Challenging the stigma against female masturbation

Say It Like It Is: Learning to use white privilege as a tool in fighting oppression

As a person who has one foot in Ecuador and another one in the United States, I have often felt guilty. Guilty that I have U.S. citizenship and can travel around the world while many of my friends in Ecuador can’t. Guilty that I go to Bowdoin College and receive many resources and financial benefits. Guilty that I live with extreme comfort while I have the knowledge that many in the Ecuador and the U.S. are constantly struggling. But guilt is a paralyzing feeling that didn’t show me how to use my privileged position in society.
When I moved to the U.S. and came to Bowdoin I started learning about a privilege I had never heard of before: white privilege. As a biracial Latina student I initially understood this concept abstractly, but didn’t connect it to my life until I took a class called “Race and Ethnicity.” I knew that race existed from a young age by observing the contrasting way in which my white “American” mother and Ecuadorian mestizo father were treated, but I didn’t understand that I had white privilege. Its implications overwhelmed me.
The house where my white mother and grandmother live is an example of the white privilege present in my life. When I go to St. Louis, MO—where most of my family lives—I am welcomed in a safe, well-kept neighborhood, in the same house that my white great-grandparents helped my grandmother buy. This house, where my family and I came when we were going through hardship in Ecuador, represents the racial inequality and injustice present in the U.S. The neighborhood is still all-white, just like it was when my great-grandparents bought it, and it’s located on the “good” side of town. My great-grandparents—who were white—were allowed to buy this house in this neighborhood; that is no coincidence. The practice of redlining continues to have very negative effects on African Americans in St. Louis, but it benefited my white family and allowed them to buy a house at a good price, while blacks were barred from the same options. Even after three generations, I am reaping the benefits of living in a racist society that prioritized my family’s whiteness at the expense of blacks in St. Louis.The fact that my mother is white and lived in a place where practically everyone was college educated, where blacks were legally not allowed to live in for a part of St. Louis’ history, had a huge effect on her chances of going to college. On top of this, as a white student she was perceived as being smarter than her black peers in her school. This type of unfair advantage that my mother was paid at the price of others, blacks, who had to prove their worthiness to teachers who gave it for free to white students. When I began to go to her same high school I realized this continued to be the case. I was immediately put into the most advanced classes when I walked into the counselor’s office with my white mother and only later learned, after talking to my black peers, that black students had very different experiences when they walked into that same office with their parents.
Over the years, I have realized that I have many privileges in my life, but what should I do with all this knowledge of my position in society and the unequal structures that privilege me? Privilege is a tool. It is power and can be used in multiples ways. President Rose’s talk last Tuesday about race is a great, specific example of using white privilege to change unequal relations that still exist in our society. Using white privilege means coming to grips with a reality that you didn’t necessarily create, but that you are benefiting from. This is hard to do, but can also feel incredibly eye opening.
We can all learn how to use privilege wisely to change the very structures that created it. Even if you’re not white, but biracial or something else (like me), by being a student at Bowdoin College, you have a lot of privilege. It’s hard to get to Bowdoin and people struggle to get into this place because of all the benefits that it gives us. It is up to us to use all these benefits to change unequal power structures. It starts by learning about the ways in which we have received unfair advantages at the expense of others.

Say It Like It Is: Don't abandon diversity

BOC budget crisis is about more than canoes and GORP.

I came to the Bowdoin Outing Club (BOC) with zero outdoor experience. I decided to join because I went on a hike led by a student as part of the Explore Bowdoin program, which provides prospective students who are underrepresented at the College with the opportunity to visit Bowdoin before deciding if they will apply. After getting my first check from my work study job as a line server at Moulton, I walked to the BOC and paid the membership fee. I was excited, but nervous—was this a place for me?
I did every possible activity I could do with the BOC; from whitewater kayaking to camping at Merritt Island to joining Spring Leadership Training in order to be qualified to lead student trips. I quickly realized something that many students have voiced concern about. The BOC was overwhelmingly white, which seemed odd for a college that is as diverse as Bowdoin. I wanted to change this and led trips with Explore Bowdoin and Out of the Zone Leadership Training, trips mostly comprised of students of color and low-income whites. While minorities were getting in touch with the BOC, it was clear that the BOC needed more.
In the past year, since the student-organized Meeting in the Union and open letter to the community published in the Orient, the conversation about race in the College has shifted. With this shift, different spaces on campus have changed to some extent as well. The BOC started off this academic year by putting a free trip pass for all students in their mailboxes and advertised that it would give financial aid to students for whom the joining fee presented an economic barrier. Intergroup dialogue has also been implemented in some programs. There is space for improvement, but for the first time in my four years at the BOC, I felt like we were on the right track to make it a diverse and inclusive space.
But now the BOC faces new financial difficulties, which will force it to reduce its activities and its generous financial aid. Students who have cars, financial resources and experience will still be able to participate in outdoor activities, but for others, the BOC is the only opportunity they’ve ever had to do outdoor activities. The telemark skiing class, which the BOC subsidized for me my first year at Bowdoin, might get cancelled because the BOC can’t afford to pay for the bus that takes students to Sugarloaf. The BOC will also have to reduce other trips that go out every weekend, especially the ones that are overnight. This is concerning because it is a halt to the progress the BOC has been making in creating a diverse environment (and I mean diverse in the racial, economic and cultural sense). Despite the BOC’s commitment to being financially accessible to all students, there is no doubt that students who will be most affected by the BOC’s budget shortage are those who don’t usually have access to the outdoors and haven’t gone on trips before because of the financial barrier it presents.
Bowdoin is not a college that is financially unstable. We have many resources (hopefully a type of emergency fund for when there are budget shortages as well). I’m not asking the Student Activity Funding Committee to give the BOC a disproportionate amount of money which would take away from other clubs. I’m asking the College to change the way they give funds to the BOC and to show they’re going to make sure we have the diverse and inclusive environment we’ve been struggling to create. I want to know that students won’t be the ones who have to pay the consequences of a budget mistake and bureaucratic processes of getting access to monetary resources.
President Barry Mills greatly changed the demographics of the College by increasing the amount of financial aid the college offered to its students, which was a great step in the right direction. Now the College faces a new challenge: how to make students at Bowdoin have the same access to resources in their four years here and thus also increase its diversity in spaces like the BOC which have been mostly white. The question now is if this is a priority for the College.

Say It Like It Is

Challenging the stigma against female masturbation

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

Caroline Martinez

Orient Staff

February 2, 2016

I’ve never lied when people have asked me if I masturbate. The subject has come up in a range of scenarios throughout the years from “never have I ever” games, events about women’s sexuality, and casual conversations. Every time it creates discomfort and sometimes giggles and questions from women like, “How do you do it? How often? Does it feel weird?”

My first weekend at Bowdoin I felt like I was in one of the most sexually liberal places in the world. I saw people making out on the dance floor, going home together—and for the first time in my life—same sex couples in a public space. At the alma mater of Alfred Kinsey, I assumed everyone, or almost everyone, masturbated. Being a sexual being seemed so acceptable in this context and people talked about their “hook ups” and partners often. But I was surprised.

Some women told me they had never had an orgasm, others that they had never touched themselves and that the idea of it just made them very uneasy. This filled me with questions. What about masturbation made them uncomfortable? Where did these ideas come from? And how did they know what they liked and disliked if they didn’t masturbate?

I began to explore my own relationship to masturbating and tried to answer these questions as best as I could. Growing up I remembered I was told myths that were supposed to keep both men and women from touching themselves. One of them claimed masturbating made an obscene amount of hair grow in people’s hands. I also learned that men always wanted sex and that as a woman I was supposed to be delicate, have no sexual needs and withhold sex from men who had no control over their endless sexual desires.

When men begin to masturbate it’s often seen as a rite of passage—something all guys do—but many women never even begin to do it because of the stigma surrounding female sexuality. When women do masturbate it’s often seen as deviant, dirty and characteristic of a promiscuous woman. Just like there’s often a double standard in dating and hooking up, there’s a double standard with masturbation. Even in a place like Bowdoin College, which in comparison to most places in the country is very open about sexuality, women can feel shame, anxiety and fear when it comes to masturbating (whether it be actually doing it or just having a conversation about it).

Masturbating is a way to connect with your body and get to know what your sexual likes and dislikes are. Sex experts like Tristan Taormino, who came to Bowdoin a few years ago, recommend that people (especially young people like college students) do it even if they’re in a relationship. Masturbating also makes the body release endorphins, which means it’s a fun and destressing activity.

I’m not going to end this piece urging all of Bowdoin to masturbate because the point isn’t to feel pressure to do it and because it’s very normal to feel anxious about masturbating. People don’t get taught how to do it and for many years female sexuality has been heavily repressed and stigmatized. What I do urge people to do is to begin to explore their relationship to masturbation. Why do you do it or avoid it? What are your beliefs about masturbation and where do they come from?

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