I'm also not like, blind to what's going on, in case anyone was wondering

Like I guess this counts as my "platform" but considering the only readers I have are like, weird russian bots and people I know in real life, and the fact that I have never in any way, shape, or form tried to make this profitable, readable, popular, etc and have NO interest in that being the case, I do not and will not put myself in the category of someone with a platform. I don't have influence to the point that it's a job, or a side hustle, or some kind of moral necessity. And yet... I'm still here writing this.

This whole month has given me the gift of people opening up about their experiences to me. Talking to me about this. Making new connections. It's helped me see which of my friends cares about this enough to say "you know what, even if it's uncomfortable for me, I should probably share a thing or two that resonated with me"and which of my friends seem to be of the opinion that "I won't share, but I will be open about this personally with people I am close to" and which of my friends are still saying "I just don't wanna." It's white privilege to be able to ignore this and just continue your life, you know. Society is built for you to ignore it. You're okay being complacent in that? I also don't want to say there's some overlap with friends who have said absolutely nothing in any capacity and friends who attended a "ghetto" themed party in high school (DESPITE me protesting that the theme was OVERTLY and CLEARLY racist) but like... there is. (I also know some people just don't post on social media at all, really, and I've seen nothing from them for months- I know that people use that kind of stuff differently).

And also honestly like.. the world does NOT need my opinion on this. I'm a highly privileged white woman and while I'm intelligent and empathetic, we can all see how this problem does not affect my life. I live in a majority white city in a majority white neighbourhood. I didn't see any real diversity in skin tone until I attended a major university. The vast majority of my friends are white. At least half my colleagues are white, and I can see fields around me that are vastly majority white. And this is the point where I'm supposed to say that's not a bad thing, bla bla white people are good, but there is literally an entire social system here set up for them to think that as a default so I'm not going to bother. It should be obvious that I don't hate myself for being born white- I obviously can't help that, nobody can. But is the whiteness of all that a good thing? Objectively not. It makes me more comfortable because everybody assumes I belong... but I don't think I deserve to feel comfortable for that. I deserve to feel like I belong in that space because I do- I earned my way there (aware of how some of that was unearned as well), I want to be there, I am there, I'm contributing. Not because I'm fucking white and "of course white people do science!" Literally FUCK that attitude. That's what I mean when I say whiteness in the space I work in is objectively bad. That's what it is.

That's something I've been trying to check in myself lately. It's literally the smallest thing I can do, and I know that. but when I drive through an unfamiliar neighbourhood, I know nobody will call the police or give me funny looks, because I'm white. I know that if I'm on campus late and it's dark and I'm walking to my car with my hood up, people just assume I'm a student who belongs there, because I'm white. When people see pictures of me they will be less likely to assume I'm not capable, that I was given something unfairly, that I didn't earn my way to where I am (of course sexism still impacts me, but that's pretty much the only ism). People assume I belong, I'm right, I'm good, I'm smart, etc. I'm never the only person of my race in ANY space I'm in, ever. Nobody questions my presence in a space and if they do, I know they won't become aggressive. Nobody calls the police because I play music VERY loudly in my neighbourhood just because I like it. I am at the point where I flat out feel that I may have been given better treatment- more attention, more care, less hostility- as a graduate student in my program because I am white. Everybody looks at me and assumes I speak English and doesn't ask where I came from because of course I came from this part of the world. People look at me and assume I am capable, smart, and will do good things, that I am a good person doing good things, that I will be easier to deal with, etc. I'm not naive enough to think that doesn't affect how people treat me. If the colour of my skin means things to people before I ever say a word, it affects how they treat me. This isn't hard.

So when people tell me things have happened to them because of their race or describe their racial experience to me, I trust them, and I remember what they said, and I make the mental effort to think about how situations are different for me because I am white. I also make the mental effort to try and question my assumptions. I can't stop whatever automatic thoughts have been coerced into my brain, but I can try to examine them- therapy is already teaching me how to do this. Is there evidence to back this up? What is really going on here? Where did I learn this story? Sometimes the answer still eludes me, but I feel morally called to do that work, inside myself, all the time. Again: literally the tiniest thing I can do. I'd like to imagine the power it could have if every white person could do it, though. Question their assumptions about race. Look for the evidence. Be critical. Be open. Be curious. Hold themselves to a higher standard and accept that sometimes the answers don't come to you immediately or that you will resist them because they are so uncomfortable. 

Between that, reading some books, reading and sharing a lot of instagram posts, and donating money, I'm trying to help. Maybe this is performative, I don't know, but I also want to be part of the reason you can't ignore this issue anywhere you go, including your opinionated feminist friend's personal blog. So here it is.

-swegan

We're really testing my ability to call myself a homebody

Let me weave you a tale of me in mid-March: stressed. Very stressed. As always. It was marking time and I had a lot of lab reports to get through again, and I knew the last lab report, consisting of the two longest sections, was something I was going to have to mark next. I was juggling bridesmaids drama- namely that one of the bridesmaids was, if not definitively a piece of shit person, decidedly acting like one, and the other helpful bridesmaids and I were trying to put together a bachelorette party 3 weekends before the wedding in mid-April. I was going to the gym twice a week, which had a positive effect on my mental health that cannot be understated (and for 25% the price of therapy, too!), and was looking forward to my teaching duties being done early so I could start to get some real work done on my project. I was going to try Baby's First Apoptosis Assay once marking was really, truly done, get some positive controls for my CB1 western blots, find a way to isolate protein with a broken sonicator, finish my RNA experiments, and see about ordering a new cell line. 

I met with my supervisor on Wednesday, something akin to seeing Bigfoot in the woods, and taught all day on Thursday, something akin to having a hangnail that you just KNOW you can't trim until you get home even though it keeps getting caught on your sleeve. With a fellow graduate student and TA, I shared that I thought that the university would really try to wrap up the remaining two weeks of the semester before shutting down. There were only two weeks left. Only two other major institutions in the country had shut down at this point. I was silently mustering strength in the background to get through the next month of my life, which was going to be extremely busy and require delicate time management.

And then they brought the hammer down.

Classes- cancelled. Labs, including the one I taught- cancelled. In-person meetings cancelled. Suddenly we had to tell the PIs exactly when we'd be in the lab and for how long, and I was instructed to wear a mask when in the lab at all times- despite me only going in at 7pm or later and being completely alone the entire time. A week later I was advised by the same PIs to freeze my cells and not return to campus. I keep kicking myself for having left a bunch of stuff in my "office"- a charging cord, several types of tea, some snacks, a little cactus that is actually just a painted rock, a sense of normalcy- you know. But at the time I don't think anyone could have predicted just how long we'd be gone. I still haven't been back- that marks almost three full months out of the lab- the same amount of time I lost to the move to the new building last summer. Given how much more slowly we're going to have to proceed when we get back, I'm thinking it's safe to say I've now lost a lot more time than just three months.

The bachelorette party never happened. The wedding did. I attended it on zoom, something I cannot recommend against enough. There are few things more painful than watching one of your best friends get married over a low-quality web stream in which their other friends and relatives will not stop spamming the chat with smart ass comments and you can't hear any of the vows, but CAN clearly hear the officiant say "well, at least the people who really mattered were able to be here with you today." I imagine one of the things more painful is having to try and reschedule your wedding in the context of a major global pandemic, just to be clear. While I'll still be able to party it up in my bridesmaids dress I paid $100 extra to rush-order which is currently the most ironic thing that has ever happened to me, I'm still processing the pain of that experience in private, on my own time. I think a lot of us are doing that right now.

Oh, by the by- I'm engaged now too. Redbeard and I will someday get married- also someday we will live together BEFORE getting married, but of course the two-posts-ago-mentioned breaking of his leg delayed his program by a semester, so now we get to move in January during the same semester of my comprehensive exam, and before you say that we could just live with my parents for a semester, you haven't been living with my parents, which I would advise you to keep in mind. I would much rather throw away money on rent than listen to my parents talk for one more second about how rent is just throwing away money.

That's the kicker, too- I went to see Redbeard in person, so fortunately my engagement was not via low-quality web stream, but was instead by a high quality real life stream, with a ring gently nestled inside of a container of flyfishing flies, right between my favourites- the hoppers (which I used this weekend knowing full well it was way too early for fish to be interested in anything that juicy). However, my ever-paranoid mother has insisted upon my return both that I have to get tested (which will happen in about 24 hours and inevitably come back negative) and that I have to quarantine in my room for 14 days. Now I am about one week into that, and I feel as though my sister is about one more time preparing a meal for me away from just hugging me in full view of our parents so we can be quarantined together. It really is something to come home from getting engaged and not feeling a single human touch for two weeks. Probably also on that list of things more painful than attending your best friend's wedding over a low-quality web stream, along with having to live apart from your fiancee for another 6.5 months. This is despite the fact that neither Redbeard nor any of his outdoorsy friends he's been in contact with have reported having The Virus (and I know he would tell me if he was quarantining for that reason, if not because he knows I'd want to know, then because it would mean two weeks not being in the mountains and that would be quite difficult for him). Let me repeat: there is literally no basis to having me do this besides the fact that my mother does not see that she clearly has an anxiety disorder and needs to go to therapy so the rest of us can stop tiptoeing around her feelings lest we trigger another passive aggressive silent treatment.

And then comes the fun realization that this pandemic has fucked us all up, to the point that I'm almost certain I'm not the only one that can't watch movies anymore because any scene containing two or more people from different households in close proximity activates my fight-or-flight response and seems extremely unrealistic. We all took it as a given that it was safe to be social and enjoy the company of others, and that was ripped away, and we all know we can't move to some kind of online pod society where we never interact with others in person because humans are social creatures by nature and as such we now must find a way to end this situation such that we can like, hug each other again, or collectively we're going to lose it.

So for once I'm using some of the tags for this blog that I made when I was like, 13, and never bothered to change because I figured those were all the classifications I'd ever need, and then stopped using when I inevitably didn't need them anymore. Because you know what? This fully classifies as :(, dread and the like, low points, and sad stuff. Thanks, 13 year old me. I hope you all out there are okay.