Photo via AMC TV.

Confession: I have hopped aboard the A-line skirt and Gimlet bandwagon and am completely addicted to Mad Men. More specifically, though, Christina Hendricks, who plays fiery secretary Joan Holloway, is a solid source of intrigue. The curves! The sass! I find the way that character carries herself and flaunts her confidence sexy and enviable, and Hendricks is also the focus of one of the most resonating and powerful scenes in the show: the episode where Joan is raped.

In this episode, Joan’s fiance drops by the office after hours to visit her. Upon his suggestion, she reluctantly takes him on a tour of her boss’s office, where he begins to kiss her. Joan hesitates, playfully pushing him away, telling him that she doesn’t want to have sex. His advances become stronger (as does her resistance)- until he finally pushes her on the ground, violently hikes up her skirt, and renders Joan’s attempts to stop him into resigned passivity. She lies on her back, emptily staring into the middle distance.

At first I was upset, shocked, and frustrated that the writers completely dropped the rape subplot. But Joan’s silence, and her unwillingness to fault her fiance for his actions (they eventually wed), reflect the stories of thousands of survivors and tell a larger story about women and sexuality.

Christina Hendricks, in an interview for British GQ, described her favorite scene from Mad Men. She mentioned the scene in which Joan, while conducting a focus group for lipsticks, uses a two-way mirror to reveal just as much of her body to the onlooking men on the other side as she chooses. “She’s controlling the women – she has more knowledge than them – and she’s also manipulating the men at the same time,” Hendricks said. While Joan is hardly a feminist, she has a deliberateness to her sexuality. Though she is working within the misogynistic confines of the office, she still finds a way to be treated with respect by the men inside of it, conveying an unstoppable strength as she struts from desk to desk. She is also a proudly sexual being, comfortable with her body and okay with having flings with coworkers because she wants to. But when she doesn’t want to, as we see in the scene with her fiance, that power that she holds becomes her downfall. The look in her eyes as she is pinned to the office floor perfectly conveys that sense of betrayal.

Women today are still in Joan’s office. We are often told that our worth stems only from our bodies, our beauty,  and our willingness to be sexual objects. We often try to reach, against our better judgement, the ideals of our society- and they are thrown back in our faces when we are raped or sexually assaulted. Our outfits, demeanor, and looks are often used to justify our worst experiences.

Joan’s rape, and the context surrounding it, is no different from what we experience, and must fight against, today.

I’ve been working with Women’s Initiative, a campus group, and have regularly had to respond to pieces published by The Eagle and mobilize others to do so. At the beginning of September, the paper published the first of a regular series on sex and dating that told women at AU not to worry about drunk hookups: to think of situations where you couldn’t decipher where you were and what was happening as a growing experience, and not as assault. The column was chilling. In response I launched (con)sensual, a campaign based in artwork and social media that spreads knowledge of and encourages the practice of verbal consent in any and all sexual interactions. I’ve worked closely with THE LINE Campaign since last summer, and wanted to use my experience to begin an open dialogue on campus. I worked with campus organizers on getting the posters in residence halls and bathrooms and further mobilized and collaborated with other groups on speakers and events.

For this reason, words could not explain the frustration I felt when I discovered “Dealing with AU’s anti-sex brigade.” The article proposed a number of claims: that date rape was not a valid crime, that straight women deserved rape for going to parties, and that rape was an innate action and an unimportant issue. The Eagle was at it again! The author stated:

Let’s get this straight: any woman who heads to an EI party as an anonymous onlooker, drinks five cups of the jungle juice, and walks back to a boy’s room with him is indicating that she wants sex, OK? To cry “date rape” after you sober up the next morning and regret the incident is the equivalent of pulling a gun to someone’s head and then later claiming that you didn’t ever actually intend to pull the trigger.

“Date rape” is an incoherent concept. There’s rape and there’s not-rape, and we need a line of demarcation. It’s not clear enough to merely speak of consent, because the lines of consent in sex — especially anonymous sex — can become very blurry. If that bothers you, then stick with Pat Robertson and his brigade of anti-sex cavemen! Don’t jump into the sexual arena if you can’t handle the volatility of its practice!

I was horrified by the piece and its publication. I immediately worked on a letter for the editors, and submitted a rewrite of the entire piece that was focused on the importance of consent:

Let’s get this straight: any person who heads to a party and drinks five cups of the jungle juice is unable to provide consent. To justify manipulating someone who is inebriated, taking advantage of someone with physical threats, date-rape drugs, and coercion, and/or disregarding someone’s ability to enjoy or consent to sex is the equivalent of pulling a gun to someone’s back and shooting it in the dark.

I drafted a petition and form letters for others to send to the editorial board. I met with a collective of activists on campus and organized a multitude of efforts to spread awareness of the article’s false and harmful claims. The petition went out later that week, and began gathering signatures. I spent the week in meetings, collaborating and spearheading efforts to work on messaging, make the activists on campus a more productive and cohesive unit, talking to the press, and even being featured on the CBS Early Show. I re-launched (con)sensual, and the new hostile environment that emerged from this article rendered a destructive welcome for the newest shipment of artwork.

We are still working, however, in the aftermath of the piece. We have used the incident to push for a full-time, professionally-staffed Women’s Resource Center, and for the university to hire a full-time sexual assault counselor. I pledged as the WI Rape Awareness & Eradication Dept. Director to stop telling women how to not get raped, and instead educate my campus about the inequalities that create violence and urge them to be a part of a progressive cultural shift to eradicate that violence.

The impact sexual harassment has on the lives of all people, and especially women, is impossible to ignore. Rape is one of the most underreported crimes, and sexual assault is likely to occur to over 25 percent of women on every college campus. Sexual assault happens every day, and every second. For The Eagle to hold up rape excuses and justifications as journalism is revolting. The overwhelming fear of shame most women feel after being sexually assaulted is real and painful, and the memories of their rapes should not be used as tools to combat an oppressive publication. The Eagle, for too long, sold rape controversy to its readers, using it as an impetus for readership and a method to grab the attention of students. They have since apologized- but this entire incident made me aware how fleeting the tenants of respect, consent, mutuality, and communication have become on my own campus.

Of course I loved the smoking cigarette glasses, the “Reform School Girls” references, and that hot lesbian kiss in the prison yard. I also LOVE the fashion and aesthetics of the video, never mind the product placement, a girl needs to get paid.

I was definitely uneasy though, possibly due to Beyonce’s gruesome acting. I couldn’t shake that sinking “what will teen girls think?” feeling I had. Maybe it was the girl fight in prison and those multiple homicides? Jezebel does a fine job of critiquing, mainly saying it’s long, disjointed, muddled and self-indulgent.

I don’t have much to say about the Tarantino references here, since I never saw “Kill Bill”, but I do want to thank him for turning me onto Badlands, which I discovered when he photocopied it in True Romance. There are other rips and references that annoy me, though. What’s up with suburban Gaga playing a prison chola? And no, I don’t think its a nod to L.A. celebutantes getting prison time for drunk driving. And wearing beer cans in her hair? That’s a direct snatch from Maluca in her “El Tigeraso” video, not that Maluca has the copyright on innovative ways to style hair, but it feels blatant.

I love the “El Tigeraso” video, it looks and feels like a documentary, portrays real characters and details of Washington Heights, has lush colors, and Maluca is fierce in the way she handles street harassment. It has humor, it has claws, and it ends with her bringing the Merengue as she fronts an all girl band with beer cans in her hair and golden old-man flip flops.

Which leads me to another video with another fierce young woman at the helm: Rye-Rye and “Shake it to the Ground”

Love that its shot on HD, but made to look lo-fi, love the Baltimore character and landscape cutaways and the and block party vibe with dancing, double dutch and teen-girl energy. I personally am totally jealous of the dancing and the editing.

The takeaway messages from Maluca and Rye-Rye is that anyone (viewer, teen-girl, person with flipcam) can document their neighborhood, their friends, and what they do to pass the time. That kind of observation and interpretation is storytelling, and a form of cultural anthropology. It feels authentic because it is authentic. Gaga in her prison voyeurism, smacks of Madonna co-opting Voguing, which Bell Hooks critiques in her essay on “Blonde Ambition.” Melissa Gira Grant talks of “12 year old realness” and what DIY co-opting looked like for her.

Borrowing is tricky, artists have done it since the beginning of time. Storytelling doesn’t have to be autobiographical to be “real” but if you borrow or re-interpret do it right.  Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach” video still holds up today – this is a movie within a video, a story with conflict, drama and resolution. After watching it I wanted nothing more than to move to Bay Ridge, wear that “Italians Do It Better” t-shirt, have sex with that hot guy I met in Tomkins Square Park, skip getting pregnant, and have Danny Aiello be my forgiving father. Is the video autobiographical? Who knows. But it sure works.

Gaga needs to keep it real, which doesn’t mean she should stop critiquing the patriarchy, the media and the music industry and “Just Dance.” She is grotesque, fabulous and over the top, and she needs to tell her own stories, in her own voice.

The professor was intrigued. “For those of you who didn’t raise your hand, why didn’t you?” One student answered that the term was antiquated. Another stated that she didn’t want to be accused of being a bra-burner. As more and more reasons piled up, I saw that I was one of the few people in the room who was unafraid of declaring feminism to be a part of my identity.

This isn’t the only time that I’ve been upfront about who I am. I’ve declared other things too: I’m an Asian American. I’m a writer. I’m a food maniac. I’m an obsessive compulsive. My liberal arts education taught me to do otherwise: avoid labels, don’t embrace them. My education tells me that that nothing is definite, everything is malleable. It tells me that being loud and proud is a performance, all show and no sincerity. As intellect becomes more important, conviction and the sense of self becomes less so.

College, I’ve discovered, often involves more talk than action. Brilliant minds sit in a circle and throw ideas at each other, always making sure to follow certain rules. Don’t accuse someone else of being an essentialist. Don’t say anything that doesn’t relate to the texts. And don’t ever, ever get overly personal. Sometimes I hate these rules. I can’t stand the emotional stagnation after I’ve done all that mental work. It’s because of these things that so many people are afraid to step forward and believe in something; they’re thinking and rethinking to the point of paralysis. Some people take an entire lifetime to get comfortable with a term like “feminist”, or refuse to even give it a chance. They don’t know what they’re missing.

As a new blogger for The Line Campaign, I can only hope to use my daily experiences to initiate both emotional and intellectual discussion, about gender, sexuality, the body, and all the gaps in between that complicate our movements through social spaces. My therapist once drew a Venn Diagram, with emotion as one circle and intellect as the other. She pointed at the overlapping space and said, “That’s wisdom.” The first piece of wisdom I’ll share with you is: Labels are not always lies. Don’t run away from conviction, belief, or chances to find yourself. Find your boundaries and stick to them.

I began my second morning as a Soapbox Soldier with an Americano. I ordered a small, upsized to a medium, and sat down to smell the beans before running to our first meeting at the Feminist Press, up the street from Penn Station at the CUNY Graduate Center.

This was just the beginning of a day focused on media: on getting into it, on challenging it, on consuming it, and on creating it. I was particularly interested in this, as someone who has ventured into the areas of film, graphic design, writing, and promotions in her time as a student and advocate and has thoroughly enjoyed it all.

The organizations hosting us and speaking with us were all what seemed like worlds apart: from the Feminist Press, the oldest feminist publisher in the world (and just a note- yes, book design is still an appreciated art) to the Women’s Media Center, which advocates for more equal gender representation and opportunity in the media, and even Courtney Martin of Feministing, the world of “real-life feminists” seemed to be one full of different creative outlets. This is a good sign for activists, I think- we’re going to stay busy, which means we will stay satisfied. We also get to choose from a variety of activities to express our feminism, be it through blogs or PSAs.

In terms of how these various mediums benefit feminism, well- messages. Gloria Jacobs of the Feminist Press sees it as a vehicle for feminist thought that goes beyond “women’s issues” – it’s about bringing forth the issues relevant to women’s lives, written about by women, or even separate from women but related to other social justice causes. This was echoed by Debbie of BUST Magazine, who met with us and professed deep convictions that presenting typically “frowned upon” things like cooking, knitting, and fashion in BUST was controversial but necessary: she is trying to create a feminist pop culture, not critique an anti-feminist one.

So this leaves me, the media glutton and the internet geek, slouching in trains at the end of the night piecing it all together. “Carmen, how you gonna do it? How can you? What should you do?” For now, I’m taking the young and ambitious route: I’m doing a little bit of it all. I’m going to remain vigilant, remain visible, but make more of an effort now to reach out to media outlets and let them know how I feel about their programming and coverage. I’m going to remain outspoken and nontraditionally active in feminism, but I’m also going to stick to my guns and lobby and rally and yell like all hell. This is what feminism is made of, after all. Love for your own voice and respect for your own self, and knowing that nothing else matters- except maybe figuring out which blog to publish first.

As school begins in the Capital City, I will be far away in New York. Reckless? Ah, it would appear that way, but alas- I am merely suiting up for Soapbox Media’s Feminist Winter Term, a weeklong activism conference for young people that focuses on women’s issues, women’s history, activism and methodology, and professional development.

If you managed to find out about it prior to registration and will also be in attendance, let it be known that you will have a comrade from THE LINE in your ranks. But if you didn’t, regret not! I will be reporting back via this very blog about the skills I pick up, the techniques I realize, and the people I meet.

(PS- information on the conference and a tentative agenda can be found online, and if you’re wondering who I requested they bring to town, my answer was inevitably Hillary Clinton.)

My last days at school were nothing if not thoughtful. It had been a rough ‘n tumble semester, but I found time once again for my feminism. I began at the American Democracy Institute’s Pathways to Power Conference.

Women at the conference were frustrated with workplaces in which their work was seen as unimportant. Women wanted resources, support, and purpose: on their terms. And only when they were respected and trusted by their colleagues and superiors did they feel truly valued.

I hopped from that conference to a Day of Action against the Stupak Amendment, where I was volunteering with the Feminist Majority Foundation. The amendment, which would strip women across the country of the ability to control their own bodies, caused young people from all over the country to congregate in a building where I slapped stickers on their chests and pointed them to free food and signs. They were speaking loudly, and they were harmonizing with the women I had met earlier that week, demanding the trust and respect of their government.

In the spirit of the week, I skipped out on studying one night to sit in on Cleve Jones, the founder of the AIDS Quilt, while he was speaking on campus. His words, provoking, moving, and dripping with strength, culminated in a question nobody in the room could answer: where is the anger? He said young people today seem to lack the urgency and fervor that formed the various movements he organized for, and continues to passionately work on behalf of.

Angry may be the wrong word, but to deny this generation the labels of passion and ambition would be crass. I know that young people today are ready to make waves and wreak havoc- and watching adult and young women alike work for trust and respect resonated with me as proof that the goals of the feminist movement are not always generationally fractured.

So the keywords, then, are trust, respect, and worth. (And if they don’t sound familiar after perusing this very blog, something is wrong.) I walked away from the semester assured that I am worth respect and worth listening to, and that my voice is important, whether it’s expressed in the bedroom or the boardroom. The best part of this knowledge, of course, is that it is true for you, too.

And so, I have drafted a New Year’s Resolution fit for every person, for everyone who demands respect, craves to be trusted and works to earn trust, and wants the ability to control their direction– to be louder, to be braver, and to continue to stand tall. And to stop allowing others to overlook our voices.

To truly speak out, and to make sure our voices are heard.

I actually really love talking about sex with my parents. From that special moment when I was watching Bernadette of Lourdes and asked what an ‘immaculate conception’ was and was informed more about ‘conception’ than my 9-year-old mind could take, my parents have always been pretty open about sex, and I as well. Though we don’t always get along or agree, I respect the two of them a lot, and as awkward as it sounds, am happy that they still have a sex life after twenty-three years of marriage, and are looking pretty damn good for their age.

I went out to dinner with them last weekend; my dad was in town to run the Marine Corps Marathon. I’m not exactly sure how it began, but we started talking about societies’ views on sex and nudity – how boys don’t shower together in gym like they did when my dad was my age, about an conversation that my mom once had with her students, while teaching a study-skills class back in New Jersey.

Hey, Mrs. C, we got a question.
What is it?
Do you think it’s okay to go for it if the girl is drunk?

My mom sat down with a sigh, about to humor their question.

Why are you even asking that. Do you really want to go for it and have sex with a drunk girl if you’re sober?
No, no, no! You don’t understand, don’t get me wrong, I want us both to be drunk!

Where I come from in New Jersey is almost a majority-minority town. The public high school, which I attended for two years, was 75% Latino, and speaking from observation, Spanish girls tended to be more willing to be submissive to their men, and the young men were extremely masculine – willing to fight, take risks, carry weapons, and dominate women and each other. My mom found it tough sometimes, especially when she had to deal with study-skills sessions, which weren’t the smartest or most well-behaved kids, but they respected her enough to give their honest opinions, one guy said—

Well, girls should be careful when they get drunk, they should know what us guys are like.

As my mom had said later, even if she had wanted to slap him for his words, or even if every other person we knew had scorned him for the statement, it was undeniably his honest opinion, and right or wrong, that’s what he felt and that’s how he acted in his life – that guys are a certain way, and they can’t control themselves when it comes to girls.

Feminism wasn’t something I considered back in New Jersey as ever having an impact on my life. I lived in a town where women seemed to be subservient to men by culture, and I went to an all-boys Catholic school, where the only talk of women was in the most objectified way possible – even more so due to our lack of opportunity to interact with women in school.

When there’s no girls around, it seemed that there was no check on the misogyny and masculinity of eight hundred teenage boys. But I knew something was strange, as I didn’t adhere to the beliefs of my peers, who talked about the newest bitties of the weekend, and called out at young female teachers in the hallway. I dated in high school, and was in a long-term relationship with an older, extremely artistic and open-minded girl for two years. We were inexperienced, but I couldn’t imagine an arrangement in which we were anything but equal. Other relationships I saw and witnessed in high school struck me as so foreign – how could some of these girls be so blind as to not realize how little he cared for her? How could they even call this a relationship?

In college, things are different. People are feminist, and queer, and polyamorous, and unconcerned with gender roles in a way that was impossible back in New Jersey. (There were also hipsters, a very rare sight in Bergen and Hudson Counties.) When I came back in the summer and began delivering at a local restaurant, it was a return to the masculinity of working-class New Jersey, and a culture shock for me. During the day I worked in urban Hudson County with men who called at women on the street, customers who would be abusing their wives when I rang their doorbell, and every vulgar thing said about lesbians who ‘just need to get fucked in the ass to make them straight,’ but at night I’d be in a whole new world, whether with my amazing feminist friend Carmyn in the leafy northern suburbs, or with my open and egalitarian family, or with my friends who disavowed the kind of sexism that seemed to be so pervasive in the city.

I don’t know where to go from here, and I don’t fully feel comfortable singling out the black and Latino people who always seemed to be the most sexist and the most spiteful towards women. For every Salvadorean man who would be coming into the restaurant barking at his wife and daughters there would be an equally repulsive white man throwing his wife into walls right in front of me, the delivery boy. For every Blood that came in with a sneer, his girlfriend weeping, there might be a Norteño covered in tattoos smiling at his wife and taking a sincere interest in what his daughter had to say.

Generalizations mean everything, and nothing. I don’t have enough experience in all-white areas to say whether they’re just as sexist – but I don’t think it really matters. In any population you can find good and bad.

It’s hard for me to imagine a world where sexism is dead; we hope for every generation to be an improvement on their parents’, but I see no clear improvement in mine, decades after the civil rights and first- and second-feminist movement was relevant. The people of my generation associate feminism more with the hateful ideals of Dworkin rather than the tolerance of Paglia or other modern feminists. Personally, I keep it real with the people I work with, and even if I can’t change their minds, I will never agree with their views on women for the sake of fitting in with them, or even endearing myself to them. I’ll continue trying to treat every girl I interact with, whether romantically, as friends, or even just in passing, with all the respect I can afford.

What was it like growing up in your town?

Dear(est) Jaclyn,

I was barely eighteen when I stumbled upon Yes Means Yes!, a young activist who had just discovered what sex-positivity even was and decided instantly to buy the anthology after reading the foreword in Ms. Magazine. Now, it remains one of the most pivotal pieces of my feminist history. Yes Means Yes! was the first book of its kind to grace my bookshelves. Today, my collection of feminist literature is vast, a reminder of how much I loved reading the anthology on the bus, holding it high and putting on my thick, black readers to make sure every single passenger knew exactly what I was into. It was not until I had read your piece, “In Defense of Going Wild,” however, that I was ready to finally close the book and take action. Your portrayal of college life as a microcosm of rape culture shook me. I read and reread your essay. I handed the book to my friends to read your essay. I defiantly marched down the hall, no longer ashamed to be going out- and then handed my floor-mates your essay.

It was around this time that I stumbled upon Nancy Schwartzman. She was working on a documentary about sexual boundaries and consent, so I did what all ambitious young women do: asked to be her intern. After sending over an uncomfortably long interest letter (I have yet to master concise feminist credentials), I became part of a four-woman core team at THE LINE Campaign, where I played an integral role in a movement that is changing lives and perspectives.

THE LINE is a documentary about rape that is told from Nancy’s perspective, detailing her decision to confront her attacker and making the viewer question exactly where the line of consent is, and how to make sure we all respect our partners. This grew into “where is your line?” a campaign that gives people the opportunity to share their lines and opinions on hookup culture through blogs, photos, and videos. At every screening, audience members are encouraged to cover themselves in the ink of confession, sharing their lines on stickers. Responses include “SOBER,” “Communicate with me,” and “I’m a sexual being, not a sexual object.” The project has only reinforced how important ending rape culture is to me.

In all of my activism toward rape prevention is a memory of “In Defense of Going Wild”; I have told all of the brilliant minds of THE LINE about how the essay impacted me, and how I hold it close to my heart still. Because of how important your work was to my own activism, I was hoping that I could interview you for THE LINE’s website. I’d also love to send you a copy of the film. It’s a challenge to articulate how fitting it would be to see you become involved with a project you created my passion for in the first place. I’m hopeful that you will see our work in the same light I do, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Love,

Carmen

Here’s the situation:

If I want someone it’s hard to stop me, especially if the person is male, and horny as a genetically programmed trait. There’s this guy I sort of work with. Once a week I sing at the club he manages, so we see each other enough to flirt and get to know each other a bit. I can’t make it a one-night thing, because I’m going to have to see him all the time, so I’m trying to imagine this as a possible “relationship” which it totally isn’t. The sexual tension is hot, but based on how flirtatious we’ve already been, I know if we DO date, I won’t be able to resist fucking him within a few hours.

So here goes my Cosmo Girl sex questionnaire attempt:

1. Will it help the relationship to wait or can I just go for it?

2. How long should a gal like me wait if I want to have more than “just sex” with someone I’m lusting after, and may actually start to date (not professionally)?

3. Is it always a bad idea to screw someone you work with? Even if that work is not an office, but a place where sexiness and entertainment are part of the atmosphere (like a bar or a group of TV writers (David Letterman) or something…)?