Author: Nicole Tsuno

After many Margaret Talbot searches, New York Times recommended to me an article in its opinion section called “The #MeToo Stories We’re Not Hearing.” After Time named the Silence Breakers 2017’s Person of the year and having personally participated in the movement, I decided the article was worth a try.

The first thing I noticed was that the author was a man, which was interesting because he only wrote about female victims. The female victims he talked about were women who had experienced sexual violence, protected themselves in someway, and ended up being incarceration for their actions. He describes that while some of the stories do get recognized through celebrities and viral hashtags, there are many more similar stories that are never heard. He quotes one of the victims who powerfully states “Abuse is protected by silence.”

#MeToo has been a mass national reckoning of rape and sexual abuse. I, like many women, have learned (often through experience) that I am not safe. I have learned to be vigilant when I walk home at night, when I accept attention or conversation in a public place, and even when I am in my home. And someday, I am going to have to teach my daughter how to do the same things–how to toe the line between the woman’s responsibility of “prevention” and the expectation of feminine warmth and sociability. It is sad that I’ve become so jaded!

Been a little under the weather and tired of writing essays so I decided to listen to a podcast by Margaret Talbot. It is a piece from 2010 on Slate’s DoubleX Gabfest titled “Sex by Surprise.” The first thing they discuss is the Sweedish rape charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Margaret gives a short summary of the events. She describes the charges were ambiguous and not really traditional assault–instead they use the Sweedish term “sex by surprise.” The first two charges revolve around consensual sex but that Assange did not want to wear a condom or get STD tested; the third charge involved him having sex with a woman while she was asleep.

Talbot thinks that the people might be all suspicious, because of the conspiracy-laden world the women live in based on their understanding. All members of the podcast agree that it might have just been a loose claim to hold Assange on some charges so they didn’t have to track him down.

Interesting account of American perceptions of rape policies that are far more strict than the ones in the US.

With all of the high-profile sexual assault allegations in the news this past month, I decided to see if Margaret Talbot had written anything on rape. Not surprisingly she has, but not in the way I imagined. She published an article in the New Yorker entitled “Reporting on Rape” in 2014. The article discusses a case where there were allegations of a gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity. The original information, published by Rolling Stone, appeared to not be true upon closer investigation. This led Talbot to her own questions–how to we report on rape?

Some of the problems Talbot identifies deal with the responsibilities of reporting and the sensitive nature of sexual assault. In the U of VA case, the journalists failed to get in touch with the accused, saying that the fraternity’s Facebook page was outdated and the accused were hard to reach. Talbot states how it is difficult to talk to sources that may contradict a person who is vulnerable, whom you empathize with and trust. However, that is a crucial part of journalism–making sure that you get all the information. However, this concept also contradicts the fact that often the best exposures of wrongdoing start with one whistle-blower. Talbot comes to the conclusion that truth-seeking–digging for the hard facts–should not make a case weak, but stronger.

Interesting perspective into journalism and dealing with sexual assault allegations when you empathize/relate to the victim.

How many more of these do I have???

This time, I looked at one of Margaret Talbot’s work on a different platform, the New Yorker. In 2009, she did a long article called “Brain Gain” which follows the use of neuroenhancers in academic and professional environments. Like many of her stories, she starts out by following Alex, a Harvard student who uses Adderall to complete work. Talbot details the obligations that Alex has each day, from running a student organization, to work, to studying. Alex describes the rationale to Adderall; people use it not to be the top student, but to be in upper levels of student achievement, or even just to do better than what they normally would have. These students are not delusional–they know that a paper written late at night on Adderall will not be as good as one written a week before the deadline with editing; they are just trying to get the job done.

She then discusses findings by a U of M researcher: users are more likely white male undergraduates at a competitive university, they are more likely to be in the Northeast, likely to belong to a sorority or fraternity, and have a GPA of 3.0 or lower. They also are ten times more likely to have smoked marijuana in the last year and twenty times as likely to say that they have used cocaine. She also discusses how common use is on campus, stating that college chat rooms used concurrently with studying are flooded with advice and offers about securing neuroenhancers. People develop strategies for how to take the pills for maximum efficiency and share them with others.

Overall, this article aligns with the content of her later work, but is different from what I normally read on the New Yorker. In general, the New Yorker tends to be verbose and targeted at a highly-educated elite class. However, this article pretty accessible and more like her New York Times work. I am interested why the New Yorker deviated from their standard content form.

I guess I missed the memo that we were supposed to do one of these! Anyway I changed the idea for my project a little while ago to be a picture slideshow type thing based off of “Faces of an Epidemic” that I discussed in an earlier blog post. I rented out a camera, and took pictures and interviewed people with mental health conditions on campus. It has been a really interesting experience so far (I wish I had the time to do more, but at the same time I think the length then would make it a little inaccessible to other people). I wanted to shoot some video too but I ended up having actually too much content, so I cut the slides and pictures down. It is up on my website but there are some issues with formatting that I am still figuring out.  Excited to show everyone!

All the feels for Talbot’s article titled “Best in Class.” Talbot follows the lives of valedictorians and the increasing competition of the title. What Talbot describes could be better characterized as warfare. In the opening anecdote, a student becomes Valedictorian by taking an easy introductory algebra class after figuring out that GPA ties are broken by amount of credits. The ensuing chaos involves parents, boycotts of graduation, and conflicts that divide not just the school but the entire town. As a result, the high school banned valedictorians and instead opted to recognize all students in the top ten percent of the class. Subsequent anecdotes describe schools where parents call school offices to figure out the rank of their child–who is often separated from the next by only one hundredth of a decimal place–to legal fights with out-of-court monetary settlements.

Talbot also cites a book called “Lives of Promise: What Happens to High School Valedictorians.” The book finds that Valedictorians never become exceptionally successful adults because they pursue financially safe careers and pursue multiple academic interests. Exceptionally successful adults, on the other hand, develop single passions early on and often recall not liking formal education. This reminded me of the Terman study, which tracked child geniuses throughout their lifetime. These “Termanites” were at best, above average in their adult careers while 2 children who were rejected from the study for having low IQs went on to win Nobel prizes.

While I was very interested on this 2005 take of high school pressure, I think the article fell short in some areas. Namely, there was a mention of general stress, but not that of the mental illness that develops in these settings. The article mentions “Stressed Out Students” a Bay Area focused program “pledged to make students and their parents less driven.” However, this wording neglects the heart of the issue–being driven is not the issue, but mental illness that constant internal and external pressure creates. I can say with confidence that Bay Area schools have only gotten worse with this regard and are now notorious hubs for suicide, eating disorders, anxiety, and depression. I wonder if Talbot’s limited view was a product of the time (since I feel like mental illness in high pressure academic systems is a table topic now) or of her limited background in the actual experience.