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involvement FIRST WAVE 14

SECOND WAVE

Self Love & Care

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Dependence

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Anti-Vote

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Not Empowering

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To affirm, value, and validate yourself amidst daily onslaught 22

Don’t expect a statuette to change her work ethic

Judging women’s choices and internalized misogyny

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Hidden Figures

It compounds Black excellence with Black Girl Magic

Collection of posters mocking the suffragettes

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Viola Davis

Blue Neighborhood

Without losing a piece of me How do I get to heaven?

Same are natural, some aren’t. Both are okay.

Handle with Care Modern day sexism and some of the pressures

THIRD WAVE 56

Protest Posters

The People need to come together under a new symbol of hope 62

Firsts

The victories were a bright spot for Democrats in a dark election. 68

Glass Ceiling

Thanks to you, it’s got about 18 million cracks in it. 74

Right to Bike

Women in Iran are being denied this basic freedom.

FOURTH WAVE 82

Asexuality

I have decided to identify in this way because it means something to me

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First Woman Rabbi

Ordained in 1935, Regina Jonas died at Auschwitz. Now, she’s being honored. 92

Invisibility

Learning to live with and through Arthritis

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Beyonce & Grammys

Beyonce usef for ratings and robbed of something she deserved



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features

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Without Us

The protests were still a success, but activists need to improve inclusion as we battle Trump 114

Backwards

Donal Trump has many famous quotes, but nothing can top the infamous “grab them by the pussy” line. 124

White Out

It’s more than just diversity that “Ghost in the Shell” is getting wrong



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Leader’s MOTIVATION We cannot ignore the fact that women’s voices are still consistently marginalized. But to hold that feminism belongs only to women, or that only women can be feminists, creates brash assumptions, ostracizes enormous number of supporters and implies that anyone who isn’t a woman cannot support the same ideas that we as women strive for everyday. How are we to advocate for women’s equality, justice and optimism if we are being prejudiced about who can advocate? To deny someone the right or opportunity to act under a feminist label simply because of their gender identity or sexuality goes against the rudimentary ideals of the cause. Since everyone has his or her own right to define “feminism,” stating that the word itself is not all-inclusive is counterintuitive. Each individual, each person, decides to put their own definition to the word “feminism.” Some honor the word, others use it as an insult. No matter how an individual chooses to utilize the term, I think the freedom to make the word yours is the beauty of feminism. Feminism doesn’t define, mold or break, rather, it bends. There is feminism in all of us, whether we choose to embrace it or not. With campaigns like HeForShe that “brings together one half of humanity in support of the other half of humanity, for the entirety of humanity,” we are now taking proactive measures to bridge the gaps between women and men that have divided us for centuries.

in son b o R e n i l e u Jac q Editor-in-Chief Twitter: @JackieRoby

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Determined

activists

Writer

Kelly Hayes

Photographer

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Queer Indigenous direct action trainer and a cofounder of the direct action collective Lifted Voices. She is community relations associate and a contributing writer at Truthout and her photography is featured in the “Freedom and Resistance� exhibit of the DuSable Museum of African American History. Twitter: @kellyhais

Monica Simpson

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Monica Raye Simpson is the Executive Director of SisterSong, the National Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective. Monica has organized extensively against human rights violations, the prison industrial complex, racism, and violence. She was also recently named a New Civil Rights Leader by Essence Magazine. Instagram: @MoSimpson

Illustrator

Bekky Shin

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She works to build trans power and worker power, always building connections between the labor movement and the movement for trans liberation. She is a writer, organizer, and is prepared to do whatever it takes to get free. Instagram: @BekkyShin

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Writer

Zoe Samudzi

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Zoe is an doctoral student in Sociology living in Oakland. She studies whiteness and structural violence as they both drive poor health outcomes in ethnic and gender minority communities. Instagram: @ZoeSam




1 st

WAVE Fem 101

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Self Love & Care

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Gap Blame

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Stay at Home

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Tone Policing

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First Wave / Changing

Determined

self

Love & Care

To affirm, value, and validate yourself— to love yourself—amidst this daily onslaught of disparaging messages is not only political but also radical By SooJin Pate

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ove, a feeling that most people think that flows outward towards some person or some thing: “I love my mom,” “I love chocolate,” or “I love my partner.” This is not the kind of love I think of when I think about the radical possibilities of love. In a society that socializes women (especially Third World women and women of color) to put the needs and desires of everyone else ahead of their own, this kind of love that flows outward can leave those most in need of loving consideration in the dust. Literally. Women of color feminists like Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, bell hooks, and June Jordan point out how the various racist, heterosexist, capitalist, and patriarchal forces that organize our society wreak havoc on the minds, bodies, and souls of women of color and Third World women. Indeed, racism and heterosexism kills. It not only kills dreams, but it also kills bodies. But there is a salve, an elixir

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to the poison of the –isms that target our bodies and souls. That healing medicine is self-love. Love, redefined as self-love, has the power to manifest dreams, to heal broken spirits, to rejuvenate fatigued bodies. And when self-love is expressed through self-care, miracles can happen. Living in a society that constantly marginalizes you, invalidates your experiences and emotions, and fosters insecurity, it becomes an uphill battle to love yourself. Based on the messages that we receive from all corners of society (from politics to economics, from media to schools), we are taught to hate ourselves. To affirm, value, and validate yourself, to love yourself, amidst this daily onslaught of disparaging messages is not only political but also radical. It is radical because you’re not supposed to survive. It is radical because you’re not supposed to exceed the boundaries and limitations that society has set for you.



Determined

It is radical because you’re not supposed to see self-love and self-care as worthwhile practices. But when you prioritize your needs, your feelings, and your desires ahead of others, that is precisely what happens: you find yourself worthy and deserving of care. The goodness that you pour to others becomes rerouted inward to your own self. Love turned inward heals the scrapes and wounds you’ve accumulated through daily living. Love turned inward weaves a cocoon of protection, where you can recharge, rejuvenate, and restore. Daily Affirmations

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t every turn, there are external forces vying for your attention. Living in a media-ridden, technologydriven society, messages from the outside world seek to occupy our minds. In addition, we have voices that are not our own (e.g., family members, friends, intimate partners, strangers, supervisors, etc.), trying to control what we think, how we think, and how to respond to what we think. Oftentimes, their “advice” and “feedback” act as barriers that limit us from achieving our full capacity. Their words of caution or flat out rejection of our ideas form a dam inside us, blocking our ability to dream and imagine otherwise. It is precisely because of these outside forces that usurp our thoughts and feelings that we must affirm and validate ourselves on a daily basis. Daily affirmations counter the messages that disparage us and cause us to doubt ourselves. These affirmations can be any phrase that empowers you. Sometimes, the simpler the sentiment, the more powerful it is. For example,



First Wave / Changing

Determined

a friend of mine created this affirmation, “I am loveable.” Another simple yet powerful affirmation: “I am beautiful just the way I am.” As a women of color professor, I have been “presumed incompetent” by administration, staff, faculty, and students over the years simply because of the body I inhabit. “I am worthy of speaking my truth.” Here’s another one I created that helps me endure the daily cuts and bruises from institutional racism and sexism: “I don’t need the system to validate me anymore. I can validate my own self.” The purpose of daily affirmations is to create a “No Trespassing Zone” in your mind and energy field that blocks out negative messages that harm and sap your spirit. Customize a phrase or saying that speaks to your own Daily Goals

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very day, we wake up with things to do. Sometimes our to-do list is in our head or written down. Sometimes our to-do list is so engrained in us that we go on autopilot the moment the alarm goes off. We take the time to help other people achieve their goals on a daily basis—whether we are meeting the goals of the company we work for, helping our children meet their educational goals, or fulfilling the expectations that go unspoken within our relationships. We put energy into fulfilling the goals of others all the time. When do you make time for your own goals? Setting daily goals for yourself that center your needs and desires is another act of self-love and self-care. I have struggled for years with the concept of self-care. When I first heard the phrase, my colonized mind immediately thought, “That’s so selfish!” After realizing that my response was a reflection of my socialization in patriarchy, I began to let the idea of self-care penetrate my mind and body. In so doing, other questions emerged: What is self-care? How do you do it? What makes feel rejuvenated? What helps me get out of my funk? In answering these questions, I began to identify activities that made me feel like I was being cared for. From

Living in a society that constantly marginalizes you, invalidates your experiences and emotions, and fosters insecurity, it becomes an uphill battle to love yourself.

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this list, I created daily goals that have also doubled as my daily affirmations. Here they are: I take good care of myself by journaling every night. I take good care of myself by doing daily affirmations—in the morning and at night. I take good care of myself by identifying ten things I’m proud of and grateful for every day. I take good care of myself by sticking to these goals. Since January 1, 2014, I have been doing all four of these things. I haven’t missed a day. Even when I was sick. And I have never felt more grounded or peaceful in my life—despite the fact that I’m about to lose my job in two months with no future prospects in sight. Some days are harder than others. To be sure, after a twelve-hour workday dealing with institutional racism, the last thing I want to do at 11:30 p.m. is journal and make a list of ten things I’m proud of and grateful for. But I do. And here’s why. On the days when I feel especially tired and down, I pull out my magic trick. Here it is: So make a specific goal for yourself. The keyword here is specific. It’s not effective to say, “I’m going to take care of myself,” or “I’m going to exercise.” Be specific about when, how, and how



First Wave / Changing

Determined

I am loveable often. Also, it’s more empowering to frame the goal in a positive way; begin with “I am…” rather than “I am not…” For example, “I am not going to eat sugar today” could be rephrased into “I am going to eat whole foods at every meal.” Then after you write down your goal(s), create a mental trick that will keep you on track in times of fatigue, depression, guilt, or sadness. You need to plan for a “bad” day because you will have one. So be proactive and create a mind game that you can access on those days you feel down. Conjure up a situation in which the only Practice Empowering Interpretations

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ecause the various –isms in our society have led to oppressive conditions for historically marginalized communities, it is easy to let painful circumstances and events determine our attitudes and beliefs about each other, ourselves, and our lives. While there are many things that we cannot control, what we can control is our interpretations of and responses to the daily assaults of life. But first, we need to distinguish fact from fiction. According to personal transformation expert Debbie Ford, facts are events observed from the perspective of an outsider; it is observation without judgment. Fiction is the story we create about the fact. And oftentimes, the story we create reflects unresolved emotions from our past (e.g., pain, fear, hurt, guilt, etc.).

Here’s an example from my own life. Fact: I have been unable to secure a permanent academic position as a professor. Fiction: Rejection. The story of my life. Why am I constantly rejected? I guess I’m not as smart as I think I am. I am such a failure. This is the fiction that I’ve been carrying with me for nearly six years. Given this story, you can imagine the shame I have suffered, year after year, applying to academic jobs to no avail. Unfortunately, this fiction is also the story that many unemployed or underemployed Ph.D.s tell themselves. I know that I’m not the only one suffering in this job market, but this fact doesn’t make me feel any better. What did make me feel better was transforming my fiction into an empowering interpretation. Rather than allowing my fiction to determine my reality, I created an empowering reinterpretation of the fact. Ford recommends that you create

I can validate my own self

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First Wave / Choices

Determined

Dependence If you’ve judged women who don’t take the being a “strong, independent woman” route, that might be your internalized misogyny showing up. By Ronnie Ritchie

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First Wave / Choices

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First Wave / Choices

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First Wave / Back Then

Determined

ANTI-Vote A collection of cartoons and posters mocking the suffragette campaigns for votes for women. By Therese Oneill

George Washington asks if he saved his country for women to be able to vote.

Their campaigns were largely peaceful and dignified... at least by 21st century standards. 30

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hroughout history, there were people who did not want women to vote. Women would work, they would pay taxes, they would technically be considered citizens... but voting was for men. In America, when the right to vote was extended to include all races, all social positions, and all incomes, women were still not included. It didn’t matter if a man was illiterate, had been to jail, or if he was the town drunk. He could vote, and a woman, no matter who she was, could not. Women suffragists (suffragettes) began campaigning in democratic countries all over the world to change this, starting in the mid-19th century. Their campaigns were largely peaceful

and dignified... at least by 21st century standards. But by 19th century standards, these women were abhorrent and indecent, making fools of themselves by demanding to be treated like men. One of the most notable things about the arguments put forth by the antisuffragette movement was how weak its position was. Anti-suffragette arguments relied heavily on emotional manipulation and downright



First Wave / Back Then

Determined

Sometimes ugly, sometimes violent, they demonstrate the attitudes and fears of those who felt the world would go to shambles if women had the same voting rights as men While the wife at home is depicted as beautiful, the suffragist is ugly.

hateful nastiness. Humor was a much-used weapon against suffragettes. They were easy to depict as embittered old maids, brutal scolds, and cigar-smoking transvestites. August 18 will mark the 93rd anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which guaranteed American women the right to vote. In commemoration, we present a selection of anti-suffragette cartoons. And for an even more entertaining look at the fight for women’s suffrage, watch the fantastic educational tribute to both suffragettes and Lady Gaga, Bad Romance, by Soomo Publishing. These postcards and images were popular during the suffrage movement, and depict the views of those who opposed women’s right to vote. Sometimes ugly, sometimes violent, they demonstrate the attitudes and fears of those who felt the world would go to shambles if women had the same rights as men. The struggle for the right to vote did not end in 1920. African-American men and women were still denied their rights until the 1960s, but I have not included anti-civil rights posters because of their horrifically racist imagery.

Go Online! See a full album of anti-suffragette and anti-civil posters www.determined.com

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The only problem was that the woman didn't find a husband, and turned into a suffragette.


ARE YOU BEACH BODY READY?


First Wave / Bashing

Determined

Nikkie heard from girls who were ashamed to say they loved makeup, so she made a video using makeup on half her face.

not EMPOWERING The natural-at-any-cost movement excludes women who want or need bras and makeup, and guilting those who do more than brush our teeth in the morning is a step back for all By Holly Scheer

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First Wave / Bashing

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elling women that they need to be comfortable without makeup or bras isn’t empowering, and ignores that most women don’t fit the narrow normative beauty standards of our culture. There’s more to underwear than just a sexy surprise under our clothes, and makeup isn’t just a splash of color on the lips. Makeup and underwear have actual, concrete purposes. Remember when TLC had Stacy and Clinton on “What Not To Wear” to tell us that looking pretty didn’t mean the absence of comfort, and that women of all sizes and shapes could look fabulous, not just those with the figure du jour? USA Today has asked just this in their article titled, “Do the braless and makeup-less trends exclude some women?” Worth considering especially are the women interviewed who describe how the natural, unpadded, and unstructured bralettes so popular in fashion right now are physically uncomfortable for more buxom women, and that forgoing makeup might be easy with naturally flawless skin but it’s a whole different story when

Toofaced teamed up with Nikkie to create this limited edition collection to celebrate the transformative power of makeup.

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Determined

Women don’t need to be like men to be wonderful. you have facial scars or adult acne. Advertising feeds us a steady diet of airbrushed fake perfection that the models themselves can’t ever match, so how is the average woman supposed to mesh the #freethenipple movement and her own desires just to look nice (and to be able to run down the stairs without pain)? Amazing skin care can allow many women to go makeup-free and still feel beautiful. Of course that’s a good thing. Other women, no matter what kind of retinol and astringents they use, will never feel confident without masking their spots, scars, wrinkles, and other blemishes. Shaming them for that is simply wrong. Beauty isn’t just something women strive for to impress the men in their lives. Many, many women don’t consider that their top motivation at all. Rather, it’s something we want for ourselves. It’s wanting our mental images of ourselves to match the reality. The health at every size movement, a group of people discussing social issues about weight and health, has pushed forward many discussions. Possibly the single most worthwhile idea in those discussions is that many body types are lovely. Women are short, tall, thin, or heavy, and they have breasts that don’t always fit some catchy Victoria’s Secret ad campaign. Embracing womanhood means embracing all of this. It means celebrating women who like swishy skirts that twirl around



First Wave / Bashing

our legs, and women who feel most stylish in a killer pair of jeans. It means acknowledging that a mean contour is talent, not deception, and that a slick of lipstick can be a confidence boost. Lindy West, an author and fat-acceptance activist, says these trends are “establishing a cultural beauty standard that is deeply exclusionary. Small is great. Big is great. All bodies are good bodies, and all bodies deserve options and respect.” She’s right. Womanhood isn’t about how you look or dress or do your makeup, it is an intrinsic and wonderful part of each and every woman. The standard should widen to accept that it isn’t anti-woman or anti-feminist to wake up and put yourself together. There’s more to style than lounge pants and shirts that are totally sheer. Tucking your sweatpants into Uggs and hiding your face behind a massive pair of sunglasses or a venti Starbucks doesn’t scream self-love. Admiring inner beauty doesn’t have to be at the cost of shunning outer beauty. Braless fashion isn’t anti-consumerism, it’s pushing the consumer to need a whole different line of clothing and personal care items. Millennials might be going braless, but this trend isn’t actually freeing women from scrutiny and pressures about their bodies. Nor does this address the changes that age and motherhood bring to the female form, since so many millennials aren’t at that stage yet.

Determined

Nikkie releases YouTube videos where she shows herself off applying makeup ad how she does it.

Embracing womanhood means embracing all of this. It means celebrating women who like swishy skirts that twirl around our legs, and women who feel most stylish in a killer pair of jeans. The natural-at-any-cost movement excludes women who want or need bras and makeup, and forcing the rest of us to feel guilty that we do more than brush our teeth in the morning is a step back for all women. Women don’t need to be like men to be wonderful. We’re awesome, all on our own. Women can own being feminine and doing all of the special, unique things that make us distinct from men. Put on that lipstick, buy that bra, and wear those heels. Or don’t. There’s room in womanhood for all of us.

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2

nd WAVE

40

Viola Davis

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Blue Neighborhood

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Hidden Figures

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Culture

Handle with Care

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Determined

ViOLa DaVIS Even if Davis wins the Oscar, don’t expect a statuette to change her work ethic. By Bethonie Butler

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iola Davis became the first black woman to receive three Academy Award nominations with her nod for a supporting role in “Fences,” based on August Wilson’s Tony Award-winning play. Davis is no stranger to making history. In 2015, she became the first black woman to win an Emmy for a lead actress in a drama series for her role as complicated law professor Annalise Keating in “How to Get Away With Murder.” “You cannot win an Emmy for roles that simply are not there,” she pointedly declared in her acceptance speech, which went viral. Davis, who already won a Golden Globe for her “Fences” role, is a favorite to win the Oscar — and she’s known for giving awards show speeches that resonate. After her own emotional acceptance speech at the Globes ceremony, Davis got attention for her remarks introducing Meryl Streep, who received the lifetime achievement award and gave a resounding speech of her own. “You make me proud to be an artist,” Davis told Streep, who also made history Tuesday with her 20th Oscar nomination. “You make me feel that what I have in me — my body, my face, my age — is enough.” The admiration is mutual. Davis got her first Oscar nod for a brief but scene-stealing appearance (opposite Streep) in the 2008 film “Doubt.” While accepting the Screen Actors Guild Award for best actress, Streep called her co-star “gigantically gifted.” “My God, somebody give her a movie!” Streep said. Davis got her second Oscar nod in 2012 for her role as a maid in the Southern period drama “The Help,” based on Kathryn Stockett’s best-selling novel. In a recent conversation with the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, the actress revealed that she “had a lot of issues” with the film. “I knew it was a best-selling book and I knew it would change my career,” Davis said, adding that she “felt it was an important story.”

Viola Davis and her Golden Globe Award



Second Wave / Outstander

“I absolutely love the premise,” she continued. “I love the fact that Skeeter [the aspiring writer played by Emma Stone] said I am going to write a story from the maid’s perspective of what it feels like to work with these white women — operative term meaning the maid’s perspective. I don’t feel like it was from our perspective. That’s the problem I had with it. I had it from the very beginning.” While detailing her frustrations

Determined

with the book-turned-film, Davis revealed that a line that was cut from a scene featuring Clark and her fellow maid, Minny (Octavia Spencer, who won the best supporting actress Oscar), preparing food for a party. “Minny says, ‘Well, I

Davis is no stranger to making history gotta go out there and serve some food,” Davis recalled. “I said, ‘Yeah, you serving crackers to the crackers.’ Cut! And it was cut because they felt it was too mean. But there was no problem with the white characters saying ‘n—, n—, n—.’” Davis felt it was unrealistic for the black maids, who were subjected to substandard wages and constant derision, to avoid speaking harshly about their employers. “So it was not telling the story,” she added. “It just wasn’t.” Davis has spoken highly of “Fences,” which is nominated for best picture and best screenplay. After her nomination was announced, Davis thanked the Academy for “recognizing this extraordinary, important film and my work in it.” She also thanked her co-star Denzel Washington, who directed and co-produced the film. Washington is up for best leading actor which, along with the best picture nod, brings his Oscar nomination total to eight, the most of any black actor. He won best supporting actor for the 1990 film “Glory” and best leading actor for “Training Day” in 2002. In stark contrast with last year’s #OscarsSoWhite protests, black actors are well-represented among this year’s nominees. Davis is nominated alongside two other black women — “Moonlight” star Naomie Harris, and Spencer, who won the best supporting actress in 2012 for “The Help” and is nominated for her role in “Hidden Figures,” the film about black female mathematicians working at NASA in the 1960s. Even if Davis wins the Oscar, don’t expect a statuette to change her work ethic. “Every time I start a job, I always have the Viola Davis as Rose in “Fences” on Broadway.

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Second Wave / At the Theater

Determined

HidDeN FiGUReS It compounds Black excellence with Black Girl Magic By Javanna Plummer

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n short, womanism is Black feminism, making a womanist a Black feminist. She, the womanist, believes in the ideologies of feminsim but acknowledges the limitations of the feminist movement – that was structured to benefit white, middle-classed women. When it comes to Hidden Figures, this struggle was brought to the spotlight. Not only were the three women featured super talented and insanely smart, but they were oppressed for the mere fact of not being white and male. Katherine Johnson, played by the beautiful Taraji P. Henson, goes to start her new job as a computer and one of her male co-workers hands her a trash can and tells her it wasn’t taken out the night before. Throughout the movie, this character is a pessimist, a composite character designed to reflect the intersection of sexism and racism, which is what womanism seeks to expose.

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Notwithstanding these racial and patriarchal barriers, Johnson went on to compute some very important calculations that helped the USA launch a man into space. In the movie, she had to walk a mile across the campus because there was no bathroom “for her” on the side that she worked on, she offended her co-workers when she just touched their pot, and she had to defend her honor as a woman and as a Black woman at every turn. Her pivotal scene was when she finally called her co-workers out on their prejudices. She got reprimanded for taking 45 minute breaks every day. Her boss wondered what she could possibly be doing for 45 minutes every day. She told him directly that she was simply trying to use the restroom. This exemplified the attitude of the times. In the trailer, we see the NASA director (Johnson’s boss) knocking down the “colored” bathroom sign because



Second Wave / At the Theater

he, like any rational person, believes that the segregationist mindset is ridiculous. To Katherine’s right stands a poised Dorothy Vaughan, played by the seasoned vet Octavia Spencer. She was the director of the “colored” computers for NASA but not paid or given the title of director. At first, she brings a complaint to Vivian Mitchell, her supervisor, and Mitchell tells Vaughan in not so many words that it’s not going to happen. Frustrated, Vaughan decides to take action. She pays a visit to a local library to check out a book about coding called Fortran. The snarky librarian informs Vaughan that she’s in the wrong section – because segregation is still being enforced – and Vaughan responds that she’s looking for a book that’s not in “her” section (the colored section). The librarian replies that that’s just the way it is and Vaughan and her children are subsequently

They were oppressed for the mere fact of not being white and male.

Determined

Real Life Hidden Figures Adam Kirby Youngest Mensa member. Scored an 141 on the Stanford-Binet IQ test

Tony Hansberry II Developed a suture method that decreases hospital stay & increases efficiency during operations for hysterectomies at 14.

Arzu-Embry Amongst the youngest to attend college. Entered Chicago State Univ. at 11. Received her Bachelors at 14 and Masters at 16.

Gabrielle Turnquest Youngest in English legal system to be admitted to the bar at 18.

Katherine Johnson Child prodigy. Admitted to college at 15 and went on to have a career at Nasa as a physicist & mathematician.

Hadiyah-Nicole Green removed from the library. While on (the back The first to work out how to deliver of) the bus, Vaughan pulls out the Fortran nanoparticles into cancer cells exclusively, book and her sons see that she’s “stolen” it. so that a laser could be used to remove Vaughan asserts that she is a taxpayer and that them, and then successfully carry out library is endowed by tax money, so you cannot her treatment on living animals. steal what you already own. This book becomes essential in Vaughan’s role at NASA. After reading the book, she sneaks into the IBM room and helps NASA get their IBM technology off the ground, which can compute thousands of calculations per second. To manage the technology, NASA would need a team of people, so Vaughan brings her women from the colored section. In the photo below, a stylist Janelle Monáe sits at the edge of the desk, in character for Mary Jackson. Like Johnson and Vaughan, Jackson too played a pivotal role in NASA’s launch. She was a third human computer who had dreams of being an engineer and accomplished those dreams in spite of barriers. One of her important scenes is when a man asks her if she would have dreams of being an engineer if she were a white male. She replies that she wouldn’t have to; she would already be one. Jackson’s journey entails standing before a judge and asking him to allow her to be the first Black student at a local segregated high school – the only high school offering the prerequisite classes she needs to become an engineer. The cast of Hidden Figures honored John Glenn, a war hero, astronaut and former Democratic U.S. Senator. Her fire and her desire, (not a Drake reference), lead to her breaking barriers for women and especially Black women. She and her contemporaries, including the nameless ones, became the voice of Black women’s empowerment. They are essentially the voice of womanism we need.

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Second Wave / Record Player

Determined

blue

NeIGHBORHOOD Without losing a piece of me How do I get to heaven? By Nathan Jake

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For so many young gay people, to engage with something that’s actually relatable to them is either impossible or quite rare. This media representation can normalise your feelings and show you that you’re not alone. Just the sheer relatability of Troye Sivan’s music on Blue Neighbourhood will have a profound impact. On the album, Troye covers many aspects of the young gay experience, from the good to the bad, and even the fact that he’s singing about boys at this young age is so refreshing. Wild is a normal pop song about love, just about a boy and even with no explicit mention it shows the normality of it all. Love songs can be about boys, girls or anyone and that’s fine. The track for him. is just so absurdly cute I can’t quite cope. Then there’s Heaven, the most honest song I’ve ever heard touch on the subject of coming out, though, that’s not particularly hard because to hear a song about it is rare – which doubles as another reason why this one is so special. Heartbreakingly real lyrics like “trying to

sedate my mind in its cage and numb what I see” and “this voice inside has been eating at me,” take me back to the hell of that initial struggle and I know I’m not alone in that. These lyrics can normalise the way young gay people are feeling and help kids to see that the way they feel is totally normal and they’re not alone. Now sure, there are other openly gay pop singers, but they’re just not as young or accessible as Troye Sivan is to his fan base, and more importantly, people who aren’t in his fan base. Every time his music receives airplay or his music videos are shown on TV he brings the ‘normalcy of gay’ to people. Lady Gaga and Katy Perry throwing some gays in a music video is all well and good but what Troye does is authentic and refreshing. When I was coming to terms with my sexuality, the only openly gay male pop star I saw was Adam Lambert, and his sexuality proved to be so controversial in the US, he couldn’t even have a male love interest in his music videos. Troye shows that we’re past that and we can only be getting better. Representation and that feeling of belonging is so important, especially here in Australia where the proposed plebiscite on equal marriage is being pushed by our politicians. The plebiscite will result in a brutal ‘no’ campaign which will subject young Australian LGBT kids to the hatred of the anti-gay community on a scale we haven’t seen before and it’s small things like this album which could make all the difference inside the heads of these vulnerable young people. If I had this album and Troye Sivan’s existence when I was about 15 or 16 I would have been a much more comfortable kid and I am ecstatic that gay youth or people of any age have him right now.

Go Online! Listen to a selection of Troye’s songs from Blue Neighborhood www.determined.com



Second Wave / Creativity Flow

Determined

HANDLE WITH

care The photos aim to capture modern day sexism and some of the pressures that women face in society today By Rora Blue

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y dad first introduced me to feminism when I was a teenager. He bought me the book Full Frontal Feminism. Since sexism is something that I experienced frequently growing up, I really connected with the themes in the book. I became extremely passionate about sexism and women’s issues. Last spring I decided to turn that passion into art. I was taking a women’s studies class and I felt inspired to speak out about the sexism that I have experienced. I wanted to give other women a platform to speak out as well. I decided to make a six part photo series titled Handle With Care. Handle With Care series explores sexist comments that are used frequently today. Some of the phrases I used are things I have been told during my life, others are comments that other women have submitted to me. The photos aim to capture modern day sexism and some of the pressures that women face in society today. A striking red color is used throughout the series to evoke emotion within the viewer. I wanted to use a very bold and striking color to make a statement. The color red is also associated with women during their period, making its prominence throughout the series especially relevant. I titled the series Handle With Care because people often perceive me as fragile since I am small and since I am a woman. I frequently have heavy objects taken away from me because people think I can’t carry them on my own when in reality I more than adequately can. Titling the series Handle With Care me pushing back against that assumption. I hope that Handle With Care will encourage conversation amongst all people. I want the comment section of the photos to be a place for women to speak up about the sexism that they have experienced. I also want men to join the conversation and talk about these issues. I think that the more people that are talking about sexism the better. Handle With Care is my way of contributing to the conversation.

Rora encouraged people to leave comments on her Instagram with other sexist experiences.

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"You hit like a girl," "You're pretty, but you should smile more," "You were drunk, what did you expect," "He is mean to you because he likes you."

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Protest Posters

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Firsts

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Glass Ceiling

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Right to Bike

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POSTeRS

We the People need to come together under a new symbol of hope By Shepard Fairey

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aron Huey and I have teamed up again for a series called WE THE PEOPLE; an effort meant to champion an appreciation for ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity because, hey- the people aren’t one people, the people are ALL people. This series of 3 new graphics were commissioned by Aaron and the Amplifier Foundation for a Kickstarter campaign. We the People need to come together under a new symbol of hope, one that reminds us that OUR America is one of equal humanity, and does not demean or discriminate. We need you to help us take back this narrative. The sale of these prints on Kickstarter will fund the purchase of full page ads in the Washington Post on Inauguration Day, to be distributed to 600,000 people. Free speech in public spaces has rarely been as stifled as it will be for this inauguration, but no administration can tell you you can’t buy a newspaper and hold it up above your head! Beyond the ads in the Post, Amplifier Foundation will also be distributing each of these images at Metro stops, via moving vans, and at drop spots in DC. We don’t have any one easy solution, but we do know this: we must be greater than fear, we must defend dignity, and we must protect each other. Take this art in your hands, and start now. We thought (they) were the three groups that had been maybe criticized by Trump and maybe were going to be most, if not necessarily vulnerable in a literal sense, most feeling that their needs would be

pursuing the presidency out of his own ego neglected in a Trump administration. It’s really about making sure that people remember that ‘we the people’ means everyone, it means all the people, I think the campaigns were very divisive, more from one side than the other. But it’s just reminding people to find their common humanity, and look beyond maybe one narrow definition of what it means to be American. Trump is dangerous. He’s a demagogue who’s a bigot and is sexist. He really has no respect for a lot of different people, no experience in politics, and is pursuing the presidency out of his own ego rather than a desire to create the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

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Kelley Wills Harpers Ferry, WV based Graphic Designer

Ernesto Yerena Artist from El Centro, CA living in Boyle Heights LA. Identifies as Chicano / Native.

Jessica Sabogal Colombian-American muralist

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Brooke Fischer Los Angeles, CA based Artist and Graphic Designer



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firsts The victories were a bright spot for Democrats in an otherwise dark election. By Amber Phillips

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he Congress that voters cobbled together Tuesday is a mixed bag on the diversity front: Women held more or less even in their representation (about 20 percent of Congress), which is not a representative ratio. But the women who did get elected are more diverse than ever. Some results were still coming in as of late Wednesday, but it looked like the Senate will gain one new female senator and the House of Representatives will lose one female lawmaker. (The number of female governors will drop by one.) The story of 2016 is a pickup here for women, a drop-off there. All told, an election featuring the first female major-party presidential candidate didn’t have much of an impact on the number of women in politics. “For all of the talk of this being a change election, it was not a change election for women in politics,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the nonpartisan Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University. “We just aren’t seeing enough of them.” Tuesday did include some bright spots for women of color who ran D for office. Come January, there will be a record number — 38 — women of color serving in Congress (35 Democrats, three Republicans). And several of these new members of Congress are notable firsts:

Ilhan Omar

Minnesota

She graduated from North Dakota State University. She’s a former refugee, a Muslim, and now the first Somali-American lawmaker in the United States. Twitter: @IlhanMN

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Kamala Harris

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California

She’s graduated from Howard University and University of California, Hastings College of the Law. Now the first Indian American U.S. senator and California’s first black senator Twitter: @KamalaHarris



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Tammy Duckworth

Illinois

She is an Iraq War veteran and graduted from the University of Hawaii and George Washington University. She is the first Asian American woman elected to Congress in Illinois, the first disabled woman to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and the first member of Congress born in Thailand. Twitter: @SenDuckworth

Val Demings

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Florida

She graduated from Florida State University. She served as Chief of the Orlando Police Department, the first woman to hold the position. She serves the House of Representatives. Twitter: @val_demings

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Cortez Masto

She graduated from University of Nevada, Reno and Gonzaga University School of Law. The granddaught of a Mexican immigrant and the first Latina senator. Twitter: @SenCortezMasto

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Stephanie Murphy

Florida

She graduated from U College of William & Mary and Georgetown University. She is the first Vietnamese-American woman member of Congress. Twitter: @RepStephMurphy

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Nevada



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Pramila Jayapal

Illinois

She graduted from Georgetown University and Northwestern University and was a civil rights activist before entering electoral politics. She is the first Indian American woman in Congress. Twitter: @PramilaJayapal

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Lisa Rochester

Delaware

She graduted from Fairleigh Dickinson University and University of Delaware. She is the first woman and African American woman to serve in Congress from Delaware. Twitter: @LisaBRochester

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Kate Brown

Oregon

She graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder and Northwestern School of Law. She is the first openly bisexual governor (and indeed the first openly LGBT person elected as such). Twitter: @OregonGovBrown

n Nevada — a state that was a bright spot for Democrats at almost every level — Democrats put up an all-female ballot in a suburb of Las Vegas, right down to county commissioner. And New Hampshire will once again be represented by an all-female congressional delegation. (Although with GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte’s loss, Republican women take a hit, going from six to five female senators.) “The women we just elected will bring their diverse perspectives and strong voices to Congress at a time when we’ve never needed them more,” said Jessica O’Connell, executive director of Emily’s List, which worked with many of the Democratic winners.

Go Online! See a full list of new women members of the government www.determined.com



Third Wave / Recognition

glass CEILiNg “Although we weren’t able to shatter the highest, hardest ceiling this time, thanks to you, it’s got about 18 million cracks in it.” By Column Five

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fter coming close to winning the Democratic Party’s presidentil nomination in 2008, Hillary Clinton famously thanked her supporters by saying, “Although we weren’t able to shatter the highest, hardest ceiling this time, thanks to you, it’s got about 18 million cracks in it.” We might not have a women in the Oval Office yet, but that’s about the only office they haven’t conquered. Even with all this progress, however, women still haven’t reached equal footing with men in the political arena.

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RigHt To

Bike

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n 1911, Alice Hawkins rode around Leicester on a bike promoting women’s rights. The leader of the local faction of the Women’s Social Political Movement—also known as the suffragettes— Hawkins campaigned tirelessly to get women in the UK the vote. Her decision to do so while cycling caused outrage in the local community, particularly since she did so while wearing pantaloons, but the stir was about far more than her choice of attire. Bicycles gave women of the early 20th century control of movement like never before, and this simple act of defiance became synonymous with the liberation of women. Now, a little over a century later, women in Iran are being denied this same basic freedom. Earlier this month Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, issued a fatwa banning women from riding bikes. His reasoning? Cycling supposedly threatens a woman’s chastity and goes against Islamic Law. “Riding bicycles often attracts the attention of men and exposes the society to corruption, and thus contravenes women’s chastity, and it must be abandoned” he said, but the reality is that the Iranian government are attempting to turn back the clock on women’s emancipation. A week before the ruling was announced, Khamenei expressed his belief that a females “only role and mission” in life is to be a good mother and housewife, with human rights groups calling the recent spate of controlling anti-women laws ridiculous. Unsurprisingly, the lady cyclists of Iran are not impressed with the new law, and like the Suffragettes before them are choosing to take a stand, or more accurately, a seat, against the ban. Now women across the country are filming themselves riding bikes and posting the results on social media – a brave move, considering this is the same country that

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Women in Iran are being denied this basic freedom. By Sophie Lloyd

Art by Elfandiary Deniharz



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Art by Elfandiary Deniharz

sentenced six of its citizens to jail for filming themselves dancing to Pharrell’s Happy in 2014. Examples include a mother and daughter from Kish Island, who after hearing about the edict decided to record and share a video of themselves riding bikes. The short film is titled My Selfie for Supreme Leader, and in the clip the pair are wearing headscarves over half of their faces in an attempt to remain anonymous. “We immediately rented two bicycles to say we’re not giving up on cycling,” said the 25-year-old daughter. “It’s our absolute right and we’re not going to give it up.” The women have received a huge outpouring of support on social media from Western citizens, where their post has been shared thousands of times. One Facebook user said: “Iranian women are unbowed and unafraid! Go ladies go! Protect your honor, pride and dignity by exercising your basic human rights and cycling is one of them.” Inspired by the mother-daughter duo, in recent weeks more Iranian women have started to take photographs of themselves biking in public and using the hashtag #IranianWomenLoveCycling. The images have been shared on a range of social networks, as well as Facebook page My Stealthy Freedom, a campaign that shares images of women without their mandatory hijabs.

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Masih Alinejad, journalist and founder of My Stealthy Freedom, not only posted a snap of herself riding a bike at night, but shared why protesting the ban means so much to her. “Women are the main agents of change and as they push for equality we see greater push back from the Islamic Republic,” she explained. “Already I’ve received messages from inside Iran from women who are shocked and want to protest. This fatwa has received much

His reasoning? Cycling supposedly threatens a woman’s chastity and goes against Islamic Law. ridicule on social media. The fight for equality is a historical process and just in the same way that women succeeded in Europe and the US to win their rights, so will women in Iran.” And she’s not the only one who thinks contesting the ban is important. “I am sure the prohibition of biking for women will be lifted in coming years,”a fellow protestor, who made her own anonymous video, said to AOL. “On that day, I will be proud that I did resist the oppression.”



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Still, it is undeniable that these women are in real danger by ignoring the rules of the ban, and already a group of female cyclists have been arrested. The women were on their way to a cycling event in the North-West city of Marivan in July when police informed them they were breaking the new directive. Witnesses claim several members of the group were arrested after objecting to the ban, while others were forced to sign a pledge promising that they would not ride their bikes in public again. Official signs began appearing in urban areas as far back as May saying “bicycle riding for women is prohibited,” but the issue of women cyclists has long been a bone of contention in the country. In 1996 a mob of roughly 20 Islamic extremists attacked women using a gender-segregated cycle lane in Tehran, and female bikers are regularly harassed by police unless accompanied by a male relative. Since President Hassan Rouhani’s (second in command after the supreme leader) government took over in 2013, many hard-won women’s rights have been infringed upon, despite promises to the contrary during the election period. Laws drafted through parliament include limiting access to birth control, which may force women to resort to dangerous, illegal abortions – punishable by up to ten years in jail. Not to mention new bills being debated that discriminate against unmarried women applying for jobs and making divorce more difficult, even in the cases of domestic abuse. Farideh Karimi, a human rights activist and member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (the opposition party to the present government), said: “Suppression of women has been a tenet of the mullahs’ regime from its outset. This latest restrictive measure shows that misogyny is being stepped up

Since President Hassan Rouhani’s government took over in 2013, many hard-won women’s rights have been infringed upon, despite promises to the contrary during the election period 80

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Art by Mateusz Urbanowicz

under Hassan Rouhani’s administration. But it is not only females rebelling against the ban. Despite the sexist policies of the government, Iranian women do have male allies in their home country. In August, shortly after the women were arrested in Marivan, hundreds of both male and female protesters marched the streets of the province. Video footage of the protest shows police desperately trying to disperse the crowd, but Mohammad Fallahi, the governor of Marivan, responded to the demonstrators by claiming the ban is to “protect” women. His solution is to build a walled space for women to cycle in without men watching. This may seem like a bizarre suggestion, but it isn’t the first over-the-top attempt in Iran to make women riding a bike a more “modest.” In 2007, the government put forward the concept of an “Islamic bicycle,” a boxy contraption designed to cover the lower half of a woman’s body while cycling.




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Intersectionality

Asexuality

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First Woman Rabbi

Invisibility Beyonce and Grammys

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Asexuality I have decided to identify in this way because it means something to me By Framboise

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believe I’ve always been asexual, but I’ve only self identified as asexual for the past few years. To be clear, I do not believe I can reproduce on my own. Many people have made that mistake when I have told them that I am asexual. The education system teaches us the medical definition of asexuality and never the sexual definition of asexuality, so it’s an easy mistake to make. Medical asexuality and sexuality asexuality are two completely different words with very different meanings. To describe my asexuality I often go over the same statements; it has begun to feel like a routine. It typically goes generally like this: “An asexual is someone who experiences no sexual attraction. That’s it. Asexual people can and sometimes do masturbate and have sex, but that differs widely based on the asexual individual. Some asexuals don’t care about sex and treat it as if it’s not their favourite activity, some find sex scary, and others find it disgusting. Similarly, some asexuals will kiss, others won’t, some will hug, others won’t. The boundaries of all asexuals are different and it’s best to ask

I’m asexual - it’s not a problem them about their boundaries in a respectful way. There is also a second word that often comes after asexual; romantic. An asexual aromantic would be not sexually or romantically attracted to anyone, whereas an asexual homoromantic would be not sexually but romantically attracted to humans of the same sex, and so forth. Some asexuals choose

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to not be in relationships, some choose to be in relationships only with asexuals, and some are in relationships with sexuals.” I think that’s a pretty fair explanation, but maybe I’m wrong because even after I explain this some people still look at me as if I told them I’m secretly a unicorn. Some of the common responses to my asexuality are: maybe you’ve never been with a good enough man, are you a virgin, do you have a hymen, does everything work down there, have you ever orgasmed before, you’ll change your mind in a few years, maybe you haven’t found what you like yet, and I used to know someone like that too and then they got over it. All of these responses follow a similar pattern. They assume that the person telling me these things knows more about my sexuality based on what is normal than I do based on living in the same body for twenty years, which I find pretty ridiculous. I have decided to identify in this way because it means something to me. If I

They assume that the person telling me these things knows more about my sexuality based on what is normal than I do follow your advice, I will have to live through any consequences that come from your advice and your life will not be affected in any way. These kind of statements place an unfair burden on the asexual, undermine their life experience, and challenge their autonomy. They’re insulting. I’m just saying no, I’m not interested. Perhaps the question should be - why does that bother you so much? These questions might be less hurtful if they didn’t reflect real issues. For example, FSD (female sexual dysfunction) is a “medical disorder” where one of the symptoms is lack of desire to have sex. So whereas I think my asexuality is a perfectly acceptable, but not common, type of sexuality, if I were to go to the doctor I could be diagnosed as sick. Hrm, does this ring an oppressive bell to anyone? Haven’t we been through this before with the DSM? So perhaps the answer could seem like - well if you experience judgement and are deemed ill if you tell anyone you’re asexual, why, just not tell people? There’s a concept called “passing” which generally means you can pass or are close enough to the dominant group that you can be

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mistaken for, and pretend to be, one of them without anyone noticing. One of the problems is that asexuals can pass very well. In fact, I’ve been in a relationship with a man for four years so I automatically pass by accident. To not pass, and have people stop assuming I’m heterosexual, I actually have to tell them that I’m asexual. I, like probably many other people, don’t like to pass. Not telling someone what you are, when you know they don’t realize what you are, feels like lying, deceiving, and keeping your mouth shut because you’ll get in trouble for the truth. It feels like I’m being dishonest about myself. It makes me feel ashamed, when I really have nothing to be ashamed about. I’m asexual - it’s not a problem. To make this crystal clear; I believe asexuality is obviously a feminist issue because asexuals can experience hardship for living their lives in a way that’s true to themselves. Asexuals are treated in negative ways that make their lives more difficult than they would be if these people identified as, or were, heterosexual. I think this is the case because of a variety of different factors, many of which are theorized about in feminism. I think it’s time to turn a feminist lens on asexuality. Finding liberation is not as easy as accepting

asexuals; we need to find places and spaces where we know we are supported and safe. There are few and far between feminist publications on asexuals, and I even had a professor once think I meant celibacy when I asked if she knew of any (celibacy is a choice, asexuality is not). There is division within the asexual community. Some live their asexuality in isolation and don’t think asexuality is a political issue or something worth explaining to other people and some have restrictive and narrow definitions of who can be an asexual that exclude many currently self-identified asexuals (probably even me). Some asexuals want to find liberation in asexual communities alone because they are not like sexuals, whereas some asexuals turn to

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FIRST WOMAN raBbi Ordained in 1935, Regina Jonas died at Auschwitz. Now, she’s being honored. By Rabbi Amy Eilberg

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egina Jonas, born into a poor Orthodox Jewish family in Berlin in 1902, dreamed of being a rabbi at the astonishing age of 11, far before the Jewish world was ready to support her aspirations. During the 1920s, she studied at the Academy for the Science of Judaism, taking all the same courses and exams required of rabbinical students, and wrote her rabbinic dissertation on the remarkable topic, “Can Women Serve as Rabbis?” The faculty member who seemed ready to ordain her suddenly died and the institution agreed only to grant her the degree of “Academic Teacher of Religion.” But in 1935, she was ordained as a rabbi by Rabbi Max Dienemann, representing the association of liberal (Reform) rabbis in Berlin. At first she was invited to work in schools, Jewish hospitals and nursing homes. As many rabbis fled the country, so that there was more unmet need for rabbis, Rabbi Jonas was able to serve in several synagogues that were desperate for rabbinic leadership as catastrophe approached. Regina Jonas was deported to Terezin in November of 1942, where she worked with psychologist Viktor Frankl in the camp before being deported to Auschwitz on October 12, 1944, where she was murdered. For decades her name and her story were virtually unknown. When her long-hidden documents became available in the 1990s, rabbis and feminist scholars became fascinated by her story. This week, a group of female rabbis, scholars, and Jewish communal leaders, sponsored by the American Jewish Archives and the Jewish Women’s Archive, traveled to Berlin and to Terezin and Prague to pay homage to Rabbi Regina Jonas, to honor her work on behalf of Jewry and of Jewish women, and to restore her rightful place in Jewish women’s history. Our journey began in Berlin, where Regina Jonas was born, educated and ordained, and where she served as a rabbi. We visited places where she had lived, perused copies of her archived documents, and tried to imagine what could have moved a young woman to dare to dream of the rabbinate in her time and place. We visited Holocaust sites, including a Jewish neighborhood with banners recalling the Nuremberg laws, the “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe” and the magnificent Jewish museum of Berlin. We met with government officials who expressed genuine anguish about the rise of anti-Semitic

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Photograph of Regina Jonas believed to have been taken after 1939

attitudes in Germany, especially as war rages in Israel and Gaza. And we had the joy of meeting with rabbinical and cantorial students at the Abraham Geiger College in Berlin, the new generation of leaders working for the miracle of renewed Jewish life in Germany. The trip reached its climax in Terezin, where we dedicated a memorial to Rabbi Regina Jonas at the ghetto/concentration camp where she served, taught and suffered. America’s first four women rabbis huddled together over the list of Rabbi Jonas’ lecture notes, trying to imagine how she had found the strength to teach about Shabbat



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Portrait of Regina Jonas by Marlis Glaser, 2014.

and Jewish holidays and inspire faith and hope in her people in the midst of such darkness. We met with a survivor who, as a teenage artist in the camp, had documented what she had seen and was one of the few children of Terezin who survived to bring her art to the world. We then stood in the solemnly beautiful columbarium hall as the survivor-artist’s son and granddaughter played exquisite, haunting music, evoking the losses of the past and prayerful hopes for the future. The first four American women rabbis honored our foremother by reading passages from her writings, and we recited the “El Malei Rachamim,” “God Who is Full of Compassion,” the prayer for the soul of the departed, that was never recited over this pioneering, visionary woman leader.

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Rabbi Regina Jonas’s story had been written out of history twice—once because the Nazis robbed her of life and again because the postwar Jewish community was unready to celebrate her story. But this week our delegation embraced Rabbi Regina Jonas as our foremother, teacher and colleague, pledging to remember her gifts, her vision, and her courage. Zichrona livracha. Her memory is a blessing to us all.



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invIsibIlity

Learning to live with and through Arthritis By Danielle Ruderman

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or the average Queen’s student, typing or writing notes during class isn’t something they have to stress about. Two years ago, it wouldn’t have been something I stressed about either. Starting off my adult years, most of my concerns were centered on being independent, making friends and attending as many parties as I could. In November of my first year I began to experience odd body pain that felt similar to the body aches you get when you have a fever. It was hard to ignore and often distracted me. This is when I had my first experience with Queen’s Student Wellness Services. The doctor

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really had no idea what to do and told me it was probably stress related. As a remedy, she said try to find time to relax more. I continued to experience the pain throughout the year, until the summer when it seized. “It must have been stress related!” I said to myself. My questions were answered, or so I thought. The Kingston cold resumed in second year and my symptoms returned worse this time. Mixtures of sharp and dull pain took over my entire body. It felt as if someone injected air into each digit of my hands and I couldn’t close them. So again, I went back to LaSalle. The doctor was again unsure of how to handle my odd symptoms.



Fourth Wave / Unlimited

She called for an x-ray and blood test, ultimately referring me to my rheumatologist — a medical specialist who deals with various joint and tissue related disorders. After a trip to Kingston General Hospital, I found myself in an office with most of its clientele in their senior years. The doctor examined my x-rays and blood tests, touched all of my joints extensively and did an ultra sound on my hands. The result — there was no inflammation, and no inflammatory markers in my blood.

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my tears until I left the office to bawl my eyes out. My body told me there was something wrong, yet the trained doctors saw nothing. The physical pain wasn’t the only symptom I’d been experiencing, my social life was also being impacted. Few people knew about the horrible pain I’d been experiencing, so most of the time I just tried to mask it with a grin. I felt invisible. Two weeks ago, I saw my rheumatologist, and he went through his usual routine.

Art by Hieu / kelogsloops

“But, I have pain, my hands feel so swollen!” I screamed in my head. The doctor dismissed me, telling me to get tested for diseases like chlamydia, and many others that cause inflammation. “Come back in six months,” he told me. I returned after six months of stiffness, intense inflammation and harsh pain, and was yet again told by the doctor that I was still not presenting any markers. In a similar fashion to my last visit, I was dismissed and told to come back in a year. Visit after visit, I held in

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He checked my hands and continued with his ultrasound. All of a sudden I heard a “hmm.” Then he casually said, “Well, I see some inflammation here.” He wiped my hands off and nonchalantly told me “you have palindromic rheumatism or arthritis.” I was in shock — finally a real diagnosis. “Maybe I’m no longer invisible,” I thought. There’s a catch though. According to the Arthritis Foundation, “Palindromic rheumatism (PR) is a rare episodic form of inflammatory



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arthritis — meaning the joint pain and swelling come and go. Between attacks, the symptoms disappear and the affected joints go back to normal, with no lasting damage. Half of the people who have palindromic rheumatism eventually develop rheumatoid arthritis, which does cause permanent joint damage.” The causes are also entirely unknown. Flare ups are a commonly used term, meaning one day you can wake up feeling okay and the next it feels like you’ve been hit by a train. Even worse, there’s no interventional treatment until it develops farther. Some people live like this for the rest of their lives, and due to the rarity of the disease, doctors still have no idea what to do with me. Essentially until my blood work comes

I wish I could still go for runs and practice art the way I used to back crappy, I’m going to feel like crap. The appointment ended with the doctor telling me “You’re in limbo, see you in a year.” Post-diagnosis has been the hardest part for me. The disease has progressed quite quickly and has affected me physically and mentally. There are still some nights where I stay up crying in pain until 3 a.m., and others where I lay awake frustrated with my new-found inabilities. During those nights I scoured the Internet, trying to find answers, and others who understood me. One night I found the website called “Arthurs Place,” a website and social network for young adults with arthritis. Although PR is quite rare, and every case of arthritis is individual, people across the world between the ages of 18-35 became my new confidants. Giving advice on pain management, coming to terms with diagnosis and sharing personal details. These people, made me feel less invisible. But, how do I feel at Queen’s? I’m currently in a studio course for my Fine Arts teachable. In the past, I would say this course was a ‘bird course,’ but now it’s proving to be my most difficult. In a studio class, everyone works simultaneously in an open space, where discussion naturally occurs. Often I hear things like “this assignment is easy.” Once again, I’m invisible. Nobody is like me. So, next time you say, “that’s so easy,” or “I can’t believe you can’t do that,” think about people with invisible disabilities like me. Trust me, I wish I could still go for runs and practice art the way I used to, or even go to lecture without making sure I take a pain killer first.

Quick Facts and Stats About 10% of Americans have a medical condition which could be considered an invisible disability. 96% of people with chronic medical conditions live with a condition that is invisible. These people do not use a cane or any assistive device and act as if they didn’t have a medical condition. About 25% of them have some type of activity limitation, ranging from mild to severe; the remaining 75% are not disabled by their chronic conditions. Although the disability creates a challenge for the person who has it, the reality of the disability can be difficult for others to recognize or acknowledge. Others may not understand the cause of the problem, if they cannot see evidence of it in a visible way. Invisible disabilities are the most common type of disability among college students. For example, students with learning disabilities, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and/ or psychiatric disabilities may request accommodations even though they do not appear to have a disability. There are numerous other hidden or invisible disabilities such as heart condition, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, and Seizure Disorder.

“Prismatic Jellyfish” by Hieu / kelogsloops

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Beyonce

GRaMmYS

How the Grammies used Beyonce for ratings and how they robbed her of something she deserved By Etienne Rodriguez and Rachel Brodsky Ratings

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Beyonce and Jay-Z at the Grammies

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veryone celebrated when Beyoncé won the Grammy Award for Best Urban Contemporary Album with Lemonade. When the time came to present the award for Album of the Year, however, Beyoncé surprisingly lost to Adele. Even Adele was shocked that Bey didn’t win and actually praised Lemonade’s musicality and cultural impact. The Grammy’s spent the whole night and week prior advertising that Beyoncé would be performing at their show and then didn’t even award her the award everyone expected her to get. It’s certainly up for debate whether or not Adele’s album, 25, is better than Beyoncé’s album, Lemonade, but it’s hardly debatable that the Grammy’s used Beyoncé’s name to generate buzz for the awards show. Many people tweeted about only watching the show for her performance and to see her win all the awards. The Grammys even had the audacity to mention throughout the night how many awards she was nominated for and then proceeded to not award them to her. Beyoncé’s name was paraded around and advertised by CBS to draw attention to their show and garner stronger ratings, yet they couldn’t even acknowledge her talents. The advertising for Adele was all but nonexistent in comparison to Beyoncé so it’s questionable as why they thought Adele deserved the award. There’s a long history, dating back to slavery, to using Black labor for selfish benefits and not giving Black people what they’re owed for that work. That’s not to imply that Beyoncé only performed at the show in promise of a Grammy, but there are basic functional similarities. Similar to how Taylor Swift used the Kanye VMA incident to further her career, the Grammy’s used their infamous constant snubbing of Beyoncé to get rating tonight. It’s not fair to use Beyoncé’s name for profit and then to not acknowledge how incredibly successful and well made her album is. Huge numbers of people tuned in to see Beyoncé perform and win awards so it’s not surprising that her biggest categories were shown at the end of the night. Fans had to wait throughout the entire night to see if Beyoncé would win the biggest awards, and they were shot down in



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rapid succession. Lemonade and Formation being snubbed isn’t the problem, rather it’s the fact that Beyoncé was hyped up by CBS the entire night and wasn’t awarded. People can argue all they want Robbed

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et’s get the obvious out of the way: Beyoncé deserved that Album of the Year Grammy. She deserved it more than Adele (who knew it but accepted her award for 25), she deserved it more than Justin Bieber(?!), she deserved it more than Drake and she deserved it more than Sturgill Simpson (sorry, Sturgill). Even Adele seemed miffed, telling reporters backstage, “I felt like it was her time to win. What the fuck does she have to do to win Album of the Year?” What, indeed? To date, she’s had three records nominated for the prestigious award, including 2008’s I Am… Sasha Fierce, her 2013 surprise-dropped selftitled and last year’s unmatched Lemonade. And yet she is continuously relegated to dominating more “urban” categories, not including her earlier wins for “Best Pop Vocal Performance” (“Halo,” 2009) and Song of the Year (“Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It),” 2010). To keep her sectioned off is a tremendous mistake. Because if Beyoncé has proven anything over the last two album cycles,

Beyoncé may have lost the grand prize (again), but there’s no doubt that she won the night anyway it’s that she’s not just a bona fide album artist—she has continuously reworked the very idea of what a long player is. This was most evident on the groundbreaking “visual album,” Beyoncé, which dropped on iTunes without warning in 2013 and came complete with a music video for each song. Ever since then, “Beyoncé” has shifted from a noun to a verb, with other musicians declaring the release date dead (well, that was just Kanye) and dropping albums with little to no warning (Drake’s 17-song mixtape, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, D’Angelo’s Black Messiah, U2’s Songs of Innocence, among others). The record itself was a conceptual thesis statement on the virtues and occasional pitfalls of matrimony (one minute you can be “Drunk in Love,” The sun rays covering the outfit symbolised Oshun, the West African goddess of fertility, love, and prosperity

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the next, “Jealous”). Sonically, Beyoncé pushed the boundaries of the slick radio pop for which she’d become best known, loosening her oncecontrolled delivery to pant “You’re… no… angel… baby” against a wash of synths on “No Angel” and growling with abandon on “Drunk in Love.” And if anyone thought Beyoncé had peaked on her self-titled, she proved naysayers (Beysayers?) wrong when she raised the bar again on last year’s Lemonade. Billed as “a conceptual project based on every woman’s journey of selfknowledge and healing,” Beyoncé’s sixth studio album premiered on HBO with, again, very little warning, and featured a stunning montage of Southern architecture and design, raging lyrics (“Who the fuck do you think I is? You ain’t married to no average bitch, boy!”) and complex choreography spotlighting black womanhood. Outlining a clear narrative around marital infidelity and all of the furor and vulnerability that surrounds it,

constant theme in her work. When she took the Grammys stage to perform “Love Drought” and “Sandcastles,” she not only performed in spite of being heavily pregnant—she actually used her belly as a resource to explore the spectrum of feelings an expectant mother can feel: susceptibility, nervousness, heightened sensuality, pride. Dressed like a madonna-goddess in gold, she frequently touched her stomach and made audiences wring their wrists as she tipped far back in an elevated chair. It’s just another bullet point in the long, long list of ways Beyoncé has enhanced and developed her solo artistry since her TRL-topping Destiny’s Child days. So why 25 over Lemonade? This is not to impugn Adele’s talent or the quality of 25. Probably the greatest thing 25 had going for it was its accessibility, which translated to oldschool album sales, which translated to Recording Academy votes. What it may come down to is

“What the fuck does she have to do to win Album of the Year?” Lemonade showed a purposefully mysterious mega-celebrity channeling her anger and grief at her husband through a series of spokenword soliloquies, genre-surfing arrangements and ambitious musical collaborations. And boy did the world respond: Lemonade topped year-end lists, earned rave reviews and set of wild speculation about the state of the Carters’ marriage. It seems fine now; if anything it’s flourishing due to Beyoncé’s recent pregnantwith-twins announcement. Which brings me to a new point: Lemonade may well have prepared its singer to make the goings-on in her life a

the fact that the Grammys are a symbol of an aging, decrepit idea of the music industry—one where progressivism, ideas and intellectualism are all fine and good in theory, i.e., if Q-Tip says “resist” onstage or if Katy Perry wears a “persist” armband, but true internal change takes much longer to achieve. The Grammys will happily accept a ratings boost from Beyoncé discussing racial identity and equality in an acceptance speech for Best Urban Contemporary Album, but they’ll play it safe when handing out trophies (see: Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly losing to Taylor Swift’s 1989 last year).

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By Marie Solis and Diana Tourjee

The protests were still a success, but activists need to improve inclusion as we battle Trump


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n the weeks approaching the Women’s March on Washington, a woman in Los Angeles accidentally created what became the most popular accessory among protesters: a pussy hat. “I wanted to do something more than just show up,” Krista Suh told the Los Angeles Times. “How can I visually show someone what’s going on? And I realized as a California girl, I would be really cold in D.C. — it’s not tank-top weather year-round. So I thought maybe I could knit myself a hat.” Suh made the knitting pattern freely available online, and soon women across the country were working quickly to finish their own pink hats before the big day. The hats became a movement within a movement, turning President Donald Trump’s infamous “grab them by the pussy” comment on its head. While clever, Suh’s pussy hats set the tone for a march that would focus acutely on genitalia at the expense of the transgender community. Signs like “Pussy power,” “Viva la Vulva” and “Pussy grabs back” all sent a clear and oppressive message to trans women, especially: having a vagina is essential to womanhood. “The main reason I decided not to go was because of the pussy hats,” 28-year-old Jade Lejeck said in an interview Sunday night. “I get that they’re a response to the ‘grab them by the pussy’ thing, but I think some people fixated on it the wrong way.” Lejeck, a trans woman from Modesto, California, said the hats signaled to her that there would be other trans-exclusionary messages at the women’s marches. She expected her local march to have its fair share of trans-exclusionary radical feminists, known as TERFs. As Lejeck described it, there are two categories of TERFS: One is the accidental TERF — “the ones who have signs that equate womanhood with having a vagina,” she said. The other category, Lejeck explained, includes feminists who argue trans women are actually men in disguise trying to infiltrate their spaces. Lejeck decided she would avoid both kinds of TERFs by abstaining from Modesto’s women’s march altogether; she had grocery shopping to do anyway. “I believe there’s a lot of inequality that has to do with genitals — that’s not something you can separate from the feminist movement,” Lejeck said. “But I feel like I’ve tried to get involved in feminism and there’s always

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been a blockade there for trans women.” For 20-year-old Sam Forrey, a nonbinary student in Ohio, and their girlfriend Lilian McDaniel, who is trans, there had been other warning signs that the Women’s March might be a dangerous space for them. Forrey said that a blurb from the Cut’s “Ultimate Guide to Preparing for the Women’s March” suggesting trans protesters bring identification that matches their gender identity or use the “buddy system” had been the first red flag. Since legally McDaniel’s sex is still male, she worried that if she were to be arrested she would be placed in a men’s jail, a concern she said always lingers at the back of her mind. McDaniel said she’d planned on attending the march despite these fears — until she saw that people were using it as an excuse to invoke what she called “genital-based” womanhood. A friend told McDaniel about a protester they’d seen marching with a two-foot-tall handknit uterus. She was glad she stayed home. “I think it ended up being a white cis women march,” McDaniel said. “There were other marginalized communities there, but it didn’t seem like they were the focus.” Forrey suggested that the saturation of vaginarelated messages and imagery reinforced the same oppressive structures the march was meant to oppose, which was a loss for everyone. “As a nonbinary person, the emphasis on genitals just bought into the rigid, Western concept of gender,” they said. This two-gender system, of course, is excluding of Forrey, too. To their credit, the Women’s Marches in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., both prominently featured trans women of color Laverne Cox and Janet Mock. In LA, Cox spoke out on North Carolina’s House Bill 2, which requires the state’s residents to use the

Wearing pussyhats, or chanting about vaginas, lays out a hierarchy based on genitals that is exclusionary. Collage Graphic by Alex Williamson

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Women’s March protester in Salt Lake City, Utah

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associate at the Transgender Law Center, alleged that her microphone was cut off during her speech at the march, just as she mentioned trans activists Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson. “Still silencing trans women,” she wrote on Twitter. “I see you and so does everyone else.” “And although I’m glad to be here now, it’s disheartening that women like me were an afterthought in the initial planning of this march,” she said, according to the full speech which she shared on her website. “Trans women of color like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera lit the fire on the LGBTQIA Right Movement but were quickly pushed aside.” If the estimated three million women’s march protesters in the United States are to start a revolution, they need to address these weaknesses, Lejeck said. And marginalizing the trans community seems to be one of them. “If this movement with the Women’s March keeps going and ends up being a major opposition to President Donald Trump then they are absolutely going to use every chink in our armor as a target,” Lejeck said. “It’s better to fix any problems now before they use them against us — not to mention that fixing them will mean even more people fighting for the same cause.” Lejeck continued, “It’s a winwin. It just takes some effort.” I was surprised to see a woman standing in

Union Station, wearing a pink t-shirt that read, “adorable deplorable.” The inauguration of Donald Trump was about to begin just blocks away and the woman’s husband tilted his red ball cap toward their daughter, perhaps to signal: “See, it is possible to ‘Make America Great Again.’” I spent last year documenting discrimination and injustice in America with the courageous, intelligent women at Broadly. The end of 2016 was a painful blur, as we struggled to continue covering the issues that affect women in America while feeling the personal tragedy of the election in our own lives. Still, we were able to continue our work together. As the nuclear family stood before me in DC, I hoped they wouldn’t notice me, or the fact that I’m transgender. I left the train station to head to my hotel. On Massachusetts Avenue, walking in the cold, young girls hugged their


Determined coats, ears warmed by Trump beanies. The day before, from the VICE office in Brooklyn, I’d watched a live stream of a subcommittee hearing at the Virginia House of Representatives. State representatives were considering a bill that would bar trans people from using public restrooms, similar to North Carolina’s infamous anti-trans “bathroom bill,” HB2. A mother had addressed the committee. “How would you feel,” she asked the lawmakers, her voice shaking, apparently in fear, “if you saw a grown man following your nineyear-old daughter into a restroom?”

Collage Graphic by Alex Williamson

furrowed brows through tinted windows. Helicopters chopped in brutal circles above as I crossed a street blocked by armored military trucks. A couple kids wearing black with white paint on their faces were ushered away from a store. “We’re leaving,” one snapped. Nearby, a man in a blue suit and a red baseball hat hurried along a crosswalk, his wife trailed closely in a mink coat. In Franklin Square Park, a homeless woman lay under a blanket on a bench. “Fuck Donald Trump!”

In DC, tables lining the streets were covered in Trump t-shirts, hoodies, and hats to commemorate the inauguration. A jogger slowed her pace and pulled out an earbud. “How are sales?” she asked. Around the corner, the glass front of a Wells Fargo Bank had been smashed. People took pictures on their phones. Later, I walked by a Starbucks as employees swept the debris of a glass door that had shattered. And then, I saw the walls of a bus stop kiosk reduced to a mound of bluish glass on the sidewalk. Across the street, two security guards in a corporate building leaned forward, peering with

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A sea of pink pussy hats in Washington, DC

bathroom that corresponds to their sex assigned at birth, rather than their gender identity — a direct affront to trans rights. “If you are a girl like me, a woman like me, a transgender person like me, you live in a country that shames you, that stigmatizes you, that discriminates against you and criminalizes you,” Cox said. Empathy, she maintained, is the only antidote to this societal ill. On the opposite coast, Mock gave a rousing speech on the importance of intersectional feminism, stating simply, “Our approach to freedom need not be identical but it must be intersectional and inclusive. It must extend beyond ourselves.”

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However, the need for intersectional feminism had never been more apparent than when the Women’s March on Washington’s organizers revised a line Mock had contributed to the march’s platform on sex workers. Whereas Mock had written that the march would be “in solidarity with the sex workers’ rights movement,” organizers changed the language to refer to sex workers as “those exploited for labor and sex.” Also in D.C., Raquel Willis, a communications

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A sign from the Women’s March in support of women’s rights

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She shouted, over and over, while holding herself in the cold. “Fuck Donald Trump!” On a curb nearby, young people in flannels with septum rings lit cigarettes. Women of all ages and races carried signs of protest, already hitting the streets one day before the historic Women’s March on Washington. That night, in the lobby of the luxurious Mayflower Hotel, a gay man wearing a tuxedo and a white silk scarf talked with self-satisfaction about why he supports Donald Trump. Women in gowns posed for photos in front of a floral arrangement. “You’re literally hiding in the bushes!” my friend laughed, eyeing me, as I leaned against the wall behind a tall potted plant. He gave me our room key and I went to the elevator. That night, women were descending upon Washington. Thousands were flying, or driving, or riding in trains, hurtling toward the nation’s capital. As I fell asleep, I thought of Broadly, and of my mother, and of all the women in my life who have easily welcomed me as their sister, daughter, or friend. I thought of the gay men and women who supported me growing up, and of our elders and ancestors, the people

who had marched for justice against sexism, racism, and homophobia—against the AIDS plague, anti-abortion laws, and segregation. Earlier that day, I had seen a fractured America, and I wanted to believe that women can bring the country together, can do something with force to reject a government that has flagrantly rejected them. But the movement for women’s rights is also fractured, and I couldn’t forget that. “The women’s movement has never been allinclusive,” said Susan Stryker, a transgender studies scholar at the University of Arizona and the author of Transgender History. Stryker had written to me earlier in the week, explaining that there’s been a long history of division within the feminist movement. There’s been a simple, insidious pattern, she explained, “find a difference, use it to exclude someone who is different and less powerful than you.” My friend and colleague Callie Beusman and I were scheduled to conduct live interviews from the heart of the Women’s March at 10:30 AM on Saturday morning. As I got ready at my hotel, I thought about what Stryker told me, but I also thought about the wealthy white gay man in the hotel lobby who proudly supports Donald Trump, and the 53 percent of white women who voted for him. I first read Stryker’s work when I was beginning my own transition


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from male to female. As a historian, Stryker expanded my understanding of the way that our country has treated queer people and women. “We need to move past the idea of a unified LGBT community,” Stryker wrote to me. “Milo Yiannopoulos is gay, remember.” She told me that we need “as many people as possible fighting for LGBT rights, whether or not they are lesbian, gay, bi, or trans.” Our political movements, she explained, can’t unify people based around identity categories. So, just as all people need to unify behind a movement that demands equality for LGBT Americans, “we need as many people as possible fighting for the right to contraception or abortion, whether or not they have a uterus, and for rising up in resistance against the police

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Collage Graphic by Alex Williamson

Go Online! Tell us how you felt about the march www.determined.com

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shooting unarmed black men in the streets whether or not that are black or male, or for housing and food and health care for people who don’t have those things even if they themselves do,” Stryker said. The Women’s March on Washington wasn’t just about women. Intersectional feminism—the idea that social issues exist in overlapping ways, that black women and white women don’t experience womanhood equally, for instance—appeared to be on the minds of women marching, and was built into the march’s mission statement. Stryker told me that Women’s March on Washington was the largest gathering of trans and cisgender women ever. “I was extremely pleased to see in the vision and principles statement issued by the march organizers that it directly addressed trans women, honored leaders of the community, and expressed solidarity with issues of particular or unique significance to trans people like name-change or pronoun usage,” she said. “Reading that, I felt that the feminist mainstream had truly come a long way.” But who decides where the issues relating to women begin and end? “As the intersectional feminists have been reminding us all for decades, ‘woman’ is never a sufficient category for encompassing or analyzing women’s oppression,” Stryker wrote to me. “Trans

issues bring this point powerfully into the foreground, in that some trans women need things that are not usually considered ‘women’s’ needs, and some trans men need things that usually are.” For instance, trans women and men have bodies that are different than the popular understanding of male and female. So if a trans guy needs an abortion, is that a woman’s issue? “Cisprivilege in feminism has not been fully dislodged,” she explained. “Really taking trans issues to heart transforms feminism, just as really taking race or ability or class to heart transforms feminism. It makes it bigger.” The crowd was so big on Saturday morning that I couldn’t move through it. In every direction, women— and men—stood together in protest. They were kind and peaceful, a balm to the


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We really weren’t as different as those who try to divide us by anatomy claim that we are. The American people quickly organized and took the city of Washington with the women´s march.

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The visual is from an advertisement published in 1947. The headline is quoting Donald Trump in 2016.

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aint Hoax, an anonymous artist who splits his time between Beirut and New York City, couldn’t stomach those words or any of Trump’s numerous sexist remarks about women. So on International Women’s Day, Saint Hoax released a project replacing the slogans on misogynistic ads from the 1950s and replaced them with real statements Trump made about women over the years. For International Women’s Day in 2016, the artist created a viral photo campaign of young female Syrian refugees posing as their favorite Disney princess. Recently, however, he was working on a project on sexist ads from the 1950s and couldn’t help but compare them to previous

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The visual is from an advertisement published in 1955. The headline is quoting Donald Trump in 1994.


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I identify as a man, and that is exactly why I make it a point every year to celebrate International Women’s Day by publishing a project inspired by the event. Everyone should be celebrating women today and every day.

The visual is from an advertisement published in 1952. The headline is quoting Donald Trump in 1994.


The visual is from an advertisement published in 1953. The headline is quoting Donald Trump in 2004.

As I was researching those ads, I couldn’t stop comparing them to Trump’s sexist remarks

Trump statements, Saint Hoax told Mic in an email. “As I was researching those ads, I couldn’t stop comparing them to Trump’s sexist remarks about women,” Saint Hoax said. “So I decided to match the visuals with sexist Trump quotes, just for fun, and show them to my friends without actually telling them where I got the quotes from. I told them that these were the actual advertisements that were published in the ‘50s/’60s and they believed it.” Saint Hoax said his friends were shocked when they learned the quotes were actually from Trump. While it’s true the way women are represented in media has shifted drastically since the time the original ads were published, Saint Hoax said The visual is from an advertisement published in 1951. The headline is quoting Donald Trump in 2013.

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The visual is from an advertisement published in 1952. The headline is quoting Donald Trump in 2005.

The visual is from an advertisement published in 1967. The headline is quoting Donald Trump in 2005.

he believes Trump is sending the United States back to the Mad Men era, when women were often seen as objects. He said he hopes his posters show how Trump’s remarks are seriously archaic and worrisome. “Sadly, Donald Trump is trying to take America back to the ‘Mad Men’ era,” Saint Hoax said. “I’m hoping that these posters would make people realize that Trump’s ‘locker room talk’ is extremely dangerous especially now since he is the president of the United States and he’s ‘supposed’ to be representing one of the most feminist countries in the world.”

The visual is from an advertisement published in 1951. The headline is quoting Donald Trump in 1991.

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Sadly, Donald Trump is trying to take America back to the ‘Mad Men’ era. I’m hoping that these posters would make people realize that Trump’s ‘locker The visual is from an advertisement published in 1952. The headline is quoting Donald Trump in 1997.

Go Online! See all of the posters and check out more of the artist’s work. www.determined.com

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The visual is from an advertisement published in 1970. The headline is quoting Donald Trump in 1992.

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The original is about as Asian as things get: Japanese cult manga, ground-breaking anime, Hong Kong– inspired locations, Eastern philosophy– based. story. 130

Screenshot from the official trailer of "Ghost in the Shell" revealing Major plugged in

ABOUT In the near future, Major (Scarlett Johansson) is the first of her kind: a human who is cyber-enhanced to be a perfect soldier devoted to stopping the world’s most dangerous criminals. When terrorism reaches a new level that includes the ability to hack into people’s minds and control them, Major is uniquely qualified to stop it. As she prepares to face a new enemy, Major discovers that she has been lied to, and her life was not saved. Instead, it was stolen. Ghost in the Shell is a Japanese media franchise originally published as a seinen manga series of the same name written and illustrated by Masamune Shirow. There have been multiple anime adaptions for the comic series.


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carlett Johansson is a skilled actress whose prominence in popular culture continues because she’s a solid performer. She has chops as a dramatic actress and as an action hero, seen particularly in her role as the special ops superhero Black Widow in Marvel’s Avengers franchise. The same Scarlett Johansson, talented, Caucasian actress, has been cast in Paramount’s Ghost in the Shell, a Hollywood adaptation of Masamune Shirow’s Japanese manga and Mamoru Oshii’s pivotal 1995 animated film, which was publicly admired upon its release by Steven Spielberg. She’s starring as “Major,” a human/cyborg hybrid who commands an elite squad to battle terrorists. (In the source material, her name is Major Motoko Kusanagi,

Screenshot from the official trailer of "Ghost in the Shell" showing a masked figure

Determined remember that because that’s important later.) Fans and other internet dwellers have now seen the first image from the film, and many of those people aren’t happy. People, in fact, are livid. On some level, I understand why. Ghost in the Shell is a uniquely Japanese story, crafted by Japanese artists and writers to comment on the way they collectively experience their time and place. The late ‘80s and ‘90s, when Ghost in the Shell was released, were financially prosperous but culturally troublesome for the island nation, which is why so many great sci-fi projects released at the time were prophetic about doomsday and the futility of effort. Japan was doubtful about its future, evidenced by prominent but apocalyptic works like Akira and Neon Genesis Evangelion. And now, star-spangled America, who in some ways


Scarlett Johansson's casting as the darkhaired, obviously originally Asian lead sent netizens into a rage.

Closeup of Major from the official trailer of "Ghost in the Shell"


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literally created Godzilla has entered to snatch Japan’s story away and reinterpret it for a Western audience. Remaking stories is not a novel concept, but sometimes art flourishes because it isn’t cross-culturally adaptable. Art, I’d argue, doesn’t have to be for everyone. When naive changes are made to particular fictions, that process can even involve insidious cultural colonialism. Scarlett Johansson, by way of her casting, is now the literal face of that effort. And make no mistake, people have been mad about this remake since Johansson was hired, and they’re mad still because looking at it, it’s almost worse than many of them feared. That Johansson is playing a character whose name was Motoko Kusanagi (and still is? Paramount’s press release had no mention of “Motoko Kusanagi”) is telling all people of color their faces and stories are just not marketable enough, not to Americans. Naysayers eager to fight diversity tooth and nail will be quick to point out that robots can’t have ethnicities. That is true, sort of, but any image, even manmade, can be coded to incorporate certain ethnic features. Case in point, some guy made a real robot modeled after, hey whaddaya know, Scarlett Johansson. And on the other side of the coin, it was no mistake that in Ex Machina Oscar Isaac’s Grand overview of the setting

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The workings of Major.

Go Online! Tell us what you think about whitewashing Major. www.determined.com

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misogynistic tech bro made a sex robot look purposefully like an Asian girl. A robot may not belong technically any particular ethnicity, but every robot has a design. Their frustration is reasonable because whitewashing and the lack of diversity behind and onscreen is still a problem, publicized as recently as the #OscarsSoWhite controversy. Diversity in fiction, especially in science fiction, is not just one conversation; it’s several different discussions and they’re overlapping and beginning to echo. Representation matters. While no one is seeing Star Wars to learn

about the nuances of space exploration, when people see people act adventurous and defiant against empires, those images stick in the cultural consciousness, informing not only how each viewer regards themselves, but how we consider and empathize with others who don’t look like us. When a film set in an imaginative world features exclusively white people (as pretty much all of the original 1977 Star Wars does), or when characters of color are made into clowns (the ultimate example is still Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the


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Diversity is important in Hollywood


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Upcoming Lunch At Cuomo’s- Rally for Reproductive RIghts @ 633 Third Avenue May 10 @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm People’s Power Assemblies Weekly Meeting @ Solidarity Center NYC May 10 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm NYC 4 CEDAW Day of Action @ New York City Hall May 12 @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm DeFund DAPL NYC Divestment Day @ Union Square Park May 13 @ 10:00 am – 2:00 pm Children’s March NYC @ Cadman Plaza May 13 @ 11:00 am – 2:00 pm People’s March for Free Press- Truth Matters! @ New York Public Library and Bryant Park May 13 @ 12:00 pm – 3:00 pm Take Action Tuesdays at Tip Top! @ Tip Top Bar & Grill May 16 @ 6:00 pm – 11:30 pm Lunch At Cuomo’s- Rally for Reproductive RIghts @ 633 Third Avenue May 17 @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm Citizens’ Climate Lobby Brooklyn Meeting @ Friends and Lovers May 17 @ 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm People’s Power Assemblies Weekly Meeting @ Solidarity Center NYC May 17 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm Take Action Tuesdays at Tip Top! @ Tip Top Bar & Grill May 23 @ 6:00 pm – 11:30 pm Lunch At Cuomo’s- Rally for Reproductive RIghts @ 633 Third Avenue May 24 @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm People’s Power Assemblies Weekly Meeting @ Solidarity Center NYC May 24 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm Take Action Tuesdays at Tip Top! @ Tip Top Bar & Grill May 30 @ 6:00 pm – 11:30 pm Lunch At Cuomo’s- Rally for Reproductive RIghts @ 633 Third Avenue May 31 @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm Citizens’ Climate Lobby Brooklyn Meeting @ Friends and Lovers May 31 @ 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm People’s Power Assemblies Weekly Meeting @ Solidarity Center NYC May 31 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm Lunch At Cuomo’s- Rally for Reproductive RIghts @ 633 Third Avenue Jun 7 @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm Lunch At Cuomo’s- Rally for Reproductive RIghts @ 633 Third Avenue Jun 14 @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm Citizens’ Climate Lobby Brooklyn Meeting @ Friends and Lovers Jun 14 @ 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm Lunch At Cuomo’s- Rally for Reproductive RIghts @ 633 Third Avenue Jun 21 @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm Lunch At Cuomo’s- Rally for Reproductive RIghts @ 633 Third Avenue Jun 28 @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm Citizens’ Climate Lobby Brooklyn Meeting @ Friends and Lovers


Determined


Determined


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