Engender Zine October 2017

engender

October 2017

a p roduction of the

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Contents: n

catio

Dedi

ara to Cl

et Bridg

and rts Robe livia Lee O Untitled

ling

Schil

iddleton

Claudia M

“I Am” Amanda Ochu Roar Hear Me , n w ro C sai y Flower Ishani De This is M

Health Katie Weber ZZQ Playlist Jane Clinger

and Ishani D

esai

work

Poetic Art

The O

Zoe Tao

nly O

ption

Chlo

e Wil

son

Remedy for Spleen

Bethany Lynn Fow

ler

Bravada

Claudia Mid

dleton

Moth

er’s S

Goodby e Olivia L e

tory

Anon ymou

s

e and B

ridget S

chilling

Dedication to Clara Roberts

We recently lost a valued member of our community. Clara Roberts was involved with the RWRC her entire four years at Rice. She volunteered with us, was a part of our coordinating team, and directed the Vagina Monologues in Spring 2015. Her love, passion, and support of the Vagina Monologues was just one instance of her commitment to uplifting the voices of marginalized people. Clara was a wonderful friend and had an unwavering commitment to human rights and social justice. During her time with the RWRC, she inspired us with her passion, drive, and innovative spirit. The impact of her dedication to intersectionality and inclusivity are still felt today institutionally in the RWRC, as well as individually with the coordinators and directors who knew and worked with her. She was respected and loved by everyone who worked with her. The RWRC owes her unending gratitude for her work and service on behalf of us and social justice. Clara was set to begin law school at NYU in the fall, which was another extension of her dedication to bettering the lives of others.

We can only imagine the impact she would have had on the world, but it is very clear that even in her short time on this earth she had a tremendous impact on those around her. In her honor and memory, we will continue to work for a more just and equal world. We will forever remember her for her love, friendship, and spirit.

Olivia Lee and Bridget Schilling

Claudia Middleton

I Am Africa.

Noun. The 2nd largest continent in the world.

The only one to lie within all four of the earth’s hemispheres.

Comprised of 54 nations.

That’s 6 more than Asia, 19 more than North and South America combined And 4 more than Europe Yet some people still have the audacity To act as though all of Africa is the same.

Africa is rich—in gold, in oil, in culture.

Africa is diverse.

With over 1500 recognized languages, We are more of a melting point than most places will ever be.

We are the location of the origin of man, The longest river in the world.

The Great Pyramid of Giza….

Nigeria.

Noun. The most populated nation in Africa And the 7th most populated nation in the world.

Located in West Africa.

Comprised of 36 states And home to more than 370 ethnic groups and tribes, Including Igbo, which I am.

The homeland of my parents.

The place of my descent.

But having been born and raised in America, There’s always been a disconnect.

Amanda.

Noun. A girl who has grown up in a society That has conditioned her to be ashamed of her skin; As if her melanin were a sin.

She tried to blend in, but something just didn’t fit.

And it always felt like it was her.

They tell her, “You’re pretty, but I’m not into your race.”

Like hearing that doesn’t leave a

Bitter aftertaste in her mouth.

She’s had to lie about the pronunciation of her God-given name Simply because it was too difficult for the Western tongue.

She got tired of correcting them, So she just let it slide, But how many times has she wondered why Some people didn’t think her name Was worth learning how to say in the first place?

And wait!

You don’t “act your own race” Is not a compliment.

Oreo.

Noun. Slang. Derogatory.

A black person who is regarded as having adopted The attitudes, values and behavior Thought to be characteristic of middle-class white society.

Nigga.

Noun. Informal. Offensive.

A respelling of the word Nigger, A contemptuous term for a black or dark-skinned person So the next time you think about calling me…

An Oreo Your Nig Your black friend Or anything other than my name, Don’t.

Because yes, I am black.

That is a fact.

But look me up in the dictionary And you’ll see that I’m also…

A Writer A Sister A Visionary A Friend But most of all I am me.

Amanda Ochu

Ishani Desai

Health This past year, I called my doctor’s office and told the receptionist “I think I am very sick, I need to come in and see someone very soon.” They told me that I could have an appointment sometime the next week.

I went to the appointment, and met with someone. They confirmed that I was indeed very sick, and needed to see a doctor. I could see the doctor in about three weeks they said. In the meantime, I stayed very sick and started to get worse.

Nearly two weeks had passed but I needed to see someone immediately.

I called the doctor’s office again, frantic, panicking over the phone. They got me in to see another person that day. They chastised me and said, “If you were this sick, why didn’t you say something? We would have treated you sooner.”

Unbelievable? Yes, for physical health care this would be clearly negligent. But this is the exact experience with mental health care that I have had at Rice. Everyone with Wellbeing and Counseling is very nice, but they are completely overloaded. Unless I literally call them in distress, I wait weeks before seeing anyone. This is not an effective system for myself or for any of the other students who I know face the same struggle.

If the Rice administration claims to care about the health and wellbeing of their students, they absolutely must expand and reform their mental health services.

Katie Weber

Jane Clinger and Ishani Desai

Poetic Artwork Creating poetry with hospice residents often reveals themes of pain, suffering, and their overcoming in seemingly impossible circumstances. Last year, I worked on a poetic artwork with a transgender woman who had become wheelchair-bound upon entering hospice care. Soon after her admission, her boyfriend called and asked for $25 to pay his phone bill. The poem is taken word-for-word from this resident.

Be Stable I won’t have to call and depend on someone else’s $25.

What I have now, I’m trying to hold on to.

I’m just trying to be okay. Be stable.

I was in a dying state when I came here.

Could barely stand up.

Could barely open my eyes.

In the long run, we’re all the same.

We all bleed, cut and cry.

I just have a lot of heartache.

But I’m gonna keep positive thoughts and…that’s it.

When I was having a cigarette, I was talking to God…if you just take a minute to have a little spirituality…

I’m gonna thank him for every blessing…I’m thankful to get up every day.

Because He made me see what life really is. I’ve been to some beautiful places.

It’s really just staying strong for myself. Or I won’t be strong for nobody else.

I’m happy now-I didn’t feel like a “gay male,” I felt like a woman trapped in a man’s body.

I was entertaining people. I was good at it.

It’s beneficial to do what you want to do.

If you have to hide what you wanna do, it’s not right.

This work follows a condensed narrative of this woman’s experience as a person who is both HIV-positive and transgender. It starts with a determined tone, as she insists on self-reliance and expresses disdain for her ex-boyfriend’s financial dependence on his now-disabled girlfriend. Then, her words transition to expressing deep gratitude for being alive with the possibility of leaving hospice care, despite having received a terminal prognosis upon admission.

When she states “we all bleed, cut and cry,” she positions her own social and physical suffering on the same level of people who are not necessarily patients, nor queer-identifying. She draws a sense of relationality to others and personal strength from this acknowledgment that suffering is universal.

Also present is her reliance on a higher spiritual power who is responsible for the positive aspects of her life. She draws reassurance from her belief that the beauty she has experienced and seen is gifted to her by this power. Importantly, these gifts are presented by God to her-not to the biologically determined male she was born into, but to the transgender woman who desired beautiful things.

In the last four lines, she solidifies her identity through intense self-reliance. Despite her identification as female having been reduced to being a “gay male” throughout her life by the people around her, she has surpassed these oppositional voices in her concrete identification as female.

She cites her experience as an entertainer in night clubs, noting that the stage is a space in which she doesn’t need to hide who she is. She gained confidence in herself as a woman through dancing and pleasing crowds.

She finishes this part of our conversation by noting that one should not hide their identity; she uses the language of right and wrong to characterize the perceived need from social pressure to disguise her femininity, and her realization that it is actually “right” to express it. Through literal performance, she constitutes the strength of her identity as female. This hospice resident can no longer work her former job as an entertainer. However, she has transcended seemingly impossible circumstances such that her disability does not significantly take away from her identity as a transgender woman. When I read this aloud to her, she put her head in her hands, wept, and exclaimed, “It’s a poem!”

Zoe Tao

The Only Option Today my professor lectured on totalitarianism I thought it was in response, but apparently it was on the syllabus.

Yesterday I was too tired to be nervous early in the night.

My mother calls me hysterically to talk about emigration procedures and how to get me dual citizenship I say: I’m tired, stay calm, breathe, take a shower I say: I promise it’s going to be okay Three hours later I say: Mommy I’m scared.

I look to the map with my friends and we see a wash of red that says fuck you.

Fuck you, we don’t care about you Fuck you, your concerns do not matter Fuck you, we think you are trash Fuck you to my mother’s first time voting, when the country that has become her home turns its back on her Fuck you to every survivor of sexual assault who has the crimes committed against us mass normalized by a man who brags of committing them Fuck you to every person who believes in compassion and love.

My anxiety disorder reminds me of the ways that I let this happen: Dammit I should have phone banked for Florida Why did I put academics above the future of our nation Why didn’t I work for her campaign this year Why wasn’t I in battleground states organizing Why didn’t I go to Ohio for college, maybe my vote would have helped How can I be a public servant if this is the way I act How did I not see this coming.

To every person who says, everything is going to be okay, I say this: This is not about what he will do, it is about what he has already done.

This political science major has miraculously stopped thinking about policy for a second Because the nature of the people who populate this country has reared its ugly head revealing to me a country that is not my own.

I live in a country where it is celebrated that my future president assaults women I live in a country where hate makes you cool I live in a country that doesn’t want me to be safe in fact I live in a country that doesn’t want me to be here at all.

But my therapist says we should channel this into productive thought So even as I am paralyzed to the foundations of human fear: fight or flight I must quote a friend who said “no good will come from leaving” And so for the sake of productivity I promise the following: I promise to bring my children to vote with me, tell them about every person who died for that right, teach them about the power of the vote I promise to show more love in my life to take care of those around me be the rock of compassion that I need others to be I promise to nurture the good that perseveres in this world attempt to understand the hate that has become the bedrock of this country and work to heal the pain that has divided us so deeply I promise to raise up the women in my life and remind them that they are capable of anything and everything strengthening them for the fight ahead I promise to stamp out rape culture make the communities I am a part of havens of safety and help raise a generation of kinder, more respectful, and loving people I promise to seize upon this horror to fuel my fire to mobilize myself and those around me to scream and shout about what I believe in.

I promise to never stop fighting the good fight because that is the only option.

Chloe Wilson

Bethany Lynn Fowler

Remedy for Spleen Some recipes might call for a smile As the first ingredient, But I’ll tell you that is sometimes hard to find.

The grocery stores always seem to be sold out.

And though other shoppers’ carts may be chock-full They will have none to spare.

Do not stoop to the canned variety.

As they are full of artificial sweeteners, And preservatives, I find, make even a lovely smile Too salty to bear.

The farmer’s market is a good idea, But if the weather is lousy – As is so often the case when we have turned to this page– Smiles will be stiff and unripe.

Don’t bother.

I’ve read recipes that use Psilocybin Mushrooms, But those bring certain risksLegal at the very leastSo I cannot, in good conscience, recommend them here.

Start instead with a deep breath.

Cold air, for this, will do just fine.

Be sure it reaches at least down to the belly So that the abdomen begins to soften.

This is important As it will allow later for the possibility of laughter.

If you are near a coast, get to it with haste.

And repeat the first step ten or eleven times.

Ocean or not Water enough to swim in is worth finding.

But a bath in no good; Baths are slippery And slipping backwards will force us to start again.

That’s all right, Start again.

Once in water, shake out the scalp Lie back, feel buoyant.

Stargazing makes an excellent substitute for floating.

If you are running short on stars and water, Then you really are in need of this remedy.

Put on some music; make sure it’s loud Bounce on a trampoline Run until you can’t Scare yourself Scream The end result should be the same: Horizontal, thrilled, breathless.

Notice The whole of the earth Behind you.

The emptiness of the universe In front of you.

Trace The millions of chance events, Constellations in uncharted stars, That have, without plan or design, Led to your existence and to the entire world.

Stay still Though your heart may be pounding, Stay still And imagine falling off The world.

Don’t you want to stay?

Serves one or more.

Bethany Lynn Fowler

Bravada My grandmothers vanity was built on an arsenal of lipstick.

Once a day she sat and plucked from the mosaic skeleton a golden tube, a bullet.

Load, aim, fire onto firecracker lips When men came to poke in their heads she shooed them in a lilting Texas twang, used clever words as if her closet was a movie from the fifties, all black and white, to tell them she wouldn’t be ready until she stood out from the bland so she dressed her lips in crimson drenched them in blood red As she drew on her lips they began to sing Opera, I swear she had magic stuff.

Made her mouth glisten and her eyes twinkle just to think about putting it on.

Here is my genealogy, laid out like a department store Generations of mothers with perfect cupids bows and gashes of tattooed pigment on pale faces And now, because I was raised to have lips stained the color of a blushing plum, I can stare in a bathroom mirror in a busy airport and feel stunning.

I feel like a woman. Two swipes of pigmented cream and I feel like a woman.

Claudia Middleton

Mother’s Story We were sitting in our car, parked on the side of the road, key still in the ignition, when my mother finally told me what happened to Anne Marie. It was a sunny afternoon in April, already hot outside as summer began creeping up on us, as always too soon. I was in 8th grade, wearing a school uniform I desperately hated and I had made a comment to my mother, not thinking.

Words had spilled out of my mouth with no regard to how they would be perceived; they came from the mind of a 14 year old unable to hold more in her mind than fleeting thoughts of boys and PMS woes.

I had said, “Mom its Anne Marie’s birthday, I almost forgot.”

She smiled weakly at me and replied “No, honey it isn’t,” and then quickly pulled over. She had that tight smile on her face. The kind we wear to stop tears from falling, as though by forcing our features into this pleasant formation we can will our body to forget the memories that want to spill from our eyes. She had obviously been thinking about this and my words had brought something to the surface.

I had gotten the date wrong. The story I grew up hearing was that Anne Marie had died, been born dead. There were years where I remember we had celebrated her birthday, going to picnics in the park, just being together. I don’t know how I learned about Anne Marie, who had told me, but the story had always been there, born dead, and it was an image, a moment, my childish experience of the world could never quite allow me to understand.

But in this car, as we sat together with the windows open in some neighborhood I can’t quite recall, my mother finally told me the truth.

I was a year old when everything had happened. She had gotten pregnant, was existed, preparing for another baby, making quilts with what would be her name. And then something unexplainable went wrong. A doctor informed my parents that this baby, still in the womb with only 2 months to go, had a number of birth defects and was unlikely to live long, maybe never even leave the hospital. My mother listed them to me, words too long, too

complicated, and yet not enough to explain why this had happened. She explained that the decision they had come to, her and my father, was to have a late-term abortion.

And then she explained why.

This is the part that has taken me years and much maturity to understand, to move past.

She said she had done this for me. That it was all for me. That in her mind the thought of bringing this sick child into the world would mean sacrificing the life she had envisioned for me. It would be confining me to a lifetime of guilt, guilt when I would want to play t-ball or soccer, would want to dance or swim, would want to date, would want to do the things Anne Marie most likely never would. This future my mother saw and said she could not stand the idea of.

That moment in the car was the first time I had ever seen my mother cry, really cry, like the emotions she felt were just too much to be contained in her small body and violently burst out of her. My first thought was that I never wanted to see someone I loved in that kind of pain again. So, I never told her and don’t plan to ever tell her how I felt.

My 14 year old mind couldn’t move beyond the ‘me’ in this scenario. I instantly felt responsible, like I had done this. If I had not been there, if I had not been born first, maybe this child would be. Maybe I would have met her, spoken with her, maybe she could have become something, but the ‘me’ in this situation was to blame.

I felt this way for a long time and carried this self-centered notion around inside of me. But I don’t feel it anymore, it has slowly gone away with age and more life experience; I cannot control what happened then and even if I could it isn’t my place to, for her or anyone. It was my first lesson in tolerance and one of the most valuable things I have ever learned. This was her history, my mother’s - her story. It was her choice, her decision; all I can do is love and support her and be thankful that she allowed me into this space to better understand her.

Anonymous

Goodbye Goodbye

Olivia Lee and Bridget Schilling

Founded in 1995, the Women’s Resource Center was opened to fill a need on campus. Since then, our needs and what we have been able to do on campus have changed. We still face pushback, but now we can be a space that is for love, comfort, and laughter. We have both been a part of the RWRC family since we matriculated to Rice and have heard conversations that changed our world views, made friends, and felt empowered by the people with whom we share space.

The Women’s Resource Center is a living, moving body made up of every person who walks into the office or comes to our events. We are made of the love and respect that our volunteers embody and spread around campus and in their lives. While we, as directors, influence the direction of the RWRC, we play a small part in everything that the Center has the capability to be on campus.

Although we are sad to leave, we have confidence that everyone who has made the RWRC wonderful will carry on a legacy that we can be proud of. Thank you to everyone who has made our jobs easy and everyone who has spread love and passion around campus during this difficult year.

We love all of you and are so blessed to have been a part of the Women’s Resource Center’s story.

- Olivia Lee and Bridget Schilling, RWRC Directors 2016-2017

Hello He l l o

Julian Wilson and Zulfa Quadri

Hello Zine readers! Although we are sad to see our predecessors leave, we are excited to continue in their legacy as the new co-directors of the Rice Women’s Resource Center. Our vision for the Rice Women’s Resource Center is to make it as visible and inviting as possible for all kinds of people -- not just women and well-informed feminists. We want the RWRC office to be a place of connection, conversation and collaboration across the board.

Starting the new year with a new modern logo design is reflective of our goal of inclusivity, and the sharp intersecting line of the design itself are meant to represent strength and intersectionality. We want to focus on collaboration, activism, and compassion. The RWRC office has always been a safe place for students to hang out and connect with one another, and we hope this year to also make it a comfortable one.

We hope that our time as co-directors will continue to foster new ideas and events that will make the RWRC an even more valuable part of the feminist movement. Revamping the office and the logo is just the beginning.

- Zulfa Quadri and Julian Wilson, RWRC Directors 2017-2018

see you in the next issue of the engender zine!

Editors in Chief

Jane Clinger and Ishani Desai

Contributing Authors

Amanda Ochu Katie Weber Emily Jacobsen Zoe Tao Chloe Wilson Bethany Lynn Fowler Claudia Middleton Anonymous

Contributing Artists

Claudia Middleton Ishani Desai Bethany Lynn Fowler

Want to submit something to the next edition of engender?

Send your submission to jwc8@rice.edu, iad1@rice.edu, or womenrc@rice.edu!