responses – Page 2 – E367: Writing and Diversity

A Little Empathy Can Go A Long Way

Roxane Gay’s piece “Fullness” and her interview with Trevor Noah were both very interesting, and both addressed a topic most people would consider a difficult subject. I decided to begin with watching the interview with Trevor Noah and then read Gay’s writing, which I believe, for various reasons, helped me better understand her work. By watching the interview first, I was able to personify Gay’s work which allowed me to empathize with her experience. In addition, watching the interview first, instilled in me a sense of understanding with her experience; that I feel I likely would not have if I had read her piece first.

In the interview, Gay explains how so many people hold misconceptions and prejudice towards people who are over-weight, while disregarding their struggles or feelings. These misconceptions and prejudice create a culture in which over-weight people are shamed, dehumanized, considered outcasts, and also considered abnormal. Furthermore, it is shown as the interview progresses and in “Fullness,” that Gay clearly states that her “craving is for more than what is just on a plate.” This craving is to be accepted in society, not feel ashamed for her weight, and to not feel the many pressures associated with being over-weight. Some of these pressures can be very burdensome, for example, Gay explains how she is constantly berated for her weight and regardless of what she does, it is difficult to fit in. Even booking an airline ticket can become an arduous task. If she buys one ticket, she is berated for invading people’s space; but if she buys two tickets people question why she needs two tickets. This mentality towards over-weight people creates an environment in which people like Gay, face constant lose-lose situations, such as the airline ticket dilemma.

As a result of these pressures, people like Gay are more susceptible to being convinced that they need to change their body and that she’s abnormal because of her weight. This notion is absurd; and it made me much more empathetic with her experience, one that she has been dealing with her entire life. For example, Gay was pressured for years to undergo weight lose surgery and finally capitulated. When speaking about herself post-weight lost surgery, she says “I am depressed and miserable. I am cold all the time and exhausted because I’m only eating between 1,200 and 1,500 calories. I am filled with regrets because everything has changed, but everything is exactly the same.” I feel that this quote is more of a metaphor than a quote in which Gay is talking about the physical changes accompanied with weight loss surgery. What Gay truly craves, in my opinion, is not to lose weight but for society to accept her and her body for what it is; and for society to not create unfair and ridiculous social standards regarding weight.

The Opinions of Others Control Our Lives

“What Fullness Is” is an extremely powerful piece in which Roxanne Gay vulnerably takes us through her journey of gastric bypass surgery and exposes her inner struggles. Gays effectively connects to her audience, America as a whole, with her use of pathos throughout the entire piece. Everyone can relate to worrying about what the opinions of others, which is a big theme in Gay’s piece.

“And the moment I step outside the safety of my home, I hate how visible I am, how people treat me, how they stare and comment both loudly and under their breath, how rude children remind me I’m fat and their rude parents say nothing, how I have to think and overthink where I go and how I will fit into any given space. I do not know how to carry myself with confidence when I go out into the world. Any sense of self I have is often shattered within minutes, and then I am all insecurities and fears, wishing myself into a more socially acceptable form.”

Here, we can see the extent to which the opinion of others controls Gay’s life. She lives day to day distracted and unable to focus on anything besides her image in the eyes of others. Without the negative cultural attitudes toward fatness, it is safe to say that Gay would be comfortable with her body:

“I am, however, sometimes fine with my body. I am fine with my curves, the solidity of me. I am strong and tall. I enjoy the way I take up space, that I have presence”.

These particular few sentences are so emotionally powerful because this is the one time that we hear Gay accepting herself. It exposes the extent of how powerful the opinions of others are. What is even more eye opening is that Gay is being told by society that she is supposed to be wanting to work on her body. Society tells her that it is a crazy notion that she should ever feel satisfied with her fatness. Gay is pushed to conform after the humiliating incident in the grocery store parking lot. The opinion of others wins in the competition with self-acceptance.

Once she undergoes surgery, Gay’ sense of self is destroyed and the psychological effects are shocking. Gay has always been told that surgery is the solution to all of her problems and that she should be fully happy after it.

“And I had to do so while recognizing that losing weight wasn’t actually going to make me happier — which may have been the bitterest part of all.”

Realizing this is not true is part of the depressing side effects of the surgery, and is something Gay has to cope with forever. After the surgery, Gay says she feels as if nothing has changed. She cannot seem to comprehend the enormous life changing event she has just endured. The mind are body are strongly connected, which is a big reason why she develops body dysmorphia.

Although many people will never know what it is like to have gastric bypass surgery, Gay does a wonderful job in putting the audience in her own shoes. This piece effectively makes the reader uncomfortable in order to imagine how agonizing this journey must have been.

“I’m Rarely Hungry, But I Am Ravenous”

Roxane Gay goes in depth about what it’s like to undergo weight loss surgery, how she felt before the surgery, and what her life was like after the surgery that (kinda didn’t) change her life.

Gay admits that,

“I had a desire to lose weight but an inability – or, perhaps, unwillingness – to force myself towards the deprivation required for the significant weight loss the world told me I needed”

She points out that the main reasoning for her wanting to get weight loss surgery was society shaming her and telling her that she needed to get it done because her body was ugly, unattractive, and not good enough.

I think everyone can agree that the idea of weight loss is all over the media we absorb, even if we aren’t personally concerned with it and aren’t always paying attention to it. Our society is so focused on maintaining certain body types for males and females (and everyone in-between) that I’ve literally seen completely healthy people worry about their weight and try to lose weight that they don’t need to be losing, all to fit into their prom dresses or look like their favorite models or singers. It’s awful and toxic how people are made to feel about their bodies.

I understand that sometimes people who are severely overweight need to do something about it because it could be life threatening and detrimental if they don’t. But what I cannot accept is fat shaming from people who know nothing about the people they are discussing, simply throwing harmful words in their direction because they feel like they have the right to tell them what to do with their body. If someone needs to lose weight, they have the ability and autonomy to go to their healthcare provider and choose to do something about it. They do not need random people coming up to them in school or on the street or on the internet telling them that the way they look is disgusting and that they should “really see someone about that” because “it’s in my genuine interest and for your sake as well”.

You do not have the right to tell anyone what to do with their body. Enough said.

In her interview with Trevor Noah, I found myself nodding my head to a lot of what Gay was saying, such as when she mentioned that people tend to give fat people unsolicited advice, they tell them that since they’re fat they’re going to die early (why do you care anyway?), and she discussed how the world doesn’t tend to accommodate to fat people because they don’t see them as deserving to belong there and that it isn’t their job to make fat people’s lives just a little bit easier.

What is especially heartbreaking about this piece is how Gay isn’t 100% sure of anything she signs up for and agrees to in this process. No matter what she does, she is always doubtful and scared of what could happen or could not happen after she makes a decision. For example, she states that,

“I don’t want any weight loss to be acknowledged (or worse, celebrated), but I also very much do”

indicating that she is constantly insecure, even after the weight loss surgery, about if people will say anything or not say anything about it. Her life has been a constant struggle of overthinking, over-planning, worrying, and stressing about things that she cannot always control. She mentions that she has “replaced one set of anxieties with another”, something that for me was truly heartbreaking. She made this massive financial decision mainly for society’s approval, and she may never truly approve of herself and her body image. She is rarely physically hungry, but she is constantly ravenous for self-acceptance and to feel whole, beautiful, and accepted by others.

Societies all over the world shame fat people for what they are and many of them will refuse to act differently. Like Roxane’s article, this response doesn’t have a very happy ending, because I don’t know myself if there will ever be a solution to fat shaming in our society and other societies over the world. I want to preach about autonomy and self-love, but I feel as though people on the shaming side of this issue constantly refuse to see being fat as anything other than ugly and needing to be fixed.

The Problem with Generalizations

The topics that Rebecca Solnit brought up are important to recognize, and her way of displaying them demands attention. The topic of women being held down or ignored is not a new one and will not be insignificant for a long time. She is an advocate for women to receive equal respect from men. And she wants it done in a non-violent way.

“This is a struggle that takes place in war-torn nations, but also in the bedroom, the dining room, the classroom, the workplace, and the streets. And in newspapers, magazines, and television, where women are dramatically underrepresented.”

Solnit mentions two specific experiences she has had with “explaining men” who she felt were being superior or argumentative because of the fact that she was a woman. In these examples, both the Aspen man and the translator for Tariq Ali, I feel she was correct in assuming they treated her differently because she was a woman, though I have a difficult time chalking all similar situations up to gender superiority. Her argument is powerful, and it is evident that these issues definitely do exist, but by generalizing (all men, all women) it seems to invite criticism from readers.

“Every woman knows what I’m talking about. It’s the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence.”

Though she addresses that not all men explain things to women the way they would to a child, it does stir the pot a bit aggressively. The valid and persuasive arguments she makes are dulled by the overlying assumption that she generalizes men, just like she feels generalized by men. In my experience, I do not automatically assume that men are going to talk down to me, and I have had very few instances of this happening to me. I struggle to think of an example when I have been in that type of situation. The whole piece was excellent, and for someone who feels similarly about women’s rights as Solnit I was able to buy into her rally. However, for someone who does not share her claims, it might be easier for that person to disregard (or even argue) her statements because of her generalizations.

Not So Little

When reading Solnit’s piece, I couldn’t help but feel some sort of childhood connection with the argument she was making. Her point in that some, not all, men have a distinct way in which they talk to women is one that I have noticed from an early age, but only recently hear essays and articles about.

I grew up in an immediate family of my two brothers and I, and an extended family of majority male cousins, both older and younger than me. I have always been spoken to by family and friends as the “little girl” of the family, even now that I am 21 years old. While I understand that some family members speak to me in this way because I am one of the only girls, I’ve noticed how this can carry over into how they converse with me on educated and opinionated topics. This viewpoint on me solely because I am a female has led male family members, my dad and older uncles in particular, to view my thoughts on certain topics as incorrect or lead them to feel as though I do not know what I’m talking about. While there are many topics that I do need educating on, I have mainly noticed their need to stop me and explain is largely when it comes to my opinions. As a way to keep peace, I do not speak out about how this form of speech impacts my decision to add to family discussions or the fact that I then feel my opinions are incorrect.

“Men explain things to me, and other women, whether or not they know what they’re talking about. Some men.”

I instantly connected to this quote and thought of my dad and how many of our important conversations went. Whether it be about topics from school, worldly issues, how to best budget my money while in college, or any other conflicting views, his side was always explained to me and my side was deemed incorrect. While this can also be blamed on the age gap and my dad’s need to share his wisdom from experience, he explains his viewpoints differently to me than he would to my brothers. The tone is much more childlike and gentle, but in a way that feels like that is the only way I will understand what he is trying to say. Rather than stating his side and having a conversation, he backs up his claim and explains why mine is wrong. With peers of my age group or slightly older, both men and women, I have never experienced this sort of conversation. I would not imagine telling my own father or peers of my age that their opinion or mindset on an issue is wrong and these are the reasons why.

I understand that in my dad’s eyes I will always be his “little girl”, however I think there comes a time where you can keep this viewpoint and also understand that I am capable of making my own informed decisions, without needing to have the logic behind it being explained. I’d prefer to have conversations where we can both have our opinions, share them with each other, and not have one side be right or wrong, as he does with many other people.

P.S. love my dad he’s a great guy

Scared Safe

Safe spaces are an interesting concept that is a place or environment where a person or category of people can feel confident that they won’t be exposed to discrimination, criticism, harassment, or any emotional or physical harm. Many people are drawn to a safe space because the spaces that should be safe for them—such as home, school, community—are not safe for them and they want to be around people are in a similar situation as them. There is also making a publicly occupied space such as a school campus, a recreational center, and such areas a safe space—as a well to reassure the occupants that they will be safe during their time there. The basic structure of a safe space is positive, but only when it occupies a space and isn’t occupying someone’s whole life.

Although, I know I should focus on the article by Heller, I found his piece to offer too many viewpoints and opinions and different facts of similar problems where I found myself unable to coherently focus on a topic. I decided the only way I could write without feeling overwhelmed was finding someone speaking about the same issue, but a little bit narrower.

A few years ago, Van Jones, a CNN political contributor, spoke at David Axelrod’s institute of Politics at the University of Chicago. During this 80 minute discussion, that included S. E. Cupp, Axelrod brought up that he had hosted President Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, the week before that discussion. Students protested the event, saying having him on campus normalized the Trump Administration. Axelrod, who disagreed with the students’ outcry, asked for Jones’ opinion on the protest.

Van Jones proposes two idea about safe spaces—a positive and a negative one. There’s the idea that a campus should be a safe space that is free from sexual harassment or physical abuse, or any kind of hate speech that’s targeted—this is the normal definition of a safe space and is in no way harmful and should be adopted. Then there’s the idea that these student are being “safe ideologically” and think they need to feel good all the time—almost putting a blanket over their eyes to anything they disagree with. Jones’ explains that he doesn’t like the second idea as it assumes that we don’t care about people’s emotional safety and wellbeing. Instead of criticizing those who want safety, we should be pushing people to be stronger. Passionately, he says, “I’m not going to pave the jungle for you. Put on some boots, and learn how to deal with adversity. I’m not going to take all the weights out of the gym; that’s the whole point of the gym. This is the gym. You can’t live on a campus where people say stuff you don’t like?!”

He goes on to speak about his parents and other older black Americans who dealt with far worse adversities such as beatings and dogs, but nowadays people cannot deal with a mean tweet. Which is true, there is still adversity today, but it not as nearly bad as it was fifty or sixty years ago. All these students grew up with President Obama as their first president they knew and grew up believing times have changes. So any instances where that shiny optimism cracks, like Tamir Rice or the transgender military ban, it’s really disappointing. But, then again these students have grown up dealing with a mass shooting every week in their schools, their churches, their concerts, or their supermarkets. And with that we have tried to harden ourselves because it hasn’t stopped and we’ve learned to get used to it—which makes us furious. So are these students still lacking adversity and hardship?

Continuing on with more passion Jones says, “You are creating a kind of liberalism that the minute it crosses the street into the real world is not just useless, but obnoxious and dangerous. I want you to be offended every single day on this campus. I want you to be deeply aggrieved and offended and upset, and then to learn how to speak back. Because that is what we need from you in these communities.”

I do agree that students need to hear and absorb and deal with ideas that aren’t similar to their own. It’s one of the ways to truly gain intelligence. How can you learn if you stay in a bubble of what you believe if you can’t understand the things you don’t believe? But, I also agree that the students, who pay insurmountable funds to attend college, should have some sort of say in what their campus does. And if they fight back on certain things that they don’t like, does that truly mean they are weak and ignorant—closing their eyes and ears to all things scary?

The students were protesting that the school was normalizing the Trump administration—an administration that unarguably promotes hatred and negative messages—and as a student, I don’t know if I would want my school to give a platform and allow someone that took part in that hatred. It would have been different if a professor played a video of someone from Trump’s white house to spark discussion or if a student-run republican group invited him to speak at one of their events. I feel like it’s even different than bringing a member of Bush’s cabinet because I don’t think it’s an issue of disagreeing with political ideologies, but more about possible the inflammation or spreading of a negative rhetoric. But, then again, if we don’t listen to such negative rhetoric, how would we ever understand to combat it? It’s an interesting balancing game that is going to take a while to truly understand.

Van Jones’ talk: Van Jones’ Excellent Metaphors About the Dangers of Ideology Safety, Jon Haidt, https://heterodoxacademy.org/van-jones-excellent-metaphors/

Response to Heller

In “The Big Uneasy,” by Nathan Heller, many different opinions about student activism are acknowledged. Heller specifically talks to students and faculty from Oberlin College located in Ohio. Heller doesn’t mention much about his own opinions on the issues discussed, he just mentions a bunch of other conflicting ideas and then leaves it up to the reader to determine what they want from the interviews that he conducted. I think that the main issue of this article was where to draw the line when it comes to student activism. If you’re too hard on the students then they will fight back, however, if you’re too easy on students then they’re not being challenged enough.

“A president’s job is to push past contradictions, while an activist’s duty is to call them out. The institutions that give many people a language and a forum to denounce injustice are, inevitable, the nearest targets of their criticism.”
Heller

The whole point of college is to challenge its students. Heller mentions that there are some people who believe that if a college protects its students from unwelcome ideas, then that college isn’t doing its job in preparing its students for the real world. I’ve heard this term “real world” so many times in my college career and I have yet to fully grasp its concept. What is the real world and what makes it so different from college? What will happen if students don’t face enough challenges in college and are then thrown into the real world? I don’t know if I agree with this huge distinction between college life and the real world because it almost diminishes all the experiences that students have during college. What you face during school aren’t “real” challenges. However, Heller mentions some examples of students who facing some very real challenges.

One student, Megan Bautista shares that exposing herself to opinions that were different from her own just exhausted her. She tried to engage in activism outside of campus but due to the impact on her grades, this idea quickly fizzled. Students tried to compromise with the college asking for activism to be looked at like a job that should be paid, or by having a minimum grade that the college couldn’t go below while their students were involved in activism outside of campus. These ideas were rejected and students felt like they had to choose one over the other because doing both seemed impossible.

“Today they are told that they belong there, but they also must take on an extracurricular responsibility: doing the work of diversity.”
Heller

There are students who feel like they aren’t being reflected in their college community. Jasmine Adams leads a discussion about Oberlin’s indifference towards racial oppression. Adams, as well as other students, bring up the issue that they feel like they are being forced to conform to the standards of their college and these standards don’t reflect what they have experienced in the real world. They aren’t going to change who they are for four years of their life just to satisfy the college’s expectations.

The problems that students are facing on campus extend to the faculty as well. One teacher, Wendy Kozol, had to disband the class because the class seated themselves by race and weren’t communicating with each other. Another teacher, Roger Copeland, who has been teaching at Oberlin for over 40 years, noticed that his teaching style wasn’t being well received by his students recently. He spoke sharply to a student once who reported to the dean that Copeland was creating “a hostile and unsafe learning environment.”

Heller mentions a lot of different views about student activism that all seem validated. It’s hard to organize my own thoughts on this idea because I feel like in order to understand what’s happening, I have to respond to each individual that’s mentioned. There are a lot of issues that are talked about that seem circumstantial, but bring each issue to light and the school is having to deal with students clashing with teachers, teachers clashing with students, and students clashing with students. Which, I guess is all ok, if the point of college is to challenge its students right?

Activism at School

In Nathan Heller’s article “THE BIG UNEASY” publish in the New Yorker, he addresses many points of view on the activism taking place at universities, and especially, Oberlin College. He began by citing examples of this activism through – what is mostly comprised of Liberal-Arts educations – the changes that universities and colleges alike had to go through in order to appease its students. For example, Yale was told that they had to avoid offensive Halloween costumes for the sake of it denouncing transgressive expression. Harvard also went through many changes, one of the more impactful ones being that they had to change their “house masters” to faculty deans in fear of it being offensive. Finally, Bowdoin student, Heller notes, were punished for wearing sombreros to a tequila party. With this information at hand, I think it to be incredible that so many people are so offended by so many things these days. I am not justifying anyone’s actions and I am certainly not agreeing with or denying the wrongdoing of any of these actions, but I find it incredible to see how coddled so many young people are today. A quotation I found to be interesting on the matter was,

“…arguing that young people taught to embrace “vindictive protectiveness” were being poorly educated for the challenges of the real world. Shielding students from the unwelcome ideas was unhealthy for the workforce and the democratic commonweal,”

I agree with this statement wholeheartedly. I do not think that this statement could be any more accurate than it is.

I believe this statement to be true because in the workforce, not everybody is going to see eye-to-eye on everything. Most people will not respect one another and most people are only there to work for themselves so that they can earn enough money to support their family and themselves. There are a few natural-born leaders who make everyone feel like a unit and address issues properly, however, that is definitely a small minority. But, to go back to my argument of sorts, if we are not teaching people how to deal with adversity and how to deal with people who do not like them, then what are we teaching people about how to deal with the real world? Socially, how can they survive? How can someone survive who is easily offended? I am not saying that people who are offended easily can succeed or survive in a social climate. But, I am saying that if one does not learn to have thick skin and be able to deal with adversity, then they will be dealing with a lot of anger and sadness and not a whole lot of optimism or happiness about being who they are. If I have offended anyone with my previous statements, I apologize and am always open for a discussion about it. However, truth be told, I think it is a bit ridiculous that I even have to include an apology to begin with. Just trying to start an interesting discussion!

Healing the Wounds

Throughout the past 4 weeks in this course, I have approached each piece we have read looking for an answer or a quick fix to these cultural differences. After listening to Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” speech, I realized that there is not a single solution. As hard as one may try, we cannot completely knock down these walls that separate us. I think that this is a clear point that Obama’s speech highlights and, while obvious, we tend to overlook this.

Obama reminds us that we are not a perfect union, nor will we ever be perfect.However, if we don’t at least try to come together then division will persist. He affirms that our “racial wounds” are not an issue that can be solved “in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy”. This is something that America, as a whole, must work on together throughout time.

“The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.”

There is benefit in addressing the fact that borders exist. We cannot run from situations that bring up these contact zones in fear of an igniting a controversy. “Retreating to our respective corners” would be doing the country a disservice. While we cannot silence our differences, we also cannot allow controversy to evoke hatred. Obama notes that it was not the Reverend’s remarks that made the campaign take a “divisive turn” but our reaction to the remarks.

“A More Perfect Union” is a call to action for every individual in America. Obama has managed to cross the border lines and connect to every with a unifying mentality. He urges Americans to accept the imperfections of prejudice and find what unifies us: survival, freedom, and hope so that we, as a nation, can prosper. Obama exemplifies this in his dilemma over Reverend Wright’s offensive remarks. Taking the high road, he recognized the part of himself in his Reverend: “As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me”. There would be no good to come out of denouncing his reverend. Likewise, if Americans succumb to negativity, then we are essentially continuing the cycle and worsening the racial wounds.