, or that vegans should not talk about their issue, or that this is a systemic issue rather than a personal one. My argument is about how some activists are framing non-veganism as the new sexism, racism, homophobia, or rape culture. Sarina Farb’s article regarding this issue compared veganism to stoning. There are posts on Advancing Animal Compassion Together’s Facebook page (see below) that compare eating meat to holding slaves, raping, and the “starving kids in Africa” trope. I never really thought that my thinking that people had more rights than animals would be that shocking, especially when faced with the idea of dehumanizing minorities and belittling their deaths and struggles as those of animals. The keeping of slaves is not the same as keeping animals for the purpose of eating them for human survival, nor are dairy cows rape victims based on any reasonable definition of consent. Suggestingthattheseissuesarecomparable dehumanizes people that need our help more desperately than animals. On some level, our fundamental differences may prevent us from engaging in productive dialogue. For instance, I do not believe that speciesism is a meaningful term. I think there are implications of that concept that need to be addressed — for instance, where do we draw the line? Are mammals the only animals that should receive rights nearly equivalent to those of humans, or do we extend those rights to birds? Fish? Insects? What constitutes sentience; what constitutes consciousness? What implications would this have on stem cell research? Should dogs vote? I can argue my computer is sentient, or at least as

sentient as an ant — is my code an abuse? If speciesismdoesexist,whatargumentsjustify placing it on the same level as homophobia, transphobia, sexism, racism, or rape culture? These are questions that need to be answered, or at least considered when using this hostile, open-ended humanistic logic. I do not believe that someone who is pro-animal rights must also be vegan, and I do not believe that a movement that needs to resort to coercion in order to further its cause is a movement that deserves my full respect. You can be a vegan and have it be an important issue for you without threatening people and guilting people into a choice. Activism takes energy and being a vegan is a choice that affects you on a daily basis. It’s also expensive, and there are only so many battles that one person can take on at a time, especially on a campus that is so politically active and exhausting.Your political guilt for making the food choice that best suits me, personally, is wrong; your activism is not expressing a freedom, but a public shaming that makes people feel guilty for eating, for surviving. Make the argument for the animals being cute, make the argument for health reasons, make the argument based on environmental reasons. Don’t come at me with starving children tropes, comparisons to human pain and problems because it makes you look less human. Convince people and educate about your cause. Make people want to be vegan for themselves, not because they fear being on the “wrong side of history” for a cause that isn’t exactly proven, nor ethically always considered, the “right side”. Don’t make your arguments inherently racist, sexist, ableist, and homophobic when trying to align with those movements by abusing the past wrongs that have already happened and are still happening.

THE OTHER VEGANISM: AN ALUMNI RESPONSE

anthony wendt ‘15

Editor’s note: Anthony Wenndt ’15 majored in Biology and Russian at Grinnell and had an interdisciplinary concentration in Global Development Studies. He currently lives in Ithaca, New York, where he is pursuing a Ph.D. in Plant Pathology at Cornell University.

A recent article by Sarina Farb petitions for food justice, suggesting that “The exploitation, domination, and use of non-human animals for human desires” is a “largely invisible injustice in society.” The author, obviously justified in their concern, goes on to say that “[some vegans on campus] feel like we are witnessing something akin to a legal and socially accepted stoning that no one else seems to see.” Of course, this is a discussion of non-human animal rights. Farb is a leader of the active student organization Advancing Animal Compassion Together, and is transparent about their perspective of food justice and the critical importance of respect for animals in securing a healthy and sustainable food system. However, I found the article to be a bit unsettling because this call for animal rights awareness, while an important perspective to be raised, is the rationale for veganism too often portrayed in our society and in fact makes up the bulk of the vegan stereotype. The purpose of my testimony herein is to offer another perspective, one that situates the rights of non-human animals into a larger discussion of injustice that isn’t always represented in a vegan’s “elevator speech.” Farb rightly describes veganism as social movement. Veganism is certainly a statement of activism in most cases, but the radical animal rights component tends to fill most of the activist space. Farb writes, “It is impossible to ever produce animal products without exploitation, since the products are literally made from the bodies of oppressed individuals.” Near the end of the piece, they plead: “So please, think of the animals, who are individuals that don’t want to die or be ripped from family members, before you eat bacon or ice cream.” Statements like these perpetuate and radicalize the animal rights dogma of veganism. Again, I don’t wish to question the validity of Farb’s argument, as it is valid, indeed. Animals do feel, and do deserve to be treated with justice and compassion. But I feel it is critical that we think of food justice not only as an animal right, but also as a global, systemic right to which all organisms, communities, and environments on this planet are entitled. I’m arguing that the push for humane treatment of animals is situated in a larger ecology of planet-scale interactions—an argument that

commands a dramatic reconsideration of Farb’s notion of justice.

concerned—with the act of a human killing an animal for food.

Ecology is about interplay. It is about respecting the biological compulsions that carry us through life, and about living at the mercy of those things that threaten to compromise our homeostasis. Humans are programmed for meat consumption; our very biology over the course of evolutionary time has shaped us into chasers, killers, biters, and chewers. In much the same way as a wolf is designed to hunt fawns, so am I designed to outwit and overcome animal prey. This is evidenced in my long human legs, my large human brain, and my sharp human incisors. This is a natural reality, which I’m sure comes as no surprise even to animal rights activists.

On the other hand, as Farb mentioned as well, there is something intensely and violently wrong with the way livestock agriculture is controlled in this country and in much of the developed world. Animals are not meant to be packed in insufferable and suffocating confinement buildings by the hundreds. Energy is not meant to be wasted powering these structures. Grain (and the land and water required to grow it) is not meant to be grown en masse as an inefficient and under-nourishing feed source. Manure is not meant to be trucked out of farms by the ton, only to release loads of greenhouse gases into our already-volatile atmosphere. Our groundwater sources should not be drained to fuel this consumptive industry, which serves only to pollute our waterways in return. The list goes on. These and countless others—including abhorrent animal rights abuses—are the injustices that disturb our ecology and tarnish the idea of meat consumption in the United States, and they are why I have chosen a vegan lifestyle.

Thus, to refrain from consuming animals “for reasons of culture, convenience, and palate pleasure” is inherently contradictory to our biology. Just like any organism, I—as Homo sapiens—am rightfully committed to honoring my culture, utilizing paths of least resistance, and consuming the foodstuffs that are not only nutritious and available, but also satisfying. I am not arguing that animal rights don’t matter, but I think that this mindset alone fails to differentiate between human nature, livestock agriculture, and the indiscriminate abuse of animals. It isn’t fair to suggest that just because animals “don’t want to die or be ripped from family members,” it is excusable to ignore the biological fact that humans can (and perhaps should) consume meat as food. Let’s face it, nobody—neither animal nor human—wants to be prey, or to be displaced, including the fawn in the wolf’s jaws (an interaction that one might just consider a part of nature). Aren’t we, too, a part of nature? At this juncture you’re probably thinking, “I thought you were vegan?” I am. Bear with me. It’s necessary to distinguish the system of abusive animal production (which, indeed, strips animals of their own biological rights in many cases) from the “sentience argument” (or as I like to call it, the “cows are cute” argument) that forbids meat consumption only because animals feel and die in the process. In my opinion, the real“meaty”issue regarding the livestock industry is not that animals are reared to be killed. I could make arguments about comparative animal consciousness and cultural significance, but I won’t go into it. Long story short, there is nothing inherently wrong—as far as I am

That being said, I want to give credit to the farmers, organizers, and consumers that are demandingasustainableagriculturalrevolution. Farb states that “meat, dairy, and eggs all inherently involve exploitation and harm regardless of how sustainable and ‘humanely’ they were raised and killed.” I feel that this statement must be interpreted with caution, because for a concerned society to get the idea that sustainability and humane treatment“inherently”don’t matter in animal production would spell disaster to the marked and important progresses in favor of environmental security and animal rights which are in the works or have already been achieved in the livestock industry. There is no foreseeable end to animal agriculture. It is wholly entangled in our global culture as contemporary Homo sapiens. Thus, it is critical that we take personal actions not only to reduce our own “footprint” (i.e. eat no/less meat until the system is fixed) but also that we take action ourselves to fix the system by promoting and incentivizing sustainability in food production. It is my sincerest hope that the animal rights argument for veganism, which has dominated the vegan stereotype and shaped society’s perceptions of our collective vegan morality, can be situated in this grander ecological narrative whereby injustice is defined by deviations from nature, and not only by ascribing rights to non-human animals.

Thanks for the check-in. I’m actually doing a lot better than I was a year ago. I appreciate the promptness.”

“Hi Bailey,

It took over a year for anyone to reach out to me. It would have been so much better to think that maybe my records got deleted. Evidently, no, they knew I was out there. They even knew that I probably needed help. It just took them a year.

After spending months of feeling constant stress, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts, I began to feel like I had no other option. And when I started to feel better, I still felt like I had no other option, no one else to turn to. Of course, I did. The Title IX office knew about my rape, since I talked to Angela Voos on February 3rd, 2015. I was promised a follow-up email and some check-ins. Which, I suppose, I received. I just got the first one on February 5th, 2016.

Angela Voos could have gotten me an appointment at SHACS. I wonder sometimes why she didn’t.

I have never had a therapy session. I have never been prescribed drugs for my mental illnesses. I’m really lucky in a lot of ways. Many people aren’t able to manage without drugs, and I recognize how lucky I am that I can (usually) get by now. I’m also severely unlucky in that I can’t afford mental health treatment, and the thought of going to SHACS and being turned away, after finally admitting how it would help, makes me almost unbearably anxious.

I’m sitting here, angry crying, thinking about all the changes I’ve made recently in my life- becoming more politically involved, going vegan, beginning to work out. All of these changes really helped with my depression, anxiety, and PTSD. Sometimes it’s the simple act of making a change in your life, more than the change itself, which leads to growth.

I don’t think I’ve ever been angrier to receive an email. It’s the sort of incredible anger that manifests itself more in frustration and just leads to angry crying alone in your single. How dare you, Bailey Connor? How dare you, Angela Voos?

“Hi, my name is Bailey Connor. I’m the deputy Title IX director. Angela Voos asked me to reach out to you. I just wanted to check in, offer you some resources, and let you know that we’re available if you ever want to talk.”

anonymous

ONE YEAR TOO LATE

STUDENT GOVERNMENT ASSOCIATION: BLOOD merlin matthews ‘17

This e-mail headline shows up in my inbox several times a semester. The first time I saw Student Government Association: BLOOD, I felt a brief moment of panic – emails titled “BLOOD” are not exactly reassuring. Then I clicked the e-mail and realized it said “BLOOD DRIVE,” and “DRIVE” had just been cut off due to formatting. I thought it was pretty funny, and told my mom and my partner that the SGA was demanding my blood. It’s gotten less funny the more it shows up, because it really does feel like the SGA is demanding my blood, and I can’t give it to them. Reason number one I can’t give the SGA my blood: I’m anemic.

Reason number two I can’t give the SGA my blood: In the past year, I’ve gotten a tattoo in a state that does not regulate tattoo facilities (Nevada). I get a tattoo every time I go back to Nevada over break, so this is an ongoing problem. Reason number three I can’t give the SGA my blood: In the past year, I’ve had sex with a man. This is also an ongoing problem. Sorry, SGA. You can’t have my gay blood.

The reason men who have had sex with men (whom the Red Cross and FDA websites call ‘MSM’) can’t give blood is that we’re considered ‘at risk’ for HIV/AIDS. And it’s simpler to ban a whole bunch of people on the basis of assumptions about the safety of their sexual practices than to test their blood for disease, right? Oh, wait. They test all donated blood for diseases. Including HIV.

While the Red Cross website doesn’t explicitly say so, I think it’s safe to assume their concern about MSM and our HIV status comes mostly from fear of disease transmission through anal sex. I’ve got some unfortunate news for the Red Cross, though: we aren’t the only people who do it in the butt. Straight people have anal sex, gay people have anal sex, bi-, pan-, and polysexual people have anal sex, asexual-spectrum people have anal sex. Anal sex, unlike the Red Cross, does not ban people from participation on the basis of sexual orientation.

MSM are not completely banned from giving blood, of course. That would be discrimination. We’re just banned from giving blood if we’ve had sex with another man in the past year.

It doesn’t matter to the FDA if you’re practicing safe sex, or if you and your partner have been exclusively having sex with each other for four years. It doesn’t even matter if you do anal or not. Here’s the kicker: I’m probably not even the kind of blood donor that they would consider an MSM: My partner and I are both trans men.

So here are my choices (if I choose to up my iron count, abstain from getting tattoos in Nevada, and bow to the SGA’s demands for blood): I can mark myself down as an MSM who’s had sex with a man in the past year and get denied. I can mark myself down as an MSM, lie about whether I’ve had sex in the past year, and experience the joy of giving blood while denying the facts of my relationship. Or I can misgender myself and/or my partner, and experience the joy of giving blood to an organization that would rather blackball people based on stereotype than actually get some damn blood for the people who need it. I’ve made my choice. My gay blood is staying in my gay veins. Look elsewhere, SGA.

SAD, MESSY, ANGRY TRUTH anonymous

probably shaking your head at my naivete. Remember those signs around campus, “A yes for Government a dance is notAssociation: a yes for theBLOOD, night?”I Sometimes I stand in front of the mirror in This e-mail headline shows up in my inbox several times a semester. The first time I saw Student I felt so dumb after seeing those.You’re my bathroom before I take a shower. I pull This is what this writing is really about. Not felt a brief moment of panic – emails titled “BLOOD” are not exactly reassuring. Then I clicked the e-mail and realized it said “BLOOD telling havemy said no? that the the towel aside andhad I look atbeen myself assault or coerced sex or gray-area DRIVE, ” and “DRIVE” just cutand offIdue my to formatting. I thought it was prettyshitty funny, and toldme myI could mom and partner try to like what I see. I try to be okay with experience or whatever the hell you want SGA was demanding my blood. But I fell into the same trap again later. I my body and its scars – which sometimes to call it. It’s about those three words: It’s shouldmy have learned. should only I can see. And then I try the words just sex. It’s gotten less funny the more it shows up, because it really does feel like the SGA is demanding blood, and I Ican’t givehave it tobeen them. smarter. See, unlike you, I am a bad Grinout, I whisper them: I was sexually assaultnellian. ed. I wasnumber sexuallyone assaulted last summer, The first I was sexually assaulted, I Reason I can’t give the SGA my blood: I’mtime anemic. and I was sexually assaulted a few years had never encountered self-gov, or active “Thatthat wasdoes fun,”not he told me when ago, thenumber summertwo after my senior year consent. I was 18year, and almost, butanot quite, Reason I can’t give the SGAofmy blood: In the past I’ve gotten tattoo in a state regulate tattooI decided facilities to leave at five in the morning, somehow high school. in college. My hometown is what I like to (Nevada). I get a tattoo every time I go back to Nevada over break, so this is an ongoing problem. call pseudo-progressive. Its residents like feeling both numb and like I was going to puke. “Sorry youancouldn’t sleep. ” But the words don’t feel quite right. Saying tell themselves that they arehad sexsex positive, Reason number three I can’t give the SGA mytoblood: In the past year, I’ve with a man. This is also ongoing problem. them splits the world into black and white. that there is no “rape culture.” I was told “I’ve got to get home,” I said, once again. Saying themYou makes a victim and while that, as someone female, I could say no Sorry, SGA. can’tme have my gay blood. sometimes I am okay with saying yes, I am to sex, but that was my responsibility, and The reason men who have had sex with men (whom the Red Cross and FDA websites call ‘MSM’) can’t give blood is that we’re considI blame myself, forthe saying nothing aered victim, andfor no,HIV/AIDS. they should stoppedto ban thealines ofbunch what was and wasn’t sex were ‘at risk’ Andhave it’s simpler whole of people on the basis of assumptions about safety of theirinstead sexual of “no. ” And I blame him, for waking when I stopped, when I pushed their hands blurry. There was no advice for the genderpractices than to test their blood for disease, right? aside other times I still blame myself. I queer, and I don’t think the boys were told me up each time I nodded off until I let understand that this is that word we so love to do Including anything other Oh, wait. They test all donated blood for diseases. HIV. than wear condoms. him fuck me. And I blame him for not asking “Is this okay?” or, “Are you sober here: problematic. Because I blame myself, enough?” instead ofour saying, god, I even if I blame no other victims but myself, I kissed him first. That is all I wanted: a While the Red Cross website doesn’t explicitly say so, I think it’s safe to assume their concern about MSM and HIV “thank status comes don’t think I’ll be able to sleep until weonly do Imostly feel I am a bad Grinnellian. kiss. Not the hand he slipped up my skirt from fear of disease transmission through anal sex. I’ve got some unfortunate news for the Red Cross, though: we aren’t the this. ” But I also blame something else. I or the fingers on my breasts and between people who do it in the butt. Straight people have anal sex, gay people have anal sex, bi-, pan-, and polysexual people have anal sex, blame and itsonperpetuation of our Iasexual-spectrum should have pushed harder, should have And didn’tdoes wantnot theban kisspeople people have anal sex. Anal my sex,legs. unlike thethen RedICross, fromGrinnell participation the basis of sexual backwards hookup culture. said “all I wanted was a kiss and not your either. I pushed his hands away but they orientation. hand up my skirt,” I should have just left, kept coming back and after a while I just and High Street andblood the if IMSM should have said “no, really, I just want other things. Like, does I blame are not completely banned from givingthought blood, ofabout course. That would behow discrimination. We’reHarris just banned from giving disappointed look on friends’ faces when to watch the movie stop touching me” I he not realized I’ve stopped kissing back? we’ve had sex with another man in the past year. should have said “what the fuck do you And, how do I get out of this when I’m the someone says, “All we did was kiss.” I the fact that asex weekend without think you’re doing” I should said “let one That’s I thought It doesn’t matter to the FDA ifhave you’re practicing safewho sex,started or if youit? and yourwhat partner have beenblame exclusively having with each othersex for here is seen as a failure. I blame our twisted me sleep” “I’m still drunk” “this is coerabout for an hour and a half. four years. It doesn’t even matter if you do anal or not. notions of sex positivity which reinforce cion” “I did not say you could put it there” is always IHere’s should have I should have He asked me after if he was a good kisser. the kicker: I’m probably not even the kind of blood donor that they would considerthe an idea MSM:that Mysex partner and Iempowering are both trans and that if we want to be empowered, we Imen. should have — “I’ve got to get home,” I said. I felt that should want to have sex. A yes for a dance something was wrong but I didn’t know is not aand yesbow for the night. Butdemands oh-so-often ISo was too kind. I pushed hands aside again what. I couldn’t very well object if I was the here are my choices (if I choose to up my iron count, abstain from getting tattoos in Nevada, to the SGA’s for here I feel like saying yes to a dance and again and then I thought, I started it. I one who had made the first move, could I? blood): I can mark myself down as an MSM who’s had sex with a man in the past year and get denied. I can mark myself downmeans as an got to say yes theofnight. What is the am thelieone whowhether kissed first. twoinyears you’re a good Grinnellian, you’re MSM, about I’veAnd, had sex the pastNow, year,ifand experience the joy of giving blood I’ve while denying theto facts my relationship. cw: sexual violence

later, It’s just sex. It’ll be over soon, and then he’ll let me sleep.

Or I can misgender myself and/or my partner, and experience the joy of giving blood to an organization that would rather blackball peo-

point of consent if it’s not genuine? And yes, consent is sexy! But what about when I don’t want to give consent? When I’m just not feeling it, and am no longer sure I ever will again? Am I no longer sexy because I will not give my consent? I do not want to have sex anymore, at least not the way it seems to be done here. When I first had sex, it was to get it over with, because it was just sex, something so pervasive on this campus it felt almost meaningless. It has never been something that gives me pleasure, or makes me feel empowered. At this point I’m not sure if that is because it is just who I am or if it stems from that first assault over two years ago, or the antidepressants I’ve been on ever since. That assault was my first sexual encounter. In the past year and a half of sexual activity I have had sex because I wanted to please the other party. Sex is something I give, just like consent, just like a present. I like giving presents. They make other people happy. I am good at giving presents, and sex seems like such an easy thing to give. After all, it’s just sex. I get so little pleasure from it but I do not feel physical pain so why not? I think. I have had straight sex, I have had queer sex. One of my friends once asked me if I prefer penises or vaginas and I told her that I don’t really care for either. I like men, I like women, I like genderqueer people. So I have sex, and oftentimes without attachments. This is what I am supposed to do. I talk with my friends about hookups because as a Grinnellian, that is what I am supposed to do. Sex is good, sex isn’t a big deal, sex is

natural it’s just sex it’s just sex it’s just sex — but if I don’t do it, if I don’t like it, am I unnatural? Am I a bad Grinnellian? Not wanting sex does not make me or anyone else a bad person. But here, it feels like a secret I have to keep, like another scar I have to hide. I am probably demisexual – I only enjoy sex with someone with whom I have a strong personal connection. At Grinnell, we say that we support the ACE community, whose members are on the broad spectrum of asexuality, but it was not until I realized how I likely identify that I realized why I do not feel supported. And I do love people. I love kissing them and holding them and being close to them and giving to them, but since this summer I have not had sex. I feel like this makes me selfish because I am not giving to others, and a bad Grinnellian because I won’t participate in something that feels so strangely integral to our culture, and because I still blame myself for my own scars. When I wrote the first draft of this, it had been months since I’d even masturbated. I’m healing now, but it’s a long road. I still have to remind myself that I am not at fault, and that it is okay for me to feel the way I do, to want the things I want and not want some things I am told I should. When my dad read my rough draft he told me, “You sound really depressed.” Yes, I thought, That’s because I fucking am. “I know you have a message that’s important to you,” he said, “but all I can think about is how depressed you sound. You might want to change that.”

I love my dad, and I know that he loves me, and only wants to help. So when I say this, I say this as gently as I can: Fuck that. I was depressed when I first penned this and now, part of what has helped me fight my way out of that thick, clinging cloud of depression has been my anger. So just as I am allowed to be angry and depressed, I am also allowed to sound angry and depressed. I will not change that because it is my truth, and I refuse to sugarcoat it. A spoonful of sugar may help the medicine go down but I am not Mary Fucking Poppins, and I don’t think this world needs any more cavities in its ideological teeth. And the truth is that ourobsessionwithsex-positivityisn’talways so positive. Instead of sex-positivity, I want sexuality-positivity and I want communication and I want honesty. I want to not be terrified to tell someone I care about that I will need time. When I look at myself in the mirror I don’t want to see a girl with secrets, who hides the truth to please others. I want to see someone who is comfortable with her body, who is able to love herself again in all senses of the word. Whose scars have begun to fade. I want to see someone whose body can offer her pleasure, and who knows how to take it, how to give it, how to say yes and how to say no and who is not ashamed. I want to see someone who has been told, It is okay. Take your time. We can go slow, don’t worry about not pleasing me. This is your dance too, and not just mine. Your trauma is okay. Your anger is okay. I can wait. It will work out. Is this okay? Are you okay? Don’t do this for me; do this for you.

GOLF NOT SUICIDE ethan evans ‘19

cw: satirical suicidal ideation I used to cry at lunch because I was seven and life was meaningless. In middle school I listened to Marilyn Manson and drew an upside down cross on my forehead every morning. In highschool I smoked piles of weed. Eventually the doc gave me pills to be happy. They turned my emotions and my dick off but I was, ostensibly, happier. The first few weeks of college were marvelous. I met new people, flirted with girls, got drunk and ignored my classwork. But as the months glided by, I slid back into the warm embrace of my depression. Wrote papers about Camus for my physics class, crafted unhappy faces with bulbous noses on every chalkboard, and surreptitiously poked holes in all of the GUM condoms. I went to SHACS to see if they could fix me. After making an appointment to make an appointment to talk to someone, I arrived three weeks later to talk to someone. First they asked me what made me happy. I told them playing drinking games to Schindler’s List and writing sad poems about why I’m too intellectual to get laid after Harrises. The nurse lady suggested I take a medical leave for the rest of the semester. I told her dad got drunk and threw copies of the Bible at me whenever I tried to talk to him about Bernie Sanders. Instead, she gave me a handful of pills. They made me drool a lot during class and have strange dreams where Jesus turned me into a poinsettia and made fun of my sexual ambiguity.

I tried to keep the chipper attitude of a good American college student, but my incorrigible sadness stemming from the pain of living clung to my neck like that turtleneck I bought to show everyone how good of a writer I was. Whenever the pills didn’t work good I tried going to the wellness lounge, but was mortified to find that a box of crayons and a fucking jigsaw puzzle couldn’t cure the mental illness I’d be suffering from for two odd decades. I stole vodka from main and yelled about neoliberalism. Anyone walking down south loggia was in for a big surprise. When my art teacher said my charcoal drawing of Friedrich Nietzsche weeping and having sex with my philosophy professor was a little contrived my will was finally and irreparably broken. I decided life wasn’t worth living. Drugs? I don’t have money. Guns? I go to Grinnell; I don’t know how to fire a gun. Rope? I can’t tie a knot. Death by cop? I’m white. For days this last, great question bounced asunder in the walls of my skull. Laying on my dorm bed, I heard the piercing wail of the train ambling through the prairie. My solution accompanied the gnashing of steel on steel. I would fuck with the train in the hope that it would behead me, or at least take off a limb or two. I would do the suicide good. Grinnellians would forever after discuss that one kid who did the suicide good and lament that they would have to live a life upholding Grinnell’s tradition of social responsibility for they could never do the suicide as good as I did the suicide.

Just as I was about to log onto my email to inform my teachers that I would no longer be attending their classes as the train was about to eat me, I came upon a special campus memo. It told me that Grinnell had purchased the Grinnell Country Club adjacent to campus. It had a golf course. While I had wandered there inebriated to sing Creep and vomit, I had never given it much thought. I decided to walk there, smoke cigarettes, and wait for the train. I arrived and saw the moon light sloping grounds like a floodlight. Artificial ponds grew luminescent like holy water. A lone figure swung and sent a golf ball sailing into two holes at once. Raykay riding bareback atop a golden wolf. In that rapturous moment I knew that I could never succumb to my sadness. I would become golf and golf would become me. I would rise at 3am every morning to train incessantly. Soon I would be touring the world, beating investment bankers and hedge fund managers alike at this supreme form of recreation. Golf is not sport. Golf is art. I found a purpose. Just like that, I switched my major from French/ Worm Studies/ Unitarian Universalism to Turf Grass Design. Now my days are filled with the ecstasy of club hitting ball, the orgasm of a hole in one. Don’t do suicide. Do golf.

THE FIELD GUIDE TO LETTING GO clara trippe ‘18

Hey. Hey you. You’ve dealt with a lot. The years you’ve lived feel longer than they should; you’ve been fighting every day. Sometimes you feel so tired very deep inside of you, in a place sleep can’t touch, and you aren’t sure if you can manage all these hours left in the day. This is okay. You have spent a long time living for other people. They have asked too much of you, more than a person can be expected to give. You were not enough for them. This is not a failure on your part; its just another thing to tell yourself before you let go. It is hard now, I’m sure, to understand good love. The people who loved you (and maybe you loved them too, this is also okay) have let you down. They made you feel wrong, or small, or selfish. They have made your body feel as if it doesn’t belong to you, as if it doesn’t deserve the care any body should have. Their love may have made you give up gentleness. I am here to tell you it is okay to say no to those who care about you, okay to not want to be touched, okay to need time to heal. This is all normal; this is a part of letting go. There is no guilt in this. And this will take time; perhaps a year, perhaps many. For now, you may be defensive and distant. You may believe the way you see the world is shattered through a kaleidoscope; it may be hard to believe what you see. You may be uncomfortable around people, or in new places, and you may hide parts of yourself as protection. It can be scary when you can’t figure out what people want from you. You can’t understand why they would want to be around you unless they can get something out of it. You might lie when you feel threatened, which is often. You were taught it wasn’t your right to say no, what else could you do?

You might have a hard time being close to someone. Trust became another very far away feeling, because you couldn’t trust the person who said they loved you. You may prefer to be alone, because it is simpler. You have learned to be hard, to wear your body like an exoskeleton, to let nothing in or out. You may hear the voices of the people who have hurt you in the floorboards telling you all the things they thought were so wrong about you. Their voice over the phone will terrify you, at least for a while. They could have never touched you; their words were violent enough. It may take a long time for these reactions to stop, for the voices to quiet down. Give it time. Living the way you want will help. Mirrors may be difficult, or reflective surfaces in general. It can be hard to see yourself as anything but what they’ve told you. Sometimes it can seem as if you spill out the sides, unwanted, into space that doesn’t belong to you. That you are large, and clumsy, and heavy, and the very sight if you is unworthy. You may wish not to be seen, or wish to have control over the way people see you through any number of things. Letting go of whatever this person has made you hold on to may be the most difficult thing you ever have to do. It will require all your thought. It may take so long, it may feel so overwhelming. While you are doing it, you may see all the times you pushed someone away because you were scared. All the times you lashed out. All the strategies you learned to stay safe. These habits are hard to let go of. It will require you to be vulnerable. Creating a healthy relationship will take intent, because the dos and don’ts of loving someone have been warped. Being able to tell someone when they are doing something you don’t like

can seem impossible. It may seem easier to just wait for it to be over. In your head, they aren’t asking too much, until all of a sudden it’s way too much. And some people will not understand this. They may think it’s the past, that you should merely forget about it. Still, it is hard for you to imagine love as anything other than an animal with large teeth and bristling fur. You can’t stop moving yet, not with the animal behind you, waiting to swallow. You are allowed to be fragile now. Some people never acknowledge the reality of emotional trauma. You may need others to assure you they want you there, because for so long you were told you were not worth love and it’s hard to believe anyone would bother. It’s okay to be needy now; it is okay to be insecure. You, you strong, tired person have had so much you’ve had to deal with: things you didn’t choose, things you didn’t want. It’s incredibly unfair. You can be mad. It’s infuriating, trust me. You may feel the need to force everyone to understand, while at the same time pretend it doesn’t even exist. What happened to you, the people you’ve loved, they’ve lived with you on a landscape, and trying to explain it to someone feels like throwing green paint across the canvas. You don’t have to make anyone else understand. You don’t have to prove to them you deserve to feel this hurt. You just have to live, and keep living as best you can with all the things that have happened to you, knowing that you have lived with them as if they were yours, even though now you are trying to leave them behind you.

So thanks a lot to Prof. Howard, it’s not like you were already the most popular kid in the class, and then he had to go and—What time is it? Nine-thirty? Ten? Christ, it’s ten twenty-five. Time to get back to work. Eating disorders are passé. Anxiety doubly passé. Depression, oh my God, triply passé. Schizophrenia you know nothing about. PTSD you don’t really get. And that’s pretty much the extent of your awareness. So maybe no mental disorder. Maybe the Conflict is an outer Conflict. Maybe your protagonist, she’s in this relationship, right? With like this abusive guy? Who works at a bar, or a construction site, or something? And she’s pregnant. Oh man, she’s super-pregnant. Well, not super-pregnant—she’s not showing yet. She’s still in high school. No, college. No, high school—you’re in college, that’d be weird, talking about a girl your age who might be in the same situation one of your very classmates is in. Though it seems unlikely any of the workshop gals would date a bartender/ construction worker. They seemed to go for creative types who smoked cigarettes and played the mandolin. Beverly Lays’ boyfriend, for example, played the mandolin. Maybe the abusive guy is not a construction worker, after all. Maybe he’s a barista in a coffee shop who looks totally innocent at first glance: innocent tortoiseshell glasses, innocent rustic flannel with the sleeves rolled up halfway, innocent SurvivalStrap bracelet from time in Peace Corps, innocent corduroy jeans, innocent clean-shaven jawline à la Bev’s boyfriend. The kind of barista who says Try a biscotti with that stupid hip-barista drawl. The Neapolitan biscotti are super-rad. Once he gets home though. You imagine a brief exchange between the boyfriend and your protagonist that ends with your protagonist huddled in the kitchen, hair pooling redly on the kitchen table, crying, her slight frame shaking as though in a strong breeze. Shaking like wind chimes in a strong breeze. There, you’ve got a metaphor. You feel almost angry as you think about this scenario. The boyfriend—what an asshole, Jesus, coming home and yelling at his girlfriend, who’s been hiding her pregnancy from

him for God’s sake, hiding it not out of malice or distrust but because she doesn’t want him to worry, she’s borrowed money from her friend in college to pay for the operation but doesn’t know if she wants to go through with it, her family being Catholic and her own views being conflicted and all—and as a high school student at that, not even eighteen and she’s got to deal with her verbally and psychologically abusive boyfriend on top of everything—You want to shake this guy for being such an asshole. No, you want to smash his face in. If anyone treats your protagonist like that—This is good; your character’s real enough that you care about her. She’s got some substance. And you’ve got some semblance of a plot. And you’ve got this Jägermeister Grant Bechmann gave you after you wrote his summary of ‘All The King’s Men’ for his 20th-century lit class. A celebratory drink. Down it goes. For some reason, all of a sudden you feel like crying. For some reason you are frustrated. You feel there is still so much you do not know. Does she laugh loudly or quietly, your protagonist? What phrases does she use in her everyday speech? What movies does she like? What makes her cry? What makes her tick? It’s not part of your story anymore. You feel like you’re breathing into a CPR dummy. How are events in her life processed and made fungible in her head, as memories and ideas? Is she self-aware? Does she bite her nails? Does she think about what it’d be like to have woken up in a different life, a life less fraught with meaning and less rich in symbolism, a life unexamined and insignificant, a life more like your own? Another drink. Whoops, that’s the end of it. Thanks, Grant, thanks for nothing, half a lousy bottle for a fucking sixpage summary of the most boring book you’ve ever—Okay, it’s fine, you’ve got a plot, sort of, you have a Conflict, and the Resolution usually figures itself out. You’ve just got to get writing. Rats, it’s eleven-thirteen. Forty-seven minutes for five pages? Easy. All’s you need is a great first sentence, the kind of first sentence that’ll really hit Prof. Howard in the gut. She looked out the window. Fuck. She

gazed out through the window, and— Fuck! Okay. You just need a minute to take a step back from the story. Breathe. Who are you anyhow to be writing about a seventeen-year-old girl with an abusive boyfriend and an unwanted pregnancy? You’re a pimply college kid with Coke-bottle glasses, hunchbacked and arachnoid and dreaming of Beverly Lays, cursing her flannelled barista-boyfriend under hateful fetid breath. And Beverly Lays—shit, Bev hasn’t looked at you once in class, except for last week during the white-supremacy story incident, which was not exactly an ideal context for first eye-contact,nottomentionhereyebrows were doing a very judgmental thing right then that could have had to do with something else, but probably didn’t. Are you a voyeur? Is that what this is? Spiritual voyeurism? Is that repulsive? Are you repulsive in spirit as well as body? You don’t think you could bear that. In body it’s all right, that’s—you can’t really do anything about the cysts and the hunchback, etc., but if there’s some kind of character perversion— Enough. You turn back to your computer. The little blinking cursor and blank document. It feels like you’re on the verge of something big here. The story’s there, you can feel it humming under the surface of the page. You are so full of things, things you have to tell people, feelings they need to feel, that they need to feel in order for you to feel. Because now it’s too late, you need to become your character; building and observing aren’t enough. You think you love her like you love yourself, only slant, somehow. So how to become this woman,thisyoungwomanwhosecollege applications are half-done and jumbled, who can never remember how to spell restaurant, whose long hair she has often dreamed about cutting off at the chin, who gazes out the window now with her gray eyes made clear by the bright afternoon sunlight, her hand floating near but not quite touching her stomach, not wanting to think about what’s inside, what’s hidden.

Sometimes it’s best to start a story with your character. Sometimes, you think, when you’re having a tough time with plot and syntax and all that 101 junk, it’s easiest to start with your protagonist’s bones, adding then muscle and fat and all the good stuff, blood and tears and snot, building the body from the ground up. It’s what God did, right? Right. Your character is a young man. A disaffected young man, a pale young man with sunken eyes and a black stare, a handsome disaffected young man who one day tells his shitty boss he’s had enough of his—No, hang on, though, you’re a young man; everyone’d make fun of you in class. Well, they wouldn’t say anything. No one says anything mean in a workshop, really. But they’d all be thinking it. Guy who can’t come up with his own stuff signs up for a fiction workshop, what kind of narcissistic ‘On the Road’-wannabebullshit—Evenespecially Beverly Lays, whose opinion you value so much. A woman. Your protagonist is a young woman. Slim-hipped and willowy and blond, with eyes like stars and lips full and—No. No, no no no no, this is embarrassing, you are embarrassed of yourself right now, thank God no one else is around and omniscient enough to see what’s going through your head. And how boring, to have some kind of Aryan princess-cheerleaderasyourprotagonist, when it’d just come off as voyeuristic and unimaginative and totally sexist, despite the totally honest attempt, through casting a female protagonist, to maybe understand a struggle you don’t identify with, maybe? You don’t know. Not willowy and blond, then. Not beautiful. Well, maybe pretty. You can’t help imagining a facial prototype that’s pretty, at least—it’s just where your mind goes. But not a total knockout. Maybe she’s got a snaggle-

VANITAS VANITUM josie sloyan ‘18

tooth. Maybe she’s the kind of girl who’s really shy in high school, and is actually really beautiful, only she’s so shy no one really looks at her, and also she wears her hair down so no one can see her face, on account of she’s self-conscious about the snaggletooth? Maybe she covers her mouth when she laughs, does kind of a little hidden-giggle deal, that whatever love interest she ends up with finds super-adorable. Maybe it’s the source of her Conflict. The snaggletooth is. But so back to the bones: she’s very thin. All shy girls are thin. All non-traditionally pretty girls (i.e., girls with Conflict + eventual love interest) are thin. In fact, it’s kind of an essential part of a non-traditional, or‘alternative’girl’s makeup that they be very thin, almost unhealthily so. Hips slender and jutting, knees knobby, fingers crooked, veins like traced seawater beneath long pale forearms. She can’t be blond, that’s been established. Blond is too much. Blond is—it’s not your fault there are stereotypes. Blond says GOLDEN GIRL, FAME, POWER, LUST, etc. etc. Brunette? There are too many brunettes. Everyone and their mother has brown hair, seems like. Your girl is not like everyone. Your girl has pale red hair that falls straight and smooth to her ribcage and ripples when she turns her head. An oval face, something Danish about the mouth and forehead. Eyes wide-spaced but not doe-like by any means, just normal wide-spaced eyes, grayish and in a certain light almost clear. Maybe a snaggletooth isn’t enough. God knows you wouldn’t be traumatized by a snaggletooth.Asnaggletoothquitefrankly would be the very least of your problems, physical-appearance-wise. There is the matter of the psoriasis, first off, and the scoliosis—the serious hunchbackish kind, not the kind Viv Malmgren had

in high school that just made her walk with a sort of vertical undulation. And your body—geez, you had work to do, if you were ever going to get that V thing around your pelvis girls supposedly liked. Or maybe better to start with the bottle-capglassesandsubsequentsweat-rash on the bridge of your nose. The oversized blackheads on your T-zone. The chin cysts. The unhandsomely deep-set eyes and overhanging brow. The sunken chest and bloated abdomen, all wrong, like a torso turned upside down and reattached. You’re not thinking about you right now. It seems essential that your character have a problem, either within or outside of herself, that will eventually be the source of her Conflict and the object of the story’s Resolution. A snaggletooth isn’t enough. A peg leg? Nah. Best to stay away from physical disabilities, you think. Too obvious. Maybe your protagonist has an eating disorder. But is that too common-garden a problem? You can name like ten people who have eating disorders off the top of your head, including old Craig Potenkis, your high-school wrestling buddy, poor old Craig and his ever-present Dixie cup that functioned as spittoon. This one time Craig asked if you wanted to see who could lose more water weight in a week for an upcoming tournament, you or him, and you were all, uh, OK Craig, like thanks anyway. Pour one out for Craig, old buddy. Rats, you shouldn’t be drinking. Not that you have a problem because that’s ridiculous, you’re a college student, it’s what college students do. But it’s bad for morale. Also this draft is due in like two hours and Professor Howard isn’t going to take any more of your shit, especially after the last story, with all the alleged ‘white supremacy subtext,’ which really? You didn’t even notice?

FROM STR8 TO STR9

john gallagher ‘17 & sophie kornbluh ‘16 (Any resemblance of any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Except for that one person. You know who you are.)

The first time I knew I was straight, it was like waking up from a bad dream. Everything seemed clear: I realized I like nipples on top of mounds. I realized I like my nipples breasted. They are better as a part of a functional mammary gland. I am a cis-gender, white, heterosexual male, and I’m proud of it. It wasn’t a choice I made, but I’ve accepted it. I can’t change, even if I wanted to, even if I tried. But it wasn’t always this easy. When I arrived at Grinnell College, I thought it would be just like high school: dates in public, pulsating testosterone in the locker rooms of hot, steamy male bodies, the deep throatin’under the bleachers, and the friend we all thought was really straight all along. I never thought it would actually be me. But here I am, world. But anyways, back to Grinnell. Everything changed when I started musical theater: the chorus lines, the show stopping tunes, and most of all, the curves. Ah, the curves! At first I thought I wanted to be friends with her. Then, I wanted to be her. BUT THEN! I realized I wanted something more. That thing they call “penis in vagina sex.” Intercourse. Coitus. Such taboo words I’d seen scribbled on dumpsters in back alleys but never dared to utter aloud. But how could it be sex if procreation was involved? Was this really living? What would my gay fathers think of this? Would they still love me? The tension continued day after day as we slowly grew fonder. It all had to be in secret, no one could ever know. Seeking solace, I snuck over to the SRC. But it turns out, the Straight Resource Center didn’t exist. None of them were straight like me! Who could I turn to? I felt so marginalized in that moment I didn’t know what to do. Did PornHub even have straight porn?

What app should I use other than Grindr? How will I meet hot chicks with sick racks? How can I tell if this girl is straight? What are the signs? Does her long hair make her straight?They never taught me these things about being straight in school, so how was I supposed to know what to do? While rehearsing the final number, my hand lingered on the back of her bra for a moment too long. Did she notice? “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that,” I muttered. “No, it’s fine,” she replied, as she averted her eyes quickly and acted as if nothing happened. As I left rehearsal, I couldn’t help but gaze longingly at the massive jugs dangling from her chest, barely supported by her bra. That’s when I noticed her staring at the large lump protruding from my crotch. My dick was lit. It was very hard. She asked, “What’s that?” as she pointed at my pitched tent. “Come into this closet with me, and I’ll show you, but no one can know,” I responded. We stumbled into the nearby closet, and closed and locked the door, out of sight. We immediately disrobed and gazed for a moment at the ugly beauty of the opposite sex’s body. Her front butt was Medusa and turned my wee-wee into stone. The veins stood out a lot on my pecker, which was like a compass, which pointed directly at her fuzz-covered pleasure center. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I knew that I wanted it. I wanted my man meat to rest on her sheath biscuit. But immediately, we ran into a problem. Which hole should I take? There were somewhere between two and four holes down there, and it was very unclear which one was the fun tunnel. I poked around for a while, “What do I do?” There was

a sound like paper ripping, as my peen machine entered the station. I felt tension, and I heard a noise. “Excuse me–was that an orgasm?” I asked curiously. “Yes, I think? Or maybe not. It’s unclear. It might have been gas. I had taco for lunch,” she replied. We continued furiously. All of a sudden my nuts felt like they were happily on fire (which had never happened with another man) and I felt a surge of viscous fluid rushing up the urethra of my dong shooting onto her like a stepped-on mayonnaise packet and squirting onto her glee lentil-and-quinoa taco. It immediately hardened into a hard coating of the prodigious number of spermatozoa that my vas deferens had secreted onto her body that cemented her legs in place. With one moan, she looked at me, then looked at her frosted donut, and did dual gasp of pleasure and horror. “I have to go, softball practice starts soon,” she uttered, and grabbed her frilly, lacy thong, and dashed out as I put on my Hanes boxer briefs and poorly-fitted jeans (which I realize now was a dead giveaway of my straightness) and sulked out of the closet. I reentered a world where my lifestyle was not legitimate. I felt immediately ashamed, but also liberated and thrilled. My wiener was satisfied, but the world stayed the same. I had the feeling at Grinnell, I could change things. I could be the real me, I could be a real man. I could be straight. Maybe.

*Special thanks to our straight consultant, Hannah Lieberman ’16, for providing endless accurate depictions of her typical lifestyle and experiences as a straight individual.

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