Fash Fatigue Chronicles: Week 2
This weekly chronicle extends into this week. Later in this article, you’ll see why.
Team Life
I caught a cold. And a really nasty one at that. Instant sore throat, coughing and fever. Most likely caught from one of my teammates. One of the setbacks of being on a competitive dance team is that you are expected to come to practice, no matter how you’re feeling. Missing practice because you’re sick is seen as almost a moral failure, given the sacrifices everyone on the team has made and continues to make. And I did not want to sacrifice my sleep, so I did the inconsiderate thing and slept through my alarm, missing a last minute practice.
On Monday I was interviewed for Light Upon Light as one of their new influencers. I also gave some final feedback before the I Don’t Speak German podcast aired. Before class, I collapsed on my bed surrounded by my books. I thought of all the looming deadlines and the multitude of responsibilities. I preceeded to get stuck.
On Tuesday after work and class, I finished my presentation for the Title IX office. I pulled excerpts from my data and felt that familiar, exausted, overwhelmed feeling I had when I first collected it. I pushed through that discomfort until I was done and could lie down. Even nine months after, the darkness of the content I’ve collected can still creep in.
I sent an email to my professor telling her I would most likely not make the evening class and sent her my presentation as proof of what I chose to invest my time in. She was understanding and gave me the night off, with the expectation that the assignments would be due Monday night.
Triple Booked
So I got to catch my breath a little and prepped for this presentation.
I was about to grab a book and a relax when I received an email from my advisor. “Just a reminder, we’ll meet for Samantha’s comprehensive defense tomorrow morning at 8am.” I laughed when I realized I triple booked. I had that defense, followed by my training presentation, followed by a meeting to discuss planning for sexual assault awareness and prevention month.
I am not so much of a masochist that I would willfully do that to myself, but all the meetings were too important to reschedule. So I went to them all.
Wednesday, sometime before I walked into the National Judicial Studies college for my defense, my podcast with Daniel aired. That podcast gave me some solace after the soul crushing defense experience.
Revise and Resubmit
I am no stranger to revisions. I welcome them. However, I want to understand that the corrections I am given come from understanding about the nature of the field I’m in. I find it hard to accept them otherwise. That level of autonomy I have from my fieldwork experiences is uncommon in grad students, and often unwarranted by faculty.
I was not sure if my committee understood some of the nuances of what I do, so I asked them to confirm certain approaches were acceptable. I was told I could reach out to my advisor during my comprehensive exams. So that week I sent him some concerns about the topics in the content section.
He’s very busy, and did not answer, so I used what I thought was good judgement. I kept the parts I felt were appropriate, and emphasized that I was speaking from my research field. I felt for some reason that they would consider the ability to adapt an asset, and appreciate current sources of information, but I was wrong. I was told parts of my comprehensive exam were “highly readable,” but not as academically rigorous as they would have liked, and to revise with only academic sources referenced. This confirmed that my initial concerns were correct, and this revision was avoidable.
I will have a week to revise, based on a concern I had expressed prior; a concern which was not listened to. I also understood in that moment that my department is not open to research that isn’t already established in the literature.
My department is not open to new research on the far right, even as far right crimes are increasing. My department is not open to research on the far right, even as far right crimes are increasing and even as right wing pundits question if it is really a problem.
and…
The Ivory Tower
What is considered pragmatic at the level of university administration and campus safety, (when it comes from a graduate researcher) is considered too self indulgent to be relevant within the context of my comprehensive exam.
In the first installment of the Fash Fatigue Chronicles, I confessed that I had a fetish for speaking truth to power. Right now, I am in the position where doing that and advocating for internet subcultures as a valid study topic would risk failing my comprehensive exam and not continuing on to the PhD. Going to a PhD will enable me to do this research with actual support.
And that is a really hard pill to swallow, because I respect my mentors and my advisor and my committee. I also deeply believe adaptability and openness to new information should be crucial for universities to better detect far right threats.
My strong reaction is not the infantile whining of someone who can’t handle constructive criticism. I welcome that. My reaction is me feeling utterly defeated. After persisting against the chilling effect, navigating this academic turf war on the right way to do social justice, and isolating myself from my entire department because I continued my research, there was one fight I had not considered: The fight that comes from bringing online ethnographic research with extremists into academic spaces.
In my field, primary source data is often scarce. The data I’ve collected is incredibly valuable for understanding the far right. Extremists are a hard group to contact, and the risks are often too great to consider pursuing the research I did. But I did, and I faced those risks and continue to face push back because of it.
In my department I am seen as more of a liability than an asset.
My department is not open to new research on the far right, even though far right terrorism is on the rise. My department is not open to new research, even though my my university asked me to speak to their Title IX office as the resident expert on extremism to help them better detect threats on campus.
And to graduate, I have to accept that this is something I do not have the energy or agency to change. I have suck it up and revise according to their specifications, which explicitly state online sources are not considered academic enough.
Title IX Presentation
My Title IX presentation was well received and seemed to scare all of the right people. I started by comparing different forms of terrorism to highlight the following: while the cultural context may differ, terrorism is terrorism and radicalization is radicalization. I then said we needed to talk about the kind of terrorism that is underreported or dismissed as a mental health or lone wolf issue.
I passed handouts with samples of Proud Boys memes to orient the audience to the ways Proud Boys dehumanize vulnerable communities. I gave them a crash course on the manosphere, MIGTOW, Incel, PUA and Rad Trad to orient them to the nature of the group. I shared excerpts from pieces Gavin wrote to highlight his history of laundering white supremascist content.
I also gave them a sneak peek of the dashboard I created, it’s features, aims and what I hope it will accomplish when it is fully web based.
You can stay tuned for updates about the map and dashboard here.
I ended my presentation with the following…
“Peter is symptomatic of a larger issue. It’s not the university’s fault for being uninformed about these threats. However, if no concrete steps are taken after being presented this information, it will become the university’s fault.”
And then after speaking from my field for the first time in weeks, I turned back into a statistics grading, graduate student pumpkin.
Grad Life
In a My Favorite Murder offshoot group, “Stay Sexy and Get that Degree” we discussed the topic of psychological distress.
We talked about the convergence of imposter syndrome, the collapse of multiple jobs into one role for graduate students and the understanding that you cannot fully explore your own research because of your gradute workload commitments.
And that’s something that is expected as a given. Not having time for what you enjoy and understanding the sacrifices inherent in earning your degree. And that’s not even accounting for the fash fatigue outside of academia, should you be one of the rare breeds that does both.
*If you are, don’t hesitate to reach out. I’d love to hear your experience and perhaps share some horror stories.
I recognize the emotional toll my research takes. Some weeks are harder than others, but I made a commitment to make time for what I enjoy, which has always been dance.
Dance Life
People ask me how I dance and do grad school. My mentor at my university told me to expect that life to fall away as I advance in academia. I was told it was impossible to maintain a rehearsal schedule and be successful in grad school.
They all mean well and reflect the environments they earned their degree in. What they don’t understand is this.
I don’t dance through grad school or treat it as a hobby. For me, dance is the thing that makes everything else work. It enables me to get me through grad school, navigate the unertainty of my future and the field I’ve chosen. Most importantly, when all of my responsibilities pull me away from myself, dance brings me back.
So this weekend, I finished grading all of my statistics for the week early and I got to perform with my team at a dance event out of town.
Who knew coordinating outfits could be so fun?
It was the most fun I’ve had in awhile. It was the most fun most of us had in a while.
We left the next day after grabbing brunch together and I returned to finish my assignments, which were worth staying up until three am to complete.
I started feeling better about approaching this last hurdle. I want to prove that my research can be accepted in both academic spaces and communicated to mainstream audiences. for now, I’m glad to have photos from last weekend .
The next time my schedule challenges my committment to my team, I’ll look back to these photos and remind myself that I’m a serious scholar and a serious dancer.
Update: Tuesday, April 9th, 2019
I did not want to publish this last weekend, because I could not appear to find a sufficient resolution in last week, something to put my comprehensive exam experience into context and imbue me with enough resilience to continue. I felt conflicted and exhuasted and again like I was shouting into the void with no one listening.
This morning, I decided to do something that I used to do all of the time. I reached out to my mentors. they always seem know just what to say. I sent mine an email entitled Re: How do I bite my tongue?
It’s nice to be reminded that even though my mentor is in another country, he’s just an email away. And he was the perfect person to reach out to, as he’s removed from the political context of my university and has my best interests at heart.
He shared his horror stories from the last hurdles he had to jump through to earn his PhD, which are so much worse when compared to what I went through, and then put things into context.
“ Think of it this way, you’re fighting a kind of cold war against the far right, and no one said war was easy.”
And seriously, with one email from my mentor, I feel embolded to jump through these last goddamn hoops to graduate!
Final thoughts
If you’re in grad school, I hope you find that things you love and people who can give you the strength to keep going. If you’re in grad school and you study the far right, don’t hestitate to reach out! We can all learn from eachother.
If you’re not in grad school, I wish you the same.
Fash Fatigue Resources
Support the fight Against Radicalization and White Supremacy! https://www.gofundme.com/light-upon-light @lighttuponlight
Support the Development of OSINT resources like the Proud Boys incident map and dashboard: https://www.patreon.com/ashkenaz89
Get Informed about CVE Efforts Through These Individuals
@_Shan_Martinez_
@_JesseMorton
@cpicciolini
@SquizzRadical
@nezumi_ningen
@MickWilliamsPhD
@bjgalloway1717
