Search Results

Sex Panther: Keeping it Exciting

Editor’s Note: Throughout the semester you’ll be reading articles from Middlebury students of different identities and experiences on all things sex and relationships.  This week’s Sex Panther is coming to you from a person in a committed relationship on campus. While there’s a lot to say about how to maintain a relationship at Middlebury, I’d like to talk about the importance of continuing communication about your sexual relationship. Not all long-term relationships include sex, but for many it is an important element.   At the beginning, everything is new. You’re exploring and figuring out how to be in a relationship with someone else, including the sex part, and there is a lot of room to change things. But when you’ve been with someone for a long time, sometimes sex becomes part of the routine. We hear pretty often that communication is key to any relationship, and sex is no different. I’m not talking about having conversations about sex just regarding consent (which you still need before every sexual experience no matter how long you’ve been together!!) but in really talking to each other about satisfaction and sexual health in the relationship.  Checking in about your sexual relationship can help prevent what some relationship counselors call “sexual boredom.” Sexual boredom can occur in long-term relationships when one doesn’t necessarily become less interested in sex, but less interested in sex with their partner as compared to the beginning of the relationship. In my opinion, people in long-term relationships should be getting just as much fulfillment from sex as people in new relationships, and having check-in conversations is one way to promote that. In order for this to happen, partners should try to be honest with their needs and wants while being receptive to their partner’s. People change and preferences evolve, and while it sometimes feels easier to stick with doing the same things as in the beginning of a relationship, that might be hindering both people from living fuller and more satisfying sex lives.  If you want to start talking with your partner about this, but just aren’t quite sure how, you can start with simply asking after sex “How was that for you?” or “Did you like when we did this?” This can often pave the way for a continuing conversation. You might be surprised that something you’ve been doing for a long time doesn’t really do anything for your partner, or there’s something that they really like that you didn’t know about.  It can feel weird. It can be awkward. Even with someone that you are close to. But hopefully, in the end, you’ll come away with a better understanding of each other, and with fuller and healthier sex lives.   

Sex Panther: Give Lube Some Love

Editor’s Note: Throughout the semester you’ll be reading articles from Middlebury students of different identities and experiences on all things sex and relationships.  Let’s talk about lube. No, really. We need to have a heart-to-heart about why some of y’all don’t seem to understand that sticking anything in anyone is gonna require some liquid love. If you’ve got a vagina, sometimes your yoni can take care of that need for you, but sometimes it doesn’t. And if you’ve got a butthole (for your sake I hope you do because if you don’t you might want to get that checked out) and you wanna stick stuff up your (or someone else’s) butt, you’re gonna need to add lube.  For my fellow queers, this probably isn’t news. Lubricant love is strong in queer circles. We have long been indebted to the virtues of lubricant in sexual situations. Personally, I carry a mini-packet in my condom case (you do carry your condoms in a case so that they aren’t compromised by friction or sharp objects, right? Right?!?!) to whip out should the need arise with my honey. Believe me, we queers know lube.  But most straight folx? Not so much. Painfully not so much. Straight boys, listen up: if your partner(s) can’t get wet on their own when you’re going at it, even though they are enthusiastically consenting to what you’re doing and you’re both into sticking stuff into each other, chances are you need lube. Otherwise, you’re going to end up with chafing at the very least and a ruined sexual relationship at worst. It’s important to combat the notion that to be good at having sex you shouldn’t need any ‘outside help’. The belief that folks with vaginas need to be able to get wet with a smoldering glance from you is laughable. Foreplay is important, y’all!!!!!! It is perfectly normal, natural and biological that every vagina is different. Some may literally drip when they’re turned on, and some may not produce any lubrication at all, even if they’re hornier than a bunny in May. So stop it with that wet = aroused nonsense. I am here to tell you that that assertion is certifiably false, sex kittens. That is just your fragile masculinity talking, and it ain’t sexy.  To be fair, you may not have ever considered not listening to that little voice of toxic masculinity, but now would be a great time to start considering it. Your partner and their orifices will thank you.  “Wahhhhh but if I take time to get out lube, I have to stop mid-coitus. It kills the mood! :(((“  Well, buddy, if stopping to make sure your partner is having the best experience possible ‘ruins the mood’, stopping isn’t the problem. And while you’re stopped, maybe ask your partner(s) what would feel good, or check in about consent or engage in some dirty talk. And if you and your sweetie enjoy incorporating toys in the bedroom (or wherever, no shame), lube can be a lifesaver! Just be careful to use a lube that is safe for your specific situation.  Remember, kids SILICONE LUBE MELTS SILICONE TOYS. And oil based lube erodes condoms, so keep coconut oil in the kitchen if you’re using a latex condom. Water-based is generally safe for all bodies and surfaces, but the only downside is that it tends to dry out more quickly, so you may need to take a couple of extra moments to re-apply and make sure everything is going smoothly down there.  Here’s the thing: foreplay is a fun, sensual, wonderful part of sex and incorporating lube into foreplay can ramp up the mood in a very hot way. So grab some packets from Parton, or invest in some lube for your (sexually) active lifestyle and get gliding! If you have a topic you’d like to see written about or you’d like to write your own Sex Panther column, visit go/sexpanther to get in touch with us. 

Sex Panther: On “Queer”

Editor’s Note: Throughout the semester you’ll be reading articles from Middlebury students of different identities and experiences on all things sex and relationships. If you have a topic you’d like to see written about or you’d like to write, visit go/sexpanther to get in touch with us.  Sex Panther here — and just so you know, I’m queer. And it sometimes throws people off when they hear me describe myself that way, especially people who aren’t in the community. “Can’t you just say gay?” “Isn’t queer a derogatory term?” “Are you reclaiming that or do you just want to be edgy?”  The term ‘queer’ does have a varied and often convoluted history, and yes, historically, it has been used as a slur. However, it is also an academic area of study, a verb and an adjective. There is a lot to get used to, and to be honest, I myself am constantly learning and unlearning new things about how we as non-straight people exist and are perceived in society. It’s a process. There’s a lot to unpack, but consider this a crash course on queerness. So buckle up, sweeties!  To start off, I’m going to give some background (skip this if you’re lazy or like, a GSFS person): the academic disciplines of Queer Studies and Queer Critique are heavily influenced by the works of two very famous theorists, Michel Foucault and Judith Butler. Here’s a run-down just to give some context to the often-overwhelming world of gender, sexuality, and feminist studies and to show how these words have moved outside the lecture hall and become more commonly used terms. Many consider Foucault to be a poststructuralist theorist; he focuses on the way that discussions around things like power and sexuality have been formed more than the content of the discussions themselves. In a queer studies context, Foucault argues that the body is “the site in which discourses are enacted and where they are contested.” That means that identities are often simplified or essentialized and projected onto different people’s bodies and that the presentation (or the ways in which a person manipulates the expected presentation) allows the person to challenge or accept that identity within the larger context of society, like putting on different outfits to fit into different scenarios.  [pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Identities are often simplified or essentialized and projected onto different people’s bodies.[/pullquote] Judith Butler also talks about the “performativity” of gender and the ways in which a “body becomes its gender through a series of acts which are renewed, revised and consolidated through time,”  in her 1988 essay titled Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory. This means that the things our contemporary society associates with being a woman or a man (the clothes we wear, the way we cut our hair, the jobs we do, the pitch of our voices, the way we react to social situations) are all things which are not innate, but rather are created and mandated by the society in which we live. Basically, gender (and attraction to gender, which we call sexuality) are things that we as a society generally create and agree upon, but don’t necessarily consider to be made up. It’s a whole lot of self-delusion, really.  We’re going to springboard from this revelation into the way that, as part of the male-female gender binary that society creates (and which most bodies perform), heterosexuality (ya know, straightness) is also part and parcel of this dichotomy. Butler says that “there are strict punishments for contesting the script by performing out of turn.” I know. What does that even mean?!?  “Out of turn” can mean anything which challenges what mainstream culture perceives as norms of gender or sexuality: people who aren’t straight, girls who shave their heads or dress like men, or people who don’t even fit into the categories of male or female.  [pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]It’s a whole lot of self-delusion, really.[/pullquote] This is where the word queer comes in. It is for people, and places, and things that are, simply put, contrary to “the norm” in a radical way. In academic circles (i.e. places like Midd’s classrooms where people throw around words like praxis, epistemological, and cis-heteropatriarchy like they’re self-explanatory things), one definition of queer includes any presentation, identity, or performance which actively challenges the norm of heterosexuality and binary genders. This is where Foucault comes back in. Sara Mills gives a super easy-to-follow summary of some of Foucault’s theories on sexuality. For example, she simplifies how Foucault suggests “counter-identification” or “counter-discourses” as ways to find empowerment in “stigmatized individualities,” which is just a fancy way of saying that people can use the ways in which society shuns them to find community and empowerment; it’s why some lesbians call themselves dykes, and why some people (gay, lesbian, bi, and everywhere in between) call themselves queer. The very act of claiming the term queer is actively subverting and challenging the ways dominant social powers shape the way people can identify and what counts as socially acceptable. In this sense, queer is an active word, and it is possible in identifying as queer some people are pointing to and embodying the ways in which their performance of identity and actions dispute normative expectations of gender, sexuality and sex. Make sense?  So, if queer is that which is  “out of turn” with “normal” performances of gender and sexuality, and by some definitions even any identity or performance that is not straight, cisgendered, white, abled or upper-middle class (which, let’s be real, is the demographic which has historically held the more power and social capital than any other). That means a lot of people could fall into the category of queer, but not everyone that might fall into that category feels comfortable claiming that word. And that’s totally fine; the use of words like queer, gay, bi, lesbian etc. are all depended on how the person using them (or not using them) chooses to interact with those identifiers. TL;DR,  if you don’t vibe with the word queer because of the culturally loaded connotations it has for you, then it is your prerogative to not use that as an identifier! If queer isn’t a word that you use to describe you, your friends shouldn’t use it to describe you either! But it is important to know how and why the term came to be something that many people are proud to claim, as well.  I always love to hear from you lovelies, so if you have a question or burning comment, head over to go/sexpanther and hmu, baby! Xoxo, Sex Panther

Sex Panther: Valentine's Day

Editor’s Note: Feb. 14 seems an apt time to revive our Sex Panther column. Throughout the semester you’ll be reading articles from Middlebury students of different identities and experiences on all things sex and relationships. If you have a topic you’d like to see written about or you’d like to write, visit go/sexpanther to get in touch with us.  A hallmark holiday that stems from the ancient Roman Lupercalia feast and the execution of its two eponymous men, Valentine’s Day continues to generate massive sales among U.S. consumers. While many outwardly disown the holiday as a cliché and a gimmick, the spending trend continues to rise. Last year Americans spent nearly $20 billion on Valentine’s Day (according to the National Retail Federation), up from 2017. Hallmark began churning out valentines in 1913 (per an NPR report) and over 100 years later the Hallmark card is still a staple in the classic Valentine’s Day gift along with candy, jewelry and clothing. Why do we still love spending money on Valentine’s Day? I have some theories: 1) If you build it, they will come. Celebrating Valentine’s Day is what you’re supposed to do, it feels wrong to not do anything. Even in elementary school it felt horrible if someone else was given chocolates and a heart-shaped anything but you weren’t — what does that teach us about love? 2) I’m in a glass case of emotion. Or, it may be that being vulnerable and sharing with someone you care about just what you love about them seems an all-too daunting task except on its designated day.  3) I gave her my heart and she gave me a pen. For some those words are always too scary and we prefer instead to buy gifts and hope that the message gets across. Vulnerability in communicating your emotions is easier said than done, and I’ve definitely experienced that tongue-tied feeling of not knowing what to say or being scared to say what you really feel. But in challenging ourselves to be honest with ourselves and our feelings, and not just for show on Valentine’s Day, we can find more fulfilling and sustaining relationships. This isn’t to say that the idea of Valentine’s Day is completely horrible. Yes, it started as “a drunken revel” in ancient Rome, and perhaps that’s what it has returned to, but having one day to celebrate love and its power could be awesome. What if we stopped buying into the capitalist commercialism that has overtaken Valentine’s Day and instead showed our love in other ways? Whether we are in a relationship, single, or somewhere in between, Valentine’s Day is a reminder to love, and not just romantically.  Making dinner with friends (using as many dining hall ingredients as possible) going to the Middlebury Discount Comedy show in Hep Zoo tonight (it’s free!), sending your friends notes about how amazing they are — these are all great ways to celebrate Valentine’s Day without buying into the traditional gifts we’ve been taught to expect. In the end, we all get to decide how and when we want to celebrate Valentine’s Day, if at all. The important thing is to share moments with the people we love. And if we need a holiday to remind us of that, then so be it. Xoxo,  Sex Panther P.S. those movie quotes were from Field of Dreams, Anchorman and Say Anything

Nobel Winner Murad Sheds Light on Yazidi Genocide in Talk

When Nadia Murad was taken captive as a sex slave by ISIS in August 2014, she was 19 years old — the same age as many of the students who packed Wilson Hall to hear her speak on Tuesday night. Today, at age 26, Murad is using the atrocities she and her community faced to fuel a life of activism. Her talk, “Pursuing Peace and Justice: A Conversation with Nadia Murad,” explored her story as an activist and captive of ISIS and her recognition as a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, which she was awarded last fall. Murad became both the first Iraqi and Yazidi to receive the prize. The talk Murad gave on Tuesday was originally scheduled for Oct. 5, but Murad had to cancel her visit last minute because she was awarded the Nobel Prize on that day. Murad and her co-winner Denis Mukwege received the prize “for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict.” Murad’s apology for the cancelation at the beginning of her talk on Tuesday was met with laughs from the audience. The talk was introduced by Vice President for Academic Development and Professor of American Studies Tim Spears and facilitated by Associate Professor of History Febe Armanios. Murad was joined on stage by her fiancé and translator Abid Shamdeen. Murad opened her talk by describing her background as a member of the Yazidi, a little-known ethno-religious minority group. The Yazidi only number around 500,000 to 700,000, and most of them live in Iraq. The region of Sinjar in northwestern Iraq is the Yazidis’ home, and Murad’s home village of Kocho is located in this region. Kocho was home to around 1,700 people, and most families were dependent on farming and cattle. The youngest of 11 children, Murad was the only one of her siblings to attend school, as they could only afford for one child to go. “Our life was simple,” she said. But by June of 2014, ISIS had begun to attack many villages around Sinjar. Members of other religious minorities, such as Christians, were given the option to stay in their homes and pay a fee or flee the territory. When ISIS entered Sinjar on Aug. 3, the Yazidi were not given such options.  “They had a specific plan of eradicating Yazidis from that region,” Murad said. “A specific plan of executing men mostly and enslaving women and children.” The United Nations has classified ISIS atrocities against the Yazidis as acts of genocide. Six of Murad’s eight brothers were killed in the attack along with her mother and many nieces and nephews. While much of the Sinjar region has been liberated from ISIS, political competition, reflecting regional conflicts, along with a lack of resources and reconstruction has made the Yazidi homeland difficult to return to, Murad said. Rather than return home, many Yazidi remain in refugee camps around the Middle East.  “It’s not a stable environment for Yazidis to go back to,” Murad said.  Today, over 3,000 Yazidi women and children remain in captivity in ISIS territory in Syria. Many are missing including Murad’s sister-in-law, who disappeared two years ago.  Many Yazidis are displaced, including about 350,000 who are living in camps in Northern Iraq along with more living in refugee camps in Greece and Turkey. About 65,000 Yazidi have returned home, Murad said, but those who did face daunting challenges, including poor health and lack of electricity. While Yazidis have received some support from governments in Canada, Australia, France and Germany, Murad has called on regional governments, such as Turkey, for help. Last year, Murad returned to Iraq and met with many local leaders. They discussed why the Yazidi people remained unprotected by the government even after the genocide and talked about ways in which the government could help support the Yazidis so they can start rebuilding Sinjar. Murad also helped obtain approval from the Iraqi government to build a genocide museum in Sinjar. During her visit, Murad returned to Kocho, where she attended a religious celebration meant to honor the dead. This was the first time they celebrated the holiday since the genocide.    “I wanted to do this as a restart of our culture and traditions and to help people start doing the same thing we used to do,” she said.  In 2016, Murad founded Nadia’s Initiative, a nonprofit organization working to address issues of sexual violence, advocate for victims and aid communities affected by crisis. In the talk, Murad discussed the difficulties of using her personal tragedies to construct a life of activism. “For me as a woman, as a survivor, someone who has lost family members and been through this trauma it was especially difficult for a woman from the Middle East, from that region, to break taboos and speak about these stories,” she said. “But I had no other choice but to do it.” Murad explained how she hopes that the Nobel Peace Prize will help further her goals. “We are hoping to use this recognition to put more light on these communities that are facing persecution and genocide and prevent these acts to take place in the future,” she said, stressing the importance of recognizing the genocide in real terms to ensure against the extinction of the Yazidi community. Murad recognized the possibility that the Yazidis will leave their ancestral homeland in order to seek better and safer lives somewhere else. But, even when Yazidis have made it to different places in Europe, she said, many still face discrimination. Their homes are raided by police looking to deport them, and many have been denied asylum. She described what is has been like to live away from her home for the past few years. In addition to drastic cultural and day to day differences, she discussed the sad truth that her perpetrators were able to stay in her homeland while she had to flee. Murad finished her talk with a message for young people, and Middlebury students in particular.  “You as students here are lucky to have the chance to come here and study and choose your own path,” she said, emphasizing that not all young people have these opportunities. Murad also highlighted that governments and weapons can’t solve all these problems and that she counts on young people to accomplish her goals. Following the talk Nora Peachin ’21 reflected on the importance of having Murad speak at Middlebury.  “The takeaway for me is there really is no excuse not to be doing activism work and speaking out and fighting for justice and peace,” Peachin said.

Student-Run Conference Goes Beyond #MeToo

The sixth annual student-organized global affairs conference, “Beyond #MeToo: Global Responses to Sexual Violence in an Age of Reckoning,” was held between Jan. 22 and Jan. 24. The conference, organized by Grace Vedock ’20 and Taite Shomo ’20.5, began with an Atwater dinner, followed by a series of lectures and screenings over the next two days. “Beyond #MeToo” emphasized the varied global perception of sexual violence, looking at the #MeToo movement through an international lens in an effort to spark deeper discussion among Middlebury students, particularly those who do not ordinarily take an active stance on such issues. The organizers cited a talk last spring on the global implications of #MeToo by Sujata Moorti, Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies, as their inspiration for the conference.  Vedock and Shomo both saw the conference as a success, describing engaged students and great faculty at every event. The only letdown, Shomo said, was attendance. “I think we both wish that more people had shown up to the events,” she said. Turnout ranged from an estimated 50-60 people at the Atwater dinner to significantly fewer at most of the screenings and lectures. “I think a lot of people are really reluctant to engage in these conversations,” Vedock said. “It’s something that, as a society, it’s gained a lot of traction, media attention, things like that, but when it comes to actually showing up and having the hard conversations and engaging, it’s not something that everyone can do — for various reasons, we understand that, of course — but it’s hard to get people engaged. It’s really, really hard.” “If I could title this article,” Vedock said later, “it would be, ‘Show Up.’” The first screening, shown in Axinn immediately after the Atwater dinner, was Roll Red Roll, a documentary detailing the complicated aftermath of the assault of a teenage girl by high school football players. The film exposed the extent to which rape culture is ingrained in the United States through the story of one small Ohio town.  The following night, UN Sex Abuse Scandal, which features personal accounts by survivors of sexual assault at the hands of United Nation Peacekeepers, was also shown in Axinn. The Frontline documentary focused on conflict zones in Central Africa as survivors, witnesses and officials described an issue that is still very much unresolved. Associate Professor of Political Science Sarah Stroup led a discussion immediately after the screening, during which most attendees expressed shock about their own lack of awareness about such a major international issue and questioned why more was not being done. “When I asked, ‘What else you would want to know to understand this story,’ many of the students reported interest in more insight into how the UN and its peacekeeping missions work,” Stroup said. “Both Professor Amy Yuen and I regularly discuss those topics in our upper level political science classes.” Other invited lecturers broadened the scope of the conference. Janet Johnson, a professor of political science at Brooklyn College, gave a talk titled “#IamNotAfraidtoSay but not #MeToo: Russian Women’s Ambivalence in Claiming Sexual Autonomy.” Another lecture by Tina Escaja, Director of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the University of Vermont, was titled “#Cuéntalo: Black Moon/Luna morada and the #MeToo movement en español,” and focused on the interpretation and effects of the #MeToo movement in particular regions. Vedock described Escaja’s talk, which focused on art and poetry as a form of resistance, and the speaker’s poetry reading, as “breathtaking.” The final speaker was Rangita de Silva de Alwis, Associate Dean for International Programs at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, who gave a talk called “More Than a Public Reckoning: The Need for Laws.” De Alwis is recognized worldwide for her expertise on women’s rights. She started the Global Women’s Leadership Project in 2017 to support UNESCO and UN women’s work on peace and justice and women’s human rights. The conference concluded with a panel moderated by Karin Hanta, director of Chellis House Feminist Resource Center, called “The Age of Reckoning at Middlebury College,” which explored next steps regarding sexual violence at Middlebury. “At the final discussion about the future of Middlebury, one thing that we talked about a lot with the people who were there was wanting to implement more preventative strategies, like teaching about consent, and teaching about healthy relationships, rather than reactive things, like Green Dot, or like the sexual assault posters in the bathrooms,” Shomo said. “In an ideal world, we wouldn’t have to put on this event,” Vedock said, stressing the need to approach sexual assault as a cultural issue. “We had a great discussion at the end that left it on — maybe not a positive note — but a hopeful one,” she said.

The Librarian Is In

[pullquote speaker="" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]The New York Times’ “Book of the Dead: 320 Print and 10,000 Digital Obituaries of Extraordinary People” Edited by William McDonald [/pullquote] As the title suggests, this massive work is a collection of over 10,000 obituaries that cover the lives of entertainers, politicians, justice seekers (“Champions of the Cause”) and more. Divided into 16 chapters and accompanied by an index ordered by name, the print portion of this text groups people by the industries they served while living and the causes they took up. Businesspeople like industrialist Henry Ford and tech visionary Steve Jobs are grouped together, for example, as are writers like poet Walt Whitman and Harper Lee, author of “To Kill A Mockingbird.” Each chapter is ordered by the chronological date of the featured person’s death, earliest to latest. So, track and field Olympian Jesse Owens (1913- 1980) appears before boxer and political activist Muhammad Ali (1942- 2016).  Black Dog & Leventhal An unique feature of this book is that 320 historical figures are featured in print and 10,000 (!) are included on a web key (a pen/USB/thumb drive) found within the front cover of the book. Once the drive is plugged into a USB port on a computer, the user is prompted to register an email address to access the thousands of obituaries (“obits”) that are available in digital format. They can be browsed, too, within 40 categories like “Architects,” “Explorers,” “Fashion,” Food” and “Nobility.” When I searched “Julia Child,” a world renowned culinary figure and author of “My Life In France,” I found that she didn’t like grilled vegetables or think much of Mexican food. We would not have been friends. While flipping through the pages of the print text, I first visited profiles like Harriet Tubman’s and Malcolm X’s, two prominent figures in the fights for racial freedoms in the United States. Then I went to the stars of the small and big screens like Lucille Ball and Marlon Brando. “I Love Lucy” was one of the first sitcoms I ever watched and it introduced me to countless themes of gender and an expert comedienne whose skill remains hard to match. I was curious about Brando because whispers and murmurs of his sex appeal still linger in conversations about Hollywood and I wanted to know what the hype was all about. I read of Dred Scott whose freedom was argued at the Supreme Court; Thomas Gallaudet who founded a school for the deaf in Washington, D.C.; and of Althea Gibson, a figure of whom I’d never heard before, who was “Serena Williams” before there was a Serena Williams. This “Book of the Dead” can serve as a trivia tool that provides quick information on major figures from the past, particularly those from the 20th century, and as a potential research tool for those seeking brief profiles on the famous or how to write a posthumous account of a deceased person’s life. However, the work is as interesting for what it does include as for what it doesn’t. For example, of the 320 people appearing in print, about 43 represent women. That’s less than 15 percent. Moreover, I don’t think one of the 320, male, female or trans, is Asian American. Why might that be? Also, there’s no chapter dedicated to scientists. The likes of these are perhaps found under the sections entitled “American Leaders” and “Thinkers.” Why? This sort of lens, one that allows for questioning what is there and what isn’t tells users of the text what the United States and the New York Times (NYT) has historically considered “noteworthy” and “remarkable.” It makes one ask the question, “How many people whose lives were especially meaningful never made it to the NYT obits? What were the criteria for determining which figures would appear in print? How come so many are male? As an information worker who is constantly at the task of treating issues of representation, the text is rather compelling. Let me share an appropriately self-aware excerpt from the introduction: “One will notice that most of the people who appear in these pages are white and male… the bias is undeniable, and it, too, is historical: It reflects the prejudices and injustices of an early era…one must inevitably draw from those who controlled the levers of power, and that group, as we know, was composed mostly of white men.” Moreover, some important figures never made it to the NYT obits because they gained their fame posthumously.  So, if you’re looking for an exhaustively comprehensive text, it’s not this one. But if you’re into “Old Hollywood,” I recommend you take a gander. For other works that study yesteryear, check out the Davis Family Library’s “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong” by James W. Loewen; “A People’s History of the United States”-by Howard Zinn; “An African American and Latinx History of the United States” by Paul Ortiz, none of which I have read — yet. Literatures & Cultures Librarian Katrina Spencer is liaison to the Anderson Freeman Center, the Arabic Department, the Comparative Literature Program, the Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies (GSFS) Program, the Language Schools, the Linguistics Program and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.

Panel Explores Injustice of U.S. Immigration

Speakers discussed the painful and sometimes tragic experiences of immigrants seeking new lives in the United States during a Nov. 15 panel in Dana Auditorium, titled “Trauma and the U.S. Immigration System.”  The panel featured University of Vermont College of Medicine Professor Dr. Andrea Green, Albany Law School Professor Sarah Rogerson, Migrant Justice activist Marita Caneda and Hannah Krutiansky ’19, who worked as a summer intern with the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES).  Meron Benti ’19, who was born in Ethiopia and moved to Italy before making her way to the United States, served as the moderator. She opened by talking about her own experience as an immigrant and her 18 month wait for asylum. Krutiansky shared her experiences working with RAICES, a non-profit based in San Antonio, Texas, where she spent time in detention facilities and worked directly with detainees to provide legal support. She focused on injustice faced by indigenous migrants that she observed during the job. [pullquote speaker="Hannah Krutiansky ’19" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]What they really need is counseling, but what they’re going to get is interrogation about the most intimate, traumatic, events of their life.[/pullquote] “I was in a courtroom where the mother and the interpreter clearly were not understanding each other and the judge just said, ‘Please give your best interpretation,’” she said.  Krutiansky’s work with RAICES gave her a first hand perspective of the trauma that immigrants endure.  “They’ll be told that they need to sign a paper that might be in English and if they ask what they’re signing a very typical response could be, ‘Do you think I have time to explain this to you?’” she said. “What they really need is counseling, but what they’re going to get is interrogation about the most intimate, traumatic, events of their life.”  In one incident, she and other RAICES staff were forced to leave the holding facility without explanation.  “We exited visitation and we were met by a literal army of ICE officers, it was probably anywhere from 30 to 50 officers in bulletproof vests, guns, shields, handcuffs,” Krutiansky said. “This was just to terrorize this population.”  After this incident, 16 fathers were randomly selected and put in solitary confinement for a day with no explanation. One of the fathers tried to commit suicide.  Krutiansky witnessed the effect that this attack had on the children whose fathers were taken away with no explanation.  “One seven-year-old boy whose eyes were completely glazed over after the incident, bloodshot, you could have put your hand in front of him and he wouldn’t have flinched,” Krutiansky said. Rogerson elaborated on immigration from a legal perspective and described a variety of legal terms. She also described traumatic experiences helping 300 refugees who had been flown to a county jail in Albany to be detained.  “No one ever told them where they were, so the first thing that the lawyers did when they went in was draw a map of the United States and show them where they were, and where their family members were in some cases,” she said, describing many of the refugees as “incredibly disoriented.” [pullquote speaker="Albany Law School Professor Sarah Rogerson" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]The Trump administration made the decision to limit asylum claims for people who were fleeing gang violence and people fleeing domestic violence.[/pullquote] Rogerson criticized many recent changes to immigration policy.  “The Trump administration made the decision to limit asylum claims for people who were fleeing gang violence and people fleeing domestic violence,” she said.  She also emphasized collaboration with law enforcement.  “We’re creating our own system of humane immigration system enforcement and we’re using law enforcement allies to do it,” Rogerson said.  Dr. Green, a pediatrician with experience serving refugees, focused on the physical effects of trauma and immigration, especially on children. “Young people, they will trade sex for their basic needs,” she said, calling it “survival sex” which leads to sexually transmitted infections, in addition to other diseases and injuries acquired through the arduous process of coming to the United States as an asylee or refugee.  “The bigger issue, in addition to all those health issues, is the effects of trauma,” she said. “Stress, trauma causes inflammation in the body, and that inflammation in the body affects health in the long term, and actually changes your genetic makeup.” The effect at a broader level is a higher suicide rate among immigrants. Green spoke about her own experience serving Bhutanese refugees in Vermont, which has twice the suicide risk of the general population. “That trauma affects that parents ability to parent that child,” she said during discussion of parents coming to the U.S. to get a better life for their children. “That trauma is now a multi-generational trauma.”  Caneda, a Migrant Justice activist, gave a brief overview of the organization’s current work. She spoke about its mission to protect Vermont dairy workers with the goal of improving lives of migrants and advancing human rights, and highlighted that immigrants do not have the same human rights as others.  “Since 2014, a lot of members of migrant justice have been arrested” she said. “Nine of those detentions have clear evidence of retaliation for coming in and speaking out about human rights.” Caneda added that many detentions and arrests by ICE also involved illegal cooperation with the DMV.  Caneda emphasized that not all immigrants are necessarily fleeing violence, but also lack of opportunity and unsafe working conditions.  “When the only options to work are for a fracking company or for an oil company or joining the army, a lot of people don’t have those values and they come and migrate here and end up working on the dairy farms” she said. “When you work at a dairy farm you live on the farm, you become a 24/7 worker” Caneda said, pointing out food safety concerns. “When you live on a farm, especially up north, you depend on others to bring you food, sometimes it’s every 15 days, so if day 13 you run out of food, you don’t have an option and you spend two days without.”  [pullquote speaker="Migrant Justice activist Marita Caneda" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Right now in Vermont anyone can get a driver’s license regardless of your immigration status, which was a big change because now people could start driving cars, going to stores, not depending on others for food.[/pullquote] In a positive moment, Caneda explained that this condition has improved.  “Right now in Vermont anyone can get a driver’s license regardless of your immigration status, which was a big change because now people could start driving cars, going to stores, not depending on others for food,” she said.  This panel fit within a larger national conversation around immigration. The narratives of the speakers stood in striking contrast with the president’s recent military response to the alleged “migrant caravan” of immigrants approaching the border from Central America. 

Reel Critic: Shoplifters

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 2018 film “Shoplifters” (Manbiki kazoku) illustrates the life of a Japanese family as they navigate life in poverty in contemporary Tokyo. The film was awarded the Palme d’Or at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival and was screened at the Dana Auditorium as part of the Hirschfield International Series. As Osamu Shibata (Lily Franky) and his wife Nobuyo (Sakura Ando) have no reliable source of income, the family survives on shoplifting and grandmother Hatsue’s (Kirin Kiki) pension. One evening as Osamu and his son Shota (Kairi Jo) are walking home from the store with their stolen groceries, they discover Juri (Miyu Sasaki), a young girl who they suspect is being abused by her parents. The family proceeds to take Juri in as one of their own.  Every scene is its own concept that presents us with a new palette of rich hues. Shots are long and still, allowing us to take in the many shades unfolding in front of us that shift from cool to warm to reflect changes in mood and atmosphere. Kore-eda’s visuals are so captivating by themselves that merely sitting in the auditorium feels gluttonous.  Equally enchanting is the realism of the film’s set design. The family’s miniscule apartment looks so lived-in that it is difficult to think of it as artificial. Whether it be empty cardboard boxes stacked in the kitchen or the sitting cushions scattered across the floor, the positioning of every piece of clutter seems essential. As the family sits around the low table in their ramshackle living room, the slurping of noodles dominates the soundscape. Conversation is sporadic and loosely scripted. Reminiscent of Hayao Miyazaki’s animations, Kore-eda makes the most mundane of events feel charming. There is nothing excessive here.  Despite its elegant visuals, “Shoplifters” makes no excuses for the family’s outlandishness. Aside from their kleptomaniac tendencies, their internal dynamics are questionable. Shota, Osamu and Nobuyo repeatedly negotiate whether the boy is “ready” to call them his parents. Furthermore, as Aki (Mayu Matsuoka) is pictured comforting clients at her job at a Tokyo sex club, it is clear that her idea of genuine intimacy is skewed. There seems to be little difference in her interactions with the men that pass through the chat room and the way in which she talks to her grandmother. By not explaining these quirks Kore-eda maintains a steady ironic distance between his characters and the audience, thus adding yet another dimension to an already complex film.  It is this obscurity that leads us to consider the film’s central questions. Although we know that Juri has been forcefully taken from her biological parents, it is difficult to convince yourself that she belongs with anyone else. As Nobuyo and Juri compare burn scars on their grimy bathroom floor, the sense of genuine care for one another is undeniable. Blurring the lines between right and wrong, “Shoplifters” makes us step outside conventional definitions and ask ourselves what really defines a family.  Taking into account that Osamu and Nobuyo essentially kidnapped Juri with little apprehension, it should come as no surprise that it is not the only morally questionable act the two have committed. After Shota is caught shoplifting by store clerks and the family’s past is revealed to us, the truth unfolds faster than we can even begin to process it. In contrast to the steady, harmonious scenes that have built our trust in the family over the course of the film, flashes of interrogations, police badges and their empty apartment leave us to fill the gaps in ourselves. Perhaps this is exactly what makes the film so taxing to follow. Kore-eda repeatedly reminds us that our assumptions and conclusions are of no relevance, and that his film is not intended to be comfortable. “Shoplifters” operates on its own plane and on its own terms. It demands to be seen not as a piece of entertainment, but as a sharp analysis of the most basic unit of society.  Watching “Shoplifters” is as much a cerebral experience as it is a visual one: the film is relentlessly focused and expects nothing less from its audience. With his skilled direction and the poignant questions that the film raises, Kore-eda creates a grip that holds us still for a full two hours.

Former Dartmouth Students Accuse School of Failing to Protect Them from Sexual Assault

Seven women have filed a class action lawsuit alleging that Dartmouth College allowed sexual misconduct by three former professors to continue for over a decade. The $70 million lawsuit, filed in the state on New Hampshire on Nov. 15, involved actions by professors Todd Heatherton, William Kelley and Paul Whalen in Dartmouth’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.  The plaintiffs argue that professors perpetrated a culture that resembled a “21st Century Animal House.” Professors are accused of inviting students to late-night hot tub parties at private residences, holding lab meetings at bars and encouraging an atmosphere of heavy drinking. These actions were accompanied by numerous allegations of sexual advances by the three professors towards graduate students who depended upon the professors’ academic support. [pullquote speaker="ROGER DAI '20" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]I don’t know if the administration buried the accusations, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they did. And that’s deeply troubling.[/pullquote] According to The Washington Post, Kristina Rapuano, one of the plaintiffs, claims that Whalen sent her a text message one night telling her to come back to his office. Once she arrived, he allegedly turned off the lights and began touching her. Plaintiffs argue that this was an open secret in the college, in the town of Hanover, and at conferences, and that these three professors had an established reputation as predators. Dartmouth officials released a statement saying they “applaud the courage” displayed by the women who came forward, but asserting that the college disagrees “with the characterizations of Dartmouth’s actions in the complaint” Middlebury’s current sexual assault policy claims that the college “will take reasonable, prompt and appropriate action” in the event of sexual misconduct. This sexual misconduct is defined as “sexual assault, domestic and dating violence and misconduct, stalking and related retaliation.” Discipline for employees, based on the severity of the actions, includes “discipline for employees such as written reprimands, salary freezes (faculty) or termination of employment.” A criminal investigation may be opened at the complainant’s discretion.  Dartmouth claims adherence to a similar policy, and writes that they are “committed to the safety and wellbeing of every member of our community.” However, the alleged disregard of sexual assault claims on Dartmouth’s campus would speak otherwise.  “I don’t know if the administration buried the accusations, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they did. And that’s deeply troubling,” said Roger Dai ’20, a Middlebury student currently spending a year at Dartmouth.  At the annual Cognitive Neuroscience Society conference in March 2015, Rapuano claims that Kelley raped her after a night of drinking, the New York Times reported. The morning after, Kelley told Rapuano that they had had sex two times, after which Rapuano began panicking. Rapuano has no recollection of leaving the bar. Rapuano, among others, attempted to gain distance from Kelley by engaging in a fellowship overseas. She says that Kelley started punishing her academically for refusing his advances. Annemarie Brown also claims that Kelley reacted in the same way regarding her advising. Andrea Courtney similarly recounts that Whalen abandoned advising her after she tried to distance herself from him. The first complaint against one of the three professors, Heatherton, was filed in 2002. The lawsuit alleges that the college has continued to ignore complaints for almost sixteen years. A months-long Title IX investigation began in 2017 after several complaints were lodged against the professors. Dartmouth allegedly told women who launched complaints to continue to work for the professors for the next four months, warning the women that academic retaliation may result from refusing the professors. In that time, graduate student Vassiki Chaahan, a plaintiff, was sexually assaulted. In October 2018, a criminal investigation was opened by the New Hampshire Attorney General and is still ongoing. As the Title IX investigation progressed, Dartmouth instigated the rarely-used process required to fire tenured professors. Before this was put into effect, however, Whalen and Kelley resigned, and Heatherton retired. The three professors are now banned from Dartmouth’s campus and any Dartmouth-sponsored events, and cannot be rehired by the university. Heatherton’s attorney has denied involvement in the scandal, claiming that the plaintiffs were not his students and were only involved with the other two professors. Heatherton did not participate in any of the parties and did not drink with underage students, he claims, and Heatherton’s lab meetings did not involve alcohol. The New York Times reported that Sasha Brietzke, one of the plaintiffs, claims that Heatherton pulled her onto his lap at a conference in March 2017 during a karaoke night and asked her about her plans for the night. Brietzke immediately left the establishment in shock. Heatherton publicly apologized for touching a graduate student while intoxicated in 2017, claiming that the act was not sexual. He also maintains that any hiring for labs was done by a female assistant, focusing on skills and experience instead of appearance.

‘Break the Silence’ Encourages Storytelling, Unites Women

“That’s what we need to do, step up, show up and break the silence,” said Senator Christopher Bray on Thursday, Nov. 15 as he introduced “Break the Silence” to the audience at the Town Hall Theatre. In the film, documentary filmmaker Willow O’Feral explored sexual reproductive justice and gender justice by featuring reproductive and sexual health stories of a diverse group of 17 women from Brattleboro, Vermont.  “Break the Silence” was not a project formed by chance, but a project born as a direct response to the presidential election two years ago. A few weeks after the election, O’Feral came together with a group of women and formed the Women’s Action Team, a feminist collective in Brattleboro. As the group was discussing ways to protect women’s autonomy over their own bodies and lives, storytelling came naturally to their discussion.  “We were talking about how storytelling was so visceral and core to [changing] people’s hearts and minds,” said O’Feral during the panel discussion after the screening. “Hearing someone expressing their lived experience with vulnerability, it is really hard to be judgmental.”   Starting the project with no funding, O’Feral was constrained by the limited tools available in her little studio. However, with only one white backdrop, one camera, one tripod, one light and one lavalier microphone, O’Feral managed to record authentic voices of women who shared candidly some of their most personal, intimate and vulnerable experiences, discussing topics such as their first time having sex, birth control, abortion, sexual assault and pregnancy. Though produced under technical constraints, the result was more than powerful.  For Lucy Leriche, Vice President of Public Policy at Planned Parenthood of Northern New England and one of the three panelists at the discussion, it was not the first time seeing “Break the Silence.” Nonetheless, it moved her to tears just as it had the first time she watched it.   “What really strikes me about this is that people are letting themselves [be] so vulnerable. There is so much shame in so many of those stories, but the courage of the people enabled them to tell their stories, to overcome that shame, and to rip through it to survive,” Leriche said.  The style of simplicity not only corresponded to those stories, but cultivated a raw and powerful intimacy throughout the interviews presented in the film and let the stories tell themselves. By zooming in and out during the interviews, O’Feral let the camera mirror the story and allowed the audience to “become intimate with the person when she is revealing a vulnerable part of her story.”  “When I could tell someone was getting to an emotional part of their story, I usually zoomed in so that you felt more intimate, and zoomed out when she was telling the background or the context of the story,” O’Feral said.  O’Feral  had difficulty putting together a representative group of women with a broad diversity of age, race, experience, economic background and gender and sexuality experiences.  “It is a feminine project, so I wanted cis women, trans women, women of color, white women, young and old women, women who have more or less money, coming from privileges or no privileges,” O’Feral explained.  With the first five or six volunteers, who were all white, middle-class, straight women, on board, O’Feral realized that she needed to seek out different kinds of women, and it took her a while to feel comfortable approaching people and asking them to be part of the project.  “I felt a little awkward approaching women of color and saying, ‘Can you please be part of my project because I want to include women of color?’ I felt I was targeting them racially. But all of them were so happy that I wanted to be diverse. Every woman of color I asked said yes,” she said with a smile.  O’Feral reached out to transgender women in the community as well. One of the trans women featured in the film actually turned O’Feral down when she first reached out, but eventually was touched by her patience and persistence at her third approach months later. O’Feral’s efforts and persistence were worthwhile, as she gained trust in the local transgender community and more people came to her with their stories.  After the screening, the response from the audience was incredible. Several community members, who were all women, stepped forward one after another and shared their own stories or concerns with the panelists and the rest of the audience. One of the overarching themes from their response was the shared concern over the younger generations about how to educate them to have a healthy view of sex and gender.  Kerri Duquette-Hoffman, the executive director at WomenSafe, was another panelist at the discussion. As a mother of three kids, Duquette-Hoffman related to that concern.  “What strikes me about this film is that it is 2018 and people are still so hurt,” Duquette-Hoffman said. “I think [the] first thing we can do is to be curious, and learn, and educate our children to make sure kids know the boundaries, have empathy building skills and understand one another.”  While some of the icebreaker questions during the interviews included, “What was your first sexual experience?,” “What was sex like at home or at school or at religious institutions?,” etc., O’Feral never asked about sexual assault or rape. However, when asked about their first sexual experiences,  half of the 17 women featured in the film said that their first sexual experience was being raped.   “So near the end of the project, I was like, God, I want to hear about really great sex, excellent, consensual, enthusiastic sex, and I started to pivot towards not just fight[ing] the world that is threatening, but [building] the world we want,” said O’Feral.   The last woman O’Feral interviewed was Sheila. Starving for more positive stories at the end of the process, O’Feral asked Sheila about her first orgasm rather than her first sexual experience, which led to the opening of the film — Sheila sharing a happy sex experience. Even though that did result in an unwanted pregnancy, Sheila said she never regretted the sex. When asked about Sheila and her positive sex experience, O’Feral said, “I interviewed her for two hours, and she sobbed through almost all of it. And this is the one happy story in that whole interview. I decided to choose that one because I felt like she was so raw and vulnerable in the rest of her interview and it did not feel right to present her as a broken person as I can see her beauty and strength in this story.”

Reel Critic: ‘RBG’

If nice girls do not file lawsuits, then Ruth Bader Ginsburg sure is not one. Screened in a packed Dana Auditorium on Nov. 1, the 2018 documentary “RBG” recounts Justice Ginsburg’s path from Brooklyn to the United States Supreme Court. Using archival footage and interviews, directors Betsy West and Julie Cohen highlight her pioneering work against gender discrimination in the 1970s and take us behind the scenes of the 85-year-old’s achievements in the legal world.  It is needless to point out that the film is timely. Between Brett Kavanaugh’s turbulent confirmation to the Supreme Court and the midterm elections, questions of gender equality have been of particular interest to the public. At Middlebury, students have voiced their concerns about sexual harassment in both writing and at protests, and The Campus dedicated an editorial to affirming survivors. As the recent nominations of both Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch have added conservative voices to the bench, Ginsburg’s dissenting statements have received more attention than ever.  In the first few minutes of “RBG” we are reminded that attention is not always positive. Familiar Republican voices and phrases like “this witch” and “Anti-American” echo in the auditorium against sunny shots of the Supreme Court in Washington D.C., followed by an image that by now feels like a rite of passage. Sixty-year-old Ginsburg sits in front of an all-white, all-male Senate Judiciary Committee wearing a blue pantsuit, much like Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford would after her. Yet this time we are not dealing with allegations of sexual harassment, but the pinnacle of a brilliant attorney’s career.  Ginsburg entered the legal world at a time when the legal world did not want women. Beginning her law degree at Harvard Law School in 1956 after her graduation from Cornell University, Ginsburg was one of only nine women in a class of 500. The environment proved to be hostile. Female students were reportedly never called upon in classes and were questioned by the dean of students about how they could justify taking up a place that could have been filled by a man. Nevertheless, she persisted. Completing both her own and her husband’s work during his illness while caring for their young daughter, she established herself as a relentlessly dedicated and disciplined professional.  Ginsburg has since become a champion of gender discrimination cases. West and Cohen give us brief snapshots of the landmark cases that she defended in front of the Supreme Court, ranging from Frontiero v. Richardson in 1973, which determined that benefits of the U.S. military could not be allocated differently on the basis of sex, to Duren v. Missouri in 1979, in which she challenged legislation making jury duty optional for women. Out of the five Supreme Court cases Ginsburg argued, she won four.  It is these scenes that remind us of how recent such developments are. How easy it is to forget that 50 short years ago it was common for a woman to be fired for being pregnant, or to be required to have her husband’s approval to obtain a credit card. At its most fundamental level, “RBG” reminds us of the women who paved the way for us to be here today.  But “RBG” is not only relevant to women. Through its depiction of Ginsburg’s husband Marty, the film reverses an old proverb to show that behind this great woman, there is a great man. Martin Ginsburg, who passed away in 2010 after battling cancer and worked tirelessly to give his wife’s work the credit and attention it deserved. Using his numerous connections in law, business and academia, he rallied to ensure that her name was on President Clinton’s shortlist of Supreme Court nominees in 1993. According to those interviewed throughout the film, it was Marty who allowed the reserved and soft-spoken Ruth to be herself and focus on what she did best. “We need more men like [Marty]”, said Gioia Kuss ’83 during the brief reflection session which followed the screening. “[Men] that believe in women, that believe in equality.”  Given Ginsburg’s demonstrated legal talent and intellect, it is a shame how little time the film spends exploring it. Oversaturating the film with repetitive computer animations and awkward pop culture references, it seems as though West and Cohen are trying hard to make “RBG” relevant to an imagined millennial audience.  Unnecessarily so: the few instances in which Ginsburg is allowed to describe her relationship to the practice of the law are moving, even electrifying. As she reflects on debates about partisanship in the Supreme Court which followed her disputed comments about President Trump, the audience is heavy with silence, only to be interrupted by yet another playful scene of Ginsburg dressed as the Duchess of Krakenthorp for an opera production.  Footage of 85-year-old Ginsburg lifting bright green barbells while wearing a “Super Diva” sweatshirt is certainly entertaining, but it can hardly satisfy the audience’s yearning to understand the intellect behind four landmark Supreme Court cases and numerous dissenting statements. The result is an almost-but-not-quite account of a woman whom we know to be a legal powerhouse. Whether or not you agree with Ginsburg’s politics or her status as an internet icon, one thing is clear. In advocacy and resilience, we can all stand to be a little more like the Notorious RBG.

Community Rallies for Trans Rights with Dancing, Speakers

[pullquote speaker="Alex Bacchus '21" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]Trans, gender non-conforming, non-binary and intersex people don’t need to wear labels or pins or present themselves differently to receive the affirmation we deserve.[/pullquote] In the middle of the #WontBeErased rally on Friday, Alex Bacchus ’21 invited the 200 attendees to dance. Lady Gaga played on the speaker as students and a few faculty, staff and community members danced together on Proctor Terrace to protest a memo from the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).  Bacchus explained that part of the inspiration for incorporating a dance party into the protest came from the organization Werk for Peace, which was co-founded by several Middlebury alumni, including Firas Nasr ’15. “Dance is a non-violent expression that has so much power; it can even be used as a tool to heal,” Bacchus said. “I wanted to include movement as a piece to today’s rally because of its great versatility. The fight for trans and intersex rights has been an ongoing battle, and this week’s news triggered a range of reactions: anger, hatred, frustration, sadness, fright, and I felt movement was an appropriate medium.” The leaked HHS memo, released on Oct. 21, detailed the department’s plan to require government agencies to adopt a uniform definition of gender as determined by biological sex. This decision would revoke legal recognition and thus remove protections for transgender and intersex individuals, undoing several Obama-era policies that had widened the definition of gender.  In the wake of the memo’s release, Queers and Allies (Q&A) and the Trans Affinity Group (TAG) co-organized Friday’s rally to protest the threat of government erasure of transgender and intersex people. Ami Furgang ’20, one of the co-presidents of Q&A, said they decided to center the event around transgender and nonbinary voices. Three students spoke at the rally, and members of Q&A read two anonymous submissions they had received prior to the event.  Leif Taranta ’20.5 spoke about their personal experiences with their gender identity, and emphasized the interconnectedness of many different groups struggling against erasure.  “We must stand with together and support Indigenous people, women, people of color, refugees and immigrants, disabled people, poor people, and all other marginalized people,” they said. “Trans people facing oppression on many fronts should be the central focus of our movement.” Speakers at the rally also focused on what students can do to support transgender and intersex communities going forward. Lee Michael Garcia Jimenez ’20, co-founder of TAG, spoke about their experience presenting a list of demands to the administration to improve the on-campus experience of transgender and nonbinary students.  “Demands were both long term and short term including creating a faculty position for managing queer and trans life on campus, creating a web-page describing the resources available to transgender members of the Middlebury College community and creating and implementing a plan to stop gendering public restrooms,” they said in an interview with The Campus.  Garcia Jimenez said that one good way for students to get involved in supporting transgender, non-binary and intersex rights on campus is by advocating for more gender neutral restrooms.  [pullquote speaker="Alex Bacchus '21" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]There are a lot of movements nationwide that are campaigning for trans and intersex rights but limited by lack of funds.[/pullquote] Speakers also shared ways to donate money to help transgender and intersex people. “There are a lot of movements nationwide that are campaigning for trans and intersex rights but limited by lack of funds,” Bacchus said. “If you have the financial capacity, please donate to organizations fighting for trans and intersex rights and awareness.”  Furgang named the Trans Lifeline and the Marsha P. Johnson Institute as two such organizations. They also pointed out that students and community members can donate directly to online fundraising campaigns set up by transgender or intersex individuals.  Lastly, multiple speakers mentioned how important it is for attendees to educate themselves on trans and intersex issues.  “Learn about our history, our diversity, our richness,” Bacchus said. “There’s more to it than trans man, trans woman and intersex individual. It’s not our job to be educators when every day we wake up knowing we are rejected by society and we have to fight to live authentically.” Bacchus said that one step in the right direction would be for cisgender people to be better about asking what pronouns someone uses.  “I have a lot of friends who consistently misgender me, and I’m sure none of it is intentional or out of malintent, but it’s painful and emotionally draining to have to experience being called ‘he’ so frequently,” they said. “Cis people, when you meet someone for the first time, ask them their pronouns. Trans, gender non-conforming, non-binary and intersex people don’t need to wear labels or pins or present themselves differently to receive the affirmation we deserve.” 

The Pragmatic Left: the Best Response to Kavanaugh

Last Thursday, the Alexander Hamilton Forum hosted “The Courts in the Age of Trump,” a discussion that featured two distinguished legal scholars: Professor James Fleming of the Boston University School of Law and Professor John McGinnis of Northwestern University. They debated the implications and likely behavior of the Supreme Court, which now has a clear conservative majority. The conversation took a predictably partisan turn, with both professors extending advice to dejected liberals in the wake of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Before considering how Democrats should deal with courts in the Trump era, it is worth asking: how did we get here? How, as Fleming put it, is our nation’s highest court composed of “an alleged sexually-harassing perjurer (Clarence Thomas), an occupant of a stolen seat (Neil Gorsuch), and an alleged sexually-assaulting perjurer with a Trumpian temperament (Brett Kavanaugh)?” In 1991, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee berated Anita Hill and then voted to confirm Justice Clarence Thomas, who Hill said had sexually harassed her when he was her boss. A comparable controversy ignited this October when Professor Christine Blasey Ford accused then-nominee Kavanaugh of sexual assault. Twenty-seven years after Hill, the same Committee with some of the same senators allowed the accuser to speak, but confirmed the nominee anyway. The Republicans not only captured the Supreme Court; they did so with morally objectionable tactics and Justices. Many Democrats are understandably jaded. However, as Professor Fleming advised, “in the rough and tumble world of fiercely partisan, constitutional democracy, we have to be resilient.” Instead of lamenting the current state of the Court, we must devise strategies to resist conservative decisions. Rather than dealing with the Supreme Court as it is, many progressives have promoted a fantasy that we may be able to impeach Kavanaugh. Even before Kavanaugh’s confirmation, progressives were considering ways to remove him. Progressive groups have raised money and collected 125,000 signatures for a petition to impeach Kavanaugh. Heidi Hess, the co-director of the liberal group CREDO Action which organized the petition, asserted that House Democrats should “know that progressives expect them to use their full power to get Kavanaugh off the bench if they gain control of the House.” While Hess’ rhetoric might appeal to disheartened progressives, it is counterproductive. I argued in the column last week that Democrats should avoid talk of Trump’s removal or impeachment since such rhetoric infuriates and activates the tribal reactions amongst Republicans. Similarly, progressives should refrain from efforts to impeach Kavanaugh. The Kavanaugh controversy has helped Republicans excite their voters and reduce the enthusiasm gap with Democrats. Donald Trump Jr.’s tweet on October 5 illustrates the Republican tactic.

SPECS

SPECS-900x674

SPECS and Sex at Midd

As far as community-building measures on campus go, SPECS is one of the most promising new initiatives to build a better Middlebury environment. SPECS, standing for “Sex Positive Education, College Style,” is a gender studies project turned student organization, turned special student organization dedicated to teaching Middlebury students about safe and positive sex.  “It’s just a fun environment where we meet and talk about stuff that we care about,” SPECS Co-President Isabelle Lee ’20 said.     For many, sex-ed is something best left in the past, in uncomfortable middle school classrooms.  “I have a lot of negative associations with my PE teacher whipping out a condom,” Lee said. But it isn’t always as simple as that. “We recognize that people come to Middlebury with varying levels of knowledge,” she said, explaining that can have an important impact on students. “My sex education was very abstinence-based and a lot of other people have experienced the same thing where you’re just taught to not have sex.”  When Lee came to Middlebury, she found herself venturing into new territory as she started to go to campus parties.  “There was just all this information that was thrown at me. I’m really a person who likes to understand things,” she said. “I remember hearing, from my friends the next morning after hookups sitting in Proctor and thinking things like, ‘Well that’s problematic,’ ‘That shouldn’t have happened,’ ‘Why did that happen?’ and not having answers to those questions really propelled me to apply [to join SPECS].”   SPECS sponsors roughly two events every month, such as first-year dorm workshops. The club has several modules, both for first-years and upperclassmen, including “Pleasure and Communication,” “Reproductive Justice,” “STDs and STIs,” “Healthy Relationships” and “Sexual Identity/Gender Identity.”  “We really try to cover everything you get in a sex-ed curriculum,” Lee said.  In addition to teaching workshops, SPECS also sponsors other social events, including Atwater dinners and trivia nights. “We try to tackle [sex-ed] in a way that makes it approachable and fun and not this big thing that people are really intimidated by,” said Lee. SPECS’ current healthy load of regular activities is just the beginning. Originally Pippa Raffel ’18 and Natalie Cheung’s ’18 Reproductive Justice project for one of Professor Carly Thomsen’s classes last year, SPECS quickly became an informal group of students meeting to talk about the needs they saw on campus for better sex-ed curriculum. Within a year, these discussions turned into curriculum and an SGA-certified student organization. By the year’s end, they were already talking with Director of Health and Wellness Education Barbara McCall about how they could be even more effective in promoting positive sex on campus.  This year, SPECS became a special student organization, much like MiddSafe, and partnered with the Office of Health and Wellness Education. This expanded SPECS’ budget, giving them easier access to the ResLife system and the school calendar, and allowing them to distribute t-shirts, promotional items and quality, safe sex supplies.  SPECS is poised to make major improvements to the Middlebury sex culture.  “Now is the time to talk about this,” said Lee. “So we are really passionate about opening that space [to talk about positive sex] and fostering it in a way that’s responsible.”  SPECS can be reached through their Facebook page or website (go/specs). While they have already accepted the applications of 15 new members this year, Lee and her co-president Annie Tong ’19 are always interested in hearing from people who would like to get involved or make suggestions.

Foreign Correspondents: Amsterdam

I don’t remember why I chose to study abroad in Amsterdam. I knew I wanted a semester abroad, some sort of experience that I couldn’t get at Middlebury. The classes at the University of Amsterdam fit my studies, but I didn’t have a clear purpose for spending four months in the Netherlands. I was nervous that I was missing out on a semester of opportunity and high-caliber learning at Middlebury. I did not realize that I would be learning every second of my time abroad. When I arrived in Amsterdam in late August, I was thrown into a weeklong orientation with a group of 25 out of the 2,500 total international students. My worries about the semester shifted to the background as I focused on my new surroundings. Our orientation leaders Bart and Borus, the ultimate Dutch dynamic duo, steered us across canals, through squares and into tiny cafes (not coffee shops, which sell marijuana). Dazed and jetlagged, we stumbled through the Red Light District at 2 p.m. on a Wednesday. Bart and Borus cracked up as we tried to figure out how to react to the prostitutes posing in the windows. Much to my surprise, I was one of the only Americans in my group. The students hailed from all over the world — Australia, China, Germany, Belarus, and so on. As I talked with my group members and orientation leaders, I came to an unsettling realization. Everyone knew so much about my culture, and I barely knew anything about theirs. Of course I got questions about Trump and our peculiar measurement system, but I was also having serious conversations about American culture with students who didn’t speak English as their first language. I could barely ask a reciprocal question about their own culture. Everything I said highlighted how little I knew. Although exhausted after that first week, I was left with a nagging desire to get up and go learn—about the Netherlands, about Europe, about the cultures of my group members. I had never experienced this feeling in the United States before. I had found the purpose that I was missing. I have been living in Amsterdam for a month and a half now. The fairy-tale image of the city is true. The canals are beautiful, everyone bikes, and the people are the tallest in the world. The Dutch language sounds like German but looks like English with too many vowels. There really is a Dutch town named Gouda where the cheese was first traded. I can see the tolerance and progressiveness of the Dutch in all aspects of their culture, from the thousands of bikers to the lenient policies on drugs and prostitution. The Netherlands was the first country to legalize same-sex marriage. I’ve come to realize that the cornerstone of the Dutch progressiveness is their “bluntness.” When they think or feel that something is wrong, they say it. In the gym last week a man walked up to me and told me I was lifting incorrectly and not benefitting from the exercise. Even though I don’t know how to react in such situations, I respect this straightforwardness immensely. It is how the Dutch get things done. One of my first trips outside of the Netherlands and its rich culture was to western Germany with my dad. We visited the cities of Frankfurt, Cologne and Bonn. It amazed me that such a short train ride took me to a place with completely different people, language, culture and history. In Bonn, we walked along the Rhine River and saw layers of history through the drizzling rain. Ruins of ancient Roman walls lined the river, constructed almost two millennia ago to mark the frontier of the Empire. Tucked behind these ancient walls were minimalist government buildings from the post-World War II era, when Bonn was the capital of West Germany. My nights ended in warm pubs crowded with loud Germans and hearty meals of schnitzel and fries. As I zipped through the countryside on my way back to Amsterdam, I realized the magnificence of Europe. There are 44 countries and over 740 million people in Europe, all packed into an area roughly the same size as the United States. It is a mosaic of cultures, connected through a complicated web of history. Although there is so much I don’t know, I am beginning to understand this mosaic. I am putting together the history of Europe by seeing and experiencing. This is why I am here. I am so glad that I allowed myself to figure that out by embracing the uncertainty of going abroad.

Talk Canceled After Activist Awarded Nobel Prize

Nadia Murad’s talk at Middlebury was canceled last week after the Iraqi Yazidi human rights activist won the Nobel Peace Prize. Murad was honored for her activism against human trafficking and her efforts to end use of rape as a weapon of war. President Laurie L. Patton announced the cancellation in an all-school email, writing, “This is by far the best cancelation notice I have ever had to write.” [pullquote speaker="President Laurie L. Patton" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]This is by far the best cancelation notice I have ever had to write.[/pullquote] Murad was captured at the age of 21 by Islamic State (IS) militants in her village of Kocho in 2014. The militants executed much of her family and most of the men and older women who would not convert to Islam. While they were buried them in mass graves, many of the young women, including Murad, were kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery. She became a part of the Islamic State’s (IS) sex slave trade among many other Yazidi women. While the militant who had taken Murad tried to force her to convert to Islam, she refused. He also tried to force her hand in marriage. During this time she was raped and tortured daily.  After three months, she escaped after being sold to a jihadist in Mosul. She fled to Kurdistan by posing as the wife of a Sunni man. Despite wanting to return home, she could not because the Islamic State still controlled her village. She instead emigrated to Germany, where she lives today.  Murad is now a human rights activist. She shares her intensely painful and personal story to raise awareness for her cause. Murad spoke at the United Nations Security Council in 2017 and successfully convinced them to approve an investigation into the war crimes committed by IS against the Yazidi people. Earlier this year, Murad published a memoir titled “The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State.”  Murad also founded the nonprofit Nadia’s Initiative. Through the organization, Murad lobbies states and institutions to recognize the Yazidi genocide and works to establish programming in the Sinjar region of Iraq, the ancient homeland of the Yazidi minority.  The Nobel Peace Prize winners were announced early Friday morning. Murad shares the prize with Denis Mukwege, a Congolese gynecologist who has treated tens of thousands of victims of sexual violence. History Professor Febe Armanios, who was scheduled to introduce Murad, was pleased by the news of her Nobel recognition.  [pullquote speaker="History Professor Febe Armanios" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]It is quite heartening to see that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee has recognized her advocacy and tireless efforts.[/pullquote] “Nadia’s story is full of pain but also of hope that such horrors would never be repeated,” Armanios said. “Time and again, over the last few years, she’s taken to the microphone to share her experiences on the global stage and has called on the international community to bring to justice those who’ve perpetrated violence against women and minorities. It is quite heartening to see that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee has recognized her advocacy and tireless efforts.” Originally scheduled to occur later that evening, the talk was part of the Critical Conversations series and was titled “Hope Has an Expiration Date: Exploring the Plight of Victims of Ethnic and Religious Violence in the Middle East.” 

FAM Launches Website to Increase Awareness of Sexual Health Services

Members of Feminist Action at Middlebury (FAM) have built a website in an effort to make sexual health resources more accessible, transparent and easier to navigate for students by directing them to available services at Parton Health Center, Porter Hospital and the Planned Parenthood in Middlebury. Information on abortions, sexually transmitted infections (STI) testing, contraceptives, pregnancy, pleasure, sexual assault, consent, menstruation and mental health are all featured on the site.  Five FAM members lead the website project: Annie Blalock ’20.5, Matt Martignoni ’21.5, Olivia Pruett ’21.5, Michael Frank ’20.5 and Emma Bernstein ’21.5. Frank and Bernstein act as data managers. The project is supported by Planned Parenthood, which selected FAM to participate in their Campus Campaign Program. The program provides students at colleges nationwide with the funding and training necessary to develop a campaign focused on an issue regarding sexual or reproductive justice.  FAM held a Planned Parenthood Action Forum last March, where they invited students, faculty and staff to discuss their experiences with sexual health issues at Middlebury. Pruett said the decision to focus FAM’s campaign on a sexual health website was inspired by experiences students shared at the forum.  “A lot of our ideas came from people telling personal stories on campus trying to access birth control or had questions about it,” Pruett said. “Or people who needed an abortion or maybe they didn’t need one, or needed information for a friend and didn’t know where to turn. We are pretty educated and a lot of us had decent sex education, and so we know these resources should be available to us, but we had no idea who to ask.” Julia Sinton ’20.5, one of FAM’s co-presidents and another contributor to the project, left the forum with a similar impression. “A lot of the students who came were first years and some of them were talking about how coming to Middlebury can be such an overwhelming experience,” she said. “Having more access and more information on sexual health issues would be a turning point for a lot of them.” This summer, the group of five FAM members attended one of Planned Parenthood’s training programs in Detroit, where they planned and strategized for their campaign. Blalock, FAM’s other co-president, emphasized that the website campaign not only concentrates on Parton. It also focuses on off-campus services that students use at Porter Hospital and the Planned Parenthood in Middlebury.  [pullquote speaker="Emma Bernstein '21.5" photo="" align="center" background="on" border="all" shadow="on"]We wanted to make sure that our campaign is something that could help all people on campus, not just white, cisgender women.[/pullquote] Planned Parenthood and FAM want to ensure that the website is an intersectional resource.  “We wanted to make sure that our campaign is something that could help all people on campus, not just white, cisgender women,” Bernstein said. To meet this goal, FAM will work with different student groups on campus and with the Student Government Association (SGA) Sexual Relationship and Respect Committee.  According to Blalock, FAM hopes to collaborate with Parton so that both groups can work together to make this resource as useful and effective as possible. The online resource will be constantly changing. Blalock said that FAM welcomes input from the administration and professionals. “The college should be held responsible for keeping sexual and reproductive health resources accessible to us as students,” she said.  While he hadn’t yet heard about FAM’s campaign, Parton’s Executive Director Gus Jordan said that the health center’s staff would gladly help. “Sounds great that FAM is doing this, but I’m not familiar with their efforts,” Jordan said. “We’d be happy to work with them.” Visit the website at: hartrymartignoni.wixsite.com/middsexualhealth Go links: go/ineedmorecondomns, go/sexysources, go/whatdoIdo and go/sexpleaseT