Elizabeth Love | Vox

Why the Kavanaugh accusations matter so much to teen girls like me

2018-09-25T11:28:23-04:00

Here’s how some of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s former classmates described him and his friends when they attended Yale in the ’80s:

“Kavanaugh became a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, or ‘DKE,’ which several students said was known for its wild and, in the view of some critics, misogynistic parties,” wrote Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer in the New Yorker’s recent investigation into a second accusation of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh. “Kavanaugh was also a member of an all-male secret society, Truth and Courage, which was popularly known by the nickname ‘Tit and Clit.’” In another interview in the article, a former classmate described Kavanaugh and his friends as a “wolfy group of guys.”

I’m 18 years old, only six months older than Brett Kavanaugh was when he allegedly sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl. (Kavanaugh denies the allegations.) I know boys that matched the descriptions of him and his friends — belligerent, abusive, and entitled — because they can be. They know they are destined for high places in society simply because they were born into privilege. Now that I’ve been in college for a few weeks, I’m getting the sense these kinds of boys are here too.

Most high school girls know these boys. At parties, we learn to be vigilant when they’re around. In college, we’re taught how to distract potential attackers. We learn to keep an eye on our friends and intervene in situations that seem dangerous.

But that doesn’t mean that boys like this are the norm — they are a dangerous anomaly. And now our country is telling them not only that sexual assault as a teenager is forgivable, but that if the allegations are true, it would not even disqualify a person from the highest court in America. As a teenage girl, it terrifies me. Even if a teenage boy’s age might save him from consequences, our age does not save us from the trauma of assault.

Sexual assault is not typical “risky teen behavior”

Multiple commentators have argued the allegations against Kavanaugh, if true, can be chalked up to nothing more than youthful indiscretion. “Should the fact that a 17-year-old, presumably very drunk kid, did this, should this be disqualifying?” asked New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss on MSNBC.

“Drunk teenagers playing seven minutes in heaven” is how Fox News commentator Stephen Miller described it. “Kavanaugh was a teenager at the time. Of course he was different then; he was a third of the age he is now. And teens do stupid, dangerous and destructive things,” wrote Jonathan Zimmerman in USA Today.

The argument — that teenagers are more prone to risky behavior because our brains aren’t developed enough to make careful decisions — is dangerous rhetoric. Suggesting that fast cars or underage drinking are the same as attempting to rape somebody is a false equivalence. Moreover, the dismissal of Kavanaugh’s alleged actions because he was a teen suggests that his alleged error was not assault but nearsightedness: a failure to assess potential consequences for him.

But sexual abuse should not be seen as a matter of risk assessment, or as something that teenagers simply “grow out of.” This shifts the focus from the trauma inevitably faced by the victim to the consequences faced by the perpetrator as the reason not to commit abuse. It is an alarming suggestion that this is what is reprehensible instead of focusing on its inherent immorality.

Teens who are listening to this national conversation are terrified

Girls my age are watching, reading, and hearing these conversations. And it’s making us scared. I have one friend who told me that the worst part is the clear disregard for women’s safety at the highest levels of the government. Another is terrified to give a man like that so much power, assuming the allegations are true.

Most of all, we’re each scared that the national conversation around Kavanaugh gives entitled young men today the green light to be abusive without worrying that it could affect their future ambitions. We don’t understand how, in the midst of the #MeToo movement, people could be so dismissive of such serious accusations. We feel like we’re sliding backward.

I’m saddened for teenage boys, too. Their entire age group shouldn’t be demonized by adults defending Kavanaugh on the basis of his age at the time of the accusations. To suggest that this is normal, that “boys will be boys,” isn’t fair to the vast majority of teenage boys who don’t behave this way. The young men that I know are disturbed by the accusations, emphasizing that any boy should know that sexual assault is wrong at 17. This is not typical drunken teenage behavior.

Maybe those focused on Kavanaugh’s age know all this but simply believe the accusations are too old to be relevant. But age is nothing without atonement. If Kavanaugh’s statement had shown that he had reformed, or that he had taught his children to be better, or, at the very least, that he now understands the severity of these alleged actions, perhaps the accusations wouldn’t be so clearly disqualifying.

But the moment we start to excuse the teenage actions of our nation’s leaders, we put young girls at risk. We tell them that the traumas they experience don’t “count,” and that if they speak up, they’ll be dismissed. And we tell teen boys that entitlement to women’s bodies is inherent and normal.

If the allegations are proven to be accurate after testimony from his accusers, Kavanaugh has no business serving on the highest court in our country. To confirm him tells teen girls everywhere that their safety doesn’t matter.

Elizabeth Love is a first-year at Columbia University. Her writing has been featured in the Huffington Post and the Salt Lake Tribune. Find her on Twitter @lizlove000.

First Person is Vox’s home for compelling, provocative narrative essays. Do you have a story to share? Read our submission guidelines, and pitch us at firstperson@vox.com.

My high school abolished its sexist dress code. Things got better.

2018-09-10T06:36:02-04:00

High school students walk down the hallway. | Getty Images/Maskot

A gray, baggy, long-sleeved, and, as her mother put it, “unflattering” Calvin Klein shirt — that’s what 17-year-old Lizzy Martinez was wearing when she was pulled from class in her Bradenton, Florida, high school earlier this month and sent to the dean’s office for violating the dress code. The reason? Martinez wasn’t wearing a bra.

After Martinez explained that she had gone braless to avoid irritating a fresh sunburn, the dean asked her to put on an undershirt. Martinez obliged, and the dean asked her to “move around” to see whether her nipples were still visible, Martinez says. The dean decided they were.

She then sent Martinez to the nurse’s office, telling her to cover her nipples with Band-Aids in an “X” shape. Martinez wore the Band-Aids for 45 minutes before calling her mom, crying out of embarrassment, so she could go home early.

Martinez then tweeted about the incident: “I decided not to wear a bra today and got pulled out of class [because] one of my teachers claimed it was ‘a distraction to boys in my class,’” she wrote. After her tweet went viral, Martinez called for a national “bracott.” On April 16, female students across the country clipped their bras to their backpacks instead of wearing them, and male students wore Band-Aids in an “X” shape on their shirts.

Martinez has said she will ignore the dress code for the remainder of the school year. Though the school conceded that the situation could have been handled better, they warned that protesters would be disciplined, but none were.

Martinez’s is not the first unjust dress code enforcement to go viral. In 2016, Helena, Montana, high school student Kaitlyn Juvik was chastised by administrators for going braless, and she too organized protests (in that case, 300 of her female classmates came to school braless). And last October, Annie Concannon of Cincinnati, Ohio, was “dress-coded” for wearing a crop top. Concannon had paired the shirt with high-waisted jeans and wasn’t exposing her midriff.

It’s not a surprise that these stories have hit a nerve — stories of unfair dress code enforcement are nearly universal for students, especially girls. And the stories enrage us. I’m a senior at a high school in Salt Lake City, and during our sophomore year, my best friend was disciplined for wearing shorts that were “too short” — although the shorts were part of the school’s soccer uniform. As a result, she lost class “participation points,” which lowered her grade.

Meanwhile, the male granola rock climber who sat next to me in English class was routinely free to wear his shirt entirely unbuttoned, flapping in the wind, revealing his chest. This sexist enforcement of our dress code was common until, at the end of my sophomore year, students took matters into their own hands.

My school’s feminist club met tirelessly with the administration and district school board, pushing them to approve a new dress code free from gendered language. Though they found an ally in the principal, some teachers and school board members were resistant, insisting that the dress code was enforced equally upon boys and girls.

But the club showed, through a school-wide survey, that girls were more frequently impacted. They argued that interrupting a girl’s education because her clothing could distract a boy implied his education was more valuable than hers.

In practice, the dress code in my school is now all but nonexistent, except for requiring that underwear must be covered, as well as the midriff. Its absence has had no adverse effects on our learning. We are able to focus despite the occasional bare shoulder or pair of short-shorts, and our large public high school continues to be regarded as having some of the best academics in Utah.

Relaxing the dress code didn’t distract students. It improved our school experience.

The relaxed dress code has brought significant improvements to my school. As students, we are treated as adults as we determine what is appropriate when getting dressed in the morning. We don’t have to stress over arbitrary requirements, such as the width of a shirt strap or the length of a skirt.

We’re allowed creativity, which some students take advantage of through their artistic DIY clothes that might have violated previous dress code rules. And most importantly, we are able to go to school free of judgment, the most significant privilege stolen by dress codes.

The sexism of dress codes is not just about their wording or their enforcement but the culture they create. In the seventh grade, a friend of mine was dress-coded routinely for her short rompers and skirts. She was 13. She wasn’t trying to be sexual; she was a tween experimenting with her style.

But the school’s perception that she was being knowingly risqué hurt her — she began worrying that all her friends (and their moms) were judging her behind her back. Despite themselves, students absorb the false assumption of dress codes: Everything is sexual, and nothing is innocent.

It’s from this assumption that the most popular, and most infuriating, justification for dress codes arises. Administrators argue that if a high school girl’s skirt is too short or her shoulders are exposed, the boys won’t be able to focus. This concern is outdated and puritanical.

It is not the woman’s responsibility to ensure she doesn’t inadvertently arouse the men around her. High school boys should not be taught that every stirring curve in their path will be concealed for their convenience; that’s not how society functions. Billboards, commercials, and magazines featuring women showing skin will continue to exist and real women will march on, whether boys can focus or not.

It’s up to them to manage themselves. In my experience, most can. I have yet to hear a boy complain that he’s distracted by a set of bare shoulders.

Many schools realize the absurdity of asking girls to dress so as not to tempt boys, and instead claim to enforce their dress code for the sake of “professionalism,” arguing that they are preparing students for future careers where they will have to dress formally.

Some high schools actually hold to the principle of “professionalism,” favoring khakis over jeans or banning sandals and T-shirts with logos. But more often than not, high schools that claim their dress codes promote professional attire allow boys to wear mesh basketball shorts with wrinkled T-shirts while requiring girls to cover their shoulders. Sexist cultural ideas are simply being buried under the guise of appropriateness.

Dress codes are implicit sexism come to life. They aren’t created with the goal of oppressing women, but they are born from the lingering perception that women’s bodies are indecent. Even outfits like Lizzy Martinez’s baggy T-shirt or a pair of comfortable yoga pants are interpreted as risqué because women’s bodies have been so heavily sexualized. The codes themselves are ultimately more improper than what they are designed to regulate.

There is nothing inappropriate about a 17-year-old girl choosing not to wear a bra on her sunburned body. What’s indecent is an administrator asking her to Band-Aid her nipples.

Elizabeth Love is a senior at West High School in Salt Lake City, Utah. Her writing has been featured in the Huffington Post and the Salt Lake Tribune. Find her on Twitter @lizlove000.

First Person is Vox’s home for compelling, provocative narrative essays. Do you have a story to share? Read our submission guidelines, and pitch us at firstperson@vox.com.

I’m a teenager. And I’m fed up with adults’ excuses for weak gun laws.

2018-02-21T09:01:13-05:00

Demonstrators hold signs during a “lie-in” supporting gun control reform near the White House on February 19, 2018, in Washington, DC. | Zach Gibson/Getty Images

On Thursday, in his statement on the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, President Trump assured America’s children that we “are never alone.” As a 17-year-old and a senior at West High School in Salt Lake City, I found this strained attempt at consolation empty and infuriating.

I was born in April 2000, a week shy of the Columbine massacre’s one-year anniversary, the event that marked the beginning of the modern school shooting epidemic. By the time I started kindergarten, there had been five more fatal school shootings in elementary, middle, or high schools.

As I near the end of my senior year, the number has swelled to 32 since 1998, not including suicides or gang-related violence. School shootings are etched into the timeline of my education as clearly as talent shows and picture days.

President Trump’s statement is meaningless. We have been alone for 20 years.

When Congress failed to pass gun reform after Sandy Hook, it was baffling. If 20 dead first-graders were not a call to action, then a call to action would never come. But that does not mean we’re stuck.

In 2016, the Associated Press found that only 15 percent of Americans believed gun policy should be a top-five political priority of that year. Though 92 percent of Americans support universal background checks, gun reform was a less significant issue to voters than terrorism and the economy.

But I can feel this changing. For older voters, gun violence may not feel so dire, so personal. But for those of us in school, there is nothing more personal. I was in seventh grade when Sandy Hook happened. I saw a school that looked like mine, with kids that looked like me, suddenly turned into a war zone. I spent the weekend after Sandy Hook terrified to return to school. When I did return, I was anxious whenever I was on my school’s first floor, reasoning that the second was safer.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the layout of my sister’s elementary school, worrying that her classroom was too close to the school’s entrance. I eyed closets and windows in my own classrooms, imagining where I would hide were a shooting to happen.

The teachers led drills, telling us to crouch beneath our desks. One sketched a diagram on the whiteboard to show us how to turn our desks into a barricade if the day came. “Lockdown” drills were routine.

My experiences are not unique. In American schools, the fear of gun violence always looms. Last week, even before Parkland, a car backfired outside my school, interrupting class with a sharp pop-pop-pop; adrenaline shot through my veins as I grabbed a friend in panic. All 32 pairs of eyes in the class widened as our teacher rushed to the window to confirm it was only a car.

For the students in Parkland, the ever-present fear turned into reality — and heightened worries in other schools. My friends whisper about who they fear would attempt something similar. They discuss how hard it would be to escape were an attack to happen on the lawn where we eat lunch.

But the terror felt by the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School has been matched by their outrage and their desire to tell their stories. A student journalist interviewed his classmates as they crowded into the dark closet of their culinary classroom — one interviewee expressed as much disbelief over our country’s resignation to school shootings as she did over the shooting happening outside the door. With remarkable poise, she said: “This shouldn’t be happening anymore … no amount of money should make guns more easily accessible.”

Many of her classmates seem to feel the same way. In the same video, another student says she had wanted to be a junior member of the National Rifle Association and was planning to celebrate her 18th birthday at the shooting range, until this experience. Now, she “couldn’t even fathom the idea of a gun in her house or on her body.” On Twitter, Marjory Stoneman Douglas student Carly Novell rebuked conservative pundit Tomi Lahren’s charge that the left’s calls for reform were insensitive, writing, “I was hiding in a closet for 2 hours. You weren’t there, you don’t know how it felt. … This IS about guns and it’s about all the people who have had their lives abruptly ended because of guns.”

At a candlelight vigil Thursday night, the entire crowd chanted, “No more guns.” At a Fort Lauderdale anti-gun rally, Parkland survivor Emma Gonzalez called “BS” on common objections to gun control — and video of her, too, went viral. Now, across the country, students are planning to stage walkouts in protest of gun violence on March 14 and April 20. On March 24, the survivors of the Florida shooting are holding a “March for Our Lives” in Washington, while others march across the nation.

Maybe the NRA and its supporters will dismiss our outrage as the “emotional” reaction of people too young to recognize the complexity of the gun debate. But young students feel a kinship with those at Marjory Stoneman Douglas. In one of the gruesome videos circulating on Twitter, I see a pair of Hunter rain boots on a gunned-down body, the same boots I see my little sister wear to school. I see a classroom that looks like one where I go each day, and I see students grieving friends who just as well could have been mine.

Before, students did not see this. The nightly news did not show the gore now splashed across Twitter. The newspapers did not provide the students’ unfiltered accounts of their trauma or their cries for change. But now we see each other, and we hear each other.

In two months I will turn 18, and in November I will vote in my first election. So will many of the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and those watching across the country. I will make sure that every candidate I support is fighting for commonsense gun regulations. I will do my best to make sure that my vote prevents my children needing to learn how to use their desks to stop bullets. And as the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas have courageously shown, I will not be alone in this fight.

The NRA and its supporters in Washington pushed away every commonsense regulation that would protect our schools, but they pushed too far. Now an entire generation is pushing back.

Elizabeth Love is a senior at West High School in Salt Lake City, Utah. Her writing has been featured in the Huffington Post and the Salt Lake Tribune. Find her on Twitter @lizlove000.

First Person is Vox’s home for compelling, provocative narrative essays. Do you have a story to share? Read our submission guidelines, and pitch us at firstperson@vox.com.