Photo essay misrepresents women

In regard to “Bedtime Stories” photo essay in the Nov. 23 issue of the UWM Post, is rape the heterosexual female fantasy? It’s certainly not mine. What makes Diego Costa and Sarah DeKeuster think it is?

I have heard this idea expressed before and it never fails to offend me when such a story is unaccompanied by a personal story. I cannot argue with someone’s personal experience, but I will argue with an article that portrays rape as the fantasy of “every woman.”

This is irresponsible to say the least. Do we really need to give would-be rapists more cause to use the line “I could tell she wanted it?” I respect the right to artistic expression, but as usual, the artists think that their art needs no explanation.

Erin Bilyeu
Graduate student

Photo essay distasteful, disrespectful

I would like to acknowledge the distasteful nature of a photomontage featured in last week’s post titled “Bedtime Stories.”

The photos were very in graphic in nature, displaying a woman being raped in a parking garage and enjoying it. Perhaps more disturbing than the pictures of the woman being forced into sex were the comments made about female sexuality by Diego Costa, a gay male.

Diego suggests that women are perhaps sexually repressed because they are not allowed to enjoy in their animalistic desire to be dominated. This attitude of women enjoying wanting to be raped and powered over is the wrong message to send to students.

I have been fortunate to have never been sexual assaulted or raped but know many people who have. These people have described the experience as frightening, shameful and humiliating, nothing short of absolutely terrifying.

You will notice I did not mention pleasure or “rejoice.” Rape is a very violent act that can change a woman or man for the rest of their life.

I acknowledge the piece might be representing a fantasy of sorts, but it is my belief that the piece was done in a disrespectful manner and does not belong in this medium. I respect that some individuals may have rape fantasies, but information on this should be covered in a different place, not a student body paper that is suppose to be dealing with student issues.

If the paper wanted to do a piece on rape, it could focus on rapes that have occurred on campus, or perhaps visit the sexual assault support group held at The Women’s Resource Center. Also, if the Post wanted to include a piece on female sexuality, they could have done a review of the student-run “I heart Female Masturbation.”

I do not believe in censorship, yet I do believe in decency and respect to the readers.

Amy Phipps
Senior

Nihilistic attitude to blame for lacking social skills

I am writing in regards to the Nov. 23 article “Freshmen don’t find coursework relevant.”

With the ghost of Milwaukee’s manufacturing past lingering and the Information Age transmitting communications at the speed of light, some students do not have the patience to accumulate knowledge that seems out of place now but will be useful in other contexts.

Without the critical element of patience to properly integrate knowledge, some information goes over their heads as other information is reduced to a factoid occasionally used in an attempt to impress someone.

Congress’ recent approval of the Higher Education Reauthorization Act budget reconciliation bill such that $14.3 billion in student loan programs is eliminated does not help the matter, as many students must work jobs largely unrelated to course material just to attend college. Then it’s not so much a matter of patience to process the material as it is an issue of time.

In response to “very few” respondents reporting “stronger social skills,” I blame the self-centered, nihilistic attitude that is prevalent on campus. The power to improve the social conditions of this campus lies within you, the reader.

Joseph Ohler

Sports section should expand coverage

I am a freshman here and I really enjoy reading your paper. There is just one thing about the sports part. I love the school stuff, but why is everything else about the Packers?

There are other sports going on, why only briefly mention them? I know a lot about sports (football, hockey, basketball, baseball, even the upcoming Olympics), so I would like to hear what you all have to say about something other than the Packers (although being a Bears fan doesn’t help).

Keep up the good work everyone!

Dan Phelps
Freshman

Open policy good for democracy

Robb Manning’s Nov. 16 article, “Endangering CIA secrets” criticizing the Washington Post and the liberal media at large is, while not surprising, disappointing in that it blatantly showed his true irrationality in fighting our war on terror.

I absolutely agree that assertive measures need to be taken in order to gather intelligence on terrorist organizations and stop violent extremism. However, his assertion that “Intelligence is a distasteful job, and is often times immoral — but needs to happen” is absolute bull.

What example is the United States setting as the icon of democracy if we resort to torture and other immoral techniques? On the one hand you want to push our political system on others, yet you won’t even acknowledge how these secret camps and abuses of power must look to the people having democracy forced on them.

To make myself clearer, I actually believe that a democracy — or a system that at least protects all opinions — is better than any other current political system. Yet one of the most important messages the United States needs to make clear to the world is that it will not tolerate disregarding civil liberties for democracy, simply because that is not how a true democracy works.

I’m not implying that we give every specific name and location of our CIA bases, but the more secrecy we keep on what happens inside those walls, the more distrust we will have to expect from foreign nations.

Robb, I suggest reading “The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror” by Michael Ignatieff for a better understanding of how it’s possible to accomplish these goals without alienating ourselves even further.

Keeping our nation safe is by no means an easy job. But if we do not clearly align ourselves with what is ethical and democratic, you can forget receiving any respect for our system in countries abroad. That is no liberal slant.

Pete Wolfgram
Senior

Bitter Waiter not politically correct

I have started reading the Nov. 16 Bitter Waiter, “Poor tipping practices across racial divide,” and I am not quite sure I want to finish the article from your “Bitter Waiter.”

How could your publication feel comfortable with referring to this person’s African-American customers as “blacks?” It sounds derogatory and the issue is extremely derogatory. This writer should have kept his observations to himself.

Oh, if I had a story for every time I categorized a group of people while working at my job. I also worked for a newspaper for awhile and I had the decency to refrain from creating more stereotypes.

The UWM Post could have done a better job sounding semi-politically correct.

Leah Pavelko
Senior

Lesbians misrepresented, information discarded

All UW-Milwaukee lesbian students deserve an apology from the UWM Post for its framing of lesbians in the Oct. 26 issue titled “Lesbians Inside: On the (in)visibility of Gay Women and Multi-Faceted Living.”

A Lesbian Alliance board member and volunteer contacted A&E Editor Diego Costa prior to the printing of the Oct. 26 issue in an effort to ensure that the UWM Post would focus on awareness, education and on telling the truth about lesbian lives and experiences. Our volunteers and board members worked to provide education material on lesbian issues to your staff.

Needless to say, we expected a respectful and informative issue — which is why we decided to support your paper by purchasing ad space.

However, your issue’s blatant use of lesbianism as nothing more than an object of allure to men in your highlighted articles’ titles overshadowed any informational and education materials that did make it to print.

Case in point are the articles in the front of the section did not include lesbian health issues, lesbian activism, the history of the lesbian music business or even lesbian cruises, but rather male-written articles titled “Lesbian fantasy for the straight male gaze,” “The semantics of lesbian porn,” “The phallus won’t be missed,” and “That’s Jenga.”

As lesbian women, we are deeply offended by the use of sexually charged images to represent lesbians, the focus on male reaction to lesbianism, the misinformation predicating through various articles and the predominate focus on the phallus throughout the issue.

On behalf of our board, members and volunteers, we ask for your public apology to our community and the community at large.

Maria Cadenas (Chair), Judy Haass (Treasurer), Katie Heldstab (Recorder), Erin Brady, Jennifer Durnall, Kathy Herbst, Cyndy Hansen, Julia Kleppin, Lesley Salas, Dawn Schmidt and Maureen White
The Lesbian Alliance Board

JMC department policy problematic

With young, maturing minds, students’ knowledge can be molded at their teacher’s discretion. Teachers not only instruct students in academia, they also encourage social and moral maturation.

“Don’t cheat, just make an effort and you will succeed.” Or will you?

Within the Journalism and Mass Communication Department this semester, a new grading policy was instated for JMC 201, the media writing class. This policy will only allow 20 out of every 45 students to pass. Many are beginning to ask, how is this grading policy fair?

Logically, any business may be competitive at times. However, this grading policy will not benefit students whether they are entering a competitive field or not. Setting the standards of an introductory class at an unreasonable level is potential suicide.

Let’s assume that every student receives the exact same grade, with exactly the same percentiles on every project. Who would be chosen to move on?

According to a teaching assistant from the department, students with a high class ranking became so worried about a low grade on one assignment that they dropped out even though the semester is almost over. Students are being discouraged from succeeding because their fears are outweighing their drive to learn.

Many think that this grading policy would make students work harder, but when instructions are supplied for the first time and students don’t have the proper practice, how could they succeed?

At the beginning of the semester, the professor suggested talking with the course TAs for extra help. But as graduate students, TAs are often too busy to help, and some even have little knowledge in the field that they are teaching in.

For example, a TA in another department admittedly said that she had no expertise in the course she was teaching in and almost failed the class when she was an undergrad. How can some TAs help if they don’t understand the material themselves?

Life’s ironies are often laughable until it begins to affect the future of those struggling to make by. So let me ask, what is so humorous about this? I seem to be missing it, I guess.

Amy Lehman
Sophomore

Critical thinking in, blind belief out

What a weird title for something that is going to go in completely the opposite direction of the Nov. 9 editorial “Evolution, in; faith, out” on this same subject, right? Wrong.

There are many things that do not support evolution, or do not support the idea of an Earth that is billions of years old. However, these things are simply pushed under the rug as being anomalies and things that will be explained someday and should not deter this ultimate and supreme theory of evolution.

Exactly how is that critically thinking? I’m not proposing intelligent design or creation. What I am proposing is the idea that Earth may be young.

“Huh? What? Are you serious? How can you say that?”

Well, after you get done laughing, think about something. Who does all this research and who spends millions upon millions of dollars to prove this theory? Public universities, right? The same universities that are government-funded, the same universities that have decided to throw religion out the window and therefore have gotten rid of the idea that Earth may be young because of the implications that has.

Now throwing religion out the window is one thing (and not something to be discussed in this editorial), but throwing out the idea that Earth may be young is another. How can someone think critically if there is only one way in which they can think?

I’ll answer that for you: one cannot. Does this mean that we’re saying “Oh, God created everything so studying things is useless?” Nope.

What I am saying is that looking at something from a different angle can sometimes produce different results.

If you are not locked into thinking Earth is billions of years old, maybe you will look at the fact that there is still trace amounts of carbon-14 left in many fossils that are dated to far more than 100,000 years ago (after this date there is no machine that can detect carbon-14 because there should hardly be any left at all) and think that this may be a proof that Earth is somewhat younger.

Or maybe you could look at helium diffusion rates and come to that conclusion, or maybe the fact that polonium radio halos can be found in rocks. And the list goes on and on.

There are things out there that point to a young Earth, but without the massive amounts of research dollars that public universities push around, the opportunity for these to be explored and consequently recognized by the scientific community seem to be very small.

Should students be taught that a bunch of nothing went “Bang!” a long, long time ago and that is how the universe came into its current form (notice that all this is speculation just as much as saying a creator created everything a few thousand years ago) and that there is no other way to interpret the evidence you find? Is that truly the scientific method? Is that really critical thinking?

And why should the idea of a young Earth be taught in a philosophy class when an idea like the big bang is taught in a science class? Shouldn’t un-provable ideas at least be lumped together in the same department or class?

Dustin Wales
Senior

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