Rant: Grad Students, You are Not Oppressed

I keep seeing posts online by graduate students (those working on Master’s degrees or Ph.Ds) about how much their lives suck and how oppressed they are.I sympathize with those who are grad students who are genuinely are being mistreated – such as those working as Graduate Assistants who are being asked or pressured to work extra hours without pay (which is highly unethical but far too common), and students of color who are not being granted equal opportunity as their white peers – but that’s what not what this rant is about. This rant is about graduate students who feel they are being victimized simply because they are graduate students and because OMG, being a graduate student in the hardest thing in the fucking universe.

Before anyone questions my ability to truly understand how oppressive graduate school is because maybe I haven’t been through a grad program myself or something, let me say that I do have an advanced degree in my field. I got this degree after dropping out of two other graduate programs, and I believe I only finished the degree I do have only because every day for over a year I repeated the same mantra to myself, “I just need to fucking finish.” I know graduate school isn’t easy. I’m not about to suggest that it is.

But, look. Here’s the thing. Graduate school is a privilege. Yes, I know, grad students, you’re drowning in loan debt, you’re broke, you’re buying cheap cigarettes and eating canned soup at home because you can’t afford to go out, which makes you feel like you’re part of some fringe minority group suffering while others stand idly by. But the truth is – you’re not.

You are among a minority, sure — but it is the minority of those who have been given access to the highest levels of education.  In March of 2011, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that 30% of American adults held Bachelor’s degrees , and that’s the highest number ever on record. That means that if you “only” have a four-year degree, you already have a higher education level than seven out of ten Americans. And according to this New York Times article, at least in 2011, less than 11% of Americans held graduate degrees. You will be – or already are, if you are working on a second or third advanced degree – part of this population. That’s amazing. That’s tremendous.

Especially when we consider how you got there. It probably began with you thinking that you wanted to go to grad school, and with you starting to look at programs. Shopping around, as it were. Narrowing down your choices about where to apply. Now, as I recall, though my memory may be a little rusty on this point – this kind of agency is usually not something that genuinely oppressed people have in abundance. Those who are oppressed generally do not get an array of choices. They don’t get to point to a map and say, “hmm… the entire world is open to me. Where shall I go? Decisions, decisions.” Actually, that sounds more like something a financially wealthy person would say, perhaps about where to take their yacht.  I know – not all of you are from wealthy backgrounds. As the first person in my family to graduate from any kind of college when I finished my Bachelor’s, I get that, and I’m not saying that you do.

What I’m saying, though, is that you have other resources. Because the next step in the process was that you applied, and then people selected you to go to their school. And then you were chosen. Not targeted, like a religious minority being persecuted or a victim of a hate crime being attacked, but chosen like the winner of a blue ribbon at the state fair, or, you know, someone who is hired for a position at a company. These folks looked at your application materials and thought, “yes, this person is one of the best and brightest. This person is smart. This person has potential. We want this person at our school.” While others were rejected, you were not.

Then, the most important step of all: You accepted.Now, maybe you didn’t know every single little thing that would be waiting for you on the journey ahead when you signed up.  But do we ever know about anything we agree to completely before we do it? When we get married, do we know about the fight we’ll have in fifteen years? When we buy a car, do we get to see every issue the vehicle might have in advance? All we can do is research as much as we can and then come into any situation armed with knowledge and our own best judgment. And when it comes to graduate school, we can get a lot of that knowledge beforehand. We can compare schools side by side. We can email, meet with, and talk to professors in the department. We can interview current and former students. So on and so forth. Sure, you maybe didn’t realize that you wouldn’t be able to see friends who live far away very often, or that you would have to give up your favorite hobby to make time for school. Maybe you didn’t realize that grad school requires a lot more investment than undergrad, and that other friends of yours who don’t go to grad school will have more money than you. But the potential for these things to happen – well, that information is out there, or, rather, out here – on the Internet. It’s also circulating among your friends who have already gone to grad school, and your professors at your Bachelor’s degree institution who went to grad school themselves. You’re a smart person (you got into grad school, didn’t you?), and so you must have had at least an idea of what you were getting into when you chose to enroll.

Last but not least, graduate school is not a prison. You are free to leave any time. That’s not to say that you’ll be able to find a great job with just a Bachelor’s Degree in Philosophy or Underwater Basketweaving or whatever (I certainly couldn’t, with my degree), but — you are not physically mandated to be there. Even if somehow you’ve become convinced that you’re stuck there — you are absolutely not. You still have choices, just like you did before you got there. Sure, maybe having a job making a million dollars isn’t one of them for you, and maybe that feels overwhelming. And maybe you need to pay back a lot of student loan money after you graduate and that feels overwhelming. But please, use the intelligence you (clearly) have, and while you’re multitasking between writing all those papers and/or talking about how many you have to write — please take a moment to check yourself before you start using that other “o” word.

Re: “Female Inmates Sterilized in California Prisons Without Approval”

A friend just posted a link to this article on Facebook.

Knowing what I know about civil rights in this country and the prison-industrial complex (which isn’t enough, as it is, but still), how can I say that I’m even remotely surprised by this news?

And maybe surprise isn’t the right word for what I feel.

Maybe it’s just sadness.

Sadness that even with evidence like this, so many of my fellow Americans choose to deny the existence of injustice in our present time — (“it’s 2013. We’re over that kind of stuff now. We have a black president – what more do you want?”) turning their backs while this kind of violence is performed with their tax dollars.

On Silence and Safety

A few days ago, a white friend asked me just what, exactly, is wrong with racism, anyways.  “I mean, somebody has to be on the bottom, in any society. If it isn’t black people, it would just be somebody else,” she said. “I don’t know why people are complaining and making such a big deal out of it.”

Now this might sound ridiculous, or even disgusting, but my entire life, I’ve been taught that when it comes to issues that don’t appear to directly concern me, rather than shutting people down or causing a fight, that, even if their opinions are different than mine, the absolute best thing I can do is to withhold my judgment, not take sides, and respect everyone’s views — that the best thing I can do is keep the peace.

And so, this is partially a thank you letter to that friend. Because what she said made me realize that my way of thinking was incorrect. The truth is: not every opinion is worth my respect. Keeping the peace is not always consistent with acting with integrity, after all. Sometimes there are moments when lines have to be drawn, when we have to stop listening, and who it concerns, directly or indirectly, becomes an irrelevant question. Sometimes there are moments where we are left wondering: What kind of person do I want to be?

*****
Every year in November, my community – the transgender community – gathers together to read the known names of every transgender and transsexual person who has been killed for being transsexual or transgender around the world since the previous November.  Out loud, we read the names and the cause of death for every single person. “Charlie (Erika) Hernandez,” we read in 2012. “Detroit; stabbed to death. Githe Goines; New Orleans; strangulation.   Soraya  – Valmir de Silva; Brazil; gagged with pieces of wood inserted into the anus, and penis burned with alcohol. Tiffany Gooden; Chicago; multiple stab wounds. Thapelo Makutle; South Africa; throat cut, partial decapitation, genitals stuffed into mouth. Brandy Martell; Oakland; gunshot. Tracey Johnson; Baltimore; gunshot. Deja Jones; Miami; gunshot. Kendall Hampton; Cincinnati; gunshot. Kyra Cordova; Philadelphia; gunshot.” And this was only a handful. Every year we read over one hundred names; sometimes, more than three hundred.

Most of my friends who are not transgender do not know about this day. They do not know that for me, it is the most sacred day of the year.  They do not know that on this day, I do not answer phone calls. I do not send chatty text messages about pets or the weather; I do not tell jokes. On this day, I am too filled with gratitude that I have been granted twelve months of being alive, listening to all the fates that could have been mine to be able to participate in the ordinary business of living. On this day, I am too filled with sorrow – a sorrow that can never be explained, a sorrow that must be felt in the marrow to be understood – sometimes, to leave my house at all.

Some people might say that all of this – these names, these descriptions – are just lies made up to fuel some liberal agenda.  This is why many people who are not transgender do not know about this day. This day – where no politicians are present, where not a dollar is made – is sacred because it is the day we speak the terrible truth out loud.

*****
Most of my friends who are not transgender would be shocked to hear that for me, this is a day that marks my mortality – shocked, probably, to think that it has anything to do with me. I don’t look transsexual; I look like any other ordinary, nerdy white graduate student. Even to my friends who knew me before I physically transitioned, they see me as being similar to themselves in fundamental ways: somebody who reads mystery novels and drinks Diet Coke; somebody who likes dogs, forgets clothes in the washer; and somebody who belongs to the protected sphere that they do, where the possibility of dying at a young age never has to cross your mind. And, for a long time, I believed that living in this protected sphere was the goal. If I could just seem “normal” enough, if I could just get along with everybody and not contest things, if I could just respect everyone’s viewpoints, then I would be safe. But now, I wonder: Is “normalcy” – is “safety” – the ability to turn one’s back and say “this is none of my business; whatever you think is fine, no matter what” – really the place where we should want to be?

My brothers and sisters do not all die at the hands of a single person with no witnesses. There have to be other people present in some of these situations, perhaps within feet of where our bodies are thrown, people so close they get splattered with our blood. In some of these cases, there have to be people across the street from the ditches where our bodies get thrown, where we might lay breathing and alive – from where we could be saved with a telephone call they could make – but a phone call that is never made. There have to be people not wanting to jeopardize their own spot in the sphere called “normal”; people not wanting to contest things, people who value their own safety above all else.

*****

Now, maybe you think a white woman asking inside her own house what the problem is with racism is not related at all to these brutal, violent deaths. Maybe you think I’m some kooky liberal just trying to push some bullshit agenda.

And maybe it is a masochist agenda to voluntarily want to face horrible truths. Maybe this is why I’ve been limiting myself to just one day a year. But tonight I wonder: Why can’t every day be sacred, echoing with honesty? What happens when we say: Actually, what you think about continuing to deny the same privileges you’re given to another group of people isn’t actually fine? What happens when we say: As someone who fundamentally believes in equality, in liberty and justice for all, that, actually, this is my business? And, tonight I wonder, when all is said and done, who do I want to be: The person who can guarantee their own individual safety by not making a scene and who stays quiet, or the person who steps out of the complicit shadows to make the call?

*****

Since the verdict was delivered in the George Zimmerman trial, I’m not the only one asking questions right now about where I stand – on justice, on truth, on power, on privilege, and on what I’m personally willing to risk. Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor (and author of Night), says “we must always take sides…” that “silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” And I wonder: What is the value of a friendship, of a community, of a culture, that asks us to say nothing in response?