Rape was not explained to me. No one sat me down and told me what it was. When I was a young girl, I heard a news story about a rape in Central Park—the park my school took us to for physical education and recess, so I paid attention. The victim’s face was slashed during the attack—cut with a broken bottle, I think. So for the longest time, I used to think that being raped … [Read more...]
Ain’t We Femme?
This post is dedicated to all of the femmes! When I was a child, Easter was my favorite time of year. Every year, my mom always got me an Easter basket full of goodies. At church, we got to recite our Easter speeches in front of the whole congregation. And after the sermon, they would host an Easter egg hunt for the young folks. They even had a golden egg with money … [Read more...]
Living Inside the Contradictions: My Father’s Love and My Father’s Abuse
[Image description: Against a black background appear a number of words in blue, orange, and black. These words include, “Paradoxes, paradox, statements, contradiction, statement, used, saying group, necessarily, ambiguities, circularity, claim, question, describe, instance, leads, known, reference, veridical, science, situations, obviously, absurdities, self, puzzling, must, … [Read more...]
Ten Counterproductive Behaviors of Well-Intentioned People
This is a follow-up to my previous piece entitled Ten Counterproductive Behaviors of Social Justice Educators. The latter was written for folks who consider equity work as their core life purpose. I wrote Ten Counterproductive Behaviors of Well-Intentioned People for the folks who consider themselves good people invested in social justice and conversations around … [Read more...]
Black Women Save America, But Who Rallies For Black Women?: Why It’s Radical To Reclaim Self Love In a Country Trying To Kill You
In the aftermath of the Alabama Senate election at the head of 2018, Black women have had to remind folks that our primary objective is not in ‘saving the country from itself.” Saving ourselves from this country is also high on our list of priorities and has been so for a very long time. Superficial social media praise juxtaposed against the harsh realities that Black women … [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 … [Read more...]
5 Ways Speculative Fiction Fails to Represent Our Future and Why It’s Time to Fight Back
We are not being represented, even in a genre that lends itself to the anarchic. In the sharp, fast-paced new world of special effects, we seem capable of imagining and imaging the most fantastical ideas. Superheroes, dragons, clones, aliens, zombies, apocalypse -- all of these are possible in our media. We as a species, and especially within the far-reaching … [Read more...]
How My Time At Planned Parenthood Is My Own Personal Resistance Against Trump
The pain is something I have never felt before. It was quick, but it imprinted itself into my memory, possibly forever. I felt somewhat powerless, like I had no control over what was happening and I just had to take it. When it was over, it sunk in that this was going to last at least 4 years, and possibly a little longer. Nothing was more painful, than when I heard Donald J. … [Read more...]
Own Your Sh*t: 5 Ways to Navigate Your Partner’s Wealth During the Holidays
The holidays are emotionally challenging for many reasons, but they take on a unique toll on working-class folks who end up in relationships with a partner who comes from a middle or upper-class background. As someone who grew up relatively poor with a single-mom who is currently under-employed, I have a complicated relationship to Christmas, but that became all the more … [Read more...]
The Future Is Indigenous: Decolonizing Thanksgiving
Copyright, Truthout.org. Reprinted with permission. Last year, a video meme circulated prior to Thanksgiving, featuring YouTube personality Franchesca Ramsey humorously breaking down the actual history of the holiday. A wet blanket to her family's Thanksgiving dinner, Ramsey repudiates one by one the many sanitized Thanksgiving myths promoted in elementary schools, including … [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...]
7 Microaggressions Trans People Face in Health and Mental Healthcare Settings
This piece first appeared on the website, Lighthouse, and is reprinted here by permission. Lighthouse is a rapidly growing new startup that matches LGBTQ people with nearby, LGBTQ affirming therapists and doctors. We asked a gender nonconforming therapist how healthcare providers can become trans-competent and avoid unintentionally harming patients. Whether … [Read more...]
“You Deserve to Heal:” 4 Steps to Move Through Survivor’s Guilt
CN: sexual violence, abuse In many methods of healing from trauma, confronting shame is often central to the process. Free up shame, get out from under the blame placed on survivors, and healing is supposed to get easier. Yet when survivor’s guilt goes unaddressed, it’s easy to fall into the pattern of prioritizing other people’s needs over individual needs. Survivors … [Read more...]
