I Stand With Justice

I can't stand it anymore.  I have to post this somewhere. I have to get all these thoughts off my chest.

This "Stand with Landen" thing at my university is growing widely out of control.  Everybody needs to calm the hell down.

First of all, sometimes I want to obliterate the idea of retweeting and sharing and all the click-and-the-whole-world-knows functions on the internet.  Yes, they're great when you're sharing an amusing grumpy cat meme, but when you think you're propagating a social movement when actually you're mindlessly pretending to stand up for a cause, it becomes a very bad thing.

Suddenly everyone is ashamed and disgusted by this rapid rape culture at UNC.  This is obscene.  UNC doesn't have more rape culture than anyone else. I do wholeheartedly agree with changing rape culture, but pinning the entire issue to this insane case is not the way to eliminate rape culture. It's just a way for a million facebook users and UNC students who don't even read the Daily Tar Heel to pretend they're fixing UNC.  People like to get up in arms over stuff, especially when they have no idea what they're talking about.

That's the problem. NOBODY knows what they're talking about.  The contents of the honor court hearing are sealed.  Nobody, besides Landen herself and the people in the court, know what happened that day. Of course, we have Landen's version of events spewed all over the media.  While her accusations should be taken seriously, they should not be treated as the gospel.  She is one person, and she is hardly objective (understandably) in this matter.

I just want somebody to step back and look at this.  Why are we assuming the UNC administrators are trying to ally themselves with rapists?  Why can't we give them the same complete trust we're giving Landen?  Why can't we assume everybody is doing their best?  Or at least assume everyone is doing their worst?  This isn't black and white, good versus evil, honor court vs little girls.

What if there actually wasn't enough information to convict the guy accused of rape?  You can't convict people of rape lightly!  Nobody knows why the honor court made that decision, so nobody should assume it was wrong. 

The media keeps reporting that UNC is going to expell this student for saying she was raped. THAT IS NOT TRUE.  She received a form letter stating that she was being accused of an honor code violation, the same letter everyone gets when accused, that says that expulsion is possible because expulsion is always possible when facing charges.  She HAS not been formly convicted of those charges, and is not anywhere close to being expelled.  UNC IS NOT EXPELLING RAPE VICTIMS TO PRETEND RAPE DOESN'T HAPPEN.  Landen has made it very clear that her ex-boyfriend, who many friends and acquaintances surely know she dated while at UNC, still lives on campus. He can VERY EASILY be identified. So the fact that she has not formally identified him does not mean that he has not been harassed.  He was never convicted of raping her.  He has not lost the privilege to attend this university.  There is some validity to those charges.  I think it was unwise to level them anyway, but what is done is done.

I believe in the power of students to make positive and lasting change in their universities. But they need to make informed, rational decisions.  Sticking the entire student body's nose into something they don't have the information to properly understand is not productive.  UNC deserves a lot of the bad press it gets, but this is not one of the reasons.

I'm sorry if Landen was abused and raped.  I'm sorry if the honor court has failed her.  But this was not the proper way to handle the situation.

The real fix here is for the university to let the real court system handle sexual abuse cases.  The university should continue to Haven and OneAct train its students to properly deal with this when the behavior is exhibited.  If a student close to Landen and her ex-boyfriend had been able to identify the signs of an abusive relationship while these events unfolded, maybe it could have been prevented in the first place. If Landen had the resources to deal with her mental issues, maybe she would have been able to leave a toxic situation before it became criminal. 

Maybe everyone needs to worry about the real cause of problems instead of becoming facebook activists. I don't know more about this situation than anyone else. I just want people to act according to their ignorance and not baseless assumptions.

I want to believe in my university and I want to believe there is justice in the world, and I want to believe there are better ways to achieve it.

50 Years

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of Sylvia Plath's suicide.

I've been calling Sylvia my favorite writer for years now.  People who aren't English majors return the name with blank stares, and English majors look a little concerned, especially if I footnote it with "Viginia Woolf."

But I can't help it; I just love the crazy ladies.  There's something so completely honest and brave about their writing.  Their deeply introspective melacholy just rings so true.  Though fifty years seperate me and Sylvia, Sylvia and thousands of people like me, her words still have the power to pierce me through the heart, to tie up exactly how I feel, to put into words those misty foggy feelings that are so hard to capture.

I don't find it so alarming that I can relate to Sylvia.  I'm not clinically depressed, but I do have a tendency toward melancholy, and sometimes that makes me feel utterly alone.  Nobody cares enough to listen to my spiraling thoughts of sadness, and I don't really expect them to because such things are inherently illogical, so I just end up being lonely.  Somebody else can't really understand the throught process because it's not rooted in any of kind of transmutable logic. 

Though I understand that intellectually, I can't help but want to tell somebody about it.  But the words don't seem as important out of my mouth as they do in my head, and people don't care, so I just end up feeling worse after. 

I think a similar compulsion spurred Sylvia to write so much: a huge mass of journals, tons of poems, scraps of novels, and one beautiful gem of a complete novel.  There are all shades of the same kind of sad introspection, attempts to feel the emptiness.  A place to talk where nobody had to listen.

But we are listening to her now.  She's given me so much, including peace of mind.  It seems wrong that somebody who stuck her head in an oven can provide peace of mind, but she does.  There are Sylvia quotes written all over my life, both physically and mentally.  A little companionship, even with a dead author from fifty years ago, can go a long way.  I wouldn't be leading the life I lead if I didn't believe in the power of written word, and Sylvia personifies that power for me in a very real way.

I'm so glad I picked up The Bell Jar because it was on sale at Barnes and Noble however many years ago.  I hope one day I can write something, even if it's just a page, that echos with the transcendent, cerebral, relatable, and beautiful words Sylvia gave to us.

The Casual Vacancy

I was afraid I'd be disappointed with J.K. Rowling's new book, The Casual Vacancy.  After all, the vacancy Harry Potter left in my reading soul was anything but casual.  I was afraid my beloved Jo would be a one-hit wonder, capable of only masterfully painting one great world, unable to inhabit the real one with the same thoughtful care and attention.

And I was disappointed, but not by Jo Rowling.  If anybody else had written The Casual Vacancy, I'm not sure the critics would be quite so lukewarm about it.  I was excited when I finally finished reading it, after delaying for months due to school.  After I stayed up til three in the morning, enthralled by the ending (much in the fashion I've read many of my favorite books, including Harry Potter), I happily cued up the episode of Mugglecast where they talked about the book.

None of them even finished it.  I was dismayed.  But I understood, since it wasn't as immediately spellbinding captivating as Harry Potter.  I decided to give them a few more minutes to redeem themselves.  Then one of the hosts said "I just don't think this story is one that needs to be told."

THE STORY DIDN'T NEED TO BE TOLD?  I couldn't disagree more. First of all, these people clearly don't know how to read a book that isn't dressed up in wizarding robes or vampire fangs.  Second, they don't realize that when they're reading about magic, they're reading about disguised real life.  If you want to criticize Rowling for The Casual Vacancy, you could criticize her for writing a book with virtually the same themes!   If you don't think The Casual Vacancy is a story that needs to be told, then you don't think Harry Potter is either. 

Both books are divided into an (almost overly simplistic) world of class warfare.  The Mollisons and the Malfoys, the Wheedons and the Weasleys (look, Jo even set up that alliteration for me).  They're about the struggles of adolescence (we all know that Ron was thinking the same things Andrew Price thinks about Gaia while he's looking at Hermione, we just don't read that part of the story).  They're about doing what is right even if it's not the most convenient or appealing option for yourself.  Only this time, there's no magic to save anyone.   The Casual Vacancy really is Harry Potter all grown up.

And the fans don't like it.  We're grown up too, and everyone was hoping that Jo's new book would be a swift return back into the fantasy of childhood.  Instead, she delivered a sobering dose of reality.  The characters and problems in The Casual Vacancy are so real it's painful to read in parts.  Not painful like "how sad is it that Harry's an orphan?" but "how sad is it that I'm implicit in this world of gross injustice?"  The second is the more important, real, and adult question. 

Literature is supposed to make you squeam, tear your heart out, pierce your soul, call you to action.  If The Casual Vacancy did none of this for you, then you're not reading it right.  You're looking for an escape, not a good novel.  Jo wanted to grow up her image, and she definitely succeeded.  She did so not through the vulgar language and sex scenes in her new novel, but through stripping the magic away and unveiling the harsh reality of the real world.  Grow up, Harry Potter fans.  Hogwarts may always be there to welcome you home, but in the meantime, figure out what really matters.

Advise

I'm tired of trying to predict what the world wants of me, what it will be like two years from now when I'm forced to join it.  How am I supposed to know?  Everybody has an opinion on how best to prepare for it.

There are doom and gloom advisers.  It's easy to want to trust them, with their diplomas declaring "I passed" neatly command hooked to the walls of their offices, supposed testaments to their successes.  All the textbooks that now gather dust on their office shelves because they no longer read them.  Maybe the diplomas really say "I failed."  Nobody starts out with ambitions to be an adviser anyway.  That means they failed first at something else. Maybe they failed at pursuing the goal you're asking them about; maybe they have a reason to tell you an English major will make you miserable because an English major made them miserable.  But you're not them and they can't know you from a collection of scores scribbled in pencil on an academic worksheet, a conglomeration of classes that adds up to practically nothing but a lot of money and time.  Or maybe they failed because the conditions really are terrible, they've been through things you're too young and idealistic to know about, and you should listen to them because they're right.

There's the other students.  The hakuna matatars, the it-will-all-work-out-so-let's-take-a-shot-ers.  They convince you for a moment that maybe you can't really plan for the unknowable future, and things will just fall into place if you keep trucking along.  Maybe you are a little too high strung. You'll have a diploma. It'll be okay.  Spend a semester in Buenos Aires or the Carribean. Live life. But what if these college hippies are just lifetime loafers waiting to become the homeless people on Franklin Street, begging for change and cigarettes.  When their looks and vodka runs out, what will they have?

There's the friends and family, brimming with over-confidence in you.  You are brilliant and driven and gorgeous and nothing can stop you.  They believe in your pixelated skype smile more than you do.  Every rejection letter is their loss, every bad test grade comes from a bad professor, you weren't tugging on any of the doors that slam shut.  They mistake giving up dreams for being lazy or insecure.  They live forty years behind you, not really understanding the ticking in your brain or the circumstances of your desperation.

So who is right?  Who should you believe? Amid all of it, you must figure out where your voice is, what your heart wants, what the world wants.  How do you put food on the table without sacrificing everything you love?  This might be the key question to the universe. It is not about where we came from or if there's a god.  It's how do I still get to read Dickens without becoming one of his starving characters?

I love too many things and not enough things.  I'm decent at a few things but not good enough at any of them.  I can't accept that I'm useless to the world, but I can't find a good use for myself.  Is the peak of my productivity checking out DVDs to undergrads?  Surely not.

I resist believing in fate or god or anything that would make these decisions for me.  I relish in free will and the power of humanity to shape itself.  But right now, I just want somebody to tell me what to do.  But I've only got me.

Creative Writing

They write such pretty words.

Pretty words about death.  Death and sex (especially if you call it "fucking" instead. Extra points for a caviler attitude) automatically makes something profound, infallible to criticism.  Higher than a complaint, too artsy to be bothered with earthly problems like confused readers and unnecessary comma splicing.

How sad to have reached perfection at 18, looking down from the height of the literary heap at your minions with their sad, double spaced stories about their innocent little lives.  Profundity isn't meant  to be subtle; it's supposed to be in your face.  Because life paints its allegories on billboards; it's meanings shout out at you from rooftops with bull horns.  There's no meticulous searching, no effort.  Just imitate. 

Chuck Palahniuk is plenty rich, but his success rate is less than half.  But less than half is more than zero, so just keep writing your disgusting narrative, and we'll keep patting you on the back because a string of pretty words saying dirty things is good writing.  You don't even need to understand it yourself; fumble through the explanation.  You only wrote it because it felt good; it feels the same as slitting your wrists in the bathroom in middle school, not to "control the pain" like the pamphlets say, but because blood and scars make you more overtly gothic.  Just crying is not symbolically resonant enough. You need vivid imagery, a cliche not to the world but to the internet's plethora of would-be writers with internet access and time to kill.

Write fan fiction about yourself because you are your biggest fan.  We'll keep patting you on the back because you've accomplished making us feel awkward enough not to criticize you.  You've peer pressured us into not being the bitch you want us to be, you dare us to be.

Maybe I could be you if I really wanted.  I could be a writer if I really wanted.  But I'm too queasy at the sight of blood; I don't have the authority of knowledge to write about fucking metaphors (a verb here, not an adjective).  So I'll bow out.  Here's the pen.  Write your story. 

I know it isn't really yours.

Mirror Rant

This article is wonderful.

I am so fascinated about the many shifts feminism takes.  There are so many varieties, and each kind tends to look down upon the others.  Some are essentialist; embracing what they believe are the fundamental differences between a man and a woman.  Embracing sexuality; pulling a Yankee Doodle on things that are supposed to be signs of our submission: high heels rising above the misogyny, lip sticked confidence, push up bras of defiance. 

Others eschew these things.  Separate is not equal. They are traps, making women entangled in a mess of man's desires; the things marketed to us are for their enjoyment and we've been trained to think we enjoy them to.  Heels so we can't run; lip stick to hide natural imperfections; push-up straight jackets molding us into what they want us to be.

How should we get our rights?  Are we trying to crack the glass ceiling or just Windexing it so it's so transparent you don't know it's there until you  bump into it?

I'm an educated, middle class female.  Like the article says, I'm supposed to know better.  I am not supposed to be trapped in my own reflection, feeling inadequate by some standards with origins as hazy and messy as my eyeliner at the end of the day, eyeliner I don't even know why I'm buying and applying. I give my money to Almay while simultaneously hating the way they advertise to me; I hate it because it works.

I'm not supposed to care about silly things like how my hair puffs in the humidity, subconsciously always smoothing it down in vain, while my other hand clutches a Jane Austen novel. Jane is writing so long ago not to be banal, to rise above the limited expectations.  And even though I don't need a rich suitor, in the back of mind, it's always there: time is ticking, you are running out, not to find a match is to be a failure.  Lizzie Bennett had her wit and her Darcy, and what do I have?

I have my feminist idols and their quotes to make me justify my insecurity.  My insecurity invalidates my ideology.  Is my ideology too ideal?   Virginia Woolf drowned herself; Sylvia Plath asphyxiated herself. Why am I looking to women who clearly don't know the answers? Liz Lemon is not particularly happy with her life.  Jane Austen died alone.

It's hard to tow the line between what is real and what is only scholarly.  I live so much in the books that I forget they don't always apply to real life.  They're just ideal ideologies, no one can hope to achieve.  I must know that because the phrase so captures my imagination, feels so accurate to describe the push and pull always in my mind.  The strengths of my brain fighting the failures of my body, each trying to reconcile the other.  It will never happen.

But I must believe that it will so I can keep looking forward.  Smashing the mirror means seven years bad luck, but a lifetime of looking to it for validation is no better.

So I Write

I'm supposed to be writing.  I'm always supposed to be reading or writing something.  Any moment spent not doing either of things, even if they are activities designed to keep me alive such as eating or sleeping, make me feel procrastinator's guilt.  It is ludicrous that I'm writing this right now, though the extremely low volume of posts lately makes me feel a different kind of guilt.

I feel like I've been spending both abnormally large and extremely small amounts of time on myself lately.  I am striving for improvement based upon a self-help plan of my own design, and I can feel it working.  I can feel progress in way I don't think I ever have.  Usually, I can mark my progress by my constant introspective musings; I can see where I've been, write down where I'm going.  But I haven't been lately.  I haven't been writing about myself.

Does that have a simple explanation?  Moving back to school and then school itself is time consuming.  I don't have time to sit around and ponder my own existence.  On the modern hierarchy of a college student's needs, food, friends, working, homework all come before long hours of self-reflection.  Perhaps it's growing busy, growing more mature, growing away from the self-centered world of an adolescent?

But also I am making such active strides toward change.  Shouldn't this provide more to write about than any previous times in my life?  Shouldn't it be a catalyst for creativity?  Am I taking out whatever part of me inspired me in the first place?  Are those parts worth losing in order to be more socially acceptable?  Is that what I'm doing here?  Making myself into a socially acceptable human being, something I never felt I was before.

In my memoir class, we constantly talk about the guilt the writers feel in using the lives of their families and friends, sometimes leaving them ravaged like a mountain after the coal miners have passed through.  But they never consider what they're doing to themselves.  Isn't probing your own mind just as risky?  Do I harm myself by living inside me all of the time?  Can I live somewhere else? No, not happily.

What is growing up?  What is maturity?  Who am I?

I am always a list of hypothetical, rhetorical questions I will never answer.  So I write.