On Freedom of Speech

Now I'm not typically one to judge people for being wrong.

Except for all the times I judge people for being wrong.

But we need to have a little conversation about First Amendment rights.  Because you've probably heard about Phil Robertson (the dude with the beard on Duck Dynasty. No not that dude with the beard, the other dude with the beard).

That dude with the beard.

He made some comments about the Bible and TEH GAYS and TEH BLACKS and lots of people got really offended.  We're not going to talk about that part because my thoughts on people who make offensive racist/homophobic comments are pretty well known.  But then A&E put him on indefinite suspension for those comments and lots of other people got offended.  Because FREE SPEECH.

Now, I don't pretend to be a Constitution expert, except insofar as I spend most of my time following politics pretty closely and carry a Pocket Constitution in my backpack like the BAMF that I am.  But we need to have a discussion for anyone who thinks your First Amendment right protects you from being fired.

We can talk about the nebulous philosophical concept of freedom of speech, if you'd like, in another post.  There is a comment section for a reason.  But right now, we're going to talk about Freedom of Speech as it is outlined in the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution.  This right protects you from the Federal government revoking your established right to freedom of speech.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

That's a precise quote, if you're at all curious.  The freedom of speech protected in the Constitution is a political right, not a philosophical right.  So, unless your employer happens to be the United States Government, you don't get to go yelling about First Amendment Rights when they tell you you're not allowed to say it.

In particular, though I cannot speak to the exact clauses of the contracts in Duck Dynasty (snooping into private legal documents is not my forte), this case is likely a question of contractual obligations.  It is not an uncommon practice for actors' or reality stars' contracts to contain clauses about the kinds of statements they can make in public related to a company's brand.  If these clauses exist in any DD contracts, and A&E felt the statements made were antithetical to the channel's brand, they have every right as an employer to tell Mr. Robertson that he cannot say them and to punish him as they see fit (within the confines of the law).

Freedom of Speech protects you from government censorship.  It does not protect you from the social or economic implications of saying something other people don't like.

Constitutionally yours,

Rachel Leigh

On Unconditional Love

So Katy Perry has a song out called "Unconditionally."

Come just as you are to me
Don't need apologies
Know that you are worthy
I'll take your bad days with your good
Walk through the storm I would
I do it all because I love you
I love you
Unconditionally

We need to have a chat about the concept of unconditional love.  It can be familial, it can be romantic, it can be friendly.  But it's a messed up concept.

The idea behind unconditional love is that it can overcome any obstacle and weather any mistakes.

But the thing about love is that it's not supposed to be unconditional.  Love is meant to be conditional -- it's based on how you treat one another, whether you trust each other, and the foundations of a strong bond.  No one deserves your love in spite of how they treat you.

The idea that someone has a right to your love in virtue of anything other than the fact that they have earned it and you have freely given it contributes to child abuse and spousal abuse in a way that's really unhealthy.  Most people think that the concept of unconditional love is cute.

But think about a dog who loves his master unconditionally, who comes when he's called regardless of how many times he's been kicked.  It's not cute; it's sad.  But we expect people in families or relationships to "work through" the rough times and love each other anyway.

Unconditional love shouldn't be praised as this amazing feat: you have a right to withdraw your love whenever you feel you need to, whenever the bad begins to outweigh the good.  Loving someone regardless of how they treat you isn't endearing or romantic.  It just hurts.

A Collection of Mini-Thoughts

There have been a lot of silly mini-thoughts that have almost been posts recently.

The inanity of Black Friday and the irony of beating each other to death over half-price TVs a the same night that we've spent telling our families how thankful we are.

A comprehensive list of what I'm thankful for (friends, school, family, not being dead all currently topping the list).  A response to Carrie Hope Fletcher's Boys in Books are Better in which I attempt to create my best book-based boy (my alliterative skills are off the charts).

But I think instead, I'm going to talk a bit about family.  I was always raised to think that family is important -- to respect members of my family, to have people's backs, to love family.  But I also learned that blood alone is not the be-all-end-all of what it means to be family.

Family is made up a lot by choices.  Marriages, divorces, re-marriages should be enough to give some insight into what I mean here -- nothing fundamentally has changed in the physical makeup of a family, but a lot has changed in the choices that defined what "family" meant.

Sometimes the choices aren't always very easy, and sometimes, it seems, the choices end up being wrong.  But my family, over the years, has been a series of add-ons and removals as it seemed necessary, and it makes me kind of happy to finally see some representations of chosen families in media, rather than a reinforcement of the idea that "because they're blood you have to love them."

On the Gender Politics of Mental Illness

In case you can't tell, I am a vocal feminist and also really into mental health.

So today I think we're gonna sit down and have a conversation about the gender politics of mental illness.

Depression and anxiety are both, according to estimates, far more prevalent in women than men.  In fact, hysteria, a previously-accepted term for what we now typically associate with anxiety disorders, comes from the Greek hysterikos, "of the womb."  We typically associate depression and stress with feminine traits.  According to the World Health Organization, women are more likely than men to be diagnosed with depression and prescribed psychoactive medications than men, even when two patients score similarly on standardized depression-screening scales.*

Statistically, however, men are 4 times more likely to commit suicide in the United States than women.**  Clearly, the perceived difference in mental illness does not account for this massive difference in suicide rates -- if women are always more depressed, why are men more likely to kill themselves?

I think a large part of it comes down to the fact that mental illness and mental distress are seen as typically feminine.  As a result, if a woman is experiencing what is considered a typical feminine flaw, they are encouraged to seek help.  Men, however, are socialized to avoid discussion of perceived emotional weaknesses, and as such are taught to suppress feelings of depression and anxiety, rather than seeking treatment or coping mechanisms.

Around the world, however, there are also a number of conditions which create situations in which women are, more often than men, exposed to psychologically-triggering experiences that can manifest in mental illness -- social subjugation, sexual assault, and the stresses of childcare and family provision are all highly-correlated with mental illness, and these problems are more prevalent for women, across the spectrum.

Whether the statistics tell the full story or not, there seems to be a significant interplay between traditional gender roles and perceptions of mental illness, and that presents problematically in the representation of both females and those individuals with mental illness.

Yours,

Rachel Leigh

*http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/genderwomen/en/

**http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide_rates/en/

On Knowing Vs. Doing

There's nothing quite like being forced to watch Super Size Me for the fourth time to bring out the "we got the memo" mood in me.

I think one of the interesting things about the PSAs about the dangers of smoking, eating fast food, safe driving, etc., is the fact that no one I know doesn't already know about them.

We've been raised in a culture that knows that certain behaviors are dangerous.  I think a lot about the rise in "molly" or MDMA use in the EDM culture -- and how, if you let people in on the little secret that MDMA is pure ecstasy, no one didn't know that it could be dangerous.  I remember talking about ecstasy in DARE (drug awareness education program) in elementary school.  We all knew what it was and why it could be so dangerous.

I also think about fast food or junk food consumption -- we pretty much all know it's bad for us.  Shaming someone who's eating it doesn't suddenly make them suddenly decide that it's not good for them and stop.

The choices people make: to smoke, or eat unhealthy food, or do things they know can be unsafe, are made, at this point, in spite of the fact that everyone knows they're bad.  Why people might choose to do something they know isn't good for them comes down to temporarily weighing pros and cons or the cognitive dissonance between what they know and what they want or believe.  It's not a matter of PSAs...it's about changing attitudes, day in and day out, to change the instinctive reactions that override the rational knowledge.

On Mental Illness and Identity

Watching a PBS Frontline documentary about the rise in diagnoses and medications for young children with mental illness, I was caught by something.

This documentary, which is supposed to objectively address the controversy surrounding early childhood mental healthcare (particularly early exposure to psychoactive medications) and which featured psychologists, and psychiatrists, experts in the field, was making a glaring error.

"My patients were bipolar."

Your patients are not bipolar.  For a lot of people struggling with mental illness, the recognition that they do not have to be defined by their battles, is a massive step forward in recovery or control.  You would never tell a cancer patient that their diagnosis made THEM cancerous.  We recognize that an illness does not have to fundamentally define the person who has it.

And yet, one of the most stigmatizing things you can do to a person with mental illness is to define them by their illness.  Your patient is not bipolar.  Your patient has bipolar disorder.  Your patient may also have acne, irritable bowel syndrome, blue eyes, or a debilitating disability.  None of these things define that patient.  They are a whole, complex human being, defined by their wants and needs, goals, history, friends, family, talents, weaknesses, and more.  You provide a huge blow to their sense of self-worth to reduce them to their diagnosis.

Especially as a care provider, this kind of stigmatizing language is incredibly unacceptable.  How is a patient supposed to see themselves as something beyond their disorder if you, as the expert who is supposed to help them, cannot?

Identifiably yours,
Rachel Leigh

On Poverty and Mental Health

I've started to think that mental health is a problem for the wealthy.

I don't mean to say that it's a first world problem which doesn't matter for anybody else -- I think just the opposite.  The National Day Without Stigma was this past week, and as always, it just reminded me of how prevalent mental illness is in the world.

And what it really made me start to wonder was about what your options are if you don't have health insurance and can't afford to see anyone.  I've been working a bit with a substance abuse rehabilitation facility in Richmond, and to some extent, it's become clear that for some people, that is their option.

Mental illness does not discriminate based on age, race, or social class.  If anything, being in a poorer situation increases the chances that you will struggle with depression and anxiety.  But the options we have to help people work through these concerns are expensive -- expensive therapies, expensive drugs, appointments with expensive therapists.  The options for those who can't afford those are, statistically, homelessness, prison, substance abuse and rehabilitation (if they can afford it or it's court-ordered), or hospitalization in extreme, high-risk cases.

The fact is that we've created a system that works pretty well for those who have access to it, but we've economically-barred some of the highest-need populations from being able to access mental healthcare.

Mental health advocacy is not simply advocacy for those who have the resources.  It is also advocacy for those who have never had the resources to get the help they need.

Thinking,
Rachel Leigh

On the Shutdown

If you've been under a rock for the last three days, let me let you in on a little secret: the government shut down.

Have you tried turning your government off and back on again?

It's all been very exciting and such, what with people worrying about what it means for the progression of our country.  But I'm getting kind of tired of hearing people (namely, Fox News people) say that no one has really been affected.

First and foremost, we look like a laughing stock.  One of Congress's big jobs is to approve a budget.  In fact, it's pretty much their biggest job.  People forget the power that money has -- setting a budget essentially sets the priorities for the next year.  The fact that political tensions have gotten so high that Congress can't perform its fundamental function speaks volumes about the general illegitimacy of the U.S. system right now.

Contingent Consent.  Maybe you've heard of it.  Chances are you probably haven't.  Contingent consent is a necessary piece in a functional and competitive democratic state.  It's the idea that you will win some elections and lose others, and that whichever side (or sides) loses will agree to live under the laws and rules of the side that won -- with the understanding that in the next election, you have the ability to unseat the other party if you don't like what they've done.

The only way to preserve rule of law under a democratic system is the acceptance of this idea of contingent consent -- the system can't function if you play by the "I lost, so I'm taking my toys and going home" mentality.  Which is exactly what we've got going right now.

Aside from the general "the reputation of the United States as a whole is at stake (compounded with the PRISM fiasco, the invasion of sovereign borders, several unnecessary wars, growing distrust of the U.S. and the West, etc)" issue, there are people being affected.  A friend of mine can't work on his thesis because he can't access the Library of Congress or the National Archives.  Many women and children who receive federal WIC funding will not receive their stipend in time if this isn't sorted out.  National Parks, federal funding for public education, GDP, "nonessential" federal employees, and more all stand to lose out if this shutdown and budget crisis aren't dealt with immediately.

The fact that you got your mail like always today doesn't mean that people aren't hurting.

Frustratedly yours,

Rachel Leigh

On Why I Hate the Filibuster

The first thing many of you are probably wondering is why I'm writing this post now, instead of back in June when Wendy Davis was filibustering on the Texas State Senate floor about the anti-abortion bill before the state legislature.

I wish I had a good answer for that.  Partially, because as much as I don't like the filibuster as a tactic, it's because I think Wendy Davis is kind of a badass.  Partially, it's because this is not a non-partisan blog.  And, mostly, it's because I was making the same argument on Facebook and it never crossed my mind to make this post.

First of all, I will note that there are some minor differences between the current Ted Cruz filibuster on the U.S. Senate floor and Davis's filibuster in Texas.  One, Wendy was in Texas, so her actions impacted only the residents of Texas, while Senator Cruz's filibuster aims to impact the entire country and the federal government.  So, yknow, keep the scope of things in mind as we progress here.  Two, the Texas State Senate filibuster rules state that you can only continue to speak as long as you continue to speak on matters directly related to the bill at hand.  This stipulation does not exist for the Senate filibuster, which may proceed (even by reading the phone book) until the speaker 1) voluntarily sits down, leaves, or stops speaking or 2) the Senate reaches a 2/3 vote needed for cloture and ends the debate in spite of the filibuster.  Until then, anything and everything is fair game.

Which brings us to today.  Ted Cruz is filibustering on the Senate floor [last I heard, reading Dr. Seuss books] to delay or prevent a vote on a critical budget measure in an attempt to "defund Obamacare" and the stipulations of the Affordable Care Act which will go into effect tomorrow.

I hate the filibuster as a tactic or procedural rule -- regardless of party affiliation or the issue.

First, it prevents any real, constructive debate on the topic at hand.  Debate is, inherently, a conversation.  And a filibuster is precisely the opposite -- especially when you don't even need to be talking about the bill that's up for a vote.  It is one-sided preaching, sometimes on topic, sometimes not, which does nothing to require either side to provide evidence or support for their side of the argument.

Second, the filibuster is a direct threat to the democratic process.  Senate voting rules were designed for a simple majority.  And, pending Presidential veto, a simple majority is supposed to be all that's needed to pass something.  The filibuster, by requiring a 2/3 vote, effectively raises the threshold for substantive Senate progress to a level even harder to achieve than half-plus-one.  People complain about Congressional inefficiency, but it's even harder to make any moves in any direction when you need not only a majority, but overwhelming support for any measure.

The filibuster is a holdover from very old Parliamentary procedure.  In the early 1800s, the House of Representatives decided it was enough of a bar to productive and timely debate that they removed it in an update of the House debate rules.  It sticks around in the Senate as a fossil from an era where immediate action was both typically unnecessary and more or less impossible -- in a world which is quite the opposite.

Politically yours,
Rachel Leigh

On Senior Year

Once upon a time, someone told me that senior year is easier.  And by once upon a time, I mean everyone has lied to me for the last four years about what my life senior year would be like.  I have been swimming in piles of class work, trying to sort through grad school applications (PLEASE SOMEBODY WANT ME), and dealing with the fact that with senior status comes a large amount of responsibility within student organizations.

When did I sign up for this?

I think, to some extent, the idea that seniors don't have to work hard is rooted in the way we, as underclassmen, saw seniors behave in personal contexts.  It always seemed like the seniors were the ones who always had time for a party...and can anyone say Cellar Wednesdays (the Cellar is our on-campus bar)?

I'm starting to wonder, though, how much of that culture was perpetuated by the sheer amount of work and stress which comes with senior year -- if maybe that's how people are choosing to cope.

All I know is that I'm jealous of the students whose Wellness classes involve taking naps.  That's just not fair.

Senioritically yours,
Rachel Leigh

On Home, Location, and Permanence

So today I registered to vote in Virginia.

Shocking, I know.  Because it's not like I care about Virginia politics.  (That was sarcasm.)

What that really got me thinking about, though, ties into a concept from class yesterday.  Historically, we think of location as permanent, and a home as a sense of permanence.  This came up as we were talking about how census data and the people who research it conceive of location -- in a way that doesn't account for frequent movement, especially in areas for poor or migrant families.

And today, registering to vote in a state that I do not think of as "home" although I also no longer live in the town I think of as "home" (as in it is not my current permanent or temporary residence), made me think a bit more about permanence.

I moved around a decent bit growing up.  Not like the army brats in movies who move to entirely new cities every six months and never get their roots -- I never had a problem establishing a sense of home in a general sense.  But changing circumstances led to a lot of literal moving: between one parent or the other, the amount of time I spent living in the same room in the same home was pretty limited after I was about six.

Now that I've once again gotten some sense of settled, here in Richmond, I'm already preparing for the likelihood of being somewhere else for graduate school, and my sense of permanence and stability is once again pretty shaken.

Most of the moves I have made in my life have been the result of conscious choices -- new relationships/marriages, going away to school, etc.  Yet they still impact my ability to think of a plot of land or building or physical location as a stable point that I can call "home."  I can only imagine what it must be like when even the sense of home that surrounds a group of people or family has gotten taken away, and the need to move is prompted not by choices but by circumstance.  With how much we consider home and location a part of our identity (my family, the fact that I'm a "Yankee" going to school in the South), it must be hard to craft a sense of identity when you're pushed away from a feeling of home.

Locally grown,
Rachel Leigh

On Testing (and what else has been on my mind)

I'm taking classes on American healthcare policy and urban poverty this semester and, as is often the case, you can reasonably expect that thinking a lot about these topics is going to color the direction of my blog a bit as ideas knock around in my head.  Be warned.

However, today what I want to talk about focuses a lot on education policy.  Specifically, test scores.  Obviously, with the GRE coming up, this topic has been floating around in my head for a while -- and finding out that several schools in the poorer areas of Richmond have been shut down or are in danger of being shut down for failure to meet standardized testing requirements definitely drove me to think about it some more.

I never really understood all the opposition to standardized testing.  I think it had a lot to do with the fact that I typically test well and, as such, never saw any harm in it.  Having family enter the teaching field, though, and watching teachers and professors struggle with standardized testing has made me think a lot about what can be measured by standardized testing.

It's always been a pet peeve of mine that SAT and other test-prep classes all seem to focus on "teaching the test" instead of teaching the material.  These classes consist largely of keywords and tricks to avoid actually knowing the materials being tested and instead to know what kind of people the test-writers are.  But that's the class you've signed up for.

However, and I see it in students I work with from time, when this becomes the role of teachers in the typical school setting, things slip through the cracks.  Instead of teaching the material and doing well on, say, the math section of the SAT because you know how to do the math, the job of math educators becomes teaching students to look for cues that an answer is wrong, many of which have nothing to do with the math itself.  And that gets to be dangerous.  It also de-legitimizes the testing process, because instead of quantifying how well something has been taught or learned, it quantifies how well you can game the system.

When did that become the point?

Qualitatively yours,
Rachel Leigh

On Yoga Pants and Rape Culture

As someone with "legs for days" (to quote some of my best friends), I always struggled to find shorts that did not violate the school dress code growing up.  I think this may have played into my insistence on wearing jeans year-round...I got used to being told my legs needed to be covered.

In the wake of a rash of yoga pants-bans in high schools, I really got to thinking about school dress codes.*  And in the wake of a subreddit that asked rapists for "their side of the story," I got to thinking about rape culture and victim blaming.**  And thinking about the two together got me...angry.

Let me preface this by saying that there is nothing wrong with telling your son or daughter what they can and cannot wear, especially when they are children.  Determining what is and is not appropriate clothing to wear to school, work, or outside the home is a conversation that parents should absolutely have with their children, and is a decision that should be reached based on a child's age, comfort level, body type, economic status, etc.  There is nothing wrong with this.

There is also nothing inherently wrong with having a dress code in place which defines what is and is not allowed to be worn on school grounds.  Offensive clothing, clothing that violates public decency laws, clothing that is dangerous (I actually totally support flip flop bans) are absolutely a problem in schools.  However, the problem comes in when it comes to how these issues are approached, explained to students, and justified in the code of conduct.

Yoga pants or my shorts do not violate a dress code because they are dangerous.  They are written into the rules because they are "distracting" and you "don't know how they'll affect the boys."  And this is where the problem comes in.  Because a society that starts out by telling a twelve-year-old that she cannot wear a particular kind of sweatpants because the shape of her butt is going to force the boys to stop paying attention doesn't stop there.

It becomes the same culture that tells a girl in Steubenville, Ohio that the fact that she was repeatedly raped by two young men was her fault because she should have known that getting drunk around boys was going to put her in a bad situation.  It builds into a culture where what she's wearing and the fact that she's drinking mean she's a "whore" who was "asking for it" and should have been charged for underage drinking.***

There is nothing wrong with having a discussion with your kids about what is age-appropriate or appropriate for certain settings when it comes to clothing.  But the second you start to contextualize that discussion in the realm of "how will it affect the others," you play into a culture that normalizes sexual assault.  Someone's inability to control their own actions is their fault and their problem, no one else's.

Yours,
Rachel Leigh

*http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/09/leggings-ban-kenilworth-junior-high-california_n_3046043.html
**http://jezebel.com/5929544/rapists-explain-themselves-on-reddit-and-we-should-listen
***http://www.buzzfeed.com/jpmoore/23-people-who-think-the-steubenville-rape-victim-is-to-blame

On Ranking Season

It’s that time of year again.  The annual college rankings are starting pour in (ranking every aspect of college life from the biggest party schools to the most sober schools, overall happiness, attractiveness of both campus and students…), in anticipation of the next round of applicants for whom this is the time to really narrow down the list of schools they’ll be applying to over the next couple months.

If you’re in college and pretending you haven’t been stalking where your school falls on these lists, you’re lying to yourself.

Love it or hate it, everybody has something to say about where their school ranked.  In my case it’s something along the lines of “who forgot to tell The Daily Beast that the University of Richmond and the University of Virginia are not the same school?”*

There are a lot of reasons to be curious – gloating rights, for one.  Plus, high rankings in certain areas mean prestige for the school, a more competitive incoming class, and donor money.  All typically good things.  But being ranked too high or too low on the party school rankings is probably not a good thing.

Case in point, last year’s top-rated party school (according to the Princeton Review, although Playboy also does a ranking) was WVU, which saw a crackdown this past year on campus drinking, drug use, and partying in an attempt to clean up its image. Make it all shiny and new for the incoming class of parents who may not want their kids at the top-ranking party school.  But let’s face it, if your academics can even reasonably match your social scene, and you make it on that list, you’re going to see a rise in applicants.  People spend most of their young-adult lives being told that college will be the best four years of their lives, and they look to these kinds of rankings as a way to ensure they’re not wasted.

Are they always accurate?  Not really.  The Princeton Review, for example, generates their entire list based on self-reported student surveys about campus life, which means scores can be artificially inflated or deflated, and that the standards aren’t exactly what you’d call objective.

But it’s still pretty interesting to check out.

#45th Happily Yours,

Rachel Leigh

*http://www.thedailybeast.com/galleries/2010/04/11/the-100-happiest-colleges.html#slide45

**http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/21/princeton-reviews-top-par_n_1817322.html

On Why "Awkward" Has It Wrong

I have a dirty little secret.  I watch MTV.  Specifically, I watch Girl Code and Awkward.  That's right: my media consumption is not limited to BBC News, CNN, the NY Times and Wall Street Journal, HBO, and the internet.  Shocking, I know.  MTV's Awkward endeavors to present the life of a socially-awkward American blogger in high school.

But MTV has it wrong.  Not that this really surprises me, since MTV also gets Skins, the people who go "down the shore," and a lot of other things wrong.  But as much as I love Awkward, it is in no way because it accurately portrays the life of a blogger.

The show treats blogging like a tell-all confessional diary on the internet.  And for some bloggers, this is probably the case -- especially if those bloggers are, say, 13, which I assume is the market MTV is shooting for with this show.  But for most bloggers late into high school and into college, the posts are typically less about which boy is fighting for your attention and more about how you see the world.

Do I post life updates on my blog?  Absolutely.  Because they help contextualize the things I have to say, and also because they make for useful excuses when I've been bad about regularly updating, not because I fool myself into thinking my readers actually care about my exam schedule.

People still keep diaries, and some people are silly enough to make their deepest, darkest secrets open to the internet viewing public.  But that's not what most awkward teenage/twenty-something bloggers are doing with their blogs.  They're trying to change minds, spread awareness of issues, comment on social change and new media, not complain about the fact that their ex and their current boyfriend are fighting over them.

Also, that's not even awkward.  But it does make for interesting television.

The fact remains, though, that when this is how bloggers are represented in traditional media (kind of like how the movie Hackers presents hackers, which is not at all like what hacking actually is or what hacktivists do), it delegitimizes the medium.  Most bloggers see themselves as the voices of new media, their work taking the place of traditional Op-Eds in a world where print media is dying out.  Positing the work of bloggers through the lens of a girl who uses the internet to work out her petty relationship problems takes away from the legitimacy of bloggers, teenage girls, and the internet generation.

Don't get me wrong, though -- I would pay good money for Tamara's wardrobe and vocabulary, and Jenna Hamilton's life is ceaselessly amusing.  Just don't confuse what she does with what most bloggers are trying to do.

Unapologetically yours,
Rachel Leigh

On an Update and News

My darling readers, I just got back from a whirlwind trip through Virginia and North Carolina, to see some family and catch a Drum Corps show in Charlotte.

While I was packing and traveling, there was a surge in Royal Baby fever as Will and Kate welcomed Prince George into the family, and the Pope took to the pulpit to publicly change the Vatican's stance on gay clergymen.  Needless to say, it's been a big week in international news, and I've been otherwise occupied.

A lot of people were surprised by the fact that I got a bit swept up in the Royal Baby (though, that shouldn't surprised anyone who knows how much of an Anglophile I am), but, as I explained, if the press can get all excited about a Kardashian baby, I can get excited about a royal baby.  I mean, one is a family that has done very little to earn their fame and has had a family member very publicly naked...and the other is the Kardashians.  At least the British royal family seems to have some class about the whole thing.

I apologize for the recent mini-posts, but I'll return to regular posting once I've caught up on some sleep.

Royally yours,
Rachel Leigh

On SDCC

This past weekend was San Diego's Comic Con International 2013.  For those of you who don't know, I typically celebrate this event by eating junk food on my couch and watching G4 for live coverage and news updates.  I could not do that this year because I was in the process of moving out.

Comic Con brings a very specific image to some people's minds: awkward, poorly-socialized comic book nerds in a convention center.  But over the years, SDCC has turned into something very different.  Yes, there are still people there for precisely that reason (I'm looking at you, Wil Wheaton and Steve Zaragoza), but SDCC has also become the major event for news in movies, television, art, comics, fantasy, science fiction, gaming, and more.  It's full of celebrities, cosplayers (people who dress up as their favorite characters from games, books, movies, shows, etc), panels (like the one that pre-showed the first episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), and other activities.

For at least the second time, they've run the Walking Dead Escape, an obstacle course where people run to escape the zombie hordes.  This isn't the old Comic Con...it's far too big and popular (and, might I add, expensive) to really even compare to most other cons or old school comic con.

Any time anybody wants to get me a press badge, you're more than welcome to.

Geekily yours,
Rachel Leigh

On the Virginia GOP

Before I head out of Virginia for a little while, I figured a fitting last post in the capitol of the Confederacy would be something along the lines of "What Exactly is Wrong with Virginia Republican Candidates (and do they hear the words that are coming out of their mouths)?"

So the Virginia GOP has given their nods to Gubernatorial and Attorney General candidates.  First on the chopping block is my good friend Ken Cuccinelli, who you may have heard of in his many attempts to restrict women's access to abortion, planned parenthood, and bodily autonomy.  He's a good man, I assure you.  Cuccinelli's most recent move has been to take Virginia's infamous sodomy law (which bans sodomy, oral sex, and, assuming they have kept the full text of the original law, sex with the lights on, and classifies them all as a felony offense) to the Supreme Court.  Now, in 2003, the Supreme Court declared state sodomy laws unconstitutional, on the grounds that, oddly enough, they persecute people whose partners do not have the opposite set of parts required for traditional intercourse, and also because we typically accept that you have a right to privacy and what you do in your own home between consenting adults is your own business.

But not only is Cuccinelli taking this to the Supreme Court, hoping they'll overturn or adjust their ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, but he posted on his campaign site that 90 new sexual predators (because, you know, felony sexual violations, like this one, will get you registered as a sex offender) will come off the sex offender registry.  Because gay sex and pedophilia are totally the same thing and this totally isn't a scare tactic.

Our other WTF of the day comes at the suggestion of one of my readers (you can like the WCS page on facebook and make post suggestions if you'd like).  Virginia's Republican Attorney General candidate is a man named Mark Obenshain, who in 2009 proposed an interesting bill.  This would require women who miscarry to report their miscarriage to the police within 24 hours or face legal penalties.  Now, there is a pro-choice/pro-life angle that one could attack this from, but I'm going to let that go for now and look at it quite simply: miscarriages are often painful and emotionally traumatizing.  Many of the women who experience them were incredibly excited to have a child.  To attempt to force a woman who is already going through this kind of emotional turmoil to compound it by forcing her to talk to the police is inhumane.  And this is the man the Virginia GOP wants in charge of enforcing Virginia laws.

All that being said, I'll be spending the next few weeks in Pennsylvania and North Carolina and will keep you all up to date with my ramblings and happenings.

Frustratedly yours,
Rachel Leigh

On Writers, Women, and the Sexy Lamp Test

Back when Joss Whedon was writing Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly and Dollhouse, he was repeatedly asked questions about why he wrote such strong female characters.  His answer, finally, was given in a speech he presented on equality, when he simply stated "Because you're still asking me this question."*

George R.R. Martin, author of the Game of Thrones books, was asked where his inspiration for complex, well-written female characters came from, and he responded that he "always considered women to be people."**

Most feminists and female readers know about the concept of the Bechdel test, developed by Allison Bechdel to determine whether a work gives a fair or even remotely non-sexist depiction of women.  The test has three parts: (1) Does this work include at least two female characters?; (2) Do these characters talk to one another?; (3) Is the conversation about something other than men?  If you can successfully answer "yes" to all three of those questions, congratulations, there is a chance you have written a remotely non-sexist piece.

However, Kelly Sue Deconnick, a writer and artist for Marvel comics, stated that the Bechdel Test may be expecting too much from us, and has proposed a test wherein "if you can take out a female character and replace her with a sexy lamp, you're a hack."***  My question, then, is when a large number of female characters fail both Bechdel's test and are replacable by a sexy lamp, why are we asking those few writers who write women who actually resemble people why they write them that way?

What does it say about the status quo for female characters when the noteworthy and novel thing is that they're written in three dimensions instead of just as a plot device?

I've often advocated for the need for strong female role models, and those are often hard to find in the real world.  But it's worrisome that they are nearly as scarce in the world of fantasy and fiction, and that those writers who create them are often questioned or criticized.

Isn't it time that, instead, we start asking, "I've noticed you've written a hollow shell of a human being and slapped a pair of breasts on her.  Why did you do that?" instead?

Curiously Yours,
Rachel Leigh

*http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/josswhedonequalitynow.htm
**http://hbowatch.com/20-minute-interview-with-george-r-r-martin/
***http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/06/20/kelly-sue-deconnick-talks-captain-marvel-pretty-deadly-and-the-sexy-lamp-test

On Skins and Adolescence

Last Monday was the premiere of the first episode of the last series of Skins.

For those of you who don't know, Skins has been one of my favorite shows since it first washed up stateside my junior year of high school.  I loved it for a lot of reasons, including, in large part, the fact that Nicholas Hoult played Tony Stonem in the first two series.

But really, what drew me in when it comes to Skins was the way they portrayed people my age.  Yes, the show was racy and definitely a lot more wild than my life (or anyone that I knew, really) was at the time.  But after years of seeing the 16-19 year-old years treated like nothing more than bad grades, shopping trips, and shenanigans learning to drive, it was amazing, to me, to see a show that portrayed its teenage characters as complex, autonomous characters.

The characters in Skins had the complicated backstories that are often associated with much more adult stories -- neglect, abuse, loss, joy, family.  They also had real, complex problems -- depression, suicide attempts, eating disorders, bipolar disorder, anxiety.  Skins was the first show I ever watched that treated my generation more like adults than children.  And it made me feel less alone.

The characters in Skins made real, complex decisions and those decisions had consequences.  Even now, with the final series and the reboot of some of the original characters in the specials Fire, Rise, and Pure, the characters, who have aged since the last time we saw them (Effy Stonem, for example, is now working for a high-powered investment bank instead of wreaking havoc on her high school/college), are facing adult issues with real consequences.  And I'm excited to see where it all heads.  In the meantime, I'm glad there is at least one show that presents adolescence as something more complicated than just that awkward time between when you're a little kid and when you become a full-fledged grownup.

I am speaking, of course, to the UK version of Skins.  The American adaptation that MTV tried to pull off was a laughable shadow of its British counterpart.

Culturally yours,
Rachel Leigh

Photo credits: 
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTYBodWpgle0hIMbsYTKZBIef1lk_al7HdSIl0M9y3YbcrKztrbOcs6rS6h_ljjHLyNVLRd4iLTTgeWdtjDvERAPRbmnP9ZaJmXw828mlGSCHE33zQT4n42ELHwRHwuXRjuQ_h43CcT9hr/s400/skins-cast-nagy.jpg
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOULGUtYct73gRdOX-Vqi0l4R-2m0WmNU-oxEkc1fmGUQ_PoZMromuPK7GvPTRjtj-ntC0VXmpVc7JF6hN-zfRfCS35S1EyeAIdVrEmTwJIwr2n5Q1Ni39Krh0I1AFyKy4qk60OpDARib6/s1600/article-0-0CA776D4000005DC-732_634x429.jpg

On R-E-S-P-E-C-T

I've been thinking a lot about respect recently.  It started with a video about the influence of teachers and made me think about why I respect those who have taught me and why others fail to respect them.  I've thought about respect for feelings and respect for boundaries.  I've thought very deeply about respect for king and country (or, well, I mean, I don't live in a country with a king, but I think you know where I'm going with that).

I've thought about what it takes to earn my respect.  If you do not treat me like a child, I will respect you as an equal who deserves the adult they have deigned to acknowledge.  If you accept that I have clear boundaries -- physically, emotionally, psychologically -- then I will respect that their are lines that you may also not want me to cross.

But those are the things it takes to earn my respect.  And I've also started to wonder if that, too, is a flawed concept.  Because in expecting you to respect those needs, the only reason I can cite is that I am a full, complex human being, deserving of respect.  But then so is everyone else: full, complex human beings who, while I may not understand their positions, have reasons and origins as complex as mine and just as deserving of being respectfully heard out.

And, I suppose, what I've come to is something of a middle.  On the one hand, I feel like there are positions and opinions undeserving of respect.  On the other, however, people are not simply their views and opinions.

What I guess I'm trying to say is that, while I have always seen respect as something earned, I'm beginning to question if that's the right way of seeing things.  Does respect for a person have to entail respect for their beliefs or choices?  If not, are there people undeserving of respect?

I'd be lying if I said I knew.

Thoughtfully yours,
Rachel Leigh

On Politics, History, Racism, and SCOTUS

I can't.

I honestly just can't.  I have lost any and all ability to can today, ladies and gentlemen.  And only part of that comes from the fact that I am wading through a dataset that seems intent on destroying me.

The Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 as a crucial response to the prevalence of Jim Crow Laws throughout the American South.  Jim Crow Laws were, in case you are unaware, a series of laws throughout states and municipalities which, through enforcement of "poll taxes" or "literacy tests" (I use scarequotes here for a reason -- the actual results of these tests or costs of these poll taxes varied greatly depending on the color of your skin), restricted the access of African Americans to the polls, in spite of the Fifteenth Amendment which guaranteed them that right to vote. (Seriously, though.  Track down a copy of the Alabama Literacy Test and tell me if, when someone slapped that down in front of you because they didn't like the way you looked, you would be able to pass and vote. (Though are you really surprised these laws were in effect less than 100 years after many of these same people thought that people were property?))

In 1965, Congress voted to pass measures which restricted the rights of states to impose discriminatory voting regulations which kept a significant portion of the population from being able to go out to the polls.  An essential piece of the legislation included a stipulation that areas with histories of these kinds of regulations, as well as repeatedly low voter turnout and registration numbers (because that doesn't look suspicious at all), would have to get federal approval before making changes to their voting regulations and voting procedures.

Well, today the Supreme Court overturned that stipulation. In a time where voter ID laws have come under intense criticism for their potentially racist limitations on the ability of minorities to vote, a restriction that has prevented actual legally-binding discrimination and a breach of the US Constitution for more than forty years has been overturned by the body responsible for protecting the Constitution.

Do I think the implications of this are as heavily racist as they would have been in the '60s -- no, at least not on the surface.  But I do think it's democratically-questionable.  Note: many of the areas which have been subject to this clause in the past, including Shelby County, AL, which was involved in specifically this Supreme Court case, are predominantly Republican.  Minority votes are, by-and-large, opposed to the Republican party.  Do I think there's going to be a massively racial backlash?  Probably not, because it's typically a bad PR move.  But do I think there's potential for party politics that will, ultimately, have racial consequences to prevent a large amount of the opposition constituency from turning out to the polls?  Absolutely.

Congratulations, SCOTUS.  I can't.

Furiously yours,
Rachel Leigh

P.S., Let's hope they do better on Prop 8/DOMA than they did with this one.  Love is love, my friends.

On Admitting Mistakes

I'm sure you've heard about the Kickstarter crap that blew up in the last couple of days.  Namely, that Kickstarter was funding a "seduction guide" which, at heart, boiled down to a guide to dating which advocated sexual harrassment and sexual assault.  My only note on this part of the issue is this: under no circumstances should you ever assume that touching someone or resorting to "physical escalation" is okay without first actually obtaining consent.  Some people don't even like being touched, let alone being pulled onto a stranger's lap, having their hair pulled, or any number of the displays of "dominance" this guide suggests.  Do not act first and ask questions later -- "physical escalation" without freely-given consent isn't "awesome" or sexy; it's sexual assault.

What I'm posting about is something that Microsoft did earlier in the week and Kickstarter did today: admitting they're wrong.  In the aftermath of a horrible backlash to the announcement of the DRM requirements on the new Xbox One console, Microsoft very publicly admitted their mistake and, after advice from gamers and users, removed the DRM from the console release.  And today, Kickstarter posted a public apology on their blog and made a $25,000 donation to RAINN in an attempt to reconcile their bad decision to fund the project mentioned above.

Is there a skeptical part of me that thinks these actions were only driven by the need to keep potential investors and users from refusing to spend money?  Absolutely.  But do I think there's something very brave and admirable about a company publicly admitting that they "done goofed"?  Absolutely.

My family and many of my friends will be the first to tell you that I am horrible about admitting when I'm wrong.  The thing is that many people (I have even heard this about the two previously-mentioned incidents) consider apologizing or admitting mistakes as a sign of weakness.  Which I don't understand.  The mistake may have been a weakness, but admitting that it happened and trying to make up for it is not.  If anything, trying to hide from those mistakes is a sign of cowardice, which is probably an even larger weakness.  And the ability to listen to criticism, change your course of action, and come forward and say "our first idea wasn't great and we're trying to do better" is not only admirable -- it's something I want to get better at.  Everybody has faults and makes mistakes, and it's about time we start respecting people for admitting they were wrong.

Faultily yours,
Rachel Leigh

On Dumb Culture

Now, I'm generally not a fan of calling attention to people with rocks for brains, mostly because I think stupid people get too much attention anyway.  However, in the aftermath of a stunningly incoherent speech about women, education, men's inherent leadership role, and job creation from Miss Utah in the Miss Universe pageant and the incredibly disheartening news that Sarah Palin will be entering the network news circuit as a political commentator (admittedly on Fox News, but that's still more viewers than she should be getting), I need to speak up.

I am all for female role models.  We definitely need more of them.

But, for the love of all that is good in this world and for the sake of creating a better future for the next few generations of girls, can we please stop treating ignorant, uneducated women as something endearing or desirable?

We have a culture that says that women are bad at math and science, despite repeated studies that show that the gap in performance occurs over time, as girls LEARN they aren't supposed to be good at math and science.  We discourage women from entering leadership roles, and those who do are often met with sexism and criticism of their mental and emotional capabilities in their role.  And, despite the continued push for empowering female education, we still hear things like "My boyfriend thinks I'm too smart for him" (vlogbrothers video) or "'If smart guys like dumb girls and dumb guys like dumb girls, what do smart girls get?' 'Cats, mostly'" (Modern Family).

Glamourizing and promoting the idea that it's "cute" for a woman to be ditzy or ignorant makes intelligent girls feel like their intelligence is a hindrance -- something to be ashamed of and hidden if they ever want to be loved or taken seriously.  But what good does it do for society to teach half the population that, if they're good at something, they should try and hide it?

Ignorance isn't cute.  It isn't funny.  It's sad, it's an insult to our education system, and it's really bad for the way girls see themselves.

Angrily yours,
Rachel Leigh

On Aunt Flo and Things We're Not Supposed to Talk About

We're going to talk about something that's going to alienate my male readers for a bit.

Periods.

And that is precisely why we're going to talk about them.  Because we don't talk about them.  Because half the world's population has them or has had them.  And they're perfectly natural and normal and, y'know, actually a good thing for your body, and women are expected to treat them like a dirty little secret.

I watched a video the other day about stupid things women have to deal with, and one of the things it mentioned was having to sneak a tampon to the bathroom.  I'll be the first to admit, I'm embarrassed to have to buy "feminine hygiene products"...especially from a male clerk.  But my question becomes why?  Why is there a taboo against a natural, healthy, normal thing?  Just because it's a little gross?  Yeah, well, so are farts, but it's something you can't control and, I've noticed, most guys don't feel bad about doing in public anyway.

Now, I am by no means saying you have to love your period.  Is it a great sign that everything's hunky-dory in your endocrine system?  Absolutely.  In fact, it's a great indicator that you're eating right, your ladybits are all in order, and that you're not too stressed, as any of those can affect the frequency or heaviness of your period.  But, let's be serious, periods can really suck.

Aside from having to spend several days crafting schemes to somehow get everything you need into the bathroom without anyone noticing, there's all the crazy stuff that happens to your body.  I had a (male, obviously) friend once tell me that there has been no medical link found between PMS hormones and mood swings (and that therefore the mood swings are all in your head).

My response was to look him in the eyes and tell him that, even if that were true, there are plenty of not-in-our-head reasons for mood swings on your period.  PMS hormones cause bloating, fatigue, bizarre food cravings, headaches, breast sensitivity, cramps, nausea, and a whole host of unfortunate physical happenings.  So, no, maybe my emotions are not directly impacted by the change in hormones.  But tell me how you feel when you're sore and tired, feeling fat because your clothes don't fit right, and still can't stop yourself from craving potato chips.  Like I said, periods suck.

But just because they suck and are maybe a little bit gross doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about them.  It's just another one of those things we're taught not to talk about because it's not polite -- but then how do you know what a warning sign is for when something isn't right?  Period problems can get really out of hand, and it's important that we be okay enough as a society that when a girl's health is at risk, she isn't ashamed to talk about the fact that it's her time of the month.  Also, it would be nice to not have to bring my purse to the bathroom every day for a week.  Thanks.

Your Friend (the PMS Tiger (great meme, look it up)),
Rachel Leigh

Update

Hello lovelies!

So this happened yesterday:

Yes, that is my laptop.  So, if my posting is more limited than usual, you know why.  I suppose that's what I get for naming my laptop after a character in a Shakespeare tragedy.  Sorry, Desdemona.

In other news, this blog is now a Project Wonderful publisher, which, yknow, means I'm now a massive sell-out and should immediately forsake my writing for the purposes of preserving my soul.  Or something like that.  But, in all seriousness, Project Wonderful is an independent ad site which runs the ads for several of my favorite blogs and webcomics, and I'm actually pretty honored to have joined the Project Wonderful family.

For the record, I am taking name suggestions for Desdemona's little brother/sister, when he/she arrives.  Maybe something a little less tragic.

Best,
Rachel Leigh

On Street Fairs, Weather, and Bad Parenting

There are certain days when I wish I wrote a food blog.  Like today, when my stomach is full of delicious Richmond Greek Festival moussaka and duck fat french fries from a place called Rox, who had a booth at a street festival called Broad Appetit.

But the fact is that I don't run a food blog, and even if I did, that's still probably not what I would be talking about today.

Because, well, I need to rant.

This was not a place for your infants or pets.  It was 90 degrees today in Richmond (which is, admittedly, not all that unusual) and is, honestly, perfectly fine weather for a street food festival.  It is not, however, fine for babies and dogs.  The National Weather Service points to any temperature above 82 degrees with high humidity as a reason to use extreme caution for risks of heat stroke, dehydration, or hyperthermia.*  These risks are significantly greater for children and the elderly.  Also, I'm sure your poodle in full winter coat isn't appreciating it either (although, shoutout to the SPCA for having an air-conditioned RV and water for all the dogs who were out there in this heat anyway).

I also don't know where people get the idea that large crowds, particularly large crowds where people will be drinking, are a good atmosphere for a small child or pet.  They could get tripped on, spilled on, or in any way hurt extraordinarily easily in those kinds of situations, and aside from that, it's incredibly overstimulating.  Your child is not appreciating the street food and craft beers that you are currently purchasing beer tickets for.  As a matter of fact, he's red in the face and on the verge of unconsciousness and I'm pretty sure you should go find a doctor.

Hire a babysitter.  Leave the dog at home with water and air conditioning.  You're not doing anyone a favor by bringing them to events like these.

Yours in frustration,
Rachel Leigh

*http://www.nws.noaa.gov/os/heat/index.shtml#wwa

On TV and Hormones

There must be some clause in every television writer's contract that says that, if you write for a television series aimed at anyone from their early teens to their late twenties, you must have one episode entitled "Let's Talk About Sex."

In this episode, the main character (or even several members of the cast) have some sort of crazy sexual awakening that ultimately leads to "the Talk" with either their partner or their parents, and several uncomfortable hijinks ensue for all involved! It's super funny and super awkward! Lol hormones and condoms!

As of right now, there are at least 8 series which have had this same episode, and while Salt 'n' Pepa gave us all a great song title with which to encompass this extraordinarily old plot device, it's time to give it a rest. It's a cliche title for a cliche idea, which reflects a time when most kids didn't have access to sex education -- or the Internet. No one's first exposure to the idea of condoms or birth control or STDs or pregnancy is from The Talk anymore. Sex Ed, 16 and Pregnant, every teen show on television, and Wikipedia have all made sure of that. (Of course, that still doesn't insure people will be safe about it, either.). Sure, the Talk is still a big moment in any coming of age show. I doubt there will ever be a time in history when talking to your parents about sex isn't uncomfortable. But there are less cliche ways to address the issue. Or at least come up with a new title. I really like the sound of "Lol Hormones and Condoms!"

Unclichedly yours,
Rachel Leigh

On Digital Humanities and My Job

I don't often talk about my work, but seeing as I'll be doing it 40 hours a week for the next seven weeks, maybe it's not such a bad idea to give everyone a little 'splaining.

If you followed the other blog linked to this account, you probably know I'm a writing consultant, as I used that blog to discuss the training process and the challenges I expected to face as a writing consultant.  But what you may or may not know is that for the last three years, I have worked at the UR Digital Scholarship Lab.

The DSL is a Digital Humanities research lab.  To a lot of people, digital humanities sounds like something of an oxymoron, because the humanities (history, philosophy, etc) tend to be pursuits we naturally link with neo-Luddism.  Okay, no, most people don't think it's an oxymoron -- mostly, they just kind of look at me like "huh?"

Our work in the lab is some bizarre hybrid of historical research and computer science skills that come together to create interesting historical resources which match the modern age -- interactive maps, updated digital archives, things which make often inaccessible research or concepts modern and graspable.

My pet project since I've worked there has to be Visualizing Emancipation -- an interactive map of the emancipation process during the Civil War.  A lot of people think (and we're certainly taught) that Emancipation happened when Lincoln made the Emancipation Proclamation and, like a magic spell, all the slaves were free.  Maybe, if your education was a little more in-depth, you were taught that what gave the emancipation of slaves legal teeth was the passing of the 13th Amendment.  Yay no more slaves!

What VE shows is the fact that the process was much more complex than that, and also precisely that -- it WAS a process.  Every emancipation event in the database corresponds to a primary or secondary source which can point to the exact date at which a slave ran away, was liberated, was re-enslaved, or any number of other major events which focus on the fact we're not just talking about a historical or political moment in time.  We're looking at the lives of people with real agency and whose freedom was not simply given to them.

This is not even to touch on the continuing plight of slaves and human trafficking victims which persists in a country that points to a point in history as the time when Americans stopped owning other Americans.  But that's a topic for another day.

For the time being, if you want to check out what I've been up to or the Visualizing project, you can go to http://dsl.richmond.edu, http://dsl.richmond.edu/emancipation, or follow the project on twitter at @vizemancipation.

Historically (and digitally) yours,
Rachel Leigh

On Summer in the City

Greetings, reader-type people!

I moved in yesterday to THIS lovely space:

That's right -- I'm living in a single (well, a single room in a suite) for the next eight weeks while I work at school.  I'll be spending the summer in Richmond for the first time ever, which is both really exciting and kind of bizarre.  As you can tell, I am clearly doing fun things all the time since I am clearly not blogging ever at all ever.

But I'm actually looking forward to the chance to get to know myself and this area/city a lot better over the next few weeks -- I'll get to experience what an actual 40-hour work week feels like (and figure out if I'm cut out for it at all), and hopefully get to spend time with some of my favorite people when I'm not at work.

Looking forward,
Rachel Leigh

On Monsanto and Frankenfood

When a friend of mine suggested I write a post about Monsanto, my first response was, "What about Monsanto?  Pretty much everything they do is evil."

...Exactly.

Monsanto, for those who don't know (though I suspect most of you do) is the number one producer of GMOs (genetically-modified organisms) and GMO seeds in the world.

Now I am not one of those people who is personally against GMOs as a food source.  And I think the use of the term "frankenfoods" to discuss crops which have been genetically-modified to be pesticide-resistant (or to grow faster or any number of the interesting things we've been able to do to seed to increase their growth and distribution potential) is a detriment to the debate because it starts out leaving a bad taste (ha, pun) in everyone's mouth.  In all honesty, I think GMOs could be the future of food production and the solution to the global food crisis, because they allow for greater and more fruitful production of food products.

My problem with Monsanto is how they USE their GMOs.  First, they have a patenting process which is entirely antithetical to their supposed goal of providing "poor people" with "cheap food," as their CEO stated just today.*  If the goal is to allow access to cheap food, then patenting the seeds you've designed to grow more efficiently is entirely hypocritical -- it creates a monopoly, which by the very nature of a monopoly drives the price up.  Sure, your foods are cheap now, but imagine how much cheaper they would be if you allowed for market competition.

The second problem I have with Monsanto is which products they make cheaper and more accessible to poor people -- corn and soy.  Two products which are precisely not what we need to further incentivize in the American diet.  The cost of corn is already artificially low, thanks to the subsidies corn farmers receive from the government (though that is a rant for another day), and as a result, you find it in nearly every cheaper (and worse for you) food alternative in every step of the food manufacturing process.  Corn-fed beef as opposed to grass-fed.  High fructose corn syrup as an alternative to natural sugars.  And, surprise surprise, these ingredients sneak their way into all those foods which are responsible for a nation-wide obesity epidemic, which primarily hits those lower-income shoppers who are supposedly "helped" by Monsanto's cheaper products.

Finally, of course, there are the massive sets of human rights abuse allegations against Monsanto, ranging from the domination of small farms to health concerns to widespread rumors about the use of child labor in their supply line.  Leaving out the questions of health or business practice, these are simply ethical concerns.  Monsanto is responsible for a number of major concerns, which have repeatedly landed them on human rights watch lists,** and the sum total of their egregiously-questionable business decisions make them a reasonable target for criticism.  I don't think Monsanto can be the be-all-end-all of the GMO debate because, if they are, the future of GMOs looks grim.

Yours (in some strange combination of hunger and disgust),
Rachel Leigh

*http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/16/hugh-grant-monsanto-elitism_n_3285378.html?utm_hp_ref=business
**http://www.globalexchange.org/corporateHRviolators#Monsanto

On Mental Health and Confessions

Back when I started this blog, I anticipated a lot of late-night rambles.  I think, however, that this is only the second late-night post I've written since I started this.

One of my big blogging idols, who runs the blog Hyperbole and a Half and is easily one of the funniest and most talented bloggers I have encountered in my time on the internet, has made two of her most recent posts (although one of them was admittedly about a year ago) about depression and how depression has impacted her work.

If you've followed me at all, you know I am a huge mental health advocate.  I can talk to you about what a comprehensive mental health policy on a college campus looks like (and what it doesn't, here's looking at YOU, Cornell).  I can tell you that 1 in 4 Americans will suffer from a mental illness in their lifetime, that many of those who do not get help will consider or attempt suicide, and that 1,000 college students will take their own lives this year.  I can also, and will, tell you that your mental illness or mental health concern does not define you, nor does it make you any less whole or less worthy a person, and that no one worth having in your life will love you any less because of it.

But I will admit, I am ashamed of my mental illness.  Anxiety disorders, severe confidence issues, and intermittent depression have dominated my interactions with myself, my work, and others for as far back as I can remember.  I have also come to realize that when any of those concerns become stressed, I have a hard time maintaining a healthy relationship with food -- I either eat far too much and cannot control myself or I find the idea of food so unappealing that I may not eat all day unless I force myself to.

I'm making this post not to force my issues on others -- I do have a small group of people in my life who have been absolutely wonderful resources for me to work through my issues -- but because I feel, as someone who pushes so strongly for people to not see mental illness as a failing of character or something to be ashamed of, that I have been terrible when it comes to practicing what I preach.  I have no right to push for people to own their battle scars if I cannot do it myself.

Yours,
Rachel Leigh

On Finals Week (Page 6 of 8)

It's the last Sunday of the semester, and I'm holed up in the library writing a blog post.  You know what that means -- it's Finals week, and I'm once again using this blog as an excuse to procrastinate on whatever it is I am actually supposed to be doing.  Finals Week posts tend to be, in some ways, reflective, as I get a chance to look back on a semester of life lessons and stories and stupid generalizations (like my post about judging you based on where you study).

This one's a little different, because most of the time, Finals Week comes with a sense of finality.  Instead, I find myself already thinking ahead to three weeks from now when I'll be moving all of my stuff back into the dorms at U of R for my summer job.  It feels like nothing's really ending, which I think is compounded by my fundamental inability to grasp the fact that I'm going to be a senior in about two weeks.  None of it seems real -- nothing's ending, nothing's starting, it's just kind of fading into itself.  Is this what the real world is like?  Who knows?

For those of you who have finished your finals already -- well, I hate you.  For those of you still struggling through, best of luck!

'Twas the night before finals
And all through UR...

I'll come up with a way to finish that rhyme someday.

Good luck,
Rachel Leigh

On Take Back the Night

As I take a break from taking notes on why Paul Feyerabend thinks we should throw method in science out with the bathwater, I want to talk about Tuesday night.

Tuesday, April 9th at UR was Take Back the Night.  For those of you who don't know what Take Back the Night is, it began in Philadelphia in the 1970s in response to the problems that women face walking alone at night.  Women are taught to fear the dark and the things that go bump within it, and Take Back the Night is intended to empower women and reclaim what has repeatedly been taken away.  It is primarily a sexual assault/rape awareness campaign, and at UR involves an open-mic style speaking event and a candlelight vigil.

It is a really moving event, but I think more than anything what I love about Take Back the Night is the extent to which it 1) puts a face to the idea of a survivor of sexual assault and 2) forces you to look at people as whole, complex individuals who have faced things and have proven themselves to be extraordinarily strong in the face of something that breaks a lot of people.  I know that I, personally, have this overwhelmingly powerful reaction whenever I see someone now who I have seen speak at TBtN in the past.  It is a combination of sympathy, empathy, and respect, sadness for what they have gone through, and pride for the strong and wonderful people they continue to be in spite of it.

I was heartbroken to see the sheer number of women who are a part of my daily campus community who went up to speak about something that no one should have to face and extraordinarily impressed and inspired by the number of strong, brave, beautiful women who refuse to let their rapists, stalkers, abusers, or scars define them.

I am proud to know you.  I am proud to fight with you.

Yours,
Rachel Leigh

On Margaret Thatcher

As I'm sure you've heard, Margaret Thatcher passed away.  (So did Lilly Pulitzer.  Sorry, I go to a southern school, I am required to know these things.)  If you haven't heard that Margaret Thatcher passed away, then, well, I'm sorry you're getting your news from me.  I am far from a reliable news source.  If you don't know who Margaret Thatcher is, well, then... I'm concerned.  Go to Wikipedia.

Anyway, may the Iron Lady of Britain's conservative age rest in peace.  We may not have agreed on all our politics (though, hey, she started one of the world's first free needle-exchange programs to prevent the spread of blood-communicable diseases among drug users, so we're not in complete opposititon!), but the fact remains that a political giant has passed.

In a lot of ways, I admire Margaret Thatcher in spite of her politics, because she was a woman in politics, who was widely-respected as a force to be reckoned with on the global stage.  She may have been a lot of things, including more conservative than I even pretend to be, but she was a truly strong and powerful woman.

Rest in Peace, Iron Lady.  I'm Sure the Doctor misses you fondly.

Politically,
Rachel Leigh

On North Korea (and an update!)

Greetings, darling readers!  It is now April, and after making many an obnoxious comment about March's terrible weather (in like a lion, out like a lamb, my ass -- more like out like a yeti), a weekend of glorious weather has befallen our humble university community.

Just in time to find me holed up in the library working on about 40 pages worth of papers.  Yay college?

This weekend was the glorious occasion of Pig Roast, which gave me a chance to escape from fears about North Korea losing their minds and deciding to fire missiles at all of us.  Has anybody seen Ze End of Ze World?  Because apparently North Korea has decided that "those ___ sons of a b*tches are going down."  Now we just need some French guy complaining he's too Le Tired to fire back.

Forgive me for making light of such a serious situation, but realistically, if there is some power hungry little man in North Korea who thinks that launching a nuclear bomb in the direction of any U.S. military station, be in South Korea, Japan, or Guam, is going to end with anything short of his country getting wiped off the map in retaliation, I sadly have no other response but to laugh.  Mostly because there are very few forces in this world more powerful than a desperate man with nothing to lose.  Those people do some pretty crazy things.

That being said, I hope we somehow avoid a nuclear holocaust long enough for me to continue updating you all on the thoughts that go through my head.  Keep on the lookout for posts on mental health, summer, and exams, all coming soon!

Building my panic room as we speak,
Rachel Leigh

On March Madness

It's March.  If you don't live under a rock, you know what that means.  It means that every college sports fan you know, and even some people who aren't, will be glued in front of the television for the next few weekends.

It also means brackets.  Now, brackets are just an interesting statistical experiment, because a) despite the painstaking efforts that go into determining seeds for the tournament, they never really seem to hold in practice and b) no matter how much effort you put in, it seems like there's always that one person who lucks their way into a better bracket than yours.

Don't get me wrong, I get why some people make three and four brackets, each differentiated by a few key decisions.  But I also kind of...don't.  Sure, it's exciting, but unless you're an intense gambler with a lot of time on your hands, I really don't get the hype.

Maybe someone can explain it to me.  Meanwhile, time to return to stressing over mine.

Madly,
Rachel Leigh

On Major Life Decisions

"Everyone I know is getting married or pregnant. I'm just getting more awesome."

~Barney Stinson, How I Met Your Mother

Okay, hold the phone.  Who told everyone around me that it was okay to start getting engaged and married or popping out babies?  When did I miss the memo on this whole life-changing-decisions thing?

I feel like I've got my life in order when both my socks match and I wake up before noon.  How is it possible that people my age are making these huge decisions about spending the rest of their lives with someone?  Or multiple someones, apparently.

I guess I'm torn, because I've read a number of things about how this generation is wasting our 20s, because we think we have our whole lives ahead of us to make these huge decisions, so it doesn't matter if we don't settle down or figure our lives out.  And I rationally know that that really just isn't the case.  But I don't feel like I'm emotionally or personally ready to start making those kinds of choices.

And I think a lot of this comes down to another big difference between Denmark and the States -- because in Denmark, most people don't get married until their 30s, at least, and most people older than I am are still in college and figuring out their lives.  And I feel like that shouldn't be a crime.  But unfortunately, in our system, it seems like not having everything figured out already puts you behind the 8-ball.

So now I'm suddenly having these visions of browsing the Help Wanted ads and spending my nights searching cheap dating sites (since my broke, unemployed, imaginary butt clearly couldn't afford the good ones), taking care of cats that somehow came into my possession, hoping to figure out my life.  And it seems like it's way too soon for those kinds of thoughts.

I guess I'm just not sure if everyone else is moving too fast or if I'm just going too slow to keep up, but either way, my head is spinning and something seems off.  I really just want to watch some cartoons and play with Legos.

Peter Pan-ing with the best of 'em,
Rachel Leigh

On 150!

Today is a very special day.  Not only is it special because it's Spring Break, and I've been moderately productive.  It is special because this is my 150th post!

150!
Woohoo 150! 

I figured that since this is my 150th post and more than three years after I started this blog, I'd do a little bit of looking back.  Sometimes retrospective is good.  I founded this blog on January 22, 2010, in the aftermath of approximately four similar projects which went under at various times for various reasons.  I was, at the time, a senior in high school who was dead-set on attending Columbia University and thought she pretty much had the world figured out.

I've always liked to write, so it made sense that eventually I would end up blogging.  I originally tried to keep my blog politically-neutral, but I realized pretty quickly that that was doing a service to neither me nor my (often sparse) readership.  So I dropped the attempts at professionalism and started writing what I know -- snarky, sarcastic, politically-charged looks at the world around me.

There was a brief attempt to monetize the blog, but that fell through when one of my friends decided to artificially inflate my view numbers.  Oh well, worse things have happened.

These days, I'm a second-semester junior (they've referred to me as a "Rising Senior" a few times already, and that is really disconcerting) readjusting to life in the States and trying to sort my life out one day at a time.  I'm proud of the work I've done so far, and I hope to see it continue to grow.

Here's to three more years,
Rachel Leigh

Greetings my darling readers!

I'm sorry that I've been such an awful blogger since I've been back.  By which I mean since always.  I guess it's just a combination of writer's block and being busy.  Hopefully I'll be able to put some interesting content out soon.

In the meantime, I guess I can tell you what I've been up to recently.  Since I've been back, I've been working on - album art for a friend's mashup album, a grant application, Ethics Bowl, Vagina Monologues, honors society applications, classes, work, classes, and other such shenanigans.

I've also been dragging myself out to basketball games and such related things.  It's been a great time to be a Spider.

Back to procrastinating on Midterm prep.

On My Plans for Valentine's Day

This week is the Vagina Monologues, which in addition to being a great time with an amazing group of women, is one of my favorite times of the year because it allows me the opportunity to make people extraordinarily uncomfortable by yelling at them about vaginas.

 Now, the reason I enjoy making people uncomfortable by yelling at them about vaginas is not simply because I like making people uncomfortable.  The fact is that I like pointing out the ways in which your discomfort doesn't make sense.  The word "vagina," and the legions of college girls yelling about them in the Student Commons, are considered weird or offensive because we are taught from a very young age that vaginas and the things they do and the things they're used for ought to be shameful and secretive.  All you need to know to know that is to look at the ways a girl will go out of her way to hide the fact that she's on her period -- which is, y'know, entirely out of our control and completely natural.

So girls are taught that our bits are supposed to be secrets that ought to be kept quiet, out of sight, and out of mind.  But while it's weird and disconcerting for women to be tabling about their vaginas (and, more honestly, about the violence which is perpetrated against those people who possess them), it's totally fine for men to be yelling about testicular cancer or to draw penises in public.  But people see our weird emoticon-vaginas on our posters and think they're creepy and wrong.

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For the record, they look like that.  Is that weird?

So, yes, I will continue to yell at you, professor who is refusing to make eye contact, about the wonders of vaginas and the things we say about them and the things we don't say about them (the things that lead to illness and violence because we're AFRAID or ashamed to talk about them), because I want to force you to think about why exactly the most quintessential piece of female human anatomy should be seen as creepy or wrong.  I mean, yeah, I get that they're all flaps and doo-dads, but I'll keep yelling about them Until the Violence Stops.

Yours in Vagina-Love,
Rachel Leigh

For the record, any one in the area of the University of Richmond, the show is the 13th, 14th, and 15th in the Pier (Tyler Haynes Commons) at 9 pm. You can get tickets, t-shirts, or chocolate vagina lollipops in the Commons every day.