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Awareness | Posted by Vicki S on 08/14/2017
Emma Sulkowicz performing ‘Mattress Project’
In July of this year, Columbia University settled alleged rapist Paul Nungesser’s lawsuit against the school for gender-based discrimination. Nungesser was accused of raping then-fellow Columbia student Emma Sulkowicz, who gained attention for her 2014 performance-art piece Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight).
Although Sulkowicz’s project itself gained a lot of media attention, the story behind it and her motivations for doing it were less popularized. Sulkowicz created Mattress Performance following Columbia University’s decision to not hold Nungesser responsible for sexually assaulting her. Sulkowicz had first gone to Columbia’s Office of Gender-Based and Sexual Misconduct and reported her assault on April 13, 2013 after learning that two other women had also allegedly been assaulted by the same person who she said raped her on the …
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Awareness | Posted by Julie Graves on 08/10/2017
The ban is discriminatory.
Historically, changes in military policies have been indicative of broader fights for social change in America. For example, the military’s desegregation in 1948 reflected the Civil Rights movement’s progress made around racial discrimination against African Americans, and the 2011 repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” a policy that banned openly gay citizens from serving in the military, reflected the progress the LGBT movement had made (in fact, gay marriage was legalized soon after). So in the wake of this progress, it was all the more upsetting when Trump declared a ban on transgender people serving in the military last Wednesday.
Though Trump claimed to have consulted with top military officials about this ban, General Joseph Dunford stated that he would not remove transgender people from the …
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Feminism | Posted by Roberta Nin Feliz on 08/9/2017
Black girls are seen as older and less innocent than their white counterparts
The results of a recently published Georgetown Law study that found Black girls experience “adultification”—or are seen as older and less innocent than their white counterparts—might be surprising to some, but certainly not to those in the Black community. While this study isn’t the first to validate the inequitable experiences of Black women or Blackness in general, this study reflects the specific experiences of Black girls.
Many black girls are familiar with being seen as more adult than our peers. Hearing comments like being told to “cover up” when I was going through puberty made me feel like I was older and more mature than my age. That perception of maturity gave me an awareness about …
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Feminism | Posted by Karla Majdancic on 08/7/2017
Support DACA.
After immigrant youth spent years relentlessly organizing and protesting against U.S. deportation laws, President Obama signed an executive order called Deferred Action for Children Act (DACA) in 2012. DACA was created to provide temporary deportation relief to eligible undocumented youth who had migrated to the United States as children. But those protected by DACA now fear its rescission due to the current administration’s toxic rhetoric surrounding immigrants—a fear most recently reiterated on July 20, when then-Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly told members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus that the Deferred Action for Children Act might be at risk.
This announcement notably came after the introduction of a bipartisan bill by Senators Durbin and Graham that would “provide Dreamers with a path to citizenship.” But despite the bill’s …
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Feminism | Posted by Dayton Uttinger on 08/2/2017
We need justice for survivors.
There are very few (if any) women who haven’t thought about it. We think about it as we walk to our cars after a night out, as we jog around the block after the sun’s been down for hours, as we watch our little sisters leave home. We clutch our keys between our fingers and tense our muscles.
One in six women has been raped, as have 1 in 33 men. The numbers are even more depressing for transgender, genderqueer, or non-conforming individuals. We tell ourselves that our friends and family could never be rapists, but studies show that rapists are much more likely to admit their crimes as long as the word “rape” is never used; they will admit to forcing their partner …
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Pop-Culture | Posted by Kayleigh Bolingbroke on 07/31/2017
Chester Bennington
Chester Bennington, the frontman of Linkin Park, was a rock legend, an important cultural icon, and a man who, like many, suffered from depression. On July 20, the 41-year-old took his own life.
Bennington, who was just 20 years old when Linkin Park was formed in 1996, spent much of his adult life in the spotlight—yet he never kept his struggle with depression a secret. In 2015 he opened up about his depression to music magazine Rock Sound: “I literally hated life and I was like, ‘I don’t want to have feelings. I want to be a sociopath. I don’t want to care what other people feel like. I want to feel nothing.’” He spoke openly about the root causes of his depression with Kerrang in …
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Feminism | Posted by Farha Khalidi on 07/26/2017
Urooj Arshad
Our government has a way of minimizing its destructive influence on the minorities of this nation by convincing us that we’re the problem—that we’re all out to get each other and everyone else—so we lose focus on the systemic oppression inflicted upon us by our highest-ranking officials and start to point fingers at each other, until we reach mutually assured destruction.
Take, for instance, the Muslim and LGBTQ+ communities in the United States. Both of these communities are marginalized in our conservative Christian society, and as such are pitted against each other. Urooj Arshad, founder of the Muslim Youth Leadership Council, told the FBomb that she believes the U.S. government is “bigoted towards the LGBT and Muslim communities, but tries to use the LGBT community as a proxy …
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Feminism | Posted by Kadin Burnett on 07/21/2017
Why do we assign genders at birth?
“Is it a boy or a girl?” everyone asks immediately upon learning of a pregnancy or birth. It’s a question that dictates the name parents give their baby, determines the color they paint the nursery, and even catalyzes the shade of powder for a viral gender reveal at baby showers. But one Canadian family recently rejected this tradition: eight months ago, Searyl Atli Doty was born to a non-binary transgender parent by the name of Kori Doty, who declined to assign the baby a gender.
Searyl Atli was born outside of the medical system and was issued a health document that did not specify gender. The issued health card (a document that …
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