What does it mean to make America “great” again?

To answer that question, we must first identify what’s so “great” about the United States. As the midterm elections approach, with voter suppression running rampant across the country, it would be statistically inaccurate to claim that representative democracy makes America “great.” We need to be more honest with each other and ourselves.

We also need to recognize that our broken federal government cannot be fully blamed on Trump. In response to the political advancements of people of color in the post-Civil Rights era, we have seen continuous efforts to reassert white supremacy within the governing body. Populist white nationalism has always been about maintaining a racial hierarchy that is becoming less and less manageable.

Frankly, white people have a good reason to be worried about the status of their supremacy given that America will have a majority of black and brown citizens by 2044.

Poor and middle class white Americans who love Trump are responding to his race-baiting, plain and simple. If we examine the premise of MAGA even a little bit, we quickly discover that racism is the default position for white people within the American narrative of “greatness.” Life has clearly improved for people of color, women and queer people since the “great” American age of the 1940s and 1950s.

The only people whose lifestyles seem to have declined are white people in the middle and lower classes, and especially white men; part of this is owing to a loss of privilege, but most is owing to a loss of economic security. Wealthy conservatives rely upon getting whites to the polls over issues of race, rather than working class economic interests, in election years like this where many white conservatives now prefer the Democratic platform on key issues like affordable healthcare. The most effective way to distract white people from the wealth gap is by appealing to racism.

One prime example of this is conservative fear-mongering surrounding the “invasion” of a migrant caravan in the weeks leading up to the midterms. Though these refugees are walking on foot and remain 2,000 miles away from their expected point of entry at the US border, Trump plans to deploy 15,000 active-duty troops to the border. His strategy is an obvious political gambit designed to stoke white fear of a racial war against the state.

The GOP fabricated this “national emergency” in order to turn out the white conservative vote. Republicans desperately need to do that because, in all respects, the white vote continues to pull the most weight within our electoral process. We aren’t a truly representative democracy today, and we never have been. But since the 2013 Supreme Court ruling which struck down key clauses of the antiracist Voting Rights Act of 1965, we have seen a profound resurgence in conservative-led voter suppression tactics.

In 2016, 65 million people voted for Clinton; 4.5 million people voted for Johnson; 1.5 million people voted for Stein; and another 108 million eligible citizens did not vote. Donald Trump won with just 63 million votes which represented 25.6 percent of eligible American voters.

Are we a representative democracy if 75 percent of eligible American voters did not consent to the administration whose thumb we are being crushed beneath?

History reveals that Democrats tend to win in elections with high voter turnout, especially among people of color. But Pew Research shows that only 59.6 percent of eligible black voters, 49.4 percent of Asian voters, and 47.6 percent of Latinx voters had their votes counted in 2016 — as compared to 65.3 percent of white voters.

Voters of color face constant barriers: from Latinx residents of Dodge City being unable to access the single overcrowded voting location outside the city limits in Kansas, to black and Latinx voters having their registrations thrown out by vote purges in Georgia, to Native Americans facing racist voter-ID laws targeting them in North Dakota. Voters of color also risk Trump-fueled intimidation by white supremacists at the polls everywhere else.

With all this trouble, why bother voting in a system that’s stacked so heavily against you anyways?

We must consider those who cannot vote, too. The Sentencing Project estimates that 1 in 13 black Americans have lost their voting rights due to felony disenfranchisement—as compared to 1 in 56 white Americans. Since 1976, post-Voting Rights Act, the number of disenfranchised citizens has risen from 1.17 million to 6.1 million. In highly conservative states, people of color face astronomical rates of disenfranchisement: 21 percent of black citizens in Florida, 26 percent in Kentucky, 21 percent in Tennessee, and 22 percent in Virginia. Additionally, citizens of US territories like Guam and Puerto Rico cannot vote in federal elections and have no voting representation in Congress. Most of these 4.4 million people are people of color.

Imagine having millions of extra voters of color (as well as electoral college votes for the territories) in 2016, when Trump won despite Clinton’s 2.8 million popular vote lead. Would a more racially-representative democracy have turned out a different result?

Viewing American politics through the rose-colored lenses of nationalism means ignoring the inconvenient fact that during the supposedly “great” eras of the US, life was much worse for black and brown Americans. In many ways, pride in the legacy of American democracy is pride in the history of the racial oppression that continues today.

Black Americans do not share the same history as white Americans. Native Americans do not share the same history as white Americans. Latinx Americans do not share the same history as white Americans. Asian Americans do not share the same history as white Americans.

White Americans calling for a return to American traditionalism want to see a revival of their own history—the history of white supremacy.

So: what does it mean to make America “great” again?

We must heed the lesson of The Handmaid’s Tale: “Better never means better for everyone… It always means worse, for some.”

The post Selcer: The conservative desire for “greatness” reveals American nationalism’s foundations in white supremacy appeared first on Emerald Media.

Lately, I have noticed a common refrain: “I can’t read the news anymore. It’s too exhausting.”

Though I can certainly sympathize with that feeling, I still believe it is our civic duty to make ourselves aware of the world around us. While sitting down to watch an hour of depressing news every evening might be a lot to commit to, technology has given us many simple tools to break our news consumption down into bite-sized chunks. When the news is built into your normal everyday routine, it ceases to be an isolated activity that you have to work up the energy to do and instead becomes a familiar habit.

That being said, here are my tips for making yourself read the news — even when you don’t feel like it.

Assess news sources for truthfulness before following them.

The nonpartisan, Pulitzer Prize-winning site Politifact has a number of tools for vetting both news organizations and individuals. For example, they found that Fox News features mostly false, false, or pants-on-fire false statements 59% of the time.  On the other hand, CNN has the highest cable news network rating for truthfulness, with 53% of statements rated as true or mostly true, and 20% of statements rated as half true. Politifact can assess individual politicians similarly: according to their statistics, only 16% of Trump’s statements are true or mostly true (whereas 47% of statements are false or pants-on-fire false), as compared to 49% of Obama’s statements being true or mostly true (with 12% being false, and just 2% being pants-on-fire false.) Politifact also runs a second fact-checking site called Punditfact, which evaluates how often political pundits lie or tell the truth. Snopes.com is another good fact-checking resource for any information you come across that seems suspicious.

Subscribe to a free newsletter or podcast from the New York Times.

The New York Times has some of the most reliable, time-tested national reporting available; if you can afford it, they only charge students $4/month for a digital subscription. You can also subscribe for free to either an evening newsletter or a morning newsletter (or both!) which will be delivered to your email inbox on weekdays. I usually spend just five minutes reading my morning email during my bus commute to campus. If you like having news emailed to you, they also have a free newsletter called “On Politics” that provides brief political analyses for current issues on Capitol Hill.

If you are more of a listener than a reader, I suggest trying some podcasts. The Daily is an engaging 20-minute morning podcast by the Times which frequently interviews reporters, major government officials, and political experts. I listen to The Daily each morning while I put on my makeup, or while I’m in the shower so I don’t have to set aside separate time during my day just for the news. I’ve also been enjoying their new podcast called The Argument, which features several Times opinion columnists from across the political spectrum debating contentious current events. Getting a sense of partisan viewpoints is particularly important in developing yourself as a well-rounded thinker. I also personally like The Rachel Maddow Show podcast.

Curate news and opinions from many perspectives.

For world news, it can be advantageous to consult non-US sources: the BBC and Al Jazeera are great options for a more global perspective. I also find it to be important to purposely seek out sources of news and opinions from organizations serving people of color, women, and other marginalized groups. For example, The Root has a high rating for factual information and it forefronts the perspectives of black Americans. Most major news organizations like these have apps that make it easy to check in during those short wait times throughout your day.

Integrate news into your social media.

By curating your feeds to include news you trust, you give yourself the opportunity to see the news in small doses throughout your day. On Instagram and Twitter, I follow dozens of reporters and politicians who frequently post current events, as well as news outlets like @Politico, @NYTGender and @the.root. Local accounts such as @DailyEmerald and @TheOregonian are great, too.

Individuals you trust and smaller organizations can also be a good resource here. I like to round out my news consumption with a variety of accounts from different perspectives: @GirlPowerSupply, @LatinaRebels, @NotSoIvoryTower, @Xicanisma_, @douconsideryourselfafeminist, and @Jezebel are just a few examples of pages I personally find useful. You can find similar groups, blogs, and news pages on Facebook: Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), SURJ Springfield-Eugene, Anti-Racism Media, Current Affairs, HuffPost Queer Voices, HuffPost Black Voices, The Nation Magazine, Black Feminisms, and AJ+.

Cut out the middle-man.

My last tip is to abandon news distributors altogether, and go straight to the source. You can start by subscribing to ProPublica’s free IFTTT email service, which sends you the Congressional website description of any bill the president signs into law. The C-SPAN radio app can give you direct access to legislative proceedings as well.

My all-time favorite news hack is the free VoteSpotter app. This platform customizes to your representatives so that you can easily see how they are voting in live-time. You can turn notifications on to get push updates, or off if you prefer to just check in on the app once every day or two. The app gives a short legislative description of each bill on the floor, states whether or not it passed, and tells you how your representative voted. In addition, you can hit the share button to post information about that vote to your personal social media platforms.

You can also say whether you agree or disagree with your representative’s vote, which will allow you to see how many other users agreed or disagreed with the representative’s decision. Most importantly, the app gives you customized buttons to call or email your representative directly through the app in response to any vote. The app even pre-fills an email response for you based on whether you agree or disagree, if you aren’t sure what you want to say or how to say it formally.

—

With accessible tools like these in hand, you can become a political guru without exhausting yourself in the process. Just pick a few methods you prefer and, in the words of Childish Gambino, “stay woke.”

The post Selcer: How to make yourself read the news — even when you don’t feel like it appeared first on Emerald Media.

“What a joke… You deserve ridicule for your idiotic ‘rape culture’ statements.”

This is how it began. I received this email last Saturday in response to one of my recent articles which unpacked the rhetoric of American rape culture. I was shocked, at first, by the coarse language and threatening tone of the message, which was sent to my Emerald email address by a total stranger who seemed to be using a fake name.

But as I read through it, a familiar feeling settled over me: resignation. I kept thinking to myself: “I should have expected this. Of course I should have expected this.”

Resignation (noun): the acceptance of something undesirable, but inevitable.

The gendered harassment and intimidation of female journalists is a rampant problem facing the news media industry today. In one study from UT Austin, 73 of 75 female journalists reported that they regularly faced sexist harassment online. In addition to the critiques and trolling that male journalists also receive, women who write often face slews of death and rape threats, sexual harassment, and online stalking. These women frequently receive aggressive photos of genitalia, objectifying commentary on their bodies, and other threats designed to frighten them away from writing.

Most of these comments would disturb the average reader. One journalist recalls being told things such as “rot in hell. You’re a c-nt. Maybe you wouldn’t be so mad if you weren’t so ugly.” The email I was sent included similarly misogynistic language: “Innocent until proven guilty, statute of limitations, and total silence by c-nts like you who give the actual rapist bill (sic) Clinton and his enabling wh-re wife a pass.”

When messages like this become hostile enough, female journalists are often forced to “think twice before taking a stance that could be controversial, and they occasionally opt not to publish anything rather than deal with the abuse.” At that point, gendered fear-mongering becomes a legitimate barrier to freedom of speech. I myself had to think long and hard about whether I was willing to put myself at risk by publishing the content of the hateful email I received last week.

Trump’s assaults on the news media have only increased the frequency of attacks on women in the media. Trump has been quoted dozens of times making misogynistic remarks towards female journalists, when he chooses to acknowledge them at all, including comments made two weeks ago to ABC News’ Cecilia Vega: “She’s shocked that I picked her. She’s like in a state of shock… That’s OK. I know you’re not thinking. You never do.”

Statements like these are designed to belittle and discredit women. Despite my qualifications as a journalist — one would assume being a PhD student of American politics and culture would give me enough authority to write my own well-reasoned opinion in a college newspaper — I was mocked as if I hadn’t robustly defended my argument:

“Clearly you haven’t travelled the world much if you think we have a rape culture in the USA. You are full of sh-t because you favor emotion over facts. Wake up and get out of your safe space. There’s reality out there… You are not only a hipocrit (sic) but an ignoble person devoid of knowledge.”

It would seem that many of Trump’s tricks have been picked up by his supporters, as evidenced by the closing of the email I received last week: “I hope someone comes to ruin your life because they don’t agree with your views (sic) Enjoy being Trumps (sic) b-tch.” The irony of his attack is that it represents yet another example of the exact rape culture he claimed did not exist. This particular reader referred to the Kavanaugh hearings continuously throughout his email in a way that aptly demonstrated the role fear-mongering plays in maintaining the rhetoric of rape culture: “[Dr. Ford is a] De Ford is s partisan wh-re member of the resistance and deserves zero respect.”

Aggressively attacking women who dare to speak out about misogyny is just another way to maintain systemic power over women. As Ellen Weinstein put it, “Abuse can also manifest itself in invisible ways: In the stories that have gone untold or unexplored by women because the risks of telling them, psychologically or physically, require too damn much.”

I have pushed forward with the publication of this article because I do not want to contribute to the ongoing erasure of these gendered intimidation practices. These hostile messages are rarely seen by anyone but the woman being harassed. Female journalists — and especially women of color who also experience racial targeting — put themselves at risk any time they call attention to these issues because newsrooms and legal systems have often failed to provide adequate support for female reporters.

News organizations, law enforcement, and men must learn to stand behind female journalists. Until that happens, “c-nts” like me will be out here trying to do our work alone: writing what we need to write, and resigning ourselves to the inevitable.

The post Selcer: Intimidation, fear-mongering, and sexual harassment—just another day in the life of a female journalist. appeared first on Emerald Media.

Nipples: we’ve all got ’em. Why is it, then, that some nipples are classified as ‘inappropriate’ for public spaces when others are not?

This is the question trans activist Courtney Demone asked in 2015 when she began a social experiment to see how undergoing HRT (hormone replacement therapy) would affect the treatment of her image online: “It’s my femininity, not my being transgender, that has brought about much of this privilege loss, and it’s misogyny that robs women of these privileges… [so] In the coming months, I’ll be posting topless photos of myself on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms using the hashtag #DoIHaveBoobsNow until those networks decide that my breasts have developed enough to be sexualized and worthy of censorship.”

Demone’s hashtag #DoIHaveBoobsNow has since been taken up by many other gender-nonconforming and trans Instagrammers as a part of the larger #FreeTheNipple campaign, which seeks to protest the arbitrary nature of “no nipple” policies. Such zero-tolerance policies stand in stark contrast to definitions of public decency, given that it is perfectly legal for women to go topless in many cities throughout the US.

Instagram and Facebook insist that the “no nipple” policies are the result of the Apple store assigning a 17+ rating to any apps depicting nudity; however, the nudity label only applies to women’s bare chests and not men’s. In their own words, Instagram’s community guidelines include the following: “…we don’t allow nudity on Instagram. This includes photos, videos, and some digitally-created content that show sexual intercourse, genitals, and close-ups of fully-nude buttocks. It also includes some photos of female nipples, but photos of post-mastectomy scarring and women actively breastfeeding are allowed. Nudity in photos of paintings and sculptures is OK, too.”

The wording of the policy is laughably irrational: female nipples aren’t allowed because they are inappropriate… except when they aren’t.

Social media users have been remarkably creative in pointing out the obvious lack of logic to the guidelines. In 2015, Huffington Post ran an article on Micol Hebron, an artist who created a digital sticker of a male nipple for women to photoshop over their own nipples—a censorship tactic that bewildered content moderators. Many of the photos from the original HuffPost article which depict female breasts “censored” by male nipples have now been taken down by Instagram. The badly photoshopped photos are still up, while the well-photoshopped photos (those in which a male nipple easily passes for a female nipple) have been taken down.

After noticing loopholes like this in the policy,  Vice’s Motherboard site ran a guide entitled “11 Ways to Post Nipples on Instagram Without Getting Censored.” They found that taking close-up photos of nipples (so that you can’t tell how large the breast tissue is) gives most users the ability to get away without censorship; they also suggest using photo-editing apps to make topless photos look like paintings, blurring or photoshopping the nipple out altogether, and posting photos featuring nipples beneath a see-through shirt.

Presumably, female nipples are inappropriate for children to see because they are considered a secondary sex organ. But the reality is that female nipples and male nipples have no biological difference in terms of function: men have the same mammary tissue, milk ducts, and even lactation hormones as women. There are plenty of examples of men producing breast milk, and one man’s breast milk has been scientifically evaluated as “within the range of colostrum and milk obtained from normal lactating women.” While women tend to have about a third more of the hormone prolactin in their bodies than men on an average day, the production of prolactin increases tenfold during pregnancy to trigger lactation. Like women, men just need a hormonal spike in prolactin to begin producing breast milk.

With that scientific evidence in mind, it is hard to argue against the idea that if women’s nipples are sex organs, then so are anyone else’s regardless of gender and sex labels.

Breastfeeding itself offers another interesting set of contradictions. The “no nipple” policy is meant to keep content which isn’t appropriate for children off of social media, and yet we are all aware that it is perfectly appropriate for young children and babies to see—and, yes, even suck—female nipples. Where is the logic in believing that female nipples are okay for babies, not okay for kids between the ages of 6 and 17, and okay for adults?

This question is, of course, rhetorical. Courtney Demone has already identified the answer for us: women’s nipples are censored online because they are oversexualized. Despite the fact that there is no biological difference between male and female nipples, women’s nipples are treated as sex objects and men’s are treated like fingers or toes.

Ironically (and paradoxically), women’s nipples would probably be less sexualized if they were publicly acceptable because the censorship of women’s nipples is exactly what guards their status as sex symbols.  Some might say that the lure of women’s nipples comes from the fact that they are always covered, and therefore able to be “discovered.” The fact that an Instagrammer could post an objectifying photo of a woman with whipped cream covering her nipples, but could not post a less sexual photo of the same woman without the whipped cream is evidence enough of this—and yes, this example comes from real life.

As a result of social expectations around modesty, women’s nipples are only ever visible in sexual contexts. Is it really surprising, then, that they seem inherently sexual?

History has shown us time and time again that desexualization comes with more liberal social etiquette. The flappers of the 1920s were scandalous for having low necklines and hemlines above the knee; several countries banned the bikini outright when it was introduced in 1946; and many of us have a grandmother or older relative who can recall a time when it was inappropriate for a woman to leave the house without pantyhose.

Yet nobody thinks bare calves are particularly sexual today. Though some public schools maintain conservative dress codes, most parents don’t even blink if their child sees a woman with a short hemline or a low neckline—not even a woman in a bikini. What would be the point? No one can prevent children from seeing these things because we are constantly bombarded by commercial media featuring objectified women selling everything from burgers to lingerie. And, regardless of that, we shouldn’t treat women’s bodies as if they are something we need to “protect” children from anyways.

Our culture punishes women for appearing too sexual even though we are constantly surrounded by sexualized images of women. The result is that women aren’t allowed to control the presentation of their own bodies.

The censorship of women’s nipples supports the sexist objectification of women, while also upholding the commercial exploitation of our bodies. Let me put it this way: if nobody is shaming companies like Carl’s Junior for running TV spots featuring half-naked woman writhing on cars, nobody should be shaming a woman for posting a photo of her own nipples online if she chooses to do so.

The post Selcer: Regarding the moral panic of women’s nipples on Instagram appeared first on Emerald Media.

On Sept. 22, I woke up and found a familiar sight on my Facebook feed. As I fought back the surreal feeling of déjà vu, I read through countless #whyididntreport stories, mostly from fellow women. For the second or third time this year, I joined the latest hashtag and went on to describe the countless times I had been exposed to predatory and violent sexual behaviors since I was a preteen. I admitted that I didn’t report a single one of those experiences to the police.

But that doesn’t mean they didn’t happen.

After two weeks of intense controversy over Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations that SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh drunkenly sexually assaulted her at a party in 1982, the Senate Judiciary Committee finally heard direct testimony from Ford and Kavanaugh last Thursday. Throughout that hearing, Dr. Ford was able to recount with profound clarity not only her traumatic memories, but also the cognitive science behind the few lapses in her recollections. Many accounts called her testimony “riveting” and “heart-wrenching.”

Despite this, Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans voted on Thursday to move forward with the confirmation process — only delaying a full Senate vote at the last minute over the concerns of Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona . The senator called for the White House to reopen a limited FBI investigation (an investigation Ford has requested multiple times) into Dr. Ford’s claims. But the one-week cap on the investigation seems to suggest that, regardless of what the FBI discovers, Republicans in the Senate intend to move forward to confirm Kavanaugh so long as they can argue that there is no definitive proof of the assault.

Every time I hear someone suggest that there is no proof that Kavanaugh assaulted Ford, I hear them also saying that there is no proof that I was ever assaulted. If her word as a research psychologist with multiple degrees from Stanford isn’t proof enough, then neither is mine. Neither is any woman’s.

Every year, we have another “reckoning” with American rape culture. We have gone through seemingly endless reiterations: #metoo, #timesup, #whyididntreport, #believewomen and more. Every year, people talk about those hashtags as if they have fixed our rape culture merely by creating awareness of it.

Awareness is not enough. The politics of Kavanaugh’s hearings are unequivocal evidence that we haven’t even begun to fix the problem. Regardless of whether or not Kavanaugh is confirmed, American rape culture will persist as long as we continue to defer to the rhetoric of rape culture. That’s because our language — the questions we ask and the way we ask them, the information we consider to be true, the way we assign credibility — is steeped in the history and practice of violence against women.

Think, for example, about the ongoing debates about what counts as sexual assault or harassment, and how long it counts for. Everyone, especially men, seems to want clear guidelines. The way that these conversations take place indicates a general unwillingness to treat women generously, and thus the underlying question seems to be: “How far across the line can someone get without consequences?” instead of “What is an appropriate, comfortable distance from the line?”

Another example of rape culture rhetoric: Does it still count that Kavanaugh assaulted Dr. Ford if it was more than 30 years ago? Does sexual assault or rape only count if you report it?

Trump certainly seems to think as much: “I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents. I ask that she bring those filings forward so that we can learn date, time, and place.”

On the face, it might seem reasonable to ask for a report to substantiate a claim of sexual assault. However, the structural constraints on reporting make it nearly impossible for most victims to even file — let alone to actually go to court. In a vicious cycle, survivors are told they need proof to file a report of an assault, while also being told that a report is the only acceptable form of proof.

Even those who are tested with rape kits might find themselves without proof, as every single U.S. state has a backlog of thousands and thousands of untested rape kits. Those who actually make it to court shouldn’t plan on receiving justice: RAINN found that “out of every 1000 instances of rape, only 13 cases are referred to a prosecutor, and only seven cases will lead to a felony conviction.”

So why would a woman put herself in a situation that is so likely to end with being disbelieved, being disregarded, and being attacked? Why would she risk so much when the odds of receiving justice are so abysmally low?

These questions are not theoretical. Dr. Ford has already received numerous death threats from those who believe she falsely accused Kavanaugh; as far as I can tell, Kavanaugh has not received any death threats for allegedly attempting to rape Dr. Ford, even as statements from his other accusers continue to pour in.

Nonetheless, many people continue to insist that Dr. Ford might be lying before even considering whether Kavanaugh might be — even though Ford has everything to lose from lying, and Kavanaugh has everything to gain from doing exactly that. We ask if this could be a false rape allegation before asking if it could be true; if she could be mistaken about Kavanaugh’s identity before asking if she could be correct. This order is not accidental.

Nearly any discussion of sexual violence seems to turn to the topic of “false rape allegations.” The National Sexual Violence Resource Center estimates that one in five women will be raped at some point in their lives (as opposed to one in 71 men) and that as few as 2 percent of reports of rape are false.

These numbers are even grimmer for queer people and women of color. The Human Rights Campaign reports that as many as half of transgender and bisexual people will experience sexual violence at some point in their lives. The Department of Justice shows that black women are are 35 percent more likely than white women to be raped; anywhere from 40 to 80 percent of Asian and Pacific Islander women report having been the target of sexual violence; 23.4 percent of Latina women are victims of intimate partner abuse; and 37.5 percent of Native American women experience sexual violence in their lifetime.

But the rhetoric of rape culture does not require attention to facts, as exemplified best by the National Coalition for Men. This Men’s Rights Activist group claims (incorrectly) that anywhere from 25 to 60 percent of rape reports are false, making men the victims of a “non-existent rape epidemic on college campuses and rape hysteria.”

Rape culture rhetoric relies heavily on the sentiment that feminists have created a world that is more dangerous for men than women. Trump has used this rhetoric time and time again over the last week, making claims like: “It’s a very dangerous period in our country and it’s being perpetrated by some very evil people.”

The fixation on whether or not Kavanaugh should have his whole life “destroyed” by these allegations reveals an underlying belief that men are the real victims of rape culture. Accordingly, most of Kavanaugh’s unexpectedly aggressive testimony on Thursday centered around the rhetoric of victimhood, as he claimed angrily that “my family and my name have been totally and permanently destroyed.”

Kavanaugh’s outraged tears throughout the confirmation hearings are an unsurprising instance of white male fragility being weaponized to shut down conversations around misogyny. The sympathy garnered by his seeming devastation will likely be used to justify Republican Senators’ denial of the truth of Ford’s allegations. 

Continuing the trend of crying wolf, last Thursday several male Republican senators — who, after Ford’s testimony, suddenly reclaimed speaking time from the female prosecutor they had hired to question Ford and Kavanaugh — used their platform to rail against the supposed mistreatment of Kavanaugh rather than to question him.

Perhaps most memorable were Senator Graham’s indignant shouts at Democrats: “If you vote no, you’re legitimizing the most despicable thing I have seen in my time in politics.” 

Nevermind the fact that Kavanaugh is not being criminally prosecuted — he is being vetted for a lifetime promotion to the highest court in the nation. The assumption of “innocence unless proven beyond a reasonable doubt” does not apply to these hearings because Kavanaugh faces no real punishment beyond being rejected. If unconfirmed, Kavanaugh will merely return to his powerful judicial seat on the Federal Appeals Court. This conveniently-forgotten fact proves that there is little substantiation to the claim that his career will be destroyed.

Conversations about Kavanaugh’s supposed suffering also usefully forget the reality that privileged men have rarely seen their lives altered by allegations of sexual misconduct: Woody Allen, Kobe Bryant, R. Kelly, Roman Polanski, Mike Tyson and Donald Trump are just a few notable examples of men who have gone on to enjoy successful careers after being accused (many of them more than once) of sexual assault or rape. It has been less than a year since #metoo, and Aziz Ansari and Louis CK have already returned to work. Nor should we forget that Justice Clarence Thomas still sits on the Supreme Court bench today.

When taken to an extreme, the “men as victims of women” logic can be twisted into outright violence. Incels (“involuntary celibates”) have long used Reddit forums to advocate for rape as a way to punish women who refuse to provide them with sex. As one man wrote: “One day incels will realize their true strength and numbers, and will overthrow this oppressive feminist system. … start envisioning a world where WOMEN FEAR YOU.”

Though people who accuse Dr. Ford of lying might not be consciously trying to create fear among women, the effect is the same. That’s because, at its core, rape culture is a culture of fear. Women are afraid of reporting because they are painfully aware that their allegations, in most cases, will not be taken seriously. Retribution is a factor too, given that eight out of 10 victims know their rapist personally.

In practice, those who report are likely to be greeted with open hostility. Law professor Anita Hill was mercilessly grilled and discredited by a panel of all-white, all-male senators during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings 27 years ago. Many of those same men sat on the Senate Judiciary Committee last Thursday during Dr. Ford’s hearing, literally yelling about the unfair treatment of Kavanaugh.

Though other women continue to come forward with accusations of Kavanaugh’s sexual misconduct, a profound disbelief in their allegations persists. Deborah Ramirez, a Yale classmate of Kavanaugh’s, has reported that Kavanaugh drunkenly pushed his penis into her face and forced her to touch it at a party in 1983, only a year after his alleged assault on Dr. Ford. This account has been corroborated by several witnesses, and his college roommate reports that Kavanaugh was known to be a frequent and belligerent drinker.

A third allegation from Julie Swetnick describes how she was raped at a party after being drugged by a group of men including Kavanaugh. Swetnick’s lawyer, Michael Avenatti, has stated that he has significant evidence of Kavanaugh’s participation in the drugging and gang rapes of a string of young women during the 1980s.

Despite this, Kavanaugh continues to deny all allegations, Republicans in the Senate continue to vote him forward, and Donald Trump continues to voice support for him via Twitter: “The Democrats are playing a high level CON GAME in their vicious effort to destroy a fine person. It is called the politics of destruction. Behind the scene the Dems are laughing. Pray for Brett Kavanaugh and his family!”

These denials raise doubts about whether Kavanaugh will ever be held accountable, criminally or otherwise. In Bill Cosby’s case, more than 60 women reported him before there was “enough” proof to put him on trial — and he still walked away with only three counts of sexual assault. It’s hard to say what could finally tip the scales in the Kavanaugh controversy.

The argument that Dr. Ford or any of the other accusers should not be believed without proof reveals that the American system of rape culture is still alive and working as efficiently as ever to keep the cycle of misogynistic violence alive. As Rebecca Solnhit of The Guardian so aptly put it when commenting on why Dr. Ford didn’t report in 1982:

“Why should we now expect an ordinary schoolgirl to have succeeded where Olympic athletes and Hollywood actors failed to get a hearing or justice?”

—

Are you a survivor with a response to this story? Feel free to email me with your thoughts. 

Support for survivors:

• RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline: (800) 656-HOPE
• University of Oregon 24-hr counseling hotline: (541) 346-SAFE
• University of Oregon Safe Ride: (541) 346-RIDE ext. 2
• More local resources can be found at safe.uoregon.edu

The post Selcer: America’s re-re-re-reckoning with rape culture appeared first on Emerald Media.

There is no shortage of controversy over the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings — from the accusations of Dr. Blasey Ford to evidence that Kavanaugh lied under oath to the Senate, to Kavanaugh’s contentious opinion that presidents should be shielded from both criminal and civil charges while in office.

But abortion may ultimately be the issue that decides the fate of Trump’s nominee. The abortion rights debate reignited two years ago after Trump’s campaign promise to only nominate judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade. The release of a 2003 email in which Kavanaugh wrote that he was “not sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe as the settled law of the land,” has only exacerbated the issue.

Senate Republicans have a narrow margin of 51 votes to confirm Kavanaugh, meaning that Democrats can prevent Kavanaugh’s confirmation if they peel off just two Republicans. Unsurprisingly, pro-choice Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins have become central targets for influence from both sides of the aisle.

A history lesson on the rise of the religious right might be required to understand the GOP’s battle to roll back abortion rights, especially given that Roe v. Wade was less controversial after its passing in 1973 than it is today. In fact, the Republican party did not take up anti-abortion as a central platform issue until 1976.

In 2011, Cambridge’s Journal of Policy History ran an article entitled “The GOP’s Abortion Strategy: Why Pro-Choice Republicans Became Pro-Life in the 1970s” in which Daniel K. Williams examines the history of the pro-life conservative movement. Williams’s research shows that at the 1974 Republican National Convention, fewer than 40 percent of delegates considered themselves to be pro-life.

However, he writes, the “GOP adopted a platform in 1976 that promised an anti-abortion constitutional amendment” as a political gambit to secure the vote of traditionally Democratic Catholic voters. The anti-abortion platform allowed Republicans to establish a large, reliable base of religiously motivated voters.

The move shifted the entire party in the direction of social conservatism, ultimately ousting most pro-choice Republicans. By 2009, only 26 percent of Republican voters were pro-choice.

Anti-abortion voters continue to be a vital demographic for the GOP, especially among white evangelicals, which provides a good motivation for many Republicans to campaign heavily against abortion. The Pew Research Center indicates that 70 percent of white evangelical Protestants believe abortion should be illegal, and that Trump secured 81 percent of this demographic in 2016.

Moreover, anti-abortion politics have only become more fervent within the last decade. New York Magazine reported that 33 states have enacted anti-abortion restrictions since 2010, while only 17 have not. The Guttmacher Institute’s research shows that 288 new restrictions on abortion were passed between 2011 and 2015—a startling 25 percent of all abortion restrictions passed since 1973.

Those statistics seem even more remarkable when put into context with actual public opinion on abortion. The Wall Street Journal just released new reporting which shows that a record-high of 71 percent of American voters oppose overturning Roe v. Wade.

Which begs the question: Why are so many conservative members of the executive, judicial and legislative branches trying to overturn a ruling that has been settled for 45 years and is supported by over two-thirds of American voters?

Republicans have arguably had a bad track record with popular opinion in the last two decades. Both George W. Bush (2000) and Trump (2016) lost the popular vote, Neil Gorsuch was significantly less popular than SCOTUS nominees from the last decade, and Trump has the lowest presidential approval rating in history. What’s more, Kavanaugh will be the least popular Supreme Court justice in history if confirmed. Conservative outlet Fox News reported this week that 50 percent of Americans believe he should not be confirmed (though he still has 82 percent of Republican voters’ support). The only nominee as unpopular as him, Robert Bork, was rejected by Congress.

Though Kavanaugh’s numbers continue to dive, Republicans in the Senate keep pushing forward with his confirmation, determined to seat him before the midterm elections, when they might lose Congressional control. The possibility that Kavanaugh could be confirmed as the least popular justice in history, and the likelihood that any of Trump’s potential nominees will support overturning Roe v. Wade, seems to present an unavoidable question:

Does popular consensus actually matter in American politics today?

Perhaps manipulation of voters is of greater concern to our politicians than representation of voters. The Supreme Court won’t be protecting the core beliefs of the American public if it overturns a hugely popular ruling with a 45-year precedent; it’ll be protecting the prejudices of the Republican party.

And, as they say, the slope is awfully slippery. If settled law like Roe can be overturned, what other civil rights are at risk? Will we also see the Equal Marriage Act of 2015 imperiled? Should we worry about the status of affirmative action laws?

Who really controls a government that has no respect for representing constituencies accurately, or maintaining the integrity of constitutional legal precedent?

Certainly not the citizenry. We need to consider the possibility that a Kavanaugh confirmation is the last nail in the coffin of our so-called representative government. Call it fascism, oligarchy or totalitarianism — whatever the United States is becoming, it is not a democracy.

The post Selcer: 71 percent of American voters support Roe v. Wade. Does it matter? appeared first on Emerald Media.

Though it’s been six years since my dad first dropped me off at college, I still remember the feeling I had when he left. At first, excitement — here I was, officially on my own!

But then, a rush of overwhelming anxiety. Here I was, in a place I did not understand, surrounded by people I did not know, officially on my own as a 17-year-old.

Many students can relate to this feeling, but the first few weeks of school can be especially intense for those who are the first in their family to attend college. First-generation students are “often ill prepared for the rigors of college life” because they are forced to struggle against “educational institutions that were not designed to serve them,” according to a New York Times news reporter. As the executive director of the University Innovation Alliance — a consortium dedicated to increasing student retention — put it, “The reality is that if the institution is not designed around students, there are a series of booby traps that are unintentionally set that would trip up any student.”

When you have another marginalized identity that intersects with being first-generation (such as being low-income, a student of color, or a first- or second-generation immigrant), navigating an education system designed to keep you out can feel impossible.

For starters, social isolation is a big factor when surrounded by peers who cannot relate to your experiences. Add to that the fact that many first-generation students from low-income schools feel intimidated by peers who have a significant head start in AP, IB, and/or concurrent enrollment credits. Some students develop a distinct university personality as a way to assimilate, but doing so can make you feel like you are losing your own identity. First-generation students also face identity crises when their collegiate experiences begin creating a gap between family and friends from home who can’t relate to such a different lifestyle.

If that’s not enough, many first-generation students also perceive faculty members as anxiety-inducing authority figures instead of friendly mentors. Unfamiliar university culture can create the feeling that everyone is working from some rulebook you never received. (An example? Going to office hours just to chat. Many students never do because they are afraid of “wasting” professors’ time.) Nepotism, unspoken expectations, and lack of transparency around university politics present further challenges.

These hurdles add up. One UCLA study of 356 four-year institutions found that only 27.4 percent of first-generation students earn a degree in four years, as compared to 42.1 percent of students who have parents with bachelor’s degrees. In addition, 42.6 percent of white students received degrees as compared to 25.8 percent of Latinx students, 21 percent of black students, and 16.8 percent of indigenous American students. Data from another 2015 study of pell grant recipients show that less than half of low-income students received a degree within six years, as compared to 67 percent of other students.

So, that’s the bad news.

The good news? Many of us will still beat the odds if we have the right tools and a little luck. Other first-generation students who have already graduated can offer indispensable firsthand advice and mentorship. For me, the following strategies contributed most meaningfully to collegiate success:

1. Find your people. This is the most important thing on this list because keeping yourself from feeling isolated is absolutely tantamount to your successful integration into the university. Many of us feel safer asking fellow first-generation students questions that might seem obvious to other peers, and that solidarity can be a wonderful stress relief.  First-generation students of color might find refuge in student unions such as the Black Student Union or the Asian and Pacific American Student Union. LGBTIA+ students have a variety of queer student organizations to choose from, and you can also find other first-generation students just by paying attention to the students in your classes.
2. Find a mentor. Here is a more difficult task, especially if you are nervous around professors like I am. In my experience, your best bet is asking other marginalized students about which university officials they feel comfortable around. They can often point you in the direction of accessible faculty members or other university staff who are from similar backgrounds. Another method is to research and take classes in the humanities that are dedicated to topics of race, class, gender, and other markers of identity. Many of the professors teaching courses in ethnic studies, women’s and gender studies, and even English are likely to have had firsthand experiences with the same hurdles you are facing. These mentors are indispensable sources of knowledge (and you will be thankful to have a few relationships with professors if you ever need letters of recommendation).
3. When in doubt, Google it. I know this one is a little obvious, but the power of Google is often under-acknowledged. There are tons of online message boards and guides concerning the first-generation experience, which can help you feel more prepared for the things you will face as a student. I also suggest spending some time just browsing through your department’s website and the homepage of the university; familiarizing yourself with the structure of the institution will make life easier.
4. Take advantage of being first-gen! I received maybe a dozen different scholarships and grants throughout college that were based partially either on financial need or first-generation status. Moreover, if you are working class, you will find a host of jobs on campus that are designed for students and can help pay the bills. Working as an RA often means free room and board, student jobs can be easier to get if you have work-study, and summer gigs are always available on campus. With a combination of good grades, savvy budgeting, and student jobs, I managed to secure enough funding to graduate with almost no student debt. It is hard work, but it can be done.
5. Call home. I cannot stress this enough. Stay connected to your family (chosen or biological) and your identity: they will be your anchors.

And with that last tip — happy first day of college! I see you, and you’re gonna do great.

The post Selcer: To my fellow first-generation students, with love appeared first on Emerald Media.

Recently, the Emerald ran a piece titled “Health doesn’t come in supersized portions” which offered a critique on the “Health At Every Size” (HAES) campaign. While I don’t subscribe to the HAES campaign—because I don’t believe it is radical enough—the arguments leveled against it were not unfamiliar to me as a fat woman involved in body positivity. Many people who are new to body positivity movements perceive them as having little respect for the “science” and “facts” of the obesity crisis.

Perhaps those who are alarmed by the way that body positivity rejects traditional notions of “health” simply fail to see health as a full picture—one which crucially includes mental health. Body positivity calls attention to the fact that physical health cannot simply be achieved through the mental warfare of fat-shaming. Which might be why, according to their homepage, HAES’s primary components are: respect, critical awareness, and compassionate self-care.

With regard to exercise, HAES states that they help members with “finding the joy in moving one’s body and being physically active.” For fat people, exercise is so often made into a practice of self-hatred: we are meant to punish our bodies mercilessly until they conform to some magical goal weight—at which point, presumably, we are meant to transform into happy people with high self-esteem. But the truth is that you can’t internalize feelings of inadequacy, shame, and disgust for years and then expect them to disappear just because your BMI registers as “normal.”

In my own experience as an undergrad at CU Boulder (which has the highest rates of eating disorders on college campuses in the nation, and is located, uncoincidentally, in the thinnest city in the United States), I often felt out-of-place. This feeling was manageable until a peer announced in class that she loved running past fat people on the indoor track because it made her feel good to see them struggling more than she did.

After her comment, I stopped going to public gyms altogether for several years. I was horrified by the idea that this is what thin people actually thought about seeing bodies like mine mid-exercise.

Believe it or not, being exposed to more positive views of fatness probably would have helped me get back in the gym after that incident. The stigma of fatness certainly seems to be one of its greatest contributors.

That stigma is exactly why body positive movements work so diligently to avoid messages of shame, in both exercise and eating. For example, HAES discusses diet not in terms of weight loss, but rather in terms of  “eating in a flexible and attuned manner that values pleasure and honors internal cues of hunger, satiety and appetite, while respecting the social conditions that frame eating options.”  

HAES’s recognition that systemic conditions often determine eating and exercising behaviors is crucial. Those who have never lived in a food desert, suffered from food insecurity,or dealt with other restrictions may not understand that financial, cultural, and emotional relationships with food can be complicated.

Being able to access unprocessed food is a privilege; so is having time to prepare food at home; so is having a vehicle for grocery trips; so is having a good knowledge of nutrition.

Moreover, the science actually does agree with a weight-neutral approach to exercise and nutrition. In 2015, the American Journal of Public Health ran a study which suggested that:

“The development of the concept of meeting an ideal weight was the beginning of increasing obesity. Weight stigma, the perception of being fat, lack of understanding of normal growth and development, and increased concern about obesity… have reinforced each other to promote dieting. Because weight suppression and disinhibition provoke long-term weight increase, dieting is a major factor producing the obesity epidemic.”

Other studies agree. In “Medicare’s search for effective obesity treatments: diets are not the answer,” researchers reviewed 31 long-term weight loss studies. They found that even when dieting did lead to modest weight loss, “complete weight regain was found in the majority” of participants. One study from the review found that 83% of dieters regained more weight than they had lost after two years; and another found that 50% of dieters “weighed more than 11 pounds over their starting weight five years after the diet.”

Dieting just isn’t cutting it. Fat acceptance starts with understanding that weight isn’t a simple equation of adding cardio or subtracting brownies.

Fat acceptance means accepting bodies that don’t fit into an arbitrary categorization of what is “normal.” So, fat acceptance also means accepting disabled bodies, racialized bodies, and bodies that are gender-nonconforming.

For me, fat acceptance is a rejection, too: a rejection of unhappiness. Because I can, in fact, be fat while also being happy and healthy.

We live in a toxic culture that glorifies an unrealistic commodified thin-ideal, while also creating systemic barriers that restrict access to better health options. Fat people who have the audacity to love and accept themselves are not the real enemies here. The general cultural trend of pointing fingers and blaming us for perceived personal failures is not the way to solve a public health crisis.

A better way forward is to learn how to treat each other’s bodies with mutual compassion, respect, and care—while also working to address the economic and social conditions making it difficult for many Americans to lead healthier lifestyles.

The post Selcer: A second opinion on being fat, happy and healthy appeared first on Emerald Media.