Category: Commentary

Fact Check After Texas A&M Censors Race And Gender Studies: I Have A Women’s Studies Degree, And I Am Successful

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Texas A&M censored gender studies last night. According to The New York Times, the regents have spoken with a unanimous vote: courses are not able to “advocate race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity” without direct approval of the university president. One regent, Sam Torn, said:

“Curriculum is created and approved based on the accepted body of knowledge needed for our students to be successful in their chosen profession. It is unacceptable for other material to be taught instead.”

I hold a bachelor’s degree in women’s studies, and thus am in a position to speak from direct experience. (Technically, I hold an interdisciplinary studies degree with a concentration in women’s studies, because that was the closest Georgetown let its women’s studies program get to recognition.)

I consider myself to have had a great deal of success in my chosen professions. I have written for Fortune 500 companies, landed and held competitive advertising creative jobs, started an organization that I have led for 10 years, served as an executive officer of the national organization for women, published work in a variety of local, national, and literary publications, and in less than a month, I’ll complete my MFA in creative writing.

I have been blessed to have a varied and rich career path, and the foundation of what I learned toward my women’s studies degree is a direct contributor to my success — I took courses in English, history, linguistics, law, psychology, and sociology that counted toward my degree. I have learned that everything counts, and that critical thinking skills are the key tool to success. The real world is multidisciplinary, too.

Academic censorship of gender studies (and race studies) has nothing to do with preparing students for meaningful careers. Rather, it’s a reflection of the authoritarian environment in which we live. The government is placing enormous pressure on our public institutions, in order to control what we think.

The goal is total control. It’s terrifying. And yes, authoritarian governments always come for the women, the sexual minorities, and the people of color first.

Unpopular Opinion: Erika Kirk Is Off-Limits

On By erintothemaxIn Commentary9 Comments

Recently, photographs of Erika Kirk and J.D. Vance embracing went viral. Seemingly everyone had something to say about where the hands were, what she was wearing, and the future of the vice president’s marriage.

STOP. Let’s be human beings, shall we? This. Woman. Is. Grieving.

Erika Kirk is undergoing an intense trauma with few parallels. Imagine having your husband murdered, on camera. Imagine those images going around the web. Imagine having young children and knowing that no matter what you do, you can’t protect them from the fact that those images are out there. Waiting for them.

Yes, J.D. Vance is a spineless, morally bankrupt tool. A chaser of the wind and wherever it blows. An authoritarian sell-out. He deserves all the criticism. All the time.

But you know what? Get those jokes about that hug out of your mouth. They are tasteless. The last thing this woman needs right now is criticism for normal behavior–a hug with a friend while she’s going through the wringer. And critiquing her clothes? No. I haven’t been in feminism for a few decades to go along with demonizing women based on their wardrobe choices.

It has been less than two months since the murder. Erika is allowed to grieve, to be. She deserves our grace. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum.

The Marathon Where I Let Go And Had The Time Of My Life

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I ran the Marine Corps Marathon over the weekend. It was my fourteenth marathon completed. I am incredibly proud of this one. It represents an evolution in my hobby-level distance running career. This marathon was grounded, joyful, and while I wouldn’t say it was effortless, it was light. Airy, even. Don’t believe me? This is me somewhere around mile giganti-thousand:

I am extremely attentive to my running. For several years I’ve kept a daily running journal in which I track my time and pace. As I’ve rolled deeper into my forties I’ve started to pay more attention to things I used to ignore, namely what I’ll call The Big S’es: Strength Training, Stability Work, Stretching, and Sleep. There is no question, I’m a better runner now than when I started. Whereas injuries used to be a constant battle, I barely ever get them now. My body is in better shape.

But earlier this year, I started to slow down. A lot. Inexplicably.

It wasn’t like I lost energy. Rather, what felt like the same effort became a minute to a minute and a half slower per mile. Pretty insane, actually.

Through a routine health care appointment this summer that had nothing to do with running, I discovered that my iron levels have plummeted. My doctor put me on iron pills. I’ve also been working on an iron-heavier diet. Pretty quickly my usual pace came back. For most runs. But I’m not totally back to normal yet, and still figuring it out.

So I truly had no idea what would happen at the Marine Corps Marathon this year. In my natural state my body likes to do a marathon in about 4:10 (I’ve clocked this or something within a minute or two of it several times). Every now and then I bust out something faster. Sometimes I fall the hell apart and go much slower.

Surrendering any pretense of a time goal/prediction was freeing!

I’m especially proud of this marathon for two other reasons:

First, two years ago I ran the first 18 miles of the Marine Corps Marathon and dropped out. This is the only marathon I haven’t finished to date. That was devastating for me, which I wrote about here. I’m thrilled to have finished this time around, but also for every stride before I finished. I did not fall into the headspace of ‘doom,’ ‘sad,’ ‘revenge’ self-punishment whatever. This weekend’s success proved to me that trying again is a worthy pursuit.

Second, I have finally figured out fueling. Remember my Big S’es from before? Fueling should have been on the list. Maybe fueling is even more important than the physical stuff. This training cycle I realized that I needed to stop grinding it out, and just eat a hell of a lot more when I’m running. It worked. I never got tired. I never walked. Score one for a training run this summer that I decided to cut short and label a failure (which I had never done). That became the impetus for me to really experiment with fueling. Win!

I will never be a professional runner. I’m getting older and, with the input of funky blood, slower.

But I love this sport. I learn things from it every day. I am thinking so much about fueling and failure and patience. Consistent effort. Letting go of outcomes. How I can apply it to other areas of my life. And find more joy!

    This Is A Lola Young Appreciation Post

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    Fam, I’m going to keep this short, but I’m a huge Lola Young fan. She’s a wickedly talented artist. For the past year her music has been the soundtrack of me writing my thesis novel about an unlikeable woman experiencing domestic violence. I’ve listened to her song “Messy” on repeat until I’ve cried (and I love that she gets beaucoup royalties for this, please take all my money, girl)!

    She is open about having experienced a variety of mental health and substance issues. A few days ago, she collapsed on stage at a music festival. She has since said that she is taking a break and will “cancel everything for the foreseeable future.”

    I already loved the crap out of her. Now it is only more. People dealing with their demons, period, much less in public, get ALL of my praise. Everyone has demons. Everyone, dude. But only some are brave enough to admit they have them.

    Do what you need to do to be well, girl! We love you.

    This is a Lola Young appreciation post.

    Failure, The Great Teacher

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    I ran my first marathon in February 2019, and have run 13 total since. In all of these training cycles, I have never not finished a training run. (Though I did drop out of one marathon race because I was going slow and my daughter had somewhere to be, which I wrote about here. That made me freak the freak out.)

    But yesterday I did a new thing. I stopped my 20 mile training run at 17.66 miles.

    I have finished absurd runs under all manner of absurd circumstances. Driving rain, with motorists pulling over to see if I need a ride? I’ll keep going, thanks. Upchuck in my mouth because of dietary decisions that, in hindsight, were rather obviously not compatible with running (dinner as four slices of jalapeno pizza with jalapeno poppers on the side, and beer, the night before)? Finished the damn run.

    But yesterday I bonked. This is a phrase that means, “run out of energy.” I have certainly bonked before. What I have not done is stop a run because I bonked. Instead, I drag myself. It’s torture but I know how to finish when this happens.

    But yesterday I didn’t do that. I just stopped. It was about to become 80 degrees, and climb another five or six, and I didn’t want to mess with that. Not after 17.66 miles of sweating in the sun.

    There was a mental chaos, a psychiatric falling through gravity that resulted from this rather unprecedented decision. I always finish my runs. What happens if I don’t finish my run?

    Turns out? Nothing.

    Except that I feel like a better runner today than I did yesterday. I learned something profound:

    I need to fuel myself more. I’d already known this, but turns out what I was telling myself was “more” was not enough.

    Additionally, if it’s hot out, I’m better off switching to treadmill, or rescheduling. Period.

    This is a life lesson indeed, to invest in myself more than I think I need to, and to take external conditions at least as seriously as I take my goals.

    Yesterday’s training run taught me more than so many others where I have bonked and kept going. I know how to perform superhuman. What I didn’t know was if I could accept a failure and learn.

    Turns out I can.

    And feel great!

    In Praise Of The Elderly White Hippies

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    Following the Trump takeover of Washington, D.C., my regular morning runs have become an inventory of the missing unhoused people, gone from their usual places.

    She’s gone. She was by the Washington Monument.

    He’s gone. He sat in a wheelchair, by the Metro.

    Gone, gone, gone. So many gone. Have they been shipped to El Salvador? Sudan? Louisiana? They have committed no crime, no crime but homelessness. Poverty. Mental illness. In no true reading of a law book are these actually crimes. They simply have nowhere else to go.

    Until the troops came. God, the troops are so young. I see them on my runs, early in the morning. I study their faces. Do they know what this country was, not so long ago? A democracy. An imperfect democracy where you could work on making it more of a democracy.

    So this is the context in which White House hatelord Stephen Miller sneered at pro-democracy protesters shouting down his press conference as “elderly hippies,” “stupid white hippies,” who “all need to go home and take a nap because they’re over 90 years old.”

    My dear elderly white hippies, please keep it going. We love you so much. Take all the naps you need, friends. We all should. This will be a long fight and we’re best served by people willing to take care of themselves and fight to the end.

    And if you think calling us names is going to make us go away? You’re wrong.

    Zero Hour: Colonoscopy

    On By erintothemaxIn Commentary1 Comment

    “She was tired of being embarrassed by the things her body did or did not do without her conscious input in the decision.” – emily m. danforth, “Plain Bad Heroines”

    I wake up at 5 a.m. to mix the drink. I sit in the partial dark, drinking Suflave with a straw. A new timer goes off each 15 minutes, telling me to do it again. My stomach rumbles. Oh, how it rumbles.

    Today is my first colonoscopy. Yes, I am sharing the story before it is complete. But I also believe that this piece of the experience — the prep, the intentionally making yourself sick — is the one that people are most afraid of. Including myself.

    Could it be that most of our irrational fears begin in childhood? My intense fear of vomiting started in preschool. Mind you, I didn’t vomit myself. But I was wearing a snappy blue sweatsuit with satin planets sewn on. It was my favorite sweatsuit.

    A girl named [REDACTED, IT’S SUCH A UNIQUE NAME THAT I WOULD DIE IF YOU RECOGNIZED YOURSELF HERE] and I were walking alongside the plastic bins that tame the beads and Duplos and shit. These were the final moments of my beloved sweatsuit. I believed it to be irreplaceable. That said, it probably came from J.C. Penney. I was neither in a position to understand this, nor to take myself shopping. To appreciate the fleeting and cyclical nature of possessions was above my skillset. This is fine. I was young. So young.

    In a moment I believed to be without warning, [REDACTED] proceeded to vomit all over me.

    This was the moment when my fear of throwing up locked in. I don’t know how to explain it, but I loved my sweatsuit with the satin planets. It was simultaneously comfortable, practical, and jazzy. And my sweatsuit with the satin planets was ruined.

    Also ruined? My previously implicit trust in the orderly.

    Whatever its origin story, my fear of the unruly gastrointestinal is not particularly unique, I guess. No one really likes acid out the front or a mess out the back. It doesn’t feel good, and it is a physical manifestation of how out of our control our bodies actually are.

    I write, as I wait for burbling abdomen to take over.

    This morning is my second round of prep. I did one last night. The truth is, it went fine. My flashbacks to the cloying gestational diabetes test drink from pregnancy were not instructive: I have not had difficulty choking the colonoscopy prep solution down. Nor has the inevitable result been nearly as dramatic as suggested by other people with anxiety on the internet.

    Now that I have hurdled the fence of my initial resistance, I’m casting my net wider, to the societal level. Why such a taboo about our bodies, and this colonoscopy test in particular? Literally everyone has a body that acts more or less the same way. I am not advocating for the crass. But who does it serve, when we are made to fear and loathe the normal and natural?

    A crappy day or two is nothing, compared to cancer prevention.