Finding Something to Believe In

Alex DiBranco

Last fall, my poetry professor told me: you like to label yourself.

You figure it’s a bad sign when that comment comes up in a creative writing workshop—poetry should be more about exploring your identity than rigidly identifying yourself—but her insight was spot-on, as always. I like to define myself, to be open and assertive—occasionally even too aggressively—about what I believe in. I had prefaced my comments on a poem with, “I probably like this because I’m an atheist”; I labeled myself at other times as a feminist, an activist, or a New Yorker. I have a “Proud to be a Feminist” sticker on my laptop, wear a PRIDE bracelet on my wrist, and recently added the term “sex positive” to my collection—and for this last one I need to thank Cody Lavender ’10, who (half-)jokingly called sex positivism his religion.

But thinking of Cody, I remember how desperately I sometimes don’t want to be identified.

I’d like to go back to last year. I met Cody during winter term of 2008, in the middle of what I enjoy referring to as “my junior year from hell.” I’d spent the fall abroad, a term that was miserable for reasons I needn’t share, but were tied in with being depressed and misplacing my sense of self. So I returned to Dartmouth, instead of taking an off-term as my D-plan expected, seeking the comfort of familiar situations and friends to rebalance me. I also looked forward to returning to the Dartmouth Free Press, which has partially served as my home since I was a first-year. You know how people tell you to find a niche at Dartmouth? Well, this paper has always been mine.

Anyway: things didn’t work out as I hoped. For one, do you know how many people here take off their junior winter? Most of my closest friends—the support network I needed—were off, including the people who helped me survive my fall abroad. Then, the burnt-out DFP Editor-in-Chief decided to hand the paper over to me a term early, turning the expected comfort of returning to a familiar place into an I’m-running-this-paper-and-have-no-idea-what-I’m-doing stress-fest. Oh, and my faith in activism, already shaky due to the dearth of vibrant activist groups on campus, was further destroyed due to the failure of the Dartmouth Progressives while I was gone—an organization I’d taken over after its leadership disappeared, motivated by a passionate belief in the vital need for campus activism.

In the midst of this funk, I interviewed Cody for an article on the Gay-Straight Alliance’s decision to change its name to Gender Sexuality XYZ. I had a history with the GSA—a mostly negative one. For a while, I had been the only ally attending meetings, and was made to feel profoundly unwelcome at the gay-male dominated group, friendly to neither allies nor lesbians. So I finally stopped going. Now, I discovered that, in large part due to Cody, the group had transformed. He challenged the concept of forcing people to label themselves and delved into issues of gender and sexuality as a spectrum, not a couple of checkboxes. He was excited about his growing success in replacing gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, questioning, allied, all the individual fragmentary labels with one word: queer. Cody said that I, who identified as straight and an ally, could call myself queer too. It was about a mentality of acceptance and inclusivity, not about who I found sexually attractive.

After all, maybe it’s not necessarily about identifications being bad or good. It’s about the right terms. So I am proud to say I’m a feminist, and in putting myself out there, I’m promoting values dear to me. And it’s important to me to be vocal about being an atheist, because terming ourselves atheist/Christian/Muslim/Buddhist/whatever isn’t just about dividing people (although too often that’s how it plays out)— it’s about sharing the core of your beliefs with somebody else and a desire to understand each other. On the other hand, I hate being termed an “ally” of the “LGBT community.” Every time I say “ally,” I feel that I’m distancing myself from something I believe in—saying I’m not “one of them,” I’m just an ally. Yet I’m afraid that if I call myself queer, an identification I prefer, people will criticize me for pretending to be something I’m not.

When I get all tangled up in this language of queer and ally, straight or not, I feel restricted. I believe in the Kinsey’s concept of a spectrum of sexuality, one that is more than just straight-bisexual-gay. Should I say I’m “predominantly straight,” because I’ve never “done anything” with another woman, and usually don’t think about being attracted to women—except that on a few occasions I have felt attracted to a woman? And because I’m good at suppressing my own emotions, I wonder how much I’m lying to myself. That label of “straight” drives me up the wall because I’m expected to choose between branding myself straight or bi, even if neither feels precisely accurate. I want to say I’m a person. But I’d also be proud to say I’m queer—if it’s a label I can wear for life, whomever I choose to (or not to) kiss, if it just means I’m open and accepting, and that I oppose heteronormative identifications and mentalities.

I am also someone who talks too much. That’s not quite a label I’m ashamed of (although I need to work on being someone who listens well, too). Right now, I’m going to keep talking, since this is my last, best chance to say something to the rest of Dartmouth.

I’m going to keep talking about how Cody and I discussed faith and sexuality. About how he told me, in reference to identifying as atheist, “There are a lot of similarities between the queer community and the faith community because we have to come out in a way.” How he mentioned that “people are judged based on their faith.” How he brought up that line—“you’re going to Hell”—that queer people and atheists both hear too often. How that shaped my sense of what it means to “come out” as an atheist, and helped me to see how similar people’s various struggles can be.

I’m going to keep talking about how later that day I told a friend that this ’10 I’d just met had restored my faith in activism. And how that winter another underclassman inspired me—an ’11 who helped me restart the Progressives as the Dartmouth Coalition for Progress and was eager to see a resurgence of activism on campus.

And I’m going to keep talking about how much my life has changed. After starting as an Economics/Government double major as a first-year, I emerge senior year as a Creative Writing major who just handed in her poetry thesis (and now can’t imagine living without writing). I became a Panarchist after three years of unaffiliated status. I poured myself into keeping the DFP alive and got the chance to see incredible work from new staffers, but couldn’t breathe life into the Coalition for Progress or Dartmouth Feminists. I started researching, writing and talking about atheism, coming to a better understanding of my own belief system. I’ve discovered how many seniors believe in the need for Greek houses to go coed—even those within single-sex houses—while I’ve learned it’s more inclusive to support “gender neutral houses.” I’ve come to see the connections between the issues of sexual assault, sex positivism, and understanding gender as a social construct. This is a mere fragment of what I wish to convey.

I didn’t mean to discuss Cody Lavender so much in my senior piece, but he snuck into the first paragraph and then I couldn&#
8217;t get him out. How fitting, given who he was. I might as well share that I wear my PRIDE bracelet not only to show my support for the queer community, but also because it reminds me of Cody, who I found shared a lot of my beliefs, yet who seemed to live a lot more fully and true to himself. Senior pieces are often a place where we soon to be graduates—so wise at the end of our fourth year of college—try to hand down advice to those we’re leaving behind. I’ll give it a try: find something that reminds you to be a better person. Find something that maybe makes you want to cry a little bit, but inspires you to really live. And then go out and do it.