Longform Links – 2008-02-26
by Latoya Peterson
Here are a couple items I’ve come across in my internet reading.
Valleywag: Was an ‘Anarcho-Transexual Afro-Chicano’ Behind the IM Worm?
Yesterday’s ViddyHo worm, which spread over Google Talk and Gmail, has been linked by some to Hoan Ton-That, a San Francisco software developer. A very San Francisco software developer.
Ton-That owns the domain name viddyho.com, now offline, which hosted a form asking people to log in with a Google account in order to watch a video. The ViddyHo worm then seized control of their chat and email accounts and sent contacts a disguised link.
Even if Ton-That had nothing to do with ViddyHo, he (or she? how am I supposed to respect this person’s deeply nuanced personal concept of gender without hearing explicitly the gender narrative he or she has constructed around a completed sense of self?) would still be an interesting character — a classically quirky yet herd-following San Francisco Web-software entrepreneur. His Twitter profile describes him as an “Anarcho-Transexual [sic] Afro-Chicano American Feminist Studies Major.”
Marisol spent all part of last weekend at TakeBack NYU, which is described as: “Take Back NYU! is a coalition of nearly two dozen groups and hundreds of students at New York University demanding budget disclosure, endowment disclosure, and student representation on the Board of Trustees.” The protest ended; many of the students who participated where suspended.
Marisol provided blog updates about the situation, including live video footage:
I highly suggest everyone check out Marisol’s blog and the TakeBackNYU blog – the assembled narrative provides an interesting look at the dynamics of campus organizing.
My boyfriend and I have been talking about this article for a couple days now. It’s a piece on the Sexist Blog for the Washington City Paper about a transgendered sorority brother. Yes, I said sorority brother. It appears to be the only title that fits:
From the time that Devin Alston-Smith became involved in George Washington University’s Zeta Phi Beta sorority, he made it clear that he was not your typical sorority sister. In spring 2008, Alston-Smith began what Zetas refer to as the “intake process.” He knew his sisters would have a lot to take in: He asked them to call him Devin instead of his legal name, Chanise. He told them he preferred male pronouns—”he” and “his” instead of “she” and “her.” At sorority events, he wore a button-down shirt and tie and a fedora over his long dreadlocked hair.
The sorority’s sisters were initially welcoming, friendly, and confused. At the initiation ceremony, all sisters were required to dress in head-to-toe white. Alston-Smith had white pants, shirt, and tie, but he didn’t have any white shoes, so one Zeta offered to buy him a pair. He told her he wore men’s shoes, size 6½. She returned with white women’s flats. “I tried to get a low heel,” the Zeta explained.
“That’s when I sort of knew that they didn’t really get it,” says Alston-Smith. He wore the women’s shoes anyway, the flats uncomfortable on his feet. “I felt degraded, like I was dressing in drag or something,” he says. “I know that all my signifiers, except for my clothes, indicate that I’m female. So I try to be really understanding.” [...]
Over the summer, the sisters hung out regularly as friends, eating lunch together or planning step routines for the fall semester. During one choreography session for a sorority “Step and Stroll,” Alston-Smith saw how his new sorority sisters’ discomfort with his gender identity would be enforced. “We were learning new steps from an older [sister], and I was doing the moves differently,” says Alston-Smith. “One of the routines was to a Beyoncé song, ["Get Me Bodied"] and it involved a lot of feminine gestures. I was just tweaking them so I didn’t have to bend over really sexy, stuff like that,” he says. “They told me I had to do it—that we were going to look stupid if I didn’t.” Alston-Smith stopped dancing. “I’m not going to pop it like a girl,” he told them. According to Alston-Smith, they shot back: “You are a girl. You have to stop acting like a boy.”
It continued that way throughout the summer—friendly interactions would inevitably devolve into critiques of Alston-Smith’s clothes, his dance moves, “the way he was.” Gender pronouns were a particularly sore spot. “At first, everyone seemed accepting, and it seemed like it was something that they would work on,” says Alston-Smith. By the time the administration change was complete, it became clear that the resistance was more than just confusion. “I tried to compromise, because Vanessa says she doesn’t feel it’s morally right to call me by the male pronoun,” says Alston-Smith. “I said, ‘OK—don’t call me by any pronoun. Just refer to ‘Devin’ whenever you speak about me.’ But she just didn’t want to budge.”
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
RJG wrote:
I was pro-the-concept-but-not-the-execution of the New School protest, since they had clear and logical goals (like removing Bob Kerry). I think it was a little overly corny but they’re art students and I forgive them.
But the NYU protest… it made little to no sense, and was barely organized. They believed they had rights they don’t have. Their demands barely made any sense and logic (a good deal of them just dealt with making sure they weren’t suspended and that the people they annoyed by protesting were still paid…).
Heck, they were demanding there be a “Socially Responsible Finance Committee” that investigates war profiteers (for what purpose? so NYU doesn’t invest in them I guess? WHO KNOWS!) and on the same line asked that the ban on Coca-Cola products be removed, seemingly ignoring that they were initially banned because Coca-Cola was complicit in human rights violations in Columbia (http://www.nyu.edu/public.affairs/releases/detail/866).
And then there was something about scholarships for Palestinians and sending excess supplies to Palestine, asking for tuition increases to stabilize and go up according to inflation yet also expand who can access Bobsts Library (apparently the money for these scholarships, supply sending, and library availability shouldn’t come from a tuition increase… it should be funded by… something).
The entire NYU protest was the kind of protest that I feel diminishes the power of justifiable protests. This time it did feel like privileged people making random demands that had little or nothing to do with each other, being more interested in getting youtube clips of police frowning at them, and playing revolutionary than fighting for a clear cause.
I don’t know. Protests like that really piss me off. I feel like my generation has gotten lazy and doesn’t know what civil unrest/disobedience really involves (that said, it’s not like I’m out there pounding the streets myself… but I’m also not going to act like sitting in a classroom and making random requests until someone gets mad – then I’ll upload it to youtube and say I have a lawyer – is fighting against an unfair system).
Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 2:31 pm ¶
Jess wrote:
Devin’s story is sad. But at the same time I have to ask why the heck he decided to join the sorority in the first place. That’s the only part that I couldn’t understand. The story wasn’t all that clear about it, or maybe Devin wasn’t clear himself.
I mean, why bother? It isn’t like the days when sororities were the deciders of social norms, or is it still like that at GW?
And what the heck was the sorority thinking? A membership base that small and you’re making it tough on somebody for no particularly good reason. Seems like people doing massively self-destructive things that make no sense. Referring to Devin as ‘he’ costs nobody a thing. For christ’s sake, they accepted Devin in the first place. If they have a problem now… well, too bad.
But then, a sorority that is down to four members is having other issues… like, attracting new members, maybe? I don’t see how this helps them.
Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 3:09 pm ¶
Margaret wrote:
Latoya, I just read your article “Not all in the game” in the Guardian. I would have responded there, but comments have been closed, please forgive my intrusion into another article.
I wanted to thank you for exploring the issue of the mislabeled gaming community and the negative results stemming from those assumptions. I’ve been female all my life and a gamer most of my life. For the last three years I have been trying to get funding for my game development company. Our earth shattering perspective which will allow us to create better MMOs than everyone else?
1. MMOs aren’t fun, but they could be (they’re currently surviving on their addictive quality and not bothering to be really entertaining).
2. MMOs are created based on a bunch of untrue assumptions, which we have not made (only white male teenage boys play video games? in what universe?).
3. MMOs are just another entertainment medium, and can have exactly as broad an appeal as any other form of entertainment, you just have to design it that way.
4. MMOs can be better than other games because they can offer a wider and more interesting community experience, if they are designed to create an environment which is conducive to said.
Anyhow, this is obviously my passion and I could go on for ages (just look at our wiki – http://www.multiaxisgames.com to see some of the buckets of information I’ve already put out on the subject), but I really just wanted to say:
Thank you for speaking out as a gamer that breaks a ridiculously inaccurate mold, and to let you know that you’re not alone in wanting to change the way gaming and gamers are perceived.
Thanks again!
Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 3:15 pm ¶
Ruchama wrote:
My guess as to why Devin wanted to join the sorority — GW has a really tiny black student population. The fraternities and sororities are probably the major places to find other black students to hang out with.
Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 3:26 pm ¶
Titanis walleri wrote:
“1. MMOs aren’t fun, but they could be”
They’ll only be fun when they stop being work simulators and start being games…
Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 3:37 pm ¶
Anonymous wrote:
Rateyourstudents.blogspot.com linked to the videos of the NYU protest. I only watched the last one where the protesters insisted that they were “operating under democratic principles”. Not to bash on the right to protest and its important role in social change, but making demands and confiscating territory isn’t how I view democracy in action…
Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 3:43 pm ¶
Beth wrote:
I went to an all women’s college, which dealt with Devin’s issues on a larger scale and in a context where excluding trangendered men would have denied them access to education they started. However, I also know several men who transfered when they decided transition not because they felt unwelcome, but because they found their own presence in a space created for women problematic.
If sororities were institutions of significant privilege, I might understand wanting to join one despite not believing you fit one of the qualifying criteria, but they are social institutions of mutual support for women. I don’t understand why he would feel that it was appropriate to join a sorority instead of a fraternity (though I could certainly see other reasons for not wanting to join a fraternity, given the stereotypes surrounding their hyper-masculinity and hazing behavior).
I see protests against the gendered nature of fraternities and sororities as being far less problematic than trying to redefine sororities as somehow welcoming to women-and-trans men, since it both denies their declared status as women’s spaces and trans men’s masculinity, while all the while leaving privileged male spaces unchallenged.
Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 3:45 pm ¶
Monie wrote:
Wowzer. Gender identity is so complicated. I am proud of Devin for even trying. I think that he was in a difficult position and chose to try rather than to just be a bystander. It is people like him that will ultimately make life easier for other transgender students and sorority members.
@Jess
It says in the piece that Devin was initially anti-sorority but after being approached by a sorority member and being told of the sorority’s commitment to the community he decided to join.
Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 3:50 pm ¶
magda wrote:
@Jess-I’ll admit that I was confused at first, but after reading the article I realized that Devin’s desire to be part of Zeta Phi Beta was perfectly logical for the following reasons. One, he is not legally allowed to join a frat. So if he wanted to join a social organization it would have to be a sorority. Two, as Ruchama mentioned, Zeta Phi Beta is a historically black organization and from what I gather, GWU is a mostly white college. This website ranks it as C+ in diversity, whatever that means: http://collegeprowler.com/george-washington-university/diversity/. Three, the original senior members of the sorority were very friendly, encouraged him to join and were reportedly accepting of Devin’s gender identity, but they then graduated. Four, there are numerous advantages to being in a sorority, especially one with a long history of which Devin was clearly proud of.
Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 4:04 pm ¶
Celeste wrote:
Did Devin know for certain that he was male before he pledged? If he knew, and didn’t want to participate in female gender activities I’m not sure why he joined. The fraternity at the school probably would have been even more hostile to him but if he’s male then that’s where he should be taking his fight.
Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 4:25 pm ¶
magda wrote:
@Celeste –
The fraternity at the school probably would have been even more hostile to him but if he’s male then that’s where he should be taking his fight.
You said yourself that the frat would probably be more hostile. Why should Devin have to suffer from that hostility just to be in the “right” organization? Also, it was sorority members that approached him, not fraternity members.
I really don’t think it’s our place to judge whether Devin should or shouldn’t want to be in this organization. Personally, I would never consider joining either a sorority or a frat, but I will defend anyone’s right to do so regardless of their gender identity.
Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 5:03 pm ¶
A.D. Nix wrote:
@ RJG
I had problems with the NYU protest as well. And not just with the “look at me!” nudity tactic or the dance party or the so-bad-it’s-bad video mentioned in #6 (it did little to garner sympathy). I really wanted to side with the protesters but I found it really hard.
The whole thing just didn’t seem terribly thought through and some of the demands just made no sense. There were also some serious strategic failures – and I know that’s part of protesting. For every one that goes well, there can be two or three that just fall short. But a lot of this seemed like ill planning or looking to make the biggest splash rather than apply the most pressure.
The entire NYU protest was the kind of protest that I feel diminishes the power of justifiable protests. This time it did feel like privileged people making random demands that had little or nothing to do with each other, being more interested in getting youtube clips of police frowning at them, and playing revolutionary than fighting for a clear cause.
I don’t want to think this is the case but the aforementioned video . . . did not help dissuade me.
Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 5:31 pm ¶
Beth wrote:
“You said yourself that the frat would probably be more hostile. Why should Devin have to suffer from that hostility just to be in the “right” organization?”
Leaving this particular case aside for a moment, I have a huge problem with the idea that because women are less hostile it is more acceptable to invade their spaces.
Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 5:35 pm ¶
Celeste wrote:
I guess my problem is trying to reconcile respecting a trans man’s masculinity and respecting a women’s organization. I think I’d be more on his side on this issue if he considered himself a man but was okay with participating in the rather gendered activities of this sorority (”dressing in drag”, popping it like a girl, etc.). I’m also not sure why he’d think that his sorors would have men’s shoes.
OTOH they should not be calling addressing him with female pronouns at all and should not question his gender identity and telling him not to act like a boy.
It’s not that I would wish more hostility on him but I’m having trouble sorting it out. Since he’s a transman that doesn’t enjoy feminine gestures or women’s clothes then it would make more sense (at least to me) to join a fraternity, even if he was invited to a sorority.
Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 6:25 pm ¶
magda wrote:
@Beth – Invade? That’s an interesting word choice. Devin was invited and encouraged to join by another member. Also, I did not say that the frat would be more hostile, Celeste did.
Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 6:27 pm ¶
Jess wrote:
@Ruchama — With that, it makes a little more sense, then. Anybody out there from GWU?
@Monie/ magda
The reason I was a bit confused was, given the gender identity issues that go with being trans, it just seemed like exactly the wrong place, as would a fraternity, but that’s my political reasoning, and the reasons I never got into it in college.
But with such a tiny, tiny membership — four people? Seems to me Devin should have seen this coming. Not to blame him — the sisters were just complete asshats. But if someone in the group is hating on me all the time, that’s a bad sign. I’d have told Devin to get the hell out and fast long before it got to that point, same as I would tell a woman getting beat on by her boyfriend. (Not that anyone has to listen to my sorry self).
But hey, I do appreciate that if he felt it was the only ay to hang out with other black students, then it might seem the best option.
@RJG and A.D> Nix — agree completely that this kind of protest isn’t helpful.
Y’know, in light of the discussion about teaching history we had here a while back, I was thinking of one Big Lie of omission that does get told. The biggest protests of the 60s and 70s were NOT at private schools like Harvard, NYU (which back then was a third-rate school) and Yale, and Columbia.
The biggest, baddest protests were at U. Wisconsin, U. Michigan and MSU. Cal, famously as well. Public schools. Populated largely by first-generation college students and people in on the GI Bill, (We all forget that military service was near-compulsory between Korea and Vietnam — more than a few servicemen went to college on the GI Bill after Korea).
Private schools, being for privileged kids, were late to the party and contributed relatively little compared to their public counterparts. And it s no accident, I think, that in this case NYU is a private institution.
It’s also worth noting that support from faculty came easier at public schools than private ones, though it was never that strong (it depended on the school and its traditions. Some places it was okay, others it wasn’t).
What I mean is, these kids have little to lose, really, and haven’t got a sense of what protest is, no strategy for how to accomplish goals, no real organization with a clear process of command (it can be democratic, but you need something. All of these are essential and characteristic of the more famous demonstrations we all read about.
You need to have a list of demands that makes some freakin’ sense. (Even the less rational parts of the big demos in the 60s had that, and that’s why the more grandiose parts never went anywhere, but the nuts-and-bolts stuff did — where the heck do people think the ethnic studies departments came from, anyway?).
But planning doesn’t seem to be their strong suit. Or a sense of history. I’ve been to my share of demonstrations. That one doesn’t seem to be all that well done.
Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 7:10 pm ¶
Ruchama wrote:
At GW, the undergrad student population is 7% black. The black fraternities and sororities are all tiny — I don’t think any of them have more than 10 people. Actually, the school newspaper had an article today about black students feeling isolated. http://media.www.gwhatchet.com/media/storage/paper332/news/2009/02/26/News/Bridging.The.Gap-3650256.shtml
Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 8:01 pm ¶
cocolamala wrote:
i don’t really like the way the first headline emphasizes the identity of the im worm suspect as though that’s equally on par with interfering with some significant portion of North American PC users.
Hoan Ton-That is overly described, but under characterized.
Besides the issue of identity, I learned exactly 2 facts: that (1) Ton-That is a San Fran software developer, who (2) worked for ViddyHo.
Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 8:17 pm ¶
timarasa wrote:
i agree with others that the NYU protest was a flat out mess, though i can sympathize with the underlying spirit of their demands. they should have just stuck to one or 2 targeted demands, such as the “socially responsible finance committee” which presumably would investigate NYU’s portfolio for any investment funds or stocks in companies profiting from the israeli occupation of palestinian territories. this is not unlike the demand that a student organization at Hampshire college submitted to the board of trustees; though the board denied it was pressured to act by the student organization’s protests (uh huh, right), it divested from a fund that contained stocks from companies that participated in socially “irresponsible” business practices. i believe 2 of the corporations the students had the biggest beef with was caterpillar (you know, the bulldozers used to raze palestinian homes to the ground) and united technologies; don’t remember the other ones.
however, the students at Hampshire seemed to be much more focused and organized than the ones at NYU. may be b/c the Hampshire protests were orchestrated by one specific student group, whereas at NYU what may have been a core coalition of specific groups quickly devolved into a rag-tag free-for-all as more people joined in, who knows. it is just sad from the 50+ years of history on organized, student-based civil disobedience and protest tactics these kids could have drawn from that this is the best they could do??
Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 8:19 pm ¶
Latoya Peterson wrote:
Re: The Sorority Brother Story
I mentioned before I was talking to my boyfriend about this story. Interestingly enough, few of the dynamics we were debating came up in this thread. I’ll insert some.
My argument is pro-Devin. He identifies as male, yet was born female. The article discusses some of the issues involved with pledging (in essence, even if Devin wanted to, he couldn’t pledge a frat.)
There were too major themes that stood out to me in the article:
1. Devin was recruited to this sorority. He didn’t just pledge. He was approached and formed a relationship with one of the members who encouraged him to join. At the time of joining the article only indicates that one soror didn’t like him. I think that feeling of inclusion and belonging that comes with pledging outweighed that one girls’ issues.
2. He underwent the pledge ceremony with a modified image.
That spring, Zeta Phi Beta extended Alston-Smith an offer of membership into the sorority. At his campus debut as a Zeta, which the sorority calls a “coming out show,” Smith and his fellow inductee, or “line sister,” Shauna Butler, performed a step routine the two had choreographed for the audience. This time, the wardrobe was Alston-Smith’s choosing, down to the blue-and-white Converse shoes. The routine ended with Alston-Smith’s official “unveiling” in front of his fellow sisters, the sorority’s graduate chapter, his friends, and his mom. At the big reveal, the sorority president pulled the tape off of Alston-Smith’s backward hat, exposing the nickname his sisters had chosen for him: “The Liberator.”
They allowed Devin to be Devin then – I don’t see why he needs to change now.
My boyfriend, being more traditional than I and having attended a Historically Black College or University (HBCU for short) had a different view.
1. According to him, if this chapter of the Zeta’s had been on a black campus, this issue would have never have happened. It would have been unthinkable to even try to bend Zeta tradition in this manner.
2. At HBCUs, there is a very strict culture of tradition. If you’re on the line (pledging) you are in an sense promising to respect that tradition and to maintain those traditions.
3. Sadly, sorority sisters and fraternity brothers have been bounced out of organizations for less. Slept with your frat brother’s crush? You might be headed out, even if it was never going to happen for him.
4. Some people just like to be petty.
Both of us, however, were amazed that commenter on the WCP site provided a biblical passage about being transgendered:
How come people use terms like Moral beliefs, and religion to justify bigotry when the Tahlmud and Old Testament clearly note five genders. The New Testament (Matt 19:11-12) clearly recognizes more than two. The GLBT community, science and the Bible (Ps 139:14-15) all agree that who we are is something set close to conception.
Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 8:20 pm ¶
timarasa wrote:
“2 of the corporations…*were* caterpillar…and united technologies”
also i think the whole Hampshire divestment move happened earlier in february (maybe NYU groups were inspired?), but only after a 2-yr campaign by that student group…yeah, like to see if the NYU students would have stamina & patience for something like that…
Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 8:30 pm ¶
Ruchama wrote:
The NYU students also had better working conditions for NYU employees as one of their conditions, but they injured one security guard, destroyed a bunch of university property that somebody is now going to have to fix, and it looks like they left that building a mess that someone’s going to have to clean up.
Posted 26 Feb 2009 at 8:47 pm ¶
Marisol LeBron wrote:
Wow, I am really shocked by the reactions to the NYU protest. As an NYU student and someone involved in the protest I just want to clarify a few things….
1. Just because it’s a private school does not mean only “rich white kids” go there which is what i assume people mean when the say privileged (which is a tenuous claim at best considering that there are degrees of privilege when talking about people in higher education regardless of whether they’re at U Wisconsin or NYU). As a working class queer woman of color who was there with other people of color at these protests, this elision is particularly harmful and reinforces the notion that the student movement is an all white movement.
2) A bunch of property was NOT destroyed, it was one lock (the lock to the balcony) and even the administration acknowledged that so please don’t make it seem like there was careless destruction on the part of protesters. As for the one guard injured TBNYU immediately apologized and reasserted its commitment to non-violent tactics after it heard that a guard had been knocked down when students tried to gain access to Kimmel (a space that is rightfully theirs).
3) The protest did not just pop out of nowhere they had been planning and spreading information for over two years. From the disorientation guide, to panels, and forums, TBNYU is no fly by night student group as the administration would make it seem.
4) People say the demands were jumbled, but really all of them related to two core concerns — accountability and transparency. Even the Gaza stuff is related to that although I am shocked and appalled by the number of people who see those demands as completely out of the blue and unrelated.
These are just my thoughts on the matter and don’t reflect TBNYU…but its kinda crazy to me that people can’t recognize that the kids who occupied NYU are part of a global student movement with roots in the civil rights and anti-apartheid movements. It is easy for us to point to all that was wrong with the protests, and there were things wrong with it, but why can’t we commend them for at least being engaged and concerned students and community members. Also, its easy to have nostalgia for the movements of the 1960s and 1970s, but they had their faults and we need to recognize that and not penalize people who are trying to organize today because they don’t live up to the imagined successes of earlier movements because all it does it pathologize youth.
Posted 27 Feb 2009 at 2:25 am ¶
Nathan wrote:
“My boyfriend, being more traditional than I and having attended a Historically Black College or University (HBCU for short) had a different view.”
Looking out for non-US readers? Much appreciated, Latoya!
I agree with you in regards to Devin; if the Sorority made the offer to begin with, its pretty rough dealing to give him the cold shoulder now. Its not like he wasn’t open about himself from the start.
Posted 27 Feb 2009 at 3:02 am ¶
theboxman wrote:
Thank you for the clarifications Marisol. All the best with your organization. I share your surprise at the absence of solidarity in the responses posted here.
Posted 27 Feb 2009 at 9:05 am ¶
Anonymous wrote:
@Marisol–
I saw the videos, and as someone who is an outsider (and therefore, whose support you need, like it or not) I was confused as hell.
Demanding transparency about NYU’s finances is fine. But I did not get the sense that the students understood exactly how this stuff works.
For instance, they talked about divesting (I think) from companies “taking part in genocide.” Um, OK, I am not entirely sure I got that. Because there was never (that I saw) any definition of that involvement.
Is the problem with the endowment or is it with the NYU retirement plan or both? Neither? The NYU budget is a different animal.
The endowment with its investments paid and still pays for all those scholarships NYU offers, and would pay for scholarships for kids from Gaza if they were on offer.
You can’t be just against something– you have to be for a clear alternative. I wasn’t sure, entirely, what that was, though I got through the part about town-hall like meetings with local people (I wasn’t sure I understood this).
I’m not saying there are no alternatives here, but were the students asking that they get a vote on investment strategy? That’s perfectly reasonable, at least if that’s what you are looking for, but again I was groping to figure out if that is what they were after.
I focus on this kind of stuff not to mythologize the movements of the past. They had their problems.
But even watching videos of the protest left me thinking that I understood little of what was going on. And since the whole point of public protests is to publicize grievances and gain support — well, you lost me there. And I had the patience to try and spend a few minutes figuring it out. Most people don’t.
I think it is really frustrating for those of us that largely agree with the students. I just felt there was this gigantic disconnect. One of the speakers on the video is talking about NYU displacing people in the local community — a damned good observation and an issue that many community groups would love to have support on form the students. That’s good stuff.
But did the students reach out to anybody? Talk to the local Community Board? (They know a lot of the right people). I think not — or at least, I didn’t see it — maybe I missed it, feel free to correct me, I hope I am wrong. Someone please tell me I am totally wrong and there were loads of local community groups there who were involved.
Remember the transit strike? That’s a classic example of a public protest (the strike) that failed utterly. Why? Besides the MTA not negotiating in good faith, the TWU forgot that it needed the support of the public to counteract that. And they didn’t do any outreach at all for months. By the time they ran their ads it was too little and too late.
The TWU was offered a spot on Hot 97 — one of the biggest radio stations in the city — to make their case with ads. They turned it down, on the grounds that a youth – oriented hip-hop station wasn’t going to reach the people they wanted. That decision was stupid beyond belief. They let the MTA make their case with the public for months with little answer.
The result: people all heard that TWU workers can retire at 55 and got pissed at having to walk to work.
There should have been 10,000 SEIU or health care workers or teachers walking publicly to work in solidarity with the TWU. The TWU should have been leafletting houses, sending people out to talk to neighbors, friends, and generally getting their outreach groove on.
Nobody got on TV and said, “Sure, we can retire at 55. We think everybody should be able to do that, becuase we are not operating on the premise that workers deserve nothing.”
I’m not saying that the NYU students have to do the same thing, but I got no sense that they were thinking in those terms. I think the “Disorientation guide” is a good start. But it’s a start, a tool. And only a small one at that.
Again, I am coming at this from the outside — but we’re the folks who you’re doing this for, ultimately. And we’re confused. If you have to explain how scholarships for Palestinian kids are related to the other demands, then you didn’t make clear demands in the first place, or didn’t make that connection, you know?
I’m not trying to pathologize youth. But being young, youdo have a bit to learn. That’s why you’re at school, right? Energy and enthusiasm are no substitute for strategy — though they are great to have.
Like I said, I have been to my share of protest marches and such. The best were focused, with a clear plan of not only what to do if demands were met, but what to do if they weren’t. There was an exit strategy, if you will.
Posted 27 Feb 2009 at 9:57 am ¶
danny wrote:
re: “menace to sorority”
first, my background: i’m white, transgender (ftm), and a graduate of a small university with a very minimal greek system that i never participated in.
second, i think Nathan, Latoya, and especially Ruchama have made excellent points by pointing out that Devin was *asked* to join the sorority (he did not “invade” it), and that that joining a sorority does provide benefits/advantages to its members, particularly to black students on a majority-white campus.
i’d also like to add to those comments that just because someone identifies as trans or as male, they (we) do not become exactly the same as any nontrans man–particularly (though not only) if we only pass occasionally, have only started passing recently, or don’t pass at all. being raised female, we often feel some affinity with female spaces at the same time that we feel alienated from the gendered expectations that accompany those spaces. we also have to deal with many of the same issues of sexism (and racism, and homophobia, and ableism…) that female-identified people do. the u.s. is so gender-divided, we often have to get used to occupying gendered spaces that we only feel a partial belonging to. i would imagine that this is even more true for black students at a majority white university–if the spaces for students of color are minimal to begin with, to limit oneself to spaces that are not only not dominated by white students but are also gender-neutral or trans-positive might be really isolating.
to the limited extent that i can empathize with Devin, it makes sense to me that despite his initial ambivalence about joining a sorority, Zeta and its supportive sisters seemed to offer him something. i don’t know anything about or have any comments about the sorority’s right to exclude him or the legality of either side’s harassment claims…but if you haven’t already, make sure you read the last paragraph of that article. rejection is rough, especially when it’s based on something like tranpshobia or any other systemic oppressions that we face throughout our lives. no organization or group of friends should treat someone like devin has been treated.
Posted 28 Feb 2009 at 12:20 am ¶