Censorship is old. And it continues getting older. I'm sick of it.
Yes, I am a pansexual atheist on a Christian campus. I generally censor my opinions for others benefit, especially in conversation with people I don't know well, and unless I'm having a one-on-one chat with a friend, conversation including or within earshot of people I'm not close to is 100% guaranteed. So that's a lot of assuming Christian perspective when explaining why even though I love a show, I can't just assume my friends will or whatever other shallow conversation I can manage to have with people. My friends here that do I'm an atheist or pan or whatever portion of my story they know can and would tell you that I don't try to censor their beliefs or opinions or experiences just because I don't happen to share them.
On the flip side, as a female college student, I have an extra advantage. I can express myself through the dry erase boards or construction paper hung within my dorm's bathroom stalls.
Last year, the month before I'd started college, I was travelling overseas, and changing time zones had stressed my body enough that my period didn't even try to start. So when my next period was three days later than the earliest I had hoped for it, I wrote this comment anonymously on the dry-erase board in the stall: "If you're dating a transgirl, you can still get pregnant and then everyone would judge you." (If that had truly been the case, I would have been a pregnant, unmarried girl in a gay relationship, AND dating someone that is judged even more for who she is than the average gay person.) Within hours, my comment at the bottom of the whiteboard had been very cleanly erased. Let me make something clear. These were laminated posterboard. They NEVER erased as well as true dry-erase boards, and always smeared. I didn't care for long at that time because I hadn't seen a mass-erase smear yet, and because I soon made friends and quit feeling so vulnerable and alone.
This year. Different dorm, different PA, different decorations. This year, there is something different in each stall rather than a plain ol' whiteboard in each one. One of the ones I rarely visit has construction paper on the walls, a few markers sticky-tacked next to the paper, and a prompt "Write something you learned today." Well, I'm generally somewhere between female and androgynous, so one day I was feeling dysphoric, almost more about people's assumptions of my religion than people's assumptions of my gender, but sort of both. So I wrote in small letters in the corner of one of the four pages, in a color that did not stand out: "Even cis-people can feel dysphoric some days." I assumed that the words were small enough and the terms were uncommon enough that people who didn't know what they meant wouldn't care, people who did would know they were not alone, and anyone curious would look up the terms they didn't know and wonder or assume what some anonymous person on the floor was going through. It wasn't big and obnoxious like the word "PICCOLOS" which was written in huge letters across two of the sheets of paper (that single word doesn't even relate to the prompt as far as I can tell.) My comment was small and easy to miss. I know even broaching the idea of transgenderism is scary to people who have never dealt with it, but cis- is the rarely-used antonym of trans- so I didn't worry about it.
Apparently I should have. I came back today, and the door of the stall was wide open, so I wandered in, wondering if anyone had left any snarky comments, like they had on "PICCOLOS" (including the jibe "are never in tune?"). I had to search for my comment and I finally realized there was a water mark around the words "people can" in the corner of the paper I'd written on. The four papers are taped in a square, I'd written in the bottom corner of one of the top papers. There was no water at all on the lower paper, and my comment was again very cleanly erased.
This is when I get mad. Roommates / best friends can call each other "poophead" and worse on the dry-erase boards and their banter not get erased for weeks or until the boards are full of comments and doodles. People can insult instruments - and by association the players of those instruments - and call them awful on construction paper. People can write (my paraphrase) "I'm super needy, but that's okay because god." But any time I legitimately try to "share my struggles" or start an anonymous conversation about real, complicated issues, I only get erased.
Silenced. That's how I felt when I first looked for comments on my "getting judged" note. That is especially how I feel now. I have proof that people are not just censoring obnoxious or negative comments. They don't even censor ones that target specific people on the floor. But my "people might go through..." (by which I definitely mean "I am going through...") comments ALWAYS get erased. Why? Because people don't want negativity on a board intended to be about interesting things? Fine. Then erase anything negative. Including "I am needy" and "certain musicians can't play music." Because it seems like trolling? Who the hell would come up with something like that to troll with? Do I pretend to be hurt for sympathy? No! If I was trolling, I'd come up with something intended to insult someone else. I can't figure out how my comment could come across as insulting. And besides, other people were doing some insulting un-erased.
I have come to a conclusion that has two options. There is either something magical about me, or something magical about transgenderism that people single out comments, and hate or fear the idea enough to censor. I know it is more likely to be transgenderism, but it really feels like I'm being singled out.
Censoring transgender issues is selfish, shallow, and ultimately self-defeating. I have met someone ON CAMPUS who, like my girlfriend, was identified as male at birth, but strongly thinks of herself as female. I (generally) only indirectly deal with trans issues, but I KNOW I'm not the only one. It is a valuable dialog to start on campus. I am not bold enough to connect my name with starting the discussion, but why erase it? Why hide?
I suspect PAs in both cases, particularly the latter. Who else would feel the need to moderate bathroom discussions? But the thought hurts. PAs (called RAs in some other colleges) have to take a leadership class before they get assigned to a dorm and wing, and are expected to be welcoming and accepting and someone you can talk to. By the end of the year, I did truly get that safe-person vibe from my PA. This year, my two PAs are enthusiastic and outgoing, but neither one has ever attempted to make conversation with me deeper than "tell me about your family" or "hey, Kara, how's it going?" (At least they know my name.)
I'm just not sure how to react. I could write my controversial opinions bigger. I could write on the walls. I could find myself paintpens and write obnoxious things deliberately. A good friend who heard my preliminary rant before writing this post, suggested censoring other negative things to even it out. I am now tempted to fill my pot with water, soak all four papers in one go, and come back two hours later to write "how does censorship feel now?" and probably more mean things depending on how much I let my anger fizzle.
Yes, I know my other blog is dedicated to the times I can redirect annoyance into amusement. Christianity I can laugh at, no matter how judgmental the christian or the preaching I hear. Censorship infuriates me. I tolerate people and lifestyles and opinions and beliefs, but I draw the line at censorship. Tell me I'm wrong or misguided or sinful or whatever you want to say as much as you want, but I need to have a voice too. And so does everyone else, regardless of how small the minority they represent.
