Six stories from the borderlands

One short week, spent sleeping nestled between mesquite bushes and barrel cactus, driving nearly impassable dirt roads by day, and here I am back in Tucson. I have ideas and issues and ideology to wrestle with, and if you’re at all interested in immigration or politics more generally, you’ll have a lot of reading to do in the next few weeks. But for now, while I’m still here, I wanted to share a few short stories from the Arizona borderlands.

1) I meet a man in Nogales. Not a man, I suppose—he’s more or less my age, though substantially taller. Sarah introduces me to him, saying that he’s from a town near my college. We talk for a minute—I’m always excited to meet people who have heard of Walla Walla, Washington. I ask him a few questions about where he grew up, and we part ways.

Later, Sarah tells me that he grew up near me, but was deported last year—caught in a traffic stop. He has no legal way of getting home, no means of re-entering the U.S. I cringe at the thought that in a few days, I’ll step onto a plane and be back home in a matter of hours. There’s a bitter taste in my mouth for the rest of the afternoon.

2) I find myself cooking dinner with a group of anarchists. It’s much like cooking dinner with any group of young people. We have the radio cranked to play the latest in terrible pop music, and we relax into the ease of self-deprecation while waiting for the onions to brown. Any time our limited camp kitchen resources create a challenge, someone feels compelled to blame hierarchical systems of oppression.

“You guys, the patriarchy is burning the quesedillas again.”

Someone else chimes in. “Fucking patriarchy ruins everything.”

We all laugh, and someone suggests adding noodles to the soup. I’m not a huge fan, so I cross my forearms in front of my chest—a block. It’s used in consensus circles to indicate irreconcilable disagreement with something being proposed. Here, though, we’ve resigned ourselves to the irony of having a trip run by leaders (or “facilitators”) who don’t believe in hierarchy. The noodles go into the soup. I have a bite, and find to my surprise that it’s not so bad after all.

3) Walking, I notice suddenly that the signs are all in Spanish. I turn to my right.

“Sarah, are we in Mexico?”

She nods.

I’ve walked into Nogales without being asked to stop, show my passport, prove my citizenship or answer questions about my intentions.

On the way back stateside, standing in line, I snap pictures of the trucks lined up and waiting to enter. A Customs and Border Patrol agent snaps at me, telling me to stop. I apologize, saying I didn’t know. I assume this is the end of it, but I reach the front of the line. The man waves me forward and takes my passport.

“What were you taking pictures of?” he demands.

“Signs, the trucks…nothing much.”

I shrug, hoping my casualness will deflect his concerns about homeland security, but it doesn’t work. He motions for me to show him. I turn the screen on.

“You’re not allowed to take pictures of the port,” he tells me, shaking his head. I wonder what I look like to him, greasy hair pulled back into a knot, Chacos covered in Mexican dust. I pause, waiting for him to say something, but he doesn’t. I ask if I need to delete the photo, and he says yes.

The first one is of a sign—no agricultural products may enter the country. He doesn’t check for agricultural products in my backpack, but he makes sure I hit the delete button twice. The next photo shows two trucks under a sign that says “open” in green lights. I hit delete. We continue this for twenty images until I reach one of the border wall, framed by construction work.

“The wall is okay,” he tells me grudgingly. I put my camera away, ask if he needs anything else, and walk back into my country.

It didn’t occur to me until after I’d crossed that I could have refused. It didn’t occur to me until later that night how low the stakes are for me when I choose to cross a border.

4) The two Border Patrol agents are joking with each other, but I can barely hear them over the rattling of chains. To my left are forty or so detainees—people picked up near the border in the last few days. They’re here in court to plead guilty en masse to criminal offenses—entering the U.S. not through an authorized port, re-entering the U.S. after being deported. Six at a time, they go up to the microphone and the judge questions them.

“Are you a citizen of Mexico?”

Sí.

“Were you found in Arivaca, Arizona on the 22^nd of March of this year?”

Sí.

“Were you previously denied admission, excluded, deported and removed from the United States on April 2 . . .”

Sí.

And together, as a group: Culpable. Culpable. Culpable.

“All guilty,” says the translator to the judge.

Those six file out, and another six are up. Some of them were previously deported earlier this year. I can’t imagine making the journey through the desert twice in a lifetime, much less twice in one year. Those who have never been deported before will be back on a bus to Mexico this afternoon. How many of them will try again? How many of them will end up back here?

5) Heading back into town, we pass through a Border Patrol checkpoint. They’re stationed strategically throughout the Southwest to pick up migrants who have survived the desert. We roll down the window, and he sticks his head in the car.

“Everyone a U.S. citizen?”

Marcel, our driver, says no, he’s German, and starts to hand the man his passport. The agent glances at the cover, doesn’t open it, and hands it back.

“I’ve seen all I need to see,” he says to our four white faces. “You folks have a nice weekend.”

6) We’re out on water drops, delayed a few hours because I noticed the car needed gas right before we’d reached the remote washes where we put supplies out. It’s our second stop on the route, and each of us carries a gallon of water in each hand. On the caps, we’ve drawn hearts. The sides say Suerte or Buen viaje in black marker.

We follow the migrant trail, but when we get there, we find almost a dozen full jugs of water. The Samaritans have been here recently. I tell myself it’s a good thing that the water isn’t being taken, hoping that it means people don’t need it, not that they aren’t finding it. We rearrange the jugs, placing them directly on the trail, since the coyotes don’t always let people stop to grab supplies when the groups move at night. On the side of one, in pink marker, is a wish: Hasta un mundo sin fronteras.

Until a world without borders.

Selling out to investment banks

Most of the students I know at Whitman want to go save the world. We’re a liberal arts college made up of idealists, future Peace Corps volunteers and academics. I’ve always sort of pictured Whitman as a place to train the next generation of college-educated small organic farmers, but there’s something to be said for health insurance and being able to pay off student loans. I’ve spent the last week in New York City talking to Whitman College alums working in tons of different careers—law, media, finance—and it’s been fascinating to see how people explain their career choices to us, and to see so many Whitties living and working in a city that’s about as different from Walla Walla as you could reasonably get.

One of our first appointments was with an alum who does private baking for Merrill Lynch. He deals exclusively with clients who have at least $25 million in assets. He came to the U.S. and to Whitman as an immigrant on a full scholarship, so he’s been incredibly happy to be so successful in his professional life.

We asked him what he thought about his job. He leaned back in his chair, arm angled against his side, and thought for a minute.

“We don’t really produce anything. We’re capital allocators,” he told us. “I struggled with it for a few years—what am I really accomplishing here? Making rich people richer?”

Ultimately, he goes back to the fact that he has a dynamic, rewarding career. He also said that the wealth earned by the rich often goes back to philanthropy efforts, so in a sense, he’s making the world a better place by allowing more charity to take place. Still, I got the sense that he struggles to reconcile his beliefs with his work.

“I do love my profession, but if I didn’t have to do it, I wouldn’t do it,” he told us. He said he had to do it to pay the bills, which there are a lot of.

Our Goldman Sachs guy was much less apologetic. He’s a vice president in merchant banking—not the division that was responsible for the collapse of capitalism, as he told us several times. He said he loves the challenges he faces at work and the culture at Goldman. He downplayed our concerns about the long hours, acknowledging that sometimes he has to stay late (until 2 or 3 a.m.), but he’s usually out of the office by 8 or 9 at night. I thought about that for a while. I’ve always told myself that I would never get a job where 60 hour work weeks are the norm and 18-hour days are sometimes a necessity, but I don’t think that’s really true. I can’t imagine loving banking enough to do it for most of my waking hours, but I would spend that time on writing or reporting in a heartbeat.

I asked him if there are any social or environmental responsibility guidelines that Goldman uses to screen potential investments. He said that the firm takes those things very seriously, and that they wouldn’t invest in a company causing serious environmental damage. I asked him to what extent that’s really true.

“You’d invest in Exxon-Mobil or Apple or Nike, right?”

He paused for a second, then acknowledged that yes, they would. But he added that there had been investment deals which had been stopped because of environmental concerns. The cynic in me says that any efforts to avoid environmental damages stem purely from a profit motive. If your company is dumping toxic waste everywhere and is eventually forced to pay for clean-up, the value of your assets goes down. I don’t fault him for this, really. I was trying to get at something I struggle with a lot. I understand that investing allocates capital in a supposedly “efficient” way and allows for business creation, economic growth and jobs, but I think there’s a fundamental tension between profit-motivated investing and environmental/social responsibility. A conservative or moderate (and really, most liberals I know as well) would say that the problem is externalities, and that if we figure out a way to make environmental liabilities show up on a P&L, we’ll make that investment machine a vehicle for environmental good. But I’m not convinced it’s a reconcilable problem.

The point of the trip is to network with alums and get a sense of what careers are out there in the world. We’re able to ask them questions about their work, ostensibly to figure out if we might be interested in working in a similar position. Since most of us are bleeding heart liberals with no desire to be in investment banking, we asked them their thoughts on the Occupy movement instead.

Both of our guys said they absolutely supported the movement’s goal of reducing income inequality. I found this interesting, since the original Occupy contingent wasn’t really about that at all. The 99% rhetoric is so ingrained in our national consciousness now that it’s easy to forget Occupy’s birth was with the Adbusters folks—a contingent of anti-capitalist anarchists who wanted to criticize the most obvious and extreme example of soulless capitalism: investment banking. Income inequality is a symptom of what they see as a much larger problem, but they’re not really into reform, because the whole system is rotten.

Our Merrill Lynch guy was more strident in his support of the protests, talking about the importance of equal opportunity and how much he believes in the American Dream, even though he knows it’s gotten harder to move up since he did it. Still, he thinks Occupy hasn’t accomplished much.

“It has high hopes. I don’t think it accomplished anything,” he said. “I think it sort of failed to do what it was going to do, which was create a more urgent environment for our country to rally around. . .”

He also said that he thought the movement was too fragmented and disjointed to do much that was practical. Our Goldman guy echoed this sentiment, saying that he agreed with the goal of more equal income distribution, but thought the movement was too theatrical in ways that detracted from the point.

Most interestingly for me, Merrill Lynch guy said that he absolutely considers himself to be part of the 99%. I’ve thought about this a lot as well—can you affiliate with others across class lines effectively? Whether or not he’s technically part of the wealthiest 1% of Americans, I have no doubt that his life is much more closely aligned with that crowd than it is with the single mother working two minimum wage jobs to try to put food on the table for her kids. Still, I’d rather have a fabulously rich guy who cares about those below him than one who’s indifferent. He said most of his colleagues aren’t like this, and that politics isn’t something you discuss at the office. We asked him if he would ever consider bringing it up, but he said it wouldn’t be possible.

These meetings reminded me how easy it is to become complacent, how easy it is to convince yourself that the work you’re doing is enough. I’m not criticizing these guys’ individual career choices, though they’re not choices I would make. But talking to them reminded me that whatever I end up doing with my life—journalism, activism, food policy—I need to keep the end goal in mind. Another Whittie we met with—a lawyer at a global firm that represents banks, sovereign nations and a bunch of other important actors—said that he didn’t think the work he was doing was actively making the world worse, but that there’s a huge difference between that and actively improving things. There are a ton of things I want to do with my life, but while I navigate that, I need to make sure that I’m true to the values that got me there in the first place. I’m sure I’ll become less radical as I age and settle down (though I’m still hoping not), but I want to check in with myself about why I’m doing the work I’m doing regularly. Because if whatever it is isn’t working to fix something that’s wrong with the world, I’m in the wrong profession.

Vegan month: the official verdict

My vegan challenge has been over for a few weeks now, but the usual chaos of school and being a reporter have prevented me from writing something about it. My apologies. Without further ado, here’s what I learned from a month of eating only plants. (Ok, plus a few food additive chemicals. No one’s perfect.)

The most surprising part of vegan month was that it was pretty damn easy. I’ve always heard vegans say that giving up eggs and dairy isn’t a huge deal, and I’d never really believed them. My twelve years of vegetarianism have largely been spent convincing die-hard meat eaters that it’s not that hard to go without. Still, something about the pervasiveness of dairy and eggs in our food had me convinced that going vegan is a challenge on an entirely different scale. Once I got in the swing of it, though, it wasn’t that hard. You do have to be more vigilant about what you eat, but I found that doing so is actually a pretty rewarding and healthful process.

One of the awesome things about being vegan was that it got me reading food labels in the grocery store. There were many times I picked up something to read the ingredients and double-check that it was vegan. Often, the item in question wouldn’t have any animal products, but would be full of oils, chemical additives or something else that made me pause and think. There were a lot of junk foods I ended up not buying, not because I couldn’t eat them, but because a closer look made me realize that I didn’t actually want to.

Another health benefit came from the challenge of finding vegan junk food. While it’s not that hard—potato chips and French fries are totally allowable—vegans are definitely pushed away from many of our worst offenders, like ice cream. I’ve noticed that gatherings with excessive amounts of junk food are a hallmark of both American culture and college life. Meetings, newspaper production nights and the like are often accompanied by a smorgasbord of pizzas, cookies, brownies and other sorts of sweet, fatty deliciousness. Most people eat a ton in these situations because they’re stressed and the food tastes good. Most people who pig out on junk food have eaten plenty of calories for the day—the junk food is a completely empty addition to the diet that isn’t nutritionally or calorically necessary. Because I couldn’t join in the pigging out, I ended up steering clear of a lot of excess food that I otherwise would have eaten. For me, this was the biggest benefit. I wish I could say that vegan month made me better about this, but since I’ve stopped being vegan, I’ve more or less returned to my usual cookie-inhaling ways.

Of course, not everything was perfect. My largest source of frustration with being vegan was that I became one of those people: obnoxious hipsters who go to the local sandwich place and stare pensively at the menu board for ten minutes before asking, “Do you guys have anything vegan?” I did this once and immediately hated myself so much that I swore off any further dining out, making an exception for Walla Walla’s relatively new vegan café, the Garden. I attended potluck brunches with friends and forgot to eat beforehand, an omission which left me lightheaded as I tried to walk home after a meal of orange juice and cantaloupe slices. I found myself turning down pastries offered to me by a visiting alum and realizing that there’s no way to say, “I’m sorry, I can’t, I’m vegan” without sounding pretentious. This, of course, is about cultural associations with veganism rather than the diet itself. But the further you remove yourself from what society considers “normal” eating, the more you open your choices up to scrutiny.

The fear of being judged as a pretentious hipster and the difficulty in finding places which served vegan food made me more proactive about cooking meals. I planned days in advance, making giant pots of soup on Sunday nights and planning to eat leftovers all week. I solidified my repertoire of a few solid dishes—lentil soup, red lentil curry and chili. (I did manage to adhere almost perfectly to my no-soy-based-fake-meats-or-dairy rule, though I snuck a bite of two of my vegan housemate’s tofu stir-fry one time.) I essentially cemented my understanding of “food” as “home-cooked meal”, which was a welcome transition after spending a semester abroad and having little control over what I ate.

It’s a little hard for me to pin down the concrete effects being vegan had on my body. I got a cold midway through the month—nothing unusual in the winter—but took over a week to recover, which is a long time for me. However, I can’t attribute this to being vegan. It could just as easily have been a particularly nasty virus, the fact that I was overworked and stressed, a lack of vitamin C in my diet or some combination of factors. I definitely lost weight during this month, but a lot of that could have just been me shedding the fat that grew out of the insane quantities of rice consumed in Ecuador. Chester (the temperamental adolescent dragon who lives in my stomach) was also noticeably happier during vegan month than he had been in a while, though I think a lot of that was just transitioning back to the U.S. Though since I’ve started paying attention more to what sets him off, I’m starting to think I may be mildly lactose intolerant.

I  didn’t feel tired or lacking in energy during vegan month, though I did find myself craving food more, especially sweets. I’ve heard that this is pretty common, and that not feeling “full” leads vegans to snack a lot. I think this could have been managed perfectly fine if I’d decided to do this for longer and invest the time in monitoring my nutrients, but since it was only a month, I figured I wouldn’t kill myself if I just played it by ear.

Ultimately, I’m really glad I decided to try being vegan. I came in thinking I’d be miserable, and I found out that veganism is pretty damn legit. My usual rants about individual choice being an ineffective weapon for change still apply, but I think veganism actually can have health benefits, in the sense that it reduces junk food and fat consumption. This is something that could also be accomplished with good self-control, incidentally, but I personally find it harder to stick to rules I made up (don’t eat junk food) as opposed to rules that are part of a larger thing (be vegan). I’ve noticed a few permanent changes in my eating habits since then. I’ve stopped eating so much cheese, and my consumption of animal-product based meals has definitely declined. I’ve renewed my appreciation for lentils and beans as protein sources, and stopped making yogurt my default breakfast. I’m definitely eating less dairy overall and being more conscientious about what I do eat.

My next food challenge is going to be a month without processed foods or added sugar. I’m waiting until the summer, when I have the full bounty of summer harvest at my disposal, and my goal is going to be to eat almost entirely local stuff I buy at the Walla Walla Farmer’s Market. I think that my biggest health problem is my addiction to junk food, and while vegan month flirted with addressing it, real food month will hit it head on. I’m excited to report back.

Food showdown, part one: the vegan challenge

I’m headed back to Whitman tomorrow, and as soon as I get there, I’ll be starting my first food challenge for the year: one month being vegan.

I’ve been a vegetarian (or pescatarian, more accurately) for most of the last twelve years, with a brief hiatus this past year to travel (Ghana and Ecuador are not veggie-friendly countries) and explore the world of local, grass-fed beef (which is probably a better choice than processed soy in the long run). Being a vegetarian is incredibly easy for me—while I like the taste of meat, it’s not something I crave or feel that I need to be healthy. I get plenty of iron and protein from other sources, and I pretty much subsist on beans, lentils, yogurt and cheese. (I try to steer clear of soy because of its role in deforesting the Amazon, the way it’s usually grown in monocultures and the way it’s processed using a neurotoxin which can cause severe health problems in workers. But sometimes, you need to have pho or pad Thai.)

Being vegan is a whole different ballgame. I love cheese. It’s like, my favorite food. I recognize that being as outraged as I am by factory farming while conveniently ignoring where my cheese and yogurt come from is hypocritical, and I’ve tried to get better about that in the past year. While I’ll eat cheese when it’s served to me, I try to only buy happy local cheese when I’m in charge of my own food. But the majority of the animal products I do eat come from the same factory farmed sources I’m always complaining about.

I’ve gone into detail about my food philosophy a million times on this blog, but quick recap: I don’t think being vegan is particularly healthy for most people, I think framing veganism as the solution to factory farming is really disingenuous and alienating, I think the ability to be vegetarian or vegan is often a function of privilege (knowledge, cooking facilities, time, money) and I don’t think individual choices are a valid solution to anyenvironmental problems, especially not something as complicated as the industrial food juggernaut. BUT, I’m also a person who thinks and talks about food and food politics a lot, and if that’s a thing I’m going to be doing for my life, I think I should at least know what it’s like to actually be vegan. I figure a month is long enough that I’ll get an idea what it’s like and won’t just spend the entire time counting down to my next quesadilla, but short enough that I can stick it out without being miserable or unhealthy if it doesn’t agree with my body.

I’m interested in exploring how I feel during this month, especially since I’m following it with a no processed foods and no added sugar month (and then going back to being a regular pescatarian). As many of you know, I have an adolescent dragon named Chester who lives in my stomach and likes to throw temper tantrums and/or loud parties. So anything which makes his life a little easier works out well for me too. I’m going to be recording general impressions (do I feel healthy? full? hungry? craving certain foods? well-nourished?), as well as weight (I’m guessing I might lose weight, but probably not much, given that Tim’s Cascade Chips are vegan), energy levels and anything else different that I notice. My hope is that I’ll use this month to explore new recipes and come out of it with some healthier and more conscious eating habits. Stay tuned…

NOW AVAILABLE: Mining and democracy in Intag, Ecuador

For those of you who've been waiting for it (probably no one), I've finally translated my final study abroad paper into English. You can view and download the entire thing as a PDF here.

 It's a thrilling tale of mining companies, small-scale farmers turned activists, betrayal, lies, possible illegal cyanide dumping, long speeches at regional assemblies, journalism and constitutional law, and all for the low, low price of FREE!

Rachel's Official Guide to Learning More About Shit Going on in the World

Quite frequently, I get people who ask me for recommended reading lists or a list of books they can read to be better informed about stuff going on in the world. After a number of friends from my study abroad program asked me to make a reading list for them so they could be more on top of politics and other news, I started thinking. While I do read a lot of nonfiction, the books I’ve read aren’t the only source of my knowledge about stuff. I spend at least as much time reading articles online, following people on Twitter and doing other things to stay informed. So rather than make a book list, I made this: Rachel’s Official Guide to Learning More About Shit Going on in the World. It’s a booklist with article links, recommendations for people to follow and stuff like that, vaguely grouped by topic, but generally sort of free form. It's based on my personal experience and is thus completely subjective, noncomprehensive and biased. Hopefully this is helpful to everyone who wants to understand where my brain picks up the information it does. Comments, questions, criticisms and additions are highly appreciated/encouraged. I will also make additions as I encounter and remember more cool stuff. (Disclaimer: I am pretty damn far left of center, a fact which I make no apologies for, but which certainly informs my news sources and the things I choose to read. I think being better-informed is a nonpartisan activity, but my Twitter feed also doesn't contain a single political commentator who self-identifies as conservative except the National Review Online. Just sayin'.)

a general note about finding cool stuff to read online

I get my online news primarily four ways:

1) Twitter. I follow a group of magazines, newspapers, journalists, bloggers, people who are paid to think, etc. My timeline thus usually somewhat reflects what’s going on in the world of lefty politics, environmental news and the like, without me having to individually check the websites of everyone cool who I try to pay attention to.

Some people I would highly recommend for having a well-rounded feed:

Pro Publica (nonprofit indie investigative journalism)

Grist (environmental news)

Feministing (awesome feminist blog)

The New York Times

Mother Jones (my favorite nonprofit journalists ever)

Colorlines (racial justice analysis and news)

RH Reality Check (reproductive and sexual health and access news)

AlterNet (leftist news)

Occupy Wall Street

GOOD (a magazine covering a variety of topics, generally into highlighting cool stuff people are doing)

Naomi Klein (author of The Shock Doctrine, commentator on various issues)

High Country News (news about the American West, strong environmental coverage)

Wikileaks (they open governments, apparently)

Al Jazeera English (great global coverage)

2) Reddit. If you're unaware, reddit is a social news site grouped by topic. Basically, users can subscribe to different sub-reddits focusing on different subjects, which can be general (politics, environment) or very specific (Occupy Wall Street, guerrilla gardening). Users submit links to different sub-reddits, which are then voted up or down by other users. So the front page of any given reddit displays links that are the most well-liked by the community as a whole. And your personal front page displays the same for all the sub-reddits you subscribe to. It's a pretty cool way of finding weird articles you otherwise might not about stuff you're interested in. Plus, you can comment on links and generate discussions with other interested people.

3) Longform.org and longreads.org. These two sites collect submissions of longform journalism--generally articles that take at least 10 or so minutes to read. They both post a few new articles each day. Longform has articles organized by topic, so if you want to learn a lot about a particular country or issue, it can be a great source. Longreads lets you search all their articles for keywords of interest. Both sites will also post content that's timely, such as collections of articles about Steve Jobs right after he died. In general, they're best for going deep into interesting or random things, or for people who just appreciate good writing, and less good for keeping up on current events.

4) The New York Times. While somewhat vanilla, it's a damn good all-around general news source. If you’re not a subscriber, you can get access to something like 20 articles online per month free. Articles you click on links to (for example, via Twitter, Facebook, or email) don’t count against this limit. Another good daily general news sources is the BBC. Also The Economist.

One other thing: more than being about following the right people on Twitter or reading the best articles out there, being well-informed is mostly a choice. You have to decide that you're going to dedicate a certain amount of time every day, whether it's ten minutes or three hours, to figuring out what's going on in the world. By all means, go for what you're interested in. I follow reproductive healthcare issues very closely, because it's something I care deeply about. I didn't pay as much attention to the Arab Spring as I probably should have, because it just didn't grab me. There are far too many things going on in the world for you to ever know all of them. Don't let it stop you from getting started.

Now then, here are some specific topics I care about with books and articles that I think are especially helpful for understanding them.

food and food politics

1) books

The Omnivore’s Dilemma—Michael Pollan

The classic explaining what’s wrong with our industrial food system, especially industrial meat and corn, and how we might go about fixing it. Not a great analysis of some key food justice issues, like food deserts and access to healthy options, but a great introduction to what’s out there.

Fast Food Nation—Eric Schlosser

I actually like this a lot better than Omnivore’s Dilemma. It explores the history of fast food and looks at industrial potato farming, flavor additives, slaughterhouses and a whole bunch of other related issues. My favorite part is the fact that he looks at industrial meat production from a labor standpoint, not just from a this-is-gross-and-unethical perspective.

Animal Factory—David Kirby

For people interested in factory farms, this book is a nice break from the usual literature focused on animal torture and gross health violations. It focuses on the efforts of local activists in rural areas (all self-identified Republicans) to stop factory farms near their homes because of human health and odor concerns. It's a refreshingly personal and unique perspective.

Stuffed and Starved—Raj Patel

This is an awesome book about global food politics. It's a bit academic in tone, and has been criticized for being one-sided with regard to the causes of poverty in developing countries. But I think it has a ton of interesting perspectives about government food policy, genetically modified crops and a bunch of other important topics.


Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit—Barry Estabrook
The title of this book is somewhat misleading, because the majority of it is actually about the slave labor used to grow most Florida tomatoes and the way undocumented immigrants are exploited for cheap fruit (which, in my opinion, is even more interesting). Though it also talks about tomato genes, organic producers and a few other things. But anyway, it's an awesome book, whether you're into good food, social justice, immigrant rights, or whatever.


Sweet Charity: Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement—Janet Poppendieck
This is an awesomely thought-provoking book. The author essentially argues that food banks and other food giveaway things have done more harm than good in addressing food insecurity in the US. She discusses how American values, such as not wasting food, inform the kinds of actions being taken to address hunger, and how the concept of "poverty" has been almost completely redefined as an issue of "hunger".

Empty Pleasures: The Story of Artificial Sweeteners from Saccharin to Splenda—Carolyn de la Pena
A great cultural history of artificial sweeteners, including where they came from, how they were marketed, how gender and a desire for "control" played into their popularity and how efforts to regulate or control them have been resisted.

2) articles

On Racialicious, an awesome essay about growing up in a food desert.

My own blog post from this summer: what I learned about food justice and food "choice" during two years behind a checkstand.

How Goldman Sachs gambled on starvation.

From Foreign Policy magazine, the new geopolitics of food.

The Seattle Times explores what quinoa's rising popularity in affluent countries has done to Bolivia and other exporters.

3) blogs and sites for news

Tom Philpott, food blogger for Mother Jones

Food Safety News

Raj Patel's blog

financial crisis

In general, there are a few great journalists who have covered the collapse very well from different angles. 

Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone has some great articles explaining how we got here and ranting about the moral bankruptcy of Wall Street. He's also written a few books about the crash, most recently Giftopia, which would be good for further reading. Among his articles, these are my favorites:
-Is the Securities and Exchange Comission (SEC) covering up Wall Street crimes?

-On the lack of enforcement: Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?
-Wall Street's Bailout Hustle

Michael Lewis of Vanity Fair has also written extensively about the collapse, focusing more on the Euro Zone. His article on Greece, "Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds", is a great explanation of the state of Greece's economy. He's also covered Ireland and what all these failing Euro countries will mean for Germany. He's written several books as well--The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, which explores the housing market/derivative crisis through the eyes of people who saw it coming; and Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World, which looks at the economies that have been collapsing around the world.

Bethany McLean, also with Vanity Fair, has covered investment baking for a while (she was one of the journalists who broke the Enron story). She has an excellent article exploring the disconnect between how we see Goldman Sachs and how the company sees itself, post-crash, and another piece on the history of Merril Lynch and how its corporate culture contributed to the mortgage crisis.

A German paper, Spiegel, did an excellent, if somewhat dry, series explaining the collapse of the Euro Zone very clearly. (Parts one, two and three.)

Mother Jones, my favorite magazine ever, has a timeline from 2008 tracing the history of the housing/financial crisis.

American society/culture/labor

Reefer Madness—Eric Schlosser
By the Fast Food Nation guy, this book explores the underground economy in the US by looking at three markets: marijuana, porn, and illegal immigrant labor. It's a fascinating history of drug wars, obscenity laws and a bunch of other random things.

Methland—Nick Reding
One of my favorite books ever. It explores what the meth epidemic has done to small-town America, which means that in addition to being about drugs, it talks about the crippling effects that job loss and industrial agriculture have had in rural areas.

Nickle and Dimed—Barbara Ehrenreich
A classic from the mid-90s. The author goes "undercover" and works a variety of minimum-wage jobs to see how hard it is to survive. Not the most eye-opening today if you pay attention to the real world, but it puts a face on problems that can seem abstract.

The Working Poor—David Shipley
Kind of a more modern updated of Nickle and Dimed, the authors goes around and interviews a bunch of working poor people. It's a nicely balanced book—the fact that some of the individuals he profiles have made bad choices or have problems like drug addiction isn't glossed over, but Shipley also looks at structural factors that have kept working people in poverty.

The single best summary I've ever read of Ayn Rand's crazy libertarian/"Objectivist" philosophy, why the right is infatuated with it, and why it's completely wrong.


environmental stuff
Cadillac Desert—Marc Reisner
A classic looking at the history of dam building in the US, mostly the American West. It examines the politics that led to so many stupid dams getting approved and some of the financial and environmental ramifications.

Dead Pool: Lake Powell, Global Warming and the Future of Water in the West—James Powell
A more updated book about Western water politics, looking at the future of the Colorado River Basin as global warming starts diminishing water supplies.

Chasing Molecules—Elizabeth Grossman
An environmental chemistry exploration of biologically pervasive molecules (like flame retardants and dioxins) and the health effects they're having on people. Informative and easy to read.

Endgame (Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization and Volume 2: Resistance)—Derrick Jensen
This is by one of my favorite authors, the anti-civilization activist Derrick Jensen. He's very radical, and I disagree with him on several key things, but his writing does a beautiful job of tying together seemingly disparate problems like pollution, sweatshop labor, the prison-industrial complex and rape. Other good books of his to check out are A Language Older Than Words, The Culture of Make Believe and Thought to Exist in the Wild: Awakening from the Nightmare of Zoos.

If a Tree Falls: The Story of the Earth Liberation Front
An awesome documentary about ELF which raises great questions about what kinds of activism are effective, what should be considered terrorism, etc. Available on Netflix Instant as well.

FLOW: For Love of Water
A documentary looking at corporate privatization of the world's water supplies. Also on Netflix Instant.


US-Mexico border/immigration
The Devil's Highway—Luis Alberto Urrea
The story of the Yuma 14, a group of 26 Mexican migrants whose story started with a journey across the Arizona desert and ended with fourteen of them being flown home in bodybags. A great examination of the way US border policies contribute to deaths in the desert, beautifully written.

Amexica: War Along the Borderline—Ed Vulliamy
The most comprehensive border book I've ever read, tying together the drug trade, illegal immigration, the rise of maquilas, the effects of free trade agreements, the murders and violence in Ciudad Juarez and elsewhere, poverty and everything else you can think of. He's also written an article for The Nation, As Juarez Falls.

Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields—Charles Bowden
Bowden has covered the border for at least 20 years, and his latest book looks at the violence in Ciudad Juarez as a phenomenon that has gone beyond a simple explanation, like drug wars. He argues that Juarez has reached a tipping point where violence is part of the social order and that the breakdown of Juarez tells us a lot about the future of global capitalism.

The New York Times Magazine looks at the relationship between the border cities of Ciudad Juarez, the murder capital of the world, and El Paso, Texas, one of the safest cities in the US.

Business Week examines the labor market in the US in the wake of Alabama's strict immigration laws. Turns out a lot of Americans don't want to do the jobs left behind.




development, aid, international relations, global issues
The Shock Doctrine—Naomi Klein
If you want to read one book to learn as much as possible about the world, read this one. It's a history of the way neoliberal economic theory (privatization, deregulation, etc.) has been applied all over the world by the US, the IMF and the World Bank, for the benefit of private corporations and wealthy/powerful individuals, usually with disastrous consequences for the people actually living in these countries. Even if you believe that neoliberal policies have benefited these countries in the long run, it sheds light on the complete lack of democratic process which often accompanies Chicago School economic policy.

Half the Sky—Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
A look at the ways women are oppressed around the world, from sex slavery to maternal mortality, which highlights NGOs and initiatives that are making a difference. Focuses more on local, grassroots groups than on big NGOs like CARE and Heifer International, which I like (though those guys are in there too).

An awesome interview with Michael Maren, a former Peace Corps volunteer and aid worker, analyzing why aid has been completely useless for developing countries. (Another book, The White Man's Burden by William Easterly, also argues this thesis. I haven't read it personally, but it's supposed to be pretty good.)

GQ has an awesome three-part series on the international sex trade. Part one is about sex clubs in the Philippines, part two is about sex trafficking and part three looks at sex tourism in Costa Rica.

My hometown paper, the Seattle Stranger, has a series investigating why cocaine showing up in Seattle was being cut with levamisole, a cattle deworming drug that can kill you. On the way, the author uncovers a bunch of interesting information about the global cocaine trade. Part one looks at the levamisole-tainted cocaine in Seattle, part two investigates the global trade and part three looks at the death toll from the last 100 years of US drug policy and argues for legalization as the best solution.




technology
Although I often take issue with his conclusions, Malcolm Gladwell's essay Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted is a great look at the limits of social media inspired activism.

Generation Why? One of the best essays I've ever read. It's a review of The Social Network, a critique of Facebook and a plea for our generation to do something better without being condescending.

How Google Dominates Us: a much-needed synthesis of the most recent books about Google exploring privacy, their search algorithms, and the ubiquity of Google in our lives

Wired on Amazon's increasing domination of the Internet.

A profile of Sheryl Sandberg, the Google VP who left to become the Chief Operating Officer for Facebook. Also one of the few women in Silicon Valley.

The Great Tech War of 2012: Apple vs. Amazon vs. Facebook vs. Google.


I read way too much about the future of journalism on the internet, but this Columbia Journalism Review piece is one of my favorites. It calls into question many of the agreed-upon solutions for the future of news, like that news organizations will become less prominent and we'll see more "citizen journalism". It argues that specialized knowledge and expertise is still important for news to serve its watchdog function.




feminism, gender, sex, LGBTQ
Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape—edited by Jessica Valenti and Jaclyn Friedman
I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It goes way beyond rape to look at the ways society constructs female sexuality, issues of consent, and how we can go about building a better model of sexuality that will help everyone have more fulfilling sex lives and relationships.

The Madame Curie Complex: The Hidden History of Women in Science—Julie des Jardins
Using Marie Curie as a starting point, the author looks at the role women have played in scientific discoveries, and the ways narratives of women in science are constructed to fit in with society's standards for "acceptable" roles for women.

Dan Savage, America's sex columnist, on the virtues of nonmonogamy for saving marriages.

Teaching Good Sex: a novel sex ed class at a high school in Pennsylvania.

A good overview of feminism and its history from Bitch magazine.

Savior vs. Savior: Looking at the murder of Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider by Scott Roeder, an anti-abortion activist.

Schrodinger's Rapist: A Guy's Guide to Approaching Strange Women Without Getting Maced

Queering Ecology: Orion Magazine looks at queer behavior in the animal kingdom

blogs/sites:
Feministing: general feminist news and commentary
Feministe: general feminist news and commentary
Savage Love, Dan Savage's sex advice column, which is awesome
Microagressions, a Tumblr which looks at people's daily experiences with sexism, racism, etc.

Best of 2011

Here are my favorites from everything I've written this year. I'm excluding my recent post on rape culture, because it appears to have taken on a life of its own and it doesn't seem fair to compare it to my other posts with their much more modest readership.


Yasuni: time for environmentalists to hold the line

Ecuador’s Yasuní National Park is one of the most biodiverse areas on earth. In one hectare, you’ll find more tree species in Yasuní than exist in the entirety of North America. Naturally, Yasuní also has huge oil reserves buried under it. Under the lush forest, there are estimated to be 846 million barrels of oil (20% of Ecuador’s total reserve), which would take ten years to extract. It’s not just any oil, either. It’s bituminous oil, better known as tar sands, oil that releases 5-15% more carbon dioxide carbon in its extraction and refinement than traditional crude does.

I am (almost) the 1%
On a personal level, it’s hard for me to pin down my feelings about Occupy Wall Street. As the movement has encouraged people to come forward and share stories under the theme “We Are the 99%”, I’ve taken a look at my own circumstances in life. Technically, I am part of the 99%. My family doesn’t rake in millions of dollars a year, I don’t have a trust fund, and I will have to work a real job in the real world to support myself once I get out of college. But that’s where my similarities with most of the 99% end. 

The gay conversation

The boys were discussing songs for their band, and Nico mentioned loving some song by John Mayer. His friend agreed, and I shook my head.

“What?” the friend asked me.

“Nothing, he’s just an asshole and a womanizer,” I responded. We discussed this for a little while—they wanted to know how I knew this. Eventually, we agreed that his music was one thing, but as a person, he was probably an asshole.

And then Nico’s friend says, “Well, at least he’s not gay.”

Turtles, time and something like silence
It’s almost one in the morning when I see my first turtle. She’s a leatherback, black and almost six feet long. She moves up the beach in the dark, slowly, as if carrying a great burden. Turning her massive body, back feet now facing us, she begins to dig. There’s sand flying everywhere, and we move to avoid it, trying to be quiet. There are six of us staring at her, but she seems almost oblivious to our presence. She’s focused on the task at hand. With the hole dug, she stands over it and lets her eggs drop in. They come in bursts, slimy and about the size of golf balls, falling into the sand, plopping into the nest she’s made. As she lets them go, tears stream down her face. Locals say that she’s crying at the thought of being separated from her babies. Science says she’s shedding salt from her body. There’s so much gravity in the air, so much at stake that I want to believe she feels what’s going on. In a world where fewer and fewer turtles are able to survive long enough to complete the cycle she’s beginning tonight, her presence here is beautiful, awe-inspiring, a tale of triumph. And yet the odds are stacked against her.


Poverty and food choice
Even controlling for all these factors, buying large quantities of soda is a pretty good predictor of whether someone is on food stamps, at least in my experience. When I first noticed this, it seemed incredibly illogical to me. Buying soda at all made no sense to me, but buying it when you couldn’t afford to feed your family seemed like throwing money away.

I’ve talked about the soda issue with a few friends, and seeing people’s reactions has been really interesting. Several friends of mine (liberal, pro-social welfare people) have expressed shock that soda is covered on food stamps at all. I’ve heard things to the effect of, “If they want to buy that crap, fine, but we shouldn’t be paying for it.” Underlying this belief, I think, is the idea that by excluding soda from food stamps, we can make a statement that we, as a society, don’t believe that this food is good for you, the recipients of social welfare. In short, we will educate the ill-informed poor people about making healthy nutritional choices.


An open letter to my future less-radical self
I want to remind you what you used to be like, before you settled down. The nights you fell asleep thinking that sometimes, you wanted nothing more than to watch Issaquah burn to the ground and see a forest grow back in its place. The evenings you spent plotting guerilla schemes to plant carrots in the middle of golf courses when you had papers you were supposed to be writing. The day you walked through one of the largest coal plants in the country, when you thought about leaving the group to attempt a one-woman sabotage of the computer system, but opted to take two hundred photos of generators and clouds of smoke instead. The weeks and months you searched for a revolutionary who lived up to his legend, who wasn’t just another dictator-to-be waiting to abolish term limits and seize land. Your burning desire to be a journalist, to uncover the worst of humanity, to travel the globe in search of suffering and resilience and speak truth, no matter its costs.


The human construction of nature (aka deep green, part 2)
The human/nature divide is an artificial one. For most of human history, people have lived in “wild” areas, and nature was historically a place where people got food and building materials and tons of other stuff. The idea of setting aside land as “wilderness” would have seemed foreign to most cultures that have existed before ours, and American wilderness was often made by kicking native peoples off of their lands so John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt could enjoy their scenic views of mountains unmolested. 

The deep green stuff I’ve read seems to be mostly on board with this, but they draw another divide—industrial civilization versus indigenous cultures. Indigenous cultures are integrated into their landbases and able to live in a sustainable way without depleting natural resources. In contrast, industrial civilization is systematically destroying the planet.



The importance of choice, or, why my negative pregnancy test made me mad at the Republican Party
I was lucky. But it could have gone the other way. I could have been pregnant now or this spring or last year or a dozen other times. I’ve had one or two other minor pregnancy scares, but none of them—not even this one—has been a truly scary experience for me. The reason for that is because I know that where I live, it’s still legal for me (and only me) to decide what I want to do if I do get pregnant.



Intag: development and protest

If you’re a scientist, you might like to know that the Intag Cloud Forest Reserve is home to some of the most spectacular biodiversity on the planet—219 species of birds recorded, more orchid species present than in the entire United States. Even if you’re not science-minded, you’ll appreciate the fact that the Andean tropics contain at least 15% of the entire world’s plant species when you’re walking through the forest or stopping to admire the breathtaking views of rolling hills punctuated by the occasional plot of maize, yucca or banana. Locals in the pueblos surrounding the forest walk for hours to harvest food and visit family members in neighboring towns. The whole area isn’t a postcard for living in harmony with nature—there’s plenty of blaring radio music at all hours of the day and night, not to mention beer and rowdy games of fútbol. But the chaos of daily human life blends almost seamlessly with the natural world, and the area has an undeniable beauty to it, the kind that makes you want to pack up everything you own and buy a one way plane ticket to Ecuador.

Of course, if you’re a mining company, you see Intag in an entirely different way.

Sustainable agricultural development
Over the past two weeks, I’ve read a bunch of articles written by African agricultural experts, and talked to government officials and NGO representatives about the best way to develop Ghana’s agricultural sector. 

Most agricultural strategy I’ve come across, both from the Ghanaian government and assorted NGOs, seems to focus on building a more industrial agricultural system. Publications point out that the vast majority of Africa’s farmers are subsistence level (1% of the US population farms, and these farmers grow a surplus of food; meanwhile, 70ish% of Ghanaians farm and the country still imports staples like rice). As far as I can tell, this is seen as a bad thing. Most strategies for agricultural development suggest that the way forward involves larger farms, fewer farmers, more efficient distribution, irrigation, increased fertilizer use and improved seed varieties.


Personal purity isn't political activism
We gathered as a group to discuss the events that had shaped the past half-century in Guatemala. We talked about the horrors and heartbreak that the country had been made to endure, largely at the hands of powerful US interests. After we had been talking for a while, Chris Fontana, our program director shook his head sadly and said to the group, “And all this so we could have cheaper bananas…”

At the time, that statement angered me unspeakably, though I couldn’t quite articulate why. I was angry at the way the United Fruit Company had political connections which allowed them to basically request a coup from the State Department. I was angry at the lack of democratic process inherent in military operations. I was angry at the collusion between corporations and the state. I wanted transparency, accountability, authentic political participation. Chris’s statement seemed to ignore all of these concerns. He reduced the issue down to one of individual choice, of conscious consumerism. His message seemed to be that if US consumers had been paying enough attention, they could have successfully boycotted Chiquita and demanded that the price of bananas reflect their actual cost, which would have magically prevented the coup. We all know that when the interests of power and capital come up against a group of law-abiding citizens making respectful demands, the people always win. Every single time.


What it means to be in love
Environmentalists are always saying they love the earth. I do love the earth—I love hiking and the scenic views of mountains that make my soul breathe a bit easier. But when I get out in forests, I remember that I feel more than just love for the earth. I’m in love with the earth, so completely. My love isn’t the chaste admiration of Emerson or Thoreau. It’s not about writing poetry inspired by majestic sunrises. My love is intimate, physical, wet, wild.

I'm not getting over it: a reflection on rape culture

Trigger warning: This piece deals with stories about rape, assault and violence. It also involves me talking about my own life, including my body and my sex life, in a level of detail that might make some people uncomfortable.

Disclaimer: I am a white, straight, able-bodied, cisgendered woman, and my personal experiences with feminism and rape culture have been influenced by those identities. This essay is meant to be a personal reflection, and as such, it’s not an all-inclusive look at how all people experience and perceive rape culture. I in no way wish to discount the experiences of people of color, queer people, transgendered people and people with disabilities, and would welcome any criticisms, corrections or additions.

1

In Ecuador I walk down the street, morning, mid-afternoon, dark approaching. I’m wearing skinny jeans, normal jeans, corduroys, a short skirt, a long skirt, a t-shirt, a sweater, low-cut, high neck, sneakers, sandals, boots, hair up, hair down. I’m walking slowly, walking quickly, looking at the ground, looking ahead, lost, sure of where I’m going. I pass a guy, or a group of them, and they call after me: Hey baby. Can’t you even hit on me in Spanish?, I wonder. Hola, mi amor. They laugh. They whistle. They stare. I want to shout at them, Tengo un nombre. Soy una persona. I want to ask them, has that ever worked for you? Ever, in the history of the world, has a woman heard a strange man yell something at her on the street and said, Oh hey, I actually do want to dance with him, go out with him, fuck him, marry him and have his babies? But I guess it’s not really about that. It’s about power. It’s about control.

2

I used to experience these things as isolated incidents.

The catcalls start in middle school, the same year we have the history teacher who supposedly seats girls in his class by chest size—largest in the front. My eighth grade boyfriend and I rarely talk about our hopes and ambitions in life, but he makes sure to tell me I look hot when I wear tight shirts. I refuse to shave my legs or armpits as a gesture of feminist resistance. Friends, guys and people I meet online all feel compelled to point out that hair removal is just another part of hygiene, like brushing your teeth.

In high school, I run cross country for two seasons. On the way home from practice, a guy six years my senior sits next to me on the bus. He asks for my number, and I pray he’ll leave me in peace. I don’t yell at him even when he won’t stop talking to me, because I don’t want to cause a scene. I finally give in and start shaving sophomore year. Although my times on the 5k put me near the middle of the girls’ team, I’m far more concerned with the fact that my hair never seems to stay in a nice-looking ponytail like everyone else’s. I gain ten pounds.  I decide to quit junior year when we get a new coach who takes things too seriously. My mom, concerned about my health, asks me, “Aren’t you worried you’ll get fat if you don’t exercise?”

Later that year, I have lunch with a guy in my aikido class because I want to practice my Spanish with him. He’s in his 30s and I’m still not legal, but he tries to take me to a hotel. He kisses me goodbye on the lips, and I’m too afraid to pull away. I get home and call my best friend, because I feel bad. I told him we could hang out again, but I don’t want to see him. I’m afraid of what he might do, but I’m almost as afraid that he’ll think I’m mean if I don’t answer his calls. She tells me I’m never going to talk to him again, and makes me program him in my phone as DO NOT ANSWER. He calls me almost every day for the next two weeks, leaving long messages in Spanglish telling me how much he loves me. I spend these two weeks terrified that he’ll figure out where I live and come looking for me. I feel dirty and ashamed, and I refuse to say anything to my mother. I’m scared she’ll say it’s my fault for going to meet a guy I didn’t know very well. I’m angry at myself for being stupid enough to think that I could have a friendship with a guy who happens to be older than me without him wanting more. I wonder what I would have done if he’d gotten me to that hotel. I wonder what I would have done if he’d tried to hurt or rape me. I tell myself I would have fought back, would have hit and kicked and screamed until he stopped and left me alone. But I wonder—if I didn’t run away screaming when he asked me to go to a hotel in the first place, if I willingly sat through lunch with him, if I hugged him goodbye even though he was the last person on earth I wanted to touch, if he kissed me and I said nothing—what would it take to make me actually stand up for myself?

3

I have, at various times in my life, been called beautiful, ugly, fat, skinny, a prude, a slut, a tease. I have worn each of these labels with pride, hated myself for being called each of them. Skinny me desperately wanted breasts. Ugly me was proud that men wouldn’t be tempted by my body, that I would be ignored, left in peace. Fat me loves my curves and hates the lack of self-control that keeps me from running four times a week, from leaving that last piece of bread for someone else to finish. Prudish me took pride in not giving in, in being stronger than desire, and slutty me loves screaming yes to someone I want to be with. And me, whole me, soul me hates fragmenting myself, letting these labels define me, work their way inside my skin and influence my thoughts, my perceptions, my very sense of who I am.

4

I hate the thought of someone else judging me silently, so I preempt their judgment by labeling myself first. I know I’m not as thin as I used to be.  I believe in fat acceptance wholeheartedly, but my willingness to support it only matters to me if I can prove that I’m “strong” enough not to have a double chin. It’s so much easier to fight someone else’s battles, so much easier to say you’re helping an oppressed group than fighting for your own liberation. A skinny girl preaching acceptance is radical, forward-thinking and empathetic. A fat girl asking for the same rights has to accept herself for who she is before she can work for change. I tell myself that I’m not really fat, not enough that anyone would come out and say it, and I’m not sure if that makes it better or worse. I feel disingenuous for identifying with either label. I hate that I have these thoughts at all, that people can’t just be people and a body can’t just be a body.

5

Sometimes I have to remind myself of all the things my body can do, all the ways I am powerful. True, I’m no great athlete, but I know how to move. I have run a mile in under seven minutes. I have hiked over a dozen miles in a day carrying a 30 pound backpack. I have had at least eight orgasms in a single hour. I have run barefoot through mud and rolled around in grass, stood naked in a canopy tower and felt the breeze play with my hair.

6

I can’t deal with the clubs anymore. A song is playing, and it’s always the same song. The lyrics may change, but the message never does. There’s a video too, faceless women, a dark room, a pole, a man who says things and dresses like a businessman, but we all know what business he’s really in. I know it could never be my body on the pole—maybe in real life, but not in the video. I hate knowing I’m not worthy of being an object and hate that feeling even more. I want the story my body tells to be mine. I want its pride and accomplishment to be written in sweat, drive, determination, not in the desires of someone I’ve never talked to.  Looking around, I see couples, women bent at impossible angles, men scheming to find a partner. And the happy groups, and the people who know each other, and it isn’t all bad I swear. But those images get locked in my head—disembodied tits, a roaming hand heading south—and I can’t breathe. A guy asks me to dance and I want to shove him up against a wall and ask him who he thinks he is. I’m so angry all the time, and it really isn’t his fault. An innocent question. I shake my head. No, I do not want to dance. I want to smash patriarchy and rape culture, but I love club music. Some nights I take another shot and let my hips find the rhythm without listening or thinking too hard. Some nights I want to walk outside, wander around by myself, dare a guy to find me and try something because I will smash his fucking face into the ground. Some nights I go home feeling empty.

7

When I had someone, this was easier. When I could go home, we could take our clothes off slowly, relishing each moment, drawing ourselves into each other closer and closer together, when I could scream without reservation, feel loved, feel whole, feel wanted in the best possible way, when I could separate being wanted from being an object, separate sex from the meat market and just breathe him in deep, I felt nourished. Now, it feels like I’m just waiting to get that back. I know I should be strong and confident on my own. I know I don’t need a partner to complete me. But sometimes it’s so hard to stay grounded without someone to hold on to. It’s so hard to remember that relationships can be mutual, that love can exist without objectifying, and that even being an object can be fun when the person you’re dressing sexy for is someone you know and care about, someone who knows that you’re so much more than just a pair of striking eyes and a nice rack.

8

New CDC research says that one in five women in the United States will be raped in her lifetime.

I have four younger female cousins.

9

A friend told me that she decided to have sex for the first time because she was afraid. She had had a friend try to take advantage of her, and it made her realize that given the choices she makes in her life, the fact that she spends time drinking in the company of men, she couldn’t be sure that that wouldn’t happen to her again. So she wanted to control her first sexual experience, wanted it to be with someone she loved and cared about. And she did love him and care about him, and she would have done it anyway. But she wanted to do it sooner rather than later, because she was worried that if she didn't give up her virginity, someone was going to take it from her. This way, she knew that if she ever was raped, at least it wouldn’t be her first time.

10

Recently, I’ve started thinking that I want to have sex with a woman. I can’t tell if this is because I actually want to have sex with a woman or just because the female body has been so sexualized and so objectified that I want it for the aura of sexiness it seems to radiate. I can’t decide if not knowing matters. Sex columnist Dan Savage frequently gets letters from readers with fetishes and fantasies ranging from pie-fighting to hardcore humiliation. These readers often wonder where their desires came from, and Dan usually tells them that it’s not important. Even if you can identify the precise cultural norms and facets of your upbringing that lead you to want what you do, at the end of the day, you’re still going to want it. Better to just go for it and see if you like it or not. But I can’t shake the feeling that those two methods of desire are fundamentally different. If I actually wanted to have sex with a woman, I would do it. It would be about her, about us, about connecting. But if it’s just about the female body, then I’m lusting after an object, not a person. How can I reconcile that with everything else I believe in?

11

Sometimes I get told I’m too angry. I should learn to compartmentalize, mellow a bit. Yes, we live in a sexist fucking world, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have fun. I try, and it works sometimes. But it never lasts for long. Frat guys at Yale run around campus chanting, “No means yes! Yes means anal!” At the University of Vermont, they distribute a survey asking members who they’d like to rape. Police officers warn women in New York wearing short skirts that they’re putting themselves in danger of being raped, and this is after Slutwalks have been going on for a few months. An eleven year old in Texas is gang-raped by eighteen men, and the New York Times feels it’s relevant to mention that she wore clothes appropriate for a much older woman.

And god, do we have it good in the United States of America. In Ecuador, lesbians are sometimes locked up by their families in prisons where they are raped by men in order to “turn them straight”. During the Guatemalan civil war, raping Mayan woman was a key tactic used by the US-backed state army, because they were the ones who gave birth to the enemy. Rape gangs patrol the refugee camps and temporary shacks in Haiti, terrorizing women who are already living in the post-earthquake nightmare. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, it’s estimated that 40 women per day are raped just in the South Kivu area, and hundreds of thousands of women have been raped in total, just a few more casualties in a conflict which has claimed 5 million lives. Women in the US Army serving in Iraq have died of dehydration because they won’t drink water. They’re afraid of having to go to the bathroom at night because they are afraid that their fellow soldiers will rape them.

Ask me how much longer I could keep writing this list. Ask me how I’m supposed to sleep at night knowing that somewhere on earth, a woman is living through hell. Ask me how I can live knowing how many women are walking around feeling his breath on their neck, feeling broken, feeling guilty, feeling powerless.

12

Feminist Harriet J explains how social conditioning can poison women, make us less likely to fight for ourselves even in situations where our lives depend on it.

If we teach women that there are only certain ways they may acceptably behave, we should not be surprised when they behave in those ways. 

And we should not be surprised when they behave these ways during attempted or completed rapes.

Women who are taught not to speak up too loudly or too forcefully or too adamantly or too demandingly are not going to shout “NO” at the top of their goddamn lungs just because some guy is getting uncomfortably close.

People wonder why women don’t “fight back,” but they don’t wonder about it when women back down in arguments, are interrupted, purposefully lower and modulate their voices to express less emotion, make obvious signals that they are uninterested in conversation or being in closer physical proximity and are ignored.

And then, all of a sudden, when women are raped, all these natural and invisible social interactions become evidence that the woman wasn’t truly raped. Because she didn’t fight back, or yell loudly, or run, or kick, or punch. She let him into her room when it was obvious what he wanted. She flirted with him, she kissed him. She stopped saying no, after a while.

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I have never been raped, which is to say, I have been lucky. Do I have a right to feel so traumatized when I don’t have a night to relive over and over, don’t have a smell or sound that will make me flash back to a moment when I had no control? I talk to my friend about this, about secondary trauma, the idea that just witnessing enough can make you unable to fall asleep, unable to walk down the street at night without feeling terrified every time you see movement in the shadows. I’m not a victim, but there are still places I won’t go by myself, situations I can’t feel safe in because I’m afraid of what might happen.

Sometimes I think we’re all a little traumatized. How else to explain our inability to say no even when we really don’t want it, our refusal to stand up for our desires, our true wishes? How else to explain the times I’ve had sex with guys I didn’t want to just because it was easier to not speak up, easier to give in than to own my no? How else to explain that when I ask my younger cousin what her biggest fear is, she tells me it’s getting grabbed, and when I ask her what that means, she tells me a girl at her school was kidnapped and sexually assaulted by a stranger and she doesn’t want it to happen to her too? How else to explain that, as much as I want to, I’m terrified to have a daughter, terrified to think of trying to keep her safe from a world that would control her, hold her down, kick her, spit in her face and tell her she asked for it?

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Every time I have this conversation, more stories come out. Friends, relatives, people I thought I knew tell me about eating disorders, suicide attempts, cutting, abuse. I sit in my kitchen with a friend well past midnight, and she tells me she’s never been raped. But she did have a boyfriend who pushed her off the bed and sometimes kicked her and tried to have sex with her when she didn’t want to and she had to fight him off. And then a few times, he had sex with her while she was asleep or passed out. And I tell her, that is rape. You can’t consent to anything when you’re blackout drunk, when you’re not conscious. And she stares at me. She thinks. And then she talks.

 How can I say that? I feel like I went through something so horrible that I don’t even remember. It’s like I’m looking at my life with different eyes. It’s like waking from a deep sleep into a hellish nightmare, begging yourself to go back to sleep when you do.

She stops. We talk about other things. I ask her about his other actions, the way he treated her during their relationship.

 If I’d ever said to him ‘you raped me last night’, I’m pretty sure he would have hit me.

And yet somehow, we stay silent.

No one else knew these things. It took me until our conversation to decide that this happened to me. It’s hard to think about yourself in that way. How could that thing happen to you? That thing you swore would never happen to you, that you were invincible from…

She still won’t say, “I was raped.” She doesn’t want to tell herself she was abused. An hour later we’re still talking, about silence, about blame, about how many women will live through this in their lifetimes.

Face it: more than 1 in 5 women have been raped. They just don’t know it.

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This isn’t just a female issue. Genderqueer and trans people experience disproportionately high rates of sexual assault, and plenty of men are raped too. The one thing that’s clear is who’s responsible: well over 90% of rapists are men. How are we still telling ourselves this is only a women’s issue? How is it that I can have this conversation with my cousins, female friends and acquaintances, but I’ve never sat down with my brother to ask for his help in making it stop?

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It’s all related. It has to be. The anti-civilization writer Derrick Jensen has twenty premises he bases his argument against civilization on. Premise fourteen states, in part, “If we did not hate ourselves, we could not allow our homes—and our bodies—to be poisoned.”

Harriet is right. We’re conditioned not to fight back, not to tell, not to cause a stir, not to create controversy. We’re conditioned to lie there and pray that someday we’ll be able to forget.

But Derrick is right too.

If women weren’t bombarded with images of perfection day in and day out, maybe fewer of us would hate our bodies. We’re raising a generation of feminists who are smart and media literate, and we’re still killing ourselves every day trying to be perfect. Courtney Martin said it best in her book Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: “We are the daughters of feminists who said, ‘You can be anything’, and we heard, ‘You have to be everything.’” We understand that fat is ok, but we still think we’re better than that. We need to be in control all the time. We overschedule ourselves and run events and meetings, and when that isn’t enough, we control our food with a finger shoved down our throat, control our pain with a small knife tracing lines on our forearms. The hatred is there, we’ve just found ways to bury it deeper.

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What would the world look like if we weren’t taught to hate ourselves and our bodies?

It might look like a woman screaming NO the next time someone tries to move things further than she wants them to go.

It might look like a man refusing to stay silent about his rape even though he fears not everyone will take him seriously.

It might look like women loving and admiring each other instead of constantly judging and trying to be the best.

It might look like me taking responsibility for my sex life, not sleeping with a guy I’m not attracted to because he’s there and refusing to say anything when he spends less than a minute trying to get me off, because I don’t want to make him uncomfortable or cause conflict.

It might look like all of us reacting with love and support when someone comes forward with a story of abuse, instead of finding ways to call their experiences into question.

It might look like my friend realizing that even if she is drunk, no one has the right to violate her body or her trust.

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Derrick Jensen’s fifteenth premise is my favorite: Love does not imply pacifism.

I think of all the women I know, all the pain I’ve seen, beautiful faces contorted remembering the unimaginable. I see the voices so long silenced, the love I feel, the courage it takes to finally share your story. And it makes me want to fight.

I’m done being silent about what I feel, what I experience. I’m sick of feeling like I don’t have the right to be visible in public. I hate that my freedom to move is challenged by the actions of a few, that there are situations in which I can’t feel safe, can’t be myself. I don’t have all the answers, and I know I can’t stop myself from being victimized. But I can’t let that keep me from speaking out.

I’m done sitting silently when people make jokes about rape. I’m done letting guys have sex with me when I don’t want to. I’m done being nice. I’m done not talking about these issues with my guy friends because I don’t want to make them uncomfortable.

I’m declaring war on rape culture, on assault, on abuse, on everything that takes our right to control our own bodies away from us. I don’t have a tactics manual. I don’t even have a game plan. But I’m going to keep pushing forward until we make a world where my daughter won’t have to fight the same battles I did, a world where all of us can fall asleep at night feeling safe and healthy and whole.


An infinite amount of thanks go out to my friend Madelyn for reading and editing this piece, and to all the friends who shared their stories with me and made this possible.


Edit: This piece can be downloaded in PDF form here.