Don't abandon diversity

Say It Like It Is: Challenging the stigma against female masturbation

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?

Say It Like It Is: Gratitude and speaking out for change aren’t mutually exclusive

Since organizing efforts for Michael Brown began last year, students of color at Bowdoin have become vocal in ways that I’d never seen my freshman and sophomore year here. There is more that needs to be done. It seems like this keeps being repeated over and over again, but for as many times as it is has been said, there is someone saying that we should just be grateful that we’re here and suck it up.
In the past years, elite colleges have changed their demographics by giving out more generous financial aid and making stronger efforts to reach out to underrepresented groups. I found out about Bowdoin when I was in high school because it was on an online list of colleges with a no loan policy. Colleges with no loan policies have a financial aid packet that expects no parental contribution if the student is from a low-income family and only includes grants. Those policies have given many low-income students the opportunity to attend elite schools like Bowdoin.
The fact that it was possible for me to come to one of the top schools in the country even though I was a low-income student seemed like a miracle. I felt extremely grateful.But now we’re here as low-income students and students of color, and Bowdoin, like many colleges across the country, doesn’t seem to know what to do with us. In the past, Bowdoin has had a lower graduation rate for blacks and Latinos compared to white students. There are constant racial tensions. Women of color are the most dissatisfied group on campus. There are still economic barriers for low-income students when they come here, despite the financial aid that’s offered. I remember asking someone on my first-year floor if I could borrow their OneCard and pay them back because I didn’t have any money to do my laundry. I had to wait for pay day, which if you’re a working student at Bowdoin, is a big deal. I was lucky enough to only have to support myself and not have to work to send money home like other students at Bowdoin have had to do.
I am grateful for Bowdoin’s efforts to try to even the playing field. I have benefited from many of them, like the funded internships that the Career Planning Center gives to students each summer. But I also feel that my sense of gratitude has kept me and many students quiet for a while, and now that we’re speaking out, there seems to be a type of backlash.Students of color who want their elite institutions to change have been painted as privileged, whiny kids. There is an attitude of, “Shut up and be grateful.” Do I need to be more grateful than other students that I’m here? Am I not supposed to want to change a place just because it’s elite?
Students of color in colleges across the country are saying, “We’re here.” And we’re not leaving or staying quiet. Elitist colleges like Bowdoin might have been made for white privileged males, but we’re making them ours. This is scary to many, but for me, it’s about time.

Say It Like It Is

BOC budget crisis is about more than canoes and GORP.

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

Caroline Martinez

Columnist

February 18, 2016

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.

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