Editing, diversity, and finding meaning

Yesterday Time published its fourth annual list of words to be banned in the coming year, and the internet exploded.

Typically I pay barely any attention to these lists, because A) it's all kind of silly and B) it's usually a poorly disguised reflection of whatever brand of "kids these days" BS people are complaining about right now. See Time's past winners: OMG, YOLO, and twerk, which are really just slang developed by the 13-to-25 crowd and otherwise harmless.

Okay, but now. Apparently the word "feminist" ought to be banned--and Time's measly reasoning for this is "when did it become a thing that every celebrity had to state their position on whether this word applies to them, like some politician declaring a party? Let's stick to the issues and quit throwing this label around like ticker tape at a Susan B. Anthony parade."

I don't need to talk about how ridiculous and infuriating that is--a thousand people before me have already done so, you can Google it--but yeah, I was pissed all day.  

So was Roxane Gay, incredible author of Untamed State (haven't read yet, want to/kind of scared to) and Bad Feminist (holy smokes what a wonderful book), who had a perspective on it that resonated with me in a major way:

(Also Gay said she is going to write her own essay on this whole issue which is going to be perfect and everything we need, and much better than what I am writing here, but I will write it anyway.)

So, diversity. I know it's kind of a boring buzzword ("At HerpDerp Corporation we value diversity because bleh bleh bleh"), and usually I don't care for it any more than you do. But actual diversity is important in real situations, like this fiasco, where the real question is--who let this slide? 

You're telling me that not only did a woman (yeah, I know! A woman!) concoct this embarrassingly racist/ageist/sexist list, but it got vetted by at least one editor? Who was the person who read this and said, "Yup, looks good"? 

Editing is about a whole lot more than knowing where to put your commas or what the difference between "gorilla" and "guerilla"is or when to end this run-on sentence. It is also, as Gay touched on, about being sensitive to what could sound shitty to a particular demographic.

I think about this occasionally when I'm daydreaming about my eventual full-time career in editing (it will happen! It will!), because as much as I sincerely love the itty-bitty details of editorial work, I also have this obnoxious desire to do something "meaningful" and "fulfilling" with my life, with the overall goal of one way or another "making a difference." Fixing other people's grammar sometimes does that for me--it really does--but other times I have to get all Carrie Bradshaw on myself and wonder: what does it all mean? What if I look back at the end of my life with the knowledge that I was always able to support myself financially but the work I did for 40 hours a week was pointless? 

That's perfectly fine for some folks (and a lot of people have no other option; let's be real here). I don't know if it would work for me, but I'm also 27 years old and probably could stand to give myself a break for not being the successful woman I want to be yet. Still, it's something I worry about: maintaining a steady income while managing not to have to look myself in the mirror and laugh at the robot I've become. I would like to, eventually, Be Someone.

And then Time gets totally slaughtered on the internet for letting one of its correspondents write up this dumb-ass article, and I look at that and think, okay, I never would have let that happen. And neither would a lot of really smart people in the world, people who are not necessarily middle-aged straight white men, who might have a different and more careful understanding of words and ideas, who will make your publication or your website or your book better and smarter and more nuanced and less likely to hurt or shame anyone, intentionally or not. 

The more diversity you get in a business--especially a big one, like Time--the better you're going to be at whatever it is you do, unless the thing you're doing is actually like making home furnishings for white supremacists, or what have you.

I am still far away from learning everything I need to learn about people different from me, because for all my good traits I am still a straight white woman who has been given a lot of things in her life and doesn't always realize how good she has it. Intersectional feminism is a vast and difficult field, y'all! But I would also bet my humble savings account that I have substantially more sense and empathy running through my bones than whatever sack of meat decided it'd be okay to leave "feminist" on a word-banning poll.

By request: a few thoughts about anti-date rape nail polish

Several days ago, I (along with the rest of the world, apparently) heard about a group of North Carolina State University students who had developed a nail polish that would detect date rape drugs. With a swirl of your manicured finger in a cranberry vodka handed to you by some new guy you met, you'd be able to tell--based on whether or not the polish changed color--if it'd been laced with something.

My first thought was: Hey, that's kinda cool. My second (slightly embarrassing) thought was: Does it come in different colors?

Here's the thing--I'm not as outraged by the invention of this nail polish as many of my feminist peers seem to be. And I'll say up front that they have made some excellent points, many of which I agree with.

I am just as angry about the expectation that women do all the work of preventing rape and sexual violence, about the idea that if you'd just worn less revealing clothing/not gotten drunk/stayed at home like a good little lady this horrible thing would not have happened to you.

I am just as angry about the idea that rape happens, and that there's not much you can do about it except stay away from rapists, who conveniently wear badges that say "RAPIST" on them and are never someone you personally know, like your boyfriend or your classmate or your coworker you thought was cool.

It's just that I don't really see a nail polish that can detect some date-rape drugs as part of the problem. I see it as a tool: just one tool in the entire war against sexual violence.

My freshman year of college, I was threatened by a guy who lived in the same dorm building as me after I told him (following one date and a few make-out sessions) that I didn't really feel like seeing him anymore. There'd been more than a few signs that told me he was a little unstable, a tad insecure, and I was starting to get grossed out. ("If you wanted fries from McDonald's right now, I would walk there and get them for you," he sobbed at me in the middle of a frigid February night, and I was like, "okay...thanks, I guess," silently wishing he would go away so I could get some sleep.)

Some time after I ended things, he came by my dorm room and showed me his poorly slashed wrists, a tribute to his affection for me--evidently it was my fault he'd decided to cut himself. I showed him out. After that came the phone calls, which I didn't pick up. Then there were the voicemails in which he informed me that I deserved to die, stupid, cold-hearted bitch that I was.

At that point the police got involved. The dude quit bothering me, though we continued to live in the same dorm building for the rest of the school year and I'd see him wandering campus or standing outside in his pajamas during a fire drill. My heart raced every time I saw him. I was nineteen and I didn't know what to do. I did, however, buy a small canister of pepper spray to keep on my keychain.

I never had to use it. I think it was only in the last year that the thing finally got chucked it out. But having that little weapon on hand, closing my fingers around it inside my coat as I went from class to class, made me feel a little safer.

Date-rape nail polish is hardly the answer to the problem of rape. But if it lends any sense of control or empowerment to the person wearing it--if it means she feels comfortable going out among strangers--I cannot begin to tell anyone that this is a bad thing.

All that said, however, we all need to be clear on a couple of very important points:

1. Drug-detection nail polish is NOT anti-rape polish. It will detect a few common types of drugs used for the purpose of date rape (we'll get to that in a second). Never, under ANY circumstances, should a woman be blamed for not wearing the damn nail polish if she's raped or assaulted after being drugged. The victim-blaming BS has to stop.

2. Here are the drugs that the nail polish can detect: Rohypnol, Xanax, GHB. These are NOT the only drugs used for date rape. (I mean, usually it's just as simple as getting someone really drunk on plain old alcohol.) Trust your instincts. Don't drink anything you don't feel is safe.

3. That last point might have a few folks bristling, because again--why should it be a woman's job to keep herself safe from rape and sexual violence? I know. I agree. But please don't tell me not to look out for myself. It sucks, it absolutely does, but we are not yet at the point where everyone gets that rape is horrible and no one should do it, ever. Until we get there--and it's not going to happen in my lifetime--I'm never going to fault a woman for doing whatever she thinks is best for her own safety.

4. This is the hardest one, for me: talk about this shit. Out loud, with people who possibly don't agree or don't understand. The pushback against date-rape nail polish has primarily been about the fact that a fashion accessory isn't going to solve the problem; only educating people about the reality and the horror of rape, about the concept of consent, will get us there. So do it. It would be great if there was, like, a high school class that you had to take in order to graduate that was all about various forms of sexual violence and how none of it is ever okay. But until that happens: call people out for their gross jokes and their misogyny. Share your experiences, if you're comfortable. If you get drugged and/or assaulted and/or raped, report it.

And believe women who tell you they've been raped. It happens more often than you think.

Re-finding Feminism

A while back--not far back enough that I'm able to stop cringing about it yet--I renounced feminism.

Well, kind of. I never stopped believing in equal rights for women; I never stopped being pro-choice and I never quit voting and I never decided that we women were all just a bunch of whiny harpies who needed to be put back in our place. I held onto my beliefs, but the word "feminism" became a dirty one in my vocabulary.

The unfortunate, hilarious, oooh-seriously? reason: I was influenced by a man I was dating at the time.

He was, generally, a good guy. Probably still is. And by "good guy," I mean he was respectful and wasn't the type of man you'd find creeping on women in bars or raping anyone. I mean the basic tenets of not being a monster.

But he felt threatened by feminism. As he explained it to me, feminism meant preferential treatment of women by a society trying too hard to right its past wrongs. As a man, he felt he was often overlooked for things like jobs or scholarships, in favor of someone who could fill a diversity quota. And as a white man especially, he felt that as an individual he might miss out on opportunities because he represented too much power and privilege. He was angry that traditional gender roles not only limited and hurt women, but men as well--it was just that no one seemed to care.

Back then, I understood very little about the concept of "privilege." It didn't occur to me to tell him: Yes, but as a white male in America, you have so many advantages you probably don't see most of them. Or: the very fact that you feel threatened by women standing up for their rights not to be second-class citizens is proof of why feminism is important.

I wanted this dude to love me. So he kept talking about how feminism had wronged him, and slowly, I came around to his point of view.

I was raised by feminists. My mother in particular was crucial to this part of my upbringing: giving me books by Gloria Steinem, teaching me about my period and the particulars of my lady-parts when I was very young (much to my chagrin), subscribing me to New Moon magazine. My father was never so overt, but he instilled a strong sense of responsibility and independence in me, and he always liked to toss a baseball or kick a soccer ball around with me when I was growing up. None of this "if only you were a boy" BS.

When I started dating this particular man, I felt only briefly that I was betraying myself (no kidding). I was giving up the ideals that I'd learned were so important, in favor of something that, I was convinced, was more evolved, more enlightened. Men experience sexism, too!!! I'd think, anytime someone mentioned something unfair to women. Harassment? Stereotyping? Discrimination? They happened to men, too, I reasoned, and therefore what women experienced wasn't so special. It was hardly worth discussion. And after all, if you were getting paid less than a man for the same work, it was probably your own fault. I wrote an editorial for my school paper about "reverse sexism" and began explaining that "I'm a humanist, not a feminist. I believe in equal rights for ALL PEOPLE."

I was probably insufferable.

I'm back on track now. That man has been out of my life for several years now. A while ago, I read Caitlin Moran's How to be a Woman and found myself falling back into the soft, pillowy safety net of my feminist allies thanks to her clarity, wit, and utter reasonableness. This quote of hers, in particular, helped lead me out of the tunnel:

“We need to reclaim the word 'feminism'. We need the word 'feminism' back real bad. When statistics come in saying that only 29% of American women would describe themselves as feminist - and only 42% of British women - I used to think, What do you think feminism IS, ladies? What part of 'liberation for women' is not for you? Is it freedom to vote? The right not to be owned by the man you marry? The campaign for equal pay? 'Vogue' by Madonna? Jeans? Did all that good shit GET ON YOUR NERVES? Or were you just DRUNK AT THE TIME OF THE SURVEY?” 

And with that I realized what an idiot I'd been.

Several things have happened in my life recently, however, that made me realize that my own return to sanity regarding feminism doesn't mean shit for the rest of the world. Caitlin Moran is right. A lot of us just plain suck when it comes to women's issues, and whether it's because we're too afraid of the "feminist" label or have some misguided idea of what feminism is, we're not doing a very good job at all.

Identifying as a feminist can be terrifying. It still is for me. I have a hard time talking about it with anyone whose viewpoints might be different than mine; it's only the known feminists I can be completely honest with. That's partly to do with my own dislike of any sort of conflict, but a lot of feminists struggle with being loud and proud about it, too. If I were to tell a complete stranger that I'm a feminist, that person might come to all sorts of unfair conclusions about me, from the superficial ones (I must hate the color pink and any woman who shaves her armpits) to the devastating ones (I must hate men and want to crush their dreams).

And as much as they'd be wrong, I still don't want them to think those things about me. I do have a mental weapon (built on Caitlin Moran's influence) against that doubt and fear, though, which I'll share here.

For any woman afraid of feminism: there's a good chance that unless you live in some sort of cult, you're operating on feminist values without even realizing it. Do you have a job? Are you educated? Do you wear pants and use birth control? Do you enjoy going out unchaperoned on a Friday night, spending your own money, and heading home without any expectation of a curfew? You can thank feminism for that. Women didn't come by these privileges easily.

It's easy not to realize or remember where we've come from. It's incredibly common for an otherwise "modern woman" to not recognize why she is able to live the way she lives. I lost my way for a while, and it feels good to get back to being totally myself, thinking my own thoughts and living as I choose. And after all, isn't that the whole point?