microsoft word ce+ghazal+to+womanhood.docx ghazal to womanhood divya mehrish, stanford ’25 i dig for salvation in the crater of womb— pelvis pounding temple empty of god, swallowed in unbroken womb. born from body to birth body into body, we are vessels of deliverance— matryoshka dolls. seed sunk into desiccated soil, fruit sinks head into walls of womb. unfurling skin, i drape shield over cage of ribs, curving stone. i hide from the gravedigger’s shovel, spurning earth, refusing to enwomb. my spine crinkles against leaf—the same blood oozes through our veins: larva crystallizes into chrysalis, not ready to cocoon. choking in womb, i remember waves were once my home, water osmosing through temples as salt seeped into bone. are you ready to become ocean, weave flesh—loom into womb? meet the piece: my piece explores the nuances of womanhood, motherhood, and maternity by delving deep into the image of and meaning associated with the womb. my poem also examines the notion of physical and spiritual exchange and generational translation through the constant, cycling process of birth. microsoft word ce+incontestable+ranking+of+the+breasts+of+naked+stanford+sculptures.docx incontestable ranking of the breasts of naked stanford sculptures surya hendry, stanford ’23 the worst breasts on campus were sculpted by rodin. they bloom from the armpit. if you lance that bronze with a needle, pus will leak out all viscous. rodin’s women cross their arms over their eyes, as if embarrassed by their bubonic pustules. next i’d rank the breasts around back of the mausoleum. they are attached to sphinxes, which used to stand in front of the maus, until jane stanford called them “displeasing” and had them moved to the rear. now androgynous sphinxes flank the front door. the breasted sphinxes became part of a vast underbelly of institutional secrets. institutional secrets have often revolved around breasts, and these breasts themselves are vast and institutional: tough rock, bulbous and distinct. in second place is the universal woman. she lives in the stem cell research building. she is eight feet tall. her breasts melt into cavities. her bronze limbs appear to waste away. the universal woman is on the brink of disappearance. the universal woman is not aging well. the universal woman eats herself alive, breast by rotting breast. the very best, most realistic breasts on campus were funded by chevron, chevron being the main corporate donor to the papua new guinea sculpture garden. they are attached to women who are often being pulled upward: by men, by eagles, by higher powers. and yet the soft wooden breasts sink resolutely down. they say: this body shall not rise heavenwards. it is of the earth. on earth she stays. meet the piece: this poem, in a tongue-in-cheek way, examines the way male sculptors have treated women's bodies in the statues across stanford's campus. in the poem, i critique sculptors like rodin, and i also comment on stanford's own institutional censorship of breasted bodies. microsoft word i+am+her+ce.docx i am her anna perronne, stanford ’25 that night, i wore my red dress; velvet heels danced with the floor, my flowing skirt revealed satin smooth skin— teasing. corset strings stripped my breath before he took the rest. that night, i was red lips my image caressed him, eyes meeting, backs arching, bodies touching— where the ocean meets the sky the fibers of my heart melt with his glance, my warmth becomes fire from the pressure of his touch, the apple of my eye, the fruit of the tree; i reach dainty fingers. lips timidly grace his neck, hair concealing our broad shoulders hypnotized, his hungry eyes reflect mine. i give into his strength, our bodies the magnets— and opposites attract. red fruit in my hands, another heartbeat throbs in my chest, consuming and overpowering. never have such frequencies changed the rhythm of my soul; our melodies harmonize effortlessly. come closer, my dear i am his and he is mine; no longer “father” or “sir,” flesh on flesh, i am her. dawn breaks, clarity rises, red dress strewn across the room, eve remembers last night. she possessed that forbidden fruit. bed empty, red lips gone. ---- meet the piece: “i am her” is inspired by the character la manuela from the novel “el lugar sin limites” by josé donoso. la manuela is a co-owner of a brothel and a transgender woman, but other characters (including her daughter and the narrator) reject her identity and consider her a man. in the novel, la manuela exhibits her femininity by wearing a red flamenco dress while performing on the dance floor, which allows the masculine men visiting the brothel to desire her. however, her desire for “the man” is never properly fulfilled. this poem describes la manuela’s fantasy: a perfect evening where her desire is satisfied. “i am her” tells of queer, mutual, genuine desire between “the man” and la manuela through biblical allusions to the forbidden fruit, images of magnets and music, and the idea of mirrors/reflections/water: common imagery in queer literature to denote queer love and desire. the poem explores the construction of gender by evoking the image of a woman in the reader’s mind without explicitly assigning a gender to la manuela, and it attempts to validate her identity by stressing her femininity through metonymy with her red lips. the poem follows la manuela from the dance floor to her room to her bed, emphasizing the attraction and unity between the two lovers throughout the night. queer desire, so often denied, is finally satisfied. commented [ksm1]: two what microsoft word ce+no+one+can+hear+our+flag+waving...+-+revisions+(1).docx no one can hear our flag waving so we slash it through the air again again again again again zoe wallace, stanford ‘23 content warning: this poem does reference sexual violence. readers are advised to take these into account before proceeding. dad said not to call again out loud, so i use the inside voice ringing through my brain. 911 how can i hel p? she is staying silent. her sobs have been quaking in our chests for weeks now please hel p every morning they shred my sleep like a tattered wife beater. hello? miss-what’s your emergency? every warning mother gave us fires deep into my throat. when uneven steps kneeling on ground carry her to the roof of my house, i can see her through my window, faceless the reflection of my eyebrow just slightly overplucked, a missing hair in my arch picking and picking and picking and picking at my nerves because it leaves the tail too bare- a line ready to snap- my moistened waterline my reddened cheeks the easy slope of my nose sinking into the depth of my cupid’s bow lipstick smudged at the corners of my mouth that opens into a hole just dark enough to hide anything perfect for swallowing salty secrets my lips screwed tight all serving as hers. i’m sorry, miss-can you speak up? tonight is the night i tell her i was there. i apologize. for being paralyzed for so long still, i heard at two a.m. when he sneered no one could. i heard his laughter at her sobs, voice cracking hel p hel p hel p p lease a mantra to forget or maybe a prayer, but please forgive me if i can’t understand the god of predators if i can’t hear him in her muffled cries see him through our blurred vision smell him through the gunpowder feel him as bloody entitlement stains my fingerprints miss- slow down. describe the situation clearly. i am. telling you the sin of believing in fear that he was watching two stories above like the hawk he is ready to make my face hers i confess i’m urged to close my eyes still. call it a nightmare so vultures can play pretend as i continue to wake to the tears of my god, her, thundering sobs day after day after day after- just tell me where you are. i’m sorry i don’t know street names i wonder if i’m even of any hel p but i beg you i need hel p hel p hel i would finish but operator the letter “p” died that night “please” gets us nowhere only plays us into a predator’s fetish for submission so i guess all we have left is hel miss-the police are on their way. go back to bed. *click* hel p will they be of any hel p i think i called too late i called too late waited for someone else to call too late i really did because she is still sobbing on the roof mascara is dripping dried red down her neck or maybe it’s just black or maybe it’s just tears or maybe i can’t see because sirens are too loud annoyed-no-interrupted yells are too loud hurried steps are too loud all i see is red and blue splatter white walls a moment and the walls are yellowed by street lights a moment of silence. and she is still faceless. i must call again i must find the missing pieces of her face or maybe i should break the window she could be in the shards maybe i should walk down the alley two stories down find letters of her name in the garbage maybe sam eve or eva ems i wonder if the “m” i’ll find points up like “w” or down because i was minutes too late still i will call again dad said not to but i will call again “there’s no point” but i will call again i swear i will call again so please help i will call again i will call again i will call again again again again again and again and again please did you find her i will call again i will call again help i will call again and again and again faster i will call again sooner i will call again and again and again and i want to know again i will call again i need to know again again again is she ok again i will call please i need to know again again again i will call again again is she alive i will call again and again and again and again i will call again so did i kill her i will call again faster this time i will call again again and again and i’m sorry i will call again. again. meet the piece: this poem relates to feminism, gender, and sexuality because it not only tackles the constant fear of sexual assault and rape that many women face on a daily basis, but how we owe it to one another to stand by each other in the case it does happen. one night in high school, i was up late and distinctly remember hearing a woman’s cries for help right outside my window. the entire neighborhood was silent except for her pleas and the maniacal laughter of her assailant. having no one to turn to, i remember not knowing what to do and being afraid that if i called the police, somehow the aggressor would know it was me and seek my family out. i regret debating for so long, but i did end up calling for help. still, i never found out what happened to her. i wanted so badly to make sure she was okay, but i heard nothing of it in the news and was told the cops wouldn’t release that kind of information. so, there was no point in calling again. this poem is my confrontation with the emotions i felt during and after that night, which i had never truly been able to face before. i was expected to simply accept what happened, all the possible outcomes, and keep it moving. i wasn’t the one harmed, so what was there to be hung up about? this. this piece stands to show what there is to be hung up about. we see the patriarchy manifest in women in many ways, and one of which is through fear. the majority of us have been guilty of being bystanders to someone else’s pain out of fear that if we speak up, we’ll end up facing that same misery. i hope that this poem helps anyone who reads it come face-to-face with their inner bystander, overcome it, and offer a hand to those begging for help just outside their door. or else, those harmed (especially women, and especially women of color) will be swept under the rug, faceless. and while such anonymity can make it easy to distance oneself, i can no longer help but see my own face in their place. microsoft word ce+queen+njinga+of+ndongo+and+performances+of+power.docx queen njinga of ndongo and performances of power isabella saracco, stanford ’23 abstract: this paper concerns the different ways in which queen njinga, the 16th century ruler of present-day angola, performed power. it argues that she was able to leverage various tools, including forces such as material wealth, tradition, religion, and masculinity, in order to both demonstrate and make manifest her power. introduction queen njinga of ndongo, whose “masculine valour reigns also in a womanly breast,” performed power in a variety of ways (cavazzi, circ. 1668/2008). when njinga took power in ndongo, a kingdom in what is now angola, the portuguese had considerable interest in what the kingdom could do for them in regards to the lucrative slave trade (thornton, 1991; heywood, 2017). as such, njinga’s reign was strife with conflict, as the portuguese continuously set up their own rulers in opposition to her rule (heywood, 2017). njinga likewise refused to ally herself with the portuguese, only coming to an agreement with the foreign power toward the end of her life (heywood, 2017). as someone whose reign was contested—in part due to her sex— njinga’s various strategies for demonstrating her power were crucial. she used diverse ideas of gender, power, presentation, possession, tradition, heritage, masculinity, and christianity in order to present herself according to different conceptions of power. the missione evangelica, a source which details many aspects of njinga’s life and from which many of the examples of njinga’s performances of power in this paper are drawn, was written by giovanni antonio cavazzi da montecuccolo, an italian missionary. he arrived in angola in 1654, and spent his first several years there in the court of one of njinga’s rivals, ngola hari (thornton, 1991). missione evangelica is a synthesis of both what cavazzi learned of njinga from others in his travels, including members of ngola hari’s court, as well as what he learned while in njinga’s court. consequently, the document is colored by the bias of both njinga’s enemies and supporters, as well as of course his own. as a christian missionary who would have understood njinga and her culture from the perspective of an outsider, cavazzi is certainly primed to view some of njinga’s actions more favorably than others. his stated purpose in writing the missione evangelica was “to speak of [the kings of dongo’s] virtues, but also to speak of their vices,” something that he claims to uphold in his writings of njinga as well (cavazzi, circ. 1668/2008). part 1: gender as performance, gender as power the different meanings of gender and their various consequences are crucial for the framing of this paper. in “gender: a useful category of historical analysis,” joan scott defines gender as “a constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes, and … a primary way of signifying relationships of power” (1986). at the heart of ideas about gender, essentially, are ideas about individuals’ relationships within a society, how people are meant to act in these relationships, and how power dynamics are meant to function within them. gender is inextricably tied to power, an idea that will be crucial here. for the purposes of this paper, another critical idea concerning theories of gender comes from judith butler’s “performative acts and gender constitution: an essay in phenomenology and feminist theatre.” in this article, butler argued that gender is a performative act, and thus can be considered something that one does (1988). a body’s gender is a performance that is viewed according to a culture’s norms, and the viewers can therefore see both ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ways to perform one’s gender (butler, 1988). additionally, this performance is equally valid regardless of biological sex, though sex may affect the performance’s reception (butler, 1988). in tying these two ideas together, this paper posits that if gender is a performance, and gender is power, then power too can be performed (e. jacob, lecture, october 4, 2021). throughout her reign, njinga made constant attempts to perform her power using a variety of different strategies. though the role of her gender was not always explicit in these performances, it was still a crucial factor in how they were perceived. part 2: presentation as power, posessions as power one of the most famous stories surrounding queen njinga occurred before she was the queen of ndongo. as a representative of her brother, then the king of ndongo, njinga was sent to negotiate with the portuguese. there, njinga clearly demonstrated that she knew how to perform power. cavazzi wrote that “on the day of the public audience she appeared dressed in a remarkable way according to the custom of black people, accompanied by a good number of pages & waiting women” (circ. 1668/2008). njinga displayed her power and high status through her dress and through her accompaniment by a large party of people. heywood wrote that this procession of people, all richly dressed, would have traveled through the kingdom, making many witness to this demonstration of power. the public nature of this procession too, would have made the occasion not just a demonstration of njinga’s—and ndongo’s—power for the portuguese, but also a way to display her power to her (or her brother’s) own citizens of ndongo (heywood, 2017). but njinga’s display of her power did not end there. cavazzi continued to write that when njinga arrived to where she was supposed to negotiate with the portuguese: for her to sit on a carpet had been prepared with a cushion on the ground according to the custom of black people, but when she saw she was not given a magnificent & showy chair she called one of her waiting women, & sat on her as if she had been a chair, rising & sitting down as necessary, & explained her embassy with much acuteness and intelligence of mind; she gave her political reasons which, although she was a black ethiopian, were well founded, as if she had been a semiramis, a zenobia, or the queen of the amazons, and excused her brother’s youthful acts, asking for peace & quiet in the kingdom, etc (circ. 1668/2008). there are two points of note here. the first is the actual incident surrounding the text—njinga’s refusal to sit on the floor, and her use of another person as a chair in order to do so. with this one action, njinga asserted her power in many ways. first, she refused to be seated in a lower position than the europeans, demanding to be treated as an equal. second, the demonstration of sitting upon another person is a very powerful image that would have conveyed the control she had over her subjects to the members of the embassy. indeed, the second point of note shows how the europeans reacted to this display of power and pride. cavazzi wrote admiringly of the way that njinga presented herself, stating that “although she was a black ethiopian, [her arguments were], as if she had been a semiramis, a zenobia, or the queen of the amazons.” njinga is undoubtedly looked down upon by the europeans for being black. yet, she is able to transcend this through her presentation of herself. she performs her power by forcing the portuguese to see her as an equal through both her use of the human chair and her elegant and well-reasoned arguments. but njinga’s demonstration of power did not end there. at the end of the meeting, njinga left the europeans with one final impression of her power. cavazzi wrote: [njinga] left the chair on which she was sitting, which was her waiting woman, which made the bystanders laugh, & when she realised this she answered that it was not a mistake, but because her king’s ambassador was not accustomed to sitting the second time where he had sat before, being rich in such chairs, & she left that one, there being no lack of someone else to take her place, and this gave everyone cause to realise ginga’s pride & ambition (circ. 1668/2008). choosing to leave behind her ‘chair’ further emphasized the power that njinga held over both that particular woman and her (or her brother’s) subjects in general. she claimed to be “rich in such chairs,” a fact which meant that there was no lack of someone else to take her place. in this very public display of her power, she of course showed her control of that particular woman, but was also sure to emphasize the fact that this particular instance of control was not unusual, and that she would be able to call upon a vast number of people to do the same. this demonstration worked: cavazzi wrote that it “gave everyone cause to realise ginga’s pride & ambition,” and in this way she established herself as a formidable power. njinga used this moment with the embassy to demonstrate her power both through her presentation—her rich dress, her intelligence, her quick arguments—and through the possessions allotted to her through her powerful status, including the people that she was able to control. part 3: tradition as power, heritage as power one of the other important appeals njinga made to her power was through the power traditionally afforded to someone in her position. as thornton argued, one of the foundations of ndongo’s constitution was based on precedent (1991), and njinga does not fail to appeal to tradition to earn the respect of her people. one tradition that njinga referred to was her religious authority and the local religious practices. as heywood pointed out, njinga “expanded the role of indigenous beliefs and customs beyond what they had occupied during her grandfather’s and father’s reigns” (2017). one example of this can be found in the missione evangelica. cavazzi wrote that njingi “did not fail to perform various heathen ceremonies in order to have a successful journey back to the king’s court, & removing the christian weapons with which she went armed and which she kept in their repositories, she armed herself with the satanic relics customarily used by these ethiopians and sold by their priests” (circ. 1668/2008). though the description is heavily laced with cavazzi’s scornful language due to his lack of respect for nonchristian religions, it is clear that on the journey that is described, njinga performed ceremonies and carried relics meant to safeguard their journey. while this may have diminished her credibility in the eyes of cavazzi and the other europeans, her refusal to ignore her own religious traditions likely had the opposite effect in the eyes of her people. in the event that disaster struck along their journey, for example, failure to perform the accepted religious practices would likely have been met with scorn. this was not the only way that njinga appealed to tradition. generally, she followed the customs of leaders. one such example involves a military instrument which cavazzi called the longa. on the importance of the instrument, cavazzi wrote that: “without this warlike sound the laws, rites & customs cannot be truly practised, & one cannot call oneself a true giaga, & be a legitimate lord” (circ. 1668/2008). but cavazzi tells us that this was an instrument that was given to njinga that she did not fail to make use of. another tradition that njinga appealed to was her heritage. though thornton and miller may disagree on whether or not njinga’s right to rule through her heritage was legitimate, they both agree that this was something that she used to argue for her right to rule (1991; 1975). cavazzi too opens his missione evangelica with “the descent of the ancestors of queen ginga,” clearly having viewed her heritage as important (circ. 1668/2008). these appeals to recognize her power were rewarded. the two quotes above are followed shortly by a segment in which cavazzi wrote that her people “looked at her as their natural lady & honoured & revered her as a demi-goddess,” and that it was for this reason that the portuguese feared njinga so greatly and so vehemently tried to destroy her. part 4: masculinity as power here, both butler’s and scott’s ideas surrounding gender, performance, and power take center stage. gender is a performance, and different individuals are able to perform either a masculine or feminine gender, though this performance may be perceived differently depending on the sex of the performer (butler, 1988). gender, too, is about power, with the masculine in the empowered position (scott, 1986). for njinga, sex was impediment to her goals. as both thornton and miller pointed out, njinga’s female status would have delegitimized her claim to the throne, as there was no true precedent for a ‘good’ female leader in ndongo (1991; 1975). in fact, njinga did not begin her reign as a ruler in her own right, instead beginning as a regent for her brother’s son, who she eventually had killed in order to officially take power (thornton, 1991). njinga’s femaleness was something that she had to carefully navigate in the duration of her rule. thornton explained one strategy that njinga took in order to mitigate the crime of her femaleness. he wrote: “at some point in the 1640s njinga decided to ‘become a man’…njinga's husbands became her ‘concubines’, and she took several at the same time. she required these husbands to dress in women's clothes and to sleep among her maids in waiting” (thornton, 1991). since upper-class women in the kongo engaged in a similar form of polygyny, there was some precedent for njinga’s actions. thornton further argued that njinga’s performance of masculinity was “reinforced” by “engaging in virile pursuits,” pointing to her prowess in battle and to her willingness to lead her troops herself. as heywood explained, njinga quite literally “decided that her inner circle and followers should regard her as a man, not a woman” (2017). njinga leveraged her ability to perform as a man in order to tap into the power that being perceived as masculine lent her. by engaging in masculine pursuits, such as the possession of multiple concubines or fighting on the battlefield, njinga was able to show herself to be a masculine person, as would have been considered appropriate to her status as a leader. for this reason, cavazzi admiringly described njinga as someone whose “masculine valour reigns also in a womanly breast” (circ. 1668/2008). part 5: christianity as power though njinga had technically converted to christianity much earlier in her life, she had not begun to fully live in the manner of a christian until much later in her life, after she had ceased to live as an imbangala (heywood, 2017). in this period of her life, njinga again redefined her image, and was portrayed by cavazzi in a completely different manner. her new image, a result of the legitimacy her new religious convictions lent her, allowed her to strengthen ties to the portuguese (heywood, 2017). whether or not njinga’s newfound religious convictions were genuine are difficult to determine. heywood certainly seems to argue that they were, but njinga of angola does not provide any meaningful evidence to distinguish between the genuine nature of njinga’s conversion to the imbangala lifestyle versus her conversion to christianity. however, for the sake of this argument, whether or not njinga was genuinely christian is moot. regardless of her intentions, njinga still used her position as a christian to leverage her power and to position herself better with the portuguese. one example of her more calculating use of christianity can be found with njinga only committing to monogamy at the behest of the european missionaries, a decision that heywood claimed was made based on the status this decision would afford her. while this is certainly not proof that njinga’s religious beliefs were disingenuous, it does demonstrate that she understood that her religious beliefs could also be used for power. the njinga in cavazzi’s texts who has officially decided to ‘genuinely’ become christian is a wholly new njinga. on her, cavazzi wrote, “the queen did not neglect to visit the invalids every day like a compassionate mother” (circ. 1668/2008). the language cavazzi uses is notable here for several reasons. first, cavazzi’s choice to describe njinga as “mother” is a stark contrast from his earlier description of someone whose “masculine valour reigns also in a womanly breast.” while earlier cavazzi had acknowledged njinga as a woman who was able to wield masculine traits, cavazzi instead portrays her here in a traditionally feminine role, that of the mother. second, cavazzi specifically described the motherhood that njinga performs as “compassionate,” further emphasizing the gentle and kindhearted nature of the role. this strikes a stark contrast with cavazzi’s earlier description of njinga as someone who had “lost her right to the honourable? epithet ‘merciful & compassionate’ appropriate to women.” third, cavazzi told us that njinga earned this status of mother through the fact that she “did not neglect to visit the invalids every day.” it is the nurturing act of demonstrating care that earns her this title. essentially, through cavazzi’s eyes, njinga was able to use her new christian persona to perform her gender in a way she had not before. instead of earning respect through her ‘unusually’ masculine traits, she adhered to the european’s understanding of what it means to be a woman. njinga’s ability to be a christian in her presentation of herself and of her gender earned her the respect of the europeans. in his introduction, cavazzi made a great distinction between the uncommitted christian njinga of the past and the fully converted njinga of the ‘present’, stating that “i briefly describe to you…[njinga’s] life, her customs, the barbarities and cruelties she committed in the past, so that when her vice is noted, the virtue should also be manifest which she shows at the present time, in contrast to the past” (circ. 1668/2008). cavazzi went on to laud njinga’s character, despite clearly holding her previous morals in low regard. njinga’s new positioning of herself did not go unrewarded as it allowed her to be respected by the europeans as something other than a fearsome enemy. this respect in turn earned her another form of power. njinga’s new position as a chrisitan allowed her to be acknowledged by the pope. on the occasion that njinga received a letter from the pope, she again presented herself as a christian. cavazzi wrote of the ceremony in which she received this letter, detailing how grand the ceremony was and how many people came to see her being presented with the letter: “her vassals, and innumerable people who had come to the feast” (circ. 1668/2008). in this way, njinga’s presentation in this ceremony was very purposefully public. cavazzi also detailed how njinga chose to present herself at this event: “she wore round her neck a beautiful gold brocade purse on a chain, in which was the pope’s letter and a little statue of our lady the most holy virgin of the most holy connection in an oval of gold encircled with the finest pearls; and when she rose and set it down, she raised it first to her head, and kissed it with great effect and devotion.” in this way, njinga demonstrated her power in two main ways. first, she proudly displayed her wealth—cavazzi wrote of “a beautiful gold brocade purse” and “an oval of gold encircled with the finest pearls”—emphasizing her high status. and second, she used these fine items to put her status as a christian on display. it is this richly decorated purse that held the pope’s letter and the statue of mary made from the finest material. toward the end of her life, njinga reformed her presentation of herself, but continued to use her presentation of herself to perform her power. conclusion njinga was multitalented in her performances of power, able to leverage presentation, possession, tradition, heritage, masculinity, and christianity to suit her purposes. her performances themselves gave her power; through acting powerful, she became powerful. yet if njinga’s power was a performance, both real and a matter of presentation, who was the audience? it was not a universal one. njinga’s reign occurred during a clash of cultures, and not all of her shows could have unanimous appeal. the respect that she showed to her own religion, for example, helped to earn her the loyalty of her people, but was likewise revolting to the europeans. on the other hand, her public performances of christianity toward the end of her life were clearly for a european audience. njinga was able to wield a variety of performances and maintain a deep awareness of her different audiences, performing her power in the manner best suited to appeal to those watching her. references butler, j. (1997). the psychic life of power: theories in subjection. stanford: stanford university press. ———(december 1988). performative acts and gender constitution: an essay in phenomenology and feminist theatre. theatre journal 40(4), 519-531. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3207893 ——— (1999). ‘women’ as the subject of feminism. in gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity (3-9). new york: routledge. ———(1999). the compulsory order of sex/gender/desire. in gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity (9-11). new york: routledge. ———(1999). bodily inscriptions, performative subversions. in gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity (175-194). new york: routledge. cavazzi da montecuccolo, g. a. (2008). missione evangelica al regno de congo. (j. k. thornton, trans.) (original work published circa 1668) heywood, l. m. (2017) njinga of angola: africa’s warrior queen. cambridge: harvard university press. heywood, l. m., & thornton, j. k. (2007). central africans, atlantic creoles, and the foundation of the americas, 1585-1660. new york: cambridge university press. miller, j. c. (1975). nzing of matamba in a new perspective. the journal of african history 16 (2), 201-216. https://www.jstor.org/stable/180812. scott, j. w. (december 1986). gender: a useful category of historical analysis. the american historical review 91 (5), 1053-1075. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1864376 thornton, j. k. (2008). general introduction. in missione evangelica al regno de congo. ———(1991). legitimacy and political power: queen njinga (1624-1663). the journal of african history 32 (1), 25-40. https://www.jstor.org/stable/182577 microsoft word tongqi+final+revision.docx not your “emerald girl” in defense of tongqi victimization discourse jiahui vivian zhu, stanford university ’23 abstract: in studying queerness and queer relationships, gender and sexuality scholars have long attempted to expand the definition of kinship beyond the heteronormative, nuclear family centered mold. some of these attempts have focused on the “queering” of intimate relationships, which often involves celebrating opaqueness and rejecting normative definitions of “legitimate” intimacy. this approach stands in stark contrast to mainstream and feminist discourses in contemporary mainland china which universally criticize the practice of “marriage fraud” – gay men marrying unsuspecting heterosexual women (tongqi). by analyzing a romanticized example of opaque kinship depicted by author yiyun li in her short story gold boy, emerald girl, this paper problematizes the ideal vision of “queer kinship” presented by scholars and defends the victimization narrative advanced by millions of chinese tongqi. in her essay on yiyun li’s short story gold boy, emerald girl, critic king-kok cheung describes the union of li’s protagonists as a “somewhat queer” and “unconventional love triangle” (cheung, 2015, p. 88). this description is indeed fitting for a story about siyu, a recluse in her late thirties, who agrees to marry hanfeng, a man returning to beijing after decades in north america, because of her attraction to his mother, her college mentor professor dai. since hanfeng is also implied to be gay, the relationship(s) at the center of this story can be mapped onto the concept of queer kinship, a term used to describe social connections constructed by and between queer individuals that transgress the bounds of traditional kinship. indeed, the field of queer studies has long attempted to broaden the definition of kinship to more than just the “lived relationality” that emanates from “the heterosexual couple and the parent-child unit" (freeman, 2007, p. 295). in appropriating and transforming kinship terminologies, queer people can emphasize “freedom, creativity, and flexibility” in the formation and definition of their relationships (freeman, 2007, p. 304). in stark contrast to the terms of empowerment employed by queer kinship theories, popular opinion in contemporary mainland china would likely disapprove of the marriage between siyu and hanfeng. since same sex marriage is not legal in mainland china (marriage law of the people’s republic of china, 2001), homosexual individuals, especially gay men who face pressures to continue the patriline often choose to marry unsuspecting straight women (liu & tang, 2014a, p. 131). gay men who engage in this practice are widely judged as immoral for their instrumentalization of their wives to “deflect social and family obligation pressures” (tsang, 2020, p. 794). contrastingly, heterosexual women who enter these marriages have come to receive widespread sympathy. these women, known as “tongqi” (同妻 – the wife of a homosexual), are considered victims of “marriage fraud,” and are “commonly described as ‘damaged’ or ‘spoiled’ goods” (tsang, 2021, p. 794). in recent years, these women have publicized their predicaments through various media, organized in offline and online communities, and have constructed a collective identity around their victimhood (zhu, 2018). unlike the chinese public, who is almost uniformly critical of the gay husbands in different-sex marriages, some scholars have argued that the discourse of tongqi victimhood is essentializing and ultimately homophobic. in her article published in sexualities, jingshu zhu, a lawyer turned researcher of lgbt+ issues in china at leiden university, argues that rather than stigmatizing gay men who enter different-sex marriages, one should consider such marriages as a form of queer kinship that “put(s) the concept of kinship into question” (zhu, 2018, p. 1086). in particular, zhu addresses two societal expectations underlying the tongqi victimhood narrative: first, that marriage “should ideally provide hetero-romantic-sexual love and a stable family life”; and second, that “only heterosexuals should be entering different-sex marriages” (zhu, 2018, p. 1077). the problem with these expectations, zhu argues, is that they leave gay men with no realistic option. for the vast majority of gay men, coming out is forbidden by societal homophobia, yet they are also unable to fulfill their socially expected duties as a heterosexual husband. to resolve this dilemma, zhu advocates the deconstruction of the “problematic truth regime” that prohibits mixed-orientation marriages on the grounds of morality (zhu, 108, p. 1085). instead, she proposes “opacity as a queer tactic in marriage,” and an expansion in the definition of kinship to include mixed-orientation relationships, which may still offer “care, support and companionship” despite a partner’s undisclosed sexuality (zhu, 2018, p. 1087). this essay will challenge zhu’s solution to the aforementioned dilemma, arguing that in advocating opacity she obscures the very real suffering of many tongqi. furthermore, this essay will rationalize the primary demands of tongqi – fewer gay-straight marriages and more “coming out” (zhu, 2018, p. 1085), as an alternative solution to the moral dilemma facing gay men. the marriage in gold boy, emerald girl, one that seemingly fits zhu’s definition of a mutuallybeneficial, “opaque” relationship, will be used to frame the plight of real-life tongqi. by contrasting li’s story, which describes a positive mixed-orientation marriage, and the negative experiences of many real tongqi, the following sections will argue that these differences are precisely why hanfeng’s marriage can be characterized as non-exploitative “queer kinship,” while other gay men may reasonably be accused of committing “fraud.” “marriage fraud” as a broken promise the first major difference between siyu and most tongqi is her lack of expectations when it comes to what zhu terms the “ideal package of marriage-love-sex” (zhu, 2018, p. 1077). in her own vision of her post-marriage life, siyu pictures not the usual images of conjugal romance, but herself “standing by the window and listening to hanfeng and professor dai play four-hand” at the piano (li, 2010, p. 221). in fact, not only does siyu have no expectations for hanfeng, for whom she likely harbors no romantic or sexual feelings, she does not even expect reciprocation from professor dai, for whom she had “remained unmarried” for more than a decade (li, 2010, p. 220). indeed, the younger woman’s expressions of love are extremely subtle, almost undetectable – in college she arrived early each day at the biology building only to receive an imperceptible nod from the professor, and since graduation she “tried to keep herself uncommitted” every new year’s eve in case the older woman required her companionship (li, 2010, p. 204). unlike siyu, most women expect more from their marriages than just living with the object of their desires and occasionally listening to them play piano. when asked by researchers about their husbands’ sexual and emotional unavailability, tongqi used phrases like “pain,” “irritation,” and “trauma,” in describing their disappointment (wang & li, 2015). in her article, zhu takes issue with blaming such feelings on “marriage fraud,” observing that “many wives with heterosexual husbands…are enduring similarly indifferent or even tormented marriages, but none of them have collectively formed an identity based around victimhood” (zhu, 2018, p. 1080). instead, zhu attributes these feelings of victimization to “the unmarked expectation…that both spouses should be straight” in a different-sex marriage, an expectation that unfairly classifies all gay men’s “straight” marriages as inherently fraudulent (zhu, 2018, p. 1080). there are two potential counterarguments to zhu’s assertion. firstly, even if it is unhelpful or unreasonable for women to expect romance and sexual fulfillment from their marriages, the psychological harm suffered due to these unfulfilled expectations cannot be negated. in addition to unfulfilled sexual desires and emotional unavailability, women often also feel traumatized when they discover that their husbands have been seeking sexual and emotional fulfillment with other men. scholars who have conducted extensive ethnographic work on tongqi groups report that many women question their own attractiveness and actions within their relationships, which often results in depression and shame (liu, 2017). in extreme cases, these negative emotions, along with the failure to come to terms with one’s spouse’s infidelity, may lead to self-harm. according to a systematic review by wang et al. (2020), multiple surveys have shown that a majority of tongqi experienced depressive symptoms including suicide ideation, and over 10% of them have had suicide attempts (p. 4). one high profile example of such a tragedy was the suicide of luo hongling. after documenting her life as a tongqi online and revealing that her husband interacted “sexually and romantically with multiple men through social media channels,” the sichuan university lecturer took her own life in 2012 (ying, 2018). secondly, zhu misattributes the “pian” (骗 – deceive, fraud) accusation in “marriage fraud” to women feeling cheated solely because of their husbands’ sexuality, thereby suggesting that those hurt feelings are intertwined with homophobic attitudes (zhu, 2018). she further argues that hiding one’s sexuality cannot be unequivocally construed as fraud, since “the withholding of information (an inaction) is not widely considered fraud (an action)” (zhu, 2018, p. 1077). in the context of the chinese marriage law, however, definitions of “marriage fraud” include “the withholding of truthful information” in order to convince another party to agree to marry (liu & tang, 2014a, p.133). although in practice chinese divorce courts only allow accusations of “marriage fraud” in cases where the fraud is committed for financial gain, legal scholars have argued that tongqi should be able to use this definition as well (wang, 2015). moreover, many gay men enter into marriages with women after coming out to their families, contrary to zhu’s characterization of widespread confusion about their sexuality (zhu, 2018, p. 1085). in a study conducted by liu and tang (2014a), many of the gay men interviewed revealed that they had decided to marry after their families reacted negatively to their coming out. one tongqi interviewee even revealed that when she confronted her mother-in-law about her husband’s sexuality, she was told that his whole family knew all along and that it was her fault for not “fixing him” (liu and tang, 2014a, p. 131). another survey conducted by zhang et al. (2014) revealed that 86.3% of the tongqi subjects would “definitely not have gotten married” to their current husbands had they known their true sexuality. combining these findings, it is clear that the hiding of their sexualities, often with the help of their families, is a necessary condition of many gay men’s heterosexual marriages. withholding information with the explicit intent to convince another party to enter an agreement, knowing full well that the information is crucial to their decision, can definitely be reasonably described as “fraud.” in sum, although zhu may reasonably argue that it is wrong for heterosexual women to expect their husbands to be straight, and that sexuality should not be crucial to a woman’s decision about marriage, her arguments cannot negate the trauma suffered by many tongqi within their marriages and upon discovering the intentional deceit by her husband and in-laws. the inescapability of unhappy marriages another predicament faced by most women in china, including tongqi, but virtually absent in the case of siyu, is the ubiquitous pressure to get married, and, more importantly, stay married. when siyu finally meets hanfeng at the age of thirty-eight, she has already “developed a reputation as unmatchable” (li, 2010, p. 206). although she too once experienced “neighbors and acquaintances” eagerly trying to “find a husband for her,” this stage of her life is decidedly behind her (li, 2010, p. 206). additionally, siyu faces little pressure to get married from her natal family – her mother has long since passed away, and she has come to maintain “a respectful distance” from her father’s family upon his remarriage (li, 2010, p. 204). furthermore, siyu is described as having “not changed much” from her days in college, where she was quirky and relatively friendless (li, 2010, p. 206). indeed, her current job as a librarian probably also does not bring with it a gaggle of nosy coworkers interested in her private life. resultingly, siyu’s life is far removed from the experiences of most tongqi, since she could independently decide to marry hanfeng at age thirty-eight, and would face minimal social pressure if she were to choose divorce in the future. for most tongqi, however, pressures by their families and society to marry in their twenties are immense (murti, 2019, pp. 41-42), and upon discovering their husbands’ sexuality, most are forced to stay in the marriage by both legal barriers and the fear of social consequences (wang et al., 2020, p. 4). remembering how she met her ex-husband, one tongqi interviewee told researchers that she got married after being “pressured by her parents to attend countless blind dates after graduate school” (wang & li, 2015). this particular woman divorced her husband after an instance of domestic violence, but many others stay in their unhappy marriages. in general, divorce is inaccessible for chinese women due to the relative difficulty for women to be financially independent as a result of a gendered lack of economic opportunities (liu, 2017). moreover, divorce is still considered a “disgraceful act” in china, especially for women (zhang et al., 2014, p. 102). certainly, such shame and financial hardship is experienced by all women in china, not just tongqi, and scholars like zhu may argue that the agony of tongqi “is an epitome of many interwoven socio-economic problems in contemporary china, rather than simply the result of a ‘gay’ secret” (zhu, 2018, p. 1082). yet this assertion cannot nullify the unique harms experienced by tongqi when it comes to being trapped in their marriages, for two reasons. first, there are additional barriers preventing tongqi from obtaining financial compensation during divorce settlements compared to women with husbands who commit (heterosexual) adultery. according to zhou dan, a lawyer specializing in gay rights cases, obtaining evidence to prove their aggrieved status is a near-impossible task for most tongqi. this is because under chinese law, evidence of a spouse cohabitating with another individual can only serve as proof of infidelity when that individual is of the opposite sex (ying, 2018). second, women who divorce a gay husband may face more severe stigmatization compared to other divorcees. for example, while many tongqi subjects of a 2014 study wanted a divorce, most of them did not see it as a practical option. when asked to explain her reasoning, one woman replied, “i may be stigmatized for being a gay man’s wife, suspected of carrying that unspeakable disease…and be ridiculed by my family and friends” (liu & tang, 2014b, p. 35). in acknowledging the additional legal and social barriers faced by tongqi considering divorce, one can no longer simply equate the experiences of these women trapped by “marriage fraud” to other women who choose to stay in unhappy marriages due to socio-economic factors. the curse of motherhood the final aspect of siyu’s character that distinguishes her from most tongqi is the unlikelihood of her ever having children with hanfeng. beyond the fact that siyu is probably physically less able to become pregnant due to her age, her distance from her immediate family and apparent lack of married-with-children friends also reduces the pressure to choose motherhood. the demand for children is equally absent on hanfeng’s side, since his father has also passed away, and professor dai makes no mention of any desire to become a grandmother. most tongqi, on the other hand, do become mothers. in fact, tongqi “often discover their husbands’ secret after giving birth” (tsang, 2021, p. 794), that is to say, after they have fulfilled the confucian filial obligation of continuing the patriline, which remains important for most chinese families (eklund, 2018, p. 297). of course, many women in unsatisfactory heterosexual marriages also become mothers, but motherhood also brings unique harms to tongqi. for example, many tongqi experience anxiety relating to their children’s development. one woman expressed fear about her son being exposed to “gay circles” (wang & li, 2015), others revealed anxieties surrounding bringing up children who are “ashamed of their fathers” (liu & tang, 2014b, p. 35). despite the fact that these anxieties may be derived from homophobic stereotypes about the promiscuity of gay men, the torment endured remains genuine and impactful. beyond such anxieties, tongqi often struggle with feelings of alienation and instrumentalization. compared to most western countries, the pressure to have children is “extraordinarily pronounced in china” (zhu, 2018, p. 1076). as a result, tongqi report feeling like “a tool for continuing the patriline” (ying, 2018), and their anxieties are often validated when their husbands’ attitude towards them suddenly deteriorates after childbirth (liu & tang, 2014b). although the pressure to bear children is ubiquitous for most chinese women, not just the wives of gay men, the revelation that their worth is no more than their uterus is particularly traumatizing for tongqi (zhang et al., 2014, p. 101, 105). conclusion arguments like zhu’s shine a much needed light on “the heteronormative prejudices behind the seemingly gender-neutral virtues of ‘spousal love’ and ‘communication’” (zhu, 2018, p. 1085). certainly, her problematization of some aspects of the discourse surrounding tongqi is also entirely reasonable – it is true that some older gay men chose to get married in an era in which the categorial “gay” identity was not yet accessible, and that essentializing gay men’s sexuality erases bisexual identities and “forecloses the possibility of sexual fluidity” (zhu, 2018, p. 1085). suggesting opacity as a solution to these problems, however, denies the lived realities of women who consider themselves the victims of “marriage fraud.” indeed, zhu herself, in assessing her interviews with one gay man, acknowledges that by listening to only his side of the story, his wife’s “emotional and sexual needs might be trivialized” (zhu, 2018, p. 1084). despite this, zhu still seems to sympathize more with the plight of gay men, reasoning that once these men get married, they will be hurting their wives regardless of whether or not they are entirely truthful. yet the logic of tongqi activism and their self-constructed narratives do not operate in a “should he tell the truth or not” dichotomy, but rather advocates for a world where gay men do not, and are not required to get married to women. in fact, many tongqi actually acknowledge the victimization of gay men by a homophobic society, while also judging it inappropriate to harm another marginalized group “just because of one’s own suffering” (ying, 2018). at the end of her analysis of gold boy, emerald girl, cheung (2015) suggests that the characters arrive at a state of “compromised domesticity,” reflecting a cultural ethos “that puts a great stock in interdependence, including filial obligation” (101). in li’s story, this compromise appears willingly chosen by all parties, connecting three lonely people who together can “make a world that would accommodate their loneliness” (li, 2010, p. 221). this is also a story in which none of the characters explicitly reveal their sexuality, a creative choice which fits both li’s literary aesthetics of subtlety and ambiguity, and zhu’s conceptualization of “opacity” as a means to “radically queer kinship (studies)” (zhu, 2018, p. 1075). nevertheless, this opacity is neither what many tongqi would accept nor the only solution to the double bind of a homophobic society and marriages that demand truthfulness. certainly, there may be women like siyu who are willing to be the “emerald girl” to hanfeng’s “gold boy,” for whom achieving “genuinely inclusive and flourishing queer kinship” (zhu, 2018, p. 1087) is possible or even desired. yet perhaps it is also reasonable for tongqi to frame their experiences as one of victimization by their husbands, their families, and oppressive notions of gender relations, and to wish for a world in which the way out of the double bind does not involve their pain or the compromising of their desires. perhaps in wishing for a world without “marriage fraud,” they are simply wishing for a world where the solution is less homophobia in the first place. references cheung, k. 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in america who experience a sense of entitlement that has been disrupted by shifting economic and political tides. finally, we will explore short-term and long-term remedies to violent tendencies beyond policy change that can reshape the way we approach the dialogue around gun violence. content warning: this article contains sensitive content, including anecdotes relating to mass shootings, and analyses of gun violence and homicide trends in america. readers are advised to take these into account before proceeding. introduction “today would have been carmen's 17th birthday. but sadly, we are having to celebrate her life, instead of celebrating what a new year might bring” robert schentrup said (cnn, 2018). schentrup was speaking about his sister at cnn’s town hall for the 2018 parkland school shooting in which 17 people were killed and 17 others were injured (chappell, 2021). students watched classmates die before their very eyes. parents endured the pain of losing children. america, with less than 5 percent of the global population, has approximately 40 percent of all privately-owned guns (wamu, 2018) and makes up nearly a third of mass shootings globally (basu, 2015). gun control has been a contentious topic in u.s. politics ever since the adoption of the second amendment right to bear arms. bloated lobbying groups like the national rifle association funnel millions of dollars each year into campaigns that prevent gun control bills from passing and boost pro-gun politicians into local and federal offices (bbc, 2020). moreover, gun manufacturers enjoy legal exemption from lawsuits when crimes are committed with their products under the protection of lawful commerce in arms act. but in 2018, the connecticut supreme court passed a decision that could unravel this exemption. in the court case, families affected by the 2012 sandy hook elementary school shooting sued remington arms under connecticut’s unfair trade practices law for knowingly targeting disaffected young men in militaristic advertisements. the advertisements for the ar-15 rifle used in the shooting featured taglines like “consider your man card reissued” and “forces of opposition, bow down” (figure 1). in a world where one feels powerless, it could be enough cause for them to pick up a gun. in 2019, remington appealed the case to the u.s. supreme court, and the court declined to hear the case, which allowed the lawsuit to proceed. finally, in february 2022, the families agreed to a $73 million settlement of the lawsuit against remington arms (collins, 2022). this case is a rare incident of a gun manufacturer being held responsible for the harm caused by their product. therefore, it forces us to re-evaluate the question of gun control from a different lens. the issue of gun violence in america persists throughout decades of political debate, and political gridlock in government apparatuses prevents meaningful progress on gun reform bills. while the avenue for change through policy is narrow, the hypermasculine remington arms advertisements reveal that we can examine gun violence from a different angle: the cultural scripts that frame violence as an acceptable means to reassert one’s masculinity. in my paper, i will be analyzing gendered innovations in gun violence: how considering gender can redefine gun culture. society has defined violence as a means to establish masculinity, encouraging those who have been emasculated to use guns to reassert their power. additionally, through an intersectional lens, we notice that white men with socioeconomic qualms make up those who are most attached to their guns. as a result, guns have become explicitly masculine symbols of power among those who feel their identity and livelihoods threatened by the status quo. how gender norms shape gun culture since antiquity, violence has been hyper-masculinized by western society and media, from mandatory military service to violent video games. these social norms manifest themselves in a disturbing pattern found in mass shooters. the violence project, a nonprofit and nonpartisan research group, maintains a database of 180 mass shooters from 1966 to the present. they coded each shooter based on 170 different variables ranging from household size to criminal history – but the single, most patterned trait is gender (the violence project, 2021). in all but four cases, the perpetrators were men – that’s 98 percent of all shooters. this is alarming because approximately 60 percent of gun owners are men (horowitz, 2020). in looking at gender differences, we uncover social narratives that function as prescriptions for violent behavior in men. society has created and enforced various attributes associated with masculinity, such as physical dominance. when these identity-based characteristics are challenged, people turn to guns as a way to provide gendered status. bridges and tober (2018) describe this phenomenon as a social identity threat: when a person finds their identity called into question, they tend to overcompensate for the qualities they lack. for instance, bullying victimization tends to produce gun-supportive attitudes in men. in an effort “to regain a sense of power and avoid further emasculation,” one will try to conform to masculine stereotypes (ray et al., 2021, p. 396). one such stereotype is responding with physical force when provoked. kimmel and mahler (2003, p. 1445) found in school shootings between 1982 and 2001 that nearly all the shooters experienced gender-specific or homophobic bullying, such as being called a “faggot” before their attacks. the researchers posit that the shooters, when faced with these threats, felt the need to reestablish their manhood through violence (kimmel and mahler, 2003, p. 1440). this retaliatory response can be traced back to childhood development: “four times more teenage boys than teenage girls think fighting is appropriate when someone cuts to the front of a line” (kimmel and mahler, 2003, p. 1450). at a young age, violence is seen as a viable form of conflict resolution, more so among boys than girls. furthermore, manliness, as a social construct, needs to be bestowed by a peer group (shuffelton, 2015, p. 388). gun manufacturers act as this peer group, promising their consumers renewed dignity. yet, in this era of gun culture, advertisers have used increasingly questionable ways to entice prospective gun owners. analyzing 1154 advertisements from 65 different issues of the guns magazine, yamane documents the shift in guns portrayed as tools for hunting and sport to weapons for home and personal protection (yamane, 2020). while the messaging continues to feed into gender stereotypes, the target object is no longer animals or inanimate objects, but other human beings. these advertisements contribute to cultural scripts that nudge disillusioned young men to pick up a gun and use it against actual people. the disillusioned are not the only ones susceptible to societal pressures. a common social narrative is that a good man should be the household’s protector and breadwinner. in his book gunfight, adam winkler (2013) writes that his wife and his “beloved” daughter “embody the reason a law-abiding person might want to own a gun”. these level-headed acknowledgments illuminate the rationale behind “moderate proponents of expansive second amendment rights [who] thereby [make] guns widely available within american communities” (shuffelton, 2015, p. 400). even within the republican party which traditionally favors gun rights, men are more likely than women to support pro-gun policy. for example, 60 percent of republican women favor banning assault-style weapons compared to 28 percent of republican men. moreover, republican men are more supportive of carrying concealed guns without a permit compared to republican women, 52 versus 24 percent (horowitz, 2020). by analyzing gender differences, we can dissect varying perceptions toward gun ownership within political groups that traditionally support gun rights. in addition to physical toughness, men also face social pressure to be emotionally tough. men are far less likely to seek mental health treatment compared to women, so their conditions often go untreated and instead feed into dangerous and unhealthy behaviors (chatmon, 2020). men reportedly die by suicide at a rate four times higher than women (mental health america, 2020). moreover, the annual number of deaths due to alcohol-related causes is 62,000 for men compared to 26,000 for women (mental health america, 2020). the stigma against emotional expression and weakness in men leaves them with very few outlets to release their unheard anxiety, anger, and depression. because suicide is a weak way to die – “one at odds with the script of masculinity” – shooters look for “status-winning, manhood-enhancing departures” (shuffelton, 2015, p. 394). altogether, social expectations, mental health stigma, and easy access to firearms make for a dangerous concoction conducive to gun violence. race and class in gun violence we would be missing the full picture if we looked only at gender. if we take an intersectional approach, race and class factors are also correlated to one’s propensity toward gun violence. while white men make up 32 percent of americans, they are 61 percent of gun owners (lind, 2015) and 52 percent of mass shooters (the violence project, 2021). in the past, white men have benefitted from privileges made possible by structural inequality. while these privileges still exist, social movements in the 20th and 21st centuries are chipping away at the inequalities that historically worked in their favor. this has led to a new strain of white male identity politics fueled by “resentment, paranoia, and apocalyptic visions, often exploding into violence” (shuffelton, 2015, p. 399). kimmel (2018) coined the term aggrieved entitlement to refer to the “gendered sense of entitlement thwarted by larger economic and political shifts” that white men are experiencing in america. aggrieved entitlement often leads to “racist or sexist sentiments toward women and racial minorities” (bridges, 2018). in the summer of 2019, these sentiments escalated into a mass shooting at the busiest walmart in el paso, texas that resulted in 23 deaths and 23 injuries. located a few miles from the mexican border, the store caters to a predominantly hispanic population. moments before the shooting, the perpetrator posted his manifesto on the anonymous messaging board 8chan featuring white nationalist and anti-immigrant themes (the new york times, 2019). the media captured these incidents, creating an insidious online feedback loop that inspired people who share similar sentiments to mimic past shooters. (harwell, 2019). varying degrees of gun-supportive attitudes fall short of outright homicide but still contribute to widespread firearm availability. in a study analyzing 1600 survey responses, mencken and froese (2017) found that white men who experience a great deal of anxiety about their economic futures are the group of gun owners most attached to their guns. on the other hand, non-white gun owners in economic peril feel less empowered by their guns. the reason white men respond more acutely to financial strain as opposed to non-white men may be that it deviates from the economy which historically favored them. specifically, kimmel (2013) argues that it is the downwardly mobile white men who “form the backbone of the tea party, of the listeners of outrage radio, of the neo-nazis and white supremacists” (p. 23). mencken and froese (2017) continue that “white men in economic distress find comfort in guns as a means to reestablish a sense of individual power and moral certitude in the face of changing times” as guns are a cultural symbol and physical tool for maintaining power and autonomy. gun empowerment, in turn, affects policy attitudes and voting behavior: “[g]un empowerment is statistically associated with strong opposition to bans on semiautomatic weapons, ammunition clips, and handguns” (mencken & froese, 2017, p. 3). furthermore, greater gun empowerment indicates less support for mental health screening in background checks and more support for concealed weapons (mencken & froese, 2017). these inclinations echo our aforementioned concerns related to mental health and compound on preexisting issues in gun control. developing community-based public safety models fortunately, communities and non-profit organizations are recognizing the need to reduce gun violence by addressing its socioeconomic factors. advance peace is an organization that has successfully decreased firearm homicides and assaults in several northern california cities, saving millions of dollars that would have otherwise gone to policing. for instance, stockton, a city that was ranked the tenth most dangerous city in the u.s. in 2012, has seen a 20% drop in gun homicides and assaults since the program launched in 2018 (harwell, 2019). advance peace’s gun violence reduction program provides an empirically proven opportunity to “reimagine public safety models that rely on policing” (natividad, 2021). the organization’s peacemaker fellowship enrolls individuals most likely to be firearm offenders “as determined by comprehensive data analyses, referrals from key partners, [and] street knowledge of the outreach workers” (corburn & fukutome, 2021). the program’s centerpiece is the lifemap (or management action plan), a series of short-term and long-term goals that each fellow establishes for themselves across multiple life areas: education, employment, housing, transportation, finances, mental health, relationships, and social connection (advance peace, n.d.). short-term goals include “participating in substance abuse treatment or individual counseling, attending parenting classes, or paying outstanding vehicle violations,” while longterm goals may be “rebuilding family relationships or completing a ged program” (advance peace, n.d.). through self-defined targets, the program can help shift the gendered narrative from finding self-worth in guns to discovering purposeful living through actionable goals. advance peace also provides services such as job training, cognitive behavioral therapy, and social services navigation, which alleviates the financial pressures that may cause people to turn to guns for solace. furthermore, the participants attend life skills classes that foster dialogue on community trauma and build trusting relationships for group healing (corburn & fukutome, 2021). the program offerings rewrite cultural narratives of masculinity and provide a holistic approach to extracting root problems that plague firearm offenders and combat tendencies that produce gun violence, breaking its vicious cycle. next steps ultimately, the solution to gun violence is not a one-size-fits-all approach. we need to analyze gender against shifting political and socioeconomic conditions. first, gun manufacturers should evaluate how their advertisements reinforce gender norms and violent narratives. media shapes social perceptions, which in turn shape real-world behavior. legal institutions should take advantage of the precedent set forth by the sandy hook decision and find avenues similar to connecticut’s unfair trade practices law to open the floodgates for lawsuits against irresponsible marketing. second, we cannot be oversimplifying mental health problems. politicians and media commentators are quick to generalize mass shooters as “mentally ill”, even though each person’s circumstances are unique and complex. many shooting incidents are caused by chronic issues such as stressful economic burdens or childhood trauma. misrepresenting the mentally ill as irrational and unpredictable can have adverse consequences, such as social ostracization or escalation with law enforcement officers, that would only worsen their conditions (metzl et al., 2021). therefore, we need to adopt open dialogue models, such as those used by advance peace. finally, we need to hold ourselves accountable for the gender stereotypes that have been embedded into societal institutions ranging from education to social media. harmful assumptions create an environment hostile to personal growth, so we must challenge tradition to ignite a virtuous cycle of honest communication, in place of unnecessary violence. references basu, t. 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(2020). targeted advertising: documenting the e emergence of gun culture 2.0 in guns magazine, 1955–2019. palgrave communications, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-0437-0 microsoft word futur+drei+essay+ce.docx lavender as a symbol of queerness, environment, and migration in futur drei/no hard feelings (2020)’s scenes of utopia cybele zhang, stanford ’22 abstract: this essay explores the final scene of franz shariat’s futur drei/no hard feelings, specifically the shot in which the three protagonists stand with a bushel of lavender. i argue that the trance-like sequence at the end of the 2020 film is a momentary realization of the trio’s imagined future—an alternate, utopic germany. the inclusion of the lavender is especially notable because it highlights key themes of the film and attributes central to this utopia: queer representation and acceptance, environmental consciousness, and the protection and welcoming of refugees and migrants. parvis, amon, and banafshe stand alone in an arid field. for the first time in faraz shariat’s film futur drei/no hard feelings, the three protagonists break the fourth wall and stare at the camera, which circles around them. the entire film has built up to this final moment where the trio makes their escape through the german countryside and is thus especially symbolic. the semibiographical film itself follows parvis, the openly gay, young adult son of iranian immigrants, who lives with his parents in hildesheim, a small, historic city near hannover. when parvis is caught shoplifting, he is sent to volunteer at a housing project for refugees, where the film commences. although initially unequipped for the position, parvis befriends banafshe and her brother, amon—both iranian refugees who live in the housing project as they seek asylum. as the siblings struggle to establish legal residency to remain in germany, banafshe encourages a budding romantic relationship between parvis and amon, who is still coming to terms with his sexuality. between scenes in the housing project, the film cuts to parvis going on grindr dates and walking home after late nights clubbing—a liberating world that he begins to expose the siblings to. in addition to centering themes of sexuality, the film also grapples with complex questions of nationality and inequity; despite their differing immigration statuses and varied perspectives on germany and iran, all three protagonists feel a lack of belonging, which they combat by imagining a more accepting future. the film ends with banafshe fleeing the housing project after she learns that the police are on their way to deport her, and parvis promises to take care of her brother. before she flees, the trio shares a final moment together, running through the countryside, momentarily realizing their idealized germany—“the world [that] is ours,” to paraphrase banafshe’s exultant shout during the sequence (shariat, 2020, 1:21:23).1 this world is epitomized by a long shot of the three standing together with a bushel of lavender—which will prove to be the final time the three are pictured together. the rural, natural scene and the inclusion of lavender, in particular, stresses the interconnection of plants and humans, which comes up throughout the film. in this final image of queer utopia, the bouquet symbolizes the pro-lgbtq+, pro-climate justice, and pro-immigration values that the three fight for, and the scene thus becomes a liminal embodiment of the alternative germany they seek. on a facile level, this trance-like scene in nature stands apart cinematically because it cuts between imagined moments, creating the sense of an alternative reality as if in a dream. running from the police, the three seek the only place they can be together: a fantasy land. constricted by legal statute and prejudice, the sequence offers a momentary escape, serving arguably as the climax of the entire film. the otherworldly scene cuts sporadically between imagined moments of serenity and joy—from parvis and amon eating sushi to banafshe rapping atop a mercedes-benz.2 the oscillating images at first glance are thus seemingly disconnected. some moments are reinterpretations of prior events in the film, while others are entirely new, as 1 still in the primary frame of the film’s narrative, prior to the trance-like interlude, banafshe declares “the world is ours” in farsi. 2 the fact that this still shot was selected for promotional images further emphasizes the idea that this scene (the three standing in the field as banafshe holds the lavender) is the climax of the movie and embodies the overarching message of the film. scenes of the trance-like utopia are from 1:21:23 to 1:22:14 (shariat, 2020). if an experience that could happen in the future in the trio’s idealized germany. in a longer shot within the sequence, mentioned prior, parvis, amon, and banafshe stand in an unnatural triangular placement, drawing attention to the scene. this particular moment, with the camera circling the trio, in fact, rejects its own cinematic format and dissolves the barrier that conventionally separates the unknowing subject within the film from the observer on the other side of the screen. the three stare at the viewer, breaking the fourth wall, and draw attention to their intimate connection with the implied viewer, as if the viewer is in the field, too. at the same time, the direct gaze into the camera also highlights the trio’s consciousness of the scene as a man-made creation in a film—it is not reality that they live in, but they exist in a created world that they imagine and mold. this image of the trio standing in the field mirrors a similar shot just seconds before, but there is one difference: the addition of lavender in banafshe’s arms.3 the similarity between the scenes thus triggers an eerie sense of déjà vu, but the slight variation also catches the viewer’s eye, prompting the question why the bouquet is needed in the imagined scene. the remainder of this essay explores what lavender specifically and plants broadly thus add to the scene through the queerness that it symbolizes. throughout the film, shariat links characters to their natural surroundings, so the final lavender scene in the countryside is a logical progression from the images of connected plants and queer humans that proceed it.4 despite the movie’s relatively urban setting in suburban hildesheim, nature is everywhere—especially at key moments in the plot’s progression. amon first approaches parvis at the refugee shelter with an offering of sunflower seeds, a snack symbolic of potential growth and new beginnings (shariat, 2020, 12:28). the first time the viewer sees parvis and banafshe interact is in the sibling’s plant filled room, establishing the plants’ association with the domestic (shariat, 2020, 16:55). parvis and amon’s first confrontation is on a forested hill as they walk up from a lake (shariat, 2020, 22:30). and parvis and amon’s first sexual encounter is in the former’s wood paneled bedroom (shariat, 2020, 45:40). from the film’s start to end, plant-life in some form is present. even in the film’s closing scene, banafshe’s voicemail message, which does not inherently have a visual component, plays over a montage of various plants (shariat, 2020, 1:26:40). as banafshe speaks, the screen fills completely with changing natural images—shades of green and the textures of leaves, bark, or cacti—as if the plants themselves are personified and talk to the viewer. in this final scene most explicitly, plants and humans merge on screen.5 shariat’s focus on the connection between plants and humans, especially in relation to sexuality, is not a novel idea. the sexuality of plants, in fact, has roots in imperialist, eighteenth century botany (sandilands, 2007). carl linnaeus notably asserted that plants are “possessors of 3 shariat includes two near identical shots of the trio standing in the field; in one, they hold nothing (1:21:23), and in another banafshe holds a bushel of lavender (1:22:05). 4 to further this connection with flora and fauna, the film’s promotional materials are rife with natural imagery. the futur drei/no hard feelings poster includes a plant stalk out of focus up the middle of the photo and the movie’s instagram has decorative floral art and photographs, among other examples. 5 another example of plant and human merging is through parvis’ word choice for his german hookup at the beginning of the film: jung gebliebene kartoffeln or young potatoes—that is, unripe or prematurely harvested (shariat, 2020, 20:35) a sexual life comparable to that of humans”—but not every plant fits into his heteronormative mold (moore, 2005). in “clandestine marriage: botany and romantic culture,” theresa kelley provides a queer caveat to linnaeus’ argument and posits that “there was (and remains) something decidedly queer in [plants’] refusal to conform to the sexual categories on which linnaean taxonomy rests, which are figured as kinds of “marriage” between male stamens and female pistils” (sandilands, 2007). just as plants in real life defy the social and sexual expectations of heteronormative linnaean thought, plants in futur drei/no hard feelings also serve as a symbol of queerness. the three protagonists, like plants, push back against heteronormative, european conventions and forge relationships and a boundless world of their own design. in the final scene of the trio together, the lavender bushel serves as a living manifestation that no boundaries or categories exist in the trio’s imagined utopia. shariat positions the flower and humans on equal levels within the kaleidoscopic scene to create a sense of fluidity between animal and vegetable, man and woman, citizen and asylum seeker, imagined and real, and present and future. catriona sandilands writes on the inherent queerness of plants: the sheer number and variety of plant species; their categorical fluidity; their ability to trouble firmly drawn lines between activity and passivity, animal and vegetable (as seen in carnivorous, fast-moving plants like venus flytraps); and their radically different forms of embodiment, growth, and proliferation still call into question some of the ways in which eurowestern understandings of liveliness are based on a privileging of animal (really, of human) being. plants, in other words, still queer life. (sandilands, 2007) by asserting the “liveliness” of the lavender in the trio’s utopia, shariat upsets existing hierarchies. the central placement of the live plant also asserts the liveliness of the marginalized characters that bear the flowers—implicitly arguing for the equality of queer people, racial minorities, migrants, and any other marginalized groups. as jeffery t. nealon writes, “the version of life [plants] open up to conversation far exceeds the reach of current discourses about human rights, recognition, and identity: again, plants decidedly queer the field of living and draw biopolitical stories toward a more complex telling” (sandilands, 2007). plant-life presence in the scene thus becomes the agent for larger narrative, and its central positioning asserts that discourse on such biopolitical topics is core to this imagined future. banafshe does not carry just any plant but lavender, specifically, and shariat strategically selects this flower for its long history as a symbol of queerness, as banafshe metaphorically brings queerness into the imagined utopia. within the larger narrative, banafshe helps her brother come to terms with his sexuality and her presence in the trace-like scene is similar, helping to usher in similar acceptance into the alternative future. historically, the color, plant, and term lavender were covert signals of gay men’s identity in order to signal their sexuality to other gay men, while avoiding public persecution (ellis, 2020). karen stollznow writes of its use in the nineteenth century “within the community, a gay man might be called a lavender lad, lavender boy, or a man with a dash of lavender… at the time, the scent of lavender was often associated with effeminate men, while the colors lavender, violet, mauve, lilac, and purple came to symbolize flamboyance, art, the aesthetic, and same-sex desire” (stollznow, 2020; hastings, 2020).6 “lavender” has also been used as a derogatory term, but in recent decades queer people have reclaimed the word as a symbol of empowerment and pride.7 the trio’s lavender, given that it is a german film, may also allude to felix rexhausen’s lavendelschwert (1966) or “lavender sword,” one of the only texts explicitly about gay germans from the postwar period. thus, in the trance-like imagined scene, lavender also carries these queer, prideful connotations. it is especially significant that banafshe carries the lavender, rather than parvis or amon, because the kaleidoscopic scene also highlights her own queerness. a few seconds prior in the imagined sequence, she kisses another woman as the camera passes through a beaded curtain—a metaphor for her coming out of the closet. thus, banafshe’s bouquet emphasizes her own “dash of lavender” (shariat, 2020, 1:21:45). a woman holding the lavender is also reminiscent of lavender menace, an informal group of lesbian radical feminists formed to protest the exclusion of lesbians and lesbian issues from the feminist movement in the united states in the 1970’s. the flower’s presence within the scene is both a prideful acknowledgement of the characters’ own sexualities and serves an invitation for the viewer to enter a “lavender” world where queerness is embraced. another pro-lgbtqi+ function of the lavender is to emphasize that, contrary to the common assumption, homosexuality is not a biological end. if the lavender and plants more broadly symbolize life, banafshe carrying the bouquet is also a metaphor for her bringing life into the world with the two men behind her. banafshe even cradles the lavender like a child. the bushel may represent the idea of future human offspring in their dream-like utopia, but it could also connote a more abstract idea of procreation. in strange natures, nicole seymour encourages readers to reconfigure “reproductivity and futurity” and “attend to how worlds can have ‘myriad non-reproductive but nonetheless generative interactions tak[ing] place between different species and ecological elements’” (schoppelrei, 2020). elizabeth schoppelrei applies seymour’s theory to nineteenth century queer poems, but the same idea of alternative forms of reproduction rings true in the context of futur drei/no hard feelings. banafshe and the lavender are one example of this plant-human symbiosis; another is amon cultivating and finding refuge in the plants in his room at the housing project. schoppelrei writes that “the ethics and care found in the interactions between plants and woman (and the blurring of these two 6 another important historical linkage between lavender and queerness was the “lavender scare,” a moral panic movement that paralleled mccarthyism and the red scare in the u.s. rather than root out communism, the “lavender scare” in the mid-twentieth century sought the mass dismissal of queer people from government service. lavender also brings to mind the term “lavender marriage”— a marriage of convenience between a gay man and woman in order to afford a protective façade. the idea of a marriage of convenience is especially relevant in the film’s context because banafshe’s male boss’ makes inappropriate sexual advances and offers a marriage of convenience that would allow her to escape deportation (shariat, 2020, 54:30). 7 “in the 1960s and 70s, demonstrators and activists wore lavender during events that included a march to commemorate the stonewall riots; decades later after the 2016 [united states] presidential election, gilbert baker reworked his rainbow flag design to include a lavender stripe so that the flag would have ‘another color to represent diversity in the age of trump’” (ellis). entities) unravels a series of generative acts that make new kinships legible.” in the film’s context, parvis, amon, and banafshe’s interaction with the natural world they escape to is what provides them with the safety and freedom to imagine and momentarily create the utopia they seek—a place in which they forge “new kinships,” interpersonally and with the natural world. as schoppelrei also notes of the poems she analyzes, the intimacy of plant and human thus “weakens heteronormative futurity and serves as an investment in hopeful spaces of interspecies intimacy and futures of creative and caring kinship.” the trio in futur drei/no hard feelings similarly gives the implied viewer a glimpse unto an alternative queer world that decenters the heterosexual, nuclear family and instead presents a queer story through nature and, to paraphrase schoppelrei, introduces a blurry “space of possibility” for any other form of intimacy and kinship. placing so much symbolism on the lavender implicitly signals a broader argument for the importance of nature and the necessity of climate justice for the preservation of such resources. in the utopia scene, the purple lavender contrasts sharply with the brown, dry landscape the trio stands in. the germany they live in is barren, aside from a few distant trees. the visual contrast between vibrant flowers and bleak countryside stresses the physical impact of climate change. if viewing humans and plants as interconnected and one in the same, as described earlier, saving nature thus also goes hand-in-hand with preserving human life. nealon argues that this interspecies bond is especially important in the “the catastrophic climate and ecological devastation that is our biopolitical present” because “vegetality is a more appropriate description of life than the individual, organismic human-animal image has ever been” (sandilands, 2007). seymour describes a related phenomenon; she argues that futurity is an implicitly queer concept and queer values entail “caring not (just) about the individual, the family or one’s descendants, but about the other species and persons to whom one has no immediate relations”—that is, queer futurity is inherently linked with all forms of life (seymour 2013). parvis models this sense of universal care when he comes to love both amon and banafshe, and parvis verbalizes interdependence when he promises to “keep an eye on” amon for the fleeing banafshe (shariat, 2020, 1:22:57). but lavender, and environment more broadly, is also one such species deserving of care. in the utopian montage, banafshe extends the flowers in front of her, as if asking the viewer to take hold of the important plant and prompt a positive change to embrace and save the natural world. the contrast between barren landscape and blooming lavender in banafshe’s arms also symbolizes the value that immigrants bring to germany. following seymour’s logic, the plant life, and by extension human life, in germany is struggling. despite banafshe being turned away by federal immigration services, the trio carry the symbol of life that the landscape (i.e. germany at-large) lacks. given the ongoing debate about refugees in german politics as well as the film’s direct engagement with these topics, it is no surprise that immigration is a theme that permeates into the scene of the imagined utopia.8 in the vision, the trio create an alternative germany where 8 since 2015 in particular, when then-chancellor angela merkel vowed to accept refugees into germany, granting asylum and taking in refugees has been an especially controversial topic in germany. although following the release deportation is of no concern. the topic and politics around it never come up in the minute-long sequence, yet the three appear to remain together in germany. the absence of discussion of immigration status in the utopian interlude thus implicitly argues against contemporary practices of deportation. looking through the lens of immigration status, lavender is again an apt choice for the climactic scene because the plant is not indigenous to germany; while lavender grows there today thanks to global trade and advanced farming techniques, the plant originates in iran, the mediterranean coast, atlantic islands, asia minor, and india (quin 1864; “lavender,” n.d.). thus lavender itself is an example of how imports, and by extension immigrants, benefit germany. although the lavender scene lasts for mere seconds of the film, the fantastical look into an alternative future is highly symbolic and impactful. the dream-like scene focuses the audience’s attention on the agency of the three german-iranian youth and the world they create—an inherently queer, climate-conscious version of germany that unabashedly welcomes refugees. the dynamic scene ties together futur drei/no hard feelings’ assertions about the interconnection of plants and humans and the creation of a new form of kinship and love among other somewhat radical, although not entirely novel, declarations. the moment in the field as the three protagonists stand in a triangle is the final glimpse that the audience has of them together and perhaps is the final image they have of each other, too, before banafshe departs.9 thus, their creation of utopia, no matter how fleeting, lingers in both the minds of the implied audience and the characters themselves. although the idealized version of germany that parvis, amon, and banafshe present is far from reality, shariat’s momentary vision into such a world prompts the implied viewer to buy into the plausibility of such a future, too. of the film, such debate has been recharged in germany in the last year with the influx of refugees from afghanistan and ukraine. 9 one may argue that their triangular placement itself is queer, especially in the german context, and is deliberately symbolic of the pink triangle, the symbol that the nazi’s forced homosexual men to wear during the holocaust. in germany and beyond, the pink triangle has since been reclaimed as a symbol of gay pride another interpretation of their triangular stance is that this shape disperses power equally amongst the three—each lie at the tip of the equilateral triangle so no one person is central to the narrative or the imagine future. references ellis, e. (2020). “flower power: flower symbolism in lgbtq+ history,” oak spring garden foundation, retrieved from: https://www.osgf.org/blog/2020/6/29/vi0rxptrmtd4v8n2epbm3otxj56z5o hastings, c. (2020). “how lavender became a symbol of lgbtq resistance,” cnn, retrieved from: https://www.cnn.com/style/article/lgbtq-lavender-symbolism-pride/index.html “lavender,” (2020). seven oaks lavender farm, retrieved from: https://www.sevenoakslavenderfarm.com/aboutlavender “lavender from petite provence: the first german lavender from taoasis,” taoasis. (n.d.) moore, l. l. (2005). queer gardens: mary delany’s flowers and friendships. eighteenth-century studies, 39(1), 49–70. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30053588 sandilands, c. (2007). “fear of a queer plant?” glq: a journal of lesbian and gay studies 23, 3, 419-429. schoppelrei, e. (2020). “the queer intimacies of roses in louise aston’s ‘wilde rosen’ (1846) and ‘die wilde rose’ (1850).” qed: a journal in glbtq worldmaking 7, 3: 20-38. doi:10.14321/qed.7.3.0020. seymour, n. (2013). strange natures: futurity, empathy, and the queer ecological imagination. urbana: university of illinois press. shariat, f. (director). (2020). futur drei/no hard feelings [motion picture]. germany. stollznow, k. (2020). on the offensive: prejudice in language past and present. cambridge: cambridge university press. doi:10.1017/9781108866637 quin, c. w. (1864). cultivation of lavender. boston medical & surgical journal, 69(24), 481– 483. microsoft word final+revision (1).docx is that sexual innuendo?: how the wife of bath displays female intelligence through euphemism rosana maris arias, stanford university ’24 abstract: the wife of bath’s prologue and tale is regarded as one of geoffrey chaucer’s better-known canterbury tales. through her vivid details and critiques against man, the wife demonstrates confidence and intelligence with which she approaches her sexuality. this paper examines how the wife conveys her attitudes toward sexual activity and gratification via euphemisms — mild or indirect phrases to refer to something more blunt or unpleasant. it is important to consider the wife’s use of euphemisms in her discussion of her sexuality because they shed light on the female role in sex, as well as the importance of the female during sex. it is also important to question why the euphemisms were employed by chaucer via the character of the wife and not himself. the paper argues that the wife confidently embraces her sexual desires, and in doing so, centralizes the importance of females in sexual activity. furthermore, the wife’s centralization of females serves to reconfigure the power dynamics between females and males in sex as she promotes the dominance of females in sex (though it is important to note that sex is not exclusive to female-and male-identifying individuals). this reconfiguration ultimately has the potential to disrupt larger gender dynamics; the resurgence of female power and control is initiated in the bed as demonstrated by the wife. the paper concludes that while the wife embodies a strong and intelligent female, her influence may still be limited because she does not exist; she is a fictional character created by chaucer, an influential man. however, this fact also suggests chaucer believed women were to be just as in control of sex as were their male counterparts. many societies consider sexual intercourse taboo despite its role in everyday life. those living during the middle ages, for example, understood that sex was important because it would fulfill god’s command to “increase and multiply, and fill the earth” (genesis 9:1), however “the pleasure associated with sexual activity” (heckel, n.d., para. 1) caused great anxiety. despite sex’s taboo nature, the wife in geoffrey chaucer's the wife of bath’s prologue and tale embraces her lust as she uses euphemisms to discuss the centrality of females and their bodies in sex, female sexual desires, and female control during sex. written between 1388 and 1396, the wife of bath’s prologue and tale is part of chaucer’s collection of tales known as the canterbury tales, in which he highlights the never-changing fears of people across history through 31 characters (british library). more specifically, the wife of bath’s prologue and tales deserves special consideration as it most prominently features rape law among all other tales. moreover, it is important to consider this fact when reading the tale because it is speculated that chaucer raped cecily chaumpaigne who dropped legal charges against him after allegedly receiving an out-of-court settlement from him (harris, 2017, para. 5). the complexity of the text provides a unique opportunity to understand the motives of the wife who seeks control of her sexual experience and pleasure. furthermore, understanding the wife’s euphemisms is significant because they centralize females in the conversation and performance of sex, which is contrary to the sexual norms of the middle ages. additionally, the text’s euphemisms illustrate the wife’s intelligence, and therefore, understandings of female intelligence at large during this time. ultimately, the wife employs euphemism to convey strong points about female autonomy and intelligence, particularly about the female exercising her free will to attain sexual freedom. through this, the wife challenges the patriarchal social structure of her time and the idea that males are to be pleased and in control during intercourse. in this essay, i will explain what euphemism is, illustrate instances in which the wife uses the euphemism device and their implications, and discuss how instances of more explicit language work when juxtaposed with euphemisms. a euphemism is a literary device through which a blunt expression is substituted with a milder one. most, if not all, euphemisms in the wife of bath’s prologue and tale reference some aspect of sexual intercourse. for instance, the wife references the vagina and the penis in her discussion of their multiple purposes when she asks “... and both our small things/ were also to know a female from a male,/ and for no other cause — do you say no?” (benson, n.d., lines 121-123). the “small things” are the vagina and the penis, which the wife claims are used to distinguish a female from a male in the historical cis-gender binary. identification of euphemisms requires careful attention to the context surrounding the euphemistic term or phrase. moreover, euphemisms are important because they make a text complicated, leaving room for a reader’s interpretation. had the wife been more explicit and used the actual names of these sex organs, we would not have the opportunity to question why she classifies the organs as “small” or “things.” more importantly, we would not have the chance to inquire about the deliberate decision to soften the language. this choice is something i will tackle throughout the essay with selected examples of euphemism. how the wife demonstrates female intelligence through euphemisms intelligence has, unfortunately, been historically associated with the male as described by stuber, who points to the early attribution of male intellectual superiority to assertions made by philosopher aristotle and the bible’s explicit silencing of women in 1 timothy 2:11-12 (stuber, 2008). intellect, however, comes in many different forms. the wife of bath demonstrates intelligence by using euphemisms, which ultimately provides her with a platform to specifically highlight female intelligence. through her euphemisms, the wife displays an awareness of gender dynamics, contradiction in patriarchal practices, and cognizance of her body and how it can be sexually pleased. her display of female intelligence is significant to the understanding of females and the dismantlement of male dominance, particularly during sexual intercourse. how the wife challenges sexual dynamics and the patriarchy as she argues the centrality of females and vaginas during sexual intercourse one instance through which the wife demonstrates her intelligence is with her discussion on the importance of sex, in particular the sustenance it provides. for example, in her conversation about procreation and male disregard for virginity, the wife states: lat hem be breed of pured whete-seed, let them be bread of pure wheat-seed, and lat us wyves hoten barly-breed; and let us wives be called barley-bread; and yet with barly-breed, mark telle kan, and yet with barley-bread, mark can tell it, oure lord jhesu refresshed many a man. our lord jesus refreshed many a man. (benson, n.d., l. 143-146) here, she assigns “pure wheat-seed” to males and “barley-bread” to females. is there sufficient difference between the wheat and barley grains to have one specifically attributed to males and the other to females? by understanding that barley flares open (figure 1) and that wheat is long without any opening (figure 2), the wife employs euphemism to describe the vagina and the penis, respectively. figure 1 illustration of the two-row barley grain (waldherr). note. the barley grain is depicted flaring open. figure 2 illustration of the wheat grain (waldherr). note. the wheat grain is shown. it is long and is not open. in addition to using the grains to describe sexual organs, the imagery provided by the euphemism implies that the wife views sex as a form of sustenance as she discusses the bread made of these two different grains. the original text, however, uses the word “breed” instead of “bread.” this strengthens the idea that the wife is indeed referencing the sexual organs. the euphemism sheds light on women’s attitudes about sex because the wife elaborates on the vital role females and female bodies play during sex. even as the wife highlights the essentialness of sex, the euphemism has a deeper significance as the wife argues that the vagina is the more important sexual organ. she writes about the nourishment the vagina provides as she states “and yet with barley-bread, mark can tell it, / our lord jesus refreshed many a man” (benson, n.d., l. 143-146). in other words, the wife claims the vagina, or “barley-bread,” refreshes or provides nourishment for man, even though barley was valued less than wheat during the biblical era (old dominion university, 2007). in other words, the wife argues that men would not be nourished without the sustenance the vagina, or “barley-bread” provides. through this argument, the wife stresses the importance of the vagina not only to the refreshment of men, but also to the sustainment of humanity. how the wife claims sexual and societal dominance by assigning strength to the vagina the wife further illustrates the essentialness of the vagina when she later references it as her “instrument” (benson, n.d., l. 149). this euphemism implies that the vagina is useful the way a tool is, and implies it is intricate like a musical instrument. interestingly so, the translation writes that if she is stingy1 with the use of her vagina during sex, god should grant her sadness. it is important to note that the original text uses “daungerous,” not stingy when writing about the wife’s vagina. the use of “daungerous” provides important insight on the wife's perspective of her vagina during sex. by calling it “daungerous” the wife implies she is prideful of the abilities 1 the translation uses a different phrase to mean stingy which some may find offensive due to its visual and auditory resemblance to a racial slur (oxford english dictionary, n.d., 1a., https://www-oedcom.stanford.idm.oclc.org/view/entry/126928?isadvanced=false&result=1&rskey=p0dab8&). of her vagina. thus, the original text grants the wife and her vagina strength. it is important to consider “daungerous” since women and female genitalia were (and still are) regarded as weak and inferior to men and the penis. additionally, the replacement of “daungerous” with stingy suggests the translator, larry d. benson, had some reservation around translating “daungerous” to “dangerous” as does the oxford english dictionary. describing the wife as stingy creates a negative view of her because it suggests she is hesitant about providing her husband with pleasure. calling her stingy grants the wife’s husband ownership of the vagina whereas “daungerous” maintains ownership and control of the vagina with the wife. thus, the wife again exudes female intelligence, specifically in the original text, as she understands the power her vagina holds and retains her agency. along with highlighting the value of the vagina, the wife reclaims her control and ability to feel pleasure during intercourse. she discusses how she “made them [men] work” the land and how men gave her “their land and their treasure,” which allowed her to “not work hard any longer” (benson, n.d., l. 202-205). to clarify, the wife’s statement on making men work the land suggests that she is boasting about her abilities in bed or on the “land.” furthermore, the same statement suggests that the wife is not in charge of performing the duties of sex because she does not have to “work hard any longer.” in other words, the wife can relax and be pleased instead of having to “work” to please the male. the wife flips the traditional narrative of males being the confident and dominant partners in bed to them being submissive under female dominance. however, in other portions of the text the wife does seem to uphold male sexual dominance. in addition to demonstrating her confidence in bed, the wife discusses receiving men's “land and their treasure.” in this instance, “land” refers to men’s bodies and “their treasure” refers to their penises. this phrase contains considerable implications for the upholding of male dominance in bed. the use of “treasure” to reference the penis is noteworthy terminology that glorifies the penis. though the wife desires to be pleased by a penis and attains it after being given men’s “land and their treasure,” the glorification of the penis makes it appear as an ultimate prize that should be sought, especially since the wife never references her vagina as a sort of prize, only as a useful “instrument.” even so, the wife may not be gratifying the male and their bodies at all. her selection of “their land and their treasure” to reference the male could be a jab at the male ego. in other words, the wife may be cunningly and intelligently using this phrase to mock the way in which men glorify their bodies and their penises, especially as she writes that she no longer works to respect them or “do them reverence” after receiving the land and the treasure. to clarify, her praising of men and their penises was only an act as she uses her wit and understanding of the male ego to obtain her treasure: sexual gratification. thus, the wife again demonstrates intelligence as she uses the ego of toxic masculinity on the masculine themselves to work in opposition to the male agenda of being dominant. despite the concern raised by her praise for the penis, the wife further champions the feminine when she addresses the imbalanced gratification felt by male and females during sex. she consistently raises concern over her unsatisfied sexual pleasure through euphemisms — as seen with her previous point on the “debt” men have yet to pay her (benson, n.d., l. 130). to illustrate, the wife states: and sith they hadde me yeven al hir lond, and since they had me given all their land, what sholde i taken keep hem for to plese, why should i take care to please them, but it were for my profit and myn ese? unless it were for my profit and my pleasure? i sette hem so a-werke, by my fey, i set them so to work, by my faith, that many a nyght they songen `weilawey!' that many a night they sang `woe is me!' the bacon was nat fet for hem, i trowe, the bacon was not fetched for them, i believe, that som men han in essex at dunmowe. that some men have in essex at dunmowe. i governed hem so wel, after my lawe, i governed them so well, according to my law. (benson, n.d., l. 212-219) the wife questions why she must care enough to please men's bodies to satisfy reasons beyond her “profit and her pleasure.” she answers with “i set them so to work, by my faith” which shows how she disregards the patriarchal practice of women having to please men in sex as she made men please her on her own terms, or by her “faith.” the supposedly laborious “work” she provides men with is reinforced by her account of them singing “‘woe is me!’” the singing implies that the wife was indeed satisfied because she made the men work so much that they sang in distress (oxford english dictionary, n.d., p2.). the wife not only demonstrates the gain of her profit and pleasure, but she also again displays confidence in her performance in bed as she claims that she “governed them [men] so well” and that she “cruelly scolded” them in bed. her consistent pride is interesting because it contrasts with male’s pridefulness during intimacy. more specifically, being prideful with one’s sexual abilities has mainly been associated with males, especially as men in heterosexual relationships equate their female partner’s orgasm with their own sexual (in)abilities (salisbury, 2013). though the praise of the penis undermines the dominance of females and the vagina during intercourse, the wife of bath eventually reasserts her dominant stance by making men work the land and cry “‘woe is me!’” ultimately, her intelligence is enhanced by her reassertion as the dominant partner because she demonstrates an understanding of how to control men to get what she wants: sexual gratification. the sexual desires, pleasures, and displeasures of the wife of bath as previously discussed, the wife uses her understanding of the male, his tendencies, and his ego to establish her dominance over men and to receive pleasure from them. she further demonstrates her intelligence as she specifies her desires and what displeases her. for instance, she states: for wynnyng wolde i al his lust endure, for profit i would endure all his lust, and make me a feyned appetit; and make me a feigned appetite; and yet in bacon hadde i nevere delit. and yet in bacon (old meat) i never had delight. that made me that evere i wolde hem chide, that made me so that i would always scold them. (benson, n.d., l. 416-419) the wife discusses how she is unopposed to dealing with men's sexual temptations and posing a fake sexual desire, or a “feigned appetite,” as long as she makes a profit. by this statement, the wife may be open to prostitution and while this could make her appear as scandalous and disloyal, such criticism comes from men who contradict themselves — which the wife points out earlier in the prologue. for example, she claims “but he [her husband] made no mention of number, / of marrying two, or of marrying eight; / why should men then speak evil of it?” (benson, n.d., l. 30-34). to clarify, she mentions that her husband “made no mention of [the] number” of women he married and asks “why should men then speak evil of” women engaging in more than one marriage. the wife ultimately uses men’s lack of honesty to dismiss the criticism of women being “whores” for engaging in more than one relationship, and possibly prostitution, by exposing this hypocrisy. whether or not she is involved in prostitution does not diminish her morality nor free will because she creates options for herself; to sleep with men who will satisfy her or to receive profit from men who may or may not satisfy her. in any case, she receives the compensation she desires and chooses who to sleep with, both of which are done under her conditions. this instance demonstrates the wife's persistence in attaining pleasure because she does not settle for something she does not want. she further demonstrates her sexual agency as she elaborates on what displeases her. the wife reveals her taste in men and sex, particularly in her discussion of male anatomy. for instance, she mentions that she “never had delight” in “bacon (old meat).” here, bacon serves as a euphemism for a penis as she clarifies that old men (and an old, presumably “worn-out” penis) would cause her so much dissatisfaction that she “would always scold them.” her particular, not picky, desire for a certain penis again demonstrates the control and specificity with which she approaches sex. this specific desire enhances her strength as a female because it reveals the standards she sets for sex and the men she sleeps with. this depicts her as intelligent and powerful because she knows what she wants and knows where and how to get it; whether that's by choosing a certain man, and thereby a certain penis, or by receiving profit for sleeping with a man who will not meet her sexual desires. the wife is in control and is satisfied in either case. from euphemisms to more explicit language: how the wife again demonstrates female intelligence as demonstrated, the wife discusses the importance of females and their bodies during intercourse. her sexual desires, pleasures, and displeasures illustrate her dominance and control of her sex life. this is important because it centers the female voice during intercourse in a way that was unusual for the time as the “active” partner would play the masculine role while the “passive” partner would play the feminine role (karras, 2016). the wife continues to place importance on the pleasure she desires as she mentions her pudendum in: is it for ye wolde have my queynte allone? is it because you want to have my pudendum all to yourself? wy, taak it al! lo, have it every deel! why, take it all! lo, have it every bit! peter! i shrewe yow, but ye love it weel;s by saint peter! i would curse you, if you did not love it well. (benson, n.d., l. 444-446) she tells the immediate man she speaks with that if he is so concerned with having her pudendum all to himself, he can, but he must “love it well” or she will curse him. the wife does not submit her vagina to a man, rather she instructs and in fact demands that he please it well. in other words, the demand is specific because she instructs the man on how to treat her pudendum. this instruction supports the dominance she has over men during intercourse. the university of rochester medical center writes that the pudendum is responsible for providing most of the sensations and functions of the exterior vagina. thus, not only does the wife warn the man about not providing her with pleasure, but she is also specific about where one should concentrate on pleasing her. this highlights her intelligence because she is keenly aware of her body and how she is pleased. it also reinforces the authority she has over men and the authority she possesses during sex because she specifies how it should unravel; with her pudendum in this case. in addition to bolstering her image as a strong and intelligent female through her reference to her pudendal nerve, the same reference prompts deeper inquiry: why is the wife explicit about the pudendum here when she employs euphemism in other parts of the prologue and tale? in other portions of text, she references her vagina as an “instrument,” “barley-bread,” and “my ‘pretty thing’” (benson, n.d., l. 447). here, however, the wife is blunt as she points to the specific area of her vagina: the pudendum. is she embarrassed about using the word “vagina” in other instances, but less embarrassed, even assured about using “pudendum” in this instance? other references to her vagina deal with the act of sex, however they are not as direct or commanding about the way the wife wishes to be pleased as the instance with “pudendum” is. to illustrate the significance of the wife's explicit mention of her pudendum, i will explain the purpose behind selected euphemisms she uses in reference to her vagina, and later discuss why “pudendum” is different and why the term deserves special consideration. when the wife mentions her vagina by using the term “barley-bread” in line 149, she discusses the importance it has in the refreshment, satisfaction, and nourishment of men. she later uses “my instrument” to reference her vagina, which again contributes to its utility in sex. lastly, by using “my ‘pretty thing’” to reference her vagina, she is presumably jabbing at males who use this condescending term to reduce the vagina to its appearance and a “‘thing.’” the first two euphemisms deal with the essentialness of the vagina and the third euphemism deals with a reclaiming of the vagina. the explicit term “pudendum” is specifically used for discussing the wife's pleasure, however. euphemisms are used when talking about the functions of sex (the way wheat, barley, and an instrument create imagery related to the anatomy of sexual organs) and men's thoughts about the vagina (“‘pretty thing’”) while blunt language is used by the wife when she demands that her pudendum be pleased. because pudendum deals with arousal and because the wife wants men to “love it [her pudendum] well,” this suggests the wife wishes to be precise and careful when it comes to being pleased; when she seeks pleasure, she wants to make sure the man delivers and thus uses more straightforward terms like “pudendum.” in other words, she provides the man with instructions, a diagram even, through mention of this term; she wishes to be as clear as possible so that she does not risk being unfulfilled with his performance in bed. ultimately, the wife uses euphemism to discuss the functions of sex and uses more explicit language to ensure she is sexually pleased. this demonstrates the wife’s seriousness about attaining sexual satisfaction. while the image, and thus clarity she provides aids her in making sure she will be satisfied, the wife also grants herself the burden of detailing instructions for the man's performance. more specifically, though she provides herself with some reassurance that she will be satisfied, the clarity she creates with “pudendum” strips the man of his responsibility of understanding the female body and how it is pleased. though satisfied, the wife remains at a loss because she is tasked with the labor of outlining how she wants to feel and how it will be achieved. in this way, can the wife and women at large ever “win” when it comes to sex, that is, can they ever purely enjoy sex without needing to provide labor? is any of this real? even as the wife of bath illustrates female intelligence through her understanding of the female body and gender dynamics during intercourse, is it possible to assume any of this is valid or real knowing that the wife of bath’s prologue and tale was written by male author geoffrey chaucer? is it possible to claim that the text demonstrates female intelligence when a female did not write the text? i do believe the claim is valid, though acknowledging that a male wrote the text provides room for further speculation about the purpose of euphemism in the text. perhaps chaucer believed women were to speak in a certain, “lady-like” way. or, like mentioned at the beginning of the essay, chaucer may have felt anxious about discussing sex, which prompted his decision to speak about sex through euphemism. if chaucer did in fact wish to censor the discussion of sex and the female voice, the prologue and tale remains insightful because it demonstrates how chaucer portrayed women as intelligent, and by doing so, he possibly believed women were to have as much influence in sex as men. in closing, the wife of bath remains an important literary and feminine figure because she challenges traditional sexual practices such as binarized gender dynamics during intimacy and the prioritization of male pleasure during sec. the wife not only works to elevate the female perspective and her sexual desires, but she also highlights the intelligence of women in doing so because she displays how in tune she is with her body through her understanding of different parts of the vagina, and because she understands how to use male tactics of undermining women against them as she reaps her desired sexual gratification. although the euphemisms may appear as nothing more than complaints about literal situations — such as having to work the land — upon first glance, understanding that these situations as euphemisms grants perspective on a female’s insight about sexual intercourse, gender roles in sexual intercourse, and the intricate layers of chaucer’s writing. references benson, l.d. (n.d.). the wife of bath’s prologue and tale: an interlinear translation. harvard's geoffrey chaucer website. https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/wife-bathsprologue-and-tale-0 british library. (n.d.). the canterbury tales by geoffrey chaucer. retrieved january 6, 2022 from https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-canterbury-tales-by-geoffrey-chaucer harris, c. m. (2017). rape and justice in the wife of bath’s tale. the open access companion to the canterbury tales. retrieved january 6, 2022 from https://opencanterburytales.dsl.lsu.edu/wobt1/ heckel, n. m. (n.d.). sex, society and medieval women. university of rochester river campus library online. retrieved august 25, 2021 from https://classic.lib.rochester.edu/robbins/sex-society karras, r. m. (2016). sex in the middle ages. serious science. retrieved january 6, 2022 from http://serious-science.org/sex-in-the-middle-ages-6345 marshall, b. r.. an ear of barley, near hackpen white horse [photograph]. (2007). retrieved january 6, 2022 from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/file:an_ear_of_barley,_near_hackpen_white_hor se_-_geograph.org.uk_-_477318.jpg old dominion university. barley. bible plants. retrieved august 25, 2021 from https://ww2.odu.edu/~lmusselm/plant/bible/barley.php oxford english dictionary. daungerous, adj., 1a. oed online. retrieved august 25, 2021 from https://www-oedcom.stanford.idm.oclc.org/view/entry/47187?redirectedfrom=daungerous oxford english dictionary. niggardly, adj., 1a. oed online. retrieved august 25, 2021 from https://www-oedcom.stanford.idm.oclc.org/view/entry/126928?isadvanced=false&result=1&rskey=p0da b8& oxford english dictionary. woe, int., adv., n., and adj., p2. oed online. retrieved august 25, 2021 from https://www-oedcom.stanford.idm.oclc.org/view/entry/229821?redirectedfrom=woe+is+me#eid1422081 4 the bible. new international version (genesis 9:1). university of rochester medicine. (n.d.). pudendal nerve block. retrieved august 25, 2021 from https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/imaging/specialties/procedures/pudendalblock.aspx salisbury, c. m. a. (2013). “did you come?” a qualitative exploration of gender differences in beliefs, experiences, and concerns regarding female orgasm occurrence during heterosexual sexual interactions. the journal of sex research. retrieved january 6, 2022 from https://www-tandfonlinecom.stanford.idm.oclc.org/doi/full/10.1080/00224499.2013.838934 stuber, l. (2008). the contradiction of masculinity in the middle ages. the delta at illinois wesleyan university. retrieved january 6, 2022 from https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1025&context=delta waldherr, s. wheat [photograph]. (2017). retrieved january 6, 2022, from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/file:wheat_(219038809).jpeg microsoft word compulsory (hetero)sexuality and queer virginity in troilus and criseyde and sappho and phao.docx compulsory (hetero)sexuality and queer virginity in troilus and criseyde and sappho and phao martina ferretti, university of aberdeen ’22 abstract: in the field of sexuality and gender studies, the topic of asexuality is often overlooked, especially in pre-modern literature. while pre-modern authors did not have access to the language that we would use today to describe this phenomenon, their understanding of the concept often manifested as a rejection of compulsory heterosexuality on the part of their characters. this study analyses two female characters from medieval and renaissance literature—criseyde from geoffrey chaucer's troilus and criseyde and sappho from john lyly's sappho and phao—and argues that their refusal to enter the sexual economy of their stories until forced is representative of their struggle to resist heteronormative sexuality in favor of living in a state of queer virginity. many terms and concepts associated with sexuality studies sound jarringly anachronistic when applied to a premodern context. it would be inaccurate to talk about, for example, heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or asexual people living in the middle ages or the early modern period, because these are categorizations not in use at the time. of course, historians frequently do use this modern terminology to describe the past, as it is often the easiest way to convey their arguments. the problem arises when these words are used uncritically, when they implicitly assume that the modern experience of sexuality is universal across history. this theoretical fallacy most often occurs when discussing heterosexuality and assuming that it has always been the “default” sexuality. as explained by james schultz (2006), unreflective usage of modern terminology “fosters the belief that, while homosexuality might be a recent invention, heterosexuality is a universal given” (p. 29). this is not to say that there was no concept of accepted or “normative” sexual practices, but it is important to recognize that they did not reflect our modern understanding of normativity. in this essay, i intend to examine premodern works and characters through the lens of asexuality studies and, in particular, to discuss the pressures of what we now call “compulsory sexuality.” critic kristina gupta’s 2015 article on the subject describes a present-day understanding of compulsory sexuality as “the assumption that all people are sexual” (p. 132). the same reasoning can be applied to the middle ages and early modern periods. if the “normative behavior” is to engage in sexual practices, then anyone who does not (or wishes not to) must fall outside of normative sexuality. (lochrie, 2005). lochrie adds: armed only with the heterosexual/homosexual divide and a presumption of heteronormativity, we cannot even begin to sort out such categories as amazons, female masculinity, or even virginity (p. xv). it is this last category that i wish to further discuss. my goal is to analyze how the main female characters in geoffrey chaucer’s troilus and criseyde and john lyly’s sappho and phao interact with and react to expectations of normative (hetero)sexuality, and what role virginity and chastity play in the narrative. while unmarried, chaste characters are common in literature of all periods, they are usually treated as inhabiting a transient state: it is assumed that they will eventually enter the heterosexual marketplace as expected. however, criseyde and sappho make chastity an active choice that the people around them explicitly disagree with, making them transgressive and therefore important in a discussion of the role of what today we may recognize as asexuality. virgins, says critic sarah salih (2001): are removed from the heterosexual economy. […] i will be assuming throughout this study that virginity is not a denial or rejection of sexuality, but itself a sexuality, by which i mean a culturally specific organisation of desires (pp. 9–10). this definition, which i will also be operating within the confines of, matches our modern concept of “asexuality” quite closely. to reiterate, i am not ascribing modern terminology to people and characters whose understanding of sexuality was completely different from ours. terms such as “asexuality” and “asexual” are here used to best represent the concepts i am discussing, but they should not be taken as an exact match. while heteronormativity and compulsory sexuality are modern ideas, the foundations for them can be found all throughout history, and their representations are what i will be analyzing. to quote critic tison pugh (2014), let us “consider the ways in which anti-eroticisms such as virginity and chastity alternately reinforce and subvert cultural normativity” (p. 3). criseyde: succumbing to compulsory heterosexuality the first three books of chaucer’s troilus and criseyde follow the title characters’ courtship—or, to be more accurate, troilus’s pursuit of criseyde, aided by her uncle pandarus and the pressures of their society. criseyde is a childless widow, who has been left alone and unprotected in the besieged troy after her father’s betrayal and flight from the city. love and sex are the last things on her mind, and when pandarus, motivated by his friendship with troilus, goes to talk to her on his behalf, this is her first reaction to hearing that he has “good news”: “i swear,” said pandarus, “i could still tell you something to make you happy.” “now, dear uncle,” she said, “tell it to us, for the love for god! is the siege lifted then? i’m frightened to death of greeks.” (chaucer, 2008, p. 25) pandarus, dismissing her legitimate concerns about the siege, replies that he brings even better news. criseyde’s priorities, however, lie firmly with survival, something that will bring her to “betray” troilus for diomede in the later parts of the story. as pointed out by david aers in his 1991 essay “criseyde: woman in medieval society”, her fear is fully justified, her weakness is a genuine aspect of a social reality not of her own making, and her isolation is an essential part of her vulnerability. in these circumstances her only asset, her only leverage on the powerful, is her sexuality (p. 121). her choices are motivated by fear; if sleeping with men is going to keep her safe, she will do it. even chaucer tells us that “she feared dreadfully for her life, not knowing what was the best advice, for she was both a widow and alone, without any friend to whom she dared to bemoan her sorrow” (p. 4). lacking male protection, criseyde is in a very vulnerable position, a fact she is keenly aware of. both troilus and diomede, then, are ways for her to protect herself in an environment that is unsafe for a woman—especially a femme sole such as criseyde. but what would she actually want, removed from the life-or-death situation she is in? not troilus, perhaps not any man. once pandarus, after refusing to get to the point and tell her his “good news” for a long time, finally confesses that troilus “loves [her] so much that, unless [she] help[s], it’ll be the death of him,” criseyde reacts negatively (p. 29). first, she probes for advice to test what her uncle wants her to do and, when it becomes clear that he fully supports troilus’s suit, she starts crying: what! is this all the happiness and all that i was to celebrate? is this your advice? is this my happy situation? is this the true fulfillment of your promise? was this whole highly coloured story told—alas!—just for this purpose? o my lady pallas, please look after me in this frightening situation, because i'm so bewildered, i could die! (p. 31) it is worth noting that she specifically invokes pallas’s, or athena’s name. athena was one of three virgin goddesses in the greek pantheon—together with artemis and hestia—and the attribute was so important to her that one of her major epithets, athena parthenos, means “the virgin athena” and is what the parthenon in athens is named after (montanari, 2018, p. 1586). that criseyde prays to her is not a mistake: it is a clear indication that she does not want to participate in the sexual economy that her uncle and suitor want to impose on her. moreover, the relationship would mean losing her status as a femme sole and the relatively high degree of autonomy awarded to unwed women and widows (aers, 1991, p. 135). however, criseyde is hounded and manipulated by a character who represents the pressures of society, courtly love traditions, and compulsory sexuality: her uncle pandarus. when he tells her that troilus is in love with her, he barely lets her get a word in edgewise while he both praises troilus and threatens a double suicide if she does not reciprocate his feelings (p. 31). he courts criseyde on troilus’s behalf by simply reiterating how worthy of her love he is and how both of their deaths are going to be her fault if she does not promise to at least be friendly to him. his stance on normative sexuality is made very clear when he tells troilus that “no man or woman was ever yet begotten who wasn't disposed to suffer the heat of love, either heavenly love or else natural love” (p. 20). through pandarus’s insistence, threats, and manipulation, criseyde is then unwillingly slotted into the role of the courtly beloved. criseyde’s wishes and desires are consistently ignored by the people around her, and her own society forces her to cave into the pressure of re-entering the heterosexual economy in order to keep herself safe. but it is also her narrative role that limits and constrains her agency (pugh, 2014, p. 25). as the noble object of love in a courtly romance, it is inevitable that she will fall for the noble troilus who loves her. in pandarus’s words, “love for love is a reasonable reward” (p. 30). she has love imposed upon her and does not get to have a choice in it. says pugh (2014): emily and criseyde frequently appear in the knight's tale and troilus and criseyde as reflections of male desire rather than as women in their own right, with the sharp irony that they are conscripted to serve as male fantasies despite their own avowed preference for anti-eroticism. (p. 106) criseyde’s resistance to troilus’s affections, if not criseyde herself, is initially positioned as the main obstacle of the story. chaucer introduces book one with a clear statement that the story is about troilus and his “double sorrow” so when the protagonist falls for someone who does not reciprocate, that reluctance is framed as adversarial (p. 1). it is a “problem” that criseyde, not knowing troilus at all, initially only promises to be friendly towards him to spare his and pandarus’s life. shortly after, criseyde sees troilus in a parade and starts considering him as a potential love interest because of his noble traits and because he is interested in her, and this is presented as a solution to that problem (p. 35). it is also purely a male fantasy and another way to frame criseyde’s disinterest in a negative light. “as much as emily and criseyde play the role of the female beloved,” says pugh (2014), “they are also female adversaries who must be subdued because of their erotic resistance to their suitors” (p. 110). but criseyde does manage a small act of resistance: she bears no children for troilus, something that pugh (2014) calls a “queer sense of agency” (p. 111). he goes on to elaborate on this, stating that: “men may love [her] despite [her] wishes to the contrary, yet men cannot compel [her] either to love them in return or willingly to produce the babies they might wish for [her] to bear” (p. 112). moreover, criseyde’s supposed betrayal ultimately leads to troilus’s death and the fall of troy, which could easily be read as karmic retribution for her treatment. criseyde is thus located in a space of queer resistance to normative and compulsory sexuality and, though she eventually does partially succumb to its pressures, it is clear that she does so against her wishes and better judgment. criseyde’s widowhood represents a cultural role that she longs to keep inhabiting for the asexuality encoded in it (pugh, 2014, p. 114). as a widow, she is free from the sexual economy and the patriarchal subjugation that wives are under. her chastity is understood as a queer state of being in a society where the “norm” is that most people are inherently sexual. of course, as a widow, she is no longer a virgin, but she similarly eschews eroticism until she is pressured to succumb to it. her stated goal was “simply to live unmolested by heteroerotic desire, to preserve [her] asexuality in a homosocial environment, and to reject undesired amatory advances,” according to pugh (2014), but this wish is denied to her by the love imposed on her by troilus and pandarus (p. 115). sappho: resisting pressure and manipulation if criseyde is an example of a woman who, despite her aversion to eroticism, falls victim to the pressures of compulsory sexuality and manipulation, sappho emerges victorious in her conflict with the “norm.” the inciting incident of lyly’s play is venus and cupid scheming to make queen sappho and the ferryman phao fall in love. venus is immediately established as capricious and more than ready to toy with humans when she declares, “sappho shall know, be she never so fair, that there is a venus which can conquer, were she never so fortunate” (lyly, 1991, ll. i.i.39-41). venus—and love by extension, since she controls cupid—is here portrayed as a powerful and violent entity, which can and will interfere with the lives of humans as she pleases. venus justifies her meddling with sappho by saying that “she [is] amiable, and therefore must be pierced,” which brings together the lexicons of courtly love tradition (in that sappho is worthy of and obligated to receive and bestow love due to her “amiability”) and brutality (l. i.i.52). the use of the word “pierced” is significant: it refers at once to cupid’s arrow physically striking sappho and to the sexual act of penetration. however, the use of such a violent term belies the fact that it would not be a consensual “piercing”—and indeed it is not, as sappho is made to fall in love with phao due to venus’s scheming. even phao envisions love as a conquering force, saying, “to yield to love is the only thing i hate,” again using the vocabulary of battle and surrender (ll. ii.i.131132). sappho, after having fallen in love with phao, also falls ill. it is a clear reference to the medieval concept of the “disease of love” which, according to mary france wack (1990), includes “idealization of the love object, preoccupation, depression, insomnia, erratic moods, and social withdrawal” as recognized symptoms “within a system of shared beliefs and symbolic conventions” (pp. xii–xiii). sappho, like troilus and many others before her, is befallen by an incurable disease brought by “a strange desire” (l. iii.iii.7). however, where the cure for lovesickness in medieval tradition is requited love, for sappho it is its absence. she is greatly distressed by her condition, and tells herself to “resist it, […] whilst it is yet tender” and that “this shall be written on thy tomb, that, though thy love were greater than wisdom could endure, yet thine honor was such as love could not violate” (ll. iii.iii.104-105, 119-122). her infatuation with phao is a source of shame for her, both because of the difference in rank and because of her reticence to sully her honor. as a queen, she is expected to take a husband and have children, but sappho refuses to do either, which is what prompts venus to sic cupid on her in the first place. she is a “virgin queen,” a parallel that would not have been lost on elizabethan audiences. like many other dramatic characters before her, sappho is an allegory for queen elizabeth and, in particular, her virginity. lyly frames her as both the courtly beloved and the virgin, which is a juxtaposition that elizabeth herself embodied with her metaphor of virginity (jankowski, 2000, p. 13). sappho, unlike many other such characters, is allowed to fully resist marriage and the expected heteroeroticism when she is released from the love spell. this could be read as a fully realized version of elizabeth’s ideals about virginity. sappho, despite literal godly intervention, stays true to her rank and her honor. indeed, she gains the status of lady of love at the end of the play—a chaste lady of love, which is an oxymoron to rival elizabeth’s virgin courtly beloved but serves to accentuate the contrast between character and real-world reference. said godly interference is as close to the most literal representation of compulsory sexuality as one can get. through cupid, venus tries to force sappho to adhere to expectations of normativity and heteroeroticism, just because she is “fair” and “amiable.” but these expectations seem to be almost nothing more than an obligation, even in the play, rather than a good thing to want or force. says critic andy kesson (2017): every representation of heterosexuality in sappho and phao is miserable and disastrous. indeed, venus first proposes forcing sappho to fall in love in the same speech which makes clear her own marital status makes her (and everyone around her) profoundly unhappy. venus’s capricious meddling reads almost as misdirected revenge. she complains that “it came by lot, not love, that [she] was linked with him,” and yet attempts to push the same “lot” onto sappho and phao (ll. i.i.32-33). in fact, she describes her forcing sappho to fall in love as “yok[ing] the neck that yet never bowed” (ll. i.i.37-38). she feels slighted that sappho has never been in love, and sets out to rectify that. or, in other words, she sets out to force sexuality on someone uninterested in, at the very least, heteroeroticism. this is similar to troilus’s experiences at the beginning of troilus and criseyde: he is introduced as a proud young knight who, despite his nobility of birth and spirit, scorns love. he states: i've heard tell, by god, of your way of life, you lovers, and your foolish observances, and what an effort people have in obtaining love and what uncertainties in keeping it—and when your prey is lost, misery and suffering! o true fools, you are silly and blind! there's not one of you that can take warning from another's example. (chaucher, p. 6) he mocks and derides lovers and, in doing so, angers the god of love, who strikes him with an arrow to make him susceptible to it, as venus does to sappho and phao through cupid. love appears here personified as an enslaving figure, whose power is unmatched even by the most powerful among people. but, as kesson puts it, “sappho overcomes this attempt to enforce her to fall in love, marry or have sex, to submit to a compulsory and normative sexuality.” once she is free of the spell, she berates venus for her immodesty and impulsiveness that cause her to stray from the path of honor: you are not worthy to be the lady of love, that yield so often to the impressions of love. immodest venus, that to satisfy the unbridled thoughts of thy heart transgressest so far from the stay of thine honour! (ll. v.ii.64-66) sappho even supplants her as the goddess of love when cupid decides to take her side rather than venus’s. cured of her love of phao, she declares: i myself will be the queen of love. i will direct these arrows with better aim and conquer mine own affections with greater modesty. venus' heart shall flame, and her love be as common as her craft. (ll. v.ii.28-31) the play ends with modesty and chastity triumphing over love and lust, and reason winning over uncontrolled desire. sappho is able to resist her royal expectations, and the gods’ interference and maintain her chastity and autonomy. in fact, she rises above her initial status and gains the ability to better direct cupid’s love arrows. specifically, she declares love to be “a toy made for ladies, and i will keep it only for ladies,” which implies that her replacing venus as the goddess of love will be beneficial for women in the sexual economy (ll. v.iii.104-105). sappho’s continued and passionate rejection of imposed eroticism can very easily be read as her struggle against compulsory sexuality—a struggle which she wins. in an unusual twist for elizabethan comedies, there is no wedding at the end of the play (jankowski, 2000, p. 14). sappho retires in the now-entirely homosocial environment of her court after having triumphed over venus and her machinations. it can be read as a queer ending in more than one sense: firstly, her line about love being a toy only for ladies references the historical sappho’s well-documented attraction to women; secondly, sappho’s status as a virgin is, itself, a queer space. as convents were not an option for women who wished to remain virgins in early modern protestant society, virginity was considered an inherently transient state. virgin characters are, for the most part, daughters who will trade that virginity for a husband (jankowski, 2000, pp. 115–116). says critic jankowski (2000): any early modern protestant virgin who chose unduly to prolong her virginity—or especially to adopt it as a permanent condition—had no place in the sex/gender system. she was a queer virgin and occupied an officially unnamed position that was both dissident and highly resistant (p. 113). sappho, however, rejects this pre-established path and is presented as neither a daughter nor a wife—subject to no man in her life and therefore transgressive and queer. conclusion both criseyde and sappho are examples of what jankowski (2000) defines as “queer virgins.” of jeanne d’arc, she says: [she] did not model the diffident young virgin who was destined to be married and lead a quiet life producing children and ensuring a husband's inheritance. she represented everything no respectable or acceptable woman should be. as a perpetual virgin, she was easily viewed as a monster. but she was worse than that. she was queer (p. 4). for these two characters, chastity is neither motivated by religion nor a result of a lack of suitors. it is an active choice for both of them to eschew heteroeroticism, and it is a choice that the people around them do not agree with. if they did, if they saw nothing wrong or unnatural with criseyde and sappho’s chastity, then that chastity would not be transgressive in the way that it is. the reactions of the worlds they inhabit tell us that criseyde and sappho fall outside of the norm, outside of the expectations laid for them: they are queer, and constantly challenged because of that. in fiction as in real life, it is easier to see the presence of something transgressive—such as homoeroticism—than the absence of normative behavior. but when that absence is constantly questioned and challenged by the people who witness it, it is brought to light and can be examined more closely, as i have done throughout this study. the expected life trajectory for women—both in chaucer’s middle ages and lyly’s early modern period—was that they would eventually take a husband and mother children. but characters like criseyde and sappho represent resistance to the norm, even if only one of the two is successful. criseyde, though ultimately succumbing to normative pressures, is, at least in part, avenged through troilus’s death, and gets to escape the destruction of troy—which is depicted as having little regard for women and their agency. sappho, on the other hand, manages to escape male attention completely, be it through chastity or homoeroticism. jankowski (2000) states that virgins, “by resisting men, are not only rejecting the sexual economy but are essentially opting out of the patriarchy,” which is a transgressive state to occupy (p. 6). sappho and criseyde are both under the pressure of compulsory (hetero)sexuality, normative sexuality, and a patriarchal society they both wish to escape. however, where criseyde is ultimately unable to escape troilus’s advances and succumbs to their pressure, sappho rejects the imposition of heteroeroticism in favor of either chastity or sexual relationships with women. references aers, d. (1991). criseyde: woman in medieval society. in critical essays on chaucer’s “troilus and criseyde” and his major early poems (pp. 128–145). open university press. brake, elizabeth, ‘special treatment for lovers: marriage, care, and amatonormativity’, in minimizing marriage: marriage, morality, and the law, (oxford: oxford university press, 2012), pp. 81-119 brown, peter, the body and society: men, women, and sexual renunciation in early christianity (new york: columbia university press, 1988) chasin, cj deluzio, ‘theoretical issues in the study of asexuality’, in archives of sexual behavior, 40 (2011), 713-723 chaucer, geoffrey, troilus and criseyde: a new translation, ed. by barry windeatt (oxford: oxford university press, 2008) chess, simone, ‘asexuality, queer chastity, and adolescence in early modern literature’, in queering childhood in early modern english drama and culture, (basingstoke, hampshire: palgrave macmillan, 2018), pp. 31-55 fahs, breanne, ‘radical refusals: on the anarchist politics of women choosing asexuality’, in sexualities, 13.4 (2010), 445-461 chess, simone, ‘opting out: anorexia, asexuality, and early modern women’, in early modern women, 15.1 (2020), 119-130 dinshaw, carolyn, how soon is now?: medieval texts, amateur readers, and the queerness of time (durham, n.c.: duke university press, 2012) freeman, elizabeth, time binds: queer temporalities, queer histories (durham, n.c.: duke university press, 2010) goldberg, jonathan, ‘introduction’, in queering the renaissance (durham and london: duke university press, 1994), pp. 1-13 gupta, k. (2015). compulsory sexuality: evaluating an emerging concept. signs, 41(1), 131–154. harris, carissa, obscene pedagogies: transgressive talk and sexual education in late medieval christianity (ithaca: cornell university press, 2018) jankowski, t. a. (2000). pure resistance: queer virginity in early modern english drama. university of pennsylvania press. kesson, a. (2017). go dare; or how scolarship lost the plot. before shakespeare project. https://beforeshakespeare.com/2017/08/28/go-dare-or-how-scholarship-lost-the-plot/ lochrie, k. (2005). heterosyncrasies: female sexuality when normal wasn’t. university of minnesota press. lyly, john, sappho and phao (manchester: manchester university press, 1991) montanari, f. (2018). the brill dictionary of ancient greek. brill. pugh, t. (2014). chaucer’s (anti-)eroticism and the queer middle ages. ohio state press. salih, s. (2001). versions of virginity in late medieval england. brewer. schultz, j. a. (2006). heterosexuality as a threat to medieval studies. journal of the history of sexuality, 15(1), 14–29. varnado, christine, ‘introduction: reading for desire’, in the shapes of fancy: reading for queer desire in early modern literature (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2020), pp. 1-50 wack, m. f. (1990). lovesickness in the middle ages. university of pennsylvania press. microsoft word ce+b-document+11+revision+suggestions.docx the transfiguration christianity’s god as newly known queer angie lopez, stanford ‘23 abstract: the omnipresence of christianity as a cultural structure that informs the cultural imaginary in western society is undeniable. it is, among other interlocking structures of cultural influence, responsible for the ongoing centrality of the western gender binary and the justified exclusion of non-white, non-male, non-cis, and non-heterosexual bodies in cultural and social spheres of influence. conventionally understood as an antithesis to the anti-normative demands of more modern and queer conceptions of gender and sexuality, religion has retained an orthodox and disciplinary character. this paper however argues that this mutual exclusion of queerness and christianity is inherently incorrect. it seeks to affirm that divinity and spiritual devotion are already fundamentally queer. the religious antagonism of queerness is not simply an obstacle to queer liberation but also, a denial of theological truth. theology and queerness can rely on each other to be mobilized towards queer liberation in the western cultural imaginary. to work towards this goal, this paper aims to create a queer theological understanding that consolidates the seemingly incompatible worlds of western christian culture and queer culture through the exploration of the queer transfiguration of christian divinity and worship in order to assert a new unified vision of both the queer and the divine. queer theology is a sentimental reeducation in divine beauties that we were earlier taught to despise (jordan, 2020) the first piece of jewelry that hung around my newborn neck was an ivory rosary. it had been passed down through four generations before retaining its relevance upon my body; becoming tethered to christianity preceded language, movement, and arguably even thought. i am but one of many who have had christianity pressed upon them irreversibly. the omnipresence of christianity, defined for the sake of this paper as the abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the teachings of jesus of nazareth, as a “cultural structure that informs the cultural imaginary” (bal, 2007) in western society is undeniable, affecting even the most devout atheists. this monotheistic, patriarchally arranged religion has created a system of worship founded upon “religious symbols that legitimate and perpetuate social inequality in both ideology and practice” that contributes to the “moods [and] motivations” of our secular society (christ 107 c.e.). it is, among other interlocking structures of cultural influence, responsible for the ongoing centrality of the western gender binary1 and the justified exclusion of non-white, non-male, non-cis, and non-heterosexual bodies in cultural and social spheres of influence. conventionally understood as an antithesis to the anti-normative demands of more modern and queer, i.e. non-heterosexual non-cis conceptions, conceptions of gender and sexuality, religion has retained an orthodox and disciplinary character (pellegrini, 2020), and the church, metonymically referring to all christian institutions, its role as the organ of authority and control. even so, i refuse to believe that queerness and divinity are intrinsically incompatible and that the queer struggle for liberation is one that is inherently at odds with the demands, beliefs, and history of christian religious identity. this paper argues that divinity and spiritual devotion are already fundamentally queer. the religious antagonism of queerness, the state not simply of being non-heterosexual and/or non-cis but more broadly being a state of non-adherence to cisheteropatriarchal standards of being, then is not simply an obstacle to queer liberation but also, a denial of theological truth. theology and queerness can rely on each other to be mobilized towards queer liberation in the western cultural imaginary. to work towards this goal, this paper independently addresses all three aspects of the trinity (the father, the son, and the holy spirit) to re-evaluate the current conceptualization of each key pillar of christianity with the aid of both queer theory and christian history. overall, this paper aims to create a queer theological understanding that consolidates the seemingly incompatible worlds of western christian culture and queer culture through the exploration of the queer transfiguration of christian divinity and worship in order to assert a new unified vision of both the queer and the divine. god is trans(cendant) 1 the western gender binary refers to the widely held cultural perspective, in western societies specifically, that defines gender as existing in a binary that unequivocally defines men and women as natural and opposite, with differences between the two as being fundamental and enduring (west, candance and zimmerman 1987). for just under half of all americans (froese and bader, 2015), god is seen as a “him,” a “father,” a divine patriarch. american sociologist andrew l. whitehead, using data from a random national survey and applying multivariate analysis, found that misperceived divine masculinity is not simply a matter of personal error, but more alarmingly, it is “consistently the strongest predictor of a traditional gender ideology” (whitehead, 2012). this traditional gender ideology is further directly correlated with an adherence to misogynistic and transphobic beliefs. for the believer, god’s assumed maleness is indicative of an “underlying assumption of a gendered nature of reality…strong[ly] influenc[ing] gender roles and ideology” (whitehead, 2012). in this sense, personal worship of a male god leads to the belief in the innateness of male superiority and authority and the creation of patriarchal social structures as reflective of good worship seeing as god, understood as masculine, is the ultimate authority and men are closer in nature to this authority than non-men. seeing the prevalence of religious imagery that is founded in masculine conceptions of divinity, take the example of any image of the christian cross with a figure of jesus on it (his body emphasized as explicitly masculine), traditional gender ideology has been allowed to permeate through all aspects of western society, inhibiting the sociopolitical equality of non-male, non-cis, non-heterosexual populations. for this reason, it is fundamental to rediscover the true nature of god, one that is not rooted in traditional gender adherence but instead is proof of divine gender’s queer malleability and excess. first and foremost, christian conceptions of god, whether they refer to him as “he” or not, do not consider god to be male in the way humanity is biologically male. to begin, in lesser-known religious works, gnostic works, i.e. first-century christian and jewish texts that emphasized personal spiritual pursuits above orthodox teachings, rejected from the new testament, “gnostic theologians correlate their description of god in both masculine and feminine terms with a complementary description of human nature. most often they refer to the creation account of genesis 1, which suggests an equal (or even androgynous) creation of mankind. this conception carries the principle of equality between men and women into the practical social and political structures of gnostic communities” (pagels, 1976). it is not uncommon then for pre-modern christians to conceptualize god outside of a patriarchal framework and do so with the support of biblical evidence. furthermore, even in orthodox understandings of god, which do adhere more rigidly to a conception of god as fatherly, an exclusively male god is still a misconception. god, as a divine figure, “transcends the human distinction between the sexes [and] transcends human fatherhood and motherhood, although he is the standard” (church, 2003). so, despite the rigid use of a male pronoun, even in the most orthodox and canonized conception of god, he is beyond human conceptions of maleness. god as “he” must be understood as divinely and queerly excessive and elusive, transcending human thresholds and understandings of gender and sex. god’s masculinity is evidence of queer theory’s assertion that “masculinity has got nothing to do with… men” (sedgwick, 1995) for god’s masculinity is completely disconnected from the male sex. instead, god’s masculinity can be better understood in closer proximity to the queer masculinity of stone butch2 lesbians for it is a masculinity that destabilizes binary understandings of gender, overlaps with gender-queerness, and most notably, describes the identity of a lesbian that is not simply butch/masculine but more specifically characterizes themselves as someone who “does not allow [themselves] to be touched” (zimmerman, 2000 ). god, as a masculine figure, cannot be touched and cannot be contained within the constraints of a conventional cis masculinity seeing god’s transgression of mortal constraints of gender and corporeality. god as a “father” most resembles the stone butch’s alternate, malleable, impermeable, visibly constructed, and excessive masculine identity, and least resembles the cis man’s one-dimensional, binary masculinity. furthermore, as a divine figure, god is not restricted simply to masculinity, despite the prevalence of patriarchal conceptions of him. god’s masculinity is equally feminine, androgynous, agendered, and gender-multiple. his gender multiplicity, like his divinity, is completely disconnected from and incomprehensible to human conceptualization. god is “both (male and female) rather than neither (male nor female) … the two add[ing] up to something non-numerical…simply gender-variant (marchal, 2020 ). if god, as a divine being beyond comprehensible human understandings of gender, is incapable of being mortally masculine, it is undeniable that to consider god mortally, to use his supposed maleness to justify a patriarchal and heteronormative social arrangement, is blasphemous for it is reduces god to something comprehensible and categorizable by humanity and more dangerously, to humanity’s (especially men’s) equal. if we are to strive to build a society that is in adherence to god’s gender, we need not prioritize the authority of men, but instead strive to adhere to queer conceptions of gender and sex, aiming to consistently expand our current conceptions of masculinity and femininity so that they might mirror more closely the fluidity and expansiveness of divinity. queer is christ though reframing god as gender-transcendent has the most visible repercussions for the modern-day social structure, gender is not the only queer aspect of christian divinity and the acknowledgement of these various other undeniably queer aspects of divinity have the potential to bring theology and the queer movement into even closer proximity. one of the most notable of these aspects is the queerness intrinsic to god’s dual corporeality and incorporeality, as manifested in the coming of christ, non-coincidentally one of the defining features of christianity. christ evades the normative conceptions of divinity’s incorporeality and queers the relationship between the mortal and the divine. acknowledging the queerness intrinsic to the nature of christian divinity further encourages less orthodox and less binary conceptions of god, our relationship to him, and ultimately of ourselves. christ as god on earth, divinity as flesh, “becomes the permanent disruption of godly abstraction and sovereign singularity…the porosity of flesh means incarnation can only be promiscuous” (rubenstein, 2020). christ queered our conception of god, complicating our perception of his immaterial character, debauching it in a sense, through the corporeal transgression of divinity as other. “th[is] coming to flesh of divinity disrupts the smooth 2 a stone butch is a lesbian who displays female butchness or traditional "masculinity" (halberstam 111) otherness of the divine, its separateness from the changeable stuff of earth, its abhorrence of rot, its innocence of death, and its ignorance of life or desire” (rubenstein 294). this disruption irreversibly changes the identity of both divinity and mortality, humanizing the former and eternizing the latter. in christ’s disruption of this binary, he can be understood in close proximity to anzaldúa’s “new mestiza,” who similarly transgresses the binary between chicanx and white culture and in doing so, develops a new consciousness that redefines both herself and both cultures. this new mestiza consciousness is a way of understanding the world that embraces dualities, ambiguities and serves, according to anzaldua, as the most compelling perspective for changing the world for the better. like the mestiza, christ, in belonging to two worlds, that of the terrestrial and the divine, “develop[ed] a tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity…operat[ing] in a pluralistic mode…nothing thrust out…nothing abandoned…turn[ing] the ambivalence into something else” (anzaldúa, 1987). christ is known for his radical acceptance of all of humanity’s sins while not abandoning his sustained devotion to god. he is thus, like the mestiza, pluralistic, radically tolerant, and turning his dual status as mortal god into something else: the promise of divine salvation. furthermore, in his coming to earth as flesh, in working out a synthesis of the mortal and divine, christ, like the mestiza, “has added a third element which is greater than the sum of its severed parts. that third element is a new consciousness…and though it is a source of intense pain, its energy comes from continual creative motion that keeps breaking down the unitary aspect of each new paradigm. (anzaldúa, 1987). christ’s new consciousness, the fulfilled trinity, is greater than the sum of its parts for the trinity is consubstantial and a source of intense pain, for to achieve this consciousness christ had to undergo crucifixion. this fulfilled trinity further enables the continual creative motion of closing the binary between the mortal and divine. unlike the mestiza however, whose consciousness and vision for the future does not calls for universal hybridization as the goal of racial inclusivity, christ’s new trinitarian consciousness does propel a unifying vision of universal and equalizing salvation under christ. nonetheless, the closeness to the new mestiza positions christ in undeniably closer contact with the queer than the normative. as a result of christ’s divinely queer transgression into the world of the mortal, god too is difficult to conceptualize as simply being an aloof monarch of the universe, and instead, must be more productively imagined in queer terms as well: a “lord who pursues pleasure and inclusivity over domination and control” (hoke, 2020). furthermore, the coming of christ queered worship by transforming the church into a space of queer intimacy through the integration of the eucharist. by ritually pursuing closeness to god through the performance of carnal closeness (the consumption of christ’s flesh and blood), christ’s coming to earth made worship a visceral experience driven equally by bodily and spiritual desires. as pope benedict xvi, a contemporary figure in the catholic world, firmly asserts, “the eucharist [is] the ultimate erotic encounter with god…erotic love reach[ing] its climax…in the eucharist” (grimes, 2016). as god’s materiality became known to us, sensuality becomes an undeniable aspect of our religious sensibility, eroticism becoming a medium through which religious content can take hold (bal, 2007). furthermore, this eroticism is not heterosexually oriented; on the contrary, it is wholly and undeniably queer. as benedict explains, “the eucharist [is] a means of erotic encounter with other human beings... while marriage requires us to love monogamously, the eucharist demands promiscuity…the eucharist brings men union not with one wife but with all those who have become [christ’s] own” (grimes 513) and in doing so, “sex and gender are destabilized as men take jesus’s male body into their own and women become the male body of christ... the eucharist exhibits the very queer tendency of contesting and reconfiguring embodied identities. if the eucharist truly provides the “source and summit” of christian life, then christian love cannot help both producing and being mediated through queer bodies” (grimes, 2016). by contesting the heteronormative boundaries between bodies, their genders, and their sexualities, the eucharist demands a queer reconceptualization of the self and of worship. it demands eroticism to be at the forefront of spirituality and universalizing gender-transcendent promiscuity, not singular heterosexual monogamy, to be at the heart of divine salvation. in this undeniably queering act, the eucharist further asserts christianity’s closeness to queerness and its ever-growing distance with the heteronormative. in acknowledging the intrinsic erotics of christian worship and the queerness of god’s incomprehensible multiplicity of (im)materiality, we begin to lose grasp of any conceivable binary between the mortal and the divine, the bodily and the spiritual, the self and other. therefore, if we are to live a life guided by divine principles, we too should strive to conceptualize ourselves and our environments beyond the simplicity of binaries towards a sensuous appreciation of everything’s deeply unknowable multiplicity and queer interconnectedness. the spirit’s uncanny timing the other essential aspect of christianity, the eternality and thus atemporality of god and biblical knowledge is also undeniably both queer and divine. the bible’s continued relevance in the modern world is indicative of its queer relationship to time, one transcending chrononormativity3, one that resists the pull towards hetero-capitalist futurity by bringing the ancient in miraculously close contact with both the present and the future. understanding god’s eternality as queer can unbound us from our own strict adherence to chrononormativity, making room for a re-imagined relationship with time that queerly and religiously values awe, unfamiliarity, and, above all, miracle. the bible’s “queer persistence” (kotrosits, 2020) as a “timeless, eternal, [and] primordial” (marchal, 2020) object undeniably relevant in the modern world is indicative of its revolutionary (both in the symbolic sense of dramatic change and literal sense of turning back) queer affect (freeman, 2011). its strength lies in its queer ability to “manifest the power of anachronism to unsituate the present tense…and to illuminate or even prophetically ignite 3 the use of time to organize individual human bodies toward maximum productivity (freeman, 2011); is responsible for our understanding of time as being standardized, with certain life benchmarks (graduation, marriage, etc.) holding particular weight over other life events (like taking a walk or making dinner); delineates the past, present, and future as three distinct times that do not overlap. possible futures” (freeman, 2011). for worshippers, this power is at the root of the bible’s divinity for to have faith in the bible is to reimagine one’s future as one tied to the eternality of heaven and for non-believers, for whom heaven has no affective resonance, the bible’s queer persistence nonetheless calls into question the future and capital-oriented momentum of chrononormativity by insisting on the modern relevance of ancient mythos and non-productive religious affect. the bible’s “multiple, even simultaneous temporalities…cross time and exceed periodization” (marchal, 2020). the very essence of what makes the bible miraculous both to believers and non-believers alike is its ability to both remain contemporarily relevant while also fully grounded in pre-modernity, often bringing these two worlds into collision through the regulatory nature of its religious doctrine. this is undeniably rooted in its adherence to queer time. it is no wonder why biblical adherence, i.e. faith in the bible, when viewed from a secular social point of view that does, in its secularity adhere to chrononormative time, can be so defamiliarizing and often resisted, for the queerness intrinsic to its reimagining of time disrupts the hetero-capitalist illusion of the present, calling forth for a disorienting intimate relationship with the past, undermining the hetero-capitalist compulsion towards futurity and innovation. similarly, the image of god himself queers time through his eternality and warped relationship to futurity. to know god is impossible for his divine immateriality prevents it however; the knowledge that jesus christ once roamed earth becomes part of the christian “memory” for it is an event that took place in the past and often resurfaces in the religious present as proof of a promise of the afterlife, the future. in this way, we do know god but as a “memory of futurity… as the promise of the future” (mackendrick, 2020). god is a strange and disruptive wielder of queer time that makes the future untenable through the present and timeless persistence of an unknowable past. god, like queerness, or more adventurously, as queerness, is something we can never touch but whose “warm illuminations of a horizon imbued with potentiality” (muñoz 1) we can feel, and whose “queerness exists for us as an ideality that can be distilled from the past and used to imagine a future” (muñoz, 2019). like a queer utopic sentiment, a “remembered god is the non-foreclosure of the possible, is the possible, the open, the giving in the given, [making] all time…queer: always open to other than it is, as the very condition of its being” (mackendrick, 2020). knowing god becomes, for individuals raised into western religious thought, the first and only exposure to queer time that, when demanded to co-exist uncritically with the rampant upholding of chrononormativity, often results in religious disillusion. in this way, a critical readherence to religion relies on the queer socio-political disavowal of hetero-capitalist time in exchange for the embracing of queer affective time driven by a corporeal receptivity to wonder. therefore, to advance both the agendas of queer liberation and christian worship it is undeniably important to re-imagine our relationship to time, avowing instead to the queer conception of time as malleable, affective, and driven by the miraculous and frightening endlessness of possibility. conclusion overall, the worlds of queerness and christianity are not as diametrically opposed as they are conventionally understood to be. both challenge the socially constructed limitations of gender, humanity, and time and do so with an unwavering commitment to affectivity, sensuousness, and miracle. in this sense, they are more aligned than opposed. it is my hope that in highlighting the similarities these worlds undeniably hold, in bringing both worlds into close proximity to each other, that the antagonism these social spheres hold for each other can begin to unravel. both queerness and christianity hold such great weight in the western cultural psyche and so it is my hope that they can begin to jointly illuminate the miraculousness of expansive thought and transgressive behavior to unbind the hetero-capitalist restraints imposed on our lives. references anzaldúa, g. 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(2000). lesbian histories and cultures : an encyclopedia. garland. come as you are, but change once you enter the misalignment between the admission and the integration of homosexual individuals in 1970s cold-war era canada alfonso ralph mendoza manalo, university of toronto ’23 abstract: the immigration act of 1952 was the first immigration policy to explicitly mention homosexuals in its list of prohibited persons from immigrating to canada. homosexuality was later removed as grounds for denying admission into canada in the 1977 immigration act. in doing so, the canadian state recognized homosexuals as legal members of the canadian state through the provision of legal status. i argue that the 1977 amendment was not indicative of the integration of homosexuals into canadian society, as the immigration act of 1952 was amended due to the increased visibility of the gay and lesbian liberation movement and the lack of policy influence amongst the department of national defense (dnd) and the royal canadian mounted police (rcmp). furthermore, homosexuals continued to be subject to increased surveillance and sexual regulation compared to their heterosexual counterparts; and were subject to pervasive forms of homophobia and sexual othering throughout the 1970s in cold war era canada which stripped them of other aspects of canadian citizenship (i.e., equal rights and social and economic belonging). introduction the immigration act of 1952 was the first immigration policy to explicitly mention homosexuals1 in its list of prohibited persons from immigrating to canada (laviolette, 2004, p.973). this policy was built on the premise that homosexuals were to be considered “subversives” and national security threats, due to dominant thinking at the time, which presumed homosexuals would be sympathetic towards communists and the political left and more susceptible to being blackmailed based on their sexual orientation by communists (lgbt purge class action, 2019). homosexuality was later removed as a ground for denying admission into canada in the 1977 amendment to the immigration act, which was fully implemented in 1978 (colwell, 2018,p.5) as a response to growing calls amongst gay and lesbian organizations that homosexual acts amongst two consenting adults were no longer prohibited by the canadian criminal code as of 1969 (girard, 2007, p.6) and that the immigration act should reflect this. the 1977 amendment was also caused by the public nature of the government’s deliberations on the immigration act of 1977 broadly through the government’s decision to call for a green paper (p.6). which marked a turning point in canadian immigration law as the act was the first to explicitly note the fundamental objectives of canada’s immigration laws such as prioritizing diversity and the principles of non-discrimination, and by introducing a transparent point system to determine the eligibility of admission for immigrants (canadian museum of immigration at pier 21, 2023b). this heavily juxtaposed the lack of public consultation and the confidential nature of the immigration act of 1952 (girard, 2007, p.14). in amending the 1977 immigration act to remove homosexuality as grounds to bar individuals from being admitted into canada, the canadian state recognized homosexuals as legal members of the canadian state through the provision of legal status. however, this paper complies with bloemraad, korteweg, and yurdakul’s (2008) argument that citizenship encompasses the following additional dimensions: substantive equal rights, political participation, and belonging (social and economic), in addition to legal status (bloemraad et al., 2008, p.153). using this as a framework to assess the citizenship of homosexuals in cold war era canada, i note that the full integration of any group or community within canadian society would require said group to possess all four of these dimensions of citizenship. thus, despite this marked transition regarding the admission of homosexuals into canada, the 1977 amendment was not indicative of the integration of homosexuals into canadian society, as the immigration act of 1952 was amended due to the increased visibility of the gay and lesbian liberation movement and the lack of policy influence amongst the department of national defense (dnd) and the royal canadian mounted police (rcmp). as will be demonstrated further in this paper, homosexuals continued to be subject to increased surveillance and sexual regulation compared to their heterosexual counterparts; and were subject to pervasive forms of homophobia and sexual othering throughout the 1970s in 1 this paper will use the term homosexuals to refer to sexual minorities, primarily gay men, lesbian women, and bisexual individuals in the cold war canadian context. this paper employs this term as it was commonly used in official documents and the rhetoric of canadian law-enforcement agencies throughout the canadian cold war when referring to sexual minorities. cold war era canada. homosexuals were stripped of all dimensions of citizenship following the ratification of the 1977 immigration act, as they were consistently labeled by the canadian government as “deviants”, “subversives”, and “national security threats” thereby further othering them from the rest of heteronormative canada. this was accompanied by the canadian government purging itself of all homosexual public servants from its ranks by identifying, outing, demoting, and firing homosexual public servants, thereby hindering their ability to participate economically in a key sector of the economy, and thus preventing them from feeling any sense of economic belonging in canada. lastly, the increased surveillance of homosexuals and the enforcement of sexual regulations such as the bawdy-house law to raid bathhouses and other gay and lesbian establishments, and the customs act which was used to censor gay and lesbian publications, inhibited homosexuals from enjoying the same rights as their heteronormative counterparts in regard to expressing their sexual orientation. in demonstrating the above-mentioned phenomena through a series of cases, programs, and other government measures, i seek to establish a pattern wherein the canadian government continued to hamper the possibility of homosexuals from fully integrating into canadian society following the implementation of the 1977 immigration act. therefore it becomes clear that the ratification of the act, and the legal acceptance of homosexuals, did not indicate the full integration of homosexual citizens into broader canadian society but rather a slight amelioration of one dimension of citizenship. “subversives”: the homosexual as a subject of suspicion in cold war era canada to further our understanding of the relationship between the status of homosexuals in canada’s immigration laws and its relation to their other aspects of citizenship, we must first understand the conditions that led to the barring of homosexual individuals from immigrating into canada in the first place. at the onset of the cold war, the canadian government had embarked on a paradigm shift in regard to its immigration and national security policy, where it sought to proactively bar “subversive” individuals (those with an inclination to challenge the canadian state) from immigrating into canada rather than interning them, so as to curb the “contamination” of canadians with so-called dangerous notions (finkel, 1986, p.54) and prevent internal political dissent (girard, 1987, p.1). this mainly pertained to communists and leftleaning individuals, whose activities were labeled by canadian and european intelligence partners to be “subversive or propagandistic in nature” (finkel, 1986, p.57), with the canadian state institutionalizing the use of security checks for all immigration applicants following a cabinet decision in 1946 (p.54). this later expanded to include a host of other individuals, with cabinet guidelines to the rcmp in 1949 expanding the barring of all prospective immigrants to “anyone who might have once demonstrated an interest in left-wing thought” (p.58). this was justified by then minister of citizenship and immigration walter harris, on the basis that “subversion had undertaken peaceful means and attempted to destroy the faith of the democratic peoples in the processes of democratic government in canada,” (p. 59) and thus requiring counteraction similar to subversion by force. homosexuals specifically, later became a prime target of national surveillance and other national security measures on the basis that the state considered their activity as “obscene”, “defiantly” challenging traditional gender roles and heteronormativity, and that they themselves innately had “character weaknesses” due to their sexual object of choice (kinsman, 2000, p.143). this coincides with kinsman et al.’s (2000) argument that the use of national surveillance and other national security measures is to protect the interests of the ruling or privileged class, by marking the other as “threatening”, “dangerous”, or “other”, justifying the suppression of their rights for the sake of protecting national interest (kinsman et al., 2000, p.278). as shown, homosexual activity was deemed to operate in direct opposition to dominant heteronormativity by the canadian government, similar to how left-wing and communist individuals were deemed as threats to the interests of the dominant bourgeoisie and the capitalist system. this led to both groups being seen as “subversive” national security threats, external to the national interest of democratic canadians and thus “unworthy” of equal rights, political participation, belonging, and virtually all forms of integration. this is notably seen in the words of minister walter harris in response to criticisms to the 1952 immigration act: “it might be said that by denying entry, we were tampering with the right of free speech…, however it was not felt that facilities for entry must necessarily be granted to one who had no right of admission into canada and no special claim on canadian hospitality” (finkel, 1986, p.54). denying and gaining admission: the origins of the 1952 immigration act section 5 (e) the government-backed rhetoric that homosexuals were threats to canada’s national security, due to their susceptibility to left-wing thought and thus should have their rights suppressed was diffused onto canada’s 1952 immigration act. the 1952 immigration act clause (immigration act section 5 (e)) (canadian museum of immigration at pier 21, 2023a) barred confirmed homosexuals from entering canada in all capacities reflected the rife homophobia in canadian society throughout the cold war, acting as a complementary national security tool to the increased preventative measures taken by the canadian government to prevent the infiltration of gays and lesbian individuals at large from infiltrating the public service by firing and demoting accused gay and lesbian public servants (lgbt purge)2 on the grounds that they were deemed by the government to be subversive, and increasing the sexual regulation of homosexuals in broader canadian society (girard, 2007, p.6). this also included the formal authorization of the security panel (composed of the rcmp, dnd, external affairs, and other rotating members) to investigate and weed out all homosexual working in the public service and 2 the term lgbt purge is used to describe the canadian government’s intentional outing and identification of gay and lesbian public servants, so as to fire or demote them on the basis of their accused sexual orientation. the lgbt purge lasted roughly from the early 1940s till 1990, culminating with douglas v. minister of national defense wherein douglas filed a lawsuit against the department of national defense for infringing her charter (constitutional) rights for being interrogated and discriminated upon on the basis of her sexual orientation as a lesbian woman (lgbt purge class action, 2019). at large, with an overriding principle of secrecy (p.4). given that the clause itself was a product of canada’s national security regime, it did not solely focus on the admission of homosexuals but also prescribed their increased regulation, subsequently curbing their sexual rights. this is seen in the fact that the immigration act of 1952 also required all municipal clerks, immigration officers, constables, and peace officers to report all individuals who were suspected or deemed to have engaged in homosexual acts to the director of immigration (p.7). the increased regulation of homosexual immigrants in canada coincided with the ratification of homophobic policies in the united states of america, which was canada’s strategic intelligence partner throughout the cold war and onwards. most notable was the u.s. senate’s subcommittee report on the “employment of homosexuals and other sex perverts in the government” released in december 1950, which called for the dismissal of all homosexuals from the american public service (p.8). it is important to note that the immigration act of 1952’s clause barring homosexuals was a product of “international security arrangements with the united states who was increasingly concerned with the laxity of canada’s security system and pressured them to tighten them” (p.6). in an effort to mitigate publicity issues and moral panics surrounding the barring and targeting of homosexuals as experienced in the us’s lavender scare, the canadian government succumbed to the rcmp and dnd’s whims to secretly include the clause barring homosexuals, and subsequently, the notion that homosexuals were security risks to canada’s national interest (p.4). therefore section 5 (e) of the 1952 immigration act in canada arose in part out of international pressures and policy diffusion in the sphere of national security from the united states, while also coming out of domestic worries and angst towards the presumed threat that homosexuals had to canadian society. the door was left ajar: the conditions leading admittance of homosexuals as aforementioned, the barring of homosexual individuals from immigrating to canada under canadian immigration law ceased with the amending of the immigration act in 1977 and its full implementation in 1978. however, the removal of the clause barring homosexuals from the 1977 immigration act is not to be mistaken as indicative of any increased integration of homosexuals in canadian society as seen in the conditions that had led to its amendment. i assert that it was not necessarily a change in public attitude and increased tolerance that led to this amendment, but rather a myriad of other factors. one of these factors being the fact that the immigration act of 1977 was preceded by the 1975 green paper from the special joint committee of the senate and the house of commons, which publicly reached out to multiple organizations throughout canada to consult them on their views towards canada’s immigration scheme broadly (p.14) so as to instill national debate on the issue of immigration. this included a dozen gay and lesbian organizations that called to remove all explicit references of homosexuals and homosexualism in the act, on the basis that barring potential immigrants on the grounds of their sexual orientation was misaligned with other legal developments (p.16). they primarily stressed that private sex between two consenting adults (21 years and older) had been decriminalized in 1969 and that the immigration act of 1975 should reflect this (p.16). furthermore, the green paper of 1975 held multiple primary objectives, including ensuring the principle of non-discrimination throughout the entire immigration process (hawkins, 1975, p.239). therefore, the barring of homosexuals from immigrating into canada would operate in direct opposition to this principle, leading to a misalignment in canada’s immigration law framework. the very public nature of these consultations and the weight given to community input rather than that to the rcmp and dnd played a pivotal role in the removal of the clause in 1977. additionally, the gay and lesbian liberation movement had started to emerge in canada leading up to the green paper. through this, homosexuals increasingly becoming more visible and public with their sexual orientation (girard, 2007, p.14-15). this was patterned with the increasing establishment of a collective queer identity, including through homosexual legal and community advocacy groups (i.e., homophile association of st. john’s and gay alliance towards equality (gate) (p.15), the proliferation of gay businesses and publications, and an overall willingness to voice out queer experiences and oppression at the hands of the government and heterosexist canadian society. these combined pressures all contributed to the removal of the barring clause from the 1977 immigration act. sexual dangers to the canadian public: the sexual regulation of homosexuals the ratification of the 1977 immigration act did not lead to the full integration of homosexuals in canada, wherein they are granted equal rights, felt a sense of political and economic belonging, and participated politically aside from possessing legal status as a citizen. as shown in the previous section, the immigration act itself was not amended due to drastic changes to public perception or acceptance of homosexuals in canadian society, but rather due to the public nature of the policy consultations surrounding the immigration act broadly and the misalignment of a clause barring the admission of homosexuals into canada with other pieces of legislation. to supplant the notion that the 1977 immigration acts amendment did not coincide with the full integration of homosexuals, this section will illustrate the ways in which homosexuals continued to be subjected to increased measures of national surveillance, policing, and sexual regulation in other public spheres outside of immigration around the time of the 1977 immigration act’s implementation. throughout this time the sexual rights of homosexuals were severely limited, with said limitations being justified by a perpetuated notion that homosexuals were to be seen as national security threats. in being framed as national security threats, the limitation of their rights was justified as measures used to ensure the protection of the canadian people; and subsequently proves that homosexuals were actively limited in obtaining dimensions of integration by the canadian state. these dimensions included access to the same equal rights and social belonging, given that in being labeled as national security threats, homosexuals were stripped of rights from which their heterosexual counterparts benefited and enjoyed while they were constantly being othered. a clear example of this can be seen in the disproportionate use of the customs act to censor, seize, and destroy homosexual publications and materials, essentially limiting the rights of expression and speech of homosexuals. as aforementioned, the emergence of the gay and liberation movement in the 1970s was accompanied by an increase in explicitly homosexual publication presses, magazines, books, poetry, and pornography (cossman, 2013-2014, p.49). the proliferation of these homosexual publications and content was met with routine seizure during transit to homosexual-catered bookshops. this led to multiple notable legal cases against the government on the grounds that they were limiting the rights to expression and speech of homosexuals, including but not limited to the body politic, a gay newspaper which was raided multiple times by toronto’s morality squad, and glad day bookshop and little sister bookstore which routinely had their homosexual publications seized by the government (pp. 5356). the censoring and seizure of homosexual publications was explained by the government on the basis that the confiscated contents were considered to be “immoral”, “indecent”, and “obscene” in accordance with the 1959-1992 criminal code definition of obscenity. this definition was later replaced in the supreme court case of r. v. butler (1992), in which the community test to determine if a material was legally considered as obscene was rewritten to include the following three categories: (i) sex with violence, (ii) sex without violence, but is degrading and/or dehumanizing, and (iii) sex without violence but is not degrading and/or dehumanizing (p.51). it is important to note that gay and lesbian publications were consistently considered as failing this community test as they were often considered to fall under the second category. this is explicitly shown in glad day bookshop v. deputy minister of national revenue (customs & excise) (1992), where the judge ruled that all seizures made at glad day bookshop were justified as each publication was considered to be obscene, “as the mere representation of gay sex was degrading and dehumanizing (p.54).” the disproportionate censoring of homosexual publications on the basis of obscenity was explicitly recognized in little sisters book & art emporium v. canada (minister of justice), in which the supreme court ruled that the canadian customs’ practice of censoring materials did not breach the homosexuals’ right to the freedom of expression under the charter, but that canadian customs did unfairly target gay and lesbian materials (p.56). another notable example of the increased sexual regulation of homosexuals was the drastic increase in “public sexuality” following the amendment of the 1969 omnibus bill that decriminalized sex amongst two private consenting adults in private (a bedroom), which, according to the george smith, a sociologist and gay activist “ironically…led to the largest mass arrests of gay men in the country’s history (hooper, 2019, p.260).” this was due to the fact that as argued by tom hooper, the omnibus bill recriminalized homosexuality by explicitly expanding the criminal justice system’s authority over the lives of discreet homosexual men whose sexual lives prior to the omnibus bill were mainly unnoticed (p.259). in decriminalizing the sexual relations of homosexuals in private, canada’s law enforcement agencies disproportionately3 used other regulations such as the bawdy-house law, to raid gay establishments (i.e., bathhouses, bars, etc.) and arrest homosexuals. under the bawdy-house law, all spaces that facilitated acts of so-called indecency were considered to be illegal (p.265). this was used to raid all spaces wherein homosexual sexual acts were considered to occur regardless of whether that establishment considered itself to be private or not (p.263). the most notable of these countless raids included operation soap in 1981, in which toronto police raided four bathhouses and arrested 306 men (p.266); the 1977 raiding of the montreal truxx bar where 146 patrons were charged with being “found-in” a bawdy-house (p.266); and the 1976 montreal olympic cleanup in which countless gay establishments in montreal and ottawa were raided leading up to the olympics (p.265). it is important to note that the sexual regulation of homosexuals was underpinned by the homophobic mentality that homosexuals were considered to be sexual threats and sexual dangers to canadian society, with toronto chief james mackey noting in 1968 that: “families have been brought heartbreak and sadness because of children affected by coming into contact with homosexuals” (pp.263-264). this paralleled the words l. r. hobbs, the director of montreal port police, where he problematically claims that homosexuality needed to be regulated as it led to criminality: “the search by homosexuals for partners often leads to assault, theft, male prostitution and murder” (p.264). furthermore, this stood in direct contrast to how heterosexual group sex was legally regulated, as shown in r. v. mason 1981 wherein despite the fact that mason hosted monthly heterosexual group sex parties, the judge acquitted of keeping a bawdy-house, with his rationale being: “it is my considered opinion that no one would seriously contend that a sexual act, between consenting adults of the opposite sex, in a private home, could be considered grossly indecent…, an act of gross indecency, as contemplated by the code, includes an act between homosexuals…” (hooper, 2014, p.71) unfit for employment: the expansion of sexual regulation into economic integration the stripping of homosexuals’ freedom to enjoy equal rights as their heterosexual counterparts encroached other areas outside of the previously mentioned literary expression, the ability to gather and congregate, and perform sexual activity in private. the sexual regulation of homosexuals also prevented the economic integration of homosexuals in canada, hindering 3 there is a lack of concrete statistical figures surrounding the disparity on the enforcement of sexual regulations such as the bawdy-house law on sexual minorities in canada. however, there is broad consensus surrounding the fact that these regulations were disproportionately enforced on gay men and lesbian women specifically throughout the cold war, as seen in prime minister trudeau’s 2018 apology wherein he states: “discrimination against lgbtq2 communities was quickly codified in criminal offences like “buggery”, “gross indecency”, and bawdy house provisions. bathhouses were raided, people were entrapped by police. our laws bolstered and emboldened those who wanted to attack non-conforming sexual desire. our laws made private and consensual sex between same-sex partners a criminal offence, leading to the unjust arrest, conviction, and imprisonment of canadians. this criminalization would have lasting impacts for things like employment, volunteering, and travel” (prime minister’s office, 2017). homosexuals from yet another dimension of citizenship needed for full integration. as subjects of national surveillance, they were barred from working in the federal civil service, the rcmp, and the military until 1992 (federal court, 2020 p.70). in actively investigating suspected homosexuals in the canadian public service and purging itself of queers in their ranks, the canadian government hindered their ability to economically belong in canada, preventing their integration. known as the lgbt purge, the canadian government tasked the rcmp’s a-3 unit with hunting down homosexual public servants and confirming the sexual orientation of all suspected homosexuals within the civil service (kinsman, 1995, p.149). the rcmp would conduct their investigations in a myriad of ways, including but not limited to the surveillance of suspected homosexual meeting spots, befriending non-civil servant homosexuals, and asking them who they knew was gay, and directly interrogating suspected homosexuals to out themselves and others (kinsman, 2000, pp.145-147). dnd’s special investigative unit also employed the same research methods to purge itself of homosexuals, in accordance with canadian forces administrative order 19-20 which barred homosexuals from working in the military until 1992 (gouliquer et al., 2018, p.324). this resulted in the discriminatory discharge of hundreds of individuals such as martine roy (1984), alida satalic (1989), and todd ross (1990) who successfully launched the lgbt purge settlement, in which the canadian government recognized that the lgbt purge subjected class members to persistent discriminatory, humiliating and injurious treatment, demeaning their dignity and infringing their basic human rights (federal court, 2020, p.69). similar to other sexual regulations, the lgbt purge was also justified by national security campaigns, that deemed homosexuals unfit for employment in all capacities due to their moral and character failings and supposed susceptibility to being blackmailed by communists as a result of their sexual orientation (kinsman, 1995, p.141). conclusion as demonstrated throughout this paper, the canadian government increased the sexual regulation of homosexuals leading up to and following the 1977 immigration act, on the basis that they were “other” as sexual and moral dangers, and national security threats who did not socially nor economically belong to canadian society nor shared the nation’s interest. this sexual regulation hindered their ability to possess substantive equality rights as enjoyed by their heterosexual counterparts and subsequently stripped them of the multiple dimensions of citizenship required to be considered fully integrated such as their economic and social belonging, according to bloemraad et al.’s. (2008) framework. therefore, the immigration act of 1977 granted the admission of homosexuals, but its ratification did not lead to nor coincide with their full integration into canadian society. references bloemraad, i., korteweg, a., & yurdakul, g. (2008). citizenship and immigration: multiculturalism, assimilation, and challenges to the nation-state. annual review of sociology, 34(1), 153–179. canadian museum of immigration at pier 21. (2023a). immigration act, 1952. canadian museum of immigration at pier 21. https://pier21.ca/research/immigrationhistory/immigration-act-1952 canadian museum of immigration at pier 21. (2023b). immigration act, 1976. canadian museum of immigration at pier 21. https://pier21.ca/research/immigrationhistory/immigration-act-1976 colwell, r. (2018). “pernicious [e]ffects”: discretionary decision-making in queer immigration to canada. western journal of legal studies, 8(2). cossman, b. (2013). censor, resist, repeat: a history of censorship of gay and lesbian sexual representation in canada. duke journal of gender law & policy, 21(1), 45–66. todd edward ross, martine roy and alida satalic and her majesty the queen, final settlement agreement, (federal court 2020). https://www.classaction.deloitte.ca/enca/pages/lgbtpurgesettlementclassaction.aspx finkel, a. (1986). canadian immigration policy and the cold war, 1945–1980. journal of canadian studies, 21(3), 53–70. girard, p. (1987). from subversion to liberation: homosexuals and the immigration act 1952– 1977. canadian journal of law and society, 2, 1–27. gouliquer, l., poulin, c., & moore, j. (2018). a threat to canadian national security: a lesbian soldier’s story. qualitative research in psychology, 15(2–3), 323–335. hawkins, f. (1975). canada’s green paper on immigration policy. the international migration review, 9(2), 237–249. hooper, t. 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(1995). “character weaknesses” and “fruit machines”: towards an analysis of the anti-homosexual security campaign in the canadian civil service. labour (halifax), 35, 133–161. kinsman, g. (2000). constructing gay men and lesbians as national security risks, 19501970. in g. kinsman, d. k. buse, & m. steedman (eds.), whose national security? canadian state surveillance and the creation of enemies (pp. 143–153). between the lines. https://books-scholarsportalinfo.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/en/read?id=/ebooks/ebooks0/gibson_crkn/2009-1201/3/406158#page=8 kinsman, g., buse, d. k., & steedman, m. (2000). how the centre holds—national security as an ideological practice. in g. kinsman, d. k. buse, & m. steedman (eds.), whose national security? canadian state surveillance and the creation of enemies (pp. 278– 286). between the lines. https://books-scholarsportalinfo.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/en/read?id=/ebooks/ebooks0/gibson_crkn/2009-1201/3/406158#page=8 nash, c. j. (2014). consuming sexual liberation: gay business, politics, and toronto’s barracks bathhouse raids. journal of canadian studies, 48(1), 82–105. https://doi.org/10.3138/jcs.48.1.82 prime minister’s office. (2017, november 28). remarks by prime minister justin trudeau to apologize to lgbtq2 canadians. prime minister of canada. https://pm.gc.ca/en/news/speeches/2017/11/28/remarks-prime-minister-justin-trudeauapologize-lgbtq2-canadians https://lgbtpurge.com/about-lgbt-purge/ https://doi.org/10.3138/jcs.48.1.82 https://pm.gc.ca/en/news/speeches/2017/11/28/remarks-prime-minister-justin-trudeau-apologize-lgbtq2-canadians https://pm.gc.ca/en/news/speeches/2017/11/28/remarks-prime-minister-justin-trudeau-apologize-lgbtq2-canadians microsoft word the scum of daddy’s girls.docx the scum of daddy’s girls: monstrous cuteness as gender resistance in bunny leina hsu, georgetown university ’22 abstract: the novel bunny by mona awad explores the gender resistance potential of monstrous cuteness for women. monstrous cuteness highlights the ambiguous feelings and nonbinary aesthetics that cuteness can generate. due to their sickly intimacy, hyper-femininity, and secret boy-killing, awad’s clique of girls named the “bunnies” are simultaneously lovely and depraved. their workshop is a microcosm for radical gender relations where they manifest frankenstein-esque boy-creations to meet their needs or die trying. while their monstrous cuteness serves as a weapon of gender reorganization, the inherent privilege of the bunnies raises the question of who gets to wield it. we all know the clique. pretty dolls with their soft hair and matching outfits, the paragons of anatomical perfection. they sit together at lunch, giggling and whispering in code. you wonder if they are making fun of you, despite the fact they never seem to notice anyone outside of each other. and when one of them does speak to you, perhaps to ask about gym class (though you can never imagine them sweating), it is in a syrupy tone alien to your own. you want to be one of them or maybe you just want what they have: a secret language, an impenetrable aura, a bond so intimate it is almost incestuous. in the novel bunny by mona awad, mfa student samantha heather mackey encounters such a cohort of women in her poetry workshop. they call each other “bunny”—hi, bunny, i love you, bunny. samantha lives every outcast’s dream of being invited into the bunnies’ world, but what she discovers on the other side is much more sinister than one would expect from nice, young girls. through their cuteness, the bunnies cultivate a feminine enclave that masks their terrifying project of creating (and killing) bunny-boy hybrids. their monstrous cuteness is a strategy of gender resistance. they simultaneously take advantage of women’s gender stereotypes and brutally reject them, making way for complete structural upheaval. published in 2019, awad’s novel is set in modern-day new england at the fictional warren university. samantha, a scholarship student, suffers from writer’s block and imposter syndrome at the prestigious institution, where the stakes are raised on her attempts at personal expression. her isolation is intensified by the effortless success of the bunnies, whose provocative pieces draw praise from their poetry instructor. the setting lures the reader into a false sense of understanding about what is valued in the world of bunny. from the snobbish students producing elusive, soulless art to the elitist professors applauding it, everyone seems to play their part. yet, awad observes these academic establishments with a critical eye, questioning the legitimacy of their authority on what makes a creation good or bad. as samantha comes to realize, women creators can only reach their full potential outside of the classroom and its rigid rules. the bunnies enable each other’s creative development in their monstrous and cute haven. cuteness and monstrosity, though seemingly divergent, actually share a multitude of characteristics. in “monstrous/cute. notes on the ambivalent nature of cuteness,” maja brzozowska-brywczyńska of adam mickiewicz university’s institute of sociology (2007) notes that cuteness’ “ambivalent nature” and “certain hybridity” allows it “to link [...] to the monster” (p. 1). cuteness is not just meant to generate simplistic, good feelings. for instance, many cute objects are also malformed, possessing “freakish” features that elicit sympathy from the viewer (brzozowska-brywczyńska, 2007, p. 6). an example can be found in manufactured cuteness such as hello kitty, who is mouthless with exaggerated proportions that transcend normality. there is an inherent monstrosity, brzozowska-brywczyńska suggests, to cuteness. even before their murderous unveiling, the bunnies embody monstrous cuteness through their behavior. samantha sees them at the university mixer, “grip[ping] each other’s pink-and-white bodies,” “temples pressed against temples” as if harboring “the telepathy of beautiful, murderous children in horror films” (awad, 2019, p. 3). she specifically refers to them as the children instead of the monsters of horror films, implying that they capture an unexpected terror with their innocence. the bunnies’ “squealing sounds of monstrous love [...] hurt [samantha’s] face.” she secretly prays that they might “implode” (awad, 2019, p. 3). samantha’s extreme reaction to the bunnies reflects what cuteness, to an uncanny degree, is meant to provoke. in their entangled state, the bunnies have complete command over her attention. they draw out a primitive and reflexive part of her that desires violence in the face of adoration. in turn, monstrous cuteness has a gendered dimension. at its surface, pure cuteness may be conflated with feminine naivete. certainly, cuteness is often stereotypically attributed to women who demonstrate the youthfulness, innocence, and submissiveness of children. however, this perspective obscures the performance aspect of cuteness that molds it into a tool of manipulation. in reading cuteness through the lens of monstrosity, it becomes more cryptic and androgynous, playing with traditional feminine expectations instead of into them. as anthony mcintyre of university college dublin (2020) writes in “gendering cuteness,” the ambiguousness of cuteness “mitigates the judgment of appropriate gender performance” (p. 5). that is, cuteness is “at once seemingly heteronormative and nonthreatening, while at the same time subversive in its creation of a space of personal agency on the part of its practitioners” (mcintyre, 2020, p. 3). certainly, the bunnies do not explicitly defy the gender binary. nonetheless, their hyper-adorability and “fake little girl voices” appear to be satirical responses to the infantilization of women (awad, 2019, p. 6). supporting the idea of their nonconformity is that, while the bunnies ruminate on men in theory, significant male presence does not breach the fabric of their lives. they only seem to seek physical intimacy, emotional support, and intellectual stimulation from each other. in a group, they recite their own sexually-charged poetry, earning praises from the other bunnies: “oh my god. so erotic” and “i absolutely love the way the erotic is rendered as a tactile, olfactory experience. every time you read that poem, bunny, it seems to possess you” (awad, 2019, p. 38). the target of their sexual expression is each other’s approbation. in the manifesto “the woman identified woman,” the coalition radicalesbians (1970) makes a point that, in our heteropatriarchy society, “the essence of being a ‘woman’ is to get fucked by men” (p. 2). thus, “until women see in each other the possibility of primal commitment which includes sexual love, they will be denying themselves the love and value they readily accord to men [...]” (radicalesbians, 1970, p. 2-3). although the bunnies do not directly have sex with each other, their monstrous cuteness affords them a vehicle of women identification. because they are so darling, their transgressions of normative heterosexual behavior are not scrutinized, giving them the space to be overt (yet covert) with their affection. consequently, monstrous cuteness has the potential for gender resistance. one way in which it fosters resistance is by creating heterotopias for women. michel foucault (1986) describes heterotopias as “places [...] outside of all places” in which real sites are “simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted” (p. 3). these spaces can be “privileged or sacred or forbidden,” they may also hold “individuals whose behavior is deviant in relation to the required mean or norm [...]” (foucault, 1986, p. 4-5). though they can be a mechanism for containing deviancy, heterotopias can also act as a sanctuary for the cutely monstrous by forgoing social constructs. in bunny, one such place is the smut salon, a routine gathering space for the bunnies to share their work. the practice is meant “to awaken [their] creativity,” “to open [their] hearts,” and “to be perverse” (awad, 2019, p. 37). at first glance, what is “perverse” appears to be their embrace of each other’s minds, sexualities, and company. certainly, just the spectacle of women reveling in one another is rendered abnormal by heteronormativity. nevertheless, the bunnies take their resistance one step further as women creators. in an attic that looks like a “dollhouse room,” sam is officially inducted into their “workshop” (awad, 2019, p. 109). the bunnies bring out an actual bunny and one remarks, “what kind of boy are we trying for today?” they are not boys, another corrects her, they are “intertextual spaces. fruitions. hybrids” or even “drafts” (awad, 2019, p. 113). then, the bunny explodes, covering the girls in gore. a knock comes at the door and it is the manifestation of their bloody ritual, a boy. he is “beautiful” but he has a “harelip” and screams when the bunnies try to talk to him (awad, 2019, p. 115). so, a bunny proceeds to kill him with an axe. as “drafts” of their ideal man, the boys represent the bunnies’ twisted process of (re)defining the masculine role within their heterotopia. thus, their secluded workshop is an avenue for creative liberation beyond what society finds acceptable or possible. “you’re…blocked,” they tell samantha about her stagnated writing (awad, 2019, p. 105). the written word is “flaccid,” but their workshop defies “genre,” “gender narratives,” and “the patriarchy of language” (awad, 2019, p. 105-6). the bunnies’ creations are unhindered by the constraints of writing, which cater to the androcentric cannon. as a result, the drafts are reflections of the girls’ inner selves and deepest desires: they are at once monstrous and cute. their aesthetics amalgamate human and animal traits, placing them within the “hybridity” that brzozowska-brywczyńska pinpoints. furthermore, their “contradictions” are “irreconcilable” to the point where they seem to be composed “of two or more radically distinct beings that, in their essential nature, have nothing to do with each other” (may, 2019, p. 129-30). the bunnies successfully produce drafts who are erudite and poetic, who stroke their faces and speak lines like “your beauty is nuanced and labyrinthine like a sentence by proust” (awad, 2019, p. 84). however, they are still tethered to their beastly instincts, with one “munching on [samantha’s] corsage with a vengeance” (awad, 2019, p. 91). the drafts are prime examples of how monstrous cuteness challenges existing structures. their resistance to a singular species categorization or conduct makes them profoundly “anti-dichotomy” (may, 2019, p. 8). they move through territory that is familiar and unfamiliar, natural and unnatural, and archaic and futuristic. in doing so, they open up what is possible, particularly for female creators, who are able to conjure their exact visions of boy-girl relations. as the bunnies put it, “it makes [them] feel a little like god” and, accordingly, they are the gods of creation within their heterotopic workshop (awad, 2019, p. 125). another aspect of the feminine heterotopia is that it encourages community. as radicalesbians (1970) emphasize, any gender norm divergence, such as lesbianism, can leave its actor “living much of her life alone” (p. 1). loneliness plagues women who believe that they are solitary in their struggle against gender expectations when many others feel the same. enclosed havens give them the opportunity to share with each other without stigma or male obstruction. although samantha feels nervous entering the smut salon, a bunny’s smile is “like an embrace” (awad, 2019, p. 33). after she experiences the draft-making ritual for the first time and faces its marvelous grotesqueness, she joins the bunny mind-meld. together, the girls “huddle-hug,” saying “oh bunny, i love you,” “i love you, bunny” (awad, 2019, p. 124). there is no distinction among them as though they are a joint entity, countering patriarchal individualism. in the power of cute, simon may (2019) argues that cuteness “is fundamentally an appeal to others: an invitation to sociality” in which “one discovers oneself already drawn into the orbit of a lovable and intimate other” (p. 18). monstrous cuteness, then, draws one even closer, for it touches and bonds the darkest, most shameful (yet most wanting) parts of us. under heteronormativity, women are shamed for the desire to live a woman-identified life. the drafts give the bunnies a way to essentially romance each other. the bunnies design a bunny-boy inspired by samantha’s past crush, who tells her he doesn’t even think about the girl he chose instead of her, but rather “how much infinitely hotter” she is (awad, 2019, p. 89). the draft placates her deepest insecurities and—originating from the bunnies’ own intentions—he lets samantha know that she is still loveable. she dances with him while the other bunnies dance with their draft dates. as they sway, one bunny “locks eyes” with samantha and “winks” (awad, 2019, p. 90). they may hold the boys’ bodies, but the poetry, comfort, and love come from the girls themselves. because the bunnies fully embrace monstrous cuteness in their creations, they can take transformative and even violent action against patriarchal oppression. in “s.c.u.m. manifesto (society for cutting up men),” radical feminist valerie solanas expresses that men are an inferior species that project their shortcomings onto women. the tyranny they enact takes away women’s freedom of expression and creation. critically, the drafts do not possess any of the suppressive qualities that solanas lists. for solanas (1967), men are appalling when they prevent platonic relationships between women. ideally, women should have the power “to engage in intensely absorbing, emotionally satisfying activities which, when shared with those you respect, lead to deep friendship” (p. 8). likewise, the workshop is an intensely absorbing, emotionally satisfying activity from which the bunny-boys culminate. therefore, these “men” depend on the bunnies’ material bond and have neither the objective nor the capacity to destroy it. solanas goes on to criticize male artists who con women into believing that “great art” is “created by men.” these men proclaim that “only those with exquisite sensitivities far superior to [women’s] can perceive and appreciate the slop they appreciate” (solanas, 1967, p. 9). contrarily, the bunny-boys speak to the greatness of women’s artistic measures as art by women. their sensitivities to literature and culture are the bunnies’ sensitivities. and with their manifestation, samantha is no longer insecure about external perceptions of her work. she thinks, “fuck you, poets. you think you are so smart, so cool with your word art. you have no idea. can you conjure hybrid spaces?” (awad, 2019, p. 124). as she learns, under male domination of the artistic realm, women can only exact great potential in modes that are inaccessible to them. samantha relishes in that fact that these supposed “poets” have “no idea” what extraordinary artistry she and the bunnies possess. finally, solanas (1967) says that “the lecherous male [...] has to [have sex]” because his “ego consists of his cock” (p. 9). in contrast, the drafts are distinctly cockless; they are missing “hands,” “genitals,” “an untwisted mouth,” and “possibly a soul” (awad, 2019, p. 125). all of the body parts that seek sexual attention/gratification from women are gone or warped, as is the soul that motivates the ego. while the drafts are corporeally monstrous, they are made cute by the irregularities that make them tangibly less threatening. as one of the bunnies puts it, “an other but not a so scary other that he won’t be able to make her tea with the dainty gestures of an anemic englishmen” (awad, 2019, p. 129). ultimately, the bunnies’ construction of bunnyboys gives insight into the extent women can thrive in the company of cuter, weaker, and emphatically better men. in spite of the promise they offer, the bunnies are still unafraid to put the drafts on the chopping block. similarly, in her manifesto, solanas (1967) vows for scum to “kill all men” except those “who are working diligently to eliminate themselves” (p. 14). many of solanas’ readers interpret her goal as a sardonic jab against self-important men, though it is hard to say what her true intentions were. either way, her murderous intent received the reaction it sought to provoke: men were outraged and forced to reflect on their own offenses. the bunnies take it one step further by bringing her vision into reality. in doing so, they rebuff the doubters who found safety in satire, substantiating the value of an actual women-run society. even when the drafts pose no threat to them, the bunnies axe them for not meeting their standards. “the ones who don’t work out for [them] for a number of reasons, [they] let go” (awad, 2019, p. 126). unlike solanas (1967), they are unconcerned about making their killings “selective and discriminate” (p. 15). in a way, they encapsulate solanas’ lawless call to action even better than her imparted directions, for they exact their power without worrying about being good role models, good leaders, or good girls. it is made clear that the bunny-boys are both disposable and replaceable— the girls do not depend on them for anything substantial. they rebel against the misogynistic conception whereby “[women] are authentic, legitimate, real to the extent that [they] are the property of some man” (radicalesbians, 1970, p. 3). if anything, the drafts are the ones who are “unreal” and mercurial in comparison to their hatchet-wielding female creators. notably, the bunnies commit the slaughters within the confines of their heterotopia. “scum will always operate on a criminal as opposed to a civil disobedience basis, that is, as opposed to openly violating the law and going to jail in order to draw attention to an injustice,” solanas (1967) writes, “scum is out to destroy the system, not attain certain rights within it” (p. 15). the bunnies align with scum in this respect; likely, their reimagination of gender relations would be stifled and demonized by the public. heteropatriarchy boxes women within “goodness” and “badness,” a trap that solanas (1967) comes close to falling into with her separation of “daddy’s girls”—“nice, passive, accepting ‘cultivated’, polite, dignified, subdued, dependent, scared, mindless, insecure, approval-seeking”—and scum—“dominant, secure, self-confident, nasty, violent, selfish, independent, proud, thrill-seeking, free-wheeling, arrogant” (p. 14). the bunnies are outwardly perceived as saccharine, but, had their activities become known, they would immediately be shut down as negative outliers of proper femininity. in their covert elimination of the drafts, the bunnies are able to freely resist binary categorization, proving that women can encompass multiple and seemingly contradictory facets. in the hybrid space of their workshop, they are monstrously cute in their closeness and bloodthirst. they are the scum of daddy’s girls. nonetheless, there are limitations to gender resistance within monstrous cuteness. although the bunnies try to define their creations as “hybrids” and “drafts,” several times, they slip and refer to them as “boys” (awad, 2019, p. 131). they struggle to view the drafts in a nonbinary or genderless light; in turn, they still cling to maleness as a means of fulfilling their fantasies. their killings take away the breaths but not the growing influence of the boys. one of samantha’s creations develops the ability to make judgments for himself, escaping the heterotopia. because the bunnies are all “in love with [him],” it sends their friendship into a frenzy (awad, 2019, p. 260). at their poetry program, the bunnies criticize each other instead of giving praise like they usually do. samantha notices that they “look like puked up soup,” failing to maintain their lovely image (awad, 2019, p. 255). it seems that their monstrous intimacy could not survive the heteronormative attack. radicalesbians (1970) may condemn them as “women [who] have related to and through men,” who are too afraid to truly decenter men from their lives (p. 3). eventually, samantha strikes an axe at her creation, so that “the boy they are fighting for isn’t a boy anymore” (awad, 2019, p. 296). only then do the bunnies somewhat return to their previous selves. yet, they are still “a ring of broken girls” with “four crooked pink-and-white bodies”—less cute and also less monstrous (awad, 2019, p. 301). it can be interpreted that monstrous cuteness, to the extent that the bunnies possess it, is paradigm-shifting within their heterotopia but vulnerable to the gender pressures outside of it. another deficiency of monstrous cuteness as a tool of women’s liberation is the issue of which women get to use it. it cannot be discounted that the bunnies are all rich, white girls within an elite institution. they carried out their monstrous actions without consequence because society already assigns innate innocence and cuteness to them. on the other hand, women of color, particularly those of the working class, are already made “monstrous” by discrimination. cuteness is not afforded to them, much less the nuance of monstrous cuteness. even as a scholarship student, samantha has decidedly less access to the heterotopia formed by the bunnies and has to be introduced by them. in accordance, “cuteness [is] a marker of racial distinction” that reflects the “asymmetries of social power” (mcintyre, 2020, p. 4). readers are urged to give more scrutiny to the bunnies’ backgrounds, which affix them very much within the system of privilege. all in all, in bunny, monstrous cuteness grants the bunnies control over their identities in relation to womanhood, creation, men, and each other. in the refuge of their workshop, they played and killed in hybrid space. monstrous cuteness, then, is “a harbinger of what the future might hold” (may, 2019, p. 126). it allows us to “question [...] who really has power” and even “the point of being in the dominant position” (may, 2019, p. 45). that is to say, the bunnies had knowledge and impact in strikingly clever, artistic, and unmasculine ways. although the bunnies’ efforts were sequestered, they inspire the notion of a feminine heterotopia in which monstrous cuteness can evolve and permeate. references awad, m. (2019). bunny. penguin books. brzozowska-brywczyńska, m. (2007). monstrous/cute. notes on the ambivalent nature of cuteness. in n. scott (eds.), monsters and the monstrous. myths and metaphors of enduring evil (pp. 1-17). rodopi. foucault, m., & miskowiec, j. (1986). of other spaces. diacritics, 16(1), 22–27. https://doi.org/10.2307/464648 may, s. (2019). the power of cute. princeton university press. mcintyre, a. p. (2020). gendering cuteness. the international encyclopedia of gender, media, and communication (pp. 1-6). john wiley & sons. radicalesbians. (1970). “the woman identified woman.” solanas, v. (1967). “s.c.u.m. manifesto (society for cutting up men).” microsoft word me+copied (1).docx mamá y eva mother and eve theresa e. nelson, stanford ’22 if my mother saw me, she would be horrified. i know this because i had a nightmare once. thrice, really. i dreamt that i had just arrived at a towering, columned vacation home in time for the whole-family reunion. she came down the stairs, linen blue dress billowing behind her, and helped me carry my bags. in the kitchen, before i could stop her, she unzipped my duffle and pulled out a bulbous, girthy dildo. for each of the three nights after that, when i would fall asleep, my subconscious would drop me back into that gaudy mansion where i would walk into the kitchen and meet my mamá’s dark, furious gaze. eva of my dream ruined the family vacation. eva of the present is quashing my weak attempts at a sexy vibe, so i physically shake off thoughts of my mother. i figure i’ve pondered this moment long enough and should stop the delay. it took me two months to finally make this purchase, plus an extra 24 hours, since i waited to pick the box off my doorstep, even though i was here the moment she came. forge on. i tear through the packaging. shit! i can’t quite take the piece of tape off the rim of the box without it chipping away in bits, can’t precisely expose the cardboard folds, one end tightly tucked into the other, without permanently creasing the box. never mind! decisively now, i rip off chunks of cardboard as they cringe and whine. now, the packaging finally torn through, i take her in…with my eyes. two black petals curve slightly to the left. one supposedly for the outside, the other petal goes in. the g-spot is really just an extension of the clitoris. phallic, but tastefully so. intended to do all the work of a penis. except better? she’s ergonomic, a sharp contrast from the $15 ikea desk chair i’m in. however, much like this chair, she smells strongly of plastic. she is pompous, confident. the space between her two lips curve into a coy smile that looks neither pained nor rehearsed. she is made to feel natural. she is overcompensating because she is not. a glare reflects off the outside arm; she was made for a sex dungeon, not for my overpriced, under lit basement apartment with dirtied white walls and the same tile ceiling as my middle school science classroom. deep breaths. our fingers touch; a human to machine handshake; appendage to appendage. we— that which is supposed to awaken something within me—and i meet. as i turn her over in my hand, trace the edge of my manicured nail from the tip to the base of this stiff paperweight, i close my eyes. i will her to life. click. click. click. fuck! batteries not included. ------ when i turned eleven, mamá took me to my first sex talk. like all things remotely intimate, she preferred to outsource difficult conversations to entrusted professionals like abstinence-only health teachers, nuns, gynecologists who advertised as adamantly opposed to birth control, and celibate middle-aged priests. always the overachiever, i learned the rules of the subject fast, and i was the star of the show during every presentation’s concluding review. premarital sex? you’ll go to hell. birth control? hell. kissing girls? hell. abortion? worse than hell. masturbation? blasphemous. consent? unnecessary; just tell him you’re on your period and he’ll leave you right alone. i can still visualize the surprise in my mom’s eyes, trim eyebrows raised in confusion, when we went out to lunch after the sex talk, and i called the little buzzing box—the square that was meant to alert us when our food was ready—a vibrator when it shook. even then, though, we knew how to laugh at the things that made our insides curdle with shame. ---- memories of this day flood back to me as i dig through the bin at the bottom of my closet. i’m sure two aa batteries must be hiding in here. could they be in the same little box where three discarded purity cards—i signed them at ages eleven, twelve and thirteen, vowing my virginal self to my future husband—were strewn? no, that would be too ironic. time for a walk to the grocery store, then, i guess. ------ for lent, mamá gave up carbs. i gave up nothing, so i have no remorse throwing extra chocolate chips and three packets of yeast into the cart. i’ll bake sweet rolls before i go home for dinner tonight. i’ll feel justified because the pastor preached from the pulpit on wednesday that these forty days of repentance were “not about losing weight” — literally his exact words. fine by me. but either it went over my mamá’s head, no taller than five feet three and a half when she stands in her low heels, or she thought that that particular sentence only applied to the cafeteria catholics: the people who go to mass only on easters, christmases, and particularly guilt-driven wednesdays for their ashes. is that who i am, now, mamita? throughout the sermon, she sat stiff as a bronze virgen: ankles crossed—my thighs would always be met with a discreet slap if i ever tried crossing my knobby knees in the sanctuary, but mamá never had to be reminded—spine straight, earrings dangling, dress pressed, hair gelled so tightly into place that the freezing wind from the vents stood no chance of displacing them, fingers entwined in prayer hands. for mamá, lent is about losing weight and praying enough that it could seem like it wasn’t, because everything is about getting back to the 120 pounds she was destined to be. run three days a week. on rest days, yoga and abs. no dessert. no processed snacks. and, until the lord’s resurrection, not a single slice of bread. ---- by my first year of high school, i was such a decorated master in the rules and regulations of sexuality, on display for all to see with my new purity ring—a present from my parents to la quinceañera—that i was asked by the leader of my church’s youth group to help organize the diocese-wide purity rally for teens and young adults at the end of the summer. my friend rafael and i were cast in the leading roles for the widely anticipated “skittles skit.” last month, when i saw rafael again to roll a joint, smoke it to a stub, and slurp oreo milkshakes with a spoon while glaring at the ceiling, i considered reminding him of our on-stage debut together: him, the moreno colombiano, and me, the gringa mexicana performing before a crowd of white faces. that day, in front of 500 people, we stood side by side, and i teased open a package of skittles that, initially, i refuse to share. we chatted casually—certainly so casually that no one could tell how rehearsed our script was—about rafael’s fictitious, nondescript new crush, but it quickly became clear that he was walking more and more decisively towards the precipitous suggestion that he was going to seduce her into bed with him on friday night when his parents were out of town. as rafael blabbered, i continued to stuff my face with skittles, collecting in my cheeks a rubbery, gnawed stash of red, green, orange, and yellow imitations of tropical fruit until, at the very end, i looked him straight in the eye to assert, “rafa, you’re not going to marry this girl. one day, you’ll find your future spouse, and the best gift that you can give to her is you. all of you. so don’t go giving away little pieces of yourself to other people along the way.” and then, drawing the audience in for the punchline, i remind him that at the beginning of the conversation, he wanted some skittles. “do you still want some?” i ask. “yes!” he jumps in, eager now. i stretch out my hand to clasp his, ready to share until, gasp!, to the shock of the fifteenand sixteen-year-olds in the crowd, i upchuck the wad of skittles i’ve been squirreling in my cheeks right into the center of his palm. “how does it feel to get something that’s been used?” i jab. end scene. i could have reminded rafael about all this last month, could have asked if he’s repressed dehumanizing memories from his upbringing, too. these days, rafael is decidedly not into pussy, and he talks to no one else from our church group, either. but instead, we counted the freckles and divots in his popcorn ceiling, constructing our own constellations that to the renters who lived there before him and the ones who will live there after could never look the same. ---- i burst through my front door, sweaty from climbing the six steps, banging grocery bags draped from my arms, and i immediately fling it all aside. i scrub my hands in the kitchen sink, and then dig through my seven new plastic turtle killers and/or grocery bags until i find the yeast. next time don’t forget your damn reusables, eva. i bring the yeast to the counter while i flail my arms out this way and that, grabbing a mixing bowl, softened butter, bags of flour, measuring spoons, a dollop of cinnamon. “hey siri!” i gripe, bringing my cell to life, “call mamasita on speaker!” “calling mu-ma-sit-u mobile on speaker.” she retorts, with choppy pauses, our near-daily call and response, and then she is drowned out by an oppressive ringing. “hello.” “hola mamita! ¿cómo está usted?” we begin our spanglish jests. me, feigning formality. her, ignorance. “hello? who is this?” “it’s me, mamá, tu hija bonita, chiquita, lindita, favorita.” i combine flour, milk, egg, butter, and yeast to churn into an enriched dough. “hmm no, i don’t have one of those daughters.” she has at least four, on a good day. “oh, is that so? maybe the lounging on the couch eating potato chips all day is dulling your memory.” lucky for her, potato chips are not the type of carb she gave up. “or maybe all that scrolling through your phone all day is dulling yours. anyways i’m just waiting for your real mother to come take you back.” “is that so?” fingers pointed downward and curved, i begin to knead, gently and slowly at first, tender as a new lover, and then picking up speed, pounding, stretching, slapping. my breath quickens, and i arch my back into it. “yes, of course. anyways, what are you up to?” this time, she matches my tone, ripping out her sing-song voice she uses just for me, because even though she’s never spoken the words aloud, everyone knows i’m her favorite daughter. i had always suspected this, but i found out for sure one evening when i was eight, and my mother had a buy one, get one free kids meal from a fancy shmancy restaurant nearby that, with the whole family in tow, we could never afford. but, never one to turn down a coupon, mamá decided to make it a competition: whoever behaved the best the week leading up to its expiration would get to have a special date with her; the rest of the girls would stay at home that night with dad. the night before the date was set, i really had no intention of snooping, but on my way down the hall to the bathroom, after my parents thought we were all asleep, i heard mamá report, “of course it’s eva who won, and i’m glad to take her. the other three didn’t stand a chance.” i was not surprised, because that’s how it had always been. eva kept her room clean and organized without having to be told; eva offered to help with dinner; eva was the bullied sister, but never the bully, so one could reasonably be sympathetic towards her. “mini blanca,” all my tías call me, because i was the only one who came out as a round peg who could easily lock into the round hole of a life mamá wanted for us, nothing like the square peg burras margarita, rebellious lara, or even crybaby ana grew up to be. square pegs, round hole. the other three didn’t stand a chance “i’m not doing much,” i answer her question, drawing out the vowels to continue our conversation’s jive. “i’m just making some chocolate chip sweet buns. i’ll bring some over this evening for daddy and lara if they turn out right.” lara is the youngest of the four daughters, and she’s the only one to live at home still. margarita and ana escaped, ran out west in search of golden independence the first chance they could. “well, that sounds lovely, but you’d be better off bringing none. i don’t need those things sitting around when i’m bored and get the munchies.” mamá is now often bored. as a result, she often has the munchies. her whole adult life she didn’t have time for much more than being a mom and a homemaker. she was underpaid and, most days, underappreciated, but i wonder if she thought that was better than the in-between she lives in these days. her only daughter left at home barely needs her help and attention. grandchildren are a far cry from where my sisters and i are now, four single young women with only an aged cat between us as far as living, breathing responsibilities go. between mamá’s workouts and the twenty minutes a day it takes to clean her emptying house, her days are quiet. “well at least i’ll bring you a taste.” “hmm, well i don’t need it.” a non-committal refusal, easy enough to walk back later if her cup of perseverant grace has runneth dry by the end of the evening. “and what are you up to?” i plop the now smooth, spent ball of dough into a bowl, giving it a chance to breath before round two. “well, i just cut two of my fresh zucchinis and i’m prepping them to make a lasagna with the sliced vegetable instead of noodles. i might even have to say—and you know i don’t use this word lightly—but my dinner is looking to be pretty sexi.” yes, sexi, not sexy; one is playful and cute, the other is suggestive and lewd. she drawls out her last two words for dramatic effect, and i can picture in my mind her eyebrows raising, bouncing up and down to her sarcastic rhythm. “mmmm, mamá. i can’t wait to try your sexi ricotta concoction. i’ll be there by six.” “i sure hope you will, because dinner won’t be served a minute later, and if you’re not on time, i can’t promise there’ll be anything left for you. más me toca. more for me.” she lets out a childish, slightly maniacal giggle. he he he har har. “okay then, little mamá! don’t you worry. i won’t let that happen. see you soon. i love you.” each sentence comes out like a series of quick pecks on the head of a small child. “i love you too. drive safe. bye-bye.” ---- after my first orgasm, i became an addict. in the fourth grade, i learned that if i let one leg hang off the edge of my desk chair, and while it dangled, swung it back and forth, the crease between my legs would rub against the hard surface. “eva, come down for dinner!” “¡me voy!” i could swing and rub, swing and be rubbed, with my forehead propped on the ledge of my desk behind the locked door of my bedroom for only a minute or two until my thighs and buttocks clenched and my cheeks flushed. “eva! dinner!” “i said i’m coming!” and i locked my jaw, rub and swing, swing, and rub, until, throughout my whole body, i would feel a rush of release. then, i would dash downstairs, breathless from the exertion, and slide into my seat at the dinner table. addict as i was, this was my daily pursuit. ---- there is silence over dinner, but only because the zucchini lasagna is everything it was promised to be, and afterwards, when mamá, lara, and i sit around nibbling up the last crumbs of the sweet buns, kicking and touching toes under the kitchen table, i turn back to dad, who was washing dishes, to ask if he has any spare batteries. ---- after the first sex talk, i stopped rubbing myself on the edge of my desk chair. masturbation was, after all—even if it involved no lustful thoughts, impure glances, nor even a bad intention—a sin. all the experts said so. i quit then, cold turkey, and on my next trip to the sacrament, i walked into the confessional sweating. “bless me father, for i have sinned,” i repeated my well-rehearsed lines. “it has been four weeks since my last confession.” before entering, i was waiting in line and, reverently—never turning my back to the altar, blessing myself whenever the line inched up and i progressed past a holy water font— i followed along in the 10 commandments confession guide for adults. i was too old for the children’s one now. my catechism and newly acquired knowledge of sexual sin allowed me to level-up. i trotted along, making my way through the back of the church, watching sinners walk into a room and saved walk out, and reading in the confessional guide the commandments and their sins, the sacred laws of god that i could have mortally broken. “number one: i am the lord your god; you shall have no other gods besides me.” bless me, father, for i have – in my heart, but never in practice – preferred to stay home and watch television in place of coming to mass. i have worshiped the false god of the glowing screen. “number two: you shall not take the lord’s name in vain.” the words oh my g*d have passed through my lips at least 12 times this past month. on and down the list of sins i read. better out then in, because not confessing all your sins on purpose is just another sin. i marked each infraction with the green crayon i snatched—and planned to return; no stealing! —from the collection of children’s coloring sheets and activities in the church’s foyer. then, i read it. “number six: you shall not commit adultery.” the big one. the doozy. after the text of the commandment was listed a slew of potential sins, longer than any other commandment on the page, because, if there is one thing the catholics do well, it is demonizing sexual sin. thank goodness, because without them, how would i have known that i was falling into a lustful trap? i lifted my crayon with trepidation to permanently stain the sheet; i circled “masturbation.” when, finally, it was my turn to walk into the confessional, my palms could hardly grip the knob. i closed the door behind me and flung myself to my knees. ---- i kiss my mamá on my way out the door. i hug her twice. “thanks for dinner, mamita. i’ll see you next week.” “okay, drive safe! have a good week at work, and don’t forget to text me when you get home.” she waves from the porch as i drive away. ---- other kids loved roller coasters. but i never craved nor rejoiced in the minutes, sometimes hours, of agonizing anxiety spent waiting in line, being drenched in screams, and watching as other amusement park goers were thrust and jerked upside down and backwards, just to eventually strap myself aboard the same machine and endure the jostling for the sake of a quick release. no. not for me. because i experienced the same ups and downs within my heart and soul every month on my knees in the confessional. in the fourth grade, i walked out of that small, holy room, legs shaking, weightless, and full of divine joy. ---- “hey siri!” my phone awakens. “text mamasita, ‘i just got home and am locked in safe and sound.’” “ready to send it?” “send.” ---- i step out of the hot shower and melt into my puffed towel as i wrap it around my chest. i busy myself with any task i can: running a brush through my water-matted curls, starting at the bottom and working my way to the top, avoiding the pulling and snapping of taught, wet lines that ensues if i force too fast; brushing my teeth with meticulous swirls— front, top left, bottom left, front, bottom right, top right, back around again—until two minutes have long come and gone; massaging and smoothing lotion into the creases in my cheekbones, my forehead, the ridge of my nose, then plunging deeper, closing my eyes and swirling it into my neck, the bones in my shoulders, my underarms, the bulges of my thighs. i touch all of me, and then i shove open the door of the bathroom, releasing in its wake an aromatic puff of heavy steam. ---- i knew your body before i knew mine i knew the sound of your heart beating the mild taste of your breasts the bulge of your belly once, twice more, the knobs in your knees when that was as high as i could see. naked, in my mirror, blue eyes locked below your dark, arched brows, i cradle my breasts. i caress my belly. i watch knees give way to shapely thighs as i stand on my tippy toes. yours. mine. let me grow. ---- i am ready. i return to my discarded toy, digging it out from the back of my bedside drawer. i slide in the batteries that i took from home, clinking them smoothly into place one behind the other, before i reattach the head of the shaft. come into me. bring me into me. i thumb the power button and utter a prayer. give us this day our daily orgasm. with pressure and a flick, i bring her to life. ---- meet the piece: “mamá y eva” is a creative fiction coming-of-age story of a mexican american woman exploring her sexuality within the confines of her memory of a catholic upbringing. i wrote it as part of a creative writing course at stanford. what this piece ultimately reveals of my own life is the immense love i will always have for my mamita. microsoft word ce+rivera-de+leon+submission+revised.docx reducing the risk and prevalence of cannabis use disorder in lgbtq+ high schoolers axel rivera-de leon, stanford ’23 abstract: over the past few decades, the nature of cannabis in american society has changed dramatically. cannabis is steadily increasing in potency and making a mainstream entrance into our society as it is gradually decriminalized and legalized around the country. with these changes comes a need to investigate the effects of the increasing reach of cannabis on adolescents. particularly, high schoolers are at an age when they are slowly gaining autonomy and seeking to make adult decisions. specifically, lgbtq+ youth face injustice and inequity when it comes to housing, schooling, parenting, and medical care; all these factors combine into increased risk for cannabis use disorder (cud) in lgbtq+ youth. this paper will outline the ideal combination of protective factors and reduction of risk factors created through individual-, school-, and policy-level interventions that would hopefully reduce the risk and prevalence of cud in lgbtq+ high schoolers. content warning: this paper discusses substance abuse, mental health, and discrimination. readers are advised to take these into account before proceeding. introduction in 2021, we find ourselves at a turning point for cannabis legalization, prevalence, and normalization in american society. with decriminalization and legalization bills being debated and passed in state governments around the united states, cannabis is making a mainstream entrance into our society. along with attitudes about cannabis, cannabis itself is changing. over the past couple of decades, cannabis has decreased in price and increased in accessibility and potency from around 9% to 30% thc in the past 3 decades (amiet et al., 2020). with the rapidly changing nature and presence of cannabis in modern society comes a need to assess how these changes impact and influence adolescents. adolescence is a time-period marked by experimentation, a fight for autonomy, and the pursuit of peer acceptance and the formation of a group identity (medoff, substance abuse). additionally, the adolescent brain undergoes neurobiological changes that contribute to emotional and behavioral changes; the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for cognitive control and impulse inhibition, experiences a decline in serotonin and glucose metabolism. the amygdala, which is responsible for emotional processing and motivation, grows during puberty, particularly in males. these changing brain regions are also regions associated with addiction. (medoff, substance abuse) ultimately, a novel substance introduced into an adolescent’s brain chemistry has the potential to take advantage of their developing, manipulable brain. trying a substance for the first time is daring and exhilarating, and this novelty stimulates the release of dopamine (medoff, substance abuse). a literature review found stronger acute and chronic effects of regular heavy cannabis use during adolescence rather than heavy use during adulthood, suggesting the adolescent brain is particularly sensitive to cannabis. specifically, the development of the endocannabinoid system may be disrupted, and synaptic pruning and white matter development may both be impacted, which may cascade into other negative cognitive and developmental effects (lubman et al., 2015). all these factors together create an ideal breeding ground for a substance use disorder in adolescents. cannabis use disorder (cud) is a diagnosis given to people with problematic cannabis consumption habits, defined as the inability to stop using cannabis despite its negative impacts on their health or social life. a 2020 research study analyzing data from the national survey of drug use and health from the substance abuse and mental health services administration found that adolescents aged 12-17 who began to use cannabis within the last 12 months were significantly more likely to develop a cannabis use disorder than young adults aged 18-25 who similarly began to use cannabis within the last 12 months (volkow et al., 2021). this finding signals a faster transition to a substance use disorder in adolescence than in young adulthood and emphasizes the dire need for an early intervention. generally, the literature agrees that experiencing cannabis for the first time at a younger age is correlated with a higher risk of developing a cud. cud is consistently more prevalent in people who had an earlier first-time experience using cannabis; additionally in the cited study, at each 12-month period since first-time cannabis use, adolescents had significantly higher rates of cud than their young adult counterparts (han et al., 2018). when cud takes a step further and becomes a multifaceted substance abuse disorder, called polysubstance use disorder in the dsmiv but dropped in the dsm-v in favor of diagnosing multiple individual substance use disorders, youth are put at risk for other health concerns. youth with polysubstance use report worse physical and mental health, often engage in other risk behaviors, perform worse in school and have lower high school graduation rates, and are more likely to increase than decrease the number of substances used over time (zuckermann et al., 2020). these findings further emphasize the urgent need to prevent adolescents from trying cannabis at an early age. lgbtq+ youth are often subject to identity-based harassment and discrimination and thus face additional risks for developing cud. lgbtq+ youth are more likely to experience bullying, harassment, feelings of alienation, and assault (prevost, 2021), and adolescents who have been physically or sexually assaulted are more likely to develop a substance use disorder (human rights campaign foundation). data from the youth risk behavior surveillance survey in 2017 found that lgb high school students used substances at significantly higher rates than their heterosexual counterparts (kann et al., 2018). transgender youth in particular face additional inequities and unique outcomes when it comes to the harms associated with cannabis use disorder and substance abuse in general. this population is often overlooked in terms of interventions and prevention. moreover, transgender youth often face additional discrimination in healthcare and bullying at school, putting them at greater risk for poor social and health outcomes. an analysis of data from a gender clinic in los angeles found that 51% of clients reported lifetime suicidal ideation, and 30% reported at least one lifetime suicide attempt (connolly et al., 2016). a 2019 study found that people with a substance use disorder have a risk of dying by suicide seven times greater than people without substance use disorders (the trevor project, 2020). while this statistic was determined for the general population, it can be safely assumed that transgender youth, who face higher rates of suicide attempts and death by suicide compared to their cisgender counterparts, would have compound risk associated with experiencing cannabis use disorder. this demographic should be properly screened and monitored for any comorbid increase in mood disorder symptoms, which would further increase their risk for a suicide attempt (medoff, self-harm). furthermore, it is unjust to discuss lgbtq+ youth without underlining prevalence of homelessness in the population. somewhere from 20 to 40% of unhoused youth identify as lgbtq+ (homelessness policy research institute, 2019), and 2% identify as transgender (los angeles homeless services authority, 2020), meaning that lgbtq+ youth are disproportionately represented in the total unhoused youth population. combining this with the racial demographics of unhoused youth, we find that systemic racism also causes lgbtq+ people of color to be disproportionately affected by homelessness. compounding with the health disparities associated with identifying as lgbtq+, being unhoused puts lgbtq+ youth at risk for negative health outcomes on a completely different scale, also opening them up to secondary health effects because of potential cannabis or other substance abuse. lgbtq+ youth experiencing homelessness are more likely to use drugs and be hiv positive in comparison to the overall united states homeless youth population (homelessness policy research institute, 2019). additionally, the covid-19 pandemic and social distancing guidelines may exacerbate solitude and other social risk factors for lgbtq+ adolescents, increasing the likelihood of partaking in riskier cannabis use habits. a canadian study administered an online survey to adolescents in 2020 and found that the frequency of cannabis use increased in adolescents from the 3 weeks before and after social distancing practices were put into effect (dumas et al., 2020). covid-19 and the subsequent stay-at-home orders put many into isolation, disrupting usual routines and limiting access to entertainment, resources, and socialization. for adolescents who use cannabis, they may be used to smoking in a social group setting, which would no longer be permitted under the stay-at-home order, pushing them to smoke alone. moreover, smoking alone puts adolescents at new risk. solitary cannabis use in adolescence is associated with more frequent cannabis use and more cud symptoms with a weak association with continued cud symptoms in young adulthood (creswell et al., 2015). many of these social users may have turned to solitary cannabis use during the pandemic as a source of entertainment and as a mechanism to cope with this newfound solitude, potentially pushing them towards developing a cud. solitary cannabis users have been found to open up to their parents about their personal problems less than social-only cannabis users (ellickson et al., 2006), which may compound with the secrecy of not being open with one’s sexuality, creating a wide rift in knowledge and emotional connection between parents and their lgbtq+ children. a longitudinal study following eighth grade solitary substance users found that these users had lower academic achievement and less understanding of the consequences of substance use, and this translated into poorer self-rated health and greater substance use problems by age 23 (ellickson et al., 2006). overall, the amalgamation of risk factors, health disparities, effects of systemic racism, and rapidly changing nature of cannabis in society has led to a disproportionate risk for lgbtq+ youth to develop a cud. with this in mind, we must call for a sweeping series of changes in policy, individual treatment, and societal attitudes to protect lgbtq+ youth, particularly transgender youth and lgbtq+ youth of color, from falling victim to cud at the fault of our society. this paper will focus on highlighting potential areas for intervention in three facets of adolescent cannabis use: monitoring, protective factors, and treatment. substance abuse does not exist in a vacuum and should not be considered in isolation given the complex social and environmental risk factors that could make substance use a symptom of a greater issue rather than the predominant health issue itself. as a result, this paper will also consider some of the differential risk factors based on social determinants of health and highlight areas of health inequity in this issue. individual-level interventions: therapy and medication options the literature on psychiatric medications to treat cannabis use disorder, particularly in adolescents, is extremely limited and with variable, sometimes even conflicting conclusions. an early literature review found that many of the typical pharmacotherapies used for other psychiatric disorders, such as “ssri antidepressants, mixed action antidepressants, atypical antidepressants (bupropion), anxiolytics (buspirone) and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (atomoxetine),” provide little benefit in the treatment of cud (marshall et al., 2014). a 2021 systematic review and meta-analysis of pharmacotherapies in the treatment of cud in adults found some promising preliminary results but a lack of sufficient evidence to support the use of one specific medication in treatment (bahji et al., 2021). researchers must continue their search for an effective pharmacotherapeutic intervention for this vulnerable population. however, due to the high association between cud and major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder, at least in adults, medication used to treat the comorbid mood disorder may be effective in reducing cannabis use in adults with cud and a comorbid mdd or gad diagnosis (onaemo, fawehinmi & d’arcy, 2021). these already tentative results cannot be extrapolated to adolescents without further investigation. this same study in adults found that experiencing depressive symptoms significantly preceded increased cannabis consumption in the following month; however, the reverse pathway (i.e. increased cannabis consumption preceding greater depressive symptoms in the following month) was not significant, suggesting that treatment of an underlying mood disorder may alleviate heavy cannabis use (onaemo, fawehinmi & d’arcy, 2021). additionally, empirical evidence supporting therapy options for adolescents with cud is similarly limited. as of 2020, there were only two randomized control trials to test the efficacy of different therapy options – cognitive behavioral therapy (cbt), motivational enhancement therapy (met), and multidimensional family therapy (mdft) – in treating adolescents with cud. despite the shallow literature pool, both studies found that adolescents with cud who underwent cbt, met, and mdft treatment, or a combination thereof, experienced significant decreases in cannabis use, with some even no longer meeting the criteria for cud. however, both trials also resulted in high relapse rates at over 50% of participants experiencing at least one relapse episode after their course of treatment (aguinaldo et al., 2019). the high rates of cannabis use reduction in response to these therapies combined with high relapse rates demonstrate a need to actively participate in therapy to reap its benefits. additionally, adolescents who no longer meet the criteria for cud are not considered “cured”; rather, they are always at risk of relapsing and returning to cannabis abuse. consequently, adolescents with cud, who are at continued increased risk of cud and other substance abuse through young adulthood, should continue to be monitored even after receiving effective therapy treatment. especially when discussing treatment options for lgbtq+ youth, there are important limitations that may affect a lgbtq+ youth’s access to certain treatments. this population is one marked by high rates of family rejection and experiencing homelessness, which would render mdft inaccessible. housed lgbtq+ youth may still face rejection of their gender or sexual identity from their family, who may refuse to participate in mdft. despite the existence of free, low-cost, and/or online therapy options, unhoused lgbtq+ youth may not be able to access therapy altogether due to financial, transportation, or technological limitations. unhoused lgbtq+ adolescents face the most risk, but also have some of the least access to treatment. for them, early prevention and education may be the deciding factor in development and advancement of a cannabis use disorder, creating a dire need for increased access to affordable therapy for lgbtq+ youth. financial and situational feasibility must be considered for this population with greatly varying socioeconomic status. a randomized control trial found that mdft was associated with higher costs and larger effects in treating adolescent cud – demonstrating a potential gradient in access to and benefits reaped from treatment based on one’s financial, housing, and family situations. this trial, when including costs for delinquency associated with adolescent cud, found that mdft was ultimately the most cost-effective treatment (goorden et al., 2016). family-level interventions: acceptance, knowledge and skills, and parenting styles family support is a strong protective factor against a number of undesirable outcomes in adolescent development, including the development of a substance abuse disorder (medoff, substance abuse). adolescence is generally marked by a strong emotional need for acceptance from others, and this is especially true for acceptance from one’s family. family acceptance is particularly important for lgbtq+ teens, whose identity may come under significant scrutiny from their parents to the point of full rejection and being kicked out of their family’s home. the san francisco state university’s family acceptance project found that a lgbtq+ youth’s risk of substance abuse decreases as their family’s acceptance of their lgbtq+ identity increases (human rights campaign foundation). furthermore, lgbtq+ youth are more likely to experience stress in their relationship with their family as a result of their sexuality, either due to hiding their sexuality from their parents or some kind of negative parental response. only 49 percent of lgbtq+ youth in the human rights campaign foundation youth survey reported having an adult in their family they could go to for help, compared to 79 percent for non-lgbtq+ youth (human rights campaign foundation). additionally, parenting styles strongly influence outcomes in adolescents. a study analyzing data from the transition to adulthood survey, a longitudinal study with a focus on low-income families, found that adolescents who reported more acceptance and less psychological control from their parents were less likely to abuse substances and reported general positive well-being during the transition to young adulthood. conversely, regardless of parental acceptance, higher levels of reported psychological control predicted subsequent substance use in the transition to adulthood (lee, beckert & marsee, 2018). families and parents should also consider their own substance use and abuse history when considering their child’s risk for developing cud, particularly as cannabis is increasingly legalized and prevalent in the united states. family history of substance use and abuse is a risk factor for developing a substance abuse disorder (medoff, substance abuse). specifically, parental cud is associated with adolescent cannabis use and low positive parenting, a known risk factor for adolescent cannabis use; parental cannabis use without cud does not confer the same association (hill et al., 2018). parents with cud may be inhibited from providing the positive parenting that is necessary for healthy adolescent development. school-level interventions: gsas, anti-bullying policies, and administrative support school culture and experiences at school have the potential to augment risk factors to the already at-risk lgbtq+ youth population or provide protective factors to deter substance abuse and potential development of a cud. genderand sexuality-based bullying has been found to exacerbate cannabis use in lgbtq+ adolescents (coulter et al., 2018). also, lgbtq+ youth may underreport bullying for several reasons, including fear of disclosing their sexual or gender minority status to school administration. if lgbtq+ youth experience identity-based harassment at school, the effectiveness of other interventions will be curtailed, demonstrating a dire need for anti-bullying protections specifically for lgbtq+ youth at a schooland even state-level. gsa clubs – gay-straight alliances, or as named at some schools, gender and sexuality awareness club – play a key role in shaping the culture of a school and attitudes towards lgbtq+ students on top of providing potentially the only safe space for lgbtq+ students at school. one prospective analysis found that fewer homophobic bullying events took place in the year following the formation of a gsa. this protective effect persists – the researchers noted a decrease in homophobic bullying from one year to the next after the formation of a gsa (ioverno et al., 2016). interestingly, this study found that this drop in homophobic bullying was independent of participation or lack thereof in gsa activities, suggesting that gsas generally aim to shape the culture of schools into a safe climate for all lgbtq+ students, not only active members of the gsa. ultimately, this suggests that the presence of a gsa at a school is enough to be a protective factor against homophobic bullying and thus a protective factor against development of cud (ioverno et al., 2016). for lgbtq+ youth, the mere presence of a gsa at a school signals acceptance and support from the school administration. from an administrative level, a harm-reduction approach may curtail substance use in adolescents. often, schools implement zero-tolerance policies, serving severe and potentially disruptive predetermined punishments in response to drug use, including suspension or expulsion from school. however, these zero-tolerance policies are often biased against lgbtq+ youth and obstruct their recovery rather than deter drug use (himmelstein & bruckner, 2011). on top of this, adolescents with a higher frequency of cannabis use and earlier onset of cannabis use suffer from lower rates of high school graduation (castellanos-ryan et al., 2016). enacting punishment on lgbtq+ adolescents with cud, who already face lower school performance and graduation rates, may only exacerbate these issues, disrupting their school achievement, sense of accomplishment, and potentially upsetting their parents and straining family relationships even further. one example of an effective harm-reduction approach in a school setting is providing a punishment-free, motivational check-in for adolescent cannabis users as described in walker et al. (2016). the researchers in this study created the teen marijuana checkup, a school-based voluntary intervention offering the opportunity for adolescents unwilling to go to treatment to ask questions and express concerns about their cannabis use. this form of met could be implemented in schools to provide an effective intervention for heavy cannabis users or adolescents with cud who may be hesitant or unable to receive treatment. general anti-substance use education and policies in place at a school may also indirectly aid lgbtq+ youth. ongoing education beginning before adolescence is an important tool in preventing adolescent substance abuse. schools can practice refusal skills using role-play to protect the adolescents from succumbing to peer pressure (medoff, substance abuse). the popularity socialization hypothesis posits that popular adolescents play a significant role in modelling risk behaviors to less popular adolescents (dumas, ellis & litt, 2020). given that peer substance use is a risk factor for adolescent substance use (medoff, substance abuse), preventing any student from initiating substance use may have cascading protective effects on lgbtq+ youth. community/cultural-level interventions: city, state, and medical policies and resources bringing in the federal government, the substance abuse and mental health services administration (samhsa) has a 24/7, free, confidential hotline that can connect youth to services. on a state policy level, samhsa has block grants which provide funding for substance abuse and mental health services to states that apply for a grant. states could advocate for receiving a block grant to fund lgbtq-specific substance abuse treatment (substance abuse and mental health services administration). lgbtq+ youth have the additional stress of being their own advocates in their healthcare. if lgbtq+ adolescents are not out to their parents or feel uncomfortable disclosing their sexuality to their healthcare providers, it may be difficult for them to share details about their sexual identity and experiences. this limited communication can lead to inadequate education, screening, and interventions, and thus, poorer healthcare outcomes (hafeez et al., 2017). additionally, even if this information is disclosed, healthcare providers may not be adequately trained on the specific needs of the lgbtq+ community (hafeez et al., 2017). social media platforms play a huge role in shaping adolescents’ perception of the world and the content that they consume. california has a series of restrictions in place to minimize the marketing of cannabis to people under 21. however, adolescents may still be exposed to cannabis media and marketing through social media. a cross-sectional online survey of highschool aged adolescents found that exposure to cannabis via social media was significantly associated with past-year cannabis use, and this association was increased with each additional platform that exposed adolescents to cannabis (whitehill et al., 2020). potential outcomes and limitations lgbtq+ experiences are incredibly unique – the lgbtq+ community is not a monolith, as it comprises of people of all races, genders, socioeconomic statuses, housing statuses, family structures, etc. for the most privileged, non-minority, housed with a supportive family, high socioeconomic status lgbtq+ youth, they may benefit greatly from the combination of these protective factors and treatment options. conversely, a poor, person of color, high-school dropout, unhoused youth estranged from their family is incredibly at-risk, with so many possible combinations of factors in between. still, though, risk factors alone do not determine whether cannabis use will evolve into full-blown cud. there also exists a lack of literature that relates queerness, adolescence, and cannabis use specifically. many studies have confounding factors that rendered significant results insignificant when included in the statistical analysis. for example, adolescents commonly do not singly use cannabis; rather, they often experiment with alcohol and nicotine as well. the effects of repeated use of cannabis can be unclear since many cannabis users also drink alcohol, which has its own set of cognitive detriments. this is particularly true for lgbtq+ teens, who face a number of unique stressors and risk factors. furthermore, cud in lgbtq+ high schoolers is a rapidly changing issue due to the evolving nature of cannabis culture, and even cannabis itself, in society. as a result, research and treatment courses must play a game of catch-up with the increasing reach of more potent forms of cannabis. however, cannabis research is blunted and restricted by the united states drug enforcement agency, which has limited researchers for decades to only using cannabis grown at the university of mississippi under their contract with the national institute on drug abuse (wadman, 2021). this cannabis is typically low quality, sitting at just 6-8% thc, nowhere near representative of the 30% thc cannabis that an 18-year-old with a medical cannabis card can legally purchase and consume on any given day. as a result, much of the published literature does not reflect the current substance climate of our contemporary society. in closing in conclusion, the united states has much work to do in order to protect our lgbtq+ youth from the growing reach of cannabis. a conglomerate of individual, familial, societal, political, and academic interventions is necessary to create the ideal environment for lgbtq+ youth to avoid falling into the cannabis use to cud to polysubstance abuse pipeline and the secondary health issues and social detriments associated with it. research on the longitudinal effects of cannabis use and a potential psychopharmaceutical intervention must continue, and the medical community should understand the specific needs of the lgbtq+ community and prepare itself for an increase in cannabinoid-induced conditions. as always, special attention should be paid to lgbtq+ and trans youth of color, who face compounding minority stress. however, as attitudes towards the lgbtq+ community change, policies and medical research advance, and lgbtq-specific resources are developed, there is hope on the horizon for this vulnerable, glorious population. references 2020 greater los angeles youth count presentation. los angeles homeless services authority. 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(2020). prevalence and correlates of youth poly-substance use in the compass study. addictive behaviors, 107, 106400. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2020.106400 microsoft word ce+world+collide+final+revision 2.docx when worlds collide challenges and opportunities in virtual reality olivia y. lee, stanford university ’24 abstract:the field of virtual reality (vr) has advanced significantly in the last decade. vr technologies have the unique capability of creating immersive virtual experiences that can amplify both positive and negative human behaviors. it is important that we consider the design decisions behind vr technology to leverage vr’s capabilities to promote social and gender equality rather than hinder it. two main challenges have been identified in modern day vr technology: first, immersive vr applications promote harassment towards women, racial minorities, and lgbtq+ individuals, and second, vr hardware is better suited to males than females. analyzing vr technology design using sex and gender analysis can significantly improve vr experiences for a wider audience, enabling us to leverage vr’s uniquely immersive capabilities to facilitate social equality. two gendered innovations can address these challenges: first, vr applications can help develop empathy towards traditionally marginalized communities, and second vr headsets can be more sex-inclusive. content warning: this article contains sensitive content, including anecdotes relating to sexual harassment, and analyses of discriminatory behavior against women, racial minorities, and lgbtq+ individuals. readers are advised to take these into account before proceeding. in october 2016, a visceral account of online sexual harassment shook the internet. a female gamer, under the pseudonym jordan belamire, detailed her experience being groped in the virtual reality (vr) game quivr (belamire, 2016). at first, she was enthralled by the virtual world and described herself walking off the game’s highest tower despite her fear of heights: “i didn’t fall, and i was walking on air. i was a god.” (belamire, 2016). however, within minutes of activating quivr’s multiplayer mode, everything changed. a player with the username bigbro442 entered the game, and upon hearing belamire’s voice, “[h]is floating hand approached my body, and he started to virtually rub my chest.” (belamire, 2016). despite belamire’s cries for him to stop, bigbro442’s avatar continued to grab and pinch her chest, and even rub her virtual crotch. just like that, belamire’s feelings of invincibility quickly turned to helplessness, “from the god who couldn’t fall off a ledge to a powerless woman being chased by an avatar named bigbro442” (belamire, 2016). feeling shocked and violated, belamire noted her brother-in-law had played multiplayer vr games numerous times without issues, but her female voice almost instantly elicited harassment. belamire is not alone in having problematic experiences with vr. while her encounter pertained to applications developed on vr hardware, others have also reported negative experiences with the vr hardware itself. danah boyd (stylized in lowercase) (boyd, n.d.), a female computer graphics programmer and researcher at microsoft, described her first experience with 3d immersive technologies in 1997 (boyd, 2016). her excitement about being immersed in the metaverse, the virtual world imagined in neal stevenson’s snow crash, soon gave way to nausea, causing her to vomit. her female peers had similar physical reactions, while her male colleagues had no problems with the system. though vr technology has improved leaps and bounds since then, boyd’s research has revealed nausea and simulator sickness in vr are still prevalent, more so amongst females than males (boyd, 2000). unfortunately, despite significant investment and advancements in recent years, vr technology still creates a comparatively negative experience for half the population. taken together, these accounts illustrate two main challenges in vr technology: first, immersive vr applications promote harassment towards women, racial minorities, and lgbtq+ individuals, and second, vr hardware is currently better suited to males than females. analyzing vr technology design using sex and gender analysis can significantly improve vr experiences for a wider audience, enabling us to leverage vr’s uniquely immersive capabilities to promote social equality. two gendered innovations can address these challenges: first, vr applications can help develop empathy towards traditionally marginalized communities, and second vr headsets can be more sex-inclusive. this paper first explores vr software applications that contain discriminatory content and promote harassment behaviors towards historically underrepresented communities. using gender as an analytical framework for vr software innovation processes facilitates reframing vr applications to promote gender and social equality. next, this paper confronts design choices in vr hardware that tend to exclude females. utilizing sex as a lens to analyze these biases, a better sex balance in research participants is needed to rethink reference models for vr hardware, leading to more sex-sensitive vr headsets. finally, this paper concludes by highlighting the interactions between vr software and hardware, emphasizing that improving both elements in parallel is essential in making the technology more inclusive. addressing discriminatory content and behavior in vr applications vr applications hinder gender and social equality by including discriminatory content and facilitating harassment behaviors. research studies have demonstrated video games, especially interactive role-playing games, promote online harassment (tang et al., 2019) and physical sexual violence towards women (afaq et al., 2019), attributable to both the video games’ content and the harmful behavior they elicit (gutiérrez, 2014). such video games also facilitate discrimination against minorities and lgbtq+ individuals: 53% of individuals harassed in video games were discriminated against based on their racial identity, and among lgbtq+ players, 35% were targeted for their sexual orientation or gender identity (“free to play?”, 2019). other studies have found vr leads to greater presence (lemmens et al., 2021) (pallavicini et al., 2019) and more intense negative emotional expression (lavoie et al., 2020) than screen-based, non-immersive video games. while research into discrimination in vr applications is nascent (“fast rise in social virtual reality”, 2021), these trends collectively suggest vr applications, especially social vr, may facilitate harmful behaviors more traumatic than those on traditional platforms. even in this early stage, disturbing vr games have already been released allowing players to sexually assault women (buxton, 2016) or containing racist and sexist elements (feltham, 2021). female gamers, like belamire, have also reported harassment encounters in vr environments (buchleitner, 2018) (westervelt, 2016). the decisions behind vr application content and design will be influential in ensuring the field moves towards gender and social equality. the potential for women, racial minorities, and lgbtq+ individuals to experience harassment through vr applications indicates concepts such as gender, sexual orientation, and race should be integrated into engineering innovation processes behind vr technology. several problematic vr applications mentioned above are designed for white, cisgender, and heterosexual males as the target audience. such applications may reinforce gender and racial stereotypes or simulate violent behaviors unacceptable in real-world contexts. this may have dangerous spillover effects into how players interact with others in social vr, or how they behave in the real world. analyzing assumptions about gender, race, and sexuality embedded in these applications can facilitate designing virtual spaces that are not only inclusive, but also actively promote social equality, rather than perpetuate stereotypes. potential solutions to address discriminatory content and behavior in vr technology may involve engineering vr applications that develop empathy towards traditionally marginalized communities. a necessary first step is to cultivate a diverse vr developer community, so communities that get less visibility in vr applications are adequately and authentically represented. white male producers dominate vr application development, and their innovations feature a similarly homogeneous demographic (“the lack of female representation in vr,” 2016; winston, 2020; de leon, 2020). they even dominate in producing vr content intended to represent women and racial minorities (nakamura, 2020), creating a spurious empathy for white viewers, and potentially misrepresenting these communities. at the first ever black vr creators event, the panel speakers unanimously agreed that hiring and mentoring more aspiring black vr developers are crucial to improving representation in the space (winston, 2020). similar arguments can be made for women and lgbtq+ individuals. while authentic representation should not be a responsibility that falls solely on underrepresented groups, communities like women in vr (“wivr: about us”, n.d.) and black vr creators (winston, 2020) indicate developers in these groups want to be more involved in content creation. hence, having vr content creators from diverse backgrounds can help appropriately represent individuals from across different genders, sexualities, and racial identities. beyond workforce representation, vr content can be developed to challenge stereotypes and help develop empathy towards women, racial minorities, and lgbtq+ individuals. immersive vr provides the unique opportunity for embodiment, which can promote identification and empathy towards traditionally marginalized groups. neyret et al. (2020) placed male participants in a vr scenario where a woman is sexually harassed by several men. participants who embodied a man and a woman empathized with the woman more than those who only embodied a man. banakou et al. (2016) conducted a similar study with white people embodying an african american virtual body, and virtual embodiment led to a sustained reduction in implicit racial bias against african americans. vr applications have also been developed to enhance empathy for lgbtq+ individuals, allowing users to interact with lgbtq+ narratives in vr (“gather around a virtual campfire,” 2018) and caregivers to undergo immersive training to care for elderly lgbtq+ adults (“new virtual reality immersive learning lab,” 2020). besides developing empathy through embodiment, vr applications can challenge stereotypes by immersing users in situations that reveal and correct implicit biases. such approaches have been used in various settings, from de-escalation training in law enforcement (kim, 2018) to reducing gender and racial bias in classrooms (gordon, 2020). the latter approach yielded statistically significant correlations between users’ empathy towards female and minority students and their awareness of implicit biases. these examples illustrate how vr applications provide valuable feedback to individuals about their internalized biases to overcome deep-rooted stereotypes about gender, sexuality, and race. overall, leveraging vr’s unique capability to provide embodiment and simulate immersive interactions can challenge implicit biases and develop empathy towards women, racial minorities, and lgbtq+ individuals. stanford’s virtual human interaction lab director jeremy bailenson believes immersive vr technology “takes the cognitive effort out of” perspective-taking exercises employed to build empathy (“how experiencing discrimination in vr,” 2018). that said, whether vr can enable effective perspective taking is highly contingent on how immersive it is. the ability to establish a strong presence where users “feel like they are there” is crucial for them to genuinely adopt the perspective simulated by vr technology. ill-fitting vr hardware may create overwhelmingly negative physical sensations like what boyd experienced, hindering users from gaining deeper insights and causing this solution to ultimately lose its efficacy. it is essential for improvements to vr hardware and software to be made in parallel, with the overarching goal to increase inclusivity in vr technology. addressing sex-based biases in vr hardware sex-based biases exist in modern vr hardware, specifically in vr head-mounted display (hmd) design. this section focuses on sex as a binary, as current research primarily analyzes differing experiences between males and females when using vr hardware. further research beyond sex-based differences and outside of the binary is necessary to ensure vr hardware fits people from a variety of backgrounds, especially individuals from historically marginalized groups. in one study, females and males used the popular oculus rift dk-1 and dk-2 hmds to play the game minecraft (shafer et al., 2017). they were asked to complete the simulator sickness questionnaire (kennedy et al., 1993) after twenty minutes of gameplay. for both hmds, females experienced more severe cybersickness symptoms than men, with negligible improvement from the older hmd to the newer version. in grassini et al. (2021), females also reported more severe nausea-related simulator sickness than males using the oculus go hmd. recent research has discovered interpupillary distance (ipd) non-fit is the primary reason for differences in cybersickness symptoms (stanney et al., 2020). substantially more females cannot achieve a good fit to their ipd with modern vr hmds. fulvio et al. (2021) found the average male’s ipd is 63.7mm, which closely matches the oculus rift dk-2’s default ipd of 64mm. however, the average female’s ipd is 59.4mm, and approximately 90% of females have pupils closer together than the default headset setting. furthermore, 27% of females have an ipd beyond the adjustable ipd range, as compared to only 5% of men. using the incorrect ipd setting introduces conflicts in the visual cues specifying object motion. these conflicts contribute to cybersickness, and evidently, such occurrences are much more likely for females. the disparities in the experiences using vr hmds between males and females suggest sex differences should be considered more thoroughly when developing vr technology prototypes. fulvio et al. (2021) makes clear that vr hmd design choices – both the default ipd setting and adjustability range – are geared towards the average male. from the empirical studies cited above, one can infer the participants involved in preliminary research leading to these design choices were likely predominantly male. research teams should ensure a better sex balance in research participants to determine the appropriate default ipd setting and adjustability range for males and females separately. companies developing vr hardware can then create more equitable technology by rethinking the standard reference models for their products. this will likely require having two reference models for prototype testing – one for males and one for females – accounting for the difference in average ipd between sexes. considering these analyses, developing more sex-sensitive vr hmds can address these biases. this could mean vr hmds are engineered to have a wider ipd adjustability range that accommodates more females (ideally a similar percentage to males). alternatively, if hardware constraints prevent the adjustability range from being sufficiently large, separate vr hmds can be developed with a narrower default ipd setting and the appropriate adjustability range for females, which should both be determined through additional research. to avoid further perpetuating gender assumptions, the headsets should be identical in aesthetic design and differentiated using gender-neutral terms like “small”, “medium”, and “large”, rather than “male” and “female.” according to stanney et al. (2020), if an individual’s ipd is properly fit to vr hmds, sex differences in cybersickness are not expected. for both sexes, participants whose ipd matched the hmd experienced similar degrees of cybersickness and recovered from any adverse effects from vr exposure within one-hour post-exposure. however, females whose ipd did not fit the hmd (there were no males in the study whose ipd did not fit the hmd) experienced more severe cybersickness and could not recover within the same period. therefore, developing vr hmds with hardware specifications tailored to fit female ipds can significantly improve their experience by reducing or eliminating cybersickness symptoms. while this solution is an important step towards more equitable vr technology, improvements in vr hardware to fit females will have little benefit if the software applications developed on vr hardware are not similarly inclusive. according to grassini et al. (2021), females experience a stronger presence – the subjective psychological sense of “being there” – than males when using vr applications. this is especially important when considering the heightened emotional impact vr experiences have on females than males. as seen in belamire’s harassment experience playing the multiplayer quivr game, vr’s unique immersive quality amplifies psychological harm associated with such experiences compared to other non-immersive mediums. vr applications should be developed to promote gender and social equality, alongside improvements in vr hardware, to make vr technology inclusive to a wider audience. conclusion and future work this paper analyzes two challenges with vr technology and explores two gendered innovations to address them. firstly, immersive vr applications contain discriminatory content and promote harassment behaviors, particularly towards women, racial minorities, and lgbtq+ individuals. analyzing assumptions about gender, sexuality, and race embedded in these applications can help improve the engineering processes used to develop them. by leveraging vr’s uniquely immersive capabilities, vr technology can promote social and gender equality by increasing representation, challenging stereotypes, and developing empathy towards traditionally marginalized communities. secondly, sex-based biases in vr hardware result in headsets being better suited to males than females. companies developing vr hardware should revise their standard reference models by improving the sex balance in participatory research processes contributing to their product design. this enables companies to develop more sex-sensitive vr headsets that fit females’ interpupillary distance. ultimately, improvements to vr software and hardware must occur in parallel to create equitable, inclusive technology for a diverse user base. regarding next steps, research into vr’s emotional and psychological impact, specifically social vr, is a largely underexplored area (“fast rise in social virtual reality,” 2021). within this relatively small research pool, minority race and lgbtq+ individuals’ experiences in immersive social vr environments are understudied compared to women’s experiences on these platforms. through balanced participatory research, researchers should study the effects vr applications have on traditionally marginalized groups. these research findings can help reduce barriers and create opportunities for underserved communities. in addition, employing a diverse participant pool in vr hardware testing can help develop inclusive hardware. for instance, gender-diverse individuals, intersex individuals, children, and people with physical disabilities may require different specifications to achieve a good fit with vr devices. despite its numerous benefits, vr is a not a silver-bullet solution to improving equity and inclusion, and additional research will be critical in ensuring vr can effectively achieve these goals. indeed, vr technologies have great potential to revolutionize how humans live, work, and interact. however, they are ultimately products of our own creation, which means they are not immune to the biases and stereotypes pervading our society. as vr creates a uniquely immersive virtual experience that can amplify both positive and negative human behaviors, vr design decisions should leverage the technology’s capabilities to promote inclusivity and equity, especially for historically underrepresented communities. analyzing assumptions about sex, gender, and race will help vr developers identify and correct stereotypes posing barriers for marginalized groups. as vr technologies continue to gain widespread adoption, research and innovation cognizant of sex, gender, and race is essential to move the field in this direction. we must integrate these paradigms that fundamentally shape our world into vr development, so vr’s positive potential can be fully realized in the future. references fast rise in social virtual reality stirs harassment concerns. 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(2020). first black vr creators panel discusses representation, mentorship. digital la. https://digitalla.net/blackvrcreators/ microsoft word safe in the eye of the storm.docx “safe in the eye of the storm” a 20th-century adaptation of safe slave spaces in colson whitehead’s the intuitionist madilyn abbe, brigham young university ’23 abstract: this paper analyzes the elusiveness of safety for black women in colson whitehead’s the intuitionist. through the lived experience of the protagonist lila mae, the novel challenges the notion of universal security by demonstrating that safety in america hinges upon gendered and racial qualifiers. to underscore the continued precarity for black women, whitehead adapts from the antebellum trend of safe slave spaces. the text associates antebellum buildings with modern bodies and modern buildings with antebellum bodies. although the novel proposes the black box will solve the city’s social issues, such a solution seems tragically ironic as the black box’s promised resolution relies on the destruction of the body. ultimately, this paper argues that the intuitionist functions as a crucial critique of the lack of safety afforded black female bodies in 20th-century urban space. content warning: this article contains sensitive content, including a discussion of sexual harassment and discriminatory behavior towards women and racial minorities. in his debut novel the intuitionist, colson whitehead intertwines the body with the city. the inciting incident of the story, an unexplained elevator crash, marks the fanny briggs building as the central edifice of the dystopian story. whitehead constructs an alternate version of new york city where elevators are at the forefront of technological advancement. women and black people face widespread exclusion from positions of power, including the most coveted city job: elevator safety inspector. lila mae watson, recently appointed the first black female elevator safety inspector, faces accusations of responsibility for the fanny briggs elevator accident, as she was the last person to sign off on its safety. as lila mae sets out to clear her name, she uncovers a larger political conspiracy and becomes involved in the race to find the blueprints of the black box—an elevator promised to revolutionize the industry created by her inspiration, the engineer james fulton, who readers later learn was a black man passing as white. connecting architecture to corporality, whitehead (1999) notes the reminiscence of the fanny briggs building to the body of its namesake, the real fanny briggs, a slave who taught herself how to read: “those looking for a correlative to fanny briggs’s powerful, lumpy body and the shape of the building dedicated to her will have to bear in mind the will to squat that roosts in the soul of every city architect” (p. 16). the mention of “a correlative” between the building and the body of the real fanny briggs demonstrates that, rather than being neutral, space possesses clear human characteristics that are racialized and gendered. additionally, because the elevator accident connects lila mae to the edifice, the fanny briggs building links together an antebellum black female body (fanny briggs the person) and a present black female body (lila mae). whitehead’s attentiveness to the relationship between building and body demands a reconsideration of urban space and the black female body. by associating lila mae with two subjects that clearly lack safety—a building with structural failure and a fugitive slave in the antebellum era—whitehead asserts that even the bodies of contemporary black women are in jeopardy. through the intersections of the fanny briggs building, fanny briggs (a female slave), and lila mae (“a modern city girl”), the intuitionist recognizes the evasiveness of safety for black female bodies in contemporary urban space (whitehead, 1999, p. 189). the academic discourse surrounding the intuitionist recognizes the ample extent to which the concept of the body shapes the novel. reading the text as an internet allegory, martin japtok (2021) identifies the rejection of the biological body as a consequence of favoring technology. linda selzer (2009) similarly observes how the enticement of uplift causes lila mae to become “progressively alienated from her own body” (p. 682). noting a bodily connection to infrastructure, spencer morrison (2017) recognizes “bodily sensation” as a pathway toward more inclusive political formations (p. 102). yet in all these appraisals of bodies, scholars avoid detailed inquiry into how the compounded effects of race and gender threaten the body. this omission in intuitionist scholarship suggests the need for more concentrated attention on how the race-based and gender-based discrimination particularly affects the black female body within the text. building on the intersectional movement stemming from the 1980s, recent social criticism has reinforced the disproportionate extent to which the black female body is unsafe. studies have found that the rate of homicide for black women is higher than any other race (petrosky et al. 2017) and that bipoc women “are less likely considered ‘true’ victims and thus less deserving of the protections more frequently available to white, straight, wealthier women” (belknap & grant, 2021). identifying the crux of such inequality, dagmar lorenz-meyer (2022) contends that “african american women are impacted by the dangerous intersections of sexism, racism and other interlocking oppressions that result in higher incident rates of gender-based violence as well as less support from courts, police, governments, social services, and other institutions.” these existing inequalities indicate that safety is already an elusive commodity for the black female body. in addition to engagement with bodies, scholars recognize whitehead’s experimentation with and adaptation of historical african american literary genres. michael bérubé (2004) calls the intuitionist a “meditation on the great northern migration” and “an idiosyncratic version of the african-american ‘passing’ narrative” (p. 163). peter sloane (2017) supports this notion with specific literary influences, mentioning that the intuitionist is “informed by seminal africanamerican texts such as richard wright’s black boy (1945), ralph ellison’s invisible man (1952), and toni morrison’s beloved (1987)” (p. 222). on the whole, scholars recognize the intuitionist as a variation of postbellum african american texts. while sloane’s brief mention of beloved lays the groundwork for connecting antebellum influence, as of yet no scholar has deeply engaged with the text’s antebellum motifs. the intuitionist identifies the antebellum period as the origin of patterned unsafety for the black female body. while elevator safety ads and safety inspectors at the beginning of the novel promise safety, lila mae’s lived experience undermines their assertion, instead indicating that universal security is not a reality. rather, safety is only guaranteed to those who fulfill gendered and racial qualifiers. to underscore safety’s continued elusiveness for contemporary black women, whitehead pulls antebellum elements into his narrative—associating the fanny briggs building with a fugitive slave, naming a character after the slave trading city natchez, and modeling the only safe space in the novel, a dumbwaiter, after historically safe slave spaces. even the novel’s proposed resolution, the long-awaited black box, cynically offers grim prospects when it comes to safety for black women; its safety ultimately relies on the body’s elimination. although the intuitionist does allude to the characteristics necessary for creating a safe environment, as a whole, the novel functions as a damning critique of the lack of safety afforded black bodies in 20th-century urban space. assumption of equal safety to contrast the later reoccurring bigotry, whitehead orients his novel with an early assertion of safety for every urbanite. within the first pages of the novel, lila mae notices a billboard from the city’s elevator company boldly declaring, “all safe” (whitehead, 1999, p. 14). in typical usage, the expression “all safe” functions as a pronouncement of the existence of safety in an environment: “the space is safe.” although the advertisement only promises safety in elevators, the strategic placement of the billboard along a well-used road seems to guarantee safety for the public. in addition to ascribing safety to the locale, alternatively interpreting the significance of “all” modulates the meaning of the phrase. taking “all” to mean the masses, the phrase shifts from a pronouncement of safety in a space to a statement about the scope of the safety on offer: “everybody is safe.” with this interpretation, the encompassing term “all” invites the inclusion of all races and genders. yet, later variations of this phrase reveal the original slogan’s brittleness. contrasting the advertisement, public interactions in whitehead’s city reveal gendered dimensions of safety. in whitehead’s parallel reality, elijah otis’s 1853 elevator safety demonstration at the new york crystal palace lays the foundation for the prestigious elevator safety inspectors of the present day. after demonstrating how his invention prohibits elevator freefall, elijah otis announces, “all safe, gentlemen, all safe” (whitehead, 1999, p. 82). not only does the patriarchal hailing “gentlemen” set up men as the primary societal protectors, but otis’s direct address also presupposes safety to be solely a male responsibility. per his assumption, it is men who possess the requisite knowledge and authority to determine whether something is safe or not. additionally, although public space seems neutral given the presence of both “ladies and gentlemen” in the crowd, the choice to directly address the men clearly identifies the space as male (whitehead, 1999, p. 81). with the utterance “gentleman,” the identity of the collective group is clarified, and women are alienated entirely. daphne spain (1993) labels the dominance of a certain gender in any given place as “gendered space” (p. 137). spain (1993) determines the gender of homes, schools, and workplaces primarily by the separation of men and women, yet otis’s remark indicates that “gendered space” can be recognized by more than just the physical segregation of genders. men and women mingling together in the public space eradicates the possibility of identifying the space’s gender on physical separation alone. however, verbally privileging the male gender as the norm marks public space as definitively male. thus, safety is characterized as a gendered concept—something arbitrated by and guaranteed to men but not necessarily to women. unfortunately, even female space fails to provide all female bodies with anticipated safety due to a lack of what virginia woolf recognizes as indispensable: spatial privacy. following from wendy gan (2009), i read woolf’s novel, a room of one’s own, as an indicator of the importance of spatial privacy for women. protesting that women aren’t granted the luxury of spatial privacy, woolf (1929/2014) not only advocates for the spatial autonomy of an individual haven but a room with clear protection for the female inhabitant—what she calls “a room with a lock on the door” (p. 76). while a lock may be satisfactory protection for white women, the lock on lila mae’s apartment doesn’t offer a similar safeguard. lila mae’s locked apartment is ransacked by two white men, jim and john, looking for clues about fulton’s blueprints. immediately, lila mae recognizes the home invasion as something that impinges on her safety, calling it a “trespass into her home, her one safe place” (whitehead, 1999, p. 39). the event signals lila mae’s inability to maintain ownership of her space considering that the trespassers access her space without permission or knowledge. not only is this break-in a destruction of black space by white individuals, but the event also exemplifies an invasion of female space by men. a bodily violation presents itself in the adjective whitehead (1999) employs to describe the apartment: “raped” (p. 166). with this personification, lila mae’s apartment takes the form of a female body and accentuates the act’s dangerous implications. rather than simply affecting the privacy of external space, jim and john’s intrusion suggests violence on the female body and clear disregard for female autonomy. in this case and as a universal principle, unsafety accompanies female space because men assume unchecked authority for the maintenance of safety. like otis’s appeal to gentlemen, jim and john imply safety is a male affair. acting as if their break-in was benevolent, jim and john call themselves “watchdogs” (whitehead, 1999, 39). a witness also seems to reinforce jim and john’s authority over lila mae’s space by addressing the trespassers as “gentlemen” (whitehead, 1999, 39). juxtaposing woolf’s hope for women’s spatial privacy with lila mae’s lived experience, safety remains painfully elusive for black women—threatening not only their physical environment but also their bodies. the exclusivity of safety is further exacerbated when considering the ways in which racial identity qualifies the level of bodily privacy women are granted. the funicular follies— the elevator safety department’s annual gathering—starkly illustrates the gender disparity: a repetition of “all safe, gentlemen. all safe” and a cabaret group ironically called the “safety girls” who are frequently subjected to unsolicited groping (whitehead, 1999, p. 150). one of the main entertainment acts of the night, a minstrel show, makes it especially clear how elusive safety is for black women. one man in blackface recounts the story about a presumably black man and woman in an elevator: dey dis man in an elevator all by himself, hambone. de car stop and in step dis beautiful lady wit de long hair and de nice eyes. two floes later she reach over an push de stop button. she takes off al her clothes and say to de man what was in dere, ‘make me feel lak a woman!’ so de man, he take off all a his clothes, throw dem on top of de woman’s clothes and say, ‘okay, do the laundry!’ (whitehead, 1999, p. 156) while the couple is not explicitly labeled as black or white, the reactions of the female black waitstaff to the joke—“so beaten they cannot speak of the incident”—as well as the embedded allusion to aretha franklin suggest the woman is black (whitehead, 1999, p. 157). although the bodies of the white women at the funicular follies are scantily clad, they are covered by some semblance of clothing, albeit tight and revealing. like these white women, the body of the black woman in the story is similarly used for the purpose of entertainment; yet, this black female body is completely nude, permitted even less spatial privacy than the white women. the joke hinges not just on the sexual exploitation of the black female body but that the black female body’s attempt at recognition is ignored. the push and pull between sexualized and subjugated indicates that the black female body is constantly endangered because the body is forced to choose between two extremes: hypervisibility or invisibility. the historico-traumatic moment to offer black women a reprieve from gendered, racial pressure, the intuitionist adopts the historical and literary trope of safe slave spaces. in her own analysis, lauren berlant (2008) combines affect and trauma theory to categorize the intuitionist’s inciting event in the fanny briggs building as a “historico-traumatic [moment]” (p. 848). while berlant (2008) recognizes the plot’s layout as an “ongoing historical present,” the critical conversation stops short of the specificities of what ongoing historical present is taking place (p. 848). yet, considering fanny briggs’s history as a slave and the fanny briggs’s designation as a memorial building situates slavery as a central issue at hand, the historico-traumatic moment that continues to inform the ongoing historical present. similar to the initiating catastrophic event that beings the issues in the novel, slavery functions as an initiating catastrophic event of american history that has since led to discrimination towards and the stymieing of black populations. barry jenkins (2021) identifies slavery as the intuitionist’s historico-traumatic event in his television adaptation of whitehead’s the underground railroad (2016) by including fanny briggs as a participating character. in the amazon prime miniseries, instead of being alone in north carolina (as she is in the novel), the protagonist cora meets a younger runaway slave named grace. later on, the audience learns grace is an alias; grace’s real name is fanny briggs. in addition to functioning as an entertaining easter egg for those familiar with whitehead’s work, this textual expansion directly connects the urban contemporary of the intuitionist to the antebellum era in terms of a concern for spatial safety. jenkins (2021) places fanny briggs with cora in a small attic crawlspace so cramped that the two girls can barely sit up. fanny briggs teaches cora how to avoid the creaky floorboards and use a peephole to glimpse outside. while the two girls enjoy companionship and safety in hostile territory, the confining nature of the space damages their bodies, causing limb atrophy and sickness. the simultaneous prison and haven-like crawlspace are representative of the greater historical and literary pattern of safe slave spaces. attics, floorboards, cupboards, barns, boxes, or hidden compartments in wagons often concealed black bodies. while safe slave spaces permitted fugitives to exist in unsafe spaces, the restrictive nature of such spaces on the body and mind meant oscillating levels of safety and danger for the inhabitant. for fugitives, safe slave spaces were a tool to acquire bodily autonomy. yet paradoxically, safe slave spaces, the means to receive body autonomy, actually stripped fugitive slaves of their bodily autonomy; the unyielding requirement for the black body to conform to spatial dictation forced dependence. by situating fanny briggs in a safe slave space, jenkins (2021) supports whitehead’s assertion that the spatial complexity of contemporary cities is similar to that of the antebellum period. even more exhibitive than jenkins’s the underground railroad miniseries, the text of the intuitionist also recognizes slavery as the historico-traumatic moment that continues to affect the present. just as the fanny briggs building connects a present edifice to an antebellum body, natchez (a black man who befriends lila mae) connects a modern body to antebellum buildings. when asked about his name, natchez tells lila mae he is named after his mother’s hometown: “she didn’t like it enough to stay there, but she liked it enough to name me after it. she still wants to hear people say it” (whitehead, 1999, p. 78). readers unfamiliar with the history of natchez the city may miss this subtle symbol of slavery and white male dominance. natchez, mississippi is primarily known for its role as a major slave trading city and its lavish antebellum architecture. a place that memorializes the white economic prosperity that resulted from slavery, natchez the city possesses inherent danger for black bodies. scholars like william gleason (2011) recognize the antebellum estate as a carefully crafted emblem of power: “for in the antebellum south the approach to a plantation was as significant an expression of power and standing as the big house itself” (p. 95). the looming, expansive architecture of the antebellum mansion intentionally exhibits an aura of white dominance. moreover, another bodily component is attached to natchez the city beyond natchez the character; fulton’s father was “a white man in natchez. gran’ma alice used to clean their houses” (whitehead, 1999, p. 138). while it is unclear whether the exchange between the white man in natchez and gran’ma alice (a black woman) was consensual or not, there is a clearly unequal power dynamic. considering the negative connotations natchez, the city, carries for black people, especially black women, why would natchez’s mother want to hear people repeat the name? the purpose of repetition is not to celebrate but to warn. although slavery is past, the presence of the character natchez in modern times serves as a reminder of the danger experienced by black women in cities. this relived presence makes such historical danger something perpetual and thus emphasizes the continued need for contemporary safe slave spaces. contemporary safe spaces the intuitionist features one successful contemporary safe space, a dumbwaiter, that outlines the scope of protection for the black body. marie claire, fulton’s housekeeper, manages to hide what everybody has been looking for—the blueprints of the black box. despite white men’s attempts to infiltrate and tear the house apart, fulton’s writings with lila mae’s name scrawled in the margin are kept protected and unseen by “a dumbwaiter in the kitchen” (whitehead, 1999, p. 242). the dumbwaiter, like many other safe slave spaces, is what miranda green-barteet (2013) calls an “interstitial space” (p. 54). for green-barteet (2013), interstitial spaces function much like “border space, one that exists betwixt and between other more clearly defined spaces” (p. 54). this in-between component of the space transfers onto its inhabitant, marking the hiding fugitive as “neither free nor enslaved” (green-barteet, 2013, p. 54). interstitiality characterizes the function of a dumbwaiter. the contents inside the dumbwaiter are typically situated in-between floors, in-between rooms, not quite above and not quite below. additionally, the dumbwaiter creates a border space between the antebellum and the contemporary. the dumbwaiter was first invented by thomas jefferson to keep slaves out of the dining room and exclude them from overhearing and participating in dinner table conversation, thus banishing their bodies from certain spaces while still utilizing their slave labor. the presence of the dumbwaiter in the intuitionist creates a space historically tied to the antebellum yet, through marie claire’s appropriation, divorced from its initial objective and rooted in modern times. an even clearer indicator of the dumbwaiter’s interstitiality is its concealed contents. inside the modernized safe space is not a whole black individual but separated, individual parts of a black person. fulton’s mind is present via his writing, and lila mae’s body is present figuratively via her name, the label intended to represent her physical body. even more than this mind/body separation, race and gender are muddled. fulton’s writings render the dumbwaiter’s contents not fully black considering fulton was a man who was black but also a man who passed as white. the presence of both fulton and lila mae renders the contents neither entirely male nor entirely female. because the parts inside the dumbwaiter are individual parts of a black individual rather than an entirety, the intuitionist asserts that modernized safe spaces only offer partial safety. with the safety offered by modernized safe spaces incomplete, the shape of the fanny brigg’s building pinpoints the underlying weakness of all safe slave spaces: inhibited mobility. in the first description of the building’s appearance, whitehead (1999) comments, “those looking for a correlative to fanny briggs’s powerful, lumpy body in the shape of the building dedicated to her will have to bear in mind the will to squat that roosts in the soul of every city architect” (p. 17). the crouched position of squatting visualizes the physical restriction required by antebellum safe spaces. the text indicates that the will of the architect causing the fanny briggs building to squat is contrary to fanny briggs’s nature; it is a characteristic that is not a corollary to her body. during harriet jacobs’s seven-year stay in the garret, she reminiscences, “it was impossible for me to move in an erect position” (1861, p. 117). instead of moving about freely, she was forced to “sit or lie in a cramped position day after day” (jacobs, 1861, p. 117). jacobs’s experience was comparable to the experience of many other fugitive slaves; bodily contortions and long periods of inactivity were required to reside in an unsuspecting place. physical restriction ultimately enabled the space to retain safeness; no one expected a body to fit in such tight or uninhabitable spaces. yet, as recorded by jacobs (1861), this bodily restriction in exchange for safety often came at a great cost: “my body still suffers from the effects of that long imprisonment” (p. 153). the fanny briggs building, a representative of modern safe spaces, is likewise suffering bodily. a sense of atrophy plagues the inside of the fanny briggs building. when visiting the fanny briggs building after the accident, lila mae notices “blighted panels” have been replaced because the building’s “sensitive skin” has reacted poorly to the citywide cleaning agent scrubbo, suggesting eerie associations to “disease” and “human illness” (whitehead, 1999, p. 225). safe spaces ultimately fail as a sustainable refuge. the fanny briggs building imitates the limitation of safe slave spaces in that it fails to provide lasting safety. when appraising the scene of the disaster, lila mae verbalizes the defect responsible for the freefall accident: “the elevator pretended to be what it was not. number eleven passed for longevous” (whitehead, 1999, p. 229). with the word “longevous,” whitehead diagnoses the foundational flaw of all safe slave spaces: temporariness. a safe slave space ultimately pretends to be what it is not; its promised safety is in reality a bad check. either inhospitable conditions or the difficulty of retaining longterm covertness mandates the temporariness of asylum. safe spaces aren’t the solution but instead a temporary fix on the way to ultimate security. in response to the failure of the fanny briggs building, the intuitionist offers a modern alternative to address the failings of antebellum safe space: the black box. although the specifics of the black box are shrouded in mystery, this new technology will alter the city. the black box is what “will deliver us from the cities we suffer now, these stunted shacks . . . it’s the future” (whitehead, 1999, p. 61). when characters speak of the black box, their hushed incredulity emanates a second-coming sort of feeling, the sense that chaos and destruction advent a reversal of social strata. although most people recognize the destruction that accompanies the black box, “everyone’s working on black boxes” (whitehead, 1999, p. 61). although most people may not understand the ramifications of the black box perfectly, it is acknowledged as something beneficial for the city, a progressive innovation worth the upending. but the true purpose of the black box becomes clearer with the discovery that its inventor, fulton, was a black man passing for white. lila mae is the only one to fully grasp the implications of the black box—its purpose is to upend racial prejudice and enable the uplift of the black race: “when he [fulton] gives lectures to his flock, years later, they are not aware of what he’s speaking. the elevator world will look like heaven but not the heaven you have reckoned” (whitehead, 1999, p. 241). on closer consideration, the reader discovers the black box’s bodily cost functions as an extreme critique of 20th-century urban space. like the garret and the attic crawlspace in the underground railroad, the black female body experiences a similar level of decomposition while in the black box. yet, the extent of decomposition in the black box is exponentially greater. as fulton’s blueprints detail, “at ninety, everything is air and the difference between you and the medium of your passage is disintegration with every increment of the ascension. . . . even the darkness of the shaft is gone because there is no disagreement between you and the shaft. how can you breathe when you no longer have lungs?” (whitehead, 1999, p. 222). in the progressive ascent, the body merges with the black box, thereby eradicating the body. the dissolution of the body revolutionizes the future and resolves all social issues because external factors that often cause divisiveness, such as race and gender, no longer exist. such bodily merging recalls the conjure tales by charles w. chesnutt. these series of tales “abound with black characters—mostly slaves—that are magically transformed into inhuman objects and animals” (lam, 2018, p. 369). in addition to turning into frogs, birds, wolves, and mules, chesnutt’s characters transform into inanimate objects; one character, who had been eating clay to prevent starvation, turns into clay as he is smashed into pieces, and another character turns into a tree who is then cut into lumber to build his master’s kitchen. as joshua lam (2018) points out, “taken together, the tales dramatize the dehumanizing process of objectification that turns human beings into commodities or non-human ‘things’” (p. 369). in addition to the deterioration of the black body into inanimate materiality, the connection between the intuitionist and conjure tales is further strengthened considering the black box and intuitionism are associated with “voodoo” (whitehead, 1999, p. 7). rather than freeing, the black box dehumanizes the individual by stripping away their body. safety is provided at the expense of the body and all bodily-related identity markers cannot truly be called safety. although lila mae accepts the ramifications of the second elevation, the black box solution feels more apocalyptic than plausible. the cost exacted on the body is too high. just as baby suggs affirms in toni morrison’s beloved, the black body is central to the black experience: “in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. love it. yonder they do not love your flesh. . . . you got to love it. this is flesh i’m talking about here. flesh that needs to be loved” (1987, p. 103-104). because the black body is to be valued, a solution to racial problems cannot come by eroding the body. through the dissatisfaction of the proposed solution, whitehead argues that the trajectory of society is not progressive but instead continues to jeopardize the black female body; 20th-century urban space doesn’t offer anything more than antebellum space offered. there is no lasting safe space for black bodies in urban space, whether in the past, present, or future. despite the lengths society may claim to have made since slavery, the female black body still is objectified, deteriorated into a mechanization. conclusion despite whitehead’s ironic solution, the intuitionist subtly delineates the needed characteristics to constitute a safe space. when chased by jim and john who are threatening physical violence, lila mae finds safety at the dime-a-dance. this kind of establishment, more commonly known as a taxi-dance hall, gained popularity in cities during the 1920s and 1930s. in these halls, male patrons paid women to dance with them. although the taxi-dance hall wasn’t always a safe space for women considering the possibility of unwanted sexual advances, the taxidance hall offered an unconventional amount of female power for its time. while observing the taxi-dance halls of chicago, urban sociologist paul cressey (1932/2008) remarked, “the most direct control remains with the group of girls who dominate the life of the establishment and who have evolved certain codes and techniques of control” (p. 38). cressey (1932/2008) also clarifies that these women “set the immediate standards of conduct for both taxi-dancers and patrons” (p. 38). in other words, in the taxi-dance hall, women hold jurisdiction over the space, governing the safety of both women and men. like the many female taxi-dancers who reveled in the freedom offered by their position, lila mae’s experience in the taxi-dance hall reflects women’s heightened authority. initiating the encounter, lila mae asks a black man to dance with her and refuses offered payment. though accepting money could be seen as female economic empowerment, in this case, lila mae’s rejection reinforces herself as an agential being, especially when compared to other instances in the novel where decisions made solely by men leave her powerless. her resolution to go against custom shifts the power dynamic as she maintains autonomy in setting the parameters for the interaction. twice, whitehead (1999) highlights lila mae’s retained sovereignty: “she has taken the lead and now guides her partner’s steps” and “she leads” (p. 217). instead of the antipathy of the body exhibited by the black box, dancing allows lila mae to connect with her body as she intentionally moves about the space. thus, the taxi-dance hall represents the necessary conditions for a safe space for women— unencumbered social authority that facilitates bodily autonomy. the diversity of the taxi-dance halls also conceptualizes an urban safe space for racially marginalized women. in his writings, cressey (2008) frequently emphasizes the unprecedented racial mixing for its time in us history: “chinese and sicilians, hawaiians and scandinavians, mexicans and russian, filipinos and romanians, jews and poles, greek and american indians, hindus, and anglo-saxon nordics all mingle together” (p. 109). although elsewhere ostracized, minority groups comprised both patrons and dancers at the taxi-dance hall. as a result, racial groups often mixed and danced together, leading many sociologists to condemn the taxi-dance hall for facilitating mixed-race intimate relations. yet while the taxi-dance hall allowed mixedrace, cressey (2008) clarifies, “the american negro remains the only racial type excluded from the taxi-dance hall” (p. 9). whitehead recrafts this historical narrative, placing lila mae and her black partner as participating members of the taxi-dance hall. while they dance, surrounded by white couples, whitehead (1999) comments, “it is safe here in the eye of the storm” and another, “it is safe” (p. 217). similar to the taxi-dance hall being what lucy burns (2008) recognizes as a means by “which a racialized immigrant community negotiated its presence in a dynamic public social space,” the undisturbed presence of this black couple offers the possibility of racial space negotiation where black bodies face no hostility (p. 26). lila mae’s presence in the space without racial antagonism marks this characteristic as a necessary qualification for lasting safety for black women. the panacea is not the black box where the body is dissolved but a 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(original work published 1929) microsoft word ce+embodied+journal+submission+(chinese+feminism).docx the making of "woman" the evolution of chinese state feminism(s) under three chinese leaders jessica yang, stanford ’24 abstract: every nation harbors a dynamic “feminism” owing to unique cultural traditions, national experiences, and women’s own experience of “gender inequality.” the nuanced “feminisms” make historical contextualization of national feminisms essential to crafting a more culturally-inclusive feminist rhetoric. chinese feminist rhetoric is one of the most dynamic in the world. in the last century, china experienced two dramatic socio-cultural transformations with consequences reverberating in every aspect of chinese society, especially gender relations and feminist rhetoric. while numerous scholars analyzed how the fundamentally-different maoist and post-mao era “state feminisms” transformed gender relations, very few extended their analyses to contemporary chinese feminism. it is crucial that we analyze the state feminist rhetoric of the current chinese leader, xi jinping to understand the evolution of xi’s gender rhetoric and its connections to earlier state feminisms. a combined analysis of maoist, post-mao era, and xi’s state feminisms will craft a more encompassing picture of the dynamic nature of chinese feminisms and the fluidity of gender constructions since 1900s china. while xi’s state rhetoric frames the return to traditional female roles as establishing china’s cultural autonomy and elevating china as a whole, in reality, the emphasis on family and women’s empowerment only serves the state’s interests. ultimately, xi draws upon both mao’s and deng’s state feminisms to impose his own, arguably more oppressive idea of “gender equality.” “feminism is never monolithic or static.” —estelle b. freedman, history of feminisms every nation harbors a distinctive and dynamic “feminism” owing to unique cultural traditions and national experiences. each woman’s experience of “gender inequality” is different depending on their ethnicity, class, and religion (noh, 2003). these nuanced “feminisms” make historical contextualization of national feminisms essential to crafting a more culturally-inclusive feminist rhetoric–to ultimately empower all women with the selfagency they deserve. chinese feminist rhetoric is one of the most dynamic in the world and shaped dramatically by state politics and china’s political leaders. china experienced two dramatic cultural and sociopolitical transformations in the last century, with consequences reverberating in every aspect of chinese society—especially gender relations and feminist rhetoric. without analyzing how china’s feminist rhetoric emerged with its sociopolitical context, it becomes virtually impossible to advocate for a culturally-appropriate “gender equality” that empowers, rather than constrains, chinese women. for centuries, chinese gender relations were defined by a confucian patriarchal system that degraded women into inherited objects passed from father to husband to son, a concept known as the “three obediences.” since then, china’s political leaders have played a critical role in shaping gender roles, due to the tremendous power they wield as the chinese communist party (cpp) leader (qin, 2019; rauhala, 2015). when mao established his communist regime, the people’s republic of china, in 1949, he radically overturned confucianism’s debasing rhetoric of women: desexualizing women and proclaiming gender neutrality (leung, 2003). however, after mao’s death in 1976, the new modernist leader deng xiaoping implemented economic reform and an open-door policy aimed at reversing mao’s communist policies and modernizing china (huang, 2018). deng’s new government ushered in the post-mao era, precipitating another fundamental transformation in chinese gender relations and feminism (leung, 2003; wu, 2010). unlike mao’s asexual gender rhetoric, deng’s state rhetoric in the post-mao era reflected an essentialist view of gender that reemphasized women’s “femininity” and sexual differences (limin, 2013; zheng & zhang, 2010). while numerous scholars analyzed how the fundamentally-different maoist and post-mao era “state feminisms” transformed gender relations, very few extended their analyses to contemporary chinese feminism. contemporary chinese feminism is heavily influenced by chinese legislation, sociocultural trends, and increasing global interconnectedness. therefore, it is crucial that we analyze the state feminist rhetoric of the current, paramount chinese leader, xi jinping—arguably as powerful as both mao and deng—to understand the evolution of xi’s gender rhetoric and its connections to earlier state feminisms (fincher, 2012b; lewis, 2020a; qin, 2019; rauhala, 2015). a combined analysis of these state feminisms will craft a more encompassing picture of chinese feminisms’ dynamic nature and the fluidity of gender constructions since 1900s china. to analyze the evolution of what we now understand as “chinese feminisms,” i begin by examining historians’ different interpretations of how maoist and post-mao era state feminisms impacted gender inequality and women’s self-perception. i will extend these analyses to incorporate xi jinping’s state feminist rhetoric and its response to a vastlydifferent sociopolitical context. by analyzing xi’s propaganda and media statements, i argue that xi’s government is pursuing an aggressive political campaign reemphasizing traditional chinese values of family and encouraging nationalism, consequently revitalizing confucian female roles of motherhood and wifehood. while xi’s state rhetoric frames a return to traditional female roles as establishing china’s cultural autonomy and elevating china as a whole, in reality, the emphasis on family only serves the state’s interests. by pressuring women to marry and reproduce for national “advancement,” xi—like mao and deng— continues to frame women’s rights as subordinate to other state goals and as a means to an end. ultimately, xi draws upon both mao’s and deng’s state feminisms to impose his own, arguably more oppressive idea of gender equality. xi uses state rhetoric to reinforce traditional confucian values of women’s inferiority, effectively oppressing women both legislatively and socio-culturally—all to strengthen the ccp’s authoritarian control. pre-mao era “womanhood” until mao zedong took power in 1949 and radically uprooted traditional chinese values, confucianism dominated social rhetoric (liu, 2013). for centuries, deeplyentrenched confucian values of filial piety and the “three obediences” underscored women’s inferiority and rendered women powerless both in public and in the home. its debasing rhetoric cultivated traditions like “foot-binding” to restrict women to the domestic sphere and to undermine women’s intellectual capacities (liu, 2013). confucianism’s patriarchal ideals emphasized how social order depends on the “wu lun” 五伦 or “five relations”: “ruler-ruled, father-son, elder-younger brother, husband-wife, and male friendfriend” (leung, 2003, p. 360). the rhetoric of social and familial order made traditional chinese society patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal (a practice where couples settle in the man’s home or community) (leung, 2003). in contrast to western individualism, confucianism teaches obedience and every individual as morally obligated to society—especially women (liu, 2013; wu, 2010). historians agree that chinese women were consistently defined in relation to men rather than as individual beings, deprived of self-agency, and characterized as tools for social advancement (leung, 2003; liu, 2013). knowledge of chinese collectivistic culture allows us to better understand how mao zedong, deng xiaoping, and xi jinping framed their feminist rhetoric within the context of societal benefit. mao zedong’s state feminism (1949-1976) with the founding of the people’s republic of china (prc) in 1949, mao zedong reversed centuries-old chinese traditions of women’s subordination by radically proclaiming women’s social equality and by using social-constructionist language: language emphasizing how “gender” is created by society rather than gender-essentialist language suggesting “gender” is created by innate biological differences (limin, 2013). to free women from confining confucian gender ideals, mao desexualized women through social-constructionist language like “nüquan” 女权 (female power) versus gender-essentialist language like “nüxing” 女性 (female sexuality) (angeloff & lieber, 2012; liu, 2013). mao specifically departed from “funü” 婦女—a term connoting confucian values of women as wives and mothers—to liberate women from their subservient, domestic roles and propel them into public labor (huang, 2018; bo wang, 2010). both huang (2018) and wu (2019) explained how mao’s famous proclamation, “women hold up half the sky,” elevated an unprecedented number of chinese women into public life. however, while agreeing that mao’s feminist rhetoric affirmed women’s equal capabilities with men, many scholars contend that mao’s state feminism was still rooted in a patriarchal revolutionary system. scholars disagree over the extent to which mao’s gender reconstruction undermined or strengthened chinese patriarchy by transforming women’s public and domestic roles. a leading historian in chinese gender discourse, zheng (2005) explains how, because women’s subordination mainly stemmed from the family hierarchy, mao's communist policies dissolving the family unit partially weakened chinese patriarchy. however, other historians argue that mao’s policies extolled women’s public contributions while emphasizing domestic responsibilities as women’s primary roles (angeloff & lieber, 2012; huang, 2018). they point to how mao grandly touted the elimination of gendered division of labor with his tailored female ideal, the “iron woman,” who simultaneously embraces economic labor and fulfills family responsibilities. while this ideal positively reshaped women’s self-perception, it also imposed compounded public and domestic burdens on chinese women—known as “double burden”—and only paid “lip service” to domestic equality (gao, 2017b; limin, 2013). a professor of chinese women’s labor inequalities at hong kong baptist university, leung (2003) more harshly condemns maoist feminism as “officially-sanctioned, subordinative … gendered division of labor and reproductive activities” (p. 365). according to wu (2019), mao’s superficial gender reforms did not uproot the patriarchal system. mao only suppressed traditional gender discourse. evidently, mao’s “gender equality” or “nannü pingdeng” 男女平等 rhetoric did not equate to “women’s liberation” (limin, 2013). some scholars go even further to suggest that mao did not simply desexualize but actually “masculinized” women. mao attempted to “re-mold” women by masculine standards, demanding they wear “shapeless clothes … behave exactly like men” and show little affection for their children (leung, 2003, p. 366). by only superficially changing women without uprooting structural patriarchal values, mao suppressed women’s femininity and stripped them of self-agency (wu, 2010). gao (2017a) explicitly condemns party propaganda as rooted in gender prejudices—like the idea of women’s weaker constitutions—despite the “iron woman” ideal. this echoes previous scholars’ views that state propaganda deformed women’s images with patriarchal standards (limin, 2013). reading these analyses of mao’s state propaganda and rhetoric in combination, huang (2018) concludes that mao desexualized women only for the purpose of state labor and forcibly redefined women’s identity through their political, family, worker, and communist roles. consequently, many authors assert that official state discourse firmly decided women’s gender identities. gender equality remained subordinate to mao’s collective goals (leung, 2003; wu, 2010). such was mao’s “passive liberation” or “pseudo liberation” of women (limin, 2013, p. 95). mao’s gender equality policies failed because they denied women self-determination and were a “state-down” approach to gender reform (huang, 2018; leung, 2003; limin, 2013). mao’s demand for complete equality was too radical in a time when chinese women were struggling to be recognized as human—much less equal humans (liu, 2013). before mao rose to power in 1949, traditional confucian rhetoric debased women as lesser creatures without the privileges of femininity like western women had. as such, zheng (2005) points to how mao introduced ideas of women's “equal rights” when women themselves had no idea what “gender equality” entailed. importantly, gao (2017) and limin (2013) depart from focusing on male perspectives to instead analyze women’s perspective on mao’s gender reform. both argue mao stripped women of their “private language” of femininity derived from personal experiences. lacking feminist consciousness and autonomous sexuality, women’s experiences under maoist "gender equality" policies were more confining than liberating. consequently, many chinese women sought to reclaim their femininity and openly embraced the post-maoist era’s re-emphasis of their sexuality (limin, 2013). post-mao era state feminism (1978-1995) when deng xiaoping took power in 1978 following mao’s death, deng radically reversed mao’s state feminist rhetoric and promoted a gender-essentialist view of women, fostering another fundamental transformation in chinese gender relations. in contrast to mao’s gender-neutral state rhetoric, deng’s new government believed and used scientific rhetoric to underscore women’s biological differences with men (huang, 2018). state rhetoric proclaimed it was restoring “the right order of the nation” by rebalancing gender differences, harkening to confucian beliefs of “yinyang” 阴阳 harmony between genders (l. wang, 2013). this led to the renewed use of “xingbie” 性别 (“difference between sexes”) and “nüxing” 女性 (“female sex”) to describe women, terms popular before the mao era (angeloff & lieber, 2012). researchers widely agree that post-mao era state feminist rhetoric was rooted in “an implicit gender code” that patronized women and denied them self-determination (angeloff & lieber, 2012; wu, 2010; zheng & zhang, 2010). leung (2003) critiques deng’s policies as using “presumed sexual differences” to group women with the “elderly and young” (p. 367), therefore suggesting women need special protection because of their biological differences. while these laws may have endowed women with unique protection, their paternalistic natures rendered them restrictive and debasing. it helped craft a “social harmony” based on men’s absolute domination over women (zheng & zhang, 2010). coupled with china’s expanding market-economy, deng’s gender-essentialist state rhetoric increasingly commodified female sexuality (leung, 2003; wu, 2019; zheng & zhang, 2010). leung (2003) reveals how state advertisements celebrated female attractiveness to “fulfill their sex role”; popular media almost exclusively associated women with fashion and beauty (p. 370). this cultivated women’s internalization of themselves as the “second sex,” as “woman” became synonymous with “femininity.” l. wang (2013), however, provides a contrasting perspective. placing post-mao state rhetoric in historical context with mao’s masculinized “iron women,” l. wang (2013) explores how the new state rhetoric could be seen as positive because it reemphasized women’s femininity, something that mao had forcibly stripped away from many women. however, in both instances, the state defined “womanhood” and women were given no self-agency. the fourth u.n. world conference of women (1995) in beijing was a crucial turning point in helping chinese women recognize the importance of self-agency and begin challenging state-imposed gender roles. the conference introduced new ideas of “self,” “gender,” and “women’s empowerment” into chinese feminist rhetoric. with these new concepts of self-autonomy and women’s equal rights, the state changed its terminology from “gender equality” (“nannü pingdeng” 男女平等) to “social equality between men and women" (“shehui xingbie pingdeng” 社会性别平等) (zheng & zhang, 2010). this change gave chinese women the conceptual framework to free themselves from marxist and socialist rhetoric of “gender equality” that subordinated women’s equality to other collective state goals (huang, 2018; leung, 2003). “gender” unlocked new meanings for women’s “equal rights,” and pressured the chinese government to acknowledge international democratic trends and women’s own perspectives in the new contemporary age. theoretically, the conference and burgeoning transnational feminist dialogue should have transformed china’s feminist movement from a state-sanctioned entity into an independent movement powered by women themselves. however, this is not the reality. 21st-century state gender rhetoric after the 1995 u.n. women’s conference, the ccp did indeed change its state rhetoric to reflect new ideas of “gender”—but only on the policy level. in the early 2000s, the cpp amended china’s constitution to emphasize its “recommitment” to gender equality; state organizations formalized “gender” into state rhetoric (bin wang, 2019). after xi jinping became the chinese president in 2013, his speeches particularly underscored his attention to gender inequality, frequently alluding to mao’s proclamation, “women hold up half the sky” (qin, 2019). most recently, in his 2020 u.n. speech to commemorate the 1995 women’s conference, president xi declared that “equality between men and women is a basic state policy in china." in reality, however, gender inequality is increasing across chinese society under xi, compared to its declining trend under both mao and deng (rauhala, 2015). just one example is how china had one of the highest percentages of women in the labor force at 75% in 1990, a percentage which has declined to 61% in 2019 (qin, 2019). moreover, china’s economic transformation has overwhelmingly benefitted men. on the world economic forum’s global gender gap index, china’s ranking declined from 57th out of 139 nations in 2008 to 103rd in 2018 (the global gender gap, 2018). evidently, despite the ccp’s enduring emphasis on gender equality as a founding principle, xi’s government is reversing decades of progress in women’s rights. this phenomenon could partly be driven by xi’s revitalization of traditional confucian values of family that both legislatively and culturally pressures women into conformity with his idea of “gender equality.” characterized by women’s domesticity and patriarchal domination, xi’s “gender equality” is more oppressive than either mao’s or deng’s. in the final section, i reveal that xi’s gender reform is aimed at perpetuating the ccp’s autocratic power—now that the party faces potential instability arising from china’s sex-ratio imbalance and younger generations’ challenging of traditional, patriarchal hierarchies. xi’s family-focused rhetoric since 2013, xi’s state propaganda reemphasizing traditional confucian values, especially of family, has propelled women’s decreasing public involvement and inequalities. one of the most preeminent scholars of xi’s state feminism, fincher (2014) describes xi’s new political theory for the cpp as “confucian-style morality,” which blends confucian values with mao’s marxist ideology. the influence of xi’s political ideology is extensive. xi became the first chinese president since deng to have his political ideology with his name attached immortalized in the chinese constitution, evidencing his ascension to be one of china’s paramount leaders comparable to mao and deng (buckley, 2018). xi draws upon both mao’s and deng’s rhetorical strategies to preserve the ccp’s supremacy. in contrast to the indirect effects of deng’s policies on women and similarly to mao, xi deliberately reshapes women’s gender roles, asserting that china’s success depends on such stateimposed social order. however, xi builds upon the gender-essentialism and sexist confucian ideals of deng’s government to craft xi’s new vision for china: one characterized by male-centered, confucian values of family that effectively fortify state control. xi’s aggressive family-values campaign is nowhere more evident than in his rhetorical characterization of china as “one family” under an indisputable patriarch: himself. this lays the foundation for the state media to portray xi as the nation’s “confucian father” (fincher, 2014). in the 2010s, state media intensified xi’s personality cult by affectionately deeming him “xi dada,” translating into “uncle xi” or “big daddy” (fincher, 2018). reinforced by popular culture, his state-cultivated persona embodies the perfect husband, father, grandfather, and leader all in one. the propaganda particularly evokes the nation’s god-like idolization of mao to celebrate xi as the national patriarch (burckhardt, 2016). by framing xi as the national patriarch, state media uses traditional chinese values of filial piety and obedience to justify the ccp’s authoritarian control and gender roles as necessary for “family” and social harmony. china daily, the state-owned newspaper, praises xi for stressing the importance of family, explaining how xi’s values for the “little family” embody his hopes for the “big family”: the nation (an, 2018). by drawing upon confucian values of filial piety in the nuclear family, xi establishes that chinese citizens or the “children” are culturally, morally, and politically obligated to obey their “patriarch”—and therefore, not question the existing gender roles. this reinforces the legitimacy of xi’s and the ccp’s control over china’s moral and cultural character, and ultimately, their vision for gender roles. women’s compounded legislative and cultural oppression due to deeply-rooted confucian values of the “three obediences” and women’s subservience, xi especially pressures women into conforming with the ccp’s gender roles. xi is the first president to explicitly break from mao’s and deng’s state rhetoric rooted in marxist ideals of women’s liberation and declare that women must “shoulder the domestic burden” (qin, 2019). although women’s domestic responsibilities were implicit under mao and deng, both had openly encouraged women into the public sphere. one avenue that both mao and deng used to spread messages promoting gender neutrality was through the allchina women’s federation or acwf, formed in 1949 and the only state-sponsored women’s organization. in stark contrast, today, vice president meng man of the acwf uses traditional ideas of the gendered division of household labor to justify xi’s emphasis on women’s domestic roles in a 2018 statement. she explains how the acwf is inspired by xi’s belief that women have “certain abilities that can help them naturally play an important role in health, education and charity undertakings,” notably excluding other professional fields (newly-elected, 2018). therefore, xi’s government distorts and paradoxically entwines the communist party’s core philosophy that “women hold up half the sky” with confucian values of women’s family responsibilities. it redefines women’s role in “holding up half the sky” as limited to their domestic roles, effectively stripping women of selfdetermination. xi adds moral impetus to his call for traditional gender roles by portraying it as a necessary precondition for china’s cultural autonomy and national elevation, especially in the context of increased globalization. through the deliberate contrast of his 2013 “chinese dream” movement with the “american dream,” xi stresses china’s need to revitalize traditional values and distinguish itself from america as a global superpower (sun, 2019). ubiquitous “chinese dream” propaganda such as that urge citizens to prioritize and work towards china’s “national rejuvenation” and cultural individuality (youth urged, 2013). xi’s message directly targets women. xi highlights the importance of family values—therefore, women’s domestic roles—to national glory. at the 19th ccp national congress (2017), xi pointedly declared that a women’s civic duty is to raise “family virtues and personal integrity.” xi further linked “good” with “family” in his 2018 address to the acwf, tying women’s traditional duties with the preservation of “national virtues.” he urged women to “possess the spirit of patriotism...use their own development for the great cause of the reform and development of the motherland” (xinhua, 2018). in these speeches, xi explicitly calls on chinese women to “reform” themselves for china’s advancement, yet rarely mentions men and otherwise states, “chinese people.” even in 2020, xi continues to characterize women as the “means” and “drivers” of social progress—instead of identifying women’s rights as its own important goal—to impel women to fulfill state gender roles (full text: xi’s un speech, 2020). in his 2020 u.n. speech, xi even endeavors to reshape women’s understanding of their own happiness. he asserts that women deserve to “feel satisfied, happy...live life in full.” but what does “live life in full” truly mean? xi deliberately, ambiguously defines what women’s “full happiness” means to veil his hidden meaning; to him, women’s “full happiness” should derive solely from their familial duties, rather than their self-autonomy. by inseparably linking women’s traditional responsibilities of marriage and motherhood to patriotism, national rejuvenation, and cultural autonomy, xi reshapes women’s self-perception and doubly oppresses women into conformity. if women do not conform, they now face statesupported, social ostracization as women who “selfishly” prioritize their individual rights and wellbeing. xi uses the derogatory “sheng nü'' or “leftover women” to describe single, independent, and highly-educated women over the age of 27 to shame women who do not conform to their “moral, civic duty” of domesticity. while the term was coined by the acwf and formalized into state law by the ministry of education in 2007, “sheng nü'' was popularized as official rhetoric under xi due to his state initiatives encouraging women’s marriage and reproduction (fincher, 2014). it is important to contextualize how chinese culture teaches women to prioritize their families over their other interests. single women interviewed in the sk-ii short film, “marriage market takeover” (2016), and the new york times op-doc, “leftover women” (shlam & medalia, 2020), illuminate how traditional chinese culture perceives unmarried women as “incomplete humans''—an idea that xi’s emphasis on marriage now reinforces and cultivates. essentially, xi exploits these entrenched cultural beliefs to both legislatively and culturally compel women to fulfill these state gender roles for societal advancement. his blurring of government-imposed and cultural morality has strengthened the relationship between state feminist rhetoric and chinese gender relations more than either mao and deng. the acwf has been instrumental in disseminating xi’s gender rhetoric and shaping public perception of family and marriage (zhou, 2019). acwf newsletters and propaganda address all aspects of women’s lives, from offering relationship advice to strategically castigating “leftover women.” some acwf articles endorse traditional confucian ideals for women, such as encouraging women to internalize their inferiority and marry quickly. they shame women for being too “picky” regarding marriage, urge women to lower their standards, and even tolerate husbands who disrespect women. the following excerpt was taken from the acwf’s march 2011 column posted days after international women’s day (fincher, 2012b): “when holding out for a man, if you say he must be rich and brilliant, romantic and hardworking [...] this is just being willful. does this kind of perfect man exist? maybe he does exist, but why on earth would he want to marry you?” the acwf goes as far as to condone men’s infidelity and vices, asserting such behaviors are women’s faults. they instruct women to never challenge gender roles but, instead, reform themselves to fulfill these ideals, directly tying to state rhetoric framing national success as solely dependent on women’s “self-improvements.” rather than acknowledging patriarchy as a foundational problem, the acwf actively encourages women to help perpetuate patriarchal ideals and gender inequality—all for the so-called “national interest.” an excerpt from the acwf’s article, “faced with a marital crisis, women need to improve themselves,” states: “when you find out that he is having an affair, you may be in a towering rage, but you must know that if you make a fuss, you deny the man “face” [...] no man is capable of spending a lifetime being loyal to an outmoded wife who never changes ... try changing your hairstyle [...] women must constantly change for the better.” acwf further enforces social conformity by vehemently castigating “leftover women” as disrespecting chinese culture and inhibiting national development. yet, they hypocritically label “leftover women” when it is actually “leftover men” due to china’s surplus of 30 million men (lewis, 2020a). “many highly educated ‘leftover women’ are very progressive in their thinking and enjoy going to nightclubs to search for a one-night stand [...] it is only when they have lost their youth and are kicked out by the man, that they decide to look for a life partner. therefore, most ‘leftover women’ do not deserve our sympathy.” the state’s dehumanization of single women fosters a self-reinforcing cycle in which women internalize xi’s narrowly-defined “womanhood” and accept their inferiority and subordination. “sheng nü” becomes a form of government “language policing” (feldshuh, 2018), reinforced by pervasive popular culture stigmatizing and branding “leftover women.” much like women’s experiences under mao and deng, such social stigma renders women unable to achieve full equality and ultimately serves to perpetuate state control. the motives behind xi’s gender reform xi’s ultimate motive for gender reform is using women’s subordination to solve china’s reproduction problem and perpetuate the state’s autocratic control. china’s state council addressed how the “unprecedented population pressures” of sex-ratio imbalance and “low quality of general population” (uneducated rural families) are a “threat to social stability” (fincher, 2014). confronted with declining birth rates and an aging population, the chinese government seeks to increase reproduction. however, they only want high-quality reproduction by young, educated, and urban women (chang, 2020). consequently, the ccp portrays traditional family values as liberating women and their “natural” duties, when, in reality, it unfairly demands women to sacrifice their wellbeing for state interests. xi also emphasizes women’s domestic responsibilities to address the ccp’s fear of potential instability. especially as there is an excess of 30 million single men in china due to the single-child policy, a feminist revolt against a patriarchal society that could overturn the party’s entire political legitimacy (lewis, 2020b). the ccp perceives gender equality as a threat to its autocratic power rooted in sexism (fincher, 2012b; lewis, 2020a; qin, 2019). in a washington post article, fincher (2018) asserts that, “it is impossible to understand the longevity of china's communist party without recognizing the patriarchal underpinnings of its authoritarianism. in short, china's ultimate strongman, xi, like other autocrats around the world, views patriarchal authoritarianism as critical for the survival of the communist party.” thus, by reducing women into “reproductive tools for the state, dutiful wives, mothers, and baby breeders,” the ccp can reinforce traditional power imbalances, minimize social disorder, and strengthen its authoritarian power (fincher, 2012a). yet, the ccp’s increasingly “fragile masculinity” symbolizes its increasingly fragile state control owing to growing international dialogue and citizen consciousness (fincher, 2018). undeniably, xi’s traditional chinese culture and family initiative predominantly serve his state interests. like under mao and deng, women’s rights remain subordinate to broader state goals. all three leaders demand women to sacrifice their rights and wellbeing for “chinese society,” which essentially means the ccp. while women’s so-called “liberation” was defined differently under all three regimes, the uniting similarity is their framing of “women’s liberation” as a means to an end for national “advancement” and the perpetuation of patriarchal authoritarianism. conclusion all three chinese leaders—mao zedong, deng xiaoping, and xi jinping—deny women self-empowerment under their inherently-oppressive state feminisms. none establish gender equality as its own distinctive goal. none place women at the forefront of their own so-called “liberation.” even in the context of 21st-century globalization and democratization, xi expands mao’s and deng’s oppressive state feminisms to forge his vision of “gender equality” and “womanhood.” it is one that undoubtedly represses women under law and culture by revitalizing outdated, sexist confucian values of women’s inferiority to promote cpp agendas, all while hiding under the facade of restoring china’s cultural autonomy and catalyzing national development. however, culture is continually evolving: chinese feminisms and definitions of “gender equality” with it. while xi may frame traditional chinese gender norms as unchanging, mao’s and deng’s regimes evidence the fluidity of gender constructions and dynamism of chinese culture. xi’s state feminism exists in a new sociopolitical context characterized by a contemporary understanding of women’s equal human rights and increasing chinese grassroots-feminist voices. to continue denying women choice, selfautonomy, and fundamental human rights would be incompatible with modern civilization. the chinese women’s movement no longer simply advocates for equal rights between men and women. they now demand equal rights for all individuals against an authoritarian state. xi’s increasing disenfranchisement of women evidences his consolidation of power, paving the path for his expanded authoritarian control over all chinese citizens and their rights. it is this intimate entwinement of women’s rights and human rights that the international community must recognize and support. we must all be aware that patriarchal ideology is its own form of oppression. as such, the chinese government cannot be the only entity deciding women’s rights. grassroots-feminists and other chinese women must have an 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existing scholarship centers around the american invasion of iraq in 2001, which was similarly characterized by extremely gendered rhetoric. this paper builds on that existing research and uses around three years of news articles, op-eds, and letters to the editor published in the new york times to argue that the rhetoric of military intervention into syria was mired in harmful gendered tropes and stereotypes. “you just think how lame you’d be … suppose i had let a million people, two million people be refugees out of kosovo, a couple hundred thousand people die, and they say, ‘you could have stopped this by dropping a few bombs. why didn’t you do it?’ and i say, ‘because the house of representatives voted 75 percent against it?’ you look like a total wuss, and you would be.” — former president bill clinton, criticizing then president barack obama at a mccain institute event on june 11, 2013 (rodin, 2013) at the time of those stinging words, two years had passed since protests had erupted in the southern syrian city of daraa, catalyzing first a wave of demonstrations across the country, then a violent crackdown ordered by syrian president bashar al-assad (the associated press, 2019). the small middle eastern country, nestled by the mediterranean sea, had for months been engulfed in a civil war — one that has since claimed nearly 400,000 lives and displaced over half of the population (syrian observatory for human rights, 2021). and in the summer of 2013, president barack obama had yet to militarily intervene. other than freezing syrian government assets, the united states had kept its hands out of the conflict. obama had marked as a “red line,” a year ago, the use of chemical weapons by assad’s government (the associated press, 2019). it would be another two months after clinton’s speech before the u.s. would first receive proof that the syrian government had fired sarin-loaded missiles into civilian residential areas, but even then, obama would be widely criticized for remaining hesitant on launching strikes against assad’s regime. hence, clinton’s famous designation of the president as: “a total wuss.” though the remark was brushed off by many as a joking stab from a former president to a sitting one, the implicit, unsaid words that made “wuss” clinton’s insult of choice unveil the gendered language of politics and international relations at that time. a study published on gender-linked derogatory terms in 1998 found that for 90 percent of people, the instant image evoked by the insult “wuss” was men and that the term fell under an umbrella of insults used to imply that a man is “weak in character,” “like a woman” or “homosexual” (james, 1998, p. 2, 5). for many men in the study, being likened to women was considered the worst insult that they could receive, reflecting the need for men to be “competent masters of every situation” (james, 1998, p. 8). given that international relations is a field not only dominated by men, but also steeped in gender norms and ideas, clinton’s use of the word “wuss” in criticizing what he considered to be weakness in the obama administration is unsurprising. this influence of gender prejudices on foreign policy was first documented by feminist scholar j. ann tickner in gender in international relations, the 1992 book that carved out the contours of feminist international relations. in it, she writes that “[c]haracteristics associated with ‘manliness,’ such as toughness, courage, power, independence, and even physical strength, have, throughout history, been those most valued in the conduct of politics … manliness has also been associated with violence and the use of force … [which] has been valorized and applauded in the name of defending one’s country” when used in the international sphere (p. 6). clinton’s pointed insult embodies this criticism perfectly; his advocacy for heightened aggression and violence against the syrian government was centered around pointing out obama’s weakness and threatening his masculinity. from march 2011, when protests first shook syria, to september 2014, when obama launched an air campaign against the islamic state in syria (isis), those who supported american intervention into the syrian civil war commonly employed gendered language and rhetoric like clinton’s. in this paper, i identify two tropes that were most widely used: first, that assad and isis needed to be “civilized” through masculine domination; and second, that obama was weak and unmasculine for not pursuing an aggressive foreign policy approach. in the academic field of feminist international relations today, much of the existing scholarship centers around the american invasion of iraq in 2001, which was similarly characterized by extremely gendered rhetoric — president bush’s adopted persona of a “cowboy,” for example, evoked images of wild, powerful masculinity embodied by the rogue stars of the wild west (christensen and ferree, 2014, p. 2). since there is presently little research about the syrian civil war in this context, this paper borrows extensively from the conversation around the iraq war, applying scholars’ analysis and work to the neighboring country. the bridging of the iraq war to the syrian civil war is also interesting because the former, which was widely dubbed a failure for the u.s., led to a new generation of politicians and americans deeply suspicious of entrapment in foreign conflicts. those who debated intervention into syria thus found themselves haunted by the shadow of iraq — there was always the fear of repeating history. i argue in this paper that 3lthoughugh this fear somewhat tempered the aggressive, gendered rhetoric used to support american intervention into syria, the minority of people who did advocate for air strikes and military support for the syrian rebels still employed much of the same gendered language that had been used a decade earlier. because of the unique histories and conditions of each conflict, i do not wish to overly flatten or simplify the similarities between syria and iraq; however, the deep scholarship on the iraq war is certainly helpful for identifying trends in the language of international relations, particularly regarding the middle east. in this paper, my analysis will draw on direct quotes from approximately three years of news articles, op-eds, and letters to the editor published in the new york times (nyt) about the syrian conflict. though evidently a qualitative rather than statistical analysis, i aim to present evidence of gendered tropes that have been used by both reporters and public figures in talking about the civil war. the quotes take place between march 2011 and september 2014 to cover the entirety of the political build-up to obama’s decision to launch the first of many airstrikes in syria, but gendered rhetoric of course continued past that point in conversations about increasing aggression even further. and although the quotes analyzed here draw only from the new york times (nyt), sociologists wendy m. christensen and myra marx ferree’s statistical analysis of media during the iraq invasion found that media across the political spectrum were relatively equally likely to use gendered language; they only differed on “the meaning given to gender and how it was used to legitimate or discredit each point of view” (christensen and ferree, 2014, p. 295). this paper’s findings should consequently not discount that other media sources also utilized similar tropes regardless of their stances on american intervention into syria, and further research encompassing a wider time frame and range of sources is invited. the civilizing white man “surely miliband must realize that western values, thought processes and decision making are conspicuous by their absence in this corner of the woods. his first precondition calls for the syrian government and the rebel groups to adhere to international laws and norms, and is followed by other related preconditions. while to western minds, such requirements are reasonable and logical, they are totally foreign in this area of conflict.” — michael dorian goldberg, writing in a letter to the editor published in the nyt on july 16, 2013 western minds are “reasonable” and “logical.” in “this corner of the woods,” namely the syrian government, those values and characteristics are “totally foreign.” surely, we must all recognize this, goldberg writes, and the roll of his eyes is almost palpable behind his words. michael dorian goldberg is just a normal reader of the nyt. the only further identification under his letter to the editor was that he was writing from israel — but the “nobodyness” of this author reveals how deeply gendered and racialized tropes were entrenched in the western public consciousness. syrians like assad were hopeless: the u.s. could not rely on them to be “reasonable,” to be “logical,” to “adhere to international laws and norms.” the only option left is unsaid: civilizing them through western force. almost a decade before goldberg published his letter, feminist legal scholar nancy ehrenreich wrote in her paper, “disguising empire: racialized masculinity and the civilizing of iraq,” about then-president bush’s construction of a “racialized masculinity” — the identification of the public to a masculinized nation-state whose masculinity is associated with the domination of people of color. during the iraq war, bush’s consistent classification of iraq as a “rogue state” and the u.s. as the leader of the “civilized world” added to a long history of the west constructing itself as a generous power needed to protect the world from savagery or barbarism. ehrenreich argues that the racialization of iraqis and muslims as backwards and uncivilized enabled american imperialism to paint itself as civilizing and beneficent, and that “dominant american norms of masculinity help to make ‘civilizing’ missions like gulf war ii both believable and appealing to many americans” (ehrenreich, 2005, p. 7). the message was that the white man and his pure, valiant masculinity are needed to tame the lesser, more corrupt iraqi man. america embodied “good” masculinity, iraq “bad.” years later, supporters of american military intervention into syria again borrowed from these same gendered and racialized tropes to portray assad and his government as savage, barbaric and needing to be civilized. some government officials, speaking anonymously, even admitted to purposefully using this rhetoric to provoke the syrian leader. according to one article from april 2011, “[a]dministration officials say that while they lack many effective economic tools, they believe mr. assad is sensitive to portrayals of his regime as brutal and backward. ‘he sees himself as a westernized leader,’ one senior administration official said, ‘and we think he’ll react if he believes he is being lumped in with brutal dictators’” (sanger, 2011). despite cultural differences, western conceptions of masculinity followed where western power led, spilling even into the middle east. the words used to describe the syrian regime, whether strategically or subconsciously selected, revived this “racialized masculinity” of the u.s. that had last been built during the iraq war. gendered and racialized language portrayed the syrian president as “backwards” and “uncivilized,” playing into tropes of the “white man’s burden” that have long been used to garner support for western imperialism and colonialism. assad’s crackdowns were described as “savagery born of desperation” (khouri, 2011) and a “savage assault upon his own people” (baty, 2013). debates circled around the idea of saving the middle east from itself: op-ed political and cultural columnist david brooks called the syrian government a “depraved regime,” writing that “[f]or 30 years, diplomats and technocrats have flown to damascus in the hopes of ‘flipping’ syria — turning it into a pro-western, civilized power … perhaps some of them were so besotted with their messianic abilities that they thought they had the power to turn a depraved regime into a normal regime. perhaps some of them were so wedded to the materialistic mind-set that they thought a regime’s essential nature could be altered with a magical mix of incentives and disincentives” (brooks, 2011). this quote perfectly encapsulates the ways in which “western” and “civilized” were seen as synonymous. “depravity,” in contrast, was seen as an “essential” part of the syrian government’s, perhaps even the syrian people’s, nature. intervention into syria was constructed as necessary, even generous: republican presidential candidate mitt romney argued that “america must show leadership on the world stage and work to move these developing nations toward modernity” (parker, 2011). journalist clemens wergin wrote that unless america stepped in, the leadership vacuum would be filled by “rogue actors like al qaeda, hezbollah and iran — and not only in syria,” implying that western forces are needed to stabilize and help the middle east because regional actors are too barbaric and savage (wergin, 2014). these words underscore a conception of american masculinity as the savior: the white man is more civilized, moral and courageous than the syrian man, and must thus offer him aid and lead him into modernity. the history of this rhetoric is deep and extensive: rudyard kipling’s notorious poem "the white man's burden," which urged the u.s. to inherit the european “burden” of conquering and civilizing other lands, was itself inspired by america’s seizure of guam, puerto rico, cuba and the philippines — the latter of which suffered a campaign of “benevolent assimilation” under former president mckinley that killed 16,000 filipino soldiers and approximately 200,000 civilians (höglund, 2007). here, america’s intervention into syria is again portrayed as “benevolent,” a generous act to save the syrian people and the middle east, despite the violence and death that it would inevitably cause. the word “savage” has also been consistently used to justify colonialism and suppression of indigenous populations by portraying them as subhuman and “degenerate,” and thus requiring “administration and instruction” (harding, 2005, p. 1). these “civilizing missions” are also highly gendered; tickner writes that “colonial people were often described in terms that drew on characteristics associated with women to place them lower in a hierarchy that put their white male colonizers on top” (tickner, 1992, p. 48). gendered language is, then, inseparable from america’s history of imperialism. america’s “racialized masculinity” was also built through the rhetoric of the syrian “thug.” an anonymous editorial in the new york times referred to the syrian government as “the syrian leader and his thugs” and “mr. assad and his henchmen,” and another said that assad was “sending his troops and thugs to murder anyone who has the courage to demand political freedom.” even secretary of state john kerry, in a speech about the use of chemical weapons in syria, called assad a “a thug and a murderer” (kerry, 2013). the word “thug” is deeply racialized and gendered: in america, it is often used as “coded language” that “draw[s] on past racial stereotypes and myths,” particularly of black people (smiley and fakunle, 2016, p.6-7). the term reinforces an idea of criminality, savagery and brutality, a characterization of black men as almost overly masculine — according to columbia english professor john mcwhorter, “thug today is a nominally polite way of using the n-word” (mcwhorter, 2015). historically, the term has also been used to posthumously describe black people killed by police officers in order to demonize them, justifying the violence and aggression that had been used against them (smiley and fakunle, 2016, p. 2); if the narrative is that black men are hypermasculine, then it is easier to rationalize masculine retaliation, through violence and power, against them. when used to describe the syrian government, “thug” similarly evokes explicit and implicit conceptions of race and gender that aid advocates in justifying increased force against the assad regime. the implication is that the syrian government is inherently criminal and brutal, necessitating greater violence to combat it. pro-intervention advocates’ co-option of these language patterns echoes the rhetoric of iraq, past imperialism and colonialism, and current institutional racism, reconstructing america’s new “racialized masculinity.” the argument, to many, was that the civilized western man was needed to save syria from itself. obama the “wuss,” bush the “protector” “obama is now being taken to task by those who say that he is soft … obama is seen as weak, hesitant and vacillating.” — amos harel, a military analyst writing in the israeli newspaper haaretz on september 1, 2013 dogged by fears of repeating the mistakes of his predecessor, obama initially approached the conflict in syria with caution. in 2011, the new york times reported that “[t]he obama administration [was] determined to avoid a repeat of the aftermath of the american invasion of iraq,” hesitant to intervene and hoping that the conflict would resolve itself without the u.s. “orchestrat[ing] the outcome” (cooper, 2011). from the start, pro-intervention advocates had criticized this hesitance as weak. but especially after obama refused to launch airstrikes even after receiving proof that the syrian government had used chemical weapons against its own civilians, the previously-established “red line” for american retaliation, that criticism reached new heights. the rhetoric of weakness and hesitancy employed by critics reflects tickner’s claim that in international relations, “the rationale for fighting wars is presented in gendered terms such as the necessity of standing up to aggression rather than being pushed around or appearing to be a sissy or a wimp” (tickner, 1992, p. 47). by using gendered language, supporters of military intervention targeted the president’s masculinity, artificially conflating rationality and an unwillingness to get involved in foreign conflicts with feminine fear and weakness. one such strategy was to underscore the masculine role of “protector” and obama’s supposed failure to fulfill it. during the first few years of the syrian civil war, politicians debated the foreign policy principle known as r2p: the “right to protect,” a u.s.-endorsed “2005 united nations initiative that calls on countries to intervene to prevent genocide and other mass atrocities” (landler, 2013). the idea of the u.s. taking on a protector-role is not new; writing on the iraq war, political theorist and socialist feminist iris marion young argued in her paper, “the logic of masculinist protection: reflections on the current security state,” that exploiting the “masculine role of protector in relation to women and children” makes it easy to build a “security state that wages war abroad and expects obedience and loyalty at home” (young, 2003, p. 2). though young’s theory poses the u.s. as protector of americans at home rather than civilians abroad, her analysis of how the masculine conception of being a “protector” legitimates both domestic authoritarianism and international aggression still applies. the bush administration, in using the language of fear and threat, justified the violent invasion of iraq and gained widespread support for restrictions of liberty such as the patriot act (young, 2003, p. 3). similarly, the logic of r2p justifies military intervention abroad in the name of protecting innocent civilians, particularly the often pointedly named “women and children.” people like richard s. williamson, a foreign-policy adviser to mitt romney, were consequently able to take advantage of this rhetoric by claiming that “‘r2p [was] … struggling,’ in part because of the administration’s unwillingness to do more about syria” (landler, 2013). by implying that obama was shedding his masculine role of “protector,” williamson indicts his leadership and strength. critics also focused on two additional choices that made obama the target of “weakness” assertions: not keeping his word on retaliating if the “red line” of chemical weapons usage was crossed and seeking congressional approval for launching airstrikes. reuel marc gerecht, a former case officer in the central intelligence agency (cia), wrote that “president obama may not believe that middle eastern conflicts are a proper test of his or america’s mettle; that sentiment is irrelevant now. he put the country’s reputation on the line in syria. the president has said many times that he doesn’t bluff. assad, with tehran and moscow behind him, has called his hand” (gerecht, 2014). four days later, journalist roger cohen echoed that sentiment, writing that “[t]he credibility of the united states is a precious, already eroded commodity … [that] cannot be compromised in this instance. a world where president bashar al-assad thumbs his nose at the u.s. president … is headed in a very dangerous direction” (cohen, 2013). the fear of losing credibility is also gendered: tickner writes that while men are seen as rational and calm beings, women are frequently portrayed as “irrational, emotional, and unstable” (tickner, 1992, p. 9). the idea of assad “thumbing his nose” at obama also implies an emasculation and humiliation of the president that makes him look weaker and more embarrassed. seeking congressional approval, too, was seen as an act of over-hesitancy both internationally and at home. samir nachar, a member of the opposition national coalition in syria, called obama a “weak president who cannot make the right decision when it comes to such an urgent crisis,” and yin gang, a chinese expert on the middle east, said that obama “doesn’t want to fight. he’s afraid, very afraid” (barnard and mullany, 2013). in the u.s., op-ed columnist maureen dowd wrote that “[m]any republicans are trying to use this as an attempt to emasculate the president” (dowd, 2013). this uproar demonstrates how even something such as seeking to take a more democratic approach to airstrikes could be construed as weakness because it didn’t follow the expected, and encouraged, method of directly attacking and asserting america’s strength. the rhetoric was so clearly gendered that dowd even directly pointed to it in the republicans’ language. the fear of being seen as weak also influenced what wasn’t talked about — peace. referencing a 2014 conference in geneva where involved actors gathered to discuss the syrian conflict and potential resolutions, artist patrick chappatte drew a political cartoon depicting the “geneva ii peace conference.” a dove clutching an olive branch in its beak looks up at a man peering at a scroll, who says, “i don’t see you on the guest list.” behind him, caricatures of frustrated world leaders argue angrily with one another. aggression and violence were often the default in discussions about foreign policy options in syria. in 2013, chief executive officer of the international rescue committee david milibrand wrote that “[t]he western political debate has focused on military options” despite growing humanitarian concerns (milibrand, 2013). and in the face of rising voices calling for military solutions, former secretary-generals of the north atlantic treaty organization (nato) javier solana and jaap de hoop scheffer desperately called for more “diplomatic maneuvering” (solana and scheffer, 2013). even when peace was discussed, it was with the backing of hard power: general salim idris of the syrian opposition said that the rebels “would not attend the conference unless they received additional arms and ammunition,” indicating that peace was not even to be considered without also insisting on aggression (gordon and landler, 2013). though obama was this time not targeted as an individual, the fear of the west and its allies being seen as weak definitely still influenced the discourse around intervening in syria. in her paper “war, wimps, and women: talking gender and thinking war,” gender and security scholar carol cohn posits that in high-level conversations about foreign policy options, government officials are pressured to “speak like a man,” meaning in a “hard-nosed, unrealistic, unsentimental, dispassionate way,” lest they be seen as feminine and consequently associated with all the negative traits of femininity (cohn, 1993, p. 230). this spills over into the subjects that people feel comfortable to talk about as well: “words that express an emotional awareness of the desperate human reality behind the sanitized abstractions of death and destruction” are not permitted, such as discussions of staggering numbers of casualties, imaginations of the pain and suffering of the “enemy’s” people, and concerns for the psychological impacts of warfare (cohn, 1993, p. 231-232). the desire to avoid being seen as weak thus aided pro-intervention advocates by discouraging discussions of peace or non-military options, and encouraging in their place an impersonal, sanitized conversation of aggression. gendered language about femininity and weakness ensured that other perspectives and suggestions remained at the margins. women as peacekeepers, women as warriors in an international arena that curves toward violence and aggression, women-led movements can present alternatives that reject the default options of masculine foreign policy. referencing a former op-ed in which journalist nicholas d. kristof had said that the only alternative to launching cruise missile strikes was sitting back and doing nothing, jessica neuwirth, the founder of women’s rights group donor direct action, wrote that “syrian women may be able to help reframe the options. the syrian women’s forum for peace is working to build a democratic syrian state through peaceful means and to find a political solution to stop the needless bloodshed … it envisions an anti-violence campaign that engages syrian mothers, wives and all women with help from women in other countries who have played a successful role in the cessation of armed conflict … bringing the voices of syrian women to the forefront may give us creative alternatives to consider as we debate intervention” (neuwirth, 2013). historically, women have played important roles in both imagining non-military approaches to international relations, and in resisting military-focused ones: at the 1985 women’s international peace conference in halifax, canada, women from both the west and the global south agreed that “security meant nothing if it was built on others’ insecurity”; women at greenham common demonstrated against the installation of cruise missiles in britain in 1981; and in the 1980s, the madres de la plaza de mayo demonstrated in support of people who had been disappeared by the argentine military dictatorship (tickner, 1992, p. 54, 60-61). incorporating more feminine and intersectional feminist perspectives in foreign policy can push definitions of security toward one of “the absence of violence whether it be military, economic, or sexual” rather than the realist conception of militarization in preparation for inevitable war (tickner, 1992, p. 66). but, up against a system already deeply entrenched in patriarchy, women themselves can also contribute to gender norms in international relations, especially in attempting to succeed in the field. the pressure to speak in a “masculine” way that cohn wrote about is perhaps even heavier on women and other marginalized genders, since “in the defense community, the only thing worse than a man acting like a woman is a woman acting like a woman” (cohn, 1993, p. 239). then secretary of state hillary clinton’s advocacy of military intervention into the syrian civil war demonstrates this: criticizing obama in 2014, she said that “[w]hen you are hunkering down and pulling back, you’re not going to make any better decisions than when you were aggressively, belligerently putting yourself forward” (bruni, 2014). clinton might genuinely hold realist perceptions of international relations; but she is also undoubtedly influenced by the pressure on women in foreign policy positions to prove themselves “masculine” enough by supporting aggressive and violent options. the root of the problem is thus not that women are not represented enough in international relations, but that “feminine” ideas and perspectives are not legitimized — “the inclusion and delegitimization of ideas marked as ‘feminine’ acts as a more powerful censor than the total absence of ‘feminine’ ideas would be” (cohn, 1993, p. 239). even movements that advocate for a feminist approach to international relations can be co-opted by patriarchal structures if they primarily center on the experiences and perspectives of western women. during the iraq war, for instance, young criticized american feminist movements for joining the government in its crusade to “save” iraqi women from muslim fundamentalism. though she acknowledges that the taliban certainly had cruel and oppressive policies toward women, she argues that the constant invoking of women’s liberation to justify the war both “constructed these women as exoticized others and paradigmatic victims in need of salvation by western feminists,” and deflected attention away from more subtle instances of gender-based violence and discrimination in other parts of the world, including within the united states and west (young, 2003, p. 19). similarly, journalist maureen dowd pointed out in 2014 that although “when american presidents rain down bombs on muslim countries, they use the awful treatment of women in the middle east as one of their justifications,” politicians ignore the human rights violations of allied countries “because we need the regressive rulers in the persian gulf to sell us oil and buy our fighter jets and house our fleets and drones and give us cover in our war coalitions” (dowd, 2014). feminist approaches to international relations have the potential to deconstruct existing masculine conceptions of security and war but can also still easily serve imperial aims and justify using violence in the name of “saving” women, bolstering the role of the state as “protector.” the role of women in international relations is therefore nuanced and complex: though women have historically been at the vanguard of movements against militarism and violence, they have also historically been subsumed into masculine structures to further aggressive foreign policy options. their inclusion in high-level foreign policy discussions is not enough to solve this issue of gendered rhetoric and policymaking. women are peacekeepers, but they are warriors and weapons too. the shadow of iraq with the failures of the iraq war lingering in public consciousness, america found itself with a new generation that did not want to go to war, tempering both the intensity and the prevalence of the aggressive, gendered rhetoric that was used to encourage intervention into syria. while bush had embraced the role of “cowboy” and himself adopted extensive gendered language in defending his decision to invade iraq, obama was instead the target of gendered criticism because of his unwillingness to intervene. this change in the commander-in-chief’s role in perpetuating gendered conceptions of international relations reflects the evolution of the american public’s views on foreign policy, which necessarily impacts scholarship on this subject. in june 2013, a poll conducted by the new york times and cbs news found that 61% of respondents felt that the u.s. did not have “a responsibility to do something about the fighting in syria between government forces and anti-government groups.” that same month, a deputy national security adviser, benjamin j. rhodes, said that “[s]ending american troops is ‘off the table,’ … citing the difficulties they faced stopping violence during the iraq war” (baker, 2013). more space was also made for nonmilitary options, with influential figures such as yale law school professors oona a. hathaway and scott j. shapiro writing that “the choice between military force or nothing is a false one” and listing alternatives such as economic retaliation, providing nerve agent antidotes to rebels, and using the u.s.’s rhetorical power to shame and pressure the syrian government’s allies (hathaway and shapiro, 2013). in bridging research and scholarship on the iraq war with an analysis of the syrian civil war, this paper acknowledges the social changes that occurred over the decade in between the two conflicts that qualify the direct application of the former to the latter. but although airstrikes against assad and his regime were less popular than the invasion of iraq was, those who called for them still employed gendered rhetoric and tropes in their advocacy, indicating that as a field, international relations was still deeply entangled with the valorization of masculinity and “masculine” characteristics and ideas. despite social shifts, scholarship about the iraq war is therefore still relevant and applicable to syria. conclusion: looking to non-gendered conceptions of security as the u.s. grappled with its role in the syrian civil war, interventionists borrowed from a longstanding trend of gendered narratives to bolster support for air strikes against the assad regime. two broad themes emerged from this rhetoric: first, that syrian president bashar alassad and isis needed to be “civilized” through masculine domination; and second, that obama was weak and effeminate for not pursuing an aggressive foreign policy approach. can the u.s. reach a conception of security that is non-gendered, especially as this “shadow of iraq” fades with time? the odds are tough: throughout countless conflicts among nations, not just in america and the west, gendered language has been exploited to further aggression, domination, and violence for centuries. this cannot be rectified by simply increasing the proportion of women in international relations. as tickner writes, “the achievement of peace, economic justice, and ecological sustainability is inseparable from overcoming social relations of domination and subordination; genuine security requires not only the absence of war but also the elimination of unjust social relations, including unequal gender relations” (tickner, 1992, p. 128). nongendered conceptions of security, thus, can only be truly achieved through the dismantling and uprooting of patriarchal structures everywhere. references “a timeline of the us involvement in syria’s conflict.” associated press, 11 january 2019, https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-syria-islamic-state-group-middle-east-internati onal-news-96701a254c5a448cb253f14ab697419b. “americans’ views on the issues.” 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state.” the university of chicago press, 2003. https://www-jstor-org.stanford.idm.oclc. org/stable/10.1086/375708?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents. let her play a report on gender-based violence in video games kirsten mettler, stanford university ‘23 abstract: globally, video games are a $152 billion industry, and approximately 3.1 billion people, or 40% of the population, are players (ingersoll & anti-defamation league, 2019, price, 2020). gaming is a huge industry, and it’s only getting bigger. unfortunately, women and other historically marginalized groups often face staggering levels of harassment and violence in these communities. this report aims to explore the issue of gender-based violence in video games by analyzing contributing factors and proposing gaming company interventions. ingrid, known as "sol," was only 19 (onder, 2021). she was a competitive e-sports player from brazil, specializing in “call of duty” (onder, 2021). and in february 2021, she was brutally murdered by her male competitor, guilherme alves costa (onder, 2021). costa recorded the murder, sharing it on whatsapp (onder, 2021). the crime was premeditated: costa was found with books outlining the crime and pdfs full of hate speech (onder, 2021). ingrid oliveira bueno da silva loved video games, but online misogyny and hate made a brutal appearance in her real life, bringing tragic consequences. the challenging culture that exists for female video gamers has disastrous impacts and must be addressed. women gamers currently experience incredibly high-rates of gender-based harassment. this includes abuse in online gaming environments, like chat rooms, and offline offices, as the gaming industry reckons with streams of workplace sexual harassment allegations. women are underrepresented in the gaming industry and objectified in games. over and over again, women are subjected to discriminatory treatment and abuse in the video game world; reminded that it is a “boys club.” this treatment has severe consequences. the importance of this issue only grows as video games become more and more popular throughout the world. globally, video games are a $152 billion industry, and approximately 3.1 billion people, or 40% of the population, are players (ingersoll & anti-defamation league, 2019, price, 2020). in recent history, the gaming industry has grown every year, and it now makes more annually than the music and film industries combined (price, 2020). this report explores the issue of gender-based harassment in video games: its prevalence and impacts, where it comes from, and how gaming companies can intervene. the problem approximately one in three female gamers in the united states and the united kingdom experience harassment based on their gender (ingersoll & anti-defamation league, 2019, bryter, 2019).1 17% of american female gamers have received threats of rape from male gamers (bryter, 2019). clearly, many women experience severe harassment while playing video games. gender-based harassment can vary significantly in games: everything from name-calling, to sharing inappropriate images, to stalking (bryter, 2019, fox & tang, 2016).2 it isn’t consistent in form either. sometimes harassment comes through in-game chats, but it can also come through the game play itself. players often exclude female gamers in collaborative games or excessively attack their avatars in combat games (brehm, 2013, mcinroy & mishna, 2017). and the harassment doesn’t end there. especially for well-known gamers, harassment can leak into 1 this report refers to women and females as all individuals who identify as women. although this report focuses mainly on those who identify as male or female, it should be acknowledged that this does not encompass all gender identities, and non-cisgendered folks often face significant challenges in gaming communities. 2 in this report, gender-based harassment refers to all discriminatory abuse on the basis of gender, including sexual harassment. sexual harassment refers to abuse that is sexual in nature. gender-based violence is a type of genderbased harrassment involving physical violence, and sexual violence or assault is a type of sexual harrassment involving physical violence. often, these terms overlap. streaming sites (twitch, youtube), social media, messaging platforms, or into in-person interactions (bryter, 2019, ruberg et al., 2019). the consequences of sexual harassment are massive: emotional distress, diminished selfesteem, anxiety, sleeplessness, depression, self-blame, suicidal thoughts, organizational withdrawal, and post-traumatic stress disorder (fox & tang, 2016). female gamers can lose their hobby, their community, their income, or even their life because harassment drives them out of the gaming world (fox & tang, 2016). the consequences of harassment are even more severe when female gamers feel like they have no recourse to address their harassment (fox & tang, 2016). scholar’s theorize that women are targeted in gaming communities because they are seen as intrusive outsiders (fox & tang, 2016). gaming culture is still characterized as stereotypically male, young, heterosexual, and white, even though women now make up almost half of all gamers (vermeulen & van looy, 2016, ruberg et al., 2019, yokoi, 2021). studies confirm this is not a random phenomenon: women are targeted for online harassment. the women’s media center’s speech project found that chat room participants with female usernames received 25 times more threatening or sexually explicit private messages than those with male or ambiguous usernames (clarke, 2019). one study looking at game voice chats found that when using generic statements, like “good game,” in either male or female voices, the female voice received three times the number of negative comments, compared to the male voice (brehm, 2013). but, women are not the only victims of gaming harassment. 65% percent of all american players, regardless of identity, have experienced severe harassment, like stalking and physical threats (ingersoll & anti-defamation league, 2019). even though men also experience harassment in video games, this report focuses on women because women have been historically marginalized in the gaming world, and often face disproportionately high rates of harassment. other historically marginalized communities, like people of color, religious minorities, and lgbtqia+ folks, also experience notably high rates of harassment in video games, and those at the intersection of these identities often face incredibly hostile treatment in the gaming world as well (ingersoll & anti-defamation league, 2019, ruberg et al., 2019). while the scope of this report focuses on women generally, it is important to note that varying communities face specific challenges regarding video game discrimination and harassment. this report does not argue that all video games are bad and should be banned. gaming is a fun social activity, and over half of adolescents participate in gaming with friends (mcinroy & mishna, 2017). gaming has also been linked to several other positive outcomes like social cooperation, memory retention, and improved attention; 88% of surveyed gamers report having positive social interactions online (mcinroy & mishna, 2017, smith, 2019). players use games to make friends online, find mentors, and meet romantic partners (ingersoll & anti-defamation league, 2019). politically, video games have been used for everything from sharing censored texts in authoritarian countries to spreading awareness about mental health (lugris, 2020, asherschapiro, 2020). by exploring the negative consequences women have faced in gaming environments, this report hopes to urge change that makes the valuable video game environment more beneficial for everyone. contributing factors many factors likely lead to the prevalence of gender-based harassment that players face while gaming, but experts and advocates consistently point to several phenomena in the industry that they believe significantly impact the problem: (1) gaming is stereotyped as male and few women work in the industry, (2) games consistently sexualize female characters, and (3) the industry has publicly failed to wrestle with workplace harassment trends. understanding these larger issues in the industry is crucial to developing solutions for online sexual harassment for everyday players. industry diversity women are seen as a minority in gaming, both as players and as workers in the industry. a popular phrase in online gaming says, “there are no women on the internet” (brehm, 2013). unfortunately, this dynamic has consequences that likely contribute to the high rates of genderbased harassment in video games. women are not a numerical minority among players. in 2020, women made up nearly 41% of all gamers in the united states and 40-45% of those in asia (yokoi, 2021). and women play many of the same games as men: 88% of female gamers report playing “competitive” style games, like fighting and first-person shooters (reach3 insights, 2021). despite this, gamers are still perceived to be predominantly white, young, heterosexual, and male (ruberg et al., 2019, fox & tang, 2016). women are consistently seen as inferior players and outsiders in the space (easpaig & humphrey, 2016, ruberg et al., 2019, fox & tang, 2016, clarke, 2019). despite making up a large portion of players, women remain underrepresented in the gaming workforce. a 2020 study of the top fourteen global gaming companies found that 84% of executive positions in the gaming industry are held by men, and only 24% of non-executive industry positions are held by women (yokoi, 2021). 45% of women in the united kingdom gaming industry feel that their gender has limited their career progression, according to a 2015 survey (yokoi, 2021). women are marginalized in other offline gaming environments as well. women are underrepresented in e-sports, and the industry is toxic to female players (clarke, 2019). female e-sports competitors and streamers, those who earn a living by playing video games, are often sexualized and seen as outsiders (ruberg et al., 2019, clarke, 2019, brehm, 2013). at e-sports competitions, women are regularly placed in subordinate roles to male players, like as cheerleaders, for example (brehm, 2013). some academics believe that by marketing and creating games by men and for men, the industry perpetuates the idea that gaming is exclusively a masculine space despite the diversity among players (vermeulen & van looy, 2016, easpaig & humphrey, 2016, burnay et al., 2019). when women are perceived as being of minority or secondary status, they are more likely to experience harassment and other forms of marginalization in the video game world, both on and offline (macdonald, 2020, fox & tang, 2014, easpaig & humphrey, 2016, fox & tang, 2016). sexualized characters likely due in part to the lack of gender diversity in the gaming industry, female characters are underrepresented in video games (breuer et al., 2015), and when they are represented, they are often portrayed as sexist caricatures (breuer et al., 2015, fox & tang, 2014, brehm, 2013, vermeulen & van looy, 2016). studies show that playing video games with these depictions can increase various forms of gender-based harassment (driesmans et al., 2015). several studies have found that less than 20% of video games feature female characters (breuer et al., 2015), although this percentage appears to be growing. when female characters are in games, they are disproportionately background characters (breuer et al., 2015, yao et al., 2009, brehm, 2013, yokoi, 2021). between 2015 and 2020, the percentage of game protagonists that were female ranged from 3% to 9% (wood, 2020). these female characters are also commonly stereotyped as either weak (damsel in distress, for example) or sexualized (fox & tang, 2014, yao et al., 2009, brehm, 2013, vermeulen & van looy, 2016). women are commonly shown in video games with revealing clothing and exaggerated proportions (yao et al., 2009, brehm, 2013, burnay et al., 2019, yokoi, 2021). one study of gaming magazines found that 59.9% of female characters were sexualized, while less than 1% of male characters were (brehm, 2013). but, male characters are not immune to stereotyping, it just comes in different forms (burnay et al., 2019). far from being immune to stereotyping though, male characters are instead shown in different tropes, with one analysis finding that 83% of male video game characters are violent, and many are shown as hyper-masculine (brehm, 2013). concerningly, these stereotypical depictions of gender may lead to increased genderbased harassment in gaming. studies suggest that playing video games with sexualized female characters increases rape myth acceptance and tolerance of sexual harassment (driesmans et al., 2015, breuer et al., 2015, yao et al., 2009, brehm, 2013, burnay et al., 2019). both male and female players tend to sexually harass female players more after playing a sexualized game and just 15 minutes of gameplay with a sexualized female character is enough to have negative behavioral impacts (burnay et al., 2019, driesmans et al., 2015) sexist content within games may be attracting players to platforms, or it may be reinforcing existing sexist attitudes (fox & tang, 2014). either way, by leaning on gender stereotypes, the gaming industry is further cultivating a harmful environment for gender-based violence and sexual harassment. workplace harassment these harmful gender trends exist in the real world as well. in 2014, video gamers faced gamergate (wingfield, 2014). anita sarkeesian and other feminist advocates received death and rape threats for criticizing the male-dominated culture of the gaming industry (wingfield, 2014, brehm, 2013, mcinroy & mishna, 2017). the incident exposed the workplace harassment faced by women working in gaming: from development, to streaming, to e-sports. discussions of workplace harassment facing those in game development peaked around #metoo. several employees resigned or were dismissed from big-name companies like ign, vox media’s polygon, riot games, and ubisoft after allegations of sexual harassment, misogyny, and rape in the industry surfaced (macdonald, 2020). a 2015 survey of women working in the united kingdom gaming industry found that 33% faced gender-based harassment and bullying (yokoi, 2021). even after these two major reckonings, gamergate and #metoo, the video game industry has still been struggling to address workplace harassment and gender discrimination. in august 2021, activision blizzard, a major gaming company, faced a series of disturbing allegations: men walking into breastfeeding rooms, unequal pay, verbal harassment, inappropriate touching, and a “frat house” culture (peters, 2021). much still needs to be done to reshape the industry and protect women working in gaming. women in game streaming also face gender-based harassment and violence. in 2020, more than 70 people in the gaming industry, predominantly women, came forward to share their experiences of abuse online (lorenz & browning, 2020). the ceo of online performers group, a talent management agency that serves streamers, stepped down after facing allegations of inappropriate conduct, and a number of prominent male streamers faced similar accusations at the time (lorenz & browning, 2020). these toxic trends have also been noted in e-sports. annemunition and jenna weowri, two popular e-sports gamers, took public steps to bring awareness to the harassment they face on twitch as women in the field back in 2019 (holden et al., 2020). e-sports abuse has made headlines since 2012, when male gamer aris bakhtanians sexually harassed competitor miranda pakozdi at a live-streamed competition (fletcher, 2012). women are not the only ones in the gaming workforce subject to this abuse, lgbtqia+ individuals have also come forward. for example, zoë quinn, who identifies as non-cisgender and uses they/them pronouns, reported that their former boyfriend, fellow game developer alec holowka, sexually assaulted them (penny, 2019). after coming forward, quinn faced harassment from the larger gaming community, known as “doxxing” (penny, 2019). quinn had previously been harassed to the point of leaving their home during gamergate only a few years earlier (illing, 2017). quinn’s story is tragically a common one. not only do women and lgbtqia+ community members regularly face assault and harassment while working in the gaming industry, but time and time again, when these individuals come forward to call for change, they are attacked on social media, facing even more abuse (brehm, 2013). this culture has numerous negative impacts. workplace harassment has significant mental health effects and often causes victims to leave their industries (fox & tang, 2016). this is tragic: those working in video games may have to leave their passion, not to mention their source of income, because of their victimization. and furthermore, in the case of the gaming industry, this exodus could lead to even greater gender disparities than those that are already observed (yokoi, 2021). it’s a chicken and the egg situation: not only does workplace harassment cause women to leave the industry, but there also may be more harassment in gaming because it is a maledominated workforce (macdonald, 2020, fox & tang, 2016). workplace harassment in the video game industry may also persist more stubbornly due to companies consistently not holding perpetrators accountable (macdonald, 2020, fox & tang, 2016). workplace harassment in the gaming industry likely impacts the gender-based harassment faced by everyday players. when players see sexual assault and harassment go unpunished in offline gaming environments, it may make this kind of behavior seem acceptable online (fox & tang, 2016). additionally, the hostile work environment may keep women out of the industry, and, as previously specified, the homogeneity of gaming professionals can impact the content and culture of video games. gaming company solutions gender-based harassment in video games is a serious and complicated problem, but not an unsolvable one. while there are likely many ways to intervene in this phenomenon, this report outlines specific steps gaming companies can take to make a difference. can gaming companies really change anything? 87% of female gamers say at least maybe (reach3 insights, 2021). gaming companies can take steps to address workplace harassment and diversity, while also transparently and appropriately enforcing content governance standards online to change gaming culture once and for all. 62% of online multiplayer games say that companies need to do more to make games safer and more inclusive (ingersoll & anti-defamation league, 2019). address workplace harassment and diversity the gaming industry needs to be more diverse and safer for all people in order to address gender-based harassment in games. as previously explained, the real-world problems in the gaming industry likely impact players’ experiences across the world. diversity. women are incredibly underrepresented in the gaming industry. companies need to take steps to diversify, and they must do so at the highest possible levels. efforts should be made to diversify company boards of directors and executives. furthermore, diversity initiatives should be overseen and publicly committed to by senior-level leadership. some members of the industry are already taking these steps. for example, after hostile work environment accusations, the large gaming company ubisoft appointed several senior leaders in diversity and inclusion roles (yokoi, 2021). companies can also facilitate diversity by creating mentorship programs (macdonald, 2020). community building and mentorship can provide women with networks that support their professional development and understand the difficulties of existing in a male-dominated industry. for example, women in games is an activist organization focused on creating a safe space for women in gaming (women in games). companies can join women in games as corporate ambassadors or encourage their employees to join the organization (women in games). workplace harassment. but, addressing industry culture means more than just diversifying. it also means that companies must publicly do more to address workplace harassment. if companies do not respond to sexual assault and harassment accusations properly, their inadequacy acts as a symbolic approval of such behavior, allowing gender-based abuse to persist on their platforms and in their offices (fox & tang, 2016). as a result, women will leave the industry and their games (fox & tang, 2016). to respond to these situations properly, companies must have public no-tolerance policies for workplace harassment. these policies must be supported by rapid and robust procedures to respond to accusations. utilizing third-party entities to investigate these situations would help ensure matters were handled without bias (macdonald, 2020). as kenzie gordon, a ph.d. candidate in feminist gaming explains, real change will only come “if studios get to the point where people are actually being fired for these accusations and stepping down and there’s some actual structural change happening” (lorenz & browning, 2020). as companies address the harassment at hand, they should also work to protect whistleblowers from internal and external retaliation (holden et al., 2020). those in the industry who have spoken out against gender-based discrimination have consistently faced attacks from the larger gaming community. when legally possible, companies should protect the anonymity of reporters from the public (holden et al., 2020). additionally, companies should stand in support of survivors who speak out (holden et al., 2020). for example, when several twitch streamers were accused of sexual assault and harassment, twitch c.e.o. emmett shear publicly spoke in support of survivors: we support people coming forward, commend their bravery in doing so, and know there are many others who have not. the gaming industry is not unlike others that have had to reckon with systemic sexism, racism, and abuse that rewards certain people and disadvantages — even harms — others. the status quo needs to change (lorenz & browning, 2020). by standing with survivors and against harassment publicly, twitch signaled to the larger gaming community that this behavior is not tolerated. companies in the gaming industry should publicly stand with survivors to try and mitigate online harassment. workplace harassment is a huge issue, much larger than the gaming industry (human rights watch, 2020). while the above recommendations are particularly relevant, other civil society organizations have compiled much more extensive guides for addressing these issues that may be useful to the gaming industry. steps must be taken to address offline gender-based harassment in gaming to halt online harassment. enforcement proper responses to sexual violence and harassment are necessary in both the digital and physical world. if platforms do not transparently, fairly, and rapidly address gender-based harassment, it will persist. experts say that unenforced content governance policies and a lack of support for victims in video games make this behavior appear permissible to players (fox & tang, 2014). platforms must act to transparently enforce human rights-respecting content governance policies to prevent gender-based harassment. content governance. companies need to employ content governance strategies that protect human rights of all people, especially historically marginalized and vulnerable groups. gamers support content governance, with 55% of players agreeing that games should have ingame voice chat content moderation tools available to gamers (ingersoll & anti-defamation league, 2019). it’s critical that content governance policies consider necessity, proportionality, and context (pírková & pallero, 2020, bsr, 2021). the industry should not utilize a “one-size-fitsall,” and different kinds of offenses and platforms will require different policies (bsr, 2021). companies should react and consider all allegations of gender-based violence and harassment while undergoing content governance efforts, but they should have a range of response mechanisms that consider various circumstances and infractions (pírková & pallero, 2020, bsr, 2021). companies can utilize mechanisms like warning labels, downranking, and temporary suspensions to respond based on what is most appropriate (bsr, 2021, yokoi, 2021, holden, et al., 2020). whatever a company's content governance policies are, they need to be clear and enforced (macdonald, 2020, fox & tang, 2014, šimonović, 2018). these policies need to be easily available to all users and the public (šimonović, 2018). companies should use paid community management teams to ensure they have the capacity to handle complaints, and company policies and practices should prioritize addressing discriminatory misconduct (macdonald, 2020, fox & tang, 2014). if users see conduct policies go unenforced, research shows that perpetrators will be more likely to perpetrate abuse and victims will be more likely to withdraw from gaming altogether (fox & tang, 2014). therefore, rapid and transparent responses to allegations are critical (fox & tang, 2014). mechanisms for reporting harassment should be readily available to all users, and companies should review and respond to all cases in a timely manner (holden, et al., 2020, šimonović, 2018). even with the most thorough review processes, mistakes can be made, so companies also need to make mechanisms for appeals readily available and affordable (pírková & pallero, 2020, šimonović, 2018). there should be clear procedures outlining how parties can appeal content governance cases (pírková & pallero, 2020, šimonović, 2018). thorough, intensive content governance can be a huge undertaking. auto-moderating systems can be a useful supplementary tool, but they must be used appropriately. whenever possible, human decision making should be utilized (pírková & pallero, 2020). auto-moderating can be useful on platforms dealing with a large volume of user-generated content, issues of speed, and where problematic language is simple to identify (pírková & pallero, 2020, anykey, 2018). for example, an e-sports tournament doing a popular live stream chat might supplement human moderators with auto-moderating systems that block expletives. (anykey, 2018) auto-moderating can also be used in tandem with human decision making, rather than as a replacement: for example, a system can flag certain posts for priority review by human moderators, or it can ask users to pause before posting potentially hurtful language (anykey, 2018, perez, 2021). to prevent abuse and censorship, companies must be transparent about their use of auto-moderating systems and allow users to request a human review of their case (pírková & pallero, 2020). external review systems can be key to ensuring accountability and avoiding conflicts of interest. third-party external review should be used to investigate repeated allegations of intolerance and assess gaming company content governance policies regularly (macdonald, 2020, pírková & pallero, 2020, bsr, 2021). gaming companies should also have regular communications with stakeholders, especially stakeholders representing vulnerable groups, to assess their content governance policies and mechanisms (pírková & pallero, 2020, bsr, 2021). having these external systems will help protect vulnerable groups and prevent unintended consequences of content governance. transparency reporting. companies in charge of massive personal data and/or undertake sizable content governance, like those in the gaming industry, should release transparency reports to ensure that the public understands how utilizing various platforms impacts their rights to privacy and freedom of expression (access now, 2021). transparency reports can, and in this case should, include platform safety information. however, few gaming companies seem to be releasing such reports. access now’s 2021 transparency reporting index (tri), a cataloging tool for transparency reports, does not identify many in the industry as releasing reports (access now, 2021). more gaming companies should be releasing annual transparency reports to the public. in the face of gender-based harassment and violence, transparency reporting is critical. platforms may need to cooperate with law enforcement for investigations or moderate harassment, and users deserve to know when these kinds of actions take place. this transparency is important for protecting privacy and expression rights, but it also allows victims to hold companies accountable for not acting on complaints and clearly informs abusers of what content is unacceptable on the platform (fox & tang, 2016). companies in the gaming industry should employ transparency reporting best practices. in addition, gaming companies’ transparency reports should specifically include data on interventions regarding gender-based harassment and violence. for example, discord’s transparency report includes data on non-consensual pornography removals, and twitch’s report has incident and enforcement statistics on sexual harassment (discord, 2021, twitch, 2021). by providing this information, companies can be transparent specifically on the actions taken related to gender-based violence and harassment, rather than just on their moderation and legal actions more broadly. change the culture often when talking about sexual harassment on gaming platforms, fingers are pointed at gaming culture. but gaming culture is not an unmovable, all-powerful being, it is heavily impacted by the actions of titans in the industry. gaming companies need to take tangible, evidence-based steps to improve gaming culture to make it a safe and welcoming place for all. representation. the current depictions of female characters in games may be fostering a more harassment-based culture. companies should take steps to improve in-game representation to truly reflect the diversity and desires of their players. while 85% of male gamers say they are satisfied with the look of their characters, only 61% of women feel the same way (reach3 insights, 2021). female game characters are too often one-dimensionally characterized as sexy or weak if they are included in games at all. gaming companies should include more female characters in their games, not just in the background, but as heroes and protagonists. their female characters should be diverse, showing varying personalities and physical characteristics. female characters in games should not exist as a sexualized monolith. this isn’t to say that sexualized characters should not exist in games at all, many women find it empowering to play with such characters — but women should be represented in games in several ways, not solely as sexual objects (anykey, 2019). when companies portray women sexually in games, they should also invest in education efforts. games should educate players about the relationship between sexualized characters and online harassment (burnay et al., 2019). they should also include information on how sexual harassment victims suffer (burnay et al., 2019). research shows that these strategies can mitigate harassment (burnay et al., 2019). gaming companies should also consider the age of their audience as they design sexualized characters. research shows that sexualized characters have a particularly notable impact on adolescents’ rape-myth tolerance, so women’s in-game representation is especially important for youth games (burnay et al., 2019). and, this issue of representation extends past the in-game experience. 71% of women gamers want companies to improve representation in advertising, by including more women in their voice-overs and castings (reach3 insights, 2021). 42% want companies to encourage women to be involved in e-sports (reach3 insights, 2021). companies should invest in consistent, well-rounded representations of women in gaming to foster a safe space for female players. making these changes will work to change gaming culture for the better and help draw even more female customers to video games. anonymity. some experts recommend removing anonymity from games. however, anonymity is critical to protecting players’ human rights, and its removal would be harmful to female gamers and other historically marginalized groups. anonymity may make a user feel less constrained by antisocial behaviors, leading to mistreatment of outgroup members (fox & tang, 2016). for example, a gamer playing anonymously may be more likely to harass a female player because there are no face-to-face social interactions or perceived accountability systems. additionally, some feel that anonymity limits recourse options for players, as they do not really know who is harassing them (mcinroy & mishna, 2017). this is why some experts believe that anonymity contributes to hostile video game environments. however, as one united nations report explains, encryption and anonymity “deserve strong protection” because they “enable individuals to exercise their rights to freedom of opinion and expression in the digital age” (micek, 2015). anonymity online is critical to protect freedom of expression and privacy (monteiro, 2014). additionally, anonymous and pseudonymous expression is a historically protected right in international law and norms, and restricting such speech does not reduce inflammatory or offensive speech, but does limit the diversity of expression online (monteiro, 2014, patry, 2021). those from historically marginalized groups, like people of color, often are the ones to suffer when anonymity options online are removed (patry, 2021). furthermore, many female gamers rely on anonymity as protection from harassment. women report “gender masking,” hiding their gender in gaming through username and avatar selections, for example, so that other players assume they are male and do not harass them (fox & tang, 2016, easpaig & humphrey, 2016). one survey found that 59% of women who play video games online hide their gender identity. to take away anonymity would take away this defense mechanism from female players (reach3 insights, 2021). crucially, experts identify that anonymity can be dangerous in games due to a perceived lack of accountability and recourse. gaming companies can change this perception while still permitting anonymity by taking other steps to enforce community guidelines and standards. if players believe they are likely to be punished for their harassment, such as by being temporarily suspended from gameplay, for example, they will perceive an accountability system and be deterred from harassment (fox & tang, 2016). while some experts recommend removing anonymity from video games to prevent harassment, games should continue to allow anonymous play as it is crucial for protecting human rights and female players. however, other steps, like better enforcing community guidelines, can make substantial differences in game culture (fox & tang, 2016). badging. badging can be a good way to signal that harassment is not tolerated. by creating badging programs and signing on existing pledges, gaming companies can make it clear that harassment is unacceptable in the community. when a gamer signs up for an anti-harassment badging program, not only are they making a commitment for inclusivity, but anyone who plays with or follows that gamer sees that commitment. this signals to abusers that their behavior will not be tolerated, and lets survivors know they are not alone. anykey created the “good luck, have fun” pledge for twitch (anykey). so far, over 1 million gamers have signed the pledge, committing to standing against harassment and playing with integrity (anykey). when a gamer signs up, they are given exclusive access to a badge for their profile, signaling that they support an inclusive community (anykey). anykey even encourages gamers to spread the pledge by keeping a leaderboard of the gamers with the most referrals (anykey). companies can create similar initiatives for their community members on their own games and platforms. industry-wide cooperation. addressing harassment in video games is no easy feat. that’s why the entire industry should work together to bring along substantial change. to truly change gaming culture, rather than just addressing harassment in a single game or platform, companies need to create relatively standard policies across games, platforms, streaming services, and competitions that specify what counts as harassment, what will be done to prevent it, and what the appropriate corporate response to harassment allegations is (clarke, 2019). these standardized systems should portray industry norms while not sacrificing adjustability when necessary (i.e. different platforms using different moderation tools). the executive director of the international game developers association herself believes that industry cooperation is critical. kate edwards explained that “[o]ne of the things that would be really cool to see is if all companies adopted similar standards for what constitutes harassment and behavior so they work more in tandem” (holden et al., 2021). previously, like in the wake of gamergate, gaming companies made united statements against gender-based harassment, but there was little follow through (holden et al., 2021). the international game developers association condemned the harassment attacks, but few member companies took tangible action (holden et al., 2021). more accountability for these industry wide efforts can be found in pledge programs. companies can sign on to public pledges that clearly stand for inclusivity and against harassment. this can signal to members of the industry and players what behavior is tolerated and expected in the gaming world and hold the company accountable to its committed values. for example, raisethegame is a pledge initiative where gaming companies can sign on, agreeing that they are committed to equality, diversity, and inclusion (raisethegame). so far, 200 pledge partners and supporters have signed on to the initiative (raisethegame). by creating systems of industry-wide collaboration and accountability, the gaming industry can shift the culture to make harassment universally 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(2021, march 4). female gamers are on the rise. can the gaming industry catch up? forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomokoyokoi/2021/03/04/female-gamers-are-on-the-risecan-the-gaming-industry-catch-up/?sh=1767f1e6f9fe microsoft word korea+copy+edited (1).docx beneath the surface: the struggles of dismantling lookism in looks-obsessed south korea katie yoon, stanford ’23 abstract: lookism––discrimination based on physical appearance––permeates daily life in south korea. while researchers and critics have extensively discussed the roots of lookism and plastic surgery in korea, little has been said on how to dismantle such an institutionalized beauty obsession —and how to adjust these goals in the wake of the tal corset (탈코르셋) or “escape the corset” movement. this article first provides a localized, critical analysis of lookism and its detrimental effects, demonstrating the potential for and necessity of resistance, especially when concerning lookism’s alarming impact on youth. drawing on this exploration of lookism’s pervasiveness in korean society, the article observes the positive intentions and successes of tal corset’s approach. next it details the movement’s failures to illuminate the powerful structures that wield lookism as a mechanism of control over women. finally, it attempts to draw on these analyses to show that effective social change can only be realized with the acknowledgement and involvement of the various stakeholders and institutional barriers linked to lookism. “your bare face is terror to my eyes.” “makeup is manners.” “your skin is disgusting for a woman.” “your eyes are so small—can you even open them?” “i would kill myself if i were you.” a deluge of derogatory insults floods the screen as south korean youtuber lina bae presents the laborious process of putting on contact lenses, foundation, eyeshadow, false eyelashes, blush, lipstick — the list goes on. yet, her efforts to escape the negative comments hurled towards her appearance prove futile as she continues to face derision even with a fullmakeup face. further criticisms appear on screen: “you think makeup is enough?” “men don’t like heavy makeup.” “i want to beat you up.” a former online beauty content creator herself, bae proceeds to undermine the conventional makeup tutorial structure by removing her makeup and returning to her bare face, ending the video with a visibly more gleeful and refreshed expression. although bae may not fit her country’s limited standard of beauty, the white hangeul characters on the screen write, “그러나 예쁘지 않아도 괜찮습니다” — “it is fine even if i am not pretty.” this is lina bae’s message to both south korea (hereafter korea) and the world in her three-minute-long testimony. upon its release in june 2018, the video was covered in various international media outlets and amassed more than eight million views, demonstrating the sheer magnitude of its reach. the ironic reality that bae is a victim of verbal abuse with and without makeup spurs viewers to think critically about how much value we attach to appearances and the consequences of expecting women to reach for some unachievable ideal. bae is one of many young women in korea who are rebelling against the strict, unrealistic beauty standards enforced by society. this tal corset (탈코르셋) or “escape the corset” movement has involved multiple posts of women destroying their makeup and shaving their hair across social media platforms, serving as both a literal and figurative expression of their liberation from a cosmetic corset. reminiscent of the 1968 miss america feminist protest1 and largely inspired by the global #metoo phenomenon, tal corset has risen in conjunction with other feminist initiatives in korea combatting not only the country’s stark gender inequality, but also the alarming prevalence of sexual harassment. by outwardly displaying their defiance of korea’s lookist and misogynistic society, members of “tal-co” (the abbreviated form of tal corset) hope that this radical method will spark the larger korean population to empathize with the stress women experience — living in a society where they are treated more as objects of admiration than as unique, individual beings. 1 see gay (2018) for more background information on the protests and how it struggled to rebel against the miss america pageant’s “antiquated, misogynistic attitudes toward women and beauty.” while researchers and critics have extensively discussed the roots of lookism and plastic surgery in korea2, little has been said on how to dismantle such an institutionalized beauty obsession — and how to adjust these goals in the wake of the tal-co movement. through a localized, critical analysis of lookism and its detrimental effects, i will argue that resistance not only has potential to succeed but is also necessary for the health of future generations, especially when concerning lookism’s alarming impact on youth. drawing on this exploration of lookism’s pervasiveness in korean society, i will describe the positive intentions and successes of tal-co’s approach. then i will detail the weaknesses of the movement, analyzing a set of other conflicting powers that complicate korea’s beauty obsession. even the movement’s failures to build solidarity hold lessons illuminating the manifold complexity of lookism. such lessons to be learned include that lookism is a deeply entrenched issue tied to historical, capitalist, and misogynist factors. finally, i will draw on these analyses to emphasize that effective social change can only be realized with the acknowledgement and involvement of the various stakeholders and institutional barriers linked to lookism. lookism: a visible problem when i first moved to the cosmopolitan city of seoul in 2010, i experienced intense cultural shock in reaction to korean society’s consuming emphasis on looks. strolling down the bustling streets of gangnam, one is bombarded with glossy “before and after” cosmetic surgery advertisements on the walls of public buses and soaring skyscrapers — a constant reminder of the distinct features required to achieve korea’s definition of beauty: round doe-like eyes, flawless porcelain skin, a slim sub-110-pound body, and a small v-shaped face. coupled with interpersonal pressures to strive for a more beautiful appearance, the homogeneous images of korean celebrities in commercials, music videos, tv shows, and my friends’ camera rolls demonstrate the inescapable omnipresence of korean beauty expectations. from as early as middle school, many of my korean peers pursued dramatic aesthetic transformations, received subtler procedures such as blepharoplasty (also referred to as double eyelid surgery) and eye enlargement. others had riskier operations like cheekbone reduction and jaw reduction surgery. according to some estimates, between one-fifth and one-third of korean women have gone under the knife and many more wear full makeup daily (marx, 2019; gallup korea, 2015, p. 5). as evident, lookism — or discrimination based on physical appearance — permeates daily life in korea and has only been exacerbated in recent years, largely facilitated by the nation’s rapid socio-economic development. proceeding from the miracle on the han,3 “compressed industrialization and urbanization” has led to heightened competition in academics, employment, and general social interactions (h. lee et al., 2017, p. 1). in such a hypercompetitive world, one’s physical attributes have emerged as another “stratifying factor;” an appearance that meets korean beauty ideals serves as a substantial advantage, whereas one that is unattractive by korean standards can be a serious detriment (h. lee et al., 2017, p. 1). the maxim “your looks are your ability” is now deeply ingrained in korea’s image-based culture, as evinced by how job applicants must attach a profile photo to their resumes as a formal qualification for employment. 2 see the following sources for further information: aquino and steinkamp (2016), bissell and chung (2009), davies and han (2011), holliday and elfving-hwang (2005), kim (2003), lee (2016), masako and kramer (2003), and woo (2004). 3 refers to south korea’s period of accelerated economic growth from 1961 to 1996, “during which it was transformed into a prosperous, industrial society” (seth, 2017). korea’s lookist society reflects the culture’s fixation on physical appearances. academic writing tends to frame korea’s beauty obsession as a problem for feminist to debate, questioning whether aesthetic ideals are empowering or oppressive (holliday and elfving-hwang, 2012, p. 75; t. kim, 2003, p. 109; s. lee, 2019, p. 16-17; k.j. woo, 2004, p. 78-79). when examining the topic of plastic surgery, for instance, keong ja woo, a sociologist from yonsei university, eloquently describes the paradox of how women willingly yet helplessly go under the knife; what is intended as a source of “empowerment” is, in reality, a “trap” (2004, p. 68; holliday and elfving-hwang, 2012, p. 75). despite the elevated socio-economic status and self-esteem that may come with a surgically enhanced appearance, aesthetic surgery is not an individual issue but one that stems from “patriarchal consumer capitalism… promot[ing] an inferiority complex in women,” causing them to view their bodies in a pathological light (k.k. woo, 2004, p. 79). korean women voluntarily receive cosmetic surgery with the belief that a more attractive appearance will liberate them from repressive ideology, allowing for greater competitive standing in labor and marriage markets. a 2020 survey conducted by gallup korea revealed that 31% of korean women in their 30s have had plastic surgery compared to just 4% of their male counterparts. however, the irony lies in the reality that these women are active consumers in an industry that is fueled by and re-institutionalizes a normative system of beauty. while the paradox of women’s agency is a familiar one in feminist discourse around the world, korea’s lookist culture furthers this paradox with the ideologies of neo-confucian and neoliberal governmentalities. scholar taeyon kim links beauty expectations for women to neoconfucianism, the nation’s dominant philosophy which ruled its “politics, religion, social system and private relations for over 500 years” (2003, p. 110). under the ideology of neoconfucianism, “women were regarded as subjectless bodies” whose identities were intrinsically embedded in the corporeal (t. kim, 2003, p. 101). analogous to how korean women in the past were expected to manage their bodies for the sake of their kin, neo-confucianism today dictates that women cultivate their corporeal bodies to meet a “requirement of decorum:” a form of propriety that persists in korea’s post-industrial consumer society (t. kim, 2003, p. 107). compared with the west’s employment of beauty and fashion as a display of individuality, korea’s culture of conformity requires that women improve and transform their bodies with strict adherence to the new codes of capitalism — where one’s looks represents one’s value in a competitive society (t. kim, 2003, p. 106-108). korean women are thus compelled to reach for their society’s impossible standard of aesthetic perfection, in turn feeling obligated to wear makeup and often resorting to aesthetic surgery in the hopes of improving marriage and employment prospects. this repressive standard intersects the confucianism of the past and the capitalism of the present as individuals are increasingly bound by both social expectations of beauty and market structures that feed into appearance-related insecurities. sharon lee — whose research explores the imperial routes of culture and media — holds that women are governed by “neoliberal mandates for self-management” based on the rationale that “one’s body is ‘an avenue to attaining social success’” in korea’s highly competitive world (2019, p. 16). referencing sang-hui kim, executive director of the korean feminist nonprofit organization womenlink, lee further calls attention to how lookism acts as a “mechanism of control that, like chaste ideologies in centuries prior, discipline women’s behaviors and relationships to their own bodies” (2019, p. 17). the predicament that arises with neoliberal body management is that it is “coded as necessity yet signified as choice.” women feel required to alter their appearance due to the threat of “lookism discrimination” since “unbeautiful women are seen as lazy and as incapable” (s. lee, 2019, p. 17). the negative consequences of refusing to follow korea’s expectations of beauty illustrate the fundamentally oppressive nature of lookism. upon careful examination of scholarly literature, there appears to be a consensus that lookism is repressive, regardless of the supposed socio-economic benefits that may be gained by conforming to korea’s narrow aesthetic standards. lookism and its deleterious consequences have been proven to manifest in tangible ways. besides the unusually high rates of aesthetic surgery in korea (the largest ratio of cosmetic procedures per capita), empirical studies have probed the relationship between appearance discrimination and its health effects in korea (h. lee et al., 2017, p. 1; isaps). one korean study reports that 24 percent of adolescents experience discrimination based on appearance and that lookism is associated with greater suicidal ideation (h. lee et al., 2017, p. 1-2; i. song et al.). a 2017 poll conducted by job search portal albamon found that 81.1 percent of part-time students believed that appearance influenced their employment search and around 40 percent responded that they had been victims of lookism when job hunting (kuhn, 2019; h. cho, 2017). one paper further concluded that those who experience higher rates of looks-based prejudice generally plan to receive or have already undergone cosmetic procedures (lim, 2015). young korean women are especially vulnerable targets of lookism; in 2013, kyungwook shin, a professor of food and nutrition at samyook university, found that 93.5 percent of 154 female university students surveyed in the normal weight range were dissatisfied with their current bodies (s.y. lee, 2015). the study also showed that 71.2 percent of underweight female college students and 100 percent of overweight students were unhappy with their bodies, resulting in extreme dieting habits with side effects ranging from anemia to binge-eating (s.y. lee, 2015). supporting these conclusions, research organized by the gangnam severance hospital in seoul revealed that among 717 young female participants with a normal body mass index (bmi), 40 percent of them erroneously perceived themselves as overweight and “67.7 percent said they were on a diet solely to look more ‘attractive’” (c. lee, 2016). in fact, kim yul-li — a psychiatrist who specializes in the treatment of eating disorders — stated that an estimated one in four young korean women suffer from eating disorders and that there is likely a greater number of people who do not seek professional assistance (kim & denyer, 2018). on top of eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia4, data from the aforementioned report by severance hospital demonstrated how women with negative body image were 1.82 times more at risk of developing depression and 1.65 times more susceptible to mental stress than those with positive body perception (c. lee, 2016). lookism and, by extension, poor self-perception undoubtedly have damaging physical and mental health effects on korean individuals. another troubling sign of severe lookism is the increasing popularity and normalization of makeup used by and catered to elementary school children (heavytalker, 2018). having lived in seoul until recently, i can corroborate this reality; walking down the streets of gangnam, one can see many young girls under the age of twelve wearing bright red lipstick and white foundation, carrying around elaborate makeup pouches in their backpacks. in a 2016 survey conducted by kim joo-duk, a professor of beauty studies at sungshin women’s university, 42.4 4 such eating disorders and poor dieting are common among korean female celebrities, in turn influencing young girls who strive to emulate the unrealistically thin bodies that are glamorized by the media. see jtbc entertainment (2018), benjamin (2017), matsumoto (2014), and doo (2016) for further context. percent of elementary school girls responded that they used color cosmetics5—the proportion has only risen since (kim & denyer, 2018; i. cho, 2017). as koreans turn towards makeup at even younger ages, the demand for children's cosmetics has drastically increased. data disclosed by sk planet’s 11th street online shopping web shows prodigious surges in the sales of such beauty products, reporting 29 percent, 251 percent, and 94 percent growth in 2017, 2016, and 2015, respectively (“sales of cosmetics,” 2018). the rapid growth of the children’s cosmetics market reflects the emerging culture of “adult kids” (“어덜키즈”), where kids as young as five years old wear makeup and mature clothes due to peer pressure and the inescapable influence of online media featuring young idol singers. in addition to marketing cosmetic products for juvenile demographics, a uniform company called “skoolooks” (for context, most korean students are required to wear uniforms until university) has incorporated small pockets inside blazers and skirts for girls to insert their lipstick, referred to as “lip tint pockets” (c. lee, 2018b). wearing this jacket serves as a constant reminder to reapply lipstick and could potentially distract students from concentrating on both their intellectual and social development. moreover, while it is no secret that women have been and continue to be expected to wear tight-fitting clothing in the workplace, the uniforms worn by young female students also typically consist of short skirts and tight blouses. according to choi yun jeong, a senior researcher at the korean women’s development institute, the intentional production of form-fitting school uniforms for young girls serves as an inappropriate vehicle of sexualization (c. lee, 2018b). the fact that korean girls are expected to wear makeup and observe stringent beauty standards from an early age substantiates further evidence for how lookist culture affects people in concrete ways. as stated by mi sun shim (communications professor at soon chun hyang university), the underlying quandary, however, is that “body shaming and lookism in the media are so normalized in korea that a lot of people don’t even realize that it’s a problem” (c. lee, 2016). i have seen my friends subconsciously fall into the false notion that obsessing over their appearance is normal, that extreme dieting is normal, and that plastic surgery as a middle school graduation gift is normal. published in the national human rights commission of korea’s 2017 report, shim’s “monitoring of the media’s gender discrimination” closely surveilled the country’s public broadcasters for six months and observed widespread body shaming as well as lookism on korean television. for example, the media assessment noted the inappropriate, frequent way in which korean female comedians are subject to disparaging appearance-related remarks, underlining the rampant promotion of lookism and gender discrimination in the media (shim et. al, 2017, p. 162). the kigipe (korean institute for gender equality promotion and education) criticized “large love,” a sketch from the korean comedy program called gag concert, for “portray[ing] fat people as being unconditionally happy in front of food” and mocking them for their uncontrollable appetite (kang, 2017; kbs world, 2016). while being overweight may serve as a “marketable selling point” for female comedians in korea, the predicament lies in that they are often reduced to simplistic characters, “becom[ing] tools in a larger comedic machine that uses stereotypes about fat people and unfeminine women to score cheap laughs” (kang, 2017). this systematic institutionalization of lookism is dangerous 5 directly translated from the korean phrase “색조화장품” where saek-jo means “color” and hwa-jang means “makeup.” this serves as an umbrella term for cosmetics including eyeliner, cushion compact, and foundation— essentially everything besides basic skincare items such as lotion and sunscreen. precisely due to koreans’ lack of awareness and understanding of its adverse repercussions. submerged in a lookist ocean, it is harder to see the problems that lie beneath the surface. the many discernible corollaries of lookism expose the gravity of the issue and point to its ultimately oppressive nature. from unjust employment discrimination to body shaming to eating disorders, lookism is clearly an issue that needs to be addressed — especially when mindful of its harmful impact on impressionable young children. when considering how the indoctrination of beauty standards can lead to destructive outcomes, korean society should be concerned that makeup is now becoming normalized for girls at earlier and earlier ages. in this landscape of unbridled lookism, the tal corset movement is aiming to defy korea’s image-based culture. escaping the corset: the path to freedom? even before the era of face masks ushered in by covid-19, korean female students would often wear face masks to school to hide their physical imperfections. this trend began among k-pop stars who would wear “fashion masks” to the airport, not only to remain incognito but also so that they could conceal their bare faces. there was this constant obligation to look “presentable” at all times; when not wearing a cosmetic mask, apart from staying at home, wearing an actual mask was the next best alternative. in february 2019, meji jung released a youtube video on her decision to free herself from the corset imposed by korean society, noting that in the 28 years that she has conformed to the culture’s beauty ideals, no one has ever questioned the lengths she has taken to appear “beautiful,” which include not only the daily labor of makeup, but also rhinoplasty, facial surgery, liposuction, and breast augmentation surgery. however, ever since she joined the tal-co movement, those around her have bombarded her with questions as to why she does not kku-myeo (꾸며) herself, which directly translates to adorning oneself, i.e. dress up and wear makeup. according to jung, “if there is the freedom to kku-myeo oneself, shouldn’t there also exist the freedom to not kku-myeo oneself?” the movement not only highlights the importance of granting women a choice, but also strives to proselytize against the toxic culture of lookism. jung’s video essay, along with a host of other youtube videos, instagram posts, etc., has incited greater conversation and awareness on korea’s beauty obsession through the effective mobilization of modern digital platforms. considering korea’s status as one of the most wired nations in the world, tal-co has been successful in spreading its message to a large audience (sohn, 2018; strickland, 2009). in contrast to most social media posts that intend to attract admiration and envy, the escape the corset movement employs such digital communication technology to stir both emotional and cognitive empathy among viewers, boldly promoting their defiance of korea’s lookist society. videos and images serve as compelling mediums for this social media empathy phenomenon, conveying the cathartic experiences of women unshackling themselves from korea’s rigid beauty expectations. this visual campaign quite literally urges individuals to confront aesthetics head on—face to face with someone who struggles from the oppressive chains of lookism. the widespread success of lina bae’s video for instance, can be attributed to her smart choice of medium and use of a mainstream social media platform, thereby connecting with viewers in a more emotive, intimate fashion. through the skillful synthesis of film components, bae captures the feelings and motivations behind the tal corset movement in a short yet impactful manner—one that cannot be emulated through a written op-ed alone. as white texts of criticism enter the screen, for example, bae stares into the camera with glum eyes that shift downwards in shame, inducing sympathy among viewers for we can perceptibly see her inner pain. the clear changes in her evocative expressions drive the video’s carefully crafted storyline in a vivid, moving manner. moreover, despite the deliberate staging of the narrative arc, the modality of a youtube video engenders a level of authenticity due to the platform’s brand as one that shares user-generated content. we instantly recognize the raw realism of bae’s independently produced piece and that her video is a creative representation of her true life. a youtube video enables bae to artfully deliver her personal story unfolding through time, crafting a relatable and credible character viewers can empathize with. owing to the video’s viral success, bae has since become a global spokesperson for the tal corset movement, speaking at the organisation for economic co-operation and development (oecd) forum and publishing a biography of the same title, “i am not pretty.” her persona and video have collectively become an empathy sensation, a synecdoche for young korean women suffering under constant pressure to conform to the narrow societal definition of beauty. younger audiences have been especially receptive to the movement’s deployment of social media. aside from tal-co’s vast coverage in both domestic and international media outlets as well as the growing visibility of #escapethecorset posts online, the movement has resulted in concrete market effects. according to hyundai card sales records provided by the national statistical office's big data center, sales of women in their twenties have steadily decreased in industries related to cosmetics such as makeup products, hair shops, and plastic surgery (seo, 2019; edraki, 2019). whereas clothing and beauty-related items previously dominated young women’s main expenditures, these former “women’s industries” have seen sharp declines in the years between 2015 and 2018: cosmetic and plastic surgery sales dropped by 53.5 and 64.4 billion won, respectively (seo, 2019). analysts credit the tal corset movement’s influence on changes in female consumption patterns, highlighting the potential for lasting, monumental change. limitations: gender wars and conflicting players yet, despite the perceivable expansion of the movement and korea’s heightened recognition of its restrictive beauty ideals, the public’s response has been divided. although talco’s social media strategy is a powerful mechanism of resistance when appealing to younger female demographics, it has failed to reach both male and older audiences who remain in positions of power. part of this may be due to technological restraints as social media algorithms enable individuals to see and click on content tailored to consumer interests, thereby preventing broader public access to the movement. notwithstanding, several men have lashed out against the movement in response to its overtly feminist framing. the polarizing nature of tal-co is reflected in the reaction to “i am not pretty:” while many young korean women have showered bae with messages of support, countless men and women have reacted in such a scathing manner that she has ironically had to disable the youtube comments function. and when i tried searching for bae’s video again this year, i realized she had taken it down. even though she had expected some backlash, she did not foresee that she would be inundated with death threats, with some commenters declaring that they would go find bae and kill her (bicker, 2018). for such content, these death threats seem too extreme — the reaction does not fit the provocation. such an extreme response can be attributed to the negative way in which others perceive feminism and how it is politicized in korea. over the past few years, extreme feminist communities such as megalia and womad have emerged online, gaining notoriety for their zealous “female patriotism and misandry” (a. kim, 2019). users of both sites have been labeled “feminazis” and “man-haters” due to their utilization of belligerent and degrading tactics against men (jay.h, 2016). megalia was inspired by norwegian writer gerd brantenberg’s satirical feminist oeuvre “egalia’s daughters: a satire of the sexes,” in which she “narrates a world where gender roles are entirely reversed” (singh, 2016). megalia’s provocative logo mocks the size of korean men’s penises, parodying the male fixation with women’s physical appearance and sexuality (a. kim, 2019; singh, 2016). nevertheless, as opposed to empathizing with its intentions, most men reacted to the design with discomfort, perceiving the emblem as masculine aversion instead of gender equality (“megalia,” 2021). following the controversial “isu station assault” case,6 over 350,000 koreans signed a petition demanding the presidential office to counter extremist feminist groups, causing megalia to shut down their website in october 2018 (c. lee, 2018a). branching off megalia while maintaining similarly hostile methods, womad (a portmanteau of “woman” and “nomad”) quickly developed an infamous reputation resulting from their antagonistic attacks against both men and sexual minorities. frequently pronouncing violent and murderous threats towards other gender identities, the site justified their resentment based on previous and ongoing discrimination against women (a. kim, 2019). while triumphant in terms of raising attention on disturbing women’s issues including korea’s prevalence of spy cams7 as well as other forms of sexual harassment and discrimination, such radical platforms have exacerbated tensions among genders (verve team, 2019; steger, 2016). as expected, many men in korea’s deeply misogynistic society exhibit intense animosity against feminism. statistics published by the korean women’s development institute revealed that over half of korea’s men in their twenties “displayed both ‘hostile gender discrimination’ and anti-feminism” — even more so than their older counterparts, alluding to growing discontent among young men in response to extreme feminism (choi, 2019). in late 2018, dang dang we (당당위) was formed in an effort to promote justice for men in the investigation and trial of sex crimes (“dang dang we,” 2021). along with enmity against women fueled by internet conflicts, many young men are disgruntled about korea’s long-standing tradition of male-only mandatory conscription: 72 percent of men regard this as gender discrimination and 65 percent want women to be drafted into the military, further irked by the belief that women hold an advantage over men in terms of employment (kwon; c. lee, 2018a). through a comprehensive look into korea’s gender wars and the wider zeitgeist of anti-feminism, one can understand men’s overwhelmingly adverse reaction to escape the corset. similar to how men are ostracized from feminist conversations on medalia and womad, members of tal-co have consistently shut out men from their discourse; for example, jung explicitly states that she only wishes women to watch her video for she believes that men have no right to an opinion with concern to the movement. the movement’s simplistic blaming of korea’s patriarchy for the country’s lookism and outright estrangement of men have unsurprisingly failed to capture male empathy and support. the feminist framing of the movement also alienates women who feel burdened by new pressures to join escape the corset to call themselves feminists. ironically, some feel that the tal corset movement has become a corset in itself — a classic catch-22 (bicker, 2018). the movement’s messages suggest that those who choose to wear makeup and feminine clothing remain corseted products of korea’s unjust patriarchy, and hence cannot be considered true 6 involved a physical fight between three men and two women at a bar near the isu subway station. see c. lee (2018a) and chung (2018) for more details regarding the isu station assault and its provocation of gender wars. 7 short for spy cameras or “molka” (몰카) in korean. the term refers to hidden cameras in public bathrooms, trains, buses, and other public areas that capture voyeuristic footage (typically of women) without knowledge or consent. such videos and images are often illegally sold online to porn sites. see gibson (2019) for more information. feminists. one youtuber even created a parody of lina bae’s “i am not pretty” called “i am pretty” featuring a conventionally attractive girl who is swamped with praise for her looks (youtube snout, 2019). when evaluating womad’s means, an article published in the berkeley political review relates the radical feminist group’s “resentful outlook” to audre lorde’s famous quote: “the master’s tool will never dismantle the master’s house” (a. kim, 2019). the same can be applied to escape the corset. the movement’s difficulties in consolidating support owing to korea’s pejorative view on feminism illustrate the limitations of using “established strategies of categorization and exclusion” to challenge oppressive structures (a. kim, 2019). on top of the glaring obstacles of entrenched misogyny and divisive feminism, it is further important to note the pivotal role of capitalism and media in propagating lookism. jiyoung yoon-kim, a professor at konkuk university’s institute of body and culture, states that korean “women are up against a multibillion-dollar industrial complex, including cosmetics, plastic surgery and entertainment, which sends women mutually reinforcing messages” (kuhn, 2019). in light of the 1997 international monetary fund (imf) crisis, korean president dae jung kim earmarked 50 million usd to establish the “cultural content office,” launching initiatives that would spread the influence of hallyu (the korean entertainment wave) and medical tourism (s. lee, 2019, p. 20). this soft power approach has proven effective as evinced by the ever-expanding popularity of korea’s modern cultural products composed of television dramas, movies, music, and cosmetics. from 2010 to 2014, total cultural content exports increased by an annual average of 13.4 percent and reportedly boosted the korean economy by approximately 11.6 billion usd in 2014 (roll, 2018; bae et al., p. 1). k-beauty,8 in particular, has risen to the forefront of the international cosmetics scene; in 2017, the industry was estimated to be worth over 13 billion usd (tai, 2017). largely driven by the plastic surgery and dermatology industries, medical tourism has also been a lucrative investment for the government, generating 348 million usd in 2014 (s. lee, 2019, p. 20). these intertwined industries of hallyu and medical tourism have not only played a critical role in elevating the nation’s global socio-economic dominance, but also in the defining of restrictive korean beauty standards. according to davies and han, “korean plastic surgery rose as a by-product of the massive cultural phenomenon known as hallyu,” further facilitated by the vigorous deployment of “media reports, advertisements, and commercials” (2011, p. 146). drawing from cultivation theory, davies and han’s paper corroborates that incessant digital publicity of cosmetic surgery has shaped public perception to adopt a normalized perspective of aesthetic alterations. the population’s widespread usage of digital communication technology has served as a “catalyst for koreans to view cosmetic surgery positively as a form of human physiological enhancement” (davies & han, 2011, p. 146). coupled with the enormous impact of celebrities who act as walking advertisements for plastic surgery, the internet has spawned online blogs, clinic websites, videos, and communal “cafes” easing access to striking images of aestheticized appearances and extensive information on cosmetic surgery (davies & han, 2011, p. 148-151). living in korea, i recall how my female friends and i would often surf the internet commenting on before and after images of korean actresses and k-pop idols, fixated by their miraculous transformations. as evident, the korean government and digital media have been and continue to be instrumental purveyors of lookism, presenting complex challenges to rebellion (s. lee 1-6, 17-22; davies & han, 2011, p. 146-154; holliday and elfving-hwang, 2012, p. 62). 8 korea’s local beauty industry that has become especially popular across the globe due to its extensive skincare products. read hwang (2016), wood (2016), ramoran-malasig (2016), and elle beauty team (2017) for further insight into the ballooning industry. an additional institutional barrier that is important to revisit is korea’s hyper-competitive job market: lookist employment operations undermine resistance efforts as an attractive appearance is essentially synonymous with success (steger & jung, 2017). according to a survey conducted by job portal saramin, 93.4 percent of 760 firms required a profile photo for resumés and 66.6 percent said they would penalize those who failed to submit (“67% of companies,” 2016). these companies cited reasons including that they could “judge personality or disposition” based on applicants’ images as well as that “appearance is competitive” and “important” for employment (“67% of companies,” 2016). six out of ten corporate human resources managers polled were apparently influenced by applicants’ looks when considering recruitment: 33.7 percent admitted that they had employed attractive candidates even if their qualifications were lacking while 48 percent of respondents said they had deducted points and eliminated applicants solely based on looks (steger & jung, 2017; “63% of human resources managers,” 2016). with increasingly fierce competition among youth, it comes as no surprise that many job applicants undergo cosmetic surgery in the hopes of improving their chances for employment. prior to interviews, applicants will often invest more time and energy into putting on makeup, choosing clothes, and receiving cosmetic procedures as opposed to preparing responses to interview questions. a poll conducted in 2018 found that 95.5 percent of job seekers believe that their appearance influenced their employment search and around 43.8 percent responded that they had been victims of lookism when job hunting (joo, 2018). and since boardrooms9 remain under the control of men, members of the escape the corset movement are at a definite disadvantage when it comes to the workplace––some women have been fired from their jobs and even assaulted (bicker, 2018; kuhn, 2019; c. lee, 2018a). to successfully fight korea’s lookist culture, one must address the nation’s discriminatory hiring practices. conclusion: lessons learned and the future of lookism through a close examination of korea’s lookist society and the recent tal corset movement, this essay has sought to explain that resistance against lookism is necessary and possible but has faced challenges due to the great magnitude and intricacy of the issue. underlying this argument is the assumption that unjust, categorical appearance discrimination should be regarded as a violation of intrinsic human rights and that it ultimately inflicts greater harm to society, particularly when concerned with younger generations. the case of tal-co illuminates the larger socio-economic and cultural context of lookism, not to mention the divided state of the korean population with regard to feminism. conversations around lookist culture require a greater macroscopic view that not only accounts for the concerns of those who consider themselves feminists but also incorporates a broader coalition of all pertinent stakeholders. this argument raises several questions about the feasibility of tackling lookism and the multiple steps that must be taken to combat appearance-based discrimination. how do we foster a more empathetic society where we no longer interact and judge people solely according to their looks? we must remember that lookism is not an issue present in contemporary korean society 9 according to the economist’s 2020 glass ceiling index, south korea came last among 29 oecd nations for the eight year in a row: “women hold just one in seven management positions and one in 30 board seats.” the index also divulged that korean women earn an average of 35 percent less than their male counterparts. a survey conducted by the gender ministry found that women account for only 3.6 percent of executives at south korea’s top 500 companies” in 2018 (nam; j. park, 2018). see jeong (2019), g. song (2019), as well as youm and yamaguchi (2016) for more information. alone, but one that spans centuries and across different cultures around the world. in fact, lookism is more relevant than ever in this digital age of concentrated media consumption where individuals are constantly exposed to picture-perfect and often heavily edited posts on social media platforms. at stake here is the need for us, as humans, to become more empathetic beings and work towards looking beyond the surface. as we have learned from the shortcomings of talco, any future measures will need to address and include the numerous entities tied to the issue. although undeniably difficult, we must foster cooperation among both genders, government agencies, corporations, and all other salient institutions to subvert the multifaceted problem of lookism. referring to audre lord’s words of wisdom, a concerted effort is imperative for, “in the end, activism based on division reiterates and justifies the status quo” (a. kim, 2019). reflecting on my time in korea, many of my recollections involve how my female peers and i would spend excessive amounts of time fussing over our looks and worshipping the seemingly flawless celebrities portrayed in the media. while our collective adoration of k-pop idols may have served as a bonding experience, i vividly remember the frustration i felt seeing the low numbers under the perfect profile photos of korean female stars, dejected that my body mass was higher than theirs. i painfully recall feeling mortified whenever i woke up with another pimple on my face, too ashamed of showing up to school. and when i discovered that my male classmates had fashioned a list ranking the girls based on appearance, i remember forcefully hiding my simmering anger beneath a calm façade for fear of seeming spiteful. though i remain disillusioned with regard to lookism in korea, the growing resistance gives me hope for a more equal, empathetic future. a world where women can invest more time in other areas of selfimprovement beyond body management. a world where individuals of all 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(2016, december 12). the glass ceiling in japan and south. global business outlook, www.globalbusinessoutlook.com/the-glass-ceiling-in-japanand-south-korea/. the colonization of the filipina mind examining filipina american mental health disparities through the lenses of feminism and colonial mentality madeleine salem, stanford ’24 abstract: colonial mentality has been defined by filipino scholars as a form of internalized oppression that conditions colonized people to believe that their ethnic or cultural identity is inferior to western culture. colonial mentality, in essence, perpetuates feelings of shame, inferiority, and embarrassment toward one’s own filipino identity, negatively influencing one’s self-perception. thus, having a higher colonial mentality has not only been associated with negative mental health-seeking attitudes, but has also been associated with poorer mental health in general, such as low self-esteem, low life satisfaction, more depression symptoms, and more anxiety symptoms. therefore, when put in conjunction with other social determinants of mental health that affect filipino people, colonial mentality can be easily implicated in the disproportionate rates of female filipino americans (filipina americans) experience mental health issues, with filipina american women being found to experience acute depression at disproportionate rates in comparison to other ethnic groups. however, filipina american women are a vastly understudied population in the field of mental health. therefore, this paper aims to answer the question of why filipina american women specifically experience these drastic mental health disparities, particularly in the form of depressive symptoms, using a postcolonial feminist approach. this paper will then analyze how colonial mentality poses barriers to filipina mental health help-seeking, suggesting potential solutions for lowering these barriers and making filipina american mental health treatment more culturally sensitive. introduction: the postcolonial problem growing up, i watched my mom constantly put her family before herself, at the expense of herself. in vain attempts to encourage her to get help for her crumbling mental health, i’ve suggested counseling multiple times, but have always been met with the same response. she’d shake her head. “bahala na. i don’t need therapy,” she’d say through a tired smile, “i’ll handle it on my own.” bahala na is a phrase i’ve heard thrown around by my filipino american immigrant family all my life. i’ve always understood it to be a dismissive term, meaning “leave it alone, things will turn out fine in the end.” recently, however, i’ve learned that bahala na is not just a colloquial phrase in the filipino language, but a core cultural value. bahala na is a fatalistic attitude that, in principle, preaches having determination in the fear of uncertainty, but in practice, dissuades taking active steps to tackle the hardships in life (enriquez, 2008). instead, bahala na promotes the passive acceptance of hardship – to wait around until things get better. in fact, bahala na has been found by psychiatric researchers to partially explain the pervasive negative mental health help-seeking attitudes among filipino american people (martinez et al., 2020). as put by sanchez and gaw (2007), filipino americans tend to be passive about negative mental health because, in a classic exhibition of bahala na, they “[accept] suffering as a spiritual offering when events are perceived as being beyond their control”. bahala na is speculated by some scholars to have developed from fatalistic attitudes surrounding colonialism (coleman and agnew, 2020). after 400 years of fruitlessly fighting back against the rampant exploitation and cultural erasure imposed on them by conquering nations, the people of the philippines defeatedly took on the attitude of being “resigned to their fate of being subject to their colonizers” (coleman and agnew, 2020). bahala na, loosely translating to “leave it to god [to handle things]”, also has roots in catholicism, which was introduced to the philippines by spanish colonizers and is now practiced by 85% of filipinos (gripaldo, 2005; sanchez and gaw, 2007). the pervasiveness of the colonial-based attitude of bahala na is an example of how colonial trauma in the form of feeling inferior to western colonizers has been perpetuated throughout generations of filipinos – a phenomenon known as colonial mentality. colonial mentality is defined as a form of internalized oppression that conditions colonized people to believe that their ethnic or cultural identity is inferior to western culture (david and okazaki, 2006). colonial mentality, in essence, perpetuates feelings of shame, inferiority, and embarrassment toward one’s own filipino identity, negatively influencing one’s self-perception (david and okazaki, 2006). having a higher colonial mentality has not only been associated with negative mental health-seeking attitudes but has also been associated with poorer mental health in general, such as low self-esteem, low life satisfaction, more depression symptoms, and more anxiety symptoms (david, 2017). furthermore, the research of dr. e.j.r. david, a filipino american psychology professor and pioneer in the field of minority mental health, has shown that implicit colonial mentality is “significantly predictive” of and directly affects depressive symptoms. in fact, results from structural equation modeling revealed that a “colonial mentality model of depression” – a cultural conceptualization of depression that incorporates hypothesized effects of internalized colonialism on self-esteem – was better able to explain depressive symptoms in filipino americans in comparison to a model of depression that did not incorporate psychological effects of colonial mentality (david, 2008). therefore, when put in conjunction with other social determinants of mental health that affect filipino american people, such as their generally lower socioeconomic status, lower employment status, immigration struggles, and multigenerational living arrangements (sanchez and gaw, 2007), colonial mentality can be easily implicated in the disproportionate rates at which filipino americans experience mental health issues. in fact, previous research has shown filipino americans to have greater rates of depression than other asian american ethnic groups, caucasians, and most of the u.s. population (mossakowski, 2007). but upon even closer inspection, one can see that female filipino americans (filipina americans) make up a concerningly large portion of these already concerning statistics. filipina american youth were found to have depression at higher instances than other asian american female youth, with a rate of 13.6% (javier et al, 2014 qt. as cited in kim and chun, 1993). in addition, filipino-american mothers were observed to have the highest rate of severe acute depression (9.6%) among mothers of asian-american backgrounds, the highest prevalence of “moderate to severe postpartum depression”, and severe maternal depressive symptoms (javier et al, 2014 qt. as cited in huang et al, 2007; javier et al, 2014). furthermore, filipino american women experience more severe symptoms of depression than filipino american men and are more likely to have long-term mental disorders than them as well (javier et al, 2014 qt. as cited in appel et al., 2011; javier et al., 2014 qt. as cited in david, 2008; espiritu and wolf, 2001; lim, 2011; ying and han, 2006; takeuchi, 2011). these statistics show that filipina american women tend to experience depressive mental health symptoms at a higher rate in comparison to both filipino american men and other asian american women. however, the exact contributors to this mental health disparity are still unclear. one reason for this knowledge gap is that, despite these startling statistics, filipina american women are a vastly understudied population in the field of mental health. therefore, this paper aims to contribute to this area of scholarly speculation by answering the following questions: (1) why filipina american women specifically experience these drastic mental health disparities, particularly in the form of depressive symptoms, and (2) how building a cultural sensitivity to colonial mentality might lead to better mental health treatment outcomes for filipina american women. generally, this paper hypothesizes that colonial mentality is a significant contributor to this mental health disparity, due to the way it interacts with sociocultural factors such as immigration struggles, working conditions, and living conditions, and that successful reforms for mental health treatments targeting this population should incorporate understanding of the effects of colonial mentality on the filipina american psyche. more specifically, aspects of colonial mentality that will be examined in their relation to the mental health disparity afflicting filipina american women include the unique history of the philippines’ perception of filipinas and how this perception was altered by colonization, the western ascribing of feminine gender roles upon filipina women as a consequence of this altered perception, and the modern-day prevalence of colonial-influenced filipino cultural values. these questions will be explored through a lens of post-colonialist feminism, a philosophy that asserts that women in the third world are oppressed both by colonial power and by the patriarchy (petersen and rutherford, 1986). according to dr. melanie straiton, a psychology researcher at the norwegian institute of public health, applying a postcolonial feminist perspective allows for the examination of how “ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic position influence the social, cultural, political, historical and economic factors that shape the lives of marginalized women”, giving us a framework for “[challenging] the assumptions of dominant society and [helping] to expose power imbalances that marginalise immigrant women.” (straiton et al, 2017). given the long colonial history of the philippines and how it has historically oppressed filipina women, the postcolonial feminist perspective is imperative for holistically examining the mental health disparities present in filipina-american women. thus, knowing the established connection between colonial mentality and general filipino american mental health, i will be applying a postcolonial feminist framework by examining how colonial mentality may be implicated in potential sociocultural contributors to the mental health disparities specifically afflicting filipina american women. i will be focusing on the following two hypothesized effects of colonial mentality on filipina americans: (1) pressure to adhere to the standard of the filipina set by colonialism and (2) denying, tolerating, or minimizing the historical and modern-day oppression of filipinos (david, 2017). finally, i will analyze how colonial mentality poses barriers to filipina mental health help-seeking, suggesting potential solutions for lowering these barriers and making filipina american mental health treatment more culturally sensitive. the colonial standard of the filipina: self-sacrifice, subservience, and silent struggle the colonial powers that dominated the philippines since the 1500s, brought their patriarchal ideals with them, and drastically influenced the perception of filipina women in filipino culture. in pre-colonial philippines, women were viewed with great importance and were held at a status equal to men (bulotano, 2021). many women even became babaylans, predominantly female mystical leaders in filipino communities who served as healers and warriors, wielding great social and political power (villariba). however, this revered and empowered perception of filipina women began to change upon spain’s arrival in the philippines, marking the beginning of the philippines’ age of colonization. according to filipina feminist scholar emily lopez-ledesma tan, for every power that ravaged and plundered in their quest to colonize the philippines, “the degradation of women became the ultimate symbol of the conqueror’s triumph and the chasm of shame for the conquered.” during spanish colonization, the babaylans — once revered as symbols of female power — were villainized into aswangs — shape-shifting women in filipino folktale that drew their power from black magic and kidnapped innocent people to feast on them (bulotano, 2021). furthermore, spanish catholicism established a patriarchal society in which women were “placed squarely in subordinate roles in the cultural domain”, and expected to be “submissive to their husbands as though to the lord; because the husband is the head of the wife just as christ is the head of the church” (tan, 2017). following spanish colonization, american colonizers dismissed women with indigenous features like dark skin, flat noses, and curly hair, favoring women who possessed eurocentric features such as light skin, a narrow nose, and straight hair as their concubines (casillan, 2020). the spanish, americans, and japanese exploited filipina women as sex slaves, forcing them to become “comfort women” who only existed to satisfy the desires and needs of the colonizer (bulotano, 2021). during this age of colonization, the filipina woman came to be defined in terms of spanish and american patriarchies. consequently, throughout the generations, colonial trauma instilled a tendency in filipina women to ascribe to western ideals of femininity – that to be feminine was to be dutiful, submissive, and a domestic caregiver (welter, 1966). thus, as a result of colonization, the filipina woman was reduced from a powerful, capable leader to a docile, subservient follower to her male superiors. due to the collectivist nature of filipino culture (church et al, 2010 qt. as cited in hofstede, 2001), the filipina woman is still expected to be all these things, as well as dutiful, self-sacrificing, and passive to negative occurrences in life for the sake of her family. i argue that in the present day, this symptom of colonial mentality contributes to the expectation of filipina women to accept the burden of being the family caregiver in all sense of the word, serving and providing as all parts a daughter, wife, mother, and especially breadwinner. due to the impoverished economic situation of the philippines, filipina women are more encouraged by philippine society to prioritize financial caregiving over physical caregiving (napholz and mo, 2010). according to a 2010 study that assessed the psychological well-being of working filipina-american women, providing financial support is seen by filipino families as filling the role of a caregiver more than physically being there, as in circumstances of economic stress, money becomes the most important way of showing one’s devotion and care to loved ones. this results in many filipina women having to leave their parents, spouses, siblings, and children in the philippines behind while they pursue better financial opportunities abroad in places such as america, with 60% of filipino immigrants in the u.s. being women (stoney and batalova, 2013). once these women immigrate, they then have to endure the colonial-influenced cultural pressure of being a caregiver in combination with separation from loved ones, which potentially puts them in a position of higher vulnerability to developing mental health issues. indeed, previous research has shown that separation within immigrant families is linked to negative mental health outcomes, so this familial separation that many filipina american women endure is likely a contributor to the disproportionate depressive symptoms observed in this population (vesely et al., 2019). a 2017 research study published in bmc women’s health validated that geographic separation from family is indeed very hard on filipina immigrants, who often express feelings of sadness due to a disconnect from their support system as well as guilt from not being able to be there for their loved ones. when describing this experience of leaving behind family in the philippines, one filipina immigrant stated, “it’s very hard... leaving your kids – i [felt] like dying… even now, i’m used to it, but… it [makes me] feel so weak, depressed also. sometimes i really miss my kids – how i wish i could ... tie their hairs or something, [or] put them in bed. but i’m here so… it’s very sad” (straiton et al, 2017). this filipina mother was put in the copious position of being unable to physically care for her beloved children. for filipina immigrant women, the desire to be with their loved ones may be at war with the knowledge that their physical sacrifice could provide their loved ones with a better life – a turmoil that may cause understandable sadness and devastation. a filipina immigrant working in healthcare echoed this statement, lamenting, “i always tell myself that, because i am working here [in another country], the love and the care that i give to my patients are the love and care that i can never give to my [family]. i can send money to them, i can call, but… i can’t [take care of] my mamma,… my ailing grandfather or grandmother” (straiton et al., 2017). these sentiments show that filipina immigrants feel as if they must accept their role as a family provider despite their extreme sadness as a result of familial separation. this adherence to their familial duty may be implicitly driven by the previously discussed colonial-influenced standard of the filipina – the standard of being self-sacrificing for the sake of family above all else. as a result, filipina immigrant women are forced to accept sacrifices such as geographic separation as their moral duty to their families. “when it comes to financial support… i don’t take it as a responsibility,” one filipina immigrant said, “i know i’m earning more than what [my family earns], so it's… a grateful thing” (straiton et al, 2017). in other words, by prioritizing the family’s needs above her own, the filipina woman fulfills her role as a virtuous and moral daughter, sister, and mother. sometimes, this rationale of viewing these sacrifices as “paid emotional labor” – the enduring of difficult emotional circumstances for the sake of earning and providing money for the family – can even soothe the guilt a filipina woman might feel from leaving behind her family by making her feel like she is fulfilling both her roles as a nurturing woman and provider (straiton et al, 2017). conversely, though, this colonial-influenced standard of self-sacrifice can negatively warp filipina women’s sense of self-worth, which is a high-risk factor for developing depression in the general population (choi et al., 2019). some filipina immigrants have reported large amounts of pressure and stress from feeling like their families back home viewed them as nothing but a never-ending source of money, or from fear that they wouldn’t be able to live up to their families’ expectations (straiton et al, 2017). thus, pressured to do all they can to support their families with day-to-day living, housing, health services, education, and other things, filipina-american women tend to push themselves to great lengths to achieve financial success, resulting in overworking tendencies that have been observed to lead to depression in the general population (rudow, 2012). for example, filipina women have been found to take on multiple jobs to the point of exhaustion on top of engaging in studying to improve future earnings, often forgoing trips to visit family back in the philippines because of their busy schedules (straiton et al., 2017). therefore, the colonial-rooted pressure put on filipina american women both by their families and themselves, in addition to the overwork and burnout they might feel from busy schedules, may contribute to the higher rates of depressive symptoms they experience. however, the colonial expectation of filipinas to be docile, passive, and self-sacrificing for the sake of family has made it so that many filipinas feel like they cannot show that they are struggling. one filipina american immigrant said in a research study, “because most of us are filipino, we are thinking first, what will my loved ones think? i want to solve it first myself, before telling them” (straiton et al, 2017). another said, “i am also one of the wings of my family, i don’t want them to see me flying down… i want them to see me…soaring high every time” (straiton et al., 2017). for filipina americans who are immigrants themselves, balancing work with family caretaking may cause them financial stress on top of geographic and mental alienation from family. these factors are the most common stressors among clinically depressed filipinos (tompar-tiu and sustento-seneriches, 1995). as such, the colonial-influenced standard of the filipina, by implicitly coercing women to ascribe to western ideals of femininity through taking on the role of the subservient caregiver, has contributed to putting filipina american women into a unique sociocultural position that puts them at higher risk for developing depression – potentially explaining the stark mental health disparities that afflict them. bahala na: the entrapment of the filipina woman in a colonial prison the pressure to adhere to a colonial standard of the filipina is one-way filipina americans continue to be oppressed by the philippines’ colonial history, adversely affecting their mental health. however, another symptom of colonial mentality that negatively influences filipina mental health is the denial and tolerance of this and other kinds of oppression. this denial, tolerance, and minimization of filipino oppression, a phenomenon known as “colonial debt”, stems from the aforementioned colonialism-fatalistic attitude of bahala na (david and okazaki, 2006). another interpretation of bahala na is “despite one’s free will, one cannot do anything about the larger existing circumstances of their situation” (phils, 2013). the prevalence of the colonial-rooted value of bahala na in filipino culture has made it so that many filipinos tend to accept bad life circumstances, which, in conjunction with the gender-specific pressures examined in the previous section, may be another contributor to the disproportionate rates of mental health issues in filipina americans. one example of such a life circumstance common in filipino culture is multigenerational living in one household, with children often living with their parents until marriage and then older parents moving in with their children when they are adults (chen et al., 2017). middle-aged filipina women are often put in charge of taking care of these older adult family members living in the household, which has been associated with psychological stress and negative emotional effects (oshio, 2014; yamauchi and tiongco, 2013). a 2017 study conducted by sociology researchers at the university of maryland showed that living in these larger households reported a higher score of depressive symptoms in mid-life filipina women, due to stress brought on by caregiving duties and loss of privacy and control. another contributor to stress and negative mental health for filipina women in these multigenerational households was the power dynamic between these filipina adults and their older parents, as the younger filipinas tended to be moved down the household hierarchy due to their age and gender (chen et al, 2017). however, in accordance with the colonial-rooted value of bahala na, filipina women may not feel motivated to gain power back in the form of increased privacy, more control of the household, or more even distribution of caregiving duties, as they must accept that that is simply the way of her culture. the colonial influences on cultural values filipinos still currently uphold thus may be implicated in how filipina-american women tolerate these living situations that are not conducive to positive mental health. outside the household, filipina americans also tend to accept bad working conditions. since 1960, the us has pulled filipinos to work as nurses, a “highly feminized” profession, to fill nursing shortages in america (thornell, 2020; straiton et al., 2017). as a result, filipino nurses currently make up 4% of the us nursing population (morton, 2021). however, filipino nurses have made up more than a third of covid-related deaths among u.s. nurses (morton, 2021). scholars believe that this is because these filipino-american nurses have “[tolerated] less-than-ideal working conditions” while working during the covid-19 pandemic, consequently putting themselves at higher risk of contracting the disease (constante, 2021). to support this, one study found that filipino registered nurses were less likely to leave jobs that caused burnout due to “the confluence of transnational pressures, unequal power relations, and socioeconomic factors influenced by a colonial past that have entrapped them into staying” (nazareno, 2021). according to minority mental health researcher dr. e.j.r. david, the reason for this tolerance is a feeling of colonial indebtedness to america for giving them an opportunity for work at all, with a rationale along the lines of ‘i might be putting myself at risk right now because my boss is forcing me to work in these conditions – but at least i'm here in america’ (constante, 2021). this characteristic of filipino american workers to stay in negative work conditions is often exploited, with employers praising the diligence and amiability of filipino american workers, but not promoting them. a study from the journal feminist economics shows that filipinos are less likely to be promoted to manager or supervisor than white americans with comparable qualifications (yamane, 2011). tolerating exploitation of labor in bad working conditions due to colonial indebtedness may be another contributor to negative mental health; adding in the implicit pressure for filipina american women to adhere to colonial-influenced gender roles puts this demographic all the more at risk. multigenerational living arrangements, bad workplace environments, and labor exploitation – are all factors that psychology researchers have linked to depression development in the general population (piontak, 2014; woo and postolache, 2008; mustaner, 2015). therefore, the colonial-rooted cultural value of bahala na, by promoting the mentality that filipina americans do not have the power to change the negative circumstances in their lives, especially taking into consideration the pressure for these women to fulfill filipina gender roles, may encourage filipina americans to stay in situations that amplify and perpetuate negative mental health. decolonizing the filipina mind: lowering barriers to treatment we have now examined several ways in which colonial mentality may adversely affect the mental health of filipina americans. understanding the cultural histories underlying mental health issues is imperative to providing culturally sensitive mental health care – but unfortunately, these cultural histories are also linked to negative mental health care-seeking attitudes in this population. a 2020 study published in the journal social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology revealed the most prevalent barriers to the pursuit of mental health care by filipino americans, many of which can be traced back to colonial mentality. these include (1) “financial constraints due to high cost of service, lack of health insurance, or precarious employment conditions”, (2) a sense of shame, embarrassment, self-blame, and fear of judgment, as well as (3) worries over the social stigma associated with mental health treatment that could put the family reputation at stake (martinez et al, 2020). denial of mental health treatment by filipina american women is driven by concerns that it would bring about financial burden and shame upon their families. these concerns may implicitly stem from the previously discussed colonial expectation of filipina american women to support and prioritize their families even at the expense of themselves. this begs the question – how can we reform cultural mental health care for a population whose culture and colonial history discourage mental health help-seeking? one way to address this problem may be to offer mental health programs partnered with institutions that are cultural safe spaces for filipina americans (napholz and mo, 2010). receiving treatment through cultural safe spaces such as churches may reduce fears of judgment and sense of shame and embarrassment. as seen with bahala na, filipinos sometimes put their trust in religion when dealing with negative circumstances in life; a church leader has even noted experiences of filipino parents deferring to him to pray for behavioral problems their children were going through rather than consulting professional therapy (javier et al, 2014). thus, filipina americans may be more receptive to pursuing mental health treatment when the referral is coming from an authority figure that they trust, such as a priest or other faith leader. “there’s so much respect given to someone higher up,” a filipino parent confirmed, “if the priest says, ‘i think you should go to this [doctor]’ they’re more likely to go” (javier et al, 2014). another intervention to promote mental health help-seeking would be to create mental health programs that specifically target filipina americans as a population. with the knowledge that other fellow filipina americans are seeking out and utilizing mental health treatment, any fears of stigma and shame being placed upon their families may be quieted, as they will see that their experiences of struggle are shared with other women just like them. creating populationtargeted programs for filipinos has already proved to have an impact on increasing the participation of filipinos in mental health treatment, as shown by the high rates of attendance and positive feedback for church-based filipino-targeted parenting programs (javier et al, 2014). in combination with dealing with the barriers that prevent filipina americans from accessing mental health care, reforms can also be put into place to ensure effective, culturally sensitive mental health services for this population. instead of utilizing standard methods of therapeutic intervention with filipina american patients, clinicians should revise their approaches using the informed perspective of postcolonial feminism, with the goal of decolonizing their minds. for instance, when treating filipina american patients with depression, therapists could shift the focus of their treatment plans onto unlearning specific cognitive distortions that are a product of colonial mentality. for example, public health researchers believe that one potential way to combat these high-risk stressors for developing depressive and anxious symptoms in filipina american women would be to encourage them to have a better work-relationship balance (napholz and mo, 2010). even though the colonial standard of filipina and filipino culture in general pushes women to prioritize financial success as the primary way of supporting family, ensuring that the pursuit of financial gain does not come at the expense of being cut off from family is integral to ensuring good mental health in filipina women. this is supported by findings from a 1996 research study that showed women who prioritized career over family scored significantly higher on anxiety, while women who prioritized being with family had the lowest mean score on anxiety, depression, and hostility (beatty, 1996). these are only some ways that mental health treatment can be more culturally focused when dealing with filipina-american patients. ultimately, in the words of public health researchers naopholz and mo, going forward, “filipino women's work and family-role experiences must be viewed within their cultural context to provide insights for both mental health clinicians and researchers.” as such, keeping cultural education and empathy at the center of mental health treatment is a powerful tool that can help bring about the decolonization of both filipino-american minds and the mental healthcare system. conclusion: a call to service the ones who have served us colonial mentality has fundamentally affected not only the way filipina women perceive themselves but also the way philippine society perceives its filipina women. colonization influenced the perception of filipina women to ascribe to a western standard of femininity, a standard that may still contribute to the self-sacrificing behaviors of filipina american women for the sake of their families, but at the expense of their own mental health. colonization also introduced an attitude of fatalism in the filipino people, manifesting in cultural values that may implicitly influence filipina americans to stay in working and living conditions that are detrimental to their well-being. in conjunction with other social determinants of mental health, these colonial-influenced perceptions and values have placed filipina american women in situations that put them at higher risk for negative mental health outcomes, contributing to the stark mental health disparities that afflict them. filipina feminist scholar emily lopez-ledesma tan put it well: “as a result of these patriarchal regimes set by colonialism, filipina women have suffered violence in the form of shouldering multiple burdens such as traditional household chores, child-rearing, regular and odd jobs, family matters – all the while being minimized, being grossly overworked and underpaid has resulted in low selfesteem, perpetual fatigue, and self-sacrifice.” addressing the way these sociocultural contributors to depression are 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(1966). the cult of true womanhood: 1820-1860. american quarterly, 18(2), 151– 174. https://doi.org/10.2307/2711179 woo, j. m., & postolache, t. t. (2008). the impact of work environment on mood disorders and suicide: evidence and implications. international journal on disability and human development: ijdhd, 7(2), 185–200. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijdhd.2008.7.2.185 yamane, linus (2002) native-born filipina/o americans and labor market discrimination, feminist economics, 8:2, 125-144, doi: 10.1080/13545700210158431 https://www.isiswomen.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=433&item https://www.isiswomen.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=433&item https://doi.org/10.1515/ijdhd.2008.7.2.185 a moment of omens julie lee, carnegie mellon university ’22 a moment of omens is an installation of my mother’s apron, slippers, rosary, and norigae (a decorative pendant in korean culture), as well as a torn photograph of her and her lover (my father) with red tape. here, the apron and slippers are presented to the viewer, lying in wait for its intended occupant, my mother. they symbolize the assignment of the important work that my mother is expected to do: housework. she is expected to carry on this feminine tradition of being a homemaker, as well as experiencing the prescribed notions it carries. the rosary and norigae act as protective charms to ward off any evil, but they also represent the split between my mother’s dedication to western customs (and therefore, assimilation) and eastern customs (and therefore, staying true to her indigenous roots). at the center of this presentation lies a torn photograph of my mother and her lover, pieced together with red tape. here, there arises the question: does the red tape symbolize the seemingly fateful union of the couple, or is it an attempt to obscure the reality of misogynist subjugation that awaits the couple, especially the woman? overall, this installation brings into question what lies ahead for my mother's future (and her selfhood), as well as the futures of countless other korean-american women. this piece centers an experience that korean-american women face within their own community. historically, korean society has maintained the social structure of unfair social treatment and distribution of unequal roles which confucianism supported with a specific tenet on women’s obedience, translating as “to the father when young; to the husband when married; and to the son in old age.” when korean society experienced industrialization and globalization from western capitalist imperialism, women would eventually enter the workforce to support their households, only to experience poor working conditions, low wages, and sexual harassment. this experience followed these women even when they migrated to other places for better opportunities, especially in the united states. korean-american women have had the sexist notion of the docile, submissive, and obedient housewife pushed upon them, limiting their ability to create their own futures. furthermore, under imperialist capitalism, housework has been transformed to be seen as a natural attribute of women, as if it's their internal need and aspiration. with all this being established, koreanamerican women experience a particular struggle of asserting their autonomy and taking control of their own narratives (both within and outside of their communities) which is what i explore in my artistic practice. this installation is an invitation to observe how korean-american women are perceived within their own spaces, as well as a confrontation of the racial misogyny these women experience to this day. meet the piece: when it comes to embodied’s primary themes of feminism, gender, and sexuality, this piece presents a feminist perspective centering on an experience that asianamerican women (who were historically excluded from the predominantly white feminist movement) face within their own communities. asian-american women have the sexist notion of the docile, submissive, and obedient housewife pushed upon them, limiting their ability to create their own futures. furthermore, under imperialist capitalism, housework has been transformed to be seen as a natural attribute of women, as if it were their internal need and aspiration. with all this being established, asian-american women experience a particular struggle of asserting their autonomy and taking control of their own narratives (both within and outside of their communities) which is what i explore in my artistic practice. this installation is an invitation to observe how asian-american women are perceived within their own spaces, as well as a confrontation of the precarious realities these women experience to this day. figueroa final content warning: sexual assault/violence, kidnapping, drink spiking, homicide born as yours, as his the day i came out screaming and crying is the day they found the intern dead. you all saw it playing on tv as i was born, unfair because brother’s birth featured just 12 hours of seinfield. a girl becomes a walking target from the first second of their breathe, essentially slapped into existence and pushed into everything that follows. you knew that, from the verdict of the ultrasound to when i finally made it home, bundled in your hold, your daughter’s face and drool and spilled formula against your chest. breaths, like drops of innocence pressed against blankets and bibs, just like the rest. only it was days after chandra levy, may 22, 2002. she and the many other girls who made their way to dateline or amber alerts or crinkled and ripped posters on walmart bulletin boards—college freshmen trying to make it home, wobbling and practically wrestling with their heels against the sidewalk, women with drinks and short skirts and dresses and drinks … hands and pills of others not where they’re supposed to be, deep voices, cat calls, men this close to pulling her into their car, nighttime and stars and dim lights, running across puddles in alleyways with men that chase the trail behind, close like the wet footprints she once owned, or daylight, watch her, prowl across window sills and peer in because it’s his zoo, or across the pavement of flea markets, cat eyes, cat calls catch her off guard, or spot and track her from a bush, blended in with the natural—they’re everywhere you are: content warning: sexual assault/violence, kidnapping, drink spiking, homicide nyc, chicago, maybe around the corner, down the street and they’re trying to get me. that’s what you told me, that he is always there, keep you eyes peeled because they’re watching like a hawk, like doctor t. j. eckleburg, a god where his glares are nothing but sin, always waiting to pull you into their palms and pin you down. please, please, slip and fall into his ice water-blue gaze. you’re so beautiful for me. i need you, now. for the next 18 years, i lived under your eyes, in the backyard, a small block of pavement, surrounding by a green lawn— the itchiness of the grass, my only escape. i couldn’t ride my bike past 5 pm, even on summer days when sunlight survived until 9. you insisted i’d be bundled up in neon, green as a glow stick. as if my clothes could kick back or signal the national guard. instead of karate lessons, i received the kidnapping 101 at home: scream help so loud your voice leaves your body. bite their hand off. draw blood. stockton: breaking news. kristin smart, cal poly, 1996. our bodies are always in danger. it was already over for me, before me. but you don’t know that the short skirts i wear, the concoctions of rum and coke, the men and women i want to kiss, the nights i walk in the scent of pine, the moments i share, swaying to their heartbeat or the jazz of jam sessions in coffee houses, the roast and caffeine and energy fill me to the brink, won’t kill me. content warning: sexual assault/violence, kidnapping, drink spiking, homicide the eyes that require perfection will strangle me until my very last breath…. author’s note: with the rate of sexual assault on campus, i often think about how womxn are born into and raised to be scared of the world around us. that we are always on the defense with the war on our bodies. even with similar dangers that men can face, we are sheltered and protected without choice while men have far more freedom to do what they want. for example, cishet men tend to feel more safe walking around at night and do not need help o be on-guard at parties. rather than addressing the root of the problem in how our bodies should be respected, society places the burden on us, and we have to bring this trauma or acknowledge risks in every space we enter. it’s suffocating. a burden is placed onto womxn the second we enter this world, screaming and crying, and we carry it with us into adulthood. every generation before has sustained this burden, so much so this protective nature toward daughters is instilled in parenting. ultimately, this poem delves into how growing up in fear stunted my growth and required extra attention to embark on new experiences. microsoft word sd+revisions 2.docx long-standing epidemic of sex trafficking in san diego tribal communities madeleine kingsland, stanford ’24 abstract: human trafficking is a nationwide epidemic operating at the community-based level. the separation of reservations from neighboring areas in rising numbers of crimes such as human trafficking is significant. by evaluating the foundational struggles of indigenous communities within san diego we can see how traffickers seek to exploit these vulnerabilities to better their pursuits. originally stemming from gender inequalities between white males and indigenous females, the historical trauma that is rooted in these communities continues to allow indigenous women to be victimized at disproportionately higher rates. while the movement to place attention on the matter is growing, issues within tribal sovereignty continue to threaten the women living on reservations in san diego and around the country. content warning: this article contains sensitive content, including analysis of human trafficking and discrimination. readers are advised to take these into account before proceeding. the fight for native american lives is a daily battle fought on reservations around the country. in a culture preserved through oral histories, it isn’t uncommon to hear stories detailing century long struggles with crime and violence. when speaking to elder members from san diego in examining present day issues on native communities, it is apparent that these struggles have only intensified generationally (dial, 2021). located in some of the most remote and secluded areas of the county, san diego reservations experience increased poverty rates and looser community infrastructure compared to their urban counterparts. (carter, n.d.). these marginalization’s serve to create hubs for illegal practices such as human trafficking. in utilizing historical indigenous trauma and the unique composition of san diego, traffickers continue to threaten the safety and wellbeing of natives living on reservations. the four indigenous tribes native to san diego county include the cahuilla, cupeño, luiseño, and the kumeyaay, which make up eighteen tribal reservations covering nearly 116,000 acres throughout the county (cie, n.d.). containing more indian reservations than any other county in the united states, san diego presents with a “checker-board” pattern of reservations trickling all the way down from the northern county to the u.s. mexico border (cie, n.d.). while not directly connected, the relative proximity of reservations to one another creates a “hotspot” perfect for the transporting of goods or persons throughout the state. the fbi reports san diego as the thirteenth worst region for human trafficking across the united states, with as many as 3,000-8,000 yearly trafficked victims (philips, 2021). due to current limitations on information tied to human trafficking accords in san diego, the exact number of victims tied directly to specific reservations is unknown (sandag, n.d.). with small differences in heritage due to a shared ancestry and proximity to one another, the ability to focus on these reservations as a collective group best highlights the overall impact human trafficking has on native americans in san diego county. while native americans make up less than 1% of the county population, they continue to be victimized by sex trafficking at rates significantly higher than other racial groups (bonnette, n.d.). across the united states, more than 1 in 3 native women will be raped in their lifetime and more than 6 in 10 will suffer from physical assault (bonnette, n.d.). often largely overlooked as victims because of their relatively small population size, native women make up 40% of the country’s human trafficking victims overall (hts, 2018). however, 88% of the individuals committing these violent crimes against native women are found to be non-native (hts ,2018). described today by tribal leaders and advocates across the nation as “epidemic” levels, sex trafficking is a systemic issue that continues to impact the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of native individuals (hts, 2018). the vulnerability of native americans as a population continues to be one of the main driving factors in perpetuating human trafficking on reservations. systemic socio-economic issues continue to be at play on reservations. these include, but are not limited to, issues such as poverty, lower education rates, increased homelessness, and substance abuse. for instance, 32% of native children live in families with income below the federal poverty level in san diego, compared to the 15% county average (cook, n.d.). inextricably linked to trafficking, all these factors significantly limit a person's ability to provide a sustainable livelihood. these “higher risk” populations are more easily exploitable, as traffickers can use false promises of employment and educational opportunities as leveraging tools (wright, 2015). frequent generational exposure to this manipulative cycle has normalized acts of sex trafficking in many native communities (wright, 2015). studies have shown that up to 18% of native victims are exploited directly through family members due to this community normalization (greer, pp. 453483). serving as a continuous pool of targets to choose from, traffickers on reservations have a selection of individuals at their disposal. this cycle of sexual exploitation is due in part to the disruption of cultural and communal identities of indigenous people. european colonization and the expansion of the spanish missionary system throughout california significantly exploited san diego indigenous people at the hands of white settlers (robinson, 2021). prior to western influence, concepts of property and ownership were not socially perceived by natives (robinson, 2021). indigenous women were highly regarded figures in tribal standing as child bearers and leaders in their communities (robinson, 2021). the infiltration of white males into these tribal groups brought rape, enslavement, maim, and murdering to indigenous women (robinson, 2021). what is now defined as modern day sex trafficking occurred to women and children during this time, as they were explicitly forced to serve as disposable bartering tools (robinson, 2021). from the beginning of colonization, indigenous women were viewed as prostitutes and physical objects to be sexually used by men. often sought for their “exotic” looks, their indigenous features served the “fetishes” of many males (navajo-hopi, 2019). the trauma associated with these types of historical events have generationally been passed down, leading to the susceptibility of current populations to increased depression, anxiety, and lack of self-respect (logan, 2016). using these psychological vulnerabilities to their advantage, traffickers directly exploit victims through the means of historical trauma. while practices of sexual exploitation are no longer legal, the victimization that occurred on indigenous soil continues to persist long after colonization. this abuse of power by the europeans continues to create mistrust on reservations today between law enforcement and indigenous people. to many natives, police are associated with the abusive powers that the u.s. government used to authorize control over indigenous lands and people. often unwilling to cooperate with law enforcement in general, it can be difficult for those living on reservations to report potential acts of human trafficking (greer, 2013). additionally, the complexity of criminal jurisdiction on these reservations further complicates matters. incorporating a mixture of state and federal authority, each individual case of human trafficking on tribal land is evaluated differently depending on location, people involved, and tribal relations (greer, 2013). as determined by oliphant v. suquamish indian tribe, tribal authorities do not have criminal jurisdiction over non-natives on reservations (tribal court clearinghouse, n.d.). with the majority of perpetrators harming native women on reservations being non-native males, the management of these trafficking cases on reservations are turned over to federal and state authorities (tribal court clearinghouse, n.d.). although geographically closer, tribal law authorities are significantly limited in their ability to intervene in an arrangement of illegal issues, such as trafficking. due in part to the significantly smaller presence of tribal law enforcement and various laws constituting the power of tribal authority, many criminals and individuals partaking in illegal activities see reservations as a “safe haven” (greer, 2013). for cases requiring federal officer intervention, the overall distance to reservations and other countywide demands significantly limit the availability of these officers. because of these factors, many non-native individuals remain on reservations without any confrontations with federal law enforcement (greer, 2013). operating in the shadows of reservations, therefore, trafficking rings, drug rings, and other illegal activities continue to occur without incident or reprimand (greer, 2013). easily drawing the attention of young children, these illicit groups seamlessly expand into community wide groups. the expansion of these groups not only perpetuates trafficking, but also serves to bring more non-natives onto tribal property (greer, 2013). as rings of criminal activities build, the constant inflow of people coming and leaving allows for victims of human trafficking to blend into groups seamlessly and gives traffickers more people to sell to. these silent types of operations move along neighboring reservations in san diego with minimal disturbance. casinos also serve as additional hubs for illegal activities on the reservation, bringing in large numbers of non-natives to reservations for gambling and resort visits. with nine individual operating casinos within san diego, the county is arguably known as the “indian casino capital” of the world (cie, n.d.). serving as hot spots for meeting places, traffickers utilize the attentiongrabbing characteristics of casinos as a distraction to their illegal practices. known as locations of high cash flow, large floor crowds, and 24-hour entertainment, casinos create the perfect cover for traffickers. by continuously watching games and supplying girls to walk the floor, traffickers can spot big money winners and drunk individuals who they can solicit (huff, n.d.). concerts and other entertainment shows provide huge crowds that allow trafficking operations to deploy a number of victims throughout the casino venue without drawing specific attention. traffickers who elicit the sale of children often frequent “family-friendly” casinos that include kids clubs and lazy rivers where they are easily able to blend-in much better than the 21+ casinos (huff, n.d.). additionally, the use of charter buses to carry in casino guests from an assortment of locations are prime transportation methods that easily allow traffickers to continuously cycle in new victims. hidden in plain sight, traffickers use the array of casinos owned by san diego tribes to further increase accessibility to their customers and control of their victims. in this constant revolving movement of individuals in human trafficking rings, the proximity of san diego to the mexican border plays a significant role in the transporting of victims. according to the 2021 trafficking in persons report, indigenous persons are identified as a high-risk group for trafficking in mexico, second only to unaccompanied children (u.s. department of state, 2021). with the campo indian reservation lying adjacent to the border, the average travel time from any one of the reservations to mexico is 24 minutes total (u.s. department of state, 2021). once inside, tijuana’s red-light district is a popular destination for human traffickers. known for its legalization of prostitution, traffickers are easily able to place their victims into clubs and shops (clawson, layne, small, 2006). this relative geographic proximity allows traffickers an increased ability to lure individuals in mexico to the u.s. with promises of better lifestyles and opportunities (clawson, layne, small, 2006). trickling down from north san diego county or starting in mexico, human trafficking rings have established pathways up and down the inner county reservations to transport victims without detection. the variety of factors working to perpetuate human trafficking on san diego reservations is nothing new in the eyes of tribal members. systemic issues such as poverty, underdevelopment of resources, and lack of trust to authority run deep through the history of tribal communities. the ability to fight human trafficking and other criminal activities throughout reservations comes from the influence of tribal leaders. recognized as independent sovereign nations, each individual tribe maintains its own governance of laws, structures, courts, and police departments. while this system aims to protect indigenous cultures and identities, creation of jurisdictions and allocations of proper enforcement resources used to combat criminal activity is the primary responsibility of individual tribes themselves. under california public law 280, the legality of tribes pursuing human trafficking cases under their own jurisdiction only applies in cases of native perpetrators convicted of trafficking native victims. because this is not the case for a large majority of trafficking cases, most legally fall under california state jurisdiction (national congress of american indians, n.d.). this mixing and matching of case jurisdiction which falls along various state and reservation boundaries within a single county is what allows traffickers the time they need to move individuals in and out of reservations. while these tribal constitutions can vary in legislature depending on their location and cultural norms, many draw parallels to national policies on issues that could be harmful to any community. within san diego county specifically, peace and security ordinances define human trafficking through the means of the palermo protocol. the pala band of mission indians goes as far to distinguish between labor trafficking, labor trafficking of a minor, sex trafficking, and sex trafficking of a minor. including definitions for terms such as debt bondage, forced labor, prostitution, and slavery, this specific terminology establishes the identification of human trafficking on the reservation (pbmi, 2016). in native versus native cases, tribal members who are found to be in violation of human trafficking receive penalties that include imprisonment, fines, and probation. depending on the significance of the crime, tribal courts can evaluate the status of tribal members and enact a voting sequence to potentially limit or revoke membership to their specific tribe (pbmi, 2016). while tribal officers are granted jurisdiction in these cases specifically, their authority and presence within native communities remains yet another difficulty. on san diego reservations, tribal police departments vary drastically in their size and resources distribution in meeting the various demands of their area. one of the methods seen in combating the systemic issues on reservations has been the receival of assistance in initiatives seeking to improve community living standards. in san diego specifically, multi-service non-profits such as the southern california tribal chairman's association (sctca) advocate for reservation needs. coordinating and administering grant programs for all reservations with san diego’s county, sctca directly serves to increase the health, welfare, safety, education, and cultural needs across tribal areas. aiding members in food commodities, career development centers, and resources prevention programs, organizations such as sctca indirectly combat human trafficking efforts by strengthening the internal structures that ultimately leave these communities vulnerable (sctca, 2021). over the past years, the increased public attention specifically on human trafficking in native communities has significantly increased national funding initiatives. in october of 2020, the department of justice awarded $5.8 million in grants alone to tribes in san diego specifically for crime victim resources. described by the u.s. attorney robert brewer as, “more important than ever,” there is heavy recognition that these resources are long overdue (hoang, 2021). in joining intertribal court systems, reservations, and indian health council services, these grants support the expansion of tribal capacities to provide protection and services aimed at bettering victims' lives. in even more recent events, president biden signed an executive order on november 15th, 2021, aimed at improving the safety and justice for native americans. including these efforts in his american rescue plan, biden awarded more than $13 billion as direct investments into indian country infrastructure and tens of billions into grant funding opportunities for natives. like u.s. attorney brewer, biden states that these types of investments were “long overdue” in chronically underfunded tribal lands (cherner, 2021). pouring directly into tribal police force training, resource supplies, and victim awareness programs, the u.s. government aims to help tribal communities gain momentum in the fight to protect their people. in recognizing the “epidemics” hitting indian country, nonprofit organizations such as missing and murdered indigenous women (mmiw) have been fighting to bring these types of issues to light for quite some time. one of the primary objectives in their fight includes using a database that logs cases of missing and murdered indigenous women girls from 1900 to the present. used as an educational tool intended to assist in bringing home victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, sex trafficking, or sex work, this database serves as an alert system throughout the u.s. and canada (sovereign bodies institute, 2021). through their work in eradicating the silence of media and law enforcement and advocating for victims without a voice, mmiw has formed the foundation for other anti-trafficking efforts. by using education and advocacy, mmiw has brought attention to the alarming rates of native women victimization. with a variety of network locations around the country, mmip offers region specific support. as mmiw continues to grow in their mission, a task force on missing and murdered american indians was added in 2019 to the u.s. department of the interior. commonly known as operation lady justice, this task force joins the mission of mmiw with top federal officials to create a multi-agency effort aimed to foster tribal government collaboration in strategy development to address this crisis of exploited persons (u.s. department of interior, 2021). the future of human trafficking in san diego native communities is at a critical point. with increasing educational programs and awareness campaigns, the needs of these victims and native communities are starting to be seen. however, this inpour of funding and educational awareness means nothing if tribes are not given the right to exercise jurisdiction over all human trafficking cases occurring on their land. building up law enforcement agencies on reservations serves no purpose in fighting trafficking if the tribal law officers intended to protect reservations are not legally allowed to intervene in the large proportion of cases. as of now, tribes lack the ability to fully protect their land and people from the harm of criminal activities that plague reservations without the right to completely self-govern separate from the federal and state government. giving back tribal rights and addressing sovereignty on reservations is one of the first steps needed to fight the increasing numbers of trafficked victims. the fragility of native members stemming from cultural trauma, weaker socio-economic infrastructure, and generational negligence will not be easily forgotten with these funds. fixing the infrastructure will improve living conditions and significantly decrease susceptibility to crimes, yet these issues have been ongoing since the 15th century. mental health facilities are at the forefront of this battle, as this fight to combat human trafficking on reservations is going to be an everyday operation for generations far beyond our time. native presence in san diego and in areas beyond show the resiliency of these communities to survive harsh odds. day in and day out, indigenous people use this strength to overcome difficult times and continue fighting battles like human trafficking for future generations. references “appendix c tribal consultation 10-03-11-adi sandag.org.” accessed november 13, 2021. https://www.sandag.org/uploads/2050rtp/f2050rtpc.pdf. bonnette, kathleen. “human trafficking and historical trauma in indigenous communities.” ssnd atlantic midwest. accessed november 14, 2021. https://atlanticmidwest.org/posts/human-trafficking-and-historical-trauma-indigenouscommunities. busing on the lookout. “casinos combating human trafficking.” accessed november 15, 2021. https://truckersagainsttrafficking.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/botl-casinobus-training-toolkit.pdf. cherner, julia. “biden signs executive order to improve safety, justice for native americans.” abc news. abc news network, november 15, 2021. https://abcnews.go.com/politics/biden-signs-executive-order-improve-safety-justice native/story?id=81180043. “chronology of the indigenous peoples of san diego county.” chronology of the indigenous peoples of san diego county san diego native american university of san diego. accessed november 13, 2021. https://www.sandiego.edu/native-american/chronology/. clawson, heather j., mary layne, and kevonne small. “estimating human trafficking into the united states: development of a methodology.” psycextra dataset, 2006. https://doi.org/10.1037/e575562006-001. cook, roy. “ poverty: our native american future at risk.” accessed november 14, 2021. http://americanindiansource.com/poverty.html. “general guide to criminal jurisdiction in indian country.” general rules criminal jurisdiction in indian country. accessed november 19, 2021. error! hyperlink reference not valid.. greer, benjamin. “hiding behind tribal sovereignty out: rooting out human trafficking in indian county.” the journal of gender, race & justice , april 1, 2013, 453–83. hoang, kimthoa. “department of justice awards $5.8 million in grants to san diego county indian tribes.” u.s. attorney’s office southern district of california, october 5, 2020. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/pr/department-justice-awards-58-million-grants-san diego-county-indian-tribes. kingsland, madeleine, and mary jean dial. human trafficking on san diego reservations. oral interview, november 15, 2021. logan, maggie. “human trafficking among native americans: how jurisdictional and statutory complexities present barriers to combating modern-day slavery,” 2016. https://digitalcommons.law.ou.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1138&context=ailr. national congress of american indians. (n.d.). tribal governance. ncai. retrieved from https://www.ncai.org/policy-issues/tribal-governance pala band of mission indians. “pala band of mission indians ordinance no. 10 pala peace and security ordinance,” may 11, 2016, 1–30. philips, walter. “opinion: children are being trafficked in san diego, but we can end the exploitation.” times of san diego, february 25, 2021. https://timesofsandiego.com/opinion/2021/02/24/opinion-children-are-being-trafficked in-san-diego-but-we-can-end-the-exploitation/. project, borgen. “poverty and it's contribution to human traffickingborgen.” the borgen project. borgen project https://borgenproject.org/wp content/uploads/the_borgen_project_logo_small.jpg, july 3, 2020. https://borgenproject.org/poverty-contribution-human-trafficking/. robinson, kanoelehua. “the violation of life and liberty: how trafficking impacts indigenous communities.” dressember. dressember, april 29, 2021. https://www.dressember.org/blog/the-violation-of-life-and-liberty-how-trafficking impacts-indigenous-communities. “southern california native american indian tribal guide, maps of reservations project.” southern california indians 19 federally recognized tribes of county of san diego riverside orange los angeles county contact information websites research. accessed november 13, 2021. http://www.kumeyaay.info/southern_calif_tribes/. southern california tribal chairman's association. “about.” sctca. accessed november 16, 2021. https://sctca.net/about/. sovereign bodies institute. “mmiwg2 database.” sbi. accessed november 17, 2021. https://www.sovereign-bodies.org/mmiw-database. trafficking in tribal nations: the impact of sex trafficking on native americans – human trafficking search, january 22, 2018. https://humantraffickingsearch.org/traffickingofnativeamericans/. u.s. catholic sisters against human trafficking. “poverty & human trafficking.” sistersagainsttrafficking.org. accessed november 14, 2021. http://www.ipjc.org/wp content/uploads/2016/09/uscsaht%20-%20ht%20and%20poverty.pdf. u.s. department of state. “2021 trafficking in persons report: mexico,” 2021. u.s. department of the interior. “missing & murdered unit.” indian affairs. accessed november 17, 2021. https://www.bia.gov/bia/ojs/missing-murdered-unit. “vulnerability of indigenous persons to human trafficking.” accessed november 13, 2021. https://2009-2017.state.gov/documents/organization/233942.pdf. webadmin. “webadmin.” cal indian legal services. webadmin https://www.calindian.org/wp content/uploads/2015/09/cilslogosquare.png, september 16, 2020. https://www.calindian.org/an-introduction-into-public-law-280/. “why traffickers go after native american women.” freedomunited.org, march 26, 2021. https://www.freedomunited.org/news/why-traffickers-go-after-native-american-women/. rafiki (2018): black joy and queer joy as resistance isabella saracco, stanford university ’23 abstract: this paper discusses rafiki (2018)’s use of story and stylistic elements to highlight black and queer joy as an act of resistance. rafiki offers a surprising reversal of tragedy, heightening the audience's sense of hope as their expectations are subverted. the film also makes use of stylistic elements, such as color and music, to emphasize the viewer's sense of joy. birds appear throughout the film as a symbol of hope. finally, the gaze in the film is given to a queer black woman, reclaiming the gaze from the heterosexual white male. rafiki (2018) is a kenyan film directed by wanuri kahiu and based on the ugandan short story “jambula tree” by monica arac de nyeko (macarthur, 2020). despite receiving much critical acclaim, and becoming the first kenyan film to screen in the un certain regard program at the cannes film festival, the film was banned in kenya by the kenya film classification board (cooper, 2019, p. 21). ezekiel mutua, the head of the kenya film classification board at the time of the ban, stated that his issue with the film was its positive portrayal of same-sex relationships. he had asked kahiu to change the ending of the film in order to have rafiki shown legally, stating that the ending created by kahiu “wasn’t remorseful enough” (macarthur, 2020). obviously, kahiu did not agree to do so, and the film was banned. the message at the heart of the film — and the reason why the film was banned — was one of black and queer joy. rafiki reinforces this message through its subversion of the romeo and juliet story and the viewers’ expectations of tragedy, its use of color and music, its refusal to depict the central relationship in a negative light, and its use of a black queer gaze. rafiki (2018) follows the story of a young woman living in nairobi named kena. kena mwaura often spends her free time skate-boarding across the city, playing soccer with her friends, or hanging out with her friend blacksta at the local soda shop, run by notorious gossip mama atim. kena’s father is running in the local election against mr. okemi, and is expecting a son with his new wife. her mother is shown to be a deeply religious woman who attends church religiously. kena, who is drawn to mr. okemi’s daughter, ziki, quickly begins to flirt with the other girl, and the two of them enter into a friendship and eventual romance. as their relationship deepens, they fear discovery due to both their family rivalry and the homophobia of those around them. upon the discovery of their relationship, ziki is sent to live in london as the okemis want to separate the two girls. years later, kena works as a doctor in a hospital in nairobi. ziki, who has returned to kenya for the first time since leaving for london, goes to find kena. kena greets ziki with a smile, hopeful music plays, and then the credits roll. rafiki sets up an impossible love story, caused in part by the rivalry between the families of kena and ziki and in part by the same-sex nature of their love. the feud between the two families is constantly referenced by characters throughout the film, and the viewer cannot help but to be reminded of another famous set of fictional lovers who are kept apart by their families’ rivalry — romeo and juliet (cooper, 2019, p. 21). kena is often asked by the film’s other characters, especially the notorious gossip mama atim, if her father knows that she is spending time with mr. okemi’s daughter. the consistent references to her father’s inevitable negative reaction create a sense of suspense, as it begins to seem inevitable that mr. mwaura will learn the truth. this inevitability primes the viewer to expect a reckoning for the characters, which, given the allusion to romeo and juliet’s story, seems as if it will be a tragic one. of course, the truth eventually comes out; kena’s father responds with anger and confusion when he learns that kena and ziki have become ‘friends’ and are spending time together. it is not, however, the tragic reckoning that the viewer has come to expect. kena’s father simply reacts with an angry lecture, and then drops the issue. the tragedy that seems inherent to kena and ziki’s love story is deliberately subverted, both here and through the ending of the film. by alluding to shakespeare’s tragedy but then not replicating it, the film purposefully surprises the viewer and makes the message of the film more powerful. yet the family feud is only one of the challenges keeping kena and ziki apart. the more pressing problem, for the characters and perhaps the audience as well, is the way in which the characters’ queerness will affect other characters’ understanding of them. the negative sentiments that other characters hold about homosexuality are constantly brought to the viewer’s attention. kena’s friends, led by blacksta, often ridicule one of the men in their community who is known to be gay. a cut across his check is implied to be the scar of some sort of hate crime, suggesting that the same could happen to the film’s two leads if they are discovered (osinubi, 2019). in the moments leading up to the film’s climax, the pastor delivers an impassioned speech on the evils of gay marriage. kena’s mother’s views on homosexuality are also implied through her deeply christian nature and her joy when she first sees kena, who often dresses masculinely, in a dress. the leading characters themselves feel the impossibility of having their relationship be publicly and safely known; ziki laments to kena at several moments in the film about their inability to have something “real” that means anything outside of the two of them. the difficulty of keeping their relationship secret is also emphasized by mama atim’s watchful eye, who will certainly not hesitate to share any knowledge that she has. any understanding of a building tragedy would only be augmented by the viewers previous understanding of films involving same-sex relationships. media depicting homosexual relationships is certainly disproportionately tragic (osinubi, 2019). in the context of kenyan film and life specifically, this sense would have only been exacerbated. the hopeful ending of rafiki can be found in “a very small number of [kenyan] films” (johnstone, 2020, p. 44). furthermore, a homosexual relationship “could mean death… [it] resounds, in kenya, with danger and the possibility of tragedy” (cooper, 2019, p. 21). additionally, rafiki was banned in kenya specifically for its less-than-tragic ending and refusal to focus on queer suffering. another unstated reason for its banning was the fact that both characters were african, and that queerness was thus being depicted as something that could be african too. queer films with happy endings had been legally shown in kenya before rafiki’s release, but queer films about africans had not (macarthur, 2020). for queer africans in the audience, both the story and the context of its release would have sent the message that a happy ending was possible for people like them. on the subject of joy and pain in african cinema, kahiu stated that “there’s a friend of mine who says you don’t want to wake up in the morning and watch an african film. and what she meant was, african films have been known to be so devastating and so heartbreaking, you’re [watching them] almost as if it’s tax. and that phrase really stuck with me because it’s so curious that we’ve been linked to a continent of pain given if you look into our traditions, our art, our ways of expression…we need to remember our roots and we need to remember our joy in the way that we depict ourselves. that, to me, has become my life’s mission. to make sure that everything that i do has hope and joy in it so that i can show that we are a people of hope and joy.” (macarthur, 2020). the joy in rafiki, as in kahiu’s art more broadly, is a resistance to the idea that african films must be joyless. kahiu purposefully highlights the joy that can be found in life and in africa specifically in her film. her film is a reminder and celebration of joy which proudly defies previously established narratives, loudly proclaiming the possibility of black queer joy. yet this proclamation of joy does not come out of nowhere. rafiki is at its heart a joyous film, something that is made clear through many of the film’s stylistic elements, especially in its use of color and music (osinubi, 2019). the opening sequence of the film sets the tone. the opening credits are interspersed with colorful shots of the city and of kena skateboarding to visit her friend blacksta. the credits themselves are colorful as well, full of cheerful shades of pinks, greens, yellows, and blues. they are accompanied by photos of the cast, with equally cheerful doodles of scribbles and lines in happy, bright colors overlaid on top of the photos. other equally joyous images such as flowers often appear next to the credits. the entire sequence is accompanied by a bright pop song. with this opening sequence, the film is proclaiming its resistance to the popular idea that films about africa need to be dark (macarthur, 2020) — something that this film will continuously resist in both darkness’ literal and figurative meanings. the tone at the opening of the film creates a world in which the film’s happy ending is possible. this is not the only moment of unapologetic joy to be found in the film. when kena and ziki go on their first date, the film shows the sequence as a montage, with soft romantic music playing in the background. the chorus of the song that plays, “ignited” by mumbi kasumba, features the lyrics, “if there is a reason for love / it’s you who ignites this heart.” this montage is one of only two instances in which there is non-diegetic music in the film, making the use of music here more notable. the romantic tone and lyrics of the song create both a sense of joy, as well as a sense of queer love being a positive occurrence. additionally, the characters’ happiness is made obvious through their mannerisms, and the joy that pervades the scene is made more apparent through the bright colors that surround the characters throughout this sequence, especially the neon colors of the dance that they attend. these elements help build the sense throughout the scene that queer joy is possible and positive. the positive portrayal of same-sex love can also been seen in the recurring imagery of birds in the film. throughout the film, there are several shots looking up toward birds in the sky. one notable example of this is the scene in which kena and ziki go onto the roof of a building together. the black silhouettes of the birds in the sky contrast sharply against the bright pinks and blues of the sky — the same pinks and blues of ziki’s hair. the birds are appropriately prominent in this scene; ziki discusses her desire to leave kenya and live a life elsewhere. throughout the scene, the camera cuts back to the birds multiple times, forcing the viewer to remember their presence. the similar color of the sky and of ziki’s hair tie her to the birds, highlighting her desire to ‘fly away’ (i.e. her desire for freedom) and her longing for something more. but the shots of birds throughout the film, and in this scene especially, can also be seen to represent the relationship between kena and ziki, and the ways in which ziki uplifts kena. in the scene immediately following this one, kena’s mother confronts her about the ‘friendship’ between the two girls. her mother is thrilled that kena is spending time with someone like ziki, who has the privilege and power attached to the okemi name, and encourages her to keep spending time with the other girl as “people like the okemis will lift you up.” ziki does “lift [kena] up”, though not in the way kena’s mother expects. later in the film, when kena appears to her mother wearing a dress, her mother comments that the only thing that would make her happier would be if kena found a rich doctor to marry. kena’s mother expects her daughter to find success only by attaching herself to someone else successful, rather than by her own accomplishments. during the scene on the roof, kena, who starts the film with the goal of becoming a nurse after graduating, is told by ziki to dream bigger and to consider becoming a doctor. at the end of the film, we see that this new dream has come true — kena works as a doctor in a kenyan hospital. a handheld shot of the birds in the sky that then cuts back to kena looking out towards them informs the viewers that these birds are meaningful to her specifically. in this way, the birds, which appear flying surrounded by pinks and blues — colors heavily associated with ziki — are symbolic of the ways in which kena’s dreams are encouraged by ziki. in this way, queer love is also portrayed to be something positive, which changed kena and her life for the better. it is something triumphant, something that is ultimately worth the struggles the characters have to endure throughout the course of the story. this beauty of queer love is also found in the stylistic elements of the scene where kena and ziki talk on the roof. this scene, like the rest of the film, is told from kena’s perspective. the opening sequence of rafiki indicates that it is kena who holds the gaze, as the viewer follows her through the city and sees the sites she sees on her journey. kena’s gaze is perhaps more present in the scene upon the roof than any other in the movie, due to the emotions that pervade it which could only belong to her. the scene features intimate close-ups of ziki’s face, which is partially obscured by the bright sunlight at her back, halolike. the audio and visuals that play throughout the scene do not always occur contemporaneously, giving the scene a dreamlike quality. the overall effect is to give the scene, as well as the romance presented within it, an element of divinity. in portrayals of queer love, this element of divinity is radical, and helps to support the film’s overall presentation of queer love as positive and joyous. the importance of kena’s possession of the gaze throughout the film should not be ignored. this ‘power of looking’ has often been given to a heterosexual white male, distorting the ‘world’ of these films through this lens. the pleasure of looking is something that is given to those who hold the gaze and can subject others to their desire, and is something that has traditionally excluded women, especially black women (hooks, 1992, p. 116). as a result, black women develop an “oppositional gaze” that removes issues of race and gender from the viewing experience in order to make filmgoing a palatable and even pleasurable experience (hooks, 1992, p. 122). the oppositional gaze is a power that is reclaimed from a society which views black bodies as object, not subject, that dictates that the power of looking must be ‘taken’ as an act of resistance. rafiki’s use of kena’s gaze instead gives black queer women the pleasure of looking (johnstone, 2020, p. 46), therefore removing the need for this oppositional gaze. rafiki makes black womanhood subject, not object, therefore freely gives the power of looking to these individuals. queer women are both looked at as objects of desire and given the power to do the looking. in a world in which kena and ziki feel that they are unable to freely express their longing for one another, much of the characters’ desire for each other is communicated through their gaze. the use of gaze empowers both the characters and the idea of queerness throughout the film, creating a world that is told from a queer black point of view. rafiki earns the message of joy for which it was banned through its understanding of audience expectations and use of color, music, and character. by using the audience’s expectations to subvert a sense of impending tragedy, the idea of joy becomes shocking and gains greater power. the continuous use of bright color and music throughout the film helps to reinforce and prime the idea of joy. the ways in which the characters are allowed to grow as a byproduct of their love for each other, notably the ways in which ziki’s belief in kena helps bring kena to success, reinforces visions of queer love as positive. the use of kena’s gaze helps the viewer see their love as something divine. when asked about the role of joy in the film, kahiu spoke of her understanding of joy as something with political power, stating that minorities “have to see ourselves as people of joy” in order to resist popular narratives that constantly place minorities in positions of suffering (macarthur, 2020). rafiki is a love letter to the resistance of joy, an embrace of black queer joy that thoroughly permeates its being. references hooks, bell. “the oppositional gaze: black female spectators.” black looks: race and representation (1992): 115-31. cooper, r. r. (2019) ‘hope’s high stakes “rafiki”’, commonweal, 1 june, p. 21-22. johnstone, lyn. 2020. “queer worldmaking in wanuri kahiu’s film rafiki.” journal of african cultural studies 33 (september): 39–50. doi: 10.1080/13696815.2020.1816931. kahiu, wanuri. rafiki. 2018. macarthur, julie. “utopias, joy, and the law: an interview with wanuri kahiu.” august 31, 2020. https://africasacountry.com/2020/08/banned-utopias-joy-and-the-law. osinubi, taiwo adetunji. 2019. “queer subjects in kenyan cinema: reflections on rafiki.” eastern african literary and cultural studies 5 (1): 70–77. doi: 10.1080/23277408.2019.1586311. all quotes “i asked if you were okay with just sleeping next to each other. you told me it was fine; it would be just like the other night. when we were in bed, and you started to touch me, i asked you to stop. you didn't listen. i said, "i don't want to," but you didn't care, you kept going while i lay there, frozen in disbelief. later, i kept thinking that it wasn't that bad, it could have been worse. i cried for hours the day after it happened, alone on the floor of my bathroom. you didn't understand when i told you that you hurt me, i don't think you ever will. the feelings i had for you didn't go away after that, they simply became more complicated. because how can you love someone who doesn't care whether you consent or not?” “when i was walking into my very first party here at stanford, a man groped me extremely hard in passing on the way out. there was no acknowledgement or look. that was that.” “he said it was okay if i didn’t want to so i felt okay to say no. the next day he proceeded to ignore me. that really hurt. and i didn’t realize until much later how deeply that impacted me. at first i thought it was sweet that he considered to ask if i wanted to, but how he proceeded to act when i in fact didn’t want to revealed a lot to me. how he acted after cut me deep and years later i am still trying to heal that wound. i just want people to know that they deserve better and that someone asking you if you’re okay with doing something isn’t an extraordinary act of kindness. it is the bare minimum and you deserve so much more.” “a story on male consent in a straight monogamous relationship: when she told me "i don't know", i tried to understand her apprehensions. but when i said "i don't know", she told me that i was putting too much pressure on her. why even ask if you didn't care about what i had to say? if honoring my consent makes you uncomfortable, maybe we should be asking other questions too.” “when i saw my violator in person and pointed him out to my close friend, i watched her experience all five stages of grief at once.” “he asked to kiss me but did not ask to finger me” “he asked to undress me and i said ‘i don’t know,’ because i did not want to say no and upset him and i thought he would not ask again. he did and i said the same thing, but this time he undressed me. he touched me and put his mouth on my breasts and i quickly got dressed and left. i was not in my own body the entire day. i was somewhere else. the next day i saw him and for the rest of the day i kept wiping my breast and genuinely did not want the breast he put his mouth on, to be a part of me anymore.” “i had a guy come over to my room to study. i really thought we were just going to study and get to know each other better. he asked to sit on my bed; i said yes, still thinking we would just be working. he asked to sit next to me and share my pillow; i said no. eventually he laid down and put his head on my knee, without asking. half an hour later, he asked to share my pillow again. i didn't know how to say no again. we cuddled for an hour and i hated every second of it. when he le�, i felt really yucky. i hadn't wanted him to touch me. i felt foolish for inviting a guy to my room with the intention of studying, because in hindsight, isn't that college-student code for something physical? "come study in my room?' when i told some of my friends about the incident, they felt bad for me, but would also raise an eyebrow when i explained i invited him to come study. lesson learned, stick to public places, i guess.” “we smoked more than i had ever in my life and he knew that. after that we had sex (consensually) but the whole situation felt wrong. he asked me overly intimate and specific questions about men i had been with before. i was not in a state to have that conversation and he had never tried to have it before i got that high.” “it feels ridiculous to have to say this, but it’s not cringe, or corny, or awkward, to ask for consent. it’s not. it takes a second to just stop and ask the other party if they are comfortable as you go forward with any sort of physical contact, and doing it more often than not as that contact progresses is always, always, better than not.” “it took me a long time to realize that just because i don’t mind, doesn’t mean i have to do it” “he never asked me before he started choking me. i hated it. i said nothing.” “so you can ask to kiss me, but you can’t ask to touch me??” “a guy, who seemed nice and who i could have seen myself being friends with, too a picture of my friends and i for us and said ‘if you didn’t all have boyfriends i would fuck you’. maybe he said that encouragingly? but it felt… wrong and uncomfortable” “i keep thinking back and wondering when the moment was when he decided that my body was not mine, but his to use. how long after seeing me did he know what he was going to do? or did no thought go into it at all?” “it's insane to me howmen don't stop harassing on this campus until the non-contact order appears, or until it becomes a feasible threat to their on-campus reputation. it's only until their image potentially becomes challenged by the rest of the world that they choose to change their actions.” “i’ve had so many times where i’ve wanted to say no but it’s been too awkward to do it, so technically nothing happened. like i’ve put myself into situations where saying no would just ruin everything, especially the mood. i’ve gone on dates, or danced with guys at parties, or hung out with them one on one, and despite realizing that the guy made me feel uncomfortable romantically, i felt like i indebted myself to be hugged or kissed or touched. and even though i knew i *could* have said no, and would have expected them to respect my no, i didn’t want to ruin the mood, so i just kind of endured it. it sucks ‘enduring’ things that you’re supposed to like.” “i was riding a bike, wearing a dress, through a parking lot at stanford where i worked. my supervisor asked me to drop off something at tressider, and she offered her bike for the ride across campus. a man pulled up beside me and rolled down his window. he was an older, well dressed man. i assumed he wanted to ask me directions, but he made eye contact, and just said "i saw your panties," and then drove off. i felt really creepy, and although this happened maybe 20 years ago, it still gives me a sick feeling.” “the first time we had sex he put it in without asking for my direct consent, without a condom, and without telling me if he was std free” “i crocheted a bikini, and wanted to take pictures of it. my shoot location was near the roundabout by the farm, and i used the self timer setting on my camera. a car of four men drove by and saw me. yelling, they drove around the roundabout once, twice, and three times before leaving, while i attempted to hide behind a fence.” “i have a list in my notes app of things that define my existence as distinctively female. that i am consistently the only woman in my hometown gym-particularly in the weights section-and being there garners me just a few too many looks that are just a bit too long from men just a little too old to look at me that way. that even though i love to go for walks and runs, not once in the summer of 2022 did i go farther than a block without getting honked at. or leered at. or catcalled. i walk and run with my airpods in, but with nothing playing: so i can be aware of my surroundings. that at work, men say things to me like ‘suck my dick’ ‘let me experiment on your tits’ and ‘be my girlfriend or my wife.’ i work at a coffee shop. that at that job, i have thought extensively about which doors lock and which don't-where i could hide if i felt threatened. that i walk with my keys between my fingers always and i carry pink pepper spray and a bejeweled personal alarm. i feel like prey in public.” “sometimes i felt like i owed my ex-boyfriend sex. sexual intimacy was important to him, as it is to me. i wanted it to be an element of our relationship, and so did he. but sometimes, since i knew he wanted sexual intimacy from the relationship, i felt as though i wasn't meeting his needs if i said no. i wasn't being a good girlfriend. not having your needs met in a long-term relationship is a valid thing to be upset about. so i would say yes, even when i didn't feel like it.” “my ex-boyfriend pressured me into having sex with him after we broke up. three months after the break-up, he came over and cried to me for hours about how i was the best thing that had ever happened to him and he was nothing without me. i had hurt him so badly. destroyed him. broken his heart. the least i could do now was have sex with him. the least i owed him, a man i had loved for years, was sexual pleasure. in retrospect, i see the manipulation. in the moment, i felt like i was the most awful person in the world, and spreading my legs for him would make me good again.” “sometimes i don't know if i want something or if i just want to give someone what they want.” “i don’t like when guys are aggressive. they never ask” “i was in a restaurant with my family, walking back from the bathroom alone when i passed a well-dressed middle aged man. his wife had approached me earlier, asking me which sports i played and discussing where i had applied to college. they were both complete strangers, and i was 16 at the time. i suppose he felt entitled to his own comments, or comfortable enough to share them, so he said something along the lines of ‘you're so tall and beautiful,’ specifically commenting on my body and, as i remember it, touching my shoulder or my back. i have always endured more comments on my body from strangers than average, perhaps because american society equates height with beauty or athleticism, and many strangers i meet feel entitled to know how tall i am or which sports i've played or whether i've considered modeling or even if it's hard for me to date. this was one of the first times i was overtly sexualized for a trait outside of my control, one i have a quite complicated relationship with, and unfortunately i'm sure it is not the last.” “i thought that this was what was meant to happen because we were in a relationship.” “both my grandma and my mom have been molested in the past by their own family members, and i am fearful that the same will happen to me or my sister. how did we let this become generational?” “hooked up with a crush of mine and felt weird about it because i was drunk and he was not. though i know it would have hooked up with him sober, it felt wrong the next morning. i felt like a boundary had been crossed. wished he would have just takenme home, and hooked up when we were both sober.” “i always feel uncomfortable when people (and particularly men) stand too close to me when talking. it indicates a disregard for my personal space and feels a lot like an attempt to close down my paths of escape.” “i’m here for you.” “i get uncomfortable when a guy assumes i’d say yes without asking me.” “how i knew something was wrong about my experience when my pants were on backwards because i put them in a drunken stupor in the backseat of a friend’s car” “repeated physical touch once you’ve already withdrawn yourself” “my best friend, a stanford student, assaulted at least 3 women in a 6 month span of time. after the first assault, he lied to me and said he would never violate a woman's boundaries again. after the next assaults he lied and said his victims were okay with what happened, so i talked to them myself.. they were not okay with it, at all. he assaulted one of my best friends, while she was crossed, while her brother was in the room. preying on women who are intoxicated is his go-to strategy. he walks around campus just as i do, and i fear every day that he's led on another girl who doesn't know that he's a predator. nothing will be done about it, and he will never face justice. he has cut me off, and everyone else who knew about what he did. he does not want to be held accountable. he does not want to change.” “someone evidently trying to get my attention while i actively try avoiding them in a fitness class and feeling the need to avoid this person even if that causes a shift in my actions when in reality it shouldn't be my job instead he should just mind his business.” “sexually assaulted at stanford frat party — an entire group of guys watched and did nothing” “stop coming up to me in the gym just to interrupt my set and look at my boobs” “working out at stanford gym and having men follow me and sit down to watch me when i’m wearing leggings” “frat boys touching me unsolicited or following me when i’ve made it clear i’m done with the conversation” “during the first week of freshman year, my boundaries were crossed by a girl i was and am still friends with. they masked their coercive behavior under a proclamation of friendship, making it very hard for me to tell them i was uncomfortable with their actions. this type of relationship happens too often— friendship should not be weaponized to make others uncomfortable.” “i was on a coupa date at meyer green. we had been sitting there for a few minutes when he went in for a kiss. i pulled away, not wanting it, but he grabbed me and kissed me again. it was broad daylight, surrounded by people, but i felt uncomfortable and alone.” “he tried to convince me to go again after i said no. i remember laughing and playfully shoving him away, feeling extremely uncomfortable with the near stranger in my room” “you touched me repeatedly while your roommate was in the room even though i told you not to. it made me so uncomfortable and months later i still feel like a terrible person for not standing my ground and leaving in the moment.” “my friend got roofied at opal freshman year and i had to carry her back home” “i have started to wear baggy clothes under the guise of comfort. in truth, i am sick of the looks, of the catcalling, and of the discomfort. why do i have to be dressed like a man to feel comfortable around men?” “my boyfriend in high school was really insecure and that would often manifest in anger towards me. i was made to feel guilty because “someone else had been in me” even though it wasn’t my choice. when we were in bed if he started making moves on me and i said i was tired he would ask why i wasn’t into him. he would get upset at me and i knew that i could make it go away if i just made him cum. when i came to college i didn’t trust my instincts because i my body’s default was fear and shutting down. i told myself i had to push through and i should to trust people. i should have trusted my guy because it was trying to protect me. my freshman fall i was feeling bold and decided to take an upper decision psych class. needless to say, i was a little lost in the sauce, so when a senior asked if i wanted to work on our projects together i accepted. i proposed we meet in the library or my dorm lounge. he counter offered with meeting in his room in miraless at 9pm. “this is sus, he wants to hook up with you,” says my gut. “stop being an anxious victim. he’s going to help you with your homework and you will get a better grade.”… that’s the voice in my head that says you are not good enough. so i biked over in the dark and for the �rst hour or so we did work on the project, and then he put on black mirror, and i fell asleep and woke up with his penis inside of me. i turned my head to the side and focused on reading the protein powder labels beside his bed. i accepted that i was not going to be able to change anything about this situation. i was stuck underneath a 300 lb senior on the football team, and i all i could do was pretend this wasn’t real.” “it makes me uncomfortable when im hooking up w someone and happen to be on my period/don't want to have sex, but i feel like i still owe it to them to make them finish. and its not that they’re intentionally pressuring me into doing anything, but i feel like i need to give them head or whatever because im like failing as a woman by being on my period. it sort of feels like im doing it as an apology or consolation prize.” “i have felt incredibly guilty about not being on birth control in the past and "forcing" guys to wear condoms--it makes me feel like i'm just going to disappoint them” “i was hooking up with this guy who vehemently disliked condoms and right before we were about to have sex he was like ‘can i put my dick in you without the condom for just a little bit and then put it on after’ and i didn't want to kill the mood or disappoint him so i let him do it even though i had asked him to use a condom before we started having sex” “my friend was giving this guy head and he started �lming her in the middle of it without her knowing. she saw him �lming her and told him to delete the video. she was drunk, and they ended up continuing having sex. we later found out that he sent that video to a groupchat with his friends” “i feel guilty about the times i have initiated, knowing my partner was tired. how could i?” “i was over at a guy's house, and he was giving me a massage. without asking, he started touching down my body, and inserted his finger inside of me. i felt like my discomfort was too dramatic or awkward or wasn't important enough in the moment to tell him to stop, so i didn't” “this girl used to make incredibly sexual "jokes" about me, and touch my thigh and laugh. i didn't want to be perceived like that in her comments.” “when i was 9 years old, at a sports camp full of boys (i'm a girl), a boy pointed to my chest and commented on my "boobs". all the boys ranging in age from 8-15 laughed at me and looked. the instructors around me (aged 18 and up) joined in laughing.” “my best guy friend started grinding on me at a club. i ran away and i never spoke of it again.” “too many friends who had sex with people they didn't want to because they didn't want that person to stop liking them” “finally hooking up with someone who i thought genuinely liked me as a person (we had been talking for months), only to get ghosted the next day” “we already hooked up, so he assumed i was okay with doing it again. i wasn't.” “i have a boyfriend. we sleep together 2x during the week. that doesn't mean (for me) i want to have sex those 2x. sometimes, i feel pressured to do so.” “i had a close friend who was raped by her significant other. she felt like it was her fault...like she owed him sex... i think we have a culture issue here. no one is entitled to someone else's body. nobody owes someone else their body. how can we begin to heal our relationships with one-another and our collective beliefs and culture? how can we come together and enact change, instead of continuing to be torn apart?” “i believe you.” “a friend visiting from high school tried to kiss me and then made fun of me for not returning the feeling.” “he kept coming to me drunk at 1am and the only way to keep him from waking up everyone in my dorm and to get him to eventually leave was to just do what he wanted. still processing.” “my ex was horny and was complaining about not being able to go to sleep until we fucked” “lingering stares at the gym” “being around only white girls” “having lunch outside, started being yelled all these gross things at by a drunk guy on the street. i was eating with my dad. he didn't know what to do, so he did nothing. we just kept eating while the guy was screaming at me.” “being coerced into not using condoms.” it can be even harder to get out of situations that were supposed to feel comfortable. acknowledge your discomfort the underrepresentation of female students in computer science programs debunking structural gender inequalities in academia yixuan ma, concordia university ’23 abstract: despite the shared recognition that ensuring equitable educational opportunities for learners of all genders is a fundamental social justice issue, computer science programs still encounter equity and inclusivity challenges. aside from the unbalanced gender composition, female cs students also suffer from quotidian gender essentialism and a sense of isolation under a male-dominated paradigm. the disproportionate female underrepresentation in academia restricts women from pursuing high-paying computing careers and exacerbates alarming gender inequalities in society. in essence, it is of paramount importance to question who leaves women behind. this study reveals that the androcentric institutional culture, as well as its corresponding educational practices and resource allocation in north american universities, resulted in the massive underrepresentation of female students in undergraduate cs programs from 2000 to 2022. this can be explored through the normalized yet dubious masculine culture, gender-inequitable pedagogical methods, and the scarcity of female support mechanisms. these aspects constantly interfere with female students’ enrollment, retention, and achievement in this subject area. despite the shared recognition that ensuring equitable educational opportunities for learners of all genders is a fundamental social justice issue, computer science programs still encounter equity and inclusivity challenges (north & longlands, 2019). computer sciences (cs) refer to the development and programming of computer hardware and software (page & smart, 2014). it is one of the fastest-growing industries with substantial labor demand and lucrative career prospects. although some female pioneers, such as grace hopper and katherine johnson, achieved notable success in computing from the 1950s to the 1970s, women have been largely absent in this field in recent decades (dryburgh, 2000). in canada, women accounted for 15.8 percent of first-year undergraduates in cs programs in 2010, and only half of them graduated with a degree in computing (statistics canada, 2019, table 1). similarly, in the united states, only 18.7 percent of cs bachelor’s degrees were awarded to female students, while women represented 57.3 percent of degree recipients in other disciplines (national center for science and engineering statistics, 2019, table 2-5). aside from the unbalanced gender composition, female cs students also suffer from quotidian gender essentialism and a sense of isolation under a male-dominated paradigm (charles & bradley, 2006). the disproportionate female representation in academia restricts women from pursuing high-paying computing careers and exacerbates alarming gender inequalities in society. whereas some scholars attribute this underrepresentation to women’s academic unfitness and preference for relational work, they may omit the institutional context of this issue, thereby risking oversimplifying the topic with a victim-blaming tendency (varma, 2002; varma et al., 2008). in essence, it is of paramount importance to question who leaves women behind. i argue the androcentric institutional culture, as well as its corresponding educational practices and resource allocation in north american universities, result in the massive underrepresentation of female students in undergraduate cs programs from 2000 to 2022. this can be explored through the normalized yet dubious masculine culture, gender-inequitable pedagogical methods, and the scarcity of female support mechanisms. these aspects constantly interfere with female students’ enrollment, retention, and achievement in this subject area. the institutional culture: masculine as the default the cs faculty establishes masculinity as the default narrative, normalizing the underrepresentation of femininity and diverting female students away from enrolling in cs programs. this is evident through the analysis of two dimensions. first, there is an enduring masculine culture in computing faculties. in north america, through a seemingly neutral approach, the educational environment portrays computers as preferably for men, who are perceived as capable of controlling powerful machinery—a subject field “culturally overlaid with the aura of masculinity” (clegg, 2001, p. 320; varma, 2002). the widespread dissemination of this ideology corresponds to the mass media theory, representing an invisible, amorphous mass communication with a “sit notum omnibus presentibus” strategy—be it known to all present (peters, 2010, p. 269). it conveys the masculine association to all individuals in the cs academic community, including the administrators, the instructors, and the students. particularly, faculty members share a normative belief that computing is a male domain (barker & aspray, 2006). with the hierarchical relationship between educators and learners, many faculty members, who have the power to transmit knowledge, implicitly reproduce negative gender messages and consolidate the gender-essentialist epistemology through day-to-day student-faculty interactions (barker & aspray, 2006). femininity is thus positioned as the inferior, insignificant opposite to the male-dominated narrative in the cs world, entrenching biases in the minds of the masses. in response to the overarching male-dominated culture, many female students either express outright rejection before entering the program or experience a sense of unbelonging upon entry (cohoon, 2008), leading to dismal female enrollment in the cs subject. secondly, this male-normed culture breeds gender-based disciplinary stereotypes that underestimate female students’ competencies. during student recruitment, program counselors tend to underrate female students’ technological abilities, such as data information literacy, compared to their male counterparts (barker & aspray, 2006). accordingly, they usually steer women away from science programs and towards other fields traditionally associated with femininity, such as arts and social science (barker & aspray, 2006). under the gatekeeping efforts of educational authorities, female students go through bitter socialpsychological enculturation and internalize negative judgments about their abilities. for example, even though male and female students perform similarly in pre-university mathematics courses, female students demonstrate increased self-doubt in calculus and information technology and are more likely to believe they are unqualified to study computing (wasburn & miller, 2008). likewise, during a research interview regarding the presence of female “pathbreakers” in cs, a male student asserts: to be a woman in computer science? it is better if you change your major [to] something else … just [like] the stories i’ve heard and the inside scenes from different professors, i don’t think that they expect a woman to be in the computer science field. nope. (varma et al., 2008, p. 308) the lack of sympathy does not simply denote an individual bias. instead, approximately 20 percent of the respondents in the study, predominantly male cs students, echoed this statement. this uncovers the faculties’ deeply embedded structural discrimination, framing the comprehensive computing culture in a narrow, monolithic masculine profile. the pervasive stereotypes elicit confidence crises for female students conceptually and hinder their enrollment in cs programs in a concrete way. this coincides with joanna cohoon’s study (2008), which points out that the departments where most faculty report some female disadvantages are the ones with low enrollment rates of female students. as feminine voices have been overlooked by the faculty and repressed by female students themselves, gender-essentialist visions of masculinity and femininity, along with gender-typed preferences and prejudices, persist in the higher education system (charles & bradley, 2006). these problematic barriers generate a circular phenomenon—the more masculine and stereotypical the culture is, the more reluctant the female students are to enroll. this, in turn, intensifies the underrepresentation of femininity and renders the hegemonic androcentric regime possibly irreversible. given these points, the male-oriented culture in cs faculties and the gender-based disciplinary prejudices combine to construct a solid foundation for the underrepresentation of female students in cs programs. pedagogical methods: gender-inequitable in essence in addition to the epistemological biases, the pedagogical methods in cs programs are also penetrated by gender injustices, undermining female students’ retention in this discipline. in the first place, instructors tend to exhibit an imbalanced distribution of attention and encouragement among students of different genders. according to lecia barker and william aspray (2006), instructors make less eye contact and provide fewer interaction opportunities for female students than male students in the higher education context. instructors are also prone to share answers with them directly without adequate explanations, acquiescing female students to give up. conversely, they encourage male students to figure out the answers themselves (sadker & sadker, 1995). the biased teacher-student communications not only lead to fewer opportunities for female students to improve and master computing skills, but also fall short of cultivating women’s self-efficacy in pursuing cs pathways. this feeds female inferiority stereotyping and the pessimistic self-fulfilling prophecy, trapping women in almost endless vicious loops and de-equalizing their retention (stanford university, 2015). secondly, cs curriculums rarely consider the interest from a female perspective or in a gender-neutral manner. notably, cs courses usually privilege agentic goals with a focus on self-directed learning and competitiveness. this disproportionately appeals to male students, who are likely to be motivated by agentic goals; nevertheless, this overrides the interests of female students, who are more likely to be motivated by communal goals and collaborative learning environments (yates & plagnol, 2022). the disassociation of the curriculum from women’s preferred academic development model provokes a loss of interest and increased uncertainty about their identity fitness, therefore discouraging females from continuing their studies. equally important, current curricula feature positive associations with male portrayals in educational materials but fail to acknowledge female representation with equal efforts. in cs textbooks and teaching examples, portrayals of women appear less frequently in text and imagery compared to men (giannakos et al., 2017). even in the presence of female associations, they are usually depicted in a cynical and stigmatized light. for instance, most textbooks on cryptographic protocols involve a female character, sybil. the name originates from flora schreiber’s 1973 book sybil, which tells the story of a woman diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder due to physical and sexual assault. this name is contextualized in teaching terminology as “sybil attack”—an attack in which forged identities disrupt a reputation system in peer-to-peer networks (medel & pournaghshband, 2017, p. 412). in like manner, david munson (1996) illustrates that “the lena image,” a photograph from playboy magazine featuring a partially nude female, has been the standard stock image for image processing courses since 1973 (p. 3). the normative male gaze and insulting connotations in these course materials serve as a socio-political tool. it perpetuates the stereotyped preconceptions of women as the irrational, objectified “other” rather than intelligent individuals with the capacity to succeed in cs. although many female students strive to resist stereotypical notions, it is difficult to counterbalance negative gender schemas that recurrently manifest in daily experiences. everyday routine engagement with the materials exerts imperceptible yet incessant influence over them, deteriorating their self-perceptions, participation, and academic performances (medel & pournaghshband, 2017). as a result of long-term sexist socialization, the cs learning journey becomes an accumulation and internalization of female inferiority, hardship, and dismay, leading many female students to discontinue their undergraduate studies or transfer to other programs. overall, the gender-inequitable teaching practices and the curriculum’s unfair consideration of women’s interests discourage female students during their studies and hamper their retention, hence consolidating the imbalanced gender representation in this discipline. resource allocation: female support mechanisms in scarcity the scarcity of female support mechanisms in cs programs further taints female students’ university experiences with insecurities and fear, impeding their achievement of degrees in this subject area. first, most north american universities do not provide access to positive female role models for students in cs. research by stanford university (2015) illuminates that women constitute only 10 percent of most computer science faculties across the united states (para. 1). female instructors, even senior female educators, experience different levels of marginalization and exclusion from advanced positions. this not only signals a shrinkage of feminine voices but also implies a deficiency in interactive same-sex mentorship availability and academic role models. concurrently, universities feature minimal networking opportunities with female scientists and guest speakers from the industry. in fact, over 50 percent of students agree that having access to female role models is vital, as these role models can exemplify the accomplishments, salaries, and lifestyles associated with future job positions (kim et al., 2011, p. 7). the exemplars can encourage women to envision themselves in similar occupations upon graduation and fortify the motivation to dedicate long-term effort throughout their studies. however, most students note that they have never met female technology professionals in university contexts (wasburn & miller, 2008). in this case, universities’ limited acknowledgment of female professionals thriving in cs industries and academia provides inadequate incentive and anticipation of highly rewarded career prospects and life aspirations. female students thus tend to remain suspicious of the “return on investment” of their studies, questioning the chance of obtaining well-paid, stable employment opportunities in a maledominated industry. consequently, they feel less secure and motivated to complete the fouryear intensive cs studies to achieve a degree that seems less promising for females. second, coupled with the paucity of same-sex role modeling, universities’ lack of female peer networks represents another persistent deterrent that erodes female students’ achievement. in 2020, women made up only 19 percent of cs graduates with a declining tendency (united nations, 2020, para. 2). this means that they sometimes have two to three like-minded technical women in computing classes whom they can ask for help with ease; though most of the time, they have none (cohoon, 2008, p. 217). in the absence of same-sex classmates, women have to approach male peers for assistance. many of them have been viewed as an anomaly by male classmates and encountered teasing infused with gender-essentialist contempt in the absence of institutional intervention (varma et al., 2008). they are often perceived as girls with presumedly overemphasized feminine appearances rather than high intellectual and mental values. the consciousness of being female and the stereotype threat make them fearful of deepening their comprehension of course content through discussions. in particular, female students generally resonate with the statement: “just that sometimes, i’m scared to speak or ask questions because guys might think … because i’m a woman, cause i’m a lady” (varma, 2008, 304). this reveals that, with a severely imbalanced gender composition, communication among peers is no longer a chance for exchanging thoughts, discovering commonalities, and conjoining into a harmonious whole (laywine, 2022). it is rather distorted into a sociocommunicative struggle in which male and female students are situated at two opposite poles, triggering further gendering and misconceptions. in this androcentric environment, the unwelcoming climate for women is likely to provoke constant feelings of isolation and vulnerability. this also entails a reluctance to ask clarifying questions and participate in critical debates. the derived inactive, passive learning mode results in insufficient engagement and understanding of the courses, rendering many female students unable to make it through advanced cs courses to attain their degrees. this aligns with cohoon’s research (2008), which highlights that given the shortage of female-empowering networks, female students’ attrition rate is six points higher than men’s (p. 214). in general, because of universities’ scarcity of female support mechanisms, including the paucity of positive role models and female student communities, women students’ university experiences are permeated with career-related anxiety and interpersonal distress, besides a heavy academic workload. this undermines females’ ambition and the pleasure of learning, limiting their attainment of degrees and personal development in the long run. concluding remarks through analyzing the masculine paradigm in cs faculties, the biases in their pedagogical style, and the dearth of female support mechanisms that impede female students’ enrollment, retention, and achievement, the drastic lack of female presentation in cs and the underlying rationales become evident. the androcentric institutional culture as well as its corresponding educational practices and resource allocation in north american universities give rise to the radical underrepresentation of female undergraduate students in cs programs from 2000 to 2022. these three dimensions form a nearly infinite cycle that worsens the structural underrepresentation of women, perpetuating gender disparities in education and, through educational socialization, in broader society. while this research primarily addresses the underrepresentation of women, it is crucial to interpret the ensuing conclusions within the framework of inherent limitations, encompassing considerations of representativeness and contextual specificity. future studies may benefit from incorporating a closer examination of the obstacles encountered by women of color, trans women, and queer women in cs programs. this endeavor will facilitate a more comprehensive comprehension of this multi-faceted focal point, where the interplay of gender, sexuality, race, and social norms converges to form an ultra-intricate amalgamation. today, some universities claim that there has been a proliferation of empowering campaigns for women in technology, which provide ample support for females to pursue cs pathways (gallagher, 2017). nevertheless, i criticize this notion, as the prosperous androcentric culture and stagnating gender composition in cs academics unravel that the educational gender gap is far from being eradicated. gender-equitable education should not just be a rhetorical slogan. universities should translate it into institutional improvements with sociocommunicative empowerment and the provision of resources for females, equipping them with technological competencies and self-efficacy to fluidly navigate through the computing terrain. ultimately, this will equalize gender representation among younger generations, advancing the integration of femininity into academic, technological, and sociocultural landscapes—a genuine liberating path toward a fair and inclusive future. references barker l., & aspray, w. 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(2008). just get over it or just get on with it: retaining women in undergraduate computing. in j. m. cohoon, & w. aspray (eds.), women and information technology: research on underrepresentation (pp. 205–237). mit press. https://ieeexplore-ieeeorg.lib-ezproxy.concordia.ca/book/6267239 dryburgh, h. (2000). underrepresentation of girls and women in computer science: classification of 1990s research. journal of educational computing research, 23(2), 181–202. https://doi.org/10.2190/8ryv-9jwh-xqmb-qf41 gallagher, b. (2017, june 16). more women are studying computer science at waterloo. waterloo university. https://uwaterloo.ca/math-alumni-newsletter/matheties/feature/more-women-are-studying-computer-science-waterloo giannakos, m. n., pappas, i. o., jaccheri, l., & sampson, d. g. 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(2008). confronting the “socialization” barrier: crossethnic differences in undergraduate women’s preference for it education. in j. m. cohoon, & w. aspray (eds.), women and information technology: research on underrepresentation (pp. 301–322). mit press. https://ieeexplore-ieee-org.libezproxy.concordia.ca/book/6267239 wasburn, m. h., & miller, s. g. (2008). keeping women students in technology: preliminary evaluation of an intervention. journal of college student retention: research, theory & practice, 9(2), 205–219. https://doi.org/10.2190/cs.9.2.e yates, j., & plagnol, a. c. (2022). female computer science students: a qualitative exploration of women’s experiences studying computer science at university in the uk. education and information technologies, 27(3), 3079–3105. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-02110743-5 https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf19304/data https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04042-4 https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/2000-01/women-faculty/intro.html https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/2000-01/women-faculty/intro.html https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2019001/article/00006-eng.htm https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2019001/article/00006-eng.htm https://www.un.org/en/un-chronicle/closing-gender-gap-science-and-technology-0 https://www.un.org/en/un-chronicle/closing-gender-gap-science-and-technology-0 https://doi.org/10.1177/0270467602022004003 https://ieeexplore-ieee-org.lib-ezproxy.concordia.ca/book/6267239 https://ieeexplore-ieee-org.lib-ezproxy.concordia.ca/book/6267239 https://doi.org/10.2190/cs.9.2.e https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-021-10743-5 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-021-10743-5 desire as violation sexual violence as a social crime in early modern english court records and literature alexa kupor, stanford university ’25 abstract: this paper explores the definition of ‘rape’ as depicted through early modern english court records and literature, arguing that contemporary sources viewed the crime as one of primarily social origin and impact. both accused perpetrators and alleged victims of sexual violence in this time used social defenses and critiqued the social reputation of their opposition in order to further their case. the court records archives from england’s old bailey, formal central criminal court of london – and literature – shakespeare’s the rape of lucrece – under examination provide textual evidence portraying the ways in which social interactions and standings were intertwined with the public’s judgment towards ones propensity to either enact or experience rape. in early modern europe, the precise definition of sexual crimes remained largely elusive as authorities attempted to place personally nuanced sexual violations into the confines of blackand-white legal, medical, and social systems. lawyers, doctors, scholars, and other officials prioritized various aspects of the crime – including its criminal consequences, physical evidence, or religious and moral implications – in their individual works to understand the nature of such a transgression. nonetheless, they largely agreed upon one aspect of sexual violence: it qualified as a primarily social – rather than personal, psychological, emotional, or physical – crime impacting various parties beyond the individual upon whom it was committed. as a reflection of this perception, mentions of the social status of both victims and perpetrators before and after an instance of sexual violence abound in early modern source material; these references could be utilized as either a way to argue for a defendant’s innocence on the basis of his superior social standing or to support the victim’s testimony by citing a loss of the social respect she once maintained as a result of this violation. in this paper, i argue that a comparison between public trial records from early modern england – specifically, the london old bailey proceedings beginning in 1674 – and shakespeare’s 1594 work the rape of lucrece offers evidence for the conception of rape as a primarily social transgression. this is supported through the works’ suggestion that the ability to both rape and be raped was a consequence of social standing as well as their descriptions of the reverberations of rape throughout a victim’s broader community. these two source materials, though vastly different in style and intended audience, are particularly revealing of contemporary social and legal dynamics, as they provide perspectives from both the criminal, and legislative sphere and the common understanding of sexual violence and its consequences. shakespeare’s piece offers a detailed account of a particular instance of sexual violation, while the old bailey database supplies myriad early modern examples of such phenomena and their various means of resolution, supplying a comparison between accounts within entertainment media and concrete case material. both the old bailey public records and shakespeare’s piece contribute to general characterizations of what made a man more likely to rape in addition to which traits rendered a woman more ‘rapable’ in early modern england. these conceptions emphasize the social nature of sexual violence, as they crafted a clear link between one’s prior social standing and an accompanying vulnerability to rape or be raped. in the old bailey records, for example, men found guilty of rape are frequently portrayed as inherently evil or socially inferior individuals; thus, their sexual crime is depicted not as an affront to a previously glossy reputation, but as a natural extension of their prior behaviors and place within society. an emphasis on descriptions of defendants as “lusty” men known for “drinking somtimes to excessive [sic]” or who are particularly prone to engaging in “lewdness or debauchery” in the records suggests that the public understood rape as a crime carried out by those previously recognized for immorality and a lowly social status (old bailey proceedings, september 1677, 20 january 1686, 25 february 1685, trial 16770906, oa16860120, 16850225). this also had the effect of separating men viewed as ‘capable’ of rape from more socially respectable classes of society; as i will later argue, this presented a challenge when a woman claimed that a man of reputable social standing had committed an act of sexual violence against her. similarly, in some cases, establishing a low social evaluation of an accused perpetrator could serve as adequate reason for a judge to declare him guilty independent of the victim’s testimony, proving the immense credibility social status held in determining one’s ability to commit a sexual crime. the unequal weighting of victim testimony compared to the accused’s own prior social standing extended into old bailey records and reflects the power of establishing a man as capable of rape by virtue of his social standing in persuading judges to declare a guilty verdict. likewise, in the rape of lucrece, the lustful characteristics of tarquin, who ultimately commits rape upon the titular character, are consistently emphasized and condemned; yet, this negative portrayal of the man’s sexual ills is not utilized merely to criticize the damage he imposes upon his victim, but rather to depict the crime as a result of tarquin’s co-optation by transgressive desire, thus reconciling the ability to rape with his previously reputable social status. shakespeare describes the “lustful lord” tarquin as “bewitch’d with lust’s foul charm” and controlled “by brain-sick rude desire,” implying that he does not accurately represent the entire social class of soldiers and noblemen but is instead exploited by an externally-imposed immorality that contributes to an increased propensity to commit sexual violence (shakespeare, 1594, lines 169-175). this language depicts lust as a distinct entity capable of exacting authority over tarquin’s actions by ‘bewitching’ his conscience, thus rendering tarquin uniquely favored to commit rape yet simultaneously removing a portion of the impetus to do so from his social identification as a lord and placing it onto an independent force, improving the social conception of the lordship more broadly. shakespeare’s rhetoric concedes that even the highest social classes could be victims of imposed lustful influences, yet the suggestion that tarquin’s crime was a result of this co-opted conscience rather than his own inherent nature protects the intrinsic social reputation of the lordship. ultimately, the piece strengthens the perception of social attributes as decisive factors in one’s tendency to commit sexual violence by depicting tarquin as a rare, explainable exception to a norm in which lustfulness and social reputability are largely irreconcilable. conversely, the source material also crafts an opposing archetypal image of the socially honorable man who is intrinsically immune from rape accusations, despite what an examination of his behaviors may indicate. just as establishing a man’s low social honor could serve as a more adequate reason to find him guilty of rape than could a woman’s testimony of his crime, the reverse also remained true; a high social reputation could overpower the conflicting testimony of a man’s alleged victim. in one old bailey case from 1677, the records do not deny the woman’s claim that “by violence” and “against her consent” the accused “had his will of her,” yet this man is ultimately acquitted, partially due to him “having a good repute among his neighbours” (obp, 6 september 1677, trial 16770906). this reference to reputation intertwines the capacity to rape with one’s social standing, insinuating that an exemplary social influence is enough to overpower accusations of sexual wrongdoing, whether or not those accusations’ credibility is fully examined. an additional case that took place in 1685 remarks that as the accused perpetrator was able to bring “[diverse] people to [justify] his used behaviour and modest carriage all along,” his social standing ultimately “over ballanced [sic]” victim and prosecutor testimonies and led to not only an acquittal, but the conclusion that the victim, a fiveyear-old girl, had used the rape accusation “as a design to get money out of the prisoner” (obp, 25 february 1685, trial 16850225). such rhetoric indicates that determining guilt in early modern rape trials was not merely a question of if sexual violence had occurred, but a consideration of whether a perpetrator’s social standing superseded the credibility of the accuser. therefore, even men who could otherwise be proven to have committed a sexual crime may have been acquitted because their social reputation rendered these acts incompatible with their prior nature. for this reason, victims “often sought a person with authority,” like a master of the house, “to help them denounce their attacker,” particularly if the victim was, herself, from a lowly social class and the perpetrator enjoyed a greater level of social repute (steinberg, 2020, p. 9). additional old bailey cases describe a victim’s claims of experiencing bodily damage as a result of sexual violence as failing to constitute “possitive [sic] evidence of a rape, under those circumstances the law requires it,” insinuating that victim testimony alone, without social corroboration, may have been granted minimal credibility (obp, 12 may 1687, trial t16870512-34). social evidence communicating a man’s inability to carry out rape thus often received equivalent or greater consideration than more telling, tangible forms of proof. in addition to drawing on social circumstances to produce archetypes of men who were more or less likely to be perceived as capable of committing rape, the old bailey records and the rape of lucrece also contribute to conceptions of various women’s ‘rapability.’ this spectrum refers not to the theoretical possibility that the physical act of forced sexual intercourse could be carried out against a woman, but rather to whether such an act qualified as an affront to social status and thus fit the popular definition of rape at the time. in the case of the old bailey records, it appears that in order to reach this threshold, the woman must first have demonstrated that she once had adequate social honor – such as prior virginity – that could have been diminished by sexual violence. failure to establish this initial honorability often meant a guilty verdict was highly unlikely to be achieved. even within testimony concerning a sexual crime, women “had a strong motive to pass over sexual details” in order to prevent tarnishing their “reputation” or “displaying knowledge that showed a lack of modesty” (steinberg, 2020, p. 14). for many women, successful testimony required a meticulous arrangement of details and rhetoric that emphasized her own social reputation while simultaneously proving her loss of such honorability without associating herself with an inherent propensity for sexual transgression. in this sense, a rape trial represented the point at which “the inner act of violence is thus turned into a public spectacle, its victim into an actor” where her “ability to perform according to a script determines the successfulness of the legal appeal” (pallotti, 2013, p. 219). that such legal proceedings may be characterized as a type of performance underscores their socially consequential nature. as a further reflection of the social characteristics of these cases, men accused of rape often employed witnesses to attest to a woman’s social inferiority, emphasizing that she came from “a dissolute life, and of no good name, having been a companion of idle and loose fellows” or that, despite her individual reputation, her “parents were of no good repute,” according to old bailey cases from 1687 and 1693, respectively (obp, 7 december 1687, 26 april 1693, trial 16871207, t16930426-86). that in each of these cases the man was acquitted portrays the gravity that a woman’s ‘unrapability’ as a consequence of low social regard held in determining the possibility – or lack thereof – that rape had occurred. attacks on a woman’s ability to fulfill her expected domestic social duties could also contribute to her status as a less ‘rapable’ and credible victim; in a case from 1689, the accused’s witnesses described “that the woman kept a bad house, of no good credit, and that several evil deeds were done there,” and the man was ultimately found not guilty despite the presence of additional evidence that “corroborated” the woman’s account that he had raped her (obp, 11 december 1689, trial 16891211). evidently, a woman’s prior social disrepute, whether based on her individual nature, the status of her friends and family, or her noncompliance with gendered social obligations could significantly weaken the applicability of the contemporary legal understanding of rape to her case; this ultimately strengthens the idea that such an understanding was rooted in an affront to social standing. while trial records from this era produce an image of the woman who may have been unable to claim the occurrence of rape based on her social characteristics, the rape of lucrece, alternatively, uses the character of lucrece to represent the most extreme form of ‘rapability’ that existed within women. from the opening of the play, lucrece is depicted as the archetypally pure wifely figure, an identity which her husband collatine consistently flaunts as he “[extolls] the incomparable chastity of his wife” (shakespeare, 1594, line 0.21). this ideal of purity and grace is so omnipresent throughout the work that, as one scholar writes, “‘lucrece’ becomes a metonym for chastity” (quay, 1995, 5). lucrece’s name is rarely written without a preceding adjective that describes her as “modest” or “holy-thoughted,” which linguistically cements the inseparability of the woman from her moral glory (shakespeare, 1594, lines 123, 384). the work suggests that these defining characteristics ultimately contribute to lucrece’s heightened vulnerability to rape; as her social value increases in tandem with greater chastity, she possesses much more social power to lose from a potential sexual violation. despite an assumption of readers’ knowledge that lucrece, a married woman, has likely engaged in sexual activity with collatine, her rape is nonetheless depicted as engendering the same momentous loss as if she were previously a virgin. for tarquin, the rape qualifies as “defloration,” a great detriment to lucrece’s social standing, not in spite, but “because of the perfect chastity of lucrece,” for “such chastity in the matron bequeaths a kind of virginity, metaphorically regenerating the hymen” (baines, 1998, p. 85). thus, it is precisely lucrece’s prior association with supreme chastity that elevates the perceived gravity of the crime committed against her, which traces a link between her initial social characterization and her vulnerability to the social consequences of rape – namely, its theft of virginity and wifely potential. in the early modern legal realm, a woman’s prior virginity increased “the quality of the loss” incurred as a result of sexual violence, and though lucrece was likely not a virgin at the time of her rape in the literal sense, her social representation to public audiences associated her with a symbolic, untouchable virginity (pallotti, 2013, 216). henry de bracton, an english legal theorist of the middle ages whose influence persisted into the early modern period, claimed that “to defile a virgin and to lie with one defiled [are different deeds],” and as tarquin’s crime was categorized under the former, the social consequences gained increased severity (baines, 1998, p. 71). similarly, shakespeare writes that “beauty” has the ability to “persuade the eyes of men” and questions why collatine shares descriptions of his virtuous wife which “he should keep unknown,” insinuating that lucrece’s chastity not only increases her potential social power to be lost by rape but also that these exemplary traits claim a portion of the blame for provoking tarquin to act on his attraction (1594, lines 29-34). this is reminiscent of the aforementioned depictions of tarquin as “bewitch’d” by lust, which isolates him from his honorable social identity – in order to produce a social ‘justification’ for his act – and diminish his autonomy in carrying out the rape in order to protect the honorability of the class of noblemen. the severity of this rape is acutely understood by lucrece, who describes a complete loss of her sense of self and presentation to others as a consequence of her destroyed chastity. the “virtuous monument” she once symbolized for all roman women transforms into what she describes as “poor wasting monuments of lasting moans,” while she begins to dress “in mourning black” as a reflection of her symbolic grief for a lost piece of her identity (shakespeare, 1594, lines 391, 798, 1587). evidently, the image of model purity around which lucrece’s social identity was once meticulously fashioned no longer remains intact following her sexual violation, and this violation itself largely occurred, as shakespeare suggests, due to this same exemplary righteousness. lucrece’s own dialogue and behaviors lend support to the idea of her purity contributing to an enhanced ‘rapability’; as she mourns an essential piece of her characterization to external audiences due to sexual violation, she aligns with the conception of rape as a crime of social motives and consequences. lucrece’s self and social identities are so utterly destroyed following her rape that the decision “to live on casts doubt on her honor, her person, her symbolic place,” and since lucrece can no longer exist as the honorable self she once was, she chooses to end her life completely rather than continue to live as a foreign, unchaste woman (belsey, 2001, p. 333). lucrece possesses the prior social power necessary to argue that a major loss in social standing has occurred as a result of rape; this contrasts with the women depicted in early modern trial records who often lost their cases as a result of a lowly social status that rendered the phenomenon of ‘rape’ impossible to be committed upon their bodies and identities, no matter the physical acts which may have occurred. finally, beyond constructing spectrums of individuals’ capability to rape or be raped, early modern source materials exhibit references to additional phenomena such as marriage, financial support, and property transfers – essential social interactions – as key factors in the initiation and resolution of rape cases. many rape cases were not brought to trial immediately after the crime was alleged to have occurred; this gap of time could have resulted when the parties involved waited to determine if a marriage or other internal resolution could be arranged before filing a lawsuit. if the families of the perpetrator and the victim could reconcile with a marriage between the two, the now-unchaste woman would not be forced to endure the challenge of finding a socially and economically advantageous marriage partner while sexually ‘impure’ and thus largely undesirable. this is reminiscent of the early modern phenomenon of claiming seduction by promise of marriage – a claim which could, if successful, effectively “restore the woman’s honor and her status as marriageable” by establishing that she only engaged in sexual activity as a result of ultimately moral intentions (dyer, 2003, p. 444). an old bailey case from 1678 remarks, regarding the perpetrator of a rape towards his victim, “that he gave her money afterwards,” suggesting an additional attempt towards resolving a case of sexual violence through financial support, which could maintain a woman’s social standing through bolstering her marriage dowry (obp, 11 december 1678, trial t16781211e-2). this payment could also dissuade a woman from filing a rape case, as the accused perpetrator may portray the interaction as consensual, paid sex rather than a forced violation. not only does the use of marriage as a resolution to sexual crimes portrays the social nature of such transgressions, but it also reflects how these crimes implicated entire families in a web of threatened social honor. the rape of lucrece does not exemplify the same concerns over marriage, as lucrece is married to collatine before the rape occurs, yet it similarly portrays rape as a thread within a broader tangle of social and political dynamics. as roman soldiers in the 500s bc, tarquin and collatine not only fight with one another but also against each other as they compete to gain social and political roles within a rapidly transforming society. tarquin’s decision to rape lucrece is likened to “high treason,” reflecting the broader political context within the rhetoric associated with sexual crime (shakespeare, 1594, line 369). likewise, lucrece’s breasts, from tarquin’s perspective, are described as “ivory globes” reminiscent of “a pair of maiden worlds unconquered,” which represents a transference of the language of politics, territorial conquering, and competition between masculine ambitions to lucrece’s physicality (shakespeare, 1594, lines 407-408). that tarquin tells lucrece that he has “come to scale thy never-conquer’d fort” similarly places her chastity within the context of land to be claimed, rendering her body a symbol of conquerance and ownership (shakespeare, 1594, lines 481-482). evidently, “the power struggle between and among men,” symbolized by lucrece’s body as an opportunity for territorial conquest, constitutes what is “always at issue in the poem” (baines, 1998, p. 85). indeed, by committing suicide, lucrece reflects this same dynamic, remaining “within the structure of militaristic conquest and masculine conflict that motivated the rape in the first place” by prompting her own death (belsey, 2001, p. 327). the intertwining of the rape within broader political conflicts underscores the inseparability of sexual violence from social circumstances and hierarchies; just as old bailey records describe rape cases as a platform for the settlement of social conflict, lucrece’s rape serves as a progression within a national social and political context. the violation against lucrece thus stands as a threat towards a much greater collective, as the “rape is seen to be not a crime against an individual, but an offence against a civilisation” (smith, 2005, p. 25). believing her social degradation to be unable to be rectified, lucrece claims that “if i die, my honor lives in thee; but if i live, thou livest in my defame” (shakespeare, 1594, lines 1032-1033). her choice to opt for the former represents her awareness of the social implications entangled within sexual violence and the broader context within which her rape falls. such a decision emphasizes the capability of rape to implicate a vast network of individuals within literal and figurative battles for honor, control, and conquerance; the stretch of such a crime reaches far beyond the individual upon which it is perpetrated. evidently, the old bailey trial records and shakespeare’s the rape of lucrece provide vast textual support for the representation of sexual violence in the early modern period as a crime of both social roots and social consequences. through the production of a spectrum of a man’s capacity to rape and a woman’s ability to claim having experienced rape within the public, it is clear that individuals’ place within social hierarchies impacted society’s views towards their sexual propensities and potential for victimization. yet, sexual crimes also extended far beyond the singular victim and perpetrator; as the source material exhibits, decisions to initiate trials, prosecution and defense strategies, and perceptions of threatened honorability involved broad familial and community webs. while the rape of lucrece tells the tale of just one case of sexual violence set long before the period in which it was written, its underlying meanings align closely with the perceptions of rape that took hold in the early modern english society in which shakespeare lived and wrote, and the old bailey records prove the contemporary manifestations of these social attitudes within legal proceedings and case resolutions. these considerations underscore the immense importance of social honor and credibility in the early modern period and the consequences that could result in tandem with their diminishing; as the sources underscore, individuals and communities were often willing to perform whatever narratives were necessary in order to restore the honor of both their own generation and that of all potential progeny. references baines, barbara j. 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(2003). crime, gender and social order in early modern england. cambridge university press. ky final divine drag: unveiling ascetic afflictions through hierarchy, race, and queerness carolyn ky, stanford ’24 abstract: inspired by dr. mike chin's innovative essay collection, where he invited ancient historians to explore the workings of a chosen concept in the ancient world through a single word, this paper applies a similar approach to investigate early christian asceticism. focused on the theme of "representation," the study examines hagiographies, rule books, and encounters with demons to uncover how ascetics externalized inner struggles related to sexuality, power dynamics, and spiritual excellence. it explores how these struggles manifested as representations of hierarchies, queerness, and race within the ascetic landscape. furthermore, the paper explores the impact of representation on communal dynamics, reputation management, and the negotiation of statuses within ascetic hierarchical communities. in adopting this approach, the study aims to shed light on the intricate and diverse nature of representation within the context of early christian asceticism. in early christian asceticism, the politics of representation reflected the theological and social landscape at a time when christianity had not yet fully defined itself. in turn, certain sects sought to gain prominence and favor in the political sphere through their ideas of what practices and ideals a christian ought to have. through an exploration of hagiographies depicting trans-saints and black demons and books, as well as rule books admonishing against gazing upon young boys, this essay will demonstrate how early christian ascetics transfigured their innermost afflictions and desires around sexuality, power dynamics, and an unwavering pursuit of spiritual excellence into external representations of hierarchies, queerness, and race. starting in the third and fourth centuries, christianity began to take on a clearer identity. one strong rhetorical development was the concept of cosmological warfare, where “the fighters are human beings; those assisting them are god’s angels; and their opponents are the foul demons” (brakke, 2009, p. 49). so, while demons already existed in other religious and cultural traditions, “evagrius of pontus crafted the most sophisticated demonology to emerge from early christian monasticism and perhaps from ancient christianity as a whole” (brakke, 2009, p. 2). evagrius, one of the most influential christian theologians in the late fourth century, played a pivotal role in developing the christian theology of contemplative prayer and asceticism, which laid the groundwork for a tradition of spiritual life embraced by both eastern and western christian churches. evagrius and other ascetics developed the idea that there were certain thoughts tied to emotions and images. each internal thought, such as lust, vainglory, and avarice, became personified into external figures called demons that had their own agency. for example, in evagrius’s against the thoughts of fornication, he writes, “against the demon of fornication that imitates the form of a beautiful naked woman” (brakke, 2009, p. 76). here, the monk is projecting his desire for fornication with a woman, personifying it into a female demon. this does not mean a literal woman is tempting the monk. instead, the monk’s desire gets mapped onto women writ large as inherently lustful beings. in the realm of spiritual combat, monks and ascetics functioned as god's fighters, wielding metaphorical weapons like prayers and the pursuit of virtuous living (brakke, 2009). their commitment went beyond personal salvation, extending to the communal fabric where they actively “[equipped] the most negligent among the brethren with their weapons” (ponticus and sinkewicz, 2003, p. 97). this ethos of shared responsibility and mutual support became foundational as monastic practices evolved. to promote even further virtuous living, monasteries physically distanced from society were envisioned as sanctuaries for individuals seeking a profound connection with god. evagrius, following a period of personal turmoil after he fell in love with a married woman, embraced monasticism in the deserts of nitria and kellia (brakke, 2009, p. 2). meanwhile, pachomius, revered as a prominent figure among the desert fathers, led the charge in establishing christian cenobitic monasticism, deliberately distancing adherents from the trappings of worldly existence (harmless, 2004, p. 115). cenobitic monasticism emphasized a structured, communal existence, where obedience to the religious superior mirrored divine authority. people from all social strata willingly abandoned their previous lives, possessions, and titles to escape the distractions of lay society and adopt the communal ethos of cenobitic monasticism. of course, the abandonment of one’s life is not enough to fully remove one’s logismoi a term encompassing tempting thoughts. evagrius meticulously categorized these logismoi into eight distinct categories: gastrimargia (gluttony), pornéia (lust), philarguria (avarice), lupè (sadness), orgè (anger), acedia (depression or disgust with life), kenodoxia (vainglory), and perèphania (pride). these logismoi are often regarded as the precursors to the seven deadly sins. hierarchies within monastic communities were therefore established not only to uphold these spiritual microcosmos of virtuous living but also to aid in the constant battle against these tempting thoughts. despite the absence of explicit delineation of a formal hierarchy, the prevalent usage of the term "old men" (abbas/fathers/superiors) suggests an implicit hierarchy rooted in seniority. these individuals held higher status and assumed roles as spiritual guides for the younger monks (gleason, 1998, p. 503). the purpose of these rule books was to preserve the monastery’s hierarchies, as enforcement of rules took on a rigorous, ritualistic form within the monastery's sacred walls. the ascetic lifestyle serves as an external representation of their unwavering commitment to the pursuit of divine connection while fighting their inner afflictions. poachomius’s rule book offers us a rare glimpse into ascetics' envisioned lives. the mandates included prayer, psalm-singing, study of scripture, manual labor, modest meals, punctuality, and a lack of personal items. this ethos emphasized monk equality, discouraging decisions based on personal inclinations to preserve an ideal, frictionless, and contemplative existence. as one reads the book and sees almost identical rules being iterated over and over again, this repetition suggests that these rules were often violated in instances of self-indulgence, implying the ascetic succumbed to their thoughts/ demons. so, pachomius's struggle in establishing social order without a clear blueprint shows the importance of social cohesion and solidarity in a society so reliant on extreme equality. to prevent the gradual erosion of the monastery's social fabric through self-indulgence, stringent measures were implemented. for example, monks and nuns required permission to leave the monastery, minimizing exposure to external temptations (ehrman and jacobs, 2004). even women, referred to as "weaker vessels," were housed separately so that “the brothers may freely tend to its duty and no occasion for detraction to be given to anybody” (ehrman and jacobs, 2004, p. 295). even though women were perceived as the weaker sex, and therefore more likely to succumb to their temptations, men still believed that women's lust could cause men to fail in fulfilling their duties. whereas pachomius emphasized the fulfillment of godly duties and the avoidance of distractions to aid monks in their inner contemplation, shenoute adopted a distinct approach to maintaining discipline. he relied on gossip and open communication about others' faults, stating, “let us not hide one another’s sin, so god is not wrathful against us…” — a departure from pachomius, who argued against unnecessary speech among monks (layton, 2014, p. 103). this practice manifested two crucial aspects within shenoute’s monastery. first, it reinforced the link between sexual desire and shame to deter various sexual acts, such as washing a child alone. second, it created a panopticon within the holy establishment, where the impact of a monk’s inner shame is intensified by the collective scrutiny of those who witnessed the transgression and others who learned about the acts. by encouraging the verbalization of shame, shenoute's strategy externalizes the inner turmoil experienced by ascetics engaged in sinful acts. this communal dialogue played a crucial role in reputation management, an ongoing concern in the social dynamics of ascetic communities. highly regarded individuals, including senior abbas, experienced performance anxiety due to the potential impact of gossip on the rankings of leading anchorites and displacement (gleason, 1998, pp. 516-517). in monastic communities’ aim to dismantle established hierarchies of wealth and political status, newly crafted monastic hierarchies filled the vacuum. these spiritual hierarchies, perceived as indicators of one's closeness to god, provided a discreet avenue for monks to pursue their desire for advancement without being seen as vain. thus, gossip not only shaped communal narratives but also intricately became a part of the continuous process of negotiating the flux statuses within ascetic hierarchical communities. exploring the intricacies of sexual regulation within monastic settings, ranging from the separation of men and women to the shaming of lustful gazes, illuminates the concerted effort to control the sexual desires of ascetic individuals. the repeated sexual regulations and anxieties surrounding young boys suggest an implicit acknowledgment of the homoerotic allure of young boys, shaping an image in the minds of ascetics that young boys are beautiful and therefore desirable. the idea of young boys as desirable did not originate with christianity; traces of this perception can be found in pagan greco-roman society before the evolution of christianity as a distinct identity. however, these rule books entwine christian demonology the study of demons within christian religious belief and myth with the desire of young boys within this cultural context. shenoute's rule book, for example, consistently condemns gazing at young boys. caroline schroeder argues that the “monks who read, hear, and rewrite these texts [including rule books] participate in a voyeuristic erotic experience” despite operating under the guise of shaming others and exercising extreme self-control (schroeder, 2009, p. 345). these texts therefore become physical representations of the inner desires and afflictions of monks who desire young boys but do not actually engage in looking at them. however, for monks who do gaze at young boys, the act of gazing is suggested to carry a neutral moral valency. yet, when desire becomes intertwined with the gaze, as is often the case, it is considered sinful. the arbitrary nature of one's true intentions complicates the delineation of acceptable behavior, exemplified by the enigmatic lines: “not simply embracing another monk, but embracing with passion poses the threat; not simply kissing a child, but kissing with passion…” (schroeder, 2009, p. 342) the use of the term "passion" introduces a subjective element, making the gaze a "means of justified voyeurism" in addition to the voyeuristic erotic experience monks can have when engaging in these rule books (schroeder, 2009, p. 338). given the challenge of discerning whether the boundary of acceptable behavior has been transgressed, the responsibility falls on the individual in question “to bear witness against himself” (foucault, 1999, pp. 182-183). thus, the emphasis on renunciation of sexual practices transitions toward interior reflection. ascetics, in their pursuit of virtue, find themselves in a perpetual state of self-surveillance, monitoring and renouncing their innermost temptations and seductions with no telos in sight. this introspective vigilance is compounded by the external panopticon imposed upon them by other ascetics. the genre of early christian hagiographies narrated the lives of saints as they propagated christian ideologies in the image of god. a myriad of these narratives exhibit pronounced queer coding. in jerome's life of paul, a narrative unfolds where a restrained martyr faces a sexually charged encounter with a beautiful prostitute. tormented by the conflict between his desires and spiritual convictions, he turns to divine inspiration and, in a radical act, bites off his tongue, stating, "the sense of lust was overcome by the sharp pain that replaced it" (white et al., 1998, p. 76). by removing his tongue, a physical, sensory representation of his inner desire and bodily pleasure, he undergoes a form of literal self-castration and cleanses the act of fornication from sin as supported by the sayings of the desert fathers, which one apophthegm stating that “there is a natural impulse inherent in the body, but it does not operate if the soul is unwilling” (wortley, 2012, p. 59). however, virginia burrus delves deeper into the symbolic significance of the physical act of self-castration. she argues that tongue-biting holds broader connotations related to gender, control, and expression. the act, seen as a form of gender-switching, connects the act to cultural codes that define a woman's relationship with language, as a woman can only assert control over her tongue by destroying it (burrus, 2004, p. 27). the martyr's experience transcends mere emasculation or feminization, leaving uncertainty regarding the martyr's position given the conventional gender norms of this historical era. instead, it situates the martyr within the fluid expressions of gender, locating them "in the gaps, in the fragments, in the very mobility of their shifting desire" (burrus, 2004, p. 27). these notions of gender-bending become more clear in a widely successful literary subsect of hagiographies that center around trans-saints, such as the pelagia of antioch and life of marianus. in the pelagia of antioch, pelagia’s gender is already inverted from the beginning. she is assigned male characteristics from her dress, scarf, and wealth “as though she were a man” (brock and harvey, 2010, p. 43). the author could have said “like a man,” but instead stated “as though she were a man” to imply that the figure’s maleness existed inside pelagia before her spiritual and physical transformation. despite being explicitly given male characteristics, the monks in the story admit they are captivated by pelagia’s beauty, breaking conventional christian boundaries around sexual attraction. pelagia, a prostitute, should be seen as a person of lower status, yet “her appearance incited everyone who set eyes on her to fall in love with her” and so “when the holy bishops saw her, they averted their eyes from her, as though she was some sinful object” (brock and harvey, 2010, p. 43). previously, the gaze had been a way for monks to indulge in their inner desires. however, pelagia’s ambiguously gendered being is so powerful and threatening to the monk’s self-control that the gaze moves into the interior, forcing the monks to restabilize their connection to the ascetic life. after her baptism, marking her spiritual journey with god, she even requests nonnos’s clothing, disappearing from the city in male clothing (brock and harvey, 2010, p. 58). to everyone, pelagia no longer exists. instead, the monk pelagio is societally accepted as a eunuch as “[pelagia’s] astounding beauty had all faded away, her laughing and bright face that … had become ugly, … as a result of much fasting and the keeping of vigils'' (brock and harvey, 2010, p. 60). by staying true to ascetic practices, pelagia physically transforms into pelagio. nonnos even says “i received a blessing from her as if from a male eunuch who was a renowned monk, a perfect and righteous disciple of christ'' (brock and harvey, 2010, p. 60). nonnos recognizes pelagio’s transcended power, unknowingly accepting pelagio’s bodily state as male. although the life of marinos does not begin with a character who lives their life in sin before becoming a monk, the narrative follows a very similar pattern to pelagia of antioch. in her early youth, mary disguises herself as a man and adopts the name marinos to reside in the monastery alongside her father (talbot, 1996, p. 7). throughout marinos’s stay, he embraces the ascetic life successfully until he is falsely accused of fornication and impregnation. the motive behind marino’s decision to accept these accusations and say “i have sinned as a man” remains unstated (talbot, 1996, p. 9). one interpretation is that being accused of impregnating someone fulfills marinos's latent longing to be acknowledged as a male. despite living almost their entire life in the monastery, marinos is more attached to their male/eunuch identity than maintaining their current position within the monastic community. overall, the stories of trans-saints are examples of ancient works offering glimpses into the complex reality of gender norms within a monastic context. these saints, often assigned female at birth, navigate most of their lives as male-presenting eunuchs and serve as “embodiments of genderqueer figures” (betancourt, 2020, p. 109). the narratives unfold with variations, as some characters choose to maintain their assigned gender after they are discovered, while others beg that they “retain their gender identities posthumously” (betancourt, 2020, p. 91). in the greco-roman cultural context, the vertical one-sex model is often used as a framework for understanding gender and sexuality. the trans-saints, by overturning their assigned gender and embracing a eunuch identity, effectively inverted this vertical hierarchy, depicting a horizontal spectrum. betancourt argues that eunuchs, portrayed as "nonbinary and gender-fluid in their bodies, roles, perception, and passing," could not be forced into a fixed state (betancourt, 2020, p. 109). positioned within the category of eunuchs, trans-saints navigated a fluid state of gender subjectivity, echoing the complexities observed in narratives like the martyr in the life of paul and complicating the traditional one-sex model. trans-saints’ strong desire for spiritual and bodily transformation may stem from the notion that “to become male … was to conquer the earthly attachment to the flesh and transition from feminine inferiority to masculine superiority” (betancourt, 2020, p. 97). the stories of trans-saints provide readers with external representations of their internal desires and struggles. while these narratives don't explicitly detail the saints' internal conflicts about gender identity, cultural contexts suggest severe consequences for acting on such desires publicly given that even the temporary act of “cross-dressing in any capacity and in either direction was prohibited not only by biblical traditions but also by church councils and imperial law codes” (betancourt, 2020, p. 99). despite the risks of violence, the monastic community provided camouflage of ascetics' inner gender fluidity as physical transformation signified devotion to asceticism, where trans-saints spiritually transcended higher than their male counterparts. early christian internal afflictions and desires of ascetic superstars were externally represented through race by intertwining racial imagery with the struggles of ascetic life, sexual temptation, and the negotiation of stereotypes within monastic communities. it is worth noting that the ancients lacked modern conceptions of racial categorization. instead, according to david brakke (2006), this association arose from broader "ethnocentric reactions to foreignness in bodies and cultures" (p. 158). this symbolism finds its roots in biblical narratives, such as the well-known declaration in genesis 1:3–4 that "god saw that the light was good," and paul's description of believers as "children of light" in 1 thessalonians, distinguishing them from darkness (brakke, 2006, p. 159). consequently, the association of dark or burnt skin became a coded reference to ethiopian people, who typically had darker skin than most monastics (brakke, 2006, p. 159). in greco-roman culture, where blackness was associated with evil, ethiopians were often perceived as demons on earth, particularly demons of porneia. this effectively relegated ethiopian monks and laypeople to a lower status as living representations of monastic logismoi. the ethiopian demon perpetuated pre-existing greco-roman stereotypes of ethiopian people being lustful beings, according to david brakke (brakke, 2006, p. 163). hagiography then continued to build upon this notion. for example, "the devil’s appearance as a black boy in the life of antony… [is augmented] with themes of sexuality and power. the context is erotic temptations, which athanasius calls 'the weapons of the belly’s navel'" (brakke, 2006, p. 160). the phrase “weapons of the belly’s navel” refers to anthony’s carnal desires and the vulnerability of human nature to physical appetites, which the devil takes advantage of in the form of anthony’s great desire, a black boy. therefore, the narrative intertwines the monk's struggle with both sexual desires and a confrontation with the power of the devil. within the framework of the one-sex model, “the power of the black demon of fornication is contained or constrained by a feminized appearance…that of a feminized boy” (brakke, 2006, p. 162). the monks projected their internal struggles with desire onto external figures, portraying the demons as powerful symbols of temptation associated with racialized characteristics. it is important to remember though that the demon does not inherently have a power but rather its “power is the projected strength or irresistibility of the monk’s attraction to the erotic object, whether women or boy” (brakke, 2006, p. 162). therefore, the monks give the demons power and therefore also have the power and strength to beat the demons as the black demon proclaims: “many a man have i deceived and very many have i overthrown; but now when i attacked you and your efforts as i have done with many others, i proved too weak” (athanasius and meyer, 1950, p. 23). the therapeutic purpose of these encounters, as argued by brakke, lies in the monks' ability to embody alterity within themselves, fostering self-reflection towards an improved ascetic state (brakke, 2006, p. 175). bringing into discussion the social anxieties monks experienced, encounters with ethiopian demons played a significant role in stabilizing the monks' identities within this world of hierarchies. when ascetics faced black demons, it became a symbolic representation of their encounter with their own struggles of the flesh. these tempting demons can be seen as testing the monk's commitment to ascetic principles and the monastic way of life. each encounter involves a moment where the ascetic either has to fight off the demon or succumb to their desires. the monks' decision to resist the black demons solidifies a static and one-dimensional portrayal of the ethiopian demon as hypersexual. however, after fighting off the black demons, the demons rather than being perceived as potent are rendered powerlessness. while stories with ethiopian demons paint them as one-dimensional, stories of ethiopian monks greatly complicate this narrative. examples such as abba moses and other powerful ethiopian ascetics challenge this fixity by being portrayed both as menacing evil invaders and as exemplars of ascetic transformation, revealing the transformability of the ethiopian identity within the monastic context. abba moses, by embodying both the demonic and the ascetic, engages in a negotiation of these stereotypes. the mimicry of demonic traits (before conversion) and ascetic virtues (after conversion) challenges and disrupts the fixity of racial and cultural stereotypes, where even a fellow monastic says “i am obliged to tell [you] about his wicked behavior in order to demonstrate the excellence of his conversion” (brakke, 2006, p. 178). other monks, revealing their internal phobias when confronted with someone "too ascetic" or "too evil," employ racial language to diminish moses’ newfound virtues. reacting to the taunts, moses, in addressing himself as "you black one" and questioning his humanity by asking, "so why do you go among human beings?" engages in an act of self-degradation (brakke, 2006, p. 157). this selfdeprecating language serves as a form of internalized one-downmanship, where abba moses adopts derogatory racial terms traditionally used against him and turns them inward. given vanity and pride were considered detrimental to spiritual progress, abba moses' status reversal becomes a demonstration of his commitment to ascetic principles and transcends him spiritually over the other monks in the story (gleason, 1998, p. 521). therefore, the ambivalence surrounding the ethiopian demons, being both demonic and potentially transformative, reflects the internal conflicts within the monks’ spiritual journey. overall, the theme of representation emerges as a guiding thread, weaving together the diverse narratives of monks, ascetic superstars, and the demons that populated their inner worlds. ascetics engaged in cosmological warfare, personifying internal thoughts as demons, strategically using these external representations to grapple with inner struggles and seek divine aid for self-mastery. monastic hierarchies, shaped by regulations and ritualistic behaviors, externally manifest ascetic commitment as fighters for god. queerness, as seen in the lives of trans-saints like pelagia and mary, are not merely narratives of spiritual transformation challenging societal norms around gender. these tales reveal more nuanced inner desires beyond the traditional understanding of logismoi within the monastic community. navigating where queerness intertwines with racialized temptations, ascetic homoerotic desires are manifested in encounters with black demons taking the form of young boys. recognizing these lived subjectivities in this historical world helps us dismantle the misconception that such intersections of queerness and race are an anachronistic imposition on historical narratives. these representations therefore underscore the entangled nature of early christian discussions on sexuality, power, and the perpetual pursuit of spiritual excellence within the ascetic landscape. references athanasius, & meyer, r. t. (1950). the life of saint antony. newman press. betancourt, r. (2020). byzantine intersectionality: sexuality, gender, and race in the middle ages. princeton university press. brakke, d. (2006). demons and the making of the monk: spiritual combat in early christianity. harvard university press. brakke, d. (2009). evagrius of pontus: talking back. liturgical press. brock, s. p., & harvey, s. a. (1987). holy women of the syrian orient. university of california press. burrus, v. (2004). the sex lives of saints: an erotics of ancient hagiography. university of pennsylvania press. ehrman, b. d., & jacobs, a. s. (2004). christianity in late antiquity, 300-450 c.e. oxford university press. foucault, m., & carrette, j. r. (1999). religion and culture. routledge. harmless, w. (2004). desert christians: an introduction to the literature of early monasticism. oxford university press. gleason, m. w. (1998). visiting and news: gossip and reputation-management in the desert 1. journal of early christian studies, 6(3), 501–521. https://doi.org/10.1353/earl.1998.0044 layton, b. (2014). the canons of our fathers: monastic rules of shenoute. oxford university press. ponticus, e., & sinkewicz, r. e. (2003). evagrius of pontus: the greek ascetic corpus. oxford university press. schroeder, c. t. (2009). queer eye for the ascetic guy? homoeroticism, children, and the making of monks in late antique egypt. journal of the american academy of religion, 77(2), 333–347. https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfp018 talbot, a.-m. (1996). holy women of byzantium: ten saints’ lives in english translation. dumbarton oaks research library and collection. white, c., athanasius, severus, s., gregorius, jerome, & hilarion. (1998). early christian lives. penguin random house uk. wortley, j. (2018). the book of the elders sayings of the desert fathers: the systematic collection. cistercian publications. gait recognition in interaction with queer citizens mason krohn, stanford ’24 abstract: facial recognition has experienced an ethical reckoning in academia and popular media for its inaccuracy and embedded bias, particularly with regard to its treatment of gender minorities. failures in sampling and overlooked flaws have made the in-use software unusable for many queer people. yet, similar discourse is lacking for gait recognition––automated identification based on an individual’s movement. with gait recognition software already capable of performing gender classification and already deployed in some sites, how might members of the lgbtq community, who use motion as a social indicator, be affected by the application of such technology? in tandem, how does mechanized gait recognition rely on preexisting assumptions about queer people? this paper seeks to build on ethical analysis of facial recognition software by looking at the harms of gait recognition in pre-computerized contexts, inspecting the assumptions used in gait tech development, and evaluating current applications of the technology. in january 2020, a letter to the u.s. privacy and civil liberties board signed by the national center for transgender equality and the national lgbtq task force called for an immediate suspension of facial recognition systems across the country (“letter,” 2020). concerns of bias and discrimination cited in the letter echo the actions of municipal lawmakers in cities like oakland and san francisco who have outright banned facial recognition (fussell, 2021). nevertheless, in 2021 the biometric scan software industry, comprising fingerprint readers and facial recognition, grew to $10.2 billion in revenue in the u.s. alone (curran, 2021). the unremitting growth of surveillance companies coupled with alarm over this surveillance from queer rights organizations places facial recognition technology at the center of conversations about big tech’s treatment of lgbtq people. yet, biometric surveillance technology in use today does not stop short at the chin. amid revolutions in machine learning, the way we move–– our walking posture, our sway, and the weight of our steps–– has also been distilled into quantifiable metrics. known as gait recognition technology, modern software is capable of detecting a unique signature from the way an individual walks either through video recordings or motion sensors. although facial recognition technology has undergone a plethora of discourse relating to the ways it disenfranchises queer people, gait recognition has not garnered the same attention. in response to this gap in scholarship, i contend that the use of gait recognition technology poses a threat to queer people. i will argue this in three steps. first, by looking at psychological research and cultural anecdotes, i will demonstrate that independent from technology, gait functions as a social indicator of sexual orientation and gender identity. second, drawing upon papers from computer vision researchers, i will argue that the design of gait recognition software adheres to a strictly binary classification system and overlooks the manipulability of gendered cues. third, by investigating the blunders of facial recognition software and the sites where biometric technology interacts with queer citizens, i will establish that gait recognition technologies replicate the dangers of facial recognition software, harming queer people through exposure and misclassification. gait recognition in order to understand the linkages between queer people and gait recognition technology, one must first understand the scope of the technology: what it is, how it’s done, and where it’s used. biometric security researchers mason et al. (2016) define gait biometric technology as “extracting and measuring unique and distinctive patterns from human locomotion” typically through video cameras, smartphones, and floor sensors (p. vii). as mason et al. (2016) point out, there is no “single measure that encompasses the full set of complex dynamics reflecting what we consider to be the human gait,” so instead, machine learning algorithms extract certain features by which an individual’s gait can be verified or identified (p. 9). essentially, gait recognition technology offers a way to decipher who an individual is based on specific components of their style of movement. the chinese company watrix made headlines when police in shanghai and beijing began using their gait recognition devices to enhance surveillance systems. watrix, which has raised $14.5 million in funding, is one of the first ventures to commercialize gait recognition (kang, 2018). fst biometrics, an israeli gait recognition firm, shut down over technical difficulties and corporate infighting, and most other gait recognition development has been government-directed or purely academic (kang, 2018). watrix’s software maintains a 94 percent accuracy rate in identification, acting as a backup to facial recognition which requires close range (kang, 2018). the company advertises its commercially-available device shui di shen jian (水滴神鉴) as being capable of finding a suspect in cctv footage after being fed a clip of the target walking (“shui,” n.d.). gait recognition has certainly not proliferated in the same capacity that facial recognition has, but the overwhelming outlook on the innovation is that it can complement pre-existing facial recognition systems. computer vision researchers do et al. (2020) claim that gait technology is preferable to other recognition software because gait is capturable from a distance, difficult to forge, and unreliant on the cooperation of the target. many of these attributes stand out because they are not possible with facial recognition software, which for the most part, needs up-close shots or high-quality resolutions. considering that facial recognition is already used by the fbi on dmv photos, customs and border protection in airports, and city police departments like that of baltimore, it is likely that the proliferation of gait recognition is not so far-off (ghaffary and molla, 2019). it is therefore imperative to examine gait recognition technology’s propensity to harm queer citizens, given its increasingly relevant role in surveillance. before the machine: gait as a social indicator before delving into mechanized understandings of queerness through gait recognition, one must consider the relationship between gait and queerness in entirely social settings. separate from recent innovations in gait biometrics, gait functions as a social indicator of sexuality and gender. professor of communication and psychology kerri johnson investigates how humans measure gender and sexual orientation through gait. in summarizing the work of prior social psychologists, she advances that gender is socially inferrable based on features like “swaying hips” and “swaggering shoulders” (johnson, 2007, p. 323). johnson (2007) furthers this argument by hypothesizing that “gender typicality” with regard to “body shape and body motion” contribute to determinations of sexual orientation by perceivers (p. 331). looking at both artificial models and real human walking patterns, subjects of her study confirmed this hypothesis; they deciphered sexual orientation by referring to how much a person’s (or a 3d model’s) gait adheres to gendered expectations of their movement. in “deliberate changes to gendered body motion influence basic social perceptions,” lick et al. (2013) build on johnson’s research by claiming that individuals, particularly queer people, may actively alter locomotion to exploit social assumptions. according to lick et al. (2013), “deliberate modifications of gendered body motions” can affect the “basic perceptions of sex and sexual orientation” surmised by an observer, appending a layer of performance to johnson’s hypothesis (p. 669). lick et al. (2013) add that gay and lesbian subjects were particularly adept at this sort of gait performance, which they speculate arises from practice in social settings requiring such an obfuscation of identity (p. 669). through portrayals of gait and observations of observers, johnson and lick et al. give traction to the idea that queerness is socially inferred from motion. this cultural understanding of sexuality-specific and gendered movement is prevalent outside of psychology. gay twitter users have popularized and humorized the trope that gay men universally share the trait of speed walking (staples, 2019). one such tweet with almost sixthousand retweets jokes, “straight people, look behind you, chances are there's a gay person trying to get past because you're moving at an extremely glacial pace” (@heydejan, 2019). there are also historic counterparts to these stereotypes of gay movement, which are neither reclamatory nor humorous. pseudo-scientific studies of homosexuality in the late 1930s and early 1940s attempted to pin down the physiognomy of gay men through references to their locomotion (lvovsky, 2015, p. 66). in sex variants: a study of homosexual patterns, psychiatrist george henry (1941) noted the gay man’s “prim, affected gait” and “uncertain, mincing steps” (p. 283). these supposedly scientifically-backed notions of identification and signals emboldened post-prohibition authorities to identify and crackdown upon bars that served gay customers (lvovsky, 2015, p. 105). in 1940, investigator william wickes discerned that the clientele of the gloria bar & grill in new york were gay based on “a very graceful motion” of their hands and “a swaying movement of their hips” which one might call “a swish in show parlance” (lvovsky, 2015, p. 107). from the early twentieth century to modern internet communities, cultural dialogues have given weight to the existence of a gay stride, whether it be for comic or violent means. the veracity of gait being an indicator for gender and sexuality might be disputable, but it is perhaps less important than the fact that the general public assumes it to be so. assumptions of gender in gait recognition development moving from human and cultural perception to computer vision, gait recognition technology attempts to both identify an individual and classify sets of individuals into categories. one area of active development is gender classification, which would enable users to assess the gender of any people in motion captured by cameras or other monitors. by analyzing the development of this software, we can ascertain assumptions of gender that underlie gait recognition. a core assumption made by software developers and computational researchers is that gender is binary. this prevailing notion underpins their methodologies, as they train models to sort data points on motion as either male or female. in “real-time and robust multiple-view gender classification using gait features in video surveillance,” computer vision researchers do et al. (2020) present a gait recognition model for gender classification in real-time, using surveillance footage. in sharp contrast to johnson and lick, little room is given in do et al.’s (2020) work to atypical gender locomotion, because as they clarify, “gender classification is a binary classification task” (406). do et al. are not alone in this belief. at the 12th iapr international conference on biometrics, held in 2019, ten teams entered a competition to estimate an individual’s age and gender through wearable sensors attached to a waist-belt or a backpack (ahad et al., 2020). teams attempted to extract statistical features from the sensors which they then utilized to develop gender classification methods (ahad et al., 2020). to arrive at classifiers, they employed a variety of deep learning methods like bi-directional long shortterm memory, temporal convolutional networks, and convolutional neural networks (ahad et al., 2020). one team relied on “a linear function to generate a continuous output for age estimation” but switched to “different non-linear activation functions to deal with the binary classification problem” of gender estimation (ahad et al., 2020, p. 14). while age receives a spectrum, modeled through a continuous line, gender is reduced to a here-or-there approach. another team created three algorithms, then for their fourth took “an average of the first three predictions” and marked an individual as a man if the average exceeded 0.5 (ahad et al., 2020, p. 15). none of the competitors accommodate non-binary, agender, or genderqueer subjects, because as the aforementioned team exemplifies, the gender models recognize above 0.5 or below 0.5 and nothing in between. gait recognition write-ups and studies are also fraught with assumptions of stability in gender cues from motion. do et al. (2020) assert that “mimicking the gait of other people is difficult” which bolsters the value of their observations (p. 400). huang yongzhen, the ceo of watrix, claims that “gait analysis can’t be fooled by simply limping, walking with splayed feet or hunching over, because we’re analyzing all the features of an entire body” (kang, 2018, para. 4). the implication in these statements is that gait is irreplicable and entirely unique to an individual, but this defies the notion established by lick et al. that the gait of an individual may be transient or context-sensitive. in attempts to individualize a static characteristic, automated gait recognition loses sight of the dynamism involved in human gait. thinking through gaitbased gender classifiers using lick et al.’s research problematizes its methodology and goals, because surveillance cannot tell what’s legitimate from what’s performance, if there even is such a thing as a legitimate gait, nor can it pick up on changes in gait from a multitude of contextual factors. the final component that problematizes gait technology’s treatment of gender is its baseline data. in “raw data” is an oxymoron, lisa gitelman and virginia jackson (2013) suggest that “data garner immanence in the circumstances of their imagination,” meaning data support conclusions precisely because of the conclusions regarding the importance of data (p. 3). gitelman and jackson (2013) propose that, despite data’s reputation of objectivity, the standards of data manipulation (collection, scrubbing, mining, interpretation, etc.) within a field govern its meaning and its capacity to substantiate claims. in the realm of biometric recognition, datasets of human beings (their faces or their motion) form the basis of machine learning algorithms, which thereby recognize and categorize the faces and movements of humans outside the dataset. in their examination of facial databases underpinning gender classification technologies, wu et al. (2020) find that benchmark databases exhibit inequality in racial and gendered representation. they also underscore facial recognition systems’ incapacity to recognize those who don’t conform to normative genders, and in response, developed a gender-inclusive dataset that trained their model to classify non-binary faces with 91.97 percent accuracy (wu et al., 2020). the central point of the exercise was that facial recognition systems can augment accommodation of gender minorities by actively constructing inclusive databases. among gait recognition researchers, the preferred database is the casia gait database developed by the institute of automation, chinese academy of sciences. the benchmark dataset contains 13,640 gait sequences gathered from 124 participants, 93 of which are men, 31 of which are women, and none of which identify as non-binary (martín-felez et al., 2010). to address this inequality in representation, martín-felez et al. (2010) claim that most studies on gait gender classification “have avoided dealing with its imbalanced nature by using reduced balanced subsets” (p. 443). resultantly, researchers must whittle down an already small sample size, allowing for 31 men and 31 women to dictate the nature of their classifiers. it is in these miniature sample sizes that machines modeled off of the majority fail in the face of queerness. gait recognition technology is therefore poised to repeat the mistakes of facial recognition, but its results may even be worsened given the comparative availability between images of faces and videos of movement. gait recognition at scale and in use: threats to queer citizens so far, i have previewed the risk of gait recognition by taking a design-side approach, but the software’s detrimental effects on queer people are best understood by taking into account its implementation in the real world. in other words, the ways in which this technology actively undermines queer citizens is only visible when seeing and imagining how surveillance technology performs in practice––installed in street corners, checkpoints, or commercial venues. the potential injurious consequences of this widespread adoption to queer citizens can be understood in two ways. first, gait recognition technology might be accurate in assessments of sexual orientation, unveiling an attribute that is otherwise not immediately visible. second, gait recognition can misread queer people, making public life less hospitable towards their identity. given that psychologists like johnson and lick et al. have buttressed the idea that queerness is visible through movement, gait recognition could similarly target the features they ascribe to lgbtq subjects. this possibility––that queer citizens could be detected and tracked in public settings––raises a host of ethical concerns. debate over these ethical implications came alive when, in 2017, stanford organizational behavior professor michal kosinski and yilun wang, a graduate student, developed an artificial intelligence program capable of detecting gay men and lesbian women with 81 and 71 percent accuracy respectively (murphy, 2017). the researchers employed “deep neural networks” on “35,326 facial images” gathered from dating apps, where profiles self-identified their sexual orientations, forming what the new york times called an “a.i. gaydar” (wang and kosinski, 2018, p. 2) (murphy, 2017). the study drew ire from lgbtq advocacy organizations glaad and the human rights campaign, who criticized the study’s exclusively white sample and reduced the research to a description of “beauty standards on dating sites that ignores huge segments of the lgbtq community” (“glaad,” para. 2). they further that the study invokes a potential harm to “both heterosexuals who are inaccurately outed, as well as gay and lesbian people who are in situations where coming out is dangerous” (“glaad,” para. 3). if gait technologies enable an explicit or implicit tracking of queer populations (which johnson and lick et al.’s research suggest they could), they would entail the consequences of kosinski and wang’s defunct prototype, bringing forth the identities of the surveilled and endangering them in the process. misclassification and failures in gait recognition pose another unique threat to lgbtq people, particularly gender minorities. a team of information science researchers at the university of colorado, led by morgan scheuerman, examined how computer vision services for gender classification and gender labeling handle cases of gender diversity. the team found that services provided by ibm, amazon, microsoft and clarifai misidentified pictures of trans men as women 29.5 percent of the time and pictures of trans women as men 12.7 percent of the time (scheuerman et al., 2019). conversely, cisgender women had an accuracy rate of 98.3 percent and cisgender men received correct classifiers 97.6 percent of the time (scheuerman et al., 2019). none of the commercially-available facial analysis services enable non-binary categorization, meaning agender and non-binary subjects were always misrecognized (scheuerman et al., 2019). once again, these risks of visual recognition translate to identifying people’s motion. as aforementioned, the models for gender classification through gait recognition rely on binary assignments, and are therefore prone to perpetuate the mistakes of facial recognition in misidentifying non-binary people. likewise, trans people will continue to be vulnerable under gait recognition software for the same reasons they are under facial recognition: limited samples that tend to the cisgender majority are used to construct models. these slip-ups propagate hostile environments; for instance, because of misidentification, trans people face “invasive body searches or harassment if their id does not match their gender” (millar, 2019, para. 9). hence, gait recognition software, by lacking nuance in its analysis of gender, can promote hostility in the public spaces that it occupies. the sites of surveillance, which tend to be securitized zones, are also critical in understanding the dormant danger of gait biometrics for queer citizens. with regard to police departments, law enforcement has a history of hostility towards lgbtq citizens which persists today. a report by ucla’s williams institute on law enforcement’s mistreatment of lgbtq americans summarizes the historical criminalization of queerness by pointing to bar raids (like the aforementioned one at the gloria bar & grill) which spurred the stonewall riots and antisodomy laws enforced by police (mallory et al., 2015). the report goes on to cite a 2013 survey of lgbt violence survivors wherein 48 percent reported experiences of police misconduct as well as a 2011 survey of trans americans where 22 percent reported harassment from law enforcement (mallory et al., 2015). notably, up until its repeal in february 2021, a 1976 law known as the “walking while trans” ban in new york city allowed for the profiling of trans women by conflating them with prostitutes based on their attire or “innocuous” behavior (mckinley and ferré-sadurní, 2021, para. 17). as gait recognition technology identifies irregularity in gendered movement, it may open the door for targeted enforcement against queer people, who already face disproportionate persecution from police. in essence, algorithms run with surveillance footage take the place of profiling officers. the tsa, one of the earliest adoptees of facial recognition technologies in the united states, has also historically harassed and invalidated trans people. toby beauchamp (2009) writes that in the wake of 9/11, the adoption of the real id act subjected trans people to more frequent stops at airport security given mismatches in listed genders on their various forms of identification. moreover, beauchamp (2009) references a 2003 dhs advisory, which reads “male bombers may dress as females in order to discourage scrutiny,” ultimately conveying that non-normative gender presentations represent a security threat to the state (p. 356). in securitizing gender: identity, biometrics, and transgender bodies at the airport, paisley currah and tara mulqueen (2011) further that the rise in whole body scanners at airports has heightened the scrutiny of trans bodies, requiring trans travelers to “contort their gendered selves to appear as conventionally gendered as possible at the airport” (p. 573). implementation of gait technology would amplify such dysphoria-inducing and mobility-restraining encounters, flagging travelers whose styles of locomotion don’t comport with normative expectations. conclusion in light of its flaws in methodology, its probable expansion, and its deployment in security settings, gait recognition carries significant consequences for queer people, be it through misrecognition or targeted identification. whether or not governments will heed the warnings of queer rights organizations remains unknown. at any rate, gait recognition technology invigorates an age-old debate weighing security solutions against their implications for queer citizens. in that same manner, machine learning amplifies and exposes the shortsightedness of its creators, demonstrating that without an eye for inclusion, technology can reify systems of oppression. references ahad, m. a. r., ngo, t. t., antar, a. d., ahmed, m., hossain, t., muramatsu, d., makihara, y., inoue, s., & yagi, y. 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(2020). gender classification and bias mitigation in facial images. 12th acm conference on web science, 106–114. https://doi.org/10.1145/3394231.3397900 https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000098 https://doi.org/10.1145/3394231.3397900 document 19 – edits.docx boy dancers and men on horses post-colonial identity and gender policy in modern kazakhstan and uzbekistan tzav harrel, mount holyoke college ’24 abstract: this paper addresses the interactions between the process of constructing national identity in kazakhstan and uzbekistan and contemporary gender policy in both states. despite trying to establish unique post-soviet and anti-colonial national identities, modern politicians are forced to use the borders, identities, and narratives manufactured by the soviet union, creating historical dis/continuities and blurring the line between pre-colonial, soviet, and post-soviet in each of the republics. both countries have turned to their history of islam to make up a central part of their self-image, and modern discourses around lgbtq rights often use a dichotomy between “western” and “muslim” to justify their positions. however, strategies for ignoring queerness and social “deviance” in central asian cultural heritage have more similarities to soviet practice than wholly religious influence. for these central asian republics, identity construction cannot truly rely on an idea of a “pre-soviet” uzbekistan or kazakhstan. in their attempts to build independent, unified national identities in the void left by the fall of the soviet union, politicians and civilians find themselves (intentionally or unintentionally) unable to create an image of their pre-colonial history without relying on the definitions generated by the soviet colonial project — and lgbtq individuals and communities in both countries are taking the hit. introduction in 2015, influenced by the growing global popularity of k-pop music and industry, kazakh boys group ninety one debuted with what would soon be dubbed “q-pop,” referencing the new romanization of kazakhstan as qazaqstan (danabayev et al. 2021). with aesthetic presentation typical of the k-pop genre, including “dyed hair, pastel-colored clothes, accessories such as earrings and flexible dance moves,” the group enraged traditionalists in the country who saw the band as an affront to kazakh masculinity — which should instead be exemplified by “brave heroes riding on horses,” (kabylova 2022). a large number of protests broke out in cities where ninety one was set to play concerts, and the events had to be canceled. this outcry from the traditionalist sect of kazakhstani society represents a larger tension between national identity and heritage, and a globalizing world. in kazakhstan, like in many other countries around the world, lgbtq rights and recognition are a major field upon which this battle is taking place. this paper addresses the interactions between the process of constructing national identity in kazakhstan and uzbekistan and contemporary gender policy in both states. in a lot of ways, these countries mimic the same post-colonial nation building strategies as their post-soviet peers: georgia and ukraine both turned to their respective national churches after the fall to find an anti-colonial (anti-russia) method of national identification, and polish catholicism continued to be a part of independent polish identity even after the success of the solidarity movement (shevtsova 2023). uzbekistan and kazakhstan have both turned toward their respective populations’ muslim histories, even as both nations also try to maintain an official policy of secularity and separation of church and state. out of fear of islamic extremism, such as that of the taliban which has taken over control in nearby afghanistan, both states have placed grave importance on defining acceptable and unacceptable forms of islam. acceptable islam is usually considered as such through the label of “traditional” islam, in reference to historical cultural practices of islam in daily life for the titular populations of each country. the result is the drawing of very hard lines by government policy around what is and is not kazakhstani or uzbekistani behavior in all parts of life. just as skinny jeans meant an affront to the horse-riding ancestors of the kazakh people, hijabs are not allowed in schools in uzbekistan, and girls must instead wear a style of veil that the government has decided has more associations with uzbek cultural traditions (“uzbekistan: hijabs may be worn, but not in schools”). uzbekistan and kazakhstan, like their central asian neighbors, are post-soviet muslim-majority countries where ethnicity and religion are conceptualized as interlinked. uzbeks and kazakhs are imagined to be “de facto muslims” by their own communities (peyrouse 2004). therefore, both governments have used this level of homogeneity as the basis for social unity in their postcolonial contexts. both maintained their respective communist party leadership after the fall of the soviet union, turning those same politicians into the presidents and representatives of their new, independent nations. they are presently developing programs to increase english language education in their countries: the trilingual country project in kazakhstan and the english-speaking nation project in uzbekistan. while independent uzbekistan maintained the soviet law criminalizing homosexuality, kazakhstan decriminalized homosexual relations in 1998, though it has failed to pass any other supporting legislation. i use both countries as points of comparison for the other, as well as to demonstrate that neither is entirely unique in its relation to soviet colonialism. it is easy to assume that the essential piece in understanding the difference in policies between the two countries is a conflict between “western” and “muslim” values – especially when focusing on lgbtq rights and liberties. and indeed, there are times when politicians and residents of uzbekistan and kazakhstan invest in the dichotomy to justify a prejudicial system. however, the machinations behind the present status of gender policy in both countries is made up of their histories with islam as much as it is their histories with the soviet union — but they are also more than the sum of these parts. through an understanding of these nations as postcolonial actors, i want to resist the popular urge to identify nations as regressive or backwards and/or in need of a westernizing, modernizing mission. this is particularly important for audiences in the united states, which is consistently invested in juxtaposing ‘western’ ideas with muslim ones. as this paper attempts to contribute to the growing field at the intersection of nationalism and sexuality, it is important to be intentional not to use lgbtq rights as a “hegemonic and ‘orientalising’ manifestation of power relations between the ‘west’ and ‘the rest of the world’” (kulpa 2004). this remains true despite, or indeed because of, the ways that homophobia and transphobia in the region is “rooted in nationalism and propelled by anti-western anti-imperialist sentiments,” (wiedlack 2023). it is important to note that there are far fewer sources about uzbekistan than kazakhstan because the former has been, since the 1990s, much more closed off to foreign researchers and has tighter control over its internet and media. although there have been more openings in recent years, we are still seeing the effects of the closed-off period in the lack of literature concerning uzbekistani society. historical context although it was tsarist russia that first made colonial claims to the region of central asia, it wasn’t until the soviet era that russia concerned itself with most facets of daily life. during the soviet era, soviet administrators saw themselves as “bearers of modern european cultural norms” on what was more or less an imperial civilizing mission in the classical sense (northrop 2004). distinct from the strategies of other western colonial powers, however, was the soviet goal of making central asians into soviet citizens — images of the new soviet man and woman, rather than colonial subjects. through government initiatives, education, and other linguistic and cultural interventions, the central asian republics would turn from colonial acquisitions into centers of soviet citizenship in their own right. the orientalist image of the east as backward, incorrect, and in need of western assistance was similar, but the image of success was quite distinct from other colonial relations. the soviet union drew borders between the nations of kazakhstan, uzbekistan, tajikistan, kyrgyzstan, and turkmenistan with focus on centers of different ethnic populations. the borders were not entirely without basis, but were largely arbitrary — there are tajik-majority cities in uzbekistan, uzbek-majority cities in kazakhstan and so forth. central asia was not considered a complete monolith — the government in each republic focused on the “un-soviet” traits of their identified ethnic group. despite stalin’s general policies of ignoring women’s issues in most of the soviet union, women’s councils, or zhenotdel, were permitted to remain in place in central asia due to their islamic histories and cultural practices (northrop 2004). in uzbekistan, the focus became culturally specific practices of veiling and seclusion for women. in kazakhstan, the soviet administration identified sedentarization through collective farms, rather any specific gendered practice, as a more pertinent goal – though they still targeted, policed, and restricted islamic practice in the name of gender equality (kane and gorbenko 2016). in uzbekistan, soviets found that uzbeks by and large did not identify themselves with the class position of the proletariat. unable to assert the use of socialist analysis to a population who did not see themselves as an oppressed worker class, regional administrators turned to women as an underclass and “surrogate proletariat” (northrop 2004). they outlawed practices such as polygyny, brideprice, forced marriage, and female seclusion. however, they were fixated on the visibility of the veil as a symbol of the repression and backwardness of islam and uzbek culture and arranged multiple mass de-veiling events known collectively as hujum, or an attack on the old ways. counter to soviet goals, though, making the head-to-toe paranji the image of uzbek backwardness also constructed it as a symbol of resistance to soviet intervention for the uzbek public. for uzbek women, “wearing a veil became more than a narrowly religious or moral matter; for many people it also became an act of political and national resistance to an outside colonial power,” (northrop 2004). women who did not veil could face mob justice that saw punishing them (as far as murdering them) as a form of resistance to soviet colonialism. paradoxically, the paranji was not common practice before the soviet union took up arms against the veil. by establishing it as the antithesis of soviet citizenship in uzbekistan, however, they inadvertently popularized the veil, fundamentally changing the fabric and content of uzbek national and ethnic identity. as previously mentioned, the veil in kazakhstan was never problematized by the soviet union en masse as it was in uzbekistan. instead, the government placed more emphasis on settling citizens on collective farms, considering this to be the characteristic non-soviet trait of kazakh cultural practice. the process was deeply traumatic on a national and generational scale; 90% of all cattle died, and the ensuing massive famines are considered genocide by kazakh historians (kane and gorbenko 2016). as a result, millions of kazakhs died or emigrated, and the newly vacant lands were promoted for resettlement by other citizens of the soviet union by stalin’s government. these attacks on nomadism “generated a collective consciousness of being colonized” that differed greatly from uzbek identification with certain aspects of islamic practice (kane and gorbenko 2016). they also dissolved existing kazakh social structures. ties that used to be built around regional and kinship bonds were now torn apart and replaced with individual connections, fundamentally changing how kazakhs related to themselves and their communities. during the soviet era, for example, kazakhstan had the greatest rate of interethnic marriage of all the central asian republics, largely due to the large-scale immigration of europeans in combination with the decimated indigenous kazakh population. although sedentarization policies were motivated primarily by collectivization goals, the transformation of the previously existing social fabric resulted in changes to attitudes around family and relationships. contemporary lgbtq policy understanding the above differences in how islam was practiced before the soviet union and how it was treated during soviet rule is necessary to understand differences between the present conditions for lgbtq communities between uzbekistan and kazakhstan. while uzbekistan has maintained the soviet law criminalizing both forced and consensual homosexual relations between men, kazakhstan decriminalized same-sex relations in 1998 but still lacks any anti-discrimination or protective legislation. medical and legal gender transition is possible in kazakhstan, although the law is very restrictive; citizens 21 and older seeking changes to the identity on their official documents must submit themselves to 30 days in a psychiatric facility for observation by a list of specialists, deemed relevant by the government, to determine if they will undergo hormone therapy (dairova 2021). undergoing hormone therapy and forced sterilization are legally mandated before they can apply to a government commission that ultimately decides if they can make the necessary changes to their name and sex markers. in 2020, the government added a time limit of six months to this final part of the process, which has sped up the process somewhat (dairova 2021). on the other hand, as with their laws on homosexuality, uzbekistan has maintained soviet-era laws that allow legal and medical sex changes under psychiatric evaluation and recommendation. although this seems similar to kazakhstan’s process in concept, getting through the necessary steps is much less clear and more difficult to accomplish because the law is antiquated and the officials who theoretically are in charge of the process are unfamiliar with it due to disuse (mirovalev 2023). additionally, in kazakhstan, where lgbtq rights groups are permitted to exist, activists play a large role in getting transgender citizens through the system, helping them find doctors and sympathetic officials, and providing general support and direction that would be impossible in uzbekistan (sekerbayeva 2022). nationalism, religion, and anti-lgbtq sentiment in uzbekistan in de-centering western sexualities, robert kulpa elaborates the use of time in national narratives; as these countries try to establish themselves as independent entities, “the present is a way to achieve a ‘golden future’, when the ‘golden past’ will be reinstalled anew” (kulpa 2014). kulpa refers here to the common use of an idealized version of a nation’s history to justify policy in the present that will in turn determine the future. although kulpa was writing about central and eastern european post-socialist countries, kazakhstan and uzbekistan clearly mimic similar strategies in their conflation of religious, nationalist, and heterosexist discourses. uzbekistan “capitalized on the cultural symbolism of islam” and has incorporated it into the grouping of characteristics the government has selected as sufficiently uzbekistani (lenz-raymann 183). relying on this association, the government actively takes the position that “same-sex desire is incompatible with islamic and uzbek traditional values,” (airpova 2022). a dichotomy is constructed, with uzbekness and islam on one side, and the west and non-heterosexual ways of being on the other. in this way, modern uzbek homophobia imitates russian styles of homophobia, with its own law similar to the notorious russian law prohibiting education on non-heterosexual identities for minors. mirziyoyev, the current president of uzbekistan who was elected in 2016 as the second ever president of an independent uzbekistan, has told the united nations directly that he will not decriminalize homosexuality because doing so is “irrelevant” to uzbek society. the “absence of any discourse of same-sex desire under soviet rule” continues in uzbekistan through official and unofficial policy (aripova 2022). here there appears a specific colonial irony in the relationship between post-soviet uzbek nationalism and discourses around lgbtq people that is unique to uzbekistan. identity-building in the post-soviet era has relied on rejecting “soviet-ness” as a marker of colonial history and turning to “pre-soviet national heritage,” yet it was the soviet union that first criminalized homosexuality in uzbekistan (yemelianova 2014) (aripova 2022). although the indigenous islamic jadid movement from the end of the tsarist and beginning of the soviet period also denounced same-sex acts, that was a position that was fundamentally contrary to the wider social conditions in the area, where same-sex male relations were common (aripova 2022). the area that is now uzbekistan had a long history of bachi, or boy dancers, who would dress in feminine clothing and perform for an all-male audience, with whom they would sometimes have sexual or romantic relations. despite this widespread evidence of pre-revolutionary same-sex desire, the post-colonial government of uzbekistan looks to the version of its history that was written during its colonial era to determine what it defines as anti-colonial positioning. this “top-down homophobia” uses a false image of “traditional values” that mimics foreign muslim and russian patriarchal and heteronormative orders to construct an ethnic and national identity that is removed from the country’s pre-colonial past (aripova 2022). russia first set about eliminating homosexual practices in the country to impose what they believed to be europeanness — yet now, it is queer and transgender identities that are constructed as a form of westernization. the government of uzbekistan, constituted by the same politicians it had before the dissolution of the ussr, still ultimately identifies itself as adjacent to russia in some respects, which is clear here. the image of uzbekistan utilized by policy creators in the country was developed through soviet education, which erased any mentions of homosexuality in uzbek religious and cultural practice. therefore, “russian” no longer bears the marker of “western,” and a wide swath of policies that used to be considered impositions of soviet colonialism are now accepted parts of culture and politics in uzbekistan. access to uzbekistan’s pre-colonial history is prevented by the impacts and transformations of soviet society and policy — past, present, and future “collapse” on top of each other, and only certain histories that serve the purposes of the state can become canonized (kulpa 2012). national identity, religion, and silence in kazakhstani lgbtq discourse for all that legislation is more open in kazakhstan concerning lgbtq identities, the nationalist focus on preserving traditions from pre-soviet times and transferring them into modern kazakhstani lives — similar to uzbekistan’s strategies — continues to reject expansive understandings of gender or sexuality. the versions of morality and tradition that the government promotes “confirm the supremacy of specific ethnic traditions and norms,” especially regarding family-related discourse, establishing a “hierarchy of gendered behaviors” that punishes deviant sexual and gender expressions (arystanbek 2021). although kazakhstan has no required sexual education courses, they do have a state-approved program that acts as a tool to teach children how to have moral and healthy relationships, referencing national culture as the ultimate truth. the textbook uses silence to erase non-heterosexual relationships and desire and implicitly establish them as deviant, all with the lens of preserving culture and history (levitanus 2022). the governing politicians of kazakhstan usually play into its multi-ethnic history and present, but the image of morality that is presented in these textbooks clearly uses conceptions of kazakh norms as a point of reference. another dynamic in the treatment of lgbtq kazakhstanis is that of uyat, which uses a sense of dedication to the community, the state, and their values to motivate punishing those who step out of line with shaming (thibault and caron 2022). globalization and urbanization in kazakhstan have reduced the frequency with which kazakhstanis generally allow uyat to impact their opinions and actions, but talking about sexual matters, including alternative sexualities and relationships, remains taboo (thibault and caron 2022). this too is connected to nationalist discourses, which perceive the kazakh language as too pure to be used to talk about such subjects. in fact, when conversations about sex and sexuality are had, they are overwhelmingly held in russian rather than kazakh (levanitus 2022). this is especially important to note because of the popularity of russian television and internet in kazakhstan, which allows for homophobic russian discourses to play a large part in kazakh conversations concerning the issue. there is also a significant holdover from soviet rhetoric around homosexuality and gender deviance. in her interviews with queer and transgender kazakhs, mariya levitanus found that many of them named the source of the silence around lgbtq existence in kazakhstan to be soviet attitudes and policy. levitanus posits that both uyat-imposed silence and soviet cultural values of silence surrounding sex may be building on each other to create the complications of non-heteronormative life in kazakhstan (levitanus 2022). kazakhstan, like its neighbors, maintains islam as an essential part of national identity and uses it as a tool in the post-soviet context. although uzbekistan is more repressive in their policies toward “non-traditional” islam, both countries share similar religious regulation strategies with muftiates and government boards that work closely together. just after independence, every major party in kazakhstan cited islam as an “integral component of the kazakh nation” (yemelianova 2014). kazakhstan had its own islamic revival after independence, and it would be false to say that religious leadership within the country does not impact social opinion. the head of the muftiate, which controls all the official registered mosques in the country, declared homosexuality and bisexuality one of the greatest sins a person can commit (sekerbayeva 8). in total, the superimposition of soviet and muslim narratives of kazakh/stani history has removed any room for sexual and gender deviance and manufactures the perception of kazakhstan as a particularly virtuous nation, within which conversations about things such as sex should not be discussed (thibault and caron 2022). in the process, the nation inevitably reconstructs the same discourses (or lack thereof) that existed during the soviet epoch. in trying to form a future around a specifically selected image of the past, the country exists instead in a state of dis/continuity, constantly undergoing transition and yet also static in the versions of themselves that existed up to a century ago. here, the line between colonial and postcolonial becomes blurred. conclusion the intersection of religion, nation, and lgbtq rights in the post-soviet context is unique, but it ultimately has the power to tell us more about what “nation” is, what it means, and what it does. i intend this piece to be in conversation with works such as maryna shevtsova’s religion, nation, state, and anti-gender politics in georgia and ukraine which discusses the relationship between two countries with their own historical orthodox christian churches and how their pre-soviet and soviet histories have created contemporary conditions for anti-lgbtq and anti-feminist discourses. i expected similar conditions in central asia: countries with strong associations between ethnicity and religion forced into atheism during the soviet period rebound into religious identity in the absence of the ussr, even as they struggle to appease the international community with (neo)liberal gender policies. i was, to a certain extent, correct. however, i underestimated the impact that the artificial nature of the national borders in the area would play on this process. for the central asian republics, identity construction cannot rely on a true idea of a “pre-soviet” uzbekistan or kazakhstan. instead, modern politicians are forced to use the borders, identities, and histories constructed by the soviet union, creating dis/continuities and blurring the line between pre-colonial, soviet, and post-soviet in each of the republics. although tension between ideas of the “west” and islam in uzbekistan and kazakhstan is used to motivate conservative discourses, it is the propensity for silence instilled in 70 years of soviet control that drives the insistence that queerness and social deviance aren’t part of central asian cultural heritage rather than wholly religious influence. the region reveals the fragility of the theoretical division between soviet and post-soviet, acting as a living critique of “transition” as a paradigm for political and economic developments in post-socialist nations (gal and kilgman 2000). in their attempts to build independent, unified national identities in the void left by the fall of the soviet union, anti-colonial sentiments drive politicians to center their messaging on what their countries were before russia. yet, they find themselves (intentionally or unintentionally) unable to create an image of their pre-colonial history without relying on the identity definitions generated by the soviet colonial project — and lgbtq individuals and communities in both countries are taking the hit. new laws in russia declaring all lgbtq rights activism as anti-governmental terrorism will inevitably release a ripple effect on countries like those in central asia which still find themselves culturally, politically, and economically connected to the country. for all the contradictions in kazakhstani and uzbekistani policies and attitudes regarding russia, russian language media, news, and internet are significant players in national discourses for both countries. further research on the continuing interactions between nation, identity, religion, and history is more important than ever as we wait to see the potentially international impacts of this legislation. caution is necessary, however, to ensure that scholars, especially scholars from the global north and imperial core such as myself, do not attempt to fill these gaps in historical knowledge for the purpose of uncovering some truer version of the past. as tjasa kancler posits in their article “body politics, trans* imaginary, and decoloniality,” while it is worthwhile to challenge these national narratives that are often upheld at the expense of minority populations, forming a “new truth, which is coming from the past,” (kancler 2020) a better future must involve reinterpreting the past without relying on any single version of history on its own. instead, the map created through considering the intersections between different histories is the tool we need to deconstruct the impacts of colonial and imperial social, economic, and political structures. uzbekistan and kazakhstan are nations with many rich histories which may appear confusing and paradoxical without the full consideration of a decolonial lens. recognizing what is and is not “true” in the grand narratives of these countries is only useful insofar as it allows us to open our eyes to the impossibility of capturing the full scope of “truth” for any nation. references aripova, f. 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(2014). islam, national identity and politics in contemporary kazakhstan. asian ethnicity, 15(3), 286–301. https://doi.org/10.1080/14631369.2013.847643 https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1fxgjp https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-4328-7_6 https://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-uzbekistan-transgender-20160317-story.html https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctvrf8cpn https://doi.org/10.1080/0090599042000246433 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-4563-2 https://doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2022.2085581 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-4328-7 https://cabar.asia/en/uzbekistan-hijabs-may-be-worn-but-not-in-schools https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2023.2214886 https://doi.org/10.1080/14631369.2013.847643 “running with a crown on your head” heterotopic queer performances against the gay-bildungsroman hayden elrafei, dartmouth ’24 abstract: why was season one of netflix’s heartstopper (2021–present) such a prominent moment in lgbt television in 2022? what about heartstopper’s warm, feel-good plot draws us in, captivates us, and what is really behind the sense of longing it provokes? through analyzing of heartstopper vis-à-vis the traditional bildungsroman, and against another lgbt netflix show from the year prior, young royals (2021–present), the plot of heartstopper is revealed to be part of a larger liberal literary project: the gay-bildungsroman. in a comparative analysis of care, protection, property, and the foucauldian heterotopia, the affective mechanisms of the gaybildungsroman plot are exposed by a queer of color critique of these shows and their star couples. the netflix original series heartstopper (2022–present) took its position as the wholesome pre-pride lgbt cultural moment of 2022. following a predictable plot progression that has become the industry standard in lgbt popular media, heartstopper cashes in on a genre it has further solidified in its popularity and wide reception: a plot which i refer to as the gay-bildungsroman, a liberal transposition of the normative bildungsroman (coming-of-age novel) plotline onto lgbt narratives.1 to theorize the popular appeal and political stakes of this generic structure, i will analyze heartstopper against another netflix original series lgbt drama from the year prior, young royals (2021–present). through this comparison, i seek to find the slippages, shortcomings, and seductive assimilationist forces of the gay-bildungsroman in heartstopper through young royals’s inversion, convolution, and critique of the normative gay love story. powerful analytics arise in how this critique is made between the two shows: set in a boys’ school and a sex-segregated elite boarding school respectively, the plots of heartstopper and young royals are both endowed with the qualities of the foucauldian heterotopia, or “other space.” through a comparative analysis of the social relations between and around the series’ star couples, i investigate the heterotopic qualities of hillerska boarding school in young royals and their ability to subvert the form and expectations of the gay-bildungsroman genre. this relational analysis will shed light on the star couples’ dynamics of care, petting, and other classed and queer convolutions. it is important to consider the ends of the gay-bildungsroman as a political formation; the gay-bildungsroman inherits all the characteristics of a feel-good sentimentality of bildungsroman plots past. it is built on the original coming of age novel’s promise that the common person/reader can dream of accessing normative respectability, love, and/or a favorable social position. what distinguishes the genre of the gay-bildungsroman from its literary parent plot is that in preserving the feel-good sentimentality toward normative success and coming of age, it also gains a liberal, queer-assimilationist valence, one rife with identitarian ideals and politics of purity; the gay-bildungsroman may appear to be the simple transposition of the straight coming of age plot onto lgbt subjects, but in doing this, it pushes a homonormative agenda: the idea that queer liberation is realized through rubrics of straight citizenship. as the 19th century bildungsroman emanates forward onto present-day flesh, in this case the televisual, several analytic modes arise along the axes of performance studies, queer of color critique, and foucauldian theory. these analytics expose young royals’s subversion of the gay 1 to understand the precedent of the gay-bildungsroman and its generic structure, i recommend other pieces of 21st century lgbt media (by no means exhaustive): love, simon (2018), its hulu original spinoff love, victor (2020–present), or casey mcquinston’s 2019 ya novel red, white, and royal blue. bildungsroman as the genre has come to mark popular consciousness through a wide swath of media (such as film, television, streaming series, and young adult fiction, just to name a few). foucault (1986) describes the heterotopia as an “other space”—a space that is in fact real, but lives with a different set of governing structures—a space full of what the quotidian world would see as deviance or transgression, a place against which the quotidian—“normal”—world and its normative governing structures are articulated (p. 24). the boys’ school is a historically evident heterotopia in its altered sense of desire and homosocial norms, often seen in literature as a site of experimentation or otherwise-forbidden acts, what foucault calls a place for “the first manifestations of sexual virility [which] were in fact supposed to take place ‘elsewhere’ than at home” (foucault, 1986, p. 24). he cites the boarding school as an iteration of a crisis heterotopia: “privileged or sacred or forbidden places, reserved for individuals who are, in relation to society and to the human environment in which they live, in a state of crisis,” or, in my reading of these shows, queer becoming, subject formation (foucault, 1986, p. 24). heartstopper embraces the (homo)normative encounter between nick (kit connor), the “straight,” masculine, popular rugby star at truham grammar, and charlie (joe locke), the out, gay, feminine, nerdy art kid. in true gay-bildungsroman fashion, heartstopper’s plot takes a familiar shape: charlie falls in love with nick, crushed by the impossibility of their love. nick, catching an eye for charlie, goes on a journey to understand and label his bisexuality identity (to much of charlie’s emotional expense). the teleological aspect of this plot—the fact that it has a clear end which the entire narrative arcs toward—is what lends it the bildungsroman’s structure: despite social and familial pressures, nick is ultimately able to explore and label his sexual orientation, and they frolic on a beach in lovely gay infatuation with one another (oseman, 2022a). nick’s coming of age, then, is marked and measured by his ability to fit into and see himself within normative identitarian frameworks—being able to label his sexuality by a set, homogenous category or identity and then entering a relationship which will reinforce his masculine subject position. charlie’s coming of age is marked by “getting the boy”—by supporting and caring for nick through his crisis of sexual identity, charlie gains access to a normative relationship as well as nick’s petting, adoration, and protection, which acts as a marriage-like extension of nick’s social capital. in episode two, the viewer is let into nick and charlie’s instagram direct message exchange. as charlie describes issues he is having with his closeted ex, he praises nick: “thank you for being my supportive straight friend haha”—reading this affirmation of his straight masculinity, nick goes on to pledge his devotion to protecting charlie—by any means necessary. “if he ever comes near you again i’ll kick his ass”—charlie’s face is illuminated by the screen as he casts a wide, warm grin (oseman, 2022c, 1:39). as charlie reasserts nick’s heteromasculinity, nick casts a shield of protection over him, a dominating, violent, masculinist sense of defense—ownership—which conjures themes of sexual and heterosexist dominance. this is what i will call nick and charlie’s top/bottom dynamic—by transposing the heterosexist machinations of the marriage plot onto gay juvenility, charlie becomes a fleshy piece of private property: to be protected by nick, to be adored only by nick— to be, in a sense, owned by nick, protected in exchange for his cuteness and ability to care for nick as he explores and normatively labels his sexuality, all the time preserving nick’s masculine, adonis figure. this implicitly sexualized top/bottom dynamic is elucidated in dynamics of petting, property relation, and the marriage plot; through a later analysis of these dynamics, i will theorize the top/bottom dynamic as a key generic formation of the gaybildungsroman plot. narratively, the gay-bildungsroman also endows heartstopper with enough “wholesomeness” (read: politics of purity) and semblance to normative marriage that conceals this normative, implicitly sexualized relation and makes audiences—straight and gay—swoon with feelings of warmth and fulfillment with homonormative sentiment—“gays can have that too.” young royals also presents a gay romance plotline, but its setting and the star couple’s complicated relationality renders it an ill fit into the gay-bildungsroman genre. wilhelm, prince of sweden (edvin ryding), also known as wille, is sent to the elite hillerska boarding school following some trouble at his prior high school. simon (omar rudberg), a working-class, latino, mixed-race son of an immigrant mother finds himself at hillerska on scholarship, not boarding like the other students, veritably ostracized along the lines of class, race, ethnicity, and sexuality. he comes to hillerska with his sister, sara (frida argento), who faced bullying at their previous public school over her neurodivergence. in wille and simon’s relationship, young royals troubles notions of a top/bottom dynamic between wille and simon—transgressions against the generic cast and structure of the gay-bildungsroman cause slippages in this binary opposition. young royals initiates this by inverting heartstopper’s direction of desire: it is wille—the young, powerful, and masculine adonis—who falls in love with the out, reserved, and studious simon (ambjörn, 2021a). simon’s class consciousness leads him to disdain wille at first, but he is quickly seduced—not by wille’s power or by the social promise of a relationship with swedish royalty, but by what seems to be blind desire (ambjörn, 2021b). however, wille and simon’s relationship is forever altered halfway through the series, where wille’s older brother, the crown prince of sweden, suddenly dies in a car wreck (ambjörn, 2021c). the crown prince’s death destabilizes a future where wille and simon can have a romantic relationship. previously, his relationship with simon was perhaps possible or even liberally respectable in wille’s position as a lesser prince who did not need to have children to continue the royal bloodline; now, wille’s inherited crown demands him to conform strictly to the demands of a heteropatriarchal familial structure. while mourning his brother, wille must face the impossibility of his queer, anti-monarchical, anti-patriarchal desire. after a period of trying to push simon away in light of these new expectations, one night on an intense party drug trip stranded on a football field in bjärstad, wille telephonically confesses his love to simon. simon rushes to the field in the dead of night to care for wille and help him back to hillerska, and after wille sobers up the morning after, they proceed to have sex in wille’s dorm. passing outside the building, wille’s second cousin august (malte gårdinger) sees him in the heat of this intimate encounter. not knowing wille’s company was simon (or a boy at all, in fact), and in an attempt to embarrass wille, august begins to take a video—quickly realizing it was simon, he stops recording in shock (ambjörn, 2021d). later, in a fit of jealousy for wille’s monarchic power, august leaks the video from a school computer (ambjörn, 2021e). wille’s mother, the queen of sweden, forces him to publicly deny that it is him in the video, but this leaves simon devastated in the face of unrelenting media attention, as his face was clearly shown in the tape. after days of simon pushing wille away, they have an exchange where simon declares that he will not engage in the hidden relationship wille demands of him (ambjörn, 2021f). in contradistinction to the script of the gay-bildungsroman, simon refuses to take on the type of care labor which charlie takes on for a questioning nick in heartstopper. the season ends with the students leaving for christmas break, where wille offers simon a heartfelt farewell, and to the surprise of everyone around them, a tender embrace (ambjörn, 2021f). just from comparing the plots of the two shows, there are already major divergences in young royals’s from the gay-bildungsroman genre. in comparing the heterotopic qualities of heartstopper’s truham grammar high school and young royals’s hillerska boarding school, the star couples’ relationalities against each other, and their respective dynamics of care, young royals emerges as a critique or subversion of the gay-bildungsroman form.2 while truham grammar and hillerska certainly share some heterotopic qualities in their gender separation, their differing levels of class homogeneity are central to young royals’s inversion of the gaybildungsroman. in heartstopper, nothing is remarkably classed—all of them are depicted as broadly upper-middle class, removing class altogether from nick and charlie’s relationality (as class consciousness is antithetical to the liberal, assimilationist ends of the gay-bildungsroman). at hillerska, however—even before the addition of simon and sara—there is a class differential, albeit bourgeois; this is shown most boldly in a blue-blooded secret society composed of hillerska’s wealthiest men. “there are actually two criteria you need to become a member. you have to be of noble birth, and a first-born son. […] take per for instance, […] he owns 5,500 hectares outside of lund. and krille here, he owns 7,500. […] all of us have one thing in common. we are all equally loyal to the monarchy” (ambjörn, 2021d, 32:22). at hillerska, there is a distinction between the already-wealthy students and the most affluent economic figures of sweden, who all hold an additional degree of heteropatriarchal dominance. then come two critical additions: wilhelm, the now-crown prince, the hegemon-of-all-hegemons, who assumes his place at the very top of hillerska’s social-capital pyramid, with other students literally pledging their allegiance to the well-being of the monarchy as an initiation into an elite secret society (ambjörn, 2021d, 29:06). then along comes simon, the proletarian outlier: son of a latina immigrant working-class single mother, on scholarship, unable to pay the room and board cost. all the raced, classed—queer—nicks in young royals’s plot and cast accentuate hillerska’s heterotopic qualities. while wilhelm retains his social/economic capital within the walls of the boarding school, he is still subject to hillerska’s laws of being and becoming, such as his hazing, where he is bound, paraded about, and forced to drink the spit of his peers (ambjörn, 2021a). and while simon is presumably regarded on the rowing team as a complete equal, “the class journey personified” as august says, he is in a way excluded from these traditions along the line 2 if heartstopper is the formulaic gay-bildungsroman jane austen, young royals’s heterotopian elsewhere renders it a queer of color critique-steeped thomas hardy. of class because he is unable to live at hillerska (ambjörn, 2021b, 40:12).3 the most pertinent slippage in hillerska’s heterotopic structure manifests in the romantic space between wille and simon, a space of queer deviance which threatens both status quos: of monarchical and class dominance and of neoliberal myths of the model minority. in heartstopper, the economy of care is generically sound with the assimilationist guise of the gay-bildungsroman. charlie supports nick as he comes to terms with his sexual orientation, and in return, nick protects charlie from the rugby boys’ ridicule, his abusive closeted ex, and other bullying that predates their relationship (oseman, 2022b). after nick comes to terms with his bisexuality with charlie’s support, this economy takes the shape of a petting relation, a form of protection elicited from an object deemed cute in the dominant gaze: “cuteness […] is first of all a physical, affective response — a feeling we may refer to as the ‘aww’ factor […] to preserve a helpless, unthreatening object from harm” (dale, 2016, 5–6). with charlie as his cute object of adoration, protection, and preservation, nick takes him on as another piece of social capital, mere private property—to be owned, petted, and protected by nick and nick alone. for example, in episode seven, after nick invites charlie to the movies with his friends from the rugby team, harry (cormac hyde-corrin) begins to berate charlie for being gay—immediately going on the defensive, nick steps between them to protect charlie from this bullying (oseman, 2022b). minutes pass, and things come to a boil between harry and nick. “you can’t help wanting to protect him, can you?” harry taunts, “because he’s a pathetic little fag”—almost reflexively, nick punches harry in the face with all his force (oseman, 2022b, 8:58). nick’s violent devotion to charlie solidifies their petting relation as protector and protected respectively, conjuring the normative formation of top/bottom and reinforcing charlie’s characterization as nick’s adorable piece of private property. this dynamic of ownership/protection is sexualized by nick’s masculine aggression, the guttural affective response to his object of affection being disturbed, resulting in physical violence. this dominant relationality, the top/bottom dynamic, is instrumental to the gay-bildungsroman plot because it conjures into it the ownership dynamics of the marriage plot in the traditional bildungsroman, transposing its heterosexist logics of domination and private property onto the bodies of nick and charlie, presenting this scene as a heroic act of protection in the heat of passion. again, this relation translates the bildungsroman’s traditional marriage plot to the juvenile gay-bildungsroman: young audiences watching heartstopper are shown that this relationality is heartwarming and romantic, rather than heteromasculine and possessive, awwing them into subjugation. lgbt audiences are promised their chance to one day assimilate into this plot by virtue of following their heart, and straight audiences are promised that these same-sex relationships will not shake up the status quo: the public is enchanted by heartstopper’s 3 august patronizes simon in a study conversation, speaking to the liberal, colorblind ethos at hillerska: “this really is the best thing about rowing. it brings people together, it’s really wonderful, isn’t it? you know class, ethnicity, it doesn’t matter. everyone has the same chances” (ambjörn, 2021b, 23:15) homonormative, they’re-just-like-us-therefore-they-deserve-state-rights rhetoric. the classed and raced levelness between charlie and nick, working in tandem with truham grammar’s less imposing heterotopic qualities as a day school rather than a boarding school, allows for a more normative, recognizable, and legible pattern of care, in line with the gay-bildungsroman and its parent genre. but young royals has different plans for the affective register of its plot. in the power differential between wilhelm, crown prince of sweden and simon, there are layers of classed, raced, and gendered charges in their economy of care. young royals denies the petting and adoration of the gay-bildungsroman plot, and this denial is intensified by this power differential. for the greater part of the season, simon provides care for wille at every turn: smuggling alcohol for his initiation party, being there for him after the loss of his brother, and rescuing him from his harsh drug trip on the bjärstad soccer field, simon cares for wille under an expectation which is fundamentally classed and raced (ambjörn, 2021a, 2021d). a young, working-class, immigrant queer of color like simon should (according to the bildungsroman and its associated capitalist desire for simon to gain a more favorable social position) want to be with wille by any means necessary. simon should be happy caring for him despite wille’s refusal to disavow his monarchical power, despite how wille chooses this patriarchal and familial power over simon. instead, simon asserts his agency over the demands of the gay-bildungsroman in a tearful, cold, breathy scene, where wille shows up at simon’s house after days of silence: “i’m not asking you to [come out]. you just expect everything to be on your terms. […] you need to figure out what you want. and you can take all the time you need. and i respect that. … but you have to do it by yourself. … i don’t want to be anyone’s secret” (ambjörn, 2021f, 29:26). a component of heartstopper’s snug reception into the gay-bildungsroman genre comes in its rigid purity politics. as the star couple celebrates their 15th birthdays, they are instrumentalized; in the same fell swoop of corporate logic, netflix is able to preserve the respectability, purity, and non-sexual nature of the gay-bildungsroman plot while offering lgbt representation which adds to the show’s “heartwarming” affective register (oseman, 2022d). sweeping normative audiences off of their feet with its “wholesomeness,” heartstopper’s plot perpetuates the idea that lgbt media is obligated to be family friendly or “wholesome” in the name of respectability. “wholesomeness” on the lips of the audience is a derivative of “respectability,” “clean,” “pure,” “non-threating,” “apolitical.” if you take young royals, however, there is a critical lapse in wholesomeness; not only is there a depiction of a sexually intimate scene between wille and simon (who are around the same age of nick and charlie), but the show also deals with a video of said act being leaked globally. not only does this plot point deny the feel-good sentimentality in its largely somber story, but its inclusion also exposes the normative, corporate, and generic motives driving heartstopper’s age setting. the broken tie between onscreen abstinence and a feel-good ending becomes most apparent in young royals’s season one ending sequence—wille’s empty gaze over simon’s shoulder—caught, puzzled glances—a separated, dissociated, suffering gaze into the viewer (ambjörn, 2021f). young royals leads us to a critique of the gay-bildungsroman genre by leveraging the heterotopic qualities of hillerska boarding school. within the governing structures and social rules of hillerska, august found it acceptable to secretly record a video of a wille having sex from outside his window. the heterotopic permeability of the dorm building is what justifies august’s action; because students at hillerska often use the side windows to sneak in and out to avoid being reprimanded, this means it could have been anyone who recorded and posted the video, which emboldened him to post it online. in the moment, august was completely content in his actions, even giddy for the chance to make fun of his friend the crown prince, until he witnessed an act of queer transgression before him. but because of wilhelm’s actions and their incompatibility with heteropatriarchal monarchical power, and out of his own anger, august further decided to post this tape publicly on the internet—again, a situation wrought wholly from the heterotopic governing structures of hillerska boarding school. this heterotopic space sets the stage for the queer performances with which the gay-bildungsroman and its associated purity politics are undermined—wille and simon’s transgressive, queer love and august’s deviant performance against his dear cousin. the queer performances in young royals are shaped by the heterotopic governing structures of hillerska boarding school on several valences: in the performance of care, in the performance of queer transgression, and a larger structural performance against the liberal assimilationist ideals of the gay-bildungsroman genre. these performances critique respectively the intentionally classed and raced homogenous structure, purity politics, and gay-bildungsroman generic structure of the latest feel-good lgbt netflix obsession, heartstopper. this dialogue shows the stakes of heterotopic queer performances and their role in narratives of queer subject formation. in this case, heterotopic queer performances within the storyline of a netflix original series give rise to a critique of a gay-bildungsroman genre which upholds the long-withstanding, state-sponsored ideal of gay assimilation. the rule-bending nature of queer performance has always been apparent, but young royals’s heterotopic critique further pushes the boundaries of its analytic and critical potential. harnessing the power of one of foucault’s prime examples of the heterotopia, hillerska boarding school becomes a site of exploitative care, of juvenile queer deviance, of scandal—and most remarkably, of resistance against the idea that queer art owes the public a comforting, feel-good sensibility or a warm hug. references ambjörn, l., et. al. (writers). (2021a). episode 1 (season 1, episode 1) [tv series episode]. in l. beckung (executive producer), young royals. netflix. https://www.netflix.com/watch/81275468 ambjörn, l., et. al. (writers). (2021b). episode 2 (season 1, episode 2) [tv series episode]. in l. beckung (executive producer), young royals. netflix. https://www.netflix.com/watch/81275469 ambjörn, l., et. al. (writers). (2021c). episode 3 (season 1, episode 3) [tv series episode]. in l. beckung (executive producer), young royals. netflix. https://www.netflix.com/watch/81275470 ambjörn, l., et. al. (writers). (2021d). episode 4 (season 1, episode 4) [tv series episode]. in l. beckung (executive producer), young royals. netflix. https://www.netflix.com/watch/81275471 ambjörn, l., et. al. (writers). (2021e). episode 5 (season 1, episode 5) [tv series episode]. in l. beckung (executive producer), young royals. netflix. https://www.netflix.com/watch/81275472 ambjörn, l., et. al. (writers). (2021f). episode 6 (season 1, episode 6) [tv series episode]. in l. beckung (executive producer), young royals. netflix. https://www.netflix.com/watch/81275473 dale, j. p. (2016). cute studies: an emerging field. east asian journal of popular culture, 2(1), 5-13, https://doi.org/10.1386/eapc.2.1.5_2 foucault, m. (1986). of other spaces. diacritics, 16(1), 22–27. https://doi.org/10.2307/464648 oseman, a. (writer). (2022a). boyfriend (season 1, episode 8) [tv series episode]. in p. walters, et. al. (executive producers), heartstopper. netflix. https://www.netflix.com/watch/81425017 oseman, a. (writer). (2022b). bully (season 1, episode 7) [tv series episode]. in p. walters, et. al. (executive producers), heartstopper. netflix. https://www.netflix.com/watch/81425016 oseman, a. (writer). (2022c). crush (season 1, episode 2) [tv series episode]. in p. walters, et. al. (executive producers), heartstopper. netflix. https://www.netflix.com/watch/81425011 https://www.netflix.com/watch/81275468 https://www.netflix.com/watch/81275469 https://www.netflix.com/watch/81275470 https://www.netflix.com/watch/81275471 https://www.netflix.com/watch/81275472 https://www.netflix.com/watch/81275473 https://doi.org/10.1386/eapc.2.1.5_2 https://doi.org/10.2307/464648 https://www.netflix.com/watch/81425017 https://www.netflix.com/watch/81425016 https://www.netflix.com/watch/81425011 oseman, a. (writer). (2022d). friend (season 1, episode 5) [tv series episode]. in p. walters, et. al. (executive producers), heartstopper. netflix. https://www.netflix.com/watch/81425014 oseman, a. (writer). (2022e). girl (season 1, episode 6) [tv series episode]. in p. walters, et. al. (executive producers), heartstopper. netflix. https://www.netflix.com/watch/81425015 oseman, a. (writer). (2022f). kiss (season 1, episode 3) [tv series episode]. in p. walters, et. al. (executive producers), heartstopper. netflix. https://www.netflix.com/watch/81425012 oseman, a. (writer). (2022g). meet (season 1, episode 1) [tv series episode]. in p. walters, et. al. (executive producers), heartstopper. netflix. https://www.netflix.com/watch/81425010 oseman, a. (writer). (2022h). secret (season 1, episode 4) [tv series episode]. in p. walters, et. al. (executive producers), heartstopper. netflix. https://www.netflix.com/watch/81425013 https://www.netflix.com/watch/81425014 https://www.netflix.com/watch/81425015 https://www.netflix.com/watch/81425012 https://www.netflix.com/watch/81425010 https://www.netflix.com/watch/81425013 feminism and the female detective in film dakota lawlar, stanford university ’26 abstract: nancy drew, a feminist icon for almost a century, embodies the public idea of the female detective. however, the nancy drew we know today stands in stark contrast to the way she was originally written. while much has been said about how females are portrayed in film, this article specifically observes the female detective’s evolution throughout history as she was shaped by cultural norms and her exigence changed. first analyzing femme fatale in 1940s film noir, this article provides an in-depth discussion on how female detectives in film were seen as dangerous women that needed to be contained. moving from the past to the present, it explains the current reinvention of the female detective into a character meant to empower rather than oppress. afterwards, this article details how specific societal expectations have affected female detectives’ portrayals as mothers and ways current media seeks to disarm these stereotypes. finally, it builds on these observations with a culmination of female detectives and friendship, illustrating that the female detective breaks not only female expectations of the past, but of the genre, as the character refuses to be defined. introduction many of us can relate to the phase in childhood when we’re obsessed with one specific thing, whether it be a band, a video game, or hobby; mine was nancy drew. i read every one of carolyn keene’s ghostwritten books that i could get my hands on and, by the end, i had read all 150. yet, this childhood phase wasn’t unique. readers around the world have been captivated by these books, as proven by the fact that nancy drew has been a cultural presence for over 90 years with over 70 million copies sold, across four generations of women and multiple adaptations; from books to film and television to even video games (lacy, 2018). originally created as a female counterpart to edward stratemeyer’s popular hardy boys, nancy drew of the 1930s stood in stark contrast to who we know nancy drew to be today, says mystery reviewer deborah lacy. this gun-toting, unruly earlier version was soon replaced by a “more demure” and innocent nancy who was deemed more fit for the younger female audience, as explained in her article. despite this change, notes lacy, the famed female detective still served as a feminist inspiration for many of today’s most powerful women including supreme court justices sonia sotomayor and sandra day o’connor (lacy, 2018). as we see with drew, the conversation regarding the larger idea of the female detective has also centered around how these characters have been shaped by cultural norms, how femme fatale was used in 1940s film noir and, subsequently, how the female detective has been reinvented via their origin stories to serve as an inspiration to other women. for example, scholars have argued that the female detectives in film, at the same time as the first nancy drew books were being placed on the shelves, were depicted to audiences as dangerous women that needed to be contained. in addition, current film reviewers have highlighted that female detectives of the present empower women rather than oppress them. furthermore, when we look at the female detective, we see these societal expectations have also affected how female detectives have been portrayed as mothers and as coworkers. this has led to debates on whether female detectives in films today are actually breaking these stereotypes of motherhood and friendship or perpetuating them. just as nancy drew intrigued me as a kid, female detectives in films of the past and present intrigue me with their competing ideas of femininity and feminism in various films and television. through sampling popular tv and film depicting the first female detectives as they weathered through the societal unrest of the 1940s and then transitioning to the popular detective films and television of today, i will provide a well-rounded investigation of over 12 movies/series and their unique interpretations of what it means to be a female detective. by analyzing female detectives in film from the 1940s and the present and asking how they each viewed feminism differently, this essay will examine how far hollywood has come in portraying women as capable of being both daredevils and strong-willed, but also loving and light-hearted. femme fatale: a danger to society something about nancy drew has captured readers’ attention for almost a century. perhaps, it’s her determined independence introduced at a time when women were strongly encouraged to return to their “place” in the home after wwii, making such independence dangerous. or, her continuous reimaginings that keep us entertained as the various ghostwriters have written her at all different stages of her life, from a young 8-year-old learning the ropes of detecting to a college-aged experienced detective who is navigating life at age 19. alternatively, maybe we can also find part of the answer to this incredibly long cultural presence in drew’s origin story. meant to appeal to female audiences with the promise of adventure, just as the action-packed hardy boys series did for its school-aged male readers, nancy drew brings us to the question of what it means to be female in media. as she’s transitioned from the classic roughness of the film noir era to a more socially acceptable detective who could serve as a role model for young girls, we are left wondering how drew was constrained by societal expectations to be an innocent and pure young woman. yet, even with these constraints, drew, a revolutionary character for her time, still represented feminist ideas to many as she was witty in the face of danger and held her own in a predominantly male field. however, in order to understand female detectives like nancy drew in the present, we must first look at their past in the context of the portrayal of female characters as a whole. film noir, the birthplace of the detective, has had an interesting history with female characters, especially after the societal unrest following the ending of wwii (hunt, 2020). in an effort to convince women to go back into the household, writer kristin hunt (2020) claims that the femme fatale character was used to invoke guilt and paranoia in women through negative portrayals. the femme fatale character is characterized as a woman who is independent and ambitious, yet uses her attractiveness to seduce and destroy the men who become involved with her, placing the man as the victim and the femme fatale as the villain. the femme fatale usually isn’t the detective, but rather “the other woman” who tries to deceive the detective and is working on the side of criminals. spreading the message that female ambition is dangerous, hunt (2020) uses the film the postman always rings twice, to explain how the rhetors wanted female ambition to be feared as the femme fatale, cora smith, resorts to murder in order to inherit a diner, ensuring the financial security of her and her bum boyfriend. likewise, she says the film, quicksand, highlights the immorality of the femme fatale, vera novak, by juxtaposing her as selfish and uninterested in the male lead in comparison to the “good girl,” helen, whose only goal in life is to get married (hunt, 2020). with quicksand ending on dan, the male lead, goes to jail because of his attempts to quickly achieve wealth in order to impress vera, hunt illustrates how the female audience is told that work destroys the home (hunt, 2020). unlike the femme fatale characters of the time, the female detectives of the 1940s, building on the legacy of the rare female investigative leads of the 1930s, were independent without being villainous. long-time scholar of detective films, philippa gates, explains that female detectives of the 1930s were “masculinized” as they filled the traditionally maledominated leading roles, such an occurrence showcased in smart blonde (1937) where torchy, an investigative reporter, leaps onto a train in a move reminiscent of a male action hero (gates, 2009). with these women ‘taking’ roles usually played by males, this independence was soon seen as a challenge to men’s “societally rightful” place in society, says gates. therefore, 1940s hollywood saw the female detective as dangerous women that needed to be contained (gates, 2009). in order to contain these women and return these roles to men, the era of, as she coins, “maratorious melodramas” was born. the female detectives in films of this era followed storylines in which the woman becomes the lead only temporarily in order to save her husband and ‘restore order,’ like the one of phantom lady (1944) where heroine carol is forced to take on the role of investigative lead to save her husband scott from death row and, ultimately, returns “to the prescribed social role of devoted and sacrificing wife” once he is freed. yet, while many acknowledge the prominence of the “maratorious melodrama” during this time, other scholars point to the existence of exceptions to the norm which contributed to the feminist movement. in her reviewed essay on 1940s film noirs, writer malu barroso argues there was a continued existence of women in noir who retained their dangerousness. citing the film, the big sleep (1940), barroso shows how the female detective, vivian sternwood, maintains her dangerousness with the help of a good-bad girl personality; allowing her to capitalize on the independence usually offered solely to the femme fatale and also having moral ambiguity, allowing her to avoid the villainous stereotype often attributed to such women, as hunt described earlier. barroso explains that this personality gave sternwood the power to not only put her own interests first, unlike the “maratorious melodrama”, as she hides her connection to a local gangster from her investigative partner, but also a heroine as she saves his life by helping him kill a hitman. similarly, we see douglas sirk’s film lured (1947) use this tactic to continue the feminist movement during this turbulent time in hollywood’s history. while we first assume that the female lead sandra carpenter, played by lucille ball, is a classic example of a femme fatale given she is a dancer who uses her looks to her advantage, we soon see that her character uses the femme fatale trope to be the heroine rather than the villain. looking at a prominent scene from the film, carpenter meets with formerly renowned designer, charles van druten, undercover as a model after answering his ad in the newspaper, reminiscent of the ad that her fellow dancer and friend lucy answered shortly before going missing. using her looks and quick wits to convince van druten to hire her, as she improvises a fake backstory about being a broke model, carpenter gives audiences a glimpse of the dangerousness of femme fatale while solidifying her role as the protagonist. through this guise of femme fatale, lured also avoids becoming a “maratorious melodrama” even though carpenter takes the traditionally male role of the lead investigator, a common driver behind these women being ushered into the home in the end. by pushing carpenter into the role of detective in order to save her friend rather than a male love interest, lured, successfully depicts carpenter as a dangerous woman who doesn’t need to be contained through proving her skills as a detective. after once again using her wits to gain information about the designer’s unstable mental state from van druten’s assistant, carpenter isn’t surprised when van druten draws the curtains to his “runway show,” revealing not a lively audience of royals as promised, but, instead, an empty room filled with only folding chairs and a dog. having learned earlier of van druten’s unstable mental state after a competitor in paris stole one of his designs effectively ending his career, carpenter’s value as a detective is showcased as she shrewdly plays along allowing her to safely navigate the situation and come closer to solving the mystery. however, lured and films like it were few and far between during the 1940s, as barroso previously stated, making their contributions to the female narrative especially significant due to their rarity. lured highlights its unique feminist qualities for the era by giving carpenter agency in the face of danger, just as the big sleep did with sternwood when she saved her partner rather than the usual of him saving her. in the climax of the scene, the show’s gramophone suddenly skips, tipping an already fragile van druten over the edge. enraged, he locks his assistant in a closet before threatening carpenter with a sword as he accuses her of working for his competitors. suddenly, an unknown man can be spotted in one of the windows watching the commotion. taking matters into her own hands, carpenter bluffs to van druten, admitting to his accusations and naming the man in the window as her boss, the competitor van druten seeks. as van druten rushes outside to confront the man, carpenter is not a damsel-in-distress waiting to be saved, but an agent in charge of herself as she takes action, using the opportunity to free his assistant and escape. reinventing the female detective so, who won the battle of the female detective? did hollywood successfully contain these so-called dangerous women or did these secretly feminist films prevail? well, to answer this question, we simply have to look at the present. the film enola holmes (2020), one of the most successful detective films in recent history with the biggest opening day of the year on netflix and over 78 million views according to business insider (clark, 2021), calls direct attention to societal expectations of women in the past and portrays holmes, who unsurprisingly shares the detecting skills of her brother, sherlock, as a stark outlier to this status quo. set in victorian england, enola homes puts into perspective how extensively the mainstream idea of the female detective has evolved. by contrasting the norms of 19th century england with holmes’ character and upbringing, the film shows how holmes defies what is expected of her through scenes like one where she is sent to finishing school. highlighting the emphasis on female obedience dominant in the victorian era, holmes’ individuality is stripped away through strict classes on ladylike behavior; amusingly including one on how to politely laugh. unwilling to conform, holmes stands still against the herd. the novelty of women at the forefront of mystery film and television can be further emphasized by the unprecedented series jessica jones, in, perhaps, the most famous crimesolving/villain-slaying franchise of all-time garnering a total revenue of over $28 billion, marvel (anderson, 2023). the verge writer kwame opam argues that jessica jones suggests a modern reinvention of the female detective into “women [who are] powerful, multi-faceted masters of their fate.” staying true to its noir inspiration, private-eye jessica jones carries many of the tropes of the genre, says opam, with her traumatic past influencing her cynical, witty view of the present and her gravitation towards a stiff drink. however, despite dealing with the trauma of abuse and sexual assault, jones, as opam claims, commits herself to protecting those around her; such as her close confidant trish and lawyer friend jeri, who always has a case. demonstrating her point, the writer says jones’ commitment to protecting others after experiencing the trauma of her past is what makes the series successful because it “embraces pain as something women triumph over, without ever needing rescue.” taking a different approach, other films introduce this new era of the female detective through mentorship instead of redemption from trauma. the recently released film, glass onion: a knives out mystery (2020), is praised by cbr film reviewer rebecca radillo for putting female lead helen brand at the forefront as she is mentored by the quintessential detective genius benoit blanc. quoting blanc’s warning to brand during their first meeting, he says, he can “only solve her sister’s murder and not get her justice for it.” radillo explains how this one line changes the film’s entire exigence by passing the role of investigator onto brand, signifying she is both ready and capable. despite having never been a detective before, after mastering blanc’s training, brand is able to achieve justice for her sister as she reveals the danger behind the murderer’s newest business idea; effectively turning his friends against him and persuading them to confess their knowledge about the murder. similarly, enola holmes’ origin story also follows this plot of mentorship and independence. film reviewer, victor stiff, claims that eudoria, holmes’ mother, chooses to raise her daughter away from the world to mentor her into a strong, independent woman. wanting to shelter holmes from societal pressures of the world, eudoria decided to teach her daughter the skills to be whoever she wanted to be, says stiff; through classes on history, martial arts, and physics. he states that it is this unique education that is holmes’ detective origin story, leading to her recalling her education throughout the film and aids in her sleuthing. ahead of her time, stiff exemplifies how holmes uses the lessons from her mother to leverage society’s preconceptions to her advantage through tricks like dressing as a widow to capitalize on people’s discomfort to avoid being caught. by reimagining how the past should have been, enola holmes, stiff declares, is a “coming-of-age tale” that portrays eudoria as a “sane mind in a world gone mad”, who teaches her daughter to be her own woman. by breaking the status quo of the victorian era, enola holmes doesn’t only showcase this evolution of the female detective, it also shows a shift from societal obedience to empowerment through reimagining the era. holmes retains her power by acknowledging the oppressive norms and choosing to use them to her advantage. from an example earlier in the film, to hide from her brothers, holmes conforms to the feminine dress of the time by wearing a corset which she uses to conceal her mother’s fortune. later on, holmes and the audience both discover that the corset has “a true use” when it protects holmes from being stabbed by an assailant. even choosing to wear a full-length victorian gown, holmes is able to fight, outwit, and defeat her attacker. shortly before holmes escapes the finishing school, sherlock also implores her to maintain her independence with surprising brotherly advice as he tells her “the choice is always yours. whatever society may claim, they can’t control you.” in fact, just as enola holmes serves as a commentary on female empowerment against expectations of the past, it also comments on the relationship between mothers and daughters; a relationship that we will soon see is recurring in portrayals of the female detective. throughout much of the film, holmes’ first-person perspective on her mother’s lessons provides insight into the detective she is today. in a scene soon after her corset saves her from being stabbed, holmes hides from her attacker and switches to first-person to explain to the audience her education as a child. echoing her mother’s fight lessons, we see holmes use her training to defeat her attacker with both her combat skills and her wits as she pretends to drown in order to escape. near the end of the film as she states herself to love-interest tewkesbury, her mother never taught her the things “most well-bred ladies” learn. rather, her mother taught her to watch, listen, and fight; all the things that make her a successful detective in the present. combating crime and kids: detectives as mothers however, sometimes when the female detective is the mother herself, the expectations of motherhood are set impossibly high. film and television professor, barbara selznick, claims that the series broadchurch approaches a juxtaposition between career and family by highlighting their incompatibility. the show follows detective ellie miller who strives and is expected to be a perfect mother in addition to being a successful detective. yet, selznick describes how with a single line, miller’s idyllic life is thrown into chaos. the episode, revolving around the phrase “how could you not know?”, reflects on this idea that women “should always know” everything about their family, especially mothers (selznick). she explains that the phrase is used only twice in the episode at two pivotal points: once as detective miller questions a witness about failing to know her husband was abusing their daughter and again when miller, in a moment of irony, is asked how she, herself, didn’t know her own husband murdered their son’s best friend (apparently, it’s a pretty dark show). while miller eventually solves the case, says selznick, the damage was already done in showing that work takes mothers away from knowing about their families and protecting their children. not every series believes that motherhood and career are irreconcilable, though. in a scene from ncis hawai’i, we see the female lead, special agent tenant, successfully and imperfectly balance work and family as she protects her son. returning home from recently solving a case, tenant surprises audiences by asking her son’s girlfriend, cassandra, who she previously disapproved of, to stay for a quick chat before she leaves. suspenseful music indicates to viewers that while tenant has expressed support for her son’s relationship despite her inner discontentment, her true feelings are about to come out after overhearing a suspicious phone call that cassandra made earlier. yet, we are once again surprised as tenant chooses to calmly question cassandra about whether she is cheating in order to preserve her relationship with her son, highlighting the imperfections of the difficult parental balance between independence and protection. a stark contrast to broadchurch, tenant is able to be both ambitious in her career and in the know at home. still, other films believe that in order to truly be feminist, female detectives should not be portrayed as striking this incredibly difficult balance of being fully present for both their career and children. looking at the 2018 film destroyer, the guardian writer elena lazic explains that the lead, long-time detective erin bell, has the skills to protect her child, but ultimately fails to take care of them. in search of revenge for the killing of her partner and father to their daughter, bell, says lazic, is simply too hardened to emotionally connect with her child. in an example of how far bell is willing to go for revenge, the writer describes a scene where bell pulls a move reminiscent of the vigilante violence made popular by dirty harry as she starts “shooting at bank robbers, endangering everyone in the building.” in a deviation from hollywood’s tendency to attribute such violence to female characters protecting their children, lazic gives us the chilling insight that bell doesn’t act with her daughter’s best interests in mind, but rather behaves simply because she wants to by quoting the detective’s response when her methods are questioned, “don’t make excuses for what you want. it’s weak.” meanwhile, this is not the case for ncis hawai’i. as we saw previously, tenant consciously acts with her son in mind. instead of ncis hawai’i putting tenant’s skills as a detective and a parent at odds, they are used to complement each other. similar to erin’s long career in destroyer, tenant’s years of experience allows her tactfully interrogate cassandra as she tells her about spoozy, a feeling she would get during her time as a cia agent when she knew something just wasn’t right about a case. this feeling, spoozy, was named after tenant’s first asset, a double-agent who was killed by a grenade being thrown through his bedroom window after his betrayal of both sides was discovered. tenant’s cryptic tone and deliberate movements as she slowly opens a bottle of wine while telling this story to cassandra quickly clues both her and the audience into the fact that this backstory behind spoozy serves simply as a cover for tenant to subtly tell cassandra that she knows she has been keeping secrets. yet, the common friction between motherhood and career in film and tv is not surprising given hollywood’s expectations for women as mothers onscreen. as jordan trippeer points out in her article on the mother archetype, mothers in film are defined by what they give as well as their nurturing love and protection. at their best, mothers and their kids have loving, entertaining relationships as we see in gilmore girls, a dramedy on a single mother and her teenage daughter, which centers around this heartfelt relationship, illustrated by trippeer. however, she specifies, at their worst, terrible mothers are villains as is the mother in the horror film mommy dearest who manipulates and abuses her adopted child. sacrificing their time and putting their children first as we see the addams family’s morticia do when she vows to take care of one her children after they become ill, trippeer says that the mother archetype represents a “collective understanding” that mothers will protect and love their children at all costs. so, if society has long told us that good mothers are tender and peaceful, how is this reconciled with the crime and violence of the detective world? as you may have come to expect in this section, ncis hawai’i can offer us a valuable perspective. once cassandra finally cracks and admits to cheating on tenant’s son with another guy, we see tenant is a complex character capable of filling the roles of detective and parent. as cassandra explains that her fear of being left behind influenced her decision to cheat, tenant reacts with compassion rather than coldness, displaying not only her love for her son in the form of protection but empathy for cassandra. combined with a sudden shift to sentimental music, the audience sees that tenant’s empathy and wit make her a good mother without pushing for perfection. ncis hawai’i accepts the messiness of the complexities of being human and a detective by portraying tenant as someone who doesn’t need to always know to protect her kid. leaving the lone detective behind: complexity through buddy-cop comedies looking now at how female detectives are often portrayed in regards to other relationships in addition to motherhood, we see a similar pattern of societal expectations emerge, stifling their personalities and innate complexities. while film noir often portrayed female detectives as alone and socially cold, the current female detective has broken into the buddy-cop genre and is shown as a complex character who can operate in the serious world of crime-solving without losing her humor. although paul feig’s film the heat has faced criticism for perpetuating some of the problematic tropes of buddy-cop films like violence and crude humor, the week writer monika bartyzel argues that the film’s copy-paste format as it simply substitutes men for women in a classic buddy-cop film is revolutionary because of that fact. by simply inverting gender roles, bartyzel says the heat shows that the buddy-cop film doesn’t have to change based on gender, breaking our expectations of how male cops should behave together versus how female cops should behave together. just as feig’s other box-office hit, bridesmaids, defied hollywood’s assumptions on the prim-and-proper idea of bridesmaids by making their adventures filled with unexpected twists rare for female on-screen characters such as food poisoning, the heat, notes bartyzel, breaks this idea that women can’t have the classic chaotic dynamic of the buddy-cop genre; by keeping its cavalier violence as mccarthy’s and bullock’s character rack up a high kill count and perpetuate other tropes of such films without ever needing to justify their actions. likewise, the detective-comedy brooklyn nine-nine emphasizes the fact that the detectives in brooklyn’s 99th precinct each have complex personalities that aren’t determined by gender. kat george in her decider article claims that, as a comedy, brooklyn nine-nine creates an idealistic work world free from gender politics allowing the show to make brief statements on the real-world obstacles faced by women. for example, while george quotes one scene in which detective rosa comments to her partner detective santiago, “we work in a police force full of dudes, we have to have each other’s backs,” the show simply uses this to make a statement and then, in the spirit of a comedy, moves on. this brevity makes the female characters captivating to watch because they are able to be witty, complex characters without centering their personality around their gender due to the fact that, in brooklyn nine-nine, their gender doesn’t affect how they are treated in the precinct, says george. in another scene, george illuminates how the audience finds humor, instead, in the juxtaposition between the two male detectives “pining over unrequited love” and how quickly detective rosa moves on from her relationships. this elimination of gender-defining personalities doesn’t affect the detectives’ skills either. with the help of the show's iconic tradition, the annual halloween heist, gender isn’t a factor when the detectives put their detecting skills to the test in a high-stakes game of deception and genius. each year, the precinct designates one item of choice to be the mark of the night and whoever successfully steals and has possession of this item when the clock strikes midnight is dubbed the “greatest detective/genius.” with the high stakes of year-long bragging rights on the line, the detectives pull out all the stops to “outwit, outplay, and outlast” their coworkers. over the course of four years, the audience is left guessing who will win the next heist as each had different champions, two male detectives and two female detectives, showing that everyone has the skills to win. in order to understand how the series accomplishes this though, we have to look at what the heat and brooklyn nine-nine have in common. when we do this, we see that they both use humor as a tool to seamlessly reinvent the female sleuth. in the case of the heat, writer for the atlantic, ashley fetters, notes how the film uses parody to break the gender tropes of the buddycop genre. citing the fact that police women in films are “four times as likely as men to be rookies,” fetters describes how the heat overcomes this through exaggerated scenes like one with sandra bullock’s character single-handedly taking down dealers in a drug bust while her male colleagues “watch sheepishly.” the dynamic duo of mccarthy’s and bullock’s detectives also go beyond the common label limiting female cops to behind-the-scenes work, such as surveillance, as fetters proves in one scene where the duo, parodying the usual violent interrogations done by male buddy cops, take on the active role of interrogation and intimidation by dangling a drug dealer over a balcony to attain the location a drug lord. while the heat uses comedy to parody gender tropes, the comedy series brooklyn ninenine takes a different approach with its humor by not limiting the detectives’ tricks and dynamics with their coworkers to gender. staying true to the nature of a sitcom, brooklyn ninenine uses comedy to defy what is expected from male and female detectives on the show. while female detectives are usually portrayed as deceptive via femme fatale, in the halloween heists we see detectives of all genders don disguises, pick locks, and use manipulation to outwit each other. in fact, this pattern of using manipulation to mislead the other detectives becomes a common theme as, for example, we see detectives of both genders use the power of suggestion to trick their coworkers into doing what they want in scenes such as framing each other for flooding the precinct kitchen to influence who the detectives pick as their partner in that year’s heist. but, brooklyn nine-nine furthers this idea in the fifth annual halloween heist with a plot twist that no one saw coming. although the heist still had all the same shenanigans like peralta hiring a group of actors dressed like “the handmaid’s tale” characters to steal a safe, comedy is also utilized to break the relationship trope of the “maratorious melodrama.” instead of romance hindering the female detective’s independence, brooklyn nine-nine introduces the plot twist of peralta proposing to detective santiago with both characters maintaining their independence as it’s a combination of their detecting skills that leads to the proposal. in the scene, peralta switched that year’s mark, a belt with the inscription “greatest human/genuis/detective ever,” for one asking santiago to marry him. however, in order for santiago to read the inscription, peralta banked on the fact that santiago would outsmart the precinct and win the heist. rather than limiting santiago’s independence, it is her skills as a detective that allow the plot twist to be possible and, metaphorically, states that the female detective never needed to go back into the home. conclusion when publisher edward stratameyer first decided he wanted to create nancy drew, he wasn’t particularly concerned with feminist ideals. instead, he saw nancy drew as an opportunity to further fill his already full pockets of cash. i doubt he ever predicted the revolution he accidentally green-lighted. on the other hand, drew’s original ghostwriter mildred wirt may have been a bit more aware of the implications of what she was writing. she was opening the door for women to finally be unexpected. even though her work was revised to fit culture’s constraints, wirt’s strong-willed, daredevil nancy drew was echoed in the rare feminist films of the 40s and amplified in the reinvention of the female detective of recent history. the commitment to being unexpected is the motto of challenging the archetypes of female detectives as mothers and coworkers. in less than 7 short years, nancy drew will have existed in the public sphere for 100 years. with that in mind, how far has hollywood actually come in making the unexpected the status quo? off to a rocky start, the femme fatale, used as a tool for social politics, began hollywood’s subduing of these unpredictable women. but, as times have changed, so too has the mainstream idea of the female detective. no longer constrained to the shallow perceptions of what a detective should be; whether that be stoic, dangerous, or incapable of having a life outside of work, the turn of the century has brought with it a fresh perspective on what it means to be female in media, which is that it is impossible to define the undefinable. unique with every new iteration, the female detective is a character that refuses to be contained. references anderson, b. (2023, may 8). 15 highest-grossing movie franchises of all time. cbr. https://www.cbr.com/most-profitable-movie-franchises-ever/#avengers barroso, m, et al. (2021, february 22). the representation of women in film noir. high on films. https://www.highonfilms.com/women-in-film-noir/. bartyzel, m. (2015, january 8) girls on film: the heat breaks new ground by not being groundbreaking. the week. https://theweek.com/articles/462513/girls-film-heat-breaksnew-ground-by-not-being-groundbreaking. bradbeer, h. (director). (2020). enola holmes [film]. legendary pictures, pcma productions. clark, t. (2021, september 29). netflix’s 10 biggest original movies of all time, including “army of the dead” and “extraction.” business insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/biggestnetflix-original-movies-of-all-time-by-viewership-2021-1#8-project-power-2020-75million-3 fetters, a. (2013, june 28). the heat's subtly radical portrayal of policewomen. atlantic: web edition articles (usa), sec. news. infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/documentview?p=amnp&docref=news/149a4bbd26a449c8. gates, p. (2009, october). the maritorious melodrama: film noir with a female detective. journal of film and video, vol. 61, no. 3, pp. 24–39. https://searchworks.stanford.edu/articles/edsjsr__edsjsr.20688632 george, k. (2016, february 4). 'brooklyn nine-nine' deserves applause for refusing to get cheap laughs from gender stereotypes. decider. https://decider.com/2016/01/13/brooklyn-nine-nine-deserves-applause-for-refusing-toget-cheap-laughs-from-gender-stereotypes/. goor, d. and schur, m. (creators). (2013-2021) brooklyn nine-nine [television series]. fox, nbc. hunt, k. (2020, march 12). how film noir tried to scare women out of working. jstor daily. https://daily.jstor.org/how-film-noir-tried-to-scare-women-out-of-working/. lacy, d. (2018, may 9). the evolution of nancy drew. criminal element. https://www.criminalelement.com/the-evolution-of-nancy-drew-deborah-lacy-carolynkeene/. lazic, e. (2018, september 14). enter the destroyer: the rise of the feminist detective. the guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/sep/14/rise-of-the-feminist-detectivemovie-destroyer-out-of-blue. https://www.highonfilms.com/women-in-film-noir/ https://theweek.com/articles/462513/girls-film-heat-breaks-new-ground-by-not-being-groundbreaking https://theweek.com/articles/462513/girls-film-heat-breaks-new-ground-by-not-being-groundbreaking https://searchworks.stanford.edu/articles/edsjsr__edsjsr.20688632 https://daily.jstor.org/how-film-noir-tried-to-scare-women-out-of-working/ opam, k. (2015, november 19). review: jessica jones is the complex (super) heroine we've been waiting for. the verge. https://www.theverge.com/2015/11/19/9760514/jessicajones-review-marvel-netflix-krysten-ritter. radillo, r. (2022, december 4). knives out & glass onion are triumphs for women of color. cbr. https://www.cbr.com/knives-out-glass-onion-diversity-representation/. selznick, b. (2021, june 14). ‘how could you not know?': the epistemological precarity of the female detective as mother.” mai. https://maifeminism.com/how-could-you-notknow-the-epistemological-precarity-of-the-female-detective-as-mother/. sirk, d. (director). (1947). lured [film]. united artists. stiff, v. (2020, september 10). enola holmes review: a delightful case of revisionist history. that shelf. https://thatshelf.com/enola-holmes-review-a-delightful-case-of-revisionisthistory/. teng, l. (director). (2021-present). ncis: hawai’i [television series]. cbs. trippeer, j. (2021, january 20). exploring female character archetypes – the mother. creative screenwriting. https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/exploring-female-characterarchetypes-the-mother/. https://www.cbr.com/knives-out-glass-onion-diversity-representation/ https://maifeminism.com/how-could-you-not-know-the-epistemological-precarity-of-the-female-detective-as-mother/ https://maifeminism.com/how-could-you-not-know-the-epistemological-precarity-of-the-female-detective-as-mother/ https://thatshelf.com/enola-holmes-review-a-delightful-case-of-revisionist-history/ https://thatshelf.com/enola-holmes-review-a-delightful-case-of-revisionist-history/ microsoft word final doc 1.docx rewriting the sexual assault narrative: applying the restorative justice framework to campus sexual assault policy anna c. kiesewetter, stanford university ’23 abstract: in 2016, under the pseudonym emily doe, a woman now revealed as chanel miller released her victim impact statement after stanford university freshman brock turner sexually assaulted her behind a dumpster. following its publication on buzzfeed, the "stanford victim's" letter amassed millions of reads and contributed to a global reckoning around sexual assault. the now-infamous "stanford sexual assault case" was not an isolated incident: in 2015, the u.s. department of education reported that one in five female college students experiences sexual assault, and only 4% of victims ever report their assault. the lack of college investigation into sexual assault, pressures of nondisclosure, and frightening prevalence of campus sexual assault couple with the powerful voice of miller's victim impact statement to demonstrate the necessity of incorporating victim-centered narratives into campus sexual assault policy. current university practices that prioritize their own interests above victims' further victimize survivors, evoke feelings of institutional betrayal, and perpetuate silence, creating a need to move towards viable solutions that recenter victims and prevent further assault. in a research paper framed by miller's powerful words, i argue that the framework of restorative justice, a cooperative process of repairing harm through education and discussion of perpetrators' impacts on communities, should be applied to campus sexual assault policy. the use of restorative justice will counter rape myths with victims' narratives, regenerate discussion, and focus on systemic issues to halt cycles of sexual violence. to bolster this argument, i discuss the current impact of responses to sexual assault on survivors, before exploring interviews of survivors and perpetrators of crime as well as statistical data on recidivation rates following restorative justice interventions. i was ten years old when my mom bought me my first pepper spray. it came in a cheerful pink container, accompanied by her cautionary words: because you're a girl, you must never walk anywhere alone. cover yourself. never let your guard down. if there's a bad guy, use this. so i grew up shying away from dark streets and short skirts, pepper spray forever embedded in my backpack. on nighttime walks to check the mail or release an intruding spider, my pepper spray remained clenched tightly in my fist. even years later, a ten-meter radius around my home was not enough security against the "bad guys" whom i feared were lurking in the shadows. when i was eighteen and packing for college, my mom perched on the edge of my bed. this time, she implored me to watch what i wore, to not give boys bad ideas. she told me she worried about the drinking culture at stanford, about how i must be careful in turning down a guy because he could become violent — always skirting, circling, shying away from, closing in on but never saying the word “rape”. but even without a name, the worry permeated the air we breathed. i saw the pepper spray staring down at me from atop my dresser. i tucked it into my suitcase. my mom's deep fear of assault was not unfounded: already when she was on the cusp of applying to college in 1985, ms. magazine and mary r. koss, then a psychology professor at kent state university, surveyed over 6,100 undergraduates to unveil that one in four female college students in the united states had an experience meeting the legal definition of rape or attempted rape (zimmerman, 2016). by 2014, this number had hardly changed, with the u.s. department of education reporting that one in five female college students experiences sexual assault (o'boyle & li, 2019, p. 432). complicating these staggering statistics is the fact that only 4% of victims ever report their assault (o'boyle & li, 2019, p. 432), and a frightening number of universities refrain from even investigating these few reports (kingkade, 2017). these universities' abandonment in the face of such horrifying numbers amplified the necessity of my pepper spray: as of 2015, 52% of u.s. universities did not investigate students' rape complaints (o'boyle & li, 2019, p. 436), leaving women with no choice but to fend for themselves. despite title ix (a civil rights law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in schools) regulations requiring all federally funded schools to address sexual harassment, in 2016, 124 universities were under investigation for violations (kingkade, 2017). specifically, more than 20% of the largest private institutions conducted fewer investigations than incidents reported, with some colleges reporting seven times more incidents than they investigated (germain, 2016). since 2016, this failing situation has only worsened: changes to title ix legislation in 2020 have narrowed the definition of reportable sexual harassment. colleges are now only required to investigate if reports are made to certain officials, and are only held directly accountable for mishandling complaints if acting with "deliberate indifference" (slagter, 2020). in fact, the university i was slated to attend held its own infamy regarding sexual assault. in 2016, under the pseudonym emily doe, a woman now revealed as chanel miller released her victim impact statement after stanford university freshman brock turner sexually assaulted her behind a dumpster. following its release on buzzfeed, the "stanford victim's" letter amassed millions of reads and contributed to a global reckoning around sexual assault echoing throughout online news outlets, communities, and even the u.s. house of representatives (miller, 2019). i spent the week before i entered stanford reading miller's 2019 memoir, know my name, starting and stopping, tears blurring the letters. in the book, she discussed being victimblamed by the media, where comment sections would question who was really at fault. she discussed the victimization she experienced at the hands of her attacker's defense team, where her identity and choices were stripped apart. she discussed feelings of betrayal from stanford as an institution, for prioritizing its reputation over her wellbeing. she discussed the painful frustration that her attacker did not "get it," that what he did was wrong rather than something attributed to alcohol. most of all, she discussed how sexual assault is not an individual or moral problem but a sociocultural one: one that does not start or stop at the university. reading this insight into a victim's experiences, i felt not only afraid, but also seen in my fear. i felt that this was a fear that many other girls have felt. and i felt that this was a burden we must not shoulder in silence. miller's powerful voice urges us to find the empathy and humanity within these stories that we often do not tell, refusing the common sexual assault narrative of silence and stigma. by doing so, she works against institutional power structures, creating a "counter-narrative or narrative of resistance against the marginalization of women’s experiences" (germain, 2016, p. 106). where institutions tend to blame and dehumanize survivors, miller's story advocates for systemic change while reclaiming agency and offering solidarity. such victim-centered narratives need to be incorporated into campus sexual assault policy to counter the institutional failures evident both in the staggering rape statistics and in miller's story. current university practices that prioritize their own image and center punishment above victims' needs further victimize survivors, evoke feelings of institutional betrayal, and perpetuate silence, creating a need to move toward viable solutions that recenter victims and prevent further assault. to meet these goals, i argue that the general framework of restorative justice, a cooperative process of repairing harm through education and discussion of perpetrators' impacts on communities, should be applied to campus sexual assault policy. the use of restorative justice will counter rape myths with victims' narratives, regenerate discussion, and focus on systemic issues to halt cycles of sexual violence. to bolster this argument, i will discuss the current impact of responses to sexual assault on survivors, before exploring interviews of survivors and perpetrators of crime as well as statistical data on recidivation rates following restorative justice interventions. polyvictimization and institutional image "what were you wearing? did you drink in college? you said you were a party animal? are you serious with your boyfriend? would you ever cheat? what do you mean when you said you wanted to reward him? do you remember what time you woke up? do you remember any more from that night? no? okay, well, we'll let brock fill it in." —chanel miller, know my name (miller, 2019, p. 346) when my mom implored me to watch what i wore and did in college, her words echoed the barrage of questions that sexual assault trials unload onto survivors. society often buys into a concept germain (2016) labels "rape myths," in which people believe aspects of a woman's behavior absolve perpetrators of guilt. on college campuses, this often manifests in beliefs that female students' engagement in "bad behaviors" such as drinking and promiscuity equates to them practically "asking for" assault, as seen in the invasively irrelevant questions posed in miller's (2019) trial. these prejudices often make victims hesitant to report assault, a victim's dilemma where survivors must either press charges and face painful rape myths or stay silent without justice (germain, 2016). rape myths do not only pose barriers to women reporting assault; even for those who brave the justice process, germain finds that accusatory questions like those in miller's trial harm a victim's healing trajectory. mennicke et al. (2021) label this "polyvictimization," the phenomenon where reporting one's assault gives rise to additional forms of victimization. fueling such polyvictimization in rape cases is the depiction of survivors in the media. through analyzing 500 stories across ten major american newspapers, o'boyle & li (2019) found that when reporting on campus sexual assault, the public media most often frames cases in terms of the moral characters of perpetrators and victims. in fact, 72% of the articles attributed sexual assault to individual causes, with 37.4% considering victims responsible and 34.6% blaming perpetrators. the fact that more articles place blame on survivors than perpetrators reveals the intense polyvictimization inflicted on survivors: "often it seems easier to suffer rape alone, than face the dismembering that comes with seeking support" (miller, 2019, p. 292). when this blame is shifted toward individuals, it is simultaneously shifted away from institutions. o'boyle & li (2019) found that only 25.8% of news articles attributed responsibility for sexual assault to academic institutions, 11.6 percentage points fewer than the 37.4% blaming victims. to explain this discrepancy, o'boyle & li posit that schools have corporate interests, making a pristine image "vital to attract elite students and government funding" (p. 436). if too much attention is drawn to sexual assault, that campus becomes less attractive, leading colleges to deliberately deflect media attention and hide accounts of rape, as we will discuss in the next section. the prioritization of institutional reputation over students' well-being feels like a betrayal to victims assaulted on their campus. institutional betrayal breeds cultures of silence "on nights when you feel alone, i am with you … how could you abandon me these last two years, to reappear and take those lines. to hide the damage, then present the polished. i could not give stanford words of hope when they had not provided me reason to feel any … on nights when you are alone, you are left alone." —chanel miller, know my name (miller, 2019, p. 315) to keep up their pristine facade, universities may turn to performative actions that can further alienate and silence victims. two years after her assault, stanford reached out to miller to have a garden and plaque put up in the spot where she had been found. though miller sent several options for the plaque's quote that discussed her irreparable trauma, each was rejected by stanford, which expressed a wish for a more uplifting message. instead, they suggested a quote extracted from her victim impact letter: "on nights when you feel alone, i am with you." such words felt painfully ironic to miller when stanford had in fact done little to support her, only contacting her once considerable media attention had forced them into action. miller declined the quote, and discussion of the plaque came to a standstill. despite stanford's continued attention to detail such as the new garden's stone veneer, "there was still no title ix investigation, no policy review. still no plaque" (miller, 2019, p. 315). through their performative and empty actions, stanford effectively silenced miller's words as a survivor searching for justice. sharoni et al. (2019) argue that this facade is why colleges often opt for relatively simple solutions to sexual assault, like commemorative gardens or smartphone training apps: they make it easy for colleges to demonstrate a sympathetic image or compliance with guidelines rather than undergoing the difficult work of rooting out structural issues. sharoni et al. name such performative actions "institutional betrayal," in which wrongdoings are "perpetuated by an institution upon individuals reliant on that institution" (p. 1356). keeping with this trend, while many college presidents are becoming "more vocal" about sexual assault, fewer than a third reported consistent funding for evaluation efforts of prevention programming, meaning a smaller percentage yet is maximizing resources toward preventing sexual assault (sharoni et al., 2019). like stanford's actions toward miller, college presidents appear more performative (vocal) than effective (funded or supported). it is perhaps no surprise, then, that germain's (2016) studies found agreement in feelings of institutional betrayal: multiple college-age women mentioned beliefs that universities adjust assault prevalence statistics to make campuses appear safer. colleges' insistence on untarnished and uplifting facades comes at the expense of students' trust. like these simple bandaids over a complex wound, colleges may do the bare minimum in compliance with federal laws, impeding victims' trust in institutions and comfort in disclosure. the creation of federal title ix regulations that necessitate staff reporting of sexual assault limits faculty's agency in advocating for survivors while dissuading students from confiding in their teachers (mennicke et al., 2021). in their work on faculty advocacy, sharoni et al. (2019) argue that the creation of "mandatory reporters" is "a passive role that limits our ability to support students and could drive a wedge between faculty and survivors" (p. 1364). if students confide in their teacher, that teacher effectively betrays their confidence in filing a report. it then becomes difficult to talk candidly with one's professor without incurring the additional logistic and emotional burden created by a formal report. mennicke et al. quantify this harm, finding that fewer than 6% of students would be "extremely likely" to disclose sexual assault if employees were required to report assaults to the university. in a system of retributive justice, the focus on formal punishment for offenders deemphasizes the comfort and needs of victims. when staff try to move beyond their role as mandatory reporters, additional barriers arise and dissuade them from continuing advocacy efforts. sharoni et al. (2019) discuss how such staff are "portrayed as troublemakers who have overstepped their role" (p. 1355) and can face such repercussions as tenure denial, dismissal, and reputational damage. for example, a university of oregon therapist was threatened with dismissal after advocating to keep a victim's counseling records confidential (grinberg, 2015). with students discouraged from disclosing their assault as mennicke et al. (2021) found, a vicious cycle is created where silence is perpetuated on all sides: students will not confide in staff for fear of mandatory reporting, leaving staff avoidant of the topic of sexual assault without outside advocacy (sharoni et al., 2019). not only are staff silenced: institutional policies can also directly silence students. efforts to increase the confidentiality of alleged perpetrators at columbia university, pomona college, and transylvania university have created what some students consider "gag orders," threatening disciplinary charges if students discuss details of sexual violence incidents with their peers and families (kingkade, 2015). just as students cannot confide in staff, the limitation on discussion with peers "makes it difficult to get emotional support … and simply makes victims feel like they are the ones on trial" (kingkade, 2015). part of this institutional hush culture around discussing sexual assault proceedings may function as self-protection from legal action. through defamation lawsuits, perpetrators sometimes pursue legal action against schools for unfavorable title ix outcomes, further victimizing and retaliating against survivors (dugan, 2022). to minimize the blow to their image and economic propositions, institutions will often favor keeping victims' loved ones in the dark, further isolating survivors. miller (2019) corroborates the resulting feelings of betrayal, relating, "it bothered me that coming forward should feel like heading toward a guillotine… silence means safety. openness means retaliation" (p. 334). this silencing of survivors by unempathetic institutional policies highlights the necessity of creating policies that renew discussion and recenter victims. cyclical violence and the need for victim-centered responses "i wanted accountability and punishment, but i also hoped he was getting better. i didn't fight to end him, i fought to convert him to my side. i wanted him to understand, to acknowledge the harm his actions had caused and reform himself. if he truly believed his future was ruined and he had nothing to lose, the possibilities were terrifying." —chanel miller, know my name (miller, 2019, p. 93) just as we must examine the cyclic silencing of survivors, we must also examine sexual violence as a whole on a cyclical level. as we look toward college-driven responses, o'boyle & li (2019) remind us that campus sexual assault does not exist in a vacuum; "the institutions of higher learning may be training grounds for behavior that eventually affects all of society" (p. 447). miller (2019) fleshes out this idea by discussing how if her attacker could get away with a light sentence, it would send a message that men could learn to not assault through "trial and error," influencing cyclical violence and the chilling reality of repeat offenders (p. 360). miller's fear of repetitive gendered violence developed in the context of a larger history. when miller attended the university of california, santa barbara, a mass shooter released a virulent manifesto lamenting how girls' "deprivation" of his "right" to sex had "forced his hand" in killing several ucsb students (miller, 2019, p. 92). miller's memory of this experience amplified her fear of her assaulter, amounting to a recognition that no punishment was adequate if it did not prevent turner's violence from graduating to a larger community. to prevent the cyclical violence similarly indicated by my mom's warning to be careful about letting down boys, miller notes the benefit of teaching and "reforming" rather than harshly punishing perpetrators. given the power of such a firsthand testimonial and the pervasiveness of rape culture, germain (2016) argues why such reforming responses must center discussion with victims like miller: survivors' stories "shift the paradigm of conversations about campus sexual violence from prescriptive and idealistic to descriptive and truthful" (p. 106). when policies are made without input from the very people they affect, they tend to follow a removed stance and stick to an ineffective status quo of what those in power believe should be done, as evidenced by the decline in confiding in trusted adults following the implementation of mandatory reporters. the words of miller's memoir offer a counter-narrative. by glimpsing the real physical and psychological toll of not only being assaulted but living in fear of larger-scale violence, we can shift our perspectives to better empathize with victims in creating systemic policies that can reform perpetrators. addressing retributive inadequacies with restorative justice "i told the probation officer i do not want brock to rot away in prison. i did not say he does not deserve to be behind bars… what i wanted was for brock to get it, to understand and admit to his wrongdoing… all he has admitted to doing is ingesting alcohol. someone who cannot take responsibility does not deserve a mitigating sentence." —chanel miller, know my name (miller, 2019, p. 358) in evaluating survivors' stories, one of the most important factors cited is the hope that their assaulter is held accountable and experiences guilt. but when probation officers asked chanel miller her wishes regarding turner's sentencing, they extracted part of her answer and neglected the rest. though it was true that she had expressed a desire for turner to not spend his life behind bars, miller found on his sentencing day that he had received only six months in county jail, in addition to expressing no true accountability: in his own statement, turner characterized alcohol as the criminal and the two of them as unfortunate drunks. this lack of accountability was perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the trial for miller; what she had wanted was for turner to come to an understanding and break away from the cyclical violence she had seen at ucsb, yet she instead received a new form of polyvictimization with these slaps on turner's wrist. in the current system, justice is seen as retributive, where "crime is a violation of the state, defined by lawbreaking and guilt" while "justice determines blame and administers pain in a contest between the offender and the state" (leung, 1999, p. 2). with crime seen as breaking laws defined by government entities, the system shifts away from recognizing injuries done to individuals. as leung puts it, "the singular focus on legal guilt, not moral, social, or even factual guilt, further isolates victims" (p. 2). this was certainly the case for miller (2019), who was by many definitions what germain (2016) labels the 'perfect victim'—having two witnesses catch turner in the act as well as photographic and chemical evidence taken within hours of the assault. the fact that miller still had to undergo a drawn-out trial casting her accusations into doubt despite this evidence demonstrates how focused retributive justice is on legality (such as the question, was it really rape?) rather than the clear physical and psychological harm at hand. when miller's probation officers called her about the sentencing, this action hinted at moving toward the survivor's needs. however, the fact that they took "no rotting away in prison" and translated it to a lighter prison sentence, without helping turner understand his wrongdoing or repairing the harm done to miller, demonstrates an inadequacy in the court's approach to enacting justice. yet miller ironically called herself one of the lucky ones, as other survivors often are unable to receive concrete consequences at all. for one indiana university student, margaux, who found herself in a similar situation, her assaulter experienced no change in attitude after raping her, blaming alcohol as the culprit. quick to address a breach in the school's honor policy and focus on retributive justice, the hearing officer took drinking as the student's crime rather than electing to deal with the difficult work of examining sexual assault-related offenses, which were far less cut and dry. the student was not expelled and in fact won the sympathy of the teacher running the hearing, as related by margaux: he tells me that my rapist was crying and admitting he's an alcoholic. and i remember him saying, 'i think we really made a breakthrough.' but the fact that i had to sit there and listen to this guy tell me that he was feeling bad for the guy who just raped me, not only raped me but was completely unapologetic. i mean that really just broke me down the most. it made me feel really defeated. (shapiro, 2010) the failures of campus sexual assault policy to support victims and change perpetrators’ attitudes points to a need for a new justice framework to be worked into the current system. i argue that restorative justice is this framework. in comparison to retributive justice, restorative justice involves problem-solving rather than blame-fixing, repairing rather than counterbalancing injury, centering rather than acknowledging victims, and contextualizing rather than isolating crimes (leung, 1999). originating from indigenous and christian teachings, restorative justice "involves creating the social conditions that minimize wrongdoing" (leung, 1999, p. 6). its main pillars include holding wrongdoers accountable, supporting victims' specific needs, teaching perpetrators the impacts of their actions, and rehabilitating parties into the community. most often, restorative justice processes involve victims getting their questions answered and having the space to express the crime's impact to their attacker and broader community. meanwhile, perpetrators accept responsibility for their actions and gain a further understanding of the issues leading to their wrongdoing. particular implementations can include perpetrators discussing victim impact statements as well as documenting how communities were harmed by their crime (kennedy et al., 2019). much in the same way as miller's statement, restorative justice acts as a vehicle for counter-narrative: survivors' voices are brought into the conversation, allowing them to communicate perpetrators' harm while reclaiming agency against rape-mythfueled narratives. because of restorative justice's attention to survivors' stories, it is by nature tailored to the specific needs of victims in each situation. not every case will involve meetings or even be eligible for restorative justice, especially if the perpetrator's crime involves ongoing risks to the victim. in addition, since the process of restorative justice is meant to educate people, often allegations of repeat offenses will not be eligible either, as "if the person is accused of offending again, the education may not have worked" (north, 2019). it also does not necessarily mean a goal of returning relationships to their initial state; rather, it is a process of "righting wrongs" or "healing wounds" (leung, 1999). answered questions and renewed flow of discussion although restorative justice has gained attention since its first introduction in the 1970s (zehr, 2018), discussion of restorative justice is lacking in the realm of campus sexual assault, perhaps in part due to the aforementioned misconceptions. however, restorative justice is in actuality a very effective measure to apply on college campuses because it combats the culture of silence. rather than making victims hesitant to report their assault, restorative justice encourages them to be more vocal because they can discuss their specific needs and repair specific harms done to them. in a conversation with an anonymous stanford student, i learned that she had experienced uncomfortable sexual situations that felt "murky" and full of "grey areas." she had been reluctant to disclose the incidents because she felt the situation was too unclear to merit an investigation— particularly because she was dating the individual and had been drinking. when i explained the idea of restorative justice to her, she expressed that she wished that option had been available for her: the retributive justice system had seemed too formal, when what she wanted was to make clear to her partner why their actions were wrong and better understand the situation. this idea of unwanted complexity is corroborated by other interviewees; as noted by one survivor, "it is unanswered questions that continue to create pain" (bargen et al., 2018). thus, getting questions answered by restorative justice processes has been a major draw for the few survivors for whom the process has been available. though not campus-involved, the victim-centering found in restorative justice processes can be seen in a bbc interview with l. coel (2015). as a child, coel was groomed and sexually assaulted by her stepfather for ten years before finally meeting with him to discuss the impact the abuse had on her life. in the hours-long meeting, the two sat in an environment curated to coel's preferences, and coel's stepfather answered her questions. the ability to interact was an important step in moving on; coel felt a need "to know that he did feel bad for what he did." when asked how she felt following the restorative justice discussion, coel replied, "empowered. i felt like i had lots of new information … i didn't want him to feel he had control over making or breaking my life; i wanted to retake that power and i did." coel's ability to regain feelings of control and power through discussing accountability with her stepfather highlights the necessity of communication in healing. the significance of an opportunity to center a survivor's needs is additionally clear in the immense reassurance coel felt afterward that she attests would not be the case had the meeting not happened. in response to the question of how she would feel otherwise, coel responded, "i would still carry all this anger and guilt and confusion around with me every day; i can move past it now and focus on my life." coel echoes the same emotions that miller (2019) lamented were hounding her attempts to move on; through restorative justice efforts and victim-based discussion, coel was able to achieve the sense of closure that miller was deprived of. restorative justice, when implemented in schools, can additionally improve the flow of discussion on sexual assault, regenerating trust in institutions to attend to victims' needs. though still an uncommon response, both the college of new jersey and rutgers university have begun offering "alternative resolutions" to sexual assault that examine what the perpetrator needs to "hear, see, complete, or do, to recognize and acknowledge harm, and for that to be repaired" (north, 2019). this can manifest in workshops with therapists on healthy relationships and discussions of victim impact statements. most notably at rutgers, there has actually been an increase in the number of sexual assault reports followed by resolution processes since the alternative process was created: prior, most students refused any resolution because of the burdensome trials associated with investigations (north, 2019). this increase emphasizes how restorative justice ensures survivors' comfort in pushing for justice; such a supportive model restores trust in institutions and counteracts silence to shed light on patterns of harm. breaking cycles of crime restorative justice is in turn imperative to breaking cycles of violence. title ix and criminal procedures are different, however, data on criminal probationers suggests that those who received restorative justice interventions were statistically less likely to recidivate, or relapse, into crime. in a study by kennedy et al. (2019), those who received an intervention had a 33.16% recidivation rate as opposed to 68.46% of a control group who did not receive an intervention. the difference between these numbers echoes the difference between numbers from quinn's (1998) study of washington state criminals, where the recidivation rate with restorative justice interventions was just 9% while without, it was 37%. with 50% fewer victims who participated in restorative justice expressing fear of revictimization, restorative justice curbs crime repetition and creates safer environments for victims and non-victims alike. in halting cycles of crime, restorative justice processes effectively help perpetrators to gain empathy and perspective on the harm they cause to others. evaluating 39 serious crimes, including robbery, rape, and homicide in british columbia, quinn (1998) found unanimous support for restorative justice following dialogue between survivors and offenders; "offenders reported a sense of personal growth, and victims a sense of closure" (quinn, 1998, p. 13). fleshing out this sense of empathy, interviews were conducted with probationers who received an eight-hour session intervention on the impact of their crime (kennedy et al., 2019). this session included discussing victim impact statements and effects on communities, as well as writing apology letters. in these interviews, there is a consensus of growth and understanding: restorative justice helped me understand the harm we caused to our victims. it helped me see that i hurt others. it opened my eyes. i learned about myself. it made me understand the victim's point of view. i understand that everyone has value. it helped me understand my problems, situation, anger, and emotion. it helped me process my feelings and prepare for future mistakes. (kennedy et al., 2019) the fact that perpetrators felt more cognizant of their impact on victims speaks to the empathic and healing effects of restorative justice. by educating those who commit crimes about their impacts, this process can prevent future acts of violence. the counter-narrative established by victim impact statements creates a more delicate balance that accommodates the nuances of cases rather than the retributive justice system, which puts victims under duress through adversarial trials. by examining victims' specific needs and impacts, restorative justice advocates for a future catered to supporting victims and regenerating discussion around how assault impacts all parts of a community. conclusion through these glimpses into the stories of several survivors and perpetrators, we see how restorative justice processes can possibly regenerate institutional courage and open up discussion in campus communities. from both miller and margaux, we saw the intense frustration of survivors when assaulters fail to understand the pain they have wreaked; from two anonymous survivors, we saw that unanswered questions generate both pain and reluctance to report an assault. from coel and rutgers, we saw the other side of the coin: through restorative justice interventions, these questions can be answered and follow-up procedures can happen, leaving survivors with a sense of closure, empowerment, and institutional courage. we also saw both quantitatively and qualitatively that restorative justice interventions can greatly lessen cycles of continued crime: recidivation rates dropped with the usage of restorative justice, and perpetrators who underwent such processes reported increased feelings of empathy, understanding, and morality. these findings highlight the necessity of implementing restorative justice into campus sexual assault policies. through alternative justice options where perpetrators devote extensive time to understanding their impacts on victims and communities, campuses will become safer spaces. while most current literature points out the harm in current policies and the need for victim-centered and culture-focused solutions, discussion of using restorative justice is lacking when in fact such policies accomplish these very goals. this gap may be attributed in part to concerns that restorative justice may create unwanted connection between victims and perpetrators, or have privacy issues if working with a community. however, these issues lie more in how restorative justice is implemented than in the actual framework. if restorative justice practices are given as a choice alongside retributive practices, they only create discussion between victim and perpetrator if the victim so desires, making the process truly victim-centered. similarly, if restorative justice practices focus on educating the community about sexual assault with anonymity for the parties involved, privacy issues should not arise. still, some issues remain to be explored: if, like miller's and margaux's assaulters, a perpetrator refuses to acknowledge guilt, it would be helpful for more options to be available than retributive justice practices as the only fallback. more research should be undertaken into other alternatives to retributive justice if a perpetrator refuses to participate in restorative justice and/or accept their responsibility. of course, sexual assault is an incredibly complex and painful issue that restorative justice can only begin to address, and it is an issue that exists long before and after the university. but by honing in on the microcosm of a college campus, sexual misconduct appears on full display, with substance-laden parties often exposing the rape culture and institutional inactions that plague all of society. during the months i have lived in stanford's microcosm, my mom's worries have manifested in full form. when i go out at night, passing the same fraternities where miller was assaulted, my pepper spray remains clipped to my lanyard. i see this same fear echoing in the pink cylinders hung around the necks of the powerful women surrounding me. at stanford's convocation, i witnessed the clear lack of institutional courage: students protested stanford's new alcohol policy for neglecting to guarantee that "students who report sexual violence involving underage drinking would not face disciplinary action" (nayudu & zheng, 2021). although my mom and i still fear walking alone at night, this burden should not be on girls to be on guard at all hours, to "cover ourselves," to carry a self-defense weapon. the way forward needs to include rewriting the sexual assault narrative with survivors' stories and breaking cycles of sexual violence — and applying restorative justice is the first step. references bargen, c., edwards, a., hartman, m., haslett, j., & lyons, a. 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(2016, june 22). campus sexual assault: a timeline of major events. the new york times. retrieved october 27, 2021, from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/23/education/campus-sexual-assault-a-timeline-ofmajor-events.html. i’d do anything for you the commodification of women in today’s romance thriller media noel seo, stanford university ’25 abstract: modern “romantic thriller” media and portrayals of chivalrous male leads perpetuate misogynistic notions and greater tolerance of acceptance of gender violence. this paper utilizes a cultural and feminist lens to compare the popular tv show “you” (2018-) and the movie “gone girl” (2014), as they present different genders of romantic antiheroes. analyzing the implications of this gender swap in both storyline (motives) and portrayal (voiceover and narration style) suggests that both works objectify women in heterosexual romantic relationships in different ways, despite their original feminist intent. content warning: this article contains sensitive content, including analysis of discrimination and sexual harassment against women. readers are advised to take these into account before reading. for the past several decades, audiences have been captivated by romantic comedy and true crime genres. from these genres rises the modern “romantic thriller” – a genre that merges mystery with the pursuit of love, illustrating the possibilities of acting like detectives in our relationships. but upon closer examination, our fascination with this media genre romanticizes dangerous behavior and perpetuates gender violence, such as stalking. stalking can range from more extreme stalking behaviors to seemingly innocuous and even positively regarded behaviors such as romantic courtship, which are prevalent in media. the gender gap and romanticized stalking depictions are problematic for women, who may misinterpret male persistent pursuit as desirability or love (dunn, 2002). this dangerous misconception can influence women to behave in ways that inadvertently encourage male pursuers. through a process called “self-commodification,” media portrayals encourage these behaviors by presenting stalking and unwanted sexual attention as signs of female desirability. as defined by joseph e. davis, a professor of sociology at the university of virginia, selfcommodification is “the interest of maximizing our ‘exchange value’ or ‘market worth,’ [so] that we envision ourselves as marketable objects” (davis, 2003). using this framework of selfcommodification, this paper investigates how the media’s portrayal of chivalrous men turns female love interests into markers of societal value and how this, in turn, reinforces harmful gender power dynamics in heterosexual relationships. this paper analyzes the hit romantic thriller tv series “you” (based on the novel by caroline kepnes) and the film adaptation of “gone girl” (based on the novel by gillian flynn) through a cultural and feminist lens. both works feature voiceover narration of the antihero, albeit in different styles, discuss similar themes, and have received significant media attention. however, the gender of this antihero is male in “you” (joe) and female in “gone girl” (amy). this gender swap provides a convenient avenue to investigate parallels and divergences in their romantic relationships. through a comparison of character motives and narration styles, this paper demonstrates how both works perpetuate female objectification in heterosexual romantic relationships, despite their original intent. how society commodifies women through men sociologist joseph davis presents his theory of self-commodification, where we are the things we buy, and our personal lives are dictated by market forces (davis, 2003). brands such as tommy hilfiger and nike skyrocketed to popularity with their metaphorical imagery and individualism, with the message that buying their brand will allow the consumer to experience greater liberation and enhance their self-image. davis suggests that it is through these commodities designed to enhance the self that influenced us to market ourselves. like successful brands, we have to “get in touch with [our] skills, the ‘selling parts’ of [our] personalit[ies], and any and every accomplishment [we] can take credit for” to craft a distinctive and socially valuable persona (davis, 2003). we must sell ourselves and self-brand relentlessly to beat the competition; we must monitor and reinvent ourselves to stay relevant in an ever-changing market of social influences (davis, 2003). however, heightened self-awareness comes at the cost of living in ignorance of how we are actually perceived by others. as a result, the illusion of self-commodification can veil gender disparities that pose real consequences for women. for instance, self-commodification as portrayed in the media is to blame for falsely empowering women. self-commodification assures women that they are more powerful than they are in reality. feminist and cultural critic susan j. douglas coins this myth “enlightened sexism,” or “a new, subtle, sneaky form of sexism that seems to accept--even celebrate--female achievements on the surface, but is really about repudiating feminism and keeping women, especially young women, in their place” (douglas, n.d.). mainstream acceptance of enlightened sexism has increased the representation of women in media, but only in ways that highlight their utility for their male co-stars. enlightened sexism in the context of romantic relationships presents a disconnect, then, between trying to improve for oneself versus for a partner. feminist francesca m. cancian asserts that “the feminine sphere of love and the family has been split off from the masculine sphere of self-assertion and work” and self-development (cancian, 1987). traditional gender roles portray women as dependent and loving, and incapable of meaningful action, and men as independent and competent individuals. but a major consequence of these gender stereotypes is that they not only imply that women need heterosexual love more than men, but also that as the “more emotional ones,” women are responsible for nurturing the relationship for both parties (cancian, 1987). the myth that women are emotionally responsible for relationships excuses men from “naturally” failing to meet their partner’s needs. it condones inappropriate emotions on their behalf, such as disinterest or rage, as well as inappropriate actions that may arise from lack of control over emotions, such as stalking and domestic violence. in this regard, and in the following media examples, society commodifies women through men, feeding them uplifting messages of purchasing power that will ultimately be used against them. “you” joe goldberg (played by penn badgley) is a white, twenty-something bookstore manager in new york looking for love. one day, he meets a woman, beck, in his bookstore, and falls in love at first sight. however, as his desire for beck grows, he snoops into her private accounts online, sneaks into her apartment and takes her personal belongings, and kills her ex and her friends out of jealousy. ultimately, he makes his life’s purpose to have her at any cost, including death. on top of this twisted psychological romance storyline, “you” is told almost entirely through joe’s voiceover narration. for instance, in the opening monologue of joe stalking beck in the first season, audiences “hear” joe’s thoughts and justifications for his immoral actions. joe’s manipulative efforts transform him into the perfect guy for beck, someone who knows her inside and out. even as he eventually kills beck in an unfortunate turn of events, he still does it in the name of chivalry. in order to understand the unintended impacts of “you,” we must first understand how joe’s narrative affects our viewer experience. the opening scene of the pilot episode is shot from joe’s point of view, through both camera angle and voiceover. as he scans beck through the shelves and uses the meticulous language of a scientist picking apart his specimen, the show literally and figuratively becomes the male gaze. he narrates, “well, hello there. who are you? based on your vibe, a student. your blouse is loose.” though joe’s monologues are unreliable, to buy into the rom-com fantasy and mystery story, audiences are inclined to suspend their disbelief. to buy into the story, we have to temporarily view opinion as fact and spend episodes in the subconscious of a serial killer nice-guy. but the show is risky for keeping audiences in his voiceover narration for too long. the cultural implication of this repeated exposure is spreading the misconception that because men are heard more in society, their words hold more weight than those of women (lakoff, 1973). other implications of taking joe’s words at face value are understanding joe’s unethical logic and seeing him as a relatable and forgivable character when he is not. women get so lost in the allure of joe and buy his tale of enlightened sexism that they forget that they are not joe. they do not share his motives and male entitlement in their own lives, or the license to be derogatory and chaotic at one’s will. drawing from cancian’s comparison of feminine love and masculine independence and self-development, the show sells an idea of joe that simply does not reflect the realities of living as a woman. why should the thought of being and empathizing with beck cross our minds, if she is always referred to as “you?” according to doyle greene, an independent scholar and co-editor of film criticism, the show’s focus on joe reinforces the “firstness” of man and “secondness” of woman through the firstness of voice and high culture, and secondness of writing and mass culture (greene, 2018). greene demonstrates how joe’s commentary itself emphasizes patriarchal high culture through his wit, depth of character and emotion, and “pathological profundity” (greene, 2018). despite superficially placing one woman on a pedestal, much of joe’s mansplaining is sexist, even towards that woman: “he tosses out ongoing commentary as quippy, seemingly stream-of-consciousness observations about beck (‘you majored in lit and minored in douchebags’); her friends (‘pointless…disloyal….instagram-able lives’); and women in general (‘the dead-eyed bulimic housewives of soho’)” (greene, 2018). joe is disillusioned about mass culture and makes women the singular scapegoat. while both joe and beck are associated with writing (joe, a reader and storyteller, and beck, a struggling writer), “for joe this is a gateway to link him to the firstness of high culture and consign beck to the secondness of mass culture, a relationship andreas huyssen argued is itself gendered: ‘mass culture as woman.’[3]” (greene, 2018). the show perpetuates this myth as well, by portraying beck’s “counter-narrative” in the form of superficial on-screen text messages: “follow your dreams-in the meantime mac and cheese!” one of the few instances where beck uses her voice meaningfully is when she drunkenly reads poetry at a night bar off her phone– and even then she is heckled by a man. by trying to highlight flawed human nature in joe’s narration, the show silences beck as a powerless and useless individual. it silences beck indirectly as well, by keeping her in a bubble of ignorant bliss, oblivious to the problems around her. by presenting beck as an ignorant victim of mass culture and joe as a cultured romeo, the show has another opportunity to present joe as a “savior” to audiences. through joe’s persistent investigations, he uncovers layer after layer of beck’s problems. he discovers her abusive ex, unethical male therapist, predatory graduate school advisor, and estranged father (dominguez, 2022). it is through his point of view and monologues that the audience learns to view beck as a complex love interest. the natural conclusion is that joe must be good for her. he understands her on a deeper level and accepts her despite her flaws —as “true love” should be, according to romantic stereotypes. to the audience, it is easy to focus on joe. joe is the main character. he is a kind person willing to love a broken soul and the show is about his efforts to do so. but what is the difference between joe and her male therapist that pursues an affair with her? unlike the show, if we shift the focus back to beck, it becomes apparent that joe is part of the problem. beck’s brokenness is a product of suffering from the men in her life. she has constantly been taken advantage of and manipulated by men with ulterior motives, and joe is only adding to that list. showcasing beck as an unaffected, happy person hides the “range of negative psychological states, including anxiety, depression, sleep disturbances, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicidality” experienced by real stalking victims (lippman, 2015). even in the rare instances where the show reveals beck’s emotional suffering, it is not explicitly tied to her interactions with joe. in addition, it is problematic that the show capitalizes on beck’s trauma (dominguez, 2022). there is something sinister about joe’s obsession with beck’s trauma and his trying to fix her life. there is something perverted about attempting to right the wrongs of his life with this new love interest and making commentary on every aspect of her life that he finds problematic. the pattern is repeated in later seasons, where his desire to protect and love extends to vulnerable non-white and younger women, such as a latinx teenage orphan and an african-american single mother (vincent, 2019). joe’s motivations in pursuing these women are driven by male entitlement and his savior complex, aspects of today’s misogynistic mass culture. joe is oblivious to how he benefits from and perpetuates this misogynistic mass culture, which blinds female audiences to his harmful capacity. several ironies in the show illustrate this fact. he frowns upon mass-produced, pop culture books and “the regime of ‘dan brown chasers’” who read them, despite these readers forming the basis of his living as a bookkeeper. despite hating these books, one of his favorite books is don quixote, a mainstream book about chivalry: to joe, “the simple message of don quixote is ‘chivalry...treating people with respect: especially women.’” (greene, 2018). joe incorrectly takes this message at face value. he is disconnected from the common interpretation of don quixote as mocking chivalry and thinks it is praising it. similar to female audiences who resonate with joe, joe empathizes with the delusional quixote that thinks he is saving the world. consequently, when joe masturbates outside beck’s window, assaults beck’s drug dealer, and kidnaps her boyfriend benji, the show portrays a “perverted yet noble quest for true love in which joe is not only beck’s romantic suitor but ordained protector” (greene, 2018). a final irony is that the book you and tv show, and by extension joe’s life, is a carefully curated, mass-produced, romance thriller bestseller. “you” is really about joe, a man who needs a woman to fulfill his self-conception as a man. so, the mass culture he proclaims to hate is in fact the ideal environment for him to present and view himself the way he wants and live freely without a conscience. in this way, joe markets himself and commodifies his female love interests. across all seasons, he flaunts his good looks, appreciation for high culture, and kindness towards women and children, at least when he wants to. his narration is calculating and pragmatic, with intelligence that impresses and wit that charms. he feels that he deserves respect as a man taking upon himself to cultivate a successful romantic relationship. echoing cancian, society tends to place the responsibility of love on women’s shoulders (cancian, 1987). so joe stalks and works incessantly behind the scenes to win beck and us over. ultimately, he hooks us with his dedication to those he claims to love. as los angeles-based tv editor liz shannon miller puts it, “he’s not stalking her, you see — he just needs to know a little more about her so that he doesn’t get hurt. and then he needs to help make sure that she doesn’t get hurt by the people in her life, or by her own choices… and he’s not afraid to do what it takes to ensure that” (miller, 2018). we learn to see him how he wants in the end, as a flawed individual with good intentions, by repeated exposure to his rationales and the willful ignorance of other characters in the show. some male characters in “you'' validate joe’s romantic conquest and blatantly encourage stalking. for example, joe’s coworker ethan fuels his interest in beck by saying, “i’d be googling the hell out of her right now. you know her full name.” the show sells stalking in a positive light by presenting alternative interpretations of resourcefulness, cautiousness, and again, dedication. joe states, “i should have seen the signs. but we never do when we’re in love,” making viewers think that he is only trying to protect himself and the relationship. moreover, joe profiles first digitally, then physically. he follows beck to her apartment often, uses multiple social media platforms to learn about her interests and friends, and hacks into her phone to read her texts. in one scene, joe stalks beck’s location to a subway station and manages to save her from being hit by a train. these scenes that frame joe as the savior lead audiences to permit his stalking because “he goes to the limit for her, not against her; it does not harm her, but ‘for’ her” (carvalho, 2020). but the reality stands: joe’s obsession with his reputation does not consider women and has terrible consequences for them. on his essay about seductive algorithms that capture our attention, luis carvalho writes that “joe constantly shows an intention to ‘make beck a better person’ or ‘make her life better,’ saying that he will cook for her, take care of her books, set passwords on his devices, or even ‘improve’ his friendships. beck does not ask for it, not even figuratively” (carvalho, 2020). what does joe actually do for beck? he murders her ex and best friend only to murder her as well, once she rejects his love. from the first monologue, he commodifies her, observing her clothes and making judgments about her character. he attributes the failure of the relationship to beck’s shortcomings and her unwillingness to reciprocate and understand his actions for her. the final stab in the back is that beck was about to catch her big break– she wrote a book about her relationship with joe, but didn’t live to see it published. joe published it in her name, “fulfilling” her aspirations of becoming a successful writer and rising as her savior one last time. but the irony of joe stripping beck of agency in her novel and in the show suggests that she was merely a tool to build joe’s brand, and thus, the show’s brand. some may disagree, claiming that “you” is a feminist show. in an interview with the new york times, sera gamble, the writer and co-producer of the tv adaptation of “you” and caroline kepner, the author of the corresponding novel state that the purpose of the show is to uncover instances of toxic masculinity in rom-coms’ “fantasy mode of storytelling” (st. james, 2019). gamble and kepner drew from their personal experiences and the rom-coms they had grown up with to create the show: “our goal was, when you come in on that first scene [in “you”], you really do feel like you’re in a scene that, eight or 10 years ago, would have been a young matthew mcconaughey and kate hudson. they are both bright and thoughtful and intelligent, and have been hurt before, but they’re open to possibilities” (berman, 2018). the show plays on rom-com notions of entitlement to love and desire to force a happilyever-after in its meta voiceover commentary: for instance, when joe is almost caught sneaking into beck’s apartment, he says, “i’ve seen enough romantic comedies to know guys like me are always getting into jams like this.” although the creators purport that “you” warns viewers of “the disturbing reality of romance taken too far,” (berman, 2018), letting viewers into joe’s stream of consciousness have the opposite effect. just look at “you’s” ratings and viewership. it has a 92% “fresh” critic score and 81% audience score on rotten tomatoes (rotten tomatoes) and a 7.7/10 rating on imdb (imdb). time after time again, the show has topped netflix’s “top 10” charts (the new york times), and netflix has reported that 72% of the show’s viewership is female (insider). as it appears, female audiences crave season after season of twisted joe goldberg “charm.” there are a concerning number of genuine and vocal joe fans. according to penn badgley (the actor who plays joe), fans have sent him the following tweets: “kidnap me pls”; ""i'm telling u it's ur face that does it. ur gorgeous. i can see past that crazy sh*t lol”; "said this already but @pennbadgley is breaking my heart once again as joe. what is it about him? ?” (gawley, 2019). the shocking media response indicates that “you” is not nearly as subversive as it seems, and that glorified media portrayal of romantic men overshadows the creators’ feminist messages. “gone girl” in contrast to “you,” david fincher’s “gone girl” features a female antihero. the film opens with an image of amy dunne, a white, affluent, picture-perfect blonde. “amazing amy” is a childhood star, harvard graduate, and seemingly happy wife to nick dunne. as the first half of the film investigates amy’s disappearance, nick and amy alternate voiceovers. amy’s voiceovers are accompanied by flashbacks and journal entries, in which she details the timeline of their relationship. after they marry, they lose their jobs to the recession. nick grows more distant from amy, hitting her in a moment of passion, and having an affair. in the meantime, the police find evidence that implicates nick for murdering amy. halfway through the film, however, the film switches starkly to amy’s narration without the diary, as she explains how she framed her husband for her murder. everything from the diary to her pregnancy is revealed to be fake, a dramatic plot device to contribute to the story of amy’s happily-ever-after: how she shapes her husband into the man she wants him to be. and though amy felt justified in tarnishing her husband’s reputation, she had also planned to drown herself, as she saw nothing more to live for without him. while nick lawyers up at home, amy stalks him through tv news reports in an isolated campground in the ozarks and moves into her ex’s place. but when she sees nick’s public apology on national tv and his desire to make things right with her (despite this being a ruse to lure amy home), she cultivates a story of how she escaped from her “abusive” ex to return to nick and become the “perfect couple.” like “you,” “gone girl” has received significant media attention and praise. as patrick osborne, a literature professor at florida state university states, it is an “ingenious and original take on the classic whodunit that consistently manipulates the reader with shocking plot-twists and unreliable narrators” (osborne, n.d.). according to book editor maris kreizman, the domestic suspense novel is “marketed mostly to women (as always) as a dark-covered fast-paced thrill ride” but “feature[s] an anti-heroine (at long last), or at the very least a main character whose defining quality isn’t ‘likable’” (kreizman, 2022). to kreizman, “gone girl’s” feminine dark side is a plus for representation and liberation. however, these portrayals of female vengeance are controversial. in “you” we have seen how overly sympathizing with a character can cultivate inaccurate expectations for romantic relationships and self-perceptions. is “gone girl” truly liberating, or is it another example of enlightened sexism in the media? and are amy’s actions truly feminist, as a woman suffering under justifiable circumstances, or are she and joe the same? on the surface, “gone girl” is a reclamation of female power in a heterosexual relationship. however, a closer inspection of amy’s motivations and nuanced depictions of female powerlessness tells a story of a woman who is corrupted by her husband’s physical violence and disrespect. instead of being empowering, amy’s erratic behaviors of stalking, blackmailing, lying and murdering are a reflection of desperation and inability to cope with her situation. to escape the suffering created by her husband and the patriarchal expectations that have commodified her into a trophy wife, she turns to these unhealthy and drastic coping mechanisms. even after her revenge arc, it is clear that amy is at the will of her husband: nick pretends to love her on national tv. amy returns to him with that superficial declaration, realizing that society and herself only see and value her as nick’s wife. in this way, “gone girl” indirectly shows how expectations of romantic men (in the media, or in this case, in amy’s glorified diary entries and flashbacks) can cause lasting psychological damage to women. amy’s backstory extends this narrative of female commodification. she has been relentlessly self-branding her entire life as the perfect daughter and wife (kanjilal, 2016). amy’s perfectly scripted journal is the embodiment of her self-branding. drawing from greene’s secondness of women through writing and mass culture, the directorial decision to depict a faceless amy writing in multiple scenes highlights her inferiority. the effect is more pronounced given that her diary words are performative and insignificant compared to how amy truly feels, which is revealed later on (szarvas, 2018). she details her progressing romance with vapid entries like “i’m so crazy, stupid, happy, i met a boy. a great, sweet, gorgeous, cool-ass guy” and “we’re so cute. i wanna punch us in the face.” diary amy is femininity embodied. and this notion is not new– society is used to seeing women “express themselves” in diaries in rom-coms such as “bridget jones’ diary” (szarvas, 2018). furthering the point that amy’s identity is constrained to writing mediums, she is the subject of her parents’ successful “amazing amy” children’s book series. with book titles like “amazing amy: meets her match” and “amazing amy: and the big day,” amy narrates that her parents essentially plagiarized her childhood: “the night begins with me, regular, flawed, real amy, jealous as always of the golden child, perfect, brilliant, amazing amy.” she is also a personality quiz writer for women’s magazines, an occupation that revolves around superficially helping women understand and brand themselves better. amy’s writing parallels beck’s in “you” as a form of storytelling that fails to contribute real meaning to their lives. remaining in this fantasy fiction world severely disillusions both women to the point of death or insanity. as the latter, amy attempts to force her expectations into reality through violent and unethical acts: “the things amy fabricated for her diary are presently becoming true. there really is a baby now, and nick really does push her'' (meyer, 2021). the womens’ vulnerabilities stand in stark contrast to their male counterparts. joe clearly controls beck’s and his viewers’ perceptions of him. likewise, nick is judged by his words. when the public thinks that nick had an affair and killed his wife, nick gives a speech in a nationally broadcasted interview. nick’s words alone shift public favor and trust back to him. this speech contrasts with scenes of amy cutting herself, lying in a hospital bed, and walking out of a car wounded amid a sea of paparazzi. whereas joe and nick’s words speak for themselves, the film reduces amy's identity to pointless writing unless she proves her worth through crazy actions (szarvas, 2018). her actions force her husband not only to fear her, but acknowledge her as a human (kanjilal, 2016). this is the key difference between joe’s and amy’s stories: amy has been commodified by men and patriarchal institutions all her life, and as a result, she internalizes her experiences as self-commodification. amy has been conditioned to be the perfect wife. she grows into a figure of femininity and then contorts her value to the market fluctuations of nick, once he enters her life: “nick loved a girl i was pretending to be. “cool girl.” men always use that, don’t they?... cool girl is hot. cool girl is game. cool girl is fun. cool girl never gets angry at her man. she only smiles in a chagrined, loving manner, and then presents her mouth for fucking.” but as director david fincher comments, the film is about the resentment and dissonance that arises when one party in a relationship decides that they are done being the ideal partner (james, 2014). in many cases, this party tends to be male, and the pattern is no different in “gone girl.” amy devotes herself to nick only for him not to keep up his end of the bargain: he eventually cheats on her with andie, who “is submissive to nick’s desires and grants him the entitlement he feels towards his hegemonic masculinity. she is easy to get along with, does not make demands, and never scowls at him. such submission ultimately makes him believe true love is ‘the permission to just be the man you are’ (gone girl 204, emphasis in original)” (osborne, n.d.). osborne’s statement falls in line with cancian’s reasoning of male independence and feminine responsibility for love. nick believes he is entitled to be himself and cheat with other women to fuel his masculine ego, while amy believes she is the one who suffers the most in their marriage and has to fix it. and in this sense, nick is detached from amy’s suffering in marriage. marital hardships are a blow to her competency, a reflection of her failures as a woman, and a dissolution of everything she was promised if she played wife (kanjilal, 2016). for amy, this realization shatters her illusion of love in marriage. her reality is that marriage is about commitment: a partner that can provide a constant source of recognition, respect, and selfworth in a suffocating, patriarchal society. like joe in “you,” amy embarks on a journey to make her relationship work. but for amy, it is destined for failure. she attempts to commodify nick as he and society have commodified her all her life: “but i made him sharper, smarter. i inspired him to rise to my level. i forged the man of my dreams.” while amy’s remarks seem to connote agency in the moment, they fail to be executed when looking at the film as a whole. amy attempts to manipulate nick and the public can be viewed as empowering, but in the end, amy is reluctant to take any concrete action against him. she never harms nick physically or financially. in contrast to joe, when she says “i would never, ever hurt you,” she really does mean it. amy also internalizes the relationship to a greater extent than joe does. joe’s fantasies, fulfilled or failed, live on in his mind. after beck passes, joe is able to move on with his life and chases other women. but without nick or other people’s love and approval, amy doesn’t see a point in living (tsintziras, 2023). when nick goes home to visit a sick relative, she says, “i don’t know if he’s happy i’m with him. i feel like something he loaded by mistake. something to be jettisoned if necessary. something disposable. i feel like i can disappear.” gillian flynn states that “gone girl” provides “a satirical response to violence against women perpetuated by patriarchal simulations in the media that construct idealized notions of love and marriage” (osborne, n.d.). but this is a rare moment where amy is honest with her reality, and the film is honest with the reality of most women. hence, the title “gone girl” emphasizes “the sense of identity of a girl had disappeared and in the end she became a woman who got into the man’s world and needed to follow the man’s standard of becoming a woman” (aditya, 2016). consequently, society views the woman as lost and crazy (kanjilal, 2016). whether told by a male or female narrator, the romantic thriller genre filled with satire, intellectual mind games, and dark humor are coping mechanisms. presenting women’s realities in a more dramatic and twisted way diverts attention from their physical and psychological suffering. this latent discrimination ultimately puts women at an increased risk for interrelational violence. conclusion according to the u.s. department of justice’s national crime victimization survey, 74% of 3.4 million americans stalked annually were female and 68% of stalkers were male (baum et al., 2009). more concerning is the fact that only “43% of college stalking victims who meet the legal criteria of ‘stalking’ do not identify their experience as ‘stalking’” (stalking prevention, awareness, and resource center, 2021), which illustrates the far-reaching effects of cultural ignorance around gender disparities. instead, female audiences are prone to internalize self-commodification and value themselves on their ability to attract sexual attention from men. the comparative analysis of “you” and “gone girl” demonstrates how media portrayals of romantic, independent men and vulnerable, superficial women result in disastrous consequences for women on-screen and in real life. self-commodification and enlightened sexism blind women to the ways in which they make themselves vulnerable to stalking, sexual harm, and other forms of male oppression. ultimately, we must disconnect from ourselves, and shift our attention to the “you” and the “gone girl.” we must recognize that women matter on an individual and nuanced basis. their stories are worthy of standing alone, showcasing the value of their identity and experiences, while also drawing attention to the patriarchal norms they are subjected to and betrayed by daily. women need to be given greater agency in the ways they are perceived. truly seeing a woman is seeing her in the ways that she wants to matter. references aditya, m. p. 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'you' season 2 review: we need to talk about joe's white savior complex. femestella. retrieved april 8, 2023, from https://www.femestella.com/you-season-2review-joe-white-savior-complex-toxic-masculinity/ wolfe, t. (1976, august 23). tom wolfe on the 'me' decade in america. new york magazine. retrieved november 23, 2022, from https://nymag.com/news/features/45938/ you. rotten tomatoes. (n.d.). retrieved april 8, 2023, from https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/you/s01 https://www.slashfilm.com/628875/gone-girlhttps://www.slashfilm.com/628875/gone-girlhttps://www.indiewire.com/2018/09/you-lifetime-review-stalker-drama-penn-badgleyhttps://stanforddaily.com/2022/10/12/from-the-community-i-was-sexually-assaultedhttps://www.vox.com/culture/2018/12/27/18100495/you-netflix-lifetime-penn-badgleyhttps://www.stalkingawareness.org/wphttps://www.stalkingawareness.org/wphttps://www.femestella.com/you-season-2https://www.femestella.com/you-season-2https://nymag.com/news/features/45938/ sweet as birdsong, soft as moonlight bee saracco, emory university ’25 the sun was just beginning to fade as night carried water back from the river. these days, her back ached as she held one hand to steady the jug atop her head, the other shading her eyes from the last golden rays. she watched the dark brown earth pass beneath her sandaled feet one step at a time. “night, there you are!” even if she had not recognized the voice, night would have recognized that smile anywhere— the way it split lark’s face into a grin wider than her pursed lips should be capable of, the way it revealed the gap between her front teeth like a window into her joy. lark’s smile had always been an invitation. the jug crashed to the ground. water spilled across the earth as night rushed forward to embrace her girlhood friend. her arms had dropped from her head to wrap around lark’s waist. neither of them minded the shattered jug– they were girls again, ignoring their mothers’ chastisement in favor of running off to play. — little lark was the first girl born to the village in three years. little night followed close behind. on her name day, the first anniversary of her birth, little lark was named for her skin browner than dirt, her laughter like a song, and her attempts at song frequent as laughter. three months later, little night was named for her near-black skin and eyes wide, curious, and gray as the moon. the other children had all been born either a few years earlier or a few years later, but even if they hadn’t been, the girls were sure it would always have been the two of them. little lark would always laugh easily and sing loudly, and little night would always be by her side, quiet and attentive. little night would always have questions, and little lark would always set out to answer them. from the moment they could walk, they walked together, and from the moment they could talk, they talked together. to everyone else in the village, they may have been little lark and little night, but with each other, there were no diminutives. night would ask, “lark, where do wheat seeds come from?” and her friend would ask her father over dinner and report back the next day: “the kernels.” night would ask, “why did giraffe move houses?” and lark would wait till they were all hanging sheets together and repeat the question to her mother, who would say, “his mother died. you have to leave a house when your mother dies. it’s not a home anymore if she’s not there.” night would ask, “why is the moon always changing?” and lark would bring her to her grandmother, who would say, “the moon is curious, but she is also shy. she turns to look at us, and then she turns away.” but all children are curious, and lark once had a question of her own: “why aren’t we allowed by the river?” night thought for a moment; her mother had always told her “you’re too small, and the river is too strong.” but what she told her friend was what she always thought when she looked out at the river from the farm on the hill: “it’s always running.” so instead, they played out by the ruins. four generations ago, the village by the ruins had been the city where the emperor was born, crowned, and killed. lark’s grandmother was just a girl when the empire fell, and she could still be coaxed into telling stories about those times. every day, the girls ran out to the ruins as soon as they finished their chores. for many months, their favorite game was to climb over the columns closest to the village. but eventually, they ran further. — night stepped back to look at her friend. the spilled water was making mud at their feet. “how long has it been?” “years,” lark laughed. “too many years.” night smiled a full smile, showing her chipped front tooth. “enough to get married?” she gestured at the woman standing off to the side, noticing her for the first time. “yes.” lark turned to take her wife’s hand and pull her into the conversation. “this is flint.” “lovely to meet you.” flint’s voice was gravelly, her face all sharp angles, but her smile was warm. night let herself be pulled into a hug. “do you have any children?” she looked around for someone small and loud, as she imagined lark’s child would be. flint laughed, “no, no children.” “what about you, night?” lark’s voice was a song. night smiled at her friend. “one. she reminds me of you. come, please, meet my family!” and she led them down the path to her farm, not the one lark would have remembered, but the homestead she had made with her husband. — night had been the one to suggest exploring further into the ruins. or rather, she had asked “i wonder what else is out here?” and lark had replied, “there’s only one way to find out,” and took off running. night followed her, giggling. lark cheered as she vaulted over the ruined wall of a building, and night made to follow suit. her foot hooked on the low top of the wall and she crashed into the ground. lark was already turning. “night, you’re bleeding!” “where?” night asked, but just then she started to feel it. her nostrils clogged with blood. lark held a hand out to help her up and as she took it, night was horrified to notice a tiny shard of white on the ground. she tried to talk while feeling her front teeth with her tongue: “ith my… did i thip my tooth?” lark cackled, clamping her hands over her mouth too late to muffle the sound or stop the instinct. “i’m sorry, i’m sorry! here, let me look.” night looked up at her friend with terror in her eyes. she opened her mouth. lark made a face. “lark!” “sorry! yes. yes, it’s chipped.” night covered her face and groaned. she had forgotten about her bloody nose until her friend nudged her arm and offered her the torn-off hem of her tunic. “for your nose.” “thanks.” night sat down on the wall of her demise. lark perched next to her. as she held the cloth to her nose, night’s eyes wandered across the ruins she had never seen. there was the cluster of low, ruined walls they were in now, which had presumably once been a row of houses, but further back towards the sparse treeline was a standalone circle of crumbling columns. “what’s that?” lark followed her friend’s gaze. just where the forest began, the circle of columns surrounded a large stone. something was different about these ruins– the way they stood apart from the rest, there was a remnant of purposefulness about them. wordlessly, the girls stood and looked at each other. and then they were picking their way across the field to those columns. as they approached, night could see that it wasn’t just a stone. the rough-hewn block held the faded carvings of sheaves of wheat along its sides— and more intriguing, a deep bowl in its top. passing through the columns, she saw a stone stool of sorts before the stone. she stepped onto it, her feet fitting into well-worn grooves on the stool’s surface. she peered into the large stone bowl. “woah,” lark said softly. night looked over to see her friend trailing her fingers over the carvings on the stone’s surface. “lark, look.” she pointed into the bowl, letting her fingers graze multi-colored stains on its surface. lark, already growing tall, didn’t need the stool to peer in. she gripped the edge of the bowl and pulled herself onto her tip-toes. night watched her friend’s face as she took in the stains– purple, yellow, green, brown. “huh,” was all she said. hardly an hour later, the two of them were sitting cross-legged on the floor of lark’s home, waiting for her grandmother to finish her rambling advice about the best way to knead bread so that lark could ask her a question. when she finally did, her grandmother hummed. “you girls want to know about the altar?” “what’s an altar?” night jumped in. lark’s grandmother was quiet a little while longer. all three of them were watching her softly wrinkled hands fold into the dough. “an altar,” she began, smiling into a memory, “is a place to ask for what you want and celebrate what you have.” every day after that, the girls could be found at that ruined altar. they tracked down the shard of night’s tooth, tossed it into the bowl, and celebrated smiles– laughing the whole time. one week it rained three days in a row, and they stomped out to the altar to scoop mud into the bowl and draw symbols in it with sticks. at the next year’s harvest, they snuck off to the altar while the village’s mothers cooked the harvest day feast, a stalk of wheat in each of their hands. they pulled the kernels off and tossed them into the bowl one by one, making up a song as they went. when the girls were old enough to fetch water from the river, night was afraid. having lark by her side was more of a comfort than her mother, whose grip was tight on night’s wrist and her warnings were harsh in her ear. watch your step. straighten your back, don’t let the jug fall. slow down. when she slipped on the slick rocks of the riverbank, pitching forward, it was lark that caught her arm to steady her. night fought to catch her breath, staring at the quicklymoving current. there was a chill in her bones as her mother guided her hands to dip the jug into the current. that evening, the girls snuck out to the altar later than they ever had before. lark pulled a river rock from her pocket, placed it in the bowl, and wrapped night in a hug. the day lark’s grandmother died, lark showed up outside night’s door wiping her nose and sniffling. as soon as she saw her friend, she started sobbing again. night brought her into an embrace, letting her friend heave sobs into her shoulder. she didn’t know what was wrong yet, and didn't want to ask. instead, she took her friend’s hand and led her to their altar. lark kept her eyes on the ground the whole way there, her tears fading. she finally whispered, “grandmother died, night.” night let the news hit her in waves. cold, and out of her control. this is what she imagined it would feel like to be washed away down the river. the girls simply stood before the altar. they didn’t know what to pray for. they had been coming here for five years, and yet night felt that they had never touched on what lark’s grandmother had meant to them. it was about a week later that lark’s family moved away. the girls had sobbed that it wasn’t fair, that they only had to leave the house, not the village, but lark’s father insisted. he had heard there was great luck to be had tree-tapping in the rich forests to the south, and a larger village as well. so the girls were sitting at their altar, ignoring their mother’s calls one last time. night sat cross-legged in the grass, leaning her back against a column and watching lark tear up fistfuls of grass. she looked at lark and she knew then that she would never not know her. they were girls together. there wasn’t anything either of them could become that would discount that. even if lark outgrew her love for baked pumpkin seeds, night will always have known the version of her that ate them by the pound every fall. even if night learned to love fetching water from the river, lark will always have been the one who held her hand to ensure she didn’t slip. so she said this out loud, because she needed lark to hear it. “i will never not know you.” lark replied, “and i will never not love you.” when their mothers’ shouts began anew, night stood and reached a hand out to her friend. she pulled lark to her feet and brushed the grass off of both of their hands. as they walked back to the village together for what seemed to be the last time, there was a remarkable sense of peace. there were some tears, too, but very little grief. — night introduced lark and flint to her husband, ox, and it wasn’t long before the four of them were all sharing tea together around the hearth. they got along better than night could’ve ever imagined, not that she ever had. she felt a sudden swell of guilt at the thought that, for as much as she reminisced on her girlhood, she had never thought about seeing her friend again. she had only ever imagined going back to those days. they were girls together; they were never supposed to be women together. — it was five months later that night was set upon by the terrible affliction of being a thirteen-yearold girl. the sorrow of being left behind had only increased in that time. she was sure it was hard for lark too, but at least she was the one who left. at least she didn’t have to be alone in places they used to be together. night still had the altar, but it was different now. she rarely went to it– only when she felt the loneliness sinking in and decided she might as well let it. she was easily annoyed by her mother these days and snapped at her frequently. even still, night was desperate to understand her. she was becoming conscious of the fact that she was growing up, and studied her mother in an attempt to predict who she would become. by the time she was fifteen, she was doing everything she could to correct herself away from that woman, for no reason other than that she was her mother. she wondered if this was how it was supposed to feel, growing up. night knew her mother like she knew how long it takes a pot to boil. it changed depending on the situation, and something was always inexplicably different when she was looking at her. just as a watched pot never boils, a watched woman never reveals herself. the only things night knew for certain about the woman who had raised her was that she was quick at chopping carrots and didn’t like the way her daughter kneaded bread. night never quite made any other friends. she knew everyone in the village, and everyone in the village knew her. there was nothing more for any of them to learn. she kept to herself, kept to her quiet study of her mother, and kept checking to ensure she was becoming something good. looking back on those years, she would not be able to help the feeling that she had been drifting away from herself. but then she met ox. or rather, she had always known him, but now they talked. night was surprised to learn how much she liked it. it had been five years since lark left, and night wasn’t used to being talked to. but here was this boy asking her about her chipped front tooth. he had never been the most handsome, but he had a wide smile and a broad chest. she was seventeen; he would be nineteen in a few weeks when the wheat would begin to poke out of the soil. ox listened attentively as night told him about the altar, blinking slowly and smiling. he liked listening to her tell stories, real or made up, and would jump in with jokes that made her laugh loud. she kissed him for the first time at the harvest day feast, hidden behind freshly-scythed sheaves of golden wheat. a year later they were married. his steadiness complemented her loneliness. by summer night’s mother had fallen ill, and ox began building them a new home in anticipation of what was to come. by fall, she had passed. the young couple moved into this new homestead, solemnly beginning the work of tilling new fields and warming a new hearth. there had only ever been two people who could coax an opened-mouth smile out of night: lark and ox. but when her baby girl was born, another suddenly joined the list: sun. from the moment she knew she was pregnant, night had worried over her baby’s name day. but from the moment sun was born, she was the happiest baby night had ever seen. by her name day, she babbled cheerfully, laughed often, and had a halo of bright curls– it was clear what sun’s name should be. as her daughter grew, she loved her more and more. from the pride of watching sun take her first stumbling steps to the joy of teaching her how to hang-dry clothes, every moment was a blessing. but eventually the joy in witnessing sun’s freedom became something else. eventually, when night watched her daughter run off to play, a small seed of resentment took root in her gut. how unfair, she thought, that girlhood was given freely but womanhood was something to be earned. she still loved her daughter, but this only doubled the resentment. she resented herself for her resentment, and for her stupidity: in all her years spent watching her mother, night had never divined how much she would miss her girlhood. she thought often about lark’s grandmother, a better model for motherhood than her own had ever been. in particular, she thought about the stories she used to tell– she couldn’t quite remember any of them now, but she remembered the feeling they exuded. night felt that all along, lark’s grandmother had been trying to tell them something about loneliness, about remembrance. about womanhood, too, and how all those things are baked into one. she could never quite put it into words. in small moments, she would miss the feel of lark’s hand on her wrist. but then she would think of the clothes to be washed and the bread to be made, and the present took precedence over the past. when sun woke up afraid one night and called for her mother, night didn’t know how to comfort her. she wanted sun to know that a mother is more than just someone who keeps you fed, but she feared she wasn’t good enough at proving it. all she could do was hold her daughter close and think about how long it had been since she was afraid like that. she remembered the cold dread of the river, the fear of being so small next to something you did not understand. but she had grown up, and going down to the river became something she could no longer be afraid of. when sun whispered “momma, how do you sleep easily?” night didn’t know how to tell her that eventually responsibility trumps fear. she just said, “because i have things to do in the morning,” and pressed a kiss to her daughter’s forehead. — it was already dark by the time sun came home. her mother chastised her for this, saying how she should know the rules by now. sun apologized with a roll of her eyes. she noticed the two strangers around the hearth sharing bread, mugs of tea gone cold. “who are you?” “sun! be polite,” night chided. “it’s alright,” lark laughed, “i know how it was at that age.” sun’s face grew hot at the thought of someone she had just met presuming to know her. she gave her mother and father a cool kiss on the forehead and announced, “i’m going to bed.” night turned after her. “but you haven’t had supper.” “i ate with river.” she was already gone. night wasn’t used to having guests, and she wasn’t quite sure what to do. but she ensured lark and flint had a good meal and good conversation before making up a bed for them to stay in for the night. in a quiet moment alone with her friend, she sighed, “don’t you miss it?” lark looked up from the dish she was drying. “miss it?” “being girls.” “no darling,” lark smiled. “i only ever missed you.” for the first time, night couldn’t meet her friend’s eye. “those days… my memories of them, they’re so soft and sweet. and i don’t know how to bear it, lark. i was so afraid of leaving home, so i stayed here. you went away to a bigger town and i stayed in this one place and watched my home slip away nonetheless. and i got older, and even my body was no longer the home i remembered. the girl i was– the girls we were together– they’re gone, aren’t they?” lark placed her wet hand on her friend’s. “yes, night, i’m afraid they are. they ran into the fields to play until the sun went down. and i think now we are more like our mothers, watching them disappear, knowing we will call them back for supper… the wheat reaching up to their waists so that from afar, it looks like they’re flying into the golden day.” the girls stood in silence for a moment. “and we have to let them go, don’t we?” “we have to let them go.” meet the piece: "sweet as birdsong, soft as moonlight" is a story primarily about female friendships. it centers two black girls: their girlhood, womanhood, sisterhood, and motherhood. as someone who identifies as nonbinary, it’s also a meditation on what it means to me to have grown up as a girl. this story is dedicated to the girls i grew up with— friends i still have and ones i’ve lost touch with— and the women who raised us. i wanted the setting, an agrarian village by the relatively recent ruins of an empire, to evoke a sense of growth despite pain. there is a collective trauma in this village, but life keeps going— and little girls will always find magic. microsoft word ce+a+continuum+of+violence+resubmission.docx a continuum of violence: karayuki-san, comfort women, and sex tourism in japan jessica zhu, stanford ’24 abstract: from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s, thousands of japanese women were trafficked to foreign countries and employed at brothels. called "karayuki-san," they were the foundation of japan’s pre-world war ii economic expansion into singapore and southeast asia, fueling growth both in their new countries and at home. this network of karayuki-san brothels across the asia pacific made it easy for the japanese government and military to then, during world war ii, set up the notorious system of comfort women and comfort stations. in japan’s post-war economic boom, sex again became a central part of growth and development, with corporate sex tourism causing investment in the sex industry of hot springs resorts to skyrocket, which has in turn contributed to increased rates of sex trafficking in japan. this paper argues that these three periods of history form a continuum of japanese society using sexual violence against women as a means to an end. from the pre-war karayuki-san brothels to the comfort stations of world war ii to the hot springs resorts today, japan has continuously used women as collateral damage: sexual exploitation of, and violence against, women has been seen as a “necessary evil” for national development, justified in the name of furthering japan’s growth and power. content warning: this paper discusses sexual violence. readers are advised to take this into account before proceeding. at nineteen years old, kikuyo zendo left her home in okayama, japan. she was the youngest of eight children and had first traveled there to live with an older sister after their parents’ early deaths. the zendos were poor: half worked as farmers, the other half as merchants. so when a woman who wove straw mats with kikuyo’s sister told her about a job working at a hotel in kobe, kikuyo followed her, hoping to make some money. but when they arrived in kobe, there was no hotel. instead, a man named egawa drove her, her sister’s friend, and around five or six other women to a pier, where they boarded a ship. from there, they were taken first to singapore, then to malaysia, where they were forced to work at a “station,” or brothel. “i was tricked, all of us were,” kikuyo recounted decades later as a woman in her 70s. “we were all in tears as we got off the boat. but we knew they wouldn’t let us go home. it didn’t help if we fought or cried. there wasn’t any hope of going home” (imamura, 1975). the master of the station told kikuyo that she owed a debt of 600 dollars to the sailors who had hidden her on their boat. the money earned from each of her clients was split 60:40 between her and the master, but saving up enough to buy her freedom was impossible. kikuyo was trapped (imamura, 1975). from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s, thousands of japanese women like kikuyo were trafficked to foreign countries. the japanese public called them karayuki-san: “kara” meant china or “foreign countries,” so “karayuki-san” first came to designate those who worked abroad during the meiji restoration. but job opportunities for japanese men were limited in foreign countries, so the majority of those traveling abroad were women, many of whom were trafficked to or employed at japanese brothels. the term “karayuki-san” thus took on a new meaning: japanese women who went to work abroad as prostitutes (hirakawa and shimizu, 1999, p. 1920). some went voluntarily, others tricked and trafficked like kikuyo. but for all, it was never a wholly free choice — even those who travelled abroad voluntarily often did so under immense economic pressure. these women were the foundation of japan’s pre-world war ii economic expansion into singapore and southeast asia, fueling growth both in their new countries and at home by increasing the demand for and consumption of japanese goods abroad. japanese scholars hitoshi hirakawa and hiroshi shimizu refer to this era as “the karayuki-led economic advance,” paying tribute to the ways in which karayuki-san were essential for, and at the vanguard of, japan’s nascent economic development. this network of karayuki-san brothels across the asia pacific made it easy for the japanese government and military to then, during world war ii, set up the notorious system of comfort women and comfort stations. around the year 1932, after japanese units were first dispatched to shanghai for an assault known as the first shanghai incident, military comfort stations began to be established in china by the japanese navy. the army soon followed in their footsteps with its own comfort stations, citing a number of objectives: preventing soldiers from sexually assaulting and raping local women, reducing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases among its troops, and improving military discipline (yoshiaki, 1995, p. 43-47). at these stations, women who were trafficked from japan and japan-occupied territories like korea and china were raped and abused by military soldiers and officials, often for long hours, suffering extensive physical and mental health problems. decades after the war’s formal close, the legacy of comfort women still haunts japanese and asian collective memory, casting an uncomfortable shadow over efforts of transitional justice and reconciliation between japan and the countries that it occupied during world war ii. since the 1990s, former comfort women have started to speak openly about their memories of exploitation and violence, and dozens have filed lawsuits against the japanese government to demand compensation and an official apology. reactionary and nationalist movements have flared up in response, defending japan’s history and asserting that the country committed no war crimes during world war ii, rendering an apology unnecessary. to date, the japanese government has still not issued an apology or provided reparations that survivors have deemed satisfactory. in japan’s post-war economic boom, sex again became a central part of growth and development. prostitution and trafficking scholar caroline norma writes that for the past few decades and still today, “[w]hite collar japanese working men are internationally renowned for their corporate sex tourism and after-hours client-entertaining in sex industry venues” (norma, 2019, p. 1). at many companies, for example, financially subsidized and often mandatory business trips called ian ryokou, shaiin ryokou, shokuba ryokou, or shanai ryokou take employees to hot springs resorts every year. these resorts are hubs of prostitution: in 1991, they were so popular that ian ryokou were the most common reason for which people traveled within the country (norma, 2019, p. 100-101). according to the testimonies of some wives, hostesses and prostitutes are “foisted upon” the men at these hot springs and are unrefusable due to peer pressure from coworkers and superiors (norma, 2010, p. 103). sex tourism abroad is also prevalent: the number of japanese men travelling abroad doubled between 1987 and 1992 to reach 12 million, with one survey reporting that one in five admitted to having bought sex with women abroad (matsui, 1993). this increase in corporate demand for prostitution, and the institutionalization of ian ryokou, have caused investment in the sex industry of hot springs resorts to skyrocket, which has in turn contributed to increased rates of sex trafficking in japan, sometimes of underage girls (norma, 2019, p. 104). this paper argues that these three periods of history form a continuum of japanese society using sexual violence against women as a tool for national development, with women being trafficked and raped to support japan’s political and economic advancement. from the prewar karayuki-san brothels to the comfort stations of world war ii to the hot springs resorts of the 60s and today, japan has continuously used women as collateral damage: sexual exploitation of, and violence against, women has been seen as a “necessary evil” (when it is even considered an evil), justified by the government and by the public in the name of furthering japan’s growth and power. with the karayuki-san, it was economic development in singapore and southeast asia; with the comfort women, it was military success in the greater east asia war; and with sex tourism, it is corporate fraternity and economic growth. this continuum is specifically characterized by the intention of using violence against certain targeted classes of women as a “safety valve” for the redirection of both male violence against broader groups of women, and also male discontentment and frustration about their own exploitation — a legitimization of certain kinds of violence that attempts to prevent violence in other places. race and class are also deeply interwoven into the fabric of this trend, with impoverished japanese women being trafficked at higher rates, and with imperialism and racism causing japanese men to view women in china, south korea and southeast asia as inferior, less pure and more inherently sexual — thereby justifying their subjugation. the history of these three phenomena are inextricable from one another, each stage laying the foundation for the next, together building a patriarchal and violent society. karayuki-san: broken then betrayed (c. 1970 1940) “from the late 1800s to early 1900s, there were tens of thousands of women who were smuggled in. they carried out their role as the front troops of japan, helping the economy and cooperating in war. only to be betrayed.” — shohei imamura, narrating in his film “karayuki-san, the making of a prostitute” (imamura, 1975) karayuki-san led the way for japan’s accelerating economic expansion into singapore and southeast asia. an estimated 6,000 worked in southeast asia during the peak of their activity in the early 1900s, with around 600 in singapore alone. many other early japanese immigrants to these new regions were also often in “improper trades” connected to the karayukisan, such as brothels and sex trafficking. for instance, out of just 1,835 japanese residents in the strait settlements in 1906, 852 were karayuki-san and 113 were brothel keepers (hirakawa and shimizu, 1999, p. 20). as these migrants settled down in their new homes, they catalyzed a domino effect of economic growth fueled by demand for japanese goods: “[the karayuki-san] needed japanese foods, japanese beverages, japanese clothes, and many other japanese goods. their demand was met by the queer japanese sundry-goods stores … as the japanese goods were also sold to non-japanese customers by such stores, they became widely known. the prosperity of [japan’s] southeast asian trade today … was in fact developed by these sundrygoods retailers, behind whom there was a shadow of the japanese prostitutes” (koji and michinori, 1919, p. 101-2). the success of the japanese sundry stores also led to the growth of retail and wholesale shops, shipping and warehouse companies, and banks, which in turn generated yet more economic growth and development (hirakawa and shimizu, 1999, p. 22). aside from sundry stores, karayuki-san also invested their money into plantations in southeast asia, typically rubber estates, which bolstered local economies. the bulk of their earnings, though, was remitted back to japan in support of their families, leading to domestic economic growth as well (hirakawa and shimizu, 1999, p. 20). the contribution of karayuki-san to japan’s economy was so powerful that when chinese immigrants launched a boycott against japanese goods in response to rising competition between china’s and japan’s light manufacturing industries, the karayuki-san were included in the boycott because of the strong perception that “they were at the front of japan’s overseas development” (imamura, 1975). the role of the karayuki-san in japan’s public consciousness was perhaps best encapsulated by iheji muraoka, a self-proclaimed pimp boss, who said that “[t]he ex-convict abductors must make the women work hard. they are to send money to the women’s family twice a year. it will help their parents. the government will collect tax from them. ex-convicts will be rich and rehabilitated. women can pay duty to their parents. and our homeland will become wealthy” (imamura, 1975). japan’s economic success prior to world war ii was, therefore, impossible without the karayuki-san. they immigrated overseas first, encouraged japanese business in their wake, invested in local economic development in southeast asia and sent earnings back home to their families. but as japan continued to modernize and grow, the karayuki-san turned into a source of national embarrassment. in 1892, for instance, a petition sent to the japanese government from a samurai and 36 other emigrant laborers in thursday island, australia asked for karayuki-san to be expelled from the island, complaining that “due to the people (women and men) involved in prostitution our migrant labourers (dekasegi-in) are at times called ignorant dark skinned savages or subjects of a country of prostitutes” (mihalopoulos, 1993, p. 43). sasaki shigetoshi, the samurai, continued that the prostitution of the karayuki-san put japan at a state of “underdevelopment,” hindering the country’s progress toward modernization and westernization (mihalopoulos, 1993, p. 44). of course, the demand was partly incited by the racist attitudes of other australian inhabitants; but rather than defending the karayuki-san, japanese immigrants abandoned them instead, relegating the women to collateral damage in the pursuit of a better, more “western” international reputation. as embarrassment of the karayuki-san grew amongst japanese nationals abroad, the japanese government caved to its people’s demands: in 1920, the acting japanese consulgeneral, yamazaki heikichi, abolished the system of licensed prostitution of karayuki-san in british malay (hirawaka and shimizu, 1999, p. 27). suddenly out of a legal job, the karayukisan found themselves stuck: there were few options for alternative work, they didn’t have the money to return home and their government had provided them with no compensation or support after the outlawing of their occupation. many had been trafficked unwillingly or pressured to travel abroad, but they still relied on their employment as karayuki-san for survival. “our homeland sucked up the women’s profits,” imamara said in his documentary, “then banned them, claiming them indecent for the nation.” many karayuki-san died without ever stepping foot in japan again; their graves are often not even marked with stones, but with pieces of wood (imamara, 1975). this paper argues that the willingness to leave the karayuki-san behind stemmed largely from the marginalized populations that made up the women who went abroad. like kikuyo zendo, most karayuki-san came from impoverished families in rural japan. as japan industrialized and urbanized, those living in poor fishing and farming villages found themselves facing a deadly combination of extreme agrarian poverty, overcrowding, and falling levels of productivity (warren, 1989, p. 4). during the tokugawa period, increasing rates of taxation also forced peasants in areas of rural southern japan such as amakusa and shimabara to turn over 50 percent of their harvests to the government. even after the meiji restoration, taxation remained a burden that forced many peasant-farmers off of their land (warren, 1989, p. 5). one of the only ways to escape these worsening conditions, especially for daughters who had few occupational choices, was to leave japan and work abroad (warren, 1989, p. 4). in an anonymous interview, for instance, a former karayuki-san recalls stowing away on a ship bound for singapore at 16 years old, working upon arrival at a brothel to support her sick father and siblings. every day, up to 49 clients came. “i'd do it in the late morning, from 9 a.m.,” she said. “it would go on until around 3 a.m. at night. i cried and cried” (miyazaki, 2020). across rural japan but especially in those villages of amakusa and shimabara, which were closest to the chinese mainland and to the port of nagasaki, young women were thus often forced to migrate, or were sold by their parents into prostitution. in a patriarchal society where female infanticide was common, and where women had no say legally or socially in family matters, peasant families viewed “the exchange of a daughter, who was regarded as an object to be invested in or sold,” as a worthy transaction that gave them “the only guarantee of a possible future” (warren, 1989, p. 6). while some, like kikuyo, willingly left home themselves — though they were often lied to about the jobs that they were chasing — many were also trafficked by their families as a result of both agrarian poverty and patriarchal norms. the line between who was trafficked and who had voluntarily travelled abroad was blurry; class and gender intersected deeply in the tragedy of the karayuki-san. first the honored vanguard of japanese expansion and then the embarrassment that was left behind and forgotten, karayuki-san embodied the exploitation of women as collateral damage in the path of national progress. despite being initially praised by the public for their contributions to japan’s growth, they were tossed aside immediately once they were not only no longer useful, but also threatening to japan’s public image as a modern and westernizing power. stranded in foreign countries with no hope of returning home, the karayuki-san were among the first victims of this trend in japanese history: one that exploited violence against women as a tool for national progress. comfort women: rape, a ‘wartime benefit’ for japan (c. 1932 1945) “the military leaders there assume that the soldiers’ sexual desires are impossible to restrain and set up comfort stations so that the soldiers will not rape chinese women. rapes, however, are committed quite frequently.” — first lieutenant hayao torao, writing in a report for the japanese military (yoshiaki, 1995, p. 68) her story was an eerie echo of kikuyo’s. it was 1943, and mun pil-gi was an 18-year-old girl living in japan-occupied korea. although she had entered school at age nine, her father had withdrawn her and burned all her textbooks, raging that “women who study become foxes.” so mun stayed at home, doing housework, spinning thread, and helping her parents with the fields and store that they owned. still, she longed to study. so, when a korean man told her that he could take her to a place where, he promised, she could go to school and earn a lot of money, she went with him. like kikuyo, mun never reached that alluring place. when she got off of the truck that had taken her from her village, she found herself in pusan, where she was put on a train to northeastern china and forced to work in a military comfort station there (yoshiaki, 1995, p. 104-5). problems abounded for the japanese military as they launched their invasion into china: soldiers were raping local women, sexually transmitted diseases were spreading among the troops due to the use of civilian brothels, and the wretched conditions of the army’s barracks were stirring up discontent. the solution that was reached borrowed from the memory and legacy of the karayuki-san. a system of “comfort stations,” military-run brothels where women from japan and japan-occupied territories were trafficked to, was designed by the japanese military to provide sexual “comfort” to soldiers and to improve military discipline. the japanese government’s intention of using sexual violence against comfort women as a deterrance for sexual violence against local chinese women, a twisted attempt to reduce antijapanese sentiment, again reflects the relegation of certain subjugated populations of women to “collateral damage” for the greater national good. okabe naosaburö, who was chief of staff of the north china area army from november 1944 until the end of world war ii, wrote in his “written notification of warnings on the treatment of the local population by military units and personnel” that “the trigger causing such potent anti-japanese sentiment [in occupied parts of china] is the widespread diffusion of news about rapes committed by japanese military personnel in various areas,” citing the formation of several chinese self-defense organizations that were seeking revenge for japanese crimes, particularly rapes, through violence and even murder (yoshiaki, 1995, p. 54-55). notably, the military’s motivation behind preventing the rape of local women was not to protect them, but to reduce anti-japanese sentiment among occupied peoples, which stood in the way of their imperial goals. first lieutenant hayao torao explicitly confirmed this in his report “phenomena particular to the battlefield and policies toward them,” which stated that “[t]he essential purposes of these stations are to … prevent rapes that damage the honor of the imperial army” (yoshiaki, 1995, p. 67). ironically, but perhaps predictably, the comfort stations did not even reduce rapes of local women: there were no occupied areas in which rapes stopped, even when comfort stations were available to soldiers (yoshiaki, 1995, p. 66). japanese scholar yoshimi yoshiaki writes that “[i]t is impossible to prevent rape on the one hand while officially sanctioning sexual violence on the other,” noting also that the lack of severe punishments for soldiers who committed rapes contributed to this prevalence of sexual violence (yoshiaki, 1995, p. 66). nevertheless, the japanese government’s attempt to reduce rapes of local women by allowing soldiers to instead rape selected groups of women reflects the assumption that women’s bodies can be traded and exploited in the name of the greater good, in this case military success, just as rural families sold their daughters into prostitution for economic gain during the age of the karayuki-san. the military’s goal of reducing anti-japanese sentiment also illustrates the ways in which women were sacrificed for the sake of national advancement: like how the karayuki-san were exploited for economic expansion and then left behind once they came to be seen as an embarrassment, the rape of comfort women was justified in the name of supporting japan’s occupation of china and furthering its global power. reducing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (stds), too, was another objective which comfort women were sacrificed for. the long hospitalization and recovery periods for stds at the time — 91 days for gonorrhea and 76 from syphilis — presented serious issues for both the stationed troops and the domestic japanese government, as infected soldiers who returned home would spread the stds there (yoshiaki, 1995, p. 69). soldiers were thus prohibited from going to civilian brothels, where it was supposed that most stds originated; instead, comfort stations were established as an alternative that the military thought it could better control and regulate with proper hygiene rules and practices (yoshiaki 70). but, as with the aim of reducing rapes of local women, this endeavor failed as well. almost all comfort women became infected with stds, an issue that first lieutenant hayao torao attributed, at the time, to the recruitment and trafficking of women who were already prostitutes in japan or korea to the comfort stations. but yoshiaki counters that “[w]hether the comfort women brought to china were a source of infection or not is highly debatable. women with no history of prostitution should be seen as victims who were infected {by troops} rather than as sources of infection” (yoshiaki, 1995, p. 71). since many comfort women were trafficked through deception and violence or were sold by their parents, it is likely that the spread of stds in the stations originated from already-infected soldiers, rather than from the women brought to china. many comfort women were also selected from the local chinese civilian population. regardless of where the stds originated, though, the philosophy behind using comfort stations to reduce their spread was still inherently exploitative: given the vast population of soldiers who were already infected, it was inevitable that the comfort women would become infected as well. despite this fact, the military threw the trafficked women in harm’s way to protect and strengthen their soldiers. the health of the comfort women, on the other hand, was given little thought: an oral history testimony from a woman stationed at the shijiazhuang comfort station recalls that chinese girls still in school were rounded up — “their genitals were still underdeveloped, so they became torn and infected. there was no medicine except something to prevent sexually transmitted diseases and mercurochrome. they got sick, their sores became septic, but there was no treatment” (kaneda, 1998). for both the personal health of the troops, and the efficacy and cohesion of the military, comfort women were sacrificed as collateral damage with no regard for the health consequences that they themselves suffered. perhaps most emblematic of this idea was the military’s final objective in designing this violent system: to provide “comfort” to their soldiers, giving the stations their notorious name. in waging its aggressive war, japan required that its soldiers remain in the field for long periods, living in bleak conditions that gradually incited anger and frustration among the troops. their human rights were violated, and they lived under the heel of strict commanding officers who exercised harsh and arbitrary discipline (yoshiaki, 1995, p. 73). as a result, officers began to lose control over their soldiers, with one staff officer in the 11th army complaining that “they were unable to assert their authority over older enlisted men” (yoshiaki, 1995, p. 74). to ameliorate this crisis, military doctors advised that wholesome comfort and entertainment facilities such as libraries, theaters and gyms be built; instead, the system of comfort facilities was established to offer soldiers “sexual comfort” from the wretched realities of their everyday lives. this goal was explicit and primary above others: the second article of the comfort station regulations of the 3rd independent mountain artillery regiment stated that the comfort stations were built to “pacify and moderate the troops’ brutal temperament and to aid in the promotion of military discipline,” and stations were brought even to areas where there were few civilians and thus few local rapes and little threat of std transmission (yoshiaki, 1995, p. 73). in pursuing this objective, the military was somewhat more successful than it was with the former two. one soldier stationed in china recounted that at the comfort stations, he and the other men “would be holding down [their] penises as [they] ran in … they all wanted to be freed from the stress of the singular experience of having walked the line between life and death … [they] thought there was no sense of fulfillment that burned so intensely as this” (yoshiaki, 1995, p. 74). rape even became seen as a “wartime benefit” among the japanese military. in the military tribunals that were set up to prosecute japanese war crimes after world war ii, many on trial for rape said that prior to departing for china, they were told by returning soldiers that sex was one of the good things about the war, and that this caused incoming soldiers to be “seized with the desire to rape” (yoshiaki, 1995, p. 191). whether this desire was released upon local civilian women or women in comfort stations was seemingly immaterial to them. in giving the soldiers access to sex with women as compensation for their harsh living conditions, the military thus furthered the idea that men’s suffering, especially when tied to the state and its aims, should be prioritized over women’s suffering to the point that violence against women was justified if in service of aiding men. evidently, these societally held notions added to the historical continuum of sacrificing women and using sexual violence against them for national objectives. the system of comfort women was viewed as a “necessary evil” among the japanese military, reflecting that even though they recognized the brutality that was faced by the women trafficked to the brothels, they felt that it was more important to prioritize the furthering of japan’s invasion of china. like with the karayuki-san, the economic class of the comfort women played an important role in their exploitation. agents in occupied territories took advantage of widespread poverty to convince young girls into going with them to seek better employment opportunities elsewhere. in korea, for example, japan’s colonial policies meshed with an already patriarchal culture to make receiving an adequate education impossible for women: a 1930 survey found that only eight percent of korean women were literate, compared to 36 percent of men. tricked by promises of good work in places like “factories,” many girls went willingly with japanese agents to escape their oppression at home (yoshiaki, 1995, p. 105). sometimes, the crushing cruelty of poverty also meant that even if the young women themselves did not want to go with the agents, they would be sold into service by their parents, who were often also deceived about the true nature of the work that their daughters would be doing. one japanese couple called the kitamuras, for example, worked as comfort station operators and bought 22 korean women in 1942 for sums of between 300 and 1,000 yen to the girls’ parents. the women and their families were told that the work would encompass tasks such as visiting the wounded in hospitals and rolling bandages; the enticement of “plenty of money, an opportunity to pay off the family debts, easy work, and the prospect of a new life in a new land” was often too alluring to be turned down. many comfort women were thus sold into the system by their own parents, their fates sealed by the trap of poverty — a cruel echo of the karayuki-san’s origins too (yoshiaki, 1995, p. 105-6). race and imperialism also played large roles in determining which populations of women were targeted for trafficking. the poverty in korea that enabled many women to be exploited was heavily shaped by japan’s colonial policies, which kept women uneducated and impoverished. knowing this, japanese agents purposefully targeted korean women: since korea was considered a colony of japan, international law that banned human trafficking was inapplicable there, as well as in taiwan (yoshiaki, 1995, p. 157). because the same could not be said of mainland japan, most comfort women trafficked from japan were chosen from prostitutes already working in brothels, since this made it easier for the military to sidestep the international treaty that forbade the buying and selling of women and children — technically, the prostitutes were not being “sold” (yoshiaki, 1995, p. 100). in contrast, “all of the korean girls are said to have been tricked into going along” (yoshiaki, 1995, p. 102). while this disparity does not mean that the trafficked japanese women were any more or less victimized in comfort stations than korean women, it does reflect how imperialism impacted which specific groups of women were targeted in different places. women trafficked in china, too, faced the impact of imperialism. the japanese military enlisted local chinese leaders to help them in gathering up women, hoping for cooperation with occupied villages and territories. but these occurrences were typically coerced: it was impossible to defy army orders, and japanese garrisons claimed that the women were needed for the safety of the village. many of the rounded-up women were thus not prostitutes, but instead local women brought to the comfort stations by force and without their consent (yoshiaki, 1995, p. 120). ironically, this meant that to reduce the rapes of local women, the japanese military hand-picked several local women to be raped themselves. a rhetoric of japanese racial supremacy supported this trafficking of korean and chinese women. after contact with the west first introduced the concept of race to japan in the late nineteenth century, political leaders used it to amass support for a variety of nationalist aims (fukurai and yang, 2018, p. 533-534). legal scholars hiroshi fukurai and alice yang write that in world war ii, this manifested in “the killing of hundreds of thousands of chinese civilians such as women, children and babies during the nanjing massacre; the exploitation of chinese, other asians, and allied pows as laboratory subjects in biochemical human experiments by unit 731 military doctors; the brutal suppression of indigenous resistance against the puppet state manchukuo in china,” and of course — “the systematic sexual enslavement of nearly 200,000 asian women and the establishment of comfort stations throughout asia,” among other atrocities (p. 534). the plight of both the korean and chinese trafficking victims demonstrates how racism and imperialism influenced how japan chose which women to target. imperial policies and power made it easy for women in occupied territories to be exploited, and views held by many japanese people about racial superiority meant that it was easy to sacrifice the humanities of korean and chinese women for the sake of japanese men and the japanese nation’s progress. the devastation of the comfort women thus grants clarity to both the use of sexual violence against women in service of national goals, and the ways in which race and class were intertwined with this exploitation. post-war and modern sex tourism: corporate compensation (c. 1960 present) “the imperative to exchange sex for survival, or its possibility whether real or not, rules women’s inequality, hence women’s lives, worldwide. in prostitution, virtually all of women’s and girls’ options are precluded except for this one, making her consent to it, or choice of it, fraudulent and illusory.” — catharine mackinnon, feminist legal scholar tanaka michiko was 20 years old when she was first trafficked into a tokyo geisha house. there, she was forced to strip by the owner of the house until, one day, she found herself facing obscenity charges levied against her by the police. she then returned to her hometown of nagano, where, after a failed suicide attempt, she saw no choice but to become a hot springs resort geisha out of economic destitution. at this new geisha house, tanaka was held in debt bondage, earning no money during the first four months of her work because it was all taken from her as board and debt repayment. she was forced to strip for groups of men and was raped by customers even during menstruation and after contracting syphilis. this sexual violence occured every night for a couple of months, making her so physically tired that she began to inject methamphetamine in order to stay awake. as her health deteriorated, tanaka eventually ran away with one of her customers (norma, 2019, p. 106). though it is unclear whether the customers who raped tanaka were on ian ryokou trips, the hot springs resort where she worked was exactly like the ones frequented by those corporate getaways. it is likely that many men on ian ryokou do come into contact with prostitutes, since the trips are the primary drivers of both sex industry investment in hot springs areas, and human trafficking to them (norma, 2019, p. 106). thousands of women and girls were, and continue to be, kidnapped and brought to these resorts, many underage or debt-bonded like tanaka. in 1963, for example, police found six underage girls being prostituted at a hot springs resort in ibaragi (norma, 2019, p. 104). violence abounded at these resorts: other than the inherent sexual violence of rape that the trafficked victims suffered with each new customer, many hot springs geisha were also injured or killed by patrons, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s. newspaper reports show that in 1969, a geisha was strangled to death by a male guest, and that in a separate incident, four men were charged with sexual assault for the gang rape of a bar hostess during an ian ryokou trip that had been sponsored by the men’s employer (norma, 2019, p. 105). one interviewed woman recalled a primary school friend who had died at age 17 from the health consequences of an std that she had contracted after being trafficked to a hot springs resort in sapporo, where she was forced to work for three years (norma, 2019, p. 100). thousands of young japanese women still fall victim to the commercial sex industry today: around 170,000 junior high and high school girls are currently engaged in prostitution, and around 300 cafes employing 5,000 teenage girls nationwide let older men chat with girls in school uniforms for about 50 dollars per hour (campbell, 2019). here, again, the violent sexual exploitation that the women of these hot springs face is seen as secondary to the objective of the ian ryokou: increasing corporate bonding and fraternity, which then drove economic progress. the trips were so institutionalized and celebrated in japanese corporate culture during the early decades of high-speed growth that british journalist lesley downer described them as the “ultimate bonding experience,” as business associates could “bathe together, eat together, get drunk together … and sleep all together in one big tatami [mat] room” (norma, 2019, p. 103). other than simply improving company relationships, these trips also used their unique atmospheres to dissolve traditional workplace hierarchies, allowing employees to bond with their superiors and escape from the typically stringent rules of corporate life. in a highly capitalist and economically exploitative society that extracted massive amounts of labor from its workers, these trips came as a welcome break. many men, especially those who had lived in poverty during world war ii, said in interviews that they should “work like crazed animals,” “give up one’s life for one’s work,” “expect death at work,” and “die on the job in fulfilment of true japanese manhood” (norma, 2019, p. 55). though these expectations were deeply entrenched in japanese society post-world war ii, it was still inevitable that the economic exploitation of employees would incite discontent and resentment among workers. in response to these economic conditions, the compensation thesis was developed by feminist analyses of the global sex industry’s post-war explosion to posit that “japanese men were supplied with women in prostitution as ‘comfort’ to compensate for having been made into ‘corporate slaves’ in the years of high growth” (norma, 2019, p. 24). like during world war ii, when sexual violence against comfort women was used to mollify soldiers about their poor living conditions, post-war japanese men’s access to hot springs resorts and other similar establishments also served as a “safety valve” for men’s anger about capitalist exploitation in corporate japan. norma writes that “[a]s a result of their acquiescence to group-based corporate prostitution practices, and therefore participation in male bonding across the workermanagement divide, these men forewent the class-based solidarity needed to wage resistance to corporate domination” (p. 25). the next stage of the historical continuum that this paper identifies is thus clear: sexual violence against women employed at and trafficked to hot springs resorts was overlooked because their exploitation helped corporate japan sustain itself through increasing fraternity among male employees and through diverting anger about economic exploitation toward sexual violence and “comfort.” the geisha and hostesses who suffered at these resorts were simply collateral damage in the broader objective of japan’s post-world war ii high speed growth. the legacy of karayuki-san and comfort women is even more explicit in another facet of post-war japan’s corporate culture: sex tourism to locations like south korea and thailand. in the early 1970’s, it became common for japanese white-collar men to prostitute south korean women as hostesses, or kisaeng, either during business trips or as part of bonuses awarded as prizes for reaching sales targets. in 1971, for instance, japan accounted for 41.5 percent of south korea’s tourists, encompassing nearly half a million people by 1973. these were 94 percent male, and according to a survey done by the south korean ministry of tourism, 80 percent of them cited “kisaeng parties” as what was most impressive about their trips to korea. a 1973 newspaper article estimated that 5000 kisaeng were working each night in seoul, and that there were 200,000 nationwide who were being prostituted by foreign men, overwhelmingly japanese, as part of sex tourism into the country (norma, 2019, p. 131). given that south korean women made up the largest proportion of trafficked comfort women during world war ii, the historical context of this phenomenon cannot be ignored. the kisaeng party trips were underscored by ideas that “korean women were racially and economically subordinated to japanese men” (norma, 2019, p. 133), a conception built in part through south korean women’s subjugation at comfort stations, which sacrificed their health and well-being for japanese men’s sexual pleasure and the japanese military’s imperial success. in thailand, the historical impact of the karayukisan is also clear. japanese men are today the leading international consumers of commercial sex in southeast asia, with 720,000 traveling to thailand in 2003 alone (yokota, 2006, p. 1). a survey of interviews conducted with several of these men reveal how deeply feelings of racial superiority run in the exploitation of southeast asian women. more than half of a group of 30 respondents said that they felt a feeling of intense freedom while traveling in thailand that made them eager to explore “exotic” things (yokota, 2006, p. 8). most also said that thai women were more desirable than japanese women, and that they were willingly engaged in prostitution and enjoyed their work (yokota, 2006, p. 9). some also identified a “sense of superiority” to southeast asian women who were “economically, racially, and socially of lower class than japanese men … some respondents appeared to regard thai women as sexual commodities” (yokota, 2006, p. 9). these sentiments demonstrate how thai and southeast asian women are objectified and exotified, seen as inherently more sexually promiscuous and thus less “pure” than japanese women. it is not a coincidence that modern sex tourism centers around the same places where karayuki-san first migrated prior to world war ii. the memory of those women, who were also sexually exploited in foreign lands, contributes to the idea that japanese men are sexually “freer” in regions of southeast asia, and that the people of those areas are inherently more sexual than women of mainland japan. modern sexual practices of corporate japan form the next step in the historical continuum that this paper identifies. access to sex with women is awarded to men in return for loyalty to and participation in corporate japan, reflecting the notion that sexual violence against women is a “necessary evil” for the advancement of japan’s economy. women like tanako, whose mental and physical health are devastated by the violence that they suffer through, are sidelined in favor of national progress. conclusion for at least the past century, japan’s economic and military progress has relied on the subjugation of women. sexual violence against certain groups of women, targeted for their race and class, has been explicitly used in the pursuit of various national goals. the historical continuum that encompasses the karayuki-san, comfort women, and modern sex tourism reflects japanese conceptions of women’s bodies as disposable—willingly traded and exploited in return for economic growth or military success. these three eras in history cannot be viewed in isolation from each other; the underlying philosophies behind each one built and reinforced the frameworks that allowed the following ones to exist. preventing the cycle from continuing thus requires not just an uprooting of patriarchy, but also the dismantling of class-based and racial oppression, which intersect with gendered violence to relegate specific populations of women to the bottom of the social hierarchy. references campbell, charlie. “the sexual exploitation of young girls in japan is 'on the increase,' an expert says.” time, 29 october 2019, https://time.com/5712746/japan-sex-trafficking prostitution/. hirakawa, hitoshi and shimizu, hiroshi. japan and singapore in the world economy : japan's economic advance into singapore 1870-1965. routledge, 1999. ebscohost, https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/12921010. imamura, shohei. “karayuki-san, the making of a prostitute.” icarus films, 1975. https://docuseek2-com.stanford.idm.oclc.org/cart/product/1759. fumihiko yokota. “sex behaviour of male japanese tourists in bangkok, thailand.” culture, health & sexuality, vol. 8, no. 2, 2006, pp. 115–131. jstor, www.jstor.org/stable/4005503. kaneda, kimiko. “testimonies of the victims: testimony i kimiko kaneda (south korea).” atonement project of the asian women’s fund, 1998, https://www.awf.or.jp/e3/ oralhistory-00.html. matsui, yayori. “the sex tourist’s yen.” new internationalist, july 1993, https://newint.org/ features/1993/07/05/sex. mihalopoulos, bin. “the making of prostitutes: the karayuki-san.” bulletin of concerned asian scholars, 25:1, 41-56, 1993, https://www-tandfonline-com.stanford.idm.oclc.org/doi/pdf/ 10.1080/14672715.1993.10408345?needaccess=true. miyazaki, kohei. “rare interview tapes with japanese 'karayuki-san' prostitute in singapore surface.” the mainichi, 30 december 2020, https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20201230 /p2a/00m/0na/016000c. norma, caroline. comfort women and post-occupation corporate japan. routledge, 2019. tsukuda koji and kato michinori. “nanyo no shin nihonjin mura [new japanese villages in the south seas].” 1919. warren, james francis. “karayuki-san of singapore: 1877 — 1941.” journal of the malaysian branch of the royal asiatic society, vol. 62, no. 2 (257), 1989, pp. 45–80. jstor, www.jstor.org/stable/41493135. yoshiaki, yoshimi. comfort women: sexual slavery in the japanese military during world war ii. columbia university press, 1995. sandeen final illustration by e. boyd smith in mary austin’s the land of little rain, 1903 the siren song of the desert: feminized desert, nature, and water as cultural critique in mary austin’s the land of little rain lucy sandeen, stanford ’24 abstract: in her 1909 book the land of little rain, mary austin’s descriptions of the southwestern desert are informed by a feminist perspective as she characterizes the desert landscape as feminine, capturing its power over the male mind. austin argues that men attempt to render the desert landscape subordinate to their ways and to exploit its resources and landscape —much like how women, native americans, and mexican residents were oppressed in the american west. in the land of little rain, austin depicts a feminized landscape by combining western realism with magical, spiritual elements, and uses this feminist perspective in her cultural critiques of water resource issues. this magical, feminine aspect is lost, however, in men's interpretations of her writing, which flatten austin's writing into a simplistic nature narrative of the american west. in greek mythology, sirens hold immense power in their enchanting voice, entrancing and seducing passing sailors with their songs and luring these sailors toward their doom. these sirens represent the maddening nature of the vast ocean. isolated, desolate, and monotonous, it had the ability to drive men insane. with the absence of water, among the barren sand and otherworldly plants and animals, the desert holds a similar power. there is beauty and seduction to the brutality of the landscape. mary austin, the daughter of californian homesteaders and one of the earliest nature writers of the american west, published her book lost borders in 1909, which explored the experiences of white and native american women in the desert. austin was heavily concerned with the gendered and racialized politics of the southwest desert and its water, and lost borders was published in the midst of a mass land rush by white settlers to buy up native land in the west. in the book, austin metaphorically portrays the desert as a woman (sawyer, 2001, p. 43). austin’s desert descriptions were often informed by a feminist perspective; in the land of little rain, while less explicitly so, she also characterizes the desert landscape as feminine, capturing its power over the male mind. austin argues that men attempt to render the desert landscape subordinate to their ways and to exploit its resources and landscape—much like how women, native americans, and mexican residents were oppressed in the american west. in the land of little rain, austin depicts a feminized landscape by combining western realism with magical, spiritual elements, and uses this feminist perspective in her cultural critiques of water resource issues. this magical, feminine aspect is lost, however, in men's interpretations of her writing, which flatten austin's writing into a simplistic nature narrative of the american west. water emerges as the defining theme and resource throughout the land of little rain. this emphasis is representative of a broader cultural shift after the newlands reclamation act was passed in 1902—just a year before austin published the land of little rain. the newlands reclamation act, which funded irrigation projects in the west, was one of the most critical acts in western land management. as a result of this act, the west transformed from a region defined by its mining to a region defined by the availability and distribution of its water. long depending on portrayals of resource extraction to establish their realism, authors of western literature, from foote's the chosen valley to steinbeck’s the grapes of wrath, refocused their writing to describe an emerging world where social, political, and economic relations were shaped by water (witschi, 2002, p. 109). austin was no different. as a writer who had always understood that nature was inextricably linked to its use by humans, she began to shift her themes after 1902 from “mining and individualism” to “water and community” (witschi, 2002, p. 113). austin's writing, which spanned genres and topics about the american west, always included cultural critique at its core. witschi notes, “to write about water in a land of little rain was not necessarily to write about nature” (witschi, 2002, p. 123). the land of little rain was just the beginning of austin's long career of advocacy for equitable distribution of water resources (witschi, 2002, p. 125). unlike many male writers of the american west, austin recognized that 1 writing about nature was political, social, and ethical—not simply an escape from urbanized society. water and nature, she understood, were linked and subordinate to the needs and wants of men. austin saw similarities between the exploitation of nature by men and the oppression of women, native americans, and mexican residents in the american west (sawyer, 2001, p. 38). she makes this connection clear in the land of little rain as she depicts the arid landscape of the mojave desert and owens valley as simultaneously feminine and supreme, harsh and terrifying while still alluring. austin's uses of pronouns are conspicuous and pertinent. in her preface to the book, she refers to the earth with feminine pronouns: “the earth is no wanton to give up all her best to every comer, but keeps a sweet, separate intimacy for each” (austin, 1903, p. viii). while austin alludes to the land throughout her text as “it,” she imbues it with typically feminine characteristics and dynamics: the powerful allure it holds over men, its beauty, its purity. additionally, she constantly refers to the typical desert visitor as a man. in doing so, she immediately establishes a gendered dynamic between the land and her male inhabitants. from the first paragraphs of the book, austin paints a world that feels distinctly disorienting, alien, and brutal yet still saturated with beauty and magic. “east away from the sierras,” she writes, “south from panamint and amargosa, east and south many an uncounted mile, is the country of lost borders” (austin, 1903, p. 3). the reader is instantly dropped in the middle of the desert, disoriented by austin’s use of direction and landmarks, and wary of her warnings of “lost borders.” she continues, asserting that “not the law, but the land sets the limit,” and that while the desert “supports no man… void of life it never is, however dry the air and villainous the soil” (austin, 1903, p. 3). still, there is beauty and hope in its landscape. the hills, “chrome and vermilion painted,” aspire to the snow-line in the distance. here austin utilizes the ambiguous meaning of “aspire,” which can mean to hope or reach toward a goal. its latin root, however, literally means “to breathe,” which hints at another draw of the desert: its air, which is the “divinest, cleanest air to be breathed anywhere in god's world,” and holds the promise of wealth and gold (austin, 1903, p. 17). the hope and clarity of the desert is perhaps the root of its allure, the siren song that captures the men who visit it. austin describes the land as having “little in it to love,” yet impossible to abandon (austin, 1903, p. 6). again and again, she describes the siren’s call. the desert has a “lotus charm” that tricks one’s sense of time “so that once inhabiting there you always mean to go away without quite realizing that you have not done it.” (austin, 1903, p. 17). the land’s promise of wealth tempts and “bewitches” men, specifically (austin, 1903, p. 17). one pocket hunter who finally makes it rich and intends to take his wealth to england eventually returns and is found by austin next to a dripping spring. “no man can be stronger than his destiny,” she writes—his destiny being the irresistible pull of the desert (austin, 1903, p. austin was a staunch advocate against the owens valley water grab in 1906, which was one of the first projects of 1 reclamation after the newlands reclamation act. the owens valley project was originally intended to create an irrigation system, but after a series of dishonest deals and mismanagement, the project instead created an aqueduct used to supply los angeles with water. austin denounced the project for destroying the culture and society of the region from which the water was taken. austin later involved herself in the negotiations for the hoover dam in the hopes of preventing a similar outcome. 80). throughout this dynamic, the land holds the upper hand. it remains utterly indifferent to man, and it eventually prevails over human efforts as the old ground is “retak[en]... by the wild plants, banished by human use” (austin, 1903, p. 131). even as the land is used by humans, it remains supreme. austin imbues land and water, the land’s dominant resource, with magical, spiritual, and religious elements, adding to their sublimity. in the land of little rain, there is either too much water or not enough—either drought or flood. the lack of water in the land of “little rain” causes the rare presence of water to be imbued with wonder and beauty. when mountains “swim into the alpenglow, wet after rain, you conceive how long and imperturbable are the purposes of god” (austin, 1903, p. 186). austin often anthropomorphizes the water and land; in one instance, she describes a creek doing its best to reach a river and the “willows encouraging it as much as they could” (austin, 1903, p. 170). storms are particularly awe-inspiring, and a strong downpour exerts powerful wrath. “weather does not happen,” austin writes, “it is the visible manifestation of the spirit moving itself in the void” (austin, 1903, p. 247). however, one must avoid mountain ranges predisposed to floods, as “you will find it forsaken of most things but beauty and madness and death and god” (austin, 1903, p. 184). austin describes the mysterious origins of mountain streams and the secret workings of snow-fed flowers, and portrays lakes as the eye of the mountain. the wet coves of hills evoke wonder in their extravagant blooms. a field of irises “have the misty blue of mirage waters rolled across desert sand, and quicken the senses to the anticipation of things ethereal” (austin, 1903, p. 238). especially in the presence of excess water, the land is saturated with beauty, magic, and spirituality. as awesome as the land can be, it is still vulnerable and tied to its use and abuse by humans. austin describes the land as “voiceless,” yet another suggestion of its similarities to the women’s condition (austin, 1903, p. 10). human life in the land of little rain is organized around what little water there is in the desert, as it represents hope, promise, and survival. jimville, a mining town, grew out of squaw gulch, and in the spring, jimville’s population sets out to find gold, guided by the “peaks and a few rarely touched water-holes, always, always with the golden hope” (austin, 1903, p. 120). austin describes a gold miner’s hunch as “an intimation from the gods that if you go over a brown back of the hills, by a dripping spring, up coso way, you will find what is worth while” (austin, 1903, p. 120). again, man’s hope is connected, even adjacently, to water. “campoodies,” or native american villages, were always established around water. water also had the ability to create human connection; austin’s pocket hunter was “full of fascinating small talk about the ebb and flood of creeks” (austin, 1903, p. 74). when water is removed from its source in the mountains, however, and harnessed for human use, it transforms from something magical and powerful to something vulnerable and skittish. while streams in the mountains sing to each other, austin dryly states that “it is the proper destiny of every considerable stream in the west to become an irrigating ditch. it would seem the streams are willing” (austin, 1903, p. 225). in this statement, austin demonstrates how the fate of water is inextricably linked to the needs and wants of human communities. it has unsettling undertones, however, especially when we consider how austin has written the land as a feminine entity. “it would seem the streams are willing” suggests an assumed consent by the water. she continues, “[the streams] go as far as they can, or dare, toward the tillable lands in their own boulder fenced gullies…” (austin, 1903, p. 225). as the brook or stream warily transforms into an irrigation ditch, it seems to lose its life. “sickly, slow streams” become infested with tulares, which are either a “ghostly pale” or a “deep poisonous-looking green” and contain “mystery and malaria” (austin, 1903, p. 240). the waters become “thick and brown” and filled with rotting willows (austin, 1903, p. 241). her descriptions of overflow waters bring to mind a quote from mark reisner: “we set out to tame the rivers and ended up killing them” (reisner, 1987, p. 486). while austin was a proponent of irrigation when used equitably and for the communities from which the waters came, she was vehemently opposed to the unequal distribution of water, which destroyed rural societies. she describes a greedy, individualistic treatment of water rights in “other water borders” that led to murder and racial violence. the water, again anthropomorphized, is depressed by this: “you get that sense of brooding from the confined and sober floods” (austin, 1903, p. 228). on the other hand, el pueblo de las uvas, a small town that austin describes at the end of her book, escapes this individual greed over water. in this town, “land dips away to the river pastures,” and the people are warm and live communally and generously; “there is not much villainy among them” (austin, 1903, p. 266, 281). perhaps this warm community has escaped the individualism and greed over the desert’s scarce water because it has accepted the desert on its own terms. austin concludes her book with an appeal to the necessity of community in the desert, imploring her reader: “come away, you who are obsessed with your own importance in the scheme of things, and have got nothing you did not sweat for, come away by the brown valleys and fullbosomed hills to the even-breathing days, to the kindliness, earthiness, ease of el pueblo de las uvas” (austin, 1903, p. 281). written years before the women’s suffrage movement, austin’s depictions of the desert as feminine and her indications that the abuse of the land was connected to the oppression of other groups, including women and native americans, were undoubtedly informed by her acute awareness of the politics of gender and authorship, and her time spent in the desert learning from native americans (witschi, 2002, p. 120). austin sought to write in the feminine and to have her writing still be respected (witschi, 2002, p. 120). however, the crucial feminine aspect of her writing was lost by the men who attempted to interpret her work in both the 1903 and 1950 editions of the land of little rain. carl van doren, who wrote the introduction to the 1950 edition of the land of little rain, which accompanied austin’s text with photographs by ansel adams, was dismissive of austin as a writer and reduced her to her gender. while austin was a “prophet,” he claimed, she still did not lose her womanhood (austin & adams, 1950, p. xi). a “matriarch in the desert,” she was a “woman’s woman,” he claimed; while men listened to her words, women hung onto them (austin & adams, 1950, p. xii). the critical themes of austin’s writing were overlooked by both men who attempted to accompany her words with visuals: e. boyd smith, the illustrator of the 1903 edition, and ansel adams, the photographer of the 1950 edition. smith was commissioned by houghton mifflin to provide illustrations for austin’s text; the publisher’s “note on the illustrations” includes no mention of any control austin had over the choice of illustrations. the publisher only expresses gratitude for being able to secure smith as the illustrator for austin’s “charming sketches” of the land of little rain (austin, 1903, p. xi). adams’s edition was published long after austin’s death; it followed a similar 1948 edition of john muir’s yosemite and the sierra nevada. adams describes his photographic additions as an attempt to “distill the spirit and mood of the land as [he] see[s] it,” although he believes that he sees the land “more clearly” because of his friendship with austin (austin & adams, 1950, p. 111). in the 1903 edition, smith begins the book with a cover illustration of a barbed-wire fence, splitting the land in half, wrapping around the title; directly above the fence flies a black bird. a singular peak is in the distance, and the suggestion of a mountain range extends to the right. another black bird, possibly a crow, sits in the shadow of the fence and pecks at the post. the rest of the land is bare, save for a few scattered, tiny plants. the drawing is made of simple, black and white lines; the ground itself is stark white. throughout the book, smith's illustrations are composed of simple, colorless lines, which appear as a stark contrast to austin’s rich and colorful descriptions of the landscape, from “deep poisonous-looking green” tulares to the “misty blue of mirage waters rolled across desert sand” (austin, 1903, p. 240, 238). smith’s illustrations preside at the start of each chapter and sit in the margins of the text, occasionally spilling over into the page. the first illustration in the book is a white sun blazing over the text, its rays full and sharp, its center a blinding white (austin, 1903, p. 1). the drawings are decidedly literal interpretations of the text, providing a visual aid to the reader. as austin writes of a cattle fence, “one could be sure of finding a bird or two in every strip of shadow,” smith illustrates a singular bird in the shadow of a fence post (austin, 1903, p. 16). if austin describes a creosote or a yucca tree, smith supplies a thumb-sized drawing in the margins to accompany its description. there is no attempt to capture the humanized and ethereal components of austin’s landscape, and smith’s interpretations allow little room for nuance or subtext within smith's drawings. instead, they simplify an incredibly rich and complex text into its very literal meaning. in austin and adams’s 1950 edition, published over a decade after austin's death, the book is bound in yellow fabric and titled in a barely distinguishable burnt orange print, suggesting the color of desert sand. austin's text is located in the first part of the book, while adams’s photographs are set after the text on glossy photographic paper—a jarring division between the two contributions to the book. austin's writing is bare and stands on its own. the front and back endpapers display a map of california and nevada, including markers for the sierra range, death valley, and national parks. in adams's section of the book, his photographs are set on the right page opposite a mostly blank page with a short, unattributed quotation at the top and a brief description of his photograph at the bottom. the amount of blank space on the pages evokes the barrenness of the desert while also asserting an assumption of importance in occupying so much space in the book. in a “note on the land and on the photographs,” adams admits that he feels a “temerity” in “attempting an amalgam” of austin's writing in his photographs (austin & adams, 1950, p. 109). despite a long friendship with austin, he confesses that he has “depended somewhat on conjecture” in his “choice of subjects for the photographs” (austin & adams, 1950, p. 111). the quotations, he notes, are taken mostly from the body of austin's text and were selected based on logical and emotional relationships to the subjects of his photographs. adam’s failure to fully cite austin’s quotes, which he selected to fit his photographs, reflects the same theme of gendered exploitation that austin explores in relation to the land. instead of sapping the desert of its resources and magic, adam saps austin’s sharp and layered narration of its feminist critique. it is unclear if adams composed the photographs for the book or if he selected them from an already existing portfolio, but it would be unsurprising if it were the latter. it is clear, however, that adams chose quotes from austin (and others, although he does not distinguish between them) to serve his photographs, not the other way around. in doing so, he does an immense disservice to her text. austin's quotations are shortened and taken out of context. where austin wrote about irises, “single flowers are too thin and sketchy of outline to affect the imagination, but the full fields have the misty blue of mirage waters rolled across desert sand, and quicken the senses to the anticipation of things ethereal…” (austin & adams, 1950, p. 238). adams selected the singular fragment, “...the anticipation of things ethereal,” to accompany a photograph of a sparse tree against an oncoming spring storm (austin & adams, 1950, photograph 16). most of adams’s photos are of dry landscapes, dusty roads, and vistas of the sierras; he includes a few portraits of men and boys in the desert. while he captures the sentiment that nature triumphs over man in a photograph of ruins, set with the quote, “not the law, but the land sets the limit,” adams erases any elements of femininity from austin’s text and overlooks the seductive, siren song of the desert (austin & adams, 1950, photograph 21). adams’s desert is one even more devoid of life than austin’s—like smith, his photographs are entirely in black and white. gone is any sense of magic or femininity; gone is the intricate connection between the use of the land and the oppression of minority groups. set beside adams’s photographs, austin’s quotations are indistinguishable from the prolific nature writers of the american west. in the land of little rain, mary austin used a key characteristic of the american west— its aridity, its scarcity of water—and used it to make broader cultural critiques about the human exploitation of natural resources. austin's feminization of the desert landscape allowed her to reveal how water reflects the cultural values and issues of the american west. by infusing her realism with the feminine, the magical, and the spiritual, austin challenged the predominantly male literature about the landscape and nature of the american west to expand its cultural critiques and understand the complexities of natural resources and how we use them as agricultural, survival, and spiritual resources. her brilliant and rich criticism, however, was received and drained of its power by smith and adams’ attempts to interpret it. even years after her death, her feminist cultural critiques were overlooked by the overwhelmingly male world of western nature literature and art. references austin, m. (1903). the land of little rain. houghton, mifflin and company; project gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51893/51893-h/51893-h.htm#h_243 austin, m., & adams, a. e. (1950). the land of little rain. houghton mifflin; gunst collection. reisner, m. (1987). cadillac desert: the american west and its disappearing water. penguin books. sawyer, t. l. (2001). writing the american desert: abbey, austin, stegner and williams and the preservation of the arid *west [ph.d., the university of new mexico]. https:// www.proquest.com/docview/304705079/abstract/bc52b82605314285pq/1 witschi, n. s. (2002). traces of gold: california’s natural resources and the claim to realism in western american literature. the university of alabama press. https:// eds.s.ebscohost.com/eds/ebookviewer/ebook?sid=61cf6669-fb32-4ac8b207-7018e5a19601%40redis&vid=0&format=eb https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51893/51893-h/51893-h.htm%23h_243 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51893/51893-h/51893-h.htm%23h_243 https://www.proquest.com/docview/304705079/abstract/bc52b82605314285pq/1 https://www.proquest.com/docview/304705079/abstract/bc52b82605314285pq/1 https://www.proquest.com/docview/304705079/abstract/bc52b82605314285pq/1 https://eds.s.ebscohost.com/eds/ebookviewer/ebook?sid=61cf6669-fb32-4ac8-b207-7018e5a19601@redis&vid=0&format=eb https://eds.s.ebscohost.com/eds/ebookviewer/ebook?sid=61cf6669-fb32-4ac8-b207-7018e5a19601@redis&vid=0&format=eb https://eds.s.ebscohost.com/eds/ebookviewer/ebook?sid=61cf6669-fb32-4ac8-b207-7018e5a19601@redis&vid=0&format=eb https://eds.s.ebscohost.com/eds/ebookviewer/ebook?sid=61cf6669-fb32-4ac8-b207-7018e5a19601@redis&vid=0&format=eb ruskey final evaluating hookup culture on campus: a lesbian separatist perspective megan ruskey, rutgers university ’24 abstract: hookup culture on the college campus simultaneously offers young women a venue for sexual liberation, while reproducing gender inequities observed throughout much of society. thus, women are subjected to power imbalances, sexual dissatisfaction, and restrictions in their own bodily autonomy in the pursuit of casual sex. given this bind, i set out to evaluate hookup culture from the framework expressed through lesbian separatist practice. specifically, i analyze the furies collective, a lesbian separatist group operating in washington d.c. from the years 1970-1972. in these two years, the furies developed a self-titled newspaper, educational networks, and a compelling set of feminist principles to guide their activism. in this project, i draw insight from both a personal interview with furies collective founder, charlotte bunch, as well as primary and academic sources. this research finds that while hookup culture does reflect various societal and physical inequities for women, it also provides opportunities for homosocial bonding, as demonstrated in lesbian separatism, that work to make this culture more satisfactory for women. therefore, in order to benefit from the liberating aspects of hookup culture, women can capitalize on the separatist spaces associated with the hookup environment, like the sorority and pre-game, to fortify connections with one another as a means of protection in hookup spaces. with the advent of birth control, sexual liberation, and increased enrollment of women on college campuses in the post-1960s years, america experienced a shift in its prior expectations of casual sex. this newfound perspective represented a movement toward what is widely known today as “hookup culture” (heldman & wade, 2010, p. 324). the term “hookup culture” represents more than just a casual sexual engagement; rather, it is a complex social framework that currently dominates the gendered relations of students on college campuses. engaging in hookups has become increasingly common, with as many as 60 to 80 percent of college students in north america participating in some capacity (garcia et al., 2013, p. 163). despite such extensive participation, the movement toward non-committal sexual encounters has generated concern from feminists on the potential exploitation of young women and the negative impacts on their emotional and physical wellness. these arguments are countered by those who see hookup culture as a liberating alternative to exclusive relationships. considering these arguments, it proves necessary to understand whether hookup culture contributes to women’s personal and collective satisfaction. hookup culture, which can be thought of as a sexual landscape that operates without the restrictions and practices of traditional relationships, has been studied thoroughly in academic literature (e.g., heldman & wade, 2010; garcia at al., 2013; wade, 2017). feminist frameworks have been used to evaluate the merits and drawbacks of this sexual dynamic, and often find hookup culture to be a sexist practice that favors men’s preferences (kelly, 2018, p. 321). while the feminist framework provides excellent insight into hookup culture’s main goals and functions, this research aims to further analyze activities associated with hookup culture that often play an important role in determining the ultimate safety and satisfaction for women. these associated practices, like pre-gaming, greek life, and campus gossip, are integral parts of the campus hookup culture that tend to be overlooked. thus, this research chooses lesbian separatism, a movement rooted in social and concrete action, to offer a new perspective on modern day hookup culture on college campuses. lesbian separatism provides a relevant framework for evaluating the aims of hookup culture due to the movement’s critical perspective on the practice of heterosexual relations. hookup culture, described as “a highly gendered and heteronormative sexual field,” often transfers agency to men and away from women (andrejek, 2021, p. 760). the principles of lesbian separatism, which are made evident through their activist writings, rituals, and practices, guide this paper in analyzing the merits and drawbacks of this culture. in addition to reviewing academic literature and primary documents, i also conducted an original interview with lesbian separatist furies collective founding member, charlotte bunch. bunch played a critical role in the collective; fellow member rita mae brown describes her as having been a strong leader and “diplomat” for the group (brown, 1995, p. 129). from the interview, i extract insight from bunch on a number of core issues surrounding separatism, hookup culture in the modern age, and the importance of centering women in one’s worldview. bunch offers her perspective not only as a founding member of the furies collective, but also as an author, advisory committee member for the united nations, organizer, and rutgers board of governor’s distinguished service professor (“charlotte bunch,” 2023). using this interview and academic literature, i find that hookup culture reproduces inequalities for women that can be observed in most facets of modern society. however, more interestingly, this research finds that homosocial settings within hookup culture provide a protective and woman-centered framework compatible with the feminist values of the furies collective. this suggests that focusing on and centering homosocial relationships within hookup culture can improve the existing imbalances of power by relying on female friendship in an otherwise male dominated space. thus, women can minimize the negative and even dangerous aspects of hookup culture in order to reap the benefits that casual relationships have to offer for women’s social and economic liberation. analysis of lesbian separatism separatism as a feminist political strategy extends deep into american history. the earliest women’s organizations, formed in the late 19th century, worked toward achieving equality both in and outside of the home. the first women’s only club, sorosis, was formed in 1868 in reaction to exclusionary practices at a new york press club banquet (croly, 1886, p. 6). while lacking in racial diversity, the club’s members still made a significant impact by employing separatism as a strategy for political equality. the goals of sorosis, which centered around promoting intellectual female connections and raising feminist consciousness, are in many ways reflective of the prominent lesbian separatist groups that would emerge a century later. after the conception of sorosis, feminists expanded their praxis in larger federations of women’s clubs and all-female colleges. additionally, women of color developed their own space, the national association of colored women, to address the political concerns of black women and men (freedman, 1979, p. 517). these early modes of separatism held women’s suffrage as a primary concern, and the networking and political strategies employed by these women would eventually help to realize this goal. however, the years following the acquisition of the right to vote were inundated by theoretical disagreement over initiatives like the equal rights amendment and troublesome assimilation into male-dominated political institutions (freedman, 1979, p. 515). in the late 1960s, one such cause for disagreement was over the inclusion of lesbian voices in feminist and male-dominated gay rights activist groups. in order to address the specific concerns of lesbian women in the feminist movement, women in major cities across america organized collectives to achieve what could only be realized through lesbian separatist practice. branches of lesbian separatism existed widely throughout the united states in the early 1970s, with each unit representing unique schools of thought and strategies for women’s liberation. despite ideological diversity among separatists, at the foundation of all lesbian feminism is a belief that heterosexual relationships are oppressive toward women. all women are therefore called to reject relationships with men in favor of homosexual relationships with women. in modern scientific thought, this assertion would seem to contradict the scientific belief that sexuality is determined by a complex blend of genetic and environmental factors, rather than by choice (burri et al., 2011, p. 1). reflecting on the belief that all women can choose to be feminists, bunch stated, “the work that’s been done on sexuality in the 40 years since the furies has really shown that it’s not nearly as solid and rigid [of a] binary as we once thought it was” (interview with charlotte bunch, 2023). nevertheless, lesbian separatists of the 1970s maintained that all women were lesbians—and any woman who claimed to not feel attracted to other women was experiencing an internalization of the patriarchy (valk, 2002, p. 313). in a literal sense, the demand for all women to engage sexually with other women is not a feasible call to action given current scientific and public opinion on human sexuality. however, what can be extracted from this sentiment is an acknowledgement of the importance of primacy in female relationships. in choosing lesbianism, women direct their love and energy toward other women—a concept defined by the new york radicalesbians as being a “woman-identified woman.” in this manifesto, collectively written in 1970, separatists argued that women are unable to self-identify in a heteronormative society. lesbianism provides a solution to this problem by redirecting a woman’s identity inward so that she may value her internal characteristics and fully relate with her sisters, rather than her oppressors (radicalesbians, 1970, p. 3). the collective values and emphasis on women’s relationships demonstrated in this document guided the frameworks of lesbian separatist groups throughout america. one of the most prominent of these groups was the furies collective, a group of women based in washington d.c. who aimed to raise women’s consciousness toward lesbianism as the primary method for women’s liberation. this paper will look to the influential practices and feminist theory employed by the furies in order to guide a critical analysis of modern-day hookup culture. the furies collective the furies collective, consisting of 12 white lesbian women and three children, integrated sexual politics with feminist practice from the years 1970 to 1972 (brown, 1995, p. 129). like other lesbian separatist groups at the time, the furies abided by radical feminist tigrace atkinson’s declaration that, “feminism is the theory, lesbianism is the practice” (johnston, 1973, p. 166). accordingly, the furies collective advocated for all women to choose lesbianism as an alternative to inherently oppressive heterosexual relationships with men. this belief in an inherent difference between the essence of men and women categorizes lesbian feminism as a cultural feminist movement, which produced criticism from feminists who did not subscribe to essentialist frameworks. nevertheless, the furies believed that in shifting one’s sexual energies towards lesbianism, which was framed as a political choice, women would create an alternative culture to reject a male-controlled society. this reclamation of sexual agency would thereby make possible a feminist revolution in which women could control their own identities and destinies, untethered to their oppressor’s subjugation. the woman-centered framework of the furies is ideologically guided by the aforementioned “woman-identified woman” manifesto. charlotte bunch affirms the importance of this publication: “the woman-identified notion that came before the furies, but that the furies built on, was i think very central to our experience, which is that you would build your life around other women” (interview with charlotte bunch, 2023). through literal organization as a women’s collective, as well as in their centering of women in their political ideology, the furies direct all energy toward the nurturing of homosocial and homosexual relations. even though the furies were strictly a lesbian separatist collective, a modern perspective allows the “womanidentified” framework to be adapted and expanded for women of all sexualities. bunch speaks to this inclusivity, saying, “there are many woman-identified women who have sex with men” (2023). thus, while the furies of the 1970s had reserved the woman-centered identity for lesbians, a modern perspective reveals that women of any sexuality can center the experiences and perspectives of women in their activism and every-day life. spreading radical ideology required tactile organization among the women to involve the community in feminist practice. the furies accomplished this through feminist education groups and disseminating theory in their self-titled newspaper (valk, 2002, p. 304). the newspaper ran from 1972-1973 and featured a variety of authors from the collective. issues featured in this paper ranged from defense techniques for fighting off male perpetrators to academic feminist theory and poetry. “lesbians in revolt,” an article featured in the first volume and authored by charlotte bunch, outlines the political direction and advancements inherent in lesbian separatism. bunch asserts in this article that “being a lesbian means ending identification with, allegiance to, dependence on, and support of heterosexuality….so that you join women, individually and collectively, in the struggle to end your own oppression” (1972, p. 7). separatism, according to bunch, is a means of reclaiming agency by socially removing oneself from the patriarchal institutions of a male dominated society. in circulating a newspaper containing these social theories, the furies were able to raise feminist consciousnesses in their surrounding geographic environment. for women who did not have access to radical ideology through academic institutions, the furies newspaper provided compelling intellectual articles that challenged the heteronormative status quo. delivering valuable resources to economically disadvantaged women was a priority in the furies collective. the furies believed that “women with economic privilege … should organize to meet the survival needs of women without economic privilege,” and demonstrated this sentiment in many areas of their lived practice (brown, as cited in valk, 2002, p. 315). for example, the furies developed schools that specialized in teaching practical knowledge like car and home restoration, which was critical for aiding women’s financial independence from maledominated academic institutions (brown, 1995, p. 128). these practical workshops served the group’s aspiration for an alternative women’s culture by providing women with the resources to detach themselves from patriarchal institutions. the furies’ conviction that women of higher economic classes should support those of lower economic classes was also promoted in their graduated income tax system. the system aimed to “rectify class differences” by accounting for women’s income and privilege (brown, 1995, p. 130). by redistributing the wealth, the members with jobs would be able to support the labor and costs associated with the continuation of the group. the furies’ engagement with theory and tangible action manifested in their collective “not as rigid ideology, rather as a process for living in the world” (enszer, 2016, p. 181). analyzing the furies’ accomplishments and philosophy as feminist “process” allows us to identify specific actions that crafted the spirit of their movement. to encapsulate the defining pillars of lesbian separatism requires a consideration of both feminist theory and the physical elements of homosocial connection. in identifying these elements that make lesbian separatism an effective and convincing movement, authors verta taylor and leila j. rupp propose four connected categories: female values, separatism, primacy of female relationships, and feminist ritual (1993, p. 34). these areas account for the woman-centered theoretical prescriptions of the furies, as well as the physical processes through which their theory manifested. given that hookup culture is similarly defined by a complex consideration of both social principles and action, these pillars facilitate the analysis between separatist ideals and casual sex on campus. thus, this paper will proceed by comparing the aims and customs of hookup culture through the lens of lesbian separatist practice. the emergence of hookup culture hookup culture, which permeates the social fabric of the 21st century, has evolved for decades under the vigilant eyes of feminists. although some sources trace the beginnings of casual sex to the 1920s, the extramarital relationships of the early suffragists demonstrate an even longer history of women’s sexual liberation in america. doris stevens, an early advocate for women’s rights and women’s sexual emancipation, had a number of male suitors. however, stevens, who communicated with her sexual partners through letters, reportedly “went to lengths to hide her liaisons” from other disapproving suffragists (trigg, 2014, p. 74). this historical account reflects the divisive nature of casual sex among feminists as it has developed over time. in 1960, decades after the suffragists won their cause, the fda approved the first oral contraceptive, encouraging many women to feel empowered by the newfound independence to moderate when or if they would become pregnant. feminist motivations largely supported the expanded freedoms that birth control offered women, although some remained cautious of the implications of contraceptives on casual sexual relationships. juliet mitchell, a feminist psychoanalyst, expressed how “women are enjoying a new sexual freedom (changing moral attitudes and availability of reliable contraception) but this is often only for their greater exploitation as sexual objects” (johnston, 1975, p. 153). mitchell’s analysis recognizes the oftenindistinguishable line between “freedom” and “exploitation,” a boundary which women must cautiously travel in the navigation of hookup culture. in analyzing modern hookup culture on the college campus, this research looks at the practice of hooking up as more than just a sexual philosophy. much like the furies, hookup culture is greater than an abstract idea; it includes tangible practices, values, and settings that encapsulate the culture as a whole. psychological researcher nicole andrejek claims that “hookup culture has much less to do with the amount of sex students are having and more to do with the shared social norms, rituals, and beliefs … in the university context” (2021, p. 759). in viewing hookup culture as a set of “social norms, rituals, and beliefs,” the current research can effectively compare these components against those of lesbian separatist practice. female values in hookup culture the female values expressed through lesbian separatist practice include a variety of principles that guide women in their social relationships and personal lives. taylor and rupp identify “egalitarianism, collectivism … respect for knowledge derived from experience, pacifism, and cooperation” as defining female values of this movement (1993, p. 42). contrasting these traits with common practices and outcomes in hookup culture initially reveals an overwhelming incompatibility with lesbian separatism. the first of these values is egalitarianism, which is a prominent component of the furies, as expressed through their graduated income tax system and independence-oriented schools. applying this egalitarian perspective to hookup culture reveals several disappointing inequalities for women. one of many areas in which men seem to benefit more than women is in the gratification of the hookup itself. dr. laurie mintz reports that 91% of men and just 39% of women usually orgasm in their sexual encounters. this article adds that an additional study of college students finds a more pronounced orgasm gap in casual sex in comparison to sex within a relationship (mintz, 2019). another area lacking in fairness is in the social outcomes in experience for those who participate in hookup culture. whereas men tend to gain social capital by sleeping with women in non-committal settings, women tend to lose respect as they can be perceived to be “sluts” (heldman & wade, 2010, p. 326). this disparity represents the double standards that lesbian separatists addressed by removing themselves from the heterosexual culture entirely. however, many young women on college campuses today feel pressured to engage with these spaces that promote unequal outcomes for men and women. one of the most prevalent and imbalanced environments on the college campuses remains the fraternity party. fraternities employ an array of tactics to maximize their members’ sexual prospects, often at the expense of women’s agency and safety. methods of achieving this goal include requiring a ratio of men to women at the party, or simply only allowing entrance based on women’s attractiveness. controlling sexual prospects as an economic form of supply and demand serves to treat men as a “scarce” resource at the fraternity party, thereby creating a simulated competition amongst the curated pool of women admitted entry (heldman & wade, 2010, p. 328). in addition to creating unnecessary restrictions on women’s agency, fraternities that employ “skewed gender ratios” at their parties were more likely to be associated with a higher risk of rape (boswell & spade, 2017, p. 137). partaking in this system is not aligned with separatist values, as the power imbalance and individualistic nature of the social competition contrast with the female values of cooperation and egalitarianism. in creating an environment where women must compete with one another for male attention, fraternities impede on women’s ability to cooperate and connect with other women. thus, the sexual landscape of the fraternity party is at stark odds with most, if not all, of the furies’ female values. one dimension of hookup culture, which is undeniably compatible with the values of lesbian separatism, is the postponement of marriage. as young women have been historically pressured into rushing into marriage for economic security, hookup culture encourages the opposite. charlotte bunch comments on this liberating component: “the good thing about hookup culture is freeing women from the notion that every relationship is a potential marriage partner, and therefore has a heavy-laden moralistic expectation” (2023). without such expectations, women can explore more freely their own sexual preferences and desires. this practice also enables women to create their own economic and educational destinies, a critical motivation of the furies’ practice. in this case, the aims of hookup culture do align with the furies’ values of economic egalitarianism. presented with this beneficial aspect of hookup culture, women are given an opportunity to enjoy newfound economic power. however, this is at least partly negated by the lack of autonomy women must endure in the male-dominated party space. separatism the furies’ use of physical separation as a political strategy reveals the importance of environment in activism. the collective lived in a home together, where they could focus fully on their cause, surrounded by other women. in considering the element of sex-segregated space, this research finds that hookup culture provides a surprisingly complex and separatist mode of female networking that aims to expand women’s autonomy and improve the safety of their sexual landscape. these networks are made possible by the formation and strengthening of female friendships through separatist spaces like “pre-games” and sororities. what the furies were able to gain through separatist organization can be similarly conveyed through women’s pre-game practices. a pre-game or “pre” is defined as a gathering where alcohol is consumed before an event or night out (merriam webster, 2023). the pre-game has been regularly accounted for in the literature regarding its role in drinking culture, but only recently has been studied for the sociological importance for women navigating hookup culture. the pre-game may seem like an inconsequential aspect of the typical “girls’ night out,” but undergraduate women often view the pre-game as being just as important as the night’s main event (andrejek, 2021, p. 764). as a sex-segregated space, women can engage in adult play, bonding, and recreational drinking without the fear of being taken advantage of. thus, the pregame presents itself as a valuable separatist environment of woman-centered relationship building. the sorority, another sex-segregated community, is also associated heavily with the formation of hookup culture on college campuses. women in greek life present a complexity in hookup culture because they often socialize with fraternities as part of the larger greek community, but at the same time present women with a compelling form of separatist gender strategy. sororities create a sex-segregated community where women can depend on each other for support. this is particularly important when these women must negotiate relationships in inequitable spaces, thus framing the sorority as a “collective response to, adaptive strategy for dealing with, a male-dominated culture” (handler, 1995, p. 252). furthermore, handler illustrates the women-centered nature of sororities in her finding that “decreased dependance on boyfriends was a benefit of sororal life” (1995, p. 245). independence and protection from malecentered institutions and relationships paints sorority life as being compatible with lesbian separatist aims. however, the tension between friendship and romance can reproduce problematic heteronormative standards and ideals for young women. in viewing the sorority as an influential actor within hookup culture, it is relevant to examine this organization’s relationships with lesbian and queer women. though sororities have become more inclusive with time, there remains stigma and exclusionary practices toward lesbians, non-binary people, and transgender women. each of these groups has either historically faced discrimination or continues to be barred from participating in panhellenic sororities. researchers have described that one motive for heterosexual women to exclude lesbians from joining sororities is that they diminish the sexual appeal of the sorority as a whole (hamilton, 2007, p. 146). this can lead to lesbians being excluded from sororities in order to avoid male disapproval. when they are included, though, there remains concern from sisters about their sexuality. one study that interviewed sorority sisters expressed a concern that lesbians joining sororities is “inherently ‘uncomfortable.’” the author continues: “at times, sorority actives stressed that they themselves would not be uncomfortable but that other parties, such as more conservative sorority sisters, fraternity men and other women on campus, would be dramatically uncomfortable” (stone & gorga, 2014, p. 354-355). the rampant heteronormativity within sororities creates two barriers that affect both homosexual and heterosexual women. the first barrier blocks entrance to lesbian women from gaining entrance to the sorority in the first place. the second acts within the sorority, as heteronormative focuses create competition between women, impeding their ability to connect with one another. the sex-segregated environments of modern-day hookup culture reflect some successful components of lesbian separatism, but are also challenged by heteronormativity and anti-lesbian biases. the proximity of the sorority to the fraternity exacerbates these issues, as sisters de-center their relationships with women in pursuit of romance with brothers. at their best, sororities have the capability to nurture relationships with other women, serving as a beneficial strategy when they enter male-dominated spaces. feminist rituals using events like support groups, poetry readings, and strategy sessions, separatists disseminated their ideology and values to other feminists, thereby raising feminist consciousness within and beyond their communities (taylor & rupp, 1993, p. 48). hookup culture similarly involves a number of rituals that young women partake in, though whether these rituals are in line with the tenets of radical lesbian feminism proves to be a divisive subject. a variety of academic literature and investigative reporting characterize hookup culture as facilitating a culture of toxic gossiping. one of such practices is called “ritual retelling,” which author lisa wade describes as an opportunity for college students to “reassure one another that they didn’t act too crazy, stroke the egos of disappointed friends, and brag” after an eventful night out (2017, p. 119). however, ritual retelling may play a more important role than this description would suggest. in the context of gendered communication, research shows that a greater proportion of women than men would be “very likely” to disclose a hookup experience with friends of the same sex (auster et al., 2018, p. 6). although this practice is largely disapproved of, the finding that women frequently gossip about their hookups to other women may be more complex than meets the eye. gossip has been studied both empirically and historically for both its destructive qualities, as well its merits. in much of the literature on hookup culture, the practice of gossip is characterized as being a problematic method of enforcing social norms and unfairly monitoring the behavior of third parties. however, empirical data paints a different picture of why people choose to gossip. one study shows that the most common self-reported reason for gossiping was “to gather and validate information,” and the least prevalent being to “negatively influence another” (brady et al., 2017, p. 1). other findings suggest that a primary motive of gossip is for group protection, or a way to warn others about harmful third parties (hartung et al., 2019, p. 11). gathering information in inequitable sexual landscapes can protect women from potentially dangerous men, or even reveal prior injustice. historically this has been observed in a variety of settings, some of which include the ghost rapes of bolivia, the #metoo and time’s up movements, the report on senator roy moore, and the “rape list” of brown university (e.g., massey, 2017; peters, 2020). each of these events involved informal communication between women that ultimately served either legal justice, or increased community awareness of threatening men. writer rachel gattuso writes, “we can understand gossip as weaponized intimacy — as the power of marginalized communities to build guerilla information networks to keep ourselves and each other safe” (2016). from this perspective, the gossiping networks within hookup culture demonstrate a form of collective consciousness raising—reflective of the values exemplified in the furies newspaper and community theory discussions. once in the hookup environment, women continue feminist ritual by combatting unwanted physical advances through using their bodies as “shields” (andrejek, 2021, p. 769). women who play the role of the shield may step in front of men or pull her friends away from unwelcome male actions. adding to this sentiment, bunch says, “we still live in a world where men exploit women, so i think women have to be more careful in hookup culture because of that” (2023). this protective feminist ritual highlights the importance of safety and being “careful” in a potentially dangerous environment. the shield is also unique because it is a protection method designed not to aid oneself, but other women. this collective perspective emphasizes a woman-centered outlook within the party space, demonstrating further compatibility with the furies’ practices and values. primacy of female friendships interacting with, learning from, and loving other women, not just sexually, was a fundamental aspect of the furies collective. in their adherence to the principles of the “womanidentified woman” manifesto, the furies held their sisters’ personal and political well-being at prime importance. bunch asserts that the practice of centering women in the collective was “the most important thing about the furies” (2023). applying a woman-centered framework to the analysis of hookup culture in a modern context is useful because straight and queer women alike can be considered “woman-identified.” to center women in one’s worldview goes beyond just the act of sleeping with other women; rather, it can represent support in a multitude of contexts. thus, women in a heteronormative space like hookup culture can resist the dominance of men by fortifying one’s relationships with women, whether they be romantic or platonic. using this perspective, one can find a variety of ways in which homosocial relationship building is demonstrated to be an important part of navigating the complicated terrain of hookup culture. as described previously, the sex-segregated space of the pre-game fosters an important environment for women to connect and learn from one another while being physically removed from men. within pre-game activities, there exists further evidence that hookup culture can facilitate friendship building between women. encouragement and sharing are two prominent features of relationship building before a night out. during pre-games, which are reported to last anywhere between two and five hours, women work together to uplift each other through words of affirmation and support (andrejek, 2021, p. 763). relationship building is also aided by the swapping and sharing of clothes, a practice that demonstrates the importance of collectivity in the pre-game. through these actions, women express a caring nature which strengthens their bonds before entering male-centered institutions like bars and fraternity parties. in unfamiliar or dangerous environments, the connection and trust that women have with each other can dramatically impact their safety. after the pre-game ritual has occurred, woman-centered practices continue at the night’s main event. once at this event, women of a canadian university express that their priorities do not lie in searching for a hookup partner, but in enjoying the company of their friends. andrejek describes how “their insistence that dancing with their friends is the primary motivator for participating in the hookup scene illuminates the importance of women-centered rituals to their self-conception” (2021, p. 767). women being able to truly engage with their “self-conception” was a critical aspect of the lesbian separatist belief in the “the woman-identified woman.” given that women can enter the hookup culture landscape without prioritizing men, there exists a compelling compatibility between environments of casual sex and the primacy of women’s relationships. the practice of a woman centering herself in a collective of other women, much like the furies did, can promote her own sense of self identity even when physically surrounded by men. while some women can adopt a woman-centered worldview in hookup spaces, the competitive nature of the culture can complicate women’s reliance on each other. the competition for male attention has the potential to turn young women against each other. sororities, which represent a unique prevailing mode of separatism, are particularly vulnerable to this competitive system. as sorority sisters are encouraged to fraternize with boys within the greek life community, sexual prospects ultimately diminish, causing tension among sisters looking to hookup. social psychologists find that “female intrasexual competition manifests in highly social, yet indirect ways—through harming social opportunities via gossip or exclusion” (reynolds et al., 2018, p. 1). accordingly, a “highly social” setting such as the pregame can quickly become a space for damaging social competitiveness, rather than an environment of protection and bonding. not only should this competitive strategy be viewed as a barrier to meaningful relationships with other women, but also as antithetical to the lesbian separatist values of pacifism and cooperation. therefore, the compatibility of gossip as a communication method in hookup culture with separatism depends on whether it is used to build relationships between women or break them down. the future of hookup culture this research reflects the concerns of a wealth of literature that examines both physical and social consequences for women who participate in hookup culture. through mechanisms which limit women’s autonomy and sexual satisfaction, i find a gendered hierarchy within hookup culture that in many ways benefits male desires and preferences. however, simultaneously operating within this culture is a network of homosocial relationships that work to improve women’s safety and conditions as they navigate the sexual landscape of the college campus. women take part in separatist collectives, whether it be through the pre-game or sorority culture, which provides opportunities for protective woman-centered bonding. the separatist spaces that are available to women on college campuses today, while imperfect, provide a valuable outlet for women to learn and connect with each other. given these mechanisms for improving hookup culture on college campuses, it may be possible to create a future in which women can more fully enjoy the liberating aspects of casual sex. after all, hookup culture does provide some convincing benefits in the movement toward women’s equality. in rejecting the “moralistic expectations” of traditional relationships, women can more fully focus on their education and careers, which is essential for economic independence. author hanna rosin goes as far as to say that “feminist progress is largely dependent on hookup culture,” given its economic advantages (2012, p. 46). in order to preserve the beneficial aspects of hookup culture, women can expand their woman-centered networks in separatist spaces around campus, like the pre-game or in sororities. here, women should not be afraid to engage in the stereotyped and taboo act of gossip, as long as it is not aimed at tearing down other women. one feminist critique of hookup culture posits that “the act of speaking allows individuals not only to reflect on their experiences but also to have power over their own identity” (kelly, 2018, p. 326). here, the act of sharing personal experiences in hookup culture can be thought of as a method for reclaiming agency in a culture that often relies on ambiguous language. through this communication, women can rely on the experiential knowledge of one another to protect themselves from dangerous situations and environments. sororities have a unique responsibility in the aspiration to make hookup culture a more equitable space for women. as this paper has expressed, the sorority at its core is a separatist space by which women can rely on and support one another as they navigate casual sexual relationships. this potential is sometimes overshadowed by competitive urges and homophobic exclusionary practices. competition and homophobia in the sororal space are often the result of women trying to increase their own desirability for men in the hookup culture. decentering male acceptance is essential for overcoming heteronormativity and homophobia in the sorority. one method by which women can decenter male approval from their sororal practice is through the adoption of the “woman-identified woman” philosophy. utilizing this outlook can help the sorority secure its potential as a positive method of gender strategy, capable of improving the conditions of women within hookup culture. another means by which sororities can reclaim power in the hookup environment is by expanding their control over parties. as stated previously, fraternities are highly restrictive spaces, but are one of the only public hookup spaces for women under the legal drinking age. to combat this monopoly, sororities should consider expanding their control over parties by throwing their own. this transfer of power has already occurred in eating clubs, a prominent social institution, at princeton university. wade argues that “when women are in charge of parties, events feel more gender-egalitarian.” she also quotes a female president of one club, who says that women have, “greater access to security for themselves and others in danger” when they are in control of the party space (2017, p. 234). as the furies have shown, sometimes women must take power away from male-dominated institutions in order to make progress for women’s conditions. therefore, in taking this power from fraternities, women can make hookup environments safer and more pleasurable for themselves. sexual liberation for neither women nor men will be achieved by returning to traditional sexual values. after all, it was these traditional, patriarchal values that united the furies against male-dominated institutions in the first place. however, women should not be satisfied with the current state of casual sex on campus. instead, they can draw from the historical knowledge presented to them from past activists. the values and practices of the furies offer modern women a strategy by which they can combat the negative and exploitative forces ingrained in hookup culture. strengthening networks of women, redistributing power in the party space, and being aware of the environments that impede on women’s agency are all methods drawn from the woman-centered strategies of the furies collective. in this sense, this research demonstrates not only tangible actions that can help to improve the current hookup culture, but also illuminates how women of history can help guide women through the struggles of today. references andrejek, n. 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(2017). american hookup: the new culture of sex on campus. w. w. norton & company. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1007/s13178-010-0024-z https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1007/s13178-010-0024-z https://www.drlauriemintz.com/ https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.16587 https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.16587 https://repository.duke.edu/dc/wlmpc/wlmms01011 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2018.03.011 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2018.03.011 http://www.jstor.org/stable/3174744 http://www.jstor.org/stable/3174744 https://doi.org/10.2307/3178744 https://doi.org/10.2307/3178744 hijab is our right an analysis of muslim girls’ veil ban protests in india aleena anand, stanford university ’25 abstract: this paper explores how the intersectional identity of indian muslim girls informs their protests against a 2022 ban on islamic veils in schools in karnataka, india. an analysis of their protest signs and speeches reveals that their activism boldly challenges reductive hindunationalist representations of muslim women dominant in india that contribute to the group’s marginalization. protesters achieve this by redefining their identity on their own terms and strategically centralizing their nationality and gender while defending their religious rights. this takes shape in four main strategies: (1) employing assertive slogans and chants to counter stereotypes of muslim women as passive and assert their right to exist in public spaces; (2) referencing india’s constitution to claim their national belonging and legal rights as minorities; (3) characterizing the veil as a cultural, not religious, marker to appeal to the history of multiculturalism in india; and (4) framing the veil ban as a violation of women’s bodily autonomy to defend women’s right to wear what they choose. for and beyond the case of the karnataka veil ban protests, this analysis illuminates how intersectionality can inform effective modes of social and political mobilization by marginalized groups. introduction “we are feeling like we have been betrayed by our own country,” said almas, a muslim student in karnataka, india, in reaction to a 2022 statewide ban on islamic veils in public schools (al jazeera english, 2022a, 0:22). the teenager, who wears the hijab in accordance with her religious beliefs, was kept from school exams when she would not remove it (“karnataka college,” 2022, paras. 1-4). in response to karnataka’s veil ban, almas and other impacted students began to protest against this incursion into their religious freedoms and access to education. despite the marginalization of muslim women in india, their voices reached across the country, sparking nationwide protests. almas’ story and karnataka’s veil ban are indicative of a larger issue of rising discrimination against the muslim minority in india since the coming to power of the hindu nationalist bharatiya janata party (bjp) in 2014. the bjp’s right-wing ideology, hindutva, and the islamophobic policies, hate speech, and violence it is responsible for uniquely impact girls, who are marginalized on multiple fronts. as muslim girls are leading the fight against islamophobia in india through their protests, how do indian muslim girls’ intersectional identities inform their protest strategies against the karnataka veil ban? my research focuses on how these girls’ multidimensional identities shape the ways in which they exercise their voices in protest of religious discrimination, ultimately aiming to understand how intersectionality impacts the way marginalized communities choose to defend their rights. contextualizing karnataka’s public-school veil ban in february 2022, karnataka’s government issued an executive order banning religious headscarves in schools after several teachers in udupi, karnataka began barring veiled girls from entering their classrooms (yasir, 2022, para. 4). this is often referred to as a hijab ban but is designed to target islamic veils of all kinds—including the burka, niqab, and chador—so will here be referred to as a veil ban. a group of high school girls petitioned the karnataka high court to strike down the ban and publicly protested the attack on their rights, inspiring larger protests by muslim girls and allies across india and the globe, which were reported on in popular indian and international news sources (yasir, 2022, paras. 5-7). protests continued after the karnataka high court decided to uphold the veil ban in march 2022 (yasir, 2022, para. 1). amidst intense pressure and attention, the girls’ case eventually reached the supreme court. however, in october 2022, the court announced a split verdict, keeping the ban in place and leaving the educational and religious rights of muslim girls in karnataka in peril (rajagopal, 2022, para. 1). still, muslim girls continue their resistance against karnataka’s islamophobic and misogynistic policy, defending their rights as indians, as women, and as muslims. through protest signs and speeches, they sought support for their cause among national and international audiences in order to create pressure on the indian government to secure their rights. i analyze the rhetoric of their protest signs and speeches against the karnataka veil ban, specifically engaging with slogans, visuals, and lines that reference the protestor’s national, gender, or religious identity. examining, for one, the most recurring protest sign slogans captured in reporters’ photographs and, for another, speeches delivered to the press by prominent student protesters from karnataka, such as muskan khan, aliya assadi, and almas a.h., reveals indian muslim girls’ major strategies for defending their religious freedoms. i argue that the protesters’ signs and speeches work by challenging and reconstructing dominant conceptualizations of the muslim woman shaped by hindu nationalists. they do so by countering stereotypes of oppression and reframing the veil controversy to emphasize their national and gender identity rather than religion. in analyzing the girls’ rhetorical strategies, four major themes emerge to form the basis for this argument: expressions of muslim girls’ agency that challenge stereotypes of oppression; references to rights enshrined in india’s constitution that emphasize the protesters’ national identity and belonging; calls for cultural tolerance that frame the veil as a cultural, rather than religious, practice; and connections to the global struggle for women’s bodily autonomy that emphasize the protesters’ gender identity and defend women’s right to make choices about their own bodies and dress. in this paper, i begin by providing an overview of relevant scholarship on the marginalization of muslim women in india today—delving into legal discrimination, hate speech, violence, and media representation—and their efforts to counter islamophobia through protests. next, i return to the case of the karnataka veil ban protests, analyzing the way the protesters frame their arguments in the context of their different identities through their protest signs and speeches. first, i identify rhetorical appeals in protest sign slogans and speeches that demonstrate the agency of muslim girls. second, i discuss indirect and direct references to india’s constitution in slogans and speeches. third, i show how speeches frame the veil ban as an issue of cultural tolerance. fourth, i highlight the similarities between slogans from these protests and slogans from global protests for women’s rights over their bodies and dress. ultimately, my findings suggest that the protesters’ strategies challenge typical hindu nationalist representations of muslim women and islamic veils, reconstructing their identity on their own terms and emphasizing their nationality and gender to mobilize for their religious rights. scholarly perspectives on muslim women’s experiences in contemporary india the karnataka veil ban is part of a broader trend of growing hindu nationalism and islamophobia in india. a portion of the extensive scholarly literature on this trend explores its consequences on the lives of indian muslim women. nehaluddin ahmad and norulaziemah binti haji zulkiffle (2022) study the growth of discrimination against the muslim minority in india, arguing that legal and political agencies incite and allow hate speech and violence against muslims (p. 1). as a result, muslim women, who are doubly marginalized, are increasingly subject to rape threats and sexual slurs online. for instance, in 2022, hindu nationalists created an app claiming to auction muslim women in order to “demean, intimidate and eventually silence” them (ahmad & binti haji zulkiffle, 2022, p. 3). ratna kapur (2022) concurs that hindu nationalism in india’s politics and judiciary marginalizes muslim women, but focuses on the way it infantilizes, rather than sexualizes, them (p. 354). referencing the indian supreme court’s ultimately hollow decision to outlaw the islamic triple talaq practice opposed by many muslim women in 2017, kapur (2022) posits that hindu nationalists claim to promote legal equality for muslim women, but in reality, advance the idea that they need to be saved from oppressive, dangerous muslim men, reducing them to “a suffering victim, mute and/or without agency” (p. 359). supplementing kapur’s argument with the addition of how islamic veils figure into this discussion, wolfgang wagner and colleagues (2012) claim that indian muslim women are stereotyped as backward, illiterate, and victims of muslim men, particularly when wearing the hijab, which is seen as a symbol of oppression (p. 536). the consequences of such stereotypes are detailed by andrea malji (2021), who adds that because the hijab makes visible a woman’s religion, veiled women are frequent targets of harassment and violence in india (p. 185). indian muslim women are further marginalized by the public and media attention, or lack thereof, given to their struggles. adrija dey (2019) finds that gender-based violence against hindu women receives more public and media outrage than that against muslim women (p. 357). according to her, hindu nationalist ideologies center hindu women as the “ideal indian woman,” erasing muslim women “from the larger public discourse” and ignoring their struggles (dey, 2019, p. 368). complementing dey’s findings, deepa fadnis explores this issue through an intersectional lens. she claims that facing oppression due to both their gender and religion, indian muslim women who suffer sexual assault are more likely to be ignored or invalidated in media, due to the common stereotype that muslim women are “accustomed to domestic violence and subordination” (fadnis, 2022, p. 18). meanwhile, flavia agnes (2019) argues that muslim women’s oppression is not simply ignored, but rather selectively represented in media, in order to further hindu nationalists’ agenda (p. 350). agnes (2019) refers to the triple talaq case studied by kapur, explaining that extensive media coverage of the issue was framed to demonize islam and perpetuate the stereotype of muslim women as lacking rights and agency (p. 350). adding their own voices to the narrative, indian muslim women have contributed to muslim rights protests, including the multigenerational shaheen bagh protest in new delhi opposing india’s 2019 citizenship amendment act, which discriminates against muslim migrants. kiran vinod bhatia and radhika gajjala (2020) find that muslim women’s physical presence at this protest challenged stereotypes of oppression, asserting their right to exist in political spaces (p. 6300). further, their nonviolent protest strategies demonstrated resilience in the face of violent backlash against muslim protesters (bhatia & gajjala 2020, p. 6300). laila kadiwal (2021) adds that protesters from different generations and backgrounds learned from each other, thereby developing “political consciousness, solidarity against injustice, and antioppressive practices” (p. 19). deepta chopra (2021) specifically highlights the role of mother and grandmother protestors, who he argues inspired younger generations, including students, to understand and claim their constitutional rights (p. 482). these studies illuminate that muslim women have an intersectional identity that is highly marginalized in india today, and yet, they have been able to effectively mobilize to protest islamophobia. however, scholars do not address how the intersectional, marginalized identity of young indian muslim girls informs how they protest a direct attack on their identity, personal freedoms, and daily cultural practices. this presents a gap in the scholarly literature which can be addressed by researching how muslim girls are using their voices to resist karnataka’s veil ban. in particular, my analysis of how their identities as indians, as muslims, and as women impact their protests sheds light on how these girls are not just responding to, but rather actively shaping the modern-day muslim experience in india through resistance. an analysis of karnataka veil ban protest signs and speeches the following analysis is based on protest signs and speeches against the karnataka veil ban that are recorded in reporters’ footage and photographs of protests included in online articles and youtube videos. i focus on slogans that are commonly repeated and speeches with large public and online audiences, in order to center those with the widest reach and impact. from these, we can learn from the voices of a range of muslim girls in karnataka and across india and, from there, deduce their main strategies for defending their religious freedoms. expressions of agency firstly, protesters counter the silencing and misrepresentation of muslim women in india through their signs and speeches. bhatia and gajjala (2020) argued that muslim women’s physical presence at the shaheen bagh protests subverted stereotypes of oppression (p. 6292). in the case of the karnataka veil ban protests, muslim girls demonstrate their agency through, in addition to their physical presence, slogans highlighting their visibility and worth. for instance, the slogan “we cover our heads, not our brains” stands out as a direct reference and challenge to stereotypes of muslim women as mute victims, unable to think for themselves and forced to wear veils by muslim men (kataria, 2022). protesters rewrite this narrative to convey that they are intelligent, free-thinking women choosing to wear the veil of their own accord. further, the repetition of personal and possessive pronouns like “we” and “our” demonstrates an active voice, challenging perceptions of victimhood and asserting muslim girls’ right to lead social mobilization. moreover, in february 2022, burka-clad student protester muskan khan was harassed by anti-veil protesters outside her school in karnataka, chanting the hindu expression “jai shri ram,” meaning “hail lord ram,” and demanding she remove her veil (al jazeera english, 2022b, 0:00). not only did she stand her ground against their intimidation by continuing her path to her school, but she also countered their chanting, yelling back “allahu akbar,” a muslim expression meaning “god is great” (al jazeera, 2022b, 0:00). by inserting her voice in the narrative, she countered the dominant hindu nationalist representation of the muslim woman unable to speak for herself and demonstrated her strength and right to exist in public spaces dominated by hindu men. a video of this encounter went viral on social media and since then, protesters have turned khan into a symbol of their movement, recreating her image and words on protest signs (mateen, 2022). centering khan’s voice pushes muslim girls out of the fringes of society and into the spotlight, where they can mobilize to demand their rights from their government. references to rights enshrined in india’s constitution arguably, the protesters’ main tool for mobilization is india’s constitution, which is continuously referenced in protest signs and speeches. india is a secular country with constitutional protections for religious freedoms. signs often directly quote article 25 of india’s constitution, which notes the right to freely “profess, practice, and propagate religion” (frayer, 2022). through this reference, muslim girls center their national identity, appealing to their country’s secular values and their rights as indians. by characterizing the veil ban as a secular, constitutional issue, protesters decentralize islam in the debate over veils. rather than focusing on the way this ban attacks islamic practices and, in turn, defending their religion, the girls reframe the issue as an attack on indian values and rights. on the other hand, there are examples of religious rhetoric in these protests, such as muskan khan chanting “allahu akbar” in the viral video mentioned earlier. however, while explaining the incident in an interview with bbc, khan asks viewers not to label the veil ban as a religious issue, saying, “i have stood, not only for the muslim girls, [but] for all the nonmuslims and muslim girls” and “everyone should stand for their right” (bbc news, 2022, 2:54). as such, she distances herself from polarizing religious tensions and appeals to a sense of national unity and the importance of defending constitutional rights for all indians. moreover, protesters often make indirect references to the indian constitution. common slogans like “hijab is our right” and “my hijab does not make me any less indian than you,” while not explicitly mentioning the constitution, allude to the fact that the protesters are indian citizens and deserve to have their constitutional rights protected (mateen, 2022; “hijab ban,” 2022). on a similar note, in a press conference following the karnataka high court’s decision to uphold the veil ban in march 2022, student protester almas a.h., as referenced earlier, claimed that muslim girls were “betrayed by [their] own country” (al jazeera english, 2022a, 0:22). her argument calls out the indian government for turning its back on its constitutional values and its own citizens. these appeals to a common national identity are especially relevant given hindu nationalists’ accusations that indian muslims are allied with pakistan or islamic terrorists, attempting to ostracize them from indian society. for instance, bjp leaders have accused student protesters in karnataka of being “anti-national” and “members of a terrorist organization” (“hijab petitioners,” 2022, para. 2). in opposition to this narrative, muslim girls protesting the karnataka veil ban emphasize their belonging in india. calls for cultural tolerance in another appeal to their national identity, protesters defend wearing the veil as a part of india’s cultural diversity, promoting cultural tolerance. in multiple press conferences and interviews, muskan khan stated that “[non-muslims] are following their culture and we are following our culture,” framing the veil as a cultural, rather than religious practice (al jazeera english, 2022b, 0:16; the print, 2022, 2:07). other protesters, like aliya assadi, have echoed khan’s sentiments. assadi added, in a march 2022 interview, that wearing veils is a longstanding tradition in india, thereby demonstrating that cultural plurality has existed in the region for centuries (the news minute, 2022, 5:27). she goes on to say that equality is not uniformity, but rather there is “unity in diversity,” and all cultures’ forms of dress should be accepted (the news minute, 2022, 5:57). by focusing on tolerance for all cultural traditions across india, protesters again make the veil ban an indian issue, as opposed to just a muslim or religious issue, seeking to create solidarity between indians across religious divides. further, by defending multiculturalism, muslim girls challenge the logic of hindu superiority and defend their belonging in their country. connections to the global struggle for women’s bodily autonomy muslim girls also defend the veil as a part of their rights as women, calling out the karnataka veil ban as an instance of restricting women’s control over their own bodies and dress. as such, they connect their resistance to the global struggle for women’s bodily integrity. for instance, many signs include slogans such as “my right, my choice, my life,” emulating the feminist slogan “my body, my choice,” which has been used for decades in reproductive rights protests around the world, including in the united states (mateen, 2022). focusing on the idea of choice characterizes the karnataka veil ban as an attack on women’s rights, decentralizing the attack on religious rights at the heart of this issue. reframing the issue in terms of gender demonstrates an effort to create solidarity between muslim girls and supporters of women’s rights across religions in india. moreover, by placing themselves in conversation with other long-standing women’s rights movements worldwide and contextualizing freedom of dress as a part of bodily autonomy, the protesters also demonstrate the significance of the veil ban as a major violation of their freedoms. indian muslim girls further centralize women’s rights through the slogan “hands off my hijab” (mateen, 2022). through the phrase “hands off,” this slogan evokes a sense of violent oppression of women’s bodies, denouncing veil bans as an attack on women’s autonomy. also written as “pas touche à mon hijab” in french, this slogan was first popularized in france, where its own bans on islamic veils since 2004 have sparked widespread protests by muslim women (lough, 2021, paras. 2-5). as such, its use helps indian muslim girls connect their struggle to that of french muslim women, demonstrating the relevance of the karnataka veil ban beyond the one state and, rather, in terms of women’s rights and control of their bodies globally. conclusion from this analysis, we see that indian muslim girls protesting the karnataka veil ban challenge the hindutva ideology and mobilize for their religious rights by reconstructing dominant narratives of muslim women in india. specifically, they do so by demonstrating their agency and centralizing their nationality and gender, rather than their religion, in their protest signs and speeches. firstly, protesters challenge stereotypes of victimhood and defend their right to exist in public spaces through assertive slogans and chants. secondly, they defend their belonging in india and their right to the country’s constitutional freedoms through references to india’s constitution. thirdly, muslim girls frame the veil as a cultural practice, rather than a religious obligation, calling for tolerance of all cultures and forms of dress in india. fourthly, protesters characterize the karnataka veil ben as an incursion into women’s bodily autonomy, defending their rights as women to wear what they choose. marginalized on multiple fronts, indian muslim girls strategically emphasize different aspects of their intersectional identities to reconstruct their representation in indian society and defend their rights. analyzing their voices, through their protest signs and speeches, helps us understand how muslim girls are influencing and resisting the muslim experience in contemporary india that has been shaped by the dominance of hindutva. while discrimination and stereotyping by india’s government and media impact muslim women’s position in society, as evidenced by the existing literature, so too do muslim girl’s rhetorical strategies for social mobilization challenging their marginalization. further, this project builds upon scholars’ understanding of muslim women’s roles in indian protests by revealing how they choose to construct a social movement to secure their personal freedoms when directly attacked. however, this project does have limitations; while a range of languages are spoken in india, english is the primary language analyzed in this paper. still, i believe this analysis can provide a valuable contribution, as the majority of karnataka veil ban protest signs found online are in english, and those in languages like kannada, hindi, and urdu are mostly direct translations of the common english slogans. similarly, there is considerable overlap between the content of student protesters’ speeches in english and those in other languages like urdu; often, they repeat similar phrases in different languages depending on the news agency they are speaking to. so, despite its limitations, this project illuminates the prevalent protest strategies of indian muslim girls. further research in this area might include other languages or expand the scope of the identities explored in this paper to include, for instance, social class and sexuality, exploring how these factors may influence muslim women’s resistance. additionally, scholars might consider the role of social media in the karnataka veil ban protests. as muslim girls in karnataka and across india are creating global attention for their struggles and fighting for legal change, their often-overlooked voices shine a light on how marginalized groups with intersectional identities can mobilize to demand their rights from their governments. this is particularly relevant at this moment, given the rise of islamophobia and continued efforts to control women’s bodies and dress across the globe. as such, the scope of this issue is not limited to just muslim girls in karnataka or even in india. rather, this analysis carries important lessons on the role of protesters’ identities in their protests that can help marginalized communities globally challenge oppression and claim their rights. specifically, as muslim girls defend their freedoms by challenging the karnataka veil ban as not only antimuslim, but also anti-indian and anti-women, they provide a useful roadmap for political mobilization informed by intersectionality. references agnes, f. 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(2021). feminists against fascism: the indian female muslim protest in india. education sciences 11(12) 1-22. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci11120793 kapur, ratna. (2019). ‘belief’ in the rule of law and the hindu nation and the rule of law. in a. p. chatterji, t. b. hansen, & c. jaffrelot. (eds.), majoritarian state: how hindu nationalism is changing india (pp. 353–372). oxford university press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190078171.001.0001 karnataka college refuses to let muslim students in hijab to answer tests. (2022, february 28). indian american muslim council. https://iamc.com/karnataka-college-refuses-to-letmuslim-students-in-hijab-to-answer-tests/ kataria, s. (2022, february 13). indian muslim students say hijab ban forces choice of religion or education. reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/india/indian-muslim-students-sayhijab-ban-forces-choice-religion-or-education-2022-02-12 lough, r. (2021, may 4). hands off my hijab! young muslim women protest proposed french ban. reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/hands-off-my-hijab-young-muslimwomen-protest-proposed-french-ban-2021-05-04 malji, a. (2021). gendered islamophobia: the nature of hindu and buddhist nationalism in india and sri lanka. studies in ethnicity and nationalism 21(2), 172-193. https://doi.org/10.1111/sena.12350 mateen, z. (2022, march 16). karnataka bandh: should courts decide if hijab is essential in islam? bbc. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-60748012 muslim women’s protest against karnataka government over hijab ban. (2022, february 13). getty images. https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/muslim-womens-fromthane-mumbra-on-sunday-staged-an-news-photo/1238450046 the news minute. (2022, march 17). is our education not bigger than a uniform? student petitioners react to hijab ban [video]. youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvevb8n642m the print. (2022, february 10). no need to fear, fighting for right to education', says muslim student who was heckled over hijab [video]. youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3tss0dpouw rajagopal, k. (2022, october 13). supreme court delivers split verdict on karnataka hijab ban. the hindu. https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/sc-delivers-split-verdict-on-hijabrow-case-likely-to-go-to-a-larger-bench/article66004319.ece wagner, w., sen, r., permanadeli, r., & howarth, c. s. 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(2022, march 15). indian court upholds ban on hijabs in schools. new york times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/15/world/asia/india-hijab-ban-schools.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/15/world/asia/india-hijab-ban-schools.html abraham final edinburgh as a machine: reclamation, resistance, and formative fiction jayne abraham, stanford ’26. abstract: this essay first identifies edinburgh by alexander chee as a work of formative fiction, as defined by stanford professor of french language, literature, and civilization and comparative literature joshua landy. it then explores the stakes of creating a formative novel in the literary age of suspicion in which we exist, as well as within the context of the multiplistic expectations that readers place upon asian american writers. this essay ultimately positions edinburgh as a reclamation of the novel for alexander chee, who faced unique expectations with the externally attached title of the “first gay korean american novelist.” introduction in 2001, alexander chee published his debut novel edinburgh, giving him the title of the first gay korean american novelist. edinburgh is a semi-autobiographical fiction about fee, a gay korean american boy who ascends through his adolescence while grappling with the sexual abuse he and his peers were subjected to at the hands of their all-boys choir director, big eric. chee’s work is a devastating, evocative narrative that is adorned in stunning prose mediated by structural and stylistic ambiguity. in his 2018 essay “the autobiography of my novel,” chee writes that in order for edinburgh to tell an effective story, specifically about victims of sexual abuse, he “would have to construct a machine that moved readers along, anticipating and defeating their possible objections by taking them by another route – one that would surprise them.” extending this sentiment to edinburgh as a whole, this imperative then invites readers to think of edinburgh as formative rather than informative – as a machine. in this essay, i will first prove that edinburgh is a work of formative fiction, as defined by stanford professor of french language, literature, and civilization and comparative literature joshua landy. i will then situate edinburgh within a literary age of suspicion, wherein the critical reader approaches literary works in pursuit of a deeper, seemingly hidden meaning, and the fiction writer bears the burden of meaningfulness when creating a piece. this discussion will lead me to posit alternative modes of reading that aspire toward alternative reading experiences — for example, prioritizing immersion within a fiction over investigation of a fiction. i will then explain how the burden of meaningfulness is compounded with the burden of authentic representation for alexander chee as a gay korean american writer. finally, i will arrive at a discussion of the stakes of creating a formative novel, a machine, within the context of the unique set of expectations thrusted upon alexander chee when writing edinburgh. edinburgh as a formative fiction in his 2012 essay “formative fictions: imaginative literature and the training of capacities,” joshua landy defines formative fictions as literary works that seek to train rather than to teach. what formative fictions require, then, is a focus on what texts do rather than what they say — making them distinct from informative fictions (landy, 2012, p. 183). in this way, formative fictions become “machines that assist us in becoming who we are” (landy, 2012, p. 176). formative fictions are also characterized by their gradual temporality and the fact that they tend to be reread. additionally, the introduction of new elements in formative fictions — whether through plot development or changes in perspective — causes readers to constantly revise their hypotheses about how the work will unfold. with a concrete definition of what formative fictions are and what they do, how does edinburgh function as a work of formative fiction? gradual temporality one distinct element of edinburgh is the pace of its plot development and the effect this has on how readers experience the book. the plot progresses slowly through the first two sections after the prologue of the novel, “songs of the fireflies” and “january’s cathedral,” before significantly picking up speed in roughly the last 50 pages. the plot of the first section revolves around fee and the other choir members’ experiences with big eric’s sexual abuse, as well as around fee’s relationship to peter and exploration of his sexuality. but when the truth about big eric comes out and he eventually goes to jail — a seemingly conclusive plot point in the big eric story arc — readers continue into the second section and engage with the resounding effects of big eric’s imprisonment. readers delve deeper, and deeper still into fee’s psyche as he watches the boys in his choir die by suicide. as fee progresses through his later teenage and college years, readers watch him bear the burden of survivor’s guilt while exploring his sexuality and dealing with the loss of peter, his first love. “january’s cathedral” reveals the depths of fee’s depression and the complexity of his relationships to various men, ending in a deeply euphoric sexual experience with the david brothers. after the first two sections, though readers may feel closer to fee, they lack a concrete conception of the plot progression, as the narrative seems to prioritize character development over a consistent plot up until this point. it is in the third section, “and night’s black sleep upon the eyes,” that chee invokes a change in perspective with the introduction of warden, the boy with whom fee will eventually engage in an inappropriate sexual relationship. though readers can intuitively sense that the introduction of a new perspective often indicates plot advancement, it is not until the fourth and final section, “blue,” that edinburgh’s plot truly accelerates. in the last 50 or so pages, readers are returned to fee’s perspective as he relays facets of his adult life with astounding speed, advancing through his first encounter and subsequent relationship with bridey and his choice to move back home to maine for a job. it is within these last pages that fee begins his relationship with warden, abuses it, and finds out that warden is big eric’s son. warden then kills big eric and fee and warden attempt to run away together, before fee leaves him in a hotel and reunites with bridey — all within roughly the last dozen pages. with the most substantial portion of its action occurring at the very end, edinburgh is certainly gradual in pace. the first two sections allow readers to get to know fee in the ways chee will let them, before clueing readers into a new plot point with warden in the third section, and accelerating the action in the fourth and final section. in “the autobiography of my novel,” chee relays his process when constructing the plot. in his pursuit of creating the formative machine that is edinburgh, chee claims that “[readers] would want to grasp for something familiar amid it all. plot could do this.” in this way, chee gives readers something to “grasp for” by eventually invoking a distinct plot, but chee is not so fast in doing so, establishing a gradual temporality within edinburgh — a fundamental tenet of formative fictions. rereading formative fictions tend to reward reading and rereading, and edinburgh is no exception. in part due to its gradual plot development, edinburgh creates completely different reading experiences upon a second or third reading and/or upon reflection. additionally, as a narrator, fee occupies an ambiguous temporal location. edinburgh is written in present tense, but it is clear that fee is located somewhere in the future in his telling of events, as evidenced by statements such as: “the survivor gets to tell the story. have you figured out who survives yet?” (chee, 2001, p. 92). therefore, edinburgh’s gradual plot development and fee’s ambiguous temporal location work in tandem to create a different effect upon rereading. this effect can be demonstrated through a close reading of the following quote: “love melts all our murder. as much as it makes it. love melted me. peter, it could only have been you” (chee, 2001, p. 52). at this point in the narrative, readers are aware of fee’s devastating experiences of sexual abuse as well as his all-consuming love for peter. upon first read, then, this quote feels like a boy’s innocent, maybe even naive, proclamation of his capacity to romantically love just one person. however, at a much later point in the narrative, it becomes clear that it is fee’s unhealthy preservation of the image of peter that ultimately leads him to engage in an inappropriate sexual relationship with warden — in part, if not in whole, due to his resemblance to peter. therefore, upon reflection, this quote loses the innocence by which it was initially characterized. additionally, recognizing fee’s ambiguous temporal location in the future, this quote can function as a sort of justification of fee’s unthinkable actions. the idea that “love melts all our murder” suggests that love trumps all, even when it can have negative consequences — “as much as it makes it.” if fee is speaking from the future, after his inappropriate relationship with warden, then saying that “it could only have been” peter relays fee’s unhealthy obsession with the past and with peter. as readers’ relationship to fee evolves with the introduction of new information and perspectives, an informed rereading of this quote absolves its initial innocence and solidifies the reality that, for fee, peter would remain “the one” as he progresses through adulthood. this experience of gaining greater consciousness upon rereading and reflecting further speaks to edinburgh’s status as a formative novel. introduction of new elements another distinct facet of edinburgh is chee’s commitment to temporarily withholding information and then revealing it later on in the narrative, causing readers to constantly revise their hypotheses regarding the conclusion of the novel. the most salient example of chee’s manipulation of access to information is peter’s letter to fee. after peter lights himself on fire and dies, fee possesses two physical mementos of peter: a photo and a letter. it is not until the final section of the novel, when fee is an adult working at warden’s school, that this letter is revealed. up until this point, if readers have not forgotten that fee possesses these physical mementos of peter, they are left to guess what the contents of this letter are. when the contents of the letter are revealed, new insight is gained that has the potential to alter readers’ perceptions of fee and their hypotheses about how the rest of the novel will unfold. additionally, multiplistic interpretations of the contents of the letter itself are possible, creating several potential paths to the conclusion of edinburgh, depending on readers’ interpretations. the last few lines of the letter explicitly open themselves up to at least two interpretations: “and so i want you to be happy for me, that this is better for me. that i found what i needed. i know you won’t be. but it’s the last thing i want. you happy” (chee, 2001, p. 210). beyond the lingering, devastating effect of peter’s sentiment that he could only find solace in death, peter’s claim that the last thing he wants is fee happy has an unsettling effect. on one end, this could mean that peter’s dying wish is fee’s happiness, or it could mean that literally the last thing peter wants is fee’s happiness, meaning he does not want fee to be happy at all. the ambiguity of these lines and the letter as a whole allows readers to understand why it has haunted fee for all these years. additionally, readers’ interpretations of this letter affect their perceptions of fee as character and his relationship to peter. with access to new information, readers also get to decide the symbolic significance of fee getting rid of the past; they get to decide if fee is capable of doing away with the past and is successful in this moment, or not. in this way, chee’s choice to reveal peter’s devastating last words and disrupt readers’ perceptions of fee at this point in the narrative is yet another facet of edinburgh’s operation as a formative work. through its gradual temporality, differing interpretations upon rereading, and introduction of new elements throughout the entire narrative, edinburgh functions as a formative fiction. these three elements of edinburgh work in tandem to create a distinct reading experience. as the story builds gradually, readers are given access to new information that alters their interpretations of the narrative. they experience delayed gratification in the last 50 pages of the book through the increased action and accelerated progression of the plot. however, the extent to which readers are gratified is based on their attention to elements of edinburgh. what readers decide to make of edinburgh’s gradual pace, fee’s ambiguous temporal location, and the information that chee withholds and then gives them access to invites them to engage in the construction of edinburgh’s narrative, making a passive reading nearly impossible. chee facilitates a complex relationship between readers and fee by giving them fee’s perspective, but ultimately revealing his narrative unreliability, clueing readers into this early on through fee’s ambiguous temporal location. readers’ perceptions of fee, as coaxed through edinburgh’s gradual temporality, inform their interpretations of edinburgh — chee manipulates readers’ ability to trust their narrator and interpret the information he chooses to share. fulfilling the qualifications of a formative novel, edinburgh invites readers into the active construction of the narrative, beckoning them to pay attention and constantly revise their conclusions. but why does it matter that edinburgh is a work of formative fiction? writing and reading in a literary age of suspicion as joshua landy notes in his aforementioned essay, there exists a reigning logic that fictions are designed to give readers “useful advice” (landy, 2012, p. 170). in other words, readers approach fictional works seeking to gain something by excavating a deeper, hidden meaning that they perceive is embedded within a literary text. landy’s essay is situated within the larger context of the idea that we exist in a literary age of suspicion. eve kosofsky sedgwick’s seminal chapter on paranoid reading from her book touching feeling situates us within this era of paranoid, suspicious reading. sedgwick posits that readers approach literary texts with a hermeneutics of suspicion (sedgwick, 2003, p. 124); that is, readers possess a sense of paranoia that is anticipatory, reflective, and mimetic when engaging in literary criticism. due to their paranoia, the reader then creates a burden of meaningfulness for the writer, as the reader expects that their attention and analysis will be rewarded with some greater, concrete message or meaning. stephen best and sharon marcus expand on this concept in “surface reading: an introduction” by complicating the normative method of “symptomatic reading,” a mode of reading informed by paranoia that encourages readers to interpret texts under the assumption that their meanings are hidden and must be extracted. best and marcus instead speak to the liberating nature of “surface reading,” a mode of reading that encourages attentiveness and immersion within a text as opposed to investigation. adding yet another layer of nuance to the concept of surface reading, heather love identifies an alternative mode of reading that is akin to surface reading while in conversation with psychologist and sociologist erving goffman in “close but not deep: literary ethics and the descriptive turn.” love adds nuance to the idea of surface reading by contending with how identity intercepts readers’ inclination to participate in an incessant pursuit of deeper meaning. goffman argues in favor of a valorization of experience over identity, refusing to “[divide human activity] into realms of authentic action and stereotyped or conventional behavior…for him, there is no more authentic reality to get to…” (love, 2010, p. 381). readers’ inclination to engage in symptomatic readings and distinguish between authentic and stereotyped or conventional behavior is particularly prevalent when discussing edinburgh. it is important to acknowledge the fraught title of the “first gay korean american novelist” that alexander chee possesses, as specifically related to expectations and pressures in edinburgh’s writing and publication process. in an interview with min hyoung song included in his book the children of 1965: on writing, and not writing as an asian american, chee says, “who wants to be valued just for what you are, as opposed to what you have to say? that’s disgusting…no artist likes to be told what to write” (song, 2003, p. 62). song then asks chee if writing under the label of “asian american” makes him feel as though he is being told what to write. chee responds, “not even ‘almost.’ it’s most certainly within this category that you’re expected to have asian american characters…” (song, 2003, p. 62). focusing specifically on asian american writers, the burden of meaningfulness is compounded by an external obligation to relay an authentic, representative experience in literature that is in line with normative conceptions of asian american identity. but what exactly constitutes these normative conceptions of asian americanness? expectation and the asian american author in the essay “korean enough: alexander chee on new korean american fiction” published in guernica magazine in 2008, chee explicitly identifies the dizzying expectations he feels subjected to under the title of “korean american” author: “is it a korean american novel because there’s kimchi, or is it a korean american novel because it’s informed by someone who grew up with even a distant sense of han?” continuing, chee expresses the complex, contradictory questions asian american writers, and more specifically korean american writers must contend with: we worry if they will “chink” the book up, put chopsticks and teacups on the cover, or dragons, or an asian woman…will we be accused of trying to “make the book marketable” if there’s asian content? will we be branded as sell outs if there’s not “enough” korean content? and if we write work that isn’t what people expect of us, of our brand, will we find an audience, or even be allowed to find an audience? (chee, 2008). here, we observe how normative conceptions of asian american identity influence and trouble writers of asian descent. stereotypical conceptions of what it means to be asian american choke asian american writers’ abilities to authentically express themselves in their works. how does chee’s mixed racial identity fit into normative conceptions of korean american identity? additionally, how does queerness fit into these conceptions? does it? further, what does it mean to write a literary work when one’s identity precedes one’s writing? in one way or another, these are questions chee had to confront when writing edinburgh. in “the autobiography of my novel,” chee identifies the weight of such expectations as specifically related to his process of writing edinburgh: i was supposed to both invent characters from whole cloth and tattoo my biography onto each of them. the absurdity of casting my every story in half-korean gay characters alone made me rebel. i think every writer with a noncanonical background, or even a canonical one, faces this at some point. note here chee’s use of the word rebel. under the crushing burdens of meaningfulness and authenticity, chee chose to rebel, creating the formative machine, that is edinburgh — rejecting all expectations and doing what a writer does best: telling a story. conclusion put simply, it matters that edinburgh is a formative novel because it radically rejects expectations placed upon asian american writers. in an age of literary suspicion, edinburgh beckons readers to reject symptomatic reading and immerse themselves in a story that demands their attention and active engagement. edinburgh is not wholly representative of any purported notion of gay korean american identity, nor is it wholly representative of asian american identity — and it does not seek to be. in this way, meaning does not lie where readers want to find it, and this sentiment is also reflected in the publication process of edinburgh. in “the autobiography of my novel,” chee writes, “editors didn’t seem to know if it should be sold as a gay novel or an asian american novel. there was no coming-out story in it, and while the main character was the son of an immigrant, immigration played no part in the story.” when asked by his agent what kind of novel edinburgh is, chee replied, “it’s a novel…i wrote a novel” (chee, 2018). and so edinburgh is a sort of reclamation — of art, of expression. it is a formative work; it is a machine. edinburgh is chee’s way of rejecting the externally attached title of the “first gay korean american novelist.” subverting the suffocating expectations that are a symptom of our literary age of suspicion, refusing to present a normative image of asian american identity, edinburgh is, above all else, a novel — and alexander chee, a novelist. references best, s., & marcus, s. (2009). surface reading: an introduction. representations, 108(1), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1525/rep.2009.108.1.1. chee, a. (2001). edinburgh. welcome rain publishers. chee, a. (2008). korean enough: alexander chee on new korean american fiction. guernica. https://www.guernicamag.com/korean_enough_new_korean_ameri/. chee, a. (2018). the autobiography of my novel. how to write an autobiographical novel: essays. mariner books. landy, j. (2012). formative fictions: imaginative literature and the training of the capacities. poetics today, (33(2), 169–205. duke university press. https://read.dukeupress.edu/poetics-today/article/33/2/169/21097/formative-fictions-ima ginative-literature-and-the. love, h. (2010). close but not deep: literary ethics and the descriptive turn. new literary history, 41(2), 371–391. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40983827. sedgwick, e. k. (2002). 4. paranoid reading and reparative reading, or, you’re so paranoid, you probably think this essay is about you. touching feeling: affect, pedagogy, performativity, 123–152. duke university press. song, m. h. (2003). the children of 1965: on writing, and not writing, as an asian american. duke university press. (trans)cultural queer (in)visibility how labeling queer identity often does more harm than good for global queer communities lora vachovska, stanford university ’25 abstract: many people often believe that queerness is a western phenomenon and that the people living in the western world are more accepting of queer identity. the historical and ideological processes of colonialism and neoliberalism have supported the idea of queerness as western, and language and labels around queer identity support the same notion. in reading about multilingual queer people’s experience, there are two general trends that emerge: 1) people claim that english labels are most useful for articulating queer identity, or that 2) english labels for queer identity are too tied to western culture. i conclude that, although labeling separate queer identities very often helps individuals feel recognized and accepted, abolishing narrow labeling practices altogether may be necessary to prevent queer identity from being continuously framed as a western phenomenon. indeed, since most queer identity labels are coined in english, it is primarily people who speak english who have the ability to articulate who they are. this relegates non-english speakers to the imagined non-queer realm in modern, western conceptions of thought and makes such people invisible. this paper suggests, also, that moving beyond hegemonic western narratives of queerness to talk about how people all over the world love, act, and exist rather than identify may be key for queer acceptance and liberation. introduction when i came out to my parents, i had to send them urban dictionary definitions of the labels i use to describe my sexuality. growing up in california as a child of bulgarian immigrants, i was raised to speak both english and bulgarian. eventually, i grew to speak english better, and it was within that language that i found the terminology to describe my identity. however, since there are no bulgarian terms to describe my queerness, the unspoken implication of my coming out was that i had become “too american” as a result of my parents moving to the u.s. many people often hold the belief that queerness is western and that the people living in that part of the world are more accepting of queer identity. while this is true in some cases, making broad generalizations about which parts of the world are homophobic or not is a mistaken claim. in light of this, this essay will seek to answer the question: how does the idea that queerness is a western phenomenon emerge, and in what ways might it be subverted? so far, there have been texts written about separate aspects that contribute to the idea that queerness is western. for example, scholars have shown how colonial practices created an entirely new system of gender as we understand it and necessitated the erasure of non-normative expressions of gender and sexuality (lugones, 2007; ahuja, 2016), and how the later rise of neoliberalism has made it so that the west now positions itself as accepting of queerness while asserting that the rest of the world needs to change (puar 2017; seckingelgin 2018; rodriguez 2019). while these socio-historical processes set up the stage for how queerness is viewed as “western,” language and labeling practices have propped up the same idea. researchers have posited that some multilingual queer individuals often resort to english to describe their identities because of the queer terminology made available by that language (raza-sheikh 2020). alternatively, some view english queer labels as intertwined with american culture, and have thus tried to reclaim or create new terminology in their native languages (manalansan 2007; gandhi 2020). all in all, this reflects a complicated discourse of transcultural queer identity labels and calls into question whether any identity labeling is useful when trying to subvert narratives of western dominance. this essay synthesizes all these viewpoints into one coherent piece that explores how histories and labeling practices fit together. i argue that, although labeling separate queer identities very often helps individuals feel recognized and accepted, abolishing narrow labeling practices altogether may be necessary to prevent queer identity from being continuously framed as a western phenomenon. first – to situate my argument within a sociohistorical context – i trace histories of colonialism and neoliberalism to uncover how queer identity has been commodified and positioned either as something to be exterminated or as a sign of progress and modernity. i then transition to speaking about the intersection of queerness, multilingualism, and identity labels. this will reveal two patterns that emerge when looking at queer labeling practices, and the essay will conclude with the interrogation of the value of identity labels themselves. i: socio-historical phenomena & effect on queer discourses different sexualities and genders have always existed; it was only that particular identities became normalized and privileged through specific socio-historical processes that served certain, dominant interests. in fact, it might be accurate to say that gender and sexuality as categories that we understand today did not even exist until more modern times, when confining people to such fabricated social realms became a means of controlling populations. that is, ‘heterosexuals’ and ‘homosexuals’ did not exist, there were simply people who engaged in certain acts that might be labeled as heterosexual or homosexual. along these lines, the label of ‘queer’ is also one that is highly tied up with western historical and cultural constructions of sexuality, but in the absence of a more inclusive term, i will use the words ‘queer’ and ‘queerness’ to broadly describe any non-normative sexual orientation, sexuality, and gender, regardless of whether the people in question identify with the term.1 a. colonialism queer people have always existed. it was not until western european countries colonized territories in the global south and the americas that certain bodies were deemed deviant. colonialism is often defined as a “political and economic system that allows one geopolitical entity [...] to establish controls beyond its traditional geographic borders” to increase profit and power (ahuja, 2016, p. 237). moreover, ahuja (2016) writes that colonial projects of domination are “always accompanied by forms of violence and coercion that attempt to reshape the material worlds of the indigenous peoples or exterminate them altogether” (p. 242). as a result, colonialism was never purely about land and resources – it involved the fundamental reimagining and restructuring of human societies to be in line with a model of society that was easier to divide and dominate. clearly-defined categories of people are easier to control, so colonizers imposed measures of identity (race, gender, ability, etc.) to mark who is in power and who is subjugated across various contexts. one way this took shape was in the creation of the gender binary. maría lugones speaks of the “light” and “dark” sides to the colonial gender system, where the “light side constructs gender and gender relations hegemonically, ordering only the lives of white bourgeois men and women and constituting the modern/colonial meaning of men and women” while the “dark side [...] was and is thoroughly violent” for subjugated populations (2007, p. 206). that is, gender included both the neat, orderly binary that white europeans imposed upon themselves with values of sexual dimorphism and patriarchy (the light side) as well as the violence inflicted upon the people they colonized in an attempt to mold those other 1 this reveals the limitations of language and identity in and of itself to the extent that it can be argued that any term is always connected to the histories and experiences of people who predominantly speak that language. ‘queer’ was historically considered a slur for gay people and has since been reclaimed, but this does not absolve it from an inherently western conception of sexuality and gender. people in other parts of the world have non-normative sexual and gender identities imbued with deep cultural meaning, and labeling them as ‘queer’ in english does not do them justice. this will be touched upon in section 2 of this essay, but for now, i digress. ‘queer’ is the most inclusive word available in english, and i will proceed to use it in this essay, despite recognizing how it, too, is limiting in certain ways. societies to the european model (the dark side). of importance to note is that “colonialism did not impose precolonial, european gender arrangements on the colonized [societies],” rather, an entirely new system was engendered that created multitudes of different positionalities and reshaped all human and earthly relations (lugones, 2007, p. 186). as such, different identities held different values across settings. as a result, gender manifested in different ways depending on the society and role that an individual was expected to fulfill. for example, the gender binary allowed for the division and organization of labor in a way that promoted the economic endeavors of men while simultaneously encouraging the childrearing capacities of women to create more children who could be made into the same type of workers and citizens. this notion of productivity under colonialism made it so that sexuality was narrowed to serve a reproductive purpose, which in turn propped up heterosexuality as an ideal. in line with sexual dimorphism, people with the capability to bear children were more often than not categorized as ‘women’ while ‘men’ were the people who controlled the “organization of sex, its resources, and products” (lugones, 2007, p. 194).2 this erased nonbinary and queer identities while placing women in a passive, oppressed role and men in an active, powerful role. returning to the point that clear categorization of people makes populations easier to control: it is no accident that the binary gender distinction (passive vs. active) mirrors what the binary between colonized and colonizer looked like. all this is to say that the extermination of queerness to fit a binary was a colonial tactic for controlling populations. yet, binaries are never this simple, which is why looking at lives across intersections of identity is necessary to understand coloniality. for instance, women in colonizer nations versus colonized societies were not imagined in the same way. white women were the “reproducers of ‘the (white) race’” while other women were equated to “animals” who were “sexually marked as female, but without the characteristics of femininity” (lugones, 2007, p. 201, 203). it is not difficult, then, to imagine the sort of violence that was inflicted upon colonized women and how it differed from that enacted on european women. this “dark side” of the colonial gender system therefore necessitated the erasure of non-normative bodies and sexualities (i.e. those that did not fit into the “light side” conceptualization of gender) since they were viewed as threatening to the social order. through these mechanisms, colonialism effectively created a system that policed and erased queer, nonbinary expressions of gender and sexuality for settler-colonial nation-state building. in these ways, western european nations established a new social order to rule the rest of the world, erasing queerness to fit people into simple binaries. b. homonationalism & neoliberalism now, the narrative has seemingly flipped. after centuries of exterminating queerness globally via colonization, the western world now claims to be protective of queer people. this 2 lugones goes on to note that it is not enough to speak of reproductive biology when speaking of how gender was organized and goes on to point out how intersex people were similarly forced into the gender binary despite having bodies that fundamentally challenged the biological binaristic gender model. saviorism manifests in a cycle that is ultimately harmful to international queer populations. for example, the most powerful countries use the cover of “rescuing” queer populations abroad to interfere with second and third-world countries' politics (seckinelgin, 2018, p. 287-288). seckinelgin’s analysis focuses in particular on british foreign aid to various african countries (uganda, ghana, and kenya, among others). he writes of how, in 2011, the british prime minister brought the topic of lgbt rights into negotiation discussions of foreign aid to african nations as a sort of “moral evaluation” of whether a country was worthy of their financial aid (2018, p. 287). however, the power imbalance in these discussions was reminiscent of past colonial relations, leading the african leaders to view the mention of lgbtq rights as “neocolonial interventions” (seckinelgin, 2018, p. 286). consequently, to protect the national identities of their respective countries from what they view as foreign influence, african governments adopt anti-lgbtq stances and deny the existence of queer africans altogether (seckinelgin, 2018, p. 293).3 the process can be described as follows: since the united kingdom purports to be accepting of queerness and brings lgbtq+ rights into international discussions, queerness is politicized. then, when it comes to political negotiations, other governments come to see queer identity as solely political and western-influenced. as such, in attempting to reject western influence in their countries, they often take anti-lgbtq+ positions in their domestic policy, further suppressing the rights and visibility of domestic queer populations, making it even easier for the government to persecute queer people in their country for being a traitor to their national identity (seckinelgin, 2018, 294). to western countries, all of this reaffirms the notion that the rest of the world is homophobic and transphobic, and the west can continue pretending to be a haven for lgbtq populations by offering the bare minimum of rights. this harmful cycle just erases the voices of actual queer people across the globe.4 as a result, one can see how drastically the narrative has flipped from the time when western nations exterminated native populations to fit their ideas of civilization, to now, when the same nations are now weaponizing queer identity to once again place themselves as superior. puar (2017) coins this “sexual exceptionalism” and writes about it specifically in relation to the u.s. (p. 2). that is, she claims that the u.s. positions itself as exceptional in that it pretends to be transcendent of all other “modernization” processes abroad and therefore facilitative of international progress from some “superior” standpoint when it comes to lgbtq rights (puar, 2017, p. 8). for puar, this process is inherently tied to what she calls “homonationalism” – homonormative nationalism (p.2). homonationalism allows queer people in the u.s. to be assimilated into the nation-state (often via capitalism) in a way that supports normative, “nationalist formations,” which then allows the u.s. nation-state to define itself in opposition to – and as better than – other states where queer people are not as visible or 3 in 2015 at the un general assembly, the president of zimbabwe stated “we reject attempts to prescribe new rights that are contrary to our values, norms, traditions, and beliefs. we are not gays.” (seckinelgin, 2018, p. 293). 4 in 2011, a group of queer african people from over 50 civil society groups released a pan-african statement titled “statement on british ‘aid cut’ threats to african countries that violate lgbti rights” – i believe it’s worth reading if you wish to understand this point better: https://www.pambazuka.org/activism/statement-british-aid-cut-threats-african-countries-violate-lbgti-rights#:~:text= while%20the%20intention%20may%20well,serious%20backlash%20against%20lgbti%20people. https://www.pambazuka.org/activism/statement-british-aid-cut-threats-african-countries-violate-lbgti-rights#%3a~%3atext%3dwhile%20the%20intention%20may%20well%2cserious%20backlash%20against%20lgbti%20people https://www.pambazuka.org/activism/statement-british-aid-cut-threats-african-countries-violate-lbgti-rights#%3a~%3atext%3dwhile%20the%20intention%20may%20well%2cserious%20backlash%20against%20lgbti%20people integrated into the state (puar, 2017, pp. 4-10). puar talks about how queer people outside of u.s. borders are racialized and “un-nationaliz[ed],” because the u.s. is imagined to be the only state where queer people are accepted (puar, 2017, p. 10). this then brings up the idea that – from a u.s. perspective – “the homosexual other is white, [while] the racial other is straight” (paur, 2017, p. 32), which all feeds into the narrative that queerness is an inherently white, western identity. that is, from the view of the u.s. nation-state, queerness is an acceptable identity as long as it fits a respectable white, american model, whereas people of other races from non-western countries are imagined to be heterosexual. this is the exact phenomenon that seckinelgin (2018) pointed to in his discussion of uk foreign aid to african countries, and he has shown that this homonationalist rhetoric only serves to silence and erase queer populations that live outside of the western world (p. 295). ultimately, this exemplifies that the west cares more about utilizing queerness as a way to position themselves as superior to it does about actually ‘saving’ queer people. for both seckinelgin and puar, this process is tied to neoliberalism. while neoliberalism is essentially an economic and political theory, it necessitates a rethinking of social organization in which “the individual is central” (rodriguez, 2019, p. 115). to this extent, “identities have been wielded in contemporary discourse to enter systems of power” (rodriguez, 2019, p. 111). the way that the neoliberal structure in the west has been utilized, individual queer people are homogenized and assimilated in a way that projects that illusion of progress. from this, western countries can take the most ‘respectable’ appearing queer people (i.e., white, able-bodied, middle class, etc.) to be the poster child for their projection of acceptance.5 this makes it so that only certain people are imagined to embody queerness. at the same time, on a global scale, the assimilation of queer individuals allows the west to be viewed as a queer sanctuary, all while propping up the idea that queerness is predominantly found in western cultures. the above section has shown how the historical and ideological processes of colonialism and neoliberalism have supported the notion of western queerness. yet, history alone cannot fully explain this phenomenon on an interpersonal, everyday level. as such, the following section investigates how language and labels around queer identity support the same misguided idea that queerness is western. ii: (in)translatability of queerness language norms can often reveal how broader societal phenomena influence individuals’ thinking. at the same time, language practices can further bolster the same entrenched ideas and stereotypes – to this extent, queer language in english reproduces the idea of homonationalism (that queer people only belong to certain countries or are most accepted in certain countries). in reading about multilingual queer people’s experiences, there are two general trends that emerge: 1) people claim that english labels are most useful for articulating queer identity, and 2) people 5 this gives rise to homonormativity, which can be seen in discourse around public figures such as pete buttigieg, an american politician, who is often critiqued as not being “gay enough.” https://www.newyorker.com/news/ourcolum nists/the-queer-opposition-to-pete-buttigieg-explained. https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-queer-opposition-to-pete-buttigieg-explained https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-queer-opposition-to-pete-buttigieg-explained https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-queer-opposition-to-pete-buttigieg-explained feel that english labels for queer identity are too tied to western culture. of course, not every attitude falls neatly into one category or the other, but these are the two overarching themes which i will use to explain the tension around using english for queer identity labels. a. english labels as “most useful” the first trend shows that, oftentimes, english queer identity labels can give people a place to discover and define their identity. that is, many people often believe that english gives them the language to describe themselves. to some degree, this can be explained by the nature of the english language. floyd’s 2020 study examined grammatical gender across a few romance languages (french, spanish, portuguese) in comparison to english, concluding that english “affords [the most] flexibility to express gender neutrality” (p. 5). floyd points to the fact that the use of pronouns in english “is interchangeable because it does not greatly affect adjectives, verbs, and other structures of the sentence” (2020, p. 9). even though this is likely one factor contributing to the anglocentrism of queerness, it cannot be the only reason. many other languages do not have gendered pronouns, such as chinese, hindi, zopau, and igbo (given, hindi does have masculine and feminine cases in verbs and adjectives). furthermore, although english has seemingly more flexibility in expressing nonbinary identities, grammar alone cannot explain why english dominance in queer discourse persists. indeed, the idea that english is best-suited to expressing queer identity is not relegated to the realm of gender-neutral expression in grammar. raza-sheikh’s article includes stories from various multilingual, queer-identifying people, all who express the same overall sentiment: as much as they would like to articulate their identities in their native languages, “‘it [is] just more natural in english,’” and “‘the terms we can use in english don’t really translate into other languages,’” (2020, para. 16, 15). oftentimes, the labels that people use to describe their sexuality are hyper-specific categorical terms coined in english using greek, latin, or other germanic-italic prefixes: demisexual, aegosexual, lithosexual, pansexual, etc. translating such labels into other languages becomes difficult, positioning english as most useful for expressing queerness. indeed, in my own experience, i am almost certain that – if i only spoke bulgarian – i would never have even realized i was queer. that is, english was a medium for discovering my own queerness, without which i likely never would have noticed that i experience attraction differently from the norm. in a slightly different sense, one catalan-, spanish-, and english-speaker in raza-sheikh’s article reported that english was simply the language she discovered her sexuality in, but it was “not [her] real language” (2020, para. 13). consequently, i do believe that english is incredibly useful for uncovering and defining queerness, but this does not erase the cultural and linguistic queer hegemony that causes people to believe that non-western and non-english-speaking people are heterosexual by default. in fact, the above point about one’s “real” language begins to reveal the sentiment that english is not true to some people’s linguo-cultural identities. in the face of this english dominance, some people have begun reclaiming formerly-derogatory terms in their language or creating new terms, which brings up the second trend. b. english labels as “too tied to western culture” some queer people feel that using english to label their sexual and/or gender identity ignores some of their other identities – nation, race, culture, etc. that is, they believe that english queer identity labels signify a particular western, white, middle-class embodiment of queerness that does not apply to them. manalansan’s 2007 article examined the challenges that many filipino immigrants in the u.s. face when navigating their queer identities. notably, he writes that, although the tagalog term “bakla” may be considered derogatory, many filipino men have favored the term over the english term “gay” (p. 24). this reclamation of terms signifies a resistance against stereotyped queerness in one’s native culture, while simultaneously rejecting modern, semeingly-western terms for identity. indeed, the filipino queer men felt that “bakla symbolized filipino queerness while gay symbolized white queerness” (manalansan, 2007, p. 24). in this sense, “gay is perceived as ‘a distinct cultural category’” that is exclusionary of the countless diverse, international forms of queernesses that exist (manalnsan, 2007, p. 23). as a result, the reclamation of derogatory queer terms in non-english languages is a way to make clear that queerness is not a new, trendy, western concept, but is rather a ubiquitous identity that is found across cultural lines. it is a way to say “we’ve always been here, and it’s time that you recognized that this identity is not a bad thing.” yet, recycling pejorative terms can often carry the same hurt and stigma. as such, many queer people have preferred to create new labels for their sexual and gender identities in their native languages. that way, they can reject anglocentrism while still avoiding derogatory terms. for example, “transpinoy/transpinay” was created by transgender individuals in the filipino diaspora as a play on “filipino/filipina” to describe their identities (gandhi, 2020, para. 7). likewise, the terms “mithliyi/mithliyah”6 (meaning “sameness”) are used by some to denote gay/lesbian identity in arabic (gandhi, 2020, para. 25). this act of language-creation allows queer people to label themselves in a way that they feel is more true to their cultural identities. at the same time, creating these new words gives queer people the agency to move past histories where labels with negative connotations were imposed upon queerness. these examples have shown how people have been attempting to reject the western-centric narratives of queerness and carve out their own queer spaces in their own languages. however, is merely translating and creating new queer labels in various languages really the answer to rejecting western dominance? iii: questioning the use of labels in many ways, even the act of labeling one’s queer identity can be seen as a western practice. i have many friends who feel that labeling their queer identity in any capacity is more correlated to western culture, and they do not even feel the need to label themselves at all in their native languages. following this thread, the following section will show how labels themselves can still uphold western dominance in queer spaces. a. complexity of labeling perhaps the most important thing to remember in this section is that labels have provided a space for people to feel accepted, and when it comes to discussions of abolishing labels, many people are hesitant because they can have a deeply personal connection to their chosen label and the expression7 and social utility8 it has given them. therefore, we must continuously grapple with the fact that abolishing labels may not be for everyone. dr. abigail oakley illustrates this complexity; she conducted a study in 2016 looking into labeling practices on tumblr, finding that “tumblr is a space where [nonbinary genders and sexual orientations] are more widely accepted and even encouraged by the lgbtqia community that exists there,” giving rise to the superfluous labeling discourse that takes place on the platform (p. 8). people on tumblr have often created microlabels for queer identity, giving people new language to describe highly-specific experiences and feelings that fall under broader, umbrella terms. oakley acknowledges this as a valuable “form of identity construction” and writes that it is important to the extent that it gives queer individuals a way to describe their “feelings, gender, and desires” and makes their queernesses “recognizable” (2016, p. 9, 11). at the same time, oakley writes that labeling queerness is a practice “born of hegemonic, binary discourse” (2016, p. 11). drawing on foucault’s post-structuralist theory of power, she says that “discourse that attempts to subvert power also reinforces it by first recognizing its power and second by giving it credence through acknowledgment that it needs to be challenged in the first place” (oakely, 2016, p. 9). in other words, attempts to subvert dominant structures of power can often reinforce that dominance by recognizing that the structure has power to subvert (i.e. the structure would not need to be challenged if it did not have power in the first place). this can be applied to labeling practices: whereas queer people on tumblr are attempting to subvert dominant narratives of sexuality and gender by creating new, highly-specific terms, this only reinforces the centrality and power that heterosexuality already holds in current society. in this sense, oakley accepts that “labeling processes through appropriation of hegemonic discourse are not radical enough to elicit true change” (2016, p. 11). labels are complex, because, as oakley concludes, they are deeply personal and valuable to individuals at the same time as they uphold oppressive structures of sexuality and gender. so what would it look like to elicit true change? b. moving beyond labels diving further into post-structuralist theory may provide the answer, and will show how labels can be harmful to the extent that they erase certain queer people and reinforce western-dominance. namaste (1994) writes that the “articulation of nonheterosexuality bolsters the centrality of heterosexuality itself” (p. 225). what this means is that the creation of new labels for non-heterosexual identities is predicated on the idea that heterosexuality is already the 7 many people i know often feel the need to label because they have struggled coming to terms with their sexuality, and having a concrete label has made them feel more secure and confident. others prefer to label their identity as an act of resistance against heteronormative beliefs that erase queerness. 8 some people (such as myself) like using labels so they have a way to describe their experiences to people, like their partner or their other friends. i also know of one person who uses labels as a defensive tactic in social situations where she doesn’t want men to flirt with her. norm. in order to normalize queer identity, then, one must stop diluting power and reject language that is created with the underlying assumption of a heterosexual frame. for example, existing labels such as “asexual,” “omnisexual,” etc. are mere “variations of terminology” that already exists to describe identities within a heterosexist structure (oakley, 2016, p. 9). this reveals how existing labels reinforce heterosexism, and how oftentimes labeling itself is harmful for queerness: if the point of queerness is to reject heterosexism, why does queer terminology rely on heterosexist language? perhaps the mere act of labeling is the problem. along these lines, namaste writes that “the emergence of homosexuality was accompanied by its disappearance” (1994, p. 224). in other words – by openly labeling queer identity – queerness that is not labeled or articulated is erased. in order for some people to be “out” as queer, there have to be queer people who are not “out.” this props up the notion that the only “real” queer people are those who are visible and vocal about their identity. but not everyone can be vocal about their identity. in tying this back to cross-linguistic labeling practices, we can see that, since most queer identity labels are coined in english, it is primarily queer people who speak english who have the ability to articulate who they are. this relegates non-english speakers to the imagined non-queer realm in modern, western conceptions of thought (i.e. makes non-english-speaking queer people essentially invisible). in this way, applying post-structuralist thought to queer labeling practices shows us how the very act of articulating queerness erases queer people who are not “out,” which is further complicated by a multilingual lens that posits that most queer identity labeling occurs in english. as long as the goal is to avoid positioning queerness as western, labeling practices may always work against transcultural queer populations. nevertheless, there are ways to move beyond labels. kulick (2000) conducts an investigation on gay and lesbian language use, and ultimately concludes that labels are limiting. he writes that deciding what to label non-normative sexual and gender identities is an “ultimately unresolvable problem” in that it does not necessarily provide any useful meaning to identity categories (kulick, 2000, p. 243). instead, kulick asserts that “reformulating questions about gay and lesbian language in terms of ‘language and desire’” would allow us to shift the conversation to engage desire and connection rather than superficial identity markers (kulick, 2000, p. 273). it is still possible for the constructions of sexuality and gender to exist without labels, but it requires shifting the conversation towards expressions of relationality and connection rather than identity categories. what i mean to say is that calling myself asexual gives people very limited information about who i am, my sexuality, how i experience attraction, and what sorts of relationships and connections i want. in fact, it just relegates me to the position of “other” while heterosexuality remains central. expressing myself as part of an identity category (such as “pansexual”) just boxes me into another structure where normative sexual and gender conventions are otherwise assumed. who we are extends far beyond a single label, and simply finding more and more specific labels is not going to give more meaning to our identities. furthermore, this paper has shown how these specific labels further entrench anglocentrism and homonationalism that hurts the vast majority of the queer global population. admittedly, much will need to change before we can live in a world where labels have no use. yet, if we can find a way to speak to one another openly about who we are and what we want, there may come a point when identifying with labels can be seen as repressive. then, perhaps, we will be able to move beyond hegemonic western narratives of queerness to talk about how people all over the world love, act, and exist rather than identify. conclusion what all of the above has laid out is how queer identity has come to be perceived as western. what is now termed ‘queerness’ was initially sought to be eradicated by western colonial structures for its inherently nonbinary, ambiguous nature that was a threat to the clearly-demarcated categories of bodies needed for state-building projects. however, with the powerful force of neoliberalism in the 20th century that sought to assimilate as many individuals into the dominant order as possible, queer identity was suddenly co-opted by the western world to produce the illusion of progress and power. while this illustrates the larger societal forces at play, language also plays a role in narratives of western dominance and queerness. the use of the english language to create new terms for sexuality beyond ‘homosexual’ and ‘heterosexual’ has only propped up the same notion of queerness as emerging and existing in western contexts only. i have touched on the complex attitudes that many people have towards labeling their queer identities: some have found it comforting to express themselves and find community around a label, while others find labeling unnecessary, and many attitudes show that both things are often true simultaneously. in the future, i recommend that studies and surveys be conducted that interview queer people and communities from across the world about their attitudes towards labels and labeling practices. in this realm of study going forward, i would hope that people in non-western countries and cultures would be prioritized as knowledge-creators. although my paper argues against western dominance, my analysis inevitably still centers the western world, and i would be interested to see the kind of knowledge that would emerge when we de-center the west entirely. what might emerge when we look at queer labeling practices at a deeply local, non-western level? do the same patterns that i have uncovered in this paper still hold true? in a world that is systematically violent and/or dismissive towards queer people, discovering language and labels for queerness undoubtedly makes some individuals feel seen. i initially used hyper-specific labels because i wanted to emphasize that i – a bulgarian-american person – wasn’t straight. i wanted to show that there was something different in how i related to others. i wanted to find community and media and language that made me realize it was okay to be who i am; there is power in that, i think. but ultimately it just gives power to the already-existing ways we conceive of sexuality and gender. given how suffocating dominant narratives of sexuality and gender are, everything i have outlined in this essay points to the fact that the eventual refusal of labels is perhaps the best method to normalize queer and non-queer identity alike. indeed, labels themselves ultimately do very little to describe who a person is. two people who identify themselves with the same label are bound to have vastly different experiences, beliefs, and desires. consequently, labels may even be more constricting than liberating. we are not labels; we are people who feel, live, desire, and love. activist, writer, and revolutionary james baldwin – in a 1984 interview conducted by richard goldstein – avoided the term “gay,” and touched instead on “the question of human affection,” how homophobia is weaponized by the state, and the intersections of race and sexuality. when asked about his idea of gay people in his “new jerusalem,” baldwin replies: no one will have to call themselves gay. maybe that's at the bottom of my impatience with the term. it answers a false argument, a false accusation. [...] which is that you have no right to be here, that you have to prove your right to be here. i'm saying i have nothing to prove. the world also belongs to me. (baldwin & goldstein, 1994, p. 73). his words are the best way i can think to conclude this essay. he implies that, through labeling, we are trying to prove something, trying to claim some space within the view that heterosexuality is dominant and central. baldwin encourages us to let it all go, and “go the way your blood beats” (baldwin & goldstein, 1994, p. 74). instead of getting caught up in labels and boxing ourselves into divided categories, we could (and perhaps should) transcend divided categories and talk about desire, affection, and connection. human relationships are so much more than sex, romance, and gender. slowly moving away from labels will allow us to find deeper means of interpersonal connection that ultimately will just let queer people exist, and allow queerness to exist across and throughout all nations, races, cultures, and languages. having spent my entire life between bulgarian and american cultures, i have come to despise how certain parts of who i am are assumed to be either bulgarian or american, but never both. but i am both; i am all my identities at once; i am whole. my queerness does not belong to a nationality or a label, it belongs to me. references ahuja, n. 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(2019). the neoliberal co-optation of identity politics geo-political situatedness as a decolonial discussion partner. horizontes decoloniales/decolonial horizons, 5, 101–130. https://doi.org/10.13169/decohori.5.1.0101. https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxqw7n/my-language-doesnt-have-the-terminology-to-describe-who-i-am https://doi.org/10.13169/decohori.5.1.0101 skinned (revision) skinned phoebe mitchem, university of california, santa barbara ‘25 author’s note: “skinned” is a lyrical essay i wrote for a creative nonfiction course at the university of california, santa barbara. it was inspired by a childhood photo of my older sister and i which encapsulates my admiration of and dependency on her when we were younger. weaving together the boundaries between dysphoria, body dysmorphia, and a medicalized approach to womanhood and beauty through a therapy questionnaire, the essay explores the difficulty of becoming a woman after a girlhood spent as another’s shadow. if i had to start with something, i would say our hair. i think it just picks up the sun. q: what do you like about yourself? when we were little, you always answered questions for me. the two of us wanted apple juice. we both liked a jillion barrettes stuck in our hair. womanhood, i thought, must be measured by solitude; afraid of growing up, i tried never to be separate from you. a: i like that i have a sister. that’s good enough for me. if i was handed a ball of clay, i could carve out my entire face like those blind artists do. i’d drag the skin below my chin up into my cheek, flip the same piece of leather neatly over my lips. then split and sandwich the halves together like two dead stingrays. it’s the ease that comes with practice, with touching skin, picking it to pieces; reading braille in nineteen fissures spread out across a forehead. (my face is covered in gullies, too dry to mend themselves proportionally. there are pink, wormy things hiding in my eyebrows. tight little balls held beneath the skin that i can roll between my fingers like nonpareils.) q: where do you feel shame? the skin itself is a fraction of my problems. first is this place, sitting double-cross-legged, twisted against myself on the blue loveseat in the medical office. i tangle my hair tie around my wrist until it snaps in half. minutes before, the therapist handed me a card with the word shame tattooed in the middle as if i could peel the letters off the paper and stick them somewhere against me, but i didn’t know quite where to put them. there are too many places, and it’s a placeless feeling. one is my chest. an integral part of womanhood, but it feels like an insult to my body. the thought, i suppose, of always holding my own skin—never trailing behind it—used to be a comfort, but now it’s erupted forward without me, making room for itself. like two tiny pregnancies i didn’t consent to. (the first time i shopped for a bra, trailing after you, i didn’t need it. i can still stroke the hollow of my sternum, touch a pocket of remembrance up my shirt sleeve. the lady held my arms up, took one look and shook her head. flat as a ribbon, ninety pounds of pure skeleton, with hip bones like soda tabs.) i guess i’ll write down: a: the macy’s dressing room. how my skin hangs differently. i scowl at the mirrors in there and these meaningless editions, juggling twenty-seven options above the item limit. at home, with the lights off, i dug out a tape measure and wrapped it around my middle, pressing the edge into the skin for optimum tightness and pronouncing all the fat i didn’t think i had. on the laptop by my bed, a speechless woman mouthed directions to straighten the band, cover the nipples. upright, bent over, lying on the carpet where they melted back in, i demeaned myself with evolution’s defining asset. i wrote the combinations on a paper scrap, then threw it out when i reached the store. sticking to generalizations (small), i combed my hair over the sides of my face, trying to disguise the humiliation. the more time i took, the more store attendants might notice that somewhere under my clothing, i was hiding a body. q: do you compare your body to others? does anyone not? i was born ten pounds heavy, and the nurse thought i would be big (fat) but look how that turned out. you were small, premature, making room for me. they thought you’d be tiny. what should i make of that? (when i was fifteen and on the tennis team, i could smooth my hands over my entire torso and feel it cave inward, never out. the tank top was skin flat, holding nothing down. my legs dropped out of the skirt like two chewed popsicle sticks. when i sprinted for the ball, nothing shook. i liked how i didn’t fit a shirt. how i could let it slide off.) i like desexing and forgetting myself. i feel like i can take my skin back. now that i cover it all with a jacket, you say i’m dressing up to hide but i’m not—i’m trying to let my better self out. press everything back in until my skin rests against my bones, against all the liquids mixing and boiling in me. to be the flat little sister, not the fat little baby, what the laws of nature had always intended me to be. the therapist asks if we look alike. maybe i’m talking about you too much. i’m taller by a good four inches, and my cheeks pillow out when i smile while yours stay intact. i have nineteen fissures. you only have one. but in the right light at the right time, when we’re walking together and that proximity, that lack of absence, makes me feel a fraction good about myself, our eyes are the same color as our hair, as if the skin is just a casing around the women inside that breaks apart in pieces to let them through. when your boyfriend met me, he said he would’ve known we were sisters if he saw us on the street. our hair is so distinct, we could almost be twins. i didn’t believe him, but i do like it when i look like you. q: do you want a relationship? in the seven years since your skin cleared, since you erupted, you’ve had three boyfriends. i’ve never kissed, never held a hand. it might be nice to be desired, to be preferred—unwrapped and digested—but that would mean giving my skin away. the skin that’s meant to be a casing of me. you say i could have it if i want it. but i dress to hide myself. i could spend an hour trying to find a shirt to wear, only to hide it with a sweater, or not leave the house at all. too tight and i feel too feminine. too loose, and i know i’m an imposter. there’s nothing in my closet i could wear on a date. should i say: a: yes. if i could be tiny again. scrape them off, or come to terms with it. maybe i should read about war and depress myself to the point where a body feels like a luxury. maybe then, even not-quite-beautiful, i could stand to have my skin held by someone else. at the end of the questionnaire, the therapist hands me a card to turn over and over, with her name and a phone number. then a little orange maraca of pills, and a fold-out list of potential complications. it says my skin might break out, and i might gain weight. i google the pills at home. across the internet, a thousand anxious people are asking each other questions their sisters can’t answer, like if taking medication will irrevocably change their personalities. this is the silliest thing i’ve ever heard. i hope i start becoming someone else quickly. that’s been a lifelong dream. q: what do you like about yourself? i like being with you. feeling more like a sister than a woman, forgetting i have a body when it’s accompanied by yours. you would say that’s not an answer. that life is defined by presence. but it’s an absent, skinless existence that i crave. in the macy’s dressing room, wanting to scrape it all off, i pull my hair to the side to clip the back together, as tightly as possible until it feels like cosplay. i try to think of something distinctly me, that i can keep for myself. i need one single thing to praise. still thinking. but i do like our hair. i think it just picks up the sun. tramsen final deceptive sexualities, nonconformity, and racial binaries: an examination of ‘appearances’ in american during world war ii fenja tramsen, swarthmore college ’23 abstract: world war ii brought issues of gender, sexuality, disability, and race into the spotlight of american civic life. the war effort united americans under the guise of defeating nazism in europe, while also highlighting existing fractures among racial and gender demographics. while thorough, the historiography of this phenomenon has largely undervalued the fundamental through-line: the importance of appearances. to control undesirable identities while maintaining the war effort and perceptions of a strong, united, heteronormative america, the u.s. military attempted, and ultimately failed, to manipulate appearances of sexuality, disability, and race. this paper examines the existing historiography on attempts to control, categorize, and subjugate sexuality, disabilities, race and gender during world war ii in order to unveil the underlying and connecting theme of appearances across diverse texts. world war ii brought issues of gender and sexuality into the spotlight of american civic life. the war effort united americans under the guise of defeating nazism and restoring peace in europe, yet also highlighted existing fractures among racial and gender demographics. while thorough, the historiography of this phenomenon has largely undervalued the fundamental through-line: the importance of appearances. in an attempt to control undesirable identities, state institutions like the military shifted to weaponize “appearances.” for this paper, appearances will be defined as how things look or seem based on external and superficial characteristics such as clothing and physique. from exclusionary legislation against “weak” homosexuals to building the appearance of a “strong” heterosexual, able-bodied america, appearances became a fundamental focus across diverse contexts during world war ii. this paper examines the existing historiography on attempts to control, categorize, utilize, and subjugate sexuality, gender, race, and disability during world war ii to unveil the underlying and connecting theme of appearances across diverse texts. as such, the arguments made in this paper are threefold: first, the institution of the u.s. military during wwii provides a critical lens through which to understand attempts to control expressions of gender and sexuality. ultimately, the institution failed to repress and control gender and sexuality because they fostered spaces for gay interactions, and were unable to accurately identify gender and sexuality from physical appearances. second, appearances allowed soldiers of color to appear as patriotic, ideal americans, despite discrimination, and third, appearances were critical for disabled veterans attempting to maintain traditional masculinity. consequently, this paper demonstrates that the current historiography would benefit from a deeper analysis of appearances’ complex role in expressing and controlling sexuality, race, gender, and disabilities during wwii. identifying and controlling appearances of homosexuality throughout wwii, the military utilized perceptions of the model american citizen to weaponize its legislative power against homosexual soldiers. this is most aptly explored by margot canaday in the straight state: sexuality and citizenship in twentieth-century america. canaday investigates the state strategies utilized to deny homosexual soldiers the same benefits received by their heterosexual colleagues. in short, the state excluded them from benefits that their american citizenship should have entitled them to. for example, in 1945, the veterans administration released a policy barring any soldier discharged as undesirable “because of homosexual acts or tendencies” from the gi benefits bill, creating a “clear line between homosexuality and heterosexuality in federal citizenship policy” (canaday, 2009, p. 138). homosexuals were perceived as undesirable, in part for their restricted performance of masculinity through appearance. masculine appearances connotated actively penetrating rather than being passively penetrated, a binary that homosexuals subverted. these divisive understandings of sexuality functioned to reinforce traditional perceptions of masculinity, with the military seeking out prime masculine and heterosexual men, which did not include those exhibiting ‘weak’ traits like homosexuality. in coming out under fire: the history of gay men and women in world war, allan bérubé complicates canaday’s discussion of the relationship between homosexuals and the military/state. bérubé writes that many soldiers were surprised to find that the military service gave them opportunities to begin a “coming-out” process far away from the constraints of home (bérubé, 1990, p. 6). the large numbers of soldiers within barracks — with some reaching 100,000 members — allowed queer communities to form, and new cities facilitated networking with other gay people seeking queer experiences (bérubé, 1990, p. 99). for soldiers from smaller, closely knit communities, relocation to large urban spaces through the military provided the anonymity to experiment with sexuality. this is further reflected in the changing geography of gay nightlife in the 1940s, as the movement of young men across cities caused them to rely on establishments to locate gay life in new places. gay bars therefore became central sites for facilitating gay interactions. thus, despite the state’s attempts to control homosexuality through exclusionary welfare systems, the military also unwittingly acted as a space far from home for soldiers to explore queer identities. as such, the military could only in part control masculine, heterosexual appearances, which were not reflective of the queer reality of many soldiers. homosexual interactions within the military were not officially tolerated, and being caught would likely result in dishonourable discharge, making any gay interactions highly dangerous for employment and social respectability. bérubé asserts that gay military employees essentially fought two wars: one against the nation's enemies, the other against the persecution they suffered within the armed forces (bérubé, 1990, chapter 7). while bérubé’s book unveils the painful oppression of queer life during wwii, he largely documents the courage and selfrespect of gay soldiers. specifically, rather than directly following the history of oppression, bérubé documents ways in which gay soldiers manipulated their contexts to still use their appearance as a form of self-expression. for example, gay soldiers took advantage of military shows, which required men to play female characters, often in exaggerated drag performances. bérubé asserts that drag performances opened a secret social space for gay men to explore their own culture. specifically, he writes that in these performances, the audience was unaware that “a subplot about homosexuality was being created right before their eyes” (bérubé, 1990, p. 72). notably, much of bérubé’s book covers white gay soldiers and comparatively holds limited information on the experiences of black gay soldiers. in part, this is due to his mainly white archival material; nevertheless, i argue that the scholarship on the appearances, self-expression, and oppression of gay soldiers requires greater attention to racial minorities. this would provide more nuance to the historiography, which currently still mainly centers on white experiences. the desire to identify and control homosexuality through physical appearance was also depicted in the us military’s psychological screenings of potential recruits. bérubé details these medical procedures in his book and describes how psychiatric examiners forcibly engaged with potential candidates in intense face-to-face confrontations (bérubé, 1990, p. 21). alongside psychological analysis, men were stripped in an attempt to locate the “naked truth” from their bodies, since the state assumed that homosexuality could be physically determined (bérubé, 1990, p. 75). for example, homosexuals such as “fairies” were thought to have more feminine traits, such as certain distributions of body hair and body fat. the military assumption that masculine, heterosexual men could be selected from lesser homosexual men based on physical appearance depicts the traditional view of homosexuality as being a defect from the normative. yet, it also demonstrates the military assumption that non-heterosexual men were too weak to fight, placing them on the same side of the binary as women who were also excluded from military conscription. bérubé’s case studies demonstrate how military officials attempted to control homosexuality; yet self-expression was not stifled, and ultimately, the institution provided spaces for homosexual relations to flourish. appearances were simultaneously controlled and categorized forms of self-expression, yet also misleading when attempting to identify homosexuals since the military failed to remove and repress queer relations. fears of deception by outer appearances were demonstrated in the military’s campaign against venereal diseases, as analyzed by hegarty in victory girls, khaki-wackies, and patriotutes. campaigns attempted to move away from the stereotype that only impure and dirty women carried such diseases, and instead began to portray glamorous and beautiful women in their adverts to spread awareness. the slogans exhibited the deceiving nature of women’s appearances and were critical to delivering the message that many women could be carrying venereal diseases. one pamphlet cautioned, “you are badly mistaken if you think you can tell whether or not a girl has a [venereal disease] by her looks or her clothes or by listening to her story. you can’t.” (winchell, 2008, p. 114). this argumentative phrasing depicted the shift away from previous conceptions of femininity, where exhibiting modest beauty, restraint, and submissiveness connotated purity. instead, advertisements about venereal disease emphasized that even when women appeared to be pure, they still posed a risk. thus, hegarty argues that the campaign attempted to protect soldiers from diseased prostitutes, while also asserting authority over women’s sexual behaviors. these adverts targeted and protected men from women, thus asserting their sexual agency while ignoring the agency of women. hegarty asserts that officials during the war targeted not just prostitutes, but “the promiscuous girl, the khaki-wacky and the girl who has become unbalanced by wartime wages and freedom,” or as otis anderson of the united states public health service termed them, patriotutes (hegarty, 2010, p. 144). women’s sexuality went from mobilized actors during the war to being criminalized, while male (hetero) sexuality was understood as normative. again, this example demonstrates how appearances were intrinsically tied to government attempts to repress and control the sexualities of both promiscuous women and homosexual men. throughout the war effort, women’s appearances continued to be reconstructed and controlled. megan winchell’s book good girls, good food, good fun: the story of uso hostesses during wwii, comprehensively analyzes the role of the united service organizations (uso). the uso provided recreation and aid to us troops and employed women as hostesses to complete its work. selections of women to employ were based on the social appearances of the women including their sexual respectability (winchell, 2008, p. 21). naturally, appearances were a large factor in the decision-making of which women to hire. for example, women older than 30 were chosen as senior hostesses, who were simultaneously perceived as asexual mothers to the men and as objects of sexual desire. within their role, male perceptions of the women upheld the binary of good girl/bad girl, while the uso also used the women’s appearance to maintain their image of respectability. asserting masculinity despite disability like disabled and emasculated men, wounded veterans threatened american appearances of masculinity, as explored by sonya michel in “danger on the home front: motherhood, sexuality, and the disabled veteran in american postwar films.” michel argues that the appearance of disabilities held connotations of weakness and failure and implied their “feminization and emasculation” (michel, 1992, p. 110). consequently, disabled veterans required women to “resexualize” them, re-establishing and confirming their manhood, and to care for them as a mother would (michel, 1992, p. 116). in turn, the lovers of disabled veterans had to “transcend the madonna/ whore split,” while maintaining their all-important appearance of respectability as women (michel, 1992, p. 116). in male body at war: american masculinity during world war ii, jarvis also notes that while the office of war information attempted to limit american exposure to wounded bodies, postwar texts like the best years of our lives (1946) and the men (1950), offered alternative forms of masculinity and strategies for masculinizing disabled men (froula, 2007, p. 72). upon the end of the war, the strong image of masculine america softened, and issues of emasculated disabled men reentered public discourse. according to the library of congress, 224,000 men returned home from the war with a permanent physical or mental disability. disabilities were, therefore, too common to not garner more public attention after the war. ultimately, while jarvis and michel investigate their respective topics in a nuanced manner, i argue that connecting their arguments with hegarty’s scholarship unveils the conflicting, and at times similar, role of appearances. none of these scholars utilize appearances as their focal point of analysis, yet its prevalence across their work proves its importance in understanding the intersections of appearances in issues of disability, gender, and sexuality throughout the war effort. able-bodied men returning from war also faced challenges in asserting their masculinity. specifically, wwii veterans struggled to maintain their traditional masculinity in the wake of feminized work environments. according to julie berebitsky in sex and the office, “one in five privately employed americans work[ed] for one of the top two hundred corporations” causing “the independence of the nation’s men” to be at risk of becoming “soft” (berebitsky, 2012, p. 141-42). having exhibited the ultimate masculinity on the battlefield, many men perceived postwar employment as emasculating since it consisted of routine work without the possibility of glory. while corporations and the military both utilize strong hierarchies, office work did not offer the promise of showcasing one’s bravery and masculinity, nor did it provide the societal status of a wartime hero. instead, postwar corporations sought out conformity rather than individuality or bravery and thus did not require men to exhibit dominant masculinity as they did on the battlefield. moreover, these fears of emasculation were exacerbated by women who increasingly espoused masculine behaviors and social norms, such as through working in previously all-male sectors of employment. actively earning money was traditionally perceived as masculine, while women maintained the domestic sphere. during the period following wwii, women continued to defy traditional gender roles by using their new independence to increasingly take up space in previously male spaces, from the workplace to social scenes. appearing american: overcoming the racial binary the military’s obsession with appearances also played out in the broader social context. in the male body at war, christina jarvis asserts that american strength and citizenship became linked to heroic (white) manhood, causing the u.s. to cultivate the perception of being a “masculine nation in the wake of world war ii” (jarvis, 2004, p. 4). moreover, jarvis details that upon entering world war ii, the military and federal institutions processed male bodies into physical categories, privileging strong, young, and specifically white bodies (jarvis, 2004). in turn, these attributes strengthened america’s image of youth, power, and whiteness following its “emasculating” weakness through the great depression (1929-1941). jarvis highlights that appearances were critical to this perception and required the transformation of famous characters like uncle tom into a broader, more muscular figure for the state’s war propaganda. additionally, the appearance of the disabled president roosevelt had to be reconstructed to appear virile and masculine, in line with the strengthening of america’s strong, white male image. connecting jarvis’ and hegarty’s arguments suggests that while ethnic minorities could appear to be masculine, patriotic, and brave through conscription, they were still unable to access the most desired characteristic of the ultimate american citizen: whiteness. moreover, racist posters that highlighted white supremacy against the japanese enemy were disseminated during wwii, especially following the attack on pearl harbor by the japanese military in 1941. by dehumanizing japanese men, these propaganda posters reinforced the white vs non-white binary, ensuring cultural hatred from americans and distancing japanese men from being perceived equally to white men. military conscription presented opportunities for ethnic minorities to prove their loyalty to the united states. prior to the war effort, appearances of the ideal american citizen were based on whiteness, due to the long history of white supremacy and legal exclusion of ethnic minorities in the us. during the war effort, however, conscripting into the army opened a new opportunity to present as the ideal, patriotic american citizen, thereby wearing military uniforms provided non-white men with the appearance of being brave, patriotic americans. this is succinctly investigated by marilyn hegarty in her book victory girls, khaki-wackies, and patriotutes. hegarty writes that for japanese men, joining the military meant proving their loyalty to america, while for african americans, it connoted inching closer to full citizenship rights (hegarty, 2010). in short, before the war, appearances revealed that citizenship consisted of whiteness, masculinity, and economic privilege. but during the war, citizenship was democratized through equalizing uniforms that signified the appearance of serving the nation and being true americans. for african american men in particular, the draft offered the opportunity to depict their patriotism and worthiness for equal rights. over one million african americans served in the u.s. army during the war, and over 2.5 million men registered for the draft, despite the irony that while fighting for democracy and against nazism overseas, they were treated as second-class citizens in their own country. wwii saw certain similarities with ww1, regarding the opportunity for african americans to appear patriotic, yet still facing discrimination. during ww1, african american men eagerly joined the war effort even before congress passed the selective service act in 1917, which required all males between the ages of 21 and 31 to register for the draft (bryan, 2017). in fact, within one week of wilson’s declaration of war, the war department had to stop accepting black volunteers because quotas for african americans were filled so quickly (bryan, 2017). comparative to their white counterparts though, black soldiers were not treated well by their white supervisors or the war department. discrimination was largely overlooked or condoned, and black soldiers often went without proper clothing for long periods, with some reports stating they received old civil war uniforms rather than new uniforms (bryan, 2017). by comparison, during ww2, black soldiers faced jim crow segregation and discrimination across all branches of the military, as well as harassment from white soldiers. therefore, while the draft during wwii did offer black americans the opportunity to appear as ideal americans in military uniform, their appearances of patriotism and contributions to the war effort during wwii, like in wwi, did not allow black americans to overcome the racial discrimination enshrined in us society. conclusion ultimately, the historiography of gender and sexuality during world war ii can be connected through analyses of appearances. in doing so, this paper has begun to address the complex question of why appearances became a dominant measure of control in american society during world war ii? in a society defined by physical appearance — sex, ethnicity, clothing — an individual’s appearance provided the most accessible and identifiable form of categorization. through my analysis of the historiography, i have shown how time and time again, appearances were deceptive. in short, appearances were just appearances: deceivable, malleable, and put simply, often untrue. one’s appearance after all does not necessarily correlate with gender or sexuality, and thus could not be used to accurately identify sexuality. consequently, attempts to categorize, control, and weaponize appearances through legislation, screenings, or other measures ultimately failed concerning sexuality, although racial binaries were easier to reinforce. the historiography has successfully shown how appearances also affirmed identities, for example through bérubé’s analysis of military drag shows, and the military uniform asserting americanness for ethnic minorities. as such, appearances in wwii held diverse and contradicting roles – they both affirmed and hid oppressed racial, queer, and disabled identities and were both used to control, and evade control, by the military. references berebitsky, julie. (2012). sex and the office. alexandria, va: alexander street. bérubé, allan. (1990). coming out under fire: the history of gay men and women in world war ii. chapel hill, n.c.: university of north carolina press. bryan, jami l. (2017). “fighting for respect: african-american soldiers in wwi.” the army historical foundation. cahn, susan. (2007). sexual reckonings: southern girls in a troubling age. cambridge: harvard university press. canaday, margot. (2009). the straight state: sexuality and citizenship in twentieth-century america. princeton, n.j: princeton university press. froula, anna. (2007). “the male body at war: american masculinity during world war ii.” american studies. lawrence: mid-america american studies association. hegarty, marilyn e. (2010). victory girls, khaki-wackies, and patriotutes. new york: new york university press. jarvis, christina s. (2004). male body at war: american masculinity during world war ii. dekalb: northern illinois university press. kelley, robin d.g. (1994). race rebels: culture, politics, and the black working class. new york: free press. kunzel, regina. (2008). criminal intimacy: prison & the uneven history of modern american sexuality. university of chicago press. mcguire, danielle. (2010). at the dark end of the street. new york: alfred a. knopf. michel, sonya. (1992). “danger on the home front: motherhood, sexuality, and the disabled veteran in american postwar films,” jhs 3. peiss, kathy. (2011). zoot suit: the enigmatic career of an extreme style. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. ramirez, catherine. (2009). the woman in the zoot suit. durham: duke university press. winchell, megan k. (2008). good girls, good food, good fun: the story of uso hostesses during wwii. chapel hill: university of north carolina press. revised paper.docx deeply rooted: an analysis of how college-aged women view body hair and body hair removal lexi abrams, vanderbilt ‘25 abstract: this study explores the ways in which college-aged women view body hair and body hair removal. drawing from interviews with 10 undergraduate women at vanderbilt university between the ages of 19 and 21, this essay suggests that there appears to be a cognitive dissonance when it comes to young women’s views on body hair removal. throughout this study, participants acknowledged the burdens of body hair removal, whether those be financial, physical, or social. they also understood how ideas around body hair removal are inherently tied to racism, misogyny, and classism. and yet, they report feeling bound to continue removing their body hair, in order to fit in and conform to societal standards. a lack of body hair is linked to feelings of confidence, desirability, and greater sexual function. participants expressed how having little to no body hair is often an expectation while engaging in sexual activities, though these expectations may fluctuate depending on the nature of the sexual relationship. although this study is in no way statistically significant, these 10 interviews reveal important findings about how young, college-educated women understand and engage with body hair removal. these findings speak to how far we as a society have come with body hair removal, and how much farther we need to go. body hair removal through shaving, waxing, nair, laser, electrolysis, or other methods is a deeply rooted practice in western society, particularly for women. the idea that women should present themselves with little to no visible hair on their bodies, particularly in the armpit, leg, and genital regions, is a widely-accepted notion. this expectation has developed and fluctuated throughout history, and today carries racist, misogynistic and classist baggage. after learning about the history of body hair removal in a class last year, and having personal experiences with body hair removal, i began the journey of researching and conducting interviews on this subject in the fall and spring of my sophomore year at vanderbilt university. in the end, i conducted individual interviews with 10 cis-identifying women at vanderbilt university, ranging from 19 to 21 years old. i asked these women — who come from different backgrounds, cultures, races, sexualities, and religions — about their personal experiences with body hair and body hair removal and their perceptions of body hair on others, among other questions. each woman i interviewed – who i will refer to with pseudonyms – had very personal, unique, and sometimes emotional experiences with body hair and body hair removal. there were, however, important themes that emerged throughout all of the interviews, representing the struggles that women across the united states face when it comes to these issues. after conducting these interviews in conjunction with outside research, i observe that women are experiencing a sort of cognitive dissonance when it comes to body hair and body hair removal. although we, as women, can acknowledge the plethora of problems that body hair removal invites — such as physical pain, financial burdens, racism, and self-consciousness — we seem unable to throw off society’s expectations, and thereby unable to curb the extent to which we remove our body hair. in fact, those i interviewed even attributed body hair removal to greater self-confidence, comfortability, and sexual function. women may recognize that such “benefits” of body hair removal are based on problematic societal norms, yet continue to remove body hair as a direct result of internalizing these perceived benefits. literature review in the introduction to her book feminist interrogations of women’s head hair: crown of glory and shame, amit kama begins by exploring the malleability of the human body: “the human body is indeed malleable to the extent that none of its features is considered to be free of cultural norms and societal dictates” (kama & barak-brandes, 2018, p.1) this idea presents a foundation for thinking about body hair and body hair removal, in that society and cultural norms are the driving forces behind our notions of what is acceptable. hair, especially, serves as the perfect tool for malleability, as it grows back and can be changed based on its shape, color, or thickness. “[h]air illustrates best and most conspicuously the malleability of the body for it is the easiest and most versatile body feature to manipulate and tame” (kama & barak-brandes, 2018, p.4). over time, these manipulations have come in a variety of different forms. body hair removal has been common since ancient times, but seems to have gained prominence in the 21st century alongside the advent of the internet and social media. in a review of pubic hair and sexuality, ramsey et al. observe that ancient egyptian, greek, and european art all depict body shaving in some form. however, body hair removal, especially of pubic hair, has become much more mainstream in modern times — a phenomenon ramsey et al. partly attribute to the internet-based porn industry, where trends have gone “from the natural look in the 1970s to the ‘hollywood’ or ‘brazilian’ highly maintained look” (ramsey et al., 2009). this shift has helped promulgate the idea that “pubic hair is dirty,” while the “modern removal of pubic hair is associated with both sexiness and cleanliness” (ramsey et al., 2009). we see this manifest itself in contemporary media, including film, television, and social media. “clean shaven” is the new normal. aesthetics have become intertwined with cleanliness and caused society to view body hair as “gross” and a sign of poor hygiene. as a result, people have integrated body hair into their sexual preferences and have developed a shared conception of what is “normal” in sexual encounters. mullinax et al. completed an anonymous internet-based survey asking people about their thoughts, preferences, and feelings about female genitalia. this study acknowledges its many shortcomings with data collection, but presents important findings nonetheless that “[by] far the most common dislikes reported by women and the second most common dislike for men focused on the theme of pubic hair” (mullinax et al., 2015, p.425). evidently, schemas from the porn industry and media have manifested in people’s sexual preferences and opinions. many share a dislike for pubic hair on female genitalia, with women citing shame and men citing a general disgust. naturally, these two feelings are inextricably linked: women are ashamed of showing their body hair because men — and other women — perceive it as “gross” and evidence that a woman is “neglectful of her private area” (mullinax et al., 2015, p. 425). one man in the study even said it was a “turn-off” for him. this phenomenon is particularly fascinating considering the extreme pain body hair removal can cause. shaving, waxing, laser hair removal, nair, or any of the countless other ways to remove body hair can cause infections, irritation, burns, sexually transmitted diseases, or scarring. they also present an extreme financial burden, as dr. jonathan trager notes in his study on pubic hair removal: “catering to this trend [of body hair removal] is a host of personal products designed for pubic hair grooming including specialty razors, electric shavers, and trimmers as well as pubic shaving gels and after-shave lotions. salons and medical practices are touting pubic hair removal by waxing and lasers. web sites and popular magazines are offering pubic hair removal tips and products for the novice as well as the experienced” (trager, 2006, p.117). body hair removal serves as a socioeconomic barrier, in that women who cannot afford these products, services, or resources are viewed as “dirty” and less attractive. people, many of them being men, are taking advantage of women’s perceived need to remove their body hair, and profiting off of it by introducing new products aimed at assisting with body hair removal. body hair removal at its core is an intersectional issue, touching on socioeconomic status, race, privilege, sex, and more. it hurts women – physically, financially, and mentally – and yet is so ingrained in our culture and is unlikely to dissipate any time soon. methods due to the personal and individualistic nature of this subject, i conducted one-on-one interviews as a means of collecting data for this research project. i decided to focus on college-aged, female-identifying students and their beliefs about body hair to examine their perceptions of body hair, the ways it affects their self-confidence and self-worth, and the ways they think others view women’s body hair and its removal. as a student at vanderbilt university, i obtained permission from the vanderbilt institutional review board (irb) to conduct interviews with my chosen demographic on campus. between february and april 2023, i interviewed 10 young women at vanderbilt. the vast majority of these participants were my friends, who i chose to interview because i felt the strength of our preexisting relationships would allow me to gain the most intimate and truthful information. the interviewees were all cis-gendered women who ranged from 19 to 21 years old. they all grew up in the united states, including the west coast, northeast, south, and midwest. they were diverse in race, religion, ethnicity, and sexuality. i believe that their diverse experiences, backgrounds, ideas, beliefs, and opinions represent much of what women around the united states, and perhaps even the western world, think about body hair and body hair removal. results/discussion a number of compelling trends and themes emerged from the 10 interviews. these included stories of participants’ first encounters with body hair and body hair removal, a milestone that signified to participants – and their parents – a transition into adulthood. many of these parents resisted their daughters from shaving as long as possible, forcing participants to shave in secret or turn to other role models for support. once this cycle of body hair removal began, participants described creating their own routines and philosophies around removal, choosing how often, which type of hair, method of removal, and so on. they learned that body hair is most stigmatized when it’s visible and found ways to work around this: leaving blonde hair alone, shaving less in the winter. as interviewees grew up and became more sexually active, their habits of body hair removal became more complex and influenced by societal pressure. suddenly, body hair removal was linked to desirability and cleanliness. participants noted feeling unhygienic with “too much” body hair and directly linked a lack of body hair with feelings of confidence, especially in sexual encounters. however, interviewees did acknowledge that their body hair removal practices change depending on the context of a sexual encounter. a long-term or same-sex relationship seems to be a less pressurized situation than a one-time hook up or heterosexual relationship. participants then turned to how their race and identity has influenced their relationships with body hair. those with genetically darker hair reported feeling out of place with their white peers, but had an easier time talking with family members about removal practices. those with lighter or thinner hair shared that they struggled to broach topics of body hair removal with family members and had to be more independent. each interview ended with interviewees musing on the future of body hair removal and whether these practices will be forever ingrained in society. while many shared hopes of a world in which women were not pressured to remove their body hair, most conceded that this dream is not likely to be reality for a very long time, if ever. first encounters the first question i posed to participants was when they first became aware of their body hair. interviewees’ answers ranged from 5th through 7th grade. in this two to three year period, they were suddenly confronted with the idea that they had body hair, and something should be done about it. whether it was someone pointing out yasmine’s hair at school, maya having to shave for swimming, brooke hearing older peers talk about ‘needing to shave’, or daniella’s mom telling her it was time to start thinking about shaving, every single interviewee had a moment where she was suddenly aware of body hair: her own and other women’s. every single interviewee’s first act of body hair removal was done via shaving. shaving, it seems, is the most accessible and inexpensive option for young women. it’s also the most discrete method, an important factor for those interviewees who chose to remove their body hair without the consent, or even against the will, of their parents. seeking maternal advice on body hair removal was another across-the-board trend: girls starting their journey of body hair removal by asking their mothers for advice, suggestions, or permission. half of the interviewees shared that their moms suggested, or insisted, that their daughters wait before starting to remove their body hair. as brooke put it, “i feel like any parent, when [the daughter] is like ‘oh, i’m gonna start shaving,’ [...] they’re a little bit like ‘we’re gonna wait, we’re gonna wait.’” the idea of being “too young” to start shaving is one that revolves not necessarily about the physical act of removal, but about what it represents. as jessica put it, “moms want to delay our adulthood as much as possible.” the removal of body hair represents young women growing up and getting ready to present themselves as desirable, more sexual beings. lizzie felt that her first time shaving represented her “transforming my body to fit the male gaze” and was wary about telling her mother about shaving for this very reason. others had similar experiences, in which their mothers were hesitant to let them shave, for fear that this would signal their daughters’ readiness to be viewed within the male gaze. for many of the participants’ mothers, the first act of removing body hair was analogous to their daughter presenting herself as a sexual object. this wariness translated to many interviewees resorting to removing their body hair in secret. brooke revealed that she started shaving her arms “behind my parents’ back”. yasmine said she resorted to stealing her mom’s razor after she had been told she was too young to shave. and just as lizzie felt uncomfortable telling her mother about her first time shaving, selene shared that she “didn’t really know how to bring it up to my mom”, instead turning to her 10th-grade sister for advice. the subject of body hair removal was somewhat taboo in selene’s household: “my mom brought up periods, but never shaving.” ever since these first encounters, each participant has developed her own philosophy and routine around body hair removal. some, like yasmine and ava, shave every time they shower, others like lizzie save their body hair removal for an “everything shower”, as they’re commonly called. maya has had laser hair removal and no longer needs to worry about removing her body hair. interestingly enough, most of the women i interviewed said they shave less in the winter months, when their bodies – and therefore their body hair – are less visible. visibility this idea of visibility is deeply connected to body hair removal. interviewees shared the main reason why they shave substantially less in the winter months: because, as brooke put it, “no one’s gonna see my legs”. although some of the interviewees said that they shave pretty consistently because they like the way their body feels, or they don’t like the way the stubble feels when they let their hair grow out too much, most of their comments came back to visibility. during our interview, daniella was very candid about this topic: “in relation to my skin, i feel like [my hair] is very visible, like the contrast almost. i feel like i’m more inclined to remove it when it’s visible because i think more people would notice and i’m concerned about what other people see.” that a woman’s body hair – in specific places – could be viewed by herself, or others, is an unthinkable notion for many. there are women who skip days at the beach because they don’t have time to get their pubic hair waxed. there are women who are late to important events because they have to shave their legs before they leave. there are women who refuse to raise their arms in public because they forgot to shave their armpits. somehow, women today feel like their body hair is a barrier to entering society. but there is an important caveat to this rule. women’s body hair is not accepted in society, if it can be seen, in the wrong places. blonde hair does not need to be shaved, women can get away with not shaving their legs as frequently when they wear pants in the winter, and dark, shapely eyebrows are worshipped, as long as they don’t grow into a unibrow, of course. when it comes to body hair, it’s allowed if it’s a certain color, doesn’t create too much of a contrast with a woman’s skin, or if it’s in a place on the body that we as a society deem valid. maya, whose family is from colombia, told me that her cousins used to dye their thigh hair blonde instead of shaving it: “they would always shave from the knee down but then like thigh-up, would never shave and they would just dye it blonde.” body hair becomes a problem when it’s visible. cleanliness when body hair is visible to society, it’s often deemed gross or represents a woman’s laziness or inability to keep herself clean. “body hair equals unhygienic”, lizzie told me matter-of-factly during our interview. when i asked ava what she thinks an unshaven woman represents, she said things like “feral”, “doesn’t care about her hygiene”, “lives in the woods” and “dirty”. this was a theme that manifested itself across many, if not most, of the interviews. every single participant alluded to this idea that body hair was in some way unclean, and over half the interviewees were explicit in their beliefs that body hair is synonymous with dirty and unkemptness. they talked about how an unshaved woman is often viewed as not caring about hygiene nor interested in being seen as desirable. not only did the participants say they feel as though society views women who do not remove their body hair as dirty, they themselves feel somewhat unclean or unkempt if they do not remove their most visible body hair. fiona described herself feeling “embarrassed that if i don’t do it [shaving], then it’s like, ‘oh, she’s not keeping up with herself, she’s unkempt.’” fiona and i went on to have a fascinating conversation expanding upon this topic, comparing body hair to acne or brushing your teeth. if you don’t brush your teeth, she said, people will think “you do you but you’re letting yourself go”, and it shows how “disciplined you are at taking care of yourself”. the same goes for body hair removal for women. while it’s not a necessity that a woman removes her body hair, the presence of body hair somehow communicates undesirability and an inability to take care of oneself. clean teeth and no body hair are the expectations in social situations, and they somehow come to reflect the overall nature of a woman. there are, of course, a number of differences between brushing teeth and removing body hair, but the sentiments are indeed quite similar. a seemingly insignificant part of a woman’s body somehow represents her as a whole and communicates who she is to society. interestingly enough, many participants expressed that the dirty feeling surrounding body hair also made them feel less feminine. “i have to shave in order for people to think i’m feminine, and that’s the only reason why i’m doing it,” krystal confessed. daniella said that part of her motivation for removing her body hair was to not “be seen as like… manly.” when fiona first realized the existence of her body hair, she said she felt “manly and dirty. it wasn’t a good feeling.” for these women, dirtiness and lack of femininity are both viewed as negative traits, ones that can be avoided by removing their body hair. having less hair on their bodies makes many participants feel more feminine, a feeling that is related to desirability, confidence, and comfortability. desirability in every single interview i conducted, the conversation around cleanliness always turned into one about desirability. “it’s crazy that shaving makes you feel, like, prettier and cleaner,” selene said. there is something about having little to no body hair that makes women feel more desirable and causes them to believe that others find them more desirable as a result of their body hair removal. and the reverse is also true: “everyone agrees, it’s the common consensus, that body hair is undesirable,” jessica told me matter-of-factly. whether they identified their preferred partner as male or female, the interviewees divulged that they feel sexier and more sexually liberated when their pubic hair is removed. when she first began shaving, lizzie said that although she knew that removing her body hair was akin to “oversexualizing myself”, she felt “okay with it because i was like ‘well, i want a boy to like me!’” multiple interviewees mentioned the idea that society seems to infantilize women’s pubic regions. 7 out of 10 interviewees spoke about how creepy, weird, and concerning it is that people prefer women’s pubic regions to look as bare, as they did pre-puberty. “a vagina with no pubic hair is a fucking pubescent vagina,” lizzie said, “i got vagina hair in middle school. so if you’re telling me a man is attracted to no vaginal hair, that means he’s attracted to an 11-year old.” fiona described it as “lowkey pedophilia”. ava commented on how strange it is that her confidence “derives from feeling like a 12 year old.” and yet, they all still continue to remove body hair from their pubic regions and attribute that removal to feelings of confidence. many of these expectations come from what people see in the media: porn, movies and television, models, social media. both men and women see hairless women in the media, reinforcing the notion that women are more desirable and sexy when they do not have hair anywhere on their bodies. male gaze one topic that naturally emerged from these discussions about desirability is women removing body hair specifically for men. 7 out of 10 of the interviewees explicitly stated that at least part of the reason they remove their hair was for men. jessica told me candidly: “i am presenting myself for boys and what’s deemed as more appealing in our society is that you’re well-shaven.” almost every participant said that having less body hair, especially in the genital region, makes them feel more confident in a sexual setting. the majority of my interviewees said that they feel like there is an expectation when entering unfamiliar sexual situations to have their body hair removed. “i would view shaving or removing my body hair as part of getting ready for something with a man,” daniella said. in fact, ava shared that she once “stopped physical intimacy because i [hadn’t] shaved.” evidently, the presence of body hair can even serve as a barrier to sexual activity. the confidence, sexiness, and desirability that is associated with having little to no body hair directly links to sexual function and comfortability. however, many interviewees revealed that despite these expectations about body hair, many of their past male sexual partners did not particularly care whether they had body hair or not. while describing one of her past sexual encounters, selene revealed that the boy told her he would “prefer it to be shaved but it doesn’t matter.” now, she doesn’t think her current boyfriend cares too much. ava said that when she asked her high school boyfriend if he cared about her shaving, he responded “‘no, not really.” and yet, all of the interviewees, including both selene and ava, still approach sexual encounters believing that they must remove all or most of their body hair in order to meet basic expectations and be viewed as desirable. this is especially true for those encounters in which interviewees do not have a close or long-lasting relationship with the other person. relationships one of the questions i posed to participants was whether body hair is viewed differently in different relationship contexts, such as long versus short term or with men versus women. daniella said that if she was in a relationship, over time she would stop putting in as much effort with shaving “because i know this person likes me for other things.” conversely, yasmine mused that with a short-term hookup, “it’s like you don’t know where their head’s at, you don’t know who they’re going to talk to so i think you still want to have a good impression almost.” there appears to be more pressure to remove body hair in the first couple of sexual encounters because many women believe it’s one less thing to be embarrassed about or to be talked about afterwards. in awkward situations such as first time hookups or the discomfort that goes along with an undefined relationship, playing it “safe” and conforming to societal expectations by removing body hair makes sense. “if i’m going to have a one night stand with someone, then i need to be shaved,” maya said. when there are so many other unknowns, it’s logical that women would want to feel as desirable and comfortable as possible. as relationships progress and women feel more comfortable with their partner (and there are less unknowns within the relationship), there is less pressure to shave, wax, laser, etc. krystal told me, “if it’s with a guy, 100% i will be shaving for those first few times. but if i’m dating a guy for months and months, i’m not going to care as much – they will see me in every shape and form of hairiness.” this comment perfectly encapsulates the idea that expectations around body hair removal start to fade away as the relationship goes beyond being just physical. sexuality of course, for women who are not just attracted to men, body hair removal is much more nuanced. “i think it is more of a female gaze type of thing to have body hair. definitely not male gaze,” yasmine said. half of the participants of this study identified themselves as bisexual, each providing unique insights into the differences in body hair removal habits. many of the patterns in heterosexual encounters remained true in homosexual encounters, including that most people do not actually have strong preferences when it comes to body hair and body hair removal. krystal revealed that if she’s with a girl, “i really don’t care if she’s shaved anywhere or not” and jessica said both men and women she’s been with didn’t care what she did with her body hair. however, participants revealed that they do feel more pressure to remove their body hair when being sexually involved with men than with women. selene argued that “it’s just less expected if i was to be with a woman, like that’s just not as much as the expectation as with a guy.” yasmine offered that she’d “probably do the same but i’d emphasize it more with a man”. krystal said that with the “women-on-women dynamic, it’s not as prioritized. it’s very much a male-female heterosexual relationship.” this goes back to the societal belief that men must care more about body hair in sexual encounters. or, alternatively, perhaps it’s that women think that men care more. this could be as a result, again, of the porn industry and how it influences men in particular, and their sexual expectations and preferences. it could also be because women can empathize with other women when it comes to the struggle that comes with body hair and its removal. in a relationship with another woman, it may be much easier for them to come to a mutual understanding to stop removing their body hair as a result of their shared dissatisfaction with these practices. similarly, women may also just feel more comfortable around other women. the fear that yasmine brought up, about not knowing where a person’s head is at in a hookup situation, might not be as relevant when it comes to a hookup with another woman. the same uncomfortability that arises in a short term relationship context might be heightened even further with a man, pressuring women even more to ensure that they appear presentable and desirable by removing their body hair. race several of the women i interviewed were pushed to start shaving for the first time as a result of racial norms or outright prejudice. brooke felt pressure to shave as early as elementary school because her hispanic heritage caused her to have darker hair than her white peers. she said she was “definitely more aware of it”. maya, who is also latina, was only in first grade when one of her white friends made a comment about her darker leg hair: “i had this one friend and we were just like all sitting there, it was either at recess or something, and we all had our legs out [...] and i just remember someone made a comment about my leg hair.” both girls wanted to fit in with their white peers and sought to get rid of their darker body hair as soon as possible. maya had her first laser hair removal when she was 12. on the other side of the spectrum, fiona comes from korean heritage, which predisposes her to have less body hair. the body hair she has is thinner and less dark than other races, which she said makes her feel “almost more inherently feminine because i’m less hairy”, a notion that was also reflected in a number of other interviews. however, fiona also told me that there are some kinds of body hair, such as eyebrows and eyelashes, in which her lack of hair presents a problem in terms of societal expectations. she said that asian women like herself tend to adopt beauty standards “in terms of body hair, based off of, like, european beauty standards”, despite not having the genetic ability to necessarily live up to those standards. although fiona might be seen as “blessed” for not having very visible body hair on her legs or arms, she revealed that she is still self-conscious about her other body hair as a result of the eurocentric expectations of body hair. fiona’s commentary reveals, once again, how society values body hair on certain parts of women’s bodies and abhors it on others. selene also expressed how she is conscious of her body hair for this reason. she identifies as east asian and feels as though she has “more hair than the average east asian”, which makes it difficult for her to talk to family members about body hair removal. because of the expectations surrounding body hair in her race, she felt out of place as she was discovering her body hair during puberty. throughout selene’s interview, she continuously referenced having to google questions she had about body hair or experimenting on her own with various body hair removal products. on the opposite side of the spectrum is jessica, whose jewish heritage means that her female family members have dark and coarse body hair, and therefore engage in extensive conversations about their hair and how they go about removing it: “i’ve spoken about it with my grandmother a lot because the women in our family are just hairy.” these racial and ethnic expectations around body hair directly impact how women are confronted with conversations about body hair and body hair removal – or how they must figure it out on their own, without guidance or support. looking ahead one of the most notable findings was brought to light by a question that i posed to the participants at the end of each interview. this question was posed more or less as follows: “in your opinion, what’s the future of body hair removal? will it always exist or are we moving towards becoming more accepting of female body hair?” [appendix c] although the individual responses brought up various nuances, not a single participant said she could imagine a world in which women do not remove their body hair. however, many interviewees expressed their hope that society is beginning – slowly but surely – to progress towards more acceptance of body hair. lizzie reflected on seeing an ad for a razor company in which women were featured having underarm and pubic hair. the ad encouraged women to use razors in a way that works for them. this is a radical notion, especially in the media, and might be the start of a societal recognition that women do, in fact, have body hair, despite media portrayals of the contrary. and although it is a small minority, more and more women are opting out of shaving altogether. a lot of the interviewees alluded to a generational shift, in which people in every new generation are becoming more accepting of women’s body hair. jessica said that she hopes “our daughters care a little bit less about shaving.” ava talked about “raising my kids [...] to respect body hair and just know it’s a natural part and not force them to shave.” in response to this final question, many of the interviewees seemed almost wistful, trying to imagine a world in which they did not have to spend time, money, energy and stress on body hair removal. and yet, despite this wish for a future of no body hair removal, none of them expressed the desire to buck society’s expectations and stop shaving. brooke applauded women who do not shave, but couldn’t imagine being one of them. “not me, but kudos to y’all i guess,” she joked. only krystal stood out as a kind of revolutionary, declaring that she would happily stop shaving… as long as she wasn’t alone in doing so: “and if we were to [stop shaving] and have a boycott of shaving, first off we’d be saving hella money and time and blood, everything we’d be saving, so why not?” although krystal was the most vocal, this idea is one that was reflected in almost every single one of the interviews. all of the participants said they understand the burdens that body hair removal creates for them, but can’t imagine defying societal expectations and letting their body hair grow and become visible. in many ways, it comes down to women’s desire to conform. fiona summarized this idea: “nobody wants to be different, in a sense. and it’s almost like, yeah i could go my whole life without shaving to make a point, but for me, there’s no – this is bad – but for me what’s the point of doing it? like i would be happier and more comfortable if i adopted whatever mindset the people around me are.” although she prefaced this thought with how “bad” it sounds, this was also the perspective of every single one of the other interviewees in this study. they told me that they remove their body hair because they don’t want to stand out or be different. it’s so much easier to buy all of the shaving products, take extra time in the shower, occasionally cut yourself shaving, and pay money to get waxed or get laser than to be viewed as dirty, undesirable, or outside of societal norms. conclusion body hair and body hair removal are subjects of taboo. rarely do women, among themselves or with men, discuss such issues in depth outside of offhand remarks that they “need to shave.” many of the women who i interviewed were talking about these topics for the first time, having felt uncomfortable with their mothers, other family members, or friends. the importance of discussing body hair and body hair removal cannot be understated. in talking about these subjects, women are able to open up about their ideas surrounding femininity, self-confidence, how they view their bodies, sexual preferences, and so much more. based on the responses to my final question on the future of body hair removal, it does not appear as though we as a society are moving toward a time when women do not feel pressure to remove their body hair. it would be unrealistic, in my opinion, to hope for a world in which body hair removal no longer exists. the notion that less body hair is equivalent to more desirability is deeply entrenched in our society. however, by opening up spaces in which women can talk about body hair and all of the baggage that comes along with it, we can start to peel away at the cognitive dissonance that so many encounter. if we begin to recognize that the removal of body hair is inherently tied to misogyny, racism, classism, and so much more, we can start to break out of the societal pressure we all face. although many women, including myself, will continue to shave, wax, laser, and use whatever other methods to remove body hair, that does not mean we can slowly make our way toward progress. instead of striving toward something unattainable, we can take small steps to give women more of a choice in how they approach their body hair. our goal should be to accept and welcome women who wish to break free from societal norms and stop removing their body hair. our goal should be to celebrate our differences and not shy away from those who have the courage to be different. our goal should be to include everyone, men and women, in conversations about body hair and body hair removal. our goal should be to educate future generations that the presence or absence of body hair on a woman means nothing about her hygiene or her character. hair is simply hair, and it does not need to have any sort of meaning, nor does it say anything about a woman: who she is, how she acts, what she does or doesn’t do with her body. references kama, a., & barak-brandes, s. (2018). feminist interrogations of women’s head hair: crown of glory and shame. routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429505430 mullinax, m., herbenick, v.s., sanders, s.a., & reece, m. (2015). in their own words: a qualitative content analysis of women’s and men’s preferences for women’s genitals. sex education, 15(4), 421-436. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2015.1031884 ramsey, s., sweeney, c., fraser, m., & oades, g. (2009). pubic hair and sexuality: a review. the journal of sexual medicine, 6(8), 2102-2110. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1743-6109.2009.01307.x trager, j.d. (2006). pubic hair removal -pearls and pitfalls. journal of pediatric and adolescent gynecology, 19(2), 117-123. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpag.2006.01.051 appendix a recruitment script i will be texting participants to ask them if they are interested in participating in my research. i will text them the following message: “hi! i’m working on an interview research project that i want to publish in a journal about body hair and body hair removal. i want to interview friends about their experiences with shaving, body hair, etc. and was wondering if you might be interested in being interviewed? it would probably be around a 30 minute interview, i’ll be recording it and will show you the questions and walk you through the process beforehand! you’ll be kept anonymous in the actual research paper. let me know if you’re interested at all!” appendix b information sheet what is this study? this is an interview-based research study/project focused on body hair and body hair removal. i will be interviewing participants on a voluntary basis (ie: if you do not feel comfortable participating, you do not have to do so). i will then be taking what i learn from interviewing and writing a research article, to be published in undergraduate research journals later this year. what is the purpose of this study? the purpose of this study is to understand how college-aged female-identifying students feel about body hair – their own, their peers’, their family members’ – and how they have been taught to conceptualize body hair removal. i wish to examine the ways in which young women view body hair and how it affects their self-confidence and self-worth. i also hope to discover how they think other people in society view women’s body hair and methods of body hair removal. what will happen during this study? participants will be initially asked to participate in the interview project via text. if they consent, they will coordinate a time for the interview to take place with me. we will meet in a quiet, private space where i will present them with this very information sheet. after reading through the sheet, they will again give their consent to being interviewed, after which i will begin recording. the interview will occur, and then afterwards, i will listen to these recordings and pull quotes from them while i write my final research paper. what’s the time commitment? the interview itself should take around 30 minutes, but can go shorter or longer depending on how willing and comfortable the participant is to answer and elaborate on questions asked. after the interview is completed, there will be no further time commitment required of participants. how will my information be shared? the interview will be recorded using the voice recording app on my phone. after recording the interviews on my personal phone, i will transfer them to a secure box folder and delete them from my personal phone. after the paper is written, i will then permanently delete them from the box folder. in terms of how i will use the content from the interview, i plan to aggregate my findings and make broader generalizations about how college-aged women view body hair and body hair removal. i will not identify the names of any participants, although i may choose to reveal certain information (such as sexual preferences and/or race/religion/identity) in my argument, but this information will not reveal the identity of any of the interviewees. if i have any questions, who should i contact? xxxxxxxxxxxxx: (973) 908-0249, xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx elizabeth covington: elizabeth.covington@vanderbilt.edu vanderbilt irb: (615) 322-2918 mailto:elizabeth.covington@vanderbilt.edu appendix c interview guide i will start off the interview by walking the participant through an overview of the process. i will present them with the information sheet and ask if they have any questions about the sheet. if they are comfortable with the sheet, i will ensure that they are comfortable proceeding with the interview, including the beginning of the recording. i will then begin to record the conversation and present participants with these questions, not necessarily in this order or with all of these questions being asked. i will let the conversation flow and ask questions based on what participants have to say. i will also periodically check in with participants to ensure they are comfortable, and remind them that they do not have to answer a question if they do not want to do so, and can ask me to stop recording at any time. interview questions: 1. when did you first become aware of your body hair? why? 2. how do you feel about your body hair? and/other people’s body hair? 3. what’s your relationship with shaving? a. when did you first start shaving? do you remember if there was a specific reason why? 4. what about waxing? a. when did you first start waxing? do you remember if there was a specific reason why? 5. how do you think your identity (race/ethnicity/religion/sexuality/gender/etc.) has influenced your relationship with body hair? a. ask specific questions about specific identity factors (don’t loop them all into one question) 6. have you ever had someone comment on your body hair? or been around someone commenting on another woman’s body hair? what happened? 7. have you ever had a romantic partner react to your body hair? if so, what happened? how did it affect you? 8. do you view body hair differently in different relationship contexts? ie: in a long-term relationship versus casual sex? 9. in your experience, have men and women in your life had differing perceptions and beliefs about body hair? how so? 10. what are your thoughts on the relationship between body hair and beauty? 11. one thing i’ve learned in my sex and society class is that body hair was actually stigmatized and deemed “animalistic” by white european colonizers, in an effort to affirm the superiority of their european white women over african women. what do you think of this information? 12. have you ever had a conversation about body hair with friends or family? 13. in your opinion, what’s the future of body hair removal? will it always exist or are we moving towards becoming more accepting of female body hair? 14. anything else you’d like to add? after the interview, i will cease recording and ask the participants if they have any questions about the process, or if there is anything that they said in the interview that they would like to be exempt from my research. the burden of birth depictions of pregnancy by women during the women’s liberation movement parker grove, stanford university ’23 abstract: this analysis explores the contribution of female artists, niki de saint phalle, alice neel, and judy chicago, to the discourse of womanhood and motherhood during the women’s liberation movement. by utilizing the pregnant body as a focal point, these artists challenged societal norms and traditional depictions of the female body. through collage, portraiture, and mixed-media fiber work respectively, they emphasized the physical and emotional tolls of pregnancy, showcasing a truthful representation of motherhood that subverts the objectification of the female body. the analysis highlights the transformative potential of art in these feminist discourses and questions the historical depiction of the female nude. introduction throughout history, representations of the female nude in western art have been heavily influenced by the male gaze, resulting in depictions of women as passive objects for male consumption. from prehistoric sculptures to high classical representations of deities, women’s bodies were primarily made by and for male desire (discover nude art in all its form expressions during history). however, the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s-1980s brought about a significant shift in the way feminist artists approached the portrayal of the female body. these artists sought to challenge traditional norms and explore new ways of representing women as active and empowered subjects. one such radical departure from traditional depictions of the female form is the emergence of pregnancy images in art. through an analysis of three works, clarice rivers by niki de saint phalle, the pregnant woman by alice neel, and eu – 53 birth figure 6: smocked figure by judy chicago, this paper explores how female artists during the women’s liberation movement have reclaimed the female nude by subverting traditional notions of pregnancy, femininity, and the role of women in society. historical context the representation of pregnancy in art has a complex history, shaped by changing attitudes towards sexuality and marriage. historically, the art world was dominated by male artists, and depictions of women were created through the male gaze, resulting in hyper-feminine objects of desire (feigel, 2020). although pregnancy was a common subject in art until the middle ages, it gradually fell out of favor and was erased, coinciding with changing attitudes towards sexuality and marriage (berthiaud, 2013). due to the influence of the immaculate conception of the virgin mary, pregnancy taboo became popularized (kordic, 2018). while childbearing was an essential facet of female married life, the taboo reflected a societal aversion to acknowledging the sexual agency of women, and the ability to see a woman’s sexual history through pregnancy was considered a less acceptable subject for art. instead, the selective characteristic of portraiture allowed artists to ignore the “sinful” side of motherhood, rendering pregnancy depictions obsolete (jansen, 2020). likewise, previous images of nude women were created for male consumption and were the object of male desire, and the canons of this classic art did not include in this image a woman’s pregnant body. for example, sandro botticelli’s the birth of venus (figure 1) portrays the goddess of love and beauty emerging from the sea, fully nude and with her hands strategically placed to cover her genitalia. despite her nudity, her posture and expression suggest a demure and almost submissive demeanor, emphasizing her beauty and availability as a sexual object. similarly, in francisco goya’s la maja desnuda (figure 2), the female subject is depicted laying naked on a couch, with her back arched and her gaze directly towards the viewer. figure 1: sandro botticelli, the birth of venus, 1484-1486, tempera on canvas, 172.5 x 278.9 cm, uffizi, florence, italy again, her nudity and seductive pose are intended to elicit desire from the male viewer, rather than portraying her as a fully realized human being. the women’s liberation movement, also known as the second wave of feminism, was a transformative social movement in the 1960s and 1970s that aimed to challenge traditional gender roles and bring about change in every area of women’s experience, including politics, work, the family, and sexuality (burkett, 2022). the approval of the oral contraceptive pill by the fda in 1961 was a landmark moment for the movement, as it gave women the ability for the first time to control their reproductive health and plan their futures. this newfound freedom empowered women to pursue careers and educational opportunities, rather than being limited to traditional roles as wives and mothers (anand, 2018). betty friedan’s book, the feminine mystique, published in 1963, also contributed to the movement’s momentum by exposing the unhappiness and frustration of many women living within traditional gender roles. these cultural shifts gave rise to organizations like the national organization for women (now), which advocated for women’s rights and fought for greater access to education, employment, and reproductive healthcare. although the movement created unprecedented opportunities for women in the workforce, there remained persistent societal biases that used motherhood and child-rearing to justify excluding women from equal professional and economic advancement (allara, 1994, pp. 9). during the women’s liberation movement, feminist artists began to use pregnancy as a subject in art, challenging the longstanding traditional depictions of the female body and critiquing the canon of the female nude in western art history (allara, 1994, pp. 7). american art historian linda nochlin comment in the 1972 artnews annual, woman as sex object, further galvanized this movement by critiquing nineteenth-century erotic art imagery as being solely “erotic for men” (allara, 1994, pp. 7). this statement became a rallying cry for the body art movement, which explored sexuality from a woman’s perspective. the use of pregnant nudes in art became a powerful tool in blocking the male gaze by challenging the cultural norms of stability and unity associated with the ideal nude. in this subversion of the traditional sex symbol, pregnant imagery violated cultural norms of male pleasure, instead highlighting the feminine experience with sex and nudity (allara, 1994, pp. 11). led by artists such as niki de saint phalle, alice neel, and judy chicago, representations of pregnant women were reintroduced into popular western art as a direct confrontation of the idealized female form (berthiaud, 2013). their images of pregnant women not only challenged traditional notions of beauty but also highlighted the lived experiences of women during a time when reproductive figure 2: francisco de goya, la maja desnuda, 1800, oil on canvas, 98 x 191 cm, museo del prado, madrid, spain rights were a central concern of the feminist movement. through art, the pregnant body became a symbol of social deviation, challenging traditional notions of femininity and motherhood (allara, 1994, pp. 11). niki de saint phalle niki de saint phalle was a franco-american artist known for her insightful analysis of the female condition and the pressures of motherhood. after spending her youth in new york city, saint phalle moved back to paris in the 1950s with her husband and children to establish her studio. drawn to the work of jean tinguely, paul klee, henri matisse, pablo picasso, and henri rousseau, saint phalle joined the nouveau réalisme movement, an avant-garde art group (life & work). however, saint phalle soon realized the challenges of balancing her professional aspirations with her caretaking responsibilities. she felt compelled to choose between her family and career, ultimately abandoning her family in order to prove herself as a painter and real professional (dossin, 2010, pp. 31). this painful experience led her to understand that most existing art of women was done for and by men, not representational of the female experience. this realization drove her to create art that explored the struggles of women and deconstructed traditional images of womanhood (dossin, 2010, pp. 35). although never publicly identified as a feminist, saint phalle’s bodies of work center on women’s experiences and challenges. her artistic legacy continues to inspire and provoke critical thought about the representation of women in art and society. clarice rivers (figure 3), sketched in pencil and graphite by larry rivers and collaged by niki de saint phalle in 1964, presents a life size portrait of a female nude in profile who stares appraisingly at the viewer. within the massive 157 x 112 canvas, her positioning highlights her swollen, pregnant belly, while her stance is relaxed (keever, 2021). the woman’s head is adorned with flowers and fluttering birds, while the outline of her body is filled with a cacophony of life. brightly colored flowers, animals, and butterflies fill her limbs, while childlike toys – a ballerina, kittens, barbie, etc. – take up all open space in her legs. instead of a child in her belly, her stomach is filled with crustaceans. her entire body, except for her sketched, bare face, is intricately covered with bright, multicolored, abstract designs and text (keever, 2021). the curves of her body are further accentuated with the sharply sketched arrows, and the rainbows of color within the outline of her body is juxtaposed with the subdued, cream paper (anderson). the image is completed with a series of sketched lines and arrows pointing at specific parts of her figure 3: niki de saint phalle and larry rivers, clarice rivers, 1964, collage, color pencils, pastel, graphite, and ink on paper, 157 x 112 cm, museum of contemporary art, los angeles, los angeles, california body: chin, breast, the middle of her back, her belly button, uterus, and vagina. although unlabeled, the markings create an impression of an anatomical scientific examination, as if she were, herself, a butterfly on display. the piece is located at the museum of contemporary art, los angeles, and is part of a larger collection of artworks. the portrait of clarice rivers by niki de saint phalle and larry rivers is more than just a stunning work of art; it carries significant meaning and social commentary. as virginia billeaud anderson notes, the portrayal of clarice’s pregnancy in the work “was obvious but timely: women were perceived as brainless sex objects, child-bearing machines” (clarice rivers). in response to these sexist attitudes, de saint phalle sought to create a representation of the female experience that highlighted the beauty and complexity of natural birth. the vibrant collage of clarice’s body teeming with life serves as a metaphor for pregnancy, with every part of her being providing for the living things inside her. at the same time, the sheer number of objects and creatures on her body overwhelm her, underscoring the dichotomy of pregnancy as both life-giving and identity-erasing. as she stands, clearly aware of her own perception, the arrows protruding from her being indicate the need to label and judge her body, much like a specimen in a science lab. despite being a shell of herself, clarice stands as a near goddess, her face the only part of her left untouched, a vision of beauty that is expected of pregnant women (bishop, 2008). this work was the first in de saint phalle’s series of archetypal female figures, which inspired her later work to create updated versions of “every(wo)man” (life & work). alice neel across the ocean in new york city, american realist painter alice neel was celebrated for her honest and expressive portraits, produced at a time when abstract expressionism was the prevailing style in american painting. after experiencing a nervous breakdown following her husband’s departure with their second child in 1930, neel used portraiture to depict destitute mothers and women (ferry & blumberg, 2023). once recovered, she returned to her home in harlem and painted the people around her to convey the systemic inequities in her community. during the active years of the women’s liberation movement, neel’s series of seven pregnant nudes were a visual expression of her support for the body art movement of the late 1960s through the 1970s (allara, 1994, pp. 7). she was particularly interested in the transformation of the woman’s body to accommodate a growing fetus and the subsequent physical changes. unlike her male counterparts, neel painted the pregnant body with realistic and unforgiving brushstrokes, erasing the glamour and mystique of pregnancy (ferry & blumberg, 2023). her works addressed a generation of politically active women agitating for social change about the perceptions of motherhood and childbirth. although she was never declared feminist, her art certainly contributed to the movement and drew attention to the realistic side of pregnancy (kordic, 2018). her paintings portray the honest image of pregnancy at the same time that women had the agency to make informed decisions about motherhood. neel’s pregnancy paintings addressed a generation of politically active women agitating for social change about the perceptions of motherhood and childbirth (allara, 1994, pp. 8). in 1971, alice neel created a compelling oil painting titled the pregnant woman (figure 4), featuring a nude woman in a late-stage pregnancy in ¾ view reclining on a sofa. the woman takes up most of the 101.2 x 152.4 cm canvas, with her body splayed on its side, and one arm draped suggestively over her head and the arm of her chair while the other supports her face. the woman’s face is rendered in a detailed and expressive style, capturing her introspective and somewhat exhausted countenance that expresses the physical and emotional toll of pregnancy (pregnant woman, 1971). the woman’s swollen belly and breasts are prominently portrayed in varying tones of pale greens and pinks, lending her an unhealthy appearance (pregnant woman, 1971). the background is sparsely depicted, with a man’s portrait in a similar green hue hanging behind her head, and the couch outlined with crude strokes. the painting’s swirling brushstrokes and rounded curves reflect the woman’s figure and the shape of the sofa, with only straight lines present in the frame of the portrait and couch legs. the left side of canvas holds most of the volume, while the right remains bare. the pregnant woman is one of several pregnant nudes int eh alice neel estate’s private collection, showcasing neel’s talent for capturing the female experience of pregnancy. alice neel subverted the traditional female nude through the pregnant woman, illustrating the loss of identity she found inherent to motherhood. nancy, neel’s daughter in law and muse for this work, was carrying twins and suffering from toxemia at the time of her painting. she is illustrated with a belly that threatens to rip her apart, and the colors of the painting are reminiscent of her pregnancy-induced illness (allara, 1994, pp. 21). with her arms raised above her and her dark hair curling around her neck, her head appears to be severed from her body. nancy is pictured as dismembered from her body, her pregnant stomach becoming central to her being. likewise, the painting does not even offer her name, “pregnant woman” reflecting her loss of individual identity (allara, 1994, pp. 22). the portrait of her husband in the background serves as a reminder that this pregnancy is legitimate, yet his corporeal absence illustrates the alienation and isolation caused by pregnancy (allara, 1994, pp. 21). nancy’s absent gaze and the bareness of the room around her further emphasizes this analysis, indicating that she has nothing but this figure 4: alice neel, the pregnant woman, 1971, oil on canvas, 101.2 x 152.4 cm, estate of alice neel, new york figure 5: alexandre cabanel, naissance de vénus, 1863, oil on canvas, 130 x 225 cm, musée d'orsay, paris, france pregnancy shackling her to her home and domesticity. alice neel chose to paint nancy in the classical female pose, lounging on her side with an arm over her head. much like alexandre cabanel’s naissance de vénus (figure 5), nancy lays in a traditionally erotic position, the entirety of her naked body on display. in portraying nancy in this way, neel presented the female body to be surveyed without the sexual undertones of the male gaze (allara, 1994, pp. 17). instead, viewers are presented with a female body immune to the desires of men and confronted with the gaze and desire of nancy, herself. although she didn’t consider herself a feminist, neel attempted to correct the absence of pregnant women in art history through honest human experience, effectually subverting the traditional female nude (gokce, 2022). judy chicago judy chicago is an american artist and feminist who rose to prominence in the 1970s with her pioneering feminist art and her active involvement in the women’s liberation movement. born in chicago in 1939, chicago attended the art institute of chicago and turned to feminist content in the late 1960s, eventually creating the first feminist art program in california (judy chicago). part of the feminist art movements, chicago was inspired by minimalist artist donald judd. as she observed, “the problem with the women’s movement in art…was the involvement of the figureheads of the movement in stereotypes of women,” highlighting the need for more diverse representations of women (khan, 1977). chicago believed that female artists, because of their gender, were expected to conform to feminine stereotypes, and her work subsequently challenged these assumptions and pushed back against the male-dominated art world (khan, 1977). her artwork became an instant touchstone for the growing feminist movement in the united states and served as a powerful tool for social and political change (yood, 2022). eu-53 birth figure 6: smocked figure (figure 6) by judy chicago is a striking piece of artwork that demands attention. in the center of the 156.2 x 55.9 cm panel stands a female figure in ¾ view. made of smocking and embroidery over a drawing and laminated panel, the medium is what differentiates chicago’s work from other contemporary artists. the unnamed woman holds her head in her hands as if crying, and the curvature of her stomach indicates pregnancy. her form is nothing but a simple rainbow outline, but the emptiness of the space inside and around her echoes her melancholy sentiments. the border of this 1984 work is a series of repeating geometric patterns created in rainbow material, juxtaposing the taupe fabric within. while the woman’s body is created with continuing figure 6: judy chicago, eu-53 birth figure 6: smocked figure, 1984, smocking and embroidery over drawing (needleworker: mary ewanoski), laminated title panel, one laminated text panel, 156.2 x 55.9 cm, salon 94, new york, new york curves, the form of the piece creates strong horizontals and verticals around her. judy chicago’s eu-53 birth figure 6: smocked figure is part of a larger series of mixed-media fiber work entitled the birth project that celebrates the birth-giving capacity of women and their sacrifice. the artist collaborated with over 150 needleworkers to create images about various aspects of pregnancy (birth project (1980-85)). chicago created the initial idea but then handed off the work to female artists and mothers around the country to add their own stories and inspiration to the work. although she chose not to have children of her own, chicago engaged with groups of women who had chosen to have children and became awed by their momentous power (dintino, 2022). in the birth project, chicago wanted to reveal birth as spiritual and symbolic while expressing the physical pain of labor. as a challenge to existing norms of religious purity and sin, she hoped to re-envision the creation myth with a feminist twist. in eu-53 birth figure 6: smocked figure, the needleworker related the story of her mother realizing she was pregnant with her fifth child. in contrast with the other pieces in the collection, this piece reminds viewers of the sobering truths about pregnancy. historically, smocking material was worn by laborers due to its freedom of movement; however, it came to be associated with children’s clothes, a reminder of the transition from individual to caregiver. when smocking is fixed with pleated cable stitching, it becomes taut, symbolically “binding the figure” to her children (chicago, 1982). the needlework itself has a has feminine associations, although it also holds a history of sexist work. through eu-53 birth figure 6: smocked figure, chicago hopes to reunite feminist and traditional female roles, subverting material and pregnancy to illustrate the power and sacrifice of childbirth. conclusion throughout the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s-1980s, female artists began to subvert the traditional female nude through the use of pregnant bodies, simultaneously challenging the male gaze and exploring the sacrifice of motherhood. niki de saint phalle, through her use of collage and natural imagery, relays the loss of identity through maternal burden in her work clarice rivers. likewise, in the pregnant woman, alice neel shares the isolation and pain of pregnancy, showcasing its physical and emotional toll. for judy chicago’s piece eu-53 birth figure 6: smocked figure, the enforcement of birth is communicated, the figure bound to motherhood. while all three women evolved in their work to encapsulate holistic maternal experiences, these seminal feminist artists contributed to the women’s liberation movement by portraying pregnant women as realistic, multidimensional agents rather than passive caretakers and sexual beings. appendix figure 7: sandro botticelli, the birth of venus, 1484-1486, tempera on canvas, 172.5 x 278.9 cm, uffizi, florence, italy figure 8: francisco de goya, la maja desnuda, 1800, oil on canvas, 98 x 191 cm, museo del prado, madrid, spain figure 9: niki de saint phalle and larry rivers, clarice rivers, 1964, collage, color pencils, pastel, graphite, and ink on paper, 157 x 112 cm, museum of contemporary art, los angeles, los angeles, california figure 10: alice neel, the pregnant woman, 1971, oil on canvas, 101.2 x 152.4 cm, estate of alice neel, new york figure 11: alexandre cabanel, naissance de vénus, 1863, oil on canvas, 130 x 225 cm, musée d'orsay, paris, france figure 12: judy chicago, eu-53 birth figure 6: smocked figure, 1984, smocking and embroidery over drawing (needleworker: mary ewanoski), laminated title panel, one laminated text panel, 156.2 x 55.9 cm, salon 94, new york, new york references allara, p. (1994). ‘mater’ of fact: alice neel’s pregnant nudes. american art, 8(2), 7– 31. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3109142. accessed 26 february 2023 anderson, v. b. (2021). niki de saint phalle in the 1960s at the menil collection. houston intown magazine, https://www.intownmag.com/2021/12/niki-de-saint-phalle-inthe-1960s/. accessed 3 march 2023. anand, t. (2018, 25 april). a brief summary of the second wave of feminism. feminism in india. https://feminisminindia.com/2018/04/25/summary-second-wave-of-feminism/. accessed 26 february 2023. berthiaud, e. (2013). enceinte: une histoire de la grossesse entre art et société, éditions de la martinière, 2013. biography. judy chicago. https://judychicago.com/about/biography/. accessed 26 february 2023. birth project (1980-85). judy chicago. https://judychicago.com/gallery/birth-project/bp-artwork/. accessed 27 february 2023. bishop, m. (2008). shooting for transcendence: niki de saint phalle. contemporary french art 1, leiden, the netherlands: brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789401206006_004. burkett, e. (2022, 2 december). women’s rights movement. encyclopedia britannica, https://www.britannica.com/event/womens-movement. accessed 4 march 2023. chicago, j. (1982). if men had babies, there would be thousands of images of the crowning https://cfa.fsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/judy-chicago-brochure-final2.pdf. accessed 28 february 2023. clarice rivers. the museum of contemporary art los angeles. https://moca.tumblr.com/post/76561429730/niki-de-saint-phalle-and-larry-rivers-clarice. accessed 28 february 2023. dintino, t. c. (2022, 2 august). judy chicago’s the birth project (1980-1985): the power of parturition and textile arts. nasty women writers. https://www.nastywomenwriters.com/judy-chicagos-the-birth-project-1980-1985-thepower-of-parturition-and-textile-arts/. accessed 9 march 2023. discover nude art in all its form expressions during history. carré d'artistes: le blog, https://www.carredartistes.com/en-fr/blog/discover-nude-art-in-all-its-form-expressionsduring-history. accessed 5 march 2023. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3109142 https://www.intownmag.com/2021/12/niki-de-saint-phalle-in-the-1960s/ https://www.intownmag.com/2021/12/niki-de-saint-phalle-in-the-1960s/ https://feminisminindia.com/2018/04/25/summary-second-wave-of-feminism/ https://judychicago.com/about/biography/ https://judychicago.com/gallery/birth-project/bp-artwork/ https://doi.org/10.1163/9789401206006_004 https://cfa.fsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/judy-chicago-brochure-final2.pdf https://moca.tumblr.com/post/76561429730/niki-de-saint-phalle-and-larry-rivers-clarice https://www.nastywomenwriters.com/judy-chicagos-the-birth-project-1980-1985-the-power-of-parturition-and-textile-arts/ https://www.nastywomenwriters.com/judy-chicagos-the-birth-project-1980-1985-the-power-of-parturition-and-textile-arts/ dossin, c. (2010, september). niki de saint-phalle and the masquerade of hyperfemininity. women’s art journal. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/catherinedossin/publication/261965606_niki_de_saintphalle_and_the_masquerade_of_hyperfemininity/links/5d1fa0ac458515c11c154c5b/nik i-de-saint-phalle-and-the-masquerade-of-hyperfemininity.pdf dyson, g. (2022, 1 august). alice neel: the story of defying convention. daily art magazine. https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/alice-neel/. accessed 3 march 2023. ewington, j. (2016). ‘i decided to become a heroine’: niki de saint phalle, 1930-2002. eyeline, 83, 53–57, https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.030377447967452. feigel, l. (2020, 31 january). great expectations: art’s struggle to depict pregnancy. the guardian.https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/jan/31/great-expectationsarts-struggle-to-depict-pregnancy. accessed 2 march 2023. ferry, e. and blumberg, n. (2023, 24 january). alice neel. encyclopedia britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/alice-neel. accessed 4 march 2023. frizell, h. e. (2009). representations of specific concerns of the women’s liberation movement in british feminist art 1970-1978. kingston university. https://ethos.bl.uk/orderdetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.497597. gingell, s. (1999). re-visioning the pregnant body: engaging with elizabeth mackenzie’s radiant monster. university of saskatchewan: atlantis critical studies in gender, culture, and social justice, 24(1). https://journals.msvu.ca/index.php/atlantis/article/view/1630 jansen, c. (2020, 30 january). why we don’t see more pregnant women in art history. artsy. https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-pregnant-women-art-history. accessed 4 march 2023. judy chicago. national museum of women in the arts. https://nmwa.org/art/artists/judy-chicago/. accessed 9 mar 2023. khan, a. (1977). myth, archetype, and judy chicago [master’s thesis, university of iowa]. https://doi.org/10.17077/etd.nxfu0qi9 keever, e. (2021, 23 december). at the menil, niki de saint phalle’s groundbreaking embrace of violence, joy, and women’s empowerment. sight lines magazine. https://sightlinesmag.org/at-the-menil-niki-de-saint-phalles-groundbreaking-embrace-ofviolence-joy-and-womens-empowerment. accessed 7 march 2023. kordic, a. (2018, 13 may). the beauty of pregnancy in art from modernism till now. widewalls. https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/pregnancy-art. accessed 4 march 2023. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/catherine-dossin/publication/261965606_niki_de_saint-phalle_and_the_masquerade_of_hyperfemininity/links/5d1fa0ac458515c11c154c5b/niki-de-saint-phalle-and-the-masquerade-of-hyperfemininity.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/catherine-dossin/publication/261965606_niki_de_saint-phalle_and_the_masquerade_of_hyperfemininity/links/5d1fa0ac458515c11c154c5b/niki-de-saint-phalle-and-the-masquerade-of-hyperfemininity.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/catherine-dossin/publication/261965606_niki_de_saint-phalle_and_the_masquerade_of_hyperfemininity/links/5d1fa0ac458515c11c154c5b/niki-de-saint-phalle-and-the-masquerade-of-hyperfemininity.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/catherine-dossin/publication/261965606_niki_de_saint-phalle_and_the_masquerade_of_hyperfemininity/links/5d1fa0ac458515c11c154c5b/niki-de-saint-phalle-and-the-masquerade-of-hyperfemininity.pdf https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/alice-neel/ https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/jan/31/great-expectations-arts-struggle-to-depict-pregnancy https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/jan/31/great-expectations-arts-struggle-to-depict-pregnancy https://ethos.bl.uk/orderdetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.497597 https://journals.msvu.ca/index.php/atlantis/article/view/1630 https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-pregnant-women-art-history https://nmwa.org/art/artists/judy-chicago/ https://doi.org/10.17077/etd.nxfu0qi9 https://sightlinesmag.org/at-the-menil-niki-de-saint-phalles-groundbreaking-embrace-of-violence-joy-and-womens-empowerment https://sightlinesmag.org/at-the-menil-niki-de-saint-phalles-groundbreaking-embrace-of-violence-joy-and-womens-empowerment https://www.widewalls.ch/magazine/pregnancy-art life & work. niki de saint phalle. http://nikidesaintphalle.org/niki-de-saint-phalle/biography/#1965-1969. accessed 27 february 2023. pregnant woman. the metropolitan museum of art. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/830344. accessed 26 february 2023. pregnant woman, 1971. arthur.io https://arthur.io/art/alice-neel/pregnant-woman. accessed 28 february 2023. yood, j. w. (2022, 16 july). judy chicago. encyclopedia britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/judy-chicago. accessed 4 march 2023. http://nikidesaintphalle.org/niki-de-saint-phalle/biography/#1965-1969 https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/830344 https://arthur.io/art/alice-neel/pregnant-woman but i’m a cheerleader; a camp critique of heteronormativity isabelle leonard, university of ottawa ‘27 abstract: the essay critically analyzes jamie babbit's 1999 film but i'm a cheerleader as a subversive critique of heteronormativity through the lens of camp. the film, set in a conversion therapy camp, uses humor and exaggerated gender roles to challenge societal expectations of gender and sexual orientation. by employing camp, the movie undermines the seriousness of the conversion therapy process and highlights the absurdity of gender norms when taken to their most literal sense. the analysis draws on theories of gender performativity by judith butler and concepts of heteronormative discourse by gayle rubin, alongside various scholarly interpretations of camp. this essay argues that the film reclaims camp as a queer mode of expression, using it to ridicule dominant culture while validating queer identities and relationships. the film’s excessive use of gendered symbolism, such as color-coding and genderspecific tasks, serves to expose the artificiality of these norms, ultimately positioning queer love as authentic and society’s rigid expectations as flawed. conversion therapy continues to harm lgbtqia+ individuals worldwide, with only a limited number of countries taking steps to ban this discriminatory practice, highlighting the urgent need for global action to end this homophobic injustice (fleck, 2023). jamie babbit’s 1999 film, but i’m a cheerleader, critiques these harmful interventions by using a satirical conversion therapy camp as the setting for a heartfelt exploration of queer identity and love—a message that remains profoundly relevant today. the american medical association (2019) defines conversion therapy as an intervention aimed at changing an individual’s sexual orientation, behaviours, or gender identity (p. 1). the practice’s inherent belief is that all nonheterosexual and non-cisgender identities are wrong and in need of fixing (american medical association, 2019, p. 1). some health and religious institutions uphold this harmful misconception and develop methods like aversive conditioning (e.g., electric shocks, food deprivation, and chemically induced nausea), biofeedback, hypnosis, and masturbation reconditioning to convert non-conforming people to heteronormative standards (american medical association, 2019, p. 1). evidence shows that conversion therapy is ineffective in its aim to change sexual orientation (american medical association, 2019). in actuality, the individual’s gender and sexual identity remain the same, with the only difference being an increased likelihood of psychological distress such as depression, anxiety, self-blame, internalized homophobia, low self-esteem, and sexual dysfunction (american medical association, 2019). there are also tragic social and interpersonal outcomes, “such as alienation, loneliness, social isolation, interference with intimate relationships, and loss of social supports” (american medical association, 2019, p. 2). these repressive systems are violently unethical in their attempts to assimilate everyone into straight and cisgender binary norms and must be banned worldwide. jamie babbit’s 1999 film, but i'm a cheerleader, uses conversion therapy as the setting for a budding romance between two girls and critiques the institution by discarding any rationality behind it. the main character, megan, is a cheerleader in high school with good grades and a boyfriend who begins to discover her true identity when her parents stage an intervention to send her to true directions, a conversion therapy camp for youth. the reason for this intervention comes from megan’s family and friends citing her “homosexual tendencies,” encapsulated by her vegetarianism, pictures of bikini models in her locker, sexual or vaginal motifs in her bedroom decorations, gay iconography posters on her wall, and disinterest in kissing her boyfriend. despite denying the lesbian allegations made against her, megan is forced to attend the camp to “fix” her sexuality problem. while there, she meets other queer teens, and the camp tries to indoctrinate them into heteronormative ideals of gender and sexuality. eventually, she falls in love with graham, another female camper, and rejects the harmful ideas true directions has placed on them. the two run away together at the movie’s end, leaving behind their families and prior lives to be their true selves. although one might assume a movie about the repressive process of conversion therapy would be painful and heavy, this movie chooses to ridicule the oppressive institution instead of presenting megan and graham as hopeless victims. babbit uses camp, an inherently queer form of parody, to highlight the absurdity of dominant gender and sexuality norms through humor. the film’s queer codes include exaggerated performances of femininity and masculinity, irony and parody of mainstream rhetoric, dramatic costuming that deliberately creates a sense of “fakeness” and a queer reinterpretation of conventional romance tropes. the film is a critique of heteronormative discourses and uplifts queer individuals instead of suppressing their difference (horn, 2017, p. 59). but i'm a cheerleader uses parody derived from camp’s use of codes to challenge dominant heterosexual ideas of gender, their links to sexual orientation, and the invalidity of homosexuality. gender norms are exaggerated to the point of artificiality; gender expression is shown with no correlation to sexual orientation, and queer love, specifically between lesbians, is presented as real, with external forces being the only obstacle in the film’s main relationship. this analysis uses butler’s (2011) theories of gender performativity, rubin’s (2012) perspective of heteronormative discourse, and various frameworks for understanding the different presentations of camp given by ullman (2018), meyer (1993), kleinhans (1993), and horn (2017). these texts provide an understanding of social constructionism concerning gender and sexuality and highlight how camp is utilized to critique and subvert the dominant discourse. defining camp camp is widely misunderstood today as any use of irony or parody in popular culture, ignoring its origins as an inherently queer method of identity construction (meyer, 1993). in actuality, camp is the use of signifying codes to create social visibility for queer people, with its roots tied to creating communities for gay men throughout history when there were no spaces for them (meyer, 1993). for example, vaudeville was a popular form of entertainment in the early 20th century that used burlesque and cross-dressing to create comedy for mainstream audiences but also created a reasonably safe space for queer performance and gender deconstruction (ullman, 2018). this form of entertainment led to camp (and the use of queer codes in general) becoming a presentation style that “exaggerate[d] and mock[ed] dominant values, and aesthetics” (ullman, 2018, p. 361). by subverting the expectations held by mainstream society, camp created visibility and representation for queer individuals to see themselves in popular culture (ullman, 2018). however, these representations were forced to uphold repressive ideas from the dominant culture surrounding gender and sexuality differences, making camp function as both a form of visibility and oppression for queer individuals (ullman, 2018, p. 363). unfortunately, conforming to these stereotypes was the only way queer performers could achieve any representation—without the humor, they would have been viewed as too radical or immoral. this phenomenon highlights the hegemonic power of heteronormativity, as it forces queer individuals to oppress themselves in exchange for limited progress. during the mid-twentieth century, camp was understood as a frivolous style of comedy, losing its subversive and critical nature (meyer, 1993, p. 1). trace camp is an appropriation of camp, where queer performance is assimilated into heteronormative discourse, and the potential for camp to critique society is neutralized as it becomes an apolitical form of comedy for nonqueer audiences (meyer, 1993). more recent camp productions, like but i'm a cheerleader, reclaim the queer form back from its roots of coding and subversion of dominant ideals (kleinhans, 1993). self-aware kitsch is often used with camp by queer cinema to highlight the absurdities of mainstream society in a coded manner that stands out to queer audiences (kleinhans, 1993). the parody of the self-aware camp allows marginalized people to mock the dominant culture while the dominant culture remains blind to the joke, understanding it on the surface level but not in the same way as queer viewers (kleinhans, 1993, p. 170). camp is the strategy of using parody to critique heteronormative ideals through codes that appear to reinforce the dominant order but in actuality challenge it (meyer, 1993). the artificiality of gender norms one of the most striking aspects of but i'm a cheerleader is the obnoxious colour-coding seen in the true directions camp. the mandatory clothing for the girls is entirely pink with skirts and blouses, while the boys wear all-blue shirts, shorts, and ties (see figure 1). to an audience immersed in dominant discourse, this colour-coding, while taken to extremes, does not appear to be anything unordinary. according to butler (2011), gendering is a compulsory practice where individuals repetitively embody the norms set out by societal expectations, making it performative. people cite previous performances of gender to know what constitutes a man and woman, and the colours pink and blue have, over time, become associated with their assigned genders (butler, 2011). in an ideal heteronormative society, everyone would perform their gender perfectly in line with the expectations. however, these expectations are impossible, and as a result, society is full of individuals whose gender presentations may stray from the expectations placed on them (butler, 2011). but i'm a cheerleader makes use of excessive gendered colouring in the clothing and in the bedroom’s design to demonstrate the absurdity of “ideal” femininity and masculinity when taken to its most literal form. the use of plastic formal attire in the graduation ceremony and plastic bed sheets can also be interpreted as the artificiality of gender norms, mocking the significance they hold in the dominant culture (butler, 2011). gender norms are essential to heterosexual power because, without them, people may see that gender and sexuality are merely social constructs as opposed to natural forms of existence (butler, 2011). but i'm a cheerleader furthers this ridicule through the activities the teens are forced to perform: fixing cars and playing football for the boys, and cleaning and changing diapers for the girls (see figure 2). these patriarchal concepts of specific duties being masculine or feminine, once again, reinforce the heteronormative gender binary. however, the film uses double entendres to make audiences question the straight reading of these roles; the teens are engaged in physical contact during these activities, making these straight practices appear somewhat homoerotic to make fun of the self-repression that is essential to heteronormativity (horn, 2017). the exaggeration of dominant gender roles “serves to emphasize how both [sexuality and gender identity] are constructs whose ‘correct’ performance takes effort” (horn, 2017, p. 84). camp is used in but i'm a cheerleader to show heteronormative ideals as ridiculous and queer identities and spaces as normal, ruining the illusion that upholds heterosexual power and oppresses individuals who do not conform (horn, 2017). figure 1 true directions orientation scene note. directed by jamie babbit, but i’m a cheerleader, 1999. figure 2 diaper changing scene note. directed by jamie babbit, but i’m a cheerleader, 1999. decoupling gender presentation from sexual orientation one of the strictest norms in ‘correctly’ performing gender is the individual’s sexuality; dominant culture requires regulation of sexuality to maintain the ideal femininity and masculinity (butler, 2011, p. 238). but i'm a cheerleader uses the female character jan to demonstrate how gender presentation does not have to align with sexual desires. jan’s character is very masculinepresenting with a buzzcut and facial hair—which is the reason she is in the camp as everyone assumes this gender expression must mean she is a lesbian. later in the film, jan has a “coming out” scene, where she admits to being heterosexual despite playing softball and wearing baggy clothes. the camp leader and other teens are so conditioned to stereotypical gender norms and their association with sexual orientation that they fail to believe that she could possibly be straight and therefore label her as in denial (horn, 2017). this reaction is ironic because despite being straight, the desired outcome of the camp, jan’s failure to represent ideal femininity demonstrates the hypocritical nature of these institutions and beliefs. the idea that someone’s gender or self-expression has any relation to their sexuality is an invention by dominant discourse to stabilize the heterosexual gender norms; both concepts are socially constructed and, therefore, must not have a relation (butler, 2011). butler (2011) points out that “the heterosexual logic that requires identification and desire be mutually exclusive is one of the most reductive of heterosexism’s psychological instruments” (p. 239). megan’s character also subverts typical expectations for a lesbian with her feminine looks and love for cheerleading. while most lesbian representations in media force women to be masculine or at least very confident and ‘cool’ feminine women, megan’s character remains sweet and ‘girly’ throughout the film (horn, 2017). megan does not conform to society’s expectations; instead, she is her authentic self, forcing audiences to change their expectations and assumptions of what a lesbian looks and acts like (horn, 2017). both jan and megan have humorous scenes showing the dissonance between what dominant culture would expect of them and who they are, using camp to show the misconceptions heteronormative society holds about queer identities. challenging the conventions of the romance genre the fear of gender norms being broken fuels the greater anxiety of homosexuality within a dominant heteronormative society (butler, 2011). this fear is understood as the ‘domino theory’ expressed by rubin (2012), suggesting that once someone starts to stray away from acceptable sexuality and gender norms, a catastrophe will occur, leading to sexual deviance and chaos (p. 151). but i'm a cheerleader uses camp humour to satirize and mock this belief of a domino effect. this is illustrated clearly in the intervention scene (figure 3) where megan’s family and friends attempt to “heal” her from her “homosexual tendencies” and allude to posters of female pop stars and vegetarianism as signals of a descent down a path of terrifying sexual deviance. the melodramatic and over-exaggerated reactions highlight how nonsensical the domino effect theory is and mock the characters for their absurd beliefs. since homosexuality is treated as sinful and shameful in the dominant culture, megan’s parents and friends feel the need to save her from this illness of homoerotic tendencies. megan’s non-conforming sexual identity is viewed as invalid and indicative of a mental disorder, and the normative response to this is forced rehabilitative treatment. the film’s camp humour demonstrates, however, that her identity is not responsible for the problems she faces; it is the repressive society she lives in that creates this invalidity and a more beneficial solution to these problems would be the deconstruction of society’s harmful standards (rubin, 2012). to subvert the traditional romance genre through camp, but i'm a cheerleader also offers a queer perspective on love and relationships. megan and graham’s love story validates lesbian love even though the dominant culture often rejects it as an invalid, sinful desire (rubin, 2012). the only obstacles these two must overcome are external, such as the camp splitting them up by kicking megan out of true directions. in conventional romance films, the conflict between the two main characters is often the result of interpersonal struggles or incompatibility, but this film subverts that practice by only creating conflict from external factors; this portrays megan and graham’s relationship as healthy and their environment as problematic (horn, 2017, p. 59). the film’s camp subversion not only validates queer love but also creates hope and resilience in queer viewers who feel hopeless in a rigid world that does not accept them (kleinhans, 1993). at the film’s end, the two women leave their families, economic standing, schools, and lives behind to be together despite all the discrimination and bigotry they face, emphasizing the strength and authenticity of their love (figure 4). the heteronormative society denies the love shared between these two girls, but it is apparent that their relationship is genuine and that they will get their happy ending. this camp film critiques the dominant culture's beliefs on non-conforming individuals while simultaneously celebrating and uplifting queer romance and identities. figure 3 family intervention scene note. directed by jamie babbit, but i’m a cheerleader, 1999. figure 4 megan and graham’s happy ending note. directed by jamie babbit, but i’m a cheerleader, 1999. but i'm a cheerleader uses camp to code heteronormative society and, specifically, the institution of conversion therapy as irregular and flawed to deconstruct the dominant ideas surrounding gender and sexuality. one of the key functions of gender norms is to uphold heterosexual values, and they do so by othering people who fail to achieve hegemonic ideals; this includes assuming non-conforming individuals must be homosexual and, therefore, are inferior. there is still significant progress to be made in society's acceptance of queer identities. however, popular camp films such as but i'm a cheerleader can help in this process by exposing the flawed nature of the dominant order and openly critiquing the oppressive institutions upholding these harmful beliefs. the film reclaims camp as a queer mode of expression by celebrating queer identities and love while simultaneously imitating the heteronormative order in its most exaggerated form, presenting its assumptions and rules as unnatural and ridiculous. this deconstruction of heteronormative ideals in but i'm a cheerleader challenges the rigid definitions of gender and sexuality and advocates for a more inclusive society where queer identities are recognized, celebrated, and seen as valid expressions of human experience. references american medical association. (2019). lgbtq change efforts (so-called “conversion ther apy”). american medical association. retrieved from https://www.ama-assn.org/system/ files/2019-12/conversion-therapy-issue-brief.pdf babbit, j. (director). (1999). but i’m a cheerleader. lionsgate. butler, j. (2011). critically queer. in bodies that matter: on the discursive limits of sex, (pp. 223–242). fleck, a., & richter, f. (2023, may 17). infographic: where “conversion therapy” is still legal. statista daily data. https://www.statista.com/chart/27674/map-of-where-conversiontherapy-is-banned/ horn, k. (2017). the great dyke rewrite: lesbian camp on the big screen. in: women, camp, and popular culture (pp. 35–109). palgrave macmillan, cham. https://doi.org/10.1007 /978-3-319-64846-0_3 kleinhans, c. (1993). taking out the trash: camp and the politics of parody. in the politics and poetics of camp (pp. 157–173). taylor & francis group. retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ottawa/detail.action?docid=240507. meyer, m. (1993). introduction: reclaiming the discourse of camp. in the politics and poetics of camp (pp. 1–19). taylor & francis group. retrieved from https://ebookcentral .proquest.com/lib/ottawa/detail.action?docid=240507. rubin, g. (2012). thinking sex: notes for a radical theory of the politics of sexuality, in deviations: a gayle rubin reader (pp. 137-171). duke university press. https://booksscholarsportal-info.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/en/read?id=/ebooks/ebooks0/duke/2015-0224/1/9780822394068#page=1 ullman, s. (2018). queer performance and popular culture, in the routledge history of queer america (pp. 359-370). routledge. https://www-taylorfrancis-com.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca /chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315747347-28/queer-performance-popular-culture-sharonullman?context=ubx&refid=7d075a40-cd0b-4e2c-9b10-2e55bc https://www.ama-assn.org/system/%20files/2019-12/conversion-therapy-issue-brief.pdf https://www.ama-assn.org/system/%20files/2019-12/conversion-therapy-issue-brief.pdf https://www.statista.com/chart/27674/map-of-where-conversion-therapy-is-banned/ https://www.statista.com/chart/27674/map-of-where-conversion-therapy-is-banned/ https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64846-0_3 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64846-0_3 https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ottawa/detail.action?docid=240507 https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ottawa/detail.action?docid=240507 https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ottawa/detail.action?docid=240507 https://books-scholarsportal-info.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/en/read?id=/ebooks/ebooks0/duke/2015-02-24/1/9780822394068#page=1 https://books-scholarsportal-info.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/en/read?id=/ebooks/ebooks0/duke/2015-02-24/1/9780822394068#page=1 https://books-scholarsportal-info.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/en/read?id=/ebooks/ebooks0/duke/2015-02-24/1/9780822394068#page=1 https://www-taylorfrancis-com.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315747347-28/queer-performance-popular-culture-sharon-ullman?context=ubx&refid=7d075a40-cd0b-4e2c-9b10-2e55bc https://www-taylorfrancis-com.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315747347-28/queer-performance-popular-culture-sharon-ullman?context=ubx&refid=7d075a40-cd0b-4e2c-9b10-2e55bc https://www-taylorfrancis-com.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315747347-28/queer-performance-popular-culture-sharon-ullman?context=ubx&refid=7d075a40-cd0b-4e2c-9b10-2e55bc forman final interrogating the ‘exceptional’: the rhetoric and reality of sexual violence and stanford greek life lily forman, stanford ’25 content warning: discussion of campus sexual violence and rape. abstract: greek life is often cited as contributing significantly to the epidemic of campus sexual violence. simultaneously, stanford students and affiliates subscribe to the notion of stanford exceptionalism: an understanding of stanford greek life as less sexually violent and problematic than greek life at other institutions. through my research, i seek to explore the extent to which this idea is true and the impact that the belief in stanford exceptionalism has on the reality of sexual violence within stanford greek life. based on interviews with stanford students and affiliates, i conclude that greek life’s sexual violence problem is a result of the system’s features, which exist regardless of the school or its individuals. my research reveals a strong belief among students in stanford exceptionalism along with the dangerous consequences of this false image. further, my research demonstrates that there are features unique to stanford’s context that serve to exacerbate the relationship between stanford greek life and sexual violence, rather than remedy it. daniel was a freshman when he decided to participate in the fraternity rush process (former fraternity member 1, 2023). he wasn’t initially interested in greek life when he came to stanford. but once he arrived on campus, he realized that everyone who seemed to be a social person was in greek life. why shouldn’t i join?, he thought. his friends who were women told him that one organization in particular was “non-problematic.” after realizing he knew a lot of students in this organization, he saw it as a safe choice. so, in the spring of his frosh year, he joined a fraternity. his first year in the organization was great. he got to live with his best friends, he was surrounded by well-rounded men, and his organization was separate from the problems within greek life. he believed this to be true until his sophomore year, when daniel learned about two disturbing incidents involving his fraternity brothers. in one instance, a member of his organization was found with an incredibly intoxicated girl — he was sober and trying to get her alone with him. in another case, a member was found to have repeatedly raped his girlfriend. in both instances, fraternity leadership sought to keep the cases under wraps. no conversations were had among members about what happened, why it was wrong, or what steps were being taken. daniel recognized the importance of maintaining the anonymity of the survivors, but he believed there were ways to address the fraternity members’ problematic behavior while honoring confidentiality. how would future cases be prevented if these ones weren’t talked about? daniel realized that the fraternity culture he was becoming immersed in was not healthy. he was pretending to be someone he was not. it was deeply uncomfortable for him to have to buy into his organization’s mono-culture and remain associated with these perpetrators. his initial impression of the fraternity as consisting of nice, non-problematic guys had been shattered. he now saw the problems under the surface and, morally, could no longer be a part of the organization. a year after joining, daniel disaffiliated from his fraternity. three years later, despite an observed increase in campus discourse about sexual violence in greek life, daniel is even more concerned his former organization. he’s witnessed the fraternity become even more “fratty,” signaling that problematic attitudes within the organization are only becoming more acceptable. four years after he first rushed, he says he now sees no merit to greek life as it currently exists. framing stanford exceptionalism daniel knew that greek life had problems, but he thought his organization was exempt from these. within a year, he was proven wrong. why did he and his friends think that one fraternity could be different in the first place? is it possible for one organization to not fall victim to the problems that greek organizations often face? daniel’s experience is by no means unique. stanford students often see stanford greek life as different from greek life on a national level. this phenomenon is known as stanford exceptionalism — the idea that stanford greek life is less racist, elitist, violent, and problematic than greek life at other schools. many students hear this idea when they arrive at stanford, and this notion often encourages them to join greek organizations (abolishstanfordgreek, 2020). however, a cursory look at stanford’s history and current context reveals that the university is not exempt from the epidemic of campus sexual violence, nor is stanford greek life innocent in this phenomenon. during their time at stanford, 25% of undergraduate women will experience non-consensual contact (defined as penetration or sexual touching) by force or inability to consent, and 38.5% will experience non-consensual contact (including attempted penetration) as a result of coercion and without active, ongoing, voluntary agreement (cantor et al., 2019, p. 30). many students point to fraternities as major perpetrators of campus sexual violence (muys & rathi, 2022). in addition to national data and anecdotal evidence, stanford surveys corroborate this understanding of fraternities as sites of violence. among stanford undergraduate women who were non-consensually penetrated, 29% encountered their assaulter at a fraternity house before the assault occurred (abolishstanfordgreek, 2021; stanford ir&ds, 2020). for years, this information about sexual violence within greek life has existed alongside the belief in stanford exceptionalism. this dichotomy leaves students, myself included, feeling deeply confused. when i first arrived on campus, i understood that greek life generally has a strong relationship with sexual violence and is a deeply problematic institution. yet students at stanford kept telling me that our university was different. after more than a year here, i was still unsure of how to reconcile these conflicting messages. i entered this research with a genuine curiosity and desire to answer the questions i was facing: is stanford greek life exceptional? do stanford students see their greek system as exceptional? and perhaps most important, does the belief in stanford exceptionalism have an impact on the way that sexual violence functions within stanford greek life? before attempting to understand the dynamics at play on stanford’s campus, we must understand why greek life as a whole has such a strong association with sexual violence. nationally, fraternity members are 300% more likely to be perpetrators of sexual violence than non-fraternity members (foubert et al., 2007, p. 739). scholars attribute this relationship to a few components. first, fraternities maintain extreme levels of control and power over their membership, campus social life, alcohol distribution, space at parties, and more (martin, 2016). this unequal power dynamic can allow for an increase in violence perpetrated by members who are afforded access to this outsized degree of control. second, the tight-knit, exclusive nature of greek organizations often serves to promote in-group loyalty and secrecy. the desire to create a strong “brotherhood” incentivizes against students speaking negatively about their organization or alerting other students to problematic occurrences among members. in addition, because of the close-knit nature of these organizations, if members enter with problematic ideas, beliefs, or practices, these practices can spread and become common among members (franklin et al., 2012; mccready et al., 2022). finally, greek organizations are rarely subject to accountability. while there is debate among activists and scholars about what accountability should involve, national organizations that oversee individual chapters rarely take any action whatsoever to remedy harm or prevent future assaults after cases of violence, and neither do the universities that house these chapters (kwon, 2021). those who believe in stanford exceptionalism would argue that stanford greek organizations are exempt from these flaws. do current undergraduates believe this, and how true is it? interview methodology in order to better understand the dynamics at play at stanford, i conducted a series of interviews with those intimately familiar with greek life at stanford. i conducted 10 interviews with stanford undergraduates, including members of fraternities and sororities, students who have never been members of greek organizations, and a student who disaffiliated from his fraternity. the conversations ranged from 40 minutes to nearly two hours. i also consulted professors and university administrators. although all fraternities and sororities can play a role in perpetuating rape culture, my case study is limited to fraternities within the interfraternity council (ifc) and intersorority council (isc) (stanford fraternity and sorority life, 2023). in addition to ifc and isc organizations, stanford also hosts greek organizations within the african-american fraternal and sororal association as well as the multicultural greek council. these organizations play a role in campus culture but function differently and with a more limited scope than isc and ifc organizations. additionally, although fraternity members are often at the center of these conversations, many advocates cite the entire greek system, including sororities, as being complicit in greek life’s relationship with sexual violence (robbins, 2015). thus, my case study and interviews focus on stanford’s ifc and isc organizations. with the goal of facilitating a comfortable and honest environment, i began interviews with context about the project. i assured students that their name and organization would not be included and gave them the opportunity to provide details off the record. to respect this agreement, each interviewee was given a label corresponding to their role and chronological order for citation purposes (for example, “fraternity member 1” or “non-greek student 2”). in addition, any name used to refer to an interviewee in my writing is a pseudonym. in the sections that follow, i will discuss the major themes that arose in my interviews. to provide insight into these conversations, each section will begin with a particularly salient quote from my interviewees that represents the theme i seek to explore. belief in stanford exceptionalism “do you think you would have rushed at a state school or at another school that wasn’t stanford?” “oh hell no, absolutely not” (fraternity member 2, 2023). among the students i interviewed, many believed that stanford greek life is different (and better) in terms of its relationship to sexual violence than other greek systems. the quote above is one example of many in which fraternity and sorority members i interviewed enthusiastically declared that they would not have joined a greek organization or considered rushing at another school. there are a few reasons why my interviewees subscribed to this belief in stanford exceptionalism. many fraternity members displayed a belief that the typical forms of toxic, violent masculinity encouraged in most greek organizations are not present within stanford fraternities. instead, fraternity members told me that they are encouraged to be authentically themselves and not to play into ideas about what a man should do or be interested in. in fact, their organizations attempt to promote healthy, supportive communities among their members. in speaking about the culture of his fraternity, one member said, “there’s been a real cultural shift toward an emphasis on how we embody the good things of a fraternity — the spirit you get, the community, brotherhood — in a setting that doesn’t necessarily always have to be a traditional fraternity setting of parties, drinking, substance use, that kind of stuff” (fraternity member 3, 2023). without the toxic components of fraternity culture, he argued, greek life can serve a valuable function. in addition, stanford greek life’s decreased presence on campus plays into this belief. members referred to a greek scene at stanford that is less active and involves less “buy-in culture,” which they argue makes the culture around greek life generally healthier (fraternity member 1, 2023). according to this line of reasoning, because students are less committed to their organizations and have identities that exist separate from their organizations, there is less toxic allegiance to organizations, so fewer problems arise within them. finally, members referred to the genuine nature of fraternities’ concern about sexual violence and creating safe, accountable communities, a trend they say is not present at other schools. interviewees spoke about how deeply their fraternities care about sexual violence prevention, and many also spoke about believing that their organization cared more deeply and genuinely than others on campus. a fraternity member offered his perspective: “a lot of people, like myself before rush, have this conception of greek life as traditionally associated with sexual violence and sexual assault … we’ve tried very hard to be aware of that and to approach situations from the lens of … we inherently, as hosts of the event, have a power dynamic, perceived or not, that exists. so when we think about our interactions with people, we’ve really tried to talk about how you break that down … instead of making it the fraternity above all and the traditional ‘we can do whatever we want to’” (fraternity member 3, 2023). this level of selfawareness isn’t generally expected of fraternity members but is common among members of stanford fraternities, contributing to the belief that stanford fraternity members are less sexually violent. exceptionally what?: stanford’s unique flaws “you have some of the most powerful families in the world in stanford greek life, and you have immediate access to them through those channels” (sorority member 2, 2023). even though many of my interviewees purported to believe that stanford’s greek system is exceptionally safe and healthy, these same conversations revealed the many flaws within stanford greek life — in fact, some of their statements demonstrated that stanford greek life may be exceptionally problematic. as demonstrated by the quote above, members of greek life emphasized the importance of the extreme amounts of wealth present within these organizations. 17% of stanford students belong to the top 1% of the wealth distribution in the united states, and 66% of students belong to the top 20% (“economic diversity and student outcomes at stanford university,” 2017). students at stanford, perhaps unlike students at schools without this extreme amount of wealth, cite networking opportunities as key reasons why they decided to rush. for example, one fraternity member emphasized that he decided to join his organization because of the networking opportunities that it presented (fraternity member 1, 2023). this student referred to an instance where he witnessed problematic behavior from a member of his organization but hesitated to speak up because he knew that doing so would sever a potentially beneficial connection. because students at stanford see their participation in greek life as having professional as well as social benefits, there is a heightened sense of loyalty to one's organization and increased fear associated with deviating from the group. in addition to this individual incentive for secrecy, interviewees argued that stanford greek organizations and their leadership often explicitly encourage silence around scandals and wrongdoings. students pointed to greek life’s dependence on approval from the university as a key factor that promotes this desire for secrecy. due to the nature of campus housing, no offcampus greek houses exist at stanford. instead, these organizations need approval from the university for housing as well as the ability to host social events and facilitate the official rush process. at other universities, greek organizations are in charge of their own housing and exist largely independently, creating a decreased sense of accountability to the school and perhaps a less urgent imperative to cover up instances of violence. when asked about how the culture of stanford greek life differs from other universities, a fraternity member answered, “it has a survivor's mentality. it does what it needs to do to survive … we have to be in [good standing] with the university so we can get housing next year or we can still get chefs instead of going to a dining hall. so it’s just tip-toeing all the time … because we’re afraid of being punished by the university” (anonymous, 2023). tip-toeing, according to him and other interviewees, often takes the form of leaders of greek organizations telling their members not to tell others about problems within the organization so the university won’t learn of these issues. above all, my interviews confirmed that despite the rhetoric of exceptionalism, greek life perpetrates and remains complicit in sexual violence at stanford. again, questions about what accountability in an ideal world would look like arise here. however, students cited numerous examples of no action being taken whatsoever to hold perpetrators accountable through consequences, to promote growth and change away from assaultive behaviors, or to support survivors of sexual violence. this problem is not limited to fraternities — sorority members emphasized that their organizations often maintain relationships with fraternities that have assaulters within their ranks. one fraternity member provided an illuminating example: “there was this guy who should not ever be allowed in any sort of public space who was [at another fraternity’s party]. even at our frat he’s on the blacklist … i was definitely disappointed … people in the frat were defending him and also people in sororities were defending him … it’s this inability to speak out” (anonymous, 2023). a dangerous cycle: the impact of stanford exceptionalism & the greek system “fraternity men that i’ve spoken with will try to convince me that their frat is not the issue rather than acknowledge the problem at hand. there’s something worse about that, because they’re denying that it’s actually happening” (non-greek student 2, 2023). as demonstrated above, many stanford students believe that stanford greek life is safe, yet the same interviews demonstrated that violence is certainly a problem within the system. here, we see the first two steps of a dangerous cycle. stanford greek life has the appearance of being better, safer, and healthier than greek life usually is. at the same time, violence is still perpetrated by members of greek life, and the greek system remains complicit in this violence. however, because of the image of stanford greek life as safe, survivors of sexual violence are silenced and advocates are gaslit. with this image, members of the community have a hard time believing that greek life has a sexual violence problem. thus, there is very little (and often no) accountability in any form for greek life, and they are able to maintain their positive image. the cycle continues. more violence is perpetrated, but nothing changes. this is the dangerous impact of the belief in stanford exceptionalism. how can we address this cycle of violence? we must look to the point in which the violence occurs. fraternity members provided a few answers when asked what they are doing to prevent violence in the first place. first, they said that they’re working to hold members of their organizations accountable through implementing zero tolerance policies for sexual violence and promoting cultures of accountability and sexual citizenship. in addition, they’re aware that not all violence at fraternities comes from its members. to prevent violence at parties, they’re implementing blacklists to keep known assaulters out, utilizing sober monitors to ensure that people are acting responsibly, and enforcing consent signs at the doors. finally, they say they’re working to build trust within their organizations among the stanford community. they want students to come to them with concerns so that they can handle them appropriately, and they want to continue to promote an image of stanford greek life as safe. based on my interviews, these solutions aren’t enough to prevent violence and aren’t always occuring in the first place. as quoted above, students cited numerous examples of fraternities refusing to enact any form of accountability for members who have perpetrated sexual violence. they repeatedly refuse to remove perpetrators from social situations, whether they are a member of the fraternity or otherwise. all of this has led to an extreme, irreparable distrust among the community. the violence in greek life comes down to factors that are inherent to the greek system as a whole — the same factors that scholars point to when explaining disproportionate levels of perpetration of sexual violence among fraternity members. the extreme levels of power, incentives for in-group loyalty and secrecy, and lack of accountability work together to create a system in which violence is perpetrated repeatedly. the nature of these organizations is such that members have no incentive to do better. in fact, members would have to step out of this system and away from the loyalty it explicitly encourages to change the culture, break codes of silence, and foster accountability. that is an unrealistic ask for anyone, especially college students. it is the system itself that facilitates the relationship between greek life and sexual violence, not the school or individual members. this is how greek life is designed to function. stanford is no exception. future directions “perhaps there is no merit to this system of how we find community” (fraternity member 2, 2023). i entered this project with real questions about whether it is possible for stanford’s greek system to exist separately from the problems that typically plague greek life. my research answered this question with a resounding no. though this project is concluding, there is still much to be done. it is important for this research to continue, particularly through interviews. many of the students interviewed for this research volunteered to be interviewed knowing the nature of the project or were recommended based on the subject. hence, they likely represent a portion of the student body that is more in touch with issues of sexual violence in greek life and beyond. this selection of students is by no means a representative sample of the stanford greek life population or the stanford undergraduate population. in order to draw more generalizable conclusions about the state of stanford greek life, a more comprehensive sample would be important. each interview added valuable information to the picture and complicated my understanding — there is still so much to learn from those both in and outside of this system. based on these interviews, it is clear that stanford must reevaluate its practices that put the entire student body at a disadvantage by incentivising students to rush and building a campus culture that favors greek life. students cited stanford’s restrictive housing, alcohol, and party policies as key reasons why they chose to join greek life. as they see it, greek life lets them circumvent these restrictions by allowing them to live with their friends and have a fulfilling social life. perhaps if stanford altered its policies, the campus wouldn’t depend so strongly on greek life and students would become more comfortable with abandoning this dangerous system. despite claims from fraternity members that they’re working toward making the system safer, my interviews have made it clear that it is impossible to reform the system to the point where it is no longer violent. simultaneously, though, stanford has strong financial and public relations incentives to maintain its greek system, so it seems unlikely that the university would abolish greek life in the near future (kiersznowski, 2021). therefore, we must work toward creating safer conditions and preventing violence in the meantime while we continue the long term push for abolition. this statement presents a multitude of new questions: what can be done to prevent violence in the meantime? what would abolishing greek life actually look like? how can we support the creation of a positive, vibrant social atmosphere outside of greek life? would the violence in the greek system be recreated in other organizations? there is much to consider as we approach abolition, but it is clear that anything other than abolition will simply lead to more violence. greek life is just one part of the complex, intertwined network of systems and practices that prop up rape culture. we have a long way to go to create a world free of sexual violence. abolishing greek life is one part of this journey. in doing away with the notion of stanford exceptionalism, we are taking the first step. references abolish stanford ifc/isc. 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(2019, september 5). her name is chanel miller, not “unconscious intoxicated woman” in stanford assault case. the washington post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/ 2019/09/05/her-name-is-chanel-miller-not-unconscious-intoxicated-woman-stanfordassault-case/ interview with former fraternity member 1. (2023, february 22). [personal communication]. interview with fraternity member 1. (2023, february 13). [personal communication]. interview with fraternity member 2. (2023, february 14). [personal communication]. interview with fraternity member 3 & 4. (2023, february 15). [personal communication]. interview with fraternity member 5. (2023, february 15). 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(2023, february 16). [personal communication]. interview with non-greek student 2. (2023, february 20). [personal communication]. interview with sorority member 1. (2023, february 21). [personal communication]. interview with sorority member 2. (2023, february 21). [personal communication]. kadvany, e. (2015, october 1). one-third of stanford women experience sexual misconduct, survey finds. palo alto online. https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2015/10/01/onethird-of-stanford-women-experience-sexual-misconduct-survey-finds kadvany, e. (2019, november 13). stanford decides to install plaque with chanel miller’s words. palo alto online. https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2019/11/12/facingpublic-pressure-stanford-decides-to-install-plaque-with-chanel-millers-words kiersznowski, n. (2021, january 13). is it time to abolish greek life? an investigative look into stanford’s sorority system. stanford politics. https://stanfordpolitics.org/ 2021/01/13/is-it-time-to-abolish-greek-life-a-look-into-stanfords-sorority-system/ kwon, d. (2021, april 12). greek life will never face accountability. the daily of the university of washington. https://www.dailyuw.com/opinion/community/greek-life-will-never-faceaccountability/article_2c6001a8-9b50-11eb-a6ac-b326e32e4db9.html leibowitz, m. (2018, may 8). in wake of reported drugging at sigma chi, some row houses change alcohol policies. the stanford daily. https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/08/inwake-of-sigma-chi-drugging-some-row-houses-change-alcohol-policies-and-others-dont/ levin, s. (2016, august 22). stanford bans liquor from parties after sexual assault case shocks campus. the guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/22/stanforduniversity-liquor-ban-sexual-assault-brock-turner martin, p. y. (2016). the rape prone culture of academic contexts: fraternities and athletics. gender and society, 30(1), 30–43. mccready, a. m., schutts, j., & mccreary, g. r. (2022). fraternities as settings for sexual assault: the relationships of traditional masculine norms climates and sexual assault attitudes. psychology of men & masculinities, 23, 222–232. https://doi.org/10.1037/ men0000375 minow, j. c., & einolf, c. j. (2009). sorority participation and sexual assault risk. violence against women, 15, 835–851. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077801209334472 muys, o., & rathi, n. (2022, march 30). going against greek. anthro magazine. https:// anthromagazine.org/going-against-greek/ nguyen, t. (2020, september 29). why it’s so difficult to abolish sororities and fraternities. vox. https://www.vox.com/the-goods/21492167/abolish-greek-life-campus-covid robbins, a. (2015, january 30). how sorority culture contributes to the campus rape problem. the washington post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/01/30/ how-sorority-culture-contributes-to-the-campus-rape-problem/ rosenberg, g., & carroll, g. (2019, june). a stanford professor sexually harassed his student a decade ago. some female students say his inappropriate behavior never stopped. the stanford daily. https://stanforddaily.com/2022/06/19/a-stanford-professor-sexuallyharassed-his-student-a-decade-ago-some-female-students-say-his-inappropriate-behaviornever-stopped/ https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2015/10/01/one-third-of-stanford-women-experience-sexual-misconduct-survey-finds https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2015/10/01/one-third-of-stanford-women-experience-sexual-misconduct-survey-finds https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2019/11/12/facing-public-pressure-stanford-decides-to-install-plaque-with-chanel-millers-words https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2019/11/12/facing-public-pressure-stanford-decides-to-install-plaque-with-chanel-millers-words https://stanfordpolitics.org/2021/01/13/is-it-time-to-abolish-greek-life-a-look-into-stanfords-sorority-system/ https://stanfordpolitics.org/2021/01/13/is-it-time-to-abolish-greek-life-a-look-into-stanfords-sorority-system/ https://www.dailyuw.com/opinion/community/greek-life-will-never-face-accountability/article_2c6001a8-9b50-11eb-a6ac-b326e32e4db9.html https://www.dailyuw.com/opinion/community/greek-life-will-never-face-accountability/article_2c6001a8-9b50-11eb-a6ac-b326e32e4db9.html https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/08/in-wake-of-sigma-chi-drugging-some-row-houses-change-alcohol-policies-and-others-dont/ https://stanforddaily.com/2018/05/08/in-wake-of-sigma-chi-drugging-some-row-houses-change-alcohol-policies-and-others-dont/ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/22/stanford-university-liquor-ban-sexual-assault-brock-turner https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/22/stanford-university-liquor-ban-sexual-assault-brock-turner https://doi.org/10.1037/men0000375 https://doi.org/10.1037/men0000375 https://doi.org/10.1177/1077801209334472 https://anthromagazine.org/going-against-greek/ https://anthromagazine.org/going-against-greek/ https://www.vox.com/the-goods/21492167/abolish-greek-life-campus-covid https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/01/30/how-sorority-culture-contributes-to-the-campus-rape-problem/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/01/30/how-sorority-culture-contributes-to-the-campus-rape-problem/ https://stanforddaily.com/2022/06/19/a-stanford-professor-sexually-harassed-his-student-a-decade-ago-some-female-students-say-his-inappropriate-behavior-never-stopped/ https://stanforddaily.com/2022/06/19/a-stanford-professor-sexually-harassed-his-student-a-decade-ago-some-female-students-say-his-inappropriate-behavior-never-stopped/ https://stanforddaily.com/2022/06/19/a-stanford-professor-sexually-harassed-his-student-a-decade-ago-some-female-students-say-his-inappropriate-behavior-never-stopped/ scarlat, s. (2022, october 12). from the community | i was sexually assaulted. stanford didn’t keep its promises. the stanford daily. https://stanforddaily.com/2022/10/12/from-thecommunity-i-was-sexually-assaulted-stanford-didnt-keep-their-promises/ stanford fraternity and sorority life—african-american fraternal and sororal association. (n.d.). stanford university. https://fsl.stanford.edu/about/chapters-and-councils/africanamerican-fraternal-and-sororal-association stanford fraternity and sorority life—our community. (n.d.). stanford university. https:// fsl.stanford.edu/our-community stanford ir&ds. (2020). 2019 aau campus climate survey on sexual assault and misconduct. stanford university. https://provost.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2020/06/ aau-survey_campus-release-june-2020-.pdf stanfordakdphi. (n.d.). stanford ακδφ. instagram. https://www.instagram.com/stanfordakdphi/? hl=en stanford.lambdas. 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https://www.instagram.com/stanfordakdphi/?hl=en https://www.instagram.com/stanford.lambdas/ https://www.instagram.com/stanford.lambdas/ https://www.instagram.com/stanford_lambdas/?hl=en https://www.instagram.com/stanford_lambdas/?hl=en https://bowdoinreview.com/2019/11/18/stanford-universitys-quiet-complicity-in-chanel-millers-sexual-assault/ https://bowdoinreview.com/2019/11/18/stanford-universitys-quiet-complicity-in-chanel-millers-sexual-assault/ https://doi.org/10.1891/0886-6708.13.1.47 https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-list-college/articles/10-universities-with-the-biggest-endowments https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-list-college/articles/10-universities-with-the-biggest-endowments framing stanford exceptionalism interview methodology belief in stanford exceptionalism exceptionally what?: stanford’s unique flaws a dangerous cycle: the impact of stanford exceptionalism & the greek system future directions fasihuddin final colored and constrained hues exploring the depiction of gender-based violence in south asian news media zoya fasihuddin, stanford ’26 abstract: this paper critically examines the representation of gender-based violence (gbv) in pakistani, indian, and bangladeshi news media through the lenses of sensationalism and victimblaming. using the vivid metaphor of a color spectrum, this analysis delves into how media frames, language, and imagery contribute to the perpetuation of gender stereotypes, rape myths, and the stigmatization of survivors. the narrative is anchored by personal reflections of the author, who navigates the patriarchal landscape of karachi, pakistan. drawing attention to a tragic incident involving noor mukaddam, the paper dissects how media sensationalism transforms real-life tragedies into spectacles, overshadowing the gravity of the crimes. examining specific cases and headlines, the study reveals the sensationalist tactics of attentiongrabbing language, vivid imagery, and the creation of a spectacle around certain types of gbv. simultaneously, the victim-blaming frame is scrutinized for its role in shifting responsibility onto survivors, discouraging them from reporting, and fostering a culture of shame. victim-blaming language is exposed through strategic details being deleted, euphemisms, and the 'good girl–bad girl dichotomy,' which perpetuates stereotypes and diverts attention from the true root of the social problem. the paper concludes with a call for transformative narratives in south asian media, emphasizing the need for thematic framing, intersectional analyses, and a shift away from sensationalist and victim-blaming practices. ultimately, the paper envisions a reimagined color wheel where empowering narratives replace debilitating hues, fostering justice and institutional change. i was never allowed to walk down a street alone. memories like walking back from an ice-cream shop with a cone and a strawberry scoop in hand or rushing to the next block to pick up groceries were memories i never had. living in pakistan as a young girl was far too dangerous – walking alone opened the possibility of leering stares, unwanted groping, and in some cases, rape. and if the latter was to happen, it would be my fault – if i had chosen to walk outside alone, i had chosen my fate. at least that’s how the media and wider culture described it. i remember what happened to noor like it happened yesterday. on the 20th of july 2021, 27-year-old noor mukaddam, a girl who grew up in the same place i did, was raped, murdered, and beheaded by her ex-boyfriend, zahir jaffer (amanat, 2021). noor was forced to endure one of the most horrific experiences i’ve ever heard of. but even in death, the pakistani media made a spectacle out of her experience and blamed her for what happened to her. phrases such as “accused tortured noor with knuckleduster before beheading her” (azeem, 2021), “man beheaded childhood friend noor mukaddam who refused to marry him” (amanat, 2021), and “this will ultimately happen with pakistani liberals” (amanat, 2021), were plastered all over the news. the media shamed her, declaring that she had chosen her fate. cases of gender-based-violence (gbv) like noor’s murder are presented in south asian 1 news coverage through a variety of distinct media frames and rhetorical approaches. pakistani, indian, and bangladeshi news media use sensationalism and victim-blaming frames, employing specific language, images, headlines, and euphemisms that reinforce gender-stereotypes and trivialize experiences. the implications of these two media approaches to gbv are multifaceted: not only do they perpetuate traditional hegemonic narratives about survivors of gbv, but they also trigger survivors and present cases as episodic rather than thematic — isolated rather than contextualized — diminishing the extent of the problem. i’m someone who has always perceived the world through colors. residing in the vibrant yet often dangerous milieu of karachi, i use thinking through color to understand the nuances of the patriarchal society i grew up in, especially when cases like noor’s are broadcasted on news media. this personal affinity for color-thinking emerges as a valuable tool in unraveling the complex spectrum of gbv cases depicted in the media. exploring this color continuum of gbv cases in south asia is necessary to understand the lived experiences of women, because these 2 “media portrayals of violence against women provide a potential site for the reproduction of gender inequality” (easteal et al, 2014, p. 106). in certain instances, the south asian color wheel is dominated by bold shades — vivacious indigo and eye-catching tangerine — reminiscent of graphic details that transform real-life tragedies into sensational spectacles. this phenomenon aligns with the sensationalism frame, a concept examined in part i of this paper. the media's the united nations high commissioner uses the phrase gender-based violence to specifically highlight violence 1 that targets individuals or groups based on their gender, including human trafficking, forced prostitution, rape, wife battering, sexual harassment, and hate crimes (cuklanz and moorti, 5). although gbv can target men and the lgbtq+ community as well as women, this paper will solely focus on the experience of female-identifying individuals, and in most cases will refer to gender-based violence as gbv. the south asian media coverage that this paper will analyze will be exclusively focused on pakistani, indian, or 2 bangladeshi print newspapers and online news, and will not include television, literature, or film. vivid portrayal, akin to the exuberant indigo, vividly highlights the explicit, creating a spectacle that overshadows the gravity of the crime itself. conversely, there are moments when the colors are subdued — like purple fading into melancholy mauve — mirroring the silencing of survivor voices. this shift reflects the victim-blaming frame, dissected in part ii of this paper. the melancholy mauve encapsulates the hushed tones surrounding survivors, emphasizing the subtle shaming tactics employed by media that contributes to the perpetuation of gender inequality. the south asian news color spectrum lacks the varied hues that symbolize the multifaceted experiences of gender-based-violence. it sensationalized and blamed noor, and if i walked alone on a road and were to succumb to the unimaginable, it could potentially do the same to me, too. by infusing color into the analytical process, i hope to elicit a more visceral and empathetic response, fostering a deeper connection to the individual experiences of women like noor that are painted into the chromatic narratives of south asian media. as i coalesce my own experience as a pakistani woman with my research on south asian news coverage, i will delve into how exactly the news depicts distinctive cases of gbv, and the implications of such representations. bold hues of distortion: unveiling sensationalism in south asian media sensationalism is at the crux of news media — it represents the entertainment value. media history specialists gretchen sonderlund and amanda frisken state that sensationalism is a combination of striking content and elements that are used to attract an audience (sonderlund and frisken, 1). these elements can include graphic headlines, inflamed rhetoric, and startling imagery. the main aim of the sensationalism frame is to use visual and textual techniques to elicit an effect from an audience: to provoke them, anger them, rouse them, or make them sympathetic (sonderlund and frisken, 2022, p. 1). in the context of media history, “crime weeklies” were the first forms of media to use sensationalism on a large scale — they used images and graphic details to illustrate crime scenes (sonderlund and frisken, 2022, p. 3). and today, with the dominance of striking shades in the color spectrum of the south asian media representation of gbv, sensationalist tropes such as lurid details attract audiences. further, sensationalism distracts audiences from acknowledging the structural factors that cause gbv, promote rape myths, and trigger survivors. one of the most common ways south asian newspapers use sensationalism is through headlines. according to journalist amrita ghosh, in the indian media industry, headlines compete to grab the most eyeballs, and keeping the sentiments of the survivor in mind is “sacrificed at the altar of trp ratings and sales” (ghosh, 2019). an example headline that epitomizes her claim is as follows: “the rohtak gang-rape horror gets uglier: victim’s food pipe was ripped out and marks found on her chest” (ghosh, 2019). this headline sensationalizes by using violent details about the victim’s food-pipe, and additionally presents this gbv case as one-off and graphic, framing it as an isolated incident. the portrayal of this case demonstrates the media ‘episodic vs. thematic’ concept. when gbv cases are presented in the media as isolated events, with a focus on details of crimes and individual behaviors as shown in the headline above, the journalism takes an isolationist approach known as episodic framing (tasneem, 2022, p. 16). media experts suggest that employing a thematic frame instead, where the reporting focuses on a contextual narrative to address the whole cycle of gbv, from prevention to prosecution, is what actually helps curb cases (tasneem, 2022, p. 16). another example of a sensationalist headline in south asian media is “uncle turns monster, rapes 18-month year old baby” (feminism in india, 2021). in using the euphemism “monster,” this headline implies that these men are barbaric and rare, taking away from the ubiquity of sexual violence. the term additionally leads to the development of what a “monster” looks like, which often aligns with caste discrimination in south asia (feminism in india, 2021) and makes it difficult for survivors to speak out about “respectable” perpetrators. this sensationalist trope therefore makes it harder for all survivors to be believed and promotes the stereotype of perpetrators fitting into a singular category. aside from graphic headlines and euphemisms, sensationalist media tropes use imagery and graphics that impose certain narratives to displace the reality of gbv. south asian media tends to use stock images that depict a woman cowering and hiding her face, which reinforce gendered prejudices that women are weak and require rescue (som, 2020). figure 1 shows common images bangladeshi media uses when reporting cases of violence against women. by exposing audience members to images of victimized women, the media further fuels stereotypes about women being helpless, and ignores the more important question of how perpetrators can be stopped (mowri and bailey, 2022, p. 272). such images can also be triggering for people who have faced abuse, forcing them to relive the horror in their minds, furthering their trauma, increasing feelings of loneliness, and impacting their mental health (som, 2020). research indicates that articles accompanied by photographs, “especially those depicting victimization,” enjoy longer reading time and audience attention — demonstrating the impacts of the sensationalism frame (mowri and bailey, 2022, p. 272). certain pakistani news articles even use photographs of survivors, which disclose otherwise private identities and further create a spectacle out of the crime (ali and pasha, 2022, 10) another sensationalist pattern found within images used in south asian media is the visual depiction of perpetrators: they are either completely absent, or a menacingly overbearing presence (som, 2020). the latter claim is exemplified by figure 2, where eyes are staring down on a survivor. this could be interpreted to represent perpetrators fixating their eyes on women, or even as the wider south asian society judging the survivor. either way, these types of images are triggering, and employ the sensationalist strategies of turning a “grievous crime into a media circus,” thus resembling entertainment (sonderlund and frisken, 2022, p. 17). figure 1: stock images used in bangladeshi news coverage of gbv (mowri and bailey). another crucial component of sensationalism is the concept of very specific cases of gbv sparking outrage. paromita vohra, a documentary filmmaker whose work focuses on gender in south asia, states that “the rape cases that get sensationalized have certain elements in common” — they are violent cases that are accompanied by death and perpetrated by strangers (singh, 2020). according to india’s national crime records bureau, 94.2 percent of registered rape cases in 2019 were perpetrated by individuals known to the vicitms. but mainstream media coverage tended to ignore these cases, due to “victims surviving their crimes and the details of the attacks not being obscenely graphic in nature” (singh, 2020). it is therefore clear that the sensationalism used in the media has farreaching consequences: by making graphic cases hyper-visible and more common cases invisible, most women in south asia remain unaware of the different forms gbv can take. i remember this being the case with me, too. growing up, i thought one could only be raped by a by stranger and that cases of gbv had to be extremely violent, with a victim either dying or being close to death. this is what the newspapers fed the public — only certain types of cases made it to the media. the sensationalist media tactics of attention-grabbing headlines, vivid imagery, and the creation of a spectacle around specific types of gbv, are deeply ingrained within the south asian media spectrum. by exclusively spotlighting the conspicuous crimsons and bold blues on the color wheel, south asian news coverage sidesteps cases that may require greater institutional focus and also distorts the presentation of these incidents. it is not merely the sensationalist choice of cases, but also how the media presents and frames these incidents: it perpetuates a cycle of misinformation, stigmatization, and a skewed understanding of gbv in the south asian public consciousness. muted tones of blame: illuminating victim-blaming dynamics in south asian media the second core media frame that applies to the south asian news portrayal of genderbased-violence is victim-blaming. according to distinguished professor rae taylor, victim blaming is defined as placing the blame of the perpetration of violence onto the victim, a narrative to which female victims are particularly vulnerable (taylor, 2009, p. 24). in the context of the media, victim-blaming tactics predominantly include the use of unnecessary details about the victim and strategic language to place the burden of responsibility on them. tactics can also figure 2: an image of eyes staring at a survivor in indian news media (som). include the deletion of information about perpetrators to absolve them of their guilt, placing the blame on survivors. according to taylor’s research, victim-blaming is the main barrier to social change with respect to gbv, as it diverts attention from the true root of the social problem, which is the abuse of women by men (taylor, 2009, p. 22). when examining the specific language and frames of responsibility used in the south asian media color spectrum, it is apparent that the glistening pastel hues that could represent survivors as strong and empowered are dim. the luminescent shades are muted, with the responsibility of gbv falling on survivors, thereby exacerbating trauma, reinforcing rape myths, and discouraging women from fighting back. according to indian journalist and activist purnima singh, the victim-blaming frame is one that is inherent within indian news articles about violence, as most articles either partially or entirely shift the blame onto survivors (singh, 2019). an example of this is a headline that states “woman gang-raped in odisha on suspicion of having illicit affair” (singh, 2019). by providing a motive — the suspicion of an illicit affair — this phrasing in an odisha newspaper ends up justifying the horrific act of gang-rape. the survivor is now viewed with judgment and stigma for a suspected affair, potentially preventing more women from sharing their stories. through giving reasons as to why a particular case might have occurred, south asian media builds a dangerous culture which holds survivors responsible for the crime rather than the perpetrators (singh, 2019). furthermore, another example of phrasing that perpetuates victim-blaming structures is the mainstream media statement, “indian woman admits to being raped” (singh, 2019). words like “admits” or “confesses” imply that the woman had a choice or agency in the matter of her rape, suggesting that she willingly participated or was complicit in the act. this language shifts the focus away from the perpetrator, who is the one responsible for committing the crime, and places undue blame on the victim, thus reinforcing the narrative that women themselves are responsible for being raped. rather than employing such words, the media should strive to use neutral language like “woman shares experience” when covering cases of gender-based violence, especially since reporting statistics are already low within south asia (singh, 2019). using language that suggests that being raped is contemptible does not only make survivors feel ashamed, but also prevents future generations from reporting, thereby continuing the cycle of violence. an additional example of an indian headline on a case of gbv is “canadian woman allegedly raped by man she met at a pub in south delhi” (singh, 2019). by mentioning specifically that the woman was canadian and that they met at a pub, this media representation reinforces south asian stereotypes that “white women who hang out in south delhi bars are loose” and “women who drink alcohol invite rape” (singh, 2019). similar victim-blaming language is highlighted in the indian news coverage of a “mass molestation event” in bangalore (diwanji et al, 2021, p. 352). leading newspapers coined this incident as “bangalore’s night of shame” and stated that the women “self-invited the violence” by wearing “western clothes,” exacerbating the prevalence of the concepts of demeaning and shaming survivors (diwanji et al, 2021, p. 353). another well-known gbv case in bangladesh is a case involving 21-year-old college student mosharat jahan munia, who committed suicide after being assaulted by a prominent bangladeshi businessman (islam and siddique, 2023, p. 23). the bangladeshi media used phrases such as, “she had an uncontrolled lifestyle,” “she targeted well-known people,” and “she had great ambition” to describe munia, thereby using the victim-blaming frame to place the onus of responsibility on her (islam and siddique, 2023, p. 24). these examples give credence to the notion that south asian victim-blaming media tactics often portray women in a negative light and use rape culture stereotypes about clothing and alcohol to make survivors culpable. another way the victim-blaming frame is used in the media is through strategic deletion of facts and information to exonerate perpetrators and ostensibly place the onus on victims. an example of this strategic deletion was used in the newspaper portrayal of the case of 6-year-old zainab in pakistan, who was kidnapped, raped, and strangled to death by a man, imran ali (zaman et al, 2023, p. 590). a research study analyzed the use of deletion in pakistani media on this case, reaching two core findings. firstly, most newspapers focused on highlighting details about zainab and her family, with comparably minimal information on her rapist and the other people who kidnapped her (zaman et al, 2023, p. 592). zainab’s name, age, and personal details were published, and the media also highlighted how her family went to saudi arabia to perform pilgrimage before her kidnapping. this was used to insinuate negligence or irresponsibility on the part of the family, subtly shifting blame away from the perpetrator, imran ali. by emphasizing this detail, the media implied that the family's absence created an opportunity for the crime to occur, suggesting that they were somehow at fault for zainab's abduction, rape, and subsequent tragic death. secondly, most news articles did not mention the word “rape,” describing the case simply as a “heinous crime” (zaman et al, 2023, p. 593). the hence media trivialized the case, presenting it as solely a murder case, using deletion to ignore the rape. zainab’s example thus shows how deletion is used in the media to exonerate perpetrators of their complete crimes, thereby blaming survivors and their families, utilizing victim-blaming techniques. media experts such as columbia professor helen benedict have also identified a ‘good girl–bad girl dichotomy’ that is commonly used by the media to unfairly depict female crime victims within the victimblaming frame (benedict, 1992, p. 16). this is used extensively in south asian media. sidra fatima minhas’s paper on the newspaper coverage of a particular rape incident in pakistan is an example that epitomizes this dichotomy. in the case she focuses on, doctor shazia khalid was raped and later threatened, silenced, and forced to leave the country because the alleged perpetrator was an army officer (minhas, 2009, p. 65). in the pakistani context, “good women” are portrayed as virtuous, domesticated, and traditional, and a “bad woman” is portrayed as a woman who “indulges her ego, seeks recognition for her work, and neglects her familial responsibilities” (minhas, 2009, p. 68). by being a renowned doctor, dr. shazia immediately fell into the “bad woman” trope. she was described by newspapers as a “loose woman,” and a “kari” figure 3: an image of zainab that went viral (zaman et al). — which translates to being a “a stain on the family’s honor” (minhas, 2009, p. 72). it is therefore clear that the notion of a “woman becoming ‘bad’ by virtue of having been raped” (benedict, 1992, p. 17) is an inherent part of the victim-blaming framing in south asian media, as can be seen by dr. shazia’s experience. according to minhas, this is intrinsically connected to the “patriarchal character of the pakistani state,” as the state is supported by the media (minhas, 2009, p. 70). feminist writer nawal aamir khan describes it very simply: “for women in pakistan, victim-blaming is the only thing that awaits you after you have been subjected to a crime” (khan, 2022). she describes how the “training to victim-blaming begins very early on in our lives” (khan, 2022) — this is something i have felt, too. our schools would teach us that wearing eyeliner or lipstick was immoral because it would entice men, leading to harassment and rape. from a young age, we were taught that it would be our fault, and that only we could prevent something awful from happening to us. there was rarely a focus on institutional changes, or a focus on the abusers themselves. and as shown above with the “good girl–bad girl dichotomy” and victim-blaming language, south asian media continues to spin the subdued color wheel — where female empowerment is replaced by female shame, rape culture stereotypes are embedded within readers, and there is minimal focus on how perpetrators can change their actions. reimagining the color wheel: transformative narratives on gender-based violence discourse in south asian media ultimately, the answer of how exactly gender-based violence is portrayed in news media in south asia lies within the media framing paradigms of sensationalism and victim-blaming. on one hand, the sensationalist frame includes exaggerated headlines, graphic rhetoric, and stock images that make cases of gbv a spectacle. on the other, the victim-blaming frame shames survivors and makes them hyper-visible, while keeping perpetrators invisible. these frames are epitomized by the noor mukaddam case that was mentioned at the beginning of this paper. the graphic details highlighting how she was “tortured with a knuckleduster” and repeatedly mentioning her name sensationalized the case, while the character assassination done by the media perpetuated victim-blaming (azeem, 2021). but today, two years after noor was killed, the impact of her experience has resulted in changes in pakistani law, with the creation of special courts for cases of gbv, and my community at home becoming adamant to change the stigma around gbv (jaffery, 2022). noor’s case figure 4: an image of pakistani women fighting for #justicefornoor at a rally (saifi). resulted in #justicefornoor protests on social media and across the nation about how women are treated by men, society, and the media. i attended some of these protests myself, raising posters with my friends to call for justice and change in pakistan. there had previously never been any national law criminalizing domestic violence, but noor’s case prompted the pakistan domestic violence prevention and protection bill to be passed in the national assembly (saifi, 2021). although the initial newspaper coverage on her case was sensationalist and blamed her, that coverage transformed as protests increased, becoming more empowering and focusing on holding zahir accountable (saifi, 2021). the urgency of transforming the harmful media practices around gbv in south asia is clear — there needs to be thematic framing instead of episodic framing, intersectional patterns of violence should be highlighted, headlines need to use less graphic language, and the mindset that continues to perpetuate rape myths and gender stereotypes needs to change (unicef and un women, 2022, p. 40). noor’s experience can become a watershed moment for a transformation of the media across south asia – the multi-faceted hues of survivor justice and institutional change can replace the muted hues 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https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/amid-waves-protest-bangladeshi-media-erased-victims-49-reporting-sexual-violence%23header--1 https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/amid-waves-protest-bangladeshi-media-erased-victims-49-reporting-sexual-violence%23header--1 https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/amid-waves-protest-bangladeshi-media-erased-victims-49-reporting-sexual-violence%23header--1 https://doi.org/10.1177/1088767908326679 https://www.unicef.org/reports/mapping-nexus-media-reporting-violence-against-girls-and-normalization-violence https://www.unicef.org/reports/mapping-nexus-media-reporting-violence-against-girls-and-normalization-violence https://ojs.plhr.org.pk/journal/article/view/467 beutter final the evolution of new queer cinema and lesbian representation in indie film grace beutter, university of notre dame ’23 abstract: films like desert hearts (deitch, 1985) and the watermelon woman (dunye, 1996)– produced a decade apart but both labeled as essential new queer films– take notably different approaches in terms of aesthetics, strategy, and concern, but each contain key traces of pastiche, appropriation, and social constructionism. desert hearts has the look of a mainstream film and plays off of various “traditional” romance tropes, while the watermelon woman is more stylistically complex with its utilization of intertextuality and its reflexive, realist aesthetic. despite these differences, however, both of these films engage in striking reworkings of history. in desert hearts, deitch literally creates a new piece of history (with the film being a period piece, taking place in 1959), reminding viewers that queer stories have always existed– they just haven’t always been seen or told. similarly, the watermelon woman is all about responding to queer erasure and constructing a new history by posing questions about storytelling, memory, and archives. accordingly, although new queer films like desert hearts and the watermelon woman do take notably different stylistic and narrative approaches, they each provide necessary reworkings of history that subvert heterosexual traditions in both film and society, and present nuanced portrayals of queer female stories and intimacy without the sense of objectification, triviality, or disapproval that is often found in filmic representations of wlw relationships. the prevailing ideology regarding sexual orientation in our society is, and long has been, heteronormative. consequently, the idea of “straightness” has been ingrained into our language, structures, and industries as the default, the norm, or the preferred way of “being.” since its inception, the film and entertainment industry has reflected this entrenched belief system, with an overwhelming focus on straight stories, characters, and audiences. as a result of the industry’s heteronormative nature, there tends to be an assumption that queer stories aren’t relatable or compelling to straight viewers, and therefore a conclusion that straight stories are what audiences want or prefer to see. thus, gay and lesbian stories tend to be considered a niche, specifically created for gay and lesbian audiences. in other words, there is an assumed mutually exclusivity, or opposition between that which is “hetero” and that which is “homo.” a pioneer in queer studies, author and scholar alexander doty, challenges this approach, arguing that “basically heterocentrist texts can contain queer elements, and basically heterosexual, straight-identifying people can experience queer moments” (doty, 1993, p. 3). to make his point, doty elucidates that the term “queer” is not exclusively or explicitly about sexuality — rather, it marks a “flexible space for the expression of all aspects of non(anti-, contra-) straight cultural production and reception” (doty, 1993, p. 3). with this comes the idea that resisting the industry’s heteronormativity is not just about whose stories are being told, but it is also about how these stories are being created, presented, and consumed. as follows from doty’s definition, then, “new queer cinema” (nqc) comes to represent a group of films which not only portray the historically underrepresented lgbtqia+ community, but perhaps more importantly, which challenge the hegemonic heterosexuality pervasive in the film industry and society alike. in thinking about the inception and evolution of the nqc movement, american film scholar and critic b. ruby rich, known for coining the term “new queer cinema,” notes that “of course, the new queer films and videos aren’t all the same and don’t share a single aesthetic vocabulary, strategy, or concern. nonetheless they are united by a common style: call it ‘homo pomo.’ in all of them, there are traces of appropriation, pastiche, and irony, as well as a reworking of history with social constructionism very much in mind” (rich, 2013, p. 18). to this end, films like desert hearts (deitch, 1985) and the watermelon woman (dunye, 1996) — produced a decade apart but both labeled as essential new queer films — take notably different approaches in terms of aesthetics, strategy, and concern, but each contain the traces of pastiche, appropriation, and social constructionism that rich discusses. desert hearts has the look of a mainstream film and plays off of various “traditional” romance tropes, while the watermelon woman is more stylistically complex with its utilization of intertextuality and its reflexive, realist aesthetic. despite these differences, however, both of these films engage in a “reworking of history,” implementing representations of the past to reconstruct histories and portray queer female stories and intimacy without the sense of objectification, triviality, or disapproval that is often found in filmic representations of wlw (woman-loving-woman) relationships. in her book new queer cinema: the director’s cut, b. ruby rich recognizes the year 1985 as a “defining moment” in the evolution of new queer cinema and its emergence out of american independent cinema (rich, 2013, p. 6). before delving into those works that were produced in 1985 and beyond, however, it is important to consider how (if at all) “indie” film was representing queerness leading up to this — before the nqc label and before queer cinema became an identifiable niche market. girlfriends (1978), directed by claudia weill, is one such american independent film which, while not explicitly “queer,” both broaches the topic of homosexuality and begins to challenge the industry’s heterocentrist traditions and dominant ideological norms. the film follows a young photographer, susan, as she experiences the realities of adulthood — struggling to get work, venturing into the dating world, and dealing with the fact that her best friend and roommate, anne, has gotten married (to her boyfriend, martin) and moved out. notably, the film’s only explicit portrayal of queer female interest occurs about halfway through the film, when susan’s new roommate, ceil, makes a pass at susan. ceil’s pursuit is quickly thwarted, however, as an uncomfortable susan explains: “ceil, you know that woman i told you i lived with? well, she was my roommate, not my lover” (weill, 1978, 43:50). here, there is no suggestion of mutual interest, so ceil’s expression of attraction amounts to little more than an awkward encounter, and the film proceeds largely unaffected by this interaction. in other words, although there is an acknowledgement of homosexuality, this “queerness” is still taking place in proximity to the main narrative, thus reinforcing the idea that queer stories are inherently peripheral. notably, however, girlfriends does seem to embody queerness in a more conceptual sense, pushing back against the industry’s historical focus on the male perspective and portrayals of traditional gender roles by focusing on female gaze (a notable role reversal) and playing with power dynamics as they relate to gender. as jane wilson put it, there is a “difference between movies which are about the life of women, and those which simply use women to flesh out the imaginings of men” (wilson, 1977, para. 15). here, susan’s role as a photographer is incredibly intentional — it places her in a position of power and invites viewers to examine the world through her lens. during a scene in which susan, anne, and martin sit down to eat dinner together, martin begins to sneeze uncontrollably, upon which susan whips out her camera to capture him in a moment of vulnerability. as she snaps away, martin tries to mask his discomfort and regain some level of control by suggesting she “get one of [his] right profile.” the shot then cuts to a close-up of susan laughing, followed by a close-up of anne smirking, her eyes glued on martin as she observes the interaction. here, weill paints a striking image of two women finding great amusement in “objectifying” a man. moreover, throughout the film, weill portrays male characters in non-traditional male roles (or traditionally “feminine” roles): we see martin caring for the baby while anne works, we see both eric and martin cooking, etc. accordingly, in girlfriends, the emphasis on the female experience and gaze, combined with the relative emasculation of male characters, subverts traditional portrayals of gender and instills in the film a sense of ambiguity that could very well be read as queerness. to this end, girlfriends is a film which, though not explicitly queer, helped to lay the groundwork for filmmakers who wanted to challenge the established representational norms. further, in recognizing the film as one of the first independent fiction features detailing women’s lives, b. ruby rich also credits weill with paving the way for future female-centered films (rich, 2017, para. 15). we now transition into a discussion of the new queer cinema movement as it emerged and evolved through the mid-1980s and into the 90s. here, it is important to remember rich’s observation that, despite their comparable subject matter and shared categorization under the nqc label, the new queer films “aren’t all the same and don’t share a single aesthetic vocabulary, strategy, or concern” (rich, 2013, p. 18). to elucidate this point, an analysis of donna deitch’s desert hearts and cheryl dunye’s the watermelon woman comes into play. desert hearts takes place in the year 1959 and tells the story of vivian, an uptight city-living professor who is in the process of finalizing a divorce from her husband. as part of the divorce process she must travel to reno, where she stays at a ranch owned by a woman named frances. there, she meets cay, a free-spirited artist with a marked openness about her attraction to women. the film then follows vivian and cay as they develop a relationship with one another, experiencing both liberating self-discovery and crushing judgment in the process. notably, throughout desert hearts, the issue of homosexuality is foregrounded as the film’s most consequential topic. one of the most pivotal moments comes in the latter half of the film when frances kicks vivian out of the house, angrily growling: “i can’t claim angel’s wings, but i am normal. to think i was proud to call you [vivian] a friend” (deitch, 1985, 56:29). such an interaction reiterates that one of the primary points of tension in desert hearts is queerness, and reconciling that identity with the one society expects. in other words, the battles vivian and cay face, whether internally or relationally, ultimately boil down to their love for each other — we watch vivian struggle to come to terms with her sexual identity and see how cay’s relationship with frances is severely impacted by her relationships with women (and with vivian in particular). in contrast, while the watermelon woman is a film about lesbians, it is perhaps more prominently about blackness and intersectionality. the watermelon woman takes place in the 1990s, documenting the life of cheryl, a black lesbian filmmaker, as she gathers information and archives for a film she is working on — a documentary investigating the identity of a black actress known for playing the stereotypical “mammy” role in a number of 1930s films, credited in each of these films not by name, but instead as “the watermelon woman.” through this process, cheryl not only discovers that the actress was a woman known as fae richards, but further that richards had romantic relationships with women, thus bringing sexuality into a conversation that had previously been focused on race. outside of the project, cheryl is forced to face challenges to both her blackness and queerness as she deals with changes in her own friendships and romantic relationships. during a conversation about their love lives, tamara, cheryl’s (black) best friend, brings cheryl’s relationship with diana, cheryl’s (white) girlfriend, into question, stating: “all i see is that once again you’re going out with a white girl acting like she wants to be black, and you’re being a black girl acting like she wanna be white. i mean what’s up with you cheryl? you don’t like the color of your skin nowadays?” (dunye, 1996, 54:51). notably, this observation has nothing to do with cheryl’s identity as a lesbian and everything to do with cheryl’s identity as a black person. moreover, cheryl’s investment in fae richards (“the watermelon woman”) is driven by her interest in this black actress and in black (film) history more generally, and it is only by coincidence that she discovers that fae was also a lesbian. to this end, the principal relationships and plot points in the watermelon woman seem to be primarily informed by race, with the queer experience and the female experience serving as secondary points of intersection that contribute to the development of complex identities. now, this is not to say that queerness is unimportant or even less important than race in the watermelon woman, but rather to suggest that, as human beings, different aspects of our identity will be more or less salient depending upon context, and that the topics addressed in this film happen to bring race to the fore. in addition to differences in content and thematic focus, desert hearts and the watermelon woman are also very visually, stylistically, and structurally distinct. desert hearts’ vivid cinematography, “jukebox score,” and use of traditional romance cliches makes for a film that feels rather familiar, almost hollywood-esque. as b. ruby rich puts it, “[deitch] wanted the look of a mainstream film to sugarcoat a nonmainstream narrative. and she got it” (rich, 2017, para. 8). aside from visual aesthetics, though, deitch’s use of romance tropes also helped her to create a film that was, perhaps, a bit more palatable for everyday (heterosexual) viewers. the film’s love interests inevitably come from “different worlds” and must reconcile their apparently incompatible lifestyles/personalities; the sense of a “forbidden love” is unmistakably present throughout the film; and the long-awaited kiss in the rain is something we have all seen countless times. by creating a film with such immersive and idyllic visuals, and such recognizable moments and tropes, deitch turns an arguably unrelatable wlw narrative into something that could “play in movie theaters and show lesbian romance to the world” (rich, 2017, para. 14). quite oppositely, the watermelon woman takes a much more complex visual and stylistic approach, incorporating an impressive assortment of media and swinging between fictional and “documentary” formats throughout the film. though the variety of film formats (i.e., 16mm, hi8 video, super 8) were (apparently) as much of a budgetary and resource-related limitation as a stylistic choice, the varying visual quality significantly contributes to the film’s sense of reflexivity, making viewers aware of the many levels at which stories are being both told and consumed (derk, 2018, p. 296). here, the use of different cameras helps to distinguish and follow the jumps being made between the film’s fictional world (level 1), the interviews and video diaries (level 2), and the archival footage (level 3). more specifically, “the 16mm sections contain the main narrative, and show cheryl working in a number of jobs… cheryl’s direct address to the camera and her interviews with people regarding fae are shot in hi8 video, while super 8 is used for the footage of fae that cheryl discovers and includes in her documentary” (derk, 2018, p. 296). to this point, dunye doesn’t seem to make any particular effort to keep audiences confined to one immersive story-world (like deitch does in desert hearts); rather, she actively provokes thoughts and questions about film as an archive and a mode of communication by throwing viewers back and forth between these multiple lenses. notably, this more experimental and reflexive visual strategy certainly supplements the exploratory nature of the film’s narrative content; however, as opposed to desert hearts, this complexity may make the film less consumable for the average viewer. despite these numerous differences, though, desert hearts and the watermelon woman find common ground in the way that they each engage in reworkings of history which challenge the hegemonic heterosexuality found in both the film industry and in society at large, and portray queer female/lesbian stories without the sense of objectification, triviality, or disapproval that is often seen in filmic representations of wlw romances. in desert hearts, deitch literally creates a new piece of history (with the film being a period piece, taking place in 1959), reminding viewers that queer stories have always existed– they just haven’t always been seen or told. she takes the romance tropes that we have seen time and again throughout history and recontextualizes them to fit the story of vivian and cay, reflecting the appropriation and social constructionism discussed by rich. to this end, their kiss in the rain is not just passionate payoff– it’s a rewriting of history that gives queer relationships the opportunity to experience the moments that only straight relationships have historically been afforded. moreover, deitch’s construction of the sex scene between vivian and cay beautifully portrayed something which has, throughout history, been either exploited for male pleasure or been seen as distasteful. as rich puts it: “to understand the power of this scene, when it finally arrives after an eternity of waiting, you have to understand that most serious films by or about lesbians at the time did not even have sex scenes: they were tasteful, indirect, with french on the soundtrack, maybe a cutaway to morning… explicit sex between women was still considered by some feminist viewers to be the domain of pornography, something to be protected from instead of shown” (rich, 2017, para. 17). accordingly, in desert hearts, deitch represents a story and an experience that has been intentionally buried throughout history, playing with (and subverting) the film industry’s heterocentrist conventions to create a document that explicitly highlights queer narratives. similarly, the watermelon woman is all about responding to queer erasure and constructing a new history by posing questions about storytelling, memory, and archives. this idea is elucidated by dunye, who explains that nqc “was, above all, a call to transform the heterosexual structures of cinema… it was about ‘playing with form, … changing not only the stories that are being told and filling the void, but … push[ing] how narrativity works, how stories are told’” (oloukoï, 2021, para. 5). to this end, dunye creates a character who is interested in uncovering black history, seeking to document her quest to learn more about the black actress known as the watermelon woman (fae richards). as she justifies her interest in this enigmatic figure, cheryl watches a clip from one of richards’s films and expresses her admiration, exclaiming, “girlfriend has it going on” (dunye, 1996, 6:57). notably, in the scene we are shown, richards’ character embodies the traditionally desexualized mammy stereotype found in many racist classical hollywood movies (koresky, 2020, para. 4). accordingly, with such a complementary exclamation, cheryl reverses this stereotype and establishes a world where black women are allowed to be appreciated and admired. as noted above, viewers also come to learn that richards had romantic relationships with women, thus responding to erasure at two levels: blackness and queerness. as formal archives (e.g., books from the library) intersect and conflict with personal ones (e.g., interviews of family members), we begin to recognize the subjectivity of history — how stories are told, and what stories are chosen to be remembered in the first place. to this end, it is important to note that the archival footage uncovered throughout cheryl’s investigation is undeniably intended to make viewers believe that richards was a real actress. only at the end of the film do we find out that fae’s identity is fictional, and merely representative of the many black actresses omitted from film history. thus, through its pastiche and irony the watermelon woman recognizes the malleability of meaning, demonstrating how an understanding of social constructionism can function in film. left with questions of truth and representation, viewers are forced to confront the reality that history is constructed (and with the watermelon woman, dunye proves it can be reconstructed to incorporate black stories, queer stories, and any other stories which have been historically underrepresented and ignored). accordingly, although new queer films like desert hearts and the watermelon woman take notably different approaches to aesthetics, strategy, and concern, they each provide necessary reworkings of history that subvert heterosexual traditions in both film and society, and present nuanced portrayals of queer female stories that we don’t often see. returning back to doty’s definition of the term “queer,” it is clear that such a label– at least in the context of nqc– transcends sexuality, with filmmakers like dietch and dunye implementing pastiche, appropriation, and social constructionism to present “queerness” as something which encapsulates an artistic approach as much as it does an individual’s sexual orientation. to this end, as she discusses the nqc movement, b. ruby rich explains that “from the beginning, new queer cinema was a term more successful for a moment than a movement. it was meant to catch the beat of a new kind of filmand video-making that was fresh, edgy, low-budget, inventive, unapologetic, sexy, and stylistically daring” (rich, 2013, p. 131). here, rich strikes at the idea that above all, nqc stood as a challenge to the mainstream — perhaps more of an ideological categorization than one based upon form, aesthetic, or narrative content alone. references deitch, d. desert hearts productions. (1985). desert hearts. derk, g. (2018). inverting hollywood from the outside in: the films within cheryl dunye’s the watermelon woman. screen, 59(3), 293–310. https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjy036. doty, a. (1993). there’s something queer here. in making things perfectly queer: interpreting mass culture (pp. 1-16). university of minnesota press. dunye, c. (1996). the watermelon woman. koresky, m. (2020). turn the gaze around. the criterion collection. www.criterion.com/current/posts/6980-turn-the-gaze-around. oloukoï, c. (2021). the watermelon woman at 25: the black lesbian classic that wears its brilliance lightly. bfi. www.bfi.org.uk/features/watermelon-woman-cheryl-dunye. rich, b. (2013). new queer cinema: the director’s cut. duke university press. rich, b. (2017). desert hearts: the thrill of it all. the criterion collection. www.criterion.com/current/posts/5118-desert-hearts-the-thrill-of-it-all. weill, c. cyclops films. (1978). girlfriends. wilson, j. (1977). hollywood flirts with the new woman. the new york times. www.nytimes.com/1977/05/29/archives/hollywood-flirts-with-the-new-woman-after-a-d cade-of-social-change.html. wood, r. (1978). responsibilities of a gay film critic. film comment, 14(1), pp. 12-17. http://proxy.library.nd.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/respo sibilities-gay-film-critic/docview/210232621/se-2. reading trans resistance and care in banana yoshimoto’s kitchen sandi khine, stanford university ‘25 abstract: banana yoshimoto’s kitchen is the subject of scholarly literature studying domesticity, subjecthood, young adult life, and urban placemaking in contemporary japan. this paper looks primarily at transgender life making, care, and hybrid resistance and struggle through the character of eriko. using the frameworks and critical analysis of transgender marxist theory, i analyze eriko’s role in both the domestic sphere and the club where she works, finding that eriko’s care work makes, shapes, and gives life to queer joy in otherwise bleak capitalist modernity. “i have cheerfully chosen to make my body my fortune. i am beautiful! i am dazzling! if people i don’t care for are attracted to me, i accept it as the wages of beauty.” from eriko’s will. (yoshimoto, 1993, p. 40) banana yoshimoto’s 1988 work kitchen stands at the center of multidisciplinary academic analyses studying space, objects, youth, and domesticity in modern japanese literature (stephenson, 1994; treat, 2018). though published as two separate stories in the englishtranslated novella, kitchen as a singular narrative focuses on the lives of main characters mikage and yuichi, young adults who must navigate familial loss, move through grief, and ultimately build new relationships. this work looks at the character of eriko, whose life and death drive the events of the story, and who plays a central role in mikage and yuichi’s young lives. however, most existing literature studies eriko’s character in relation to mikage and yuichi, treating her as a tool of the narrative, rather than a character worthy of full analysis. reviews of eriko observe her primarily as a companion to the other characters; for example, ian buruma (1993) writes in a review that “the kitchen is to mikage what drag is to eriko: a refuge from loneliness after the death of a loved one” (p. 29). further, deborah garrison (1993) comments that eriko’s transition “is a piece of superfluous inventiveness on the author’s part; it lends everything around it an air of cheerful unreality that mirrors mikage’s state of mind” (p. 110). these assessments do not engage with eriko’s trans identity in a way that allows a full and complete observation of her character; rather, they see eriko’s transition and personality as ways to better understand mikage and her own relationship with grief, love, healing, and whimsy. to bring eriko’s character and life to the forefront, this paper studies eriko through the lens of transgender marxist theory and analysis. i first lay out the framework of transgender marxism and how it is productive in reading eriko’s character. building upon such an analysis, i narrow in on labor and care, observing the ways eriko’s labor and care are made evident in two central ways in the story. i first analyze eriko’s work outside of the domestic sphere, her work at the club that provides income, and then pose this against an analysis of eriko’s labor within the domestic sphere, with yuichi and eventually, mikage. i observe how found family and new domesticities are shaped through her care work. in doing so, i argue that eriko’s care work, both within and outside of the domestic sphere that serves as the primary setting for the story, offers a narrative of hybrid resistance and struggle—queer joy—in the face of a modernity synonymous with industrial capitalism. transgender marxism as method i employ transgender marxism as a critical framework through which to read eriko because it offers the most comprehensive and careful lens that eriko’s trans identity might be understood by. transgender marxism draws heavily from marxist feminist politics, which considers how socially reproductive labor is work that reproduces both workers as humans and their labor power under capitalism. however, transgender marxism departs from a traditional marxist feminist analysis in the way that it ensures that trans life itself is made legible: as gleeson and o’rourke (2021) write in their introduction of transgender marxism, “we are opposed to the entrenchment of a transcendent principle of ‘trans’ that comes to obscure the particular struggles of trans people to survive in the face of capitalism” (p. 22). transgender marxism makes concrete trans life in the diverse ways that it is lived and considers the ways that transition demands a disruption in all of the “epistemic regimes” that involve property and ownership, work and labor networks, family structures, and domestic life (gleeson & o’rourke, 2021, p. 31). indeed, transgender marxism offers an opportunity to read eriko’s character in a way that departs from the perspectives of existing scholarship. the collection of essays in transgender marxism is the seminal work on which i refer to, and which grounds my analysis. specifically, i call to attention the way literary modernism is rife with examples of trans women as “metaphorical figures for the destabilization of inherited gender traditions” (gleeson & o’rourke, 2021, p. 24). i hope this paper moves away from a more conventional study of how trans women often serve as literary tools to ground the experience of cis women and instead toward a study of a trans woman who captures agency and is able to live a life of queer joy under the systems of production that continue to oppress her and, ultimately, result in her cruel and untimely death. this work does not question why eriko as a trans woman exists in a japanese novel set in the 1980s but rather attempts to explore how her care work is shaped by her experiences, and her experiences shape her labor in a reflexive way. in engaging with transgender marxism as a framework, i hold that this paper will emphasize the forms of socially reproductive labor that eriko engages with as a trans woman under the conditions of marginalization and stigma and this care work and labor is at the center of the queer community and familial support that mikage finds solace in. nat raha’s (2021) essay in the collection calls for a queer and trans social reproduction that “makes legible the caring labor that enables and maintains queer and trans people and lives” (p. 123). furthermore, because the labor of feminized, queer, and trans workers is often made invisible and therefore materially and socially undervalued, it is necessary to situate this work in the divisions of labor under capitalism. the story focuses in particular on an urban center of japan as a location from where queer lives and worlds might be written and therefore reconstructs notions of the domestic household and family structures. transgender marxism recalls “that the struggles of living one’s life transgender must be threaded, rather than dispersed into distinguishable ‘spheres’” (gleeson & o’rourke, 2021, p. 37). in an analysis of this literary work and the character of eriko, observing her labors of care and work in the public and domestic sphere separately—and together—offer various insights into how she engages in work under capitalism. these divisions are also symptoms of capitalism but still serve as effective modes of understanding eriko’s engagements and interactions with work in a text whose thematic setting is the domestic space of the kitchen. it is the work of recognizing eriko’s agency as a trans woman, as well as her care and labor, that deserves attention. eriko’s work in public space “trans people waging struggles for economic survival offer a means of imagining a class politics that pursues the potential for full human development.” michelle o’brien (2021) in “introduction: trans work: employment trajectories, labor discipline, and gender freedom” the public character of queer sexuality and labor is made most visible through eriko’s work in the club. although eriko’s profession is mentioned repeatedly as mikage stays at the tanabe home, it is primarily to the effect of eriko arriving back to the home at early morning hours. this section focuses on eriko’s work through a more traditional and mainstream conception of work and labor: that which is an exchange of goods and services for payment. when yuichi first tells the story of eriko’s transition, he recounts how eriko quit her job, transitioned, and bought the nightclub, raising yuichi as a woman alone. there are more details about eriko’s work revealed in her conversations with mikage, though these details remain minimal—she works at a “gay bar,” and “she would come home a little tipsy,” in mikage’s observations (yoshimoto, 1993, p. 15). readers continue to see glimpses of eriko from mikage’s conversation with chika, the head girl at eriko’s club who is also a trans woman, and in mikage’s memories and descriptions of eriko. chika, to whom eriko had willed the club, is the only other character in the story with insight into eriko’s public life and work. mikage’s interaction with chika is brief and primarily about yuichi, but it reveals that eriko’s work and labors of care in the public sphere were farreaching. the space of the night club is thus understood as a safe haven for trans women, and there is the implication that a form of sex work is involved. eriko has been able to create a space of care and community for trans women in the face of capitalism: her struggle is against the stigma and marginalization that trans women experience. in presumably reshaping the nightclub into a space of care and queer support systems, we observe how eriko has been able to build queer joy. survival sex work, which is a major site of class struggle for trans women of color, can offer further insight into how eriko has built networks among otherwise socially marginalized trans women through the physical space of the night club and through the metaphorical spaces of mutual aid networks where trans women engage in collective struggle. work itself, which imposes gendered expectations on everyone, is therefore a site where eriko’s experiences reveal the ways she, as the club owner, is able to resist gendered expectations and instead transform these gendered expectations to produce opportunities for trans women’s self-determination, dignified expression, and joy and pleasure. eriko’s work at the nightclub transcends a traditional transactional relationship of payment for goods and services; rather, it is evident through her personality and her relationships with the other girls at the club, such as chika, that her labors of care extend far beyond the private sphere. while liberal feminisms have not meaningfully challenged capitalist production, transgender marxism offers a way to understand eriko’s care labor so as “to undo the ‘hierarchy and domination’ inherent in the division of reproductive labor across gendered lines” (zazanis, 2021, p. 51). trans social reproduction, in this case performed by eriko, is a practice by which trans people produce means for their survival. eriko’s work in the nightclub, accumulating capital and being able to support herself and yuichi, and later on, care for mikage, are examples of ways trans people produce and reproduce their own identities in relationships and social spheres. the public sphere of eriko’s workplace is unique because it involves her care labor and the informal, unpaid labor of building transgender networks of care for which marxist analyses are well-suited. gleeson (2021) writes that trans social reproduction occurs in community, but there is no one trans community that exists (p. 54). this is true for kitchen, wherein the trans community is that of eriko’s nightclub, one which she actively and intentionally fosters. eriko’s work at the nightclub is integral to a comprehensive understanding of how she navigates capitalism as a trans woman: her form of resistance is in the way that she builds a community of trans women, materially supports them, and provides them with care that goes beyond the work itself. chika, for example, is said to have often spent the night at the tanabe apartment, underscoring the importance of eriko’s leadership and care in urban trans woman community spaces (yoshimoto, 2021, p. 63). kellerman (2010) observes that yoshimoto does not reveal any details about eriko’s career before her transition (p. 54). because the focus is on her labor and work as the owner of a queer nightclub, i find that yoshimoto reveals the importance of eriko’s work at the nightclub not only for her struggle as a trans woman, but also for the other trans women who are all unified in their collective struggles. under the framework of transgender marxism, trans work struggles, like eriko’s, and “what they offer to the broader gender freedom of the working class, breaks open the relationship between identity liberation and class struggle” (o’brien, 2021, p. 75). for eriko, her gender expression is central to her human fulfillment, dignity and life, and her experience and expression of beauty and pleasure. these fulfillments and joys are made visible through her work and her commitment to following a nonconforming self-expression that is, against all odds, fulfilling her whole identity. eriko’s labor in domestic space “if a person wants to stand on her own two feet, i recommend undertaking the care and feeding of something… by doing that you come to understand your own limitations. that’s where it starts.” eriko to mikage (yoshimoto, 1993, p. 33) the care and affective labor that eriko does in her place of work is reproduced also in the domestic space that readers have the most access to; though the kitchen and tanabe home is a private space, the story offers a unique interiority of eriko’s domestic life as mikage stays at the apartment processing her grief. in the private space of the tanabe home, eriko is able to engage in queer world making that extends beyond her work in the nightclub and manifests in a family of social support and community building. it is notable that eriko’s role as a single mother to yuichi disrupts the heteronormative, nuclear family that is upheld by gendered divisions of labor. transgender marxism thus emphasizes a “concept of the affective work of gender as gender labor that supports gender expressions” and queer and trans conceptions that are produced in queer households (raha, 2021, p. 116). i argue that eriko has created a queer household in the tanabe apartment, where her queer life is reproduced and exists separately from the traditional gendered norms of care labor. the tanabe apartment is a place where she has raised yuichi as a mother, and though a queer household such as hers may be considered illegitimate or unrecognized in mainstream social and political structures, it is one that does the work of creating queer community space. wages due lesbians (1977) argue that “the familial forms we have been inhabiting and creating for decades are often rendered invisible as sites of social reproduction” (p. 124). in this process, the costs of social reproduction are reliant on private relationships, ones that exist in the domestic sphere. however, eriko is able to move beyond traditional familial forms in a queer household: her familial relationships involve not just yuichi, her son, but also mikage, who she takes in, and chika, whose roles transcends being just a coworker at the club. eriko’s role as a trans woman in her queer household, where she is the sole caretaker of yuichi, reveals how she is able to live the best she can amidst capitalist alienation. in her will, eriko writes that she is “body and soul a woman. a mother in name and in fact… i have loved my life” (yoshimoto, 1993, p. 40). transgender marxist theory affirms the necessary work for trans survival; in eriko being able to live fully as a trans woman and produce forms of community and sociality in her private space, this caring work is made visible. in the framework of transgender marxism, it is clear that the care work that eriko engages in within the tanabe household—emotional and psychological support, performance and expression, and feeding and housing and raising and cleaning—is work of survival. her labors of care are situated as domestic labor in that space; as the primary provider, eriko’s labor is made distinct against a heterosexual nuclear family structure. in place of this structure is a found family, a queer trope that finds its place in the story as a place of grounding for mikage as she grows through her grief. mikage’s found family is eriko and yuichi, and for these characters, it appears that they are not just content with, but also find joy, in their queer family. eriko’s affective labors are not just for her own survival—rather, the networks of care shown in the novel, such as purchasing extravagant machines like juicers and bringing mikage gifts like a banana print glass, serve the family that she has constructed. the found family and new domestic space is indeed a site, physical and emotional, of eriko’s resistance and desire to create queer and trans joy despite external influences. in her will, she explicitly warns yuichi not to contact any biological family from his birth mother because they “cursed” her (yoshimoto, 1993, p. 40). eriko, who was an orphan and who was taken in by her wife’s family, has constructed a family and identity outside of any state recognized relation. this is an outright rejection of a hetero-patriarchal family structure, one that capitalism demands and depends on. her existence and identity as a trans woman necessarily subvert that, but more than that, her home can serve as a radical and transformative space that can be articulated as a site of “knowledge and praxis for resistance” (raha, 2021, p. 119). in particular, this domestic space, one that exists despite the constraints and scorn of capitalist structures, serves as both a means of survival for eriko and also as a means for loving and caring for her loved ones. in a less generous reading of the domestic space that eriko has created as a trans woman and mother, eriko’s role as performing the bulk of emotional care labor is one that reproduces the reliance on women to perform the endless free labor of caring and holding up social support systems. in queer communities too, gendered stereotypes may play out where queer femmes do this labor without their communities acknowledging the nature of this work. however, in a transgender marxist perspective, eriko’s work takes the necessary role of creating trans livelihoods while living in the material pressures of capitalist society. in trans social reproduction theory, it is critical to recognize that eriko’s specific labor is undertaken under material conditions that also socially abject her. therefore, the affective labor that she engages in her queer household is not just necessary for her survival, but also a way that she creates joy and love despite the constraints of capitalism. conclusion indeed, understanding how trans people engage in class struggle and form community, joy, and family can offer broader visions of gender freedom in the midst of capitalist society. i hope to briefly bring attention to eriko’s death: it is the catalyst for yuichi and mikage coming together throughout the second half of the story, and it is what leaves both of them with no family left besides each other. how can we make sense of eriko’s death and the particular circumstances of her death? her life is fleeting, and in mikage’s eyes, it is eriko’s joy and care that become the most visible. for her to be a trans woman character in the story and then suffer the violence of transmisogyny in one of the places that she has cultivated to be home, yoshimoto ends eriko’s story in a way that is almost expected, but still disappointing. it is significant, however, that even in her final moments, eriko is no passive observer to violence and transmisogyny. she beats her stalker to death and so is able to continue her resistance to the capitalist structures that put trans women at risk. perhaps this final form of resistance is a way that yoshimoto might justify eriko’s death. still, this moment is contextualized by her work; her stalker finds her in the club she owns and works at—a space that she has built to be safe. eriko’s care work, in the domestic space and as labor in the nightclub, is a unique site to observe her simultaneous resistance and struggle despite the suppression of industrial capitalism. transgender marxism offers an appropriate framework through which to understand eriko’s relationships to care, work, love, and her trans identity. eriko’s work in the public sphere, where she creates space for trans women to find comfort, informs her narrative of resistance against hetero patriarchal capitalism. this work cannot be extracted or understood separately from her care work in her domestic life and the family that she has built in the tanabe apartment, shaping new relations of care. ultimately, eriko’s character and story is one of resistance and of joy, speaking to the deeply material ways trans people struggle, restructure, and reproduce new relationships between home and production. references buruma, i. “weeping tears of nostalgia.” review of kitchen by banana yoshimoto. the new york review of books 40:14 (12 aug. 1993): 29-30. garrison, d. “day-o!” review of kitchen by banana yoshimoto. the new yorker 68: 49 (25 jan. 1993): 109-10. gleeson, j.j., e. o'rourke, and j. rosenberg. 2021. transgender marxism. kellerman, r. 2010. “a room of her own in banana yoshimoto’s kitchen.” pacific asia inquiry, volume 1, number 1: 54-63. yoshimoto, b. 1993. kitchen. new york: washington square press. the sociolinguistic benefits of multilingualism for the lgbtq community patricia nova, stanford ‘26 abstract: it is well elucidated in the field of sociolinguistics that language is a key determinant in the way individuals interact with themselves and others and that multilingualism thus has implications in deepening personal expression. however, there is very sparse research done in the domain of how this linguistic fixture interacts specifically with lgbtq expression, an oddity considering that much of contemporary queer pride is conveyed through linguistic expression, fostering a fortified sense of belonging and assurance within one’s own identity. my research examines not only how language itself can change queer expression, but also how lgbtq multilinguals have a unique set of tools to shape their social interactions and promote community. in addition to consulting linguistics and queer historical/sociological research, i interviewed three multilingual queer undergraduates at stanford university with a series of semistructured, narrative questions. when combined, my investigation allows for this paper to focus extensively on the mechanistic particularities of multilingualism that beget sociolinguistic benefits for queer individuals. namely, linguistic adaptation, cultural navigation, and socioemotional connection are key themes that presented themselves in the journeys of queer multilinguals. these findings underscore the possibility of linguistic diversity as a means to nourish greater inclusivity and understanding and have crucial ramifications for the amelioration and amplification of community, identity, and belonging. keywords: queer multilingualism, linguistic determinism, sociopragmatic transfer, lgbtq, identity formation, adaptation i grew up with two constants in my life: my love of languages and my queerness. rooted into my personality at a young age, these fixtures shaped me in ways i could not comprehend until years later. raised bilingual in english and romanian, i readily found a proclivity for learning other languages—french, mandarin, and spanish to be exact—each of which revealed new and unique facets of my personality. this gave me the ability to interact with the world in an entirely new way, connecting deeply with people i otherwise never would have. concurrent with my journey through languages, i was making strides in my gender identity. realizing i was transgender was daunting, as aside from the innate physical incongruity i experienced, the prejudice from people in my life led to a loss of connection with them and the community i was born into. however, i realize retrospectively that because of the languages i learned growing up, i already had access to entirely new worlds of people to bond with and learn from. in a way, this did not only help me surmount the loss i had experienced, but it enabled me to derive pride from my identity in entirely new and unique ways. languages saved my life, and i am now invested in understanding why and how they did it. beyond my own profound experiences, the existing scholarly research on the impact of multilingualism for queer individuals has revealed that my experiences are far from unique. academics studying the separate fields of language and queerness have each arrived at similar conclusions: speaking multiple languages enriches identity construction (kasper, 1992), and identity itself is pivotal in navigating a queer journey, in the sense that having a label to assign to an identity makes the ability to explore oneself in their niche far easier (pew research center, 2013). for example, having a term for existing outside of the gender binary (i.e., genderfluid or non-binary) facilitates the exploration of one’s gender identity to comprehend where they comfortably fit personally and socially. put simply, it has become evident that languages have a crucial role in shaping social interactions and fostering community bonds, something that can offer unique advantages to the queer community. i will argue that multilingualism allows lgbtq individuals to navigate and bridge diverse social landscapes, thereby enabling them to more effectively consolidate, process, and heal from anti-lgbtq perspectives and internalized biases. this is particularly true for queer english language learners (ells), as english has become the predominant language in many lgbtq spaces (especially online) and is the primary language for most resources on queerness. this paper aims to display that language learning can serve as a powerful tool for resilience and self-affirmation in the face of discrimination, something of utmost importance for a community long fraught with considerable adversity. in order to demonstrate why language acquisition affects queer expression and benefits the lgbtq community, i use a sequential approach. first, exploring the current scholarly landscape on “queer multilingualism” will assist in understanding not only the relevant academic fields in this discussion, but also identifying opportunities for further exploration. moving forward with this framework, the paper will break down this topic into its first principles, exploring it through the lens of linguistics, and separately through queer history and sociology. beginning with the language portion, i will explore key language ideologies, such as linguistic determinism, the emergent identity theory, and sociopragmatic transfer. the implications of these findings will be crucial when moving into the next section of queer history and sociology. this portion will unpack centuries of lgbtq experience to help frame the socialization of this community in a contemporary context. understanding the roots of anti-queerness is imperative, as it sheds light on the continued plight of the community, an awareness that is crucial to resonate with why the presented language ideologies are pertinent. this leads to the last section, which finally explores the specific ways in which multilingualism can shape and support queer identity. by interviewing three, queer multilingual undergraduates at stanford university, i am able to identify and examine the key themes in their experiences, all the while calling upon concepts and frameworks established earlier in the paper. to conclude, i will use these findings to suggest potential implications in multilingualism being able to nurture stronger, more fulfilling communities amongst queer folks, an essential endeavor in a time when lgbtq rights remain perpetually under threat. current research at the intersection of language and identity the field of queer multilingualism due to the specialized area of study this topic covers, there is limited research done specifically on “queer multilingualism.” furthermore, the existing scholarly work in the field is oftentimes very niche, focused on a particular identity or language subgroup. however, they do provide a sufficient foundational framework for the general disciplines involved in the conversation. primarily, it became evident that literature with a linguistics-heavy focus is ideal for more concrete analysis of the correlation between expression of identity and number of languages spoken. for instance, a 2020 thesis paper from the university of leiden titled “multilingual lgbtq+ youth: queer language and identity” articulates how english second language dutch speakers interpret and express their identities. for example, when asked the question, “do you feel that the language you discuss your identity in has an impact on how you communicate it?” only 6.6% of participants responded in the negative (lambert, 2020, p. 55). the same source discusses how there are certain linguistic features that make it cumbersome to convey sentiments related to queerness, and in the same vein, the paper “queer identities and expressions in romance languages” from the university of pennsylvania focuses specifically on the limitation of romance languages to queer expression (floyd, 2020). here, the researcher divulges the lack of standardized gender-neutral grammar due to strict binary gendering of nouns, adjectives, etc., and how this makes expression outside of the gender binary quite difficult (floyd, 2020). this promulgates the recurrent theme that language itself can impede adequate self-expression, which is directly correlated to, and thus is a dictator of, the ways in which you can perceive yourself. tying this principle back into the aforementioned concept of gender neutrality, in binary-gendered languages (i.e., romance tongues), it is exceedingly more difficult for a gender non-conforming person to come to terms with and explore their identity in a concrete way without borrowing linguistic features from english (i.e., they/them pronouns). given these few sources, one thing is made abundantly clear: language does impact the way queer people interact with their identities. however, these same sources often have a tendency to overshadow the role multilingualism itself plays in these scenarios. due to their heavy focus on queer ells, many researchers simply explain that multilingualism has to do with acquiring english as a pragmatic means to increase accessibility to queer resources and community (floyd, 2020). contrarily, my research aims to explore how specifically language is able to shape lgbtq identity and what specific linguistic features make multilingualism a tool for resilience. to do this, we need to examine language independently of queerness to understand its mechanisms and the relationship between queerness and language. language as a dictator of identity in the conversation about supporting queer identity, we must evoke such ideologies to first comprehend the nuanced interplay of language and one’s sense of self. to begin, linguistic determinism is a widespread theory that explains how the structure and vocabulary of the language we speak can alter our thoughts and views (cornell, 2024). lena boroditsky et al. (2009) pragmatically tested linguistic determinism by showing how spanish and german speakers describe a “bridge” masculinely or femininely, respectively, due to its gendered classification in both languages. one caveat in linguistic determinism is that proponents of the theory often suggest that language can not only shape, but restrict what we think about, which is not entirely accurate. for one, many languages lack terms to describe lgbtq identities, but evidently, this doesn't mean speakers of those languages cannot be queer (gandhi, 2020). however, it does make it more difficult to actualize one’s identity, indicating a pervasive effect of language on identity, albeit indirectly. thus, consulting more refined linguistic ideologies will help elucidate what specifically makes language such a powerful tool. namely, in 2005, linguists bucholtz and hall introduced their “emergence principle” of identity formation. they argue that identity is not predetermined by the language one speaks, but rather by the way that language interacts with one’s community, culture, and society (p. 588). in turn, this is a key proponent in cultivation of an identity. for example, bucholtz and hall (2005) interviewed a hijra, in which she describes her experience of being exiled from her family (p. 589). for context, hijra is a south asian cultural identity which holistically includes trans, intersex, and non-binary people, for which a western equivalent does not directly exist, making them a very unique social minority to conduct linguistic research with. with this particular interview conducted in hindi, which has obligatory gendering of verbs, bucholtz and hall (2005) noticed how the hijra used the masculine verbiage when describing how her family spoke of her and in the feminine when speaking of herself (p. 590). this is a powerful show of how language must exist within context to build identity, in the sense that it can be used as empowerment in opposition of familial or societal perception. this elucidates how language does not, in fact, restrict how you can speak of yourself, but rather acts as a facilitator or detractor, depending on a variety of external factors (i.e., culture, society, etc.). as it pertains to queer identity, this implies that each language has an innate ease with which lgbtq individuals can express themselves, which makes it more or less facile to cultivate an identity with, and thus feel fulfillment with. impacts of multilingualism while imperative for a general understanding of language’s impact on us, the ideologies discussed above do not cover multilingualism, an important scope of this project. fortunately, the effects of speaking more than one language have been greatly elucidated by other linguists, chiefly the work of gabriele kasper (1992). many of his papers divulge the concept of linguistic pragmatism and its implications for multilingual individuals. put simply, this is the phenomenon whereby the linguistic and cultural conventions from one’s native language transfer over into their second language (kasper, 1992, p. 206). the significance of this for the queer community includes the ability to transfer concepts and ideas from a language with more accepting terminology for lgbtq to a language with more restrictive views. it is important, however, to note that no one language is an ‘ideal’ for queer expression, as many contain limitations and advantages that, when combined via the above mentioned transfer, can foster a more comprehensive way to express oneself effectively. more specifically, this transfer is foundational for queer verbiage in languages that lack adequate terminology. for one, in tagalog, the common term for “transgender” is a slur, so the bilingual filipino diaspora has adopted terms like “transpinoy/transpinay,” which, while not grammatically standardized, are the culturally and pragmatically transferred from other languages (gandhi, 2020). equipped with a culturally and linguistically informed analysis of how identity and language interact, it then becomes important to more intimately understand the queer journey and how these linguistic features could be vital for the lgbtq community. historical perspectives on the lgbtq community and their ramifications for the lgbtq community, forming connections is not just optional—it is essential. in times of societal ostracization, from the buggery act in the medieval ages which outlawed homosexual acts, to the 1980s aids epidemic in the usa, strength in numbers has been a guiding principle for queer people in order to ensure mutual protection. evidently, both historical and contemporary accounts demonstrate that language serves as a crucial tool to achieve this vital connection. to fully understand the critical nature of such connection and bond formation, it is useful to turn to the history of the community and the sociological fixtures that arose from the widespread treatment of the community during various bouts of discrimination. homophobia’s effect on queer culture and acceptance chiefly, it is important to understand that queerness has been well documented in history since the dawn of man. lgbtq history in the western world has its roots in ancient greece, where homosexuality was an open part of quotidian society. for instance, pederasty was the practice whereby older men enter into mentor, and often sexual, relationships with younger men, viewed as a key social player in the masculinization of adolescents (hubbard, 2020). moreover, communities in north america before colonial contact also show evidence of this same precedent in their culture and language. for instance, the languages of cree and ojibwe had words to describe men who dress/function as women, and vice versa (bigeagle, 2023) (see appendix a for a comprehensive list of these terms and others). these open attitudes, however, could not withstand the changing tides of an increasingly parochial world. the medieval ages saw a staunch rise in adherence to religious law, notably of christianity in europe and islam in the middle east, north africa, and southern europe (anderson, 2024). interpretations of the major religious texts led to widespread attitudes that discouraged same-sex attraction and gender expression outside of the binary of male and female. further, research done by queer anthropologists like luiz mott (2021) has found that the gender fluidity and more sexually expressive culture in native populations was seen as “promiscuous” and “shameless” by the european colonizers. as a result, the cultural and social structures they implemented in the “new world” placed an emphasis on religious piety, enforced with strong attitudes of domineering masculinity, or “machismo” (azevedo et al., 2021). analogous attitudes were spread across many global cultures through european colonization, leading to a society where gender nonconformity and same sex attraction were made largely invisible to the public. further on, codification of anti-queer sentiment began in the 16th century, with bills such as the aforementioned buggery act 1533 making homosexuality punishable by death (martin, 2021). pride and language in the modern movement though documentation of queerness between the 15th and 18th century is limited, the community persisted nonetheless in stealth, through secret societies or coded language, further underscoring how crucial communication is to the maintenance and survival of lgbtq identity. a poignant showcase of said secrecy is polari, a language invented specifically by gay men in the 19th century to be able to foster community in an era that prohibited it (baker, 2019). polari was of particular importance in the united kingdom, where it was primarily used, as prior to 1967, laws made it nearly impossible to congregate with other queer individuals without facing persecution. although perhaps not a distinct language in its own right, it drew from various languages to form a covert slang lexicon that could be considered a dialect of english (baker, 2019). when considering this context, polari exemplifies how identity is able to shape language by adapting rapidly at a colloquial level to meet the needs of marginalized communities. for these mid-century queer individuals, language was able to serve both as a shield and a tool, enabling for discreet communication in an otherwise hostile society and environment while simultaneously fostering a sense of solidarity and belonging. this illustrates that identity formation and language are inextricably linked, with linguistic adaptation emerging as both a response to and a necessity within the challenging sociocultural conditions faced by marginalized groups. even after polari fell out of use as societal attitudes improved through the 1960s, certain terms remain in queer spaces today—like “butch,” “femme,” and “drag”—emphasizing how a sense of community is passed along generations to maintain solidarity and identity (baker, 2019). on the other side of the atlantic, the 1960s were a time of great social change for the lgbtq population in the united states as well. up until this point, analogous attitudes that pushed the formation of polari made it so that queer gatherings took place away from cisgender, heterosexual society. in north america, this manifested in ballroom and house culture, a social scene earmarked by free expression, artistic liberation, and unabashed pride (brathwait, 2018). this spirit born from the underground gatherings of black and latino queer folks in nightclubs and bars, and it must be noted that people of color not only contributed to the formation of modern queer culture, but they also spearheaded major efforts for lgbtq liberation. most notably, new york city’s stonewall riots on june 28th, 1969 marked the beginning of a slow but favorable shift in the legal, societal, and linguistic perception of the queer community (metcalf, 2019). to elaborate on the latter point, it was during this era that terms like “slay,” “werq,” “spill the tea,” “yas,” and “shady” emerged, most of which remain prevalent in modern lgbtq lexicon, similar to holdovers from polari (davis, 2023). in fact, as acceptance of the community has grown, some of these terms have made their way into layman verbiage, reflecting a turning point in tolerance for queerness in the mainstream. at any rate, these words, both at their inception and currently, serve as linguistic markers of queerness, reflecting pride in identity and fostering a sense of community that continues to thrive in lgbtq spaces. in 1970, the year after the stonewall riots, the first pride parade was held in new york city, and in the eight years following, eight other countries had their inaugural parade (arnett, 2016). of these, five were countries where english is the official language, and the three others —the netherlands, norway, and finland—have english speaking proficiency in the ranges of 75% to 90% (babu, 2024). this trend is important to pinpoint because it intrinsically shows that resources and verbiage about queerness are more likely to be in english due to anglo-centric roots of the most modern movements. this seems to be a primary reason behind why many ells find that english is dominant in their queer expression (95.1% to be precise) and thus turn to it in droves to be able to better understand and interact with their identity (lambert, 2020). however, while english is often touted as the “official queer language” because of its aforementioned accessibility of resources and verbiage, it was never inherently poised to take on this role—nor was any other language. rather, this phenomenon underscores how historical precedent and decades of linguistic adaptation—enabled in part by relatively increased cultural tolerance, as seen with polari and ballroom slang—have enabled anglophone communities to mold existing linguistic structures to meet the needs of lgbtq expression. this reflects how such adaptation is possible for many other languages and how this process is not a subversion of linguistic rules, but rather a necessary evolution to suit the ever-changing needs of their speakers. for instance, francophone cultures globally have been slower to adapt to queer customs, and this is exemplified by a 2017 statement from l’académie française, the governing body of the french language. herein, they suggest that inclusion of the gender neutral neopronoun “iel” and other progressive linguistic changes would “result in disunited language” and “create confusion that borders on illegibility” (l’académie française, 2017). the contrast between anglophone and francophone adaptability displays that changing a language is not merely a reflection of linguistic necessity, but also of sociocultural willingness to embrace change. this shows that the evolution of queer expression in any language is ultimately tied back to the political and cultural landscapes in which they operate. methods in order to encompass the nuance of the queer multilingual community, it is necessary to consult them directly. ultimately, the goal of this primary data collection is to be able to find throughlines in individuals’ relationship between their linguistic practices and their identities. this is a unique feature that will shed light on the true impact of multilingualism on queer identities. for this paper, i interviewed three queer multilingual individuals, all undergraduate students at stanford university. one, alex, identifies as nonbinary with a mandarin chinese speaking background, while the two others identify as gay men with spanish speaking roots: kyle and jeremy (these names are all aliases to protect the identities of those interviewed). these interviewees were chosen based on their lgbtq identities, their ability to speak more than one language, and their willingness to participate in a ten-to-fifteen-minute sit down interview. in conducting an eight-question semi-structured interview, participants were able to respond narratively in as much depth as they desired (see appendix b for full interview transcripts). these questions were carefully constructed in order to encapsulate the overarching themes explored by the secondary research portion of this paper. more specifically, they concerned themselves with the dynamic relationship between language and identity, in addition to the cultural landscapes wherein these dynamics take place in order to provide a more nuanced understanding of their interactions. naturally, there was a large emphasis placed on queer and multilingual intersectionality to try and bridge the two topics that have largely been explored separately until this point in my research. with these methods, i was able to synthesize their responses and find three key themes in their stories as queer multilinguals: linguistic adaptation, cultural navigation, and socioemotional connection. these throughlines illustrate and exemplify both the linguistics and sociological research conducted prior, which further supports the notion that there may be an inextricable link between language and identity for lgbtq people. the intersection of multilingualism and queerness linguistic adaptation sociopragmatic transfer is defined as the ability to apply frameworks from one language (often a speaker’s native tongue) into foreign ones, affording a richer ability to express certain concepts that are more difficult to convey in either one in isolation (kasper, 1992). a common example is the tendency for many japanese speakers to apply their complex honorifics system into english, begetting a more respectful dialogue in the latter language that is not as easily achievable to monolingual anglophones (kasper, 1992). in the context of queerness, this becomes useful when trying to express ideas and concepts that do not exist in a certain language, which is often the case in a world where english is a sort of queer lingua franca. for example, alex explained that, in written mandarin there are distinct pronouns for men (他), women (她), and non-human objects (它), which causes problems for gender non-conforming (gnc) individuals. however, what many multilingual chinese people have turned to is likening the terms for objects, “它,” to the more widespread “they/them” used in english. yet, as it pertains to oral usage, all three of these pronouns are pronounced the exact same, “tā”, which in alex’s words is “affirming because it doesn’t sound like you’re being gendered, which is great and the way i prefer it.” this is a highly unique linguistic fixture in mandarin and in combination with aforementioned adaptations in the written language highlights the significance of bicultural exchange in sociopragmatic transfer. this case of recognizing strengths in one’s native language advantages and incorporating those with ideas from another exemplifies of how intermixing of various languages and cultures is essential for bridging communication gaps and bolstering a sense of belonging for queer people through shared terminology. especially considering that the lgbtq journey is innately tumultuous, going through it without the verbiage to describe how you think and feel can take an enormous toll. it is analogous to the widespread usage of polari— cultivating a new style of communication in order to address limitations created by your society, culture, and language. in a time when strides in lgbtq visibility are happening faster than ever, colloquial adaptations and formation of slang such as these ones can serve as a way to maintain personal expression while formal language has yet to catch up, which can take years, if not generations. cultural navigation another benefit of multilingualism that came up in the interviews is the fact that language can serve as a method of compartmentalization. in both my personal experience and through these interviews, it is clear that speaking different languages is able to foster unique personalities, shaped by the various contexts in which each language is used. when it comes to queerness, this has significance not only in identity formation, but also as a means to safety. when kyle spoke about his upbringing, he noted that because of the emphasis on masculinity in cuban culture, spanish is a way for him to assume that role in order to protect himself from discrimination. this is a form of linguistic code-switching, which is a well elucidated phenomenon whereby individuals are able to imbue the usage of their “multiple personalities” to better assimilate and benefit from a particular social group (bullock et al., 2009). regretfully, many live in communities that openly harbor anti-queer ideology, and in such cases, safety becomes a priority over identity. for kyle, this manifests as using language to compartmentalize expectations from his different cultures. in english, he is able to connect with the gay community in a way that is effective and well established. as mentioned earlier in the paper, since many resources and slang for the queer community exist mainly in english, he is able to nourish this part of his identity with these terms in this tongue. in contrast, his familial use of spanish, shaped by the intense expectations of “machismo” in cuban culture, prompts him to code-switch, allowing him to align with and maintain a connection to the cultural values he was raised with. this, in return, shields him from backlash he may receive if he expresses his queerness as openly in spanish as he does in english. this also highlights how language, and its connections to various identities, is an intensely personal aspect of one’s life. kyle, as a cuban-american, is not connected to the queer culture present in his family’s home country, yet that does not inherently imply that there is not an lgbtq movement in cuba. rather, it suggests that the languages people speak are tied more strongly to the context in which they learned them, insofar as they reflect the values, norms, and social dynamics embedded within those contexts. for kyle, this means that his connection to english and spanish goes beyond mere communication, serving instead as a means of navigating and expressing different aspects of his identity within the cultural frameworks tied to each tongue. socioemotional connection given the discussion about how varying cultural tolerances towards queerness impact individuals’ ability to present and express themselves, it is important to clarify that there are no judgements being passed about these languages and their associated cultures. in fact, it aims to do the opposite. for one, even though kyle’s cuban background is generally less accepting of his queer identity, it does not detract from the value it adds to his life for reasons independent from his sexual orientation. in his interview, he made it clear that “growing up bilingual has taught me the value of words, meaning, and communication as it truly alters [my] perspective,” underscoring the importance of intersectionality for multilingual individuals, queer or otherwise. here, it must be stated that queerness and multilingualism do not exist in a vacuum, and lgbtq individuals should be afforded the right to exist proudly at the intersection of their multiple identities, even if they may seem incongruous. multilingualism is simply a means by which a mental compartmentalization of incongruous identities (i.e., ethnicity and queerness) can occur in order to navigate and harmonize these aspects of one’s selfhood. throughout this paper, examples of linguistic transfer and the invention of new ways to speak in order to protect one’s integrity has highlighted how above all, the necessity to connect pervades all else. human beings are innately social creatures, which is what makes the ability to bond with and divulge multiple communities through multiple identities is such an important player in self-fulfillment. for instance, in contrast to kyle’s experience, jeremy spoke mainly about how his ability to speak spanish allowed him to better connect with his mexican culture, independent from its relation to his queerness. having grown up in california, there was always a level of tolerance to his gay identity that precluded him from necessarily needing the same compartmentalization that kyle cited as being important to him. rather, bilingualism afforded jeremy the opportunity to put another aspect of his identity at the forefront, underscoring how lgbtq people do not have to monolithically identify only with their queerness, but rather appreciate and feel enriched in all aspects of their person. either way, equipped with this unique ability, queer multilinguals can provide a pathway for non-lgbtq people to learn about these experiences as well. as kyle aptly put it, “i am also able to change the minds of those around me one conversation at a time,” something that is only possible by maintaining and nourishing all parts of oneself, not just a few. significance and conclusion while current research focuses mainly on being multilingual as a means to accessing english language resources and community, this paper has explored the mechanisms behind multilingualism, informed by three primary interviews. these accounts in tandem with research of existing linguistic theory dictate how several facets of multilingualism contribute positively to the formation and maintenance of queer identity, community, and resilience. with linguistic determinism and emergent identity theory, it is determined that language cannot ordain how you identify, but it can control how you express yourself, meaning queer people can access new forms of expression through new languages. using sociopragmatic transfer as a lens, lgbtq people can also use multilingualism to transfer frameworks and verbiage between languages, giving autonomy in self-articulation without waiting for standardized language to evolve. the ability to navigate identity through language is not just a tool, but a lifeline. offering a pathway to inclusivity, community, and mental support, this area of academic research is urgently in need of expansion. even outside the academic framework, given a recent and pervasive rise in antilgbtq sentiment, this solution can be enacted once again to help the community weather another period of adverse sociocultural conditions. being queer is still an innately taxing experience, this much is undeniable. whether internal turmoil or societal ostracization, some pains are universal and deeply difficult to bear the burden of. now picture feeling all this pain without having the words to explain why. without a community to rely on; to learn from. this is the reality of millions across the world, seen in case studies of languages without genderless terms, verbiage for certain identities, or cultures that enforce rigid social standards. yet, time and time again, history has shown that our community surmounts the darkest hours with fortitude and strength in numbers. this kind of community, as explored with a variety of periods in queer culture, is truly only able to be fostered effectively with a strong enough linguistic basis. a basis that serves to uplift and allow lgbtq folks to discuss, explore, and divulge their identities in the unabashed way characteristic of this community. after all, the movement that began the mainstream liberation of queer people is called pride, so-named because of the community’s ability to embody and celebrate this very concept for themselves and others. this paper has demonstrated that language and identity are inextricably linked, and in light of this, the ability to speak more than one language has shown benefits that can serve as tools for this community. tools that not only nourish strength in identity, but also in connection, subsequently ameliorating bonds that have always been necessary for the proliferation of the lgbtq movement. references 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(trans)cultural queer (in)visibility. embodied: the stanford undergraduate journal of feminist, gender, and sexuality studies, 2(1). retrieved 2024, from https://ojs.stanford.edu/ojs/index.php/sjfgss/article/view/2632/1605 https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2024.2309529 https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2013/06/13/chapter-5-identity-and-community/ https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2013/06/13/chapter-5-identity-and-community/ https://doi.org/10.3366/tal.2022.0504 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/03/the-mystery-of-people-who-speak-dozens-of-languages https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/09/03/the-mystery-of-people-who-speak-dozens-of-languages https://www.thetrevorproject.org/blog/the-trevor-projects-annual-u-s-national-survey-of-lgbtq-young-people-underscores-negative-mental-health-impacts-of-anti-lgbtq-policies-victimization/?gad_source=1&gclid=cjwkcajw57exbhaseiwaaixaznuqhgfkkhefkaafusha9wlln9ncskacryjutxkmohqtxtfa48axehoca3kqavd_bwe https://www.thetrevorproject.org/blog/the-trevor-projects-annual-u-s-national-survey-of-lgbtq-young-people-underscores-negative-mental-health-impacts-of-anti-lgbtq-policies-victimization/?gad_source=1&gclid=cjwkcajw57exbhaseiwaaixaznuqhgfkkhefkaafusha9wlln9ncskacryjutxkmohqtxtfa48axehoca3kqavd_bwe https://www.thetrevorproject.org/blog/the-trevor-projects-annual-u-s-national-survey-of-lgbtq-young-people-underscores-negative-mental-health-impacts-of-anti-lgbtq-policies-victimization/?gad_source=1&gclid=cjwkcajw57exbhaseiwaaixaznuqhgfkkhefkaafusha9wlln9ncskacryjutxkmohqtxtfa48axehoca3kqavd_bwe https://ojs.stanford.edu/ojs/index.php/sjfgss/article/view/2632/1605 appendix a queer terminology in north american indigenous communities cree ● napêw iskwêwisêhot: a man who dresses as a woman. ● iskwêw ka napêwayat: a woman dressed as a man. ● iskwêhkan: one who acts/lives as a woman. ● napêhkan: one who acts/lives as a man. ● tasta-ee-iniw: a person in-between. ● înahpîkasoht: a woman dressed/living/accepted as a man. diné/navajo ● nádleeh: the one that changes, who is at war. blackfoot ● ááwowáakii: gay man. ● a'yai-kik-ahsi: acts like a woman. ● ninauh-oskitsi-pahpyaki: manly-hearted woman. mi'kmaw ● nekm: gender-neutral pronoun. lakota ● wíŋkte: to be as a woman. ojibwe ● ininiikaazo: women who choose to function as men; one who endeavors to be like a man. ● ikwekaazo: men who choose to function as women; one who endeavors to be like a woman. adapted from bigeagle, l. (2023, september 21). beyond two-spirit: indigenous people look to revive traditional lgbtq terms . cbc news. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/indigenous-lgbtq-words-1.6953445 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/indigenous-lgbtq-words-1.6953445 appendix b questions & responses from interviews with queer multilingual individuals at stanford university interviewees’ aliases*: jeremy (he/him), mexican-american kyle (he/him), cuban-american alex (they/them), chinese-american * not all participants answered each question, as is the nature of these types of interviews language and identity can you tell me about your journey with languages and how they've shaped your identity? 1. alex: ● i kind of have a really standard, i guess, asian american or at least immigrant relationship with language because i grew up in irvine, a heavily asian community. my parents spoke chinese to me at home, but i always spoke english with them. by the time i got into kindergarten, english was my primary language. i never really questioned that until i went to stanford and took mandarin chinese my first year. it was like, "holy s***, i've been missing so much." the way i began to explain it starting spring quarter last year was that before i spoke mandarin or learned it, my knowledge of my chinese heritage was like a blank sheet of paper. as i started learning mandarin, it's as if words started appearing on that sheet of paper. 2. kyle: ● i grew up in a primarily spanish-speaking household as my parents and grandparents were immigrants from cuba. while i quickly learned english in elementary school, i have held onto that part of my identity for connections with my family and my larger community of friends, city (miami), and latino people around the world. growing up bilingual has taught me the value of words, meaning, and communication as it truly alters your perspective. take that as you will, i don't know, man. 3. jeremy ● i learned spanish from a fairly young age. my home was fully english-speaking, though my parents are mexican and italian. i first started learning spanish in the first grade when my parents sent me to a dual-language spanish-english k-8 school. there, almost all of the students were english-language learners and spoke only spanish at home. however, the only person outside of school who i could communicate with in spanish was my grandmother, who even then, spoke fluent english. learning the language was difficult, but after a certain point (probably around 4th grade), spanish started coming naturally to me. the spanish language allowed me to truly tap into my mexican heritage. i was introduced to one of my strongest passions (mariachi music) and began to fully immerse myself in my culture in and outside of the classroom. though i had always wished i had attended a “normal school”--one with super competitive sports or kids who learned math in english–i have become so grateful for all that my primary education gave to me. cultural and social connections how do your different languages influence the way you express yourself and connect with others? alex: ● i don't know because i mostly express myself in english. sometimes i write poetry about china or my relationship with it, but i don't write in chinese. english is the main language through which i express myself, but there's solidarity in being able to speak chinese with another person and talk privately in a room without others understanding. it's great. kyle: ● to some extent, i have to act more masculine in spanish: i deepen my voice and alter my mannerisms to ensure my safety when engaging with a community that is typically less accepting of homosexuality despite all the other benefits it brings to my life. however, i am also able to change the minds of those around me one conversation at a time. lastly, i have been able to hold relationships with other people (usually fellow queers) even in different countries, which has broadened my awareness and understanding of the world. jeremy ● the spanish language allowed me to express myself in ways i could have never expected. when i was 7, i enrolled in a mariachi academy and began taking music lessons outside of school fully in spanish. i was able to connect with people on more than one level–both through our love for music, our heritage, and our ability to form a linguistic enclave. mariachi music soon became–to be somewhat dramatic–my entire life. i spent hours every day speaking in spanish, listening to music in spanish, singing in spanish–it consumed my everyday life. the number of people that i was able to connect with through this medium i would consider to be immeasurable. without it, i would be a completely different person than i am today. do you express yourself differently in each language? how does this affect your identity as a queer person? alex: ● i don't really have a personality in chinese because i don't know enough of the language to have one. however, i find the relationship with pronouns in chinese interesting because, although the characters for "he," "she," and non-gendered objects are different, they all sound the same. it feels affirming because it doesn't sound like you're being gendered, which is great and the way i prefer it. it would be cool if english had something like that, but whatever. kyle: ● in spanish, i feel like i have to present myself in a more traditionally masculine way to navigate cultural expectations, which can affect how i express my queer identity. however, this also allows me to challenge and change perceptions within my community. personal experiences and challenges can you share a specific story where speaking a certain language had a significant impact on your life or relationships? kyle: ● there have been many conversations where speaking spanish has helped me. from working with clients at work to communicating with my own family to flirting with foreign boys over the internet. have you faced any challenges or felt self-conscious speaking about your identity in a particular language? can you share more about that? kyle: ● there are some spanish phrases that i simply have not learned or used much because they are not taught or common enough. for example, conversations about mental health or self-expression are not really existent in spanish households, but i am still able to bond with others who also face these challenges. jeremy ● i always feel somewhat self-conscious when speaking spanish with native speakers, especially here at stanford. not because of any particular experience, or because i feel like they notice, but because i feel like i’m not able to express myself fully in the way that i’d like to. when i speak in spanish to people from latin america or spain, i always feel like there is a disconnect in the way that we are communicating–like they know that i am putting in more effort to speak to them than they are to me. however, i think those barriers are ones i create for myself. it’s simply something that you face when spanish isn’t your first language, or when spanish is not the native language of the place you grew up. emotional and social impact how does speaking multiple languages impact your emotions and sense of belonging? alex: ● speaking chinese generally just makes me feel kind of sad because i don't know much about it, and it's hard for me to express myself. however, it's interesting to connect my queer identity with my linguistic identity because it opens up new possibilities. it's like being both american and chinese allows me to reframe things in unique ways. kyle: ● being able to speak another language (and knowing basic phrases in even more languages) has allowed me to gain an entirely new community with people who deeply understand my upbringing. specifically, i can connect with fellow queer latino people who grew up in households that may not have held space for those types of conversations. additionally, i’ve gained access to different knowledge and cultural wisdom, even through my own family as some of them only speak spanish (e.g., my grandma). jeremy ● i think speaking multiple languages can create an extremely interesting dynamic in any space. for example, if i’m in a room with several international students from latin america, i shy away from speaking spanish and often react with laughs or head-nods so they know i understand. however, if i’m in a room with a bunch of native english speakers and a small group who learned spanish as a second language, we feel excited to communicate with each other in spanish. there’s a certain amount of pride and bonding associated with being able to recognize that we both went through the time and effort to learn the language. i think speaking multiple languages in a group setting can either bring people into the space, or push people away from the space. i just wish that strange barrier between native speakers and bilingual learners didn’t have to exist, and we could all share the beauty that is the language that we speak. reflections on learning and using languages what has been your experience learning and using languages in relation to your queer identity? do you have any memorable experiences where language learning intersected with your understanding of yourself? kyle: ● there are some spanish phrases that i simply have not learned or used much because they are not taught or common enough. for example, the entire spanish language is gendered, so the concept of non-binary is non-existent. while modern phrases like "latinx" have made their way around (which i disagree with because i find it very colonial given that the letter x is essentially obsolete in the spanish language), i do appreciate that progress is trying to be made. do you find that some of your languages have limitations when discussing queer topics, and if so, do your other languages help to bridge those gaps? kyle: ● there are some spanish phrases that i simply have not learned or used much because they are not taught or common enough. for example, conversations about mental health or self-expression are not really existent in spanish households, but i am still able to bond with others who also face these challenges cree diné/navajo blackfoot mi'kmaw lakota ojibwe appendix b questions & responses from interviews with queer multilingual individuals at stanford university language and identity cultural and social connections personal experiences and challenges emotional and social impact reflections on learning and using languages unveiling l'objet petit a in anaïs nin’s “the veiled woman”: a lacanian reading of femininity in erotica rosemary ho, barnard college ‘27 abstract: the similarities between the works of french-born cuban writer anaïs nin and french psychoanalyst jacques lacan suggest a novel avenue to interpret erotica as a literary genre. i hypothesize that by reading nin through lacan—more specifically by applying the lacanian gaze as an instance of objet petit a to nin’s short story “the veiled woman”—we subversively perceive nin’s female characters as the more active and dominant agents, thus reconsidering themes such as power, femininity, and sexuality in erotica. analyzing the gaze as a thematic agent in nin’s erotica can also provide new insight into psychoanalysis that encompasses a wider range of subjects. possible gaps that this paper hopes to bridge include the overlooked and misunderstood value of psychoanalytic theories in literary criticism as well as lacan’s own elusive seminars and repeatedly remodeled theories. i attempt to put forth possible explanations for and reconsiderations of lacan’s gaze as exemplified in “the veiled woman.” "the sexual life is usually enveloped in many layers, for all of us – poets, writers, artists. it is a veiled woman, half-dreamed." – anaïs nin, little birds despite its marginalization within literary criticism, psychoanalysis offers a powerful framework for analyzing erotic literature, as it uncovers the psychological and symbolic dimensions underlying sexual fantasies and imagery. more specifically, erotic texts have historically been written for male consumption, which begs a critical reexamination of how gendered dynamics shape both the production and reception of such texts especially when it comes to erotica written by female authors. this raises important questions about whose desires are being represented, whose voices are marginalized, and how female-authored erotica—such as that of anaïs nin—challenges or reconfigures dominant narratives of sexuality. the similarities between the works of french-born cuban writer anaïs nin and french psychoanalyst jacques lacan suggest a novel avenue to interpret erotica as a literary genre. frappier-mazur (1988) characterizes erotica authored by women and minorities as forming a “marginal canon,” a view that mirrors the broader neglect of nin’s writing. this marginalization is deeply rooted in the historical and cultural biases of a literary canon that remains both arbitrary and inherently patriarchal (hakim, 2010; patthey-chavez et al., 1996; pulis, 1994). nin’s exclusion from the canon can largely be attributed to the core focus of her work (pulis, 1994). nin herself acknowledged the unconventional origins of her erotic writing in the preface to little birds, her second posthumously published collection of erotica. she recounts how, alongside henry miller, she was hired to produce erotic content for an anonymous private collector, a task she described as “writing pornography for a dollar a day” (nin, 1979). what began as a financial necessity in the 1940s evolved into a groundbreaking literary career, positioning nin as a pioneering voice in female erotica (salvatore, 2011). at first glance, the female figures in nin’s stories may appear homogeneous—highly sexualized, passive, objectified, and almost caricature-like (nalbantian, 1997, p. xiii–xvii). yet beneath these surfaces, nin continues to refine her craft, weaving her narratives with poetic language and subtle references to philosophy, culture, and psychoanalytic theory. as a result, her works transcend conventional pornography, offering richly layered portrayals of femininity and sexuality that challenge the norms of 20th-century western discourse (hakim, 2010). through a psychoanalytic lens, erotica can be interpreted as a reflection of unconscious desires, anxieties, and internal conflicts. this approach also sheds light on how such fantasies are shaped by personal experiences and the broader social and cultural environment. the paper introduces the role of the eye and lacan’s gaze as a mechanism to interpret nin’s short story “the veiled woman.” through identifying the subject’s encounter with the gaze and the consequences thereafter, i argue that nin’s erotica subverts the deep-rooted phallocentrism that saturates the genre. in bridging gaps between psychoanalysis and literature, the paper aims to use lacanian psychoanalysis to reclaim the inherent power in femininity expressed in nin’s works. i posit that such a reassessment elucidates importance in nin’s erotica otherwise neglected. on the gaze in stade du miroir (the mirror stage) psychoanalyst jacques lacan complicated his theory of the gaze throughout his clinical career and seminars (rabaté, 2014; scott, 2015). lacan originally conceived the notion of the gaze as a counterpart to his other notable theory, stade du miroir1. the gaze in the mirror stage refers to the moment of recognition infants experience when staring into a mirror and seeing that first image of an autonomous being (gallop, 1983). this led to lacan’s original conclusion that the relationship between the focal point of the eye and the mirror was the subject’s “gaze” of elusive mastery and control (mcgowan, 2007). not only do infants recognize themselves in the image, what is more significant about the mirror stage is the false sense of mastery that comes with this recognition (lacan, 1949). the infant, according to lacan (1949), begins constructing 1 translates to “the mirror stage” in english an ideal version of its ego at this moment. lacan speculates that the infant who sees itself in the mirror begins associating certain attributes to its body even when the infant has not yet developed full mobility or motor independence. this tendency marks the earliest sign of narcissism and initiates the subject’s entry into the imaginary order, the first register of the lacanian triad. the imaginary is characterized by identification with images and illusions of wholeness, where the ego begins to form through misrecognition—a foundational moment in which the infant sees an idealized, unified image of itself that conceals its actual fragmentation and dependency. this misrecognition shapes the subject’s relationship to both itself and others, grounding its future desires in illusion and idealization (lacan, 1966). the imaginary order, in short, represents a narcissistic and false completeness of one’s “ideal-i,” or ideal ego. this ideal then becomes asymptotic—approachable, but never reachable—in the subject’s later development. when an infant recognizes the image in the mirror as the ideal-i, the subject (i.e., the infant) becomes fragmented. the subject’s bodily reality (one that is fractured and not yet full-formed) deviates from this model image in the mirror (one that is complete, the “ideal-i”). the mirror stage, as theorized by lacan, marks the moment when the subject forms a libidinal attachment to their own body image. in this phase, the reflection in the mirror becomes the ideal ego—a fantasized, coherent image situated within the imaginary register (canellopoulos, 2010). this foundational moment of subjectivity arises from a misrecognition, as the mirrored image offers a false sense of unity that the fragmented, material body cannot truly embody. the resulting dissonance between the ideal ego and the physical self which begins a cycle of identification, gaze, and narcissism. a similar dynamic is observed by feminist film critics such as laura mulvey, who applies lacanian theory—particularly the gaze—to the analysis of classical narrative cinema in critiquing specific camera angles, mise-en-scene, and other visual elements that derive from scopophilia, the pleasure in looking at another person who is oblivious to the spectatorship as an erotic object. mulvey interrogates how femininity is constructed and consumed in mainstream film, proposing that cinema is structured by scopophilic drives and patriarchal ideology (mulvey, 1973). central to her argument is the idea of woman as “lacking”—a subject defined by the absence of the phallus. according to mulvey, phallocentrism organizes cinematic pleasure by positioning the female body as the object of both visual desire and narrative control: “it is her lack that produces the phallus as a symbolic presence; it is her desire to make good the lack that the phallus signifies” (mulvey, 1973). just as the infant misrecognizes its reflection as a complete version of itself, the (primarily male) spectator is invited to identify with this phallocentric structure. the gaze directed at the eroticized female body on screen serves a dual function: it both objectifies the woman and reaffirms the male viewer’s imagined mastery through identification with the camera’s perspective. mulvey further argues that the female figure is haunted by a “maternal memory” that exists only in relation to castration and can never transcend it—thus reinforcing the dominance of the male gaze and the marginalization of female subjectivity in film. this parallax—between the gaze and the objet petit a—ultimately extends into the subject’s entry into the symbolic order (lacan, 1966). the symbolic, comprising structures such as language, law, culture, and social norms, represents the collective framework that governs desire and behavior. in the context of erotica, the symbolic order functions as both a constraint and a field of expression: it defines what is permissible, taboo, or unspeakable in the articulation of sexual desire. while the imaginary is concerned with self-image and the illusions of wholeness, the symbolic imposes societal codes that regulate identity, gender roles, and sexuality. erotica, then, becomes a unique literary space where the tension between these two registers plays out—where private fantasies intersect with the public rules of representation. in this sense, nin’s erotica exposes desire as a site of entanglement in which the subject is destabilized through contradicting cultural and linguistic systems that structure our reality. in a broader context beyond the specialized field of psychoanalysis, a “gaze theory” coalesced in mainstream media studies (smelik, 1998). mulvey’s essay relates the effects of spectatorship with the amalgamation of each individual’s background—such as gender, class, race, social class— resembling the lacanian symbolic. contemporary scholarship2 indicates the gaze theory continues to gain traction in academic disciplines such as critical race theory, feminist theory, film theory, and art critique. despite her controversial interpretation of lacan, mulvey shifted the orientation of film studies to include concepts from both lacanian psychoanalysis and feminist theories (mcgowan, 2003). the gaze as objet petit a and desire however, scholars have argued that mulvey’s seminal essay—though foundational to feminist film theory—misinterprets lacan’s concept of the gaze as derived from the stade du miroir (manlove, 2007; mcgowan, 2003; smelik, 1998). mulvey applies freudian and lacanian terms such as “scopophilic instinct” and “the gaze” in a literal and visual sense, aligning them with a gendered dynamic of viewer and object in cinema. yet this reading, rooted in the mirror stage, overlooks lacan’s later theoretical revisions, which reposition the gaze not as an active, controlling look but as something far more unsettling. in lacan’s mature theory, the gaze is not what the subject exerts, but rather an intrusive moment when the object of desire appears to return the look—an uncanny encounter that disrupts the illusion of mastery. within the erotic register, this reformulation is particularly significant: the gaze becomes a site of vulnerability, where the subject is caught in a moment of exposure and fascination, confronted by the objet petit a—that elusive, seductive kernel that sparks desire precisely because it can never be fully possessed or understood (mcgowan, 2003; scott, 2015; žižek, 1989). in this light, the erotic experience is not simply visual pleasure but a destabilizing interplay between fantasy, lack, and the gaze that looks back. lacan alludes to hans hobein’s 1533 painting the ambassadors to better illustrate the concept of the gaze. upon one’s first glance at the painting, one sees the two ambassadors standing in luxurious textiles and delicate instruments. yet the seemingly glorious sight soon betrays an uncanniness as one notices an indistinguishable mass, uncoordinated with the rest of the painting, in the foreground. the mass flirts with decipherability before it “humiliates the viewers” (scott, 2015), unraveling itself, when viewed from the side, as a skull staring back at its audience. the angled skull becomes visible only through the viewers’ skewed vision: it quietly retreats as a pale, inaccessible shadow as soon as the viewers look straight at the painting. some scholars interpret this intentional distortion as a memento mori (bowie, 1987, p. 150), yet to lacan, one is simultaneously enveloped by the painting the moment one perceives the gaze: the subject is absolved from subjectivity. between the eye and the gaze “there is no coincidence, but, on the contrary, a lure” (lacan, 1994, p. 102). the painting’s anamorphism also exemplifies the subject’s encounter with objet petit a (scott, 2015). not only does this gaze exemplify the unattainable object-cause of desire, it furthermore embodies lacan’s third register in the borromean knot—the real. the encounter with the real the third register of the lacanian-borromean knot—the real—disturbs the imaginarysymbolic through small eruptions of the “uncanny.” the real, in short, disrupts the subject’s notions acquired through images and signifiers about itself and the world (žižek, 1992). the real is, as joël dor (1998), describes, a “shattering enigma,” disrupting the otherwise smooth functioning of the other two registers. as lacan points out, one’s relation to the real is always in discordance— “what i look at is never what i wish to see [... the] moment of losing the gaze is the initial moment of seeing” (lacan, 1997, p. 103). the moment one perceives the skull in holbein’s painting is the closest encounter one has with the real (scott, 2015). lacan describes encounters with the real as traumatic and eruptive as it disrupts one’s subjectivity constructed upon the imaginary-symbolic (mcgowan, 2003). the gaze reveals itself to the subject, subverts the subject’s false sense of autonomy, and, in that instance, obliterates subjectivity. englishspeaking lacanians popularized a paronomasia to illustrate this phenomenon: “the gaze is, in other words, irretrievably lost to the eye and ‘i’ of the subject” (scott, 2015). not only is the 2 manlove (2007) claims that “mulvey’s essay might well be considered a historical document by many in feminist film theory and film studies, and her ideas about the pleasurable and controlling aspects of vision have been highly influential in several academic disciplines.” gaze obscured in the field of vision (in that one does not instantly recognize the gaze upon first glances; the “eye”), it is moreover lost to the subject (“i”). similarly, nin’s erotica despite its apparent conformity to its genre, remains particularly transgressive and surreal. nin stages encounters with the real by disrupting the viewer’s symbolic understanding of desire and subjectivity. when erotic imagery bypasses mere visual pleasure and provokes discomfort, fascination, or a disquieting sense of exposure, it gestures toward the real. the viewer is no longer a sovereign voyeur but becomes the object of an enigmatic gaze, like in holbein’s painting, that returns from the image, threatening to undo the boundaries of the self. lacan characterizes this objective gaze also as an instance of objet petit a—the cause of desire. objet petit a is not to be confused with the object of one’s desire; rather, it is what sustains the process of desiring (dean, 2005). in order for desire to sustain its existence, the cause of desire must be seemingly at-reach but perpetually absent from the subject. because the lacanian gaze is an object (mcgowan, 2003)—one that involves not the active agency of the subject, but the instance where the object looks back at the subject—the subject can never truly possess such a gaze. the gaze therefore springs from an objective, rather than subjective, point of view. in mulvey’s—as well as numerous other scholars’—contentions, the gaze is simply an action done by the spectator (manlove, 2007). todd mcgowan (2003) provides an insightful look into lacan’s gaze in looking for the gaze: lacanian film theory and its vicissitudes. mcgowan argues that the “loss of the gaze as an object is at once the moment of its emergence – the subject can never truly ‘satisfy’ their desire through obtaining the object [...] the gaze would cease to be the gaze once recognized by the subject” (p. 29). in other words, because both the gaze and the objet petit a are unattainable objects, there exists no possibility for the subject to ever possess the gaze, let alone utilizing it in certain ways as exemplified in mulvey’s argument. it is in the register of the real where one finds the unconscious and desire (felluga, 2011). yet according to lacan, individuals escape the real through constructing a fantasyreality—one that is shaped by the imaginary-symbolic orders. one’s desire therefore relies on lack. when one eventually reaches the supposed “heart” of desire, one discovers that it is merely a misrecognition of fullness, of completeness—and upon this realization the cycle of desire ensues. arriving too close to objet petit a threatens to uncover the inherent lack necessary to sustain desire, which is why in spite of objet petit a’s lure—the gaze in hobein’s painting is always there, beckoning the viewers to notice it—the subject cannot recognize it within the rigid networks of the imaginary-symbolic (mcgowan, 2016). yet when the subject does encounter the gaze, the seemingly stable matrix of “reality” becomes distorted (the viewers witness the skull’s gaze only when looking askew). similarly, just as how one easily traverses the registers of the imaginary-symbolic but not the real, the subject can maintain a stable relationship to the network of objects but not to the gaze. lacan’s gaze places significant emphasis on the subject’s lack and desire. this contrasts with mulvey’s (1975) argument in “visual pleasure and narrative cinema.” whereas mulvey contends that pleasure dictates erotic expressions in art, lacan sees the cause of desire—and more importantly, the void of desire—as the driving force behind the subject’s action. in light of lacan’s theories, one can then analyze nin’s erotica in an object3-centered perspective and reconsider subjectivity in nin’s erotica. although lacanian theory has gained popularity in various academic disciplines, mcgowan (2003) argues that “lacan’s conception of the gaze has been almost completely absent from the world of film theory and film studies” (p. 5). aside from gaps existing in the peer-reviewed literature, lacan’s own elusive seminars and theories is a gap in itself. scholars have contended that the four seminars from “of the gaze as objet petit a” are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to comprehend and fully understand. martin jay claims that “the gaze is a … cryptic assertion,” and concludes his explication: “it is impossible to summarize lacan’s complicated dialectic of the eye and the gaze in any simple formula” (jay, 1993, p. 362). likewise, michel thévoz (1996)—a swiss author and the curator of the cantonal fine arts museum of lausanne from 1960 to 1975—argues to take lacan’s first seminar on the gaze as the 3 as in objet petit a primary reference point for the mirror stage. certain challenges involved in interpreting lacan’s elusive notion of the gaze. taking into account the complexities and nuances of lacan’s theories, the paper therefore does not seek to assert a novel, definite reading of lacan, but rather to utilize existing interpretations as a method to reassess nin’s erotica, thus contending the intertextuality between nin’s erotica and lacanian psychoanalysis. the strikingly frequent appearance of words relating to seeing, sight, and vision in “the veiled woman” invites a close examination of the gaze as a central thematic thread and theoretical element. allows us to closely examine the gaze as a thematic concept within the story. drawing on lacan’s theory, the gaze is not merely an action performed by a spectator, but rather a disruptive encounter in which the subject is made aware of being seen—what lacan identifies as the moment when the object returns the gaze (krishner, 2005). this understanding of the gaze underpins my analytical approach, which draws from lacanian psychoanalysis while also critiquing the simplifications often made by traditional lacanian film theorists. rather than treating the gaze as a stable mechanism of power or voyeurism, i examine how “the veiled woman” stages moments of visual disorientation and reflexivity that align more closely with lacan’s notion of the gaze as an encounter with the real. to illustrate the gaze as an objet petit a, i identified the point in which the veiled woman, who embodies the real, gazes back at the subject george, the male protagonist whose actions we follow as readers. towards the climax of the story, nin (1986, p. 84) leaves a paragraph solely to the line: “she looked at him.” here nin makes the gaze abruptly, violently apparent. just as the instantaneous obliteration of subjectivity when the skull gazes back at its viewers, the emotion erupted within george (and by extension, us as the readers) as the veiled woman (as objet petit a) looks back him is one that strikingly resembles the “traumatic encounter with the real” (mcgowan, 2007). the veiled woman—who remains passive and object-like—beckons the subject, george, to advance towards the void of desire. through nin’s minimalist syntactical usage, the veiled woman serves as a paradigm of the lacanian gaze—one’s encounter with the gaze can be as simple and serendipitous as is. furthermore, george’s reaction to this instance is not pleasure, but doubt. like objet petit a, the veiled woman does not “satisfy” george’s desire. her gaze brings the subject into the objective realm and disrupts the symbolic order’s illusive network of safety. george “became obsessed with the idea that all the women who invited him to their houses are hiding a spectator” (nin, 1986, p. 86). the denouement of the story also strikes at the heart of lacan’s philosophy on desire. desire, according to lacan, is the remnants from the infant stage— “by its infantile origins as the remainder when satisfaction of physiological needs is subtracted from the child’s demands for its mother’s attention” (krishner, 2005, p. 2). george, like many others that find themselves trapped in the loop of desiring, eventually reaches what lacan calls jouissance. it is what a subject seeks in repetition beyond the possible gratification of physical needs. jouissance, despite its literal meaning in french, which translates to “enjoyment,” is different from pleasure or satisfaction. lacan differentiates jouissance and pleasure: whereas one experiences pleasure when a need is fulfilled (and thus a reduction of tension), one experiences jouissance when excessively engaging in actions that fulfill a need. for instance, pleasure derives from consuming an adequate amount of food to reduce hunger; jouissance arises when one obsessively devours food to a point where physical discomfort becomes evident. jouissance therefore lies beyond the pleasure principles and is taken as “superabundant vitality” (canellopoulos, 2010). in seminar x, lacan distinguishes between drive and desire—whereas drive is only a particular representation of desire, desire encompasses the entirety of desiring. all drives are partial and incomplete. desire, in other words, is an independent, autonomous slippage. as drive shifts from one object to another, desire remains whole and present. drives are the manifestation of desire, and because of this, the subject can never be fully satisfied upon a fulfillment of a drive. the path of the drive forms around objet petit a (denoted by “a”). the elliptical orbit suggests the perpetual desiring of objet petit a. as žižek (2007) explains in his book enjoy your symptom!: jacques lacan in hollywood and out, the space of the drive is a “paradoxical, curved space: the object is not a positive entity existing in space… but a certain curvature of the space itself which causes us to make a bend precisely when we want to get directly at the object.” once again, kirshner (2011) points out that even lacan himself leaves the essence of desire unanswered—the objet petit a is a hypothetical cause that drives individuals to circle around such an “object” devoid of any concrete form or substance. and when the object is at a moment closest to objet petit a, it swings right back around the curved path of desire (žižek, 2007). as aforementioned, the actual object of desire does not equate the cause of one’s desire. and through the networks of the imaginary and symbolic, subjects find temporary fulfillment to their drives and indulge in fleeting pleasures (mcgowan, 2007). yet the instance one acquires the object of desire (whether a materialistic fulfillment or a temporary satisfaction), one loses the desire to desire—and the cycle ensues (felluga, 2011; mcgowan, 2003). likewise, the moment where george confronts the veiled woman’s gaze, his experience of their intercourse shifts from pleasurable to disorienting. in an attempt to make the analogy more lucid: when george (the subject) discovers—though not consciously—that his constant search for “an interesting event… or an interesting women” (nin, 1986, p. 52) is not fulfilled by his encounter with the veiled woman (gaze as an objet petit a), he becomes distraught and is driven to a point of obsession beyond physical pleasure (jouissance). the veiled woman disrupts the cycle of desire by revealing that there is no ultimate secret behind the objet petit a. in doing so, she invites the reader to reconsider themes of power, sexuality, and femininity within nin’s erotica. while a mulveyan reading might reduce “the veiled woman” to a pornographic spectacle crafted for the male gaze, a lacanian approach opens up multiple interpretive paths, revealing how the imaginary and symbolic registers are distorted, reconfigured, and ultimately transformed. this reading encourages a deeper exploration of power, desire, and female sexuality as they emerge in more abstract and implicit forms. as lacan asserted in seminar xii (1964–65), “the unconscious is structured like a language.” from this perspective, applying psychoanalysis to literature becomes not only valid but essential—particularly in marginalized genres such as female-authored erotica. the goal of this research is not to undermine mulvey’s foundational contributions to feminist and film theory, but rather to extend the ongoing dialogue at the intersection of psychoanalysis, art, and eroticism. references abdul hadi, n. h., & asl, m. p. 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(1992). looking awry: an introduction to jacques lacan through popular culture. mit press. wu final stars surrounded by darkness qingyun wu, tufts university ’23 abstract: k-pop has experienced a surge in global popularity, largely attributed to the globalization strategies implemented by the entertainment industry, including the establishment of a star system. within this system, female idols have been theorized as sexualized pretty dolls by their companies. the aim of this study is to examine how the presentation of female idols has altered over time. through the lenses of gender display and objectification frameworks, and employing content analysis as the research method, the study analyzes music videos from different generations in k-pop. from the coding results, the study concludes with the inherent inequality faced by female idols within the industry and explores the complexities of popular feminist themes in the current generation, which can simultaneously empower and constrain them. introduction k-pop has demonstrated continuous success in the global music industry, with the soaring popularity of groups such as bts and blackpink. while k-pop girl idols are celebrated for their remarkable music and dance abilities, their appearance is equally significant. typically conforming to korean beauty standards that emphasize youthful and feminine looks, girl idols are often associated with reinforcing female stereotypes by performing their gender through their music videos and other products. this study aims to investigate whether the presentation of kpop female idols has changed over time. this study opens with a literature review of the k-pop star system and entertainment companies’ goal of globalization. according to kim (2013, p. 8), k-pop is a “deliberately planned industry” that embodies capitalist marketing and neoliberal governmentality, where idols’ bodies are regulated in a market-oriented way. the entertainment agencies have created a systematic way of production, particularly in the case of female idols, who not only undergo extensive training, but also must comply with the beauty standards set by the industry. i conceptualize the idol industry in relation to aesthetic labor, drawing on goffman’s framework of gender display and mulvey’s concept of gazes. i then elaborate on my operationalization, which involves analyzing the music videos of mainstream female idol groups across generations, to conclude that female idols are constructed as ideal girls based on observed nonverbal behaviors. i also argue that although some female idols resist traditional gender roles in their music videos, aligning with postfeminist sentiments and the commercialization of popular feminism, these idols still fail to escape the capitalist manipulation by their labels. looking ahead to the future of gender in k-pop, i argue that while the genre may not be a driving force behind feminist movements, it is an avenue for its audience to explore and navigate their own gender and sexual identities. the idol industry what makes k-pop attractive to a wide range of audiences is its unique star-making process that highlights physique and voice-choreography (oh, 2013). entertainment companies — notably sm entertainment, yg entertainment, and jyp entertainment (or the “big three” entertainment houses) — adopt an in-house idol training system, or “academy system,” that incorporates “production” and “management” (shin, 2009; shin & kim, 2013). entertainment agencies recruit their trainees through auditions, street castings, and tv programs. global auditions are also held for candidates abroad (lee, 2013). consider the example of the 2022 sm kwangya global. while there were no requirements for nationality, applicants must have been born between 2003 and 2011 (cha, 2022). those who passed the auditions then entered an apprenticeship which usually lasted two or more years (lee, 2013). training programs included singing, rapping, dancing, acting, composition, foreign language skills, manners, and more. (ahn, 2011; lee, 2013; shin & kim, 2013). furthermore, trainees needed to participate in physical fitness lessons and beauty therapies (oh, 2013). visual appearance was particularly emphasized among girls. as venters and rothenberg (2022, p. 9) noted, in addition to a slim hourglass-shaped body, “ideal face structures, consisting of v-shaped jawlines, large eyes, and a small nose, are enthusiastically pursued.” as a result, idol aspirants were pressured to undergo extreme dieting and cosmetic surgery to conform to these beauty standards. like an assembly line, entertainment companies focus on creating the right “formula” while making idols. when forming a new group, producers first think of the “image” of that group and then select suitable trainees (lee, 2013). that image is also versatile to meet the market’s expectations. for example, the image of the famous girl band girls’ generation has evolved from innocent young girls to confident independent women (ahn, 2011). in pursuit of balance, each member needs to have a distinct talent or characteristic to appeal to a wider range of fans. common positions in a group include a leader, visual, vocalist, rapper, dancer, and “maknae,” or the youngest (carpio, 2021). it is these idol-producing strategies that enabled entertainment houses to generate profits, by exploiting artists dependent on their contracts. regardless of how successful a group might be, agencies exercise a considerable amount of control over the members’ careers. the term “slave contract” was used to describe the unethical terms of employment and unfair distribution of earnings. even though the maximum length of trainee contracts was reduced under the ruling of the fair trade commission in 2009 (lee, 2013; venters & rothenberg, 2022), some idols, such as the boy group b.a.p (lee, 2014), filed lawsuits against their label for suspension of contract due to mistreatment. an overview of the idol industry shows capitalist firms’ neoliberal governmentality where idols, especially females, have a lack of agency. depicted as a “factory-like manufacturing system,” kim (2019, p. 33) argued that “today’s k-pop idols are conditioned as an obedient, disciplined, and sexualized labor force, directly manufactured by male corporate elites in the kpop industry to serve the interests and needs of capital.” under globalization in the mid-2000s, followed by the soaring popularity of k-pop in asian markets, korean entertainment companies tried to cross cultural boundaries to break into the u.s. market. to fit into the western imagination of asian women, female idol groups were manipulated as being docile sexual objects under the control of their male managers. jung (2013) analyzed two groups: wonder girls (wg) and girls’ generation (snsd). while most of both groups’ music was girlish, romantic love songs when performed in their home country, their music switched to erotic songs with provocative lyrics degrading women when debuted in the u.s. — exploiting racial and gender stereotypes. their on-stage facial expressions and body-touching dance moves further played to the male gaze. eventually, although their songs and visual images targeted the u.s. market, neither accomplished establishing themselves (jung, 2013). then, in the mid-2010s, k-pop idol groups managed to penetrate the u.s. market following the achievement of psy. a well-known female group among them is blackpink. their single “ddu-du ddu-du” reached no. 55 on the billboard hot 100 chart and became the fastest music video from a korean girl band to gain 100 million views on youtube (herman, 2018). contrary to wg and snsd, blackpink pursues a girl crush concept. “ddu-du ddudu” reveals a strong and tough woman image with lyrics directly confronting “haters” and traditional femininity (lee & yi, 2020). most significantly, blackpink’s popularity did not fade in the global market. in their most recent comeback, their album “born pink” won no. 1 on billboard’s top album sales chart, breaking another k-pop record (garcia, 2022). inspired by blackpink, more and more groups have been pursuing a girl crush concept, advocating for female empowerment. but today, the current k-pop market has seemed to hit a saturation point due to an overcrowding of “strong girls” (daly, 2022). amid these changing k-pop trends, my study is, thus, interested in the question: how do female idol groups present themselves differently over time, in relation to their gender performance? aesthetic labor and gender display categorized as a type of aesthetic labor under the umbrella of display work in the service economy, the idol industry reveals inequalities at the intersection of gender, race, and class (see mears, 2014; mears & connell, 2016; otis, 2016; balogun & hoang, 2018). in a neo-confucian male-dominated society, korean female idols are expected to conform to either the stereotypical western imagination of asian women as sexual and vulnerable — illustrated by the examples of wg and snsd — or to the traditional gender role of submissive and innocent maidens whose worth is dependent on men (lin & rudolf, 2017; jonas, 2022). building on goffman’s (1956) notion of gender display, west and zimmerman (1987) contend that in the interactive activities of “doing gender,” individuals express femininity and masculinity based on sex category, which sustains socially arranged gender hierarchies. in the k-pop world, femininity is described through the metaphor of “asian dolls” in the lolita ideal, manifesting the insulting normalization of the westernized male gaze, instilled with pop obsessions (puzar 2011). excessive femininity is deliberately displayed in the dressing styles and choreographies of girl idols. dancing with bare legs and high heels in uniformly patterned movements demonstrates “their sexual bodies emphatically in passive postures” (kim 2011, p. 339). to maintain a dollified cute image, they are decorated with youthful accessories and clothes such as ribbons and school uniforms when performing onstage (kim, 2011). since dollification, in conjunction with commodification, simultaneously constructs a fetishizing sense of flawless beauty (puzar, 2011), female idols are often mandated to engage in beauty practices (yoon, 2018). body laborers (e.g., makeup artists, hair stylists, plastic surgeons) boost their body capital (balogun & hoang, 2018) and produce the perfect “dolls” of pureness and submissiveness by reflecting a hybrid of western and asian beauty ideals (see leem, 2017). both artists and staff must therefore maintain a constant awareness of gender norms and are held accountable for conforming to them in the idol industry. mulvey’s (1988) concept of gaze highlights women’s “to-be-looked-at-ness” in visual media. the image of women is depicted as enjoyable objects to be passively looked at by the active gaze of men. through the lens of dominance approach that recognizes the tenacious system of male dominance, the unequal treatment of women is a result of power structure constructed by the patriarchal society (mackinnon, 1984). nevertheless, the juxtaposition of sexuality and cuteness in the idol industry obscures this power dynamic and justifies the male gaze under the neo-confucian structure. the girl idols’ fandom consists of a significant number of middle-aged men known as samchon, or “uncle,” fans. the depiction of these men’s relationship with the girl idols as uncle and niece, and their endorsement as familial support, minimizes the sexual connotation of staring at teen girls’ bodies and normalizes their potentially pedophiliac actions (kim, 2011; see also epstein & turnbull, 2014). moreover, as beauty ideologies and practices are associated with global culture (see edmonds, 2010), the influence of western hegemony is shown in the widespread use of “double-eyelid surgery, rhinoplasty, and cheekbone surgery, [and] jaw surgery” (leem, 2017, p. 658). together, female idols are crafted for westernized masculine gazes in conjunction with the gaze of men within korea. according to lee and yi (2020), while the concept of “strong sister,” or ssen-unni, is prevalent among female idols nowadays, seemingly undermining the traditional shackle of weak femininity, the concept actually strengthens patriarchal perceptions. blackpink is not the pioneer of embodying ssen-unni in their performances. in fact, that concept has been in k-pop since mid-2000, with groups like 2ne1 incorporating militaristic objects and outfits in their music videos. nevertheless, the employment of these materialistic hypermasculine symbols demonstrates a sense of ambiguous resistance as it upholds the association between male and power and speaks nothing for social transformation of gendered norms, thus failing to portray the true liberation of women. despite the ambiguity in the ssen-unni concept in confronting the underlying problem of gender inequality, from a western feminist point of view, lee and yi (2020) noted a strong correlation between ssen-unni and third-wave feminism. resonating with anti-essentialist ideologies, the generational feminism and youth cultures of the third wave extend the idea of intersectionality by suggesting flexible ways of presenting feminine identities to actualize girl empowerment, such as through sharing personal stories (gilmore, 2001; mack-canty, 2004). yet, this implies that women are personally authoring these narratives: in k-pop, it would require songs intended to voice female empowerment or fight societal sexism to have substantial authentic input from artists (mack-canty, 2004). yet, for blackpink and 2ne1, most of their songs are produced by teddy park, a famous songwriter at yg entertainment (taylor, 2020). to put it in another way, since their songs may not reflect their personal experiences or intellectual thinking, they are only performers and not the owners of their songs. i propose that although there has been an increase in the girl crush concept among k-pop female idols groups, unless they can actively participate in the producing scene, these idols are unable to communicate and embody egalitarian messages that go beyond hierarchical gender norms and are therefore confined as pretty “asian dolls.” methods objectification theory builds on the notion of gaze to recognize how women are treated as mere bodies for pleasure. their bodies are sexually evaluated by viewers, resulting in their deliberative objectification in visual media through these gazes (fredrickson & roberts, 1997). by using content analysis, scholars have conducted studies regarding portrayal of objectification in music and other media fields (see flynn et al., 2016). goffman (1979) identified a model to decode gender behaviors, which later scholars applied in examining music videos for the operationalization of gender role display (see wallis, 2011). therefore, to answer my research question about how female idol groups have changed through generations with respect to sexual objectification and gender display, i employed content analysis to examine the music videos of 20 groups over time. groups were selected through purposive sampling that deem to be popular or representative of that generation and their sampled songs. the generations ranged from gen 2 (2004-2007), when k-pop started to become a global phenomenon, to gen 2.5 (2008-2013), gen 3 (2014-2015), gen 3.5 (2016-2017), and gen 4 (2018-present). since there is no strict definition of the time period of these generations, i drew my timeline from idology (squib, 2020) . three of 1 the selected groups’ most-viewed music videos on youtube (n = 59) were watched numerous 2 3 times and coded accordingly. to measure gender display conveying dominance and subordination, this study first adhered to wallis’s (2011) coding scheme for nonverbal behaviors while considering prior research on girl bodies by osborn (2021). on the one hand, subordinate and overtly sexual nonverbal gender displays included “touching hair, delicate self-touch, smiling/[winking]…a childish finger to/in the mouth…suggestive dancing, a sultry look” (wallis 2011, p. 166). on the other hand, the dominant counterparts involved “flinging hands/fingers, showing force… showing passion while singing” (wallis, 2011, p. 166), and aggressive facial expressions. second, body exposures were measured. as camera work contributes to the construction of gaze (dibben, 1999), the close-up shots of any exposure of the artists’ “butt cracks and/or cheeks, stomach/navel with belly button exposed, legs from knees to upper thighs, the back fully exposed…the shoulders,” and the chest line were also noted (frisby & aubrey, 2012). all these variables were coded for either presence (1) or absence (0) in a unit of 10 seconds. whether 4 idols are treated as objects was further analyzed to investigate sexual objectification. third, each set of the artists’ outfits was coded once as “neutral [or] slightly provocative (clothing that reveals more of the chest, abdomen, or the thighs than in everyday work/school attire)” (wallis, 2011, p. 166). finally, the english translations of the lyrics in each video were analyzed 5 separately to determine any presence of resistance to the male gaze. data sources are listed in appendix a, and all the information is as of december 2022. the next section will discuss the findings in terms of gender display and objectified gazes respectively. findings i. gender display across generations to show how gender display has evolved across different generations of k-pop, i first calculated the percentage of such display for each music video in a sampled group. i then computed the averages for each group, taking into account the differences in the length of the videos. table 1 shows the means of the percentage of gender display that occurred in a music video in a generation. it is evident that variables that are regarded as dominant nonverbal behaviors are rarely displayed in female idol groups’ music videos, while those that are stereotypical feminine behaviors result in higher percentages. according to koreaboo, it is the longest-running k-pop critic webzines in korea. 1 some mvs were uploaded by two different channels, so their views were summed up.2 since one gen 4 group debuted less than a year and only had two major comebacks by the time of data collection, 3 they had one fewer sampled mv. in wallis (2011)’s study, the unit of analysis is 30 seconds. i chose a unit of 10 seconds to further increase the 4 comprehensiveness of the codes. wallis (2011) divided the codes for outfits into three categories: neutral, slightly provocative, and provocative. but 5 due to cultural differences and the conservative nature in korean idol performances, i only adopted the first two categories. table 1 there are two reasons why the percentages of dominance display are generally low in female idol group music videos: calculation and coding constancy. firstly, while some music videos may have higher percentages of masculine display, they are often averaged out with others that have 0%. for instance, in 2ne1’s (gen 2) “i am the best” music video, i documented 32% aggressive facial expressions, 18% showing force, and 9% flinging hands. however, when averaged out with the rest of gen 2 music videos, these percentages became significantly lower. secondly, to maintain a consistent standard of coding, some elements that may symbolize masculinity are not counted. for example, in 2ne1’s music videos, aggressive facial expressions often connote showing madness alongside other cues from body gestures. gen 2 gen 2.5 gen 3 gen 4 dominance aggressive facial expression 3% 3% 1% 1% showing force 3% 0% 1% 0% passionate singing 1% 1% 0% 0% flinging hands 2% 0% 2% 2% subordination touching hair 0% 3% 5% 5% delicate self-touch 0% 1% 1% 0% sultry look 0% 11% 1% 0% suggestive dancing 0% 9% 0% 0% smiling (wink) 36% 36% 31% 29% childish finger to/in mouth 1% 2% 1% 0% therefore, behaving solely emotionally distant and indifferent is not coded as aggressive. similarly, 2ne1 shows force by destroying a physical object or firing weapons. it is not equivalent to holding a toy-like gun or doing a single punch in the camera. as fewer female idol groups pursue a straightforward “badass” concept with explicit violence, the percentages of dominant display become lower as the generations progress. for variables of subordinate display, smiling has a relatively high percentage for female idols in all four generations. most early gen 2 music videos (i.e., snsd’s “gee”) were made up of shifting between close shots of members’ smiles and choreography. conceptualizing the idol industry as a form of aesthetic labor explains smiling as a practice of their commercial values. associated with femininity, smiling suggests sociability by conveying a message of warmth and friendliness (reis et al., 1990). as a part of aesthetic labor, emotional labor in service work often requires employees to smile at customers, suggesting a sign of deference. conforming to heteronormativity, female workers’ projection of feminine facial expressions appeals to male guests’ heterosexual masculinity (barber, 2016). overall, as their emotions are commercialized, idols are also objectified as models of passivity, which confirms puzar’s (2011) theory of dollification. touching hair is a variable whose percentage increases over the generations. it is a form of feminine touch included in goffman’s (1979) study on gender images in advertisements. goffman argued that ritualistic self-touching indicates a sense of delicacy and preciousness of one’s body, which separates from the utilitarian use of hands in manipulating or holding. by engaging in this behavior, women are aligned with the societal expectation of femininity. a comparative study between the u.s. and india further found no significant difference in the prevalence of feminine touch portrayed in magazine advertising, implying that self-touching has a common meaning of subordination across cultures (griffin et al., 1994). with globalization, utilizing an increased occurrence of touching hair in music videos is thus foreseeable. in the context of outfits in music videos, it is noteworthy that a majority of female idols are depicted dancing in heeled shoes, including high heels, block heels, heeled boots, and heeled sandals (see graph 1). high heels have historically been associated with women as sexual objects, and women walking in high heels are often perceived as more attractive (morris et al., 2013). a project by dilley et al. (2015) investigated the relationship between wearing highheeled shoes and the display of “emphasized femininity,” defined by connell (1987) as the compliance with men’s desires. the freedom to choose footwear may contribute to women’s identity-building despite the physical pain to their feet. however, if viewed from the perspective of female idols’ limited agency over their bodies (venters & rothenberg, 2022), it could also be argued that entertainment companies are decorating these women with heeled shoes to conform to sexualized gender norms and to enhance their sexual appeal in performances evaluated by gendered expectations (west & zimmerman, 1987). as a result, female idols are often portrayed with hyperfemininity. graph 1 from the data, it can be seen that female idols who perform submissive feminine behaviors and wear feminine attire are engaging in a form of “bridgework.” this term, as defined by otis (2016, p. 914), refers to the “labor that requires interaction between customers whose countries and cultures of origin diverge from those of workers.” in the k-pop industry, female idols are trained to exhibit a “universal” form of femininity (i.e., smiling and dressing appropriately), which is institutionalized through western hegemony. on the other hand, it is important to note that the bridgework framework does not take into account the differences in gender display percentages across different generations of female idols. the way female idols perform a song may also be influenced by their group’s marketing goals or the trending concepts of the era, rather than a uniform construction. gen 2 marked the first expansion of k-pop into broader asian markets, with companies also beginning to incorporate western markets into their agenda. the following of traditional gender roles and presentation of cute innocent girls’ images, as well as the pioneering of bad/cool female types, are both attempts by companies to search for the most effective ways to attract a larger fan base. these concepts all fall into the trap of patriarchy, regardless of which ones groups strove to pursue. next, in gen 2.5, four out of the five sampled groups emerge from smallto middle-sized labels. the common ground of most of this generation’s music videos and choreography is the prioritization of filming attractive female bodies. a predominant theme across the music videos and choreography of this generation is the greater emphasis on filming attractive female corporeal bodies. unlike gen 2, where innocence in facial expressions often took precedence, gen 2.5 sees a heightened focus on seductive physical movements as a portrayal of femininity. this shift is evident in the increased percentages of displays indicating subordination, beyond mere smiling or winking. it could be argued that due to limited resources for international outreach, agencies sought to swiftly capture local audiences by resorting to the overcommodification of female bodies. as a result of differing marketing goals, from gen 2 to gen comparison of percentage of heeled shoes worn in mvs among generations 0% 25% 50% 75% 100% gen 2 gen 2.5 gen 3 gen 4 88% 67% 93% 83% 2.5, there is a discernible rise in the prevalence of submissive displays among female idols, bordering on oversexualization. in gen 3, idol groups competed with a diversity of concepts. but by gen 4, the girl crush concept flourished in the k-pop industry. female idol groups explicitly voiced empowerment, intending to break from the shackles of hyperfemininity. songs released in this period focused less on romantic love and more on self-confidence (see graph 2). smiling in mvs became a sign of confidence instead of a presentation of innocence. graph 2 lee and yi (2020) have suggested an association between the phenomenon of “strong sisters” and the third wave of feminism. with a continually growing feminist movement in korea following #metoo, the role of social media platforms is prominent in disseminating feminist activism that is inspired by the west (shin, 2021). under this influence, westernized feminist themes hybridized with confucian conventions stand out in the hallyu 4.0 (boman, 2022). rooted in media culture, feminism in today’s korean popular culture can be understood under the framework of “postfeminism” (li, 2022). by absorbing the system of neoliberalism and individualism, postfeminism, better conceived as a “sensibility,” articulates personal choice and uses beauty to feel good about oneself (gill, 2007). applied to performances, this idea is manifested in the idols’ confident attitude and intensified subjectivity (see favaro, 2017), thus also explaining the rising volume of “egoistic” songs. i contend that the kind of bridgework assigned to female idols extends beyond simply exhibiting femininity. to continually “bridge” the younger generations of audiences globally, regardless of gender, this “work,” grounded in consumerism, is fluid and evolves with popular media trends. with the growth of feminist movements, it is not surprising that gen 4 became committed to popular feminist sentiments. however, it remains questionable whether female idols internalize their aesthetic labor in line with postfeminist values as autonomous beings, or if they remain passive objects, adhering to neo-confucian beliefs. comparison of percentage of love songs among generations 0% 23% 45% 68% 90% gen 2 gen 2.5 gen 3 gen 4 24% 67% 87% 67% over the generations of k-pop girl groups, there has been a shift from innocent girls mixed with strong women, to a trend of embracing sensual femininity, to a diversity of concepts, and finally to a parade of “girl crushes.” while some groups have challenged gender norms through hypermasculinity, others have perpetuated emphasized femininity with relatively high percentages of submissive behavior and overt sexualization of female bodies. in the next section, i will elaborate on objectification theory and test my hypothesis about the correlation between song production credits and opposition to female oppression. ii. sexual objectification to measure the presence of sexual objectification, i examined three variables: (1) close shots of “exposed” body parts, (2) provocative clothing, and (3) treatment as objects. graph 3 presents the average close shot units shown in a female idol group music video in each generation. while the results are not salient, there is a positive correlation between the feminine display and close-shot units. for example, close shots are used most often in gen 2.5 – a generation with the highest average display of subordinate variables. one prevalent shooting sequence is that when the choreography incorporates a hip movement, the camera tends to focus on the butt. although their flesh is not strictly exposed, they are usually wearing tight clothing that delineates their bodies’ curves. graph 3 compared to the data in graph 3, that in graph 4 is more prominent. i only analyzed the outfits that the idols wore when dancing collectively; if individual outfits were also coded, the percentage would be higher. hot shorts and miniskirts — typical symbols of fetishized femininity — play a central factor in the percentages. among the 28 videos that involve provocative outfits, 78.6% of them pertained to being too short. by adhering to these dress codes, female idols’ legs are visually emphasized and take on a significant physical presence (kim, 2011). for example, in sistar’s (gen 2.5) “alone,” along with the reflective dance floor, dark setting, and leg-sliding choreography, the monochrome high-cut dresses construct a memorable impression of the legs. this same applies to gen 4 girl crush groups. in aespa’s comparision of average close shot units in mvs among generations 0 0.8 1.5 2.3 3 gen 2 gen 2.5 gen 3 gen 4 0 0.3 2.7 0 “black mamba” and “savage,” short bottoms increase the visibility of their inner thighs, especially with camera positions and squatting actions in the two music videos, respectively. even for the clothing that i did not code as provocative, female idols’ legs can still be drawn as a focal point. after scrutinizing snsd’s (gen 2) “the boys,” oh (2014, p. 60) asserted how choreography alone brings an emphasis on their “long, white, slender, [and] nonmuscular” legs. like ballerinas, tiptoeing and circular dance movements reinforce the notion of gendered legs. graph 4 three music videos across generations include moments when female idols are overtly depicted as lifeless objects. first, in “gee,” snsd (gen 2) are portrayed as animated and cute mannequins. their subjectivity is activated only through the male character’s gaze and heterosexual affection (kim 2019). second, exid (gen 2.5) are objectified in “up & down,” where their body parts can be split in half and (disparately) stuck together by a magician wearing a lion headpiece. third, (g)i-dle’s (gen 4) “tomboy” embeds a storyline where the girls are turned into barbie dolls that move awkwardly. by treating female idols as objects, the music videos seem to normalize the phenomenon of female submission to male desires and exalt fetishism (kim, 2019). the overall results affirm previous studies of objectification in music videos (aubrey & frisby, 2011; frisby & aubrey, 2012). through camera techniques and provocative attire, female artists are sexualized and confined to stereotypical gendered appearances. separated from their faces and identities, their bodies exist for public consumption and pleasure (fredrickson & roberts, 1997). nevertheless, resistance can be established in some music videos characterized by hypersexualization and objectification. visual imagery and lyrics can provide extra context to the music, such as by containing lesbian relationships, weaponized sexuality, matriarchal images, and other things that subvert the male gaze (osborn, 2021). in fact, exid’s (gen 2.5) “up & down” and (g)i-dle’s (gen 4) “tomboy” illustrate resistance to the male gaze and expectations of women through their plots, in which the male characters who try to manipulate the girls are either poisoned or hanged. instead of being cast in the roles of victims, exid and (g)i-dle are portrayed as perpetrators of femme fatale violence, subverting the norms of sexuality and comparison of percentage of provocative outfits appeared in mvs among generations 0% 23% 45% 68% 90% gen 2 gen 2.5 gen 3 gen 4 41% 47% 87% 8% violence. in this portrayal, their bodies are not objectified, but instead are presented as the carriers of power and control (doane, 1991). another commonality between exid and (g)i-dle is that one of their members was involved in the song production process. whether idols are credited in a song results in substantial disparities in the scheme of lyrics and complexity of stories. though more songs feature resistance as generations progress, qualitative differences lie in the depth of lyrics and the overarching themes. one significant distinction between songs that credit members and those that do not, aside from the indication of self-agency, is that the former speaks to the experiences of a broader female audience. they tackle greater societal issues such as the male gaze, freedom of expression (i.e., political advocacy and choosing what to wear), and gender stereotypes. in contrast, songs that lacked member’s involvement, regardless of what generation they were released from, convey a straightforward message of rebellion or self-boast. admittedly, the high level of confidence displayed by female idols is undeniable, at least in their music videos, and their lyrics can be personal. for example, in le sserafim’s (gen 4) “antifragile,” kazuha’s and sakura/chaewon’s lines are “don’t forget my pointe shoes i left behind / what more must be said” and “don’t underestimate the path i’ve walked i go to ride ‘til i die, die,” respectively. these lines reflect their strong and determined personalities, especially given kazuha’s background as a professional ballerina and sakura and chaewon’s prior debut experiences. however, as their previous song “fearless” also draws attention to their tough but vibrant past, the resulting exaggeration of their experiences becomes a label for self-commercialization. credited songs were also similar in their higher gender display percentage for masculinity/dominance and femininity/subordination, provoking queer sentiments. nonetheless, their outfits may be subject to sexualization: exid’s attire in “ah yeah” sexualizes businesswomen, resembling the trend in gen 2.5, and one set of the outfits in “tomboy” is short and tight, correlating to stereotypical provocative female idols’ clothing. moreover, these videos all include scenes of sexy dancing, which may invite the male gaze despite being presented in an assertive manner. corresponding to the postfeminist sentiment of empowerment being established through sexuality (tasker & negra, 2007), the female idols replicate the media norm that preaches “confidence is sexy,” and remodels self-governance to a construction of an image grounded in neoliberal capitalism, enlisting women to pursue aesthetic labor (favaro, 2017). mcrobbie (2009, p. 12) criticizes this postfeminist ideology as a “double entanglement” that “comprises the co-existence of neo-conservative values in relation to gender, sexuality and family life…with the processes of [liberalization] in regard to choice and diversity in domestic, sexual and kinship relations.” while the “taken into accountness” is celebrated through autonomy, feminist politics are dismantled “by aggressive individualism, by a hedonistic female phallicism in the field of sexuality, and by obsession with consumer culture” (p. 5). in the case of k-pop, even with the increasing volume of songs that aim to resist the societal construction of gender, the overwhelming use of individualistic lyrics and materialistic symbols (i.e., luxury cars, shopping bags, and tanks decorated by diamonds) theoretically have nothing to do with feminist concerns of overcoming patriarchy. thus, mcrobbie (2009) concludes that postfeminism is an “undoing” of feminism. furthermore, in the context of popular culture, postfeminist culture incorporates and naturalizes various aspects of feminism to a form of compelling popular feminism (tasker & negra, 2007). feminism is branded, wrapped in gender equality, and marketed for sale through the platform of media (banet-weiser, 2018). based on this framework, the girl crush concept that advertises female empowerment is a product sold by entertainment companies on youtube. being a platform for circulation, social media provides visibility and accessibility for this popular feminist content where, in this cyclical process, its popularity grows as it gains more visibility, which in turn allows for even greater visibility (banet-weiser, 2018). meanwhile, this visibility of popular feminism is shaped by neoliberal capitalism that has no political vision beyond the market and its measures (rottenberg, 2018). in korea, even though feminist activities are gaining traction, particularly in the context of sexual harassment (shin, 2021), feminism remains a sensitive topic in the entertainment industry. female idols across generations rarely openly state their feminist positions (if any) in public, perhaps due to concerns over anti-feminist backlash and marketing considerations in a society that holds certain neo-conservative gender values (li, 2022). therefore, virtually no song can escape its destiny from being commercialized, regardless of members’ participation in the production process. commercialization promotes the idea of postfeminism as the market shapes feminist ideology. conclusion after a systematic study of the presentation of girl groups across generations in their music products, my findings indicate that while the thematic messages of girl groups’ songs and performance styles have evolved in response to globalization and popular feminism, female idols continue to be confined to the norm of sexualization, with limited autonomy over their bodies. acknowledging the inequality and power dynamics within the k-pop star system, i believe that female idols should be granted more individual freedom rather than being manipulated as pretty idols. one way to achieve this is by involving them more in the song production process, particularly in songwriting, allowing them to express their concerns and interests. however, there are two main obstacles that hinder this progress: age and market reality. since the average debut age for idols is around 18, with some debuting as young as 14, it is skeptical whether they receive adequate education and socialization to develop personal values and navigate gender politics. in cases where female idols possess songwriting abilities, it is more common to see credits for their work in groups from smallto middle-sized companies. this could be attributed to larger entertainment agencies already having abundant resources, such as sophisticated production capabilities, strategic planning, and promotion teams, to ensure the outcome and quality of the final products. adopting an assembly line approach is probably the most efficient way for these agencies to generate profits within the shortest possible time and with minimal risk, prioritizing addictive melodies and catchy phrases over the depth of lyrics to capture a mainstream audience. producing profound songs with a small audience would miss the purpose of commercial production. amid an era of globalization, the korean entertainment industry is responsive to the changing demands of global markets. the concept of popular girl groups has transformed across generations to meet the changing ideals of femininity: as feminist movements gain momentum worldwide, the previous trend of hyperfemininity has gradually given way to the commodification of transnational postfeminist culture through the emergence of the girl crush concept. at the same time, this ambition for globalization has limited the range of themes explored in popular music. even when female idols are involved in song production, their creativity is often constrained by market ideologies of popular feminism. based on the findings of qualitative content analysis, songs that demonstrate a form of resistance often exhibit a “double entanglement” that undoes feminism by emphasizing empowerment through sexuality alongside notions of individualism and materialism. consequently, considering the present obstacles and circumstances, i argue that the potential for k-pop to advance feminist movements is relatively limited. nonetheless, it is worth noting that within the k-pop industry, the boundaries between femininity and masculinity can be blurred, as evidenced by the low percentages for both dominance and subordination gender displays. under this queer culture, accompanied by female idols’ practice of cross-dressing performances and androgynous fashion styles, k-pop can be a source for its consumers to explore their gender and sexual identities. while this study contributes to the existing research on k-pop mainly within the context of gender, it faces some limitations. the primary one is its relatively low reliability due to the absence of an inter-rater in coding the music videos. while i tried to minimize inconsistencies in the codes by watching the videos multiple times and following a guideline, some codes may still contain ambiguities. future studies could enhance the reliability by involving multiple raters in the coding process while completing the data on gen 4 girl groups as this era comes to an end. furthermore, to improve the external validity of the findings and explore whether the resistance demonstrated in female idol groups’ music videos promotes a queering effect or empowers its audience, it would be worthwhile to measure the public perception of the songs on social media platforms such as 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(2018). global imagination of k-pop: pop music fans’ lived experiences of cultural hybridity. popular music & society, 41(4), 373–389. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/03007766.2017.1292819 appendix a data sources lyrics and song interpretations genius youtube seoulbeats atrocitycl music videos youtube member profile kprofiles complimentary k-pop news allkpop soompi koreaboo the dark side to delivery: illuminating the u.s. black maternal health crisis iyanu dare, stanford university ‘25 abstract: in the united states, pregnant and postpartum women are dying at the highest rate among developed countries. this crisis disproportionately impacts black women, who are three times more likely to die during childbirth than white women (centers for disease control and prevention [cdc], 2020). a plethora of factors contribute to this disparity. black women are more likely to experience lower quality healthcare or be unnecessarily recommended riskier surgeries such as cesarean sections even in low-risk births. additionally, they have lower access to affordable healthcare plans that administer maternal care (martin et al., 2019). the cdc reports that 60 percent of maternal deaths are preventable, highlighting the urgent need to improve maternal health quality and accessibility in the united states. this paper argues that poor black maternal health and black maternal mortality constitute a public health crisis in the united states. while existing research highlights socioeconomic barriers as key contributors to health inequities, this paper identifies implicit bias as the underlying driver of these disparities. drawing on the lived experiences of black women and systemic racial bias in healthcare, it provides a nuanced understanding of black maternal mortality. during the recent biden-harris administration initiatives demonstrating an interest in black maternal health, they advocate for holistic solutions, including eliminating racial biases, ensuring equitable and patient-centered care, and improving maternal healthcare quality. “no, you have to do something!” “just go home. let it abort. you can get pregnant again because that is what you people do” (murphy, 2021). u.s. representative cori bush was devastated by these words from her doctor when she went into preterm labor at 16 weeks during her second pregnancy. her terrified mind spiraled back to a similar situation she had been in just months before. during her first pregnancy she suffered from hyperemesis gravidarum, a severe form of morning sickness characterized by persistent nausea, vomiting, and dehydration (murphy, 2021). she had sat in her doctor’s office at five months pregnant, encouraged by a sign on the wall that read: “if you feel something is wrong, something is wrong. tell your doctor.” however, when bush told her doctor she was hastily dismissed and repeatedly told she was “fine” and should “go home” (murphy, 2021). so, she returned home. one week later, bush went into labor at only 23 weeks gestation, and her son zion was born. “his ears were still in his head. his eyes were still fused shut. his fingers were smaller than rice, and his skin was translucent…we were told he had a zero percent chance of life,” bush recalled (murphy, 2021). bush’s son survived, but her concerns about not being listened to during her pregnancy were brushed aside yet again in her second pregnancy. bush later testified before congress, sharing how dismissive and biased medical care nearly cost her and both her children’s lives: “my children almost became a statistic. i almost became a statistic” (bush, 2021). bush’s harrowing experience highlights a crisis that disproportionately impacts black women in the united states. while bush survived, many do not. every year, over 50,000 women in the u.s. experience life-threatening pregnancy complications (dent, 2020), and black women are three times more likely to die during childbirth than white women (cdc, 2023). this paper will demonstrate that poor black maternal health and black maternal mortality constitute a public health crisis in the united states. socioeconomic barriers that contribute to health inequities are discussed as they play an important role in black maternal mortality (singh, 2021). however, this paper goes further to evaluate how implicit bias is the underlying driving cause of maternal health inequity. it will provide a more nuanced understanding of black maternal mortality rooted in the lived experiences of black women in the united states to inform more effective policy solutions that address the causes of maternal mortality more holistically, particularly considering the biden-harris administration’s voiced dedication to addressing black maternal health (congress.gov, 2021). reframing black maternal mortality as a u.s. public health crisis lived experiences like that of congresswoman cori bush are often portrayed in the media as individual misfortunes rather than as evidence of systematic racial health disparities in the united states. this section examines the broader public health crisis, highlighting alarming statistics, systemic factors, and the global context that positions the u.s. as an outlier among industrialized nations. in 2020, the maternal mortality rate in the u.s. was 23.8 deaths per 100,000 live births (hoyert, 2020), with black women disproportionately affected. black women face a mortality rate three times higher than that of white women (figure 1). the centers for disease control and prevention (cdc) further highlights these disparities: black women are 22 percent more likely to die from heart disease, 71 percent more likely to succumb to cervical cancer, and a staggering 243 percent more likely to die from pregnancyor childbirth-related causes compared to white women (martin et al., 2017). this stark inequity persists despite the united states being the world's wealthiest nation and spending $4.3 trillion on healthcare in 2021 (cms.gov, 2022). these figures reveal a systemic failure to prioritize black women’s health. u.s. maternal health in the global context despite disproportionately affecting black women, maternal death rates in the u.s. are significantly higher than in comparable industrialized economies (taylor, 2022). in 2020, the u.s. maternal mortality rate was nearly three times higher than that of france, the industrialized country with the next highest rate (figure 2). the world health organization (who) reported in 2015 that black expectant and new mothers in the u. s die at about the same rate as women in countries such as mexico and uzbekistan, where large proportions of the population live in poverty (figure 3). as a result, the united states remains one of the riskiest countries for black women to give birth (figure 4). figure 1 a comparative perspective on black women’s maternal mortality rates in the united states note: adapted from maternal mortality rates in 2020, by centers for disease control and prevention (cdc), national center for health statistics, 2020, cdc (https://www/cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/maternalmortality/2020/maternal-mortality-rates-2020.htm). copyright 2020 by the cdc figure 2 a comparative perspective of u.s. maternal death rates in the industrialized global context note: adapted from maternal mortality rates in 2020, by centers for disease control and prevention (cdc), national center for health statistics, 2020, cdc (https://www/cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/maternalmortality/2020/maternal-mortality-rates-2020.htm). copyright 2020 by the cdc rising yet preventable maternal deaths u.s. maternal death rates have been increasing over time (figure 5). in 1986 the cdc implemented a pregnancy mortality surveillance system that monitored maternal deaths (cdc, 2022). since then, the system has recorded a consistent rise in maternal mortality in the united states. some researchers suggest that the reason rates appear to be rising is because new classification codes in data collection methods have improved the accuracy of the record (joseph, 2017). however, despite minimal improvements in data collection in recent years, maternal mortality rates have still increased from 20.1 in 2019 to 23.8 in 2020 to 32.9 in 2021 per 100,000 live births (cdc, 2023). this stands in stark contrast with other industrialized countries that are experiencing a decline in maternal mortality despite similar improvements in data collection methods (cox et al., 2018). the tragedy is that not only are u.s. maternal mortality rates high and rising, but most of these deaths are preventable. in 2021, the cdc estimated that 2 of every 3 maternal deaths in the united states could have been prevented (cdc, 2023). common causes of maternal mortality, such as heart conditions, infections, hemorrhage, cardiovascular disease, and embolisms, can often be detected, monitored, and treated. it is senseless that so many women, particularly black women, are dying from these preventable conditions. the rising and preventable nature of black maternal mortality across the nation underscores the urgent need to address the quality of black maternal health in the united states. figure 3 mortality gap for u.s. mothers note: adapted from u.s. ratios (2011-2013). cdc pregnancy mortality surveillance system, and global ratios (2015), unicef, by habitat at home, n.d., habitat at home (https://habitathome.us/america-is-failing-its-black-mothers/) data sources: cdc pregnancy mortality surveillance system and unicef figure 4 new data shows u.s. maternal mortality rate exceeds that in other hics, particularly for black women note: adapted from new data shows u.s. maternal mortality rate exceeds that in other high-income countries, particularly for black women, by m. z. gunja, e. d. gumas, and r. d. williams ii, 2022, the commonwealth fund (https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issuebriefs/2024/aug/health-care-women-how-us-compares-internationally). copyright 2022 by the commonwealth fund evaluating the causes of black maternal mortality to effectively address black maternal mortality, a comprehensive understanding of the causes of black maternal mortality is essential. the disparity in maternal death rates between black and white women in the u.s. is not driven by genetic factors, but rather by a history of— and more critically, ongoing—inequities that black women face within the u.s. healthcare system. this section explores three key contributors: the historical medical mistreatment of black women’s bodies, the socioeconomic factors that limit access to healthcare and exacerbate inequities, and implicit bias, which is a critical driver that not only fuels these other factors but also perpetuates poor maternal health outcomes. historic maltreatment of black women’s bodies historically, in the united states, the reproductive rights of black women were abused, and black maternal health was neglected. an example of this is the legacy of forced sterilizations and nonconsensual experimentation that systematically occurred to black pregnant women in the name of advancing gynecology (prather, 2017). dr. marion sims, a former president of the american medical association, performed vaginal surgeries and procedures on enslaved black women without anesthesia (holland, 2018). despite this abuse, he is still revered in u.s. medical history as the 'father of gynecology,' highlighting how many doctors who contributed to the mistreatment of black individuals continue to be glorified by the u.s. healthcare system (sartin, 2004). in addition to sims' experimentation, black women were disproportionately subjected to forced sterilization programs throughout the 20th century, particularly during the eugenics movement. for example, in north carolina, between 1929 and 1974, doctors performed approximately 7,600 sterilizations. black women made up 60 percent of those sterilized by the figure 5 u.s. maternal mortality rates over time note: adapted from maternal mortality rates in 2020, by centers for disease control and prevention (cdc), national center for health statistics, 2020, cdc (https://www/cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/maternalmortality/2020/maternal-mortality-rates-2020.htm). copyright 2020 by the cdc 1960s, despite being only 25 percent of the population (kaelber, 2012). these sterilizations were often framed as necessary for "public health" or "genetic improvement" but were rooted in systemic racism and efforts to control black reproduction. consequently, today many african americans hold high levels of medical mistrust in the united states due to legacies of racism and medical malpractice combined with current race-based medical inequities (kennedy, 2007). instead of recognizing this history and working to repair it, many physicians and media outlets portray pregnant black women as irrational for harboring medical distrust. they usually assume black women need education about how healthcare services have improved. however, this furthers the misconception that overt and covert discriminatory medical biases and inequitable policies do not still exist in the present day when they do. instead of blaming the victims of marginalized communities for non-adherence, the u.s. healthcare system needs to work towards building an institution that can overcome present maternal health injustices and instill trust in black mothers. socioeconomic disparities historical mistreatment of black women’s bodies laid the foundation for poor maternal health outcomes, and in conjunction with social determinants of health, they continue to sustain maternal health disparities in the present day. the world health organization defines the social determinants of health as the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age that affect their health outcomes (who, 2024). a 2021 investigation by johns hopkins medicine, published in the journal of american medical association, examined preeclampsia, a serious blood pressure condition that can develop during pregnancy. the study found that black women born in the united states consistently had a 26 percent higher risk of preeclampsia during pregnancy than those who immigrated from other countries (johns hopkins, 2021). additionally, black women who had lived in the united states for more than 10 years had a higher risk of preeclampsia compared to those who had lived in the united states for less than 10 years. these findings suggest that living in the united states not only increases the likelihood of preeclampsia but that the risk grows with prolonged exposure. the researchers attributed this to the compounded effects of social determinants of health in the united states that disadvantage black women, contributing to higher rates of maternal mortality. this reflects broader trends showing that socioeconomic factors, such as access to safe housing, nutritious food, stable income, and safe environments, are disproportionately distributed in the u.s., particularly affecting black women. for instance, in 2023, black women working full-time, year-round were paid only 66 cents for every dollar earned by a white non-hispanic man (national women’s law center, 2024). limited access to high-quality healthcare and systemic barriers to these critical determinants of health can mean the difference between life and death for black pregnant women. poor social determinants of health contribute to limited access to high-quality healthcare, resulting in higher maternal mortality rates for black women. nationally, black women are, on average, three times more likely than white women to die from pregnancy-related causes (cdc, 2023). however, in new york city, this disparity is even more severe, with black women experiencing a maternal mortality rate 8 times higher than that of white women (nyc department of health and mental hygiene, 2019). a study published in the american journal of obstetrics and gynecology examined how the disparity in maternal mortality rates between black and white women in new york city is influenced by the hospitals where they give birth (howell, 2016). hospital quality is closely tied to factors such as income and location, which are social determinants of health. those with higher socioeconomic status are more likely to access higher-quality hospitals. the study found that black women are disproportionately more likely to deliver in hospitals with higher rates of severe maternal complications compared to white women. while 65 percent of white deliveries occur in the safest hospitals, only 23 percent of black deliveries take place in these facilities (howell, 2016). this disparity reflects the enduring effects of socioeconomic inequities and historical segregation, as hospitals serving predominantly black populations often remain lower in quality and have significantly higher rates of life-threatening complications. the intersection of inadequate social determinants of health and systemic healthcare inequities prevents many black women from accessing highquality care, exacerbating maternal health disparities. underlying driver of black maternal mortality: implicit bias often research tends to highlight historical and socioeconomic factors as the primary contributors to maternal health disparities in the u.s. however, as demonstrated in this paper, other industrialized countries facing similar socioeconomic challenges have significantly lower maternal mortality rates than the united states. this discrepancy underscores the role of implicit bias as a crucial, yet often overlooked, underlying driver of black maternal mortality. implicit bias in healthcare refers to unconscious attitudes and beliefs that influence clinicians’ behaviors, affecting their understanding, decision-making, and treatment outcomes (joint commission, 2018). implicit biases in healthcare are deeply rooted in structural racism and the historical mistreatment of black bodies in the united states as previously discussed. these biases are influenced by cultural stereotypes that depict black individuals as stronger, more resilient, or less sensitive to pain, which are often ingrained through repeated exposure to societal messages (saluja & bryant, 2021). according to preshuslee thompson, a training and development specialist at ohio state’s kirwan institute, the more individuals are exposed to these stereotypes, the stronger these implicit associations become (rao, 2020). this leads clinicians to rely on assumptions about black patients’ physicality, such as beliefs that they have thicker skin, stronger bones, or less sensitivity to pain, which in turn affects the care they receive (saluja & bryant, 2021). these false beliefs manifest in healthcare settings, where studies have shown that black patients, particularly black women, are less likely to be given appropriate pain management. for instance, rust et al. (2015) found significant racial disparities in the administration of epidural analgesia, with black non-hispanic patients receiving it at significantly lower rates than their white counterparts. as healthcare providers are exposed to or operate with these stereotypes, their unconscious biases are solidified, leading to discriminatory practices that further entrench maternal health disparities. in maternal care, this bias manifests during pregnancy and the postpartum period, manifesting in high-stress medical settings like labor and delivery rooms or emergency departments. in these environments, where quick decision-making is critical, clinicians often rely on automatic or unconscious processes, which can activate harmful stereotypes and unconscious beliefs (saluja & bryant, 2021).the quotes below are the responses four well known black women or their family members received from their doctors in the united states when expressing the concerns they had when believing their health or their baby’s health was in danger: “i think all this medicine is making you talk crazy,” serena williams’ doctor told her (williams, 2022). “there is nothing we can do; you just have to wait, give it more time” shalon irving’s doctor told her (martin et al., 2017). “your wife just isn’t a priority” kira johnson’s doctor told her husband charles johnson (pahr, 2024). “just go home. let it abort. you can get pregnant again because this is what you people do anyway” us representative cori bush’s doctor told her (murphy, 2021). a common theme emerging from these quotes is the racial stereotyping and invalidation of pain experienced by black women. in these instances, their lived experiences and concerns about their own health, and that of their babies, were not taken seriously. this reflects a broader systemic issue within the u.s. healthcare system, where racial biases erode trust in the patientdoctor relationship, often with fatal consequences. trust is critical in maternal care, and its absence exacerbates racial health disparities. figure 6 serena williams figure 7 shalon irving for instance, despite being highly educated, financially stable, and insured, all four women experienced poor maternal care. serena williams, a global tennis star, faced significant medical challenges during her pregnancy (figure 6). as an elite athlete, one would assume she would have a strong understanding of her body. however, she was repeatedly ignored by medical staff when she correctly requested a ct scan and heparin drip to address her growing complications, leaving her dangerously close to death (williams, 2022). despite her clear knowledge of her own body and medical needs, she had to advocate relentlessly for herself before receiving the appropriate care. similarly, shalon irving, a public health leader and former epidemiologist at the cdc, tragically lost her life due to high blood pressure complications despite her extensive health knowledge (figure 7). she had raised alarms to her doctors multiple times, but her concerns were dismissed. she died after suffering complications related to preeclampsia, an issue she, as an epidemiologist, was keenly aware of (martin, 2017). charles johnson, the husband of kira johnson, also experienced a devastating loss. charles fought desperately for his wife’s medical attention after watching her foley catheter “turn pink with blood” (howard, 2020). his concerns were invalidated for hours, and despite his pleas for help, kira was not treated as a priority. this delay led to the discovery that she had been internally bleeding for 10 hours and had lost over 3.5 liters of blood. tragically, kira died on the operating table, underscoring the deadly consequences of her concerns being ignored and invalidated by medical professionals (figure 10). finally, the last quote comes from u.s. representative cori bush, who felt unseen in both of her traumatic pregnancies, as detailed previously (figure 9). despite serving the people of her district every day, she was left unheard by the healthcare system at her time of greatest need. cori bush’s experiences further highlight how, even for those in positions of power and influence, black women’s concerns are often dismissed within the healthcare system. this dismissiveness, compounded by implicit bias, underscores the devastating impact that healthcare disparities have, regardless of one’s status or role in society. figure 8 kira johnson figure 9 u.s rep cori bush understanding implicit bias as the underlying driver of black maternal disparities “being heard and appropriately treated was the difference between life and death for me,” serena williams said on april 5, 2022. in that moment it wasn't her class, her education, her income, or any other socioeconomic indicator but her voice being heard, acknowledged, or valued which would have made the difference for her. in the larger u.s. healthcare system, as reflected in serena’s story, even when adjusting for socioeconomic standing, implicit bias still perpetuates racial medical disparities. these cases highlight a key insight: implicit bias, not socioeconomic status, was the decisive factor in their maternal health outcomes. the commonalities between these women are striking they are educated leaders, are involved in their communities, occupy stable jobs, are financially secure, and have health insurance. these are all factors that should, in theory, protect them from poor health outcomes. however, despite their socioeconomic privilege, they all experienced poor maternal care perpetrated by the implicit biases they experienced as black women. tragically, shalon irving and kira johnson lost their lives. their status and privilege did not shield them from the biases and violence inherent in the healthcare system. this demonstrates that the issue is not simply a matter of access to care, but a deep-rooted systemic bias that affects the quality of care particularly for black women, regardless of their social or economic status. the impact of implicit bias is especially evident when examining the role of education in maternal health outcomes. despite higher levels of education or financial stability, black women continue to face worse maternal health outcomes because of implicit racial bias in medical practice. for example, black women with college degrees are twice as likely to experience maternal mortality as white women without a high school diploma (hill, 2022). this stark contrast highlights the powerful impact of implicit bias and racial discrimination in healthcare, challenging the narrative that black women’s poor maternal health outcomes are solely due to socioeconomic factors. beyond dismissive rhetoric, implicit bias influences clinical decisions in numerous ways. for example, studies show black women are more likely to undergo cesarean deliveries than white women, even when adjusting for medical necessity (saluja & bryant, 2021). a cesarean section (c-section) is a surgical procedure used to deliver a baby through incisions in the abdomen and uterus when a vaginal delivery would pose a risk to the mother or baby. cesarean sections, while sometimes necessary, come with increased risks of maternal and infant mortality, including hemorrhage, complications of anesthesia, and infection (roth, 2012). this racial disparity underscores how unconscious biases shape clinical practices, disproportionately subjecting black women to riskier procedures. further compounding these disparities fueled by implicit biases is the exclusion of black women from medical research (le et al., 2022). historically, black women have been underrepresented in clinical trials, which directly affects their health outcomes. for instance, a study examining u.s.-based obstetric trials between 2007 and 2020 found that black participants were notably underrepresented in trials focused on hypertension and obstetric anesthesia (jecca et al., 2023). in hypertension trials, black participants represented a disproportionately low percentage, despite their higher rates of hypertensive disorders during pregnancy. similarly, obstetric anesthesia trials enrolled a minimal number of black participants, and these trials were the least likely to report race and ethnicity data, further limiting the understanding of how treatments may affect different racial and ethnic groups. hence when health professionals operate on the results of biased research results it exacerbates black maternal health disparities. strategies for tackling implicit bias in maternal health to address the black maternal mortality crisis effectively, policy solutions must begin with raising awareness and educating healthcare providers on the real impact of implicit bias in maternal care. many healthcare providers struggle to recognize the impact of their personal implicit biases on the care they provide to patients (saluja & bryant, 2021). studies, such as one from the society for maternal-fetal medicine, highlight a gap between clinicians’ awareness of disparities and their acknowledgment of personal biases in patient care. while 83% of providers recognize the existence of disparities, only 29% believe that their personal biases influence their care decisions (jain & moroz, 2017). therefore, it is crucial to mandate regular implicit bias testing for healthcare providers to allow them to confront and reflect on their biases in a structured way, ideally through tools such as the implicit association test (iat), which is not self-reported but instead measures unconscious associations. regular testing and reflection will help make implicit bias more visible and lead to more intentional care practices. additionally, improving the quality of implicit bias training is essential. one approach is to incorporate compulsory post-care conversations with black women, allowing them to share their experiences to clinicians directly. this feedback is crucial in identifying where patients felt unheard, overlooked, or mistreated, providing opportunities for improvement in care. such conversations can also help build trust, as patients feel that their voices are valued and their concerns are addressed. training should emphasize not just listening but actively reflecting on non-verbal cues, tone, and gestures to ensure that providers recognize and correct any biases that may be subtly influencing patient interactions. to further this effort, healthcare providers should be trained to slow down when they can and listen to patients’ concerns, particularly those of black women. adopting a mindset where healthcare providers consider their patients’ concerns as valid until proven otherwise—rather than dismissing them outright—will allow for more accurate diagnoses and better patient outcomes. this approach can prevent scenarios like that of serena williams, where an underestimation of concerns led to life-threatening consequences. implicit bias training must occur on both an individual and institutional scale. hospitals, medical schools, and health systems must implement comprehensive, ongoing training and foster environments that emphasize accountability, collective responsibility, and continuous learning. addressing implicit bias should not be limited to individual practitioners but must be a systemic effort to create meaningful, long-term change. conclusion black women are dying in the united states at the highest rate among industrialized nations. black maternal mortality rates are high and rising, yet preventable. each death is a life lost too soon, too often due to the failure of the u.s. healthcare system to value black women’s maternal health and well-being. black maternal mortality must be acknowledged as a public health crisis founded on a systematically inequitable healthcare system; shaped by implicit bias, discriminatory practices, and the historical maltreatment of black women; and compounded by socioeconomic barriers many black women face. as explored in this paper, the causes of black maternal mortality are multidimensional and require equally multifaceted solutions. often, socioeconomic factors are considered in policy, but if implicit bias and the legacies of historic maltreatment are not addressed when implementing these solutions, these policies are unlikely to effectively eradicate maternal health disparities. implicit bias in medical training, decision-making, and care practices must be recognized and actively challenged to ensure that black women’s health concerns are taken seriously and treated with the urgency they deserve. in conclusion, to effectively address the black maternal mortality crisis, the united states needs a comprehensive and equitable maternal health system that includes holistic, targeted initiatives to address both historical and current barriers to high-quality black maternal healthcare. key measures include regular implicit bias testing for healthcare providers, enhanced training through 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https://www.cdc.gov/healthequity/features/maternal-mortality/index.html puzzle box: chiasmus, queering, and subjective finitude in clive barker’s hellraiser puzzle box: chiasmus, queering, and subjective finitude in clive barker’s hellraiser marley goldman, emory university ‘24 abstract: this essay, an analysis of clive barker’s hellraiser, enters into the conversation of queer negativity by utilizing a foucauldian framework for understanding queerness and subjectivity. this framework is expanded by eve sedgewick and susan sontag’s analyses of queerness and camp, alongside leo bersani’s groundbreaking essays of queer negativity. in addition to queer-focused philosophy, the chapter takes inspiration from eugenie brinkema’s book life destroying diagrams (2022) in which she employs a formalist approach to reading film. at the core of this essay lies the queer subject-other positionality of the cenobites in clive barker’s hellraiser. the cenobites’ freedom, and their queerness, is found in their continued sadomasochistic illegibility. though they are trapped at one’s fingertips, always summonable through the iconic puzzle box, they are ephemeral: specters discernible only in discrete collisions with the mortals who summon them. by illuminating the intertwined relationship between perceived interior (the home) and exterior (the sadistic hellscape of the cenobites), the essay rejects the premise of an outside and presents queerness as a disruption within a foucauldian grid. hellraiser’s frank cotton becomes the site of such a disruption through his summoning of the cenobites, but his refusal to relinquish subjectivity bars him from becoming queered in the way that they are. frank thus finds himself dragged between forces as the film unfolds—agonized by continued visibility, yet trapped within the grid he sought to transcend. the chapter will juxtapose frank’s adhesion to sexual legibility against the sadomasochistic cenobites’ embrace of inscrutability. this essay begins with a scene of horror. the horror is an answer. an answer to the question that opens clive barker’s hellraiser: “what's your pleasure, mr. cotton?” this question is posed within the film, but it is also posed extra-diegetically. the viewer wants the same thing as frank cotton: a reckoning with the limits of experience. frank finds his answer in the shaded anonymity of a mysterious market, a puzzle box capable of bringing the possessor unparalleled pleasure. the viewer finds their answer in the play button, pressed with a trembling hand. the viewer, however, is to remain pinned until the next chapter. let them agonize a little longer. the scene of horror must now unfold. so it begins. seated shirtless on the floor within his attic, bare skin gleaming within the light of a square of candles, frank watches as the box morphs—folding into countless prismatic shapes as it reveals its promises. his eyes widen as the boarded walls thrum, blue light beginning to seep through the cracks. strange steam swirling within the room, hitherto unseen, becomes illuminated by this intruding light—forming linear shapes in the air around frank’s reverie. then the walls themselves recede, tangible plaster rising to the heavens to allow greater presence of that brilliant blue light. when the box completes its transformations, electricity, as vivid as the light subsuming frank’s room, arcs into his flesh. hooks of ambiguous origin bury themselves in his skin, rending it, his blood beginning to slide in rivulets. the camera work is close, capturing the tortured flesh in shocking relief—a stark contrast to the foggy inscrutability displayed by the rest of his surroundings. frank screams, his face distorted by the wicked sensation of promised agony, and the film cuts abruptly: an elegant family home filling the screen where the tortured hedonist had been. the series of vignettes presented are domestic and yet unsettling: a family dining table, heaped with rotting food; an empty hallway adorned with portraits; a poorly illuminated statue of christ keeping watch over unseen household members; a bed with filthy sheets upon which a cockroach scuttles. then comes the nondescript attic door, swinging slowly inwards to reveal a sliver of light. finally the viewer is privy to what lies beyond. it no longer resembles frank’s attic. the physical structure revealed is ambiguous—the walls, ceiling, and floors are obscured by inky haze, as though filthy. windows, identical to those in the earthly home, are discernible among the filthy and nondescript panels. first concealed by a myriad of chains and hooks descending from the concealed ceiling, the realization of their identical nature is discordant to the viewer. within the room stand pillars adorned with human flesh: chunks of viscera, iridescent with blood, attached with hooks and chains. the pillars reject stagnation in favor of rotating constantly, presenting a never-ending morphology of shapes. with each revolution, the tangible space is torn apart and reconstructed. the result is an ephemeral simulacrum of the attic room, identical and yet illegible, wet with blood. through this uncanny scape drifts the cenobite—illuminated by a single swaying bulb amidst the chains. the glow of the bulb is warm and familiar compared to the blue seeping through the fragmented walls where boards have given way to light. a human face lies disassembled upon the floor, the pieces placed like a macabre puzzle. the attempt at reassembly is farcical, for the face is torn so significantly it no longer coherently resembles a face at all. the cenobite looms above it, its own face similarly ravaged by a grid of pins emerging from deep within the flesh. with a deft caress, it slides the puzzle box into the original configuration and all traces of the cenobites are expunged in an instant. the attic is tightly walled once more, illuminated with the earthly glow of a curtain-covered window. the chiasmus when frank summoned the cenobites, he carved a crossing into the fabric of his world. the spatial and ontological relationships occurring between human and cenobite, between home and exterior, were chiastic in nature. it was a cataclysmic collision of forces which tore poor frank cotton beyond repair. the term chiasmus is a literary one, referring to an inverted relationship between the syntactic elements of parallel phrases (merriam webster dictionary definition of “chiasmus,” 2024). abba—pleasure’s a sin, and sin’s a pleasure. within the reversal of two antithetical statements lies the power of the chiastic sentence. through such intimate juxtaposition, the irreconcilability of conflicting sentiment is both emphasized and forced into discordant unity. this is because, despite containing only two overt terms (a and b), a chiasmus actually produces an invisible third term: c. in order for a and b to work in linguistic tandem, they must somehow generate a bridge between their contradictions. the bridging concept (c), acts as a figurative stage upon which antithetical a and b can operate in conversation with one another. in short, the “chiasmus works not simply through a logic of crossing or exchange between two terms, but also through the generation of a third term” (wiseman & paul, 2014). thus chiasmus is not powerful merely for its ability to juxtapose, but also for its ability to generate something new—something akin to the collision between frank’s attic and cenobite, something born from dissonant forces amalgamating. an example to illuminate this point: the aforementioned pleasure and sin. in this case, the third term that emerges, which acts as a site of interaction between sentiments, comes from a religious matrix of pleasure versus sin. that is because, through the employed language of sin, a greater religious world is invoked. pleasure’s a sin, proclaims puritan morality; but sin’s a pleasure, retorts the dissenter. though their perspectives are dissident, these antithetical statements are both legible upon a moral stage of religiosity. this cultural context is both present and absent within the chiastic sentence: its contextual contingency is not verbally established and yet the implicit context is necessary for both the declaration and the refutation to be uttered. as seen in this simultaneous presence and absence of context, the chiasmus implies a larger world, or a subject who utters it, without those forces being visible within the confines of the sentence. as argued in chiasmus + culture “there is, within the third element, an implication of the larger ground the claim occurs in—or the ‘i’ that speaks it…and yet it is not present within the moment” (wiseman & paul, 2014). this implied world context is how the unnamed site c, or crossing, is able to briefly unite the disagreeing clamor of unnamed voices. the third site is intangible and, were it to be overtly written, the chiastic sentence would be destroyed. its absence within the chiasmus is not due to any neglect of its written inclusion, rather its absence stems from its status as the unsaid. in that sense site c is apophatic: speech that says by unsaying. site c is a place of transformation, obscurity, and possibility where reconciliations occur that are impossible in verbal logic. were the aforementioned example expanded to read: “pleasure’s a sin on the religious stage, and sin’s a pleasure”, it would be nonsensical. it would be a mere contradiction. by defining site c, the chiastic powers of juxtaposition are murdered in favor of irreconcilability. the sentence has been rendered incoherent because the confines of coherence, either of subject or location, cannot support the antithetical a and b. as such, c is not specific or tangible, and often lacks verbal comprehensibility; this means that it often signals as an affective state. the third “term often registers entirely as laughter, delight, awe, or other emotional response,” (wiseman & paul, 2014) all of which arise from the inability to express conflicting states. c is not a logic proof which solves for a and b’s commonality. it is an expression of something nebulous— awe, confusion, tension, overwhelming sadness. ?????? chiastic reversal has a ludic quality. further, the fact that c “is often expressed as laughter is a welcome mystification of social relations” (wiseman & paul, 2014) which require coherence or legibility as a requirement for existence. c insists on its own existence despite its inscrutability! its presence is demonstrated through effects both absent and tangible in the sentence. the expansive abyss of this third site occurs only within the confines of the crossing between a and b and is thus paradoxical in form—implying something limitless and yet utterly confined to a moment. there is no permanence to be found within this new site of formal innovation. rather “the basis for resolution is always signified only by the crossing, which itself supplies no principle of resolution but rather perpetual oscillation” (wiseman & paul, 2014). this is because the space between a and b is contingent and ephemeral, born of the elements which imply it and consisting of nothing but the space upon which they engage one another. were it altered or applied broadly, it would dissipate forever. while its roots are mired in the poetic, the chiastic structure is also useful in conceptualizing matters of philosophy. the philosophical appeal of the chiasmus “stems from its capacity to imply an additional dimension of thought, experience, or social organization in which incommensurables can be joined harmoniously or productively” (wiseman & paul, 2014). similarly to how the prior example of pleasure and sin generated an unspoken battleground of morality upon which to reconcile itself, philosophically chiastic crossings are ripe with generative collisions that resist verbal categorization. another philosophical appeal of the chiasmus is that it can generate an ontological paradox as well as a linguistic one. this occurs because the speaker, the subjective “i” within the chiasmus, is highly unstable. the two sides of the chiasmus imply either divergent perspectives, each referring back to the other, or that both sides are the product of a single shattered subject with no consistent self-orientation. in either event, there is no coherent “i” who speaks: the speaking, knowing subject is either absent or so fragmented that it contradicts itself. and though site c generates vital context, it does not reconcile this befuddling ontological condition by attributing subjectivity to the phrases. drawing on its complexity as a rhetorical and philosophical figure, chiasmus can be utilized to conceptualize spatial relationships of crossing and inversion within hellraiser. its operation at the level of physical space within the film, as opposed to at the level of the sentence, still produces the elusive site c—and the crossing produced comes with even higher ontological stakes. the simulacrum attic room, figure 1, in which frank’s body is tormented is a physical representation of site c. figure 1 the attic the attic, a representation of the abyss at the heart of chiasmus, is a meeting ground upon which both cenobites and family are legible, a clutter born of both worlds, gore and civility shockingly juxtaposed. it is as exquisitely ephemeral as it is dangerous. it is a site with no identity of its own, whose blood slicked floors allow the forces to converge. it is an attic that is not an attic, lit from within and without, whose pillars of flesh spin with endless possibilities. as frank’s actions initiate this crossing of worlds, he himself becomes the broken subject that is implicated in the ontological paradox of the chiasmus. his body is rendered void as the hooks tear into his skin and yet he is not destroyed; he becomes the very point of crossing. the cenobites do not storm the attic walls, or manifest in some other earthly fashion. their presence bursts forth as the crossing occurs at the site of frank—an inversion which turns him, literally, inside out. the crossing a leap outside of the limits of pleasure, achieved through a finite reckoning with the cenobites—that is what frank dreamed of when the puzzle box was first placed into the palm of his curious hand. frank wanted to pursue a limit experience. he wanted to access that figurative ambrosia which lies outside of the conventions that hem him in. limit experiences1 vary in method, they are attempted through sex, mind-altering drugs, or enduring deliberate pain, but their purpose is always the same: allowing the subject to experience the most triumphant and cataclysmic sensations possible, so dazzling that it shatters the light of their subjectivity. ego death catharsis horror ecstasy frank summoned the cenobites with the intent of stepping into their world to pursue such an experience, leaving his own world untouched for his inevitable return. the stark divide he conceptualized between interior (his home waiting, untouched) and exterior (the twisted world of ultimate experience) purports that one can exist within the confines of subjectivity or one can transcend, breaking free into the dazzling elysian nights of unbridled sexual ecstasy. that is the neat duality of space which frank so confidently bet his flesh on—one that would have allowed him safe passage into the cenobites’ outside and back again, resituated in the seat of subjectivity with memory enough to pacify monotonous days. but that was never to be. frank’s lust for a mere glimpse of the outside was unable to be resolved, for such resolution would require division between the cenobite world and the home. he wanted the box open for his pleasures and closed whenever agony was inconvenient, but that tidy theoretical division crumbled into a gruesome paradoxical reality. why? because the box is not a ticket out from the confines of the repressive hypothesis famously critiqued by foucault. were the box a portal, as was assumed by frank, then it would possess a tidy relationship to exteriority and interiority. when in the tightly-sealed starting position, the box would contain the latent power to access the cenobite realm: the “outside” according to the world of the family. then, when the box’s structure is interfered with and the “portal” is activated, as occurred during frank’s seance, the fabric between cenobite and human would be diminished—allowing the subject to step, or be dragged, into that exterior space. once within the cenobite world, the return would consist of inverse operations. this conception of the box is, at its core, a metaphysical doorknob. but that model of the human world and cenobite world does not capture the true spatial intricacy of their relationship—one that is chiastic in nature. the portal framework relies on the assumption that the action occurring is the passage of a subject who is only partly undone 1 a notion that michel foucault borrowed from george bataile. through a departure and subsequent return facilitated by the box. however, the true mechanism of interaction is a veritable collision of cenobite and mortal within the confines of the summoning space. therefore, when frank intends to move from the figurative a to b, the box creates c. as such there is no departure, he is never free of the attic; for the family home and the cenobite realm become the integral forces whose irreconcilable interplay rips the liminal c into existence. c is therefore neither attic nor cenobite, it is not even a corrupted attic or a failed site of departure, it is a crossing. frank’s initiation caused elements of the intertwined realms to bleed into one another, creating an unsettled space that eludes direct categorization. it is an ephemeral space which is contingent on the chiastic powers the box contains—it is an empty space, an unnamed void. with each revolution of the flesh-pillars, the simulacrum room is remade anew, demonstrating endless spatial adaptation. the chains that sway from the ceiling lend a cenobite air to the borrowed attic facade, providing a stage upon which both realities can carve their meanings into frank’s flesh. though fleeting, the carnal impact it allows is viscerally real. it is a space of high ontological stakes, and within it frank is dragged between paradoxical hooks. he is a subject. he is within his home. he belongs to the family. he is a man. he is legible. and: he is other. he is in a place beyond conception. he belongs to no one. he is an object, illegibility is written across his ruined flesh. spatially and subjectively, frank has been quartered much like damiens in the infamous opening of foucault’s discipline and punish. though frank’s intended limit experience failed, he reckoned with a limit nonetheless, and it was a collision after which he will never be the same. this confrontation which produces a crossing at the site of the former subject is queer. queer here does not designate an identity, like a species of flower within a greenhouse of variants, for there is nothing queer about such a legible position on a normal curve of sexuality. nor is queerness transgressive in the sense that it crosses or transcends norms, as was frank’s intent. that cannot not be the case because there is nothing “outside” of the limit. the crossing occurs at the site of frank; frank himself crosses nothing. the queering action hellraiser performs is a hollowing out in which frank’s very flesh is inverted by the forces which act upon him. therefore this queering is a disruption—frank’s body is shattered, turned inside out, as are the divisions between worlds, as are the delineations of cenobite and human, as is subjectivity itself. “the leap” it is only after the refuse of frank is expunged that the viewer is made privy to the collision’s location: the bastion of domesticity that is the attic of a family home. the unmoored viewer drifts backwards down the stairs, gaze hesitant to leave the attic door which is now tightly closed. how tidy it looks, how utterly incapable of concealing torment. the fact that the crossing occurred between cenobite and a domestic space is intimately implicated with the film’s queerness. the scene’s location illuminates how frank’s debauchery was a deviation from within as opposed to an invasion from some outside space where cenobites proliferate freely. the origin of deviance, then, is from within the family home. frank was born within it, lived within it, and was ripped apart within its similacrum’s walls. this view of deviation is a foucauldian one; a perspective oriented not around the escape of repression, but around the production of queerness within the confines of a grid of quadrillage2. the opposing, and more commonly employed, conceptual model of queerness and its assumed opposite is that of diametrically opposed spaces. on one side lies all which is sanctioned by the heterosexual, utilitarian mechanism of repression; on the other side lies queerness. they are divided and yet the queer side is accessible with the correct method of self-liberation. this conceptual model allows a subject the “opportunity to speak out about the powers that be, to utter truths and promise bliss, to link together enlightenment, liberation, and manifold pleasures” (foucault, 1976) with the intent of transcending the repressive powers of confinement. the leap is not easy, for the barrier, though permeable, is iron-fisted in its constraint, but the outside is distinct and vivid in nature. rebellion, blasphemous speech in the face of repression, kinky sex, gay sex, non-procreative sex, sadomasochism, such are the mechanisms of the leap. through figurative freedom of movement, from one side of the metaphorical divide to the other, a sexualized self might access unfettered, unrepressed pleasure as well as freedom from the effects power places on sex. the sex club is a place where such a departure might occur: a two-way train ticket to and from the realm of queerness. in this enclave of rebellion, the subject is able to experience pleasure beyond the edict of taboos governing their daily life, thus temporarily shedding the effects repressive power exerts on them. on one side lies the power of repression and its products: dismal heterosexuals in procreative missionary positioned within the sterile home of the married couple. on the opposing side lies the queer, kinky, salacious “garden of earthly delights” (foucault, 1976) outside of power’s reach: the place frank so eagerly sought to step inside of, salivating for its forbidden fruit. conceptualizing queerness as wholly removed from repression is enticing because it promises an outside to the effects of power. were such a schematic true, then it would inherently allow for the possibility of fruitful transgression, a space the subject might escape to. the subject need only resist, and they would “place [themself] to a certain extent outside the reach of power” (foucault, 1976) because it would be a power whose only weapon is repression. each act and 2 used to refer to partitioning as a form of control. word of defiance hence would appeal to a future where sex would be free, where sex would be fantastic. queer joy, queer lust, freedom—these would be the boons of sexual revolution. wouldn’t that be nice? deviance but queerness is not an autonomous haven outside of the grid’s reach, it is produced within the very structure it appears to resist. freedom of movement, a leap from one side to the other, is thus impossible. the subject cannot hope to resist the repressive effects of power, not because methods of rebellion are rendered inaccessible, but because the mechanism of power was not primarily repressive to begin with. queerness is not rebellion, nor is it the sweet and dripping promise within the core of a forbidden fruit. queerness is a deviance produced by the very lines of grid, slashed into the flesh of the subject. queerness was born from the “setting apart of the ‘unnatural’ as a specific dimension in the field of sexuality,” (foucault, 1976) a process of categorization whose goal was not to remove the deviant, but to churn further power from the prescription of its features. power does not stifle sexuality with the intent of exterminating it, instead power incites its constant proliferation—splintering sexuality into a myriad of options to be observed and categorized. the power that forged queerness from the quagmire of sexual potential “gave it an analytical, visible, and permanent reality” (foucault, 1976) which demanded constant pursuit. examination and definition were the knives that excised queerness from obscurity and bottled it up for constant observation. the homosexual (figure 2), the sadist, the sexoesthetic invert—each cut gridded deviance further along the definitional lines inscribed. the result was a sexual mosaic so precise, whose lines had proliferated with such intensity, that its object of deviance could be found in exponentially increasing sites. figure 2 the homosexual in the same way that collision site c does not exist with autonomy from the mortal realm, queerness is not outside of normativity. there are striking parallels to these two existences: both are aberrant and yet both are born within a productive power mechanism. in the words of foucault, “the machinery of power that focuses on [the] whole alien strain [of queerness does] not aim to suppress it, but rather to give it an analytical, visible, and permanent reality: it was implanted in bodies…made a principle of classification and intelligibility” (foucault, 1976). queerness was not born of natural origin, deemed aberrant, and then excluded. nor does it possess an outside existence wholly untouched, inaccessible except via transcendent measures. queerness is not about the crossing of a line in the same way the box is not a portal. queering occurs when the former subject becomes a site upon which forces produce a crossing that, in turn, undoes the subject. the legible sexual subject is undone at the site of queerness, and in that sense it can be considered a verb: a queering. queerness thus cannot be conceptualized as a stable and generalizable state, one which can be adopted as identity. but that is not to say it is not powerful in its effects, or that it cannot be embodied. for the cenobites, it is their continued illegibility that queers them. they are a figure only visible at the crossing, illuminated in the blue light of worlds collapsing upon one another. therefore queerness is an ontological paradox: it is brought into violent existence as a product of the power that names it; and yet it is an inexorable presence, even when gnashed like paper through the teeth of a shredder and thus rendered illegible within the very mechanism that created it. this ontological paradox is a chiastic implosion of meaning at site c, as opposed to psychoanalytic queer negativity’s masochistic self-negation achieved by sexually “shattering the psychic structures themselves.” (bersani, 1987). here bersani’s rectum-as-grave is not a manifestation of the death drive, it is the chiastic site c—a site of irreconcilable forces that can only emerge through a foucauldian analysis of the grid of intelligibility. it is a diagonal emergence within a brinkemian diagram. it is a rhetorical and ontological collision that bypasses psychoanalytic repression and its ensuing liberation to sketch a different kind of freedom-as-horror. “them” this is the paradoxical ontological experience that affords the cenobites freedom, not despite the inversion of their flesh, but because of it. imagine, for a moment, that the cenobite was once a human. first the delineation of gay is drawn upon them, a vertical cut through the center of their body. then come the slashes, each one a specifier, each one endeavoring to process this subject into intelligible, ever more fine-grained, attributes. bottom, masochist, dacryphile, exhibitionist…until every aspect is pinned to the metaphorical dissection tray. now there is a subject, their interiority rendered visible and located precisely within the catalog of the grid, but there is also an object—the viscera left behind, the illegible body bared for parts. therefore the cenobites’ queerness is not due to some phantasmic external origin. nor is it due to a rebellion against repressive forces seeking to confine them. nor is it due to their ability to step outside of a grid of legibility which seeks to define them. their queerness is born from the ecstasy of nebulous viscera left behind as subjectivity was torn beyond recognition. the danger of the queer is that it can undo the human. queer theorist leo bersani writes that “what disturbs people about homosexuality is not the sexual act itself but rather the homosexual mode of life, which foucault associated with the ‘formation of new alliances and the tying together of unforeseen lines of force’”(bersani, 1987). foucault elaborates in an interview, suggesting that queering might “reopen affective and relational virtualities not so much through the intrinsic qualities of the homosexual but because of the slantwise position, as it were, the diagonal lines [it] can lay out in the social fabric allow these virtualities to come to light” (foucault & rabinow, 1997). present in both quotations is a vital affirmation of queering as destabilization, something which runs contrary to the grid’s quest for specific delineation and yet exists within it; described spatially by foucault as a diagonal line amidst an implied grid—a quadrillage—of horizontal and vertical lines. found within this spatial description is what i want to reclaim as a crucial difference between queer and gay. queer means the nonself-identical undoing of subjectivity celebrated by queer negativity. as opposed to the identification with a sexual category, be it gay, lesbian, sadomasochistic, or any such shade of delineated “perversity”3. such designations, no matter how transgressive their attributes may appear, exist within a square of the grid. their perverse particularity might mean the confines draw closer, more finely grained, designating them within a niche upon the periphery of the normal curve, but they exist legibly within the grid and upon the curve nonetheless. because attempts to clearly define queerness will, in fact, destroy the queerness of the moment or relation, queer cannot become nearly as specific as ‘sexual identities’. foucault thus does not define his aforementioned new modes of relations, which bersani finds to be a “beneficial limitation, since more specific suggestions about how we might “become [queer]4 could operate as a constraint on our very effort to do so, while his under-conceptualizing of that notion can serve as a generous inspiration” (bersani, 1987). 4 changed from “gay” to be consistent in language. 3 used in reference to michel foucault’s discussion of the proliferation of perversities in history of sexuality, vol 1. the non-self-identical conception of queerness extends to this reading of hellraiser, making the cenobites a mere example of queer relations, not one that is stable or constant. in my exploration of their ontology i am not arguing that they are subjects with a certain identity (sadomasochistic, or even queer), nor that their interactions are a blueprint for queering—frank’s reckoning proved as much. their origin is unclear and that is precisely why it is illustrative. in how to live together, roland barthes attends to a community of cenobites, describing their lives as idiorrhythmic—in which they are “both isolated from and in contact with one another within a particular type of structure…where each lives according to his own rhythm” (barthes, 2013). the word “cenobite” is derived from latin and was coined in the 1600s to describe an individual living within a religious community (“cenobite, n. meanings, etymology and more, oxford english dictionary,” 2023). these historical cenobites are still somewhat veiled in mystery among religious scholars. they are known mainly for their ardent faith and close-knit social bonds which existed far from the eyes of the church. practitioners of cenobitic monasticism sought an egalitarian community in which to live by their faith, complete with daily worship, sharing of all resources, and a strong commitment to one another. cenobitic monks notably engaged in ritual dance, performed by jewish monks on the sabbath and by christian monks following prayers (dunn, 2003). cenobitic life typically occurred in the mountains, in a rapturous world of their own. so distinct from the lives of other religious practitioners was this form of faith, that one text notes an individual must “transform from monk into cenobite” (“cenobite, n. meanings, etymology and more, oxford english dictionary,” 2023). even monks felt that “in the form of cenobitism, [their faith] was truly unknown” (“cenobite, n. meanings, etymology and more, oxford english dictionary,” 2023). despite existing within a structured religion, the cenobitic monks afforded themselves secrecy and freedom through their compliant avoidance—so enraptured in their faith and semi-exile that they were more or less untouched by laws and edicts. clive barker’s cenobites share similarities with their historical namesakes: their existence contingent on transformation of the human subject, their life in a sequestered yet unguarded community, and their subsequent existence in disregard of their confines. as alluded to in barker’s novella, and confirmed in the second film, the cenobites were once human. their origin from, and consistent location within, the grid of intelligibility affirms two foucauldian assertions: that queering is a deviation from within and that “there is no outside” (foucault, 1975). the seemingly demonic entities are not native to an outside sphere, nor are they seekers of pleasure who successfully escaped to frolic beyond the confines of earthly morality. the cenobites' bodies were twisted beyond repair, beyond recognition, but they remained within the grid nonetheless. their community, which exists in a liminal relationality to the mortal world (contained and elusive), is both inscrutable and scrutinized—its egalitarian nature inherently queer. the bonds between cenobites lack visible structure, each as close as the next. lacking in gender markers or apparent hierarchy, they exist as fragments of a baffling entity; they flicker into view alongside one another, disappearing just as fast. their communication is formed by clicks, gestures, and glances; oblique forms of speech which betray nothing to frank nor the viewer. nor is the viewer ever privy to their home, merely glimpsing it as it collides with frank’s attic during the chiastic event. such secrecy does not protect the cenobites from earthly scrutiny or intervention however, for their lives are accessible through the activation of the infamous puzzle box. they may exist, like their monastic predecessors, at the unseen periphery of experience; but they are simultaneously rendered hyper-visible by their entrapment. the cenobitic monks of history, having sworn their vows, remained held by the church despite their complete removal from the institution’s daily workings. hellraiser’s cenobites have been afforded a similar form of freedom—the ability to exist unseen, tethered to the grid of intelligibility nonetheless. the cenobites thus epitomize the undoing of the sexual grid, by way of queering, which occurs within the very grid itself. like frank, the space of their bodies is flayed, opened, held apart with hooks and yet they are uncaring. they have been destroyed, both corporeally and in terms of their legibility as subjects. they submitted completely to the grid, the pins of which protrude, criss-crossing their monstrous flesh. the cenobites have been broken, blinded, degendered, and dehumanized—yet it is irrelevant to them. they continue to move, feel, see, and exist without negating the power inscribed upon them. it is as though they have been extruded by the machinery of power, rendered illegible to the system that rendered them thus. when frank first observes the cenobites, he finds them most unfavorable; repulsive even, due to their mangled, inhuman bodies. he expected their presence to be otherworldly and novel, so “why then was he so distressed to set eyes upon them? was it the scars that covered every inch of their bodies, the flesh cosmetically punctured and sliced and infibulated, then dusted down with ash? ... no women, no sighs. only these sexless things, with their corrugated flesh” (barker, 1991). it is notable that frank considers them to be things, as opposed to people. the cenobite therefore does not represent a damaged subject, a subject actively torn apart and cast beneath violent light—they represent an absence of subjectivity. it is a loud absence that, like the attic-shrouding fog upon their arrival, makes salient what it conceals. it is a false absence that screams its lack like a banshee. the cenobites’ relation to the foucauldian grid of intelligibility can thus be conceptualized as a diagonal; eschewing the lines of the grid, despite being located within it, and discernible only at its chiastic points of collision. the cenobites possess a freedom which eludes frank due to this continued illegibility, due to the fact that their position on the grid is only ever estimated by the inscription of a diagonal line. they only truly appear within site c of the chiasmus, in each of the metaphorical dots upon the grid. though a line may be drawn through these discrete interactions, a rough estimation of their reckoning with the legible, the delineation of legibility cannot touch the cenobites. the cavernous space between points, a void both “empty and peopled” (foucault, 1961/2009), is an idea without place—lacking subject, reason, imagery, or coherence. the cenobites’ home, a theoretical existence which collided with frank attic, is wholly inscrutable to frank, viewer, and grid alike. building upon this example of the cenobites’ diagonal relationality within the grid of intelligibility, the very concept of queering can be seen as oblique—both in the spatial and discursive senses of the word. the oxford english dictionary defines oblique geometrically as “having a slanting direction or position; not vertical or horizontal; diverging from a straight line or course,” (“oblique, adj., n., & adv. meanings, etymology and more, oxford english dictionary,” 2023) thus concurring with the notion of queer as a diagonal amidst gridded lines. providing further evidence for the diagonal nature of queering, the etymology of “queer” traces it to the word “quer” of middle high german, meaning “oblique, transverse, and crosswise.” (“queer, adj. meanings, etymology and more, oxford english dictionary,” 2023) the word oblique also refers to verbiage which is not straightforward, but rather “obscure or confusing; indirectly stated or revealed.” (“oblique, adj., n., & adv. meanings, etymology and more, oxford english dictionary,” 2023). less frequent utilizations of oblique, dated around the mid 1500s, synonymize the word with “aberrant,” (“oblique, adj., n., & adv. meanings, etymology and more, oxford english dictionary,” 2023) and use it to refer to instances of exception or deviation. when something, or someone, is queered, they become oblique in each of these senses: their positionality altered and their subjectivity obscured. the importance of conceptualizing queerness as oblique comes from its bypass, rather than negation, of the grid of intelligibility. this is the bypass of repression because such a conception of queerness “seeks to escape transgressive relationality itself and might contest given categories and values by failing to relate to them either adaptively or transgressively,” (bersani, 1987) it does not propose ‘queer’ as a radical, stable, and rebellious identity to be embodied. to be oblique is to disregard and to obscure, erasing definitional boundaries of what can be considered a queer relationality. queer is thus not a sexuality, a personality, or an identity to be defined discursively and set against heterosexuality, homonormativity, or sexual repression—queer is a relational to a grid, a movement from within the grid. queer is a disruption. queer is the subject’s finitude. references barker, c. (1986). the hellbound heart. harper collins. barker, c. (director). (1987). hellraiser. new world pictures, entertainment film distributors. barthes, r. (2013). how to live together : novelistic simulations of some everyday spaces. columbia university press. bersani, l. (1987). is the rectum a grave? october, 43, 197–222. https://doi.org/10.2307/3397574 coenobite | cenobite, n. meanings, etymology and more | oxford english dictionary. (2023). oed.com. https://doi.org/10.1093//oed//4875171775 definition of chiasmus. (2017). merriam-webster.com. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chiasmus dunn, m. (2008). the emergence of monasticism. john wiley & sons. foucault, m. (1976). the history of sexuality. volume i: an introduction. vintage books. foucault, m. (1977). discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. vintage books. foucault, m. (2013). history of madness. routledge. (original work published 1961) foucault, m., & rabinow, p. (1997). essential works of foucault, 1954-1988. new press. oblique, adj., n., & adv. meanings, etymology and more | oxford english dictionary. (2023). oed.com. https://doi.org/10.1093//oed//1275922823 queer, adj.1 meanings, etymology and more | oxford english dictionary. (2023). oed.com. https://doi.org/10.1093//oed//9610104456 wiseman, b., & paul, a. (2014). chiasmus and culture. new york; oxford berghahn books. having a voice, being heard: lessons on gender dynamics in policy conversations ashley brooke cotsman, georgia institute of technology ‘25 abstract: women’s voices have reshaped the fabric of american policymaking, yet gendered dynamics continue to shape who speaks, who is heard, and how influence is wielded in policy conversations. drawing on interviews with thirteen women across policymaking, lobbying, and academia, this paper explores how women navigate male-dominated spaces, adapting their communication styles, building confidence, and leveraging support networks to assert their voices. the findings highlight persistent challenges, such as interruptions and microaggressions, but also underscore the resilience and strategies women have developed to ensure their contributions are recognized. while women have made remarkable strides in leadership across sectors, the double standards they face remain. this paper contributes to the understanding of conversational gender dynamics in policy settings and calls for continued attention to the intersectionality of gender with race, ethnicity, and other identities in shaping women’s experiences. ultimately, the resilience and ingenuity of women in policy stand as a testament to the ongoing evolution of leadership and womanhood, where having a voice and being truly heard remain distinct, hard-fought achievements. “i will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. i will have my voice: indian, spanish, white. i will have my serpent’s tongue–my woman’s voice, my sexual voice, my poet’s voice. i will overcome the tradition of silence.” –gloria anzaldua, borderlands/la frontera: the new mestiza (1987) the voices of women today resonate deeper and reach further into the fabric of american government than our predecessors ever envisioned. a century ago, the milestone of women’s suffrage was a hard-won victory, but true political power remained elusive, and the fight to uproot sexism was far from over. today, female leaders are essential across every major political institution in america. we have seen women serve as speaker of the house, vice president, and a presidential candidate who secured over 70 million votes (pew research center, 2025). women comprise half of the supreme court, over a quarter of congress, and a third of state legislatures (associated press, 2024; center for american women and politics [cawp], 2025). among the largest cities, women are a third of the mayors; we are half of the current presidential cabinet and a third of the nation’s governors (cawp, 2025; pbs newshour, 2024). these numbers illustrate the substantial progress women have made in political leadership, but they do not reflect the profound cultural shifts that facilitated it. modern femininity goes beyond just having a seat at the table; we have demanded that our voices be heard and taken seriously. we claim space in conversations and defy norms of deference that once silenced us. we lean in and assert ourselves—and society has taken note. i am unequivocally and unapologetically proud to be a woman. i am also fortunate that rarely do i think about being a woman. in lab meetings, i am simply a researcher; in university classes, a student; in conversations at the dinner table, just a participant. thanks to progress won by the generations before mine, these spaces have become more level playing fields, so seldom have i been overly conscious of the peripheral thing that is my gender. to me, being a woman has always felt incidental, like having brown hair or freckles—an unremarkable fact of who i am, neither defining nor noteworthy. it was during my internship on the hill that i first became acutely aware of what it meant to move through the world as a woman in a male-dominated space. the formal and informal conversations i observed made it clear that gender dynamics play an undeniable role in determining who leads, who influences, and who is heard. i noticed many instances where i and other women were interrupted, spoken over, and subjected to subtle behaviors that undermined our contributions to policy discussions. these microaggressions played out everywhere: in hearings, meetings, hallways, and even casual chats over coffee. i soon noticed them in class discussions and with men i encountered at weekend social gatherings. interruptions were not the only behaviors i noticed. there were the cut-offs, yes, but also the physical signals of disengagement—the lack of eye contact while i spoke, as if to say i do not care to hear what you’re saying, and i’m already planning how to outmaneuver you. i had spent my college years developing skills in policy analysis, rhetoric, and logical reasoning, but in washington, i came to understand these attributes were not always enough. sometimes, the real battle was just getting a word in at all. my voice—something that generations of women before me fought to secure—is perhaps the most valuable thing i hold. but there is another truth: having a voice and being truly heard are not the same. only the latter signifies true participation as an equal. theoretical background while female representation in u.s. politics has grown, significant obstacles in conversational gender dynamics persist and have been measured at a macro scale. there is no shortage of literature illustrating these challenges: women speak less than men in mixed-gender groups, are more likely to be interrupted, and are more likely to speak on policy concerns with direct relevance to women (coates, 2015; osborn & mendez, 2010). a study by emory researchers examined 24,000 hearings from 1994 to 2018 and quantified these disparities. the study found that women were significantly more likely to be interrupted during hearings, with the likelihood more than doubling in discussions centered on women’s issues. women were 44 times more likely to be victims of “interruption clusters” — instances of aggressive, rapid-fire interruptions. interruptions were most common in mixedgender interactions, with men significantly more likely to interrupt women than other men (miller & sutherland, 2023). while existing research quantifies the entrenched gender dynamics in formal policymaking spaces, working on the hill in a male-dominated policy field sparked my interest in the nuances of these interactions behind the scenes. i sought to explore several questions: which sectors and policy areas are more progressive in conversational gender dynamics? what factors determine whose voices carry weight in discussions? most notably, how have women adapted and asserted themselves to be heard? what strategies can entry-level women learn from those with long-standing careers in the field? methods interviews for this project were conducted between august and december 2025, both in person and through digital meeting platforms such as zoom and microsoft teams. most participants were identified and recruited through my professional network in washington, d.c., while i was working on the hill as part of a congressional program that connects longtime staffers with young professionals. interviewees in lobbying were contacted through connections from my internships in financial services, as well as alumnae from the georgia institute of technology. academic professionals were identified through my academic networks and referrals from advisors and previous participants. interviews ranged from 23 to 48 minutes in length and followed a semi-structured, conversational format. a standard set of questions guided the discussions while allowing space for participants to share insights organically (see appendix a for the question guide). general trends across industries this report explores themes and insights drawn from conversations with thirteen women across policymaking, government affairs, and academia. of the participants, five were lobbyists, primarily representing the financial services industry—a notably male-dominated field. another five were in policymaking, working in both the house and senate across republican and democratic offices. the remaining two women held academic positions as professors and administrative leaders in their institutions. across interviews, women in policymaking frequently described being interrupted by male colleagues in both formal and informal conversations. these behaviors were especially pronounced in male-dominated fields, such as financial services, where participants often found themselves outnumbered and felt the need to assert themselves repeatedly to be heard. by contrast, interviewees working in fields with greater female representation, such as healthcare and budgeting, noted a greater sense of camaraderie and fewer interruptions. the dynamics in each sector have evolved over time, with noticeable improvements overall. lobbying, particularly within financial services, remains a challenging environment for women to navigate, characterized by high levels of competition and a culture that has been slow to change. women in policymaking highlighted some progress, particularly as they gained seniority, although deeply ingrained norms persist. academia, on the other hand, was described as comparatively more progressive. women in this field cited a culture that, while not perfect, is more open to discussions about gender equity and less prone to interruptive behavior—especially among social scientists who are familiar with these nuances. financial services and lobbying nearly all the female lobbyists i interviewed—each of whom was in the financial services industry—were intimately familiar with interruptive and microaggressive behaviors in policy conversations. the financial services industry remains heavily male-dominated, with women comprising about half of the entry-level workforce but less than a third of the svp and c-suite positions. many of these women expressed frustration over how this imbalance spills into government affairs, affecting conversational dynamics in lobbying environments. one woman, now the head of federal government relations for a major insurance firm, reflected on being interrupted throughout her career—from her early days as a dc intern to her current position at the top of the ladder. “i wish i didn’t have a recent example, but i do,” she said. within the last two weeks, she had experienced excessive interruptions from a man during a meeting, who even questioned whether their male svp colleague—a subordinate to her—needed to be present. early in her career, she often felt typecast as a secretary, with the assumption that she was not involved in substantive policy work: “in earlier days in dc, overcoming the gender role of the ‘secretary position’ made it hard to be part of the conversation.” although interruptions have become less frequent as she has advanced in her career, she still finds herself taking extra measures to ensure she is heard. another lobbyist who transitioned from the hill to a lobbying group after earning her master’s degree shared a similar perspective. she recalled working under an “old school” lobbyist and learning from seasoned women that male bullies are often all bark and no bite. “they’re like big dogs,” she explained. “they bark for a second, but they’re really putting up a show.” she emphasized that interruptions by men are prevalent in the lobbying world: “everyone is trying to be the smartest in the room, sell themselves, and get new contacts.” she pointed out that men tend to be more direct and assertive when asking for money: “they’re a lot more pushy and demanding by nature. women are bad at asking for money without apologizing.” this aligns with data at the macro level: men initiate negotiations four times more frequently than women and, on average, request 30% more in financial negotiations (babcock & laschever, 2009). a third interviewee in financial services lobbying noted how consistently men interrupted her or paid more attention to male colleagues, even when she was leading the meeting: “there have absolutely been times that this has impacted my confidence and ability to do my job. the more it happens, it naturally gets in your brain… like, fine, i’ll just sit back and let him do the talking, because clearly it’s going to happen anyway.” while she observed that this behavior has lessened somewhat as she climbed the ladder, it still persists: “it doesn’t necessarily matter how high up you are; there is always a gravitation toward the male in the room.” she recounted an event where her female head of office hosted members of congress, only for the attendees to bypass her and approach the male counterpart, assuming he was the boss. “more often than not, i’m one of the only women in the room. people usually assume i’m just someone’s assistant,” she said. the vice president of government affairs and lead lobbyist for a prominent financial services lobbying group agreed that interruptions and gender gaps are especially prevalent in financial services advocacy. however, she noted signs of progress: “people are more present, understanding, and aware of these dynamics, especially in conversations, than they were 5 years ago.” reflecting on her early years in lobbying, she recounted frequently being the only woman at fundraising events: “as a woman in financial services, i think my tolerance for these things is a bit higher than others.” another interviewee shared an anecdote about attending a women’s financial services happy hour. when her boss questioned why there was not a similar event for men, she responded with a laugh: “every financial services happy hour is a men’s one.” academia women’s experiences in policy academia stand in notable contrast to those in corporate government affairs. while gender biases persist, academia is generally viewed as more progressive than other sectors. a study by researchers at cornell and boston university examined six aspects of academic life for tenure-track professors, revealing significant examples of gender equality, such as equal grant success rates between men and women, among other metrics (ceci & williams, 2023). one professor reflected on her career in policy academia, unable to recall any memorable instances where men had interrupted or talked over her. she attributed this to the strong representation of women on faculty and in administrative roles at her institution. this aligns with broader trends: in 2021, women comprised 48% of full-time faculty, 47% of associate professors, and 54% of assistant professors across all 4-year universities (colby & bai, 2023). “there’s always been a strong representation of women, but even more than that, men and academia know how to behave,” she observed. “they’re social scientists. they’ve read about [conversational sexism] explicitly in their academic readings.” she suggested that men in policy academia are often exposed to feminist arguments and diverse perspectives early on, which shapes more inclusive behavior compared to other fields. government work, in contrast, tends to lag behind in terms of cultural and technological progressiveness. “there are some places that are culturally more ahead,” she elaborated, “not even just with gender roles, but with things like clothing, technology, even standard of dress. some of these guys in government are still in the printing-out emails stage. they’re just culturally behind on a lot of things.” another academic with a stem-focused background provided a more critical perspective. her research has examined the macro-level disparities in how women’s voices are and are not heard in scientific production. “men publish more frequently and more overall. even when accounting for differences, men are cited more, put in more newspapers, and invited more often to testify before congress. from all the voices we hear in science, women’s voices are diminished at every point.” she emphasized that balancing the composition of decision-making panels is key to amplifying women’s voices in these spaces: “when your work is being reviewed, you’re significantly more likely to have it accepted if at least one reviewer looks like you.” the problem, she noted, is that most scientific panels are predominantly male, creating a positive feedback loop that favors men and keeps them at the center of the system: “in grant-making, we’ve found that heterogeneity in panels neutralizes these gender disparities. diversity reduces the tendency to conform.” when asked why academia might be more progressive than government, she gave an interesting standpoint: social sciences adopt a critical, evidence-based stance on gender dynamics, and scientists are inherently open to evidence. she recalled giving a talk at a highlevel administrative meeting about inequities in women’s voices in science. afterward, the dean of engineering from another institution approached her, saying, “i’ve had to go to these dei things for years, but your talk had error bars, so i’m convinced. how do we fix this?” quantifying inequalities with evidence, she found, was persuasive: “once you present evidence to scientists in a compelling way, they believe it. policymaking doesn’t have the same sense of science-based evaluation.” instead, policymakers often rely on personal experiences, which, when filtered through a male perspective, can reinforce existing biases. “when you go based on your own experience, you perpetuate the biases already embedded in society,” she explained. reflecting on policy conversations, she echoed sentiments from other interviewees: “i remember so many times when i walked into a room of all women and how incredibly freeing it felt. i didn’t have to watch my words as carefully, i didn’t have to worry about what i was wearing… didn’t have to look pretty enough so i wasn’t dismissed, but not too sexy that i was slutty. i could just be.” policymaking women’s experiences in congress varied widely. one senate staffer in the healthcare sector shared particularly positive experiences. early in her career, she worked for a lobbying firm and found her niche in healthcare policy—a field notably dominated by women: “women dominate health policy because of our inherent traits. you’re dealing with disease groups, complex healthcare issues—things that require empathy. women tend to have those traits, empathy and patience.” she noted feeling “very protected” by her current team, led by a female director and predominantly composed of women: “if a man interrupted me, someone would definitely call him out.” while she encountered fewer interruptions than women in other policy areas, she noted differences in communication styles: “men look at things as wins; women look for common ground. they think to themselves, how can we all win in this process?” her insights are substantiated by research on negotiation behavior, where men often choose metaphors like “winning a ballgame” or “a wrestling match” to describe negotiations, while women liken it to “going to the dentist” (babcock & laschever, 2009). in her book you just don't understand (1990), linguist deborah tannen describes how men often approach conversations as competitions and aim to “win” the argument, whereas women prioritize consensus and cooperation. tannen’s work illustrates how these differences shape interactions, with men treating arguments as zero-sum games and women prioritizing consensus. a staff director for a house subcommittee offered a contrasting perspective: “looking back to my first job at a restaurant, i was constantly talked over. that pattern continued all the way through my policy career.” she recalled being explicitly told to be a “good girl” when she was first hired on the hill and described clerk meetings where the culture enabled men to dominate conversations and interrupt in ways women could not. societal norms often condition women to be deferential, making it challenging to address interruptions or microaggressions directly: “we’re socialized to never make a man feel wrong or minimized. this totally affected my sense of relevance and well-being.” now, with years of experience behind her, she reflected on how her status has shifted treatment. “people actually listen to me now because i have a rank and title,” she said. this theme—having to work hard to be heard—resonates with many women at all career stages: “looking back, it’s illustrative how much i had to work to have people listen to me.” adaptations and insights equally important to understanding the barriers women face in policy conversations is recognizing the resilience and creativity with which they have responded. the interviewees offered a wealth of hard-earned wisdom: strategies born from persistence and deep understanding of how to navigate spaces that were not built with them in mind. these strategies fall into thematic categories that reflect both internal and external adaptations: shifts in mindset, communication styles, and coalition-building approaches. some are quiet, personal recalibrations, while others are collective practices aimed at reshaping harmful culture itself. the following sections explore these strategies in greater detail, offering insight into how women have learned to influence outcomes in male-dominated policy environments. the power of self-belief much of the advice shared by women centered on one key principle: developing and projecting confidence. one lobbyist reflected on her journey to embracing this mindset: “i want to be taken seriously. i want to share what i know, what i’ve spent so much time becoming an expert in.” for many, a lack of confidence was the most significant barrier to entering a conversation or overcoming interruptions. one interviewee told me, “do not be talked out of how important, great, and wonderful you are. do not lose confidence because of things in your external environment you can’t control. if you’re prepared and you’ve done your homework, speak.” another woman echoed, “trust yourself, trust your instincts and what you know. whatever room you’re in, you are there for a reason.” many encouraged action even in the face of doubt or fear: “even though it might feel hard or scary, assert yourself regardless—even if you think you’re the dumbest in the room. women think so much before we speak… you’re going to be right most of the time.” one interviewee shared a strategy she had recently adopted: in meetings, especially larger ones, she makes sure to contribute within the first five minutes. “this establishes you as an active participant in the meeting and makes you more comfortable continuing the dialogue,” she said. she found that sitting back for the initial part of a meeting made it harder to break the silence later: “get your voice in the room from the start, and it will flow from there.” several women pointed out the audacious confidence often exhibited by men, which often works to their advantage. “if we choose to have a level of confidence and audacity, nobody will question us,” one woman noted. this is substantiated by research; across 64 study variations, women consistently rated their performance lower than men did, even when their actual results were similar or better (exley & kessler, 2022). notably, the women who underestimated themselves were generally more accurate than the men who overestimated their abilities. one woman humorously referenced a popular social media mantra: “just have the blind confidence of an average white man.” though intended as a joke, it serves as a reminder that a bold sense of self-assurance, however unconventional, can sometimes make all the difference. speaking with purpose the differences in communication styles between men and women—whether rooted in society, biology, or a combination of both—are well-documented and cannot be overlooked. many interviewees pointed out that men are often more direct and assertive in conversations and negotiations, which frequently works to their advantage. research corroborates this, showing that men tend to use direct measures and straightforward commands, while women rely more on indirect measures or hints to get their way (falbo, 1977). these behaviors are especially prevalent in mixed-sex interactions, where societal norms condition men to assert their intentions and women to prioritize compliance (block, 1984; falbo & peplau, 1980). several women stressed the value of being direct and assertive to amplify voices and become successful in policy conversations. one interviewee remarked, “women tend to think more before they speak, while men are more demanding by nature.” another added, “if you watch men, they are very direct. i think we as women need to realize that if we choose to have a level of audacity, nobody will question us.” studies confirm that women communicate more effectively with men when they make demands rather than requests (dolinska & dolinski, 2006). this dynamic is significant in the high-stakes world of policymaking and lobbying, where conversations often center around the negotiation of money and resources. many women agreed that men excel in these environments because they are unapologetic and bold in their asks. one interviewee put it: “do not be afraid to be as pushy as the men are.” across the board, interviewees urged young professionals to embrace direct communication, dropping excessive cushioning words, unnecessary apologies, and self-doubt when making their case. for many, the concept of being demanding feels uncomfortable or even unnatural, particularly in male-dominated settings. however, there is no way around the fact that asking for what one needs is a critical step to being heard. “you’ll never get what you don’t ask for,” one woman reminded me. “whether that’s for a raise, for respect, for money. if you never say anything, nobody’s ever going to do anything for you.” challenging the gender norms that discourage female directness is an important step for women who want to influence policy conversations. “we, women, aren’t great about being aggressive, demanding the same attention, standing up for ourselves… you just have to learn that skill,” one interviewee shared. “it’s about figuring out what you want, then unapologetically reaching for it.” women, she noted, have long been adept at “managing up”—navigating systems that were not designed for them in mind. it is a skill borne out of necessity, but invaluable when it comes to self-advocacy. playing the game an unexpected but compelling theme that emerged from many interviews was the concept of strategically leveraging societal gender roles to navigate challenging environments. historically, women in professional spaces have often taken on “mothering” or “secretary” roles—sometimes consciously, often subconsciously. these roles can include additional responsibilities unrelated to job descriptions, like tidying up, grabbing coffees, or acting as social nurturers in the workplace (jang & george, 2020). while these behaviors are rooted in traditional gender expectations, they can also be leveraged as tools for influence and leadership. interviewees expressed mixed views on these roles. some described the challenges of escaping the secretary stereotype. “in earlier days, overcoming the gender role of the secretary position made it really hard for me to be a part of the conversation,” one woman shared. another cautioned against taking secretarial positions altogether, explaining how the role’s associations can be challenging to escape: “even when i was promoted to a policy-oriented role, i still had to work as the secretary. i essentially had to do two jobs at once to get involved in the actual policy work.” yet, several others argued for embracing these roles strategically. “in a room full of men, i’ll ask myself, what advantages do i have? how can i use them in order to be heard?” one woman asked. another woman from academia gave a particularly nuanced perspective: “we as women have privileges that give us opportunities to navigate a room in a way that men can’t. in the early 1900s, women who took on the ‘mothering’ role ended up in the room where things happened.” she added, “ask yourself, how can i play into certain roles in ways that benefit me? how can i take advantage of these societal nuances? you need to realize that this is the game we are playing.” this perspective is both pragmatic and empowering. advocating for a more equitable system and using tools available to succeed within that system are not mutually exclusive. acknowledging that the “game” may be inherently unfair does not have to mean giving up; it can mean finding ways to thrive within it. after all, life is not a game we can simply “tap out” of, so why not maximize every opportunity to succeed within it? reframing the “mothering” role i am proud to be the daughter of a woman well-known in our hometown for her compassion, gentleness, and boundless patience. she spent a decade as a preschool teacher before managing a local restaurant, where i had the privilege of working alongside her during my teenage years. watching her interactions with staff, many of whom came from less privileged backgrounds, left an indelible mark on me. other managers often joked about how she “babied” the staff; she spoke to them with patience and kindness, even in moments of frustration or conflict. she gave them rides home or to the train station, remembered birthdays, and made coffees without being asked. she listened to their stories, taking the time to learn about rough childhoods and foster care experiences. my mom treated her staff with a compassion that some had never encountered elsewhere. for many, she became a gentle and patient mother figure they had never known. the impact of her leadership was unmistakable. miscommunications eased, frustrations diminished, and trust flourished. it became clear that her staff deeply respected her, and their trust made the team more harmonious than ever. while policymaking institutions are vastly different from restaurants, the takeaway remains the same. women should not be obligated to take on “mothering” roles, but when embraced intentionally, these qualities can build trust and strengthen communication. women are capable of being nurturing yet formidable, gentle yet strong. i grew up watching my mom be all of these things at once. now, i strive to carry her compassion and strength into every role i take on. walking the fine line in social science, the “assertiveness penalty” refers to the phenomenon where men are praised for being assertive or direct while women are criticized for the same behaviors (rudman & glick, 2001). this double standard is especially pronounced in professional settings, where women must walk a fine line between being perceived as confident and being labeled as aggressive. research examining the interplay of gender, assertiveness, and status has shown that men who express anger or stand up for themselves are often seen as powerful or authoritative, while women are deemed “out of control” (brescoll & uhlmann, 2008). this theme emerged repeatedly in conversations with interviewees, who reflected on difficulties balancing confidence with approachability. one academic highlighted the disproportionate scrutiny women face: “there’s a much lower threshold for women to seem too aggressive—we see this with the rhetoric surrounding hillary clinton, kamala harris.” the media coverage of these figures is revealing. hillary clinton was often criticized as “overly aggressive” by political opponents and the press (carlin & winfrey, 2009). on a podcast with cherie blair, clinton recounted how pitching an idea in the same way as her male counterparts often resulted in her being labeled “off-putting” while the men were seen as compelling and powerful (stoecklein, 2023). “it’s not just the typical assumptions about credit,” she said. “it’s about women—how we express ourselves, and whether we fit into the mental image of what a woman is supposed to be.” a similar dynamic played out during the 2020 vice-presidential debate when kamala harris drew attention for saying, “mr. vice president, i’m speaking,” after being repeatedly interrupted. she was mocked for this by political figures, the media, and even former president donald trump during her 2024 presidential run. this contrasts with a 2020 debate moment, when joe biden told trump, “will you shut up, man?”—a comment that elicited little critique. the consequences of this double standard are amplified in policymaking, where success often hinges on perception. politicians rely on favorable public opinion to win elections. staffers and lobbyists depend on professional relationships and reputations to achieve policy outcomes. “in policy work, relations are central,” one staffer from congress explained. “if you’re aggressive or difficult to work with, people simply won’t come to you. a man can be much more aggressive before he hits that threshold.” another woman echoed this sentiment: “if you don’t care about how you’re perceived, sure, maybe you’re freer of these societal burdens. but you’ll get passed over for someone that everybody likes.” understanding and navigating these dynamics, albeit unfair, can be vital for success. “you just have to know you’re going to hit that threshold earlier—it’s a navigation one has to make,” said one congressional staffer whose work centers on appropriations and budget work. “i negotiate for a living, and having somebody see you as fair, but tough, but reasonable, but approachable is a very hard dance—which men don’t have to do.” she added, “oftentimes, someone has to like you in order for you to get what you need from them.” still, many women expressed optimism that this gap narrows with experience and authority. “as my rank has increased, so has my freedom to be more aggressive,” shared one academic. “i can push harder now than when i could when i was an assistant professor.” while many women stressed the importance of navigating these unwritten rules, one academic offered a different perspective. when asked how she balances assertiveness with avoiding abrasiveness, her response was blunt: “why do you care? that’s the problem—to worry what they think about you.” as one of her students, i admired this professor for being bold, unapologetic, and wildly effective. her words indicate this inner strength: “i don’t care what people think about me. and there’s my power.” strength in solidarity the importance of female inclusion and support networks in policy fields emerged as a common theme among participants, particularly those who had experienced female mentorship or worked in women-led environments. one woman in healthcare policy on the hill described a sense of protection and solidarity within her team: “i feel very protected by my team, and i think the same goes for healthcare lobbyists—these women generally look out for one another.” female-dominated teams, she noted, often foster a sense of camaraderie and mutual support. even in male-dominated sectors like financial services lobbying, the value of robust networks was unmistakable. “there’s an incredible group of women in the financial services lobbying side, and we all look out for each other. getting yourself ingrained in these types of networks is helpful,” one lobbyist shared. groups like the women’s congressional policy institute and the bipartisan women’s caucus provide opportunities for women in policymaking roles to connect across party lines, while organizations like the national league of women lobbyists bring together advocates from diverse backgrounds. beyond these formal networks, countless informal groups in dc help young professionals connect, grow professionally, and contribute meaningfully to policy discussions. participants across the board spoke about how daunting it is to walk into male-dominated rooms, let alone speak up and be heard. in those moments, the presence of allies—especially other women—can be transformative. “when you walk into some of these situations and see an ally, it helps. you have strength in numbers,” one interviewee said. another woman described the critical role of female friendships in navigating the policy world: “you have to have friends in dc in order to get anything done.” strong networks amplify women’s voices in spaces where they might otherwise go unheard. support networks are not just about inclusion but active amplification of women’s contributions. many interviewees expressed deep gratitude for the women—and men—who have championed their success. “management caring about this stuff is so important,” one woman explained. “i had a great male director who intentionally hired women to push us up, and he made a huge change: he gave me a network. now i know other women in leadership, and that connection has made us stronger.” mentors also played a crucial role in advocating for women during critical moments. “i’m thankful to have had men and women as mentors who would speak up for me,” one participant reflected. “even when i wasn’t brave enough to stand up for myself, i’ve always had a strong team that would.” perhaps the most touching reflection came from a woman who recounted the impact of her allies. “i’ve always had such strong champions and mentors,” she said, her voice emotional. “i guess it’s my turn to do the same for the next generation. sitting here today, talking to you— this is my chance.” shifts across generations women across sectors expressed gratitude for the battles fought by older trailblazers who paved the way, as well as the younger generations who continue to challenge norms and foster meaningful dialogue. a banking lobbyist voiced her immense respect for the women now retiring, describing them as the ones who had it the hardest but laid the groundwork for what she and her peers could achieve: “every decade that goes by, it gets easier and easier. every older generation of lobbyists has paved the way for us.” she noted that asserting oneself becomes more natural with age and experience: “it’s intimidating, but not as intimidating as it used to be. that comes with age—i now know that i didn’t know before.” equally, women praised the boldness of younger generations, who continue to challenge systemic barriers and create shifts unimaginable in previous decades. when asked what advice she would give to young women striving to be heard, one interviewee responded simply: “i would start by saying thank you, and good job. you are changing a narrative that we have all lived in and accepted. by doing that, you’ve made it better for all of us. i can’t thank you enough for that.” intersectionality & unheard voices while this study centers on gender dynamics in policy conversations, it is important to acknowledge that gender does not operate in isolation. the experiences of women in these spaces are also shaped by intersecting identities such as race, ethnicity, and other socioeconomic factors. for instance, kimberlé crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality highlights how black women often face unique forms of discrimination that are not simply the sum of racism and sexism but are compounded in ways that create distinct challenges (crenshaw, 1989). similarly, research indicates that women of color may encounter additional barriers in leadership roles due to the interplay of racial and gender biases (pogrebna et al., 2024). while the scope of my interviews did not explicitly explore these intersections, it is important to recognize that the challenges and strategies discussed may not fully capture the experiences of all women, particularly those from marginalized racial and ethnic backgrounds. future research should explore how these intersecting identities influence women’s participation and voice in policy conversations. a new chapter for women in policy at times, it feels almost ungrateful to dwell on the lingering disparities between men and women in policymaking. i enjoy freedoms today that my grandmothers and great-grandmothers could not have dreamed of: i vote freely and have watched a woman take the oath of office as vice president; i have earned policy fellowships, interned in three congressional offices, and regularly sit in the hearings where history is made; i can choose to wear a skirt or pants to work on capitol hill—a simple privilege once unthinkable to the women who preceded me. yet, my conversations with women across policymaking, academia, and lobbying indicate that gender dynamics in policy conversations persist, greatly shaping whose voices carry weight. societal norms and disruptive behaviors continue to exist across sectors, with their effects most pronounced in male-dominated spaces. while these challenges tend to lessen with seniority, they remain barriers that undermine contributions and make it harder to ascend in the first place. the most remarkable takeaway from this project is the resilience, ingenuity, and adaptability of women. women are extraordinary strategists in navigating environments that have historically excluded them. they find ways to build confidence, make direct requests, and create networks of allies that amplify their collective voices and broaden their influence. the increasing presence of women in leadership roles has catalyzed change, while targeted mentorship has forged pathways for future generations. some women have learned to walk the tightrope—assertive but not aggressive, with voices both strong and well-received. others have rejected this balancing act altogether, focusing instead on the quality of their work and ideas. regardless of their approach, women have steadily challenged the structures that once limited their reach. progress is undeniable. year by year, more women are joining decision-making tables, reshaping conversations, and normalizing what was once extraordinary. the challenges they face in policymaking today are far less formidable than those of the past. women who lead—as speakers of the house, vice presidents, presidential candidates—are redefining what power looks like and showing that progress is not a solitary achievement, but a collective endeavor. each of us stands on the shoulders of those who came before. women today enjoy opportunities unmatched at any point in history. this is evident not only in the positions we hold and the conversations we shape but also in how we see ourselves. one interviewee told me, “today, i don’t think a lot about being a woman. that’s a great thing in my book.” there is something evocative in that sentiment: the declaring of a quiet revolution, a reality where women speak without hesitation, move without constraint, and lead without question. the journey continues, and progress has never felt more possible. this next chapter promises to be extraordinary. but today, i stand proud to be a woman—unremarkable in determining what i achieve, yet remarkable for all it represents. acknowledgments this project would not have been possible without the thirteen extraordinary women across policymaking, academia, and lobbying who shared their stories with me. their reflections illuminate the role of female mentorship in amplifying young women’s voices. by reflecting on their own experiences—having a voice, so to speak—on this very topic, they have shaped a dialogue that will guide the next generation of leaders. i am especially grateful to kerry donnelly, who was instrumental in connecting me with many of these women. i am profoundly thankful to my professor, dr. mark zachary taylor, for his support and belief in this project even when it was merely a seed of an idea. over this semester, it grew into what i consider my final “passion project” as a student. it is a privilege and an honor to have explored a subject that has taught me lessons i will carry forward into my career. my deepest gratitude goes to my parents, who 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(2023, march 7). s2 e1. woman and change: setting the scene with hillary clinton and cherie blair [audio podcast episode]. in the story of woman. https://thestoryofwomanpodcast.com/blog/s2-e1-woman-and-change-setting-the-scenewith-hillary-clinton-and-cherie-blair https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.1977.tb00573.x https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2452 https://doi.org/10.1080/15544770903501384 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/13-women-will-be-governors-next-year-a-new-record https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/13-women-will-be-governors-next-year-a-new-record https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/21/women-account-for-28-of-lawmakers-in-the-119th-congress-unchanged-from-the-last-congress/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/21/women-account-for-28-of-lawmakers-in-the-119th-congress-unchanged-from-the-last-congress/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/21/women-account-for-28-of-lawmakers-in-the-119th-congress-unchanged-from-the-last-congress/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38167539/ https://doi.org/10.1111/0022-4537.00239 https://doi.org/10.1111/0022-4537.00239 https://thestoryofwomanpodcast.com/blog/s2-e1-woman-and-change-setting-the-scene-with-hillary-clinton-and-cherie-blair https://thestoryofwomanpodcast.com/blog/s2-e1-woman-and-change-setting-the-scene-with-hillary-clinton-and-cherie-blair https://thestoryofwomanpodcast.com/blog/s2-e1-woman-and-change-setting-the-scene-with-hillary-clinton-and-cherie-blair https://thestoryofwomanpodcast.com/blog/s2-e1-woman-and-change-setting-the-scene-with-hillary-clinton-and-cherie-blair appendix a interview questions 1. can you briefly tell me about your current role, what you do, and your career journey that led you to where you are? 2. in formal or informal conversations related to your job, do you ever feel sidelined or spoken over? can you recall any specific instances? 3. in your experience, what factors shape whose voices are heard or carry weight in policy conversations? do you think gender plays a big role in this? 4. have you noticed any patterns in when you've felt your contributions are especially valued, or perhaps overlooked? for example, if more women are in the room, or if you're in a room with social scientists instead of engineers? if you're in a leading role in an event versus a participant? 5. reflecting on your experiences across different stages of your career—school, internships, and then the professional career that led you to where you are now, how have conversations evolved? have you noticed that you're treated differently, or your voice carries more weight, as you've moved "up the ladder"? 6. do any particular moments stand out to you as learning opportunities in navigating conversations and making sure your voice is heard? 7. public policy, particularly in dc, is a competitive environment. what advice would you give to young women seeking to participate more effectively in both formal and informal policy conversations? 8. something i've talked a lot with others about is how women in politics often walk a fine line between coming off as assertive and abrasive. unfortunately, i think this is a field where your success can heavily depend on perception, so i think many women are struggling to navigate the tension between being effective and avoiding negative stereotypes. what is your perception of this? 9. from your perspective, what shifts—whether personal, cultural, or institutional—would help create more inclusive and productive conversations in policy settings? “i will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. i will have my voice: indian, spanish, white. i will have my serpent’s tongue–my woman’s voice, my sexual voice, my poet’s voice. i will overcome the tradition of silence.” –gloria anzaldua, borde... references sanitizing yellow peril how asian pornotroping erects white saviorism yunchi li, university of toronto, ‘25 abstract: this essay extends black feminist theorist hortense spillers’s (1987) concept of pornotroping to an asian context, examining how cinematic tropes perpetuate asian fetishization. focusing on the hypersexualized portrayals, namely the lotus blossom and the dragon lady, as manifestations of asian pornotroping, it explores how these depictions construct abject female asian subjectivities. through an analysis of the hypersexualized tropes in madama butterfly (1904), miss saigon (1989), and the world of suzie wong (1960), i argue that asian pornotroping emerges as a legacy of woan’s (2008) concept of white sexual imperialism. this legacy not only incites and justifies white saviorism but also imposes a destitution/sexuality matrix onto asian subjectivities, signaled through physical features or cultural markers. ultimately, asian pornotroping obscures the colonial violence inflicted by the west on the asia-pacific in the 20th century, reinforcing a colonial narrative of a progressive, humane occident contrasted against an underdeveloped, backward orient. black feminist theorist hortense spillers (1987) coined the term “pornotroping” to describe how black suffering is turned into a visual spectacle for entertainment, tantalization, and shock value. alexander weheliye (2014) expands on this concept, proposing that cinematic pornotropes visually inscribe abjection onto black bodies, enfleshing them as sites of otherness and transforming them into eroticized commodities whose fetishization is inseparable from their racialized identity. these portrayals construct a framework where racialized bodies are othered and commodified, reinforcing a narrative of fetishization that is inseparable from their identity. inspired by spillers’ analysis, this paper examines the simultaneous racialization and fetishization of asian women in western cinematic productions. while asia encompasses a multitude of diverse cultures with distinct histories, value systems, economies, and religions, cinematic portrayals often homogenize these differences into a singular, universal representation of “the oriental woman” (rajgopal, 2010, p. 144; shimizu, 2000; tajima, 1989). transposing spillers’s concept to the asian context, i introduce asian pornotroping to analyze how western cinematic tropes contribute to the fetishization and abjection of asian women. asian pornotroping refers to the process by which stereotypical narrative tropes inscribe a destitution/sexuality matrix onto asian subjectivities and bodies. this process employs organic (e.g., bodily features) and inorganic (e.g., clothing, furniture, language, cultural practices) ethnic markers to accentuate asianness and its perceived destitution. in this paper, i radically appropriate the term “destitution” to encompass not only material deprivation that renders survival nearly impossible, but also a perceived moral and sexual depravity—an extreme lack of respectability—projected onto impoverished, racialized subjects by european colonial discourse. expanding the term in this way highlights how imperialist imaginaries collapse poverty and sexual excess into a single racialized figure of abjection. this framework allows me to trace how asian femininity is constructed not only as economically lacking, but also as sexually degraded, and thus in need of rescue, containment, or erasure. stereotypical tropes for asian women can be classified into two archetypes: the lotus blossom and the dragon lady (tajima, 1989). the lotus blossom archetype depicts passive, submissive, self-sacrificing, and hyperfeminine asian women who exist primarily as “love interests for white men” (tajima, 1989, p. 309). these characters are often portrayed as virginal prostitutes, readily available for white male sexual consumption. in contrast, the dragon lady archetype portrays domineering, seductive, and politically dangerous asian women who wield their sexuality to manipulate white men, either for personal gain or as agents of “conniving asian males” aiming to undermine western civilization (shimizu, 2000, p. 59). despite their apparent differences, characters in both archetypes often share commonalities: participation in sex work as concubines, prostitutes, or seductresses— professions that render their sexuality easily accessible. as my analysis will demonstrate, the lotus blossom and dragon lady are two sides of the same coin, distinguished by whether their sexuality is deployed for the benefit of white men or personal political agenda. these tropes construct abject asian female subjectivities, assigning a perverse hypersexuality to asian women as an inherent characteristic that starkly contrasts with the normative and morally superior sexuality embodied by white women on screen (shimizu, 2000). such depictions are deeply rooted in the legacy of colonization and white sexual imperialism. white sexual imperialism refers to the systemic western domination of developing nations that historically forced women in these regions into circumstances where sexual submission to white men became one of the few practical survival strategies available (woan, 2008). this dominance was deeply intertwined with existing patriarchal structures in asia, which had long conditioned women to occupy subordinated roles in both social and familial hierarchies. colonial and imperial occupations exploited and intensified these entrenched gender hierarchies, leveraging them to facilitate and justify the extraction of asian women’s bodily, sexual and emotional labor. by framing this exploitation as culturally inevitable, imperial powers deepened women’s subjugation and reconfigured patriarchal oppression to serve colonial objectives. this intersection of patriarchal oppression and colonial exploitation laid the foundation for asian pornotroping, embedding narratives of destitution and sexual availability into the racialized portrayals of asian women. these portrayals not only naturalized the marginalization of asian women but also reinforced colonial and imperial hierarchies under the guise of moral and civilizational superiority. this paper argues that asian pornotroping positions asian women as helpless and sexually available, serving to incite, reinforce, and justify white saviorism—a narrative framework that portrays white individuals as moral and heroic figures rescuing the “helpless other.” through close readings of madama butterfly (1904), miss saigon (1989), and the world of suzie wong (1960), this paper shows how the pornotrope recurs across different media forms to obscure the brutality of euro-american imperial violence in the asia-pacific. these cultural productions perpetuate a colonial discourse that frames the west as progressive and humane while depicting the orient as patriarchal and backward (said, 2019). in doing so, they sustain and legitimize european colonial dominance and later american global hegemony. this legacy is evident in policies and practices that perpetuate harm, such as discriminatory immigration laws, sexual/racial violence against asian women, and the coopted use of human rights discourse by neoliberal administrations. rather than protecting marginalized communities, this discourse often justifies state intervention that polices sex workers and survivors of sexual violence, frequently to their detriment. historical contexts: the colonial foundations of asian pornotroping in this section, i trace the historical development of the submissive yet hypersexual “panasian” woman stereotype and situate it within real-life historical contexts. i examine how orientalism shaped the eurocentric lens through which europeans viewed asia and its peoples during colonization. madame chrysanthème and prostitution in meiji japan european fantasies about “oriental women” originated in colonial literature (tracolhuynh, 2010). these works emerged after europeans established spheres of influence in asia as traders in the late 17th century (ramageteach, 2020). a critical entry point is madame chrysanthème by french naval officer pierre loti, published in 1887. drawing from loti’s real-life experience of cohabitating with a young japanese girl in nagasaki in 1885 (suzuki, 2023), the novel depicts a french naval officer’s paid one-month marriage to a young japanese geisha during the meiji era. by portraying japanese women as simultaneously infantilized, hypersexualized, and subservient, madame chrysanthème articulates early orientalist stereotypes that later crystallized into the cinematic archetypes of the lotus blossom. the novel’s depiction of japanese women as objects of fascination and consumption for european men reflects broader colonial attitudes that racialized and fetishized asian women. a deeper understanding of the historical context when the novel was written sheds light on the societal and economic conditions of the time. by 1885, the meiji government legalized prostitution as a state-regulated industry, imposing taxes to generate revenue (stanley, 2012). many rural families, struggling with poverty, continued to sell their daughters into prostitution, both domestically and overseas, as they faced criminalized abortion and infanticide (narayan, 2016). while these young women endured significant oppression and hardships in their roles as sex workers (mihalopoulos, 2012), their incomes often supported their families, enabling them to fulfill cultural expectations as “dutiful daughters” (stanley, 2012, p. 85). the young japanese women who inspired loti’s novel may well have been resilient, breadwinning daughters from impoverished backgrounds, whose labor underpinned the rapid growth of a modernizing japan. colonial regulation of prostitution in the asian colonies in the european colonial discourse, native women across different colonies were portrayed as sexual trophies, each marked by distinct sexual traits (tracol-huynh, 2010). women in asia were characterized as both victims of their own culture and threats to western morality (howell, 2000), articulating the destitution/sexuality matrix central to asian pornotroping. this racialized portrayal served to justify european colonial authority, imposing strict control over asian women’s sexuality (e.g., registration, regular health inspection, sanitary incarceration) under the guise of “paternalistic intervention” (howell, 2000, p. 335). such regulations entrenched these stereotypes and deepened economic precarity, positioning asian women’s suffering as natural within a colonial moral order. these colonial infrastructures helped construct both the lotus blossom and the dragon lady as an asian female ontology. in addition, children of interracial unions posed a threat to the racial boundaries essential for sustaining colonial authority and white privilege (stoler, 1989). in response to these anxieties, colonial authorities often assumed custody of these children, who were portrayed as “[unhappy] beings by definition” (stoler, 1989, p. 648). racial prejudice was reframed through a veneer of pity, enabling a humanitarian logic that legitimized intervention. european feminist women played a key role in this process, advocating for the removal of interracial children from indigenous communities deemed degenerate and corrupting (stoler, 1989). by casting racialized subjects as both pitiable and threatening, this discourse constructs an ontological framework that justifies their ongoing policing and exploitation. since the mid-1950s, the american military capitalized on this colonial legacy, employing indigenous women as sex workers and maids in rest and recreation centers around their bases (enloe, 2000). regulated through racialized and sexualized policies, prostitution had evolved into a full-fledged industry under its presence (enloe, 2000; tracolhuynh, 2010), exemplifying current ongoing exploitation. eroticizing destitution: asian pornotroping on scene and screen building on the historical contexts previously examined, this section analyzes how asian pornotroping functions in three landmark euro-american productions: madama butterfly (1904), miss saigon (1989), and the world of suzie wong (1960). these works collectively construct an eroticized image of asian femininity shaped by imperialism, patriarchy, and poverty. not only do these narratives hypersexualize asian women, but they also framed the women as victims of their own cultures, in need of salvation through white saviorism. by romanticizing racialized suffering, these productions reinforce the white savior narrative while masking the systemic violence that creates the very conditions of destitution they portray. plot summaries madama butterfly. premiering in 1904, madama butterfly is an italian opera by composer giacomo puccini, adapted from pierre loti’s madame chrysanthème (van rij, 2001). the opera tells the tragic story of butterfly, a 15-year-old japanese geisha, and pinkerton, an american naval officer stationed in 1904 nagasaki. their contract marriage excites butterfly, who converts to christianity in anticipation of their union. her conversion enrages her buddhist relatives, who subsequently renounce her. undeterred, butterfly consummates the marriage, wholly believing in a future with pinkerton. pinkerton soon departs japan, leaving butterfly behind. remaining faithful, she rejects a marriage broker’s offer to wed a wealthy prince and patiently awaits pinkerton’s return, giving birth to their son during his absence. three years later, pinkerton returns, now accompanied by his american wife, kate, who offers to take the child. heartbroken yet composed, butterfly agrees to relinquish her son on the condition that pinkerton visits her one final time. after securing this promise, she takes her own life. miss saigon. inspired by madama butterfly, this french musical by boubil and schönberg (1989) is set in saigon near the end of the vietnam war. the story follows 17year-old kim, an orphan forced into sex work at a brothel run by a hustler known as the engineer. during the bargirls’ contest for the title of “miss saigon,” a disillusioned american gi chris meets kim, who is portrayed as an innocent virgin. initially hesitant, chris tries to pay her to leave, but after learning of her history of loss and displacement, he vows to take her to america. they fall in love and spend the night together. the following day, the bargirls arrange a vietnamese-style wedding ceremony for chris and kim, but their union is interrupted by thuy, kim’s betrothed, an officer in the north vietnamese army. a confrontation ensues, during which kim defiantly asserts that she is chris’s wife. soon after, as saigon descends into chaos, chris is evacuated, leaving kim behind. clinging to the hope of his return, she hides from the new regime while raising their son, tam. meanwhile, in the united states, unaware that kim has survived, chris marries a white american woman named ellen. kim’s circumstances take a desperate turn when thuy discovers her and tam, threatening to kill the boy and send her to a re-education camp. in self-defense, she kills thuy and flees to bangkok with the engineer’s help. three years later, chris and ellen arrive in bangkok in search of his child. upon learning that chris has remarried, kim pleads with the couple to take tam so he can have a better life. she then takes her own life, dying in chris’s arms. the world of suzie wong. this british-american romantic drama by richard quine (1960), follows robert lomax, an american architect who moves to hong kong to pursue painting. while staying at the seedy nam kok hotel, he meets suzie wong, a bar girl who was abandoned by her family. initially hiring her as his muse, robert struggles with his growing feelings for her, torn between societal judgment and the romantic advances of kay, a british banker’s daughter. as robert gains a deeper understanding of suzie’s circumstances, their bond deepens. together, they navigate social pressures and personal hardships, culminating in tragedy when suzie’s son dies in a landslide. in the end, robert proposes to suzie, marking a shift from their transactional beginnings to a romantic connection. ethnic dress as fetish: staging poverty and desire in all three productions, the use of ethnic costume in these productions does more than signify cultural identity—it visually codes asianness as erotic, impoverished, and disposable. in madama butterfly, butterfly is dressed in a kimono, and her relatives appear in traditional japanese clothing. similarly, kim wears traditional vietnamese garments, including “an ersatz vietnamese wedding gown” (shimakawa, 2003, p. 32). suzie and her friends are costumed in tight-fitting cheongsam dresses. these outfits, as markers of cultural specificity and otherness, anchor the characters’ identities in visual codes of exoticism. the costumed characters are bound by a fate of poverty and marginalization, associating asianness with destitution. butterfly’s unexplained financial hardship leads her family to commodify her, offering her to pinkerton in a transactional marriage reminiscent of sex tourism. kim’s situation mirrors this dynamic: orphaned and displaced by war, she is pushed into bar work as a means of survival. the broader context of u.s. military aggression is notably absent, shifting attention from systemic violence to kim’s individual tragedy. suzie’s sexual labor is similarly framed as inevitable, with no acknowledgment of the british colonial policies that shaped her vulnerability. across these stories, violence against asian women is aestheticized and normalized, presented as an intrinsic and culturally specific fate. the deployment of ethnic costumes thus signifies not only racial difference but also eroticism and disposability, framing these women as exotic and tragic commodities. mapping the tropes hypersexualized tropes are pervasive across these productions, firstly through the recurring figure of the lotus blossom. butterfly and kim epitomize this archetype: both are teenage girls, and their youth is used to signify virginity and innocence. this attractiveness, crowned by extreme youth, is neither noted as problematic by the producers nor critically addressed within the narratives. instead, the audience is left to rationalize these sexual transactions, obscuring the exploitation of their age and vulnerability as natural or inevitable elements of their environment. their infantilization echoes loti’s (1905) description of japanese women as “dolls” (p. 20), accentuating passivity and a lack of agency. beyond their youth, butterfly, kim, and suzie are characterized by unwavering fidelity to their american “husbands,” even in the face of abandonment or alternative possibilities. this self-sacrifice reinforces their portrayal as emotionally dependent and lacking autonomy. their devotion erases individuality, reducing them to vessels of longing whose lives and happiness hinge on the return of white men, thereby advancing the white savior narrative. in contrast, the dragon lady trope surfaces in miss saigon through the depiction of the vietnamese bargirls. in the opening act, numerous women appear in “string bikinis” (shimakawa, 2003, p. 32), performing overtly erotic gestures to attract american soldiers. the accompanying lyrics frame them as manipulative figures who view gis as their “tickets out” of vietnam (boubil & schönberg, 1989). these representations mark the women as opportunistic threats to national and racial boundaries, echoing colonial anxieties around miscegenation and cultural contamination. suzie, dubbed a “prostitute with a heart of gold” (shimizu, 2008, p. 60), oscillates between both tropes. in the bar, she wields her sexuality to attract attention and money, taking on the qualities of the dragon lady. in her relationship with robert, however, she reverts to the submissive and emotionally loyal lotus blossom figure. her persistent sexual availability, in contrast with the white female characters who symbolize respectability and autonomy, reinforces a racialized dichotomy between eroticism and virtue. orientalist logic and the villainization of asia these productions reproduce orientalist tropes that glorify euro-american values while degrading indigenous ones, framing western intervention as redemptive and desirable. in madama butterfly, butterfly converts to christianity and praises it while mocking her maid’s devotion to japanese gods, calling them “fat and lazy” (puccini et al., 1904). in miss saigon, the engineer performs the satirical number “the american dream,” fantasizing about american excess: “the american dream... sweet as a new millionaire... fat, like a chocolate éclair... girls can buy tits by the pair.” in the world of suzie wong, suzie and her friends express delight in robert’s american imports, reinforcing the desirability of assimilation. throughout these narratives, euro-american culture is cast as modern, liberating, and aspirational, while indigenous practices are dismissed as backward, irrational, or corrupt. this dynamic is reinforced by the villainization of other asian characters, particularly the patriarchal, possessive, and violent “asian men.” in madama butterfly, butterfly’s relatives disown and humiliate her for converting to christianity. in miss saigon, thuy embodies the oppressive patriarch: he refers to kim in objectifying terms, shames her as a traitor, and ultimately threatens to kill her child. in suzie wong, suzie is abandoned by both her father and the father of her child. these portrayals frame the suffering of asian women as rooted in their own cultures, erasing the structural violence of imperialism and war. by positioning white men as saviors liberating asian women from patriarchal oppression, these narratives obscure western complicity in gendered violence and reproduce the illusion that euroamerican societies are free of misogyny. ultimately, they sustain an orientalist logic in which imperial power is framed not as domination but as benevolence, where the celebration of occidental modernity relies on the portraying oriental traditions as violent and regressive. the erased mother and the illusion of rescue in these productions, white saviorism is exemplified by the adoption of mixed-race children by white couples. in miss saigon, the song “bui doi” describes these children as “conceived in hell and born in strife” (boubil & schönberg, 1989). the clinical term “conceived” erases the circumstances leading up to conception, reducing it to a biological act of reproduction. this language sanitizes the violence and exploitation embedded in these relationships, making questions about consent unfathomable within the narrative. instead, the song calls for american responsibility, declaring, “we owe them fathers, and a family, and a loving home they never knew” (boubil & schönberg, 1989). yet this condescending call for accountability ignores the devastation the u.s. military inflicted on native women, whose exploitation enabled the very familial bonds the musical seeks to normalize. can one truly speak of fatherhood and family when these relationships were forged through sexual violence and exploitation? can a home be considered loving if it is built on the erasure of indigenous mothers and their autonomy? by cleansing the violent origins of these children’s existence, the narrative recasts them as victims of circumstance in need of rescue by white “families.” “bui doi” thus functions to justify the removal of children from their vietnamese mothers under the guise of care. robbed of motherhood, butterfly and kim both take their own lives, ostensibly so their children can live better lives with their white american parents. the productions offer no compelling rationale for their deaths, framing their selfabandonment as tragic lovesickness and further erasing their agency. these deaths, however, serve a symbolic purpose: they sever the children’s ties to their indigenous societies, eliminating any cultural or racial ambiguities that might complicate their assimilation into whiteness. in doing so, they preserve the icon of the monogamous white nuclear family. this echoes colonial practices that institutionalized mixed-race children to reinforce racial boundaries, confining asian women to the realm of disposable sexual objects. the films analyzed in this paper reveal a consistent pattern: asian pornotroping frames asian women through intersecting narratives of racial otherness, hypersexualization, and victimhood. across these productions, asian women are depicted as both desirable and disposable, their worth tied to their function within western male fantasies and imperial storylines. these representations do more than entertain—they construct a cultural grammar of racialized power that reinforces white saviorism and colonial ideologies. by romanticizing asianness as synonymous with sexual availability and passive suffering, these works obscure the structural violence and imperial exploitation that produce the very conditions of asian women’s destitution. the consequences of these portrayals extend far beyond the stage or screen. the stereotypes they normalize fuel real-world prejudice and contribute to an ongoing continuum of violence against asian women globally. as the next section demonstrates, asian pornotroping is not confined to the realm of art—it has tangible, often harmful impacts on the lives of asian women, particularly in diasporic contexts across euro-american societies. violence made aesthetic: the real-world impact of asian pornotroping white saviors and the commodification of colonial ideologies the portrayal of white men as saviors in cultural productions serves as a potent ideological tool to validate imperialism and colonialism. shelby steele (2006) defines “white guilt” as the discomfort experienced by white americans when confronted with the legacies of racism and colonialism, particularly as these legacies erode their “moral authority” over racial and social justice issues (p. 24). this loss of perceived legitimacy creates a “vacuum of moral authority,” compelling white americans to seek redemption by demonstrating that they are “not racist” (steele, 2006, p. 27). however, this redemption often manifests as performative acts that center themselves as saviors, reframing their complicity in systemic violence as benevolent intervention. asian pornotroping capitalizes on this logic, converting white guilt into a profitable storytelling device. these narratives recast colonizers and imperialists as compassionate rescuers, shifting focus from structural violence to individual heroism. by centering racialized suffering and white rescue, they offer audiences a vicarious sense of moral redemption. the financial success of these productions reveals how colonial ideologies are commodified and consumed. despite longstanding critiques of its orientalism, madama butterfly remains a cornerstone of the opera repertoire, with over 900 performances at the metropolitan opera by january 2024 (chiu, 2019; metropolitan opera, 2024). miss saigon was similarly lucrative, entertaining over 31 million people across 18 countries by 2011 (chung, 2011), and setting a record £4.4 million in single-day ticket sales during its 2014 west end revival (clark, 2013). this commodification is particularly insidious in its ability to both entertain and legitimize. these narratives mask structural violence while presenting imperialism as morally redemptive, transforming the colonizer from oppressor to hero. by packaging imperial conquest as romantic salvation, asian pornotroping offers audiences both escapism and absolution, allowing empire to be consumed as spectacle, empathy, and virtue. yellow fever: the racial fetishization and violence against asian women asian pornotroping fuels yellow fever, the racial fetishization of asian women that operates at the intersection of racism and sexism. this fetishization subjects asian women to a continuum of violence, ranging from sexual racism in online dating (williams, 2004), to street-level harassment and threats (yuen, 2023), to racially targeted physical and sexual assault (geranios, 2000; kim, 2015), and even murder and terrorism (chang & yuen, 2021). despite its racialized nature, such violence is often institutionally dismissed or erased (kim, 2015), compounding asian women’s systemic invisibility, dehumanization, and marginalization. the psychological toll of fetishization is equally profound. women targeted by yellow fever often report feeling depersonalized and otherized, wherein they are simultaneously “treated like an object interchangeable with other objects” and held to distinct and racialized standards of physical appearance and sexuality (zheng, 2016, p. 407). these experiences create persistent cognitive dissonance, forcing asian women to question their value as individuals while expending “psychic and emotional resources” to navigate a world shaped by fetishistic desire and racial projection (zheng, 2016, p. 409). militarized prostitution and the legacy of asian pornotroping sexual violence is a weapon of war (frazer & hutchings, 2019), and women’s sex work has long supported predominantly male militaries (vine, 2015). militarized prostitution, a system historically intertwined with asian pornotroping, continues in contemporary contexts. in camptowns around u.s. military bases in south korea, poor korean women and trafficked filipino women work under exploitative conditions, including confiscated passports, arbitrary fines, and wages below minimum standards. these practices echo colonial regulatory frameworks, sustained by the same racist and sexist beliefs that have long justified the extraction of labor and intimacy from asian women. recent crackdowns by u.s. and south korean authorities have pushed this labor underground, exacerbating precarity rather than addressing systemic exploitation (vine, 2015). this continuity reveals how asian pornotroping extends beyond cultural production and into state structures of control. like the stage or screen, the military re-enacts these dynamics, casting asian women as simultaneously available and discardable, and reframing domination as protection. since the 1990s, global recognition of sexual exploitation in wartime as a human rights violation has grown (frazer & hutchings, 2019). however, this discourse is often co-opted to justify carceral and imperial interventions. in u.s. anti-trafficking movements, punitive policies are reframed as feminist and humanitarian (bernstein, 2012). these campaigns depict global south women as victims of “backward traditionalism” (p. 62), reinforcing the idea that they require rescue by global north states. in this way, human rights discourse replicates the logic of asian pornotroping by turning the suffering of racialized women into a vehicle for white redemption. the persistence of militarized prostitution and punitive politics masked as humanitarianism show that asian pornotroping is not confined to media. whether through camptowns, anti-trafficking campaigns, or foreign policy, these systems reproduce racialized and gendered hierarchies. by framing domination as care, they allow state power to eroticize suffering and obscure structural violence. conclusion this paper applies asian pornotroping as an analytical concept that constructs a demure, hypersexualized, and subservient asian femininity in service of the imperialist sexual, emotional, and narcissistic consumption. these narratives inscribe a destitution/sexuality matrix onto asian women, framing them as both helpless victims and hypersexualized commodities. by reinforcing this dichotomy, such portrayals obscure the systemic violence of white sexual imperialism and glorify western intervention as morally superior, perpetuating colonial hierarchies and erasing the complicity of western patriarchy. this dynamic is not confined to the screen or stage but extends into real-world practices, such as militarized prostitution and the contradictions within u.s.-led militarized humanitarianism. future scholarship could employ this framework to examine how asian pornotroping impacts portrayals of asian men. do these narratives also perpetuate emasculation, hypermasculinity, or exoticization? how do they intersect with the colonial legacy explored in this paper? additionally, the internalization of these tropes by asian individuals themselves remains a critical area of inquiry. du bois’s (2008) concept of double consciousness offers a lens to explore how asian individuals reconcile their identities with dominant western portrayals or resist these narratives through activism and alternative storytelling. understanding the broader social, psychological, and systemic impacts of asian pornotroping is vital to dismantling the colonial and patriarchal structures it sustains. by critically examining these narratives and their 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(2016). why yellow fever isn’t flattering: a case against racial fetishes. journal of the american philosophical association, 2(3), 400–419. doi:10.1017/apa.2016.25 https://x.com/nancywyuen/status/1658356316975382532 a pornographic ethnographic study: the lives of online sex workers kennley cook, southern utah university, ‘24 abstract: this ethnographic research examines different experiences of female-bodied performers in the adult film industry. the pornographic industry carries the reputation of being exploitative and seedy. through analysis of the performer’s lived experiences, it becomes clear that the industry is far more nuanced than most assume. the average daily experience of online sex workers is reviewed and examined, and then the mental, emotional, and social impacts that performers face from their line of work are explored. the unique communities they build and how they find support are discussed as how these intersect with judgment and shame. this paper explores how the roles of stigma, trauma, and embodiment of sexualized characters greatly shape the experiences of online sex workers. my first time watching porn, i was nineteen. it was my freshman year of college, and in my introduction to anthropology course, we were assigned to research a subculture. after kicking around a few ideas, i landed on porn stars. my initial interest in porn stars came from my conservative religious upbringing—pornography had been presented as a destructive force and the individuals in the industry were either malicious sex addicts or victims of sex trafficking. it was during my first year of college, away from the relentless forces of my religious community, that i began to reexamine the things i had been taught growing up. concepts such as sex and sexuality were especially interesting to me. pornography fell under my interest because of how taboo it had been for me. the selection of porn stars as my subculture was approved by my professor, so i began my research. my research led me to pornhub, where i watched porn videos—for the first time in my life—while taking notes on every scene. i thought that pornography and by extension porn sites, were catered to “beginner” viewers since i had been told how enticing porn would be my entire life. i assumed hardcore films had to be sought out, but the videos on the homepages of websites would be simple one-on-one gentle intercourse. this was not the case, and the first videos i watched involved rigorous three ways, stepsibling fantasy situations, and anal sex. i walked away with the opinion that porn was disgusting and very confused as to how anyone would want to engage in any way with pornography. it was through this subculture project that i also discovered there was little research on the actual lives of porn stars (or as i later learned the preferred term, online sex workers). most research consisted of philosophical debates regarding the ethics of pornography and psychological studies of the effects of pornography on the brain, but very little on the lives of these performers. what few studies conducted about online sex workers were regarding early film sex workers in the 20th century or involved small sample sizes of only a few hundred individuals. the lack of research left me feeling unfulfilled with my first project. my views on pornography and the individuals it employed were still largely negative, but i recognized that i did not have enough information to justify that belief or any belief, positive or negative, regarding online sex workers and pornography. i spent four years aggressively researching everything i could on anything related to pornography or sex work. i discovered that pornography and online sex workers are much more complicated than often presented and that they cannot be neatly labelled as “bad” or “good.” my final capstone project for my anthropology degree led me to interview sex workers, attend pornography conventions and museums, and read all the information i could find on sex work. i developed concepts to explain what i was seeing, which i explore throughout this paper. the first being personas of the self: these personas are hyper-sexualized, fictionalized versions of the sex worker, which they take on when working. it combines real aspects of their personality with an endlessly erotic fantasy of themselves. part of the role these personas play is protecting performers emotionally from pornophobia. pornophobia, which i explore later in great detail, is the belief that pornography and anyone attached to it is inherently bad. the effects of pornophobia heighten violence against sex workers and drive many of the negative impacts associated with pornography. after discussing pornophobia and its effects, i explore the ways online sex workers cope, primarily by creating online support groups or “social media neighborhoods” that they use to protect themselves. after discussing these aspects, i explore how performers are still able to build real relationships with their clients and even go so far as to heal themselves and others from traumatic experiences through sex work. literature review and background there are many names for female-bodied online sex workers: porn stars, cam girls, adult content creators, and adult film stars. i found through my research and in talking to these individuals that the most accurate and accepted term is “online sex workers.” online sex workers are anyone who creates pornographic content. in this paper, pornography will be defined as “...sexually explicit [images] or videos intended to sexually arouse the viewer” (jhe et al., 2023, p. 1). for my research, i divided online sex workers into two categories: freelancers and professionals. freelancers are individuals who self-produce and post content to places like onlyfans, cam-girl sites, and amateur porn sites. professionals are those who are signed with an agency and work on professional porn sets. the owners of these films then often post the content on sites like pornhub and xvideos. most professionals engage in some form of freelancing as well, but not all freelancers engage in professional porn shoots. as it currently stands, there is limited research done on the lives of online sex workers. sociologists and psychologists have studied to some extent the roles and lives of sex workers, but these generally are exotic dancers or full-service sex workers (fssw), also known as prostitutes. online sex worker-specific research can be hard to come by. the largest peerreviewed study i was able to find with this information was done by a group of psychologists in 2013 with a group of 208 performers. this study looked at opinions regarding sex, condom use, and std concerns as well as basic demographic information like race, gender identity, sexuality, and age (griffith et al., 2013). while an excellent start to gathering information on online sex workers, the sample size is relatively small, and subjects were only recruited from one health clinic in los angeles, california, thus further limiting the sample size. this data also did not include any information on freelancers. information on how much revenue the pornography industry generates is murky. the professional industry is estimated to generate 12.8 billion dollars a year in the us (lüdering, 2018, p. 12). there is no exact data on the freelance market, but it is estimated to have millions of performers worldwide (simon, 2024). there is also limited data on how much income freelancers generate since freelancers exist across so many sites, making them hard to track. there is also little information on how performers prep for shoots, interactions with family members regarding their careers, client-performer relationships, how online sex workers enter the industry, and what a typical day of shooting content looks like. there are a few interviews with online sex workers regarding such topics, but these interviews are usually done with bigger names in the industry (nocella, 2023; west, 2019). accounts of the experiences of the “common” unknown online sex worker are hard to come by. despite a lack of direct information, some concepts and ideas translate to the online sex worker experiences i observed. fantasies around sex are frequently used to sell sex. this concept was explored by anthropologist debra curtis. her research focused on american tupperware-style parties for selling sex toys (2004). curtis mentions how saleswomen emphasize the fantasy of sex with the toys. this concept directly ties into my idea of the persona of the self. online sex workers emphasize a fantasy of themselves to move more “product.” but these personas are not sold in a void. in a presentation by anthropologists susan faulkner and jay melican, they examine how people use social media to create “personal spaces.” these personal spaces exist entirely virtually but allow the owners to create rules, cater to specific aesthetics, and stand out (2004). these spaces become particularly important to those with large online followings, it builds a niche that only they can exist in. i take faulkner and melican’s ideas a step further, with online sex workers not only creating “personal spaces” but also social media neighborhoods. these neighborhoods, which i will review in greater detail later on, are made up of similar online personal spaces and are used to further market and protect online sex workers. part of the need for social media neighborhoods comes from the fact that sex is traditionally seen as embarrassing and uncomfortable, as emphasized in wardlow’s book on fsswers in new guinea (2006). this discomfort bleeds into policies that affect sex workers. for example, a united states federal bill attempted to redefine obscenity to include “an actual or simulated sexual act or sexual contact…or lewd exhibition of the genitals, with the objective intent to arouse…the sexual desires of a person” (interstate obscenity definition act, 2022). since the us does not allow obscenity, this bill would effectively outlaw pornography if passed (miller v. california, 1973). these large-scale policies all promote pornophobia. as will be explored in this paper, these sentiments lead to stigma that can result in emotional, physical, and financial harm on a personal level. methodologies the methodology of this study consisted of open-ended interviews done over video calls, phone calls, or direct messages with online female-bodied sex workers and related professionals. i recruited subjects by messaging them directly through their x and instagram accounts. in total, i directly messaged an estimated 266 accounts, 24 through instagram and the rest on x. some sex workers heard about my research through friends, and they reached out to me themselves. in total, i conducted 33 interviews over the course of three months. i had a list of prewritten questions (see appendix) but also frequently diverged from the list to gain information about individuals’ specific experiences. i gave the interview subjects the option of how they would prefer the interviews to be taken: 7 interviews were conducted over the phone/zoom call and the remaining 26 were done over messaging apps. thirty interviews were with current sex workers, 9 of those being professional performers and 21 were exclusively freelancers; one was with a former sex worker and two were with sex therapists. i observed sex workers both online and in person. i conducted online observation over the course of three months by following over 200 sex workers’ x accounts. i spent an estimated 180 hours in online observation. i took note of major trends but also used the accounts to gain a better understanding of sex worker vernacular. i was able to observe the different “styles” sex workers took on like bdsm, foot fetishes, financial domination, etc. for my in-person observations, i attended the adult video news (avn) expo in las vegas in january of 2024. the avn expo is the largest gathering of sex workers in the world. held every year, it lasts four days. i attended one of the days of the public expos. i spoke with a few sex workers there but largely spent the time observing how online sex workers interacted with fans. this paper pulls from these interviews and observations. any potential identifying information has been removed, and i refer to most to interviewees as “performers” rather than using fake names. this is because performers use stage names, and by needing to create thirty different fake names, it seemed likely i would accidentally use someone’s legal name. to prevent potential discomfort of the sex workers, i avoid using any names (with one exception) — fake or otherwise. a day in the life before diving deeper into the aspects of sex work, it is important to review what sex workers do. there are many misconceptions about sex work, even among academics (griffith et al., 2013, p. 638). through my interviews with online sex workers, i was able to create a basic layout of how professional porn shoots are performed. first, online sex work is not very ‘sexy.’ in professional porn shoots, a large portion of the shoot is spent just getting ready. sex workers have consent checklists of sexual acts in which they mark what acts they are and are not okay with. these lists are sent ahead of time to the director and co-stars. everyone reviews the lists before the shoots. performers i spoke with emphasize that there is also mandatory std testing that must happen no more than two weeks before the shoot. these tests are full panel workups and involve swabbing anal, vaginal, and oral cavities and blood tests. the performers i interviewed all had very similar experiences on set, with sex being filmed in about five-to-ten-minute increments. performers mentioned that there are usually up to a dozen people on set. while they are given scripts, there is usually some improvising mixed in. performers also mentioned that shoots can last anywhere from 4 to 16 hours. there is also an industry standard for professional shoots’ pay scale, as all the online sex workers i interviewed described being paid between $800 to $2000 per shoot, depending on the scene. royalties were never reported, with sex workers being paid once up front. the sex worker’s agency will usually take a cut of 20% or more. for many freelance performers, this high percentage is what drives them to freelance work. most performers reported shooting no more than four scenes in a week. for freelancers, work is much more flexible, but also time-consuming. the freelancers i interviewed varied greatly in their schedules, usually shooting when it was most convenient for them. most freelancers i interviewed start the day by checking their social media and engaging with other sex workers. they are in a near-constant cycle of content creation, editing, and then posting. some content gets posted for free, some is sent to specific buyers, and some is published to specific sites. some freelancers i interviewed created posting schedules, so they do not go too many days without posting new content. for most, freelance work is a full-time job on top of other everyday responsibilities. it is often these outside responsibilities that drive the individuals i interviewed to sex work. they often navigated disabilities, motherhood, school, and second jobs on top of their sex work. they repeatedly expressed that the flexibility of sex work is what lets them attend to these other responsibilities. in my interviews, one sex worker who was also a mother said, “[i]n today’s world it seems most of us moms always have that nagging and pulling inside us, we want to help provide for our families, but we also want to be home with our babies.” sex work allowed her to stay home but still make an extra income. another described how her autism made typical 9-to-5 days extremely difficult to navigate. another described why she entered the industry, saying, “i was 18 and college took all my money…college was very physically intense, and i couldn’t/can’t drive, so i wasn’t able to get any other job.” sex work gave them the financial independence they otherwise may not have been able to achieve. while flexible and financially supportive, sex work is still work. it requires a varied skill set to maintain followers and income. it is not for the faint of heart nor those looking to make a quick buck. since so much is required for sex workers to be successful, they must find ways of coping to survive in the industry. personas of the self workers take genuine and authentic parts of themselves and mix them with a fantasy sexual sequence to create what i term as a “persona of the self” —they are neither playing a completely fabricated character nor are they entirely themselves. the most successful accounts i saw often had one other layer of a “theme” beyond just their pornographic content. many are heavily educated in politics and mix their opinions into separate posts on their accounts. others stream video games or have live streams. specific themed “looks” are not uncommon either. posts featuring goth makeup, kawaii (japanese style) outfits, and cosplays are all popular. humor is also an aspect that allows content creators to let their personalities shine. performers of all types can find their markets, as one performer mentioned in their interview, “being in the adult industry, there are different avenues you can take. different people who love all different body types…” regardless of not needing to conform to customer preferences, it still takes effort for workers to get followers. anthropologist scott ross studied how social media users gain followings and interaction. he compares instagram and social media to science, saying “users attempt to craft successful communicative acts through studied experience of usage [and] following the social lives of posts to determine if an image is valuable” (ross, 2019, p. 29). if social media is a science to be studied, then sex workers are the phd holders of the online world. they understand that it is not just about nudes, but about the right amount of editing, captions, schedules, and interaction. they watch which of their posts get the most traction and at which times, all while maintaining an air of ease. as one creator said, “it takes a lot of effort to appear effortless.” and that is the goal: to appear effortless. this starts with the target group being marketed to. of the individuals i interviewed, target audiences included those interested in financial domination (the submissive sends gifts and money to their dominatrix), foot content, milf content, humiliation, masturbation, and vaginal squirting. sometimes performers would dip into multiples of these fetishes, but they primarily stuck to one or two main kinks. however, kink curation is only the beginning. after curating their kink, they decide on a presentation, depending on what they think will sell. for some, it involves hair and makeup. one performer had wigs they would use to make preparing for filming easier. other performers went for natural looks, with one commenting, “[s]ometimes buyers like that 100% authentic look. just rolling out of bed and flashing a quick picture or video.” it all boils down to recognizability and creating their niche. even pubic hair is sculpted and curated for specific looks. some performers dye their pubic hair to be a variety of colors, even shaping it into specific shapes. this marketing of style and theme all help to curate each performer’s persona of the self. personas of the self are different from what i term the “primary identity.” primary identities are the sum of all the things that go into what makes someone themselves: personality, opinions, physical presentation, life experiences, education, etc. the personas of the self can be a part of the primary identity, but primary identities are never personas. personas of the self exist only in specific spaces and with certain individuals. to simplify, the personas of the self are the sex worker, but the sex worker is only one piece of the primary identity. for sex workers, the persona of self is crucial. it is not just about presenting oneself in a good light, it is quite literally selling oneself. sex can make people uncomfortable, but when they feel a connection to the one promoting it, they are more likely to buy (curtis, 2004, p. 101-2). this is why the sex worker’s persona of the self is so important. viewers are seeking a connection with the performer. the sex workers i interviewed emphasized this as the secret to selling content; the buyers are looking for more than just pornographic content, they want to feel connected to the individual on the other end. just like any entrepreneur, sex workers try to increase engagement with their audiences. they use the same methods mentioned in faulkner’s and melican’s presentation (2004): surveys, short bite-sized content, and engaging with comments. whenever i scrolled through my x feed, i was bombarded with posts asking, “which look [viewers] liked best?” and “what should [the performer’s] next video be?” all of this was an attempt to make the fans feel like they knew the content maker and that they were a part of the process. personas of the self are like personal brands described in anthropologist ilana gershon’s article (2014). they both use their characteristics to market themselves and promote themselves. they also both include a level of editing and filtering. the difference between a personal brand and a persona of the self is the spaces they occupy. sex workers step out of these personas when they are not in front of a camera, while personal brands are taking one’s personality and marketing it (gershon, 2014, p. 286-7). personas in spaces in one of my first phone interviews, i chatted with jane, a very talkative and friendly online sex worker. i did not need to ask many questions as she happily chatted away about her experiences. for me, it was the ideal interview—just listening while she endlessly shared what she thought was important. one of the few questions i asked was if her partner cared about her work, and she replied, “no, he knows the people online get one version of jane, and he gets the real—” for the first time in the interview, she paused: “he gets the real jane.” the reason for the pause was, i assumed, that she almost used her real name instead of her stage name. when jane almost used her real name in her conversation with me, it seemed it was because she forgot she was speaking as an online sex worker “jane.” sex worker jane was a persona of the “real” jane. jane was a professional sex worker, so she did not often engage in freelance behaviors, such as talking on the phone to customers. the change of the normal contextual space the persona jane took up had shifted, which made it difficult to truly maintain the persona since personas are limited to one specific context or location. it is difficult for personas of the self to exist outside these specific spaces. these spaces include the physical and the non-physical. examples of spaces would be sex workers’ social media accounts, porn sets, and private messages between workers and customers. when these personas are shifted to unfamiliar circumstances, like a phone interview, it can be awkward. i observed examples of this awkwardness while at the avn expo. the avn expo was set up like a traditional convention, with sex workers at booths and tables for fans and attendees to meet them. for sex workers, they were between the spaces where their personas lived: they were taking on the persona of the self, but in a shared physical environment with fans no longer on the other side of the screen. the sex workers i observed at the convention were often shy and seemed uncomfortable interacting with attendees. the one exception i saw repeatedly was what happened when performers posed for pictures. as soon as they stepped in front of a camera, the persona of the self took over. they knew exactly how to stand and pose to emphasize their features. the confidence that immediately showed up as they stood with a stranger’s arm wrapped around their waist is something i have never seen. it was like a different person, but as soon as the picture was taken, they became shy and reserved again. pornophobia near the beginning of my research, i was discussing the porn industry with my dad. he was more of an audience as i recited all of my observations and knowledge. he would occasionally ask questions, but mostly just listened. despite his relaxed nature in the conversation, i repeatedly felt the need to emphasize to him that i was not going to go into the sex industry. i listed my reasons as it took too many hours, and i would not want to be on social media that much. both were true, but my real reason for emphasizing my lack of interest was from my own internalized pornophobia. pornophobia is a relatively new term. the first use i could find in academic literature was in a legal essay review about pornography law by theresa bruce in 1997, but bruce does not even use the word in their review, just in the title. otherwise, the term has been scattered in tabloid health magazines and obscure online dictionaries. with its apparent obscurity and muddied definition, i formed my own definition: pornophobia is the strong aversion or distaste towards pornography and sex workers and the sex industry in general. it goes beyond simply not wanting to consume pornography: it affects policymaking, social interactions, and beliefs. i found pornophobia to lead to forgetting the primary identity and the person behind the persona of the self, basically the online sex worker became viewed as less than a person. using my previous example, i sought to avoid the assumption that i might join the industry; to be attached to the industry was to diminish my worth and personhood. other examples of pornophobia are negative beliefs around sex work, institutional barriers, and social and physical violence committed against online sex workers. pornophobia surrounds us, and i found myself up against it time and time again, both in myself (despite my best efforts to remove it) and in others. in the weeks leading up to my university’s finals week, the school provided chalk for students to write encouraging messages on the quad. amongst these, read one “even if you fail, there’s always stripping!” this sentiment, disguised as a joke, reveals much more problematic origins. for one thing, it promotes the idea that sex work is not real work. many of the sex workers i interviewed protested that idea, with one commenting, “a lot of people joke about quitting work and selling feet pictures. and that does annoy me because the amount of work that goes into this industry is very underrated.” most sex workers i spoke with worked between 10 and 80 hours a week as sex workers, many on top of being mothers, students, and employees for other businesses. of the 33 interviews i conducted, only two people had no other major obligation beyond sex work. this undervaluing of sex work and the assumption that it is easy is another form of pornophobia. unfortunately, pornophobia extends to institutional settings. for example, united statesbased online sex workers can have their bank accounts closed without warning should the bank find out they are sex workers. this is called banking discrimination and is completely legal (equal credit opportunity act, 1974). it can lead to ruined credit scores and inaccessible funds. the exact reasons for banks refusing to serve online sex workers are unclear, but performers are well aware of the consequences that revealing their source of income can lead to. one performer explained the risks of sex work in this regard: “there’s also [real life] consequences like from banking, housing, future jobs asking about resume gaps if you do [sex work].” it is often for this reason that sex workers go through third-party banking apps or lie to their banks about their actual professions. however, pornophobia can lead to much darker consequences. many of the individuals who are most likely to commit pornophobic acts are the consumers of porn. “they think we’re the scum of the earth, so they feel like they can tell us anything,” said one sex worker. indeed, many people i interviewed expressed that there were many things they “couldn’t unsee” that were sent to them from viewers. one performer said: “this industry has also subjected me to a lot of things i wish i could unsee. thus lessening my overall trust and respect for people, but men in general. no one warns you about this when joining the industry (at least not in my experience) …because we aren’t widely understood and respected [sex workers as a whole], we are treated pretty nasty, and some people set out to intentionally harm us in some form.” several performers mentioned similar things. one performer mentioned: “guys either completely disrespect me, or think they get a free pass to treat me like a sex object… [one man] wrote an entire diary entry, calling me bitch, whore, saying i don’t deserve the title of a woman, said my parents failed me, called me dirty etc. i never once disrespected him, but he was a complete asshole to me.” some are exposed to awful things like child sexual abuse material. one stated, “[a] negative experience i have had is reoccurring, and that’s facing clients who are pedophiles and rapists…” another performer mentioned: “the absolute worst of what i’ve experienced is someone contacted me...and started randomly sending me [child porn] …i even went through the process of submitting a tip to the fbi. it’s definitely not uncommon…i got many messages and comments from other sex workers saying they had been subjected to [it].” one worker eloquently summarized the results of pornophobia: “risks of being harassed, or doxxed by angry men online…disgusting things you see…like bestiality and sexualization of minors, and people threatening/expressing interest in sexually assaulting them.” many of these things stem from the dehumanization of sex workers rampant in pornophobia. in a phone interview, one performer told me about one of her experiences going to the store. she was wearing a pornhub hoodie. as she told me the story, i could tell she was proud of having the hoodie. pornhub sends gifts to creators after they reach a certain level of engagement and/or income, and this performer had reached that goal and been sent the hoodie as a symbol of her hard work. while at the store, a man approached her and complimented her hoodie. she responded with, “thanks! look me up on pornhub!” and gave the man her channel title. the man then proceeded to follow her to her car. her appearance on pornhub made the man believe it was acceptable to harass her. she was no longer human—she was a sex worker. it is pornophobia that requires the personas of the self. these personas allow for a layer of protection; in all the above examples, sex workers only experienced harassment when they stepped into their persona. it is for this reason that many sex workers keep their “vanilla” lives separate from their sex worker lives. many of the sex workers i interviewed mentioned that they usually kept their work private from at least a few people in their lives. the main tragedy of sex workers lies in this concept. almost everyone’s social media is layered with some level of fantasy (ross, 2019). most do not feel the need to hide their online personas. there is not often the risk of losing family or loved ones if they see us step into our personas of self. pornophobia drives these personas underground and hidden; they cannot reveal them to loved ones. even addressing that the personas exist can be dangerous, as one sex worker commented, “i know sex workers who were thrown out of their homes and lost family over being outed…” the message is sent repeatedly; their personas are not welcome to appear in their primary identity. many of the online sex workers told me that they hid their work from their outof-work lives, even going so far as to not tell their children what their job. one sex worker told me her son did not find out she was an online sex worker until he was in his teens, even though she had been a sex worker since before her son was born. fortunately, her son did not mind, but other sex workers emphasized how frequently they hid their employment for fear of judgement. pornophobia exists in the industry as well. sex workers are seen as their parts rather than a person. the most common response i got from sex workers when i asked them what they wished the public knew about them was simply, “we are people.” as one worker eloquently said, “we could be your sister, daughter, friend, or the person you just passed at the grocery store.” unfortunately, they are not always viewed as people. one sex worker told me a story regarding her and her agent: “i was invited over to my agent’s house to film a collab. strictly work. his coworkers were literally in the next room. he asked to take photos of me in all of the positions first but while on top of me from behind he just started having sex with me off camera. he put it down and fucked me for a while and then came inside of me without asking. it was super uncomfortable...i truly don’t really think he understands what he did was wrong or that i’m uncomfortable.” her agent did not see her as a person; he only saw her as her persona of the self: an endlessly sexual being that was just human enough to have sex with. the fault lies entirely with the agent and with every individual who forgets there is a person behind the persona. pornophobia through its dehumanization of sex workers encourages rape, violence, and hate. social media neighborhoods faulkner and melican (2004) described social media as often feeling like a personal space, and indeed, sex workers feel their social media accounts are their spaces. most sex workers do not hesitate to block individuals. one mentioned, “i really have zero tolerance for people who do not treat me with respect…so i ban a lot of people and walk away from a lot of things.” so commanding and self-assured were sex workers in their online spaces that i often came to think of their social media pages as the homes of their personas of the self. similar to how one might not tolerate someone coming into their physical home and berating them, so too do sex workers not tolerate hateful comments or judgment from followers. sex workers even create “rules” for their pages and how fans may approach them. for example, financial dominatrices (“findoms”) demand that followers pay them “tribute” before sending a private message. failure to send proper tribute, usually ranging from $5 to $50, ends with followers either being demanded to send double what is acceptable or being completely ignored. beyond their own accounts, there is a sex worker community where they consistently interact with each other’s accounts, a sort of social media neighborhood. faulkner and melican (2004) observed that social media creates tight-knit communities. online sex workers do have an online community, but that extends to fans, producers, full-service sex workers, exotic dancers, and anyone with any connection to the sex industry. the social media neighborhoods i observed were much more close-knit and designed to uplift, rather than just acknowledge a shared interest as seen in online communities. sex workers’ social media neighborhoods had several distinctions i have not observed in any other form of social media. for one, they face shadowbans by the social media companies. these bans hide accounts from being looked up; the only way to find a shadow-banned account is if you follow another account that tags the banned account, or someone you follow also follows the banned account, and you find them in their followers’ lists. these shadow bans exist partially to limit children from viewing pornographic content, but more frequently, it is yet another echo of pornophobia. shadow bans can be particularly damaging since many sites, like onlyfans, need advertisements from external sites to funnel viewers to a user’s channel. frustration with shadow bans was frequently brought up in my interviews with online sex workers. they described their ways to circumnavigate shadowbans using gain trains. gain trains involve groups of sex workers all agreeing to post each other’s content and tag the creator. this allows individuals following one sex worker to then see posts of other sex workers and follow them. it proved extremely useful in recruiting interview participants since x would hide any accounts that matched keywords like “porn” or “sex work.” gain trains are just one aspect of the social media neighborhoods. sex workers are constantly interacting and chatting. one sex worker told me she once had a group chat of over 140 people. these chats serve to help provide feedback on posts, organize gain trains, and police the social media neighborhood. as one performer mentioned, “it’s ‘in’ within our community to govern ourselves due to the lack of support from laws to protect us.” anyone who breaks the rules of a sex worker’s page or the “neighborhood” faces swift and immediate justice. for example, one night i was scrolling through x, when i came across a post of a femalebodied sex worker critiquing a male sex worker. the post had several comments from other sex workers, all agreeing to boycott and block the male performer. i then saw a slew of tweets, all voicing opinions against the male sex worker. the reason for this ostracization? the male sex worker had posted a video of himself having unprotected sex with a female-bodied performer where he switched between anal and vaginal sex repeatedly. this type of sex can lead to intense yeast infections and is seen as unacceptable amongst sex workers, since it poses a risk for the other partner. the online sex worker community punished this male sex worker for his actions. different social media neighborhoods have different rules. common rules relate to “poaching” clients, posting pictures of children (even in nonsexual settings), types of content, and reposting content without permission. and while i observed divisions and feuds between sex workers or even whole neighborhoods, there was still an overwhelming sense of camaraderie amongst online sex workers—a camaraderie i was lucky enough to be allowed into, even as a non-sex worker. not just customers while online sex workers are endlessly subjected to pornophobia and harassment, this did not stop them from being one of the most open and accepting groups i have ever encountered. i attribute this to the overwhelming sense of community amongst performers. “everyone is a big family…we all know the job can be trying so we all stick together,” one performer told me. another mentioned, “some of the most genuine people i have met are sex workers!” i cannot help but echo their sentiments. the sex workers i interviewed were usually eager to share their information and help with the research. i was still considered a “civilian” (the sex worker term for someone not in the industry), but i felt a sense of adoption and acceptance into the community i did not expect. this extends to their fans. creator-fan relationships are far more complicated than simply “likes” and comments. in regard to her fans, one performer mentioned, “i [have] created real friends with men that [are] beautiful humans. i talk to them every day of my life.” it makes sense these bonds exist: for one thing, bonds help sell content, but deeper than that, sex workers have a natural approachability that allows feelings of friendship to bloom (curtis, 2004, p. 101-2). for most, especially freelancers, interactions with fans were positive. creators create real bonds with their fans and look out for them. one creator mentioned that they once cut off a fan because the fan got a girlfriend. the creator did not want to interfere with his relationship. one dominatrix mentioned that they often become protective of their submissives. she told me the story that one of her dominatrix’s submissives was being harassed by a stranger online. the dominatrix used her social media neighborhood of fellow dominatrixes to get the stranger’s account shut down and banned. the dominatrix laughed, saying the general response from dominatrices to strangers harassing their submissives was “only i can say that to my sub!” healing in sex work one performer said she “wish[ed people] knew how vital sex workers could be to healing the darkest places of the human mind and body.” i cannot speak to healing the darkest parts, but i did see healing in sex work. one example comes from the experiences a sex worker recounted to me where they often have one-on-one online roleplay crafted around a client’s trauma. she mentioned that these roleplays often center around religious trauma, saying, “i have clients who want to role-play around religion, and i have others that we simply craft affirmations about how god made them gay, and we thank god for that.” outside studies have also shown that roleplaying certain scenarios can be healing. one study interviewed individuals who experienced early-life abuse and engaged in bdsm. the individuals found bdsm, coupled with therapy, to be a way to process their childhood traumas and regain control in their lives (cascalheira et al., 2021, p. 11-12). online sex workers are sometimes used both as a therapist and a role-play partner. one sex worker i interviewed joked, “there [have] been situations where i have become essentially a therapist.” the sex therapists i spoke to expressed concern that while healing may have occurred, using a sex worker over traditional therapeutic means could be harmful. they expressed concern that because online sex workers are not clinically trained, they may end up traumatizing themselves or their clients through these therapy roles. one sex therapist was not opposed to clients using kink to heal from trauma, but did specify that she would want to discuss it with the client and their partner beforehand, with clear boundaries in place. several of the sex workers i interviewed also have found healing for themselves in their work. one sex worker recounted to me: “my addiction started before i entered the industry, not because of it…it has served me because it allows me the freedom to meet with sponsees, go to meetings, take time for mental health…the adult industry did not drive me to addiction, and if anything, it saved my life.” for another, the sex industry helped with eating disorders and self-harm: “i… have better body image than i’ve ever had before (which is huge since i’m in recovery from an eating disorder) ...it helps to keep me from having self-harm relapses too because i can’t take pics if i have fresh injuries.” the increase in self-confidence does not seem to be unusual. in a survey using the rosenberg test, a test used to rank self-esteem on a scale of 10 to 40, with higher scores indicating higher self-esteem, female online sex workers on average scored 34.69 (griffith et al., 2013, p. 640). amongst the sex workers i interviewed, boosts in self-esteem and confidence were common. one worker said, “i love the body positively that you see in the [sex worker] community, it is amazing!” this confidence also translated into other aspects of their identity. for many performers i spoke with, sex work provided healing for their sexualities. one performer mentioned that when she lost her virginity as a teenager, she was lectured by her parents for three hours straight. another performer recounted how she remained a virgin until her late 20s due to her muslim upbringing. when she finally lost her virginity, it was not a pleasurable experience. referencing a proverb, she joked, “you fasted and fasted and broke it on an onion!” for her, sex work was a way to explore her sexuality. others expressed using sex work to heal their traumas and reclaim their sexualities. one said, “i took my freedom back and now own [my sexuality] as exactly what i want it to be.” another performer mentioned, “i definitely know now that i’m kinky and i embrace it.” it was through sex work that they were able to reclaim their sexual identities. conclusion through interviews with online sex workers, observing their online and in-person interactions. i uncovered some of the nuances and complexities of online sex work. online sex work is not as simple as turning on a camera and performing erotic acts. it requires one to navigate emotional and mental turmoil brought on by pornophobia. pornophobia saturates society and perpetuates the belief that pornography is a disgusting, artless product and the individuals featured in it are equally as despicable. this belief drives violence and cruelty against online sex workers. personas of the self are used to keep the damages of pornophobia at bay. since these personas create a buffer between the hurtful slurs thrown at them and their actual identity. personas serve an additional purpose in providing a marketing tool for performers by turning themselves into caricatures that reflect some of their personal interests while adding in the fantasy of endless sexuality. the industry is not all fantasy, however; it requires constant monitoring and supervision by the individuals who make it up. it creates social media neighborhoods that provide protection and support for online sex workers, while also ensuring ethical regulations are followed. it is through this combination of social media neighborhoods and genuine human connection with fans and other workers that much healing and connection can be found. for many, sex work creates a safe place to work through past traumas and forge new friendships. it provides an opportunity to explore sexuality and identity free from judgment. to capture the full scope of sex work would take far more than these pages. while sex workers often exist in online spaces as personas of themselves, their experiences capture some of the best and worst of humanity. it captures the emotional and at times, physical violence that stigma, like pornophobia, causes. however, sex workers are resilient to these forces and have found ways to heal through the painful moments. through their connective social media neighborhoods, close relationships, and a little bit of fantasy, sex workers truly show the beauty of human connection and pleasure. acknowledgements thank you to all of the sex workers who dedicated their time and knowledge to helping produce this study! also, a special thank you to doctor matthew newsom for all of his help in advising and supporting in my research. references bruce, t. 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(2019). pornography and ethics: an interview with porn performer blath. porn studies, 6(2), 264–267. https://doi.org/10.1080/23268743.2018.1505540 appendix below are the questions that were asked to the interview subjects. questions were not always asked in order, and at times were skipped or altered depending on the online sex worker's circumstances. depending upon the answers, additional follow-up questions would be asked for clarification or to better understand their life experiences. 1. are you a freelancer, professional, or both? 2. what is your educational background? 3. what is your nationality? 4. what was your age at the time of your debut? 5. what is your current age? 6. what is your race? 7. what is your gender identity and sexual orientation? 8. how many years have you been in the industry? 9. what first got you interested in joining the industry? 10. what are some of your most positive experiences in the industry? 11. have you had any negative experiences in the industry you don’t mind sharing? 12. what does your typical day of work look like? 13. what preparations do you take before shooting? 14. (if freelancer) how do you come up with your ideas for shoots? 15. have you had any difficulties recruiting followers? 16. how much do you make in the industry? 17. how many hours a day do you dedicate to your work, and how many days a week? 18. do you have any other responsibilities outside of your work, like second jobs, schooling, parenting, etc? 19. (if freelancer) have you ever wanted to join an agency? 20. how has being in the industry impacted your personal relationships? 21. have your views on sex changed since entering the industry? 22. how would you respond to a friend wanting to join the industry? 23. are there any acts you will not perform? 24. are there any red flags people outside the industry can look for to determine whether the pornography they’re consuming was made ethically? 25. have you ever had your videos or pictures leaked, and how did you handle it? 26. how do you handle menstruation during your work? 27. do you feel you were raised in a sex positive environment? 28. do you have a preferred term for your work, like sex worker, cam girl, porn star, etc? 29. what do you wish people outside of the industry knew about the industry? might for right: martial arts for youth development and women’s empowerment riya mehta saran, stanford university ‘25 abstract: sport for development and peace (sdp) is a growing tool, implemented in part to achieve the united nations sustainable development goals (unsdgs), two of which include youth development and women’s empowerment. martial arts programs present a unique opportunity to further these development goals as they have been proven to increase physical and mental strength, teach life skills, provide mentorship opportunities, and allow women and girls to challenge restrictive gender norms. however, despite the proven benefits of martial arts programs, a framework for successfully establishing martial arts sdp programs is lacking. the following research examines demographic data and interviews with students, parents, and instructors from two jhoon rhee tae kwon do schools in virginia to determine aspects of this program that have contributed to its successes. based on this data, i present the snakes and ladders framework for martial arts programs to effectively achieve sdgs. author’s note: the author holds a third-degree black belt, earned through the jhoon rhee tae kwon do system and is a former part-time instructor at jhoon rhee falls church. youth development and women’s empowerment are critical issues in the face of developmental stagnation worldwide. developmental stagnation refers to delays in childhood development with respect to motor skills, speech, language, comprehension, or emotional development and has been exacerbated worldwide as a result of the covid-19 pandemic. according to the sport for development and peace international working group, “today’s children and youth represent the single largest cohort of young people in history,” creating an unprecedented opportunity to address these global issues at a large scale (right to play, 2008). investment in youth provides long-term benefits as these children age and contribute to society. similarly, promoting empowerment of young women enables them to combat gender inequity from a young age, building their confidence to overcome inequities as adults and mitigating developmental stagnation that disproportionately impacts girls. sport for development and peace (sdp), the intentional use of sports to advance development, provides a unique opportunity to jointly address these issues. sdp is a growing tool in which sports are used to address the united nations sustainable development goals (unsdgs) (right to play, 2008). youth development and women’s empowerment align with several sdgs and can be achieved through a multitude of sports programs. the following research focuses on two sectors of sdp: sport based youth development (sbyd) and sport and gender development (sgd). sbyd encompasses leveraging sport to advance life skills among youth, while sgd focuses on using sport as a tool to advance women’s empowerment and gender equity. the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco) (1978) declared sport and physical education a fundamental right for all, and sbyd centers on “ensuring optimal conditions for a child’s early years” (right to play, 2008). sbyd can support that right by implementing sdp programs to reduce child mortality and disease while promoting universal education, environmental sustainability, and global partnerships. sbyd often addresses youth who have started their lives at a disadvantage and works to intervene during critical childhood development windows to support children in their personal growth and interpersonal interactions. these programs provide children with the opportunity to become stronger physically and mentally, gain greater access to education, interact with peers and supporting role models, develop life skills, and be given a second chance to overcome their hardships. however, for these programs to be successful, significantly more emphasis must be placed on development at the center of the experience rather than competition, and the coaches and staff must be well trained and equipped to provide the necessary support (webb & richelieu, 2015). similarly, sdp can be used to promote women’s empowerment by targeting girls at a young age and supporting them in understanding the values of teamwork, self-reliance, and resilience while having “a multiplier effect on their health, education and leadership development” (hayhurst et al., 2021). sgd is used not only to empower young girls individually, but also to address gender stereotypes and gender equity. sgd addresses gender stereotypes by placing women in roles outside the home and providing them an opportunity to excel among their male counterparts at elite levels. additionally, “female coaches, peer educators, and sport program staff offer girls and women visible proof that women can excel and lead in society” (right to play, 2008). prior research highlights how several sports initiatives have been implemented to address the development goals in both the sbyd and sgd sectors. while these programs have had varying success rates across a variety of sports, the following study explores martial arts as a unique opportunity to target both sectors together to support outcomes for youth and women in both developing and developed countries. the benefits of martial arts interventions are not limited to wealthy nations and have the potential to uplift individuals coming from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds. common misconceptions may portray martial arts as a sport that facilitates increased aggression or an inclination to fight. however, current programs demonstrate that this notion may not be true. but which aspects of these current martial arts programs allow them to effectively support youth development and women’s empowerment? and how can these programs serve as a framework for implementing future sdp programs? the following research explores enrollment demographics by age, rank, and gender from two jhoon rhee tae kwon do schools, one of the most established programs in the us, and nine interviewee perspectives including students, parents, and instructors, to identify how martial arts programs can and should be implemented more broadly to support youth development and women’s empowerment moving forward. background on sport for development and peace current sdp literature includes reports from the sport for development and peace international working group (iwg) and scholars who have conducted analysis on the progression of sdp as a development tool (right to play, 2008). iwg published harnessing the power of sport, a framework that highlights the importance of addressing the sdgs and the consequences of failing to address the goals across several key sdp sectors, including sbyd and sgd. the united nations (un) (2016) also published its action plan on sdp which identifies sport as an important enabler of sustainable development and provides actionable steps on how to implement the policy recommendations. these documents all highlight that best practices include placing gender and youth development at the forefront of sdp initiatives and making those issues integral parts of development plans. while sbyd has been a un priority for about 40 years, sgd has become a more recent focus area in the last two decades. scholars such as hayhurst (2021) investigate the history and progression of sgd, emphasizing how the distinction between equity and equality or limiting the focus to “girls” rather than “adolescent girls and young women” can detract from the efficacy of sdp programs. referring to participants as “girls” can reinforce the idea of patriarchy, while “adolescent girls and young women” refers to a stage of life, leading to programs that support female empowerment as equals to their male counterparts. additionally, the equity distinction is important because equality of opportunity generally neglects pre-existing disadvantages that some groups may face. sgd initiatives place a premium on women achieving equity in the face of gender disadvantages because these initiatives aim to uplift women without detracting from the successes of their male counterparts. along with research surrounding the history and efficacy of sdp broadly, the following researchers examine the specific benefits of martial arts for sgd. wall (2019) examines the benefits of judo and uses testimonials from women of all ages to demonstrate how judo can positively empower women through the development of physical and emotional strength, social well-being, character building, and life skills to be employed outside of the sport. hamilton (2022) focuses on mixed martial arts (mma), concluding that for martial arts to successfully achieve women’s empowerment, “it will require their implementation of feminist principles and pedagogies rather than simply providing a space for women to learn how to punch and kick” (p. 781). in addition to women’s empowerment, unesco’s report on youth development through martial arts also reviews the importance of gender equity in youth development, concluding that martial arts programs are successful in building youth resilience, respect for oneself and others, and inter-cultural dialogue (2019). with respect to at-risk youth, several researchers have explored the impacts of implementing martial arts programs in elementary and middle schools respectively, such as twemlow et al. (2008), who found a reduction in aggressive behaviors in elementary schoolers and zivin et al. (2001), who found a reduction in violence and expulsions in school for middle schoolers. likewise, lorenz (2018) concluded that the hierarchical program structure enables mentorship and healthy adult-child relationships for atrisk youth, as long as coaches are well trained to work with at-risk youth in community intervention programs. similarly, well-trained coaching staff can also enable martial arts to be used as a treatment mechanism for learning disorders, given that tae kwon do training can have a greater positive impact on attention than other physical activities (kadri et al., 2019). however, the martial arts studies research network identified multiple problems with engaging women and girls in martial arts and combat sports in a 2016 seminar: these sports have traditionally been associated with masculinity, women generally have had greater barriers to entry because of childcare obligations, female martial artists have tended to be hypersexualized in media, and male overrepresentation tends to deter female participation. these issues align with the equity concerns previously noted in hayhurst’s (2021) distinction between equality and equity. the network proposed solutions that align with sgd best practices to promote equity. however, the authors also expressed the importance of “attending to gender issues whilst not assuming they are the only things that matter in women’s and girls’ lives” (channon et al., 2016, p. 4). hayhurst (2013) expands the potential for uplifting women through martial arts by highlighting female-focused programs that encourage ugandan girls to become “entrepreneurs of themselves” and to take part in martial arts to “[build] an economically vigorous body that was employable and/or fundable” (p. 304). this rise in opportunity extends beyond efforts to engage women in girls in martial arts and combat sports, by defying cultural norms and breaking the cycle of poverty and domestic violence (channon, 2016). while current research identifies the benefits of sdp and martial arts as a strong example of supporting youth development and women’s empowerment, this project examines the jhoon rhee tae kwon do program as an example of one of the longest standing martial arts programs in the us to identify how current martial arts programs can provide a framework for implementing future sdp programs. tae kwon do is a korean martial art, known for its use of kicks, as well as blocks and punches. grandmaster jhoon rhee is known as the father of tae kwon do in america and russia. he is credited with graduating over 100,000 black belts from his schools, including to several members of the us congress, and over a 60-year period he was responsible for developing a structured program that focused on youth and gender inclusion. grandmaster jhoon rhee stated that “most sports only emphasize winning, but i want to transform the training in the gym to human qualities. from endurance to perseverance, timing to punctuality, power to knowledge” (smith, 2018). methods this study examines demographic data, including the gender breakdown of student enrollment at jhoon rhee arlington, a jhoon rhee school in virginia, from 2013 through 2022. i analyze the current gender breakdown for jhoon rhee arlington to understand the trends in gender as students progress in rank and age. i subsequently examine the gender breakdown of all full-time and part-time instructors who have worked at jhoon rhee arlington since 2005 to determine if there is any correlation between the gender breakdown of instructors and students. i also collected the current student gender breakdown for jhoon rhee falls church, another virgina program, but their dataset had more gaps in demographic information, so the following discussion will focus on jhoon rhee arlington to allow for comparison with past student data and instructor demographics. while the demographic data provides quantitative metrics, the trends are coupled with qualitative evidence from nine interviews, as well as my own experience as a third-degree black belt and former instructor. the group of nine interviewees include male and female, former and current, students, parents, fulland part-time instructors, and program directors. the students include two male and two female students, all of whom have assisted in teaching younger students; the parents include a father of two students and a mother of one student; and the instructors include one female instructor who went through the system as a student, one transgender male instructor who went through the system as a female student, and one male instructor who went through the system as a student and now owns the falls church school. in addition to these interviews, i also draw on my own perspective as a student at jhoon rhee falls church for 14 years, achieving the rank of third-degree black belt and working as part time instructor for four years. these participants were selected to allow for a varied selection of participants who have different experiences as students and/or instructors in jhoon rhee programs. these participants were asked about their experiences in the program, what makes the jhoon rhee program different from other martial arts programs, and how gender influenced their experiences and perceptions of how martial arts should be taught (see appendix a for interview questions). results figure 1 jhoon rhee arlington gender breakdown by rank in february 2023 note. figure 1 displays a snapshot of the percentage of students by gender at each rank (increasing from beginning ninjas to black belt) at jhoon rhee arlington in february 2023. the male and female figures on the left represent the gender distribution of students at the lowest rank in the program (beginning ninjas), while the figures on the right represent students in the highest rank in the program (black belt). figure 2 gender of jhoon rhee arlington instructors from 2005 to 2023 note. figure 2 displays the percentage of instructors of each gender from 2005 through 2023 (includes fulland part-time instructors). despite beginner enrollment reflecting significantly higher male participation in 2023 (figure 1) the percentage participation gap by gender decreases for students achieving higher ranks. the trend is also reflected in a significantly higher percentage of girls participating over age 13 than under age 13, which could be due to the age at which males and females start tae kwon do in these programs and earn their black belts, with males typically starting the programs at a younger age. insights from instructors suggest that there is also a higher likelihood of girls pursuing tae kwon do as their main sport, while boys may transition to focusing on other sports in school. overall, there has been a decline in the number of students enrolling each year from 2013 through 2022, but the decline for females is more significant going from 158 to 79 female students enrolling from 2013 to 2022, compared to 288 to 215 male students enrolling (appendix b). however, taking a closer look at 2020, when classes moved online, there was a significantly greater reduction in the number of male students than female students, which could be associated with a gender preference for teaching medium and commitment to training in a virtual environment (appendix b). enrollment across genders has increased since the covid-19 pandemic, but the increase is more significant for male than female students in the arlington school (appendix b). figure 2 highlights the distribution of male and female instructors, which represents a more similar distribution to the black belt student population than the initial population of enrolling students. the gender balance for jhoon rhee arlington students at the rank of black belt in 2022 is 44.9% female and 55.1% male, while the gender balance for instructors from 2005 through 2023 is 40.5% female and 59.5% male (appendix b). this trend likely occurs because all instructors earned their black belts through the jhoon rhee system, and given that earning a black belt can take five years on average, students at higher ranks have a greater level of commitment towards the sport and the school. despite disparities in enrollment levels, figures 1 and 2 suggest that the jhoon rhee system cultivates an environment that allows female students to succeed at the highest ranks as students and instructors equal to, if not more often, than their male counterparts. interview responses support this claim as well. one student said, “by the time i left there were more girls that were of a higher rank than i was than boys” (saran, j. 2023). from personal experience, many of the highest ranked students, including myself, were girls, and many of us went on to be instructors, despite there being more boys in our class when we started. figure 3 snakes and ladders analysis snakes and ladders for martial arts programs ladders ● focus on martial arts for good ● focus on building character development and life skills ● mentorship from male and female instructors ● inclusivity ● youth centered ● maintaining strong academic standing to progress in rank ● emphasis on good attitude and behaviors outside the studio ● well-defined progression in rank ● balance between character development and martial arts skills ● evolving process, adapting to changing times while respecting tradition ● well-trained instructors ● support for female students to achieve higher ranks ● focus on sportsmanship and control ● provide opportunity for reflection snakes ● treating students as a number to meet a quota in a business ● expecting perfection that exceeds a student’s potential ● lack of consistency in class offerings weekly and year-round ● lack of organization in rank progression ● large classes that lack individualized attention ● expensive programs that are inaccessible to certain groups ● too much focus on competition while limiting camaraderie ● focus on aggression ● having only male instructors, failing to provide female representation ● training always separated by gender, developing a lesser standard for female athletes note. figure 3 presents a snakes and ladders framework to evaluate martial arts programs. upon reviewing the interview responses, i analyzed common ideas and experiences under the snakes and ladders framework. the snakes and ladders framework identifies ladders as characteristics that contribute to the success of sdp programs and contribute to the sdgs while snakes are characteristics that are detrimental to the success of sdp programs and could detract from the sdgs (webb & richelieu, 2015). ladders include having meaningful dialogue with the intended participants, setting attainable goals, having well-trained coaches and administrators, empowering athletes, receiving long-term funding, having easy access to equipment, and establishing clean, affordable, and enjoyable environments (webb & richelieu, 2015). snakes include using sports to manipulate, politicizing sport, receiving short-term funding, and reinforcing imperialist relationships between the global-north and global-south (webb & richelieu, 2015). together, the existing sdp snakes and ladders framework and this framework in figure 3 which is specific to martial arts, can further the successful implementation of martial arts sdp programs. the current snakes and ladders framework highlights the beneficial and detrimental aspects of sdp programs more broadly. however, figure 3 distills these interview responses and analysis of the jhoon rhee system as a case study into a snakes and ladders framework, specific to martial arts programs. for example, female students and instructors stressed the importance of having female instructors as role models, while all interviewees, regardless of gender, agreed that coed training plays a critical role in development. a female student stated, “it’s definitely better to train coed [because] the relationships you build are so important to experience” (tarutani, 2023). similarly, a male student shared, “to have that experience of having girls and boys together you learn from them… i think it’s important even for kids, especially to know that anybody can do this” (jain, 2023). these perspectives demonstrate the shared recognition across genders of the benefits of this program in advancing women’s empowerment through role models and youth development through coed training. discussion the jhoon rhee program has benefited students in areas ranging from influencing lifestyles to setting out career paths. interviewees have identified discipline, perseverance, respect, focus, reflection, confidence, public speaking, writing, goal setting, memorization, leadership, responsibility, relationship building, individual success, physical strength, and a healthy lifestyle as traits or skills they have gained through jhoon rhee programs. while some of these traits are found in other programs, the emphasis on writing, goal setting, and public speaking are unique in that students are required to complete writing assignments as the test for each belt and deliver a speech for their black belt exams. as one instructor stated in an interview, the program provides a place to “work out negative emotions as a kid” and serves as “the great equalizer,” where students regardless of background or identity have the potential to excel. this potential for character development and athletic success provides students with “a safe place to learn and to fail and to get back up” (rome, 2023). these ideals align with the sdp snakes and ladders in an effort to create a safe space, while indicating that successful martial arts programs require a focus on character development that often falls to the instructors’ responsibility. as instructors have experienced this environment in their own training, they work to create that environment for their students. given that all instructors are trained through the jhoon rhee system themselves, the program exercises control over ensuring that the instructors are well-trained to support students of all backgrounds. unlike many team sports that may have a greater focus on success as a group, martial arts require a certain level of individual accountability, which necessitates an environment that empowers students to develop selfdiscipline. “you will only get as far as you’re willing to work, and you get rewarded for individual contributions” (ohri, 2023). as students progress in rank and begin to understand the full realm of the martial arts arena, they also have the potential to share their knowledge through teaching others. fulland part-time instructors view teaching as an opportunity to build patience and confidence and learn about themselves and others. one instructor reflected on her experience teaching, stating, “it’s helped me learn different personality types and how people learn differently and just how to interact with everyone, whatever their race, background, culture any and everything” (curiel, 2023). another instructor stated: “[teaching] helps me remember that expectations for myself should also be realistic, while i’m trying to hold the students, not to my expectations of myself, but to ones that match their capabilities. we have all these ideas about what we’re capable of and what we’re not, and i like to show people things they never considered that i thought they could do” (rome, 2023). while it is important to hold students to high standards, teachers also acknowledged the importance of finding balance in striving for encouragement and perfection. demanding perfection that exceeds a student’s capabilities can be seen as a snake in sdp programs because it can lead to disillusionment from students in their ability to advance and achieve success. both reflections from instructors aligned with the idea that “we need to learn about each other to be the best teachers we can be” (rome, 2023). for many instructors who began teaching at a young age, teaching also provided an opportunity to develop leadership skills that can carry into their academic and professional lives. one student who began assisting others starting at age seven stated, “it taught me how to lead others who are older than me, and how to carry more of an impact with my voice and my actions, even though i was much younger than the people around me” (saran, j., 2023). leadership from a young age is an increasingly important ladder for the program as it promotes youth development from the start rather than attempting to teach necessary skills at a later age when individuals have more formed views and may already be at a disadvantage. that leadership then not only helps students progress in tae kwon do, but also in other sports that they may participate in as well as in their home, school, and professional lives. along with the mental aspects, martial arts is one of the few sports that requires full-body exercise and plays a significant role in increasing physical strength, endurance, balance, flexibility, and dexterity, which promotes student success as well-rounded athletes. with respect to competition, it is important for programs to foster a collaborative environment. an overemphasis on competition can lead to a lack of control and sportsmanship, which would decrease camaraderie and serve as a snake for the program. however, competition also provides an opportunity for students to “put themselves out there in an uncomfortable position… opening their eyes, getting them to see something and realize that they’re part of something bigger” (curiel, 2023). importance of female role models interviewees were also asked about their perceptions of gender roles in martial arts instructors, whether training should be coed or separated by gender and how they might respond to the common belief that martial arts is not for women and girls. with regard to female instructors, interviewees expressed a consensus that students are more likely to perceive female instructors as safe people and nurturing figures, while students may perceive male instructors as more intimidating. these perceptions may alter the tasks that instructors are asked to perform based on their gender and the reactions they may face from students and parents. female instructors are more likely to work with the shyer students to help them acclimate to the studio and class environment, while male instructors are more likely to work with boys who may come in with a bit of an attitude or are looking to pick a fight. generally, female instructors are also more likely to be tasked with communicating with parents on the students’ progress but will likely engage in less direct conversation or receive less respect from men who may be entering the studio for the first time. this phenomenon does not just occur in martial arts. having personally coached in other sports as well, there is a common thread of female instructors being tasked with more emotionally laborious roles, often because female instructors are stereotypically perceived to be more attune to emotions. female instructors are also less likely to hold decision making power across a teaching team, so when complex situations regarding human emotions arise, their higher ups are more likely to delegate those tasks to the female instructor, who the children may feel less intimidated by. given the differences in tasks that instructors of different genders may perform and their varying experiences to reach their positions as instructors, students and instructors both indicate that it is important to have both male and female instructors. despite having positive experiences and mutually respectful relationships with male instructors, female instructors are critical for more balanced gender representation and to serve as role models for young female students, especially when male instructors are more prevalent across martial arts programs. therefore, a lack of female instructors would be seen as a snake for potential sdp programs because the lack of representation may lead to a decline in female student enrollment. as witnessed through personal experience in the jhoon rhee falls church school, there was a decline in female student enrollment during the covid-19 pandemic when the only lead instructors teaching via zoom were male. however, the return to in person instruction and reintroducing female instructors, myself included, was correlated with an increase in the number of young girls joining the school. for female students, seeing a female instructor for the first time is like a “light bulb moment,” showing them what options exist and subconsciously reducing doubt in themselves (curiel & rome, 2023). female students are more likely to want to or feel the need to prove themselves, some even started martial arts to prove that they are “just as capable as guys are, if not better” (tarutani, 2023). young girls may come in with a feeling of needing to prove to themselves and their male counterparts that they are capable athletes. female role models show young girls that they are just as capable of excelling and show male students that women are just as capable of holding higher ranks. these role models also increase advocacy to make clear that women and girls are capable of training hard but that certain tasks present a different challenge. sharing these voices centers on the idea that, “i’m not saying i won’t. but i need you to know it’s a bigger ask than you think because everybody is different. every body. literally” (rome, 2023). while female students are held to the same standard as their male counterparts throughout training, it is important for instructors to be able to recognize that the gender divide does make these tasks easier or more difficult to perform, to ensure that credit is given where credit is due, and students are not being pushed to a point of injury. teaching teams are more likely to hold this understanding if the team is composed of both male and female instructors. these perceptions of female instructors also contribute to interviewees’ views on whether training should be co-ed or separated by gender. importance of co-ed training overall, male participants were more likely to favor a co-ed training environment while female participants were more likely to lean towards a combination of both co-ed and separated by gender. female participants expressed support for some sessions to be all female to bring together the minority group in a male-dominated environment, empower women and girls, and possibly focus on skills that may pertain more to women and girls from a self-defense standpoint. these sessions could target preparedness for unsafe situations that women are more likely to encounter. separate training could also be more effective in societies that place a higher value on modesty, as girls and their parents would likely be more comfortable participating in the sport if they were not training with boys and if their instructors were female. however, both male and female participants also expressed wanting to ensure that co-ed classes would promote female engagement in martial arts and ensure that female accomplishments were seen as no less than male accomplishments, given that separate training and standards may not be viewed as inherently equal. with co-ed training, students develop “camaraderie as a class and differentiation [comes] from your skill, not from your gender” (saran, a., 2023). in contrast, training separated by gender would make “tae kwon do seem like a macho thing, like it’s only for men, when it’s very clearly for anybody” (jain, 2023). additionally, “for the purpose of self-defense you’ll encounter people of both genders regardless of where you are, so it’s important to be able to fight everybody, regardless of the gender” (saran, j., 2023). however, given varying cultural backgrounds and experiences, there are still people who come into the studio questioning a woman’s or girl’s place in martial arts, and it is important to foster discussion and convey examples of how a person’s place in martial arts is not dependent on gender. as one student describes, “a girl really can do martial arts, and i’ve come so far doing it” (quraishi, 2023). at the jhoon rhee falls church school, in 2020, there were a higher number of female instructors or students who held the rank of second-degree black belt or higher than their male counterparts. for the lone full-time female instructor, when asked how she would approach a conversation with someone who believes that martial arts is not for girls would have said, “do you have a mother, a daughter, a sister, a niece, a really close friend that’s female? and wouldn’t you want them to be better protected, to be more confident, to be more disciplined? why wouldn’t you want that for anybody? martial arts is for everybody, but i think it strongly benefits women and girls… whether it’s using her words, using her brain, or if she has to, being able to physically defend herself” (curiel, 2023). this approach allows instructors to frame a respectful conversation with the individual to help them understand the potential benefits of martial arts and what a person would be deprived of by being restricted from participating. growth as an individual, not just as an athlete in conjunction with responses regarding the benefits of the jhoon rhee program and perceptions of martial arts with respect to gender, interviewees have pinpointed certain aspects of the jhoon rhee program that set it apart from other programs in successfully promoting youth development and women’s empowerment. unlike many programs prior, the jhoon rhee program is modernized and youth centered (rome, 2023). the program is also an evolving process that welcomes change while “still paying homage to the tradition” (rome, 2023). one cornerstone of the program, which would be a prominent ladder in future sdp initiatives, is promoting a balance of martial arts and life skills while working to expand those traits out of the studio and build character. many programs have since started to implement character development into their curriculum, the jhoon rhee program was the first to “associate martial arts with more than just kicking and punching” (rhee, 2023). the jhoon rhee program was also the first to incorporate musical forms, known as martial ballet, in which a series of movements was choreographed to music. some programs place a greater emphasis on taking the offensive while fighting. however, the martial ballet aspect of the jhoon rhee program is more performance-oriented: “it was about the discipline aspect, it was about learning the beauty of the art itself. while these skills in discipline, among others, do not necessarily have to come from a martial arts program, there’s a lot that's embedded all in one place there. and then, because they’re all tied together, there's a sense of self that develops out of that confidence” (saran, a., 2023). interviewees also highlighted a high level of organization in the program. by requiring students to keep a binder to track their progress, their writing assignments for each belt test, their goals, and their overall journeys through tae kwon do, the sdp programs further exemplify the importance of reflection as a ladder. the program also requires that students remain in strong academic standing by maintaining at least a b average in school and seeking responses from teachers and parents about the student’s behaviors at school and at home, respectively. after passing the physical portion of each belt test, the students are also required to seek permission from their parents to receive their next belt, granted that they are behaving appropriately and to their family’s standards at home. unique benefits of tae kwon do the jhoon rhee system was also the first to patent safety equipment for sparring, which aligns with the sdp ladders’ need for a safe environment. the introduction of safety equipment fostered a more welcoming environment for women and children, sparking “a long history of including people that weren’t included” (rome, 2023). this inclusivity also includes establishing the adaptive program, a program started at jhoon rhee arlington to serve students with special needs. families of students in this program have likely been turned away from many opportunities under the pretense that programs do not have adequate resources to support their children or that their children will not be able to perform. in the jhoon rhee arlington adaptive program, students have the opportunity “to work hard for something and feel the pride of actually achieving it and earning it at a pace in a style that works for them” (rome, 2023). additionally, peer helpers who assist in the program provide support with social skills. these peer helpers also see benefits of the program in themselves as they learn to be flexible and some go on to carry the skills they learn into college or careers such as social work or applied behavior analysis. the adaptive program highlights how martial arts programs especially have the potential to support youth development for students with disabilities. analysis of several participants’ experiences in the jhoon rhee program in comparison to perceptions of other programs has also shed light on potential pitfalls for martial arts implemented as sdp programs. potential pitfalls include having large class sizes with many ranks grouped together and less individualized attention, or classes that are not offered consistently. to avoid this scenario, the jhoon rhee system works to ensure that “your kid will learn something versus being a number that meets a quota for the school to build their business” (rhee, 2023). martial arts programs could also suffer from a lack of organization, such as illdefined ranks or trajectories for progression throughout the program. for a program to succeed, it must have well-defined ranks but also enough flexibility if necessary to change with respect to individual circumstances. for martial arts sdp programs to be successful, they must also overcome the barrier of financial accessibility. under current programs, it is expensive to train and compete, which limits participation to a select demographic. these programs must also be accessible to a wide audience, and in particular, the youth, women, and girls who need them most. conclusion and future research youth development and women’s empowerment pose challenges with advancing life skills equitably across youth populations. sport presents a unique opportunity to target both of these development challenges together. the literature identifies the benefits of martial programs in promoting these development goals as well as the characteristics necessary to foster a successful sdp program. my analysis of the jhoon rhee system investigates interviewee perspectives and enrollment data by rank, age, and gender. this investigation draws conclusions regarding the importance of a youth centered, well organized, inclusive, and evolving system in successfully supporting youth development, while highlighting female role models, coed training, and leadership development as being particularly successful in promoting women’s empowerment. while the diversity of interviewee backgrounds strengthens the credibility of the results, this study is limited in its analysis of one program with limited interviewees. however, this limitation could be addressed with further research through the lenses of the attitudes toward women scale and the youth development tool book. the attitudes toward women scale is a self-reported measure of individual attitudes towards gender ideologies, which can also be adapted into a shorter form and a version with simplified language for adolescents (spence et al., 2013). the youth development tool book is a survey tool that surveys respondents over time to determine the efficacy of youth development programs by evaluating competence, confidence, connection, character, and compassion (united way). both tools can be applied to a larger number of respondents to obtain a more comprehensive overview of the development implications of the jhoon rhee program. the un places a high priority on achieving their 17 sdgs, particularly now as we have passed the halfway point to achieve those goals. this study demonstrates the potential for sdp programs centered in martial arts to advance goal 5: gender equality as proven through the jhoon rhee program’s ability to advance women’s empowerment and gender equity. while the un has not established an sdg specific to youth development, this study also highlights the role of martial arts programs in advancing goal 3: good health and well-being and goal 4: quality education, which in turn allow for youth development to rectify developmental stagnation. the snakes and ladders analysis establishes a framework for evaluating current programs and proposing new programs, highlighting youth centered focus, evolving processes, clear organization, inclusivity, and representation as critical criteria in support of advancing the sdgs. the synergies between the effects of the jhoon rhee tae kwon do programs and the un sdgs highlight the potential for martial arts programs to succeed as future sdp programs, advancing youth development and women’s empowerment worldwide. references channon, a., & matthews, c. r. 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2. did you have any expectation for how long they would continue? 3. from a parent perspective, how do you think your children benefited from tae kwon do? 4. given that two of your children did tae kwon do and the third did not, do you think there are differences in the way that the two who did would approach a situation versus the one who did not? 5. from what you know about other martial arts programs, what do you think makes the jhoon rhee program different? 6. is there anything you would have changed about the jhoon rhee program? 7. do you think it was better for your children to train coed or separated by gender, and why? 8. do you think your son and daughter were ever treated any differently in their training because of their genders? a. tarutani 1. what has jhoon rhee tae kwon do done for you? 2. what has teaching done for you? 3. do you think your experiences have had an effect on your life outside of tae kwon do? 4. from what you know about other martial arts programs, what do you think makes the jhoon rhee program different? 5. is there anything you would have changed about the jhoon rhee program? 6. did you notice differences in the program during virtual instruction? 7. when you’re sparring would you think of a match or prepare for it any differently if you were sparring a boy or a girl? 8. would you feel any different if you won or lost to a boy or a girl? 9. did you have a preference for training with male or female instructors? 10. do you think it is important to have instructors of both genders? 11. do you think it is better to train coed or separated by gender? 12. what would you say to someone who thinks that martial arts is not for girls? j. saran 1. what has jhoon rhee tae kwon do done for you? 2. how old were you when you first started teaching, and were the kids that you were teaching the same age or older than you? 3. how do you think your teaching experience affected you as a leader? 4. what has teaching done for you? 5. how has tae kwon do affected you in school? do you think it affected your grades? 6. do you feel like doing taekwondo made you confident in your ability to defend yourself if you had to? 7. from what you know about other martial arts programs, what do you think makes the jhoon rhee program different? 8. is there anything you would have changed about the jhoon rhee program? 9. when you’re sparring would you think of a match or prepare for it any differently if you were sparring a boy or a girl? 10. would you feel any different if you won or lost to a boy or a girl? 11. did you have a preference for training with male or female instructors, and if so, why? 12. do you think that training with girls affects how you interact with the opposite gender outside of tae kwon do? 13. do you think it is better to train coed or separated by gender? 14. what would you say to someone who thinks that martial arts is not for girls? j. curiel 1. what has jhoon rhee tae kwon do done for you? 2. what has teaching done for you? 3. from what you know about other martial arts programs, what do you think makes the jhoon rhee program different? 4. is there anything you would have changed about the jhoon rhee program? 5. do you think it is important to have a focus on competition? 6. did you feel like your training was any different because of your gender? 7. do you think it makes more sense to train in groups by age or rank, or both? 8. do you think it is better to train coed or separated by gender? 9. did you have both male and female instructors growing up? 10. do you think it’s important to have female instructors, and if so, why? 11. do you think you have been treated any differently by students, parents, or other instructors, as an instructor based on gender? 12. do you think the tasks you were given as an instructor were different because of your gender? 13. what would you say to someone who thinks that martial arts is not for girls? c. rhee 1. what has jhoon rhee tae kwon do done for you? 2. did all your siblings have the same level of involvement in tae kwon do? 3. what made you come back to tae kwon do after leaving it? 4. what has teaching done for you? 5. from what you know about other martial arts programs, what do you think makes the jhoon rhee program different? 6. roughly how long does it take somebody to earn their black belt in the program? 7. is it common for kids to start and go all the way through or take a break in the middle? 8. other interviewees have cited the jhoon rhee philosophy as what makes the program different, so what would you consider to be the jhoon rhee philosophy? 9. knowing that the program has evolved over the years, is there anything about it now that you would still look to change? 10. why did you start the binder system? 11. do you think it is better to train coed or separated by gender, and does that apply to sparring? 12. did you have male and female instructors growing up? 13. do you think it’s important to have both male and female instructors, and if so, why? 14. do you think there has been a difference in the last few years without a full-time female instructor? 15. do you notice a difference in the ways that students will work with a male or female instructor, or the way instructors treat students and vice versa? 16. what would you say to a new parent or student coming to ask you about the program? a. rome 1. what has jhoon rhee tae kwon do done for you? 2. do you think it is better to train coed or separated by gender? 3. what do you think teaching has done for you? 4. what changed for you that made you want to teach? 5. from what you know about other martial arts programs, what do you think makes the jhoon rhee program different? 6. if there was one thing you could go back and change through your experience, what would it be? 7. what made you start the adaptive program at arlington? 8. what are some of the biggest benefits of the adaptive program for students? 9. are the instructors for the adaptive program mainly assistants or full-time instructors? 10. how do the student assistants react to the program, and what do they learn from it? 11. do you ever hear of students in the adaptive program or the students teaching the program developing skills that transfer to their lives outside of tae kwon do? 12. do you think these developments are specific to martial arts or sports in general? 13. when it comes to sparring, do you think age or rank makes more of a difference? 14. how common are adaptive programs around the country, and do you think it would require a significant amount of training for current instructors to implement a program like this one in addition to their current teaching experience? 15. did you notice any difference in the way you were treated by students, parents, or other instructors before and after you transitioned? 16. for the generation that doesn’t know you transitioned, do you feel like there is a difference presenting as a man or as a woman instructor, and do you think it has had an effect on your teaching? r. jain 1. what has jhoon rhee tae kwon do done for you? 2. did any of your experience transfer to your life at home or school? 3. how did working with younger students affect you? 4. from what you know about other martial arts programs, what do you think makes the jhoon rhee program different? 5. is there anything you would change about the jhoon rhee program? 6. when you’re sparring would you think of a match or prepare for it any differently if you were sparring a boy or a girl? 7. do you think it is better to train coed or separated by gender? 8. would you feel any different if you won or lost to a boy or a girl? 9. did you have a preference for training with male or female instructors? 10. if anyone came to you interested in starting tae kwon do, what would you say to them? s. quraishi 1. has your goal been to become a black belt all along? 2. what have you learned from jhoon rhee tae kwon do? 3. do you think your experience has affected you outside of tae kwon do? 4. if you went back to the start of your training, is there anything you wish you or the program had done differently? 5. when you’re sparring would you think of a match or prepare for it any differently if you were sparring a boy or a girl? 6. would you feel any different if you won or lost to a boy or a girl? 7. do you have male and female instructors? 8. do you think it helps to have role models achieving the ranks you are working towards? 9. if anyone came to you interested in starting tae kwon do, what would you say to them? 10. what would you say to someone who thinks that martial arts is not for girls? s. ohri 1. what made you put your son in tae kwon do? 2. do you think your son has benefited from tae kwon do? 3. from what you know about other martial arts programs, what do you think makes the jhoon rhee program different? 4. do you think your son doing tae kwon do has had an impact on his life outside of tae kwon do? 5. do you think training should be coed or separated by gender? 6. given that your son is the youngest of your three children, and you have two older daughters, is there any reason why they did not also do tae kwon do? appendix b summary statistics figure b1 jhoon rhee arlington gender by year year female male non-binary total % female % male % nonbinary 2013 158 288 1 447 35.3 64.4 0.2 2014 103 206 0 309 33.3 66.7 0 2015 102 175 0 277 36.8 63.2 0 2016 80 161 0 241 33.2 66.8 0 2017 82 170 0 252 32.5 67.5 0 2018 86 172 1 259 33.2 66.4 0.4 2019 67 140 1 208 32.2 67.3 0.5 2020 56 97 0 153 36.6 63.4 0 2021 56 164 1 221 25.3 74.2 0.5 2022 79 215 1 296 26.7 72.6 0.3 figure b2 jhoon rhee arlington gender by rank rank % female % male % non-binary beg ninjas 14.6 85.4 0 adv ninjas 20.5 79.5 0 white 26.2 73.8 0 gold 24.4 75.6 0 orange 30.4 69.6 0 green 25 75 0 purple 6.7 93.3 0 blue 31.3 62.5 6.3 red 42.9 57.1 0 2nd brown 40 60 0 1st brown 48.1 51.9 0 black 44.9 55.1 0 figure b3 jhoon rhee arlington gender of instructors gender of instructors since 2005 female 30 male 44 non-binary 0 total 74 *one transition from female to male, counted as male figure b4 jhoon rhee arlington additional gender data gender female 168 male 433 non-binary 1 total 602 gender under age 13 female 87 male 325 non-binary 0 total 412 gender above age 13 female 79 male 103 non-binary 1 total 183 gender in cardio kickboxing female 16 male 1 non-binary 0 total 17 gender in adaptive program female 4 male 38 non-binary 0 total 42 figure b5 jhoon rhee falls church gender by rank rank % female % male % non-binary ninjas 28.1 71.9 0 white 26.3 73.7 0 gold 46.2 53.8 0 orange 42.5 57.5 0 green 55.2 44.8 0 purple 62.5 37.5 0 blue 16.7 83.3 0 red 40 60 0 brown 48.4 51.6 0 black 33.3 66.7 0 