The Art of Homophobia

I'm going to backtrack here about something I meant to write about in a more timely manner, but as usual, real life got in the way.

Last month, the University of Notre Dame's student newspaper, The Observer, featured a 3-panel comic strip entitled "The Mobile Party" that ran as follows:



Panel 1: A tall, saw-like object with human hands and feet holds a bottle (presumably alcohol). He says:
"What's the easiest way to turn a fruit into a vegetable?"
Panel 2: A second figure, a human male, also holds two bottles. He replies:
"No idea."
Panel 3: The Saw Man again. He says:
"A baseball bat."

I'm not going to lie-- my jaw literally dropped when I first read this on the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) website. Thanks to GLAAD, the comic strip controversy made national headlines, and The Observer was inundated with angry letters from readers including current and former gay ND students. "The Mobile Party" was permanently discontinued. A Managing Editor resigned.

And then, the newspaper issued an apology that shifted from an apologetic tone to a discussion of Senator Harry Reid's now-famous racial remarks about President Obama. In other words, broader issues of diversity insensitivity were brought up to push the target away from themselves and instead on American society as a whole. Ah, college kids are sly.

The cartoonists claim that they were actually trying to critique homophobia in the first place through the absurd logic of the "Saw Man" character, who is literally depicted as a "tool" in the strip. This is rather difficult to believe (it comes off as all-too-convenient), especially given the fact that GLAAD reported the original punchline was "AIDS" rather than "baseball bat." Thus, the cartoonists felt that "baseball bat" was a less insensitive term than the fiery buzzword that is "AIDS," which is completely ridiculous since "baseball bat" makes light of-- and, indirectly, encourages-- physical violence against gays.

The cartoonists' desperate justification for their actions and their all-around stupidity reminds me of a situation that occurred when I was a columnist for my college newspaper. In my junior year, I wrote an article about the National Day of Silence, an annual event organized by the Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) to address the persistent bullying of LGBT students in U.S. schools. The article simultaneously denounced the Day of Truth, created by the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) as a response to the DOS urging "open dialogue" about human sexuality and the "Truth" behind homosexuality (yes, with a capital T). Except their definition of the "Truth" meant that people can de-gay-ify themselves through Jesus. Yeah, I know.

Anyway, I received an email from an editor of my school's rival newspaper, in which he accused me of being anti-free speech for my criticism of the ADF and the Day of Truth. He also asked me, and I'm quoting this word for word, "Who is being intolerant here: the Alliance Defense Fund, or Brigid Black?"

I almost laughed.

I suppose you could say yes, I was being intolerant-- intolerant of intolerance. Groups like the ADF sugarcoat their anti-gay platforms with the facade of "openness" and "truthfulness," and that's exactly what I sought to expose in my column. The "Mobile Party" cartoonists also sugarcoated the message behind their artwork, which was in reality a painfully upsetting piece. Who knows if they were truly sorry for what they did, or just sorry that they were caught.

As a former cartoonist and art department editor of a school newspaper, I'm well aware of the responsibilities that come with these positions. Cartoonists are journalists too-- as much as writers are-- and have a duty to the public that must be taken seriously. Yes, comic strips are meant to make us laugh, but not all cartoons are funny. The ND incident shows how some of the worst cartoons try to be humorous, but fail horribly in the process. And interestingly enough, some of the best cartoons are those of a serious nature. If the cartoonists were truly trying to demonstrate a pro-gay attitude, as they claim, then a more effective cartoon could have shed light on campus homophobia in a more subtle, sobering way.

I've always believed that good artistic journalism shouldn't be measured by how far the envelope is pushed, but by the intent and effect of the material. The cartoonist-artist-journalist has a choice: change the status quo and inspire readers to do the same, or perpetuate the same old sad stories. I would hope that The Villanovan staff takes a lesson from The Observer, and never needs to hear that phone call from GLAAD. Not even a successful basketball team can take away the shame of an unaccepting campus culture.

Immersed in the Twitterverse

A few months ago, I signed up for Twitter, utterly convinced that the project would be abandoned in a matter of days. Even my username-- the ever-intimidating BB_Gunz-- was a joke (its origin being my bling-sporting, rap-happy alter ego from Halloween 2008.)

How wrong I was. 7 months and 630 tweets later, I'm turning into somewhat of a Twitter fiend, and I'm not sure how I feel about it.

On the one hand, it's gotten me off of AIM, where I wasted away countless hours in high and school and college glued to my computer (who knows how many books I could've finished with that lost time?). For the most part, tweets have replaced the function of away messages, and even instant messages. IMs are a time-consuming effort, and full-time employment leaves little room for one-on-one online conversations after staring at a screen for the greater part of the day at work.

With AIM falling out of the picture, Twitter keeps me connected with friends and classmates-- people who have been busier than ever with grad work, jobs, and travel ever since the end of undergrad life-- sometimes even moreso than Facebook does (gasp!). But how?

Well, frequent tweets come off as less irritating than frequent Facebook status updates, since the sole purpose of Twitter is to tweet, whereas Facebook arguably serves more purposes, including photo album storage and an event invitation feature. We also usually tend to follow those friends on Twitter that we feel closer to (remember those 10 kids from freshman orientation you still haven't de-friended yet on Facebook? Me neither), and thus care more about what they have to say.

Twitter has also become the first place where I get my news in the morning. As I'm shoving Cheerios down my throat at the kitchen table, I can flip through a convenient mobile Twitter app on my iPod Touch. My favorite news sources-- the NY Times, NPR, the HuffPost-- are all on Twitter (though I still browse the regular Times & NPR homepages from a desktop computer on a daily basis. Twitter can't possibly cover all the good stuff.)

Thus, obtaining information via Twitter is quick and easy. Information is neatly packaged into 140-character units. Updates are short, sweet and to the point. Drawing upon "brevity is the soul of wit," Twitter users strive to entertain and educate their followers in a manner that's concise, humorous, and most of all, memorable. It's interesting, and often impressive, to see how people express themselves when given such a tight space-- it may even bring out their literary best. Tweeting, or "micro-blogging" as some have dubbed it, is perhaps our newest popular art form.

On the other hand, Twitter is yet another one of those addicting digital drugs. The instantaneous, up-to-the-minute tweets popping up in my feed leave me thirsty for the latest news and friend-related updates. But a mere taste isn't enough-- I find myself wanting to share my own news too. The result: signing in more frequently, tweeting more often. In the realm of cyberspace, Twitter is a massive black hole right in the middle of it, and I'm getting sucked in.

Not to mention that my previous comment calling Twitter an "art form" neglects the juvenile, incoherent babble that graces the pages of numerous D-list celebrities. The tweets of reality stars like Tila Tequila and Snooki aren't much different from what you'd find on the wall of a bathroom stall. These are the people with legions of followers numbering in the hundred thousands (and sometimes millions). And they contribute to what many eager tweeters consider to be the main draw of the Twitterverse: civilians stalking celebs.

Personally, I don't follow too many celebrities on Twitter (the count is at two with Ellen DeGeneres and Coldplay), and perhaps this is part of why I'm not entirely hooked. I also tend to tweet far less on the weekends or stray from Twitter altogether, choosing instead to spend time with my significant other (who I miss very much during the tweet-filled workweek. Is Twitter use a kind of coping mechanism for the lonely long-distance relationship? That's an essay for another time). Additionally, I try to limit myself with a max number of tweets, which is normally somewhere between four and eight. More than ten just seems like too much for one day-- once I hit the double digits, I back off. I don't want to flood my friends' timelines with drivel, which leads me to my last cautionary measure: avoiding the mundane (i.e. "Just woke up. About to use the toilet. Sweet").

Thanks to Twitter, just about anyone can publish their thoughts to the world. It's a gift, but many don't think about it that way. Using the written word to communicate to the masses used to be an amazing honor, and I always made that my mantra as an amateur student journalist. It all comes down to the fact that tweeting is, essentially, whatever we make of it-- in short, you are what you tweet.

Plight of a People

Sometimes it just isn't possible to dodge the real world. By this point, nearly everyone on the globe is aware of the tragedy of catastrophic proportions currently going on in Haiti. Last week, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck a country that has already long been ravaged by poverty, disease, and economic ruin. Photos of dead bodies and crying children have been featured front and center on the New York Times site each day since the disaster occurred-- these are the human faces of the horror. I don't think there's a decent person out there who can look at such graphic visuals and not feel anything, be it shock, sorrow, or utter hopelessness.

While my knowledge of Haiti is somewhat limited, I haven't been totally in the dark about the country's ongoing bleak situation. Last year, one of my good friends began working with a microfinance institution based in Port-au-Prince. Before that, I learned about Dr. Paul Farmer's work fighting TB and AIDS in Haiti when I read Mountains Beyond Mountains for a college history class. I now know more about the country than ever before, but unfortunately only because of the earthquake.

I may not have the strongest personal connections to Haiti, but my hometown certainly does. The five boroughs (Brooklyn in particular) are home to the largest communities of Haitians in the United States. When I was a kid, I remember almost always hearing Creole being spoken on the B3 bus in the Flatbush area near the mall. Haitian culture lives and breathes in Brooklyn, and so many locals are mourning the loss of their people and the place they once called home. I can barely get a grip on the measure of their devastation.

When these deadly natural disasters occur-- Hurricane Katrina, the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami-- my mind has trouble registering figures like "50,000 feared dead." I want to feel grateful that New York isn't on top of a fault line, in a tornado zone, or likely to get hit by a tsunami. But instead I can't stop thinking about how vulnerable we all are, and how much suffering can be caused by what we as humans can't control: forces of nature.

And yet that statement isn't entirely true. While it isn't physically possible to stop a 7.0-magnitude earthquake from causing massive destruction, it is possible to be more prepared for its effects in order to prevent further loss of life. But Haiti didn't stand a chance, and that's what I find so heartbreaking. Things were already awful, and just got exponentionally worse. This was honestly the very last thing that the poorest country in the Western hemisphere needed. If these people can hold onto some semblance of hope in a time like this, then their resilience truly amazes me, because I don't know if I could do the same.

A few days ago, my fingers found themselves texting the word "HAITI" to 90999-- AKA the Red Cross relief efforts. In the past, I've rarely given to charities mainly due to a lack of steady income, as a full-time student supported by my parents and whatever cash I've scraped up from part-time jobs. But being employed full-time (for the first time) has allowed me the wiggle room to make a donation out of my own pocket, which is all the more meaningful. I can only hope my handful of dollars helps at least one person-- even if it equates to a single sip of water.

So this is the new year...

Welcome to 2010. Fun writing it out, isn't it? And yet I'm sure that come March, I'll still be mistakenly dating every form with "09." Seriously though, it's a huge change. After ten years of the 00s, my hand is automatically programmed to write a "0" after "20" when writing out the date. This will undoubtedly take some serious physical and mental effort, but I think I can do it.

Ah, the end of a decade-- and the beginning of a new one. It's intriguing how we put time into neat little packages: decades, centuries, millenia, etc. The benefit is immense for the purposes of recording and retelling history. Without organization, history is a giant mess of nouns: people, places, and things. Centuries provide order to the chaos of a millenia; decades provide order to the chaos of a century.

For weeks, the much-hyped coming of 2010 produced an endless array of "Top ___ of the Decade" lists pertaining to 00s politics, pop culture and everything in between. In addition, social and cultural commentators have also attempted to give a title to the 00s as a whole, i.e. "The Decade of [fill in the blank]". But such all-encompassing labels can seem a bit lofty and premature-- has enough time passed to gain any real insight? What happened to retrospect? (Then again, VH1 did premiere its "I Love the New Millenium" series back in 2007.) However, the urge to sum up our life experiences and draw some kind of meaning from them is only natural. We're reflective creatures, be it by nature or nuture's doing.

I couldn't help but notice that an an overwhelming amount of these assessments of the 2000s have been extremely negative. Commentators highlight (lowlight?) September 11, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, various natural disasters, and the current economic crisis as key low points. Monikers such as "The Decade of Decadence" have sprouted up. I've even seen one writer label the 2000s as "The Decade Where Nothing Happened" (a gross misnomer; that simply isn't true). But every decade has its fair share of tragedies, so why crucify the "aughts" (that's what we're calling them now, I think) in particular?

Speaking from personal experience, I quite literally lived through one of these disasters when I fled up the West Side Highway for safety on September 11. Yet do I consider this the single most memorable moment of the decade? And on a broader scale, did growing up in the US during the "war on terror" permanently taint my experiences? No, and no. These events are undeniably significant (and awful), but they're not the first things that come to mind when I reflect on the 00s.

For myself and for an entire generation of early twentysomethings, the 2000s are my quintessential coming-of-age decade. The "aughts" are especially fitting of the label, since my high school and college years fit back-to-back into it (2001-2005, 2005-2009). It was near-perfect storybook timing. And generally speaking, it feels good knowing that I've come a long way in the past ten years. 2000 saw me as a skittish adolescent. Exiting 2009, I can proudly say that I'm slightly less skittish. Okay, fine-- a lot less. While I've got a lot of living left to do, the 2000s may turn out to be most critical period of my emotional development and self-discovery. There's an undoubtedly enormous gap between the 12-year-old girl and the 22-year-woman.

Personally, 2009 was perhaps my most bipolar year ever (the year, not me!). Whereas the highs were like a trip up to the clouds and back, the lows were like wounds that couldn't stop bleeding. College graduation was the epitome of bittersweetness: an amazing accomplishment that simultaneously stripped me of the life I'd grown to love, four years in the making. Couple that with the departure of my significant other to the west coast for a possibly indefinite time period, for which I had to force the thought of life without her down my throat (a terrible taste). Luckily, two important things happened: I got a job, and she came back.

Honestly, if I was able to make it through 2009-- the good, the bad, and the ugly-- then I can get through anything. With a strange and unprecedented bravery, I'm ready for new things, as long as I get a grip on those bursts of nostalgia. True, I still miss the pre-grad era, but at this point I've had eight whole months to process post-grad living. The physical calendar change from 2009 to 2010 wills me to go forward in a mentally encouraging way. With '09 gone, there's no turning back now (I meant to post this entry on New Year's Eve, but as usual, the real world got in the way-- as much as I try, it's impossible to be a full-time dodger).

Of course, I still find myself emotionally clinging to the 2000s. How could I not? The past ten years will always be a part of me, but they don't have to weigh me down. Instead, let them be balloons, lighter than air, that I'll hold on tight to. And if the 00s are balloons, let the 10s be the vast, sweeping sky above.

Up up and away.

Pre-Christmas Reflections

Is it really almost Christmas already? I think I say that every year. Honestly though, the past few weeks have whizzed right by. And I'm also at the point where I can say that the past few years seem to have whizzed right by, too. Just in case you haven't picked up on it yet in any of these posts, I am one of the most secretly sentimental 22-year-olds I know. Fittingly so, I find it nearly impossible not to be in a near-constant reminiscing state of mind-- especially on Christmas. (I wonder whether my tendency to over-analyze and over-sentimentalize everything in painstaking detail is the the mark of a writer's mind, or insanity. Or both.)

I remember my childhood Chrismases pretty fondly like anybody would. They had all the right elements: presents under the tree, seeing [almost] all of my cousins, endless amounts of chocolate, etc. Indeed, Christmas is experienced in its purest form when we're children, when it consists only of toys, food, and fun. There's no stress or drama yet; that privilege is reserved for the adults (unless you're like Charlie Brown: wise beyond your years).

But of course, when the obligations and conflicts that the holidays create start piling up, the pure joy gets slowly filtered out. That's what happened as I got older-- much of the magic started to disappear. Like any child on the verge of adolescence, I lost my faith in Santa Claus, realizing that Christmas presents were not mysterious gifts from the North Pole, but the direct result of my parents' hard work and everyday sacrifices.

Coupled with that was my falling away from the Church. It became harder to sing songs like "O Holy Night" at Mass when I couldn't appreciate them on a deeper religious level like I was supposed to. I wish I was more of a believer, not because I'm "supposed to" (thank goodness my family doesn't force religion upon any of us), but because I'd probably get more out of Christmas. (I'm not a full-out atheist, but I'm doubtful that God exists, if that makes any sense.)

But hey now, don't get any ideas-- I promise I'm no Scrooge. If anything, all of us are surrounded by Scrooges these days, what with the neverending talk of the recession and uncertain times. Life isn't easy, but I'm just grateful that my family and friends are alive and okay. We have a roof over our heads. My parents still have their jobs. I have a job. Life is tough, but at least we have life. That might seem like a 52-year-old's way of looking at the world rather than a 22-year-old, but I guess I'm an old fogey.

Most importantly, I don't need dozens of glittery, sparkly presents to enjoy myself, or else I'd be buying into the whole holiday sham. I see through the facade of our gift-obsessed culture and I refuse to get lost in it. I do like getting gifts-- who doesn't?-- but I don't need a gift to verify Christmas (and I'd much rather give them). That might sound hopelessly cliche, but a lot of people still don't get that.

Recent years have also brightened my holiday season like never before, ever since being lucky enough to share it with someone special in my life. Some of my favorite memories of our relationship are from Christmas activities and events that we experienced together: making gingerbread houses in the Italian Kitchen at Villanova, visiting the Rockefeller tree, attending and hosting holiday theme parties. "Merry Christmas Darling" by the Carpenters sums up my feelings pretty accurately at the moment:

I've just one wish
On this Christmas Eve
I wish I were with you
I wish I were with you.

I never thought twice about all those melancholy Christmas songs until I was in love, of course. And yet the hurt of missing a significant other is also something to be grateful about-- I'd rather have her to miss than no one at all. But for now, I'll have to be content with listening to the Chipmunks' "Christmas Don't Be Late," making a vanilla pudding pie, and putting up a few last decorations with my mother. Merry Christmas, readers.