Microaggressions are hard to deal with.

I’m familiar the them in regards to race, but as a male, I have obviously never endured the ones used on women.

One girl, sitting across from me at the table mentioned how, in her bio class, during a group project, one man in her group after divying up the tasks to the other men in her group, said something to her the effect of “Don’t worry- we’ll get it done and then you can just copy”. There are two different assumptions this guy could have made: 1) this girl wasn’t smart and could therefore not handle doing any of the work involved in the project or 2) as a man, he was somehow responsible for this helpless girl. Obviously, neither are true, and both are insulting. Particularly the second one, because I think we have grown up with this toxic idea that women are to be cared for, that a true gentleman doesn’t let a girl lift a finger. Though its always nice to be courteous, there is fine line between that and falling into the fallacy that women can’t do things on their own. Men aren’t needed. We don’t have to do a girl’s homework for her.

I walked away a little more concious about how my words could convey these sentiments, and hoped to aware of that going forward.

I’ve recently found myself involved with a program called Alternative Breaks. I joined in a bit late, and in a bit of a rush, but when I found out they were partnering with NYC’s Harlem Grown program I forced myself onto the team as quickly as I could.

Harlem Grown is an urban agriculture project in the most historic and unfortunately, most underprivileged part of Manhattan. After the Great Migration of African Americans during the period following emancipation, thousands of black families left the south for opportunities in big cities like New York to the north. Because of very intentional practices by the powers-at-be during the time, they found themselves mostly concentrated in Harlem. This became an unforeseen blessing for the world- the Harlem Renaissance during the 1930s was a period of some of the most culturally important works of art, music, and literature. Now, again due to very intentional practices like selective mortgage lending/financing, bank redlining, and racially restrictive covenants, Harlem is a place of high amounts of poverty, homelessness, and most relevant to this post- food insecurity.

Tony Hillary owned a limousine business in New York City and drove around some A-List Hollywood elites, and he made a lot of money doing it. When the Recession hit, he put a pause on this business and out of the kindness of his heart, decided to start volunteering on local public schools. That’s when he saw just how dire the situation in Harlem had become- public schools are funded through real estate property taxes, and because Harlem had significantly lower property values then, say, other parts of Manhattan, the public schools in it had less funding to pull from. The result was another component in the vicious cycle of poverty, crime, and lack of education.

But where many people saw a problem, Tony saw an opportunity: adjacent from the school he was volunteering for, there was a vacant lot. The kids called it haunted and stayed as far away from it as possible. In reality, the owner had allowed it to become derelict and full of junk and junkies, to the dismay of the neighborhood. Tony contacted local government, acquired the lot, and turned it into the first garden that would go on to become Harlem Grown.

My first conversation with him made me incredibly excited to work with the program, not only to contribute to this beautiful work that they do, but to also learn more about the story that got them to where they are.

I went into the dinner just expecting to listen. When it comes to subjects like feminism, I feel that often men speak too much. It is not a place for us to speak. It is a place for us to listen- and to learn. And that’s the attitude I went in with- not to speak.

But, I am a man, and so I of course spoke a lot. We are simple creatures.

In my defense, the feminist woman at the table was speaking on a matter that was something I’ve always been very curious about: greek life.

I’m not a fan of greek life, and I never have been. I view it as incredibly exclusionary, often institutionally racist, dangerous, and most relevant, sexist.

Numerous studies have shown that frat brothers are far more likely to rape, and that sorority girls are far more likely to experience rape. The Guardian says: “These are not anomalies or bad apples: numerous studies have found that men who join fraternities are three times more likely to rape, that women in sororities are 74% more likely to experience rape than other college women, and that one in five women will be sexually assaulted in four years away at school.” There you go. And these claims are strongly supported by studies from different academics everywhere.

Greek life is, at least to me, the antithesis of feminism.

Not only because its an institution that more-or-less condones these types of predatory behaviors, but also because it encourages young women to stick by strict guidelines of binary gender identities.

A sample of the often super-diverse individuals who get accepted into a sorority. This is ZTA (zeta thelma alphid? zebra taco accent? who knows.)

The young woman who was there speaking on feminism was also a sorority girl, and a part of the panhellenic board. And so naturally, I asked her about all of these things. Her argument was along the lines of “I understand where you’re coming from. We’re working on it. I would rather work within the system to make it better than to let it continue the way it is”. I thought that was a respectable answer. But I also think the better option is to end the greek system altogether.

On Monday, I joined a few others at a Table Talk to learn about developments in immunotherapy research and the basic mechanisms of how it works. In essence, there are new treatments that may be more effective and less damaging than the current chemotherapy and radiation treatments. In the most basic explanation, the most notable mechanisms include the following: increasing flagging of cancer cells for immune cells to attack, training our immune cells to better recognize cancerous cells, and using viruses to attack these cells. It was fascinating to learn about immunotherapy, and brings both hope and a sense of reality to the field of cancer research today. While these treatments can be very promising, much more research must be conducted because specific drugs must be developed for different types of cancer. However, this can take years in order for drugs to be approved.

Additionally, as we were discussing the results of a particular study, I thought of the ethical implications that researchers face in conducting these. While not specific to cancer treatment in general, there must always be a very difficult balance between obtaining enough information for analysis and withholding treatment for a group of people in the study. From what I understand,  medical studies often split participants into randomized groups. One patient may receive one drug, and the other may receive the standard treatment in order to compare effectiveness. However, if the new drug appears to be more effective over a period of time, when is the ethical time to switch over these participants? Repeats of experiments are often done in order to confirm results before a drug is approved. But what would make it ethical to subject some people to what appears to be a less effective treatment?

With this in mind, it is a reminder that research can never be perfect, and that science, for all its glory as being rational and concrete, there are a multitude of factors that influence our understandings that come from it.