Amendment Literary and Art Journal 2007

Amendment

Promoting social change through artistic expression

2006 Virginia Commonwealth University Student Media Center

2007

Richmond

Promoting social change through artistic expression

Amendment

Amendment

Amendment is an annual fall student publication funded by student activity fees.

Amendment accepts rolling submissions year-round and offers workshops for writers and editors. We encourage submitted works of creative essays, personal narratives, short stories, plays, poetry, and prose. We also welcome artistic media including drawings, paintings, photography, and other forms of fine and applied arts. For submission guidelines, please visit our web site www.studentorg.vcu.edu/amendment or contact our editorial staff at amendmentvcu@gmail.com. You may visit our office in person or mail submissions to: Amendment, VCU Student Media Center, 817 West Broad Street, P.O. Box 842010, Richmond, VA 23284-2010.

No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission of the VCU Student Media Commission and the editors of Amendment. All materials copyright 2007 by Amendment. All rights reserved.

Mission Amendment seeks to

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provoke thoughtful conversation and communication concerning issues of gender, race, class, sexuality, “ability,” and any other oppression the student body sees fit to discuss;

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extend and equalize publishing opportunity for VCU students and additional emerging writers and artists;

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inspire writers and artists to seek knowledge through artistic and critical expression while increasing awareness about social and political issues.

Acknowledgements Amendment would like to express our most sincere gratitude to the following allies: The many people of the Student Media Center and the VCU Student Organizations Services Center for all of their Administrative help and support, specifically Greg Weatherford, Olivia Lloyd, Mary Franke, and Yolanda Jackson.

We would also like to include in our thanks the other student media on campusPoictesme, WVCW, The Vine, and The Commonwealth Times.

We would like to thank specific academic departments for helping us with promotions and assisting in the development of talented writers, artists, and critical thinkers, particularly Women’s Studies, English, Mass Communications, Psychology, Sociology, Social Work, and the School of the Arts.

We appreciate the support of the many professors, staff members, and individuals around the VCU campus who helped with publicity, inspiration, and support, specifically Dr. Diana Scully, Dr. Deidre Condit, Gay Cutchin, Dr. Jennifer Fronc, Dr. Patricia Perry, Margaret Altonen, Dr. Sarah Jane Brubaker, Dr. Ann Creighton-Zollar, and Dr. Elizabeth Cramer. We want to give a very special thank you to Dr. Janet Winston, for her inspiration, thoughtfulness, dedication, and encouragement.

We would like to thank the student organizations, leaders, and activists for their help on so many fronts throughout the past year. We would also like to thank our readers and our contributors; without you, we would not be here.

Staff Editor in Chief and President LeaAnne Eaton Editorial Staff Sarah Clark Kristen Hall Tisa Kanchanahoti Khia Lyle Danielle Shutt Kristin Vamenta Celina Williams Faculty Advisor Liz Canfield Production Manager Mary Franke Student Media Director Greg Weatherford Business Manager Olivia Lloyd

“Be whatever you need to be, love whoever and however you want to love. Only one rule makes that all work: Don’t be mean. If you’re not mean, you can do anything you want and have a pretty terrific life.”

—Kate Bornstein from March lecture at VCU

Introduction Amendment is now knee-deep in its fourth issue! Whew! This publication has grown and evolved over the last few years due to the hard work and persistence of VCU students and activists, community allies, and faculty/program mentors and supporters. What began as a class semester project has become a yearly University-wide publication that aims to address important issues in our lives and to express creatively our varying visions for a more just world.

I couldn’t be more pleased to introduce this latest issue, our most dynamic issue yet! Kate Bornstein’s March 1, 2007 visit to VCU exemplified this spirit of open-minded acceptance, community-building, and appreciation for all things “freaky” or “different” in our lives. The pieces you will find in this issue embrace this diversity, difference, and freakiness. From the very personal to the political to the academic to the creative, the work you see here in this issue (and in our other publications) moves to tap into what makes us different in order to find what can bring us together. This journal couldn’t have come together without the dedication of a small (yet mighty) group of student editors and supporters. Of course, the overwhelming amount of quality submissions we’ve received over the past year has been inspiring and amazing, and many of these submissions are featured in the following pages as well as in our zine.

If you’d like to become involved with Amendment, don’t hesitate to email us! We’d love to have you. As always, we accept submissions year-round. Our email address is amendmentvcu@gmail.com. Happy reading!

Liz Canfield Faculty Advisor

Contents c

Untitled #4 Dustin Lacina

Mission

Acknowledgements Amendment Staff

Introduction Liz Canfield

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Janaya Jenn Viohl Confessions Michelle Hoppen Beware of Domestic Werewolf Sally Courtois Imperialist America: A Call to Action Jade Conner Aflame Whitney Brown A Dead Poet Laura Ashworth

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Breaking the Barriers Elizabeth Bochicchio imitation Amber O’Hara Because He Whistled at Carolyn Bryant Dexter Booth intertitle Danielle Shutt Deaf With Desire Maya Goldweber Machine Dance Kathryn Parker Degress Amber O’Hara Liberation Crystal Davis Upward Climb #1 Carolyn Morris Upward Climb #2 Carolyn Morris

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BUSCAPE Mr. Yamada Marginalization Heather MacNalley She is My Lover Neal Gwaltney Hand Banana Mr. Yamada The Exciting of Tiny Hairs Maya Goldweber Machine Dance Kathryn Parker Fresh Air Dustin Lacina Fitzgerald and the New Women in “Babylon Revisited” Sarah Clark Freud Jenny Bailey

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The Apple Debra Schneider Pink or Blue Dr. L. Daniel Mouer to say Amber O’Hara Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis Elaine Kelley Guillotines Jenny Bailey My Father’s Father’s Father Who Was Beaten Sarah Rodriguez Dr. King, Sir, Reverend Brandon Whitt Transformation JennViohl Editor’s Note LeaAnne Eaton

Janaya Jenn Viohl Four Freudian Slips accost out the nudes’

freshly bared flesh with its fangs placed awkwardly in a twilight exposed Jacuzzi after our last human living event; an apocalypse surrounding this discretely placed armoire.

I feel its teeth sinking in and out again that supposed sacred-luminescent skin for craving suspended half-blinded grips from stark-raving-mad hands and lips that trace tactile lightening trips

on breasts and hips and thighs with counterfeit eyes manifesting four obscure human figures.

This is the end it says.

Confusingly tenderizing me, singularly and solitarily Amendment

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tenderized, I’m wearing thin upon its palate I can taste no more.

Salvia is unbecoming when mixed in saliva.

This is the end it says.

It closes in, boxes in and swallows up my head, my sex like a box for the dead; hidden from orange juice-colored hummus sunrises and suicidal sunsets.

This pale horse will drive me through into unconsciousnessI’d force it too, to pull and rip and tear bare flesh, only its best to force me to want more than I ever have before.

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Confession Michelle Hoppen When my boyfriend of three and a half years told me he was transgender I freaked out. As much as I like to give the impression that I’m totally open and free, an equal opportunity dater, I still freaked out. There was crying, there were hurtful words (“I always wanted a normal wedding!” is one that I’m not very proud of, and also something that isn’t very true. Chalk it up to sociallyimposed freak-out), there were long talks. And in the end I accepted it and even embraced it. I encouraged my new girlfriend to set up doctor’s appointments, went with her to Fan Free Clinic, helped her put on makeup. That brings me to one issue I had (and still have) regarding switching genders. I am a girl. And while I do wear makeup, I don’t feel women should have to. Nor should they have to shave their legs, or wear skirts, or have long hair. Yet when my boyfriend became my girlfriend she became a typical girly-girl. Was that what she had always wanted, or was that just what society told her girls did? What makes gender anyway, if we’re assuming it’s socially constructed? If you feel like a girl in your head, if you already are a girl, why do you need to wear different clothes, or change your body? A woman who gets a double mastectomy is still a woman, even without breasts. So why do you need breasts to transition from man to woman? Comfort level would probably be the obvious answer. But it must be more deeply ingrained than what most of us call “comfort”- a fleece blanket, that old pair of jeans. If you’re willing to put your life on the line, risk friends and family, and pay thousands of dollars it’s more than “comfort.”

When people ask what being transgender is all about my answer is, “Imagine this morning you woke up with the same mind, but the body of the opposite gender.” Of course we can’t imagine that. Nor can we imagine what it’s like to live with that for our entire life. What you may be able to imagine is this: what if tomorrow you woke up and your partner had the same mind, but the opposite gender body? How would you feel? What would you do? It’s an issue that seems Amendment

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to get left behind when talking about transgender topics. There aren’t many groups for partners of transpeople. When it happened to me, after the initial freakout, I felt left behind. My girlfriend was meeting new people who shared something with her that I could never understand. I was also worried- what if she turned out to like men? And when that fear was realized I felt angry- why didn’t she tell me sooner? Was she using me all this time? Now, two years or so after she told me her secret I’m dating someone new, someone who’s also transgender. He hasn’t decided if he’s going to transition or not, but I think he will, one day. He’s female, no doubt about it, and I know that he’d be much more comfortable with himself if he had a vagina (although I’m sure he’d use the word “cunt”). I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried. I worry I wouldn’t find his girl self as attractive. I worry the hormones would make him more attracted to men (although I’ve been told that will never happen). I worry the hormones will change his thinking so much I won’t recognize him. And I know that regardless of that I will stay with him, sex change or not, because I love him. I like to think I’m above the gender binary, but I still have a lot to learn.

In my defense, it’s tough for partners too. That doesn’t allow for prejudice, but it is something to be realized.

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Beware of Domestic Werewolf Sally Courtois There is urine on the seat again.

At this point, I know a “sorry” is not a promise.

I can’t tell you that though, Or you’ll stop saying it.

I’m warning you.

I’m dangerous.

Don’t interrupt me, Stop nodding your head When I know you’re not listening, And next time we exchange some “You always!” ’s and “Give me just one example!” ’s, You must run.

People like me, In relationships like mine, Have been known to kill their lovers.

Waking up in a mess of shed hair And warm blood.

Claws just starting to sink Back into the Hades of fingertips.

Ears no longer spires.

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For the less evolved, The coccyx will be throbbing.

We then gather our weakened senses, lick our wounds and pretend to mop this moment from memory.

Damned to pay our dues with Please and thank you’s, apologies, and pride, I’ll still do my best to crave you.

But this is slowly becoming the hardest chore.

And I notice the bed gets smaller by the year.

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Imperialist America: A Call to Action Jade Conner “Rape is not a reward for warriors/ it is war itself/ a deep, deep tearing, a dislocating of/ the core of the womanself./ rape rips heartlessly/ soul from spirit,/ obliterating colors from beauty and body/ replacing melody and music with/ rat venom noise and uninterrupted intrusion and beatings.” (Madhubuti 172). Rape, the universal onslaught on women’s bodies. Rape, the very crux of woman’s oppression. Rape and the eternal threat of the rape of not only her body, but also her spirit, keep all women in a perpetual state of terror and subservience. In class, Dr. Condit mentioned that to date, there have been over 360 cases of rape against female American soldiers committed by male American soldiers. I believe that the systematic rape of women in combat is merely a representation of the culture of rape in which we live, amplified. The American government continues to participate and perpetuate a systemic war against women. Patriarchy has taught us that if we are “good girls” that rape and domestic abuse will not happen to us, but feminism must teach us that being a “good girl” guarantees nothing but continued oppression.

Empirical evidence has shown us that nearly 1/3 (31 percent) of American women have reported being physically or sexually assaulted by a partner at some point in their lives. (Family Violence Prevention Fund). While these numbers may seem awfully high, it is crucial to remember that this study included only American women and only assaults that were reported. The United States has long claimed to be the pinnacle of equality for all, yet women appear to not only have been left out of the equation, but have been brutalized and tortured for centuries. The condition of women in the United States is often viewed as the standard of greatness by which women of other countries should want to live. We would be doing ourselves injustice as women if we did not demand better treatment in all countries. If the conditions for women are so horrible in Amendment

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America, that a third of us have been intentionally harmed by a male partner does the war exist in Iraq, or is there a global war against women? I think that the brutal treatment of women in the armed forces is a classic expression of how the world views the female half of the species. A survey of 579 out of 659 women attending the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs concluded that 70% of the women had been victims of sexual harassment and 12% of the graduates that year were victims of rape or attempted rape in the four years they attended the academy. (Reports from: USA, 2003). The sexual harassment of female officers and soldiers in the armed forces is sadly only the tip of the iceberg of subordination that encapsulates nearly every woman on this planet.

American culture teaches us patriotism and respect for the armed forces on the grounds that it serves to protect us from the unnecessary evils of the world. The armed forces also serve as one of, if not the, most violent institution in American society, with the exception of the home. The Department of Defense has heralded itself as some sort of police force bent on ridding the world of the “bad guys,” but as a woman it becomes painfully obvious to me that perhaps the “bad guys” are not only in the Middle East. If one of the leading superpowers in the world today cannot ensure the safety of its female citizens is it not safe to assume that there are serious flaws in the entire system?

As women, should we be obligated to defend and stand behind our country despite the abuses inflicted upon us minute by minute? I do not, I cannot believe that simply because we are “American women” that we are expected to be grateful for having the luxury of living in a society that merely rapes us as opposed to mutilating our daughter’s genitalia as a rite of passage. The Bush Administration has created a war for the sake of bettering humanity, but can war be justified when women’s bodies on both sides of the argument are sacrificed as a means of either claiming victory or satisfying man’s “biological need” for orgasm. I think that America, as a nation is breeding boys to become men who respect the armed forces for their bravery and camaraderie, yet I find nothing more cowardly and debilitating to us as a culture than the merciless torture 8

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and slaughter of entire nations under the guise of pre-emption. According to Madeline Morris in By Force of Arms: Rape, War, and Military Culture, “the norms currently prevalent within military organizations include a configuration of norms regarding masculinity, sexuality and women that have been found to be conducive to rape, including elements of hypermasculinity, adversial sexual beliefs, promiscuity, rape myth acceptance, hostility toward women and possibly the acceptance of violence against women.” (Morris 651). The armed forces trains men to essentially be hyper vigilant, killing machines. I think that the entire military system creates men who love to hate not only the evil tyrant in another country, but women as well. The military has taken every dangerous, backwards trait about masculinity and created an entire sub-group of violent, aggressive killers. One of the most dangerous groups, I believe, for women today is a group that maintains the archaic stereotype of man as warrior and woman as weaker-than-man. America has begun to lean more towards a dictatorship in the way that it is run. Not only do we live in fear of attack from other countries but we also fear our own government perhaps most of all. In their article “Twenty Years Later: The Unfinished Revolution,” Peggy Miller and Nancy Biele say, “Men rape because they can. Sexual violence is sanctioned, at worst taught, and at best excused.” (Biele 50).

When we analyze the injustices committed against us, as women, by our own government disturbing patterns begin to emerge that have often led me to question my own loyalty to my country. Stan Goff wrote an article titled “Institutionalizing Sexual Aggression in the Military”, in which he concluded by saying, “Out of almost 900 general officers in the US armed forces, only 34 are women. That is less than 4%. The percentage of women leading Fortune 500 companies, on the other hand, while still low, is around 16%. Of the 100 members of the US Senate, the most powerful political boys club in the world, 13 are women” (Goff). Recently, I’ve begun to identify America as the imperialist, capitalist machine that it is. I believe that in a true democracy women would not have had to fight for nearly 75 years for the right to vote that men felt to be their god-given right.

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Much like Valerie Solanas in the “SCUM Manifesto”, I too am issuing a call to all women to join a revolution that will ultimately cause the fall of a patriarchal system that we have cooperated with for far too long. Liberal feminism has not ventured far enough in its search for equality. Liberal feminists would have us believe that as long as we continue to play nice and request equality when it becomes convenient that one day, surely one day men will allow us the very freedoms that they took for themselves. Men will continue to pillage our bodies and our spirits until we become the women we know we are in our hearts, and take the offensive. Women have played the defense and have appeased men since the beginning of time. It is not easy to begin a revolution with thousands of years of inferiority burned into your subconscious, but I think that as feminists there is an undeniable stirring in us that will not be satisfied until our battle is won. I think that one of the most important things Solanas says to sum up her argument for the subversion of patriarchy is that, “there’s no reason why a society consisting of rational beings capable of empathizing with each other, complete and having no natural reason to compete, should have a government, laws, or leaders” (Solanas 52). She proposes that women must withdraw from the work force, and eliminate the use of money in order to cause the collapse of the American economic system, which I also believe would cause global economic collapse and the implosion of patriarchy.

Do women have an obligation to follow the laws, moral and legal, of a regime that has done little to include women or people of color for that matter?

I absolutely do not feel that the laws that govern this country should apply to women. We did not help create them, they offer us very little protection, and they often go against our rights over our own bodies.

I have a vision for a future in which women work alongside men at the same jobs, for the same amount of pay, with no threat of attack whether it be personal, or political. I have long dreamt of walking down a street at night and greeting people that I meet because I have no fear of rape, robbery, or physical attack. I want my daughters to live in a world in which the word rape does not exist, where they are free to do as they please without constantly 10

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asking themselves, “does this person have the potential or the ability to attack my person?” Therefore I propose two solutions to end the state of terror that has kept us in bonds since the beginning of time.

In general, men have proven to women that their inability to respect, care for, and love others is an unfixable dilemma. One of the most difficult, yet effective means of eliminating patriarchy is the “pre-emptive annihilation” of men. This would require years of planning in order to ensure that women would be able to reproduce without the assistance of sperm. Stem cell research has made it possible to manipulate cells into either ovum or sperm cells which could lead to major breaththroughs in reproduction. If sperm could be created then the elimination of men would be made possible and a more peaceful, cooperative society could be planned. The problem with this solution is that in order to eliminate men we must become violent by nature. Every woman would be required to contribute by destroying the men in her life, which could prove difficult because of feelings of companionship and love. I think that this theoretical perspective on the destruction of patriarchy is a bit ahead of its time as we are not yet able to fully achieve reproductive independence. It does work on the grounds that we have a tendency as Americans to follow a “kill or be killed” mantra, but I don’t know that this sort of cutthroat mentality is necessarily productive to woman’s emancipation.

The more realistic, and efficient solution that I offer is to follow Solanas’ theory of economic liberation. I want to take it one step further and also argue that women must eliminate reproduction to assist the boycott against capitalism in order to bring down patriarchy as quickly as possible. All women must first withdraw from the workforce within a few days of each other. We must stop using money to buy anything. If every woman refuses to consume using money the financial world will crumble. A single day of mass looting by all the women of the world will be unstoppable. Jails will not hold billions of women because it simply cannot be done. The American justice system, already in shambles, will meet its demise attempting to prosecute and convict so many women.

One of the most important things to realize with this sort of revolution is that Amendment

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a lack of total cooperation would invariably lead to failure which would cause a setback and revolt that would ensure women’s progress would be reversed. I realize that many women who follow conventional religions or are from certain backgrounds will take issue with mass looting, but I have to question their basis for believing that stealing is wrong. When an oppressed group is starting a revolution and overthrowing an entire system must we not also throw out the rules that system has set up for us? Religion tells us that we should not murder, steal, commit adultery, and so on, but we’ve seen that men themselves commit these crimes in higher numbers than women do. If we are going to follow the rules that we’ve been told we must follow there can be no revolution. It takes a complete disregard and tossing out of the ideals that have been instilled in us since we were children to destroy the entire system of patriarchy, which is perpetuated by capitalism.

Despite the dangers of moving forward with this movement it is essential to acknowledge the power that we have as a gender. Failure is not possible if we all cooperate and dedicate ourselves to the fight for justice in a world that has yet to recognize us as fully human. We have an obligation to ourselves as people to rid the world of an all-encompassing system that has forced women into roles of degradation and servitude. It appears to me that we have no choice, but to destroy patriarchy and every violent system that accompanies and reinforces it. We must work quickly, we must organize, we must plan, and we must fight for our lives. The attack against us has gone on for far too long and I think that we must realize no real progress will be made unless we take it for ourselves.

Conservative America and the world will continue to fight our every request for the advancement of our gender. We have a moral obligation to ourselves to get up off our knees, to stop begging for the leftover scraps of equality that men want to allow us. Our grandmothers started a revolution and now it is up to us, the daughters of the revolution to stand up and finish it.

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Works Cited Biele, Nancy; Miller, Peggy. “Twenty Years Later: The Unfinished Revolution” Transforming A Rape Culture, Ed. Emilie Buchwald, Pamela Fletcher, & Martha Roth, Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 1993. 47-53.

Domestic Violence is a Serious, Widespread Social Problem in America: The Facts. 14 April 2006. Family Violence Prevention Fund. http:// www.endabuse.org/resources/facts/ Goff, Stan. “Institutionalizing Sexual Aggression in the Military”. 15 July 2005. Feral Scholar. 14 April 2006. < http://stangoff.com/?p=165> Madhubuti, Haki. “On Becoming Anti-Rapist.” Transforming A Rape Culture, Ed. Emilie Buchwald, Pamela Fletcher, & Martha Roth, Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 1993. 165-178.

Morris, Madeline. (1996). By Force of Arms: Rape, War and Military Culture. 45 Duke L.J. 651 “Reports from: USA.” WIN News Vol 29. Iss 4. Pg 77. (2003). 14 April 2006 <http://proquest.umi.com.proxy.library.vcu.edu/pqdweb?index=6&di d=475179741&SrchMode=1&sid=3&Fmt=3&VInst=PROD&VType =PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1145044369&clientId=430 5#fulltext> Solanas, Valerie. SCUM Manifesto. New York: Verso, 2004.

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Aflame Whitney Brown If I tell you a secret, should I whisper? Or can you lean your shoulder into me, as my lips drip with words only you were meant to hear? Or I could yell my secret. We both know you love the enticement of taboo words. I know the scent of mango that lingers on my collarbone has your attention. Or perhaps my preparation is in vain. Perhaps the white woman in the perfume ad doesn’t even see me. She sees through me, and she sees to that white man’s pocket.

As I stand in line and count my pennies, carefully rolled with mama’s love, I forget that they don’t give a damn about me. This society fuels the passion I need to light the match to send it to hell. Will I walk away from the flames, or will I become a martyr? Will history know my name? Will you remember this poor black girl? When you see my name in the newspaper, will your blood rise? Will your eyes water? Or will you write me off as “that crazy black girl who lit the world aflame?” I don’t mind. You see, crazy has always been my middle name. But it wasn’t on my birth certificate. I was blessed by his highest and anointed with it. How many “crazy black girls” can say that?

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A Dead Poet Laura Ashworth Once you thought you could not have them, rounded belly now a lovely curse, tight grip around the spatula, the bacon spits you cannot write.

The daffodils are growing strong it is bee season and they want your flowers.

One by one, roots exposed with a face like a fist, you pull them up.

Soggy boots at the door he is home.

He, the bogeyman the lost daddy the one that slipped inside your ear with ink that gave a wink to all the pretty skirts.

He took you half way there, but you drove yourself mad.

You never had a chance, cracked against the bowl and poured.

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that says, you cannot write with that grin on your face.

You complain, there is nothing in my head.

She needs the moon.

She needs her pillbox back.

She knows his name death, death, the rotting pomegranate.

The sick, safe way he makes her feel.

Yes, she knows how it is to taste it on her tongue.

She is the real Lady, arisen twice only to plop back down.

The grave, the final day, the baby’s bottle and warm milk, the door locked, the little girl, the bumblebee in the iron box that stung for twenty years.

And him, and him.

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Breaking the Barriers Elizabeth Bochicchio The world is full of people with various disabilities both visible and invisible to the naked eye. Disabled people often feel isolated and cut off from the world and are often misunderstood by non-disabled individuals. Deafness is a disability that may be invisible to others. I feel more awareness needs to be spread in the hearing world so misconceptions can hopefully be abolished, civil rights will be protected fully by the government, and the overall quality of services for deaf and hard of hearing individuals in state agencies can be changed for the better.

Deaf with a capital letter refers to people who are deaf and use American Sign Language as their primary way of communicating and make this part of their culture. Deaf with a lowercase letter refers to people who are unable to hear well enough to rely on their hearing as a way to process spoken information. Hard of hearing refers to people who have some hearing and are able to rely on it for communication and feel comfortable with doing this (Banks).

There are many common misconceptions, held by a majority of hearing people about deaf individuals. A mistaken belief of people who are deaf is that they all know and use American Sign Language, often times this is not the case. Deaf (deaf) children are often born to hearing parents and are taught to communicate orally, or use lip reading because they are integrated into school with hearing students. The common assumption is that all deaf individuals are excellent at lip reading. The truth is, it impossible because no one is able to lip read one hundred percent of what is being said. Misunderstandings can also arise in school settings. Teachers may slow their speech to a great extent in order to help the student. Teachers may also assume that deaf students do not know how to read and write well, when in reality the student is capable.

As a result, they may leave the deaf student feeling unintelligent and ashamed of their disability. A worse situation would be a teacher who may choose to Amendment

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ignore the disability and accommodations in order to better prepare the child for life in the real world. A false belief faced by deaf adults is that intermarriage between deaf individuals results in deaf children being born. Another common erroneous idea concerning the deaf community is the idea that they are unable to drive due to the hearing loss.

A mistaken idea faced by hard of hearing individuals is that they choose what they want to hear and ignore the rest. This is not the case as many people who are hard of hearing have varying degrees of hearing loss. Another misconception is that all people who are hard of hearing wear hearing aids, but this can vary from person to person depending on the severity of their hearing loss and condition. Many hearing individuals think that all hard of hearing people are elderly, which is not true. About half the people who suffer from a hearing loss are young people, such as children or working adults.

Discrimination was often faced by many people of the disabled community before the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990. Deaf (deaf) and hard of hearing individuals are protected and granted accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act. A person is defined as having a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act if one of these concepts is met. First, the person has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits a major life activity. Second, the person does not have a current impairment but has a history of one. Third, a person is regarded as having impairment by the employer. Finally, the worker is associated with an individual who has an impairment and is discriminated against because of this association (Castellano 3-4).

There is no comprehensive list of disabilities that are covered under the ADA. If a person has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits a major life activity, they are protected under the ADA. I am very grateful to live in an age where discrimination against the disabled is slowly being lessened.

There are many accommodations that must be doctor’s offices and hospitals must provide for deaf or hard of hearing individuals. If requested 18

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by an individual whose primary means of communication is using American Sign Language, an interpreter must be provided. The interpreter is paid for by the agency where the interpreter will provide services (Banks). All too often in doctor’s offices, patient’s family members, friends, or even children are asked to interpret for them. This violates the patient’s right to confidentiality.

The information may be misunderstood because of the lack of training in the proper usage of medical terminology. If an interpreter is hired, some doctors or even counselors may ask the interpreter for their own opinion. The deaf or hard of hearing individual may even be referred to in the third person (Lucas).

The ethics of the interpreter are violated because they are only supposed to sign and translate what is being said to and from each party. Many public places have equipment that allows a person to use auxiliary aids, so they can follow and understand auditory material. If they do not use a sign language interpreter but are unable to hear what is being said clearly these aids can come in assistance. Strobe lights are often installed to go off when a fire alarm is sounded to alert the deaf or hard of hearing individual to the potential danger (Banks). A recent addition to increase the rate of communication among deaf and hard of hearing individuals is the use of the Relay service. A person who is deaf or hard of hearing dials 711 on their TTY, TTD, or any other assistive telephone they use. It allows them to communicate with a person who uses a standard phone through the use of an operator (Banks). The advancement of telecommunication has made life much easier for deaf and hard of hearing individuals.

In the past several years, many civil rights of deaf people have been violated by the police because they are not trained on how to interact with deaf individuals properly. In several cases in Ohio, attorneys that represented deaf clients reported that many of their clients had been denied their constitutional rights. The police who knew some sign language interpreted their rights and did the interrogation. The deaf suspect was left confused as to what their rights were and lacked the knowledge of their entitlement to their constitutional rights (Lucas). As a result of their uncertainty many deaf suspects were vulnerable Amendment 19

to signing waivers; this allowed the deaf suspect’s to easily surrender their constitutional rights (Lucas).

When a sign language interpreter is provided, it is critical that the interpreter is trained properly. Proper training is needed in order to get the most crucial and critical of details correct. If something is signed incorrectly it can change the meaning and syntax of what is being said, this can also lead to more confusion and the loss of constitutional rights of deaf individuals.

In a study done by Rob Hoopes, a professor of sign language interpretation at Sinclair College, Hoopes found that only one of twenty words translated by interpreters were understood by deaf individuals. Interpreters who had completed an associate’s degree were understood better, but conveyed very little grammar (Anton). According to Hoopes, interpreters who had ten years of experience or more were able to be understood fully by deaf individuals and were better qualified. (Anton). This is logical since all signs that are used may not be universal and will change over time. Interpreters need to know a variety of signs that a deaf person may use for a particular word.

Deaf (deaf) people need to be educated, and awareness needs to be spread about the civil rights they are guaranteed. If the details of deaf suspects’ rights were explained to them clearly and fully, then perhaps instances like police brutality could be avoided. According to an issue of the Los Angeles Times published by in 1999, a 72 year old deaf man named Sanford Diamond was arrested for attempting to use sign language. The police did not understand and viewed his attempt at communicating as aggressive behavior towards them. The Los Angeles police responded by knocking Diamond to the ground, and he was badly injured. Sanford Diamond was then held for hours, without knowing why he was being held. The charges were eventually dropped, and a lawsuit was settled in September of 2003. Diamond won $130,000 in damages from the Los Angeles Police Department (Anton). The police department also agreed to provide an interpreter within 45 minutes to deaf suspects, witnesses, and crime victims. The Los Angeles Police Department also promised to better train officers on dealing effectively with deaf individuals. It was promised by 20

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the department that they would reach out to the Deaf community (Anton).

Hopefully, these actions were done by the Los Angeles Police Department.

Some police departments are trying to educate their officers on how to handle situations that involve deaf suspects or witnesses. Police departments such as the Howard County, Maryland department are trying to improve the lines of communication. In 2005, they sponsored 3 days of sign language training as well as strategies for dealing effectively with the deaf. The department wanted to police officers and deaf individuals to be able understand each other more, as to not result in misunderstanding and eliminate any misconceptions held by both communities. Also the Maryland Sheriffs’ Association has developed motor vehicle driver cards that state that the driver is hearing impaired and entitled to an interpreter by federal law (DeFord). This will make it much easier for officers to identify individuals who are hearing impaired and needs an interpreter. Also provided at this training was information about Deaf culture. In Deaf culture, the use of gestures and body movements are essential in communicating; the deaf individual may want to step out of his or her vehicle in order to communicate.

However, an officer could view this as a threatening approach. In complex situations, a trained interpreter should be called on. Relying on suspects’ family members or children to interpret for them was stressed as inappropriate. This was stated as a reminder by the instructor, Ron Fenicle, “You can’t legally force anyone to interpret” (DeFord).Yet, many officers still ask family members to interpret when a trained and qualified interpreter should be called.

Many deaf people as well as hard of hearing people, including myself, have felt isolated from the hearing world throughout their lives. I have always felt as if I did not belong in either the Deaf world or the hearing world. I felt stuck between the two because I did not have normal hearing and was not deaf.

These feelings led to my taking American Sign Language in high school because I wanted to be able to communicate with many of the deaf students I knew. I also wanted to learn more about Deaf culture. These feelings of isolation are partly because there are still so many false ideas still held about deaf and hard of hearing individuals. Thankfully, strides towards improving civil rights and Amendment

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equality have improved greatly in the past century.

My hope for myself and for the future for the Deaf and hard of hearing community is that awareness will continue to keep spreading. When you are able to communicate at least a little with a deaf or hard of hearing person who uses American Sign Language you can see a glow in their eyes. Deaf (deaf) people are more than willing to share their knowledge of American Sign Language with others. People just need to be more tolerant and willing to learn. Hopefully, one day we can live in a world and the barriers between the Deaf and hearing worlds can begin to disintegrate.

Works Cited Anton. Mike. “You have the right to a Sign Language Expert.” Los Angeles Times 14 Nov. 2003. 14 Oct. 2006. <http://latimes.com.html>.

Banks, Trish. Personal Interview. 23 June 2006 Castellano, Lucinda A., and Randy Chapman. ADA Compliance Advisor/ The Legal Center. New Jersey: The Prentice Hall, 1993.

DeFord, Susan. “Officers Brush Up Their Sign Language.” The Washington Post 8 Sept. 2005: T20. 14 Oct. 2006. <http://www.washingtonpost. com.html>.

Lucas, Ceil. Language and the Law in the Deaf Communities.

Sociolinguistics in Deaf Communities. Vol. 9. USA: Gallaudet University Press, 2003. 14 Oct. 2006. <http://www.gupress.galluadet. edu/excerpts/LALtwo19.html>.

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imitation Amber O’Hara Please in your pallor sing the sins of sweet Jezebel to me Please in your guise explain the use of superficial wings Now born in cyst, came the girl To spit upon your faith Then in choir came the hymn, Sung to beckon suffering Now with the imitation of your tongue, The little girl refused To stomach the equilibrium --she doesn’t have to lose.

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Because He Whistled at Carolyn Bryant Dexter Booth They fixed a seventy-five pound cotton gin Fan around his neck.

The barbed wire tied to it Was supposed to act as a weight.

He was shot and beaten, Thrown into the Tallahatchie River.

And for three days the water said nothing About what had occurred.

The Fishermen who found him Must have been startled When they pulled in what was supposed To be the catch of the day.

The funeral was open casket So that the world could see What had been done as the result Of a simple joke.

He did not grab her waist Or ask for a date.

As she had alleged. He wanted Candy and a soda.

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intertitle Danielle Shutt

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Deaf With Desire Maya Goldweber

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Machine Dance Kathryn Parker Amendment

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Degress Amber O’Hara 28

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Liberation Crystal Davis Amendment 29

Upward Climb #1 Carolyn Morris

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Upward Climb #2 Carolyn Morris Mayan communities in the Guatemalan Highlands have been and continue to experience injustice. Mayan women are doubly discriminated against because of the very machismo society found in Guatemala. These women, however, are the strongest women I have ever met. They spend their days carrying children in slings over their backs while walking up and down steep mountain sides with heavy buckets of water or bags of weavings. They also take care of all household chores and meal preparation. This picture shows the strength of these women and the hard struggle they have been facing. It also presents a sense of hope which has been slowly growing as human rights violations in Guatemala are slowly decreasing due to international interest and help. There are also many international groups that are working towards empowering the women in Guatemala, especially Mayan women. Could you carry that bucket on your head while walking up those stairs?

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BUSCAPE Mr. Yamada 32

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Marginalization Heather MacNalley

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She is My Lover Neal Gwaltney

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Hand Banana Mr. Yamada Amendment

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The Exciting of Tiny Hairs Maya Goldweber

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Machine Dance Kathryn Parker Amendment

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Fresh Air Dustin Lacina

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Fitzgerald & The New Women in “Babylon Revisited” Sarah Clark The roles of women are often overlooked in Fitzgerald scholarship.

When the portrayal of women is addressed, it is often in a heavily biographical light, and very superficially at that: Nicole Diver and Zelda Fitzgerald are both heiresses who resent their respective husbands’ success, and at least a dozen Southern belles are loosely based on Zelda (Sylvester 181). Clearly, Fitzgerald is not given much credit on this front. His female characters in “Babylon Revisited” express his long-standing dissatisfaction with both the “New Women” of his generation and their derivatives.

None of the women in “Babylon Revisited” are portrayed very positively; Marion Wales is “amoral and vindictive”; Honoria Wales is false and without convictions; Helen Wales is dead after an adulthood of debauchery, and Lorraine Quarrles is still in the midst of her own debauchery (Petry 155). Fitzgerald is said to be “highly critical” of his female characters, “as if he secretly expected more of them at the outset, but put them in a world that allowed them no theater for growth” (Fryer 7). This is, of course, problematic, since Fitzgerald would seem to have created the textual world around them. However, one could argue that women of this period are frequently refused the right to a complete “theater for growth,” trapped between quasi-liberation and quasi-imprisonment. Negating a larger misogyny, all of the female characters in “Babylon Revisited” reflect the different approaches women took, or were forced to take, in light of their new-found freedoms.

Helen Wales is the model of the New Woman. In the midst of the speculation successes of the 1920s, she is a more mature version of the flapper: she drinks, she dances, and she and Charlie share evenings of public disarray.

Fitzgerald is often cited as having lauded “old virtues” and “old graces,” much Amendment 39

like Charlie Wales who “wanted to jump back a whole generation” and not have to cope with the new dimensions of society (Davison 199). Naturally, Fitzgerald’s stories would be hostile towards the New Women, and any woman who defies traditional gender roles.

Charlie relates the climax of the Wales’ past: he and Helen become engrossed in “a slow quarrel [that lasts] for hours,” which culminates in Helen refusing to go home with him (Fitzgerald 515). Helen defies Charlie’s authority when he “tries to take her home,” and refuses to let him decide when she should leave and under what conditions (Fitzgerald 515). Charlie goes so far as to negate her feelings, referring to her protests, even in retrospect, as “hysterical” (Fitzgerald 515). Helen is locked out in the snow, literally and figuratively. She is unable to maintain a household of her own, and physically and symbolically unable to survive without her husband. Fitzgerald treats Helen’s past as a staunch warning for women who would dare to defy the social norm and venture sovereignty from domestic life. Additionally, one can view this occurrence in a larger sense: the New Women are given freedom, but not enough to counteract its consequences.

Meanwhile, Charlie’s daughter Honoria is clearly a proto-flapper.

She is not given much of a role in a story that revolves around her custody, so most scholars are forced to extrapolate the boundaries of her character. These analyses of Honoria often focus on her precocious manipulation of the truth, unconscious though they may be. Like Fitzgerald’s other flappers (Marjorie from “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” certainly comes to mind), Honoria is learning to combat what society percieves as her “feminine fallabilities” by catering to them, and playing the little girl who loves her “dads dads dads” (Fitzgerald 506). Instead of “exploit[ing her] sexual attractiveness” in order to “assert her will,” Honoria uses her own Lolita-like assets to assure her veracity in the eyes of others, and acquieces to the wishes of the authority figures around her in order to reduce the friction around her (Fryer 6). It is also worthwhile to consider whether Honoria recognizes that she would have more freedom and more autonomy living with her father than with her staunch aunt.

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It would follow that Fitzgerald would portray Honoria without excessive malice, since “being a flapper or vamp in Fitzgerald’s day—with all the preoccupation with beauty, fun, charm, and sexuality that such terms imply—can in actuality be equated with work in the female tradition” (Fryer 9). Honoria also embodies Fitzgerald’s preference for women who provide “unquestioning, self-effacing support” to the men around them (Fryer 5). Honoria leaps into Charlie’s arms, and later tells him that she wants to live with him – the exact scenario he had been waiting for (Fitzgerald 511).

Marion, on the other hand, confronts her half-liberties with Victorianera manipulation. In a world where women have more influence than before, Marion faints and criticizes, and generally enlists her histrionics to achieve her goals. This is perfectly natural, since it is often unpalatable to be the forerunner in any trend, and speaking ones mind was quite the trend at the time. Fryer explains the increasingly irrational behavior of women like Marion by suggesting that “Fitzgerald’s female characters…are recipients of mixed messages about their roles and rights in life. They behave selfishly, impulsively, and inconsistently as a direct result of their fundamental uncertainty about their purpose in life” (Fryer 5).

It is, of course, ironic that Marion is struggling for control over Honoria, a decision that, by its domestic nature, should be in her jurisdiction. As women are gaining the power to vie with men in extradomestic matters, men like Charlie and Lincoln are beginning to question women’s traditional authority as well. This underscores the idea of Marion as a parody of the traditional Victorian woman, or rather, the Victorian woman displaced in society by the New Women.

Fitzgerald’s depictions of women in the era of the New Women are more social commentary than misogyny. Both Charlie and Lincoln in “Babylon Revisited” have their own faults (alcoholism and sycophantism respectively). It would seem that Fitzgerald is simply unflinching in his disclosure of the world’s ills, even if those ills happen to find root in women more often than men.

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Works Cited Fitzgerald, F. Scott. “Babylon Revisited.” The Story and Its Writer. Editor: Ann Charters. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin, 2003.

Fryer, Sarah B. Fitzgerald’s New Women. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1988.

Petry, Alice H. Fitzgerald’s Craft of Short Fiction. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1989.

Sylvester, Barbara. “Whose ‘Babylon Revisited’ Are We Teaching?” F. Scott Fitzgerald: New Perspectives.

Editor: Jackson R. Bryer, Alan Margolies, and Ruth Prigozy. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2000.

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Freud Jenny Bailey Hair pressed in those damn sweet curls, moving in close time with his breath on my cheek.

“I love you,” and it’s just like the movies. I’ll go home and make kisses in my fake kitchen, stirring and shaking this broken air.

“On the rocks, sweet girl,” And I obey, like a nice girl will.

Hell, I was born to be a mother.

Hair pressed in those damn sweet curls, moving in close time with his breath on my cheek.

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The Apple Debra M. Schneider “It gonna rain, it gonna rain. The earth is afire and God send a rain...”

The dirty man swayed and sang to himself. Dry brown leaves littered the street, swept up in occasional gusts of cold November wind. The gray Sunday-morning sky held no clouds.

He smelled of stale beer. His matted hair clutched a wayward brown leaf, a few small twigs. Wearing a musty, tattered green coat with no buttons, he stood near his bed of cardboard at Third and Main. His shoes were without laces, mismatched—one black, one white.

A woman approached wearing a suit of lavender silk. Her gold bracelets jangled on her perfumed wrist, and her high-heeled shoes clicked on the sidewalk as she walked. She clutched a beige purse that had been made from the skin of a viper.

On the next block, church bells chimed.

The woman glanced at her slim gold watch, and quickened her step.

She knew that if she walked past the man, she could get to her pew by the time the service started. But she would have to smell his smell and walk near his dirty bed, and he would probably ask her for money. She clutched her purse tightly to her hip and continued walking.

The man’s ear pricked at the sound of her clicking heels. He turned towards her and cocked his head to one side, eyebrows upturned.

She felt him eyeing her. She slowed her steps slightly and glanced to her left, considering the longer route. Her heart beat an urgent tempo of unease.

The man sang more loudly now, accompanied by the pealing bells, 44

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and he watched her. “It gonna rain…it gonna rain… You can feel the fire. God send a rain!” He swayed and shuffled his feet, and his shoes flopped loosely. He pushed his hands into the pockets of his coat, and raised his shoulders against the chill wind.

The woman’s heels tapped the cement as she walked. She smelled his sour clothes, and tasted her fear of his darkness and his poverty.

He watched her with truth-telling eyes. As he swayed to and fro he said to her, “Spare a quarter, ma’am?”

“No,” she lied.

The man nodded.

The woman hurried past, and as she moved away from him her fear subsided but her shame grew.

“It gonna rain,” he sang again, “it gonna rain. Red flames of fire, God send a rain…”

The woman stopped.

“Wait,” she said. Turning towards him, she reached into her snakeskin purse. “Have this.” She pulled out a red apple.

The apple was as round and heavy as the breast of a nursing mother.

It had taut crimson skin, with thin amber streaks near its stem.

The woman held the apple out to him in her pale manicured hand.

The man took it, his brown fingers curving around its weight, street grime in his nails. He sniffed it. Then he held the apple against his filthy cheek and smiled broadly.

He had no teeth.

“It gon’a rain, it gon’a rain,” he sang. “…The earth is a’fire and God send a rain.”

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Pink or Blue? A War Veteran Learns to Knit L. Daniel Mouer, Ph.D. My mother taught me to knit. Mind you, I didn’t learn how to knit from my mother, but she taught me nonetheless. She also taught me to sew. I don’t know why. My brothers weren’t taught these things, as far as I know. I don’t even think my sisters were. Maybe I was the only one who seemed interested.

Maybe I just tended to hang around Mother too much…

I think I was probably about 8 or 9 or 10 when she taught me to knit, but I didn’t actually begin learning how to knit until I was 58. I enrolled in knitting classes at a local knitting shop. Richmond, my hometown, has at least five knitting shops. For reasons I can’t fathom, I chose to take lessons at the oldest, best established store in town: the “West End” shop, whose habitués are mothers of children enrolled in the city’s exclusive local private academies. They are the wives of lawyers and doctors and politicians—no that’s not quite right. They are the wives of judge’s, chief surgeons, and governors of the Commonwealth.

I drive to my lessons in my ratty little ’72 Beetle. They drive in humongous Lincoln Town Cars, 700-series Bimmers, and Range Rovers.

There are other places to learn knitting and to buy yarn. There’s the store with all the high-fashioned glitzy yarns and the workshops taught by international knitting stars. There’s the newer shop full of hip, high-end luxury fibers, all natural of course, down in what passes for Richmond’s version of Greenwich Village. Then there’s that newer shop with the laid-back, crazy, funny women who smoke too much and, I wager, keep bottles of whiskey or brandy tucked away with their stashes. They are fun-loving yarn-addicts, pure and simple. But, for reasons still unclear to me, I wound up in the high-brow shop with the tennis-club and equestrienne set. Go figure.

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Let’s make one thing very clear. I am the only man taking these lessons. I continually hear rumors of other men who knit, but, so far, they are just rumors.

“Lots of men knit these days,” says one of the shop’s owners. “But Dan’s the only straight guy, isn’t he?” Straight guy? But I knit! Some would say I can’t be straight by definition.

I point out to all who will listen that men do the knitting in Peru, that men were traditionally knitters at various times in “The Old World,” and that male soldiers in World War I routinely knitted their own socks! I get quiet, knowing smiles. No sense trying to tell anybody anywhere anything about gender. It is, after all, completely “natural,” and everyone knows all about it practically from the day they’re born.

I am working a cable row in the front on my alpaca sweater. I hope to complete it by the time it’s cold enough to wear an alpaca sweater. The “ladies” of the shop love to talk about the multi-colored socks I knit myself last year. “He even wears them,” one hastens to add. While I quietly knit away, my teacher, the shop ladies, and the other students all talk about babies. Always. Someone at the table is always knitting a baby sweater, or baby booties, or baby blanket, or a baby hat. Sometimes these items are being knit from a pure-white soft cotton or washable wool. More often, they are either pink or blue.

The talk invariably turns to when “the baby” is due, and whether the mother or grandmother in question yet knows “what it is.” That means, in case you didn’t get it, whether the fetus in question is on its way to becoming male or female. Even in this day of sonograms, lots of people don’t know. The parents-to-be all know, but they’re not saying. So even the expectant mothers are not revealing the big secret: they knit in white, or they make one item blue and one pink… “just in case.”

“Why don’t you make something green? Or purple?” I ask, playing the devil’s role, of course. Nobody bothers to answer. It can’t possibly be a serious question. I don’t follow up, because I’ve tried dozens of times. That conversation just doesn’t go anywhere, and, anyway, I’ve just dropped two stitches in the Amendment

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middle of a “cable back,” and that demands all my attention.

When the conversation isn’t about babies, which is rare, it’s about the older children: the boys in St. Benedict’s and the girls in St.Catherine’s. They don’t talk about the students’ grades or their sports accomplishments. Instead they discuss their summer art programs in Florence, and their intensive language programs in Moscow, and their pending appointments as Congressional pages.

But the real concern is not for this ascending generation, but for the babies, for what is being knit for them, and “what they are.”

••• My cousin recently needed someone to accompany her to the hospital for a surgical procedure. I knew I’d be stuck in the waiting room for three or four hours, so, naturally, I took my knitting. As time passed, other patients and their drivers/helpers/loved ones arrived. And every so often one would have a bag of knitting. Each of these knitters gravitated to my side of the room, made friendly inquiries about what I was making, gave their compliments, then took up an adjacent seat. After a couple hours, we had a phalanx of knitters, all sitting along one wall of the waiting room, chatting away merrily.

Knitters don’t just knit when they get together. We shared knitting stories. We shared knitting tools. We commented on color combinations and yarn choices. All the other knitters were women, of course. One of them noted my wedding ring and asked me if my wife were also a knitter. Of course I (and all the other women) took her question to really mean, “So, are you married or available?”

And so I comfortably lounged away a few hours, surrounded by women of all ages, knitting, knitting, knitting. Were I to suddenly find myself single, it would never dawn on me to go seeking company in a bar, when I could find myself a corner in any public space—say, a Starbucks Café—open my knitting bag, and soon have plenty of company.

Of course, not everyone is happy to see a man knitting in public. There is clearly something odd, suspicious, maybe even frightening about such a 48

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scene. I remember one time taking my knitting to the clinic at the VA hospital.

It always takes my doctor way more time than seems reasonable to see me on appointment day. No sense complaining, though. I might as well just plan on getting some knitting done. And so I do.

On the day in question, I noted that my knitting had just the opposite effect as what I had experienced the day of my cousin’s surgery. I soon found I was sitting surrounded by empty chairs. Other patients were giving me a rather wide berth. But then, none of the other patients was also knitting. You see, most of the other patients were men: men my age or older. Men wearing their veteran’s hats, their combat colors, their manly accomplishments on their proverbial sleeves. These guys don’t knit. Or, if they do, they damn sure don’t do it in public! I’m the odd man out. I’m also a war veteran, and I’m wearing my colors, too. My combat engineer’s hat is set off nicely by the colorful stripes in my latest silky-soft scarf.

Finally, into the waiting room came a couple. They were much younger than I. Both were wearing some indications that they were in or had served in the military. I later learned they had both served in Iraq. She carried a knitting bag. After registering at the desk, she walked directly over to me, asked about my project, asked if she could join me, plopped down beside me and pulled out her work. Her partner—her husband, I soon learned—stood across the room glaring at me. He stood! He couldn’t even bring himself to sit. My knitting companion kept gesturing to her hubbie to come join us, but he insistently stood and glowered.

After a few minutes, a nurse appeared and called the wife’s name, then took her back into the clinic to test her vital signs, etc. The man slowly approached me. I stopped knitting, met his eyes, and held my hands with the long #3 needles angled just enough to suggest that they could serve as defensive weapons if need be. (For some reason, I tend to knit a lot of things with sporting weight yarns and small needles. For once I wished I had been working on a bulky Icelandic sweater. I would have been holding # 13s instead of # 3s!)

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He stared into my soul and, I suppose, something he found there told him I was not really a threat to his marriage or his masculinity or anything else.

Or perhaps he decided I was too dangerous, or too deranged, to tangle with.

He grabbed a hot rod magazine off the rack nearby and walked back across the room to sit by himself.

What would happen to our planet if, all of a sudden, infant girls were swaddled in baby blue blankets? And what disastrous consequences could ensue if baby boys came bedecked with little pink pom-pom hats? What in the world can the world possibly find frightening about a 6’2” 200-pound man with a bag full of wool and knitting needles? What in Heaven’s name leads some people to a murderous rage at the very thought of a man in a dress and panty hose?

A former high school friend is a highly accomplished and respected poet. He’s 60 years old and holds a professorship at an Ivy League University.

He has published numerous books and won many awards. Lately he has been writing to some of us, his former classmates, online, pouring out his heart full of hurt and his still-hot fury about how he was treated by the bullies in high school nearly a half-century ago. I, myself, harbored a fantasy of taking a baseball bat to one punk’s head for more than 30 years for beating me up and calling me a sissy. A recent study suggested that the rash of violent school shootings we have experienced in this country over the past few years were almost all perpetrated by boys who had been bullied and hounded and terrorized for not meeting some arbitrary norms of masculinity. In our culture we seem to think that violation of gender codes is an egregious offense upon society, punishable by torture and death.

It starts, innocently enough, by choosing to knit pink or blue. It proceeds from there by making girls who would rather have a Jedi’s light sabre play with Barbie Dolls. And if the gender variance hasn’t been shamed out of our children by the time they reach high school, we find it acceptable to let society’s goons try to beat it out of them. Besides school-yard bullies, we have skinheads, good ol’ boys, queer-rollers, tranny-bashers, and many other sorts of “concerned 50

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citizens” waiting to finish the job. Call me Pollyanna, but I think we could end this sort of violence by knitting the rainbow for babies without first stopping to inspect their plumbing.

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to say Amber O’Hara I know that he would like to bake my sores beneath a lamp and watch them crust over.

Then, declare with triumph that I am healed and he has done no wrong.

But secretly— beneath the scabby crust I am spoiling with infection I suppose I am latent and susceptible And will be silenced like the feathery babies, escorted into their black coffins to sleep for the night The weightless autumn leaves whisked into large bags, their crunching and shuffling bodies silenced in the void of black I live through them as they’re trapped in the darkness and sufficate alone with the smell of plastic I lose the life through broken stems In burning pallor I am born again And then I listened as laughter came When I rid myself of the parasites I harbored.

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Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis Elaine Kelley It would be difficult to find political support in our American society today for policies of infanticide of all Females and brown-eyed babies. It would even be hard to garner support for the killing of babies who will need glasses, or even those who have asthma. Would our American society, the one that so often declares itself an example to the world, ever support the “mercy killing” of babies that were born deformed or were developmentally challenged? I am not sure if there is a poll on the future of infanticide in the United States, but my best educated guess is that such ideas are simply unthinkable in our culture.

A simple determinant of right and wrong in a society is to ask the question, “is it a good idea in our culture to…?” (Condit August 24th). Yet many ethical issues cannot be simplified to such a level. Reproductive technology is one of those issues where lines of ethics are blurred, boundaries of religion are broken and politics is constantly racing to keep up with the new science. One aspect of reproductive technology that is new and includes an immense span of uncharted territory is Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis, or PGD. PGD is not synonymous with infanticide, nor is it necessarily a tool for eugenics or marketable designer babies. Yet PGD’s possible relation to the latter calls for public dialogue, specifically in our social and political realm in the United States, about where the legal boundaries should be, and what ethical principles we have that back up those potential policies.

The U.S. educational system reveres societies like ancient Greece, and its many philosophers including Aristotle and Plato. Yet few are aware that the Greeks practiced blatant infanticide and dangerous genetic selection.

Debora L. Spar writes in The Baby Business that the ancient Greeks “routinely left unwanted babies to die and deformed infants were killed at birth” (101).

Plato writes in his “The Republic” that “the offspring of the inferior, or of the Amendment

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better when they chance to be deformed, will be put away in some mysterious, unknown place, as they should be” (Spar 97). Plato praises such practices; and our society’s philosophers and political theorists (among others) praise Plato’s works. Yet this does not require that these intellectuals admire every sentiment in Plato’s writings. Many people in the same academic category extol the writings of Aristotle, but do not commend slavery, which Aristotle considered natural. Nevertheless we must take a moment to realize that slavery was, after all, at one point an acceptable way to sustain the economy of the Old South.

There is no logic here that says we will one day practice infanticide due to our reverence of Plato, but it is important to recognize how our society’s values have changed dramatically throughout time. Perhaps the unthinkable needs to be thought of, so that we can stop it as it is just beginning.

Time will only tell if we are in fact just beginning to head down a perilous road in the United States, or if we are actually on the threshold of a serious technological breakthrough that will ultimately make our people happier, healthier and all-round better citizens. Reproductive technology, and specifically PGD, is one such practice that needs to be carefully analyzed as a possible hazardous trend. PGD involves the removing of one cell from a recently formed eight-cell embryo. The cell is then tested for devastating diseases such as Tay-Sachs or Fanconi. There is, however, already the capability to distinguish gender, or whether a child is likely to have a non-fatal affliction such as Down syndrome. Science may soon offer possible solutions through genetic selection to problems such as cancer or even obesity (Spar 98). When this happens, unless legality forbids it, there will be no stopping science to finding genetic markers for eye color, hair color, height intelligence or athletic ability. Spar notes that there are specialists in the business of gender selection already. Jeffrey Steinberg charges thousands of dollars for such a procedure (99).

An online website titled simply Sex (Gender) Selection boasts that they offer “family balance through modern science” (Fertility Institutes1). This euphemism is potentially a threat because it carries with it no warning of concerns for a world where every couple can select out a less-desirable gender. It is clear in 54

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our society that the so-called weaker sex are females. Whether this stereotype of weakness is generally believed or not does not change the overwhelming evidence of discrimination against women such as women receiving only 72 cents per every dollar that a man receives for the same job (Condit, Oct. 21).

Even those who recognize that men and women are essentially equal in value and ability cannot deny that women are more likely to face discrimination. If all couples act on this logical conclusion by selecting-out all their female embryos, the result would be catastrophic.

While technology currently allows for little more than early determination of disease predisposition and gender selection, women and those with certain diseases are not the only people who might be prevented from existing. People of minority races, namely blacks, have nothing to fear of white couples “selecting them out.” Science tells us that two biological, white parents would not have black embryos to choose from. Given this, African Americans like Dorothy Roberts do not fear this technology on a individual level: one, they have already been born – and two, no one white couple alone has the option of selecting out a black embryo. Dorothy Roberts is wary of PGD based on the principle of such potentially gene-obsessed technology, and the implications it carries with it. Roberts concludes, “Black folks are skeptical about any obsession with genes.

They know that their genes have been considered undesirable and that their alleged genetic inferiority has been used for centuries to justify their exclusion from the economic, political and social mainstream” (Roberts 261).

Gender and race are not the only categories wherein certain traits are historically less desirable in our society. There is a chance of this technology leading to movement towards elimination of all homosexuals and transsexuals.

Society has made sexual orientation as well as gender identity/expression another category, not dissimilar to race and gender, that gives institutions and people who drive them a reason to discriminate. If science proves traits of sexual orientation and gender identity (different from the sex) as genetic variants, then why wouldn’t many couples (of any opinion of the variants) begin to select-out these individuals. The list of minorities that would be likely not selected as Amendment

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embryos is endless.

Many couples may see embryo selection as the ethical or “right thing to do” for their unborn children. They may try to save them from non-fatal, but abnormal conditions. An indirect effect that I see of hyper-development of PGD would be a drastic change in the role of parent. Everything we know about the parent-child relationship will change if parents are able to design their children. Not only will parents expect their children to do their best and achieve, but parents will also begin to design their children with the abilities they will one day force them to use. Those who select the allegedly most intelligent embryos might make early plans for medical school, whether their child has an interest in the field or not. Parents may not wait twenty years for their son or daughter to become the adults they will be; but rather parents may begin to tell their children who they will be, or worse who they have to be. Just imagine a scenario where a parent says, “I didn’t pay $10,000 for you to turn out as a starving artist/bisexual/dyslexic /etc.” These are all issues that must be publicly addressed, before they become realities.

The concept of designing a child to have a pre-determined life path is still not as extreme as if one initially brings a child into the world solely to serve one purpose. This scenario is not a futuristic prediction, but rather something that has already occurred. Lisa Nash conceived using IVF in order to select an embryo whose marrow would match her daughter’s, and could be used to save her daughter’s life from Fanconi Anemia. Nash gave birth to a son, Adam, whose blood was taken during delivery, and would help his sister recover from her fatal disease. There is a beautiful picture painted of the Nash’s with their newborn son, and daughter who truly experienced a renewed life. Yet the concept looms over the Nash’s story that technology now presents us with the possibility of creating one child to save another (Spar 98). There is no black and white rulebook for this type of situations. This is a gray area in the world of ethics.

In situations as the proceeding where many religious, political and ethical viewpoints within our society can still see the gray area of such a decision, 56

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how are we to make public policy regarding the issue? My answer is that legal guidelines are absolutely necessary, but not a simple law allowing all or none of technology such as IVF and PGD. Regulation on the federal level is what I would call for in the United States, but history arguably tells us that the federal government’s job is to react slowly and deliberately to new potential crimes rather than to make legislation in attempt to prevent them. In order to best understand why legislation is necessary, I think the government will wait for an actual case to come forth. For example, I think the way that these technologies will eventually be regulated is by a U.S. Supreme Court decision that will overturn or affirm a lower-court decision. The lower court decision will likely be a ruling made either to strike down or affirm a state statute. This is how I envision the legal process coming to light. Ideally those state statutes would begin popping up around the country today, before practices get too extreme. I think the biggest obstacle to state legislatures’ proposing and passing bills about reproductive technology is a lack of understanding of what IVF and PGD really mean. Lobbyists need to speak with state senators and delegates about what technology is available today, how it’s being used and how future technologies will be used in the future. Obstacles are once again a lack of understanding, and additionally lack of support for earmarked women’s or liberal issues.

Nancy Lublin describes in Pandora’s Box: Feminism Confronts Reproductive Technology the characteristics of Technophiles and Technophobes, meaning those who fear and those who fully endorse technology, specifically technology that “interferes with the womb” (Lublin 23). Lublin brings to light that there is a feminist perspective that such technology is a liberating agent for women, and there is the ecofeminist who does not support said technology.

An ecofeminist would likely point out that fighting the biology that so often creates the basis for inequality among men and women is not the solution. An ecofeminist, according to Lublin, would more likely take the viewpoint that “biology is the source and not the enemy of feminist revolution”(45). I agree with the standpoint that technology is to be welcomed in general as an agent of change, but I feel there are distinct boundaries that need to be established Amendment

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in our society in this realm. Only long, intense, public scrutiny and dialogue about where the line should be drawn can produce solutions that make sense in our culture, or ethical solutions. Technology developed to make our lives easier should be viewed with less legal scrutiny than should the development and marketing of technology created to interfere with the very creation of who we are in the deepest and most basic form. Whether one believes strongly in reason, science or religion, it seems to make sense in our society that humans should not be entrusted with deciding what type of human DNA should or should not continue to occupy the planet.

Works Cited Lublin, Nancy. Pandora’s Box: Feminism Confronts Reproductive Technology. New York: Roman and Littlefield, 1998. 75-114.

Roberts, Dorothy. Killing the Black Body. New York: Random House, 1997.

Fertility Institutes. Sexselection.net. 26. Nov. 2006. 2006, http://www. sexselection.net/pages/626742/index.htm Spar, Deborah L. The Baby Business. Boston: Harvard, 2006.

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Guillotines Jenny Bailey There’s a band of guillotines circling your arm 27 cigarettes later and all that’s left is a dagger dripping with your charm and a mind full of useless promises.

Stare down to a bloody blouse and the circular ash burns are more than I can count and I contemplate the stars.

In your corner, mourning your win and these black eyes seem likely due to my own sin and I apologize with a harsh breath.

Sweep me off my feet dear lover and make me believe that the punishment is over that this week’s cycle is done.

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My Father’s Father’s Father Who was Beaten Sarah Rodriguez My Father’s Father’s Father Who was Beaten For the stain of his nation upon his skin.

No birth recorded, no one cared, the life he lived Is an untold story. One can only guess: Sugarcane on the island, an island that ran out Of natives for the white men to beat, So they beat my father’s father’s father Buffalo soldier, who knows he was my ancestor?

No stain of his country on my skin.

What would he say if he knew his descendent would Look like the demons who ruled him?

Was mixed to the point of whiteness.

Would he be Fierce and Outraged?

Embarrassed and Ashamed?

Or Humble and Thankful only, that I would have opportunities he never had?

Who can tell? The gauze of time is stretched over My eyes Are still his brown And I hope my children Will carry his stain With the knowledge that because of the strength and unity of our people, We will not be persecuted!

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We will not be discriminated!

I hope by their time there are no beatings But perhaps I hope in vain Maybe this hatred between races will never end.

BUT My children will not be beaten by this whip of racism, nor chained by these Chains called stereotypes Or killed for another man’s hatred.

In memory of an ancestor whose name I don’t even know, whose nation and life I don’t even know.

But he burns inside of me.

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Dr. King, Sir, Reverend Brandon Whitt I hear the annoying sound of ambulance In the heat of the night Wondering again why it’s blaring outside my door I should never have to wonder If my kids will ever have to wonder the same thing You told millions one day about a dream you had It was a good dream. I’m not patronizing you I just wish more people would have listened Millions heard your dream But the majority were only hearers, they never Did anything about it They said it was their dream, they claimed It had become their own How could they all forget so easily?

They let your dream die with you I hate that Not for you, but for me For my children They didn’t listen to you, Reverend None of them did, it had nothing To do with the color of their skin They became guilty of wrongful deeds They ate of that tree you told them not to eat of They satisfied their thirst for freedom premature On the cup of bitterness and hatred 62

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They all did, and now We’ve inherited their sin nature It’s been passed along, we delude ourselves Into thinking that we haven’t even noticed And even now I can only dream Of when all God’s children can sing together With new meaning, From every mountainside, let freedom ring I’m not going to be scared anymore, no. I’m not Going to lie in my bed all day to escape the reality That things haven’t changed, our grandparents Haven’t changed, that my generation is no different Than yours You had a dream, I have a dream, Of an oasis of freedom and justice, of children playing together, but Dreams drain the spirit if we dream too long

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Transformation Jenn Viohl Those cascading mirror images fling me right side up only to resemble something quite upside down.

Isn’t it easy to forget to breathe? forgetting love, loss, and memory or to frown for such profound lack of touch and so very much, I used to wonder or used to care but despite used to it’s disrepair, left just like I left: wholly partial woman, and completely unprepared.

I repeat myself, I impeach myself, I repeat myself with the sound of a round, I am overthrowing this dictatorship.

My lungs collapse and black holes make maps on two hearts skipping to a single beat.

Its superficial persistent nonexistence pulls to 64

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epiphany number two girl, boy, thing, no one loves you for you not the way they used to, or ever will again as such a type of woman.

Life continues on this way, or so they say, and not one kind really ever stays defined because things and people change although strange for the rearrangement of such histories intertwined, but I repeat myself, what else can I say when reflected so steely grey and blue except I’ll miss some part of you.

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Editorial Note First of all, I want to say what an amazing opportunity it was to work with this year’s editorial staff. Without this group of people, the journal could never have actualized. This year the journal went through many critical internal changes as it faced the challenges of losing long-standing staff members to the world as it gained new, fresh faces. We sadly said goodbye to one such loss, our friend and former President, Ceres, mid-year as she embarked on the next chapter of her life. This left the journal to face the eternal question—what happens now? Under new leadership, the staff was amazing and I cannot express how thankful I am for their perseverance throughout the entire year as we all learned the process of publishing a journal as we went. I have never seen such a dedicated group of people work so hard to accomplish something so wonderful. On top of creating the journal, we also created an Amendment zine, which was finished in the early summer. We hope to make this zine a permanent fixture of Amendment and we hope that it helps us enlarge our audience and gives us all new voices to hear. This year, the theme amongst the staff seemed to be change, coping, and finding balance. A lot of the work that is presented seems to also reflect this.

Many of the works that are in this year’s journal reflect a dissatisfaction with the way things are presently. A call for action has been declared on multiple fronts. Issues of race, disability, imperialism, body image, gender issues, sexuality, and many others are covered in this year’s journal. Our authors included personal stories, crises, triumphs, and memories. This journal is as much theirs as it is ours, and I want to make it yours as well. Many of the issues brought up by the journal are not new, but they are very much silenced. Through publishing this journal, we (the staff) hope to continuously bring these and any other issue that one would find important to the center of discussion. Amendment is working to become a bigger voice on the VCU campus and in the surrounding community as it strives to empower leaders through artistic expression.

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Amendment will continue to change as it adjusts to the ever changing world.

I hope that these changes will always be good, and we hope to continuously learn. Amendment teaches us about ourselves, our friends, our community, and our world. Every day is a new day to learn of another person’s struggle and a chance to help make a difference. I hope sincerely that this journal helped you find some solace, comfort, or your own inspiration. I also hope that it helps to give you a voice to use in your own struggles and life.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this journal. Please, feel free to offer any constructive criticism, comments, questions, or thoughts to Amendment at anytime. We would not be in existence without you and the many voices who want and need to be heard. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I hope that you will continue the good fight and never give up hope.

Sincerely, LeaAnne Eaton Editor-in-Chief 2006-2007

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The Student Media Center, part of the Student Affairs and Enrollment Services division at Virginia Commonwealth University, is a resource center for recognized independent student media at VCU. Current recognized student media include Poictesme; Amendment, another literary journal; The Commonwealth Times newspaper; The Vine, a quarterly magazine; and WVCW radio.

For more information, contact VCU Student Media Center, 817 W. Broad St., (804) 828-1058. Mailing address: P.O. Box 842010, Richmond, VA 23284-2010. E-mail: goweatherfor@vcu.edu