Tag Archives: opinions

Timothy Egan: Do Not Silence the Students

16 May

Oh, Timothy Egan, what were you thinking?  Were you thinking?

Today in The New York Times, the regular columnist Timothy Egan wrote an op/ed called “The Commencement Bigots.”  He starts the piece out with this:

“It’s commencement season, cell-phones off please, no texts or tweets.  Even with a hangover from debt, alcohol or regret, grads across the land may be lucky enough to hear something on the Big Day that actually stays with them.”

I wish I had been so lucky.  The class who graduated before me got a rather amusing speech by Dr. Ruth (you remember her, right?) and we got stuck with quite possibly the most boring graduation speech in the history of graduation speeches.  It was Henry Kaufman who basically gave an economics lecture.  It lasted for the better part of an hour and I am pretty sure came straight out of a book. No preparations necessary, just grab a volume from your library and read about balance of trade, fiscal policy or some shit in the most monotone voice you can muster.  It was terrible.  I just asked my dad what he thought about it and he said,

“Oh, that guy?  That guy was an idiot.  I did not like that guy.  Not only was he boring and an idiot, but he was a has been!  He was big in the 80s!”

I don’t know about all that but I do know that I was bored to tears.  Egan documents a similar experience of the graduates of Stanford in 2009 who had to listen to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy give “an interminable address on the intricacies of international law, under a broiling sun, with almost no mention of the graduates.”  Much better, Egen thinks, were the addresses by David Foster Wallace at Kenyon in  2005 (“If you can’t learn to ‘construct meaning from experience, you will be totally hosed'”), Steve Jobs, also in 2005, at Stanford (“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life”) and Stephen Colbert at Knox College in 2006 (“The best career advice I can give you is to get your own TV show.  It pays well, the hours are good, and you are famous.  And eventually, some very nice people will give you a doctorate in fine arts for doing jack squat”).  As much as I would have loved to have had Stephen Colbert speak at my graduation in place of Mr. Gloom and Doom, I wouldn’t exactly call his advice sage.  But I guess that’s not Egan’s point.  What is his point?  Well, basically that college students should shut the fuck up and appreciate who they get because the person could be, gasp!, boring.

Okay, that’s not exactly what he said.  What he said was that protesting college students are akin to censors who do not want anyone to come speak to them and “spoil a view of the world they’ve already figured out.”  He cites a few examples.  First up was Condoleezza Rice who was slated to speak at Rutgers University but canceled “after a small knot of protestors pressured the university.”  Next up were the bigots (his word, not mine) of Smith College whose concerns about the International Monetary Fund’s part in “strengthening of imperialist and patriarchal systems” caused Christine Lagarde, chief of the IMF, to cancel her prepared speech.  Egen opines about the loss these students will suffer by not hearing one of the “world’s most powerful women” share her insights over (and this he seems to spit) “concerns about the patriarchy.”  This was followed by my absolute favorite line in the entire piece:

“Evil men — we’ll show ’em.”

Here is the thing about it.  It certainly is a shame that students won’t get the opportunity to hear Rice and Lagarde speak.  I agree wholeheartedly with Egen when he says,

“Give me a brisk, strong, witty defense of something I disagree with over a tired replay of platitudes.”

But is the appropriate way to back up that highly logical statement to call those who disagree with it bigots?  I am sure that the people who heard Colbert and Jobs and Wallace speak, especially given that the latter two men are no longer with us, will remember those commencement speeches for a long time to come.  I am sure those graduates, and the attending staff members, friends and families consider themselves incredibly lucky.  But I also think that a person who holds the privilege of writing for a paper as respected as The New York Times should take a little more care before calling college students opposed to the legacies or the mechanisms through which university-chosen speakers make their mark a word as loaded as bigot.  That’s quite a punch to throw.  I also think that, perhaps, a privileged white man should think twice before he belittles a group of women’s concerns about the patriarchy – it is very real and is something they will have to contend with every single day of their lives.  This rings especially true for Smith students who are of color or are members of the LGBT community.

Egen urges these horrible censors to consult Rutger’s student mission statement which reads,

“We embrace difference by cultivating inclusiveness and respect of both people and points of view.”

Egen, perhaps, should have taken his own advice before writing this ill-conceived column.  It is true, that we should embrace inclusiveness and respect different points of view, but doesn’t that include respect for those who disagree with the appointment of certain speakers?  Doesn’t that include those who feel that by sitting quietly in an audience while someone who represents institutions or policies they find incredibly damaging and problematic acts as the exclamation point on their college experience makes them somehow complicit?  Shouldn’t we celebrate the fact that students in our universities are able to question these institutions and speakers and see results?  It is a shame that these women, and Attorney General Eric J. Holder who was also mentioned in Egen’s piece, did not get the chance to speak because of protests, but I do not think that means that we should shame and silence students.  Instead, we should encourage them to continue to protest because it is an active civilian population that is the best way to keep the government in check, to question policies, to support minorities and underrepresented groups, to fight voter fraud, to stop rape culture, to tell the IMF that we do not approve of the way they operate, to let Condoleezza Rice know that she will be held accountable by the population for her roll in the Bush administration, and so many other things.  We need this and by calling active student bodies bigots, we are telling them that their dissent is unwarranted, unnecessary and unacceptable and that is a real shame.  Isn’t it also possible that encouraging a more active population would result not only in better leadership, but also in better preparing our leaders for dissent and criticism?  The thin-skinned should not be in positions of power and, honestly, I am sure they have experienced far worse than some protests by a small group of soon-to-be college graduates.  Their ability to cancel in the face of such limited disagreement is a luxury that is silly.

So, let the students speak.  No, actually, don’t just let them, encourage them.  The best educations, I think, give us the ability to think critically and express our opinions and where is that more acceptable than on college campuses?  I think this country would be a lot better off if we all felt that our voices were heard and that our dissent did not make us bigots.  It’s just too bad that Egen felt the need to use his soapbox to shame a bunch of 21-year-olds.  But, that is his right and I support it, just as I support the university’s right to have Christine Lagarde speak at commencement and the right of the student body at Smith to protest the patriarchy.

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Street Harassment: The Close Proximity Whisper

13 May

Okay, ladies, I’m sure you’ve all experienced this:

You’re walking down the street doing what you always do which is minding your own goddamn business and going about your day when you see a man walking towards you.  You notice him looking but he says nothing, doesn’t exactly ogle but his eyes linger on you a little too long for optimal comfort.  As he gets closer you brace yourself for the upcoming comment, the kissy noises, that terrible clicking sound.  Nothing.  You think you’re home free but then, just as he passes you he leans in and whispers ever so quietly,

“God bless.”

You can feel his breath on your face and the hair stands up on the back of your neck.  You turn around, angry, but he is already halfway down the block making his way to where ever he is headed.  No one around noticed a thing.  He’s in the clear.

If I had to rate types of non-physical assault style street harassment from one to ten, ten being my least favorite, I think that approach would get the crown.  It is worse than the passing car, the obvious stare, the invitations to go out, the whistles from rooftops.  For me, the close proximity whisper is one of the most invasive forms of harassment.  In the United States, we have such an engrained idea of personal space that when someone invades it there is no ignoring it.  That person made the choice to enter into my space, he knew it would make me uncomfortable and he didn’t care.  The feeling of his breath on my skin only adds insult to injury.  It is one step away from him putting a hand on me.  It is infuriating, disempowering, and disgusting.

The close proximity whisper is something that has been driving me crazy for a long time.  I almost forget that it even happens until one day some dude whispers “smile baby” in my ear and I go through the fucking roof.  But he didn’t touch me and there is no opportunity for a strong worded retort, really. It always takes too long for me to register what has happened and by the time I do my only option is to scream like a banshee at some asshole’s receding back.  The reason I thought of this now is that the other night this happened to me only it was on a crowded train and it was terrible.

So I was with a friend of mine and we were heading to Crown Heights to visit his friend at the bar she works in.  When we got onto the train it was relatively empty but we opted to stand.  I have been standing a lot lately.  It’s a thing.  Anyway, we were standing in the little door alcove on the wrong side of the train (AKA the side the doors open on) so every time we stopped somewhere we would split up; he would stand to one side of the doors and me to the other.  We’d reconvene in the middle once everyone got aboard.  When we stopped at Atlantic Avenue the train got swamped.  We couldn’t meet in the middle again so he stayed to his side and I stayed to mine. Right next to me was a really tall (this is all relative considering I am pushing 5’4″) man somewhere in his late forties if I had to guess.  The second the doors closed he leaned over and, right in my ear whispered,

“Are you a mommy?”

It took me a second to understand what he had said.  It was Mother’s Day after all.  I gave him a small smile and said no and then resumed staring blankly in front of me, my left arm grasping the subway poll, my right hand resting on my left shoulder, as much of a protective stance as I could muster considering I had no room to move.  He leaned forward again,

“You look too young to be a mommy.”

I glanced over at him, raised my eyebrows and did a very slight head nod in an attempt to acknowledge he had said something to me without inviting him to say anything else.  A moment later his hand “slipped” off whatever he was holding and hit me in the chest, landing hard on my breastbone.  I instinctively checked to make sure my necklace didn’t vanish — it hadn’t but it wouldn’t be surprising to me if it had because people just love to steal shit from me — and felt thankful I had the foresight to cover my boobs with my arm.  I glanced over at my friend who had been looking at me protectively, not sure exactly what to do and, I imagined, taking cues from my behavior.  The man apologized.  I shot my eyes up to him without turning my body in his direction.  Then, seconds later, as we approached a stop he put his hand on my shoulder, leaned in much to close and whispered,

“Have a wonderful day.”

He was all up in my space.  He was touching my arm.  I thought maybe he was getting off at that stop and felt a momentary rush of relief but the train doors opened and he made no move to exit.  At that moment my friend called over the heads of the half dozen people in between us and asked if I wanted to get off and walk.

Fuck yes.

We got off the train.  I didn’t look back to see the man’s reaction when he realized that I was traveling with someone and that someone happened to be years younger and much more solid than him.  My friend and I talked about it for a minute, him not knowing the man had touched me because he was unable to see through all the people.  From his vantage point all he could see was some guy whispering in my ear and to him, that was enough to want to get me out of the situation. I put it out of my head for the remainder of the night but now I am thinking about it.  And here is what I am thinking.

It is bad enough to have someone whisper in your ear and keep moving but to have that person violate your personal space and continue to stand there is totally fucked.  It put me in an incredibly uncomfortable situation, one that I could not extricate myself from.  It’s like, there I was, stuck with all these people around me and then this guy who was just toeing the line, seeing how far he could push it.  I was bound, in a way, by the manners we as women have been taught.  I didn’t want to sharply tell him to stop, as I normally would if I could walk away, and then be stuck standing next to him, with the eyes of all the other passengers on me.  I didn’t know what their reactions would be, whether they would support me or think I was a loon.  I mean, all he was doing, really, was talking.  And the first touch could easily have been excused as an accident.  I started feeling like the best course of action was to keep my eyes down and my mouth shut, to not draw attention and maybe it would just stop on its own.  (In my personal experience, this reaction never really has the desired effect.)    I didn’t want to have to defend my reaction to a bunch of people who might not support me and then remain there, shamed.  I thought if I just stood there, more or less unmoving, as nonreactive as possible, he would back off but he didn’t.  He just kept toeing the line, kept inviting me into this seemingly innocent, but incredibly invasive, private conversation that I had absolutely no interest in participating in.

It’s a weird thing, to step out of your own tendencies.  I am pretty outspoken about this sort of thing, normally.  Especially when I am in New York.  That might sound like a weird thing but this is my home, I have lived here for a long time and I know when I should say something and when I shouldn’t.  Before I react strongly to a comment, I note the time of day, where I am, whether or not there are people around. At 4am I keep my mouth shut, but in the afternoon, in a parking lot stuffed with cars, I will say my piece.  I take the shock and awe approach.  I am especially good with words when I am angry and I think that the mouth I have takes casual harassers by surprise.  It gives me the chance to tell them about themselves and march off before they regroup and think long enough to come up with something better than “bitch!” But being stuck in a subway car, pinned in place by the sheer quantity of people, can really make you revert back to socialized habits.

Anyway, a lot of times I think back on things and figure out how I could have handled it differently, better.  There’s always something.  But in this particular case, even with the luxury of space and a few days time, I cannot for the life of me figure out how I could have behaved differently.  I didn’t feel unsafe, really.  What I did feel was the society in which I was raised, one that teaches girls to keep quiet.  I thought about all the times people have told me that it is unsafe for me to speak my mind, that it isn’t worth it.  But I can’t stop thinking about how this guy won. How by not telling him what he was doing, I was complicit in it, I was saying it was okay.  Sure, I got off early, sure, it was clear that I didn’t want to be near him, but I don’t know.  It is very possible that me telling him to back the fuck off, as much as he could considering the circumstances, would have set him off, or would have fallen on deaf ears, but I also could have been the first person to say it and maybe, hopefully, the last person he did it to.

Being a woman is hard.

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