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...]
Fellow White Women: We Learned To Be Complicit With Oppression — Now We Must Become Brave
This article was originally published on louisaleontiades.com as "The Cowardice of White Women: Learning to Resist" and is republished with permission. Some questions you don’t expect to have to ask in your lifetime, let alone answer. But with the rise of Trumpian fascism, a question has consistently rattled around my white woman’s brain: At what point would I put my own life … [Read more...]
5 Ways Outdoor Recreation Is Inaccessible to Marginalized Folks
This article first appeared on Everyday Feminism under the title "Outdoor Reaction Isn't Free -- Why We Need to Stop Pretending It Is" and is reprinted by permission. When I spent a summer as a river guide, I met three people who’d abandoned their homes to live on the Rio Grande. One lived out of a bus, another in a tent, and the last in his station wagon. They spent their … [Read more...]
Quienes son tus amigos importa: por qué soy precavido de ser tu amigo cuando ninguno de tus amigos son marginados
Un día mientras trataba de resolver con vergüenza y acomplejado por mi tendencia a evaluar las clases de personas con las que se rodean las personas que son nuevas en mi vida. Estaba pensando en relación a los cuerpos, particularmente razas y gordura. Hasta ese momento tenia internalizado que era un comportamiento innecesario, prejuicioso e incluso superficial. Pero tuve una … [Read more...]
The Difficulty of Portraying Softness While Existing in a Brown Body
It is almost close to impossible to portray genuine softness within a cisheteropatriarchal capitalistic society without it becoming a commodity or lifestyle that can be marketed and sold to us. We are taught from an early age that our emotions hinder us. This is because our society as a whole thrives on an unrealistic portrayal of intimacy and love. We are taught that to be … [Read more...]
4 Covert Ways the Workplace Can Be Hostile
Workplaces can be sites of hostility – particularly for folks with marginalized identities. The same issues that occur outside work tend to show up inside of the workplace. There’s been substantial public dialogue addressing issues like sexual harassment, racial discrimination, wage gaps and problematic hiring practices. However, it’s also important to be able to identify the … [Read more...]
When Helping Turns Into Hovering: 6 Times Being an ‘Ally’ Can Make Things Worse
As a person with many identities that are marginalized in our society, being Afro-Latina, femme, and many others, I search for support within my communities, and at times outside of my communities. In these communities I have had to build a rapport with what we call an ‘ally.’ An ally is defined as, “combine or unite a resource or commodity with (another) for mutual … [Read more...]

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