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The Impact of the Tumblr Porn Ban of 2019: An Analysis

I have a love-hate relationship with Tumblr. I have many reasons to thank Tumblr, for being the source of visual knowledge for sexual terminology and acts. I credit Tumblr for guiding me through learning my sexuality. Without Tumblr, I would’ve never stumbled onto queer porn, specifically “wlw porn” (”women loving women porn”). My introduction with queer sex was finding soft porn GIFs which I am not mad about. I think about how lesbian/queer porn is represented outside of the platform like on Pornhub or other general social media sites like Twitter. I did not interact with Pornhub or Twitter until I reached high school, which was intentional for me. I was satisfied with Tumblr as one of my “safe spaces” to connect with the internet. The platform was at it’s peak in 2014, along with Vine, Instagram, and Twitter. Tumblr’s interface was satisfying to me, with the simplistic home page and the ability to code for customizing your account page. It challenged me to research how to code and let me engage with the content I wanted to see, on my own terms. I was able to access information about the LGBTQ community that I would not have been able to learn about from my parents, who never mentioned queerness unless it was to make fun of.

Although I never posted my own content on my page, I would repost stories and like posts that resonated with me. Authors would post about their personal queer attractions and it let me learn self expression, self acceptance, and what self representation looks like for others. It helped me shape my identity in private. I learned that I liked women, and that there was nothing sinful about it. It took me a while to fully process these feelings, where I would have been rejected by my first crush on a girl in 8th grade and I would end up being forced to come out to my parents by senior year of high school. As of 2024, I identify as a bisexual woman. I go by she/they pronouns because I am comfortable being referred to not just what the world perceives me as. Without Tumblr, the journey would not have started at such a crucial time in my development as a young person.

This has led me to now, asking myself many questions regarding this time in my life. During my Wandering Uterus class, where we have discussed sex education for all ages, Tumblr’s impact on my peers and I has been brought up a couple of times. I believe that I mentioned my feelings, which remain mixed. It left me wanting to pursue more information, especially because as a 22 year old woman that is still chronically online, I want to unpack moments of my character development. Plus, I have not consistently engaged with the platform since Tumblr placed a ban on pornography, specifically the nudity of AFAB people. Was Tumblr an actual safe space? What effect did Tumblr’s porn ban have on other people? What are the negatives and positives of pornography on young adults? What can we learn from Tumblr in terms of creating spaces for people to explore their sexuality and gender? How can we approach online sex education for the youth? Through reading articles discussing thoughts surrounding Tumblr’s porn ban in 2019, the effects of pornography on young adults, and how to approach sex education, I will be learning about the appeal of the platform and how it affected the NSFW and LGBT communities.

When approaching the start of my research, I wanted to learn the specifics about the infamous Tumblr porn ban in 2019. In 2013, Tumblr was sold for $1.1 billion and in 2019, not long after the ban, it was sold for less than $3 million (McNicholl). The web traffic for the site from October 2018 to April 2019 went from 558 million to 376 million globally. This means their traffic dropped to 30% in the months after the ban and crashing down 40% over the next three years. Clearly, the ban saw a massive loss of followers from leaving the platform. This was despite of the app’s return onto the Apple App Store in December 2018. Tumblr was removed from the App Store in November 2018 because child pornography appeared on the site (FastCompany), which was “immediately removed”. Indonesia banned Tumblr because of the existence of pornography (Electronic Frontier Foundation).

In July 2018, there were “a set of controversial bills” that were signed by Trump (during his term as POTUS) intended to aide with cutting down on illegal online sex trafficking. There are two bills, “the House bill known as FOSTA, the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, and the Senate bill, SESTA, the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act.” The perspectives of this bill are split, either receiving praise from advocates seeing this as a victory for victims of sex trafficking (Romano) or critiquing it as, “is anti-sex trafficking in theory, but in practice has only led to a single trafficker prosecution in its first three years” and it has been specified as the reason tech companies have been kicking off “consenting online sex workers off their site”. Tumblr’s Director of Platform Engineering David Galbraith negates the bill having an impact on the site’s decision to ban sexually explicit content, "The sole reason these changes are being made on our iOS app is to be more compliant with Apple's App Store Guidelines related to content they classify as 'objectionable,'"(Iovine).

The term objectionable cannot be perceived objectively in this instance, according to Maggie MacDonald, a Ph.D. student at the University of Toronto researching pornography platforms, “It's a very slippery slope, because 'objectionable' can apply to, like, a snuff film…but it can also just apply to almost anything sexual. But it doesn't apply to all things sexual,” The perception of what’s objectionable relies on perspective. For example, there are plenty of misogynistic, homophobic, racist posts online, but it will never be permanently removed because they won’t be perceived as ‘objectionable’ by the white straight men who finance and own these companies. Instead of Tumblr responding to the backlash with instilling changes within the company, they threw a “blanket” ban on sex and nudity over the whole site. Using a filter tool that is ‘over-inclusive’ would end up flagging content that is ‘acceptable’ (Iovine). The company never admitted to what caused their decision, but we can assume that those decisions had something to do with it.

Tumblr’s porn ban could be perceived as an example of how content moderation is handled by these platforms. How does the platform’s decision making shape our social and cultural norms? Well, “content moderation is not standardized and lacks federal oversight,” which I am aware that this is due to social media companies not seeking out a way to moderate content without having to take accountability for their user’s words. Using an automated system to police content puts many online marginalized communities at risk of erasure (Duguay). Because of the Tumblr porn ban, the queer and sex positive communities were left to fend for themselves and find another online space to call home, which has been named “digital nomadism” (McNicoll).

The safer alternative platforms that were created after the Tumblr blanket ban include newTumbl, Cumblr, xstumbl, Sharesome, BDSMLR, and Pillowfort. What made them an alternative to Tumblr? Well, some of these websites created a similar homepage interface and allowed you to import old Tumblr blogs. But they would never reach the peak of Tumblr’s popularity due to their lack of high website visits numbers and their offhand approach to offensive speech on their platforms. For example, a blog called EroticPatriarchy on BDSMLR titled posts with “happy girls know their place” and “Being (g)raped made me support the patriarchy more”(FastCompany). When the average American thinks of where they could find online porn, the most famous option is Pornhub, but this platform is not a safe space for queer people. The ban was the cause for several ethical feminist porn websites, which began to rise in popularity, despite charging a fee for access to their content. Websites like these celebrate consensual sex, inclusivity, gender equality, and body positivity which is not the case for main audience of Pornhub (McNicoll).

The porn ban echoed a downward spiral into online censorship, which aimed to protect marginalized groups but ended up over-policing and hurting many others. This would ruin the organic and special communities that had grown on Tumblr (McNicoll). This loss of home gives these communities no choice but to relocate to porn sites that are not designed with diverse sexuality and gender identities in mind. These temporary homes are not safe, where they are more likely to encounter stigmatized, stereotypical and demeaning representations of women and transgender people (Duguay).

A term that applied to Tumblr was the “queer ecosystem”, coined by Alexander Cho, from UC Irvine, defined as a space that “users circulate porn, flirt, provide support to deal with homophobia as well as advice on coming out…”. Cho found that Tumblr was preferred by queer youth of color as the platform for sharing intimate and personal content. This is compared to Facebook, the original social media platform, that is perceived as the space of “default publicness” (Duguay). Writer and Tumblr user Jonno Revanche said it gave access to “social connections that are otherwise unavailable due to geographic isolation and social anxiety” (Byron). Without Tumblr’s allowance of porn, there is a lack of safe space for queer youth of color to explore their sexuality and gender identity; causing the available depictions of the “alternative sexuality” become “frequently rendered invisible” (Duguay). The “alternative sexuality” consisted of not just LGBTQ porn, but tattooed porn, fetish porn, or fan edits of your favorite characters with their moments of potential sexual tension (Iovine).

Considering all of this information, we need to recognize both sides of the coin. The general stance towards the exposure or exploration of pornography for young adults is not accepted. This is not to say that they are not valid reasons for protecting your children from content that is not moderated efficiently. I decided to seek out research that explained the negative and positive effects of pornography on young adults, and I came up with answers for both sides of the coin.

The American College of Pediatricians published an article in June 2016 titled “The Impact of Pornography on Children”. They claim that the consumption of pornography is linked to “many negative emotional, psychological, and physical health outcomes”. The list of outcomes includes high rates of depression, anxiety, misbehavior (violent behavior), early sexual activity, sexual promiscuity, high risk of teen pregnancy, and a distorted view of heterosexual relationships. Clearly, this article is only considering the argued majority of the population’s sexual orientation. The points they made against pornography use by the youth are charged with the moral beliefs that are carried through sexual health education in the United States. They state this use “often leads to a distorted view of sexuality and its role in fostering healthy personal relationships”, with distortions like amplification of the popularity of sexual activity in the community, the belief that sexual promiscuity is normal and that sexual abstinence is unhealthy. They conclude with saying that these views will cause more difficulty for young people to create and maintain long-lasting, meaningful relationships with the opposite sex which leads to the negative outcomes mentioned previously, along with “overall life dissatisfaction”. Although I understand that pornography does not guarantee positive experiences for everyone, I would encourage that instead of dismissing pornography for its potential negative impact, that we recognize its positive impacts and learn what this could mean for online sex education (Perry).

From the National Library of Medicine is an article titled “Pornography use among adolescents and the role of primary care” which discusses the impact of pornography on sexual health development in adolescents and the role that primary care providers (PCPs) in evaluating the use and providing sexual health education. They explain that although the perception of the consumption of porn by adolescents are viewed negatively, the reality of the matter is more complex. Studies have been affected by the “methodological challenges and cultural bias” that are constantly laced in them, producing research that is “based on correlations, not causations, limiting conclusions that can be drawn from the findings” . They stated that pornography may help adolescents’ sexual development and in turn enhance their sexual relationships and knowledge, working as an educational tool as well as a tool for sexual gratification and an leisure activity. They refer to one study found that when questioning individuals on their opinion of how pornography impacted them, respondents said that it helped them with their sexual confidence because of the exposure to sexual acts that they would not have considered otherwise. Moreover, pornography allowed for experimentation with sexual attraction which is helpful with the identification of sexual orientation and gender identity. The demonstration of sexual acts taught these individuals what they were, increasing their sexual self-confidence. From what I have experienced and what I have found during my research into the communities affected by the blanket ban, I believe that this is what Tumblr provided for LGBTQ youth on the site.

This article proposes a way for primary care providers (PCPs) to intervene in their patient’s sexual health and sexual education. They explain that the exploration of the motivation for pornography use may help PCPs and caregivers to assess their adolescents’ psychosocial needs. They recognize the negative effects, such as the adolescent having a “more advanced pubertal development, minimal caregiver supervision and emotional connection, family conflict, and behavioral problems” and “may engage in pornography use as a way to seek relational or sexual connectedness and/or comfort without any emotional commitment, reducing any fears of rejection or abandonment.” These are valid issues for young adults that can be discovered and addressed through primary care. They found another study found that youth seeking pornography could be used to increase their sense of belonging and decrease feelings of loneliness, as well as to help manage feelings of emotional stress, discomfort, and boredom.

They encourage PCPs to include screening youth for pornography viewing into their regular routine in adolescent health care. With these actions, PCPs could normalize the conversation around sexual health and how it is a form of self-care as a way to reduce feelings of shame around discussing pornography usage. Primary care providers could offer guidance and provide accurate and reliable information. They prefer seeking help from a primary care provider to using the internet for help. This is something that I understand where both sides are coming from, but I believe that in order for primary care providers to be successful in their sexual education, they would need to be well-versed in not just heterosexual sex but in various ways of pleasuring bodies. That is one thing that many primary care providers lack, and it’s the reason why Tumblr was so successful in the first place. Because of the lack of safe spaces in clinical and educational settings, the youth turn to the internet to avoid the shame or confusion they potentially feel towards their own sexual desires (Jhe).

After examining the negative and positive impacts of porn, I want to tie it back into Tumblr. In November 2022, Tumblr announced that they would be allowing nudity back on their website again, in order to “welcome a broader range of expression, creativity, and art on Tumblr, including content depicting the human form (yes, that includes the naked human form)”. But, they also warned that “visual depictions of sexually explicit acts” still remain banned on the platform. So what does this mean for the communities that were forced off the platform because of the ban? Should they return, despite their previous exclusion from a platform that was dominated by them a decade ago? Tumblr CEO, Matt Mullenweg has emphasized that “the casually porn-friendly era of the early internet is currently impossible.” One can argue that this is the right step in the direction of permitting “a more broader range of expression” on the site and returning to the “old Tumblr” (McNicoll). Is the allowance of nudity on the platform enough for Tumblr to return back to its height in preference from the LGBTQ youth?

sources:

“After Tumblr’s NSFW Ban, These Adult Communities Have Come out on Top.” FastCompany, 4 June 2019, www.fastcompany.com/90358305/six-months-after-tumblrs-nsfw-ban-these-kink-communities-are-coming-out-on-top.

Byron, Paul, and Brady Robards. “There’s Something Queer about Tumblr.” The Conversation, 26 Feb. 2024, theconversation.com/theres-something-queer-about-tumblr-73520.

Duguay, Stefanie. “Why Tumblr’s Ban on Adult Content Is Bad for LGBTQ Youth.” The Conversation, 2 May 2024, theconversation.com/why-tumblrs-ban-on-adult-content-is-bad-for-lgbtq-youth-108215.

Iovine, Anna. “The Death of Tumblr Porn Left a Void No Other Site Can Fill.” Mashable, Mashable, 20 Apr. 2022, mashable.com/article/tumblr-adult-content-ban.

Jhe, Grace B, et al. “Pornography Use among Adolescents and the Role of Primary Care.” Family Medicine and Community Health, U.S. National Library of Medicine, Jan. 2023, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9853222/#s3title.

McNicoll, Kayla. “Years on from Tumblr’s Infamous Porn Ban, Where Have Those NSFW Communities Gone?” Happy Mag, 12 Dec. 2022, happymag.tv/tumblr-porn/.

Perry, L. David. “The Impact of Pornography on Children.” American College of Pediatricians, June 2016, acpeds.org/position-statements/the-impact-of-pornography-on-children.

Romano, Aja. “A New Law Intended to Curb Sex Trafficking Threatens the Future of the Internet as We Know It.” Vox, 13 Apr. 2018, www.vox.com/culture/2018/4/13/17172762/fosta-sesta-backpage-230-internet-freedom.

“What Tumblr’s Ban on ‘adult Content’ Actually Did.” Electronic Frontier Foundation, 20 May 2019, www.eff.org/tossedout/tumblr-ban-adult-content.

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Sylvia Rivera: Herstory

The history of LGBTQ activism in New York City made substantial strides on the backs of people of color, specifically Black and Latinx trans women, from the community. There were figures that were born from this time, most famously Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, a Latina trans woman who fought beside her. I believe that Sylvia Rivera is an important figure to know when thinking about the history of queer and trans activism. She stood for inclusivity and recognized intersectionality within the community at a time where that was not at the forefront of change for gay activists groups like Gay Liberation Front. Through this essay, I will be highlighting her legacy as an activist, including her early life, movements she was associated with, and activist groups that were formed by her and carried on past her lifetime. 

Sylvia Rivera was born on July 2, 1951 in Bronx, New York City to a Puerto Rican father and a Venezuelan mother. Her childhood was troubled in the sense that she lost both of her parents at a young age. Her father abandoned her after her birth and was orphaned at the age of three after her mother committed suicide. She was sent to live with her grandmother, who physically abused her for her effeminate behavior. This caused her to run away from home at the age of eleven to the city, where she became a child prostitute working in the Times Square area. This was the reality for many homeless, queer youth during this time. While living on the streets of New York, she met a group of drag queens, who welcomed her with open arms and became her support system into her transition as Syliva. In her early years, she considered herself to be a drag queen but later in life, she described herself as a trans woman. (11) 

The Stonewall Riots, also known as the Stonewall Uprising, is noted as a motivating force for LBGTQ political activism, which led to many gay rights organizations forming. The event was located at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village that was owned by the Genovese crime family, who bribed the police to ignore the activities occurring within the club. They went as far as blackmailing the club’s wealthier patrons to keep their sexuality a secret. The conditions of the Stonewall Inn were deplorable: lacking a fire exit, no running water in the building, and the toilets were not clean. The uprising began there at the early hours of June 28, 2024. This started with the Public Morals Squad of the NYPD conducting a raid with the excuse of cracking down on “illegal” activity and prostitution. They were roughing up patrons, finding bootlegged alcohol and they arrested 13 people, “including employees and people violating the state’s gender-appropriate clothing statute (female officers would take suspected cross-dressing patrons into the bathroom to check their sex)” (12).  In response, the people fought back, including Sylvia Rivera and her fellow friend Marsha P. Johnson. They were rioting and protesting in the streets, calling for an end of the criminalization of their lifestyles as queer people. That night, Rivera is quoted for telling her lover, “I’m not missing a minute of this. It’s the revolution!” (7). 

In the 1970’s, Rivera joined the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activist Alliance. The Gay Liberation Front was a militant group of radical and revolutionary gay men and women committed to fight the oppression of gay people as a minority group and to order the right to self-determination of their own bodies. The Gay Liberation Front had a newsletter titled Gay Flames. In their fourth issue (1970), they observed that the organization, “is trying to build an alternative to the bars/baths/cruising scene which has become a way of life for so many homosexuals, particularly homosexual males. Gay night at Alternate U. is part of that effort.” They hosted Friday night classes at Alternate U., “listed in the publication included medical, legal, demonstration, gay squatters, racism, gay history and literature, sexism, exploration of roles and identity, and Marxism and political workshop” (8). Additionally, the coalition produced New York’s second gay newspaper, COME OUT!, from November 15, 1969 until the winter of 1972. 

She was advocating for nondiscrimination ordinances for housing and employment in New York City. She was an outlier in the movement because of her identity as a Latina trans woman. The movement’s agenda was not aiming to benefit people of color in the community. This is due to the majority of the activist groups mainly being gay white men. She was also shunned by lesbian feminists during this time, who viewed her identity as a trans woman as caricatures of womanhood from a sexist perspective (10). 

When I was researching more about her association with the Gay Liberation Front, I discovered a speech of hers on YouTube. It was titled the, “Y’all better quiet down” speech, which was a recording of her delivering this passionate speech at the Christopher Street Liberation Day Rally in Washington Square Park. Immediately when Rivera came onto the stage, the reaction from the crowd was echoing with ‘boos' and she came back with rage in her voice. She was angered by their lack of inclusion as a movement, referring to their fear of "stepping on tails'' and ‘backroom deals’ that were being led by gay middle-class white men as well as white lesbians who didn’t understand nor shared her passion for marginalized groups within the gay community (transgender, gender non-comforming, etc.). She was directly pointing out the physical and sexual violence enacted on transgender people in jail, including her own personal experiences with it (5).

As a viewer, this speech was impactful from her delivery along with her ability to command an audience to listen to her, despite the lack of support from the organization. I feel like a lot of points she made are issues that are still happening today: there are still substantial amounts of queer/trans youth of color that are getting kicked out of their homes from their disapproving families. Trans people, specifically trans women of color, have been verbally, physically, and sexually assaulted, and even worse, being murdered for simply existing.

Her feelings towards the injustice of queers/trans people of color motivated her and Marsha P. Johnson to start their own activist group: S.T.A.R., the Street Transgender Action Revolutionaries. Formerly known as the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, the group was created in 1970, after a sit-in at Weinstein Hall in New York University. The protest at NYU erupted after the administration canceled planned dances there, reportedly because a gay organization was sponsoring the events. The Gay Liberation Front and other activist groups held the sit-in, which ended with them winning the right to use the venue for their dances. After this, Rivera shifted gears and joined forces with Marsha P. Johnson to create S.T.A.R. They are known for being a militant group and youth shelter for homeless trans youth. This was important for both Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson because of their experiences of homelessness as trans youth. They made it a priority to recognize intersectionality within the LGBT community and practiced inclusivity within their group, unlike the Gay Liberation Front. (1)

What really stuck with me when reading more about the history of S.T.A.R. was the importance of having a home. “STAR was for the street gay people, the street homeless people, and anybody that needed help at the time,” Rivera said. As a group, they struggled to find shelter in New York City. They snuck multiple people into hotel rooms, “Marsha and I had always sneaked people into our hotel rooms. And you can sneak 50 people into two hotel rooms.” In the group’s first home, a parked trailer truck in a Greenwich Village outdoor parking lot, they had over two dozen trans youth living together. One day, Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson found a truck driving away from the trailer with about twenty people inside sleeping, with one person on their way to California. They wanted to grow in a more permanent home without the control of the Mafia, so they decided to land with a home at 213 Second Avenue in the city. Rivera said, “We fed people and clothed people. We kept the building going. We went out and hustled the streets. We paid the rent. We didn’t want the kids out in the streets hustling. They would go out and rip off food. There was always food in the house and everyone had fun. Later we had a chapter in New York, one in Chicago, one in California and England. It lasted for two or three years” (3). The fact that Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson did not have the financial standing that could comfortably support 50 people yet they made it their priority to make it work with what they got is a beautiful thing to hear.

Rivera met the Young Lords Party in the fall of 1970, during a mass demonstration that started in East Harlem. They were protesting against the police’s repression and STAR decided to join the demonstration with their banner. This was one of the first times the STAR banner was shown in public and was present as a group. “I ended up meeting some of the Young Lords that day. I became one of them. Any time they needed any help, I was always there for the Young Lords. It was just the respect they gave us as human beings. They gave us a lot of respect. It was a fabulous feeling for me to be myself—being part of the Young Lords as a drag queen—and my organization [STAR] being part of the Young Lords.” She also made an association with Huey Newton, leader of the Black Panther Party in 1971. “Huey decided we were part of the revolution—that we were revolutionary people,” Rivera said (3). These associations of hers are an example of practicing what you preach; she created connections with other organizations that stood for the rights of Puerto Ricans and African Americans, in which many quuer/trans youth in STAR identified with. They recognized intersectionality and practiced inclusivity within their organization, creating a safe space and a home for queer/trans youth in need of protection, support and guidance.

What transpired almost three decades of activism for Rivera was the Sylvia Rivera Law Project in 2002. The purpose of the project is to provide much-needed legal services for those who cannot afford representation, as well as use training public education, policy reform, and precedent-setting lawsuits to end state-sanctioned and institutional discrimination, violence, and coercion on the basis of gender identity and expression in relation to race and class. Due to Sylvia’s passing in the same year, they are continuing Rivera’s lifelong work as a trans person of color by working to ensure a stable and safe experience for transgender, intersex, and gender nonconforming people. They are centralizing issues of systemic poverty and racism, and prioritizing the struggles of queer and trans people who face the most severe and multi-faceted discrimination. They have a website that highlights their approaches and principles as an organization, which is very extensive and is typed up in both English and Spanish translation. This feature is subtle in its inclusivity, allowing a larger audience to connect with and potentially join or volunteer for the project (6).

Thinking about Sylvia Rivera in relation to the readings that were exposed to me during the course of the semester, discussions about the transgender experience has informed me more to understand her better. I believe that the critiques of the film, Paris is Burning, both bell hooks’ “Is Paris Burning?” and Judith Butler’s “Gender is Burning”, along with C. Riley Snorton’s “A New Hope” could be applied to the principals that Rivera practiced in her activist career. The film Paris is Burning was released in 1990, where we were given a glance into the ballroom scene in New York City. This film was directed by Jennie Livingston, a white lesbian who had the means to come into this community and make a spectacle out of the tragedies of trans women of color. This aspect is something that both hooks and Butler discuss in their writing, Butler cites hooks in their writing but also ties in their perspective. 

hooks states that Livingston is a white lesbian that although her physical presence in the film is not there, her position and perspective as a white woman/lesbian filmmaker shapes and forms the standpoint of the film. hooks states that Livingston does not resist the notion that “hegemonic whiteness “represents” blackness, but rather assumes an imperial overseeing position that is in no way progressive or counter-hegemonic” (151). This “privileged location of innocence” that Livingston possesses is something that Rivera was fighting against in her activism, especially in the “Y’all Better Be Quiet” speech. She was actively boo-ed for being a trans woman of color speaking against the whiteness of the Gay Liberation Front; a movement that was run by white, cisgender gay men and lesbians who dismissed the struggles that trans women of color were facing at that time (4).

Butler points this out as well, calling Livingston’s camera as “the promise of phantasmatic fulfillment” for the trans women of color that were in the film. Livingston as “the white girl with the camera” is both the object and vehicle of desire as white woman but as a lesbian, she sustained “some kind of identificatory bond with the gay men in the film” (391). They go on to state that Livingston incites trans women of color on the screen to become a woman before her camera and in doing so, she has the ability to bestow femininity and womanhood onto trans women of color. This is because of her position in society, where whiteness and wealthiness are considered the “peak” identity, at the top of the societal chain and the class ranking. I find both bell hooks’ and Judith Butler’s takes to be interesting ways to analyze the dynamic between both Livingston and trans women of color like Octavia St. Laurent, as well as Sylvia Rivera and the Gay Liberation Front (2). 

Snorton’s “A New Hope” speaks more about the relationship between hope and desire being “intimately linked” together. This is in reference to the hope of passing as a trans person but I would like to consider this concept to be applied to the hope that Sylvia Rivera had for LGBTQ activism throughout her career. Snorton writes that the “meanings of hope and desire may overlap when the length of time is short or hope can become a passive counterpart to desire when the duration of time is indefinite… hope lies in an aspirational future that implicates individual practice in the present… hope can cast the present in a historical light.” I believe that this thinking could relate to how the hope of inclusivity and practicing intersectionality for the movement lies in the aspirations for the future of the LGBTQ community/rights movement, which implicated Sylvia Rivera to practice in her present time and is carried through people a part of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project that is still active today (9). 

From learning about Sylvia Rivera, there are a lot of things that you can take away from learning about her life as an activist and pioneer in the LGBTQ rights movement. She fought for her beliefs in inclusion and intersectionality while associated with an organization that did not support those beliefs. Because of this, started the group STAR, the Street Transgender Action Revolutionaries with her friend Marsha P. Johnson to serve the large population of homeless queer and trans youth of color. Despite the struggle to find a building to provide shelter for them, they eventually settled in 213 Second Avenue. STAR was able to establish associations with the Young Lords Party and the Black Panther Party, which reflected the organization’s core principles. Jumping to three decades later, she continues to practice her activism through the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, which is inclusive to Spanish speakers on their website. She would continue to come outside to protest until her passing in 2002, the same year her project was created. Considering the readings we familiarize ourselves with this semester, I was able to connect the thoughts/concepts of bell hooks, Judith Butler, and C. Riley Snorton discussed in their writings. I will carry the knowledge of her legacy in my mind, and I hope that her legacy lives on through her project’s people.

sources:

“An Army of Lovers Cannot Lose: The Occupation of NYU’s Weinstein Hall.” Researching Greenwich Village History, WordPress, 23 Feb. 2012, greenwichvillagehistory.wordpress.com/2011/12/14/an-army-of-lovers-cannot-lose-the-occupation-of-nyus-weinstein-hall/. 

Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter : On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” Routledge, 2011.

Feinberg, Leslie. “Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries- Lavender & Red, Part 73.” Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, Workers World, 24 Sept. 2006, www.workers.org/2006/us/lavender-red-73/. 

hooks, bell. Black Looks : Race and Representation. Routledge, 2015.

“L020A Sylvia Rivera, ‘Y’all Better Quiet down’ Original Authorized Video, 1973 Gay Pride Rally NYC.” YouTube, 23 May 2019, youtu.be/Jb-JIOWUw1o?si=jY94H5fnzTSvx-8e. 

“Our Approach and Principles/Nuestras Práctica y Principios.” SRLP (Sylvia Rivera Law Project), Sylvia Rivera Law Project, 11 Feb. 2018, srlp.org/about/principles/. 

Rothberg, Emma. “Sylvia Rivera.” National Women’s History Museum, 2021.

Shockley, Jay. “Gay Liberation Front at Alternate U.” NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, National Women’s History Museum, May 2017, www.nyclgbtsites.org/site/gay-liberation-front-at-alternate-u/. 

SNORTON, C. RILEY. “‘A New Hope’: The Psychic Life of Passing.” Hypatia, vol. 24, no. 3, 2009, pp. 77–92, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.2009.01046.x.

“Sylvia Rivera: Pushing Boundaries: Taína Caragol.” YouTube, 20 Nov. 2020, youtu.be/0ODJ5gNcGho?si=rvbUfY4wnTU1DTK1. 

“Sylvia Rivera - Speech, Stonewall & Death.” Sylvia Rivera , Biography, 4 June 2019, www.biography.com/activists/sylvia-rivera. 

“1969 Stonewall Riots - Origins, Timeline & Leaders.” History.Com, A&E Television Networks, 31 May 2017, www.history.com/topics/gay-rights/the-stonewall-riots. 

link to powerpoint:

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An Interview with Melissa, a Registered Nurse

Who did I interview?

When thinking about who I wanted to interview for this paper, I immediately thought of my mother. Initially, the reason why she was my first choice was because of her profession, a Registered Nurse working in a hospital in Central Florida. Specifically, she works at AdventHealth Fish Memorial in Orange City, Florida. This hospital was taken over by the AdventHealth company two years into my mother’s career in 2019, originally operating under the name ‘Florida Hospital Fish Memorial’. They are described as a Seventh-day Adventist non profit healthcare organization, headquartered in Altamonte Springs, Florida (adventhealth.com). For context, my brother and I were born in Altamonte Springs and have been living near and driving there for all of our lives. I was not aware that the company started in Florida, but by the time I was in high school, most of the health care centers in my town and around Central Florida were under the AdventHealth name. 

Throughout the past seven years at the hospital, she would tell me these stories about her supervisors, co-workers, and patients, which were either really hilarious or shocking. These stories became more tragic with the COVID-19 pandemic, and this was a time where people like my mother were affected greatly. My mother was very careful during this time. After work, she would park her car in the driveway, close the garage door, strip naked, enter the house through the laundry room, and throw her clothes immediately into the washer. She would wash her hair after every shift, and wouldn't let her family have any physical contact with her for weeks because even as a nurse, she didn’t know how contagious the virus was. 

My mother has been an inspiration to me as a person; because of her, I find caring for people to be one of my main pleasures in life. Although I am not in the healthcare field myself, I feel this care for myself and others translates through my work. About two years ago, I took this “Comics: Graphic Journalism '' class and one of the assignments was to interview a person who was affected by the pandemic. I decided to interview my mother, specifically about her experiences working on the “COVID floors” in her hospital. She was one of the reasons why this course has been so appealing to me, and I share what I am learning in class with her because it’s a different perspective about care. Living in a (kind of) post-pandemic world, I want her stories and experiences like hers to have a platform. She was a top candidate for this interview, and she agreed to do it after another long night shift. 

Initial approach to interview

I approached the interview with the goal of gaining a better understanding of my mother’s experiences as a Registered Nurse. Because she is my mother, I am aware that she navigates the world differently because she is darker than me. For reference, my mother was born from a lighter-skinned Puerto-Rican woman and a brown-skinned West Indian man. We do not know much about her father because he died around the time my mother turned seven in 1987. Many questions have been left unanswered for the family when asking about him. For the longest I thought he died from cancer, but turns out he took his own life. I believe that this tragic part of my mother’s childhood shaped her as a woman, having to become a “second mother” for her three siblings in order to support her single mother. Caring for others was a thing of survival, and it’s just part of her nature now. 

For the interview, I wanted to understand how she thinks of her own identity and if there’s any correlation between how she presents in the world to how she is treated by her supervisors, coworkers, and patients. As I was generating questions for the interview, I broke them up into five sections: 1. Introduction (to Melissa) 2. Supervisors 3. Coworkers 4. Patients 5. Personal Experiences. As I am writing this, I realize that the titles might need more context. 1. Introduction (to Melissa) were questions that would “break the ice” and let her introduce herself. 2. Supervisors were questions based around her feelings towards her supervisors and whether she thinks that her gender and race affects her treatment from them. 3. Coworkers follow the same formula, and 4. Patients do as well, but with this section I asked her more specific questions because I wanted to hear her thoughts about both the “bad” and “good” experiences she has both participated in and witnessed with her other coworkers. 5. Personal Experiences was a conclusion to the interview. I am aware that this whole interview was based around her personal experiences but I wanted her to get deeper with her thoughts about her profession. 

I will say that there are benefits to interviewing your mother: because she and I have a pretty good and close relationship, I felt less pressure to have my questions worded as professionally as possible. What happens to me when I interview people I am not as close with is I have a lot of inner-pressure to sound as eloquent as I can be, but this was not the case with this interview. I did take the time to word my questions to be as neutral as possible, because of the critique I received prior to the interview. This critique was needed, because without it, I might’ve made my mother feel a little more depressed about her job. So, I approached this interview with the goal of getting her perspective as a Registered Nurse without making her feel uncomfortable by the end of it.

The research prior to the interview

Before conducting this interview, I was introduced to a reading that related to what I wanted to cover: the history of women of color working in the “domestic” profession. The title of this work is “From Servitude to Service Work: Historical Continuities in the Racial Division of Paid Reproductive Labor” by Evelyn Nakano Glenn. One concept that she introduces is the concept of “social reproduction” which is the activities and relationships involved in supporting people on a daily and intergenerational basis. What comes out of this is “reproductive labor”, which are the activities that fall under social reproduction, like shopping for household goods, doing laundry/clothing repair, taking care of the appliances and furniture, cooking and serving food, taking care of children, providing care and support for adults, and supporting family and the community. 

She explains what the Marxist feminists’ perspective is, placing “the gendered construction of reproductive labor at the center of women’s oppression.” (2) Basically, this labor is performed at a disproportionate level by women and is essential to the economy, yet it is not recognized as real work because it is not taking place in the market. Men are able to benefit indirectly and directly from this labor. Directly, they are contributing less labor while enjoying the assistance that women provide as mothers and wives. Indirectly, they are free from domestic labor and that gives them more freedom to “paid employment and attain primacy in that area” (2). They go on to explain how in addition, race plays a part in those employed for domestic labor the most as a form of “maintaining white domination” (2) over people of color, specifically women of color. She presents a historical analysis of this race and gender construction of reproductive labor. In summary of Phyllis Palmer’s observation, white women are at the top of the category of ‘woman’ because with the compensation of their husbands, they are able to hire another woman to take on the domestic labor for them, “thereby supervisory for cultural, leisure, and volunteer activity or, more rarely during this period, for a career.” (7). 

Where the reading associates with my preliminary research the most, Glenn finds similarities in the situations that “Mexicans in the Southwest, African Americans in the South, and Japanese people in northern California and Hawaii.” (8). Each of these groups were excluded from rights and protection that are given to full citizens and were placed in a separate legal category. This limited their ability as citizens to organize as one, compete for jobs, and obtain capital. In the Southwest, Mexican American girls were trained in their youth to do the domestic work and were employed by the age of nine or ten to clean their employer’s house. For the African American women in the South, nearly every middle-class housewife had at least one African American woman cleaning the home and taking care of the children. Sometimes, this would lead to daughters of Black domestics to be recruited as children to aid their mother’s employers through baby-sitting, washing diapers, and cleaning. 

This reading told the realities of women of color participating in reproductive labor.  Women of color were taken advantage of as employees because they were more likely to remain in service compared to European White immigrants, who often left service after marriage (11). White housewives were afraid that if their maid was Mexican, then their children would assume that their mother was the maid. Another fear was that the maids would kidnap their children and sell them in Mexico (11). White women were persistent that “inferior race” women (Chicanas and Black women) as “dependent, slovenly, and ignorant”. Because of these beliefs, they argued that training young Chicanas would help white women keep their freedom because they have someone to take care of their houses for them but at the same time raise them by improving their standards of living, elevate their morals, and assist their “Americanization'' (12). 

The “dominant group ideology” that was formed by White society were racial justifications that women of color were considered to be “suited for service”. The arguments that stemmed from this included that Black and Mexican women were incapable of controlling their own lives which meant they depend on white people and made white employment an act of benevolence. (14) In order for white employers to force women of color to enact the role of the “inferior”, they used rituals like addressing their workers by the first names, ordering them to use the back door as the entrance, requiring uniforms, and to eat only in the kitchen (15). This research informed me of the history of women of color, specifically Black and Mexican women, and I started to apply these histories in a modern context. How do these histories translate into the healthcare field? Are healthcare workers like my mother, who is a woman of color, experiencing the effects of these histories today? Glenn’s “From Servitude to Service Work: Historical Continuities in the Racial Division of Paid Reproductive Labor” was the basis of my research throughout the interview process. 

The interview: what did I discover? What thoughts and questions remain?  

For context, this interview took place over the phone, late at night and while a hailstorm was happening outside. I was sitting at my desk, reading and recording the audio of our FaceTime call from my laptop while my mother was laying in bed with my father. The duration of this interview was almost twenty-five minutes long, which was longer than we were both anticipating. Even though my mother and I have touched on the topics addressed in this interview in casual conversation, there are still new things that I have learned about her experience working as a Registered Nurse. I will break down these discoveries into their associated sections. 

Introduction (to Melissa)

Beginning the interview with having my mother formally introduce herself with her name, age, and profession made her laugh, which made it hard for me to redirect focus for a minute. But after a chuckle fest with her and my father, she stated that she is forty-three years old and that she is a Registered Nurse. I followed this question with asking her to address her identity: 

Tatiana: Can you please describe your race and ethnicity? Like how do you identify, in terms of race and ethnicity? 

Melissa: I’m Spanish. With a little bit of… I would just say Spanish. Just because I don’t really know where my father is from.

Tatiana: How do you think the world views you? Like in terms of race and ethnicity?

Melissa: They would probably say Spanish. 

At the time, I wanted to push her thinking of her identity further, but I realized that her perspective of her identity is “a reflection of her time”. Comparing this to how I explain my identity, I believe that this is a matter of how the Gen-X (her generation) Latino/a community views their identity versus how the Gen- Z (my generation) Latiné/x community views their identity. I do not believe that my mother has even heard of the term ‘Latiné/x’ because of how new this term is for the community as a whole. From the National Museum for the American Latino website, they graphed the frequency of the Google search “Latinx” which started in June 2015 at a 16% rise in frequency, lowering to 8% the following year, then sky rocketing to 84% in 2018 then lowering to 46% in 2020. In my lifetime, conversations of finding new ways to label and explain our identities have been a focus for us. A commonality between my mother and I is that we are both mixed-race; so it is interesting to see how she views herself and from this interview, she used the term ‘Spanish’ used to generalize people belonging to cultures and communities that were affected by the colonization of the Spaniards centuries ago. She acknowledged that her decision to pursue a career in the healthcare field:

Tatiana: Initially what made you want to pursue your current profession?

Melissa: I wanted to be a pediatrician when I was younger. But I knew I was not going to do school. So I always wanted to go into the health field so Registered Nurse was my next thing. 

Reading this after the interview made me realize that my mother had to compromise for her dream profession: to become a pediatrician. Although I did not ask her reasoning for this decision during the interview, she did explain in the past that financial struggle and her responsibility to her family did play a part in this decision. In addition to this, she decided to put her education to the side in order to raise her children. This was a decision that was not easy, because this put a lot of weight on my father to be the sole provider for our family during that time. It was not until my brother and I were in middle school that she decided to pursue an education in the healthcare field, graduating with her Associate’s in Nursing in December 2016. Without both of their sacrifices, my brother and I wouldn’t have the support and freedom to pursue our dreams, which I am extremely grateful for. 

2. Supervisors 

When asking my mother about her supervisors, I was surprised to hear not much criticism towards them. My preconceived notions were not really addressed when questioning her stance on her relationship with her supervisors. I believe that this was due to my mistake of reformulating the question: 

Tatiana: What are your feelings towards your supervisors? Like what is your work environment like in general, if you had to sum it up?

Melissa: It sucks. (another closed mouth laugh)

Tatiana: It sucks? Could you talk about it more?

Melissa: How do I feel working there? …I mean it’s a hard job, in terms of, I mean you know how many hours I work… it’s hard on your body, because you are constantly moving patients and having to do stuff like that. And it’s hard because mentally because you see a lot of things that you don’t wanna see. So it’s not an easy job… I mean I’m sure no job is easy.

Tatiana: Describe your relationship with your supervisors? 

Melissa: I mean I have a good relationship with my supervisors. I mean we do things together outside of work, so I have a pretty good relationship.

I noticed that throughout the interview, I felt a need to reformulate my pre-planned questions as a way to make it easier for my mother to understand what I meant and to help her thoughts flow. This is an example of how saying too much can redirect an interviewee in the wrong direction. Her explanation of how her job sucks was something that I planned to address later in the interview but her emphasis of her job “not being easy” speaks to some people’s belief that working as a Registered Nurse is an easy job. I was surprised that she said that she has a good relationship with her supervisors because I have heard her complain about them in the past. But she rationalized her good relationship with her supervisors because they hang out outside of the workplace. Having the ability to do this with supervisors is not something that is guaranteed in any profession, so that made me happy to hear.

3. Coworkers 

Her positive feelings towards her supervisors also applied to her feelings towards her coworkers. This did not surprise me because I have met her coworkers multiple times both in the hospital and outside of the hospital. I have attended their annual Christmas parties and their company events in the hospital, as well as invited her closest coworkers, Winnie and Zabrina, over to our house for dinners and to celebrate the New Year. She mentions this during our interview: 

Tatiana: What are the most rewarding interactions you’ve had with your coworkers? If so, what happened? Have there been any?

Melissa: Rewarding? In terms of–

Tatiana: Like positive interactions?

Melissa: Oh getting to know them. Like getting to know who they really are; not just in work but outside of work. For instance with Winnie, getting to know who she is and where she came from, all she has to deal with, her personal life. 

I am pleased to know that my mother is a part of a community of women that has created relationships that are deeper than just being coworkers. Women like Winnie, a Liberian woman who came to the United States for a better life, have been a support for both my mother and I and an example of a hard-working woman. The healthcare system comprises of women like my mother and Winnie. After this, I was curious to find out if she has been treated poorly by her coworkers: 

Tatiana: So I have this question: Have you ever been treated poorly by your co-workers? 

Melissa: I would say that I have been treated poorly. By people that they take your kindness for being weak. They think that because I’m nice, they could run over me… Or that I’m not going to say anything if something is said about me that’s not true or done to me. 

Tatiana: Do you believe that your gender and race affects how you’re treated by your coworkers and your supervisors? Like do you think it takes a part in how you’re treated? 

Melissa: Hmmm no, not at my job. My gender, no because we’re mostly girls anyways. You know? By my race, with other people, yes. Like with patients.

It is unfortunate that my mother has been treated this way by her coworkers, but I found it interesting that she doesn't feel like her gender and race play a part in her treatment from her coworkers. I did not push this further by having her elaborate about her mistreatment. I wonder who these co-workers were? Are they women of color? What are some specific scenarios of how my mother was mistreated? I am afraid that she has been made to feel like this because of preconceived notions of Black and Latino people in the domestic world that I learned from the Glenn reading.

4. Patients 

This was one of the most informative parts of the interview, in terms of getting a better, more specific look into her experiences with patients and how the nurses and clinical technicians approach the care of their patients. My mother spoke in great detail about her experiences of mistreatment from her patients: 

Melissa: It’s just so many crazy people (laughs). The crazy ones are the ones that stick out the most to me. 

Tatiana: Like what?

Melissa: Like one that wanted to be, like he was completely confused obviously. He was so confused that he tried to hit us. He tried to hit me then that’s when I had to put him in restraints. That’s the first time I had to do that before. That was scary because he became very violent. So what I had to do, now it is very rare that they do a four-point restraint, which means that you have to restrain their arms and legs. So I would say that would be the one that I will always remember. And then he was so tense when I gave him the medication as an injection; it didn’t want to go through. 

Tatiana: So would you consider that to be the poorest you’ve ever been treated by a patient? 

Melissa: No. The poorest I’ve ever been treated by a patient was when they became racist, which some of them do. A lot of older people get confused and they think that they’re back in the forties or the fifties and they wanna call you names. Sometimes I just brush it off, but when you have those that are not like that, and they treat you like that, it's those ones that affect you. You try not to let it affect you but it does affect you. They become racist and they become nasty (laughs).

Tatiana: Define nasty?

Melissa: When they take off their pampers and they start throwing, whatever it is that they have on it, at you. We've had that happen several times. Or they’re very vulgar.

Tatiana: Like verbally?

Melissa: Yeah, like they curse you out and stuff like that. But the ones that affect you the most are also the ones that are degrading.

As she’s explaining these moments, she was able to laugh which I believe is a way for people (specifically my family as a whole) copes with the difficulty of life and our jobs. From her answers alone, this brings up a larger conversation about how older generations tend to become vulgar towards the people employed to take care of them. My mother brushes it off because at the end of the day, these people are ill and need to be taken care of. But how are women like my mother supposed to live with these experiences? What protocols are set in place for healthcare workers to support them through their mistreatment? My mother touches on one way of dealing with “difficult” patients: 

Tatiana: What are your observations of how your co-workers treat patients?

Melissa: (laughs) You get a little bit of everything at my job. 

Tatiana: What do you mean by that?

Melissa: It just depends on the patient. You don’t treat every patient the same. Some patients, you have to be a little more rough with them. When I say ‘rough’, I mean in the way that you speak to them. You can’t speak to every patient the same. Some of them, you have to be a little more firm because you have those who can be nasty. If a patient is nasty to you, you're gonna treat them with kindness and respect regardless but also be firm with them. You can’t let them think that they’re winning and that they’re affecting you. And you go to let them know from the beginning that you’re there to help them out. Which is true, you’re not there to do them any harm. Sometimes, there’s some patients that need other people that can go in and talk to them because they’re better at dealing with that type of person. You have a person that is really disrespectful and you feel like you are not getting anywhere with them. There’s a certain coworker that you would send to see if they can get through them to take medication or whatever it is. I’ll give you a good example: Winnie’s sister, she was a tech (clinical technician). When it came to patients that were extremely confused, like jumping out of bed, wanting to get out, being a little aggressive, she was the best person for that. She knew how to calm them down, how to get them out of bed… she was the best one for that. She’s a little “rough on the edges” but she was perfect for that type of scenario. But don’t give her a lady that is as sweet as can be because she is a little too rough for that lady. 

Medical lab technicians like Winnie’s sister are the backbone of the hospital. Even though medical lab technicians work with Registered Nurses and have just as many  responsibilities (if not more at times), they are getting paid at a significantly lower rate than Registered Nurses. As of March 2024, the average salary of a lab technician in the state of Florida is $61,266, with the usual range between $53,371 and $71,471 (depending on education, certifications, etc.) (salary.com). For Registered Nurse, Florida’s average salary is 12% lower than the national average, sitting at $72,000 (incrediblehealth.com). Living in this economy, these salaries do not feel as high as they should be. Shouldn’t we be paying the people that are taking care of us and our loved ones? 

I asked my mother the same question of if she believes that her co-workers’ race and gender plays a role in how their patients treat them (and vice versa) and she replied with both a yes and a no. She goes on to explain that she believes that patients treat coworkers based on race and gender but not the other way around because they are all not the same. I concluded this part of the interview with finding out how diverse her pool of coworkers is in order to provide more context. Her response was: 

Melissa: Oh, we are very diverse. And when I say my coworkers, I mean everyone that works on the night shift. It’s mostly minorities. (laughs) That’s who we are, in the night shift. We have a lot of Spanish, we have a lot of Jamaicans, that’s really most of it is. 

Tatiana: So you would say mostly Latino and Black people? 

Melissa: Yes, that is the majority. If you look at the night shift, the majority is that.

5. Personal Experiences

I left the heaviest part of this interview for last. She mentioned in the beginning of this interview the physical and mental toll that her job causes, but I wanted to know about how the job affects her physically, mentally, and emotionally: 

Melissa: Mentally, I am drained by my job and the hours that I work. Physically, my body is drained as well. It’s not easy working from 6:30 pm to 7 to 8 am in the morning. A lot of people think that “It’s only three days (that you work in a week),” but that’s basically almost 14 hours (per day). (After) working the night shift, you try to sleep but you don’t sleep during the day because there is so much going on around you. You don’t get enough sleep, and then when you’re there at work, you’re dealing with so much so it’s mentally exhausting. Then, physically, it’s a lot. Sometimes, you have patients who are violent. They hit you and most of the time, they are confused. What can you do? You can’t press charges on them. It’s a physical job at times and it can become very physical. You gotta move them around, moving them up and down the bed sometimes because not everybody can walk by themselves. For me, it’s emotionally draining because I feel like I don’t have a life outside of my job. I feel like I put my relationships on the back burner because of my job. Not only with my kids but with my husband… I think it has affected my personal life a lot. 

Hearing this was really hard for me, especially since while she is in Florida working at the hospital, her children are living in Chicago and depending on her hard work to sustain their lives. This guilt has stuck with me ever since I started art school, and I am afraid I won’t ever be able to repay her with my future income. I am worried that she will not be able to retire when the physical pain becomes too much for her body. I wonder what are some common health issues that healthcare workers experience after retirement, specifically nurses? 

To conclude this whole interview, I continued to reference topics that were briefly touched on before. I wanted to know if she feels like she is getting paid enough for the services she provides and time spent on her feet. She went on to explain that she doesn't feel like she gets paid enough and:

Melissa: I have a person’s life in my hands, technically. I don’t get paid enough for it. You have people that are doing paperwork that are getting paid more than me. And I am not saying my job is the only one that doesn’t get paid enough. To me, cops should make more money (and) firefighters should make more money. Teachers are the ones educating our kids and we don’t even provide them a great pay. To me, that’s just stupid. 

When asking her how the healthcare field has impacted her as a person and changed her perspective on life, she explained that she gained into a world that not a lot of people have the knowledge to navigate confidently with:

Melissa: Working in the hospital has helped me understand what it is not being a patient. Now I know what the ‘behind the scenes’ is; what it exactly is. When you go to the hospital, sometimes you think that they are B.S-ing you, but sometimes they’re really not. I know that now, because I work in a hospital. It is what it is, you know? That’s why when Suga Mama (her mother/my grandmother) goes to the hospital, I’m like, “No that’s how it is,” I do have a little bit of perspective. 

The knowledge and skills that the education and job experience provides is something that her and I both view as very valuable. I followed this question with asking her if she would recommend for people to join the healthcare field, which she agreed with wholeheartedly because of the lack of people working in it currently. The interview was concluded with expressing her love for the job but if she had to change anything about it, it would be: 

Melissa: I would change my hours because I think one of the most important to me, personally, is my family. I think working the hours that I work has put a big strain on my personal life. Could I do that? Technically yes but my pay would go down, and that’s something that I can’t afford. That’s why if nurses got paid more, I could do that. 

Despite how lengthy this interview is, there are so many questions I failed to address and thoughts that remain unanswered. I am not satisfied with the lack of specificity but I forgive myself for it because I did not want to overwhelm my mother with too many questions. I believe that this interview provided me with extensive knowledge of my mother’s interactions with supervisors, coworkers, and patients and her experiences within the healthcare world. Although this paper was written for a grade, my mother’s words should be read and understood by not just me, but a larger audience in order to create a dialogue for improving the lives of women of color in the healthcare field. 

sources:

“AdventHealth Fish Memorial .” AdventHealth Fish Memorial, 14 Mar. 2024, www.adventhealth.com/hospital/adventhealth-fish-memorial/our-location. 

“Average Registered Nurse Salary in Florida.” Registered Nurse (RN) Salary in Florida, www.incrediblehealth.com/salaries/rn/fl. Accessed 14 Mar. 2024. 

“How Do Latinos Self-Identify?” National Museum of the American Latino, latino.si.edu/exhibitions/presente/latino-identity/how-do-latinos-self-identify. Accessed 14 Mar. 2024.

Salary.com, Site built by: “Laboratory Technician Salary in Florida.” Salary.Com, www.salary.com/research/salary/listing/laboratory-technician-salary/fl#:~:text=How%20much%20does%20a%20Laboratory,falls%20between%20%2453%2C371%20and%20%2471%2C471. Accessed 14 Mar. 2024. 

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for the dry bitches, february 2024.

created through procreate. printed with risograph printer, colors federal blue and red.

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The Sounds of the Psychological Horror: Hereditary (2018) and The Shining (1980) 

Introduction 

Within modern cinema, the sub-genre of psychological horror has been popular… When watching films like Hereditary (2018) and The Shining (1980), I began to wonder how psychological horror films like Hereditary (2018) and The Shining (1980) use music to frighten the audience during intense scenes. I believe that with the musical techniques of the shepard tone, internal sound, and the use of silence, give off the feeling of a creeping fear, which has contributed to the demand and appeal of this sub-genre.

I will be watching the films Hereditary and The Shining, specifically some intense scenes (sonically and visually), and discuss my findings between the two films. I will briefly discuss background information that will include general information about the composers, the director, what they specialize in, etc. I will be looking at the use of the film’s narrative in relation to its soundscape, emotion, and action; this is in order to identify the elements that frighten the audience. Lastly, I will be comparing them to see what similar and different techniques they used and how psychological horror film scores changed over time. 

What is psychological horror?

The word “horror” derives from the Greek word phryke, meaning the act of shuddering. This is the only fictional genre that is designed with the intent to constantly and deliberately arouse fear rather than incidentally or irregularly. Behaviorally, horror films can elicit reactions like shivering, closing of the eyes, startle, shielding of the eyes, trembling, paralysis, piloerection, withdrawal, and screaming. The purposes of these films are, “to frighten, shock, horrify, and disgust using a variety of visual and auditory leitmotifs and devices including reference to the supernatural, the abnormal, to mutilation, blood, gore, the infliction of pain, death, deformity, putrefaction, darkness, invasion, mutation, extreme instability, and the unknown.” (Kattelman). Psychological horror is a subgenre of horror and psychological fiction, which focuses on how to mentally, emotionally, and physiologically frighten its audiences. 

Hereditary (2018)

Hereditary was released on June 8, 2018 under A24, a film and television company that released critically impressive films like The Witch (2016), Under the Skin (2014), The Killing of a Scared Deer (2017), and It Comes At Night (2017) that fall under the “horror” category. The director of this film, Ari Aster, prior to the release of Hereditary created horror films like The Strange Thing About the Johnsons (2011) and Beau (2011). In the process of filming, Aster reached out to Colin Stetson, Canadian-American saxophonist, multireedist, and composer for the score of Hereditary. Stetson started composing film scores after director Alexandre Moors and composer Sarah Neufeld reached out to him to compose for the Washington Snipers film Blue Caprice (2013) (Lau). 

In interviews, Stetson spoke about how in collaboration with Aster, they had a clear idea of what their vision was for this score, “I think first and foremost keying off of what Ari wanted, which was very minimal direction. Generally speaking, he said he wanted it to feel evil and to embody the concept that the score was to play out as if it was a character.” (Iken). The musical  concepts of minimalism and the feeling of evil come up frequently in these interviews, as well as his active avoidance of the use of common horror tropes. He explained that the majority of films during that time seem to rely heavily on high strings, ominous percussion and synthesized music, so he avoided these psychological horror score tropes by finding new sounds and utilized unconventional processing through the instruments. The usage of vocals were essential to the sound of Hereditary: “There's an enormous amount of voice used and sometimes you'll actually hear it. It'll sound like drone, but the majority of what you don't think is voice — what people probably think is synths or strings — that is all just coming from an unconventional capturing of vocal parts that I did myself.” (Lau). Stetson’s approach to Hereditary’s psychological horror soundtrack created the dark, unsettling atmosphere needed for its corresponding visuals. 

The film shows the lives of Annie (Toni Collette), her husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne), son Peter (Alex Wolff), and daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro) after they experience grief after the death of Annie's mentally ill mother. The family tries a variety of coping mechanisms to deal with their sadness, including Annie and her daughter dabbling in paranormal activity. They individually start to encounter unsettling, paranormal events that are connected to the evil secrets and emotional pain that have been passed down through their family's centuries. Although Hereditary is jammed packed with intense moments throughout its two hours and seven minutes, I would like to highlight a couple of intense scenes that showcase the musical techniques that were used by Colin Stetson. 

At thirteen minutes and fifty-five seconds into this film, we cut into Charlie sitting in class quietly fiddling with a toy, then getting caught by her teacher as she walked down the aisles of desks. The shot cuts to Charlie’s side profile to the left of the screen, when suddenly a bird slams into the window, shown on the right of the screen. This loud sound of the bird's quick, boisterous bang against the glass window causes the class to go silent in the classroom and the underscoring heartbeat-like pulse that is used more throughout the film. The camera shows Charlie’s face swallowed in anxiety, as if she feels an evil presence from the bird. The music reverberates as we see what Charlie is staring at in this shot: a pair of scissors in a cup on her teacher’s desk. 

Skipping to fifteen minutes and fifty-seconds, the camera shows us the aftermath of what happened to the bird, laying dead on a bush in front of the school’s front exterior. We pan out to hear the school bell ring to signify the day ending and to see Charlie staring at the bird while eating a chocolate bar. These light stings of high-pitched synths layer onto the continuous percussive heartbeat of the score, tensing up more as she cuts the head off of the deceased bird. During this action, these scraping violin strings play as you hear the snipping of the scissors, resembling the moans and screams of pain and death. After Charlie pockets the bird’s head, a low roar follows Charlie’s gaze to the parking lot across the street, where a strange older woman lifts her hand in a shy wave. Stetson’s saxophone long tones become buried beneath a layer of ambient electronic drone, this feeling of evil circulating in the air. 

At thirty-two minutes and fifty seconds, we are watching Peter rushing his sister to the hospital because she is going into anaphylactic shock from accidentally ingesting peanuts. As the car accelerates, the diegetic tension of the score increases as Charlie screams and grabs at her throat. Pushing her head out the window to try to get more air, Peter inadvertently kills Charlie by a telephone pole after swerving away from a deer in the road. After the collision, Peter stops the car. The only sounds are his erratic, trembling breathing and his feeble, sotto voce attempts to reassure himself that Charlie is okay. Breathing, in this scene, becomes the underscore for the internal, psychological trauma that has occurred, making the audience feel horrified with Peter.  

The Shining (1980)

The Shining has been recognized in popular culture as an influential psychological horror film in modern cinema. The film was released on May 23, 1980, debuting during the “golden age” of the slasher film era (1978-1984). This created a home for an electronic musical instrument known as the synthesizer, which revolutionized music in the sixties and came to popularity in the seventies and eighties. Wendy Carlos, an American musician and composer, created her own compositions through adapting classical music to the synthesizer in A Clockwork Orange (1971), directed by Stanley Kubrick. 

After collaborating on A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick hired her for another project alongside producer Rachel Elkind for The Shining, which was another score filled with Carlos’s synthesized cues. Kubrick would choose only two out of thirty-one tracks Carlos and Elkind created, which remained unpublished until 2005. The finalized score comprised early twentieth century pieces composed by Krzysztof Penderecki, Bela Bartok, György Ligeti, Henry Hall And The Gleneagles Hotel Band, and Al Bowlly. 

After getting a position as an off-season caretaker, Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), an aspiring playwright and former alcoholic, takes his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and his talented son Danny (Danny Torrance) up to the snow-capped, remote Overlook Hotel in Colorado. The manager gives Jack a tour of the massive hotel as it closes for the season, and the aged Mr. Hallorann (Scatman Crothers), the facility's chef, has an interesting conversation with Danny about a rare psychic ability called "The Shining," making sure to warn him about the hotel's abandoned rooms, especially the off-limits Room 237. But instead of getting out of the depressing creative rut, Jack gradually begins to lose his sanity as he is imprisoned in a harsh environment of seemingly never-ending snowstorms and a massive, silent jail filled with bizarre occurrences and unsettling visions (Riganas).

At one hour and nine minutes, we cut to this shot of a television with the weather channel on, announcing that the central and the Rocky Mountain states are buried in snow. As the news reporter continues to explain how the snow has closed down travel, we are panning farther away from Dick’s (Mr. Hallorann) face; this break of silence builds anticipation in the air. As we zoom back into Dick’s face, these ringing violin strings and tonal shifts creep into the scene. There is an addition of a heartbeat sound, whose heartbeat is left to interpretation. One interpretation I found theorized, “Perhaps it is the heartbeat of a new Jack, a new life coming into existence.  Perhaps it is the heartbeat of the Overlook reborn yet again.” (Reeves). 

We slowly watch Dick pick up on a signal from Danny, eyes widening in terror as the swelling strings and heartbeat clash against each other. This transmission between Danny and Mr. Hallorann causes Danny to suffer from a seizure, foaming at the mouth with a blank expression. There we see the door of Room 237 opened, the camera giving us a first-person point of view of Jack looking around the room and entering the bathroom. The instrumentation of Krzysztof Penderecki’s “The Awakening Of Jacob” gradually transforms into a swirling nest of sounds as the scene develops and the enigmatic woman's beauty fades, reflecting the confusion and lunacy that are gradually settling in and taking control of Jack. 

Right at the two hour mark we are witnessing an iconic scene within modern psychological horror cinema. After swinging an ax at the bedroom door multiple times, Jack announces “Wendy, I’m home,” The music sounds like this cluster of terror, harsh percussional plucks of the violins clashing and pinching against the high strings. As Wendy releases Danny into the snowstorm outside, there is this simultaneous ascension and descension of tone screeching that begins and continues throughout this horrifying scene. “Here’s Johnny!” Jack shouts after he cuts down the part of the bathroom door, with the quick riff of the signature violins signifying the panic that Wendy is experiencing. Those piercing violins are replicating the sounds of the stabbing of the door and the cuts of the knife against Jack’s hand. 

Hereditary v. The Shining

The shepard tone is defined as, “a sound that seems to infinitely rise or fall in pitch yet never moves out of the range of human hearing. This auditory illusion is created by layering tones on one another that are one octave apart. As the tones ascend or descend, the careful fading in and out of those at the upper and lower limits creates the impression that the pitch is infinitely rising or falling.” (Kattelman). This technique is used in The Shining when Jack is cutting down the door in madness to get to Wendy and Danny. You could hear the rising and lowering of the tones with the violins, blaring as a reflection from the feelings of Wendy and Danny. This tone instills this direct feeling of chaos and the need to escape from the impending danger of Jack and his madness. Between the two scenes I discussed for Hereditary, I did not find any use of the shepard tone. The potential reasoning behind this is because of Colin Stetson’s active avoidance of common psychological horror tropes. 

I found that the use of internal sounds both coincided with the use of silence and were separate between the two films. Internal sound is a musical technique that corresponds to the physical and mental center of a character, which is amplified when there is no accompanying score. From the scene with Charlie cutting the bird’s head off, you can hear the sniping of the scissors with a sound that replicates the groaning of experiencing death. Jumping to the next scene where Peter is paralyzed in shock after his sister’s head is decapitated and you are listening to his panicky breaths. The Shining showcased its use of internal sounds during the moment where the camera is focused on Dick’s face as he receives a signal from Danny. There is this heartbeat sound that looms under the shot in a similar way to the bird’s decapitation in Hereditary, accompanied by sharp violin chords. 

There is a heartbeat motif in both Hereditary and The Shining, implemented in different ways. After Charlie gets caught playing with her toy during the test, the only noise you could hear is her heartbeat, pounding heavily as a precursor for the bird colliding into the window. Personally, I believe Hereditary was more direct with its silence in both of the scenes I highlighted. When Peter realizes he inadvertently killed his sister Charlie, the music cuts off immediately after the slam of the brakes and Charlie’s head impacts against the telephone pole. The internal sound of breathing is the underscore for the psychological trauma both the viewer and Peter are experiencing. Without any musical accompaniment, Peter’s trembling was effective because it pushes the horrifying image further and evokes a sympathetic reaction in the viewer. In The Shining, I found that when Mr. Hallorann is listening to the television, and the silence in the room is heavy and unwavering, you don’t know what to expect next. 

Conclusion

Released almost forty years apart, the films Hereditary and The Shining standout in the timeline of modern and contemporary psychological horror. They reflect and contrast in terms of its musical composition and the techniques used within their respective scores. From watching these films, I learned that they utilized musical techniques like the shepard tone, internal sound, and silence in order to add value to their scores.

sources:

Brunstad, Sarah. “Droning and Dread: How Hereditary Gets under Your Skin.” Tor.com, 19 Oct. 2021, https://www.tor.com/2021/10/19/hereditary-soundtrack-is-a-masterpiece-of-dread-by-composer-colin-stetson/. 

Gengaro, Christine Lee. “Forever and Ever and Ever: Reappraising the Score of The Shining.” Senses of Cinema, 7 Oct. 2020, https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2020/the-shining-at-40/reappraising-the-score-of-the-shining/. 

Goldowitz, Paul, and Ruby Gartenberg. “Colin Stetson Interview: Composer of Hereditary and Hulu's the First: Pop Disciple: Film Music & Music Supervision Interviews: Music in Media News.” Pop Disciple | Film Music & Music Supervision Interviews | Music in Media News, Pop Disciple, 15 Sept. 2019, https://www.popdisciple.com/interviews/colin-stetson.

Iken, Maggie. “A Conversation with ‘Hereditary’ Composer Colin Stetson.” Frightday, Frightday, 13 June 2018, https://www.frightday.com/a-conversation-with-hereditary-composer-colin-stetson/. 

Kattelman. (2022). The sound of evil: How the sound design of Hereditary manifests the unseen and triggers fear. Horror Studies, 13(1), 133–148. https://doi.org/10.1386/host_00050_1Lau, Melody. “How Colin Stetson Broke All the Rules and Created This Year's Scariest Film Score | CBC Music.” CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, 10 Apr. 2019, https://www.cbc.ca/music/read/how-colin-stetson-broke-all-the-rules-and-created-this-year-s-scariest-film-score-1.5042524. 

Martin, G. Neil. “(Why) Do You Like Scary Movies? A Review of the Empirical Research on Psychological Responses to Horror Films.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 10, 2019, pp. 2298–2298, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02298.

Reeves, Rachel. “Stanley Kubrick's the Shining: A Legacy of Soundtrack Perfection.” Nightmare on Film Street, 3 Jan. 2019, https://nofspodcast.com/terror-on-the-turntable-stanley-kubricks-the-shining-a-legacy-of-soundtrack-perfection. 

Riganas, Nick. “Hereditary.” IMDb, IMDb.com, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7784604/plotsummary#synopsis. 

Riganas, Nick. “The Shining.” IMDb, IMDb.com, 13 June 1980, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081505/plotsummary. 

Rogers, Jude. “'She Made Music Jump into 3D': Wendy Carlos, the Reclusive Synth Genius.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 11 Nov. 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/nov/11/she-made-music-jump-into-3d-wendy-carlos-the-reclusive-synth-genius. 

Schneck, Anthony. “The Story behind the Haunting, Unconventional Music of 'Hereditary'.” Thrillist, 8 June 2018, https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/hereditary-movie-score-colin-stetson-interview.