Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 909

The American criminal justice system is guilty of killing Tamir Rice

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Media fell asleep on Ebola: Outbreak in West Africa declared over as world ignores 11,000 dead and 22,000 orphans

The Ebola outbreak has officially ended in West Africa, the U.N. health agency declared Tuesday. The fatal disease broke out in Guinea in December 2013, before spreading to neighboring Sierra Leone and Liberia. A handful of cases of Ebola were subsequently reported in Nigeria, Mali, the U.S., and some European countries, yet were all contained. "This is the first time that all three countries – Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone – have stopped the original chains of transmission that were responsible for starting this devastating outbreak two years ago," said World Health Organization Regional Director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti in a statement. The World Health Organization declared the end of the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone in November. It has now been 42 days since a case of the disease has been reported in Guinea. The country will remain under heightened surveillance for 90 more days, in order to ensure that there are no new cases. In total, at least 11,300 people were killed in the outbreak — the largest Ebola epidemic in history — according to the World Health Organization (although this is a conservative estimate, and likely an underestimate of the actual death toll). The vast majority of victims lived in the three West African nations. Children bore a particularly large brunt of the suffering. A toddler was the first victim of the contagious disease. During the outbreak, more than 22,000 kids lost one or both parents in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. In Guinea alone, 6,220 children lost a parent, and 519 more were killed. UNICEF warned that tens of thousands of children will need continued support. "While we mark this occasion, we must all remember that children were greatly impacted by Ebola. They were more likely to die if infected," stressed UNICEF Guinea Representative Mohamed Ag Ayoya. "They are traumatized and continue to be stigmatized in their neighborhoods. For thousands of girls and boys, the outbreak does not end today. It will be with them throughout their lives. Let us commit to be with them too," the UNICEF official added. Since Ebola was contained in the West in 2014, however, western governments and media outlets have largely ignored the continued suffering of Africans. When just a mere four cases were reported in the U.S. in 2014, the media exploded. Despite the fact that just one person in U.S. (who was not American) died from the disease, warnings filled headlines and Americans were terrified they could be next. Scientists and experts warned that this fear-mongering was irrational, dubbing it baseless "hysteria" and "epic, epidemic overreaction" — but the press fanned the flames. That same hysterical media then suddenly became silent when the disease was contained in the West. This reaction led critics and activists to accuse the western media of bias and racism. When white people were threatened by the disease, there was exponentially more concern and interest; when they were no longer threatened, there was silence. In the year since, there has been little concern devoted to the tens of thousands of victims. With the declaration that West Africa is Ebola-free, the World Health Organization has called on nations to stop ignoring the survivors.

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“We no longer trust the local criminal justice system”: Tamir Rice’s attorneys, family accuse prosecutor of “sabotaging” case

The family of Tamir Rice is lashing out against the criminal justice system after a grand jury declined Monday to indict the police officer who shot the 12-year-old at a park in Cleveland in November 2014. Rice's family has argued the non-indictment in the case, in which a black child was killed by a white police officer, is symptomatic of a biased and "corrupt" criminal justice system. The family's lawyers have also accused Prosecutor Timothy McGinty of "sabotaging" the case, and acting on behalf of the police. "We wrote several letters to the prosecutor where we outlined the many ways in which the prosecutors were sabotaging the case," explained Earl Ward, an attorney for the Rice family, in a statement to Salon. The letters the lawyers wrote are publicly available, and were uploaded to their website, ecbalaw.com. "Of significance was the presentation of use of force experts who were allowed to opine on the ultimate issue, whether the use of force was justified," Ward told Salon. "Moreover the experts chosen were clearly biased." Ward also pointed out that Prosecutor McGinty "acknowledged that he didn't think criminal charges were warranted." "That view influenced the presentation to the grand jury," he said. "Essentially what you had was a charade and a farce to provide the prosecutor with cover," Ward concluded. McGinty claimed the police shooting should be blamed on a "perfect storm of human error." He insisted that "evidence did not indicate criminal conduct by police," and that Patrolman Timothy Loehmann's belief that Rice's toy gun was real was justified. Rice's family lambasted the decisions of McGinty and the grand jury. In a statement they said they are "saddened and disappointed by this outcome — but not surprised." They maintained "it has been clear for months now that Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty was abusing and manipulating the grand jury process to orchestrate a vote against indictment." Law firm Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady LLP, which is representing Rice's family, detailed the ways in which they say the prosecutor was biased in favor of the police. Even though video shows the police shooting Tamir — whom they thought was holding a real gun rather than a toy gun — in less than two seconds, the law firm stated, "Prosecutor McGinty hired so-called expert witnesses to try to exonerate the officers and tell the grand jury their conduct was reasonable and justified." "It is unheard of, and highly improper, for a prosecutor to hire 'experts' to try to exonerate the targets of a grand jury investigation," it added. "These are the sort of 'experts' we would expect the officer’s criminal defense attorney to hire — not the prosecutor." "Then, Prosecutor McGinty allowed the police officers to take the oath and read prepared statements to the grand jury without answering any questions on cross-examination," the lawyers continued. "Even though it is black letter law that taking the stand waives the Fifth Amendment right to be silent, the prosecutor did not seek a court order compelling the officers to answer questions or holding the officers in contempt if they continued to refuse.  This special treatment would never be given to non-police suspects." Rice's family says it is "in pain and devastated by the non-indictment of officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback for the murder of our beloved Tamir." "After this investigation — which took over a year to unfold — and Prosecutor McGinty's mishandling of this case, we no longer trust the local criminal-justice system, which we view as corrupt," Rice's family stated. "Prosecutor McGinty deliberately sabotaged the case, never advocating for my son, and acting instead like the police officers' defense attorney," they asserted in a statement. "In a time in which a non-indictment for two police officers who have killed an unarmed black child is business as usual, we mourn for Tamir, and for all of the black people who have been killed by the police without justice," Rice's family added. "In our view, this process demonstrates that race is still an extremely troubling and serious problem in our country and the criminal-justice system." "I don't want my child to have died for nothing and I refuse to let his legacy or his name be ignored," Rice's mother added. "We will continue to fight for justice for him, and for all families who must live with the pain that we live with." "All I wanted was someone to be held accountable," she said. "This entire process was a charade." The Rice family, which has filed a civil suit against Cleveland, says it wants the federal government to investigate the case. The family of Tamir Rice is lashing out against the criminal justice system after a grand jury declined Monday to indict the police officer who shot the 12-year-old at a park in Cleveland in November 2014. Rice's family has argued the non-indictment in the case, in which a black child was killed by a white police officer, is symptomatic of a biased and "corrupt" criminal justice system. The family's lawyers have also accused Prosecutor Timothy McGinty of "sabotaging" the case, and acting on behalf of the police. "We wrote several letters to the prosecutor where we outlined the many ways in which the prosecutors were sabotaging the case," explained Earl Ward, an attorney for the Rice family, in a statement to Salon. The letters the lawyers wrote are publicly available, and were uploaded to their website, ecbalaw.com. "Of significance was the presentation of use of force experts who were allowed to opine on the ultimate issue, whether the use of force was justified," Ward told Salon. "Moreover the experts chosen were clearly biased." Ward also pointed out that Prosecutor McGinty "acknowledged that he didn't think criminal charges were warranted." "That view influenced the presentation to the grand jury," he said. "Essentially what you had was a charade and a farce to provide the prosecutor with cover," Ward concluded. McGinty claimed the police shooting should be blamed on a "perfect storm of human error." He insisted that "evidence did not indicate criminal conduct by police," and that Patrolman Timothy Loehmann's belief that Rice's toy gun was real was justified. Rice's family lambasted the decisions of McGinty and the grand jury. In a statement they said they are "saddened and disappointed by this outcome — but not surprised." They maintained "it has been clear for months now that Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty was abusing and manipulating the grand jury process to orchestrate a vote against indictment." Law firm Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady LLP, which is representing Rice's family, detailed the ways in which they say the prosecutor was biased in favor of the police. Even though video shows the police shooting Tamir — whom they thought was holding a real gun rather than a toy gun — in less than two seconds, the law firm stated, "Prosecutor McGinty hired so-called expert witnesses to try to exonerate the officers and tell the grand jury their conduct was reasonable and justified." "It is unheard of, and highly improper, for a prosecutor to hire 'experts' to try to exonerate the targets of a grand jury investigation," it added. "These are the sort of 'experts' we would expect the officer’s criminal defense attorney to hire — not the prosecutor." "Then, Prosecutor McGinty allowed the police officers to take the oath and read prepared statements to the grand jury without answering any questions on cross-examination," the lawyers continued. "Even though it is black letter law that taking the stand waives the Fifth Amendment right to be silent, the prosecutor did not seek a court order compelling the officers to answer questions or holding the officers in contempt if they continued to refuse.  This special treatment would never be given to non-police suspects." Rice's family says it is "in pain and devastated by the non-indictment of officers Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback for the murder of our beloved Tamir." "After this investigation — which took over a year to unfold — and Prosecutor McGinty's mishandling of this case, we no longer trust the local criminal-justice system, which we view as corrupt," Rice's family stated. "Prosecutor McGinty deliberately sabotaged the case, never advocating for my son, and acting instead like the police officers' defense attorney," they asserted in a statement. "In a time in which a non-indictment for two police officers who have killed an unarmed black child is business as usual, we mourn for Tamir, and for all of the black people who have been killed by the police without justice," Rice's family added. "In our view, this process demonstrates that race is still an extremely troubling and serious problem in our country and the criminal-justice system." "I don't want my child to have died for nothing and I refuse to let his legacy or his name be ignored," Rice's mother added. "We will continue to fight for justice for him, and for all families who must live with the pain that we live with." "All I wanted was someone to be held accountable," she said. "This entire process was a charade." The Rice family, which has filed a civil suit against Cleveland, says it wants the federal government to investigate the case.

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Beth Stelling doesn’t need your Internet justice

When someone has the courage to come forward with a story of physical or sexual abuse — or both — it's not always easy to know how to respond in the most supportive and respectful way possible. It requires sensitivity to what that person wants to come from the disclosure. But here's a good first step: Don't make it about you and what you need. On Monday, Beth Stelling, who has had a banner career year and who Vulture recently dubbed "a young comedian to watch," posted a shocking image on Instagram. It was a quartet of photos: one of her smiling and holding a microphone, and three of her limbs, covered in bruises. "Same girl in all of these photos (me)," she wrote. "I've had an amazing year and you've seen the highlights here, so these photos are an uncommon thing to share but not an uncommon issue…. When I broke up with my ex this summer, it wasn't because I didn't love him, it was because of this. And I absolutely relapsed and contacted him with things I shouldn’t have, but there are no 'best practices' with this. When friends or comics ask why we broke up it's not easy or comfortable to reply; it doesn't seem like the appropriate thing to say at a stand-up show, a party or a wedding. It's embarrassing. I feel stupid. After being verbally, physically abused and raped, I dated him for two more months. It's not simple." Stelling went on to state, "After I broke up with him he said, 'You're very open and honest in your stand-up, and I just ask that you consider me when you talk about your ex because everyone knows who you're talking about.' And I abided. I wrote vague jokes because we both live in L.A. and I didn't want to hurt him, start a war, press charges, be interrogated or harassed by him or his friends and family. I wanted to move on and forget because I didn’t understand." It seemed a continuation of a message she'd hinted at back in October, when she tweeted, "I was my ex-boyfriend's best quality. Pls RT."  The response has been immediate and deeply supportive. John Hodgman praised her "profound courage"  Rachel Bloom said, "I am in awe of @BethStelling," and Kumail Nanjiani said, "This makes me feel many things but chief among them is that @BethStelling is awesome & I'm happy we are friends." Megan Amram added, "@BethStelling is my hero." But though Stelling has made it clear many people in and out of the industry know who he is, she did not name her ex. And this has proven very frustrating for some. "Nothing brave about not saying who the abusive ex is," wrote one commenter on HuffPo. "Covering up for him is going to allow him to find his next victim." Another chimed in, "Who is this guy? I think he should be named to help other women avoid him at all costs." On Variety, another commenter said, "If he is a serial rapist and abuser, which I am guessing he is, then he should be exposed with his name. What he told you he has also told the other women he has abused. Time to shine the spotlight on him." Perhaps sensing what was coming, the comic widely assumed to be Stelling's abuser appears to have quickly deleted his social media accounts on Monday. A search of his name on Twitter, however, quickly turns up mentions that he "rapes and tortures women," messages that "Everyone should know so they don't support him or his comedy," and warnings that "We ain't stopping til we find you. Sleep tight pal :)." Yet as author Sara Benincasa helpfully explained on Monday, "I get the urge. I've been the reactionary person who wants to kick somebody's ass or make their life hell because they hurt somebody I cared about or admired. Guess what? I didn't fix anything and I just ended up hurting the person I loved, all over again. Personally, when I talked about abuse in a public setting and people were like WHO IS HE? LET'S KILL HIM! it just upset me and scared me and caused stress and drama for people I loved. It made the whole experience of telling the story almost more traumatic than the event itself. So until you get the go-ahead from somebody to cowboy up and be a Wild West West hero aka the great Will Smith, settle down and just be a support, an ally, and a friend. If you have to do something, make a donation to a group that helps abuse survivors in your area." In a year in which women have come forward to accuse porn star James Deen and comic Bill Cosby of abuse, others still have a right to make different choices in how they share their experiences. If Stelling wants to disclose more details about her ex, that's for her to decide. It's not a job for the Internet justice league. And supporting Stelling's choice to reveal her abuse means supporting every aspect of that choice, including, for now, what details of her story she wants to disclose. In her Instagram post she explained, "I don't want revenge or to hurt him now, but it's unhealthy to keep this inside because my stand-up is pulled directly from my life." And that's enough. When someone has the courage to come forward with a story of physical or sexual abuse — or both — it's not always easy to know how to respond in the most supportive and respectful way possible. It requires sensitivity to what that person wants to come from the disclosure. But here's a good first step: Don't make it about you and what you need. On Monday, Beth Stelling, who has had a banner career year and who Vulture recently dubbed "a young comedian to watch," posted a shocking image on Instagram. It was a quartet of photos: one of her smiling and holding a microphone, and three of her limbs, covered in bruises. "Same girl in all of these photos (me)," she wrote. "I've had an amazing year and you've seen the highlights here, so these photos are an uncommon thing to share but not an uncommon issue…. When I broke up with my ex this summer, it wasn't because I didn't love him, it was because of this. And I absolutely relapsed and contacted him with things I shouldn’t have, but there are no 'best practices' with this. When friends or comics ask why we broke up it's not easy or comfortable to reply; it doesn't seem like the appropriate thing to say at a stand-up show, a party or a wedding. It's embarrassing. I feel stupid. After being verbally, physically abused and raped, I dated him for two more months. It's not simple." Stelling went on to state, "After I broke up with him he said, 'You're very open and honest in your stand-up, and I just ask that you consider me when you talk about your ex because everyone knows who you're talking about.' And I abided. I wrote vague jokes because we both live in L.A. and I didn't want to hurt him, start a war, press charges, be interrogated or harassed by him or his friends and family. I wanted to move on and forget because I didn’t understand." It seemed a continuation of a message she'd hinted at back in October, when she tweeted, "I was my ex-boyfriend's best quality. Pls RT."  The response has been immediate and deeply supportive. John Hodgman praised her "profound courage"  Rachel Bloom said, "I am in awe of @BethStelling," and Kumail Nanjiani said, "This makes me feel many things but chief among them is that @BethStelling is awesome & I'm happy we are friends." Megan Amram added, "@BethStelling is my hero." But though Stelling has made it clear many people in and out of the industry know who he is, she did not name her ex. And this has proven very frustrating for some. "Nothing brave about not saying who the abusive ex is," wrote one commenter on HuffPo. "Covering up for him is going to allow him to find his next victim." Another chimed in, "Who is this guy? I think he should be named to help other women avoid him at all costs." On Variety, another commenter said, "If he is a serial rapist and abuser, which I am guessing he is, then he should be exposed with his name. What he told you he has also told the other women he has abused. Time to shine the spotlight on him." Perhaps sensing what was coming, the comic widely assumed to be Stelling's abuser appears to have quickly deleted his social media accounts on Monday. A search of his name on Twitter, however, quickly turns up mentions that he "rapes and tortures women," messages that "Everyone should know so they don't support him or his comedy," and warnings that "We ain't stopping til we find you. Sleep tight pal :)." Yet as author Sara Benincasa helpfully explained on Monday, "I get the urge. I've been the reactionary person who wants to kick somebody's ass or make their life hell because they hurt somebody I cared about or admired. Guess what? I didn't fix anything and I just ended up hurting the person I loved, all over again. Personally, when I talked about abuse in a public setting and people were like WHO IS HE? LET'S KILL HIM! it just upset me and scared me and caused stress and drama for people I loved. It made the whole experience of telling the story almost more traumatic than the event itself. So until you get the go-ahead from somebody to cowboy up and be a Wild West West hero aka the great Will Smith, settle down and just be a support, an ally, and a friend. If you have to do something, make a donation to a group that helps abuse survivors in your area." In a year in which women have come forward to accuse porn star James Deen and comic Bill Cosby of abuse, others still have a right to make different choices in how they share their experiences. If Stelling wants to disclose more details about her ex, that's for her to decide. It's not a job for the Internet justice league. And supporting Stelling's choice to reveal her abuse means supporting every aspect of that choice, including, for now, what details of her story she wants to disclose. In her Instagram post she explained, "I don't want revenge or to hurt him now, but it's unhealthy to keep this inside because my stand-up is pulled directly from my life." And that's enough.

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Best TV of 2015: The best pop-music cues, from “Where Is My Mind” to Fleetwood Mac

1. Maxence Cyrin’s piano cover of the Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind,” at various points in “The Leftovers” and in “Mr. Robot” episode “eps1.8_m1rr0r1ng.qt” If there is a song of the year, this is it. “Where Is My Mind”—in haunting piano melody—seemed to be the undercurrent of a lot of television, softly tinkling behind Kevin Garvey’s existential crisis in “The Leftovers” and scoring Elliot’s plans to send the world into the post-apocalypse. The iconic film “Fight Club” ended with the Pixies’ original electric guitars scoring the collapse of Wilmington, Delaware’s skyscrapers. Both “The Leftovers” and “Mr. Robot” opted for the far less triumphant piano version—more explicitly emo, but perhaps even more lost, too. It should be said that both shows did extraordinary work with their music direction—drawing from classical music, indie rock, and their own instrumental scores when necessary—but still, for both, this version of “Where Is My Mind” is the standout. 2. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Skeletons,” in the “Manhattan” season finale, “Jupiter” One of the most chilling slow builds this year, as the first nuclear explosion on the planet occurs during a period of incredible personal anxiety for the scientists and civilians in the middle of the New Mexican desert. “Manhattan” is about the people who are, by accident or design, teetering at the precipice of the next great accomplishment in human history, but “Skeletons” cracks open just how much fear and pain there is on the eve of the world’s deadliest weapon finally approaching fruition. 3. James Blake’s “Wilhelm Scream” in “Not So Together,” the season finale of “Togetherness” As I wrote extensively at the time, there is hardly a better choice of song for “Togetherness,” and the final moments elevate the entire season into something sublime. It helps that the creators, Mark and Jay Duplass, unleash all of their considerable directorial skill on the closing montage, which is chilling from the framing of a car on the freeway to the slow buildup to a kiss in a Sacramento hotel room. 4. Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain,” in “The Americans” episode “Walter Taffet” There isn’t a more perfect song for this show, which is entirely about the endless, meaningless loops that loyalty, family, and violence create for its characters. “The Chain” plays during a desperate, wild scene where Elizabeth and Philip launch an assassination operation, while a spy-in-training watches from the curb. 5. Alice Boman’s “Waiting” in “Transparent”’s “Kina Hora” and “Man On The Land” The real brilliance in using this song is in showrunner Jill Soloway’s decision to use it twice, to score what is the beginning and end of what is in actuality a circular arc. The reprise it occurs during a scene of awful grief and violence, but as “Transparent” so often does, it finds a way to make the moment of tragedy a moment of beauty and love, if not of joy, exactly. “Waiting” does a lot in terms of setting the scene, which is to say, a lot in terms of making me cry. 1. Maxence Cyrin’s piano cover of the Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind,” at various points in “The Leftovers” and in “Mr. Robot” episode “eps1.8_m1rr0r1ng.qt” If there is a song of the year, this is it. “Where Is My Mind”—in haunting piano melody—seemed to be the undercurrent of a lot of television, softly tinkling behind Kevin Garvey’s existential crisis in “The Leftovers” and scoring Elliot’s plans to send the world into the post-apocalypse. The iconic film “Fight Club” ended with the Pixies’ original electric guitars scoring the collapse of Wilmington, Delaware’s skyscrapers. Both “The Leftovers” and “Mr. Robot” opted for the far less triumphant piano version—more explicitly emo, but perhaps even more lost, too. It should be said that both shows did extraordinary work with their music direction—drawing from classical music, indie rock, and their own instrumental scores when necessary—but still, for both, this version of “Where Is My Mind” is the standout. 2. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Skeletons,” in the “Manhattan” season finale, “Jupiter” One of the most chilling slow builds this year, as the first nuclear explosion on the planet occurs during a period of incredible personal anxiety for the scientists and civilians in the middle of the New Mexican desert. “Manhattan” is about the people who are, by accident or design, teetering at the precipice of the next great accomplishment in human history, but “Skeletons” cracks open just how much fear and pain there is on the eve of the world’s deadliest weapon finally approaching fruition. 3. James Blake’s “Wilhelm Scream” in “Not So Together,” the season finale of “Togetherness” As I wrote extensively at the time, there is hardly a better choice of song for “Togetherness,” and the final moments elevate the entire season into something sublime. It helps that the creators, Mark and Jay Duplass, unleash all of their considerable directorial skill on the closing montage, which is chilling from the framing of a car on the freeway to the slow buildup to a kiss in a Sacramento hotel room. 4. Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain,” in “The Americans” episode “Walter Taffet” There isn’t a more perfect song for this show, which is entirely about the endless, meaningless loops that loyalty, family, and violence create for its characters. “The Chain” plays during a desperate, wild scene where Elizabeth and Philip launch an assassination operation, while a spy-in-training watches from the curb. 5. Alice Boman’s “Waiting” in “Transparent”’s “Kina Hora” and “Man On The Land” The real brilliance in using this song is in showrunner Jill Soloway’s decision to use it twice, to score what is the beginning and end of what is in actuality a circular arc. The reprise it occurs during a scene of awful grief and violence, but as “Transparent” so often does, it finds a way to make the moment of tragedy a moment of beauty and love, if not of joy, exactly. “Waiting” does a lot in terms of setting the scene, which is to say, a lot in terms of making me cry.

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My feminine, compulsive “sorry”: I apologize for everything from having an opinion to taking up space

On average, I’d say I apologize about 15 times a day. That sounds ridiculous. That is fucking insane. At first I thought that couldn’t be right, there was no way that I legitimately said the word “sorry” that many times out loud. Then I consciously counted. Maybe I don’t say that exact word, but I definitely cough up some form of an apology over a dozen times – daily. I apologize for how I’m feeling, where I’m walking, or for someone else’s problems that have nothing to do with me. I feel especially sorry for bothering someone else with my problems. If I’m talking to another female of my acquaintance, she’s probably apologizing for bothering me with her problems, and then maybe I apologize for making her feel like she can’t talk to me. I couch my phrases in “maybes” and “probablys” and other words meant to make my sentences seem less assertive or aggressive. I’m sorry about my body all the time – enough to hide my tampons in a pocket or my purse when I walk to the bathroom, even though I work in a library and the majority of my co-workers are women.

I’m hyper-aware of how much space I take up, sorry for the swing of my arms and the jut of my hips. When I pass co-workers in doorways or on the stairs, I apologize for getting in their way, even if there’s plenty of room for both of us, even if I’m the way who was there first. If I’m walking across campus, I’ll move onto the grass to give someone else space on the sidewalk. Once, another woman walked toward me on that stretch of pavement and we simultaneously moved onto the grass. We laughed about it and we both apologized, but neither of us got back up onto the sidewalk. Neither of us wanted to be the one who wasn’t sorry enough.

Being sorry isn’t always a bad thing. It helps me find humor in awkward situations; it allows me to see situations more clearly. Apologizing provides space around topics that are too conflict-heavy to consider rationally, and it allows others comfort, too – a comfort that I get to provide. Sorry says, “I see you. I understand you. I know what you’re going through.” Apologizing to someone means I see more than one side of an argument. It means I’m willing to compromise. 

But lately, I started wondering, what does it really mean to be sorry, and is it possible to be too sorry, to be sorry too much of the time? Most of the time, I say the words unthinkingly. It’s habitual. For example, yesterday I apologized to someone because I was talking to them about a book and I said that I didn’t really like the style. It was too biographical; not enough plot progression – for me, though, maybe other people would like that style? I don’t know, maybe I just can’t understand what they’re doing – that’s probably it, right? Sorry, I’m sure it’s actually great.

Why did I feel the need to apologize? The point was that the person might be offended or could think I was belittling the author out of jealousy – and that remote possibility triggered a response in my brain. An apology serves as an incantation to ward off bitchiness. If I pre-apologize for my mood or for saying something that someone might not like, I’m preemptively correcting their impression of me by chanting this mantra. If I say sorry enough times, the other person will forgive me for something I haven’t even done yet. I will be beyond reproach. Being sorry is easier than dealing with conflict. It’s much less stressful. If I apologize for something, I can shunt away a conversation that might prove too difficult to handle. It allows an argument to slide out of sight. We don’t have to prolong an uncomfortable situation if I’m sorry for what I did or if I’m sorry for something you don’t like. It’s easier to be sorry for something than to deal with the repercussions of someone else’s discomfort.

Here are other ways I chose to be sorry today:

For eating lunch because I’m eating at a time someone wanted to ask me a question about work For feeling irritated that someone bothered me during my lunch break, but maybe they didn’t know, and the tone I just used could have hurt their feelings? For asking someone a work-related question when they were busy working, even though we’re both at work and it should be fine, they just looked super busy and maybe I was interrupting them For writing an essay about female apologies – because I think that this will possibly annoy people and they’ll be mad at me and I don’t want to deal with their unhappiness

Let’s break this down. Why am I sorry? Because I don’t want to deal with someone else’s emotions about a way I choose to feel or behave. This indicates that I would rather deal with hiding how I feel about something than make you feel upset. If we’re looking at the situation like a line graph, with everyone else’s feelings on one side and my own on the other, I will actively choose to slide the scale closer to your happiness.

The only problem is that lately, much of my apologizing is angry-apologizing, and it’s cyclical. I get mad and then I apologize and I’m still angry so I keep apologizing. I’m not sitting around feeling bad about things. Sorry for me feels like childhood sorry, like when I was 8 and broke a glass of red Kool-Aid and tried to hide it by mopping the mess up with a shirt from the laundry basket. I’m sorry I got caught and I’m sorry someone’s upset with me. I’m not sorry for what I did; I’m sorry that I’m forced to deal with your feelings while mine roil around in my own head like coffee that’s been cooking on a burner all day.

My anger is embarrassing. I’m saying, “I’m sorry,” but really I’m sorry for myself.

And of course, the word “sorry” is often feminized. By feminized, I mean that our society promotes apologies as passive. To apologize is to soften, to admit fault, to weaken. The first person to apologize is seen as the one willing to admit defeat. Merriam-Webster tells us the term is “used to introduce disappointing or bad news in a polite way.” Women are told not to cause a scene. We are instructed to say sorry, to be the one willing to smooth things over, even if it means saying you’re wrong when you know that you’re right. Growing up, I was repeatedly told the story of Mary and Martha – how when Jesus came to visit, Mary was the sweet one, the one who sat docilely and listened. Martha was the one who bothered everyone by asking for help when she should have held her tongue. We were given coloring sheets in Sunday school depicting sweet, beautiful Mary and grumpy, angry Martha. Martha was the one who was wrong. Martha had to apologize. Her face was sorry; lined and perpetually worried. Don’t be a Martha, I was told, meaning: be delicate, be polite, be sorry.

When I was 12, I went with my family on a trip to North Carolina. We did this every summer because it was cheap and we could all caravan together in one of those oversize tropic traveler vans – the ones with the swivel seats and wood paneling and the world’s smallest television set that only played VHS tapes. Every afternoon my family would eat lunch at a diner that served a huge selection of homemade pies. Once at this restaurant, I decided to order the oyster stew, which the waitress had declared a local delicacy. When I told my father what I wanted, he made a big deal out of telling me how much I was going to hate it.

“It’s not what you think it is. You’re gonna be sorry.”

I ordered it anyway.

It came out before anyone else’s food; a small blue bowl of hot milk bordered by packages of crackers. Everyone stared at me as I stirred the broth. When I brought my spoon back up, the bowl held what I thought resembled a boiled eyeball.

My father smiled. “You’re sorry now, aren’t you?”

I put the spoon in my mouth and chewed the eyeball. The gristle snapped between my teeth, like biting through a ball of rubber bands. I ate until everything was gone. I stared at my father and I drank every drop of the warm, oily milk. I wiped my face with a paper napkin and ordered a big hunk of strawberry pie and drank three glasses of coke. I was not sorry for that then, but I’m sorry thinking about it now.

A related thing I’m sorry for: my relationship with my father. I care too much about what he thinks, care enough that I’ll spend 20 minutes telling someone why I don’t care about what he thinks. I apologize in my head, over and over again, because I’m sorry that we don’t understand each other, and I’m sorry that I disappointed him by turning out gay. Once he and I got into an argument about why I couldn’t name a stray cat “Butch.”  I was 12. I asked why it mattered to call it “Butch,” even if it was a female, because wasn’t a name anything you’d like it to be? He countered by pulling out the dictionary and forcing me to read the Merriam-Webster definition – aloud – to a roomful of relatives.

Butch: (adjective)

1 : notably or deliberately masculine in appearance or manner

2 : closely cropped

I identify as femme. I’m sorry about this sometimes, because I wonder how much of it stems from that time my father told me that he only liked long hair – that girls with long ponytails looked especially beautiful. Once in third grade, I got my hair cut at a salon. The woman who cut my hair that day had a cold. I remember her eyes were red and drippy and she kept tilting my head with fingers that dug and pinched. Instead of a trim, she gave me a bob that tucked neat under my chin. When she was done, I looked in the mirror and cried because I knew it wasn’t pretty. My mother apologized to the woman for me. The woman apologized to me and then apologized to my mother. When we got to the car, my mother told me she was sorry. She said that it would grow back out. Maybe it never did. According to Merriam-Webster, “butchness” is also a noun.

Sorry could mean that I love you more than I love me. Sorry probably means that I don’t love myself enough to deal with whatever conflict is causing the apology.

Say my family’s Southern Baptist. Say I’m 8 years old and it’s revival weekend, which means they’ve got all the big names down from Atlanta mopping sweat off their foreheads with giant hankies as their shouts slap at your ears no matter how low you huddle in your seat. Say I need to pee. Say I walk down to the front of the church to ask my mom if I can use the bathroom. Say my mom’s on her knees praying and when she sees me there she confuses this pee-walk with a desire to come to Jesus.

Choose your own adventure: Do I tell her that I just needed to use the bathroom, even though she’s happy-sobbing through her Mary Kay purple eye shadow? Or do I nod when she asks if I finally prayed for deliverance?

They take me to the lake the very next weekend to get baptized because they’re renovating the church building and the baptismal isn’t finished yet.  I open my eyes underwater to try and see Jesus down there and there’s only the preacher’s khaki pants and algae-muck and a faded Pepsi can. So maybe my name is mistakenly written in the Book because I just had to pee really bad at church one time.

What would an apology do to fix this? Or my relationship to my father? Or my relationship to myself? Maybe prayer is just a constant state of sorry.

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“Mad Max,” “Jessica Jones,” “Star Wars”: 2015 was the year women reigned geek culture

Women have been slowly gaining ground in the world of "geek culture" — an amalgamation of comics, video games, sci-fi and fantasy — but 2015 will likely go down as a breakthrough year all the same. That's because this is the year that a huge number of existing franchises finally started experimenting with giving women lead roles. The result was that a lot of franchises that were feeling a little long in the tooth felt reinvigorated and fresh, reminding people of the magic that made them fans in the first place. By far, this was most evident in the big event movie of the winter, the year and quite arguably the century, "Star Wars: The Force Awakens." The original franchise, despite the presence of Princess Leia, was still male-dominated, with almost no important female characters of note except Leia. But "The Force Awakens" not only added more women to the mix, but took it a step further: The Luke Skywalker-style character, the young hero who is unaware of latent Jedi powers who will clearly develop into a prophetic-style savior character, is a woman. This choice, to make Rey female instead of the male character that she would have surely been at any point prior to about 2012, proved to be the smartest decision that screenwriters J.J. Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan could have made, and not just because it let them cast Daisy Ridley, who turns in a winning performance. By making the young Jedi-to-be female, Abrams and Kasdan added a layer of subtext to a story that otherwise would have felt like a direct rehash of the original "Star Wars," or at least, more than it already does. Adam Driver plays Rey's enemy (and possibly brother or cousin?), Kylo Ren, as an insecure young man who is incredibly talented, but drawn to evil because he hopes it will ameliorate his self-doubt. And then comes along a young woman who is confident, intelligent and a real natural at the very thing--using the Force--that he had to work for years at to learn. He is obsessed with her and wants to dominate her, either by recruiting her to be his minion or by killing her. For anyone who has come in contact with Gamergate — a movement of young male video game enthusiasts who harass and terrorize any woman who dares to criticize video games — the dynamic is quite familiar. Gamergaters don't want to rid gaming of women. They just want those who come in to accept a subservient, silent role. But if you refuse to do that, they want you out. The Rey/Kylo Ren fight tapped into this fascinating dynamic, elevating the story beyond just a child's story of good and evil and into something that felt a lot more contemporary and meaningful. The same thing happened with another sequel to a 1980s franchise that most people thought was long-dead: "The Mad Max" movies. As with "Star Wars," the filmmakers put a female lead in the center of a movie that most audiences think of as a boy's club, and, as with "Star Wars," the choice ends up invigorating a movie that otherwise could have gone very wrong. By making the movie about Imperator Furiousa, played by Charlize Theron, George Miller is able to spin out a riveting feminist fairy tale in the post-apocalyptic wasteland where people seem to express themselves solely by grunts and high-speed car chases. It wasn't a subtle movie and didn't want to be. But it still felt fresh, in no small part because audiences are so used to seeing violence against women, especially in sci-fi and fantasy movies, used only as window dressing or to motivate a male character to heroism. But in "Mad Max," the women who are subjugated are saving themselves and, in the process, this low-dialogue, high-action movie ended up having more to say about patriarchy and the women — and men — who resist it than far more high-minded bedroom dramas can usually convey. The Marvel movies continue to fall behind when it comes to making women the stars, and unsurprisingly the two big movies of the year, "Avengers: Age of Ultron" and "Ant-Man," ended up being less than memorable. Not so with the Marvel TV shows, however. The year kicked off with a winning TV show with a woman at the center, "Agent Carter," who is known as the founder of S.H.I.E.L.D in the Marvel universe. But even better was a late in the year arrival, "Jessica Jones."  This show, which had the marvelous Krysten Ritter in the lead role, managed to win over even the most superhero-hostile of critics with its story of a super-strong woman who is trying to escape the clutches of a stalker who has  mind-control powers. The show, which had a female showrunner as well as star, was widely praised for its eerily accurate take on what life is like for women who have escaped abusive relationships or survived rape. Jessica isn't the simpering, angelic victim that we usually expect. Her strength is real, but so is her trauma. But it wasn't just one of the best representations of surviving gendered violence ever to grace a TV set. "Jessica Jones" also reinvigorated the superhero genre, reminding audiences that it can be about a lot more than cool action sequences and special effects, but also about telling human stories where superpowers function as metaphors for the way we actually live. "Supergirl," CBS's new addition to the DC universe, doesn't aim for the depths reached by "Jessica Jones," instead being satisfied being a shoot-'em-up action show about Superman's younger cousin making her way in the big city. But while it started slow — with far too many eye-rolling moments where they made an "it's a girl!" fuss that felt like it belonged more to a '70s show than one in 2015 — the show quickly found its footing and became one of the more surprising adventure shows on TV. In fact, this first season of "Supergirl" is now more entertaining than "Arrow" or "The Flash," companion DC shows on the CW that were also started by showrunner Greg Berlanti. Part of the reason is gender. When the heroes of "Arrow" or "The Flash" try to show hidden depths, it comes across as clichéd explorations of male angst, the same story we've heard a billion times before. But Kara of "Supergirl" is struggling to keep a bright, sunny exterior plastered over her inner boiling rage. The angst story now has a feminist angle. The angst caused by being a male superhero who feels burdened by saving the world is hard to relate to, but a woman who struggles to keep up a sunny, pleasing appearance while she's secretly burning with rage inside? That's the story of every woman's life, at some point. Of course, the danger in all this is that women's stories will get relegated to novelty status, an occasional trick writers use to liven up a fading franchise before going right back to telling nearly all their stories about men. But the real lesson here is that when you tell women's stories on equal footing with men, that gives you twice as many wrinkles and possibilities as you have focusing like a laser only on one side of the gender aisle. Let's hope this new trend of putting ladies in the driver's seat--literally, in the case of "Mad Max"—stops being a trend and becomes the new normal.

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My child is not in heaven: Your religion only makes my grief harder

We're re-running this story as part of a countdown of the year's best personal essays. To read all the entries in the series, click here.

When I tell people about the death of my infant daughter, they often respond that she is in heaven. They tell me that she is an angel now. They tell me that she’s with God. But as an atheist, these words have never brought me any comfort.

My daughter was born three years ago. I went into pre-term labor at 22 weeks gestation, and try as they might, the doctors could not keep her here with us. Her short life, just eight hours long, has marked my life and my husband’s life deeply. Margaret Hope (or Maggie, as we refer to her) continues to exist with us in her own way, but this persistence has absolutely nothing to do with god or Jesus or angels or any other specific afterworld. This is what works for us as parents. It’s what works for about 2 percent of the U.S. population who currently identify as atheists, and for about 20 percent who are agnostic or unaffiliated with any particular set of beliefs.

Being an atheist in a believer’s world can be difficult at times, especially when some of the more fervently religious are close family or friends. It’s even more daunting when faced with grief and death. Christians believe that when we die, we either go to heaven or hell. Many, of course, believe babies go to heaven because they are, well, babies. When our daughter died, my husband requested to have our baby baptized, fearing in some way for her soul, a remnant of his Catholic upbringing. There was no time for a traditional baptism while she was alive but her NICU doctor performed the rite for her while we held her in our arms for the first time, our tiny, frail, lifeless daughter whose eyes never even got a chance to see. It felt bizarre to me, but I allowed it because my husband was suffering and it seemed to bring him some comfort. Later, as reality hit harder, he would lose all faith as I had done.

After we left the hospital, we were faced with the task of whether or not to hold some sort of memorial service for Maggie. Part of me wanted to go to the Unitarian Universalist church, as that is the only place I’d been where I felt like my agnostic views were still respected, where I could still enjoy some semblance of spirituality while remaining non-religious. At the time, however, I was an emotional mess and could not do much to contact anyone or even make any suggestions.

Fortunately, my brother stepped up and arranged a service at a church in Miami Beach (where Maggie “lived” for most of her brief life). While it was technically a Christian church, the fact that they were supportive of the LGBTQA community, plus their commitment to serving the homeless made me feel like this was a place I would be comfortable bringing my daughter, even after death. In a small, cosmic joke, we also appreciated the fact that the pastor was named “Hunter” Thompson.

Those around us did their best to offer words of comfort, but after a while, I became tired and even resentful of the comments about my daughter needing to go be with Jesus. Worse still, I isolated myself so I wouldn’t need to hear their “comforting” words because all they did was make me feel worse. Like so many other non-believers, I cannot wrap my head around the idea that there is some supreme being that allows these sorts of things to happen, commands them to happen. Being a bereaved parent is hard enough, but being one when you don’t believe in god is something else altogether.

The thing is, though, if you tell someone of faith that you don’t believe your child is in heaven, you’re met with confusion, or sad looks, or sometimes even a bit of anger. People don’t understand how or why you wouldn’t want to believe that your child is in a better place. Quite often, they take it as a personal attack on their belief when it’s really more about being honest about your own grief. It’s funny how inconvenient my lack of faith as a bereaved mother can be for those on the outside. (Actually, it’s not funny at all.)

I sought out support groups in my area, but could not find any that were not held within a church. I did not feel comfortable going to one of these places for fear of verbally assaulting anyone who might suggest my daughter had earned her angel wings. It made me want to shake people until they realized that maybe she died simply because people die. Maybe she died because there were errors made in the care I received at the hospital I visited twice in the week before she died, where those who saw me shrugged off that I was spotting without reason. Maybe she died because I was unable to visit a new doctor because the office refused to see me without receiving the paperwork from my previous doctor in Miami, whose office continuously forgot to fax over my records, leaving me without regular medical care for weeks. Maybe she died because I had experienced tremendous stress after being fired from my job due to early pregnancy complications that required me to miss work, causing me to go on Medicaid in the first place, resulting in the aforementioned doctor shuffle. Maybe she died because of any other reason except that it was god’s will. Maybe it was more about socio-economics and my own personal health than about imaginary lords in the sky.

I knew I couldn’t be the only one who felt this way. After some searching, I found a few Facebook groups for people like me: people who were grieving but were done with believing. One of the groups was a general bereavement group. Here, people from all over were telling the stories of their grandfathers who just passed away from Alzheimer’s, their sisters who succumbed to lung cancer, their best friends who hanged themselves when things got to be too much, their mothers who died of old age, their sons who were killed in car accidents.

I told my story and found a sense of community, but I did not feel like I could share my grief as openly because I hadn’t yet gotten to know my daughter the way they knew the people they had loved and lost. All I knew about her was that she enjoyed "The Little Mermaid" (because she kicked wildly when I sang along to all the songs in the film), that she enjoyed the first few chapters of "The Little Prince" and that she was my very best friend for a brief period of time. But I did not know her the way others in the group knew their loved ones with whom they’d shared years of memories.

Eventually, I found a group specifically for agnostic and atheist mothers who’d lost their young babies, either due to miscarriage, stillbirth, prematurity, SIDS or other causes. This group became my home for a long, long time. I met and befriended so many women who had been through nearly the exact same thing I had been through: mothers who also lost their babies at 22 weeks; mothers who also went into pre-term labor, with no explanations; mothers who were grieving their entire futures who did not believe in god and instead found comfort in things like the First Law of Thermodynamics or in the words of great thinkers like Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson about how we are just a tiny speck in the universe, that there is something so much bigger out there that we are only beginning to understand. Believe it or not, this is extremely comforting to those of us who don’t believe in a god. These are the things you can say to a non-believer who is mourning a loss.

October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, and while there are countless parents grieving publicly via Facebook and Instagram, posting messages of how their babies have earned their place in heaven, those of us without organized religion are left on the sidelines. Some of us still refer to our babies as angels, though not the kind that float on clouds by pearly gates. We simply lack the language to describe our loss without resorting to theistic terms.

Agnostics and atheists understand why people have faith. We understand it brings them comfort. At times, I wish I could believe that my daughter is watching over me right now while enjoying a beautiful and eternal afterlife. But that’s just not what I believe. Instead, I imagine her in all sorts of places. Maybe her energy shot out into the stars. Perhaps some molecule of her is dancing around on Jupiter. Other times, I think about much of her remaining in my heart, as science tells us part of every child’s DNA remains forever with her mother, a fact that does bring me great peace.

Maggie's physical remains are in a plastic, white box, swaddled in her hospital baby blanket, and placed inside my bedroom closet, still waiting for the day I am willing to part with them. I really don’t know what happened to her soul, if such things even exist. And while it may comfort you to say to me that my daughter is in heaven, it does absolutely nothing for me or for the countless others who don’t subscribe to your brand of faith — and that is OK.[image error]

 

We're re-running this story as part of a countdown of the year's best personal essays. To read all the entries in the series, click here.

When I tell people about the death of my infant daughter, they often respond that she is in heaven. They tell me that she is an angel now. They tell me that she’s with God. But as an atheist, these words have never brought me any comfort.

My daughter was born three years ago. I went into pre-term labor at 22 weeks gestation, and try as they might, the doctors could not keep her here with us. Her short life, just eight hours long, has marked my life and my husband’s life deeply. Margaret Hope (or Maggie, as we refer to her) continues to exist with us in her own way, but this persistence has absolutely nothing to do with god or Jesus or angels or any other specific afterworld. This is what works for us as parents. It’s what works for about 2 percent of the U.S. population who currently identify as atheists, and for about 20 percent who are agnostic or unaffiliated with any particular set of beliefs.

Being an atheist in a believer’s world can be difficult at times, especially when some of the more fervently religious are close family or friends. It’s even more daunting when faced with grief and death. Christians believe that when we die, we either go to heaven or hell. Many, of course, believe babies go to heaven because they are, well, babies. When our daughter died, my husband requested to have our baby baptized, fearing in some way for her soul, a remnant of his Catholic upbringing. There was no time for a traditional baptism while she was alive but her NICU doctor performed the rite for her while we held her in our arms for the first time, our tiny, frail, lifeless daughter whose eyes never even got a chance to see. It felt bizarre to me, but I allowed it because my husband was suffering and it seemed to bring him some comfort. Later, as reality hit harder, he would lose all faith as I had done.

After we left the hospital, we were faced with the task of whether or not to hold some sort of memorial service for Maggie. Part of me wanted to go to the Unitarian Universalist church, as that is the only place I’d been where I felt like my agnostic views were still respected, where I could still enjoy some semblance of spirituality while remaining non-religious. At the time, however, I was an emotional mess and could not do much to contact anyone or even make any suggestions.

Fortunately, my brother stepped up and arranged a service at a church in Miami Beach (where Maggie “lived” for most of her brief life). While it was technically a Christian church, the fact that they were supportive of the LGBTQA community, plus their commitment to serving the homeless made me feel like this was a place I would be comfortable bringing my daughter, even after death. In a small, cosmic joke, we also appreciated the fact that the pastor was named “Hunter” Thompson.

Those around us did their best to offer words of comfort, but after a while, I became tired and even resentful of the comments about my daughter needing to go be with Jesus. Worse still, I isolated myself so I wouldn’t need to hear their “comforting” words because all they did was make me feel worse. Like so many other non-believers, I cannot wrap my head around the idea that there is some supreme being that allows these sorts of things to happen, commands them to happen. Being a bereaved parent is hard enough, but being one when you don’t believe in god is something else altogether.

The thing is, though, if you tell someone of faith that you don’t believe your child is in heaven, you’re met with confusion, or sad looks, or sometimes even a bit of anger. People don’t understand how or why you wouldn’t want to believe that your child is in a better place. Quite often, they take it as a personal attack on their belief when it’s really more about being honest about your own grief. It’s funny how inconvenient my lack of faith as a bereaved mother can be for those on the outside. (Actually, it’s not funny at all.)

I sought out support groups in my area, but could not find any that were not held within a church. I did not feel comfortable going to one of these places for fear of verbally assaulting anyone who might suggest my daughter had earned her angel wings. It made me want to shake people until they realized that maybe she died simply because people die. Maybe she died because there were errors made in the care I received at the hospital I visited twice in the week before she died, where those who saw me shrugged off that I was spotting without reason. Maybe she died because I was unable to visit a new doctor because the office refused to see me without receiving the paperwork from my previous doctor in Miami, whose office continuously forgot to fax over my records, leaving me without regular medical care for weeks. Maybe she died because I had experienced tremendous stress after being fired from my job due to early pregnancy complications that required me to miss work, causing me to go on Medicaid in the first place, resulting in the aforementioned doctor shuffle. Maybe she died because of any other reason except that it was god’s will. Maybe it was more about socio-economics and my own personal health than about imaginary lords in the sky.

I knew I couldn’t be the only one who felt this way. After some searching, I found a few Facebook groups for people like me: people who were grieving but were done with believing. One of the groups was a general bereavement group. Here, people from all over were telling the stories of their grandfathers who just passed away from Alzheimer’s, their sisters who succumbed to lung cancer, their best friends who hanged themselves when things got to be too much, their mothers who died of old age, their sons who were killed in car accidents.

I told my story and found a sense of community, but I did not feel like I could share my grief as openly because I hadn’t yet gotten to know my daughter the way they knew the people they had loved and lost. All I knew about her was that she enjoyed "The Little Mermaid" (because she kicked wildly when I sang along to all the songs in the film), that she enjoyed the first few chapters of "The Little Prince" and that she was my very best friend for a brief period of time. But I did not know her the way others in the group knew their loved ones with whom they’d shared years of memories.

Eventually, I found a group specifically for agnostic and atheist mothers who’d lost their young babies, either due to miscarriage, stillbirth, prematurity, SIDS or other causes. This group became my home for a long, long time. I met and befriended so many women who had been through nearly the exact same thing I had been through: mothers who also lost their babies at 22 weeks; mothers who also went into pre-term labor, with no explanations; mothers who were grieving their entire futures who did not believe in god and instead found comfort in things like the First Law of Thermodynamics or in the words of great thinkers like Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson about how we are just a tiny speck in the universe, that there is something so much bigger out there that we are only beginning to understand. Believe it or not, this is extremely comforting to those of us who don’t believe in a god. These are the things you can say to a non-believer who is mourning a loss.

October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, and while there are countless parents grieving publicly via Facebook and Instagram, posting messages of how their babies have earned their place in heaven, those of us without organized religion are left on the sidelines. Some of us still refer to our babies as angels, though not the kind that float on clouds by pearly gates. We simply lack the language to describe our loss without resorting to theistic terms.

Agnostics and atheists understand why people have faith. We understand it brings them comfort. At times, I wish I could believe that my daughter is watching over me right now while enjoying a beautiful and eternal afterlife. But that’s just not what I believe. Instead, I imagine her in all sorts of places. Maybe her energy shot out into the stars. Perhaps some molecule of her is dancing around on Jupiter. Other times, I think about much of her remaining in my heart, as science tells us part of every child’s DNA remains forever with her mother, a fact that does bring me great peace.

Maggie's physical remains are in a plastic, white box, swaddled in her hospital baby blanket, and placed inside my bedroom closet, still waiting for the day I am willing to part with them. I really don’t know what happened to her soul, if such things even exist. And while it may comfort you to say to me that my daughter is in heaven, it does absolutely nothing for me or for the countless others who don’t subscribe to your brand of faith — and that is OK.[image error]

 

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I hated not being white: The lies I told just to fit in haunt me still

We’re re-running this story as part of a countdown of the year’s best personal essays. To read all the entries in the series, click here.

“What do you think your name should be?” my dad asked me.

We were parked outside my new elementary school on Elm Street, I was excited: How many children get to choose a new name—and, by extension, a new identity?

I told my dad I wanted to be called “Ken,” a Japanese- American name, and, importantly, the name of a Street Fighter character. He suggested “Tom,” a name that would obscure any Asian ancestry.

Tom was close to the name my parents gave me: Tung, a Vietnamese name after the Tung tree meaning strength and fortitude. I had neither during my childhood; I was timid, so they called me Diệu, a girl’s name. Because of this, my identity existed in discrete units, fractioned out. At home I was Diệu, at school I was Tom, and on any official record I was Tung.

In my family, names were more than what people would call you. Parents would name their sons and daughters names that would signify traits they wanted to imbue in them. Names had powers. But when my parents and I immigrated to the U.S., names were just that: names. They were tools, not symbols. They were used to identify, not signify; utterly utilitarian.

In my family, my sister and I had the most Asian names. After my parents passed their naturalization test they changed their names to Steve and Kim. They gave the children they had after me far more white-American names: Tina, Justin and Brendon.

Why did I have to change my name?

I asked my dad this as an adult. He said he knew it would be easier for me and easier would be better. “It’s better to go with the crowd than to stand out,” he told me. And I believed him; he loved this country and the opportunities it gave him, even if at times it was awful. “Chink” and “gook” are words he didn’t understand, but I could, though I wouldn’t tell him what they meant. 

In some ways, I knew my dad was right; it probably was easier for me to make friends as Tom than it would have been as Tung. It was easier to live where we did without the stigma attached to a more ethnic name. Yet, changing my name didn’t change how I looked: Asian. Epicanthal folds, pug-shaped nose, black hair, brown eyes. These are features a person can’t escape.

In elementary school I auditioned for the lead of the school musical and instead was cast as Confucius (I was the only Asian person to audition for musical theater). At Asian restaurants, friends turned to me as an expert on cuisine and culture. In public, I’m not considered a threat but a model minority. Here is the thread that connects these experiences: I am seen as a representative of a race. Through no choice of my own, I represent Asians and Asian culture in settings where Asians are in the minority.

I never asked for this role. It’s a role that was given to me based on my identity and the perception of others. And here was the seed of my own self-hatred. I didn’t want to play the representative of some ethnic minority. I didn’t want to act as a canvas, painted with people’s expectations. I needed distance from this imposed burden.

Throughout high school and into college I was afraid of being stereotyped. I avoided other Asian people because I didn’t want that label, or any label at all. I picked interests that would differentiate me from the stereotypical Asians and limit my contact with other Asian students. I did improvisational comedy, I wrote poetry, I made short films. Instead of treating my racial peers as sources of solidarity, I felt alienated from them.

And, on some level, it felt good, this distancing. I couldn’t help feeling a sharp pang of glee every time someone would exclaim, “I never knew you did that” or “Wow, that’s totally unexpected.” I wanted to exist tabula rasa in the way that many people get to exist without any marked preconception. When they see Tom, I wanted them to think of the unlimited possibilities that could be behind that name. Or even just to think of nothing at all.

I was surrounded by people, close friends, who would say things such as, “You’re not like the other Asians” or “You’re more white than Asian.” At the time, these things didn’t bother me as much as they do today. I didn’t love comments like this but they were an affirmation that my efforts to blend in were working.

Even so, as hard as I worked to exist outside a stereotypical framework, I could never truly escape it, even if I wanted to believe that I had.

One night, at a bar, while I was trying to make conversation with a woman, she rebuffed me with, “I don’t think of Asian men as men. Sorry.” Even faced with this sort of rejection, I still found myself returning, over and over, to white women.

I also had very few non-white friends. I wanted so much to not be judged, to be neutral or blank, that I was perpetuating the racism my name and behavior were meant to avoid. While I was cleaning my own slate, I was filthying the waters around me.

I believed that because white Americans had fewer preconceptions pushed on them, they were somehow freer to choose what they would do, and that this freedom made them more interesting. I thought that because Asians were subject to preconceptions, they would in turn be more predictable and boring. I was pushing my bias onto others, seeing myself as more enlightened  than other Asians.

It was years before I realized that this was happening, that I was internalizing my racism, projecting it unconsciously. Getting there took long conversations with other people who had similar experiences. It took several talks with people in interracial relationships about dating and racial lines. It took discussions with my parents.

Where do I go from here? Now, when I see someone, I do check myself. I run through a mental flow chart to detect where my biases are. I want to identify them and I want to erase them. I don't want to live life to escape others' expectations. And the first step is to acknowledge where I have failed.

These days, when I think about my name, I feel the push and pull of Tung and Tom. I feel like I’m cheating on the past. I think of how I can compromise the tug of all my identities. Maybe people can call me T. Phan or T. V. Phan. Yet I also think of how such a compromise would affect others' perceptions of me, and my perception of myself. It would be all too easy to relinquish a culture to which I am only tenuously tied. And I’m afraid I can’t turn back.

We’re re-running this story as part of a countdown of the year’s best personal essays. To read all the entries in the series, click here.

“What do you think your name should be?” my dad asked me.

We were parked outside my new elementary school on Elm Street, I was excited: How many children get to choose a new name—and, by extension, a new identity?

I told my dad I wanted to be called “Ken,” a Japanese- American name, and, importantly, the name of a Street Fighter character. He suggested “Tom,” a name that would obscure any Asian ancestry.

Tom was close to the name my parents gave me: Tung, a Vietnamese name after the Tung tree meaning strength and fortitude. I had neither during my childhood; I was timid, so they called me Diệu, a girl’s name. Because of this, my identity existed in discrete units, fractioned out. At home I was Diệu, at school I was Tom, and on any official record I was Tung.

In my family, names were more than what people would call you. Parents would name their sons and daughters names that would signify traits they wanted to imbue in them. Names had powers. But when my parents and I immigrated to the U.S., names were just that: names. They were tools, not symbols. They were used to identify, not signify; utterly utilitarian.

In my family, my sister and I had the most Asian names. After my parents passed their naturalization test they changed their names to Steve and Kim. They gave the children they had after me far more white-American names: Tina, Justin and Brendon.

Why did I have to change my name?

I asked my dad this as an adult. He said he knew it would be easier for me and easier would be better. “It’s better to go with the crowd than to stand out,” he told me. And I believed him; he loved this country and the opportunities it gave him, even if at times it was awful. “Chink” and “gook” are words he didn’t understand, but I could, though I wouldn’t tell him what they meant. 

In some ways, I knew my dad was right; it probably was easier for me to make friends as Tom than it would have been as Tung. It was easier to live where we did without the stigma attached to a more ethnic name. Yet, changing my name didn’t change how I looked: Asian. Epicanthal folds, pug-shaped nose, black hair, brown eyes. These are features a person can’t escape.

In elementary school I auditioned for the lead of the school musical and instead was cast as Confucius (I was the only Asian person to audition for musical theater). At Asian restaurants, friends turned to me as an expert on cuisine and culture. In public, I’m not considered a threat but a model minority. Here is the thread that connects these experiences: I am seen as a representative of a race. Through no choice of my own, I represent Asians and Asian culture in settings where Asians are in the minority.

I never asked for this role. It’s a role that was given to me based on my identity and the perception of others. And here was the seed of my own self-hatred. I didn’t want to play the representative of some ethnic minority. I didn’t want to act as a canvas, painted with people’s expectations. I needed distance from this imposed burden.

Throughout high school and into college I was afraid of being stereotyped. I avoided other Asian people because I didn’t want that label, or any label at all. I picked interests that would differentiate me from the stereotypical Asians and limit my contact with other Asian students. I did improvisational comedy, I wrote poetry, I made short films. Instead of treating my racial peers as sources of solidarity, I felt alienated from them.

And, on some level, it felt good, this distancing. I couldn’t help feeling a sharp pang of glee every time someone would exclaim, “I never knew you did that” or “Wow, that’s totally unexpected.” I wanted to exist tabula rasa in the way that many people get to exist without any marked preconception. When they see Tom, I wanted them to think of the unlimited possibilities that could be behind that name. Or even just to think of nothing at all.

I was surrounded by people, close friends, who would say things such as, “You’re not like the other Asians” or “You’re more white than Asian.” At the time, these things didn’t bother me as much as they do today. I didn’t love comments like this but they were an affirmation that my efforts to blend in were working.

Even so, as hard as I worked to exist outside a stereotypical framework, I could never truly escape it, even if I wanted to believe that I had.

One night, at a bar, while I was trying to make conversation with a woman, she rebuffed me with, “I don’t think of Asian men as men. Sorry.” Even faced with this sort of rejection, I still found myself returning, over and over, to white women.

I also had very few non-white friends. I wanted so much to not be judged, to be neutral or blank, that I was perpetuating the racism my name and behavior were meant to avoid. While I was cleaning my own slate, I was filthying the waters around me.

I believed that because white Americans had fewer preconceptions pushed on them, they were somehow freer to choose what they would do, and that this freedom made them more interesting. I thought that because Asians were subject to preconceptions, they would in turn be more predictable and boring. I was pushing my bias onto others, seeing myself as more enlightened  than other Asians.

It was years before I realized that this was happening, that I was internalizing my racism, projecting it unconsciously. Getting there took long conversations with other people who had similar experiences. It took several talks with people in interracial relationships about dating and racial lines. It took discussions with my parents.

Where do I go from here? Now, when I see someone, I do check myself. I run through a mental flow chart to detect where my biases are. I want to identify them and I want to erase them. I don't want to live life to escape others' expectations. And the first step is to acknowledge where I have failed.

These days, when I think about my name, I feel the push and pull of Tung and Tom. I feel like I’m cheating on the past. I think of how I can compromise the tug of all my identities. Maybe people can call me T. Phan or T. V. Phan. Yet I also think of how such a compromise would affect others' perceptions of me, and my perception of myself. It would be all too easy to relinquish a culture to which I am only tenuously tied. And I’m afraid I can’t turn back.

We’re re-running this story as part of a countdown of the year’s best personal essays. To read all the entries in the series, click here.

“What do you think your name should be?” my dad asked me.

We were parked outside my new elementary school on Elm Street, I was excited: How many children get to choose a new name—and, by extension, a new identity?

I told my dad I wanted to be called “Ken,” a Japanese- American name, and, importantly, the name of a Street Fighter character. He suggested “Tom,” a name that would obscure any Asian ancestry.

Tom was close to the name my parents gave me: Tung, a Vietnamese name after the Tung tree meaning strength and fortitude. I had neither during my childhood; I was timid, so they called me Diệu, a girl’s name. Because of this, my identity existed in discrete units, fractioned out. At home I was Diệu, at school I was Tom, and on any official record I was Tung.

In my family, names were more than what people would call you. Parents would name their sons and daughters names that would signify traits they wanted to imbue in them. Names had powers. But when my parents and I immigrated to the U.S., names were just that: names. They were tools, not symbols. They were used to identify, not signify; utterly utilitarian.

In my family, my sister and I had the most Asian names. After my parents passed their naturalization test they changed their names to Steve and Kim. They gave the children they had after me far more white-American names: Tina, Justin and Brendon.

Why did I have to change my name?

I asked my dad this as an adult. He said he knew it would be easier for me and easier would be better. “It’s better to go with the crowd than to stand out,” he told me. And I believed him; he loved this country and the opportunities it gave him, even if at times it was awful. “Chink” and “gook” are words he didn’t understand, but I could, though I wouldn’t tell him what they meant. 

In some ways, I knew my dad was right; it probably was easier for me to make friends as Tom than it would have been as Tung. It was easier to live where we did without the stigma attached to a more ethnic name. Yet, changing my name didn’t change how I looked: Asian. Epicanthal folds, pug-shaped nose, black hair, brown eyes. These are features a person can’t escape.

In elementary school I auditioned for the lead of the school musical and instead was cast as Confucius (I was the only Asian person to audition for musical theater). At Asian restaurants, friends turned to me as an expert on cuisine and culture. In public, I’m not considered a threat but a model minority. Here is the thread that connects these experiences: I am seen as a representative of a race. Through no choice of my own, I represent Asians and Asian culture in settings where Asians are in the minority.

I never asked for this role. It’s a role that was given to me based on my identity and the perception of others. And here was the seed of my own self-hatred. I didn’t want to play the representative of some ethnic minority. I didn’t want to act as a canvas, painted with people’s expectations. I needed distance from this imposed burden.

Throughout high school and into college I was afraid of being stereotyped. I avoided other Asian people because I didn’t want that label, or any label at all. I picked interests that would differentiate me from the stereotypical Asians and limit my contact with other Asian students. I did improvisational comedy, I wrote poetry, I made short films. Instead of treating my racial peers as sources of solidarity, I felt alienated from them.

And, on some level, it felt good, this distancing. I couldn’t help feeling a sharp pang of glee every time someone would exclaim, “I never knew you did that” or “Wow, that’s totally unexpected.” I wanted to exist tabula rasa in the way that many people get to exist without any marked preconception. When they see Tom, I wanted them to think of the unlimited possibilities that could be behind that name. Or even just to think of nothing at all.

I was surrounded by people, close friends, who would say things such as, “You’re not like the other Asians” or “You’re more white than Asian.” At the time, these things didn’t bother me as much as they do today. I didn’t love comments like this but they were an affirmation that my efforts to blend in were working.

Even so, as hard as I worked to exist outside a stereotypical framework, I could never truly escape it, even if I wanted to believe that I had.

One night, at a bar, while I was trying to make conversation with a woman, she rebuffed me with, “I don’t think of Asian men as men. Sorry.” Even faced with this sort of rejection, I still found myself returning, over and over, to white women.

I also had very few non-white friends. I wanted so much to not be judged, to be neutral or blank, that I was perpetuating the racism my name and behavior were meant to avoid. While I was cleaning my own slate, I was filthying the waters around me.

I believed that because white Americans had fewer preconceptions pushed on them, they were somehow freer to choose what they would do, and that this freedom made them more interesting. I thought that because Asians were subject to preconceptions, they would in turn be more predictable and boring. I was pushing my bias onto others, seeing myself as more enlightened  than other Asians.

It was years before I realized that this was happening, that I was internalizing my racism, projecting it unconsciously. Getting there took long conversations with other people who had similar experiences. It took several talks with people in interracial relationships about dating and racial lines. It took discussions with my parents.

Where do I go from here? Now, when I see someone, I do check myself. I run through a mental flow chart to detect where my biases are. I want to identify them and I want to erase them. I don't want to live life to escape others' expectations. And the first step is to acknowledge where I have failed.

These days, when I think about my name, I feel the push and pull of Tung and Tom. I feel like I’m cheating on the past. I think of how I can compromise the tug of all my identities. Maybe people can call me T. Phan or T. V. Phan. Yet I also think of how such a compromise would affect others' perceptions of me, and my perception of myself. It would be all too easy to relinquish a culture to which I am only tenuously tied. And I’m afraid I can’t turn back.

We’re re-running this story as part of a countdown of the year’s best personal essays. To read all the entries in the series, click here.

“What do you think your name should be?” my dad asked me.

We were parked outside my new elementary school on Elm Street, I was excited: How many children get to choose a new name—and, by extension, a new identity?

I told my dad I wanted to be called “Ken,” a Japanese- American name, and, importantly, the name of a Street Fighter character. He suggested “Tom,” a name that would obscure any Asian ancestry.

Tom was close to the name my parents gave me: Tung, a Vietnamese name after the Tung tree meaning strength and fortitude. I had neither during my childhood; I was timid, so they called me Diệu, a girl’s name. Because of this, my identity existed in discrete units, fractioned out. At home I was Diệu, at school I was Tom, and on any official record I was Tung.

In my family, names were more than what people would call you. Parents would name their sons and daughters names that would signify traits they wanted to imbue in them. Names had powers. But when my parents and I immigrated to the U.S., names were just that: names. They were tools, not symbols. They were used to identify, not signify; utterly utilitarian.

In my family, my sister and I had the most Asian names. After my parents passed their naturalization test they changed their names to Steve and Kim. They gave the children they had after me far more white-American names: Tina, Justin and Brendon.

Why did I have to change my name?

I asked my dad this as an adult. He said he knew it would be easier for me and easier would be better. “It’s better to go with the crowd than to stand out,” he told me. And I believed him; he loved this country and the opportunities it gave him, even if at times it was awful. “Chink” and “gook” are words he didn’t understand, but I could, though I wouldn’t tell him what they meant. 

In some ways, I knew my dad was right; it probably was easier for me to make friends as Tom than it would have been as Tung. It was easier to live where we did without the stigma attached to a more ethnic name. Yet, changing my name didn’t change how I looked: Asian. Epicanthal folds, pug-shaped nose, black hair, brown eyes. These are features a person can’t escape.

In elementary school I auditioned for the lead of the school musical and instead was cast as Confucius (I was the only Asian person to audition for musical theater). At Asian restaurants, friends turned to me as an expert on cuisine and culture. In public, I’m not considered a threat but a model minority. Here is the thread that connects these experiences: I am seen as a representative of a race. Through no choice of my own, I represent Asians and Asian culture in settings where Asians are in the minority.

I never asked for this role. It’s a role that was given to me based on my identity and the perception of others. And here was the seed of my own self-hatred. I didn’t want to play the representative of some ethnic minority. I didn’t want to act as a canvas, painted with people’s expectations. I needed distance from this imposed burden.

Throughout high school and into college I was afraid of being stereotyped. I avoided other Asian people because I didn’t want that label, or any label at all. I picked interests that would differentiate me from the stereotypical Asians and limit my contact with other Asian students. I did improvisational comedy, I wrote poetry, I made short films. Instead of treating my racial peers as sources of solidarity, I felt alienated from them.

And, on some level, it felt good, this distancing. I couldn’t help feeling a sharp pang of glee every time someone would exclaim, “I never knew you did that” or “Wow, that’s totally unexpected.” I wanted to exist tabula rasa in the way that many people get to exist without any marked preconception. When they see Tom, I wanted them to think of the unlimited possibilities that could be behind that name. Or even just to think of nothing at all.

I was surrounded by people, close friends, who would say things such as, “You’re not like the other Asians” or “You’re more white than Asian.” At the time, these things didn’t bother me as much as they do today. I didn’t love comments like this but they were an affirmation that my efforts to blend in were working.

Even so, as hard as I worked to exist outside a stereotypical framework, I could never truly escape it, even if I wanted to believe that I had.

One night, at a bar, while I was trying to make conversation with a woman, she rebuffed me with, “I don’t think of Asian men as men. Sorry.” Even faced with this sort of rejection, I still found myself returning, over and over, to white women.

I also had very few non-white friends. I wanted so much to not be judged, to be neutral or blank, that I was perpetuating the racism my name and behavior were meant to avoid. While I was cleaning my own slate, I was filthying the waters around me.

I believed that because white Americans had fewer preconceptions pushed on them, they were somehow freer to choose what they would do, and that this freedom made them more interesting. I thought that because Asians were subject to preconceptions, they would in turn be more predictable and boring. I was pushing my bias onto others, seeing myself as more enlightened  than other Asians.

It was years before I realized that this was happening, that I was internalizing my racism, projecting it unconsciously. Getting there took long conversations with other people who had similar experiences. It took several talks with people in interracial relationships about dating and racial lines. It took discussions with my parents.

Where do I go from here? Now, when I see someone, I do check myself. I run through a mental flow chart to detect where my biases are. I want to identify them and I want to erase them. I don't want to live life to escape others' expectations. And the first step is to acknowledge where I have failed.

These days, when I think about my name, I feel the push and pull of Tung and Tom. I feel like I’m cheating on the past. I think of how I can compromise the tug of all my identities. Maybe people can call me T. Phan or T. V. Phan. Yet I also think of how such a compromise would affect others' perceptions of me, and my perception of myself. It would be all too easy to relinquish a culture to which I am only tenuously tied. And I’m afraid I can’t turn back.

We’re re-running this story as part of a countdown of the year’s best personal essays. To read all the entries in the series, click here.

“What do you think your name should be?” my dad asked me.

We were parked outside my new elementary school on Elm Street, I was excited: How many children get to choose a new name—and, by extension, a new identity?

I told my dad I wanted to be called “Ken,” a Japanese- American name, and, importantly, the name of a Street Fighter character. He suggested “Tom,” a name that would obscure any Asian ancestry.

Tom was close to the name my parents gave me: Tung, a Vietnamese name after the Tung tree meaning strength and fortitude. I had neither during my childhood; I was timid, so they called me Diệu, a girl’s name. Because of this, my identity existed in discrete units, fractioned out. At home I was Diệu, at school I was Tom, and on any official record I was Tung.

In my family, names were more than what people would call you. Parents would name their sons and daughters names that would signify traits they wanted to imbue in them. Names had powers. But when my parents and I immigrated to the U.S., names were just that: names. They were tools, not symbols. They were used to identify, not signify; utterly utilitarian.

In my family, my sister and I had the most Asian names. After my parents passed their naturalization test they changed their names to Steve and Kim. They gave the children they had after me far more white-American names: Tina, Justin and Brendon.

Why did I have to change my name?

I asked my dad this as an adult. He said he knew it would be easier for me and easier would be better. “It’s better to go with the crowd than to stand out,” he told me. And I believed him; he loved this country and the opportunities it gave him, even if at times it was awful. “Chink” and “gook” are words he didn’t understand, but I could, though I wouldn’t tell him what they meant. 

In some ways, I knew my dad was right; it probably was easier for me to make friends as Tom than it would have been as Tung. It was easier to live where we did without the stigma attached to a more ethnic name. Yet, changing my name didn’t change how I looked: Asian. Epicanthal folds, pug-shaped nose, black hair, brown eyes. These are features a person can’t escape.

In elementary school I auditioned for the lead of the school musical and instead was cast as Confucius (I was the only Asian person to audition for musical theater). At Asian restaurants, friends turned to me as an expert on cuisine and culture. In public, I’m not considered a threat but a model minority. Here is the thread that connects these experiences: I am seen as a representative of a race. Through no choice of my own, I represent Asians and Asian culture in settings where Asians are in the minority.

I never asked for this role. It’s a role that was given to me based on my identity and the perception of others. And here was the seed of my own self-hatred. I didn’t want to play the representative of some ethnic minority. I didn’t want to act as a canvas, painted with people’s expectations. I needed distance from this imposed burden.

Throughout high school and into college I was afraid of being stereotyped. I avoided other Asian people because I didn’t want that label, or any label at all. I picked interests that would differentiate me from the stereotypical Asians and limit my contact with other Asian students. I did improvisational comedy, I wrote poetry, I made short films. Instead of treating my racial peers as sources of solidarity, I felt alienated from them.

And, on some level, it felt good, this distancing. I couldn’t help feeling a sharp pang of glee every time someone would exclaim, “I never knew you did that” or “Wow, that’s totally unexpected.” I wanted to exist tabula rasa in the way that many people get to exist without any marked preconception. When they see Tom, I wanted them to think of the unlimited possibilities that could be behind that name. Or even just to think of nothing at all.

I was surrounded by people, close friends, who would say things such as, “You’re not like the other Asians” or “You’re more white than Asian.” At the time, these things didn’t bother me as much as they do today. I didn’t love comments like this but they were an affirmation that my efforts to blend in were working.

Even so, as hard as I worked to exist outside a stereotypical framework, I could never truly escape it, even if I wanted to believe that I had.

One night, at a bar, while I was trying to make conversation with a woman, she rebuffed me with, “I don’t think of Asian men as men. Sorry.” Even faced with this sort of rejection, I still found myself returning, over and over, to white women.

I also had very few non-white friends. I wanted so much to not be judged, to be neutral or blank, that I was perpetuating the racism my name and behavior were meant to avoid. While I was cleaning my own slate, I was filthying the waters around me.

I believed that because white Americans had fewer preconceptions pushed on them, they were somehow freer to choose what they would do, and that this freedom made them more interesting. I thought that because Asians were subject to preconceptions, they would in turn be more predictable and boring. I was pushing my bias onto others, seeing myself as more enlightened  than other Asians.

It was years before I realized that this was happening, that I was internalizing my racism, projecting it unconsciously. Getting there took long conversations with other people who had similar experiences. It took several talks with people in interracial relationships about dating and racial lines. It took discussions with my parents.

Where do I go from here? Now, when I see someone, I do check myself. I run through a mental flow chart to detect where my biases are. I want to identify them and I want to erase them. I don't want to live life to escape others' expectations. And the first step is to acknowledge where I have failed.

These days, when I think about my name, I feel the push and pull of Tung and Tom. I feel like I’m cheating on the past. I think of how I can compromise the tug of all my identities. Maybe people can call me T. Phan or T. V. Phan. Yet I also think of how such a compromise would affect others' perceptions of me, and my perception of myself. It would be all too easy to relinquish a culture to which I am only tenuously tied. And I’m afraid I can’t turn back.

Continue Reading...

Bed death, U-Hauling, processing: Lesbian stereotypes abound — here’s the story on 7 of them

Stereotyping is a necessary evil. Stereotyping simplifies complex information so our brains can easily understand it, reducing the amount of processing we go through when seeing or meeting new people. That said, it also causes us to generalize. If we see one hipster drinking PBR and wearing an “Everyone loves Grandpa!” T-shirt, our brain is like, #YesAllHipsters.

When it comes to lesbians, I was curious if the stereotypes had a basis in reality, partly because I am a former gym teacher who drives a truck and loves cats and has a wardrobe that’s 90 percent flannel. I've probed the data to see if the old lines about U-Hauling, lesbian bed death and others had any statistical sway. The results were surprising.

1. U-Hauling.

The most common lesbian joke is often attributed to comedian Lea Delaria, who once remarked: “What does a lesbian bring on a second date? A U-Haul.” This plays into the notion that queer women tend to move in together at lightning-fast speeds. While there are no significant statistics comparing the cohabitation speeds of queer vs. straight women, there is some science that pinpoints why a lesbian couple might move in together sooner than a hetero couple. Some of these reasons have to do with societal norms, financial benefits and hormones.

“U-hauling happens for two reasons,” explains clinical psychologist Lauren Costine at AfterEllen. “Biologically our brains are wired for a relationships and connection. We emit much more oxytocin than men. Oxytocin is a hormone women emit when they’re falling in love, having sex, or breastfeeding. It’s biological encouragement to attach. It feels so good that for some women, in this case lesbians, they can’t get enough. Since there’s two women, there’s twice as much oxytocin floating around.”

And we all know what happens when you leave oxytocin floating around: trips to Bed, Bath and Beyond.

2. Processing.

Another oft-recited stereotype is that lesbians are known to process everything to death. Q: How many lesbians does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: I don’t know. Should we use LEDs? What wattage? Are these recyclable? Maybe this is a sign we should be lowering our carbon footprint. Let’s make a pro and con list of solar panel options and revisit this next year.

Processing is the tendency to overanalyze and overdiscuss every aspect that can be analyzed or discussed. When it comes to relationships, it turns out this works in lesbians’ favor. According to a 12-year study by John Gottman of the University of Washington and Robert Levenson of UC Berkeley, gay and lesbian couples are excellent communicators who use fewer “controlling, hostile emotional tactics” when fighting, such as belligerence, domineering, and fear. “The difference on these ‘control’ related emotions suggests that fairness and power-sharing between the partners is more important and more common in gay and lesbian relationships than in straight ones,” Gottman explained.

3. Lesbian bed death.

The dreaded “bed death,” or the notion that lesbians in committed relationships stop having sex with each other, is a touchy topic. According to Karen Blair of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sex, only 15 percent of lesbian couples engage in sex more than twice a week, compared to 50 percent or more of other comparison groups (straight couples and gay men).

But! While it’s true that lesbians have less frequent sex than their straight counterparts, lesbian sex lasts far longer:

“Women in same-sex relationships reported significantly longer durations of sexual encounters than individuals in all three comparison groups, with their median duration falling within the 30 to 45 minute range, compared to the 15 to 30 minute range most commonly reported by participants in other types of relationships.” Also, almost 10 percent of lesbians get it on for more than TWO HOURS, compared to 1.9 percent of straight couples.

“Furthermore,” Blair explains, “very few women in same-sex relationships reported very brief sexual encounters, possibly providing a hint as to why their sexual frequency numbers tend to be lower than the other three groups.”

4. Lesbians know how to please their partners.

No doubt partially due to lesbians’ excellent communication skills and lengthy lap-nap sessions, lesbians have more orgasms than straight and bi women. A study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine polled 1,497 men and 1,353 women who'd been sexually active within the past year. Participants were asked to state their gender, sexual orientation and the percentage of time they orgasmed "with a familiar partner."

Researchers found that heterosexual women reported orgasming just 61.6 percent of the time, and bisexual women following close behind with 58 percent. Lesbians, however, reported coming 74.7 percent of the sexytime.

Way to bring your gAy game, wimmin.

5. "The L Word": Lesbians love Leisha.

According to data culled from its four million users, online dating site OkCupid revealed in a survey that “The L Word” was not only the most common phrase used on lesbians’ profiles, it was used so frequently it didn’t even fit on the graph relative to the amount of times lesbians used it. Analysts had to shrink it down to fit OkC’s template. Love it or hate it, if you like ladies, you probably watched the Showtime series that aired from 2004 to 2009. More than once.

Also unsurprising is the prevalence of Tegan and Sara and Ani DiFranco mentions, as well as cult fave TV show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," which featured one of the first lesbian kiss scenes on U.S. television.

 

6. Lesbians are kinkier and druggier.

According to OkCupid data again, the attributes lesbians used to describe themselves most often were artsy, adventurous, kinky, and almost half said they were “into drugs.”

Curiously, straight women were more “into sports” (so there goes that lesbian stereotype?), as well as optimistic and far more likely to identify as religious.

In addition to drugs, lesbians and bisexuals tend to drink more alcohol than straight women. Though this rate has been declining in the past two decades, substance abuse is still a big issue when it comes to overall health (especially because queer women are less likely to have insurance and visit doctors regularly).

7. Lesbians reject cultural norms and dominant beauty standards.

Research has shown that lesbians tend to have better body images than straight women, possibly because they have a broader definition than the general public of what’s beautiful and sexy. (This also contributes to queer women having better sex, as the better one feels about one’s body, the more enjoyable sex is.) Some researchers posit that because dating a same-sex partner is already a move away from the mainstream, lesbians would also reject cultural messages about the “ideal” female body. Feminist values, which many lesbians ascribe to, also play into lesbians’ tendency to enjoy, celebrate and accept more body diversity than their straight counterparts.

  Stereotyping is a necessary evil. Stereotyping simplifies complex information so our brains can easily understand it, reducing the amount of processing we go through when seeing or meeting new people. That said, it also causes us to generalize. If we see one hipster drinking PBR and wearing an “Everyone loves Grandpa!” T-shirt, our brain is like, #YesAllHipsters.

When it comes to lesbians, I was curious if the stereotypes had a basis in reality, partly because I am a former gym teacher who drives a truck and loves cats and has a wardrobe that’s 90 percent flannel. I've probed the data to see if the old lines about U-Hauling, lesbian bed death and others had any statistical sway. The results were surprising.

1. U-Hauling.

The most common lesbian joke is often attributed to comedian Lea Delaria, who once remarked: “What does a lesbian bring on a second date? A U-Haul.” This plays into the notion that queer women tend to move in together at lightning-fast speeds. While there are no significant statistics comparing the cohabitation speeds of queer vs. straight women, there is some science that pinpoints why a lesbian couple might move in together sooner than a hetero couple. Some of these reasons have to do with societal norms, financial benefits and hormones.

“U-hauling happens for two reasons,” explains clinical psychologist Lauren Costine at AfterEllen. “Biologically our brains are wired for a relationships and connection. We emit much more oxytocin than men. Oxytocin is a hormone women emit when they’re falling in love, having sex, or breastfeeding. It’s biological encouragement to attach. It feels so good that for some women, in this case lesbians, they can’t get enough. Since there’s two women, there’s twice as much oxytocin floating around.”

And we all know what happens when you leave oxytocin floating around: trips to Bed, Bath and Beyond.

2. Processing.

Another oft-recited stereotype is that lesbians are known to process everything to death. Q: How many lesbians does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: I don’t know. Should we use LEDs? What wattage? Are these recyclable? Maybe this is a sign we should be lowering our carbon footprint. Let’s make a pro and con list of solar panel options and revisit this next year.

Processing is the tendency to overanalyze and overdiscuss every aspect that can be analyzed or discussed. When it comes to relationships, it turns out this works in lesbians’ favor. According to a 12-year study by John Gottman of the University of Washington and Robert Levenson of UC Berkeley, gay and lesbian couples are excellent communicators who use fewer “controlling, hostile emotional tactics” when fighting, such as belligerence, domineering, and fear. “The difference on these ‘control’ related emotions suggests that fairness and power-sharing between the partners is more important and more common in gay and lesbian relationships than in straight ones,” Gottman explained.

3. Lesbian bed death.

The dreaded “bed death,” or the notion that lesbians in committed relationships stop having sex with each other, is a touchy topic. According to Karen Blair of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sex, only 15 percent of lesbian couples engage in sex more than twice a week, compared to 50 percent or more of other comparison groups (straight couples and gay men).

But! While it’s true that lesbians have less frequent sex than their straight counterparts, lesbian sex lasts far longer:

“Women in same-sex relationships reported significantly longer durations of sexual encounters than individuals in all three comparison groups, with their median duration falling within the 30 to 45 minute range, compared to the 15 to 30 minute range most commonly reported by participants in other types of relationships.” Also, almost 10 percent of lesbians get it on for more than TWO HOURS, compared to 1.9 percent of straight couples.

“Furthermore,” Blair explains, “very few women in same-sex relationships reported very brief sexual encounters, possibly providing a hint as to why their sexual frequency numbers tend to be lower than the other three groups.”

4. Lesbians know how to please their partners.

No doubt partially due to lesbians’ excellent communication skills and lengthy lap-nap sessions, lesbians have more orgasms than straight and bi women. A study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine polled 1,497 men and 1,353 women who'd been sexually active within the past year. Participants were asked to state their gender, sexual orientation and the percentage of time they orgasmed "with a familiar partner."

Researchers found that heterosexual women reported orgasming just 61.6 percent of the time, and bisexual women following close behind with 58 percent. Lesbians, however, reported coming 74.7 percent of the sexytime.

Way to bring your gAy game, wimmin.

5. "The L Word": Lesbians love Leisha.

According to data culled from its four million users, online dating site OkCupid revealed in a survey that “The L Word” was not only the most common phrase used on lesbians’ profiles, it was used so frequently it didn’t even fit on the graph relative to the amount of times lesbians used it. Analysts had to shrink it down to fit OkC’s template. Love it or hate it, if you like ladies, you probably watched the Showtime series that aired from 2004 to 2009. More than once.

Also unsurprising is the prevalence of Tegan and Sara and Ani DiFranco mentions, as well as cult fave TV show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," which featured one of the first lesbian kiss scenes on U.S. television.

 

6. Lesbians are kinkier and druggier.

According to OkCupid data again, the attributes lesbians used to describe themselves most often were artsy, adventurous, kinky, and almost half said they were “into drugs.”

Curiously, straight women were more “into sports” (so there goes that lesbian stereotype?), as well as optimistic and far more likely to identify as religious.

In addition to drugs, lesbians and bisexuals tend to drink more alcohol than straight women. Though this rate has been declining in the past two decades, substance abuse is still a big issue when it comes to overall health (especially because queer women are less likely to have insurance and visit doctors regularly).

7. Lesbians reject cultural norms and dominant beauty standards.

Research has shown that lesbians tend to have better body images than straight women, possibly because they have a broader definition than the general public of what’s beautiful and sexy. (This also contributes to queer women having better sex, as the better one feels about one’s body, the more enjoyable sex is.) Some researchers posit that because dating a same-sex partner is already a move away from the mainstream, lesbians would also reject cultural messages about the “ideal” female body. Feminist values, which many lesbians ascribe to, also play into lesbians’ tendency to enjoy, celebrate and accept more body diversity than their straight counterparts.

 

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