Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 884
January 24, 2016
Unfollow Humans of New York: The site engages sentimentally with real political matters — empathy is much harder
Over the holidays Brandon Stanton was able to raise upward of $500,000 in financial assistance for Syrian refugee families through his incredibly popular blog Humans of New York. While this campaign will surely ease the strain on many refugee families who desperately need help, HONY, by encouraging sentimental, individual acts of charity over support for systemic political change, effectively does more harm than good.
The incredible effect that HONY has on millions of American viewers lies in Stanton’s use of quotations. The quotations accompanying each image are not real. Clearly, each Syrian refugee does not prepare a speech for these encounters, making sure to have a carefully orchestrated narrative flow. The quotations — based on his conversations with each subject — are a creation of Stanton, who limits and conditions the possible interpretations that the viewer can have. This act of delimitation makes each refugee’s story Stanton’s own. Stanton operates as a filter between each Syrian refugee and each American viewer, sharing only those parts of the conversation that he wants us to hear.
Not only does Stanton craft stories that leave out certain (possibly very important) details, but he deliberately focuses on details that reflect American values, in order that these subjects can be recognizable to American viewers. So, while each story is always tragic, the people in them are always the same. Viewers are presented with family-oriented people, who understand the value of hard work, and are filled to the brim with hopes and dreams and passions. To get to where they are today they had to be brave, and they had to sacrifice. Each quotation confronts the viewer with people who are fundamentally “American.” Except they are not American. Stanton is purposefully misleading here. He presents subjects who are pitiful and therefore unthreatening, all the while reminding viewers that these subjects are basically “American” and therefore acceptable.
HONY fails to challenge viewers to new understandings, and this is why it does more harm than good. Stanton takes real stories and molds them into something that can be easily consumed by intelligent, passive readers. Most HONY viewers consume a portrait and then immediately forget about it, because what these portraits do, and do very well, is articulate things that viewers already know (i.e., that life over there is really awful, and way worse than our lives over here). Each quotation keeps the subject, ideologically, within the structure that viewers are used to. The fact that these portraits do not complicate viewers’ understandings of the political realities of the Syrian civil war is exactly why HONY fails to encourage support for systemic political change and settles instead for small acts of individual charity.
Melissa Smyth introduces this idea in her article “On Sentimentality : A Critique of Humans of New York” by expounding on the differences between sentimentality and empathy. She writes that “sentimentality offers an escape from the difficult conclusions that must come from honest scrutiny of social reality in the United States.” HONY portraits can be so passively consumed because they do not force viewers to think twice. They are sentimental. Easy. “Honest scrutiny of social reality,” on the other hand, requires effort, reflection, nuance and complication. It requires an honest engagement with a political reality that is as hard to think about as it is to look at. This is what empathy looks like.
It seems to me that a wealthy adult donating money to a refugee family through HONY is no different than a broke college kid liking the photo and sharing it on Facebook. Both acts are sentimental engagements with real political matters, that not only allow the viewer to feel good about themselves, but to say something good about themselves. It allows them to feel without being committed. Meanwhile, bodies continue to wash up on the shores of European borders, while we pretend that we’ve done the job. Sentimentality is easy. Being empathetic is much harder.
In a time of crisis and civil war there are no easy answers to questions concerning systemic political change and large-scaly policy initiatives; the answers we come up with are bound to be flawed. That being said, a manifestation of useful emotion in this case could be supporting the president in his goal to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees in the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. Or fighting against the rampant nativism currently coursing throughout the country. The crucial element of real modes of support is that they take time but can have lasting, positive consequences. Progress in the political realm is slow, steady, concrete and unsexy; the absolute antithesis of HONY, which is quick, easy and feels nice and warm. Progress requires a different emotion. Empathy begins by purging ourselves of useless sentiment. Unfollowing Humans of New York is a good place to start.
Robert John Boyle is a Columbia University first-year majoring in philosophy.
Over the holidays Brandon Stanton was able to raise upward of $500,000 in financial assistance for Syrian refugee families through his incredibly popular blog Humans of New York. While this campaign will surely ease the strain on many refugee families who desperately need help, HONY, by encouraging sentimental, individual acts of charity over support for systemic political change, effectively does more harm than good.
The incredible effect that HONY has on millions of American viewers lies in Stanton’s use of quotations. The quotations accompanying each image are not real. Clearly, each Syrian refugee does not prepare a speech for these encounters, making sure to have a carefully orchestrated narrative flow. The quotations — based on his conversations with each subject — are a creation of Stanton, who limits and conditions the possible interpretations that the viewer can have. This act of delimitation makes each refugee’s story Stanton’s own. Stanton operates as a filter between each Syrian refugee and each American viewer, sharing only those parts of the conversation that he wants us to hear.
Not only does Stanton craft stories that leave out certain (possibly very important) details, but he deliberately focuses on details that reflect American values, in order that these subjects can be recognizable to American viewers. So, while each story is always tragic, the people in them are always the same. Viewers are presented with family-oriented people, who understand the value of hard work, and are filled to the brim with hopes and dreams and passions. To get to where they are today they had to be brave, and they had to sacrifice. Each quotation confronts the viewer with people who are fundamentally “American.” Except they are not American. Stanton is purposefully misleading here. He presents subjects who are pitiful and therefore unthreatening, all the while reminding viewers that these subjects are basically “American” and therefore acceptable.
HONY fails to challenge viewers to new understandings, and this is why it does more harm than good. Stanton takes real stories and molds them into something that can be easily consumed by intelligent, passive readers. Most HONY viewers consume a portrait and then immediately forget about it, because what these portraits do, and do very well, is articulate things that viewers already know (i.e., that life over there is really awful, and way worse than our lives over here). Each quotation keeps the subject, ideologically, within the structure that viewers are used to. The fact that these portraits do not complicate viewers’ understandings of the political realities of the Syrian civil war is exactly why HONY fails to encourage support for systemic political change and settles instead for small acts of individual charity.
Melissa Smyth introduces this idea in her article “On Sentimentality : A Critique of Humans of New York” by expounding on the differences between sentimentality and empathy. She writes that “sentimentality offers an escape from the difficult conclusions that must come from honest scrutiny of social reality in the United States.” HONY portraits can be so passively consumed because they do not force viewers to think twice. They are sentimental. Easy. “Honest scrutiny of social reality,” on the other hand, requires effort, reflection, nuance and complication. It requires an honest engagement with a political reality that is as hard to think about as it is to look at. This is what empathy looks like.
It seems to me that a wealthy adult donating money to a refugee family through HONY is no different than a broke college kid liking the photo and sharing it on Facebook. Both acts are sentimental engagements with real political matters, that not only allow the viewer to feel good about themselves, but to say something good about themselves. It allows them to feel without being committed. Meanwhile, bodies continue to wash up on the shores of European borders, while we pretend that we’ve done the job. Sentimentality is easy. Being empathetic is much harder.
In a time of crisis and civil war there are no easy answers to questions concerning systemic political change and large-scaly policy initiatives; the answers we come up with are bound to be flawed. That being said, a manifestation of useful emotion in this case could be supporting the president in his goal to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees in the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. Or fighting against the rampant nativism currently coursing throughout the country. The crucial element of real modes of support is that they take time but can have lasting, positive consequences. Progress in the political realm is slow, steady, concrete and unsexy; the absolute antithesis of HONY, which is quick, easy and feels nice and warm. Progress requires a different emotion. Empathy begins by purging ourselves of useless sentiment. Unfollowing Humans of New York is a good place to start.
Robert John Boyle is a Columbia University first-year majoring in philosophy.
4 things Obama can do to prevent the planet from destroying itself before he leaves office
President Obama made a wise decision to avoid reciting a laundry list of new initiatives in his State of the Union address. After all, Congress will be in session only 111 days this year, the Republicans control both houses and he’s a lame duck. So how much can he get done? That said, there are a number of things the president can still do to strengthen international security that would not require him to go through Congress. And taking such executive action would not be out of the ordinary. Indeed, Obama’s Republican predecessors, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, both made significant unilateral cuts in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. According to Stephen Young, a senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), Obama could take four related actions regarding U.S. nuclear policy. First, he could declare that the United States will take its land-based nuclear missiles off hair-trigger alert, abandoning a dangerous, outdated Cold War policy that increases the possibility of an accidental nuclear launch. Second, he could cancel a proposed new nuclear-armed cruise missile that would likely lower the threshold for using nuclear weapons. Third, he could cut U.S. deployed strategic nuclear warheads by a third. And fourth, he could declare that the sole purpose of U.S. nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear attack on the United States and its allies, which would fulfill his promise to reduce the role such weapons play in U.S. policy. None of these steps would compromise U.S. security. On the contrary, they would not only save U.S. taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, they would also make the United States, and the rest of the world, a much safer place. Obama's Promising Start President Obama actually addressed the nuclear issue right out of the starting gate. Just a few months after taking office, he gave a widely acclaimedspeech in Prague on reducing the threat posed by nuclear weapons. "The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War," he said. "And as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act. We cannot succeed in this endeavor alone, but we can lead it, we can start it." He then cited some of the "concrete steps" the United States would take "toward a world without nuclear weapons." A year later, in April 2010, he was back in Prague to follow through with one of his promised concrete steps: to sign the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with Russia, further cutting both countries arsenals and reinstituting a strict verification system that the Bush administration had allowed to lapse. But since then, Obama has not been able to accomplish much else, despite his high hopes. In fact, it seems that his administration is going in the wrong direction. As I reported last August, it wants the U.S. government to spend $1 trillion over the next three decades on a new generation of nuclear warheads, bombers, submarines and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). So, let's examine Obama's options to reduce the nuclear threat a bit more carefully. 1. Take U.S. Land-Based ICBMs Off Hair-Trigger Alert Since the early days of the Cold War, the United States has been keeping its land-based ICBMs in a state of readiness that allows them to be launched within minutes, at least in part to avoid having them destroyed by a surprise nuclear attack. At this point, however, it is highly unlikely Russia would launch a massive first strike, and no other country is capable of doing so. What's more likely is an accidental, erroneous or unauthorized ICBM launch in response to a false attack warning, triggered either by a technical glitch or a human error. In fact, there have been a number of incidents of both kinds in Russia and the United States over the last few decades that could have prompted a nuclear launch. Obama acknowledged the risks posed by this outmoded policy even before he moved into the White House. "Keeping nuclear weapons ready to launch on a moment's notice is a dangerous relic of the Cold War," Obama said in an interview published by Arms Control Today in September 2008. "Such policies increase the risk of catastrophic accidents or miscalculation. I believe that we must address this dangerous situation." Obama is not alone in that assessment. A number of former secretaries of state and retired high-ranking military officers, including former commanders of the U.S. Strategic Command and the Navy's nuclear submarine fleet, agree. 2. Cancel the Long-Range Standoff Missile The Obama administration has proposed developing a new, stealthy nuclear-armed cruise missile, dubbed the long-range standoff (LRSO) missile, to replace the air-launched cruise missile (ALCM), which is due for retirement in 2030. The Air Force plans to buy 1,000 to 1,100 of these new missiles — roughly double the 572 ALCMs now in its stockpile — with a price tag of $20 billion to $30 billion. The new missile would be faster, more accurate and longer-range than the current model. And that's not good, says Young, the UCS analyst. Why? Because, he says, it will make it easier for the United States to use nuclear weapons. By being more "usable," the proposed LRSO missile would increase the role that nuclear weapons play in U.S. security policy by lowering the threshold for when the United States might consider using one. And that would signal to the rest of the world that the United States believes nuclear weapons retain significant war-fighting value. That's not a message the United States should be sending. "The bottom line," says Young, "is the proposed missile would not enhance our security. In fact, it would do the exact opposite." 3. Reduce the U.S. Nuclear Arsenal by a Third Obama should cut the 1,550 long-range nuclear weapons the United States currently deploys to 1,000, a third lower than the number negotiated with the Russians under the New START arms control agreement. After all, he plainly stated in a June 2013 speech that such a reduction is eminently feasible. "After a comprehensive [Pentagon] review," Obama said during a trip to Germany, "I've determined that we can ensure the security of America and our allies, and maintain a strong and credible strategic deterrent, while reducing our deployed strategic nuclear weapons by up to one-third." According to Young, New START verification procedures would be able to substantiate such a reduction without requiring a new treaty; a smaller nuclear force would save U.S. taxpayers tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars; and, despite its aggressive actions in Ukraine, Russia would likely follow suit and reduce its arsenal, especially given its ongoing financial crisis. "Some nuclear proponents may argue that reducing the U.S. nuclear arsenal could embolden Russia," Young says. "But cutting 1,550 deployed strategic warheads to 1,000 would have no effect on nuclear deterrence whatsoever and save resources for higher priorities." 4. Define the Purpose of U.S. Nuclear Weapons In 2010, the Pentagon issued a report that defined the goals for U.S. nuclear policy, strategy, capabilities and force posture for the following five to 10 years. Called the Nuclear Posture Review, it stated: "The United States will continue to strengthen conventional capabilities and reduce the role of nuclear weapons in deterring non-nuclear attacks, with the objective of making deterrence of nuclear attack on the United States and our allies the sole purpose of U.S. nuclear weapons." Obama should make that "objective" official policy. The Nuclear Posture Review listed "a narrow range of contingencies in which U.S. nuclear weapons may still play a role in deterring a conventional or CBW [chemical or biological weapons] attack against the United States or its allies and partners" for countries that either have nuclear weapons or are not in compliance with their nonproliferation agreements. Young says that "narrow range of contingencies" is shortsighted. "Giving nuclear weapons a role beyond deterring a nuclear attack is unnecessary and downright dangerous," he says. "Nuclear weapons don't add to the deterrence the overwhelmingly superior U.S. conventional forces already provide against a non-nuclear attack or the United States' ability to respond to such an attack. And if the United States considers nuclear weapons to be 'usable,' that could encourage other countries to try to join the nuclear club." The United States should strengthen, not undermine, the international consensus against the use and proliferation of nuclear weapons. Declaring that the United States would use nuclear weapons only to deter a nuclear attack is one way to do that. Obama at the Finish Line In October 2009, President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, largely due to his efforts to promote nuclear disarmament. Shortly after learning he had won the prize, he held a press conference in the White House Rose Garden. "I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century," he told reporters. "We cannot tolerate a world in which nuclear weapons spread to more nations and in which the terror of a nuclear holocaust endangers more people. And that's why we've begun to take concrete steps to pursue a world without nuclear weapons: because all nations have the right to pursue peaceful nuclear power, but all nations have the responsibility to demonstrate their peaceful intentions." It's been more than six years since Obama made that statement, and there is plenty left to do. But the president can still heed that call to action by taking a few more concrete steps before he leaves office. We would all be a lot safer if he did.
President Obama made a wise decision to avoid reciting a laundry list of new initiatives in his State of the Union address. After all, Congress will be in session only 111 days this year, the Republicans control both houses and he’s a lame duck. So how much can he get done? That said, there are a number of things the president can still do to strengthen international security that would not require him to go through Congress. And taking such executive action would not be out of the ordinary. Indeed, Obama’s Republican predecessors, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, both made significant unilateral cuts in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. According to Stephen Young, a senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), Obama could take four related actions regarding U.S. nuclear policy. First, he could declare that the United States will take its land-based nuclear missiles off hair-trigger alert, abandoning a dangerous, outdated Cold War policy that increases the possibility of an accidental nuclear launch. Second, he could cancel a proposed new nuclear-armed cruise missile that would likely lower the threshold for using nuclear weapons. Third, he could cut U.S. deployed strategic nuclear warheads by a third. And fourth, he could declare that the sole purpose of U.S. nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear attack on the United States and its allies, which would fulfill his promise to reduce the role such weapons play in U.S. policy. None of these steps would compromise U.S. security. On the contrary, they would not only save U.S. taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, they would also make the United States, and the rest of the world, a much safer place. Obama's Promising Start President Obama actually addressed the nuclear issue right out of the starting gate. Just a few months after taking office, he gave a widely acclaimedspeech in Prague on reducing the threat posed by nuclear weapons. "The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War," he said. "And as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act. We cannot succeed in this endeavor alone, but we can lead it, we can start it." He then cited some of the "concrete steps" the United States would take "toward a world without nuclear weapons." A year later, in April 2010, he was back in Prague to follow through with one of his promised concrete steps: to sign the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with Russia, further cutting both countries arsenals and reinstituting a strict verification system that the Bush administration had allowed to lapse. But since then, Obama has not been able to accomplish much else, despite his high hopes. In fact, it seems that his administration is going in the wrong direction. As I reported last August, it wants the U.S. government to spend $1 trillion over the next three decades on a new generation of nuclear warheads, bombers, submarines and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). So, let's examine Obama's options to reduce the nuclear threat a bit more carefully. 1. Take U.S. Land-Based ICBMs Off Hair-Trigger Alert Since the early days of the Cold War, the United States has been keeping its land-based ICBMs in a state of readiness that allows them to be launched within minutes, at least in part to avoid having them destroyed by a surprise nuclear attack. At this point, however, it is highly unlikely Russia would launch a massive first strike, and no other country is capable of doing so. What's more likely is an accidental, erroneous or unauthorized ICBM launch in response to a false attack warning, triggered either by a technical glitch or a human error. In fact, there have been a number of incidents of both kinds in Russia and the United States over the last few decades that could have prompted a nuclear launch. Obama acknowledged the risks posed by this outmoded policy even before he moved into the White House. "Keeping nuclear weapons ready to launch on a moment's notice is a dangerous relic of the Cold War," Obama said in an interview published by Arms Control Today in September 2008. "Such policies increase the risk of catastrophic accidents or miscalculation. I believe that we must address this dangerous situation." Obama is not alone in that assessment. A number of former secretaries of state and retired high-ranking military officers, including former commanders of the U.S. Strategic Command and the Navy's nuclear submarine fleet, agree. 2. Cancel the Long-Range Standoff Missile The Obama administration has proposed developing a new, stealthy nuclear-armed cruise missile, dubbed the long-range standoff (LRSO) missile, to replace the air-launched cruise missile (ALCM), which is due for retirement in 2030. The Air Force plans to buy 1,000 to 1,100 of these new missiles — roughly double the 572 ALCMs now in its stockpile — with a price tag of $20 billion to $30 billion. The new missile would be faster, more accurate and longer-range than the current model. And that's not good, says Young, the UCS analyst. Why? Because, he says, it will make it easier for the United States to use nuclear weapons. By being more "usable," the proposed LRSO missile would increase the role that nuclear weapons play in U.S. security policy by lowering the threshold for when the United States might consider using one. And that would signal to the rest of the world that the United States believes nuclear weapons retain significant war-fighting value. That's not a message the United States should be sending. "The bottom line," says Young, "is the proposed missile would not enhance our security. In fact, it would do the exact opposite." 3. Reduce the U.S. Nuclear Arsenal by a Third Obama should cut the 1,550 long-range nuclear weapons the United States currently deploys to 1,000, a third lower than the number negotiated with the Russians under the New START arms control agreement. After all, he plainly stated in a June 2013 speech that such a reduction is eminently feasible. "After a comprehensive [Pentagon] review," Obama said during a trip to Germany, "I've determined that we can ensure the security of America and our allies, and maintain a strong and credible strategic deterrent, while reducing our deployed strategic nuclear weapons by up to one-third." According to Young, New START verification procedures would be able to substantiate such a reduction without requiring a new treaty; a smaller nuclear force would save U.S. taxpayers tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars; and, despite its aggressive actions in Ukraine, Russia would likely follow suit and reduce its arsenal, especially given its ongoing financial crisis. "Some nuclear proponents may argue that reducing the U.S. nuclear arsenal could embolden Russia," Young says. "But cutting 1,550 deployed strategic warheads to 1,000 would have no effect on nuclear deterrence whatsoever and save resources for higher priorities." 4. Define the Purpose of U.S. Nuclear Weapons In 2010, the Pentagon issued a report that defined the goals for U.S. nuclear policy, strategy, capabilities and force posture for the following five to 10 years. Called the Nuclear Posture Review, it stated: "The United States will continue to strengthen conventional capabilities and reduce the role of nuclear weapons in deterring non-nuclear attacks, with the objective of making deterrence of nuclear attack on the United States and our allies the sole purpose of U.S. nuclear weapons." Obama should make that "objective" official policy. The Nuclear Posture Review listed "a narrow range of contingencies in which U.S. nuclear weapons may still play a role in deterring a conventional or CBW [chemical or biological weapons] attack against the United States or its allies and partners" for countries that either have nuclear weapons or are not in compliance with their nonproliferation agreements. Young says that "narrow range of contingencies" is shortsighted. "Giving nuclear weapons a role beyond deterring a nuclear attack is unnecessary and downright dangerous," he says. "Nuclear weapons don't add to the deterrence the overwhelmingly superior U.S. conventional forces already provide against a non-nuclear attack or the United States' ability to respond to such an attack. And if the United States considers nuclear weapons to be 'usable,' that could encourage other countries to try to join the nuclear club." The United States should strengthen, not undermine, the international consensus against the use and proliferation of nuclear weapons. Declaring that the United States would use nuclear weapons only to deter a nuclear attack is one way to do that. Obama at the Finish Line In October 2009, President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, largely due to his efforts to promote nuclear disarmament. Shortly after learning he had won the prize, he held a press conference in the White House Rose Garden. "I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century," he told reporters. "We cannot tolerate a world in which nuclear weapons spread to more nations and in which the terror of a nuclear holocaust endangers more people. And that's why we've begun to take concrete steps to pursue a world without nuclear weapons: because all nations have the right to pursue peaceful nuclear power, but all nations have the responsibility to demonstrate their peaceful intentions." It's been more than six years since Obama made that statement, and there is plenty left to do. But the president can still heed that call to action by taking a few more concrete steps before he leaves office. We would all be a lot safer if he did.
President Obama made a wise decision to avoid reciting a laundry list of new initiatives in his State of the Union address. After all, Congress will be in session only 111 days this year, the Republicans control both houses and he’s a lame duck. So how much can he get done? That said, there are a number of things the president can still do to strengthen international security that would not require him to go through Congress. And taking such executive action would not be out of the ordinary. Indeed, Obama’s Republican predecessors, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, both made significant unilateral cuts in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. According to Stephen Young, a senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), Obama could take four related actions regarding U.S. nuclear policy. First, he could declare that the United States will take its land-based nuclear missiles off hair-trigger alert, abandoning a dangerous, outdated Cold War policy that increases the possibility of an accidental nuclear launch. Second, he could cancel a proposed new nuclear-armed cruise missile that would likely lower the threshold for using nuclear weapons. Third, he could cut U.S. deployed strategic nuclear warheads by a third. And fourth, he could declare that the sole purpose of U.S. nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear attack on the United States and its allies, which would fulfill his promise to reduce the role such weapons play in U.S. policy. None of these steps would compromise U.S. security. On the contrary, they would not only save U.S. taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, they would also make the United States, and the rest of the world, a much safer place. Obama's Promising Start President Obama actually addressed the nuclear issue right out of the starting gate. Just a few months after taking office, he gave a widely acclaimedspeech in Prague on reducing the threat posed by nuclear weapons. "The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War," he said. "And as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act. We cannot succeed in this endeavor alone, but we can lead it, we can start it." He then cited some of the "concrete steps" the United States would take "toward a world without nuclear weapons." A year later, in April 2010, he was back in Prague to follow through with one of his promised concrete steps: to sign the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with Russia, further cutting both countries arsenals and reinstituting a strict verification system that the Bush administration had allowed to lapse. But since then, Obama has not been able to accomplish much else, despite his high hopes. In fact, it seems that his administration is going in the wrong direction. As I reported last August, it wants the U.S. government to spend $1 trillion over the next three decades on a new generation of nuclear warheads, bombers, submarines and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). So, let's examine Obama's options to reduce the nuclear threat a bit more carefully. 1. Take U.S. Land-Based ICBMs Off Hair-Trigger Alert Since the early days of the Cold War, the United States has been keeping its land-based ICBMs in a state of readiness that allows them to be launched within minutes, at least in part to avoid having them destroyed by a surprise nuclear attack. At this point, however, it is highly unlikely Russia would launch a massive first strike, and no other country is capable of doing so. What's more likely is an accidental, erroneous or unauthorized ICBM launch in response to a false attack warning, triggered either by a technical glitch or a human error. In fact, there have been a number of incidents of both kinds in Russia and the United States over the last few decades that could have prompted a nuclear launch. Obama acknowledged the risks posed by this outmoded policy even before he moved into the White House. "Keeping nuclear weapons ready to launch on a moment's notice is a dangerous relic of the Cold War," Obama said in an interview published by Arms Control Today in September 2008. "Such policies increase the risk of catastrophic accidents or miscalculation. I believe that we must address this dangerous situation." Obama is not alone in that assessment. A number of former secretaries of state and retired high-ranking military officers, including former commanders of the U.S. Strategic Command and the Navy's nuclear submarine fleet, agree. 2. Cancel the Long-Range Standoff Missile The Obama administration has proposed developing a new, stealthy nuclear-armed cruise missile, dubbed the long-range standoff (LRSO) missile, to replace the air-launched cruise missile (ALCM), which is due for retirement in 2030. The Air Force plans to buy 1,000 to 1,100 of these new missiles — roughly double the 572 ALCMs now in its stockpile — with a price tag of $20 billion to $30 billion. The new missile would be faster, more accurate and longer-range than the current model. And that's not good, says Young, the UCS analyst. Why? Because, he says, it will make it easier for the United States to use nuclear weapons. By being more "usable," the proposed LRSO missile would increase the role that nuclear weapons play in U.S. security policy by lowering the threshold for when the United States might consider using one. And that would signal to the rest of the world that the United States believes nuclear weapons retain significant war-fighting value. That's not a message the United States should be sending. "The bottom line," says Young, "is the proposed missile would not enhance our security. In fact, it would do the exact opposite." 3. Reduce the U.S. Nuclear Arsenal by a Third Obama should cut the 1,550 long-range nuclear weapons the United States currently deploys to 1,000, a third lower than the number negotiated with the Russians under the New START arms control agreement. After all, he plainly stated in a June 2013 speech that such a reduction is eminently feasible. "After a comprehensive [Pentagon] review," Obama said during a trip to Germany, "I've determined that we can ensure the security of America and our allies, and maintain a strong and credible strategic deterrent, while reducing our deployed strategic nuclear weapons by up to one-third." According to Young, New START verification procedures would be able to substantiate such a reduction without requiring a new treaty; a smaller nuclear force would save U.S. taxpayers tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars; and, despite its aggressive actions in Ukraine, Russia would likely follow suit and reduce its arsenal, especially given its ongoing financial crisis. "Some nuclear proponents may argue that reducing the U.S. nuclear arsenal could embolden Russia," Young says. "But cutting 1,550 deployed strategic warheads to 1,000 would have no effect on nuclear deterrence whatsoever and save resources for higher priorities." 4. Define the Purpose of U.S. Nuclear Weapons In 2010, the Pentagon issued a report that defined the goals for U.S. nuclear policy, strategy, capabilities and force posture for the following five to 10 years. Called the Nuclear Posture Review, it stated: "The United States will continue to strengthen conventional capabilities and reduce the role of nuclear weapons in deterring non-nuclear attacks, with the objective of making deterrence of nuclear attack on the United States and our allies the sole purpose of U.S. nuclear weapons." Obama should make that "objective" official policy. The Nuclear Posture Review listed "a narrow range of contingencies in which U.S. nuclear weapons may still play a role in deterring a conventional or CBW [chemical or biological weapons] attack against the United States or its allies and partners" for countries that either have nuclear weapons or are not in compliance with their nonproliferation agreements. Young says that "narrow range of contingencies" is shortsighted. "Giving nuclear weapons a role beyond deterring a nuclear attack is unnecessary and downright dangerous," he says. "Nuclear weapons don't add to the deterrence the overwhelmingly superior U.S. conventional forces already provide against a non-nuclear attack or the United States' ability to respond to such an attack. And if the United States considers nuclear weapons to be 'usable,' that could encourage other countries to try to join the nuclear club." The United States should strengthen, not undermine, the international consensus against the use and proliferation of nuclear weapons. Declaring that the United States would use nuclear weapons only to deter a nuclear attack is one way to do that. Obama at the Finish Line In October 2009, President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, largely due to his efforts to promote nuclear disarmament. Shortly after learning he had won the prize, he held a press conference in the White House Rose Garden. "I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations to confront the common challenges of the 21st century," he told reporters. "We cannot tolerate a world in which nuclear weapons spread to more nations and in which the terror of a nuclear holocaust endangers more people. And that's why we've begun to take concrete steps to pursue a world without nuclear weapons: because all nations have the right to pursue peaceful nuclear power, but all nations have the responsibility to demonstrate their peaceful intentions." It's been more than six years since Obama made that statement, and there is plenty left to do. But the president can still heed that call to action by taking a few more concrete steps before he leaves office. We would all be a lot safer if he did.
Fear and loafing on the campaign trail: Showtime’s “The Circus” cops out with cynical pundit porn
A former KGB agent isn’t the only Putin critic to wind up dead
Former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko is back in the news after a British inquiry found that Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, “probably” approved the ex-KGB agent’s 2006 murder by poisoning in London. The allegation has riled the Kremlin and threatens to further damage relations between Russia and the UK. But it also brings to mind the many other critics of the regime who, like Litvinenko, have met an untimely end.
Russian officials have regularly denied any roles in these mysterious deaths, but their circumstances have long raised suspicions. Here, GlobalPost looks at just a few:
Boris NemtsovThe most recent mysterious death is of former opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was fatally shot just outside the Kremlin last February. Shortly before his murder, he was helping to compile a report detailing what he said was Russia’s clandestine military involvement in the eastern Ukraine crisis.
Officials have sought to Former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko is back in the news after a British inquiry found that Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, “probably” approved the ex-KGB agent’s 2006 murder by poisoning in London.
The allegation has riled the Kremlin and threatens to further damage relations between Russia and the UK. But it also brings to mind the many other critics of the regime who, like Litvinenko, have met an untimely end.
Russian officials have regularly denied any roles in these mysterious deaths, but their circumstances have long raised suspicions. Here, GlobalPost looks at just a few:
Boris NemtsovThe most recent mysterious death is of former opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was fatally shot just outside the Kremlin last February. Shortly before his murder, he was helping to compile a report detailing what he said was Russia’s clandestine military involvement in the eastern Ukraine crisis.
Officials have sought to 
America’s dangerous “self-made” mythology: Why our ideas about upward mobility are seriously misinformed
Studies show that this is true of capitalist systems broadly. In a recent study, Carina Engelhardt and Andreas Wagener find that in every country studied, perceptions of mobility were higher than actual mobility.
Why Does Everyone Believe in Mobility? If upward mobility is illusory, why do politicians on both the left and right accept this fantasy? The main problem was recognized by Antonio Gramsci, who writes, “All men are intellectuals, but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals.” The people who benefit from inequality tend to attribute their success to themselves, rather than to luck or factors outside their control. These people then look upon the world and seek to justify it. Their justifications, because of elite power, are amplified, while the insights of the poor are ignored. The chart below, created using data from ANES, suggests that the wealthy are far more likely to believe that America is basically meritocratic. Only 33% of the richest in the survey (over $175,000 a year in family income) agree or strongly agree that “One of the big problems in this country is that we don't give everyone an equal chance,” compared with 54% of those earning less than $30,000.
Economist Branko Milanovic finds that 60% of an individual's income is determined before they are born (and tells me in an interview it’s likely higher). Economists Larry Mishel and Josh Bivens find “the increase in the incomes and wages of the top 1 percent over the last three decades should largely be interpreted as driven by the creation and/or redistribution of economic rents, and not simply as the outcome of well-functioning competitive markets rewarding skills or productivity based on marginal differences.” Higher-paid CEOs underperform lower-paid CEOs. Hedge fund managers are vastly overpaid. In 2013, the 25 highest-paid hedge fund managers made 2.5 times more than every kindergarten teacher in the U.S. combined. Yet every study finds that they can’t beat the market. Instead of acknowledging that their wealth is largely due to circumstances they control, the rich moralize (and their fans encourage them to). As with a recent Business Insider piece, in which Steve Siebold writes, "Few people in the middle class really understand the mindset of the richest people. After all, if they did, they would be among the top earners as well. We’ve all heard the remarks: Rich people are lucky, rich people had an unfair advantage, rich people are crooks, rich people are selfish, etc. These are mostly empty statements with little proof to back them up." This is, of course, risibly false. The wealthy have entrenched their advantages by investing more in their children while also supporting austerity measures that -- by leaving children undernourished and undereducated -- ensure the poor can rarely rise above their rank. But it’s unlikely the rich are even aware that they are justifying themselves. Psychologists have found numerous biases -- the self-serving bias, optimism bias and illusions of control -- that afflict us all. It is only the rich who are successful enough to become entirely delusional. What Is the Consequence of Our Commitment to the Mythology of Mobility? Our commitment to mobility prevents us from alleviating inequality. Writers, thinkers and politicians from nearly every political persuasion accept the mobility ideology in their speeches. Mike Lee warned last year of an “opportunity crisis.” Cathy McMorris Rodgers’s response to the State of the Union, which will likely define the Republican line on inequality, included the line, “The president talks a lot about income inequality. But the real gap we face today is one of opportunity inequality…” At the centrist Brookings Institution, opportunity is the watchword, with Richard Reeves’s recent essay, “Saving Horatio Algers,” which concludes, “On that spring evening in the nation’s capital, the crowd had gathered not to bury Alger, but to praise him. It is now time to pay him more than lip service. Equal opportunity must and will remain the quintessential American ideal. The challenge is to live up to it.” Kirsten Gillibrand, a liberal senator from New York, has pushed for an “American Opportunity Agenda.” Redistribution is out; mobility is in. Yet the limits of mobility as a palliative to inequality should be obvious to anyone. Even in a society with perfect mobility, someone must be at the bottom. When inequality is high, the wealthy have more of an incentive to use whatever means possible to maintain their privilege. They use their economic and political power to solidify these positions, creating a glass floor from which they can look down upon the poor, whilst exhorting them to try harder. As inequality rises, the rich are more separated from the poor, and more likely to accept their ruling ideology (the “empathy gap”). Bo Rothstein and Eric Uslaner argue that, “the best policy response to growing inequality is to enact universalistic social welfare programs. However, the social strains stemming from increased inequality make it almost impossible to enact such policies.” As inequality increases, the winner-take-all economy leads voters try to look out for their own children. The period during which overall inequality has risen has seen a massive increase in more affluent families’ spending on enrichment for their own children.
Engelhardt and Wagener find that redistribution is lower when actual social mobility is but also lower where perceived mobility is higher. Even if voters perceive the level of inequality correctly, their tendency to overstate the level of mobility can undermine support for redistribution. In another study, Alberto Alesina and Eliana La Ferrara find that Americans who believe that American society offers equal opportunity (a mythology) are more likely to oppose redistribution. In another paper, Alesina, along with Edward Glaeser and Bruce Sacerdote, shows that the share of respondents in the country who think success is due to luck correlates strongly with social spending. This relationship makes sense: the safety net should be understood as social insurance, and understanding that an individual has little control over their circumstances increases support for universalistic programs. As the chart shows, the view that luck determines income is weak in the United States.
The authors also show that while 60% of respondents in the European Union believe the poor are trapped in poverty, only 29% of those in the United States do. Similarly, while only 26% of respondents in the European union say the poor are lazy, 60% of American respondents do (see table). Within the U.S., 88% who say that the U.S. spends too much on welfare believe the poor are lazy, compared with 35% of those who say the U.S. spends too little on welfare. These views are obviously mediated by race, as most of those who say the poor are lazy have a certain race of poor in mind. Using data from 33 democracies, Elvire Guillaud finds that those who believe they have experienced downward mobility in the past decade are 32% more likely to support redistribution.
Conclusion Earlier this year, Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page rocketed to popular fame with a paper finding “average citizens’ preferences have little or no independent impact on policy.” Yet less reported was the finding that “the preferences of average citizens are positively and fairly highly correlated, across issues, with the preferences of economic elite.” This is not to say that economic elites and the general populace agree on everything -- as I’ve frequently argued, they do not. But it is where they agree, on issues like social mobility, that there are dangers. Certainly no one would reject the premise “we should increase social mobility,” but the ideological baggage upon which that statement rests is an important impediment to true progress on inequality. As long as income is “earned,” and position is “merited,” those who support equality are fighting on enemy turf. A recent Pew Survey finds, “Nearly nine-in-ten (87%) agree that: ‘Our society should do what is necessary to make sure that everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed.’ The share agreeing with this statement has varied little over the past 22 years.” It’s certainly true that people on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder are more skeptical of markets and the story of upward mobility. But their voices rarely reach politicians. A recent study by David Broockman and Christopher Skovron finds that “conservative politicians systematically believe their constituents are more conservative than they actually are by more than 20 percentage points on average, and liberal politicians also typically overestimate their constituents’ conservatism by several percentage points.” Elite control of the political system is certainly terrifying. Money flows through the veins of the political system like never before. But the control elites exercise over opinions and perceptions is certainly the more important factor -- and one even they are blithely unaware of.
January 23, 2016
This state has the most virgins, according to OkCupid data
If Virginia is for lovers, Utah is for virgins. At least, according to OkCupid's latest report on user data from 2015. The report features an interactive map of the United States, ranking each state's concentration of virgins and the concentration of people looking for casual sex. At the top of the virginity ranking is Utah, with nearly 20 percent of OkCupid users from the state identifying as virgins. Utah is closely followed by South Dakota, at 18 percent. By contrast, Vermont ranks lowest—only 9 percent of OkCupid users from the Green Mountain State are virgins. More from The Daily Dot: "How escorts brought this father and song together" This the not first time that a dating site has uncovered data about the state of virginity in Utah. Back in 2013, Seeking Arrangement—a dating site for sugar daddies and sugar babies in search of one another—found that one in seven women in Salt Lake City are virgins. Additionally, the women of SLC are more likely to become sexually active later in life; while the national average age for virginity loss is 18, in SLC the average age is 20. Utah isn't lacking in surprises, however: Just because the state has a high concentration of virgins doesn't mean that those OkCupid users who are sexually active aren't looking for flings. The state ranks at No. 24 for the highest concentration of people looking for casual hookups, with nearly 12 percent of Utah's OkCupid users interested in one-night stands. (The No. 1 state in the nation for casual hookups is good ol' Oregon.) More from The Daily Dot: "Cow whose NYC slaughterhouse escape went viral gets a new home" OkCupid is a heavily data-driven site, so the company has collected statistics on everything from sexual habits to political views. If you're curious to know how often OkCupid users masturbate, whether they prefer Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary race, and even which emojis are most popular in messages, head on over to read the full report.
If Virginia is for lovers, Utah is for virgins. At least, according to OkCupid's latest report on user data from 2015. The report features an interactive map of the United States, ranking each state's concentration of virgins and the concentration of people looking for casual sex. At the top of the virginity ranking is Utah, with nearly 20 percent of OkCupid users from the state identifying as virgins. Utah is closely followed by South Dakota, at 18 percent. By contrast, Vermont ranks lowest—only 9 percent of OkCupid users from the Green Mountain State are virgins. More from The Daily Dot: "How escorts brought this father and song together" This the not first time that a dating site has uncovered data about the state of virginity in Utah. Back in 2013, Seeking Arrangement—a dating site for sugar daddies and sugar babies in search of one another—found that one in seven women in Salt Lake City are virgins. Additionally, the women of SLC are more likely to become sexually active later in life; while the national average age for virginity loss is 18, in SLC the average age is 20. Utah isn't lacking in surprises, however: Just because the state has a high concentration of virgins doesn't mean that those OkCupid users who are sexually active aren't looking for flings. The state ranks at No. 24 for the highest concentration of people looking for casual hookups, with nearly 12 percent of Utah's OkCupid users interested in one-night stands. (The No. 1 state in the nation for casual hookups is good ol' Oregon.) More from The Daily Dot: "Cow whose NYC slaughterhouse escape went viral gets a new home" OkCupid is a heavily data-driven site, so the company has collected statistics on everything from sexual habits to political views. If you're curious to know how often OkCupid users masturbate, whether they prefer Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary race, and even which emojis are most popular in messages, head on over to read the full report.
My ironic sorority disaster
When I arrived at Sarah Lawrence College in the fall of 2006, I saw banners hanging across the front lawn that said, “Gender Fuck; Fuck your Gender.” I didn’t have a clue what it meant to fuck your gender. I thought gender was something you were born with, something you couldn’t fuck with.
The gender fuck banner was hung between trees on the main campus, which made up the original Lawrence family estate. The manicured look of the Tudor mansions and floral pergola were what initially drew me to the school. But here was this bizarre and shocking thing blocking the picturesque view.
Despite the campus aesthetic and finishing school history, by the time I arrived, Sarah Lawrence was a place where students could, to a greater extent than in most other academic environments, avoid the norms that govern most of the world. With no grades or academic honors, it was non-hierarchical and academically noncompetitive. But rather than embracing the freedoms of that new environment, I felt drawn to recreating oppressive structures, albeit ironically. That’s what led me to create an ironic sorority. Okay, a somewhat ironic sorority.
At that time, the Sarah Lawrence student body was 75% women, and many of the men I met were gay. The near absence of straight men created what was for me a new kind of social scene. For some students, Sarah Lawrence must have been a utopia where, for the first time in their lives, social structures did not revolve around straight dating rituals or hook-up culture. But I am straight, and I was confused about where I fit into the new, liberated environment.
I went sheepishly to a gender-bending party, dressed in a Risky Business style men’s shirt and no pants. When I arrived I saw that other women were wearing facial hair and socks in their pants. Clearly we were not on the same page. My efforts to be fem-sexy and cute (like Paris Hilton in a Fedora or girls in boyfriend jeans) were out of place among other students’ transgressive gender experimentation. The gender-bending party was my first exposure to this kind of boundary-breaking among women—and it shocked me. I was more than a little unprepared for the new world I had encountered.
In high school I spent a lot of time getting dressed for parties. I would try on shirt after shirt, trying to calibrate an impossible balance between sexy and cute. I looked for outfits that didn’t “try too hard.” I wanted something that said, “oops, I’m hot." And then, running late to meet friends, and sweating beneath my winter coat in the cold, I felt ashamed of my vanity and need for positive male attention. I didn’t want to be the butt of those ubiquitous jokes about women who took too long to get dressed. But I didn’t see a way out. I wanted to be a different kind of woman than the one I was, but I was unable to imagine how this woman would feel or dress or think. Paying scrupulous attention to how I dressed felt like it was necessary for me to survive, in order to feel good and accepted.
My high school was a modern orthodox Jewish day school where feminism was a word I heard used rarely and derisively. The acronym LGBT was, perhaps intentionally, confused with BLT. In religious classes we learned that men and women are essentially different and were created to fulfill different roles in life. In the mornings we prayed, boys on one side of the room and girls on the other, separated by a makeshift mechitza – a traditional barrier segregating the sexes for worship.
In this high school context, girls were held to specific standards of dress and behavior. Those who did it best wore cashmere or Petit Bateau cotton shirts, like younger versions of their Scarsdale mothers. They spoke in that uniform cadence of privileged New York-area teen girls. Their hair was silky and straightened or curly and gelled stiff—a desirable look in 2006. That was hot; they were hot. From a young age I knew that receiving male attention was social currency. I could mimic my classmates’ cadence and save up for their clothes, but I believed I could detect a patronizing tone in their polite questions. I grew up around lots of girls like that. As early as elementary school they asked skeptically, "Where are you from?"
I grew up in Soho, in the same tiny one-bedroom apartment that my mother moved into in her twenties. Back then Soho had some grit, she said. “That’s so cool you live in Soho,” a classmate once said. “Are your parents, like, Bavarian?” My parents were and still are kind of Bohemian. They were writer-performer-waiters. They were also observant Jews who chose to send me to Jewish schools, where our financial situation and quirkiness often left me feeling out of place. Like them, I was arty and liked to write. Perhaps consequentially, my clothes, my school supplies, even my cultural points of reference were never quite right, as if my subconscious was willing me not to conform while the conscious me wanted to badly. I was highly critical of my surroundings. But I also totally bought into the expectations of those around me and was conscious of how I fell short.
The homogeneity of my school -- we were all white, Jewish, New York-area kids -- amplified other types of differences. I imagined that everyone knew that my parents had financial difficulties. The college admissions process felt like a magnifying glass held to my family's lack of resources. Our school was academically competitive and known for sending students to Ivy League schools. I applied almost exclusively to elite schools and was rejected from all but Sarah Lawrence and SUNY Binghamton. I believed that going to a public school would perpetuate my family’s limited access to wealth and privilege, confirming in the eyes of my peers that I was different.
But the Sarah Lawrence name had cachet. They offered me a generous scholarship that enabled me to become a part of the school's legacy. I had a dated fantasy of the place as a prim, WASPy finishing school for artistically inclined girls. That elitist fantasy appealed to me. More recent cultural references to Sarah Lawrence, like Julia Stiles’ character in "Ten Things I Hate about You," who rejected mainstream culture and was a self-proclaimed feminist, might have been alienating to me if I'd paid attention to them. I had no idea what I was in for when I sent in my confirmation of enrollment. I was clueless that in choosing Sarah Lawrence, I was not only choosing an elite academic experience but a social experience that contrasted sharply with the one in which I’d come of age.
During my first few months of school, I made friends with other conventionally feminine girls and even took pleasure in thinking we were cuter or more “normal” (meaning less challenging of mainstream culture) than anyone else there. But I had a nagging insecurity about not having a “normal” college experience.
One night in the library I used the reference computer to look through Facebook pictures of high school classmates. I fixated on an album, “We’re bringing sexy back! Sorority Rush ’07,” that featured pages full of girls carefully posed with red Solo cups. In some pictures they wore sized-down football jerseys and temporary cheek tattoos to University of Michigan football games. So this is what everyone else is up to, I thought. While I navigated genderfuck parties, my Scarsdale-bred high school classmates were dressing up in identical packaged Halloween costumes. I was put off by the kind of imposed homogeneity—and the self-inflicted objectification (a very external show of internalized sexism). But at the same time that it all seemed totally insane, it was also oddly attractive. I felt excluded; this was major FOMO before I had an acronym to describe it.
I googled “sorority rush” and diligently studied the protocol with a mix of disgust, amusement and envy. I was particularly drawn to the formal social hierarchy of the system; how you could tell who was hot, who was rich and who was cool by the fraternities or sororities they were admitted to. During rush, sorority members observed subtle social cues in order to discern who belonged. There were blogs that advised girls about what to wear. They warned against looking “trashy” or “slutty” and advocated for chaste dress combined with endless enthusiasm. They imposed a strict conception of white femininity and upheld a subtle classism:
“When you enter the room there will be loads of girls chanting and cheering! Keep a big smile on your gorgeous face!”
“Don’t wear too much jewelry, avoid loud make up or too-tight tops; a sorority is not a nightclub.”
“Dress like you’re going out with your girlfriends for ice cream.”
“You know what would be ridiculous,” I suggested to my new Sarah Lawrence friends, “starting a sorority.”
Soon we had a name, Sigma Lamda Chi, and a Legally Blonde-inspired hot-pink logo. We began drafting flyers that said, “Shave your legs and put on your miniskirts,” “Radical feminism won’t land you a man!,” and “Put down your leather collar and put on your pearls.” We made hundreds of copies and pasted them, complete with our contact information, in dormitory hallways and cafeterias.
By morning the flyers were covered in red Sharpie. Sexist bullshit, someone wrote. Disgusting. Everyone needs to chill out and learn to take a joke, I thought. It’s not like being feminine is the same as being sexist.
Although I insisted that the flyers were a satire of imposed femininity, the girls who contacted us about membership were earnestly interested in a more conservative presence on campus. A quiet girl from my Romantic Poetry class came up to me in the library and asked how she could join. She said, “When I saw you guys, I was like, thank god there are other normal people here!”
“That’s awesome!” I answered, confused about how distributing semi-sarcastic flyers with images of hairy-legged women in miniskirts could be construed as “normal.”
I was briefly interested in having a system of selecting and accepting members in order have a more “authentically elitist experience." The other sisters said that was pushing the boundaries of what was a joke. (My version of the sorority was always more sadistic than everyone else’s.) Our membership continued to grow democratically. We had a Facebook group with 15 to 20 girls excitedly posting ideas for our first sorority event—a bake sale or, I offered, a hazing ritual. Eventually we decided to throw a Greek life-themed party.
The night of the party we wore tight-fitted, pink sorority T-shirts. We went to Stop and Shop and loaded up on cases of Coors Light with the money we had pooled together from our group of Facebook members. My hands shook with excitement as I mixed the grain alcohol with powdered Hawaiian Punch. In the absence of ironic fraternities we became both sorority girls and frat boys. I joked about adding roofies for the sake of authenticity. Like a young bro enjoying scenes of bad behavior in "The Wolf of Wall Street," I could not discern between satire and aspiration.
We threw the party at Warren House, one of the single-family homes that the school had purchased for student residency. One of our sorority members, who was also a resident, suggested this venue because the size was similar to a frat house. We never thought to ask how her housemates felt about hosting. We went ahead and marked the front door with our Greek letters like the ancient Israelites with their lamb's blood. Outside it was snowing. Inside we blasted an excruciating playlist full of the dregs of top-40 music (Paris Hilton’s update on Rod Stewart’s “If You Want My Body”) and frat anthems usually played at closing time in dive bars: "Sweet Caroline" and "Don’t Stop Believing." Our party guests, confused, hipster classmates from our literature in translation seminars and poetry workshops, asked “is this for real?” They watched uncomfortably while we attempted keg stands on a Heineken mini keg, trying to hold each other upside down but failing and falling on the floor. Some grew antagonistic and tried to change the music to Elliot Smith. Others got into it. Gay male friends requested sorority shirts, danced with us on tables, chanted with us: “You’re only as strong as the drinks you mix and the tables you dance on!” By 10 p.m., we had succeeded in a producing a lively, carnivalesque recreation of mainstream culture. At midnight, one of the house residents threatened to call security if we didn’t turn down the music. “I did not agree to host this mess,” she said. We ignored her request and, as promised, campus security came and wrote us up for hosting an unregistered party.
By the next morning, in the throes of my paranoid hangover, the campus’s anonymous list serve filled up with comments about the sorority. “Sad display of sexism and self-hatred” wrote one commenter. “Dumb bitches,” someone else wrote. “Those girls think they’re so hot but they’re not.” “The blonde girl’s boobs look like sausage meat squeezed into that stupid shirt.”
I assumed that the last comment was specifically about me, and felt ashamed of my body and my insistence on exposing it. I was ashamed of our bravado, which enabled us to joke about sexism, elitism, imposed femininity, objectification—realities that persisted even within the liberal Sarah Lawrence bubble; realities that were evident in the slut-shaming condescension of the anonymous commenters. Their accusations were another version or continuation of the same female policing I had experienced in high school. On the other hand, I began to see how for other students at Sarah Lawrence, the lack of gender-normative culture was a respite. While femininity is not internalized sexism, imposed femininity is surely a product of sexism. Our “ironic” imposition was reasonably interpreted as threatening and hostile. Finally letting that thought sink in, I quickly shut down the Sigma operation and ceased hanging up flyers. The network of sorority sisters disintegrated.
When I eventually started dating someone, a student at Johns Hopkins who was in a fraternity, I gained exposure to real-deal Greek life, and I was surprised to find that my boyfriend’s masculinity was also a kind of ironic performance. “Bro!” he said, “bra, bra, what are you even about right now?!” He took pleasure in the exaggerations and insisted that his constant use of “bro” was a criticism of how middle-America college students abuse the word. “This is Johns Hopkins," he said, “It’s not like we have legit frats here.”
It occurred to me that my gender performance was not the only one that was aspirational and performative. The times that I had joked about drag being freakish or campy, I had not taken into account how contrived my own efforts were. Senior year, as a requirement for the thesis I wrote about masculinity, I enrolled in a queer theory seminar. Before each class I straightened my hair and did my makeup. I recognized my new classmates as the same students I once taunted with sorority posters. During discussions on Judith Butler’s theories of gender performativity, I picked at the split ends of my hair, just as I had seen other girls do. I began to recognize the behavior as a performance, and wondered if this new consciousness qualified the act as ironic. I wondered if something could be ironic if I continued to feel pleasure and attachment in earnest.
This year I went to meet some of my old Sarah Lawrence sorority sisters at a Mexican restaurant in the East Village. We never mention the sorority—the memory of it is buried in locked Facebook albums. For a long time it was something I wanted to disassociate from and forget.
To our left was a bachelorette party full of drunk girls wielding penis paraphernalia. The server brought them a bottle of Patron.
“I want Patrón and pink sashes,” my friend joked. “Why isn’t that us?”
“That is us,” I said. “Think of the metaphorical pink sashes we wear across our chests as cis-women.”
“L-O-L,” my friend replied, “and this war paint we call makeup.”
The bachelorette party, rebellious within mainstream boundaries, reminded me of us on the night of our sorority party. That night I found myself in a confusing place between conformity and rebellion; between an earnest longing to belong and a flippant rejection of the surrounding expectations. Today, almost a decade later, I can look back on that night with sympathy and fascination at my motivations. I don’t particularly like or want to be the person I was at that moment, but I have compassion for her. Even now, as I move between spaces such as a high school friend’s bachelorette party in Atlantic City and the small, radical feminist organization where I work, I am conscious that there is often a disconnect between my actions and my beliefs, a wish that I could have better, more “enlightened” desires. There are moments when I still find it hard to distinguish between what I do ironically and what I do earnestly. But I recognize now that rejecting gender norms and adhering to them are often motivated by the same deep and essentially human desire: to find a way to feel loved and accepted within the world.
When I arrived at Sarah Lawrence College in the fall of 2006, I saw banners hanging across the front lawn that said, “Gender Fuck; Fuck your Gender.” I didn’t have a clue what it meant to fuck your gender. I thought gender was something you were born with, something you couldn’t fuck with.
The gender fuck banner was hung between trees on the main campus, which made up the original Lawrence family estate. The manicured look of the Tudor mansions and floral pergola were what initially drew me to the school. But here was this bizarre and shocking thing blocking the picturesque view.
Despite the campus aesthetic and finishing school history, by the time I arrived, Sarah Lawrence was a place where students could, to a greater extent than in most other academic environments, avoid the norms that govern most of the world. With no grades or academic honors, it was non-hierarchical and academically noncompetitive. But rather than embracing the freedoms of that new environment, I felt drawn to recreating oppressive structures, albeit ironically. That’s what led me to create an ironic sorority. Okay, a somewhat ironic sorority.
At that time, the Sarah Lawrence student body was 75% women, and many of the men I met were gay. The near absence of straight men created what was for me a new kind of social scene. For some students, Sarah Lawrence must have been a utopia where, for the first time in their lives, social structures did not revolve around straight dating rituals or hook-up culture. But I am straight, and I was confused about where I fit into the new, liberated environment.
I went sheepishly to a gender-bending party, dressed in a Risky Business style men’s shirt and no pants. When I arrived I saw that other women were wearing facial hair and socks in their pants. Clearly we were not on the same page. My efforts to be fem-sexy and cute (like Paris Hilton in a Fedora or girls in boyfriend jeans) were out of place among other students’ transgressive gender experimentation. The gender-bending party was my first exposure to this kind of boundary-breaking among women—and it shocked me. I was more than a little unprepared for the new world I had encountered.
In high school I spent a lot of time getting dressed for parties. I would try on shirt after shirt, trying to calibrate an impossible balance between sexy and cute. I looked for outfits that didn’t “try too hard.” I wanted something that said, “oops, I’m hot." And then, running late to meet friends, and sweating beneath my winter coat in the cold, I felt ashamed of my vanity and need for positive male attention. I didn’t want to be the butt of those ubiquitous jokes about women who took too long to get dressed. But I didn’t see a way out. I wanted to be a different kind of woman than the one I was, but I was unable to imagine how this woman would feel or dress or think. Paying scrupulous attention to how I dressed felt like it was necessary for me to survive, in order to feel good and accepted.
My high school was a modern orthodox Jewish day school where feminism was a word I heard used rarely and derisively. The acronym LGBT was, perhaps intentionally, confused with BLT. In religious classes we learned that men and women are essentially different and were created to fulfill different roles in life. In the mornings we prayed, boys on one side of the room and girls on the other, separated by a makeshift mechitza – a traditional barrier segregating the sexes for worship.
In this high school context, girls were held to specific standards of dress and behavior. Those who did it best wore cashmere or Petit Bateau cotton shirts, like younger versions of their Scarsdale mothers. They spoke in that uniform cadence of privileged New York-area teen girls. Their hair was silky and straightened or curly and gelled stiff—a desirable look in 2006. That was hot; they were hot. From a young age I knew that receiving male attention was social currency. I could mimic my classmates’ cadence and save up for their clothes, but I believed I could detect a patronizing tone in their polite questions. I grew up around lots of girls like that. As early as elementary school they asked skeptically, "Where are you from?"
I grew up in Soho, in the same tiny one-bedroom apartment that my mother moved into in her twenties. Back then Soho had some grit, she said. “That’s so cool you live in Soho,” a classmate once said. “Are your parents, like, Bavarian?” My parents were and still are kind of Bohemian. They were writer-performer-waiters. They were also observant Jews who chose to send me to Jewish schools, where our financial situation and quirkiness often left me feeling out of place. Like them, I was arty and liked to write. Perhaps consequentially, my clothes, my school supplies, even my cultural points of reference were never quite right, as if my subconscious was willing me not to conform while the conscious me wanted to badly. I was highly critical of my surroundings. But I also totally bought into the expectations of those around me and was conscious of how I fell short.
The homogeneity of my school -- we were all white, Jewish, New York-area kids -- amplified other types of differences. I imagined that everyone knew that my parents had financial difficulties. The college admissions process felt like a magnifying glass held to my family's lack of resources. Our school was academically competitive and known for sending students to Ivy League schools. I applied almost exclusively to elite schools and was rejected from all but Sarah Lawrence and SUNY Binghamton. I believed that going to a public school would perpetuate my family’s limited access to wealth and privilege, confirming in the eyes of my peers that I was different.
But the Sarah Lawrence name had cachet. They offered me a generous scholarship that enabled me to become a part of the school's legacy. I had a dated fantasy of the place as a prim, WASPy finishing school for artistically inclined girls. That elitist fantasy appealed to me. More recent cultural references to Sarah Lawrence, like Julia Stiles’ character in "Ten Things I Hate about You," who rejected mainstream culture and was a self-proclaimed feminist, might have been alienating to me if I'd paid attention to them. I had no idea what I was in for when I sent in my confirmation of enrollment. I was clueless that in choosing Sarah Lawrence, I was not only choosing an elite academic experience but a social experience that contrasted sharply with the one in which I’d come of age.
During my first few months of school, I made friends with other conventionally feminine girls and even took pleasure in thinking we were cuter or more “normal” (meaning less challenging of mainstream culture) than anyone else there. But I had a nagging insecurity about not having a “normal” college experience.
One night in the library I used the reference computer to look through Facebook pictures of high school classmates. I fixated on an album, “We’re bringing sexy back! Sorority Rush ’07,” that featured pages full of girls carefully posed with red Solo cups. In some pictures they wore sized-down football jerseys and temporary cheek tattoos to University of Michigan football games. So this is what everyone else is up to, I thought. While I navigated genderfuck parties, my Scarsdale-bred high school classmates were dressing up in identical packaged Halloween costumes. I was put off by the kind of imposed homogeneity—and the self-inflicted objectification (a very external show of internalized sexism). But at the same time that it all seemed totally insane, it was also oddly attractive. I felt excluded; this was major FOMO before I had an acronym to describe it.
I googled “sorority rush” and diligently studied the protocol with a mix of disgust, amusement and envy. I was particularly drawn to the formal social hierarchy of the system; how you could tell who was hot, who was rich and who was cool by the fraternities or sororities they were admitted to. During rush, sorority members observed subtle social cues in order to discern who belonged. There were blogs that advised girls about what to wear. They warned against looking “trashy” or “slutty” and advocated for chaste dress combined with endless enthusiasm. They imposed a strict conception of white femininity and upheld a subtle classism:
“When you enter the room there will be loads of girls chanting and cheering! Keep a big smile on your gorgeous face!”
“Don’t wear too much jewelry, avoid loud make up or too-tight tops; a sorority is not a nightclub.”
“Dress like you’re going out with your girlfriends for ice cream.”
“You know what would be ridiculous,” I suggested to my new Sarah Lawrence friends, “starting a sorority.”
Soon we had a name, Sigma Lamda Chi, and a Legally Blonde-inspired hot-pink logo. We began drafting flyers that said, “Shave your legs and put on your miniskirts,” “Radical feminism won’t land you a man!,” and “Put down your leather collar and put on your pearls.” We made hundreds of copies and pasted them, complete with our contact information, in dormitory hallways and cafeterias.
By morning the flyers were covered in red Sharpie. Sexist bullshit, someone wrote. Disgusting. Everyone needs to chill out and learn to take a joke, I thought. It’s not like being feminine is the same as being sexist.
Although I insisted that the flyers were a satire of imposed femininity, the girls who contacted us about membership were earnestly interested in a more conservative presence on campus. A quiet girl from my Romantic Poetry class came up to me in the library and asked how she could join. She said, “When I saw you guys, I was like, thank god there are other normal people here!”
“That’s awesome!” I answered, confused about how distributing semi-sarcastic flyers with images of hairy-legged women in miniskirts could be construed as “normal.”
I was briefly interested in having a system of selecting and accepting members in order have a more “authentically elitist experience." The other sisters said that was pushing the boundaries of what was a joke. (My version of the sorority was always more sadistic than everyone else’s.) Our membership continued to grow democratically. We had a Facebook group with 15 to 20 girls excitedly posting ideas for our first sorority event—a bake sale or, I offered, a hazing ritual. Eventually we decided to throw a Greek life-themed party.
The night of the party we wore tight-fitted, pink sorority T-shirts. We went to Stop and Shop and loaded up on cases of Coors Light with the money we had pooled together from our group of Facebook members. My hands shook with excitement as I mixed the grain alcohol with powdered Hawaiian Punch. In the absence of ironic fraternities we became both sorority girls and frat boys. I joked about adding roofies for the sake of authenticity. Like a young bro enjoying scenes of bad behavior in "The Wolf of Wall Street," I could not discern between satire and aspiration.
We threw the party at Warren House, one of the single-family homes that the school had purchased for student residency. One of our sorority members, who was also a resident, suggested this venue because the size was similar to a frat house. We never thought to ask how her housemates felt about hosting. We went ahead and marked the front door with our Greek letters like the ancient Israelites with their lamb's blood. Outside it was snowing. Inside we blasted an excruciating playlist full of the dregs of top-40 music (Paris Hilton’s update on Rod Stewart’s “If You Want My Body”) and frat anthems usually played at closing time in dive bars: "Sweet Caroline" and "Don’t Stop Believing." Our party guests, confused, hipster classmates from our literature in translation seminars and poetry workshops, asked “is this for real?” They watched uncomfortably while we attempted keg stands on a Heineken mini keg, trying to hold each other upside down but failing and falling on the floor. Some grew antagonistic and tried to change the music to Elliot Smith. Others got into it. Gay male friends requested sorority shirts, danced with us on tables, chanted with us: “You’re only as strong as the drinks you mix and the tables you dance on!” By 10 p.m., we had succeeded in a producing a lively, carnivalesque recreation of mainstream culture. At midnight, one of the house residents threatened to call security if we didn’t turn down the music. “I did not agree to host this mess,” she said. We ignored her request and, as promised, campus security came and wrote us up for hosting an unregistered party.
By the next morning, in the throes of my paranoid hangover, the campus’s anonymous list serve filled up with comments about the sorority. “Sad display of sexism and self-hatred” wrote one commenter. “Dumb bitches,” someone else wrote. “Those girls think they’re so hot but they’re not.” “The blonde girl’s boobs look like sausage meat squeezed into that stupid shirt.”
I assumed that the last comment was specifically about me, and felt ashamed of my body and my insistence on exposing it. I was ashamed of our bravado, which enabled us to joke about sexism, elitism, imposed femininity, objectification—realities that persisted even within the liberal Sarah Lawrence bubble; realities that were evident in the slut-shaming condescension of the anonymous commenters. Their accusations were another version or continuation of the same female policing I had experienced in high school. On the other hand, I began to see how for other students at Sarah Lawrence, the lack of gender-normative culture was a respite. While femininity is not internalized sexism, imposed femininity is surely a product of sexism. Our “ironic” imposition was reasonably interpreted as threatening and hostile. Finally letting that thought sink in, I quickly shut down the Sigma operation and ceased hanging up flyers. The network of sorority sisters disintegrated.
When I eventually started dating someone, a student at Johns Hopkins who was in a fraternity, I gained exposure to real-deal Greek life, and I was surprised to find that my boyfriend’s masculinity was also a kind of ironic performance. “Bro!” he said, “bra, bra, what are you even about right now?!” He took pleasure in the exaggerations and insisted that his constant use of “bro” was a criticism of how middle-America college students abuse the word. “This is Johns Hopkins," he said, “It’s not like we have legit frats here.”
It occurred to me that my gender performance was not the only one that was aspirational and performative. The times that I had joked about drag being freakish or campy, I had not taken into account how contrived my own efforts were. Senior year, as a requirement for the thesis I wrote about masculinity, I enrolled in a queer theory seminar. Before each class I straightened my hair and did my makeup. I recognized my new classmates as the same students I once taunted with sorority posters. During discussions on Judith Butler’s theories of gender performativity, I picked at the split ends of my hair, just as I had seen other girls do. I began to recognize the behavior as a performance, and wondered if this new consciousness qualified the act as ironic. I wondered if something could be ironic if I continued to feel pleasure and attachment in earnest.
This year I went to meet some of my old Sarah Lawrence sorority sisters at a Mexican restaurant in the East Village. We never mention the sorority—the memory of it is buried in locked Facebook albums. For a long time it was something I wanted to disassociate from and forget.
To our left was a bachelorette party full of drunk girls wielding penis paraphernalia. The server brought them a bottle of Patron.
“I want Patrón and pink sashes,” my friend joked. “Why isn’t that us?”
“That is us,” I said. “Think of the metaphorical pink sashes we wear across our chests as cis-women.”
“L-O-L,” my friend replied, “and this war paint we call makeup.”
The bachelorette party, rebellious within mainstream boundaries, reminded me of us on the night of our sorority party. That night I found myself in a confusing place between conformity and rebellion; between an earnest longing to belong and a flippant rejection of the surrounding expectations. Today, almost a decade later, I can look back on that night with sympathy and fascination at my motivations. I don’t particularly like or want to be the person I was at that moment, but I have compassion for her. Even now, as I move between spaces such as a high school friend’s bachelorette party in Atlantic City and the small, radical feminist organization where I work, I am conscious that there is often a disconnect between my actions and my beliefs, a wish that I could have better, more “enlightened” desires. There are moments when I still find it hard to distinguish between what I do ironically and what I do earnestly. But I recognize now that rejecting gender norms and adhering to them are often motivated by the same deep and essentially human desire: to find a way to feel loved and accepted within the world.
Stop watching “Hoarders”: Our lurid reality TV obsession with mental illness has crossed a line
Hitler’s turning point: Without his year in prison, “he could have disappeared into the sands of irrelevance”
Cracking the West Wing Boy’s Club: How Obama’s top women finally broke into the room
