Doc Eat Doc World? Thinking Differently About Peer Review

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This week’s post is the third in a four part series where Xan and J share experience and tips managing academic publication and reviewing.  In this post, Xan discusses the elements of being a good reviewer and some ways to capitalize on reviewing opportunities in terms of careers and networks.

Hello readers, Xan here! Over the last couple weeks, we got some great tips from J on how to publish a whole bunch – see here and here. This week, I’m offering some insights on sitting at that other side of the publishing table: being a reviewer! I’ll follow up this first post next week with my own top tips for writing awesome peer reviews, and building your reputation as a scholar in the process.

Writing peer reviews is a great way to support your fellow scholars and have a hand in getting good research published. There’s a lot of good research floating around out there in peer review, so this is a very important task! Serving as a peer reviewer also provides you with the opportunity to strengthen manuscripts that are merely okay with suggestions that help the authors make them truly great.

It also certainly doesn’t hurt that writing peer reviews for a diverse array of journals looks great on your CV. If you’re Writing Where It Hurts on the regular by doing scholarship and outreach on controversial topics, or if you occupy a marginalized social location within academia, or if you just want that promotion so badly you can taste it, writing awesome peer reviews can help you get there! Being a peer reviewer helps you to shine not only by diversifying your record of professional service, but also by increasing your own chances of publishing in the journals of your choice.

As J pointed out earlier this fall, publishing a lot is very much about building strong relationships with editors at your target journals. Offering your services as a peer reviewer and writing thoughtful, constructive reviews is a wonderful way to accomplish this. There are certainly others, of course, but being a dependable and affirming peer reviewer is one of the best.

Editors absolutely do take notice of the content and quality of reviews you submit. And if you’re writing good ones, odds are you’ll receive more than a few emails from editors expressing gratitude for your excellent work, and urging you to submit your own work to that journal. Here at Write Where It Hurts, we get a lot of these emails, and we’d like to spread that good fortune around to as many people as possible.

Making an editor’s day with a really excellent manuscript review hardly requires a doctoral degree—indeed, it’s something all of you readers can do even if you are still in graduate school. Writing good reviews isn’t about the particular credentials you hold, but rather the critical thinking skills and spirit of curiosity you brought with you upon matriculation.

Of course, if you’re in graduate school right now, you’re probably also hearing a fair few horror stories about the peer review process. We all have them, and if you’re looking to publish a lot, your best bet is to treat them like literal horror stories—i.e., macabre entertainment. A certain neuroscientist whom I admire greatly once regaled me with tales of how a peer reviewer told her that her manuscript “should really be two papers, neither of which should be published”. She went on to publish the paper in another top journal.

J has given you plenty of excellent ideas for turning garbage into gold when receiving spiteful or just plain incoherent peer reviews. I’ll give you my own detailed perspectives later on how to write a truly golden review, even in those cases where you may think that a paper is absolute garbage. I have had this thought precisely once in the course of many years as a peer reviewer, and approached reviewing it from the perspective of coaching the research team in salvaging the paper if at all possible. The review earned me lengthy accolades from the journal’s editor, who in turn strongly encouraged the authors to incorporate my feedback for future submissions.

So I speak from experience in saying that the secret to writing good peer reviews is first and foremost to remember that we are all in this together. Although our perspectives as scholars may differ dramatically at times, we are ultimately part of a shared community of learners and teachers. We do our best work as members of this community when we remember that we do not stand in it alone, and that anonymity does not equate to null consequences for our own behavior. Even anonymity itself is a fantasy, of course. While the authors may never know who wrote that petty and vitriolic review, the editors certainly do, and they will remember.

Perhaps the more important question here, though, is why anyone would *want* to hit their fellow scholars below the belt in the first place. It’s a question I can’t answer with a high amount confidence because the correct response likely varies by individual, but I can certainly make some educated guesses. The hateful peer reviewer is academia’s equivalent of the Internet troll, a person whose only socially acceptable outlet for rage, which likely owes to a fair amount of perceived marginalization in their own life, is ranting into the abyss.

I suspect every person reading this article has experienced marginalization on at least one occasion in their life, and in turn entered a sort of “sneaky hate spiral” in which they eventually lose their composure and all semblance of social graces over a seemingly innocuous exchange. I’ve been there myself, and look back with a mixture of regret and empathy at those times where I’ve chewed out a customer service representative or scathingly silenced a grocery bagger for asking one too many questions about my personal life.

But likewise, I’ve tried to use those moments as an opportunity to understand what makes us find so much satisfaction in cutting down someone who has no power over us in the first place—and to use them as a means of connecting meaningfully with them and others afterwards. Beyond the world of academia, this has led me not only to apologize on the spot if I’ve snapped at someone, but also to explain what led me to do so. Without fail, the other person has responded with appreciation and compassion.

So what if we could do the same as peer reviewers—or better yet, simply jump ahead to the territory of sharing and connectedness? In my experience, we can and sometimes do…and it’s easier than we might think. Tune in next week for some tips on bridging the gap between criticism and critique by exploring our own thoughts as we examine those of others.

Adventures in Publishing Volume 2

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This week’s post is the second in a four part series where Xan and J share experience and tips managing academic publication and reviewing.  In this post, J offers 5 more tips for publishing in academic journals that build upon the first 5 outlined in last week’s post.

In last week’s post (Volume 1), I outlined 5 lessons I have learned about publishing journal articles to date. The following lessons build on those so I encourage all readers to check out Volume 1 before reading this one. That said, these are all lessons that have become equally important and obvious to me throughout my experiences publishing journal articles. As noted in the previous post, I do not expect everyone to agree with my experiences, but rather I share the lessons I have learned and encourage others to debate and discuss their own experiences with these dynamics.

Lesson 6: Publishing journal articles is about recognizing that reviewers only really matter if you get an R&R.

I know the standard marketing slogans that you hear everywhere about the importance of reviews, the need to consider every review seriously, and the fears of not doing so and it coming back to hurt you. Once again, I find most of this discussion to be “wishful thinking” or “anxiety statements” coming from people that believe in meritocracy or some other imaginary version of the academy. I can tell you that in my experience paying much attention to reviews that do not come with an R&R is at best a waste of your time and at worst will cause you more time wasted on extra work later.

Don’t get me wrong here, I would suggest (and I do) reading and thinking about all the reviews you get on any paper. Sometimes reviewers note important aspects of your paper or useful literature that you can use no matter where you send it next, and in such cases you should incorporate these elements. Sometimes reviewers will say things you wanted to say or agree with but left out, and you may then want to put those things in the next submission. Most importantly in my experiences, sometimes reviewers will note details that tripped them up or distracted from your manuscript that you may want to clarify or drop from the piece to avoid the same distraction or confusion again. The fact is some of the best and most useful feedback I have gotten on papers came in the process of a rejection so I would argue it is in fact important to take the reviews you get seriously even if they are part of a rejection.  The problem, however, arises when you grant reviewers that have no power (i.e., you got rejected, they cannot get you published no matter what they wrote) some power by spending days, weeks or months working on comments instead of getting your paper back under review somewhere else where it might have a chance of publication (see lesson 2 again).  Put simply, finding what is useful in a review is important, but in the end you have no way of knowing if that review will ever matter in relation to publication so it should be a tool you consider rather than something that eats up a lot of time.

The person I know that has published the most since I came to the academy does not even read reviews that come with rejections at all and simply flips every paper until ze gets an revise and resubmit. In fact, I will admit that 8 out of 10 times I simply flip an article from one journal to the next exactly as it was at the first journal or with very minor adjustments (i.e., clarifications).  The other two times out of ten are when reviewers say something I find useful for any journal in terms of publishing the article (i.e., I agree with them and think “Damn I missed that”). The vast majority of the time (all but 1 so far) I get very different reviews from the next journal and if I get an R&R I revise and if not I do the same again. In 1 other case thus far, I even experienced the horror story I have heard in graduate programs and at conferences (i.e., you get the same reviewer you had at the first journal who notes they already reviewed the piece and you didn’t change it like they wanted back then), but I can tell you that it apparently did not matter since I got an R&R and got published in the course of that experience (in fact, the published version also doesn’t have the changes they suggested because I disagree with them and apparently the editor did too). Once again, the point is simply that reviewers have little power (they hate it but editor likes it = published; they love it but editor hates it = not published; they agree with editor = published or not based on agreement) so while pretending they have more power than they do might make them feel good it may also simply waste your time and energy. So my advice is simple when you get reviews with a rejection = study them to see what may be useful to your paper and what you agree with, incorporate those things quickly, and get it to another editor and set of reviewers where the reviews might end up mattering more to your chances of publication.

Lesson 7: Publishing journal articles is about recognizing reviewers are simply other people sharing their opinions based on their own training, assumptions, biases, and backgrounds.

Again here, I know the standard marketing slogans spread throughout disciplines – reviewers are experts in a field, reviewers donate their time so must be respected, and reviewers are important to listen to and please. Once again, I simply disagree with this because my experience – and those shared with me by others – do not support these assertions. Reviewers are people like anyone else, and thus they have their own standpoints and perspectives. Reviewers are scholars like you and me, and thus they have their own background training, favorite theories, and methodological assumptions. Reviewers are varied ages like the rest of us, and thus they may know this theoretical framework or that one from graduate school, but not necessarily the latest developments in that field or theories not covered in their training or experience or they may know older or other theories useful to you that you did not get exposed to. I want you to notice that each of these aspects of reviewers can be good and bad. On the good side, this means they may add something to your work, and they may catch things you miss – this is useful. The fact is there are some amazing reviewers out there, and in the next two posts Xan will discuss some aspects of these reviewers.  When you get these amazing reviewers, you can learn a lot and greatly enhance your work.  On the bad side, however, this means they have their own values and beliefs and limitations so they may be wrong, misguide you, or otherwise problematic just as easily. The fact is you will run into some horrible reviewers and biases and assumptions along the way (unless you’re very lucky) and you need to be ready to manage these and sort them out from the good ones in practice.  Simply put, in order to publish journal articles, you must learn to spot the difference, and make your case. If you agree with the reviewer, do what they say in your way, but if you disagree with them, do so and explain why in a memo. In my experience and that others have shared with me, both of these options happen regularly, and in the end the editor (see Lesson 5 from the first post again) is the only one with any real power in the process.

I understand that most of us are taught to assume reviewers know what they’re talking about, but in reality – as editors will even tell you if you ask – they are simply selected first and foremost on their willingness to review and no one checks to see if they actually know what they’re doing in regards to your paper. Here are some fun examples:

  1. I think of the reviewer who suggested I go read x book because x book would show me that my entire paper was wrong. I went and read x book, and it turned out that x book said my entire paper was right, necessary, and important. I responded in the memo that the reviewer should go read x book that they had suggested to appreciate my paper, and even quoted the findings from x book so the editor could see that the reviewer either never read x book or simply got it wrong.
  2. I think of the reviewer who explicitly told me “be nicer to” privileged group x “in my analysis” because we all know politeness trumps empiricism right?
  3. I think of the reviewer who admitted in their review they were not familiar with (i.e., had not read or studied) the theory at the heart of my paper. How they expected to evaluate my paper without any understanding of the theory it was using is beyond me.  I also wonder (since this is what I do when I agree to review something and then realize I don’t know the literature in the piece) why they did not go read the theory first before completing their review instead of reviewing the paper without this information.
  4. I think of the reviewer who expressed anger because they had “read this manuscript already and it is no good” when reviewing a manuscript I had never submitted anywhere before, and I wondered if they either (a) just didn’t want to read it but wanted to do a review, (b) were not much of a reader and thus got it confused with some other paper they read, and / or (c) had simply had a bad day and didn’t want to bother with doing a review.
  5. I think of the countless reviewers who have told me to read my own or one of my coauthor’s works because that work totally destroys the piece in question, and I am lucky I did not get me or one of my coauthors as a reviewer on this piece, which is just plain hilarious and for me quite a lot of fun honestly.

Once again, I could offer so many more examples it is scary, but the point is the same – reviewers are people who are offering their opinions, and there is no reason to believe their opinions are any better (or more accurate) than yours automatically. You should thus make sure you know your work so you are ready to defend it if necessary or accept useful feedback (I honestly get quite a lot of that too and it makes me smile – there really are some seriously good reviewers out there so don’t let the bad ones discourage you too much) when it is provided.

Lesson 8: Publishing journal articles is about recognizing that storytelling is more important than data.

It is not uncommon to hear many scientists in a wide variety of fields talk about the importance of data (regardless of what kind of data they prefer themselves). Not surprisingly, it is also not uncommon for many emerging scholars to assume that data is what matters in journal article publishing. Sadly, this is false. In every field I have come across and among every scholar I have encountered (with a few notable exceptions), the reality is that publishing journal articles is about your ability to tell a good story. In some fields, this emphasis is more explicit so you will hear people regularly say that you must have a “theoretical” contribution to get published no matter how interesting, new, or fun your data is. You must put that data into an existing storyline for it to matter at all because the theoretical discussion (i.e., the storytelling in that journal and in your field) is what matters most. In other fields, this is more implicit, but the pattern still holds – it doesn’t matter what your data is or says unless you can find a way to tell a good (theoretical) story about it. If, for example, your data says that x and y correlate, then you must creatively construct a storyline where this correlation theoretically implies some possible concrete thing in the world beyond. If, for example, your data says that x accomplishes y by doing a, b, and c, then you must creatively construct a storyline where what x accomplishes (the y) matters to existing theoretical assumptions, beliefs, and values held by others in your field or another field. The story – not the data – is what matters; the theory – again not the data – is what matters.

While I cannot say I’m correct or not because I simply do not know, my own guess is that this counterintuitive reality (i.e., that stories (theory) matter more to science than data (empirical observations) stems from the emergence of Western Science within societies dominated by Christian traditions that prioritize belief (i.e., agreeing about the right story) over action (i.e., what one actually does). As a result, science was founded and developed as an attempt to theorize (i.e., come up with stories people could agree upon that were not necessarily religious) instead of simply observe or document (i.e., catalogue what actually happens in the world). To this end, we value attempts to explain the world (i.e., theory and belief) over attempts to document the world (i.e., data and empiricism). Stated another way, we care more about what the correlation might suggest in a possible scenario and less about the fact that what we actually documented was simply a correlation. Whether you like this or not again does not matter – the reality is that empirical papers (i.e., those about data instead of about a story) will rarely get published and theoretical papers (i.e., those about a story whether or not it necessarily fits or has data) will get published so learn to be good storytellers if you want to publish journal articles.

Lesson 9: Publishing journal articles is about recognizing that “contribution” means nothing and a thousand different things all at the same time.

Related to lesson 8, publishing journal articles requires figuring out what anyone means when they say “contribution.” In some cases, this means you have found something that others have not discussed yet, but this is rare in my experience (in fact, editors often reject such findings even when reviewers love them because they disrupt existing storylines). In other cases, this means you studied something other people have not yet studied (i.e., some new data), but again this is rare in my experience as people generally privilege theory / belief over data / practice. In most cases I have seen, heard about, and experienced, “contribution” actually means an addition to existing literatures and lines of thought (i.e., you’re adding a new wrinkle or detail or chapter to the latest published story). This means that a “contribution” is basically anything an editor (and then reviewers) see as complimentary or additive to whatever they have already read and / or agreed with at that point. Not surprisingly, this means a contribution can mean anything. If, for example, you get an editor who has never heard of theory b but loves theory a, and your piece adds a detail to theory b, you will likely be seen to have no contribution. On the other hand, if your piece adds a detail to theory a, you have a contribution. In the same manner, if your piece makes theory b look bad, you may have a contribution if the editor and / or reviewers don’t like theory b, but you may not have a contribution if the editor and / or reviewers do like theory b. See how this works?

This gets even more complicated since the vast majority of reviewers (positive or negative) will offer a similar critique of damn near any manuscript = you didn’t use literature on x. To interpret this critique, you have to realize that what they are saying is “you didn’t use this literature I like or know that is somehow maybe related to your study and I want you to use it or I’m not going to like your paper.” So, if reviewer k loves literature in this subfield and you don’t use that literature, you do not have a contribution, but if you do use that subfield you either (a) have a contribution or (b) have to add the literature they like in that subfield to have a contribution. Again, note that the literature (i.e., the established storyline) is more important than the data in your study.  In either case, “contribution” is shorthand for “what I as a reviewer or editor deem important at present,” which is something you can rarely guess since any paper will only use a limited amount of any given literature to make its point. Publishing journal articles thus requires giving up any belief in an absolute or easily guessed “contribution,” and instead embracing that this term can mean anything or nothing in a given context because it is based on what the reader themselves (a) thinks matters, (b) is familiar with, and (c) feels comfortable with. In fact, if you embrace this reality you may – as I have many times already – have the hilarious experience where you get the exact same unchanged paper rejected from journal a because “you have no contribution” and then accepted at journal b because “you have a significant contribution” as a result of the lack of actual concrete meaning the term “contribution” actually has in practice.

Lesson 10: Publishing journal articles is a social process.

As all the above suggest, publishing journal articles is a social process wherein a multitude of variables influence whether or not something appears in print. While it may be comforting to think of journals as containers of truth and merit, the reality is that they are created based on the actions and assumptions of people like any other result of social processes. In many ways, the process is kind of like dating wherein the author seeks an editor (and then reviewers) who like their outfit, agree with their worldviews, and find things about their work important. When these things line up, you have a nice time, but when these things are incompatible you simply swipe to the next potential lover on your app.

This is complicated because like any other social process journal article publishing is not uniform, but rather varied in relation to existing assumptions, biases, opinions, experiences, and expectations held by parties on each side of the interaction. The editors and reviewers behind the scenes are just as human and socially created and influenced as the authors, and as result, their opinions and biases and expectations influence the outcome of the interaction dramatically. There are many people, for example, that adjust their names, the language used in articles, and other facets of their self presentations simply to avoid or protect against assumptions and biases they have experienced in the process at times in the past. All these intersections and interactions (as they do in other social processes) influence outcomes and experiences in nuanced ways.

This is further complicated because – again like any other social process – journal article publishing is varied in status and prestige. Like other normative institutions, the mainstream or most valued journals (think the top 10 to 20 in any field) tend to be more conservative in what they publish than lesser established journals are (I was lucky that senior scholars explained this one to me early on since as someone who does work often deemed “innovative” or “controversial” this is an important detail about the structure of academic publishing often not talked about in official spaces). As a result, pieces that are more controversial or create problems for existing stories often get published in brand new or niche journals (or in books removed from the journal article process) and only really effect the mainstream conversation over time or as a result of many people citing those works in their own endeavors. At the same time, someone will gain more immediate benefit in their career for publishing a more ordinary or conservative or usual piece in the top ranked journals than they will for pushing boundaries in lesser known journals. These factors – not surprisingly – dramatically influence what knowledge counts and leads to better careers as well as each of the lessons outlined above.

This is even further complicated because – again like any other social process – journal article publishing requires resources that are not evenly distributed. One example may be found in the topic of time, and who does or does not have time to shop multiple editors, who does or does not have writing time built into their job, who does or does not have time for conference networking or library searching in the midst of their work. All these factors play prominent roles in who can even pursue publishing in journals in the first place. We can run down a similar amount of inequitable dynamics if we look at money, research support infrastructure, course releases to focus on writing, or assistance in research just to name a few examples. All of these resource distributions influence who can publish in journals by limiting or expanding the ability one has to work through the process and play the game.

Adventures in Publishing Volume 1

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This post is the first in a four part series wherein J and Xan outline some tips and lessons concerning publishing and reviewing they have picked up over the years.  In the first two posts, J outlines 5 lessons learned about publishing journal articles over the 4 years since submitting zir first manuscript to a journal.  Next week, J will outline 5 more lessons from these experiences, and then the following two weeks Xan will offer tips and lessons about being a good reviewer for journals and the ways this may help one’s overall publishing and other career-related experience.  

Every year, I attend conferences and come into contact with graduate students seeking to find answers to a multitude of questions concerning publishing and other aspects of academic careers. As I often do in such cases, I wanted to use this post (the first of two on the subject) to share some lessons I have learned about publishing in academic journals over the years just in case it may be helpful to emerging scholars navigating these activities. I do not mean to claim my experience is in any way exhaustive or some kind of ideal approach, but I realize (if for no other reason than the number of graduate students that seek me out each year) that such information may be useful to many people.  I further admit that many people may disagree with my own approach and the lessons I have learned so far, and I think that is quite fine – my goal here is to offer what I have learned and experienced in hopes of helping others, and I would suggest others simply do the same if they see things differently.

To this end, I offer the following lessons I have learned in the 4 years since I submitted my first manuscript to an academic journal. Considering that I have since published 19 journal articles, I feel like I have a pretty good handle on the journal article process, and so I hope to share some insights from behind the scenes while recognizing that many other people likely approach things both the same way I do and much differently in practice. In this post, I offer 5 lessons learned, and in the next post (Volume 2 forthcoming) I will offer 5 more.

Lesson 1: Publishing journal articles is something one learns by doing.

If you walk through any conference or graduate program I have come across so far, you are likely to be able to find lots of advice about how one should go about publishing, but best I can tell most of such advice is not all that useful in practice. I say this as someone who was lucky enough to have mentors that answered any question and provided examples along the way.  What I learned, however, is that the process itself is simply one that takes practice. I cannot tell you how I know when a paper is ready to go out for review or which reviewers to agree with or disagree with because these are ongoing processes of interpretation I have simply picked up with practice over time. I can tell you that such practice is very important, and thus I encourage you to spend at least as much time submitting your work as you do asking others how you should go about submitting work.

Lesson 2: The people who publish the most generally are those who submit the most.

It may be comforting to believe in meritocracy or other ideal scenarios where the cream rises to the top no matter what in academic work and beyond, but realistically everyone I know (self included) that other people say “wow they publish a lot” or “how are you so productive” has a ton of rejections to go with those publications and always has something in the pipeline (if not ten somethings, hell I have 20 at various stages of review as I type this and I know of two colleagues that have more than that in the pipeline right now). To get published, you have to write and you have to submit. I was granted this advice by a scholar I met while in graduate school who, to quote a senior scholar at the time, “published a ton,” and their advice was simply – “if you want to publish a lot, you have to submit a lot, get rejected a lot, and keep submitting – it’s a numbers game like any other, the more chances you get the more times you’ll score a publication.” I can thus tell you that no matter how much (or how little) you workshop, present, or otherwise agonize over your papers, in the end what will matter is how many of them go out for review and how willing you are to keep submitting them (with adjustments along the way) following rejections. Like any other game, you have to play to have a chance.

Lesson 3: Publishing journal articles is about rejection.

Everyone I know that actually enjoys the publication process (as opposed to worrying about it, fearing it, and / or stressing about it) expects every paper they submit to get rejected – period, no exceptions. I say this as someone who has already had 2 papers get conditionally accepted on first submission and as someone who has published a lot – I assume each thing I submit will get rejected and I look forward to getting the rejection, disagreeing with the reviewers, and one day celebrating when I can say (no matter how accurate or inaccurate) “see they were wrong” when another journal wants the piece. I do not expect to get accepted, and thus each time this happens feels like a damn holiday and miracle. The rejections hurt (they suck), but like any other pain, it stings less if you are expecting it from the start instead of hoping for something that you do not get. I thus treat submissions like a game – I throw the pass or accept the dare or spin the bottle assuming it won’t go well so I can dance and sing when it occasionally works out great. I also never developed a “thick skin” as some professors suggest – rather I curse, scream, cry or whatever I feel about every rejection and use that emotion (or pain) as motivation to keep going (i.e., I’ll show them!!!) with the paper in question. I would thus say think of it like this you have nothing to lose since they’re going to reject you anyway so why not give it a shot.

Lesson 4: Publishing journal articles is about patience.

When submitting an article to this or that journal, there is no way to know how long it will take to get a decision. Almost every journal says they do things in x or y time period, but in reality these are averages at best or ideal guesses at worst from what I can tell. The shortest turn around from submission to decision I have experienced so far was 1 month, and the longest was 13 months. I have also experienced everything in between these two extremes. When you submit something, my advice is to forget about it the best you can and work on something else. Watching the pot will not likely do you any good at all, and may increase any anxiety you experience in relation to publishing or submitting in general from what I’ve seen.

Lesson 5: Publishing journal articles is about editor shopping.    

I know the standard marketing slogan, sermon or whatever you want to call it that damn near everyone repeats constantly – “the best papers get published here,” “this journal will get you good reviews,” “your paper is a perfect fit for this journal,” and “if you get good reviews you’ll get published” to name just a few. This is all “wishful thinking” best I can tell because the reality is – as many of my mentors and colleagues have expressed and I have experienced – that all you’re doing when you submit a paper is waiting to see if a given editor wants that paper. Some examples may help de-mystify this statement for those of you who might still cling desperately to beliefs about merit and objectivity in publishing:

  1. I think of the time an Editor rejected a paper of mine because they wrote “they did not believe in qualitative methods,” which kind of automatically meant the merit of any qualitative work would not matter because they did not believe in the work in the first place. This was after the paper had gotten all positive reviews during both rounds (yes I said both, initial and R&R rounds) of review.
  2. I think of the time an Editor rejected a paper of mine because they wrote I had “published too much” in that journal recently, which simply ignored the 3 glowing positive reviews the piece got (i.e., merits) in favor of journal politics and desires.
  3. I think of the (too many to count to date) times I have received rejections at various journals only to realize I got 3, 4, and even 5 glowing positive reviews with statements like “This is the most innovative piece I’ve seen in x field” or “This could be a major contribution to the discipline.” In such cases, editor taste trumps the merit documented by reviewers. In fact, a colleague and I have a running joke that if someone calls our work “innovative” or “original” we know we’re going to get rejected (unless we go to a small niche journal or a brand new journal where they appear to be more open to NEW ideas in my experience) because the last thing any editor at a well known journal seems to want is something innovative or original.
  4. I think of the many times (at least a dozen or so) where reviewers have slaughtered a piece (i.e., they hated it – I even had one write they hated it) by giving it the worst reviews I could imagine only to get a glowing R&R from an editor who apparently liked the piece. Once again (though more positive for the writer) the editor’s taste trumped the merit established (or denied in such cases) by the reviewers.

Sadly, I could give plenty more examples of these experiences, but the end point remains the same – publishing is about finding the editor that wants the piece and merit doesn’t matter unless the editor says it has merit. You have to keep in mind that editors are people with their own biases, assumptions, perspectives, tastes, agendas, etc, and they can (and do) ignore the reviewers (positive or negative) regularly. You can love this or hate this, but in either case, this is the process so you will need to learn to accept it. If your paper is great according to your colleagues and / or the reviewers, but an editor doesn’t want it, it will not get published at that journal. If your paper is horrible according to your colleagues and / or reviewers, but an editor does want it, you will get published at that journal. In the end, the process is about editor shopping because in the end editors decide what has merit and what does not. As a result, you can spend years trying to get your writing group, advisor, friend, magical creature, pen pal or whoever to like it, but in the end unless they are the editor of the journal you choose it won’t matter all that much.

I hope these 5 lessons are useful to readers, and I encourage debate and discussion of them here on the blog since I know from experience people view publishing processes differently. In the next post, I will offer 5 more lessons learned that build on these 5 so until then I wish you well in your own adventures in publishing.

What does teaching feel like?

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In this post, J. Sumerau asks us to consider and reflect upon what teaching feels like and how such feelings may vary and / or be illustrative in relation to different people, approaches, and social locations.

This week I experience one of my favorite times of the year – the beginning of classes for a new academic year. As I walk to and through campus, all the signs are there that a new year has begun. Some of the students are excited, others are nervous, and still more seem just plain lost as they look around for some kind of guidance. Some of the faculty are bouncing around with glee, others appear annoyed beyond belief, and still more are arguing about parking. I always experience a mixture of fear and exhilaration personally, which I figured I’d write about for a bit since it makes me wonder about variations in how teaching feels for different people.

In terms of fear, I find myself locking up – physically, emotionally, and even mentally – this time of year with anxiety about the fact that I must talk to and deal with people constantly from this point forward after a summer usually spent mostly in isolation – or as some friends say “hiding in my cave.” While my students rarely believe it until they see me outside of school, I’m not very social and interpersonal interactions are often very difficult for me to navigate so when I’m able to I simply avoid interacting with people (I prefer to watch them from a distance so to speak as I roam around cities alone listening to random conversations and / or whatever records I’m interested in at the moment). There may be nothing more awkward in my daily or normal routines than the thought of speaking to a room full of people and / or making small talk in a given hallway, and yet these are two of the most common elements of my occupational experience.

Companions who understand this about me sometimes express surprise that I love teaching as a way to make a living and spend my time. The answer lies in the other side of the coin – constantly doing something terrifying is in many ways exhilarating and never boring for me. My life – especially the parts that require human interaction and communication not accomplished via typing – feels like a constant adventure, a kind of boxing match between my fear of people and my desire not to be ruled by fear. While I have friends who spend days and hours deciding exactly what to say and do in classes, I almost never have any clue which of twenty or more outlined directions any given class might go. If I try to be more specific than that – as I learned by trying to do so in graduate school – I lock up, have a panic attack, and can’t speak. For whatever reason, deciding exactly what to say ahead of time creates more anxiety because I then worry about going off script or forgetting something important so – in much the same way I approach presentations at conferences – I instead come up with a bunch of different possible scenarios and then read my audience for cues as to what might be fun and useful (i.e., the same way I navigate interpersonal interactions outside the classroom).

If there is anything I have learned over the years, it is that there may be an unlimited amount of ways to teach well, experience classrooms, and manage the self and the class in educational endeavors. From the colleague I know that designs a specific game for each concept to the colleague I know that maps out every possible student response so ze has an example and / or resource ready at hand at all times, people prepare and experience classrooms in a wide variety of ways. From the colleague that giggles whenever anyone says “course prep” because ze does not do any of that “boring stuff” and instead uses improv experience to run classrooms based on topics ze already knows well to the colleague who spends the entire summer preparing detailed and sophisticated lectures with graphs and charts because the structure eases their own anxiety about talking in public, the spectrum of possible approaches suggests – and I admit I’ve benefited from personally thanks to countless conversations with others on the matter – a wealth of information to be found sharing teaching approaches, experiences, and styles with one another.

These simple observations about the experience of and approaches to teaching lead me to wonder how others experience these dynamics. While rarely mentioned or written about (that I have seen) aside from social media posts here and there and online groups where teachers share frustrations and celebrations during the year, the way it feels to teach is likely a fascinating topic and would likely reveal a lot about the ways educators navigate the world and their lives within it. As I continue enjoying the fear and exhilaration of my own latest week one, I thus ask us all to reflect on what it feels like to teach and what lessons we could learn about teaching and ourselves from such reflection.

All the Pain Money Can Buy: How Far We Haven’t Come with Pain Control

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Editor Xan Nowakowski, whose own experiences with a painful chronic disease have inspired much of their own research, reflects on seven years of scholarship on clinical pain management, and what they have learned from lived experience along the way.

When I started doing pain management research as a graduate student at Rutgers in 2008, it was an exciting time for the field. New technologies as well as off-label uses of less recent ones like the Interstim device seemed to hold tremendous promise, and intrathecal pumps and ambulatory catheters were achieving significant penetrance among a variety of service populations. Especially in the world of post-surgical pain management, new reasons to envision a bright future were cropping up all the time.

In the long-term pain management field, pharmaceutical companies were racing to develop drugs to address underlying causes of chronic pain. At the time, I was taking one of those drugs—Elmiron, the much-lauded “wonder drug” for management of interstitial cystitis. Those of us with chronic conditions dared to hope a bit too, even as we rode the capricious waves of hope and despair that living with persistent illness always seems to bring.

The summer of 2009 was a watershed time for me. I was completing my Master of Public Health fieldwork, preparing to finish the program, and thinking about my next moves. Though I did not know it at the time, within six months of completing my research I would make the life-changing decision to move to Florida. I would leave behind the place where chronic pain had brought me to the brink of suicide, and where I had learned firsthand why pain and post-traumatic stress so often go hand in hand.

I drove all around New Jersey that summer, interviewing hospital providers and administrators about the pain management modalities they provided, and the barriers they encountered in offering alternatives to opioid narcotics. One of the most instructive aspects of my own experience with chronic pain had been the Scylla and Charybdis choice I faced for over a decade, trying to reconcile my fears of opioid dependency and functional disability with my equally pervasive fears of ultimately losing my will to continue living with intractable agony. I would later learn that I was hardly alone in these fears.

The hospital personnel I interviewed were many, representing about 35 percent of all hospitals in New Jersey. They held a variety of advanced degrees and came from a variety of backgrounds, with differences in beliefs and practices that reflected the variations in their training. But what stood out most to me was the levels and awareness and compassion I consistently observed in the people I interviewed. Every single person I talked to viewed chronic pain as a serious problem worthy of serious clinical attention.

Likewise, each and every one of them reported feeling frustrated with insurance companies’ lack of willingness to pay for non-opioid treatment modalities. According to my study participants, this was the most prominent barrier to providing what they viewed as truly effective and responsive pain management in accordance with national guidelines. We shared those frustrations—I told my story to many of those providers after we wrapped up our interviews, and learned a lot of things “off the record” that have informed much of the work I have done since.

The people I interviewed shared my frustrations over care practices not being able to keep pace with scientific innovations as a result of funding barriers. Predictably, these problems were often worst in hospitals with a high charity care population. Some of these hospitals found creative solutions for their patients with chronic pain from conditions like sickle cell anemia by working with local Federally Qualified Health Centers. But as often happens in low-resource communities, need for these services greatly exceeded clinics’ capacity to provide them.

We still had plenty of reasons to hope, though. With so many new medications and technologies hitting the market and starting to permeate best practice recommendations for clinical care, there was ample justification for thinking about a pipeline effect in which impactful innovations would reach more and more health care users with each passing year, becoming more affordable in the process. The promise of affordable health care legislation from the Obama administration gave additional weight to this vision.

The summer of 2015 is now drawing to a close, and once again I am wrapping up a study on clinical pain management. This time I had a partner in research and less driving to do, and a ready team of MPH students and undergraduate research assistants eager to assist. We conducted semi-structured interviews with university health care providers, working excitedly to fill a gaping hole in the published literature on pain management. We had a wonderful experience getting to know one another and completing our study, and I loved every moment of watching my students shine as they enhanced their key informant interviewing and qualitative content analysis skills.

Yet as we finish coding our data and begin writing up our findings, my happiness has become increasingly bittersweet. My students’ achievements mean everything to me, and always will. Their thoroughness, however, has proven to be a double-edged sword. What my students unearthed in their probing of our study participants was an old familiar tale that rang all too true: lots of good options offered up by science, but no functional translation of these modalities into affordable clinical care for people with chronic pain.

It is 2015, and I still have to carry a bottle of opioid medication everywhere I go. This mostly achieves the purpose of quelling the crippling fear of not being able to control my pain if nothing else works. Indeed, the literature suggests that often the most helpful aspect of opioid medications is their ability to confer a sense of mastery to people who live with painful conditions. I feel this restoration of personal agency quite a bit when sitting in relative comfort as I am now, typing away on an article or blog post that makes me feel like my own experiences are gifts that yield professional insight.

I do not feel it as much during those times every few weeks when I lie curled up beneath my desk, praying into empty air that my medication will kick in. I do not feel it when phenazopyridine stains the edges of the toilet bowl, or when bleach fumes rise into my nostrils as I wipe away the evidence of how far we haven’t come in providing real options for people like me.   I especially do not feel it when the phenazopyridine fails to enhance the effect of the diphenhydramine I have already taken, and I have to reach for the bottle of narcotic tablets that I still associate with defeat.

I also do not feel any mastery when I remember why I stopped taking Elmiron—the surreal moment of standing in my parents’ kitchen holding an absurdly dainty gingham-topped jam jar of my own urine, staring in suspicion at the rubbery threads of unidentifiable discharge that had started appearing with alarming frequency. I had a moment where I realized that urinating through a tea strainer to catch “specimens” was about my limit. One is perceived as deviant enough when one lives with a mysterious autoimmune disease, even without making a habit of urinating in jars to inspect the contents.

I should interject that these shortcomings in the field are not entirely the fault of insurance companies. As the Affordable Care Act was being developed and organizations like the Institute of Medicine were continuing to refine their recommendations for best practices in clinical pain control, a storm was brewing that set the field of innovative chronic pain management back substantially. The retraction of some two dozen published studies on multimodal analgesia crippled other clinicians’ efforts to incorporate integrative approaches using new therapies into their own programs of care. As predicted, the field has yet to recover fully.

Of course, when you live with a painful chronic disease, you learn quickly that you never truly recover. Your body changes; your life changes; and your brain changes right along with them. Illness management becomes the name of the game—one that often feels like Whac-a-Mole rather than a game in which one defeats a series of bosses and wins. Good science, conducted by people with curious minds and compassionate hearts, is one of the best weapons we have in this game. But abuses of research ethics—even by scientists who may have the best of intentions in mind—can leave us fighting fisticuffs against enemies we cannot hope to vanquish on our own.

Later this fall, I will be doing a follow-up post here about the 2009 multimodal analgesia scandal and its broader implications for ethics in medical research, adding a perspective of lived experience to the insights offered by other clinicians as they reacted to the news about Dr. Scott Reuben’s research fabrications. In the meantime, I know that when many of you Write Where It Hurts, you are doing so in the most concrete and literal sense possible! So I encourage all of our readers to share stories and insights about pain management, including any research you have done on the topic and any lived experiences that inform your work.

What’s in a Name: On Bi and Pan Sexualities

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A few weeks ago, I posted two pieces on Conditionally Accepted (see here and here) and one here on Write Where It Hurts exploring bisexuality in varied contexts and defined in varied ways. At the same time, Lain Mathers posted a piece here on Write Where It Hurts examining the ways these meanings and conflicts around bisexuality play out in lesbian/gay and heterosexual spaces. In this post, I want to reflect upon a question that regularly emerged in response to these posts – the relationship between bisexuality and pansexuality.

As I noted in the midst of some of the productive conversations that emerged in comment threads, the term pansexuality or pansexual (like bisexual, bisexuality and other fluid identity terms) is often rife with conflict. In my experience, this conflict arises as a result of the use of the term in three distinct ways by varied individuals and groups.

Before discussing these uses and the conflicts they contain, however, a little her-his-our-story may be useful. Initially, pansexuality was not coined as an identity term (i.e., like bi, homo, and hetero sexualities), but rather as a statement (often attributed to Freud and others at the time) on the presumed innate sexual desire of all humans. This elaboration is automatically problematic because it erases asexual existence and experience, but thankfully, this is not how the term is generally used at present. Rather, these days pansexuality is generally used as a form of sexual identification that dates back (at least) 3 or 4 decades. In this elaboration, it was initially established as a type or form of bisexuality wherein the person in question did not factor genital possession in the establishment of sexual desire and practice. In fact, many bisexual people I have known (myself included) use this term interchangeably with bisexual, fluid, and Queer among others to denote experience and identification with this end (i.e., lack of concern for genitals in matters of attraction and / or sexual activity and / or romance) of the bisexual spectrum (i.e., I may say I’m bi, pan, fluid, and Queer within a few breaths of the same conversation since for me (and historically) this is like saying I like guitars, fender guitars, electric guitars, acoustic guitars, and bass guitars = I like guitars and here are certain types of guitars that especially fit my needs).

When this identification practice emerged, bisexuality (even in general use) typically referred to those people attracted to their own body and / or genital type and the bodies and genital types of others who were not the same as their own (i.e., these were people who engaged in both homo and hetero sexualities, therefore bisexual). Within this umbrella definition, some bisexuals were (1) attracted to more than one type of genital set or sex, some bisexuals were (2) attracted to more than one type of physical form (i.e., size, shape, race, sex, gender presentation, etc), some bisexuals (like me) were (3) attracted to all types of bodies (i.e., like mine and not like mine) whether or not they looked like their own body type, and some bisexuals (4) fluctuated along varied points of this spectrum throughout their lives. Within this spectrum of possibilities between self (1) and other (2) body types (i.e., bisexuality) and between homo (1) and hetero (2) sexualities, pansexual referred to the third type noted above (as did ambisexual, polysexual, and other terms).

In fact, this spectrum still finds voice within bisexual communities and umbrella designations, and remains the most common definition of bisexuality I have seen among bisexual identified people. Other terms, such as fluid (noted as number 4 above), have even been established to make sense of bisexual people’s locations within this spectrum / umbrella. However, the last few decades witnessed systematic erasure and marginalization of bisexuality within lesbian/gay and heterosexual communities predicated upon transforming the word “bi” from an expression of two ends of a complex spectrum of human engagement and desire preference into a simplified binary articulation of the male/female genital binary homo and hetero sex norms are built upon. Instead of bisexual referring to both homo and hetero sexualities, people began linking it to sex / gender binaries to essentialize homo and hetero sexuality. To put this into perspective, imagine if we began saying homo and hetero sexual meant one sex only instead of preferences for a type of sexual engagement – you would have the same thing that has been done to bisexuality over the past few decades, and it would likely sound as silly to homo and hetero sexual folks as it does to most bisexual folks aware of this history. In the process of this extermination of bisexual complexity in the hetero-homo imagination, some people (not surprisingly) began to identify as pansexual in order to avoid biphobia and monosexism within lesbian/gay/straight communities.

It is within this context that (at least) three uses of pansexuality have emerged as regular components of normative or mainstream sexual politics. In the first case, people adopt a more traditional interpretation of pansexuality as a type of bisexuality that refers to sexual attraction and / or engagement regardless of genital consideration. In such cases, pansexuals stand along side other bisexual people against monosexism and biphobia (and in many cases hetero and cis sexism), sometimes refer to themselves as bi-pansexuals or pan-bisexuals though just as often simply say they are pansexual and / or bisexual (or any other terms within the bi spectrum) in varied contexts and with varied others, and often find comfort and security in larger bi communities while working to provide the same for other bi people in lesbian/gay/straight communities. In such cases, pansexuality is not problematic at all – it is simply someone exercising their self and bodily autonomy to identity in the way that best fits their experiences and desires. They are harming no one, and often, as members of larger bi communities, helping others. In such cases, their identification efforts are similar to working class people who prefer homosexual or heterosexual when identifying themselves, but do not have issues with or fight against middle class people who prefer to use the terms gay or lesbian or straight to identify themselves – they are merely identifying as they see fit within a larger umbrella of binary sexual (homo and / or hetero) others who they support and embrace.

The second most common way I see pansexuality used, however, is deeply problematic. In this case, people identify as pansexual to distance themselves from bisexual communities and avoid the marginalization of these communities within lesbian/gay/straight (i.e., binary sexual) communities. In such cases, these people will call themselves pansexual in a positive way, but then repeat biphobic notions of binary bisexualities used to marginalize bisexuality (however termed) within gay/lesbian/straight spaces. In so doing, they will generally receive affirmation and better treatment from binary sexual communities (lesbian/gay or straight identified) in exchange for supporting monosexism (i.e., sexual binaries) – a process referred to as trading power for patronage in inequality studies (i.e., the process wherein a subordinate accepts subordination on certain terms to gain a more comfortable location within a given matrix of inequality). In such cases, pansexuality is incredibly problematic because it is used as a form of sexual inequality reproduction that further marginalizes other forms of bisexuality and non-binary existence. In such cases, pansexual identification efforts are similar to some working class people who prefer homosexual or heterosexual to identify themselves, and then say those using the terms like gay or lesbian or straight are misguided or wrong or not “really” authentic and / or middle class and above people who prefer the terms like gay and lesbian and straight, and then say those using homosexual or other terms are misguided or wrong or automatically hurting them or not “really” authentic – they are using their own preferred terminology as a mechanism for demonizing people who prefer other terms for describing similar (in many cases the exact same) sexual desires and identities.

Within the aforementioned uses of pansexuality, there lies another common use that actually demonstrates the importance of the first two patterns. In this case, people grow up in spaces and communities devoid of bisexual our-his-her-story and understanding, and as a result, learn binary sexual (lesbian/gay/straight) perspectives of the world only. In such cases, they are taught horror stories and insults and jokes about bisexuality that reproduce monosexism and biphobia, and then adopt pansexuality as a term for themselves because they don’t look like or want to be like the negative depictions they are taught by those who benefit from monosexism. In such cases, they rarely know that pansexuality emerged as a form of bisexual identification, or the patterns of ongoing bi-erasure, marginalization, and just plain fear embedded within many contemporary binary sexual (lesbian/gay and straight) communities. Without access to this backstory, they simply identify in the way that appears “acceptable” to the people around them and embrace the biphobia promoted in the same circles. In such cases, pansexuality is once again problematic for the same reasons noted above, but it is nuanced because some of these people will change their behaviors and / or identities and / or politics when they meet bisexual communities, learn about bi-pan-Queer-fluid backstories, and / or continue to encounter marginalization (though often in a more polite form) within lesbian/gay/straight circles due to their non-binary sexual desires and practices. Others, however, will have grown accustomed to the comfort achieved by contributing to bi oppression, and thus slide into pattern two noted above over time. Finally, still more may never become acquainted with bi-pan-Queer-fluid backstories, perspectives, and / or communities, and remain ignorant of these dynamics or the ways their own self presentation and politics speak to these long term patterns. In such cases, pansexual identification efforts are similar to people who only grow up hearing heterosexual perspectives on the world, and internalize these depictions of dangerous or scary gay/lesbian/homosexual people and wrestle with these depictions whether or not they ever encounter gay/lesbian/homosexual backstories, perspectives, or communities in their own lives – they adopt terminology (i.e., I do this, but I’m not gay/lesbian/homosexual/bisexual/pansexual/etc) due to the fear, guilt and shame they were taught by others seeking to preserve their own position within binary sexual politics and power structures.

With these patterns in mind, I return to the conflicted positions of contemporary pansexual identification. As suggested in my use of gay/lesbian/homosexual conflicts I’ve observed over the years, the use of pansexuality as an identification term is complicated, nuanced, and not a new issue for sexual minority communities (i.e., one only needs to look back at previous conflicts between homophile and gay identifications or conflicts over lesbian and gay woman to see the exact same patterns play out in binary sexual minority (i.e., lesbian/gay) communities in the past). As a result, I tend to interpret these conflicts in much the same way I do in relation to the gay/lesbian/homosexual conflicts noted above.  As Queer scholars have long suggested, I focus on the actions tied to the label instead of obsessing over whether or not someone identifies in a “specific” way (i.e., I focus on sexual justice instead of identity politics).

As such, if someone identifies as pansexual while embracing and working for other types of bisexual people, then I see no problem, welcome them to the club, and stand beside them in any way I can. This is the same way I approach bisexual, lesbian/gay, heterosexual, or asexual people – if they identify as their chosen term while embracing equality for all beings of varied sexual identifications and working for such equality, I want to support them in all ways I can.

If, on the other hand, someone identifies as pansexual while demonizing and working against (intentionally or otherwise) other types of bisexual people, then I see a problem, oppose them in any way I can, and call them out on their biphobia, monosexism, and / or heterosexism. This is the same way I approach bisexual, lesbian/gay, heterosexual or asexual people – if they identify as their chosen term while demonizing other beings of one or more sexual identifications and working against such people, they are facilitators the pain of many other people, and I oppose them in all the ways I can.

I take a similar approach – no matter someone’s sexual identification – in relation to cissexism, racism, sexism, ablism, classism, colorism, nationalism, religious oppression (maybe religism?), and other forms of inequality. If the person in question is working to oppose these systems that cause so many people so much pain, then I stand with them whether our identities match or not and / or whether or not I agree with their chosen identification terms, but if they (intentionally or otherwise) feed these systems I stand against them, do my best to call them out, monitor myself to make sure I don’t slip into such practice or catch any practices like this in my own activities I’m not aware of yet, and otherwise seek to end (in any way I can with my one life) these systems and their power.

As a result, my ultimate suggestion in regards to differential sexual identification terms is to focus on equality and justice for all beings regardless of sexual identification. Do you identify and act in ways that support the equality of others? Do you identify and act against monosexism, heterosexism, biphobia, homophobia, and other forms of sexual violence and marginalization? Do you identify and act in ways that support the right of other people to exercise autonomy in self identification and activity even when such autonomy leads them to prefer different identifications and practices than your own? Do you identify and act in ways that support consent, bodily autonomy for all, sexual freedom for all, and the dignity and respect of all people who embrace and support these ideals? For me, these are the important questions regardless of the term one prefers to use to describe their own sexual practices and desires.

J. Sumerau

Teaching Where It Hurts

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In this post, Xan Nowakowski and J. Sumerau reflect on their experiences personalizing sociology in the classroom (see their recently published Teaching Sociology article on this topic here) in hopes of facilitating dialogue and debate about the benefits and limitations of incorporating professor biographies into sociological curricula.

As people who write about, teach, study, and engage in advocacy related to chronic health conditions, social inequalities, sexual and gender experiences and identities, and managing trauma, we have become intimately aware of the potential personal experience and stories can have for facilitating learning and motivating concrete action among our students, colleagues, and communities. At the same time, we know all too well that structural factors regularly limit who can say what in classrooms in much the same way they do beyond the academy, and that academic traditions have long privileged rational or remote notions of instruction over emotional and personalized approaches. As we did in our recently published Teaching Sociology article, we would like to encourage our colleagues to consider these options and structural patterns in hopes of spurring dialogue about the potential of using our own experiences within inequitable structures to help students and colleagues see the pain created by social inequalities on a more personal level.

As we did with the establishment of ongoing conference sessions, an upcoming book project, and the creation of this site, our focus here lies in the potential of writing (or researching, teaching and advocating) where it hurts. When Xan shares stories of almost dying or struggles with doctors and other medical professionals unfamiliar with what to do to treat their chronic physical health conditions, for example, students come face to face with the results of our flawed healthcare system in the midst of their own lives and worldviews. Likewise, when J. shares stories of being physically assaulted for daring to go on a date with a cute boy or watching a lover die amidst both caring and supportive and judgmental and hateful medical professionals, students witness the concrete tears, pain, and sorrow that come from experiences within interlocking systems of inequality embedded throughout our society. In these and many other cases, we utilize our own pain to pull social inequality out of the abstract and into the actual lived experiences of the students and colleagues who interact with us.

As we advocate in our recent article and practice in our own classes and on this site, we seek to personalize social inequalities for our students. Rather than things they read or hear about in class that happen somewhere “out there” unseen to them, we use our own experience and narratives shared by other people occupying marginalized positions or experiencing traumatic events to translate “out there” into personal realities with actual faces, personalities, voices, and bodies in the eyes of students and colleagues. In fact, both students and colleagues regularly experience their own organic emotional reactions to social patterns in the process, and tend to very quickly make the link that if it could happen to “their professor” then it could happen to “them” or “their loved ones” as well. Not surprisingly, such realizations very quickly transform societal patterns of inequality into anything but abstract concepts. As a result, our willingness to talk about the pain or teach where it hurts often translates into incredibly passionate and engaged rooms full of students especially willing to discuss and consider concrete steps they can take toward more positive social relations.

As we note in our recent article, we developed these approaches – individually and collectively – over time by building the entirety of our class offerings around discussion, consent, and application of scholarly materials to personal experience. In terms of discussion, for example, our courses are organized – from the first to the last day – around personal or collected emotional narratives that we share with students in relation to each course reading and topic. In so doing, we ritualize personal narratives within the class so students become accustomed to this form of interaction and dialogue throughout the course. Likewise, our courses are built upon an emphasis on consent wherein students are never required to disclose their own personal experiences or use ours in their work, but they are allowed to do both of these things on any assignment or in any class meeting where such things are relevant to the given assignment or class topic or assigned material. We thus remove grading from the equation by giving students ample resources to do just as well in the class no matter their experience and / or interpretation of the personal content we or other students share. Finally, we strategically link every scholarly piece or activity in a given class to specific personalized examples so students are able to always see the real world (or applied) aspects of the materials we cover in their own lives, in our lives, and / or in the lives of other people. Our experiences – as well as some initial negative experiences others have had when first attempting styles like our own without these ingredients – tell us these (and maybe other) efforts to create classrooms where students get used to and feel safe with vulnerability may be essential ingredients in personalizing instruction.

With all this information in mind, we invite dialogue, commentary and discussion on the possibility of personalizing scholarly work through teaching and other methods. Whether one seeks to join this conversation on this site or in relation to our call in Teaching Sociology or in any other space, we invite and appreciate other educator’s perspectives on these matters. To this end, ask yourself what ways you do or could personalize sociology? What might be the benefits or limitations of doing so? What institutional and structural steps might we need to take to serve and protect those who share their pain in the service of education and advocacy by and for their students and other colleagues? While we will not pretend to have some “right” or “absolute” answers to these questions, our experiences to date within and beyond classrooms tell us these questions might be incredibly important and useful in many ways.

When it won’t go away – on managing chronic conditions in the academy

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An important part of the initiation of Write Where It Hurts came from Xan Nowakowski and J. Sumerau’s experiences collaboratively managing chronic conditions in relation to their professional and personal relationships.  Building on Xan’s previous post in this area, in this post J. Sumerau reflects on aspects of managing chronic mental and physical health conditions in hopes of facilitating dialogue about these issues within and beyond the academy.

Although often invisible to the naked eye in social and professional interaction, estimates suggest as much as half the American population live with chronic mental and / or physical health conditions, and must manage such conditions throughout their daily lives. In this post, I reflect on some of my own experiences as one of these people in hopes of facilitating dialogue on this subject.

In so doing, I am seeking to build on the bravery of other scholars who have already addressed experiences with chronic conditions in many ways. Whether we look to recent blog posts (often anonymous) by people exploring, for example, aspects of bipolar conditions, experiences along the autism spectrum, managing dissociative identity disorders, or persistent anxiety, we can already see the silence around chronic conditions beginning to dissipate. I thus seek to contribute to these voices in hopes of continuing to, as DeWelde and Stepnick title their important volume exposing gender inequality in the academy, “disrupting the culture of silence” around chronic conditions in the academy.

To this end, I want to start by noting that on the surface – or from the outside so to speak – I generally appear to be a rather productive scholar. In fact, I regularly encounter people (well meaning, kind and complimentary people, best I can tell) who say things to the effect of “how do you get so much done” or “I wish I was as productive as you” when they realize that I only began graduate study 7 years ago but already have over 30 academic publications. I appreciate the kindness and compliments these people offer me, and I am proud of my work personally and professionally because doing this work is the closest I ever get to feeling like I might fit in somewhere.

I do not, however, note these experiences to boast in any way. Rather, I note these experiences because people might never think of me when they hear about scholars managing extremely painful and difficult chronic conditions. I have regularly heard people at conferences and in other settings assert negative stereotypes about people with enduring mental and physical conditions, which suggest these people are rare (false) and / or that these people are obviously or automatically different or deviant (false) and / or that visibly managing conditions or otherwise these people are somehow less capable than their normatively bodied or mental colleagues (false again). Like many of the scholars I am aware of managing such conditions, my constant struggle to exist is invisible to the casual glance, and still others face similar struggles managing more visible conditions. In both cases, every scholar I have come in contact with who is managing one or more chronic health conditions is at least as competent as any other scholar I have seen and often actually perform well above the average in their fields (Charles Darwin likely being the most famous example).

The mismatch between stereotypes and actual scholars managing chronic conditions is likely familiar to anyone versed in inequalities scholarship. Similar to people stigmatized via normative or dominant notions of race, class, gender, sexualities, and age to name a few, people whose minds and bodies work differently are typically framed as deficient or deviant. We are called diseased instead of simply different, our experiences are called disorders instead of variations, and our abilities are called lesser instead of diverse. In all such cases, we are assaulted for not fitting artificial norms about how human bodies and minds “should work” so that others who benefit from these norms do not have to reevaluate their own mind and body assumptions. As has traditionally been the case, many of us have realized that these patterns will only change if we begin announcing ourselves to the rest of the world and challenging mental and physical ablest assumptions embedded within academic and other social arenas.

To this end, I would like to share some things about my experience managing chronic conditions that I hope people will think about when they assume bodies or minds should be or work in a certain way. While strangers, colleagues, and acquaintances may look me up, meet me at a conference, see me speak, or otherwise come into contact with me, their view will generally be different from the people closest to me. While such people (based on their reactions to date) will likely see my “productivity” or “talent” first and foremost, those closest to me see how little I sleep because my brain won’t stop working, how many hours and days (and even at times weeks) I spend curled up in a ball in the dark because I feel like the world is trying to kill me, how confusing normal or common speaking patterns are to me and how much energy it takes me to have a five minute conversation with another person, scars scattered around my body from the regular times where it feels like my skin is too tight, and the constant headaches I live with and medicate.

The people closest to me also know that I always keep pills and ice packs nearby because I’m always in at least some physical pain due to issues with my legs. They also know that I regularly hear and see things that other people do not, and get used to me randomly having conversations with people and things they cannot see when we’re together. They also understand what its like to get a call from me when I’ve forgotten who I am, when I don’t know where I am, when I’ve gotten lost on the way to work again, when I think they’re dead but I want to check, when I think I’m dead but want to check, or when I can’t figure out how to put on clothes or feed myself. They also have the patience to look after me when, for example, I wander off following something that they can’t see, disappear mentally in the middle of a conversation without realizing it, or ask them if they’re real because I suddenly don’t know. They also understand when I throw out all my spoons because I’m convinced they’re out to hurt me, when I go whole semesters without working on our projects because my brain just won’t work, when something as simple as going to the grocery store terrifies me or tires me out emotionally, or when I just can’t interact at all for a while and need to be completely alone in silence or with music.

The people closest to me also are not surprised when I don’t buy shoes with laces because they already know that while I can memorize books I can’t tie shoelaces. They are not surprised (and often kindly try to protect me) when the thought of anyone being behind me terrifies me, when human contact makes me literally sick to my stomach (a wonderful example was a friend at a conference who once made controversial statements each time someone went to shake my hand so they would be distracted and I wouldn’t have to explain why I was not going to touch them), or when I have trouble even breathing in a large group of people (even people I like and care about) because I feel like the presence of others is suffocating me. They can even explain to other people why I spend so much time outside since sometimes walls feel like cages, why its much better to contact me online where I don’t have to talk to or see anyone, or how I might shift from the most hyper person they’ve ever met to the most comatose person they’ve ever met within a few minutes.

As you can probably tell, the people closest to me are wonderful people who make a very difficult world more comfortable for me in numerous ways. I find myself appreciating them more than words can say every moment I’m conscious, and without their efforts every aspect of my life other than writing would be much more difficult because I work in a profession where who you know, networking, and other social interaction skills are often just as and / or far more important to careers than how productive you are. This was a hard lesson for me when I arrived in the academy because I can write 10 or more solid articles in a semester but I will never know what to say at a mixer or conference surrounded by frightening strangers. This is all the more important because the conditions that facilitate the above examples are not likely to ever go away, and thus an academy based on the ability to “make small talk with the right people” automatically disadvantages me no matter how good a researcher I am or become.

I am able and willing to share these aspects of my experience, however, because in many ways I have been lucky enough to receive incredible emotional and instrumental support throughout my time in the academy. The people closest to me and especially my life partner, for example, are very understanding and protective of me, and many of them have the resources to protect me even if my disclosure leads other to stigmatize me in some regard. Likewise, I am incredibly productive because, as Matt Damon’s character says in Good Will Hunting, when it comes to research and writing – I can just play. I might not be able to do most of the things normatively bodied and minded people do so easily every day, but I write on as high a level and as fast as anyone I have ever met. The same things that make most of social life so hard for me provide me with abilities that are perfectly suited to the scholarship part of an academic career (i.e., I can read a book in an hour and memorize it, cite findings from years past off the top of my head, take apart anything I read or see or hear and turn it into patterns and themes without even meaning or actively trying to, etc.).  Further, from my earliest days in graduate school to my present academic position, I have had mentors in my programs, in other programs, in Sociologists for Women in Society, and in Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction who were and still are kind enough to accept and help me in countless ways as I try to survive the necessity of being social in the construction of an academic career.

It is also with these resources in mind that I remain well aware that many people managing chronic conditions everyday cannot safely speak out about their experiences, marginalization, and /or aspects of ablest bodily and mental assumptions and norms that impact their academic careers. I also know all too well that in many cases chronic conditions do limit productivity in terms of normative metrics like publishing in much the same way they limit me socially, and the only way to shift these burdens is for those of us who can to start speaking out and advocating for a more realistic understanding of the multiple aspects of scholarly experiences and lives and the natural variation in the ways human bodies and minds operate.

I thus share my experiences in hopes of facilitating dialogue concerning the management of chronic conditions in the academy (and elsewhere), steps we could take to provide resources for such management within academic settings and programs, and concrete ways we could begin to shatter the stigma and silence surrounding this prominent and widespread experience. For many people, mental and physical conditions will not go away, but if we work together, we could get rid of the ways current academic norms, simplistic and conformist assumptions about bodies and minds, and silence surrounding mental and physical health within and beyond the academy punish people for their pain. In so doing, we might instead create a culture where people experiencing the wide variety of empirically common bodily and mental types and forms are celebrated, affirmed, and accepted as full beings capable of providing diverse perspectives on a complex bio-social world.

Making the Most of a False Arrest

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In this guest post, Dr. Jerome Krase reflects on an experience of false arrest in the 1990’s and the perils of navigating academic, legal, and political systems.  Dr. Krase is a public activist-scholar serving as a consultant to public and private agencies regarding urban community issues residing in Brooklyn who writes regularly on local and global social and political issues.  

The following, slightly edited, first person narrative was originally published in The Brooklyn Free Press in the Spring of 1998 as “Bill, Me and Sexual McCarthyism.” It is the kind of experience most people, not to mention, college professors would rather forget. I am grateful for the creation of a space to Write Where it Hurts to share and reflect upon very personal and emotional aspects of my own teaching and research.

Bill Clinton and I have two things in common; we both lean to the left and have been accused of sexual misconduct. The similarity ends there. Bill did “it”. I didn’t. For most of us an accusation of Sexual Harassment or Sexual Abuse would be punishment enough. In my case, the accuser, someone I choose to call Student X, understood the power of Sexual McCarthyism by which the fear of even unfounded accusations leads one to silence. He was also aided and abetted by incompetent and indifferent public authorities who assumed that their crimes of omission would be covered up by my embarrassment. I will not be silent.

For years critics have complained about “standards” at The City University of New York. Having gone through a year of personal hell I can tell you that the “standards” of officials in the Police Department, Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, PSC/CUNY Faculty Union, and Brooklyn College are much lower than those of my most unprepared students.

March 25, 1998, 10:30 A.M. I stood in Criminal Court as Bogus Charges of Sex Abuse in the Third Degree against me were dismissed. How I got to this low point in my life is a story only Kafka could appreciate.

Tuesday, December 2, 1997, 6:30 P.M. Brooklyn College. While I was addressing my class Student X entered, tossed a second rewrite of his failed mid-term onto my desk and made his way to the back of the overcrowded classroom. It had an extra page for “Comments by Professor Jerome Kraze.” When he became disruptive I indicated that he should leave. He went out, but stood in the hallway glaring at me through the open door. I closed it. He opened it. I closed it. He opened it, stepped into the classroom, kicked in the doorstop, and then retook his post outside. I closed the door again. During the next hour and a half he entered and left the class at least twice more. Finally it was time for the student evaluation. Mr. X asked what was going on. I told him to listen to the student proctors. I smelled alcohol. He wanted to speak with me, “Now!” I hurried out and down the long corridor. He stayed on my heels, muttering. “You going down the elevator?” I knew it was not a good idea.

On the escalator, I told him he was a problem in class. He said the “other colleges said the same thing”. He called me “the white professor”. I said if he didn’t leave me alone I would go to Security. He said if I reported him, he would report me. At the exit, I asked the guard to hold him while I went to my car.

Thursday morning, December 4. Brooklyn College. I spoke to Dr. Wertheim in Counseling about my problem student. Her first question was “Do you have tenure?” Then she said protect yourself and contact the Student Life Office for disciplinary action. She asked for his name and social security number. She left me a copy of “How to Identity, Assist and Refer Students with Personal Problems and/or Disruptive Behavior” in her office. I never heard from her again.

I assumed that Student X was entitled to “special” protections because of mental or emotional problems. In the past, such “persons” had been placed in my classes because I was a “sensitive” instructor. I called the Vice President for Student Life to find out his status. He was at a meeting. I was referred to his assistant, who was also not available. They sent me “forms” to fill out.

Sunday evening, December 7. There was a message to call Professor Natov at home. She informed me that Student X had accused me of Sexual Harassment. He also made a complaint to the Police that I had “grabbed his groin” on the escalator. She said the charge is unbelievable but the school is required to go through a process. I told my wife, three daughters, son-in-law, and my daughter’s police office fiancé, Juan Carlo, who all had joined us for dinner. They thought I was joking. I called my chairperson. He said, “not to worry”.

After several unanswered calls Juan Carlo and I took a ride to the 70th Precinct and found the civilian clerk eating at her desk while the phone rang off the hook. Student X had filed complaint #14135 that I had “grabbed comp in his groin area”. I filed complaint # 14307 against him. I was assured it would be treated as another “he said-he said” dispute. I called an NYPD lawyer friend of mine. He felt there was no need for me to get an attorney because the police are required to make a thorough investigation.

Monday morning, December 8. I called Student Life VP Hillary A. Gold. He had already seen the student’s accusation. I asked him to bar the student from the college and protect me. He couldn’t do anything until he “had paper” on the student. I made an appointment with his assistant, Dr. Williams. He said he would call back. He never did. Later that day, Public Safety Director Donald A. Wenz, called. Mr. Wenz said he had assigned me a guard. There were, however, no notes in the Security Log about the incident.

Mid-day, Tuesday, December 9. Dr. Williams said she had worked in the Brooklyn DAs Office and “it seems like an ex-con thing”. Student X didn’t have the course pre-requisites and she was not surprised he was floundering. I asked if she heard from Dr. Wertheim from Counseling. She said the offices don’t communicate with each other.

I went to my class. The students were worried because they heard him muttering threats, saw Student X follow me out of class, and also had smelled “liquor” on his breath. They tried to call me but something was wrong with the phones. When two female students were bringing the student evaluations back to the office Student X verbally abused and threatened them. A Security Guard intervened. Later that night Student X, confronted and threatened one of them on the subway. I asked them to tell the security guard what had happened. He told them to go to Security to fill out forms.

After class, I was told to call Detective Belgrave at the Seven O. I told my story, and what I learned that night. He had already spoken to Brooklyn College. He reassured me that he thought the charge was false, but had to proceed. I informed him that I had filed a counter complaint against Student X. He said he would interview him, and that I should call him on Thursday.

Wednesday morning, December 10. I called a NYC official, for help and advice. He said he didn’t think there would be a problem. Then I called Dr. Williams’s office about what I learned from the students on Tuesday night and about the guards not taking notes or filing reports. She said they were “not required” to.

Later that day my friend-the-official called to say that the best he could do was that I not be put “through the system” (held overnight for arraignment). I told him that my son-in-law-the-dentist thinks I should get a criminal attorney. He agreed it was a good idea. I called Detective Belgrave and asked him to complete the processing in time for me to meet my Thursday classes. I left a message for my lawyer about my impending arrest.

Early Thursday morning, December 11. My wife and my first-year-law-student-daughter accompanied me to the 70th Precinct where we met Belgrave who said he was sympathetic but must arrest me. He asked me how I spelled my name. I told him. He smiled. Student X had said my name was spelled Kraze.

Belgrave left the room several times. During one trip another detective called out that there was a lawyer (mine) on the phone looking for him. When he returned they said nothing to him. I told him that my lawyer had called. He said it was “too late”.

The detectives were comedians. The Columbian Association representative was trying to recruit them. One said: “Where’s the headquarters of the Columbians, the Bergen Hunt and Fish Club?” When I was taken for my mug shot another called out “Get the Brooklyn College ID in the shot!”

As a Black police officer, Belgrave didn’t seem to have much rapport with the Caucasian wise guys. But his own ironic racism had more subtle expressions. He explained that Student X was “credible” because he wore “clean” pants, and “spoke well,” as if this was unusual for Black complainants. I asked Belgrave if he contacted any of my other students. He hadn’t. I asked him if he would act on my complaint. He said “No.”, because it was only a Class E. Misdemeanor. I said as a “Bias Crime”, it was a felony. He said he would check with his Lieutenant. I never heard from him again. He handed me a Desk Appearance Ticket for January 12, 1998 to answer to a charge of Sex Abuse 3.

Friday, December, Court Street. 8:30 A.M. My attorney informed me that District Attorney, Charles Joseph Hynes, had implemented a Mandatory Arrest Policy in cases of domestic violence and sex abuse. By his fiat the IV, V and XIV Amendments to the United States Constitution no longer applied in Kings County. Hynes allegedly told defense attorneys; “I don’t care if they can prove they were in bed with a judge at the time.” I became a victim because the NYPD and the DA had been burned too often for not arresting really dangerous people. And, perhaps because Hynes needed Black support in the gubernatorial primary, justice for a white man who was brought to the Abner Louima Precinct for sexually abusing a black man was impolitic.

I asked my attorney how much this was going to cost. He said although I can’t be convicted, it could cost a lot. He told me to forget about “justice”. It is merely a “process”. He said the DA’s Office would contact him. They never did. He advised me against participating in the Sexual Harassment hearings.

A few days later I asked my union for help. They didn’t believe that what the college had done to me was a “grievance”. The PSC/CUNY Union attorney advised that although the union is sympathetic it can’t help, but for my $600 a year dues he did wish me “Good luck.”

December 16. I learned that Student X was a transfer student from an upstate Community College, that he failed the CUNY Quantitative and Writing Entrance Exams, and that he should not have been in my advanced Sociology class.

Monday, January 12, 1998. My wife and daughter came with me for my first court appearance at 9:30 A.M. at 120 Schermerhorn Street. My lawyer told us to get there early. It was good advice. The ground floor lobby was a huge cattle pen, and the line of innocents-until-proven-guilty flowed outside and snaked around the corner. We took off our jewelry, and emptied our pockets. I took off my belt. We put our things in a basket, handed it to a court officer, and went through a metal detector. Then we crammed ourselves onto an elevator. We waited in the hallway outside the courtroom for an hour. When my attorney arrived they told him my files were not there. He asked for a new date. I asked what was going on. He said it was normal – “It’s part of the process.”

The next day, I received a Certified Registered letter from Brooklyn College dated January 12, 1998. It read in part: “…I concur with the “findings that there was no evidence to substantiate the allegation of sexual harassment.” Sincerely, President Vernon E. Lattin, Brooklyn College. I faxed my attorney a copy.

Thursday morning, February 19. My wife and I made our second Court appearance. Although some of the paper work was still not presented charges were filed against me. THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK V. JEROME KRASE…THE DEFENDANT DID GRAB INFORMANT’S GROIN AREA WHILE TRAVELLING ON AN EXCALATOR OF THE BROOKLYN COLLEGE. I pleaded “Not guilty”. Student X was granted an Order of Protection against me. My attorney asked for another court date.

Wednesday morning, March 25. We made our third court appearance. The prosecution was still not ready to proceed so my attorney moved to dismiss because the case had not met some requirement. After a discussion with the ADA his motion to dismiss was approved without opposition. I was not elated. I had to pay $5 for each copy of my Certificate of Disposition #502235. I sent one to President Lattin of Brooklyn College.

My attorney explained that although my record would be officially sealed, my name was now “in the system”. I got to hope that another 40 year old black male doesn’t walk into a station house and say he was grabbed by a middle-aged blue eyed white male with a Ph.D.

I have since learned that at one of the Sexual Harassment hearings Student X appeared drunk. He denied he disrupted the class during the night in question as described by other student witnesses. He also refused to account for several years of his life history. Student X took four or five classes in the Fall 1997 Semester. Two or three were remedial. He received only one grade – an “S” for Remedial Writing (Probably for my mid-term essay rewrite). In the Spring he registered for two classes but never attended them.

I asked Brooklyn College to bar Student X from campus for my own protection, and that of the other faculty, staff, and students. The College sees no need to bar him from campus. If he comes they will refer him to the Office of Student Life where “He will be advised that he is neither to contact you nor to retaliate against you…” And, appropriate security measures will be taken.

I asked the College to pay for a criminal attorney if Student X makes another false charge, and also reimburse me for my first attorney. Pamela Pollack, the college attorney, said she’d get back to me on that. She never did.

Finally, I asked why after learning all they had about Student X, even before my first court appearance, the college never contacted my attorney, the Police Department, or the District Attorney. Counselor Pollock said they never called. My attorney was right, it is just a process, and, I might add, one that never seems to end.

As I have reflected on this experience over the years, I have increasingly thought about what might have happened to me had I not been so privileged. I was, as he said, a “white professor.” I also had political connections enough not to suffer the immediate consequences of arrest. What would have happened had the alleged victim been a white woman and I a black professor or fellow student? There was also some implication on the part of police that I was Jewish and gay, and was hitting on black students so anti-Semitism and homophobia may have also played a role in their lack of interest in investigating the accusation. There are so many ways in which this could have been played out, but the most important factor in broadcasting my troubles was my wife’s insistence that I write and publish the story as soon as the charges were dropped. It should be noted that only the student in this story remains unnamed. Given the suggestion that he had been incarcerated, as an African-American male he was more of victim than I. I was just a more or less convenient target for his rage.

What should I do when I’m walking behind or passing a white woman late at night on the street?

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In this guest post, David Springer reflects on navigating race and gender intersections in public spaces as a black man and a feminist committed to pursuing racial and gender equality.  David Springer is a doctoral student in sociology at the University of Illinois Chicago, this is his first blog.  

Ever since I started talking to women about street harassment, I’ve tried to be more conscious of my presence as a man in settings where women are often made to feel unsafe. I have become especially conscious of this dynamic when I’m walking around or behind women late at night. A friend of mine once suggested that he crosses the street in these types of situations to avoid making the woman feel uncomfortable (he was Latino). I’ve done this a handful of times since then and will continue to do so, provided I’m not thrown too far off my original route.

But I still have some mixed feelings about this suggestion. For a while now, moments like these have exposed a rift in my mind. On one side of this rift is my militant/anti-racist/black nationalist self. This is the side of me committed to racial justice for all people of color, and especially for black men. It’s the side of me that’s been cultivated since I sat and watched Spike Lee’s Malcolm X with my family when I was 6 or 7 years old. On the other side of the rift is an intersectional feminist attempting to use their position of (male) privilege as a megaphone to help spread the voices of women who are harmed by sexism and misogyny on a daily basis. These overlapping but distinct parts of my consciousness crash into one another whenever a woman reacts fearfully to my presence.

An example of this came one night when I was in college. A group of friends and I – all African-American – were heading back to our dorms after dinner at the dining hall. As we were walking, an Asian woman walked briskly out of another building in front of us with her head down. At first, I wasn’t sure if she was simply lost in thought, or if she was nervous about our presence. I got my answer when one of my friends politely asked “How you doin’?” She jumped as if she had heard gunshots, and walked away from us even faster.

We laughed at the incident. By this point in our lives, we’d come to expect people to be afraid of us, even on the campus we called home for four years. One of my first nights at college, some friends and I headed to a gas station across the street from our dorms for a late-night snack. As one of my friends – a 6’4″, dark-skinned black man – reached for the door handle, an older white woman rushed to the door, locked it, and shook her head “No,” signaling that either they were closed or that she didn’t want us in her store. We laughed then, too.

The militant black side of me views these kinds of incidents as blatant acts of racism. What else could they be? Black men in America are among the most criminalized in the world. Black men are 6 times more likely to be incarcerated than white men, and make up a disproportionate number of those who are stopped, searched, arrested, and jailed for drug-related offenses, despite studies suggesting that they use and sell drugs at rates remarkably similar to whites. Black men have long been assumed to be criminals or inherently threatening to our society, and are often profiled as such. Throughout history, we’ve often been assumed to be particularly threatening to white (and other non-black) women. Many lynchings in the American South and elsewhere took place after allegations that a black man had “improper relations” with a white woman. This often included criminal acts like rape or harassment, but even sleeping with or flirting with a white woman was sometimes grounds for death.

Today, we – as black men – often find ourselves being shunned and avoided by those who assume that we pose some sort of threat to them. This is especially the case for those of us who must navigate predominantly white/non-black spaces. When a woman crosses the street to avoid us, walks faster as we approach, or rushes to lock their door as we pass by, it reminds us that we’re often viewed as a threat to both society in general and to women in particular, even if we’re middle class, college-educated professionals.

So, should I cross the street when a woman walks past me late at night? My militant side says “No!” After all, I already spend too much time as it is managing the emotions of whites around me to make sure they’re comfortable. For example, black professors around the country must often manage the emotions of whites in the classroom when we discuss issues of white privilege and racism. We must navigate and manage the expectations of whites in college settings, at work, in our neighborhoods, in restaurants and in movie theaters. The stress this causes – known as “racial battle fatigue” – is highly associated with negative health outcomes. In other words, constantly dealing with racism in different settings is literally detrimental to our health. Given how much of a burden this places on the shoulders of black men, I reject the idea that I should have to cross the street to accommodate women’s aversion to black men.

Right?

But the feminist in me sees these events a little differently. A substantial amount of the violence and harassment that women face comes at the hand of boys and men of all races. I like to think of myself as a “nice guy,” despite the fact that many men on the Internet have given the term a bad name. But whether I’m the nicest, most feminist guy on the planet or a misogynistic serial killer – I must ask how any random woman on the street will know that? Many simply see a man. Moreover, domestic violence, sexual assault, street harassment and other forms of violence against women are at chronic levels in our society. You’d be hard pressed to find a woman in this country who hasn’t been verbally or physically abused, harassed, or sexually assaulted by a man somewhere, regardless of race, class, or sexuality. It’s not just black men who do things like this, despite what some may imply. ALL kinds of men harass women, and in those moments, women can’t be sure whether or not I’m one of those men.

Most of the women I’ve talked to have experienced verbal harassment, unwanted touching, or been outright assaulted by men. As feminists have brought attention to this issue over the years, I’ve come to re-evaluate some of my interactions on the street with women.

The woman who jumped as my friend greeted her? Maybe she had recently been harassed or assaulted by men like us. Or maybe she was being racist. Maybe both. I’m less inclined to give the store clerk the benefit of a doubt, as she very well could have just told us they had closed for the night. Store clerk jerks aside, men do pose a substantial threat to women in a variety of ways, and it’s important for us to do what we can to help women feel the same level of comfort that we do when we’re in most public spaces.

So, when a woman – white, black, Asian or otherwise – crosses the street to avoid me, avoids eye contact, or simply tenses up around me, I should acknowledge that she’s doing so as a form of self-preservation. I can empathize with that, as I react the same way when I encounter police officers or security guards. Whatever the circumstances, conversations around street harassment and violence against women aren’t about me, per se, or even about men as a whole. After all, many men aren’t abusers or rapists. But that fact doesn’t help women feel any safer, just as I don’t feel safer around unfamiliar police officers knowing that there are “good cops” out there. Women’s actions in these instances are reactions a perpetual pattern of harassment by men, black or otherwise. Put another way, #notallmen are harassers, rapists, or abusers, but #yesallwomen have experienced these different forms of violence at the hands of men.

So, which side of me is right? The Black Nationalist in me has a point – I shouldn’t have to tap-dance around other’s people’s racism just to make them feel comfortable. And I have a right to exist in public spaces without being criminalized. But as a black man, I also understand what’s it’s like to feel as though you are putting yourself in danger simply for existing in public. The stories of Trayvon Martin, Emmett Till and countless other black men remind us that we’re often one bad interaction or misunderstanding away from violence or death. Women experience something similar on a day-to-day basis.

Of course, none of this is to suggest that women and black men should play “Oppression Olympics” when it comes to this subject, or to erase the nuanced ways in which black men and women experience violence in public spaces at the hands of police officers or even one another. And it certainly isn’t to suggest that all women experience violence and brutality in the same ways. Rather, it is to highlight one of the conundrums of trying to support women as they fight back against violence and street harassment while also trying to counter violence against black men.

I know that street harassment isn’t okay, but it’s also not okay to assume a man is dangerous because he’s black. Black men are by no means the only group that engages in this kind of reprehensible behavior, but that fact shouldn’t be used to dismiss the experiences of women across the world.

So, what’s the answer? What should I do when I’m walking behind or passing a woman late at night on the street?

I still have no idea.