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Roxane Gay’s piece “fullness” was very moving and a piece that I enjoyed reading. This piece sided with issues that we have in our society of public discrimination, judging others for looks, and overall lack of self confidence. After reading this piece I couldn’t do anything but feel bad for Roxanne Gay and her experiences with others while she was in public. No one should ever feel as if they are afraid to go in public because they will be called degrading things or belittled because of their physical representation. This being said its very hard to fathom that people are like this but it is the world we live in, insecure low life people have the urge to make fun of other to protect their insecurities. This reminded me of how people can be put in contact zones as we talked about earlier in the semester. Roxane Gay’s piece does a good job in touching on being silenced for her looks, put down, and beat up. At one point she states,

“The truth is that my desire for weight loss has long been about satisfying other people more than myself, finding a way to fit more peacefully into a world that is not at all interested in accommodating a body like mine.”

This quote right here stuck out to me when I was reading her piece. This is because this seen to be a big problem in our world today. Others are so focused on what other people think about them that they need to change their body, change the way the act and do certain things in order to fit in to society. I have never really understood this and this is something that so many people are doing nowadays, so many are following this trend of making others happy first and not finding happiness within. This trend has lead many in our nation to be left lonely, depressed, and overall unwanted by society. Although this is a common theme I still feel bad for people like Roxane Gay, I feel bad and empathize for them because they constantly have people critiquing them, making fun of them, and telling them how to get better. I can side with this and understand how it would lead someone to want to alter their body. Nowadays people are so ready to critique someone else first but when they are critiqued all hell breaks lose. Why is this? Are people nowadays more insecure? Are they looking for power?

Another quote that I found to be very powerful is when she states,

“I had to face the extent of my unhappiness and how much of that unhappiness was connected to my body. I had to accept that I could change my fat body faster than this culture will change how it views, treats, and accommodates fat bodies. 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.”

This stood out to me because of the way she frazes this, it put it into perspective for me, she states that she had to move her fat body faster than this culture will change how it views, treats, and accommodates fat bodies. As she describes through her text our culture is not the one to be accepting and accommodating of overweight humans in the U.S. I feel as if people are losing the ability to accept people for who they are nowadays and pre judge by looks rather than getting to know someone’s story first.

Solnit’s piece, called Men Explain Things to Me, explores the theme of the arrogance of men in society. Through her examples, we can see how men have oppressed and overlooked women when it comes to a multitude of different topics. 

“Yes, guys like this pick on other men’s books too, and people of both genders pop up at events to hold forth on irrelevant things and conspiracy theories, but the out-and-out confrontational confidence of the totally ignorant is, in my experience, gendered.” I feel that this statement is very true for many men in society. I feel that this might not be the case for most men, I feel that this can be said for close to the majority. When we are passionate about something, sometimes we can get blinded by our own attempt at proving our points. I feel that this article is pretty different from the ones we have read so far this semester. Besides for the Baldwin and Buckley debate, I feel that this article has taken the strongest stance towards their topic. Solnit takes strong stances and she uses strong examples to prove her points. 

This article reminds me of Ta’Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me because it draws from many complex issues that are or have been occurring within the past decade as far as social justice inc concerned. One thing that Heller notes as important are the recollection of times this up and coming wave of professionals have encountered. The kind of country that this particular age group has developed in he says has a high activist agenda. The groups of young woman and men we are watching take office now have been raised during tense times and have sharp conservative perspectives because of them. Coates wrote Between the World and Me as a letter addressing his young son to warn him of all the trouble this country has and will cause to a young Black man trying to make a name for himself. This seems similar to many First-Gen, minority, low-income, or underrepresented students around the country who are coerced into these university systems but still constantly have to bare the pressure of all of the other larger systems that we find ourselves belonging to because of our social status. As we step further and further into our adulthood and closer to the practices that elicit opportunity we are understanding that unfortunately the structures that rule the ‘real world’ remain unchanged, they just transpire on a more discrete level. Older generations might mark us as oversensitive yet we see it as a fight that we did not choose to take part in. Within the generation that is currently blossoming are various new identities and ideals that are unconcerned about the feuds and tensions of the past, it is frustrating to have to continue cleaning up when we do not feel associated with these evils. We are much more concerned with innovation and creation especially while we have all kinds of readily available technology and networks that were unavailable before.

The praise of Male mediocrity in society is nothing new. 

Men are celebrated for achieving everything from the bare minimum to actual successes. Even for the most basic of human actions, men are constantly praised in society. They are allowed to be and expected to be confident, loud, assertive, and prideful. The same cannot be said for women, however. Male mediocrity is praised and celebrated while female achievements are downplayed and criticized. 

If a woman is confident, she is “vain.” If she is assertive, she is “bossy.” If she is a working woman, she is “selfish.” If she is a stay-at-home mother, she is “lazy.” Women are held to unattainable and insurmountable standards by society. In order to be taken seriously, they have to be the best. Unfortunately, even if they are the most qualified person in their field, as Rebecca Solnit explains in “Men Explain Things to Me,” women are still belittled and not taken seriously. 

I know there is the common argument of “not all men” and all of its variations. While this is true, not all men perpetuate these gender inequalities, however, enough men, either knowingly or unknowingly benefit from these views, creating and continuing this double standard. As Solnit puts it, her life “is well-sprinkled with lovely men, with a long succession of editors who have, since [Solnit] was young, listened and encouraged and published [Solnit],” however, her life is filled with “these other men, too,” the ones who belittle and ignore her.  

As a woman, Solnit’s article hits close to home. What shocks me is how similar the female experience is when speaking to men. This is particularly evident when she recounts a conversation she had with a man. 

“He kept us waiting while the other guests drifted out into the summer night, and then sat us down at his authentically grainy wood table and said to me, ‘So? I hear you’ve written a couple of books.’

I replied, ‘Several, actually.’

He said, in the way you encourage your friend’s seven-year-old to describe flute practice, ‘And what are they about?’

Solnit

Despite Solnit’s obvious achievements, she is still spoken to as a child. This experience is demeaning and insulting. Solnit is an adult woman with remarkable skills and successes, yet to this man, she is nothing more than a silly little girl. He then goes on to smugly explain the “very important” book he had read to Solnit.

Unfortunately for this man, what he does not realize at the time is that Solnit actually wrote this book he is trying to explain to her. As a woman, I relate to this story, as I have also fallen victim to the dreaded “mansplaining.” 

Though I agree with and relate to the majority of Solnit’s piece, I take issue with her points towards the end of the article. Here she discusses the issues of violence against women. She argues that “women women acquired the status of human beings when these kinds of acts started to be taken seriously, when the big things that stop us and kill us were addressed legally from the mid-1970s on” I, however, do not think society has reached this point yet. As made evident from countless verdicts of “not guilty” for male defendants against women (Brock Turner, for example) and the constant attacks on the reproductive rights of women, women are most certainly not seen as human beings the way men are. Like Solnit, I am hopeful that one day men and society will change to protect and support women, I am not convinced this will happen in my lifetime.

Heller starts by recounting the happenings at Oberlin College where student activism is threatening the established “liberal matrix”. Recently, Oberlin College has seen a whole host of student backlash; including food fights, and student letters protesting faculty. He goes on to mention several significant liberal – arts schools who are struggling to cope. Over the course of the article, Heller interviews many involved in academia on both sides of the debate. It must be said that debates of this kind are often a slippery slope. Therefore, you’ll notice, Heller largely refrains from giving his own opinion. And instead opts to consider as many view points as possible.

This article was quite hard to digest, considering the range of points of view from individuals qualified to weigh in on the topic. I am left, in a sense, wondering about the state of self-expression. If we continue to suppress and nit-pick for inconsistencies who will be left to speak? Who will be willing to risk sharing their opinion in this climate?

            Wasn’t free self-expression the whole point of social progressivism? Wasn’t liberal academe a way for ideas, good and bad, to be subjected to enlightened reason? Generations of professors and students imagined the university to be a temple for productive challenge and perpetually questioned certainties. Now, some feared, schools were being reimagined as safe spaces for coddled youths and the self-defined, untested truths that they held dear.

As far as a sponsor goes there can be many. As far as sponsors go they can be many things, I believe a sponsor can bring the best out of an individual without the most effective attempt. The effects a sponsor might have on his/her mentee can be everlasting and in some cases create unprecedented confidence and structure. In everything we learn there must be a sponsor, everywhere we go there must be one too. I choose to write this response in a reflective tone, how must we continue life without sponsors? There must always be those willing to teach and give their path of fortune onto the next willing generation if not nothing would survive. Sponsors have done so much for literacy. Without it, none of the slaves would have never learned to read or write, left to their own devices one could have only gone so far. I vouch for sponsorship when I think back to some times where I may have never known myself had it been for a sponsor. I think back to a time during my teenage years when I boxed and tried for the Golden gloves medal, my sponsor educated me as to its history, etiquette, process, etc… and without this knowledge I would have failed undoubtedly. There are few things we can accomplish blindly in this world, this must be the reason why we watch one another so closely.

Former President Obama’s speech “A More Perfect Union” was an interesting take on racial relations in the United States. It was not a speech I would have imaged a politician to give. Rather than make black and white statements about each group, which he acknowledges as a common trope used by other politicians, Obama instead looks to the deeper root causes of racial issues in the country.

Something many current politicians mention is the idea of forgiving student loans or medical debts. While these are quick solutions and will undoubtedly help many people, they miss the underlying problem of why these debts exist in the first place in order to prevent a situation like this again. There is no deeper analysis for why it costs thousands of dollars for a simple medical procedure or why college tuition has increased nearly 800% over the past few decades.

“That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations – those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years”

This is what makes Obama’s speech so impactful and meaningful; he is looking at the root causes of racial tension. Instead of focusing on individual issues and moments, he takes a broader and more understanding approach. It is through understanding like this that more thoughtful discussions about racial relations can be had.

I thoroughly enjoyed this article with Obama. Even though I have never been the one nor has my family to fully engage in politics, because it would always draw out conflicts that we already did not want between each other, I enjoyed this. This is yet another piece in which we are seeing more integration and racial discrepancy between people. This ties into the ideas that we have been discussing in class about racial backgrounds and racism. Although many people have seen Obama to be a negative figure, you can really see the good side of him by the timeframe that he stepped into office. He stepped into office in order to change and unite the nation in one of the worse times.

 “I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together – unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction – towards a better future for of children and our grandchildren.”

This I saw to be a big idea that I took out of his writing when I was reading it. It made me start to dive into the idea of Leadership and what it takes to be a true leader. In order for you to be a true leader you have to have support and trust from the ones around you, in saying this he began to develop that trust just by this statement, of how “we” need to change the nation together. There are still struggles today but Obama does a fairly good job by uniting us americans together and using “we” instead of “me”. Every well oiled team, nation, committee, etc. uses the term “we” instead of “me” and if we are able to do this we can conquer anything.