Mi hermano es trabajador de la industria de servicios. Trabaja en un restaurante de comida rápida y hace todo tipo de tareas, desde recibir pedidos de clientes testarudos que piden cosas que no están en el menú hasta limpiar los enchastres que la gente deja en sus mesas al retirarse, limpiar baños y sacar la basura con un enjambre de moscas zumbándole en la cara. Todo por diez … [Read more...]
Self Love Isn’t Easy: 10 Difficult Things I Do To Practice Radical Self Love
Self-love is crucial for surviving and thriving in an oppressive society hellbent on making us feel like we’re wrong or not enough. But precisely because of this society, cultivating self-love can be difficult. As someone who has struggled with depression and anxiety, I know how much energy it can take just to get through the day. When you’re stuck treading water, self-love can … [Read more...]
Why White North Americans Need To Understand Ourselves as “Settlers”
If you’re white, this land was not made for you and me. Like many white North Americans, I grew up with a vague idea of where my ancestors came from. In my case, they were scattered across Western Europe, and I was fascinated by what their lives must have been like. But I had no real connection to what it means, culturally, to be Irish or Scottish or British or German or … [Read more...]
Feminist Rage: 4 Ways White Feminists Continue To Silence Women of Color’s Anger at Racism
Women are angry, and rightfully so. I only have to write the words “Brett Kavanaugh” — a series of events so deeply disturbing in their unmasking of elite frat boy rape culture that I stopped my compulsive news watching for three weeks after — to convey how deeply US women are under attack by the Trump regime. As white women in particular are justifiably encouraging each other … [Read more...]
10 Ways To Check Your Privilege With Fast Food and Other Service Workers
My brother is a service industry worker. He works at a hamburger restaurant doing all sorts of tasks, from taking orders from testy customers who want to order items that don’t exist on the menu, to cleaning up the messes people leave behind on their tables, to cleaning bathrooms and taking out garbage as swarms of flies buzz around his face. All for ten dollars an hour. Many … [Read more...]
Feeling Traumatized and Gaslit by American Gun Violence? You’re Not Alone
Note: This article was originally published on June 18, 2018. We are republishing it as a statement reflecting how evergreen and important of a crisis mass shootings continue to be in the United States. On Saturday, March 24th I traveled from my home in Boston to Washington, D.C. for the March for Our Lives, doing my part to support my country’s youth in stopping the … [Read more...]
Summer Is Not for Street Harassment — Regardless of Gender, Race, or Size
Ah, summer. Enduring six months of a freezing New England hellscape in order to re-enter the world of soft, swirling sand dunes and jeweled salty ocean waves. The perfume of sunscreen. Living in the city, battling the humidity as I take my dog to the park. Existing as a curvy, white, queer femme, cisgender woman. Feeling men’s eyes travel over my ass and my boobs as I walk down … [Read more...]
#CloseTheCamps: No 4th of July While Children Die
On July 2nd, I participated in a #CloseTheCamps rally demanding that the illegal concentration camps for undocumented children and their families -- with 71% of migrants being held in for-profit facilities as of November 2017 -- be shut down. I stood on the sidewalk of a local park with about 60 other protesters as we held signs and rattled noisemakers, chanting and begging our … [Read more...]
Let’s Stop Acting as if Queers Need To Look a Certain Way To Be Queer
In my city, there’s a monthly queer-women-and-company dance event called Flannel Takeover. It’s supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek reference to the visuals of being a queer woman: someone who wears lots of flannel. Line up, ladies and trans gents and non-binary folks! Grab a beer, don your snapback, aaand let’s perpetuate the lazy stereotype that queer woman equals masculine. A … [Read more...]
Cultivating Interdependence: 3 Ways To Center Friendships While Being in a Committed Romantic Relationship
I’ll admit it: I’m guilty of codependency in my romantic relationships. The why has many answers, from battling debilitating anxiety and depression for the past two years that have made it hard to leave my house, to the fact that most of my friends have moved away from the city I live in. As I shifted careers and began solely working from home, my isolation increased, as did my … [Read more...]
The 2018 Midterm Elections Showed: The Future Is Women of Color
The recent US congressional midterm elections were a resounding success when it came to electing candidates better representing the country’s remarkable diversity based on gender, race, class, sexuality, and religion. Despite the very real problems of gerrymandering, voter suppression, and outright lying by the Republican party (part of their reactionary strategy to respond to … [Read more...]
How Conservatives Are Using Cis Women’s Bodies To Destroy Trans Women’s Lives
Content warning: references to sexual assault; graphic transphobic violence With very few exceptions, almost every woman and non-binary person closest to me has been a survivor of sexual violence, often committed by people in their own families. The perpetrators of these crimes have overwhelmingly been cisgender men, correlating with national data demonstrating … [Read more...]
Brett Kavanaugh and #MeToo: What Happened to You Matters
Content warning: discussion of sexual violence and rape culture When I was eight years old, a neighborhood boy who was about 16 was over at my house watching the 1968 version of Romeo & Juliet with me on the VCR in my living room. Apparently my dad let us watch it, something my mom would later excoriate him for, coming from a place of bitter knowledge that women, … [Read more...]
6 Reasons Being Angry Doesn’t Mean You’re Hateful: It Means You Value Your Boundaries
I’ve learned a lot of things about anger in my life. Growing up, I learned to be there for other people when they were angry, helping soothe their unruly emotions, or at least bearing witness to them, packing away my own emotions until they felt like a choking, gnawing grief I couldn’t shake. (There wasn’t enough room for my grief, for my anxiety at being parentified… I … [Read more...]
