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Transgender and Male at an All-Female College

Once individuals have enrolled and announced that they are trans, the schools, more or less, leave it to the students to work out how trans classmates fit into a women’s college. Two of those students hashed it out last fall after Kaden Mohamed, then a Wellesley senior who had been taking testosterone for seven months, watched a news program on WGBH-TV about the plummeting number of women’s colleges. One guest was Laura Bruno, another Wellesley senior. The other guest was the president of Regis College, a women’s school that went coed in 2007 to reverse its tanking enrollment. The interviewer asked Laura to describe her experience at an “all-female school” and to explain how that might be diminished “by having men there.” Laura answered, “We look around and we see only women, only people like us, leading every organization on campus, contributing to every class discussion.”

Kaden, a manager of the campus student cafe who knew Laura casually, was upset by her words. He emailed Laura and said her response was “extremely disrespectful.” He continued: “I am not a woman. I am a trans man who is part of your graduating class, and you literally ignored my existence in your interview. . . . You had an opportunity to show people that Wellesley is a place that is complicating the meaning of being an ‘all women’s school,’ and you chose instead to displace a bunch of your current and past Wellesley siblings.”

Laura apologized, saying she hadn’t meant to marginalize anyone and had actually vowed beforehand not to imply that all Wellesley students were women. But she said that under pressure, she found herself in a difficult spot: How could she maintain that women’s colleges would lose something precious by including men, but at the same time argue that women’s colleges should accommodate students who identify as men?

— In The New York Times Magazine, Ruth Padawar looks at the growing trans community at schools like Wellesley and Mount Holyoke and how they’re sparking a discussion for policy changes at colleges that have been historically all-female.

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Photo: Wen Zeng

The Art of Arrival: Rebecca Solnit on Travel and Friendship

Rebecca Solnit | Orion | Summer 2014 | 20 minutes (4,780 words)

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The word “journey” used to mean a single day’s travels, and the French word for day, jour, is packed neatly inside it, like a single pair of shoes in a very small case. Maybe all journeys should be imagined as a single day, short as a trip to the corner or long as a life in its ninth decade. This way of thinking about it is a;rmed by the t-shirts made for African-American funerals in New Orleans and other places that describe the birth date and death date of the person being commemorated as sunrise and sunset. One day. Read more…

Interview: Simon Rich on Guilt, Humor Writing, and Being the Worst Person Ever

Jessica Gross | Longreads | Oct. 2014 | 17 minutes (4,290 words)

By the time Simon Rich graduated from Harvard, where he served as president of the Harvard Lampoon, he had a two-book deal from Random House. Less than a decade later, the humorist has written four short story collections and two comic novels. He also spent four years writing for Saturday Night Live (he was the youngest writer SNL ever hired) and about two years at Pixar, and is now at work on a film and a television series.

Rich’s level of productivity, impressive as it is, takes a backseat to the quality of his humor writing. His stories are crystalline, eccentric, and universally hilarious. Many of the stories in his new collection, Spoiled Brats are built on an unusual premise, or told from a surprising angle. In “Animals,” a hamster narrates his wretched existence as a class pet at an elementary school. In “Gifted,” a mother insists that her son—born as a monster, with horns and a tail—is exceptional. And in “Distractions,” a writer believes the whole world is out to get him, and they really are.

* * *

How old were you when you started actively, seriously writing?

Well, I always loved to write. As early as kindergarten, I plagiarized Roald Dahl stories that I would try to pass off as my own. But I think it sort of shifted around when I was 17. That’s when I started writing every single day, whether or not I had an idea. Until then, I would only sit down and write a story if one occurred to me, and then I started to wake up every single day and write for a few hours whether or not I had anything worthwhile to say.

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Eight Days In a Hong Kong Hotel Room With Edward Snowden

Profiling documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras for The New Yorker, George Packer writes of her latest film, “Citizenfour,” which tells the story of N.S.A. whistleblower Edward Snowden. Packer describes the documentary as a political thriller in three acts, with the second act chronicling Snowden’s time in Hong Kong. Over the course of eight days Poitras filmed Snowden in a Hong Kong hotel room for twenty hours, and “the act proceeds chronologically through the eight days in the hotel room, taking up a full hour of the hundred-and-thirteen-minute film.”

We watch Snowden explain his background, his motivations, the nature and extent of N.S.A. eavesdropping, and his fears for the future. His control under immense pressure is unnerving. “I am more willing to risk imprisonment,” he says, “or any other negative outcome personally, than I am willing to risk the curtailment of my intellectual freedom and that of those around me, whom I care for equally as I do for myself.” The interviewer is Greenwald, and, soon enough, he and Snowden become defiant collaborators against power. Snowden, explaining why he plans to reveal his identity, speaks as if he were confronting a government heavy: “I’m not afraid of you. You’re not going to bully me into silence like you’ve done to everybody else.” Greenwald exclaims, “You’re coming out because you want to fucking come out!” (It’s a moment of inadvertent and unregistered humor, since Greenwald is gay.)

Snowden watches the global fallout from Greenwald’s stories on the TV in his hotel room. Snowden’s girlfriend, Lindsay Mills, whom he left behind in Hawaii without a word of explanation, writes him that police have come to question her. He is shaken, imagining her realization that “the person that you love, that you spent the decade with, may not be coming back.” He types something on his laptop—presumably, a reply to Mills—but Poitras, respecting his privacy, doesn’t move the camera to show its content. As the days go by, Snowden’s anxiety increases, and the room becomes claustrophobic. A fire alarm keeps going off—routine testing, he’s told. The bedside phone rings—“I’m afraid you have the wrong room,” he says, and hangs up. “Wall Street Journal,” he explains. His chin is stubbled and his hair won’t lie flat. He seems to be growing visibly paler, and the many stretches of silence last longer; Poitras’s camera stays close to him, at once exposing and protective. In such a small space, from which there’s no exit, the presence of a camera has a distorting effect, and it turns Snowden into a character in a play. Unlike Dr. Riyadh and his family, who went about their lives as Poitras trailed them, Snowden can never forget that he’s being filmed. There are few moments of self-betrayal.

“How do you feel?” we hear Poitras ask.

“What happens happens,” he says. “If I get arrested, I get arrested.”

In shots of him sitting on his unmade bed—white sheets and covers, white headboard, white bathrobe, white skin—Snowden seems like a figure in some obscure ritual, being readied for sacrifice. At one point, we hear his heart beating against a microphone. Still, he keeps speaking in the hyper-rational, oddly formal sentences of a computer techie. And then he’s gone.

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Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Publishing Startup at a Crossroads: ‘Maybe It’s Time to Embrace Something Old-Fashioned’

The iOS app, pending improvements, still might catch on, but if it doesn’t, we’ll have to figure out how to try to keep those subscribers as we fold them back into the original distribution system. We’re also in talks with an established indie publishing house, trying to figure out whether doing a handful of print and e-book Emily Books originals in collaboration could make financial sense for both us and them; I’m hopeful, but when I look at the profit and loss statements they’ve given us for reference, I get less so. The idea that print availability is the only difference between selling a few hundred and a few thousand books seems like a stretch. Then again, we have a built-in base. “Two hundred people who love you are more important than 2 million people who like you,” some startup guy or other once said. Startup guys say a lot of stuff, though.

When night fell on our retreat, we put away our laptops and curled up on the couch in front of the TV. The Devil Wears Prada was showing on Lifetime, as it always is, and we were delighted to sit down and rewatch it. Outsized caricature that it is, this monumentally great chick flick does seem in some ways to encapsulate my own journey from principled young striver to glamour-chasing young sellout and back again. As we watched Andi toss the cell phone that had tethered her to her dream-nightmare job into the fountain and put her terrible corduroys back on to work at some kind of scrubby newspaper, I wondered if the movie wasn’t an omen. Maybe it’s time to embrace something old-fashioned instead of something glitzy and new and untried. Maybe our future–and publishing’s future–isn’t to be found in technological advancements that change the way we read, but in advancements that change the way books reach their audience.

Emily Gould, in Fast Company, with an honest reflection on her own publishing startup, and questions about what to do next.

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Photo: nataliaromay, Flickr

An Intruder in Two Spaces: What It Feels Like to Be Biracial

This confusion at your own place is the essence of being biracial. Even though you owe no one an explanation, there’s a desire to explain, which comes from believing that just by being yourself you are a liar. You’re an intruder in either space, with no right to claim one or the other without a heavy caveat. You’re not really what you say you are, not “technically.” It’s my feeling the need to need to clarify at those weddings, to say “I’m not entirely part of this group” or “It’s ok that I’m wearing this because my dad is Indian,” before anyone could call me out on my trespass.

When you’re constantly being asked “what” and not “who” you are, this is a knee-jerk reaction. You’re ready for it before that puzzled look appears on a stranger’s face. Being biracial means having to justify why your skin is this color when your mom is that color, or why you know so much about Indian music because you don’t look like you should know about Indian music, or why you don’t know more because you look like you should be an expert.

And you’re told not to be mad, because these people are “just curious.” It’s still a rare thing! You’re making a big deal out of it, it’s just a joke. You should help them learn. Forgive them if they’re mad at you for wearing a bindi, they just thought you were appropriating. Understand when they see your name after your relatives’ “normal” names, they just want to know how you got there. They just want to explain to you that maybe you’re using the wrong words to describe yourself. It’s too much hassle to get mad, listen and answer their questions and save yourself the frustration.

— Jaya Saxena, in The Aerogram, writing about her experience with being biracial.

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Photo: anurag agnihotri

The Get-Rich-Quick Schemes of George Zimmerman’s Family

Robert’s ultimate goal was to turn George into a reality-TV star. His models were John Walsh, who began hosting America’s Most Wanted after his 6-year-old son was abducted and killed, and the Kardashians, whose fame was launched by Kim’s leaked sex tape. “I learn a lot from watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” Robert told me. “Like, use the shit you’ve got.” One idea was for George to be the focus of a Candid Camera-style program. One episode, for example, might feature a professor teaching a class about self-defense, and at the end of the episode it would be revealed—surprise!—that George was one of the students.

— Amanda Robb writes about meeting George Zimmerman’s family in GQ, and reports about some of their get-rich-quick schemes and their constant paranoia two years after Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin.

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Photo: Youtube

‘Living for a Plank and Four Wheels in a Profligate Culture’

My wife, Daphne, got to something I’d been trying to figure out for years when, after reading a particularly asinine article in the February 2003 issue [of Thrasher magazine], she said: “It’s really not OK that these people are using so little of their brains.”

“Using so little.” It’s the perfect indictment of everything that’s wrong with—and the most succinct encapsulation of everything that’s brilliant about—skateboarding. The beauty of using so little in a country that uses so much. Living for a plank and four wheels in a profligate culture. And the saddening fact that Thrasher has, in many ways, been failing to move against the wind. Jake Phelps, the current editor, a San Francisco skater to the bone, wrote a sort of suicide note in the March 2003 issue: “I’ve never felt as depressed as I do now… I try to stay focused on the mag—my life is in this mag. And its life is in me… I feel distant from the spots, skaters and special people I’ve known… God this is awful.” These desperate words, especially jarring in contrast to Thrasher’s ironic dirtbag voice (it used to be ironic, big-hearted, dirtbag), were wedged into an issue stuffed with ads. An issue fifty-four pages longer than a contemporaneous Vanity Fair.

Feeling depressed by your success is a rare predicament for an editor in chief. (I wanted to tell him to try aromatherapy.) I figured Phelps was about to hang it up and let Thrasher go fully corporate. There were certainly skateboard doomsday signs aplenty. I attended a screening of Dogtown and Z-Boys, a documentary about the earliest days of skating, in a private theater at the Sony Corporation’s New York headquarters. The place was filled with MTV celebrities and their posses. I was the only person with a plank on wheels. A guy in a long black leather jacket pointed at me, turned to a young woman, and said: “Ooh, he brought his board,” and I felt ashamed.

Skating through midtown Manhattan that night, I remembered that I used to think skateboarding would never get too big because it hurt too much. Because you can’t take the pain out of skateboarding. Because putting yourself deliberately in harm’s way is a quick, easy, and reliable route to the truth. But what I didn’t realize is that you can take the skateboarding out of skateboarding—make the act a mere accessory to its style.

Sean Wilsey, in his 2003 essay for the London Review of Books, edited for his anthology More Curious, and reprinted on BuzzFeed

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Photo: fotologic, Flickr

Sam Simon on Life After ‘The Simpsons’

“In the pressure cooker of a TV show, it’s a little bit of a witches’ brew. I completely think I’m capable of being crazy. I probably was crazy when I was doing The Simpsons. But my pulse used to be really low, my blood pressure used to be really low, and I could be screaming at someone on the phone, yelling at the network, I might even be throwing some stuff, but my blood pressure wouldn’t go up. My heartbeat wouldn’t go up. Because I was doing a bit. Shtick. Pretending to be that mad to get my way. Which is not a good way to do it. I don’t suggest it.”

And so, in the fullness of time, it came to pass that almost 100 episodes of The Simpsons were completed, most with Sam at the helm, thus ushering the show into the lucrative world of international syndication. Then, in 1993, he left. “I can’t honestly say we were getting along as well at that point as when the project started,” he says. (The terms of his departure included a non-disclosure agreement.) “But it worked out for everyone. Everyone should be happy.” His settlement gave him a percentage of everything relating to the show—including the licensing and merchandising—worth hundreds of millions of dollars over the years. “I make tens of millions of dollars a year, which may not sound like a lot, but over 25 years it adds up.” Sam laughs.

“I’m an atheist, but there’s a thing called tithing that a lot of religions do. Ten percent was the minimum you were supposed to give to charity every year. And I always outdid that,” Sam explains. In 2002 he started the multi-platform Sam Simon Foundation, one arm of which rescues animals from Los Angeles kill shelters and trains some of them to be service dogs for the hearing-impaired and veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Then there’s the mobile veterinary clinic, also in Los Angeles, which offers free surgery and free spay and neuter services. But it’s not just animals; another arm of the foundation funds the Feeding Families program, a vegan food bank that offers free meals to some 400 Los Angeles families a week. “We’re on track to distribute over a half-million pounds of food to more than 65,000 people this year,” its spokesman tells me. Sam is also the largest individual donor to Save the Children, which just announced a new global philanthropic community called the Simon Society.

— In Vanity Fair, Merrill Markoe profiled her friend Sam Simon, a co-creator of the Simpsons who was diagnosed with terminal cancer two years ago. He lived the only way he knew how: with good humor and by dedicating his life to philanthropic causes.

Sam Simon died today at the age of 59.

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Photo: Mercy for Anim

Interview: Caitlin Moran on the Working Class, Masturbation, and Writing a Novel

Jessica Gross | Longreads | Sept. 25, 2014 | 13 minutes (3,300 words)

Caitlin Moran has worked as a journalist, critic, and essayist in the U.K. for over two decades, since she was 16. In her 2011 memoir/manifesto, How to Be a Woman, she argued women should keep their vaginas hairy, said she has no regret over her own abortion, and advocated for the term “strident feminist.” Moran brings the same gallivanting, taboo-crushing spirit to her debut novel, How to Build a Girl, which follows Johanna Morrigan, a working class teenager, as she navigates her way toward adulthood. Morrigan shares a few traits with Moran, from her background and career path to her obsession with music and masturbation.

* * *

As I read How to Build a Girl, I pictured you laughing uproariously to yourself as you were writing it. But in the acknowledgments, you say, “Writing a book is literally worse than giving birth to a baby—in hell.”

I wrote the acknowledgments in a welter of self-pity. I love writing—it’s the easiest thing in the world for me to do. But all through that summer, my children and husband would disappear and come back all covered in sand, having been to the beach while I sat at the table I’m at now, in the garden, chain smoking roll-up cigarettes, chain-drinking coffee. I was working so hard that I genuinely thought I’d have to go to the psychiatrist and get some valium prescribed to me. I’ve always been incredibly cheerful and laid-back, and that summer I was incredibly anxious and depressed, like my head was going to explode. There was one morning where I was putting the coffee pot on, and I noticed it said that it made 12 cups of espresso. I’d been drinking that, diluted with milk, before lunchtime. I stopped drinking the coffee, and it all got a bit easier after that. Do not drink 12 espressos before midday. It’s enormously bad for your mind.

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