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Listening to this week:        

The Arctic Monkeys, The Urbs, Lady G and T.I.

Reading:                            

Howard's End by Forster - just finished Zadie Smith's On Beauty - great, great distillation of the pettiness of academia and modeled on Harvard and based on Howard's End...so, now reading Howard's End and Carolyn Dean, The Fragility of Empathy.

Watching:                             

Belle de Jour with an effervescent Catherine Deneuve


So, I was driving out to Northampton the other day for the class I teach at Smith and as usual I was listening to the radio - at least for the first hour, before it cuts out and then it is back to the ipod. Well, anyway, there was much talk of Rumsfeld's incompetence and would he or should he get fired and what would be the effect of the retired generals speaking out
against his plan for Iraq. Then finally, they give some sound bites from George W. And keep in mind that the program had been quite serious and had given much information on the reasons we went to war, the problem of not having enough troops in Iraq, dissent within the higher ranks of the armed forces and now they turn to the President and the US for his
incisive comments about the crisis with his Secretary of Defense and he has this to say: ""I hear the voices, and I read the front page, and I know the speculation. But I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense."

This is probably Bush's most complex understanding of his job: "I'm the decider!" And the "decider" decides that Rumsfeld stays and the war must go on. It is still hard to fathom, 6 years later, how such a buffoon manages to stay the "decider." It is also hard to understand why Americans are willing to put up with stupid people in public offices - it is especially hard to understand this here at a place like Harvard where a very high premium is set on smartness, intelligence, intellectual worth - we really do have to confront the meaning of stupidity and its value in this country. I like to think of stupidity not as a simple lack of knowledge but actually as a mode of domination and it extends to blocking academics from the public sphere, failing to support public education and letting rabid Christians decide upon school curricula. What is the value of intelligence in this political climate and, given that so many of our politicians do pass through institutions like Harvard, what do we think happens to the investments they have made in some notion of thinking, cultivating intelligence and educating?

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Hey people! I am taking to this blogging thing like a duck to water--
or is that a Harvard graduate to Investment Banking! Anyway...busy
day on campus. There was a great trans activist rally outside the
Science Building and Dean Spade gave a rousing speech about making
connections between transgender politics and the politics of labor,
immigration and employment. This was a really good reminder to not
get stuck in an identity politics dedicated to rehearsing the terms
of one's exclusion. Spade made some very concrete suggestions about
how the issue of discrimination against trans people in the workplace
should be linked up to more general issues about labor, about elite
institutions and so on.

One of the questions for my entry yesterday concerned how much
responsibility professors should or might feel to be public
intellectuals. This is a really great question and one that i think
about a lot. Not all professors will necessarily do well as public
intellectuals, hell, many don't even do well at teaching! But I do
think, personally, that in return for the privilege of spending one's
time reading and writing, one should shoulder some responsibility for
extending education beyond the university, making real contributions
to the spread of unpopular opinions or providing access to the the kind
of critical thinking that really only goes on in universities....

As for Katie's question about art and politics and why i turn so much
to art and cultural production in my work for inspiration...well, I
really do find that subcultures and marginalized art worlds find ways
of reframing "reality" and re-articulating power and they produce
very meaningful responses to the dominant. In my opinion, if you do
not look for and find and recognize alternatives, then you are stuck
with the dominant, in thrall to the dominant, and hopeless in the
face of the dominant...I don't only look to subcultural productions
in my work, I also take great solace and pleasure in the disruptive
moments in popular culture and I generally find myself drawn to low,
very low culture (teen movies, horror movies, children's films and so
on) because it offers surprising formulations of resistance - I did
write a piece about Spongebob for BITCH magazine for example that
argued that Spongebob's produced a surprisingly flexible and
"absorbent" form of masculinity that was far preferable to the high
culture versions of masculinity on display in a film like Sideways.

Anyway, even aging professors need their sleep. Will blog on tomorrow!


--Judith
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When Katie asked me if I would like to "blog" (is it a verb?) on this
site for a while, I wasn't sure what I would have to say or what kind
of conversation the blogging context called for. I don't actually
read blogs and when I do, they tend to annoy me - they often seem to
be the boring ramblings of people who lack other platforms for their
opinions! But, after reading some interactions in this blog space, I
did find myself more interested. What better place for a screed
against that Mansfield book or a quick comment on the state of
academia or a short review of She's The Man! Well, I haven't read
Mansfield nor have I yet seen "She's The Man" but don't worry, that
won't prevent me from commenting!

But first, let me say how much I have enjoyed being at Harvard for
the semester. Harvard is truly a great place to teach not because of
its libraries or its resources or its faculty, but because the
students, at least the few whom I have met, are eclectic, energetic,
active and surprising. I know there are many other students out there
on campus who are boring, over-educated, overly concerned with their
future political careers, conservative and elitist but then this IS
Harvard.

I am teaching for Women and Gender Studies and so I presume I am
exposed to a very particular group of Harvard students, but needless
to say, they are the ones I wanted to meet. At the various events to
which I have been invited and in which I have participated on campus,
I have enjoyed some fairly intense conversations about gay marriage
(who cares...), the role of the intellectual in contemporary US
culture, transgender politics, queer subcultures, the future of
gender studies, masculinity (and, sadly, manliness) and Spongebob,
naturally. I have lots to say on all of these issues and can give a
few sound bites here and then settle in to field some comments,
questions or whatever.

In terms of some of the "kick off" questions I received, here are a
few responses:

1. The current state of gender studies and queer theory: well, I
think both fields are thriving with or, as is usally the case,
without institutional support. As you see here at Harvard, Gender
Studies is generally not taken as seriously as say Government or
Economics even though it may even cover some of the same ground. I am
of the opinion that Gender Studies will actually survive what will
surely be a reorganization of the university in coming years. ANd
while some traditional disciplines like English may find themselves
becoming less and less relevant to student interests, studies in
gender and sexuality, because it is a diverse and interdisciplinary
field, should do very well.

2. There was a question that began "in a world where academia is so
peripheral to people's everday lives..." Hmmm, let me stop you there!
Many things are peripheral to people's everyday lives - in fact the
everyday is not the best location for judging what is important!
Engineering and bio-chemistry labs can be "peripheral to people's
everyday lives" and yet they are never considered unimportant on that
account. But the question went on to ask what my "most important,
paradigm shifting contribution" may have been. I guess the
implication is that no matter how amazing that paradigm shift may be,
it will still be peripheral to people's everyday lives! No
matter....by the way I have noticed that Harvard students are quite
preoccupied with 'fame" here - the "fame" of the professor, for
example, but they often won't really know why the professor is
famous...anyway, my fame is a small one, my contribution has been to
shift both feminism and other thinking on gender towards the topic of
masculinity and female masculinity in particular. I noted that much
energy has been spend on deconstructing femininity and the
relationship between woman and femininity but less time was dedicated
to deconstructing masculinity and de-essentializing the relationship
between men and masculinity.

3. Finally, there was a question about activism and academia - I
personally don't like to emphasize the massive gaps between the two
but instead I look for continuity. Many academics are activists and
vice versa. This semester, for example, Harvard offered a class on
"Transgenderism and the Law" team taught by Janet Halley in the Law
School and Dean Spade, a trans lawyer activist. Academia can
sometimes be the location for very creative couplings between
activism and academia. I try to combine the two in my speaking
engagements by always talking to off-campus groups when i go to do a
talk somewhere. In fact, I was in Montreal two weeks ago where I gave
a talk at McGill and then participated on a round table at a local
gallery where art activists had created a show about archiving queer
cultural production. It was fabulous, there were beautiful posters on
the wall, zines and the whole event showed how much care and art goes
into making queer space. The local queer band, Lesbians on Ecstasy
played an acoustic set and those divisions between academics,
activists and artists were nowhere to be found!


--Judith
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Part of Cambridge Common's mission is to facilitate dialogue among the Harvard Left.  Up until now, that has meant discussions among students (with the occasional anonymous comment by a house tutor, perhaps).  But this week, that's about to change.

Professor Judith Halberstam not only has a brilliant, original mind and a unique perspective as a Harvard professor, she also has valuable life experience with Leftist communities and movements both inside and outside of academia.  If we're going to try to create a community of Leftist intellectual-activists, it's about time we got some input from an elder like her.

You may not agree with everything Professor Halberstam has to say.  In fact, I bet she'd rather you didn't.  So let's make the most of this opportunity and keep the questions and comments coming--knowing we share with our guest a common goal of making Leftist advocacy the best it can be.  Whatever that means.
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With this year's TBTN winding down, it seems that one trend has remained the same over the last three years: the people that regularly attend TBTN events are usually the most involved in the anti-violence movement: the OSAPR educators, people involved in OSAPR workshops, people from Coalition Against Sexual Violence (CASV), people who were active in Harvard Men Against Rape, and people who have been involved with TBTN at some point.

It's interesting (at least to me) because you'd think these people who know so much about the issue wouldn't need to educate themselves.  I know that's the reason a lot of people give me for not attending the events, particularly those who think of themselves as more progressive, gender conscious, and liberal (note: I'm not saying people who are more conservative are attending the events, this just happens to be the reason more progressive people use for not attending events).  They insist they know enough about the issue to reduce the risk and work to prevent themselves or their friends from ever being in a compromising/dangerous situation.

But as someone who has spent the last five or so years working with the anti-violence movement in different ways, I still find attending events related to the issue (and not just TBTN events, but the BMF's panel on masculinity, or house SASH events on porn, alcohol, or hip hop) incredibly beneficial.  Most of the work I've done has been with acquaintance and stranger rapes, but just yesterday, I attended the screening of "Searching for Angela Shelton" and the presentation was on incest and the steps we can take to prevent incest and how we can approach and treat victims of incest.  There are lot of things I have to learn.  I am still not sure what to say when people confide in me that they are survivors.  I am still not sure what to do when someone makes an off-color joke about blackout sex, child molesters (I know you've heard Michael Jackson and Catholic Church jokes...), or porn.  I mean, I still (sadly) make some of these jokes (I try my hardest, but I know I've cracked a few MJ jokes)!  And I definitely don't know what to do about listening to (and sometimes enjoying) music that casually describes violence against women.  And there is NO WAY I know how to have a reasonable conversation with someone who believes a woman has responsibility for her rape, or that rape is an "inevitable consequence" of some people's choices.

But these situations are our reality, and they are issues we need to address as a society and as a community.  Maybe I'm just a little slower than the rest of you, but I think that we ALL could learn something (more) about this issue.  That's why you see the OSAPR educators, the CASV groupies, the SASH tutors at all these events!  The issue is so complicated, and it is essentially a taboo topic.  We have to use every opportunity we have to educate ourselves and to educate others.  TBTN is providing a great opportunity to do just that: to learn from each other and to learn from ourselves.

So again, one last plug: come to the vigil (tonight) 4/13 steps of Memorial Church at 7:30.  The first step toward prevention and education is raising your own consciousness.  And this is a way you can do this while also supporting survivors.  It is the one time a year where we guarantee we will not blame or shame survivors when they share their stories.  The rest of the week's schedule should be available over your house list or group list, but we will post the remainder of the events tomorrow. expand post »

    

Thought #2: TBTN is not a universally supported movement at Harvard.

 

I think this is one of the most over-looked issues surrounding TBTN and I think it’s an important reason why you should make the effort to go to a TBTN event.   It isn’t a fair, true, or safe assumption to make that if someone isn’t out at TBTN events they don’t support TBTN.  But at the same time, not everyone agree that rape jokes aren’t funny, or that a woman isn’t responsible (in part) for her own rape.

 

      This is not to say that the “pro-rape” movement is alive and well at Harvard, but you’d be surprised at what your peers are saying about the issue.   Victim-blaming is alive and well, even here at Harvard.   Having been to multiple student group meetings to urge participation, cosponsorship, and attendance, I’ll let you look at the following excerpted (and completely not taken out of context) quotes:

 

“Good she should have learned.” (in response to my explanation of post-traumatic stress disorder in victims/survivors that sometimes leads to them feeling uncomfortable with intimacy)

 

“She [the victim] has to take some responsibility for putting herself in that situation. [being intimatewith a guy]”

 

“Feminism and the pro-sex culture led to rape.”

 

I’m in no way against free speech, but I, for one, thought that all of these issues were settled (rape appears in the earliest historical records and the Bible, increased reporting is due to increased education and awareness, victims are not to blame for being attacked, and rape is not a punitive measure for someone’s lifestyle).

 

These assertions only contribute to the incredible obstacles there are to reporting an assault.   We as a community need to take a stand that this is NOT what we think of victims/survivors, and this is NOT our conception of rape.   We need to show that we are beyond this, and that we are ready to have an open and honest conversation about sexual violence that does not revolve around rape myths, false generalizations, and misguided intuition.

 

Those comments were definitely in the minority, but the arguments Katie pointed to, namely the “indecent and angry nature” of the clothesline project and the vigil and the “anti-male” direction of the movement were surprisingly prevalent.

 

Some people are uncomfortable with the language that is on the t-shirts, or with the words that are spoken at the vigil.   The language is “indecent” (the words fuck, cunt, penis are the ones that are usually mentioned) and the people are “angry.”  

 

They’re right.   The language is indecent and the people are angry.   After all, it’s indecent to penetrate someone against their will.   And a person who has been violated will experience anger at some point or another.   This is natural, this is normal, and this is part of the healing process.   If we are to unite and educate our community, it will not be by suppressing parts of the healing process.   It will be by having an honest and open dialogue.

 

And, my favorite: “the anti-rape movement is anti-men.”   Actually, the anti-rape movement is just that: anti-rape.   The anti-rape movement is also against female perpetrators. Not all men are perpetrators, but it so happens that in about 90% of the cases, men are the perpetrators.   This is an issue we need to talk about.   If we’re going to stop rape, we have to stop perpetrators.   And the best way to do this is through education.

 

The first step to education is being aware that this is a real issue that affects you.   I’d encourage anyone reading this to come to the Take Back the Night vigil Thursday 4/13 Mem Church steps at 7:30.   It will open your eyes to an overlooked but very real problem on campus.

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For the last four years , I’ve had the opportunity to work in the anti-violence movement in many different ways: with the Coalition Against Sexual Violence, with the Office of Sexual Assault Prevention and Response, with the Eliot SASH team, with Take Back the Night, with the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center… alright you get the picture.
 

And somewhere in the midst of doing this work, people started referring to me – while in my presence – as the “rape girl.”
 

It’s an interesting phrase.   I’d like to think I’m more of an “anti-rape girl” but be that as it may, the “rape girl” has some thoughts on the anti-sexual violence movement at Harvard which I’ve conveniently subdivided into three shorter posts to ease your reading.

 

Thought #1: who’s talking about rape at Harvard

 

The people that are talking about rape are the ones that are hearing about rape.   This shouldn’t come as a surprise; it’s not easy to step forward and say, “I am a survivor.”   But it’s easier to do so once someone else has shared their experience, or is educated enough not to blame you.    It’s unfortunate because it’s self-fulfilling; those who care about this issue are more likely to see its reality because they are the ones engaged in a conversation and are approachable.

 

So I’d urge everyone to try to make themselves approachable, at least for some time during this week.   Because the reality is that rape does and is happening at Harvard.   The 32 reports to HUPD, the 61 to OSAPR, these are people we live with, work with, laugh with, create study guides with, and I can’t figure out how not to end this sentence with a preposition.   And we can make ourselves approachable by showing we care enough to take an hour out of our time to attend a vigil (shameless promotion: Thursday 4/13 7:30 Mem Church steps) or another of the week’s events.

 

We have ONE week a year we allot to talk about this.   ONE week for the ONE IN FOUR women who will be the victim of a completed or attempted assault by the time they graduate.   ONE week for the ONE IN EIGHT men who will be the victim of a completed or attempted assault by the time they graduate.   There are six degrees of separation that separate one person from any other.   There are not nearly so many degrees of separation between yourself and a victim/survivor.

 

This is not a conversation that should be happening one week, or one night (which is all we ask of our cosponsoring groups- to attend one event – and many can’t seem to do that).   This is a way we live our lives.   We choose whether or not to make the rape joke, we choose whether or not to say anything when someone else does.   We choose whether or not to walk our drunk friend home.   We choose whether to check in with our partners when intimate.  

 

And we choose whether or not to have this conversation.   And it’s great to have this week, Take Back the Night, where we try to start the conversation.   And it’s great to have Cambridge Common as another outlet for the conversation.   I’m going to take the time to highlight a lot of the arguments Katie outlined that groups on campus are making.   For a campus as “liberal” as Harvard, there are some surprising battles that have yet to be won. 

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On behalf of the Take Back The Night boardmembers, I submitted an article for the op-ed page of the Crimson.  It was rejected.  It didn't have an argument.  I wrote back, questioning this assessment and was told that what I viewed as the argument of the piece "had no opposition."  After asking for suggestions for changes to the piece, a fellow board member writing to the editor on my behalf was told " the fundamental shape + content of the piece is not suited for the  Crimson oped page."  The article does have both an opinion and an argument - that there is healing value in speaking out about personal experiences of abuse and violation, that each and every one of us is affected by sexual violence, that we need to talk about these issues instead of shirking away from the unspeakable nature of their horror.  Only when dialogue is open, only when we come together as a community will we have the necessary tools to diminish the threat of sexual violence.  It is painful to hear of survivor's stories, which is possibly why the Crimson so stubbornly pushed away the article, but it is necessary.  I wonder if the article didn't have a personal anecdote, and if it didn't ask people to really think about how sexual violence affects their life, if those with control over submissions would have objected so much.  While the op-ed that they printed today retains a few of the messages of my original, it is deprived of the specific focus on our campus and the emphasis on healing.  It is not, as the Crimson complained, a PR piece for Take Back The Night, but proof of why we need, as a bare minimum, this week on our campus and reasons why we should all be involved in it.  Below is the original, dedicated to my amazing sister who has taught me so much.  

                                        Why Take Back The Night

            In April 2000, at the Take Back The Night (TBTN) Candlelight Vigil, a freshman stepped forward to do something she hadn’t done for the two months that had passed since she had been sexually assaulted at a party in Leverett House.   She spoke out.   This was not something she had envisioned herself doing.   She attended the vigil that night timidly, for reasons she couldn’t even articulate.   She had no expectations of what the night would mean to her or what she would find there.   Then something happened.   Another freshman stepped into the circle, someone she knew only by sight but admired as an outgoing person who seemed to thrive in the college environment.   This energetic, competent woman told the candle-lit crowd about having been raped in Thayer, sobbing the whole time.   Hearing this testimonial helped her realize that sexual assault can happen regardless of who you are or how others see you, which allowed her to step forward and break her own silence.   She spoke that night, and has continued to do so ever since.  

This story is incredibly important to me for two reasons.   First, because the student of whom I write is my sister, and while the thought of what happened to her six years ago still fills my eyes with tears of rage and grief, the overwhelming emotion is one of love – I am proud of her strength, inspired by her courage, and so thankful that I am part of her life and she mine.   The second reason I value this story, as does my sister, (without whose permission I would not have shared it) is that it illustrates so well what Take Back The Night strives to do: to educate, to unite, to heal.    

            Take Back The Night is a weeklong series of events, this year from April 10-14, which focuses on awareness and prevention of sexual assault and domestic violence.   The scope ranges from local to global and from outreach to speaking out.   TBTN is about opening dialogue, about coming together as a full community, regardless of how you identify or to what groups you belong.   Among those who are reading this article are survivors of sexual assault and their family members, friends, and classmates.   Sadly, there is not one person whose life or relationships are not affected by sexual assault in some way.   Rape is not endemic to any one gender, sexual orientation, race, or class.   There is no quality that provides immunity to sexual assault.   While it is tempting and soothing to ignore rape as something that does not matter for you, doing so is fallacious, and dangerous. A community that is silent, and that does not take a stand to support survivors, is one that allows emotional, legal, and societal obstacles to silence survivors’ voices and allows perpetrators to continue unchallenged.   Only when the destructive and awful nature of sexual violence is recognized as something that harms every single member of society can we do anything to stop it.  

That is why the Take Back The Night week is such an important and powerful time: it addresses an issue that applies to absolutely everyone.   That is why you are asked to spend some time this week to go listen to former NFL star Don McPherson speak about masculinity and a culture of violence, to read the testimonies of survivors at the clothesline project, to take time to acknowledge the number of students assaulted at Harvard in the last year, to support others and be supported at the candlelight vigil.   But beyond any particular event, please take the time to think about the issues TBTN raises, to discuss them with each other, with anyone and everyone.   This is a time to begin to build a Harvard community that we can all live in, with safety and support for all. We have the ability to change a culture that tacitly condones sexual violence, but we need to learn how to do so.   It isn’t intuitive, and it isn’t straightforward, but it is undeniably important and possible.

Take Back The Night is not about a night nor a week, and if it is limited in our minds to just that short time in April it can never bring about the societal change that is so desperately needed. We spend 51 weeks of the year in a culture that shies away from confronting sexual violence, and that is way too much.   Take Back The Night is a start, but it is up to all of us to follow through.   If we all do our part to continue the openness of the supportive community that TBTN encourages, if we can see each other as peers rather than opponents, if we refuse to let the issue once again be shrouded in a silence of shame, maybe someday, possibly even someday soon, fewer of our sisters and brothers will know the pain that sexual violence brings.     

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If you want to take a stand for the lives and rights of workers, here's what you can do:

1. Sign the new petition to the Harvard administration.
2. Tell 5 of your friends, blockmates, classmates and professors.
3. Talk to your student group and ask them to endorse the campaign.
4. Join SLAM for our weekly meetings. Mondays at 7:00 in Phillips Brooks House.
5. Write with any questions or thoughts to mgould@fas or harvardslam@yahoo.com.
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