As Harvard University students kick off a new school year, they find themselves at the center of a heated debate about one of higher education’s longest-standing traditions: gender-segregated social life.
When Nesreen joined a running club in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, she was prepared to sweat—not just from physical exertion, but because she would be running in a long black dress and headscarf, as required by state law, in temperatures approaching 100°F. Beyond the blistering heat, the mother of four was worried for her personal safety. Associating with non-familial members of the opposite sex in public is forbidden by religious law, so each time she joined the pack of co-ed joggers, she was putting herself at risk.
As 19-year-old Saudi Arabian athlete Sarah Attar crossed the finish line of the 800m sprint at the London Olympics in 2012, an audience of 80,000 stood to applaud her. The crowd wasn’t congratulating Attar on victory—she had finished over half a minute behind competitors. Instead, spectators were responding to Attar’s historic presence as one of the first female athletes to represent Saudi Arabia in the Olympics. Because the Olympics involve competing in front of a mixed-gendered crowd, the country had previously banned women from attending. When Attar and her fellow team member Wojdan Shaherkani were allowed to compete, the public was awash in optimism about what their performance would mean for female athletics in the kingdom.
It would be nice to think that voters elect their representatives based on careful consideration of candidates’ policy proposals, qualifications and prior voting records. But the truth is that we often choose who to vote for based on immeasurable personal qualities like authenticity and charisma. There’s no doubt that character matters in politics—but it’s also true that innate prejudice can influence our perception of a candidate’s personality.
Comments posted on the Republican National Conventions’ YouTube live stream quickly devolved into an outpouring of racism, vulgarity and hate. Anonymous comments on the internet have never been all that nice—but these reach a new low.
Rather than simply signaling innocent pleasure, laughter can often be more complicated—conveying everything from anxiety to civility to spite. In fact, laughter can communicate to others sentiments we’d prefer remained secret.
Venting to friends, in the form of a rant, long text message, or string of expletives, can feel like the emotional equivalent of releasing a pressure valve–allowing negative energy to escape from our system.
