Subjectified Blog

OK, many of you need some cheering up this week and others have been waiting for an excuse to “Share” Subjectified. Here we go. The kitten series begins, our gift to you. Share away!

By Melissa Tapper Goldman, cross-posted from the Huffington Post:

 
I’m going to tell you my first kiss story. By the summer after eighth grade, my desperation for male attention had reached a fever pitch. It’s not that I was a late bloomer, but simply awkward in a way that still makes my face scrunch up when I think about it 18 years later. I had a lot of time on my hands without a boyfriend, and I used much of it to imagine in slow-mo how we would make out once I did manage to recruit any old guy. The bar was low. Having watched, enthralled, the then-new drama My So-Called Life, maybe I should have seen the seeds of discord. However, I was resolute. I wanted a Jordan Catalano for real, and I wasn’t going to be some wuss like Angela with all these personal boundaries and ideals…  Read on at Huff Post Women.

I’ve had trouble finding the words to express my admiration of the brave women of the Russian punk band “Pussy Riot.” They were arrested for a 30-second prank performance criticizing President Vladimir Putin, and sentenced to two years in a penal colony.  I will let them speak for themselves, which is what I’m here to do.

I do want to point out 1. These messages are much bigger than one country, and

2. How do you know your voice is powerful?  When people want to silence you.  Ladies, take this to heart. Every time someone minimizes our experiences, every time someone tells us that our assaults were not “legitimate” or that we may not use the medical words for our own body parts in their presence, it is because

our voices are powerful!

Their arrest is proof in itself that they were doing something powerful.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, “I don’t want to label anyone. It seems to me that there are no winners, losers, victims, or defendants here. We all simply need to reach each other, connect, and establish a dialogue in order to seek out the truth together.”

Passion, total honesty, and naïveté are superior to the hypocrisy, mendacity, and false modesty that are used to disguise crime.

…

Every day, more people understand that if the system is attacking three young women who performed in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior for thirty seconds with such vehemence, it only means that this system fears the truth, sincerity, and straightforwardness we represent.

…

Yesterday, Madonna performed in Moscow with “Pussy Riot” written on her back. More and more people see that we are held here illegally, on false pretences. This amazes me. I am amazed that truth really does triumph over deception. Despite the fact that we are physically here, we are freer than everyone sitting across from us on the side of the prosecution. We can say anything we want and we say everything we want. The prosecution can only say what they are permitted to by political censorship. They can’t say “punk prayer,” “Our Lady, Chase Putin Out,” they can’t utter a single line of our punk prayer that deals with the political system.

-Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, member of Russian punk band “Pussy Riot”

Having your period at work. Ladies (of a certain reproductive status), you know what I’m talking about.  This is not something that gets much airtime.  Why?

1. People act grossed out by it, I guess. I honestly don’t know why

2. When women are uncomfortable, we’re socialized not to let it become “someone else’s problem”

3. Allegations of a hysterical “PMSing” woman are often used against us to delegitimize our reactions to things

and the Anne-Marie Slaughter-style clincher

4. Nobody wants to talk about the particular challenges that menstruating women face in the workplace, for all the expected reasons and some others

Remember that one time that a pad advertisement used the color red? That was, apparently, a big deal. Periods, we’re told, freak people out.

Men are obviously not going to bring it up.  And most often women don’t want to air our dirty laundry, so to speak, because we’re concerned with affirming our professionalism, legitimately scared that we’ll be barked out of the working world if we ask for reasonable accommodation (by way of insisting that we have a right to be treated fairly). It’s tantamount to saying that being a menstruating woman is a disability. Maybe it is, depending on how your define disability.

Angela, my outreach intern, came into work one day looking tired and down.  I asked her what was wrong. She told me that she had her period and felt gross.  It was as uncomplicated as possible, like it ought to be: a simple exchange, followed by some compassion and some problem-solving so that we could find a way to make the workday more tolerable and effective, given her low-energy state.  That’s really all it took, because I’m lucky enough to have the flexibility to set the pace in my workday.  I know people who get such bad cramps that they throw up. I honestly don’t know what they do (especially without sick days).  I have friends who, as a rule and except in dire work circumstances, don’t even leave their apartments on the first day of their periods.  If I’d been a male boss (or a competitive and unsympathetic woman), Angela never would have told me what was up, and I would have wound up frustrated by her performance.  Sure, I would prefer for everyone to be 100% productive all the time, myself included, but that is not anybody’s reality, and Angela has lots of gifts that I’m grateful for (some of them that might actually come from her being a woman).  It’s hard to define what productivity even means. Should we all be buzzing around every day at the same frenetic wavelength, in the same mood?  This does not sound desirable.  There are moods when I’m better at writing, or better at working on spreadsheets, or organizing things, or being creative, and all of these tasks are required for my work.  Thank God I’m not always in the same mood.

Most women can pop a pill and pretend the cramps aren’t happening, but at least for me, my body tells me to SLOW WAY DOWN when I get my period, and I will regret it 99% of the time if I blow that signal off.  But I’m super lucky because I have control over my schedule as well as a cycle that’s always been predictable.  Very few people have either of those strokes of luck. How much better would it be if we could just work at our actual physical capacity without feeling guilty about it (or trying to hide that reality from other people)?

Freshman year in high school, I was desperate to get out of required sports practice, for no other reason than my hating it.  Cramps were an excuse you could manufacture every now and again (not necessarily during your period), as long as you weren’t stupid enough to claim it more than once a month.  I had a woman coach who told us to buck up and that running makes them go away (not my experience). I remember one 30-something male coach yelling over at me to pick up the pace.  “I have cramps! Can’t I just leave?” I asked, mostly because I knew this would make him uncomfortable enough to get me out of playing, the manipulative jerk I was at 14.  “OK,” he said, fumbling for some way to diffuse the awkwardness.  “Well, at least you’re not pregnant!” He fumbled. I was put in my place, and knew better than to blame him for my own embarrassment (although he probably could have gotten fired for saying that). This does not illustrate any of the best parts of human nature. And maybe that’s what people are worried about when they’d prefer women to feel shamed into minimizing our experiences–a fear that excuses will take us over and we’ll revert to our natural lazy and gossip-addled state. But when you have a job where you want to contribute and want to find ways to become productive, this is not a concern.  Let’s stop assuming that the normal state of people who face any challenge is to weasel our ways out of being contributing members of society.

Women who have menstrual cycles know what it means to live on a calendar, to have times when we’re predictably sad, or energized, or aroused, or focused, and to be helpfully reminded that our minds and bodies are thoroughly interdependent.  It’s not that men’s minds and bodies are any less intertwined, for sure, but they aren’t forced to learn that lesson every month, to be reminded that you aren’t what you think, you aren’t what you’re feeling right now, and you can choose to do what you want to do with those thoughts or emotions.

I recently grimaced my way through the (longest and?) most popular article in the history of the Atlantic, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” which masterfully untangles at length many of the American workplace standards that are, frankly, unfair to mothers. But we’re impacted way beyond just motherhood.  Our reproductive status impacts us throughout our life cycles: in employment, living situations, federal benefits, and health insurance, to name a few.  We’re impacted at work and in the street while treated as objects of desire (or scorn), we’re impacted economically when we do or don’t become partnered, or mothers, or if we’re breastfeeding, and we’re unless we’re always pregnant like Michelle Duggar (or dealing with health situations that we’re also not encouraged to acknowledge at work), so many of us are impacted every month by a leaky, gooey mess, accompanied by cramps, nausea, headaches, downtown aches, the expense of pads or tampons, and yes, sometimes irritability.

I’m good at a lot of things and not that good at a lot of others.  But like most adults, I’ve learned to work around the things that are hard for me.  Sometimes that requires ignoring my body and taking a painkiller when my period comes, but other times it means getting rest so that by the second day, I have enough energy to be productive.  Sometimes it means taking the opportunity to have an argument with my spouse that I’m usually in the mood to let fester (the hidden upside of “PMS”), and sometimes it means putting away my eagerness to pick an irrational fight that I’ll definitely regret later on.  If we really believe that women make valuable contributions in the workforce and society, we can’t be expected to abuse our bodies to fit them into a schedule that ignores what’s physically and emotionally healthy.  We can pretend that periods, or morning sickness, or “mommy brain,“ or breastfeeding, or our home lives don’t exist, but is that actually a successful strategy for getting us paid or treated equitably?

I hope I don’t scare off any future employers by posting this.  They might be grossed out by periods, too.  But I feel confident knowing that I do good work, my body helps me stay alive to do that work (among other things), and shutting up about what really affects us doesn’t help.  That’s why I made my documentary, because I honestly believe that shutting up doesn’t help.

When I started interning for Melissa, I was most excited about the Subjectified discussion kit: a fun package containing a copy of the Subjectified DVD to watch together, a conversation guide to make a chat among your friends fun and free-flowing (even if you’re intimidated about broaching the topic of sex), as well as other goodies. Having moved to New York from Gainesville, FL, a town of 125,000 people, about 50,000 of which are college students, I had become accustomed to a liberal and local scene. Small businesses and porch talk move mountains in that town, and I was excited to get back to those ideals in a city which is notoriously daunting. I am thrilled to work on the distribution of a project that is so important, in a way that is so unique and potentially game-changing. The discussion kit gives girls and women, and anyone who supports free speech and open minds, the opportunity to learn more about the women around them and, especially, themselves. The discussion kit helps unpack some of the complex topics addressed with its hosting guide and interactive discussion activities, making the whole process inviting and entertaining, and allowing us the opportunity to continue telling our own stories.

I watched the documentary for the first time at home with my roommate. We had been discussing the topics alongside the women on the screen for nearly twenty minutes when my roommate asked, “Who are these women? Why should I care about their stories?” I think I only really realized in that moment that my roommate, like all of us at some point or other, expected to be entertained by outlandish stories from sensationalized caricatures, rather than the experiences of women we could have met on the street, or in class, or at work. These were stories we all have- our first kiss, the time we made a difficult decision about our bodies, and the partners we share them with. Sometimes the women seem totally typical, even mundane, and sometimes they strike you with an honesty that renders them completely unique. I realized then it wasn’t so much the particular stories themselves that struck me as important, as most of them were akin to conversations I’d had on porches with friends so many times before. They were important because they had finally been liberated from the gabbing of those porches. They are important in their own right, pillars of a history that incorporates and validates the experiences of women, one we will build for ourselves, which one day may very well overshadow the nameless banshees of mass media that at some point became the templates for our own self-images.

Rather than attempt to force a singular narrative on the depiction of female sexuality, the documentary dismantles the solitary and exclusive concept of a unified truth and lets each woman speak for herself.

And this discussion kit invites and encourages you to be just as candid about your own experiences.  The guide helps facilitate open conversations about the topics touched on in the documentary: sex, in the broadest sense, encompassing personal experience as well as sex ed, health, identity, and upbringing. Sometimes it’s difficult enough being honest with yourself about your own conceptions of sex and sexuality, so that having honest conversations with others can seem impossible. Sometimes even knowing where to begin is too intimidating, stopping the conversation before it even starts. It’s one thing to joke about sex; it is quite another to talk openly about your own sexuality- but games make everything a little easier!  We’ve put in countless hours to making a kit that can create valuable experiences for lots of different people:  book clubs, parents, Sororities, and groups of high school friends, to name just a few.  I hope you’ll check it out!

This site is pretty women-centric, but I want to take a minute to write about a man who’s made shattering breakthroughs in media distribution and opened up taboo discussions about sex, all from his humble perch as a comedian. He’s also taken flack recently, some rightful but a lot of it misplaced. I’m talking about Louis C.K., the mind behind both the boundary-crossing hit show “Louie”, and the most impressive self-distributed video campaign in history (as far as I’m concerned, but more on that in a later post).

In case you’ve never encountered Louis, his show contains realistic, everyday scenes from the life of a divorced, middle-aged comic in New York City. The themes (sex, power, awkwardness, rejection, failure) could be too heavy to handle, but Louis’s expert storytelling keeps your eyes glued through the uneasiness, and the dark, contemplative strain just under the surface. His content hits you like a ton of bricks—but you’re still laughing. Louis’s redeeming commentary makes this tension more meaningful than your average slow train wreck a la “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” You can check out a clip here (warning: discusses masturbation).

Funny Ha Ha?

After watching Louie for a while, I came to think that Louis C.K. was a friend to the ladies. While his setups often fail the Bechdel Test, he has two daughters and struggles earnestly in his distinctive sensitivity to the world they’ll become women in. So, I was surprised to see him embroiled in the recent controversy wherein Daniel Tosh (another comedian with a show), performing at a club, made some rape jokes, including ones at the expense of an offended audience member. According to the woman, he said it would be funny if she got raped by five guys. There’s some disagreement about whether Tosh made a “joke” about her getting raped by five guys or a “comment” that she was reacting so harshly that she must have been raped by five guys. Actually, the difference here doesn’t exactly matter, because the purpose was bullying either way: to shut the woman up. What followed was a twitterstorm among comedians, an old argument about whether rape jokes can ever be funny, whether comedians should be censored, and what’s the compassionate way to respond to criticism.  Apparently, Louis accidentally stepped into this e-altercation by posting a general, supportive tweet about Daniel Tosh’s show while away on vacation, unaware of what had gone down. Louis manages to make the situation more complicated for himself with some escalating comments on the Daily Show, but in the meanwhile proves himself to be open to both improvement and criticism.

But totally separate from the chatter, Louis had proved just that week that you can make a funny rape joke, pulling off an elaborate sexual assault scene on his own show (season 3 episode 2).  Except the difference was that Louis’s joke revolved around double standards about men’s and women’s sexual performance and availability, and acknowledged straight out that women have lots of sex they don’t want to have, for a variety of reasons, but the same is not expected of men. The scene ends dramatically (spoiler alert) with Louis being assaulted by a woman he’d been out on a date with, played by comedian Melissa Leo. At least, that’s the way I read it. I personally found the moment riveting, hilarious, and deeply disturbing. It managed to be funny while teasing out a brutal condition in our sexual culture. The humor came from the gender reversal making the setup seem far-fetched (although there are plenty of cases of boys AND men being sexually assaulted),  but used that setup to remind us that with a quick flip of the script, swapping the two characters, the date rape would be a result that’s both devastating and too common.

Trigger happy?

What Louis missed in his discussion with Jon Stewart is that it’s not just about feminists not being able to take a joke.  This issue is about triggering.  It’s not fundamentally different from making jokes describing IEDs blowing up in Fallujah next to a traumatized veteran who could have a flashback. Does Daniel Tosh really care so little for the 1 in 5 women in his audience who’ve been sexually assaulted, who might practically relive the original experience because of his joke? I’m going to assume that the comics involved just don’t understand trauma or its prevalence. A joke can be funny and harmful at the same time. Why choose harm?

It’s not possible to accommodate everybody’s triggers always, but shouldn’t we want to be kind when we have the choice? Shouldn’t we try to care, rather than belittling someone for getting up the courage to ask for accommodation? For something as shockingly prevalent as sexual assault, there are some predictable triggers, and our widespread indifference sends a distinct message: don’t complain, don’t talk about your experience, don’t inconvenience other people by having feelings, it’s your burden and your problem. We need to go way beyond not telling women to shut up.  Daniel Tosh’s comment made a woman shut up in that club (and let all the other audience members know that the price of complaining was being singled out and embarrassed). We need to open up lines of communication to offer support where it’s needed. This is where I hope that Subjectified (the documentary that I made about young women and sex) can be a useful tool, allowing people to hear firsthand retellings of sexual assault and abuse (among other experiences), putting a human face on stories that very often stay hidden. I hope that the movie can make people more comfortable sharing their own stories and hearing other people’s. The Penn State tragedy is another reminder that rape can happen anywhere, and that we all have to keep listening to the people in our lives if we want to stop abuse as soon as possible.

Early on while shooting Subjectified, I was getting ready to leave for an interview that a friend had arranged. The woman I was supposed to interview emailed right at the last minute to cancel, explaining that her first sexual experience had been “somewhat traumatic and involved a very persistent guy that didn’t know how to listen.” She went on to say that she’d never told anyone in all the years since. She wanted to share her story, but couldn’t go through with it in the end. My heart broke both for what she lived through, and for the terror that prevented her from speaking up even years after the attack. Sadly, nothing about her fear is irrational: not the fear of assault, not the fear of speaking up. This week in Kentucky, 17-year-old Savannah Dietrich watched as a plea deal on felony sexual abuse charges was struck by two young men who had assaulted her and posted photos of the attack online.  Dietrich called the plea a “slap on the wrist.” Dietrich’s punishment for having been assaulted and reporting the crime? A court order not to discuss the terrifying attack, to protect the identities of her assailants (also minors), with the threat of 180 days in jail if she ignored the command. The young men had publicized lewd photos of her without her consent, but she was asked to shut up for their sake. She took to social media, bucking the order and tweeting the names of her attackers. From her facebook page, she commented on the trivial punishment that the young men received, “If reporting a rape only got me to the point that I’m not allowed to talk about it, then I regret it.” And on twitter, “I’m not protecting anyone that made my life a living Hell.”  An assault sends a clear, dehumanizing message from perpetrator to victim, “your experience doesn’t matter.” That’s an attacker’s mindset. So how come we keep saying the same thing?

Should women be allowed to talk? What’s at stake when stories are silenced

The following is an excerpt from something that I wrote in March but did not publish for a number of reasons.  I was content to tuck it away because it feels political in a manner that I try not to associate with Subjectified, which I hope can resist political boundaries.  But with the recent rehashing of a story of a woman’s silencing in government (in this case an actual State Representative in Michigan, on the floor of the state House no less), I decided to dredge it up.  This issue is not about Democrats or Republicans, although it’s common for both sides to portray it that way for self-serving purposes.  It has to do with whose voices we value and those who we would prefer to push aside.  Sadly, most women I know are intimately familiar with the experience of being shut up when our points of view are destabilizing, when we are “too emotional”, or simply when including our voices is inconvenient (see the nagging sitcom wife cliche).  Yashar Ali wrote a compelling blog post expanding the concept of of “gaslighting”, shutting someone up by preemptively dismissing that person’s point of view as over-sensitive.  This is cruel and combative in personal life.  When it’s done in government, it’s repressive and sometimes illegal.  -Melissa

March 2012

Before Rush Limbaugh’s most recent outburst, before Sandra Fluke, there was a Congressional hearing set up by the Republican majority on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to discuss concerns about the Obama administration’s healthcare program. The issue on the table, nominally, was whether religious employers would be required to cover women’s birth control, responding to outcry from religious employers opposed to supporting contraception.  The Administration proposed a compromise that satisfied many concerned religious groups, including the Catholic Health Association, one of the policy’s early influential detractors.  Should religious employers be made to offer birth control, against their (legally protected) doctrines, when it conflicts with the interests and rights of women? That’s a tough question, one worthy of debate, study, and compassionate consideration.  It is not, however, the question that the hearing set about to address. It is not what started the firestorm.  That question, brought into such stark relief by the Committee, is whether women are essential voices to recognize when talking about women’s experiences.  In discussing an issue that affects women primarily, do we need to consult women at all?

GAG ORDER?

How can you tell when you’re being silenced? It’s obvious when someone tells you to shut up, deletes your comments, or strikes your testimony from the record, but less obvious when there’s no decisive action, just a nagging feeling of exclusion.  Just a reminder, only 17% of members of Congress are women.  We know that women’s voices are numerically underrepresented in politics, but we don’t often have the luxury of a a direct personal attack by Rush Limbaugh to let us know when our presence is unwanted.

In the course of everyday life, it’s hard to spot a lack of something, since a lack doesn’t advertise itself.  This is even more pronounced in the over-crowded information channel of politics and news coverage.   You can’t hear a silence in the room full of yelling.  So why should the Chairperson of the committee holding hearings on the birth control rule have cared that there were no women testifying on the issue? His defense? That the hearing was about the effects of the policy on religious organizations, not its effects on women.  The policy, however, affects two parties, only one of which was invited to give testimony.  Feminism continues to be a bad word among most young women, and to be sure it has its contradictions and infighting.  But its greatest contribution remains crucial and desperately needed: shining light on untold stories.   Even in 2012, it remains shockingly true that women’s stories continue to be ignored and unconsidered.

Briefly, this is what happened in Congress.  The majority (Republican) party brought forward five (male) witnesses to argue against the policy over a three hour session.  Typically, the minority (Democratic) party should have been able to offer at least one dissenting voice in testimony. Breaking with precedent, the Chairperson, Rep. Darrell Issa, rejected the Democrats’ witness on the flimsy grounds that she had not been presented early enough for proper vetting, and that, based on a google search, she was deemed merely a “college student who appears to have become energized over this issue,” without any useful credentials to address the topic at hand, no matter that the witness is a student at a Catholic University, where policies on birth control coverage impact thousands of sexually active college students.  Rep.  Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat who walked out of the hearing in protest of the proceedings and the lack of women’s voices, noted that ”in Congress more than 20 years…I have never seen a minority witness excluded.”  The silenced witness, Sandra Fluke, a 31-year-old third-year Georgetown Law student and seasoned advocate, put it best, “I can’t think whose voices would be more appropriate than the women who are affected by this policy.”

The women affected by this policy, employees and students of religious organizations, do not necessarily have expert resumes to wow Congress (as if that were truly a requirement for testifying–it’s not).  To prevent current college students from advocating for themselves because they lack a degree is strictly absurd.  In the case of Ms. Fluke, a college degree, years working on this issue, and an impressive CV did not prove compelling enough credentials.  Does a lack of degree mean that those affected can’t speak for themselves?  What happens when we’re not allowed to speak for ourselves?  In the political arena, where agendas are well-lobbied and power plays machinated, it means that there are plenty of other people ready to speak for us.

The stridency of the Congressmen preventing women’s testimony on birth control coverage reveals at once a deep contempt for women,  as well as a deep insecurity.  What will happen if women are able to share their stories?  People might start to care, and not the people whom Rep.  Issa intended to “energize” through the politically inflammatory hearings.   Right now, the healthcare “debate” isn’t addressing any of the legitimate concerns about healthcare policy.   Will the healthcare bill infringe on people’s personal rights?  Will it turn into a giveaway to the healthcare insurance industry?  Many have noted that birth control is a red herring, an issue of concern only to a vocal minority, but used as a weapon in “culture wars” against the Administration. The media hasn’t helped much, either, with coverage of any continued conversation about healthcare remaining shallow and partisan.

Let’s look at who’s still talking.   Even in this protracted controversy about the exclusion of women from the conversation, quotes by Rush Limbaugh and Darryl Issa dominated the coverage.   It’s still a matter of cruel, dismissive men being given a megaphone to share their corrosive streams of consciousness.  Have the stories that were quashed managed to poke into the conversation?  Not much.  Sandra Fluke has become a symbol of the controversy, more in name than in content.  She was eventually was able to tell the heartbreaking report that she was initially invited to recount: a story of one woman losing her ability to bear children because of her University’s policy against covering birth control pills, the only treatment for her particular condition.  Rush Limbaugh, and the Democratic backlash against him have both hogged much bigger headlines than the voices of the women who walked out of Congress, or the woman who was silenced in Congress to begin with.

WHEN STORIES BECOME LAW

The hearings, fascinatingly entitled “Lines Crossed: Separation of Church and State,” were intended to address the religious institutions affected by the law.  These institutions should be represented and their interests discussed.  That’s what legitimately tricky about this debate, weighing the rights of religious institutions versus the rights of the affected women.  But in order to weigh the apparently conflicting rights of two groups, we need to hear from two groups.  What should be perfectly clear is who has a right to be heard.

I believe in religious freedom, a key component of our democracy.  I’m interested in arguments about how healthcare intersects with religious freedom.  In fact, the current birth control compromise is evidence of that ongoing discussion.  The groups opposing the birth control coverage are increasingly narrow, as more and more organizations are satisfied by the Administration’s commitment to compromise.  And I believe that the men in Darrell Issa’s panel should be heard.  As millions of American women know, health insurers are not famous for having our interests in mind either, so a healthy debate on objections to blindly following the received standard of care is certainly welcome.

When you look at what’s actually being debated, you find the surprising fact that religious organizations are not being asked to pay for women’s birth-control coverage at all.  Representative Holmes Norton called the birth control coverage policy “one of the best win-win compromises I’ve seen since I’ve been in Congress…these religiously affiliated institutions do not have to touch or pay one dime for contraceptives…[T]his is the untold story here—that it costs insurers more to withhold contraceptive insurance.  And if you think about it, the reason is that childbirth costs a great deal more than contraception.”

So, let’s be clear.  Insurance companies want to cover birth control.  Religious institutions can prevent them from doing so at a cost, and women who want to “opt in” to birth control coverage can do so at no additional cost to themselves or the employer.  No religious hospital or university will be forced to pay for a woman’s birth control directly, any more than they already do by contributing to the profits of an insurance company.  So back to this red herring.  With reason exhausted, let’s return to the most obvious interpretation of these hearings, that the entire discussion is a political distraction devised align the Administration with recreational sex, and the Republicans with wholesome anti-sex values.  It’s low-hanging fruit in an election year, and it remains easy unless women make enough noise to remind the country how dull life would be for everyone if we were no longer able to have recreational sex (either inside or outside the confines of marriage).

The men in question are extremely interested in what goes on in the vaginas of co-eds, which makes me personally feel exposed and disgusted.  I think Rush Limbaugh put it best, “if we’re going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something for it.  We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.”  This is not even the statement that he apologized for.  Are the men opposing this policy frustrated by all the sex they didn’t get to have in college with the likes of the Sandra Flukes of the world, good-looking, smart women who know how to stick up for themselves?

Let’s step out of the realm of personal attacks long enough to look at what’s in the public interest, the questions being pressed but yet avoided.   Should we as a society pay for young people’s birth control?  The answer, matter-of-factly, is that we should pay for it if, as a society, we’d prefer not to pay to raise their unplanned babies.   Every other developed nation does it (even the Catholic ones), and every other developed nation has a lower teen pregnancy rate than the U.S.  Birth control is not a panacea, but let’s not act like its effects are unknown.

I care about religious freedom, as well as freedom of speech (even Rush Limbaugh’s).  I don’t hate Republicans or love Democrats.  In all of this debate, we’ve lost sight of what we’re actually talking about: nuanced issues that require thought, sensitivity, logical argumentation, and also heart.  In theory, we’re talking about religious freedom versus individual rights—a constitutional issue.  I’m no constitutional law professor, so I can’t speak to that, and neither can Congress.  This is what we have courts for, however imperfect their implementation of justice.

The debate has forced front-and-center the question of who is eligible to speak for herself, whose story we want to dignify with our attention (and thus compassion).  Is it a coincidence that the religious organizations representing the anti-birth-control-coverage position are all the same religions exclusively led and dominated by men? When my interests and theirs are supposedly at odds, who wins? I am not asking this rhetorically.  But it’s hard to win an argument when you’re not allowed to talk.

Decisions about women’s well-being are made every day in the open halls of government and the back rooms of health insurance companies.  We’re lucky when they’re made transparently enough that we can voice concerns.  Policy decisions are not based on anecdote, Sandra Fluke’s or anyone else’s, so why should one more testimony bother the Committee?  Stories have a particular power in an election year, when facts can’t be checked in real time during a debate, and the impact of figures are overshadowed by sentiment.  Stories are dangerous.  Darrell Issa believes that this policy is about religious freedom, and as Chairman from the majority, he gets to set all of the talking points.  The minority believes that the policy pertains to women’s access to healthcare, but they get to set agendas and call witnesses only at the caprice of the majority, in this case not at all.  These are two conversations happening simultaneously, ostensibly on the same topic, but speaking in mutually unintelligible languages, a Tower of Babel.  Here we are, arguing over matters of procedure, while stories, our best time-honored tradition for fanning the flames of compassion, are systematically silenced.

After months of work, the day finally came.  We were having a screening and Director’s question and answer session for Subjectified: Nine Young Women Talk About Sex at my school, Columbia University in New York City.

As an intern with Melissa, I reached out to various student organizations, academic centers, and campus programs that support the multifaceted goals of the project. We looked for groups that fell under the umbrella of feminist, anti-homophobia, sexual empowerment, anti-violence, and health/wellness.  Depending on how you want to screen it, many different types of campus entities could be involved. We heard back an enthusiastic response from Women’s History Month that they wanted to use Subjectified as a big opening event.

Women’s History Month is marked every March at Columbia, embodying a different theme every year related to contemporary and historical struggles for gender equality. This year’s theme was “The Xth Wave: Redefining Activism and Engagement in the 21st Century.” The WHM board members thought the documentary would fit in perfectly, showing a new way that women could be involved in representing themselves through media.

On the night of the event, I walked into the crowded lounge of the dorm. I had seen the film before, but I was really excited to hear what my peers would think. The room was packed, which was especially surprising for a campus event on a Saturday night. People sat in plush armchairs lined up from wall to wall, facing a projector and a stand-up screen.  I saw people I had never seen before standing on the side. I thought I knew everyone at this school who comes to feminist events, but clearly the community, marketing and co-sponsorships had allowed us to reach a larger scope of people. As the film screened, people laughed, expressed concern, and seemed empathetic. I was sitting with my friends who live in Q House (one of our non-monetary co-sponsors) and we all gave each other excited grins whenever one of the interviewees discussed non-heterosexual sex.

The film wrapped up, and the crowd clapped. We took a short break for snacks.  I mingled and my friends and acquaintances came up to me to congratulate me. I remember one of my friends saying, “I can’t wait to ask the director my question,” and another said, “I wish I could make something like this.” We settled back in our seats for questions. Melissa gave a short introduction and answered the questions she usually gets asked, such as how she chose the women and the interview questions.

My friends are brilliant and critical, so I was nervous about Melissa fielding the questions. Sometimes I am even intimidated by how active everyone is in critiquing others’ language and presentations. As expected, my friends asked some really difficult questions, but I think Melissa was true to herself and her intentions with the film in her answers. One person asked how she changed throughout the process of making the documentary. Melissa told the crowd that she definitely had to challenge herself to work through her own views and preconceptions of female sexuality as she conducted the interviews. She felt she had learned how to be open and receptive to answers coming from a wide variety of places. I think she showed that she cared about the individual women’s stories. This attention to giving people a voice was at the heart of her project. While they were contextualized in the context of generalized gender inequalities and misrepresentations of female sexuality, Melissa discussed how she wanted to be true to these lives she met for a brief encounter. Other questions touched on power dynamics, interviewing techniques, and strategies for making a grassroots documentary. One of my friends who is a feminist and aspiring filmmaker told me later that she found this portion of the event really useful for her in conceptualizing how she wants to make her own work in the future.

In evaluating my own emotional reaction, at first, I was sad because what I had just seen reminded me of things I’ve been silent about and the complex hidden world of female sexuality, but I guess this is a first step to moving toward opening up a healing and transformative dialogue on these issues. Listening to the feedback, it sounded like the audience had a similar reaction. One of my friends summed it up well when she said, “that was heavy, but it was real.”

In order to make such a successful event, we had many campus groups step up to co-sponsor: Radical College Undergrads Not Tolerating Sexism, Men’s Peer Education (a group dedicated to eradicating sexism and gender violence through educating men), Columbia Queer Alliance, and Everyone Allied Against Homophobia. These groups have different agendas and constituencies, but they each found this event significant for their work. My friend from Residential Life also helped by booking space and making sure everything ran smoothly on the day of the event. We also had non-monetary support from many other campus organizations: help with advertising the event and promoting it on campus.  The groups ranged from non-partisan to the radical left. I recognized my friends and fellow student activists who were all interested in hearing the true stories of young women discussing sexuality.

-Kassy Lee, Spring 2012 Outreach Intern for Subjectified

I hope you’re enjoying our new website!  It’s the culmination of months of planning and designing.  As we make more tools available to different audiences, we hope the site can grow, including posting more video/multimedia resources for your viewing and learning pleasure.  If you have ideas for how you’d like to see Subjectified reaching out to audiences in your area, we’d love to hear from you!

If you’re looking for the posts from our old site, you can find them here.

-Melissa