Think Outside the Box

By Cate Lunt | Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Is it so much to ask that a bunch of rich kids who’ve had everything handed to them think outside the box? As an idealist, I used to think “No,” but lately I’ve been disillusioned and alienated. I guess that’s part of growing up during an age of globalization. Globalization is changing everything. Yet, in other ways, it’s changed nothing. That is the central paradox of the twenty-first century. We need to wake up. Who will stand up and speak out about this? Who’s brave enough to make their voice heard?

Cate Lunt, reporting for duty. I’m here to call people out on their racist, sexist, classist, heteronormative, anthropocentric, heteronormative, logocentric, Eurocentric, capitalist, phallocratic, and heteronormative behavior. I am a foot soldier in the war on apathy. Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Yeah, all right, let’s do this!

Here is a tale to make your flesh creep. It made me—a peace activist, for crying out loud—look forward all the more to the Environment’s mercy execution of polluting humanity. As a poet and activist, I submitted a poem for publication in a campus literary magazine, excerpted here:

i am deconstructing a phallus so
you will not oppress the rest
of me. i am the dream-chewed
vaginal stars de-privileging
your discourse. Lit cigarettes…

My mother’s sexual [1] partner, a MacArthur genius grant award-winning editor at a renowned magazine, called it “very subversive.” But weeks later in the Collis lunch line, once a bastion of progressive thought, or so I assumed, I overheard a so-called “fraternity brother” reading this poem aloud to his fellow Neanderthals [2]. But the thing that makes your heart burst is this: they didn’t seem to be subverted at all. In fact, they seemed to think that my work was laughably bad. These were econ majors, probably, constructing my poetry as a plaything in their patriarchal frat house, as it were. How could this happen in 2007?

I think in my opinion that it seems there are two problems at this point in time. First, as ever, there is privilege. Most of us go to tropical islands during vacations where we stay in nice hotels paid for by our parents. And, no, it doesn’t bother us that what has been constructed as a tropical island is really the post-colonial anvil of neo-liberalism, that our parents are constructions of a heteronormative discourse, that we suck shamelessly at the capitalist teat, and have an all-in-all normative “good” time. If you resemble the high school me, you take these privileges for granted and even enjoy them. But I ask Dartmouth students to think: next time you shoot willy-nilly from island to island on your dad’s private jet, how much are you contributing to global warming? Have you realized that you’re racist, that what you spend on shoes one afternoon on Fifth Avenue could pull a small African country out of debt? But, no, we are all blind to this. We all benefit from privilege, and yet are so reluctant to sacrifice a little for the greater good.

Other impediments are the so-called “jokes” themselves, usually the tools of males to phallocratically embolden patriarchy. This is often a difficult subject to discuss for the simple reason that laughter often accompanies supposedly “positive” feelings like “happiness,” at least as it’s socially constructed. But it is obvious to anyone paying attention that laughter can also hurt and destroy. Who was the idiot who first said, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”? Get a grip: jokes kill. Only when humor voluntarily de-genders itself will we allow it to romp freely in the Dartmouth Community.

This is all fine and well, but what is to be done? You’ll be pleased to read that a grassroots and netroots solution is already voxing the vote. As a poet, womyn, and student assembly representative, I sometimes feel as if poets are now in danger more than ever, that we are like dodo birds being clubbed to death by homophobic Portuguese sailors. With this in mind, I have introduced a resolution in the Assembly called the Dartmouth Poet Protection Act. All poets who live and breathe poetry will finally be able to discourse unmolested. Some will say the measures it calls for are “harsh” or “unfair,” to which I say: “Maybe you should have thought of that before you were ‘harsh’ and ‘unfair’ to the Dartmouth Community!” Yeah! Chalk one up for justice. To quote the immortal lines of Maya Angelou, “Phenomenal woman / that’s me.”
***

A word of explanation: Some will say, “Why should a progressive write for The Dartmouth Review?” The real question is, why shouldn’t ze [3]? I will be subverting to hatemongering mechanism from within, and maybe I’ll help some of their writers think for the first time in their lives.

[1] I don’t mince words. Deal with it.
[2] Oh yes: I went there.
[3] Gender neutral pronoun, maybe a first for this rag.

Think Outside the Box

Article Tools

Related Articles