It's About More Than a Hijab
  September 27, 2022 There’s a lot of pressing news in the world today, but before I get to it: Can we take a moment to bask in the fact that Rihanna will be performing at the Super Bowl halftime show next February?? Naturally, I have questions: Does this mean new music? A new tour? Will her baby come on stage as a special guest? Also, why did Taylor Swift turn down the performance? My synapses have been firing all weekend. More soberingly, Hurricane Ian has made landfall in Cuba and is making its way toward Florida. We hope all of our readers and colleagues are staying as safe as they possibly can. Lots to cover today—including a potential government shutdown and the growing protests in Iran—so let’s dig into it. Waiting for R9 and Midnights, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ON“What are you setting on fire?”: The unrest in Iran continues following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman who was detained by the country’s morality police and died in their custody. Based on photos of Amini’s bruised, comatose body lying in a hospital, many believe she was severely beaten by police, but officials have denied this version of events. Iran’s foreign minister even went so far as to assert during an NPR interview that the protests in Iran are “not a big deal” and the noise around Amini’s death is being caused by “foreign media and outside agitation.” But videos on social media, showing thousands of people around the world—and, tellingly, within Iran itself—marching and demonstrating, tell another story.  PROTESTORS REMOVING THEIR HEADSCARVES OUTSIDE OF THE IRANIAN EMBASSY IN ISTANBUL. (IMAGE BY CHRIS MCGRATH VIA GETTY IMAGES) The most profound symbols of this multi-national protest have been women (and a few men) removing their head coverings and cutting their hair in public—acts that are illegal under Iran’s theocratic law. As a Muslim woman living in the U.S., I have been reluctant to enter the debate about Islam’s role surrounding this tragedy. Hijab—which is an entire lifestyle, not just a scarf on one’s head—is often touted as a symbol of the oppression of women abroad, used to flatten the complexities of Muslim women’s experiences. Head coverings have been used to justify wars, invasions, xenophobic laws, and Islamophobic hate crimes. As women living in the West, we often feel the need to plant our feet firmly on only one side of the debate: We champion women who defy the laws forcing them to cover, but when it comes to those who want to cover—even if, just like the former group, their choices are being limited by the government—we adopt either silence or a sort of conversational waffling. (Yes we support you but that scarf is a sign of internalized patriarchy, so why cling to it?) But two realities can exist at once and both are deserving of more nuance than they get. As a practicing Muslim in a country hostile to them, it’s difficult to both speak out against these oppressive practices and defend my faith without colleagues, employers, or strangers in general challenging whether or not I’m really a feminist.  PROTESTOR IN GREECE CUTTING HER HAIR IN SOLIDARITY WITH IRAN. (IMAGE BY MILOS BICANSKI VIA GETTY IMAGES, ILLUSTRATION BY THE METEOR) But what is happening is not merely an issue of unclipping the shackles of a religion that’s already been demonized in the West. What is happening in Iran is a political uprising against a corrupt government—so let’s beware of conservative Western politicians who are jumping on board the “liberate Iranian women” train, while helping engineer one of the greatest losses of women’s rights in the U.S. for 50 years. Writer Mona Eltahawy puts it perfectly: “So successful has white supremacist patriarchy been at convincing you that you’re lucky to live in the U.S. and not Saudi Arabia or Iran, that so many of you did not pay enough attention to the theocracy that white supremacy was building right here, at home.” The U.S. flavor of theocratic rule Eltahawy refers to is, of course, forced pregnancy, which is not that different from a nationwide dress code. Both stem from a willful misinterpretation of ancient texts and the desire to control women’s bodily autonomy. To be abundantly clear, hijab is not merely the scarf we see. It is a religious practice that comprises one’s dress, comportment, and language and is an outward manifestation of the relationship one chooses to have with their maker. It’s also not just for women.  PROTESTOR IN CHILE TOUTING WOMEN, LIFE, LIBERTY. (IMAGE BY LUCAS AGUAYO ARAOS VIA GETTY IMAGES, ILLUSTRATION BY THE METEOR) While we can argue all night and day about whose god is right or wrong, the fact remains that there is no version of a god that is a politician. The fight ahead both here and abroad isn’t against personal beliefs, but the political structures that have allowed men of privilege to turn their own beliefs into laws and political policy. Iranians burning their hijabs are not committing an affront to Islam; they are saying loudly and proudly that choice and bodily autonomy are fundamental human rights. So for anyone who’s been having strong feelings about what’s happening across the world but not about what’s happening in your backyard, I’m asking the same existential question Eltahawy is: What are you setting on fire?
 University of Idaho’s newest gag order: The Intercept just released a communication between the University of Idaho’s general counsel and its staff, telling employees of the university how to talk to students about abortion. The short version? Don’t. “During all times that university employees are performing their jobs,” the letter says, “the law prohibits them from taking any action, and from using or providing institution funds or facilities, for any of the following…promoting abortion…providing or performing an abortion…counseling in favor of abortion,” and so on. The memo also notes that the school will stop providing birth control (an unusual move for a university), and that the consequences for breaking these rules could be firing. It’s possible that other large public universities in states that, like Idaho, have largely banned abortion or are trying to also have similar policies, whether written or implicit. But these guidelines deprive students of crucial health information—and they’re especially disappointing considering that Idaho has in the past at least nodded to a more compassionate stance. Last month, when The Meteor’s Talia Kantor Lieber asked 61 schools about their abortion travel policy, the University of Idaho told us that the university “does not provide money specifically for students to travel for an abortion. The university does have emergency funds available to students…While it is possible a student could use it for this, the university does not get involved in the medical decisions of our students….We provide information and resources that allow students to make informed and independent decisions.” Or maybe not anymore. AND:
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Iranian Women Are Burning Their Hijabs
  September 22, 2022 Dear Meteor readers, It’s officially the Fall Equinox which means summer is truly, truly over. But the silver lining is we can all start sporting our fall fashions—which, in my opinion, are the only good fashions. Also: leaf peeping! In today’s newsletter we’re covering the latest on the growing unrest in Iran after the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died under suspicious circumstances after being detained by Iran’s morality police. Sitting under a sun lamp, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONBurning their hijabs: Last Tuesday, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was arrested by morality police in Iran for allegedly failing to cover her hair in accordance with the law. Three days after “mysteriously” falling into a coma while in police custody, she died. Witnesses to her arrest say that Amini was beaten by officers on her way to a detention center (a story officials are refuting). But since her death, women have taken to the streets and the internet to protest Amini’s treatment and the restrictive law in Iran that states that women must fully cover their hair and wear loose-fitting garments. Protestors—led by women but supported by men—have been cutting their hair in defiance, while others are burning headscarves in the streets. So far nine people have been killed in altercations with Iranian security forces. Videos and images from the protests have been moving, heartbreaking, and essential to our understanding of how dangerous the situation has become for those daring to protest.  PROTESTORS REMOVING THEIR HEADSCARVES OUTSIDE OF THE IRANIAN EMBASSY IN ISTANBUL. (IMAGE BY CHRIS MCGRATH VIA GETTY IMAGES) But now the Iranian government is slowly but surely trying to silence the voices of protestors by blocking internet access in cities where demonstrations are happening. Residents of Tehran have reported issues with Instagram and WhatsApp, platforms used to share messages about what’s really happening on the ground. Back in the United States, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was scheduled for an interview with Christiane Amanpour where one of the topics would be the unrest in Iran. However, after Amanpour refused to comply with his request that she don a head covering for their conversation, President Raisi declined to speak. It would be easy—lazy, even—to write off what is happening in Iran as a local issue of religious freedom. Instead, this is a huge opportunity for the international community to support women fighting for their bodily autonomy. We cannot allow Mahsa Amini to fade into another tragic hashtag. Here is a list of reporters and experts to follow and amplify as the situation unfolds.  PROTESTORS IN THE STREETS OF TEHRAN, CLASHING WITH IRANIAN SECURITY FORCES. (IMAGE BY ANADOLU AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES) Justice for Shireen Abu Akleh: According to a new report conducted by human rights group Al-Haq and research agency Forensic Architecture, there is sufficient forensic evidence to prove that Israeli forces “deliberately killed” Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh earlier this year. Abu Akleh was shot by a sniper while reporting from the city of Jenin while wearing a vest that clearly identified her as a member of a press. The report confirms the long-held suspicion that Abu Akleh was targeted by Israeli forces, despite the Israeli government’s claims that she was struck accidentally during an exchange of fire. There is even evidence that after Abu Akleh was hit, the shooter continued to fire on a civilian who attempted to give aid. On Tuesday, the report was presented at The Hague and an official complaint was filed. The IDF has released no response. AND:
 BEFORE YOU GO...THERE ACTUALLY WAS SOME GOOD NEWS THIS WEEK!The news cycle has been particularly bad this week, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few positive things going on in the world. Let’s get a quick hit of serotonin before the weekend.
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Meet the Black Filmmakers That Changed Representation in Movies
BY REBECCA CARROLL
“When I was a little girl, all I wanted to see was me in the media. Someone fat like me, Black like me, beautiful like me.” –Lizzo
If anyone needed a reminder of how important representation is in visual media, last week’s release of the new Little Mermaid trailer provided it. Dozens of cheerful, genuinely moving videos of little brown and Black girls, rejoicing in seeing a Black Halle Bailey as the new Ariel, hit social media—and were swiftly followed by racist backlash.
Representation matters and its absence in visual media is not because Black folks haven’t been creating it; it’s that predominantly white gatekeepers who fund and distribute film and TV have chosen to exclude Black creators. And that’s why REGENERATION: BLACK CINEMA 1898-1971, an exhibit at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles exploring seven decades of the vast canon of work created by Black American filmmakers, is so important. The exhibit is a tribute to Black filmmakers who did their work not just in the face of structural racism, but in a burgeoning industry that refused to acknowledge them.
I sat down with Rhea Combs, the co-creator of REGENERATION and director of curatorial affairs at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, to hear about what she learned.
Rebecca Carroll: This exhibition features films and visual art from nearly a century of Black filmmaking. Are there pieces that you still think about all the time?
Rhea Combs: Yes, short answer. We open it with Something Good - Negro Kiss from 1898, a 29-second work that shows Gertie Brown and Saint Suttle in this kind of playful embrace (the first documented on-screen kiss between two Black folks in film history). It’s the piece that you see when you walk in, and it's emblematic of everything that Doris Berger and I were really looking to accomplish with this exhibition. And by that, I mean: You see this juxtaposed with a Glenn Ligon Double America 2 work that’s this neon piece that has America written right-side up and then written upside-down—that kind of double consciousness of knowing someone else is looking at you, but then also doing it for yourself and doing it with such pride and such dignity and such beauty. I think Something Good - Negro Kiss embodies all of that.
The exhibition notes describe how the groundbreaking Black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux was working in an environment where the bar for what a film should look like was D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation—which, as most people aware of the film know, was wildly racist. What do you think the impact of that film was on Micheaux and other Black filmmakers?
When we looked at this show and conceptualized it, we had to predate cinema and look at theater and photography, which then allows you to understand that there were these conversations around Black modernity that were happening. When you situate it within that framework, then you understand better an Oscar Micheaux. Yes, there was D.W. Griffith, [but] there were also people like Booker T. Washington and [W.E.B.] Du Bois, who were creating these really grassroots, organized protests against [Griffith’s] work.… So I think there were these kinds of social and cultural dynamics at play within the African American community that we try to address in the exhibition through showing forward thinkers like Sojourner Truth, who used photography, and Du Bois, Frederick Douglas, and Booker T. Washington.
That is sort of a summation of Black culture—so much of the work we create is in response to what we haven't been able to do, what we haven't been able to be. Were there moments in the exhibition when it was clear that these filmmakers were creating work that was not [only] in response to the ways in which we were and are oppressed?
I think even within the spaces in which these works were shown (pop-up churches or community centers) suggest that while these social realities were happening with structural racism, I believe that filmmakers were doing this in part because they wanted to do the work. They weren't just doing it in response to.
We talk a lot about the power of seeing ourselves reflected in film and TV, especially as we have been so objectified and dehumanized, right? It’s just amazing to me that we've been doing this for so long and internalizing as much as we have—both the beauty of something like Negro Kiss, and the ugliness of Birth of a Nation.
We’ve been navigating. As you look through seven decades of a push, [a] pull, an ebb-and-flow of this artistic practice, you still have these moments of hope and glimmer. You have an 18-year-old Josephine Baker going from leaving after being traumatized from race riots in East St. Louis to France, not knowing how to speak French, to becoming fluent in French and becoming a spy.
Did you say a spy?
Yes, she became a spy during World War II!
I always seem to forget that.
We hope to take the visitor on a journey [in this exhibition], and to understand the complexities of not only the external world, but also the people—performers, folks in front of and behind the camera—and the complexities behind their stories.
So if you wish for the visitor to go on a journey, where do they land at the end of that journey?
They land with a sense of hope, a sense of possibility, and this notion of resilience. In the culminating gallery, we showcase five filmmakers: Madeline Anderson, an independent filmmaker; documentary filmmaker William Greaves; the writer and filmmaker Robert Goodwin, whose work had been lost until recently; Gordon Parks; and Melvin Van Peebles. So you get a range of styles. You also get a sense of how the industry was shifting by the time you get to the late 60s/early 70s. At the end, you see this mantle where artists have chosen yet again to use this art form of film as an opportunity to speak about issues in a variety of ways. And I think that then leaves the visitor [with an expanded] understanding of American cinema.
And where have you landed?
Where have I landed? [laughs] I sit in this space of awe and inspiration—that through so many trials and tribulations, there were people who still found a way to create artwork that was meaningful.
Questions Like “What is a woman?” Work to Divide the Left
BY CHASE STRANGIO
If you have been activated by the fall of Roe v. Wade but have failed to notice the endless onslaught of anti-trans sentiment and legislation that’s been sweeping the country, you have fallen into a well-laid trap to divide natural allies in the fight for gender justice and liberation. While the left has spent the last few years embroiled in a battle over the contours of womanhood, the right has capitalized on our willingness to fight each other to advance legislation that will curtail bodily autonomy for all of us.
Just last week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a national leader in the fight against abortion access and trans health care, made strategic use of our internal divisions by announcing his support for a “Women’s Bill of Rights to Affirm Basic Biological Truths and Fight Back Against the Left’s Attempts to Redefine the Term ‘Woman.’”
Though he claims to be taking a stand against “the Left,” the anti-trans rhetoric he endorses was actually developed by the center-left. For at least seven years, we have been subjected to a disingenuous and, unfortunately, very destructive discourse that purports to ask, “What is a woman?”—but ultimately seeks to question the legitimacy of trans existence.
And it’s worked: The fear-mongering and concern-trolling has not only further propelled the far-right into power but has also caused some advocates for trans inclusivity in existing feminist and LGBTQ+ spaces to abandon their support for transgender people.
...the right has capitalized on our willingness to fight each other to advance legislation that will curtail bodily autonomy for all of us.
Back in 2015, the New York Times published an op-ed from Elinor Burkett asking “What Makes a Woman?”, tied to Caitlyn Jenner coming out as trans. Burkett wrote, “I have fought for many of my 68 years against efforts to put women—our brains, our hearts, our bodies, even our moods—into tidy boxes, to reduce us to hoary stereotypes.” Somehow, looking at all the different ways sex stereotypes are deployed and weaponized in the world, Burkett points the finger, not at right-wing campaigns, not Victoria’s Secret catalogs, not dress codes or sex-separated learning, but at trans people.
More recently, we saw the “What is a woman?” dog whistle invoked during the Senate confirmation hearings for Justice Brown Jackson, in Senate hearings on abortion access and maternal health, and again in a New York Times column by Pamela Paul decrying “The Far Right and Far Left Agree on One Thing: Women Don’t Count” just days after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs overturned Roe.
This type of rhetoric cultivates the conditions that allow for conservative activists like Matt Walsh to release his 2022 anti-trans documentary of the same name: What is a Woman? (It’s been praised by British fantasy author turned anti-trans advocate J.K. Rowling.) The more the left entertains the idea that “women” are threatened by the inclusion of trans people, the more people like Walsh and Paxton will capitalize on the precarity of gender justice solidarity to drive an SB8-sized hole in our collective rights to bodily autonomy and self-determination.
And when trans inclusion and the overturning of Roe are seen as two sides of the same coin, “erasing women,” we all but ensure that government actors succeed in their longstanding plan to curtail all our health. At this point, it is on us—those of us who are truly committed to the fight for gender justice and liberation—to get it together. Womanhood is not a zero-sum game where one person’s inclusion limits another person’s.
What if, instead, we just accepted that our sexed bodies are more complicated and dynamic than we’ve been told—full of beautiful possibility and desire—and break down all the reductive tropes about gender that hold everyone back?
Imagine what it would mean for our collective fight for health care, bodily autonomy, and liberation if, instead of spending our time casting people out of the categories of manhood and womanhood, we challenged the very idea that the state should get to decide who we are, what we need, and how we work together.
Chase Strangio is a lawyer and trans rights activist who lives in New York City.
"Why Are We Still Talking About Royalty?"
BY MEGAN CARPENTIER
When Queen Elizabeth II—the former Elizabeth Windsor—died last week, she received the uncomplicated veneration we bestow upon world leaders and celebrities (and the occasional person, like The Queen, who was both) upon their passings. But she was also criticized and mocked, online and off, by those whose ancestors and culture had been subject to the violent, extractive colonialism of the vast British empire.
Those criticisms, of course, were inevitably followed by calls to not speak ill of the dead, verbal attacks on those who did, and yet further paeans to her 70 years of rule.
A little background: When Elizabeth Windsor was born in 1926, only a handful of the colonies her family had ruled for generations—Ireland, South Africa, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia—had achieved nominal independence. And by 1952, when she came to power, only India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Burma, Palestine, and Egypt had joined them. But within the 15 years of her ascension to the British throne, the empire that had at its height encompassed 25 percent of the Earth’s landmass, controlling the lives of 20 percent of its people, now consisted of just a few islands. (The largest and most populous of these was Hong Kong, which reverted to Chinese control in 1997.)
But though the dissolution of the British empire under Queen Elizabeth II is thought of as peaceful in the popular Western imagination, in many places it was far from an orderly, non-violent handover of power. For instance, mere months after Elizabeth II took the throne, British forces began a nearly decade-long campaign to suppress an independence movement in Kenya, which they referred to as the “Mau Mau uprising.” Recent research has shown this campaign involved the mass detention of 1.5 million Kenyans, most of whom belonged to the Kikuyu ethnic group, and a systematic process of torture, forced labor, rape, and murder that the British government covered up for decades.
The British government still holds documents from 37 other former colonies in still-secret archives that are reportedly similar to the ones that proved their involvement in the “Mau Mau uprising” in Kenya.
Nonetheless, the Queen never apologized for the abuses of colonization, and there have been calls—long-standing and recent—for the British government to do so, and to provide reparations to countries damaged by extractivist colonialist policies and reconsider the role the British monarchy should have (if any) in the 21st century and beyond.
To talk through some of these questions, The Meteor turned to the people whose lives and ancestors were affected by British colonial policies about why there is both criticism and admiration of Queen Elizabeth II—and what her death represents.
“...if the British had found diamonds here, we probably wouldn't be independent now.”
–Tshepo Mokoena, London-based journalist and editor, originally from Botswana
The running joke in my family in Botswana was always that, if the British had found diamonds here, we probably wouldn't be independent now. But we gained independence from the British in 1966; the diamonds were discovered in 1967. [The mining company is jointly owned by the Botswana government.] The diamond money was used to fund public services and public health, which was very important as the HIV crisis hit Botswana in the 1990s.
There was a sense that we happened to time the discovery of the mines quite well, whereas in South Africa—where the mines were found early—there was that constant tug-of-war between the British and the Dutch. And it created centuries of a back-and-forth of European powers trying to control South Africa's resources.
Today I would say that the monarchy feels very distant from Botswana, because it is a small, landlocked country where there is not a strong remnant of white settlers. Besides some leftover rituals around Christmas and Christianity, you don't tend to feel much of that connection to Britain, and especially not to the royal family as an institution.
“But by and large, the reaction [among Indians] has been almost like losing any other beloved celebrity who was like this grandmotherly figure.”
–Rohit Kulkarni, D.C.-based former journalist, originally from India
Currently, whether in Bollywood, among the cricketers from India, or in [Indian] society in general, there is a lot of empathy and sympathy for the royal family, and they really appreciate what the Queen did. She was a chief guest for the India Republic Day celebrations in 1961; there were at least a million people who stood on the roads in New Delhi to say hello to her. The second time she visited was in November 1983, when she met with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi for the Commonwealth Leaders meeting.
She visited for the third time in 1997 (I had just graduated high school and started college) and was supposed to visit the site of one of the biggest British massacres during the regime, which happened in the state of Punjab at a place called Jallianwala Bagh. People asked her to apologize, but she gave a speech the day before she visited in which she spoke about the dark past and how we cannot rewrite the history.
There is a whole generation of people who really don't know much about the dark history and have never witnessed a royal visit, but for whom there has been this fascination with the British royals as just celebrities. At the same time, you'll also see a reaction like, “It's 2022, people. Why are we still talking about royalty? And especially a person who belonged to the family that butchered and massacred our country and destroyed our social fabric.”
But by and large, the reaction [among Indians] has been almost like losing any other beloved celebrity who was like this grandmotherly figure.
“For Irish people, what [the Queen] represents is just so beyond toxic.”
–Sadhbh Walshe, New York-based writer and screenwriter, originally from Ireland
For Irish people, what she represents is just so beyond toxic. And partly that's just this whole idea of the empire and all of that. But I think at the moment what really, really jumps out at me—and what I think some other people feel—is in reaction to the idea that she presided over this period of stability and so on with her great service. And yet, Britain is in the worst state it's ever been; the country is coming apart at the seams. The health services are falling apart, various labor unions are on strike, the ports are a complete mess, the airlines are a mess, ordinary people are literally choosing between food and heat.
This is all happening under “the great stable presence”—and while she and her family have relentlessly enriched themselves at the expense of the general public. She's managed to procure personalized exemptions from more than 160 laws, and some of the things are really questionable: She secured immunity from anti-discrimination laws and from standard workers' rights related to benefits, to pensions, to compensation, [and] working hours.
Looking at that as an Irish person, I just don't know how ordinary Britons can put up with it.
One nice thing: She did visit Ireland in 2011. For all of my childhood, no member of the royal family set foot in Ireland. But she was terrific on that visit. She did all the right things. She expressed “sincere thoughts and deep sympathy” for those who died in the troubles—though the British government has trouble sometimes taking responsibility for its actions—and went to the memorial for the Bloody Sunday victims. I think it really did advance the cause of Irish and British relations.
“The British monarchy is being given a moment—an opportunity—to do something different from its history of pillaging, from its exploitation and oppression of communities of color, beginning with the continent of Africa, all of the Caribbean, India, [and] Asia.”
–Staceyann Chin, poet, actor and activist from Jamaica
Jamaica was once under British rule. [Since 1962] we've become a country in which we have elections [but] the queen is the “head of state,” [even though] Jamaica is not a colony of Britain. We still bow and scrape to her, and when she visits, we still pull out the pomp and ceremony. We still have to get her permission, her blessing, on the things that we're doing with regard to government and leadership. But we have been removed from the list of people who could [visit without a visa]; we were removed from the space where we could become citizens once the British economy grew and their social welfare got better.
What it feels like to me, as a Jamaican citizen, is we still are indebted to England, but England is no longer responsible for us. Essentially, we have no rights as subjects of the queen, but then she gets to say, "These are my subjects."
I think that we should do away with that. The British monarchy is being given a moment—an opportunity—to do something different from its history of pillaging, from its exploitation and oppression of communities of color, beginning with the continent of Africa, all of the Caribbean, India, [and] Asia. I think that Charles is being given an opportunity to do something with his life, to do something to distinguish himself. A rather radical, rather unprecedented opportunity, a giant moment to do something different with this institution that has brought so much pain to so many people on the planet.
Megan Carpentier is currently an editor at Oxygen.com and a columnist at Dame Magazine; she's also worked at NBC News, The Guardian, and Jezebel, among other places. Her work has been published in Rolling Stone, Glamour, The New Republic, the Washington Post, and many more.
Queen Elizabeth's Complicated Legacy
  September 8, 2022 Darling Meteor readers, It is, with no exaggeration, the end of an era: Today the British royal family announced the death of Queen Elizabeth II at the age of 96 in her Scottish summer home, Balmoral Castle. After ruling over the United Kingdom for 70 years—longer than any other British monarch—she became a worldwide symbol of power, empire, and the complexities of leadership. Despite everything we know about the queen, the actual woman behind the crown was as much of a mystery as she was a constant presence. The young Elizabeth ascended the throne at the age of 25, assuming a persona of apoliticism and hiding her emotions from public view. Her stoicism, which read as cold indifference to many, marked her entire rule for better or worse. But despite being thrust into a role meant for someone else, she met the impossible task of ruling head-on in the face of a drastically changing world. Her death will mean an array of different things to different people as her legacy is examined and picked apart in the days to come. For some this is a moment to reexamine history, for others, it may be solemn—there’s no singular way to process the death of this particular cultural institution. So during this time, let’s all extend each other a little grace to feel whatever it is we feel, even if it’s nothing at all. And now, a little bit of news. From behind the mourning veil, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONSigned, sealed, delivered: On Tuesday, after winning their match against Nigeria, the U.S. Women’s National Team made history once again with the stroke of a pen. Players from the women’s team were joined on the field by the men’s national team to sign their collective bargaining agreements—solidifying the USWNT’s equal pay victory and guaranteeing their $24 million settlement with the U.S Soccer Federation. “The agreement marks the first time in soccer history that a women's national team will receive the same amount of pay as their male counterparts in the World Cup,” the Federation told CBS. And they said it couldn’t be done!  FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: BECKY SAUERBRUNN, CRYSTAL DUNN, AND SAM MEWIS AT THE SIGNING OF AN HISTORIC COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AGREEMENT FOR U.S. SOCCER. (IMAGE VIA TIM NWACHUKWU VIA GETTY IMAGES) To spit or not to spit: Are we being gaslit? For the last two days, the internet (and the Meteor Slack channel) has been torn asunder by this single clip of Harry Styles at the Venice film festival, possibly spitting—or not spitting!—in the general direction of Chris Pine. My eyeballs tell me that Styles spit, or at the very least made a spitting motion in Pine’s direction. But Pine’s reps say no such thing happened and that Mainstream Media™ is just making up rumors. Who can I believe?! Who can I trust!? Is this all just an elaborate publicity stunt to get me to watch a movie I had no intention of watching??? The truth is out there! AND:
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It's Been Ten Years Since Steubenville
Author and filmmaker Nancy Schwartzman on how far we have and haven't come since the rape case that changed everything.
Content Warning: Sexual assault. Please consider your mental health before reading.
Ten years ago this month, a young woman was sexually assaulted by a group of high school athletes in Steubenville, Ohio. The girl, who was unconscious, had been transported, stripped of her clothes, and digitally assaulted (meaning the assailants used their hands). Later there would be undeniable evidence: texts and posts on social media in which perpetrators documented, and even bragged, about the horrific acts that took place that night. Two of those students, Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond, both 16 at the time, were convicted of rape.
Steubenville was a turning point in how we talk about sexual assault and rape culture. It was the first sexual assault case to go viral on social media, sparking major online activism in response. Nancy Schwartzman, a filmmaker and a writer, has followed this case since the beginning, first making a documentary about the town, and most recently publishing Roll Red Roll, a book about the incident. The New York Times called it a “meticulous account” of what happened that night and the culture that allowed for it.
This week, I talked to Nancy about the film, the book, and what she learned from all of it.
Samhita Mukhopadhyay: Why were you initially drawn to investigating the Steubenville rape case?
Nancy Schwartzman: I had already been examining issues of consent in my first film, The Line—what is coercive consent, what is enthusiastic consent, etc. And by the end of having so many conversations with young people about the topic, what became very important, I thought, for us to all be looking at was perpetrator behavior.
[Sexual assault was talked about] very much like the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial. The victim is scrutinized: her behavior, her alcohol levels, her outfit, her prior sexual conduct. For me, what was just never discussed, and actually where the problem was: “What are the conditions that enable sexual assault to run rampant, and what are the behaviors we should be looking out for?”
When Steubenville broke, [at first] I thought, “Nothing about this is new.” But when I started looking into it more closely, all of the text messages and social media were public. And it was a script of how these guys were talking about the victim, how they were planning it in advance, and how they were egging each other on. So all of a sudden, we had a window into perpetrator behavior.
It’s hard to remember now, but Steubenville was one of the first big sexual assault cases where social media and the internet played a huge role. That’s why it garnered so much national attention, right?
Yeah, the Times also didn't break the story; Rachel Dissell in Cleveland started reporting on it. And what was happening was more about how this was dividing the town, and then [the hacker group Anonymous got involved] to get more global media attention. That's what caught the New York Times’ eye. I remember when I first went to Steubenville and sent some pictures to people like, "I'm here, I'm here,” someone was like, “Whoa, Steubenville, that town from the internet.” It was the first time the internet world and what we call brick-and-mortar collided.
Going to talk to older people [in the town], it was this fascinating generational divide. A 70-year-old man who runs the appliance shop and volunteers at Fort Steuben, the historical fort, he was just like, “These people, they came in with masks, these people from the internet.” So the internet “invaded” this town, they [came] in with a threatening message and their faces covered in a mask, and then people actually showed up on the courthouse stairs. It was also interesting that the people who showed up were from the town, so they got to benefit from the anonymity of Anonymous—from the fact that the outside world was saying “Yo, what's going on in your town is fucked up." People could agree quietly after years of being silenced, or going along with it, or not even knowing there's an alternative way possible.
Yeah, that is super interesting. One of the things that you’ve explored in the book is the culture that creates sexual assault. Many of these people in the town were upset about the attention the case was getting and felt that the whole thing was overblown. So can you talk about some of those circumstances a little bit, some of those contexts that you were referring to?
Most people I spoke with, including [a lovely man who owned a big family-owned store], would acknowledge, “Well, what happened was bad.” Everybody categorically agreed that it was bad. So aside from the negative attention, they were horrified. I think one of the things folks didn’t understand... I mean, [the store owner] cornered me in his shop and put his fingers in my face and was like, “Digital, it was digital penetration, it was digital.”
Oh my God.
I know. So I think there was a wild misunderstanding of assault in all its forms. And the [digital penetration] was one detail of the case that was eminently provable in court, but there was a lot of stuff that pointed to other sexual misconduct. So there was a physical minimizing of the actual harm, which was obviously a problem. There was also this question of: “If someone is blacked out, how bad can it be?” So there was a wild misunderstanding there.
The people that I really was the most frightened of, in a way, were the mothers of sons. In all of my screenings, I was like, “Oh, shit, there's a bunch of dads in the back, and there's a bunch of men." I called the men in to be my allies. They're in locker rooms, they know, they grew up in this environment and were like, “Yep, I know this behavior, this is familiar to me, this is not good. I have a daughter or a son, and I don't want him in trouble.” [But] it was the mothers of sons that were fiercely protective. “Not my baby,” and “She must have done something.” I just did not expect this level of obstacle with that demographic.
Why do you think that is?
I don't know. I’m not a parent, and I don’t have a son. I think a mother's love for her son... Well, I think in the big picture, this is a place that is really, really, really steeped in patriarchal tradition. The book covers the history of the mills: The men are working, and the women are at home. There aren’t any places for women to go. There's a really strong separate-sphere ideology. Men are at the mill; women are at home. Mill's closed, men are on the football field, boys are on the field, girls are cheerleaders. There were no women on the city council; it's a very, very Catholic town. There are no women in leadership in the clergy. I mean, it was alarming, across the board.
When we’re thinking about moms protecting their sons, mommies generally love their little boys, and their little boys are perfect. If they do something wrong, it’s someone else's fault. I saw that growing up in my town. The way that gender roles play out, it's wildly unsafe to be a young woman or a queer person in that town.
I think a lot of people in the “#MeToo era” are talking about the limits of the criminal justice system in sexual assault. Steubenville is a rare case where perpetrators were convicted. There was some sense of justice through the criminal justice system, and that's because there was so much documented evidence that you could not ignore it. But what was your learning and takeaway from that? And what happened to the boys after they were convicted?
My book has a whole section about transformational justice and different models for justice. For most of us, we get no justice. I talked to Aya Gruber, who’s an amazing feminist criminologist. So often, the burden of “What should be done?” is on the victim. Like, “Well, it's your obligation to report because he could do it to someone else.” You know what? It's not my obligation to do anything because the criminal justice system is so dangerous for women, it's dangerous for people of color, and it's unreliable. It's not a space for justice. The burden should not be on our shoulders to do something.
But the boys were sentenced: Trent was sentenced to two years in juvenile detention, Ma'Lik was sentenced to nine months, and Ma'Lik got out and finished high school. There was a big ripple of anger because he was brought back onto the football team, and that divided the town. People were like, "Hey, football is a privilege; it's not a right. He should be let back into school, but this was the environment that led him to get caught up in something like gang rape. What about the football team has changed to ensure this doesn't happen?" The coach had said, “He did his time. I believe in second chances.” But they didn't bring anything onto the team to ensure that thinking and behavior changed. That was a missed opportunity, big time.
I think what I really wanted folks to understand is that it's not... Every survivor doesn’t have to become a fucking activist. And you're doing nothing wrong if you're a survivor and you decide not to report to the police, because reporting to the police is a dangerous act that might not be in your best interest.
Samhita Mukhopadhyay is a writer, editor, and speaker. She is the former Executive Editor of Teen Vogue and is the co-editor of Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance and Revolution in Trump's America and the author of Outdated: Why Dating is Ruining Your Love Life, and the forthcoming book, The Myth of Making It.
PHOTO BY HEATHER HAZZAN
Grieving Princess Diana Let Me Mourn My Brother
  August 30, 2022 Hola Meteor readers, I am a puddle of emotions this week. Last night Serena Williams walked onto the court for her first match at her last-ever U.S Open, a tournament she’s won six times over the years. The game was followed by a beautiful tribute from Billie Jean King and a special video narrated by Oprah thanking Serena for everything she’s done for the sport of tennis. And as if that wasn’t enough: Taylor Swift announced a new album for October, so I really don’t know how I’m going to manage all these feelings through the fall. Today’s newsletter is also somber and reflective. In honor of the 25th anniversary of Princess Diana’s death tomorrow, writer Susanne Ramirez de Arellano explores how the princess’s death helped her mourn a more personal one—and what she’s learned in the years since. But first: some news. Lighting a candle, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ON“Monsoon on steroids.” That’s just one phrase that’s been used to describe the onslaught of devastating floods that have put a third of Pakistan underwater. The word “dire” fails to capture how bad things are, with a death toll of over 1,000, nearly half a million citizens displaced, and entire cities, towns, and agricultural sites completely wiped out. It’s nothing short of a climate catastrophe, made worse by the country’s melting glaciers. To help those in need, please consider donating through UNICEF, the IRC, Islamic Relief, or LaunchGood.  Then there’s this: In a video shared by Jessica Valenti on Instagram, a story of forced birth that is too horrific told by a pediatric gynecologist in South Carolina.  AND:
 WE REMEMBERIt would be the last time I saw my brother alive. BY SUSANNE RAMÍREZ DE ARELLANO  PRINCESS DIANA IN PARIS, 1988. (IMAGE BY BY JAYNE FINCHER VIA GETTY IMAGES) Tomorrow will be 25 years since Princess Diana died in a car crash in Paris, chased by paparazzi on motorcycles in the Pont de L’Alma. Her tragic end shocked the world and caused an unprecedented outpouring of grief in Britain. Her death also embedded itself as a timepost in my life: It would be the last time I saw my younger brother alive. The sequence of that day plays out in my mind’s eye like an old film. I had traveled from London (where I was living and working for a news agency) to New York to see my brother. He was very sick, but he would be flying from Hawaii to see us. My sister called and bluntly said, “I think you’d better get on a plane.” In a blur, I packed, rushed to the airport, and arrived late at night. My beautiful brother, John Lawrence, known to us as Larry, had full-blown AIDS. I woke up the following day to the front page of The New York Times: Diana, Princess of Wales, 36, Dies in a Crash in Paris. I sat at my sister’s kitchen table, in her beautiful home, with a sense of impending doom, only able to read the first paragraph again and again. I refused to believe it. First, my brother, a shadow of his former self, was dying. And now Diana. Two people whose stories would become surreally intertwined in my life. Diana was a facet of daily life in London. Her face was everywhere: in newspapers and magazines, on television programs, and on tea towels. I had seen the fairytale wedding, witnessed the unraveling of her marriage, and been inspired by the emergence of a strong-willed woman coming into her own. And, of course, we all remember that “revenge dress” at the Serpentine Gallery. My brother and I watched the funeral together. (In truth, I think I forced him to watch it.) He lay on the sofa next to me as I stroked his thin legs, and we spoke of the woman who championed the cause of people living with AIDS. Diana publicly took on the HIV crisis as a cause in 1987 when she opened the U.K.'s first HIV/AIDS unit at London’s Middlesex Hospital. She changed the way people thought about AIDS with just one gesture by shaking hands (without wearing gloves) with an AIDS patient who was terminally ill. It was the 1980s, and the shame around the illness was virulent. For me, her gesture was a visually powerful way to confront HIV/AIDS stigma, a public challenge to the notion that HIV was passed from person to person by touch. It was the opposite of my family’s reaction. My father refused to acknowledge that Larry had AIDS, avoiding the crushing inevitability of what would happen. After my brother passed away, he would say that Larry had died of a tumor.  PRINCESS DIANA EXCHANGING HOLIDAY GIFTS WITH A PATIENT IN AN AIDS HOSPICE IN CANADA. (IMAGE BY TIM GRAHAM VIA GETTY IMAGES) The princess was just 36 when she died; my brother, who passed away two months later, on October 30, 1997, was 37. Today, Diana would be 61 and my brother 62—two lives cut short when both had so much in front of them. At present, there are approximately 38.4 million people across the globe living long and healthy lives with HIV. In 2021, 28.7 million people with HIV had access to antiretroviral therapy globally. Yet I am still angry that more was not done to fight AIDS earlier. It could have saved my brother. Maybe it would have given him time to teach me how to surf. Instead, I can still see him riding the waves, lithe and athletic, like a dancer. Larry would laugh because I never stayed on the board for more than a minute. (But how exhilarating that minute was!) This interlacing of stories—Diana's death and my brother's—is not a weepy fascination; there are no happy endings here. But Diana's funeral, and the collective grief of the British, allowed me to deal with what was happening in my life. The mourning of her loss permitted me to grieve mine.  Susanne Ramírez de Arellano is an author on race and diversity, opinion writer, and cultural critic. The former news director of Univision, she writes for NBC News Think, Latino Rebels, and Nuestros Stories, among other outlets. She lives in Brooklyn and is busy writing her first novel.  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? Sign up for your own copy, sent Tuesdays and Thursdays.
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Missouri Parents Want to Bring Spanking Back
  August 25, 2022 Good evening Meteor readers, So I assume we’ve all taken a look at Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan by now and had time to run our own numbers and shake our fists at the sky, wondering why this man won’t hit the delete button on everyone’s student debt. Perhaps that’s overly idealistic of me—but it’s equally idealistic for federal loan programs to believe paying $400 a month until the year 3000 is any way to live.  BIG SHOUT OUT TO THE ONE PERSON ON THE RIGHT WHO BROUGHT SNACKS TO THE STUDENT LOAN BORROWERS RALLY IN DC THIS WEEK. (IMAGE BY PAUL MORIGI VIA GETTY IMAGES) But a win is still a win, and this was a win since activists have been working to bring this possibility to life for over a decade. When some of us first started college, “loan forgiveness” wasn’t even a phrase anyone used. And now, it’s the talk of the town! Imagine how much we could get if we pushed for a few more years…But I digress. (Trust me, I could drone on for days about this.) Today we’re loaning you our overview of the news at an introductory rate of 0% interest for the full term of your time here. Let’s roll. Swiping my abacus, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONIdaho again: A judge has placed an injunction on a portion of Idaho’s near-total abortion ban. Although most of the ban goes into effect today, the portion of the law allowing felony charges for physicians providing abortion services is on hold. According to Politico, it “does not provide adequate protection for physicians who perform abortions during a medical emergency, and therefore runs afoul of federal law guaranteeing patients the right to treatment when their health or life is at risk.” But people who help abortion patients in Idaho can still be sued for $20,000, and nearly all abortions are now illegal in the state. You can always help by donating to the state’s local abortion fund. The blue wave that could: The results are in from Tuesday’s primaries in New York and Florida. And surprisingly, it’s not all bad news! Staten Island (which I’m being told is part of New York???) had its highest turnout for a Democratic primary ever. In Florida, an Afro-Cuban Gen Z nominee, Maxwell Alejandro Frost, is almost assured to be the first Gen Zer in Congress after beating out more experienced candidates. And Aramis Ayala, who went toe to toe with former Florida governor Rick Scott over the death penalty, secured the nomination for her state’s attorney general. We have a long way to go before November 8—but this is promising. It shows that people are fed up and ready to fight back.  What the actual fuck: A Missouri school district has reinstated corporal punishment (specifically, hitting with paddles) as a last resort to discipline students. And if that’s not wild enough for you: this proposal was brought to the district by parents who wanted their children to be physically disciplined at school and asked for a vote on reinstating the policy. (Families will still be able to opt-out of the new “paddling” policy by filling out a form.) Now I have no children, so maybe I am missing some sort of logic here, BUT I did once write a lengthy piece about the roots of child-hitting, which go back to the time of colonization and enslavement. The TL;DR is that hitting as a form of discipline in the U.S. arose as a direct response to acculturation and fear of worse violence enacted by the “dominant racial group.” Parents, specifically parents of color, feared what would happen to their children if they misbehaved in front of white authority figures. So the behavior was curbed (to the extreme) inside the home in the hopes of achieving some degree of safety. So what exactly are we teaching kids in Missouri (a state with a 31% Black and Latine population) about themselves when we allow them to be hit in school by an authority figure? Make it make sense. AND:
 WHAT WE'RE READING, WATCHING, AND LISTENING TO THIS WEEKENDIf you don’t plan to spend your weekend watching the MTV VMAs (yes, that program is still running, and sadly I live quite close to where it’s happening), here are some culture offerings we’re enjoying on our days off:
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It's always been hard for teens seeking abortions
  August 23, 2022 Valar morghulis Meteor readers, If that greeting confused you, then I gather you’re not one of the 10 million viewers who tuned in to watch House of the Dragon (the Game of Thrones prequel series) on Sunday. Which is fine, we all have our own thing, and apparently, my thing involves fawning over Matt Smith in a long flowing white wig as he’s waffling between villain and unloved elf man.  My doctoral thesis on how this fictional universe is not anti-feminist is forthcoming. For today’s edition, we’re flying our dragons over the glittering sea of news, so let’s get to it. Valar dohaeris, Shannon Melero (of house Targaryan) P.S. If you’re a New York, Florida, or Oklahoma resident, it’s an election day for you. If you haven’t already, find your polling station and VOTE. You can take this newsletter with you and read it in line.  WHAT'S GOING ONWe’re going to miss you: Dr. Anthony Fauci, a beacon of hope and common sense during the early days of COVID, announced Monday that he would be stepping down from his position as White House Chief Medical Adviser in December. He is NOT retiring but simply “[pursuing] other directions” in his career—which is impressive because he is fully 81 years old and has committed five decades of his life to public service. But in the government, at least: his watch has ended (sorry, last Thrones reference, I promise). Naturally, haters in the Republican party are still threatening an investigation into Fauci’s exact role in the government’s less-than-stellar pandemic response. Here’s what I know: it wasn’t this elderly man who was encouraging me to drink bleach and continue working as if COVID wasn’t real.  AND:
 LET KIDS CHOOSETeens also need abortion rights. Why have we made it so hard for them?BY CINDI LEIVE  A CALIFORNIA TEEN HAVING TO DO THE HARD WORK OF FIGHTING FOR HER RIGHTS BECAUSE THE ADULTS KEEP DROPPING THE BALL. (IMAGE BY RONAN TIVONY VIA GETTY IMAGES) You probably read the headlines last week: A “parentless” 16-year-old in Florida had been denied the right to end her pregnancy by a court that found her “too immature” to make that decision. “I have no words…just rage,” read one typical comment on The Meteor’s post on the subject. “Too immature to have an abortion but mature enough to be a mother at 16?” asked another. “DA FUCK is this ruling?” Excellent question, but if you think that the answer starts on June 24, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade—nope. For decades, teens have had to jump through flaming hoops of humiliation to end their pregnancies. Florida, in fact, has not outlawed abortion—but it is among the at least 36 states with measures requiring teens to notify or secure the permission of one or both parents in order to receive care. The first time I got enraged about this was almost three decades ago, in the 1990s, when, as a fresh-out-of-college editorial assistant, I sat in an editorial meeting at Glamour magazine and pitched a story on the newly emerging parental notification laws. (The knowledge that I wouldn’t have been at that conference-room table at all without the abortion I’d been able to get my freshman year was a motivating if unspoken factor.) Since then, most states have rolled out notification or consent laws—with “judicial bypass” exceptions that allow teens who don’t want to or can’t tell their parents to petition a judge instead for permission to end a pregnancy. The laws became the norm, and many Americans got used to them—an apparently “acceptable” infringement of rights, like the repro equivalent of a drinking age. Except they’re not. The American Academy of Pediatrics opposes these restrictions, pointing out that most teens who can tell a parent about their abortion decision do (I did), and those who opt not to have solid and sometimes terrifying reasons. Plus, the judicial bypass process, meant to make things better, is only as good as the judge you get: In one study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health in 2019, teenagers who went through that system in Texas described it as “intimidating” and “scary,” full of judges who “preached” at them. “We found the bypass process functions as a form of punishment and allows state actors to humiliate adolescents for their personal decisions,” concluded the authors. Just six months ago, another Florida judge denied a 17-year-old an abortion, citing her low GPA as justification. (Don’t try to think through the logic.) Now the horror of post-Roe America has made things worse. For one thing, judicial bypass could disappear as an option, potentially even in states where abortion is legal. And if abortion is illegal in a state, teenagers there are less likely than adults to have money to travel out of state; less likely to be able to rent a car in their name; and less likely to be able to find a telehealth option, usually only available to those over 18. In other words, it’s bad. But—it’s been bad. And this is another reminder that, as Monica Simpson of SisterSong puts it, Roe was the floor. We don’t want to return to a world where legal abortion exists only for the wealthy, the white, or the appropriately “mature,” whatever that means. We want, and need, access for everyone, teenagers included. We should never have gotten used to less.  Everyone needs abortion funds. Teens really need abortion funds. Find your local one at abortionfunds.org.  Cindi Leive is the co-founder of The Meteor, the former editor-in-chief of Glamour and Self, and the author or producer of best-selling books including Together We Rise.  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? Sign up for your own copy, sent Tuesdays and Thursdays.
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