Intersexional Magazine

INTERSEXIONS

Hello !

A Little Bit About Us This magazine is a small collection of the works of all 52 of us in Intro to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies class from this Fall semester. We have put our hearts and souls into this magazine, so that we can share with our Northeastern community the values with which we identify: justice, equality, compassion, love, fairness, kindness, and acceptance.

We hope that this document provides some information, and a great deal of value to our community. To those reading something like this for the first time, we hope it intrigues and excites you.

We hope that it lights a fire inside of you to seek more information, and become as passionate as we are about kyriarchy. To those reading this and seeing themselves within its pages, we hope that you come to know us as friends and allies. We hope you know that we stand with you and for you.

Some of Our Favorite Reads from Class “Sexuality and Gender in Certain Native American Tribes: The Case of Cross-Gender Females” Evelyn Blackwood “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles” Emily Martin

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“Medical Violence Against People of Color and the Medicalization of Domestic Violence” Ana Clarissa Rojas Durazo “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses” Chandra Talpede Mohanty

“Combahee River Collective: A Black Feminist Statement”

“Navigating Our Own “Sea of Islands”: Remapping a Theoretical Space for Hawaiian Women and Indigenous Feminism” Lisa Kahaleole Hall

“White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” Peggy McIntosh

“This White Feminist Loved Her Dreadlocks – Here’s Why She Cut Them Off” Annah Anti-Palindrome

“Intersex FAQ” Interact Youth

Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More Janet Mock

Table of Contents Gender Theory Towards Feminist Androgyny Femmephobia is Hurting Us Alternatives to the Patriarchy 5 Misconceptions of Being Genderqueer

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Sex(ual) Education Shades of Asexuality Building and Uncovering Queer Identitites and Language Birth Control & Domestic Violence 28 Little Pills Let’s Talk About SEXual Abuse

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Media Feminist Netflix Queue Empower Your Soul Appropriation of Drag

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Global Perspectives Feminism in Korea?

Africa Feminism The Cartography of Oppression Mr. and Mrs. Oppression

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Personal Statements The Angry, Feminist African Woman Living in the USA How I Navigated Title IX Even Misogynist Parents Can Empower You From Tumblr Blogs to the Progressive Classroom Skin Like Tree Bark

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Gender Theory

Towards Feminist Androgyny

By Isabella Viega

Second-wave feminism, a period of feminism that advocated equality for different sexualities and gender, began in the 1960s and lasted until the 1980s. While first-wave feminism fought for legal-based rights, the women in this era began to realize the extent of systemic gender oppression, thus engendering the women’s liberation movement. In her 1970 article, “What Would It Be Like if Women Win,” Gloria Steinem builds upon the movement via the pontification of a different gender system: “ Any change is fearful, especially one affecting both politics and sex roles, so let me begin these Utopian speculations with a fact. To break the ice. […] Women don’t want to exchange places with men. Male chauvinists, science-fiction writers and comedians may favor that idea for its shock value, but psychologists say it is a fantasy based on ruling-class ego and guilt.”

The established hegemony and the discourse surrounding its demystification appears in this passage, since feminists began to unveil the

psychosocial implications of the gender order (as well as other intersectional issues, like class, race, sexuality, etc.). In response to such realizations, feminists also postulated alternatives to the current order, Utopian (like Steinem’s article) or feasible.

Different ideas about gender began to surface in the beginning of this era, culminating in the 1970s and 1980s when androgyny became a more widely-accepted form of gender identity, in response to the 60s’ reverence of Utopia, idealism, and authenticity. Androgyny, of course, can be described as: “a human condition in which one behaves in such a way as to indicate a balance of those characteristics we have labelled ‘masculine’ …and those we have labeled ‘feminine.” Thus, androgyny suggests a balance of masculinity and femininity to achieve a sense of human wholeness, and, in turn, a truly androgynous society offers a complete range of experiences and states of existence to every person regardless of genital differences.

This emergence of gender ambivalence caused a plethora of feminists to look into the androgyny movement, as well as its success.

For example, Janice Raymond examines androgyny in “The Illusion of Androgyny,” an article from 1974. Here, she argues that androgyny should attempt the integration of cultural masculinity and femininity to achieve the previously mentioned human wholeness. However, Raymond makes the case that androgyny is often androgenized (or, masculinized) androgyny because of the oppression of women/femininity and the veneration of men/

Towards Feminist Androgyny // 5

masculinity in our society – she contends that, even though the word androgyny stems from the Greek aner masculinity and femininity equally – despite what the term suggests. Consider the etymological similarity between the words androgyny and androgen: Raymond fears that society will become less androgynized and more androgenized, based on the severity of the gender hierarchy in sundry aspects of society.

Androgyny should integrate human qualities, both masculine and feminine – yet, androgyny is often masculinized, and, in the process, masculinity is elevated and femininity is suppressed.

“Androgyny should integrate

human qualities, both masculine and feminine – yet, androgyny is often masculinized, and, in the process, masculinity is elevated and femininity is suppressed.

”

The stem of this comes from centuries of oppressing women: rhetoric makes the male seem like the active power of generation while the women seem like the passive power, therefore enforcing gender roles and stereotypes. Although sublimated, patriarchal values infiltrate many bodies of thought, including scien tific and sociological language. Females are seen as defective males because of a lack of androgen.

In order to be seen as androgynous, the female must become male; that is to say, she must embody culturally-masculine traits. Raymond argues that the idea of androgynizing humanity would involve androgenizing humanity– in other words, in a society that revolves around a gender construct that elevates men (the active power) and presses

6 // Towards Feminist Androgyny

women (the non-power), women would e masculinized, but men would not be feminized. The aforesaid definition of androgyny describes the assimilation of two parts to create a whole – a concept of androgyny that contains flaws, considering that cultural perceptions of masculinity and femininity would theoretically force women to become men to attain androgyny. Raymond continues her argument by pointing out that “the male has a direct route to the androgynous being; the female must first of all become male… in [this] split-level hybrid model of androgyny.”

Androgyny is still a prevalent concept in the 21st century, especially in aesthetic ideals. We see headlines like, “Why Burberry’s Cool Androgyny for the Runway is a Beauty Dream,” “ELLE Channels Hip Parisian Androgyny in Mini-Collection,” and “International fashion runways are breaking gender stereotypes. Will India follow suit?” Androgyny seems more like a fashion movement – Zara, for example, released an ungendered clothing line in March 2016 – yet, despite its attempt to be androgynous, Zara falls into the the passive power, therefore enforcing gender roles and stereotypes. Although sublimated, patriarchal values infiltrate androgeny category.

Femmephobia is Hurting Us

By Mackenzie Coleman

Throughout human history, women and femmes have experienced tremendous amounts of violence and oppression. Femme can be defined as feminine and queer-coded gender expression and even as its own gender identity. Misogyny, the hatred of women, is entrenched in the core of every system and institution in our Western, patriarchal society today. Femininity and womanhood are frequently conflated to be the same thing when they are ideally regarded as completely unrelated identities. Due to the confusion of feminine gender expression with womanhood, femmes are often subject to similar vitriol as women. Thus, while the two groups include people with different gender identities, both often share similar experiences of violence. This violence is due to femmephobia, the fear or hatred of all people who are perceived as feminine or femme.

The influence of the patriarchy imposed upon us all is solidified by the hatred of femininity in our society that manifests in institutional level discrimination and violence. These biases lead women and femmes to become more isolated from each other, and these lost opportunities for community are devastating for countless people. This fear of femininity also comes from internalized homophobia that people absorb from our society. It results in women being separated and not forming close relationships, as stated in chapter 5 of Our Bodies, Ourselves, an essay written by The Boston Women’s Health Book Collective about lesbian relationships and experiences. The piece touches on the potential for friendship to bring women together and how in-

frequently this is explored. An enormous capacity for potential solidarity and coalition building is squandered when the internalized misogyny women have absorbed keeps them apart. Thus, the patriarchy strengthens itself and remains further ingrained in society. In one academic study, many of 220 femme participants stated that coming out as a sexual minority and as a femme gender identity were two very different experiences with different levels of difficulty (Blair 2014). This shows that femme gender identity and/or queer sexual identities lead to different lived experiences and forms of oppression that too frequently divide members of the greater LGBTQA+ community.

“Radical Softness” is a concept that actively fights the femmephobia that divides so many women and femmes of different sexual orientations and other gender identities. Softness in this sense does not relate to the traditional view of femininity as always being kind, docile, and quiet; it is about deliberately cultivating vulnerability and sweetness in your close relationships. Radical softness runs far beyond

“ Radical softness runs far beyond gender: it is about making space for healing the trauma imparted by a world full of oppressive institutions and allowing oneself to openly feel emotions.

”

Femmephobia is Hurting Us // 7

“Femmephobia hurts LGBTQA+ communities because it replicates many of the biases found in mainstream society that these communities ideally would reject.

”

gender: it is about making space for healing the trauma imparted by a world full of oppressive institutions and allowing oneself to openly feel emotions and become empowered rather than constrained by them. Radical softness calls for close relationships between women and femmes that are often discouraged because of femmephobia, and it can be adopted into the ideologies of many groups and organizations because of its emphasis on kindness and connection. Radical softness can be a useful tool to use against many of the harmful biases that permeate even within marginalized communities and organizations.

The discrimination transgender women and queer femmes too frequently face is explained in the book Excluded by trans feminist theorist Julia Serano. Serano writes, “It is commonplace for people in both the straight mainstream as well as within our queer and feminist circles to presume that feminine gender expression is more frivolous, artificial, impractical, and manipulative than masculine gender expression, and that those of us who dress or act femininely are likely to be more tame, fragile, dependent, and immature than our masculine or ‘gender neutral’ counterparts. By reclaiming femininity, those of us who are femme are engaged in a constant process of challenging these negative

8 // Femmephobia is Hurting Us

assumptions that are routinely projected onto feminine gender expression.” Femmephobia and misogyny are not solely held by communities of cisgender and heterosexual people and affect many queer and femme folks; femmephobia is present and rampant within queer communities. This leads to the oppression of all people who are viewed as presenting their gender near the female end of the gender binary society has in place.

Femmephobia continues to hurt LGBTQA+ communities because it is present among many of the biases found in mainstream society that these communities ideally would reject. It manifests in the form of respectability politics that determine feminine men, women, and gender nonconforming people as responsible for the poor image of the gay rights movement. They also contest that femme women who love women cannot be queer because their gender expression defies the butch stereotype more frequently displayed in the media. Another academic study observed 698 people, many of whom were femme-identified sexual minorities (not heterosexual), and concluded that there was a higher level of femmephobia among butch or androgynous people than in femme-indentified lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual women (Blair 2015 29). This suggests that masculine queer people who are benefiting from the patriarchy are less likely to be critical of the ways society oppresses feminine people, and they may even perpetuate this oppression because they gain power from it. There was also a greater awareness of internalized femme stigma in queer femme women than in lesbian and bisexual femmes as well as masculine queer folks in the study (Blair 2015 28), highlighting the tendency within the queer communities towards discriminating against femme people. This problematic bias in the community is also demonstrated by analyzing the identities and experiences of two different queer and non-binary public figures, Ruby Rose and Alok Vaid-Menon.

Ruby Rose is a non-binary celebrity who uses she/her pronouns. She has been a host for many MTV events and is known for her role on the highly popular Netflix show Orange is the New Black. Rose has received an overwhelmingly positive public response to her rising fame. Many straight women have confessed their attraction to Ruby on social media, stating that they would “go gay” or “flip” for her.

Rose’s trans-masculinity is warmly received - masculinity is the norm in society and thus dictates the norms of non-binary androgyny as well. Our male-dominated society centers maleness as the default gender, and because of the tendency society has of conflating maleness and masculinity, a masculine gender presentation is also the norm and often receives more praise than femme identities do.

In addition to her masculine or androgynous presentation, Ruby is white, thin, and able-bodied, and upper middle class: these identities shape her experience alongside her genderqueerness. Though she experiences oppression related to identifying as nonbinary, Rose possesses a significant amount of privilege as well.

These unearned advantages must be considered when regarding her lived experiences – to say that she is precisely the same as all other non-binary people would be incorrect. While all non-binary folks experience significant discrimination from both the cisgender and transgender communities in this world, not all binary folks experience the same amounts or types of discrimination. This exemplifies Kimberle Crenshaw’s term, “intersectionality” – the idea that no identities exist in a vacuum, that everyone has multiple identities that give them unearned privileges and disadvantages that shape their experiences in the world (Crenshaw).

These privileges and oppressions can affect people differently in different contexts, places, and periods of an individual’s life.

people as a result of femmephobia is exemplified further by an analysis of the experience of another non-binary figure, Alok Vaid-Menon.

Alok is half of the queer and trans South Asian performance art duo DarkMatter, and they use they/them pronouns. They are a talented poet who frequently tours colleges and museums around the world to share their work. They are also a popular public figure on social media due to their increasing fame. Alok is also a fashion icon; they have been featured in many fashion magazines, and they frequently post Instagram and Facebook photos of their explicitly queer style and clothing. Vaid-Menon frequently posts to both Facebook and Instagram about their experiences with street harassment and gender-related violence, often placing their stories as the captions of photos of the very same outfits they were wearing when the story occurred.

Alok’s identities outside of their non-binary identity may explain why they seem to experience so much more violence than someone like Ruby. Alok is a self-identified brown, hairy femme, and they are visibly gender non-conforming. They have unsubscribed from gender both ideologically and in their variety of gender presentations and don’t “pass” as cis or ‘butch’ in the way someone like Ruby might. Passing

This disparity in experiences of non-binary

Femmephobia is Hurting Us // 9

is a somewhat controversial concept describing the phenomenon of a transgender or gender nonconforming person appearing to be cisgender, which is highlighted in Janet Mock’s book, Redefining Realness. Mock stated in a video on her YouTube channel, “I am not ‘passing’ as anything. I am merely being myself. (Janet)” The complicated relationship transgender and gender nonconforming people have with passing is portrayed frequently in Mock’s autobiography, Redefining Realness. In the novel, Janet explains that passing earns people safety in a world that is hostile towards transgender and nonbinary people, but it also is problematic in that it implies that these people are actively deceiving people around them about who they truly are (Mock). This invalidates trans people’s identities as legitimate and takes away their agency to define themselves outside of the binary gender identity that corresponds with the biological sex they were assigned at birth.

Alok doesn’t “pass” and knows this well. A quote from their website reads, “it is on the days that i feel most myself that i am most punished for it.” As a person of color and a femme, Alok deviates from two norms that Ruby adheres to: whiteness and masculinity. The violence and criticism they experience is a direct result of the privileges and protections they lack due to having marginalized identities. Femmephobia is thus a hindrance to the lives of all people, can be amplified by other marginalized identities, and is perpetuated both within and outside of queer communities.

Femininity shouldn’t just be valued for the sake of equality and flexibility in presentations of gender. It also is a positive antidote to the toxicity of the patriarchy set in place in society.

There are countless positive and traditionally feminine-coded characteristics which men aren’t traditionally permitted to exhibit. A world that values femininity is a world without normative and oppressive gendered behaviors and

10 // Femmephobia is Hurting Us

expressions that trap people in binaries that don’t truly exist. A world that values femininity is a world full of emotive and empathetic people who aren’t afraid or disempowered to be affectionate. Toxic masculinity and the patriarchy bar many people from the amazing and empowering concept of “radical softness.” Femininity and vulnerability could have the potential to be a positive shift in perspective for many people, if not everyone. A world without femmephobia is one where bodies aren’t policed unequally or at all. This would be a world where people are free to be their truest selves. Doesn’t the possibility of a world seems to be worth the struggle to dismantle the institutions we have in place now?

Alternatives to the Patriarchy

By Rachel Ceskavich

It is a common misconception that, because societies around the world share similar norms for gender roles and hierarchies to ours, this must be the natural order of things. But in fact, plenty of non-patriarchal societies have existed in human history! Evelyn Blackwood writes about one such example in her article, “Sexuality and Gender in Certain Native American Tribes: The Case of the Cross-Gender Females.” The socalled cross-gender females referenced in the title are women who “acted, sat, dressed, talked like, and did the work of the other sex,” not as in transgender individuals, but people who merely wanted to fill gender role typically assigned to men rather than to women in their society. I say “merely,” but when gender nonconforming people express this desire today, they are shunned by our patriarchal society.

The patriarchy by definition values masculine roles over feminine ones, such as the role of providing over caretaking, and any deviance from the assigned norm, for instance a mother choosing to work instead of being a stay-at-home mom, is pushed back against because it threatens the existing hierarchy. This pushback is not because women are best suited to child rearing, but because a woman pursuing a career is seen as an invasion into the more valued role typically reserved for men. As explained in “Under Western Eyes” by Chandra Mohanty, the fact that women are assigned the caretaking role “in a variety of societies is not as significant as the value attached to mothering in these societies.”

Being a caretaker or mother is not inherently

“Being called a girl

is one of the worst insults for a boy, because being a girl is to be inferior.

”

inferior to being a breadwinner, because both roles are important to a family. Instead, the value placed on various gender roles by a society is what makes one gender inferior or superior.

Once this fact is understood, so much about our society becomes clear. Women are told to “stay in the kitchen” as a put-down because the female gender role of cooking is not valued. Being called a girl is one of the worst insults for a boy, because being a girl is to be inferior. Because the activities associated with the female gender role are not valued, women instead are told to find their worth in their appearance. The list of ramifications goes on, and it can all be traced back to devaluing the female gender role.

In contrast to this patriarchal society, certain Native American tribes in fact created society without gender hierarchies simply because neither gender role was valued more than the other, and “ultimately, neither women nor men had an inferior role but rather had power in those spheres of activity specific to their sex,” Blackwood explains. From this equality, “it was then possible for some Native American women

Alternatives to the Patriarchy // 11

to take up the male role permanently without threatening the gender system.”

Cross-gender females were accepted in their society for who they were, and the cultural practices in place made the transition seamless, even allowing cross-gender females to marry women. Althoughcross-gender females were regarded socially as male, the relationship between a cross-gender female and a woman was not considered “an imitation of heterosexual behavior,” according to Blackwood. This seeming contradiction is again possible because of the lack of a gender hierarchy in these Native American tribes. In her chapter of Toward an Anthropology of Women, Gayle Rubin explains that one purpose of the division of labor by sex is to ensure an interdependency of the sexes, thus prohibiting “sexual arrangements other than those containing at least one man and one woman.” In contrast, the society of these Native American tribes essentially allowed individuals to choose the role they preferred, rather than assigning roles by sex. Without a division of labor by sex, men and women were not forced to be interdependent. Cross-gender females were free to pursue the male role in society, at the same time that their relationships with women were seen as homosexual.

Sadly, the egalitarian society existing in these Native American tribes came to an end when colonialism brought patriarchal ideas about gender to America. As Blackwood states, “ideological pressures of white culture encouraged Native American peoples to reject the validity of the cross-gender role and to invoke the notions of ‘proper’ sexuality that supported men’s possession of sexual rights to women.” With the hierarchy of gender enforced by European societies, the cross-gender role suddenly became a threat to men, whose assigned gender role came to be valued more than women’s, thus creating the superiority of men over women.

With this new hierarchy in place, the cross-gen-

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der females now threatened this superiority by choosing to take up the male gender role instead of the female one. In order to enforce the newly formed hierarchy, Native American men abused the cross-gender females living at the time of this cultural change. One cross-gender female was even “raped by a man who was angered because his wife left him for [her].” This kind of behavior results directly from valuing one gender’s role in society over another, such that any deviation from the normally assigned gender roles becomes a threat to the superior gender.

The egalitarian society of certain Native American tribes is not the only such society that challenges certain beliefs about gender held in our society. Claude Lévi-Strauss conducted a survey of different societies and found that, “the sexual division of labor varies endlessly,” with some societies assigning hunting to women and caretaking to men. The very fact that gender roles vary so much is evidence that it is not a biological specialization, that it is not natural for there to be a binary of men and women with hierarchy between them. People’s desires and skills are not limited to their sex or gender, and our society would be much better off if it recognized this. The first step, however, is coming to value the masculine and the feminine equally.

5 Misconceptions About Being Genderqueer

By Allison Davis

1. There are only two genders. While many may believe that there is simply a binary system in which only men and women exist, gender is actually more fluid and lies on a spectrum. A genderqueer person is someone who does not identify according to conventional gender distinctions but identifies as neither, both, or a combination of male and female genders. There are infinite ways that people can identify, including agender, bigender, cis female or male, trans, etc., and even social network websites such as Facebook list many of these as gender options in a person’s profile.

2. Gender identity and sexuality are interrelated. Gender identity refers to the gender with which a person most strongly identifies. Sexual orientation refers to the sexual preferences and attractions of an individual. These concepts are separate and a person’s gender identity does not determine their sexuality and vice versa. A general rule of thumb is to never assume anyone’s gender identity according to their sexuality.

3. Individuals who are Genderqueer are also Intersex. People who are intersex typically have sex characteristics that put them outside the misinformed binary “male” and “female”, according to interactyouth.org. In simple terms, Genderqueer differs because it is related to gender while Intersex is related to sex. Someone can be Intersex and identify as Genderqueer, but if someone is Genderqueer it does not mean they are necessarily Intersex.

4. The singular use of they, them, and their is not grammatically correct. While some argue that this use is incorrect, they, them, and their can be used as gender-neutral pronouns. It is important that as our societies evolve to be more inclusive of all people, so does our grammar and language. That said, even Shakespeare practiced the singular versions of they, them, and their in his plays in the 1600s.

5. The concept of genderqueer is fairly new. Genderqueer and non-binary individuals have been around for a very long time, but lack of mainstream attention has caused many people to think these identities and people are new. Always remember that just because you have not heard of something until now does not mean it must not have existed until now. Riki Anne Wilchins, activist and founder of GenderPAC, describes this in the 1995 newsletter of Transexual Menace, In Your Face. “The fight against gender oppression has been joined for centuries, perhaps millennia.

What’s new today is that it’s moving into the arena at open political activism. And nope, this is not just one more civil rights struggle for one more narrowly-defined minority. It’s about all of us who are genderqueer: diesel dykes and stone butches, leatherqueens and radical fairies...transgendered, transgressively gendered, and those of us whose gender expressions are so complex they haven’t even been named yet.”

5 Misconceptions About Being Genderqueer // 13

Author’s Note The following narrative is based on interviews and experiences with Karis Vancavage about being a genderqueer person. Karis has given me permission to share their story and I am beyond grateful for the opportunity.

My Friend Karis Who is Karis? To me, Karis is my best friend, the life-of-the-party, the sarcastically funny cat-lover, rugby-playing Tampa native, who can recite every line from The Office. When I met them freshman year, Karis was found shopping in the boy’s section more often than the girls, exhibiting an increasingly shorter haircut, and swapping perfume for axe deodorant. Myself being a former catholic schoolgirl, Karis was my first “gay” friend and I admired how candid they were about who they were as a person, something I could not say for myself at the time.

While playing a card game with our friends in our third year of college, Karis told us that from now on they would like their pronouns to be ‘they’ and ‘their.’ We all nodded and agreed, and continued on with our game.

“It is uncomfortable to be referred to as something you don’t feel you are,” Karis explained to me when I asked about it later on. It never felt right when people called Karis ‘she’ or even when their mom referred to them as her daughter. I inquired about when they had this awareness and they told me about an instance that had occurred three years earlier.

One morning while eating breakfast with a friend, Karis made a sarcastic comment about being a boy due to their appearance looking more like a traditional boy than girl. Instead of laughing it off like most would, the friend asked if Karis did not feel like they were a girl. No one had ever seriously asked Karis that before and they were at a loss for an answer. The friend said she knew people who were genderqueer and did not identify as either a boy or a girl. Karis had no idea that this concept even existed, let alone that it was common and practiced.

After coming out as non-binary to more of their friends through a Facebook status a couple months after the card game, Karis felt like they could finally be more themself. “There

14 // 5 Misconceptions About Being Genderqueer

was no longer a pressure to be hyper masculine in order to prove a point, but rather I could wear earrings or be more ‘girly’ if I wanted, and comfortably remain somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.” As Janet Mock, a writer and trans rights activist said in her memoir Redefining Realness about growing up as a trans person in America, “No one’s definition is the same, and compartmentalizing a person as either a boy or a girl based entirely on the appearance of genitalia at birth undercuts our complex life experiences.”

Even after finding the immense courage to first come out as gay and then as genderqueer, Karis still faces numerous challenges in public on a daily basis. They dread having to use the bathroom, a biological process that connects us all as humans, because there is no gender neutral option. Karis typically uses the girls’ room due to their breasts and the belief that girls might not harass them as much as boys would, but still receives dirty looks when spotted inside. As a student at Northeastern University, Karis is uncertain about how to come out about their identity to professors and employers.

Once a professor made a comment about how it was so great that the class had the same number of boys as girls, and Karis was unsure of its relevancy and validity to the curriculum.

The day I met Karis was the day I became an ally. I continually strive to support their identity and instill comfortability in their life, just as society has unfairly let me feel since the day I was born and identified as a heterosexual girl. This alliance is practiced through correcting people who use the wrong pronouns for Karis and spreading awareness about what it means to be non-binary. As Elizabeth Martinez writes in Unite and Rebel! Challenges and Strategies in Building Alliances, “We must acknowledge our tendency toward silence around...difference and work on solutions...for when others say nothing, this second act of violence compounds the damage that’s already been done.” Therefore, I implore you to find a motivation to no longer be silent, as I have found my reason in Karis.

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Sex(ual) Education

Shades of Asexuality

By Isabella Viega

In a society that propagates the endurance of the binary in various facets of the human experience, one typically considers sexuality as a spectrum, with two extreme ends (heterosexuality and homosexuality) and a middle (bisexuality). This idea persists with the work of Alfred Kinsey, a sexologist who created the Kinsey Scale. These binary and linear perceptions of sexuality often marginalize groups who fall outside of these heavily dichotomized scales. Many people consider asexuality a variance or an outlier to this spectrum: consider how the Kinsey scale added asexuality as an afterthought, symbolized by the letter X rather than a number like the other types of sexuality. Asexuality, though included, does not have any derivatives, unlike heterosexuality and homosexuality.

Asexuality, in reality, encapsulates a variety of sexual expressions or lack thereof. Sexologist Anthony F. Bogaert considers “a lack of sexual attraction” as the most popular definition of asexuality. He also argues that sexuality and romanticism intersect: demisexuality and gray-sexuality are two subtypes of asexuality that often deal with romantic and/or sexual attraction. Demisexuality occurs in a person who does not experience sexual attraction without an emotional bond; in other words, sexual feelings arise when strong emotional connections occur. However, not all emotional bonds bring forth sexual feelings for a demisexual person.

The prefix demi- implies that demisexuality is halfway between sexuality and asexuality. Despite the etymological connotations, one should

not interpret demisexuality as an incomplete form of sexuality. Rather, it exists as a type of asexuality that is equally as valid.

Gray-sexuality, on the other hand, depends on a Gray-A’s (a person who identifies with gray-sexuality) sexual attraction, sex drive, and attitudes toward having sex. Gray-As can include people: who do not normally experience sexual attraction, but do experience it sometimes; experience sexual attraction, but a have low sex drive; experience sexual attraction and drive, but not strongly enough to want to act on them; people who can enjoy and desire sex, but only under very limited and specific circumstances, etc.

Despite the etymological suggestion that asexual people do not experience sexual feelings or desires, asexual people can experience sexual attraction or a libido – some asexual people masturbate (80% of asexual men and 70% of asexual women, according to a study), and

“Despite the difference in

sexuality and romanticism, the two are not mutually exclusive; rather, they are aspects of human identity that relate to one another.

”

Shades of Asexuality // 17

some engage in sexual activities with partners.

This is not to say that all asexual people feel sexual attraction or libido: some asexuals are sex-repulsed (meaning that any kind of sexual activity repulses the person); others consider sexual release as a biological function, devoid of personal pleasure; others do experience minimal-to-no sexual pulls (hyposexuality, for example, exists because of a low libido and, therefore, lack of sex drive – though hyposexual people can engage in sexual and romantic relationships).

If a person identifies as asexual, they do not necessarily identify as aromantic. Asexuality and aromanticism are two different entities; one involves sexual attraction, and the other involves romantic attraction. An asexual person can be romantically attracted to someone, as in cases of demisexuality and gray-sexuality.

Despite the difference in sexuality and romanticism, the two are not mutually exclusive; rather, they are aspects of human identity that relate to one another. For example, a person who identifies as demisexual can be panromantic; in other words, sexual attraction can develop with strong emotional attraction, regardless of the biological sex or gender of the person involved – an emotional connection is the basis of the attraction, in this case. Ace (asexual) people can be heteromantic, homoromantic, biromantic, panromantic, aromantic, or any other form of romantic identity.

Asexuality is more prevalent than many originally fathom: in Bogaert’s 2004 study of asexuality, he postulated that approximately 1% is the rate of asexuality in adults (“1 in 100 adults asexual”). People who do not have full comprehension of asexuality often mythologize or disregard this (estimated) portion of the population – thus, in order to be a considerate and sympathetic member of society, it is integral to understand a marginalized and/or forgotten group of people with a sexuality that defies the binary norm.

18 //Shades of Asexuality

Building and Uncovering “Queer” Identities & Language Through Our Ancestors: The Americas Perspective

By Alessandra Bryant In a neocolonial world where our civilizations are increasingly dependent upon science and its practices, in the chapter on Dueling Dualisms in their book, Sexing the Body Fausto Sterling suggests that those in the disciplines involving the human body have “attempted to control the very gender of the body-including its capacities, gestures, movements, location, and behaviors.” These mindsets, especially when applied to people of color and indigenous communities, are continuing to perpetuate some of the racist and colonial practices that have caused homophobia to rise all over the globe. Furthermore, in her Queer Xicana Indigena Cultural Production: Remembering through oral and visual storytelling, Susy Zepeda emphasizes the way in which colonizers cover up indigenous histories and take from (whoever they took from), all while having sexual violence be a central component in their colonization. Addition-

ally, in Evelyn Blackwood’s publication on Sexuality and Gender in certain Native American Tribes she states that “Colonizers perspectives on the berdaches (cross-gender females) of North America distorted our understandings of sexuality among ingenious peoples.” Considering this history of perspective shifts due to colonization, many queer people of color like Zepeda believe that the term queer can hold western hegemonic connotations and erases the historical contexts in which “queerness” was previously present and thriving.

standings of race, gender, and sexuality but also learning about the civilizations and their rich histories involving queer folx has empowered many queer indigenous people of color to reclaim and adopt these ways of life and decolonize their sexuality. In this way, queer indigenous people of color are not only working through decolonizing their minds but also becoming anthropologists that are offering indigenous solutions to many of the negative social constructs that are made in a western colonial hegemonic society.

In response, many queer people of color across the Americas have begun studying the civilizations of their ancestors and the types of socially constructed sexual frameworks they have. This allows people of color to find their own queer identities and languages that weren’t made within oppressive western colonial hegemonic communities.

This process of not only challenging our colonial under-

For those from Mesoamerica where colonization fragmented groups of people, reclaiming language allows them identify themselves as Xicana. Furthermore, many queer women of color have adopted the term “queer Xicana Indigena, ”according to Zepeda and therefore “queering of colonial legacies that impose norms of gender, race, sexuality, ceremony, and spirituality—actively creating

Building and Uncovering “Queer” Identities & Language // 19

space for decolonized alterities.” The X in Xicana signifies a purposefully political identity that remembers Indigenous cultures, histories, and language throughout Mesoamerica.

Similarly, in North America a council of tribes convening to talk about LGBTQAI+ rights and indigenous sexuality created the term Two Spirit to encompass those people within their tribes that cross our western gender boundaries. According to NativeOut. com, “a Two Spirit person is a male-bodied or female-bodied person with a masculine or feminine essence. Two Spirits can cross social gender roles, gender expression, and sexual orientation. “These people were historically respected and accepted within many tribes, including the more popular histories of Two Spirit people living within the Apache, Zuni Pueblo, Navajo, and Crow Peoples. Accepting the title of Two Spirit can only be done by those who have ancestors within the Americas Indigenous populations and it directly recognizes the many ways that different North American tribes includes queer gender crossing people to live and thrive within their societies before colonizers invaded.

This reclamation of language to represent the diverse indigenous experience of queerness within their societies

20 //

is in direct opposition to the colonizers assimilation efforts that caused acceptance of homophobia that still causes harms to their people and erasure to their rich history.

language to represent the diverse indigenous experience of queerness within their societies is in direct opposition to the colonizers assimilation efforts...

born in Juchitan, it has been debated and reclaimed by other descendants from that indigenous region. According to fusion.com, a young muxe from LA who has reclaimed her identity after coming to the United States explains the differences between trans people and muxes is that a, “transvestite is a boy who dresses as a girl… a muxe dresses with his traditional huipiles and enaguas, is proud of where she comes from. It’s a role where culture plays a fundamental part that is aligned with sexuality Maritza explains. A muxe is a traditional woman: she feels dreamed about.” In this context, the queerness of these people of color doesn’t align solely with the title queer so young people of color have looked to their roots to find queer identities and language that fits their cultural background and recognizes indigenous histories.

Zapotec word ‘muxe’ was modified from ‘mujer’ which is Spanish for woman according to the Huffington Post and signifies an understanding of a third gender which allows individuals to have queer sexualities and fluid genders within traditional contexts. Muxes or cross gender females and males can be traced back to precolonial times and have ties to Mayan Gods and Aztec priests. Traditionally a title for those

To summarize, many queer people of color in America have reclaimed not only their histories and identities but have moved to decolonize the ways in which we think about gender, sexuality, and history.

Blackwood suggested how understanding context in the histories of indigenous peoples gave us new solutions to how we could possibly build non-hierarchical frameworks surrounding sexuality, gender, and gender roles.

Specifically in Juchitan, Oaxaca Mexico the deep and interwoven history of Muxes shows how traditional and modern indigenous feminists are using their ancestors’ perspectives and experiences to guide them through western hegemonic influences. The

“ This reclamation of

”

Building and Uncovering “Queer” Identities & Language

Building and Uncovering “Queer” Identities & Language // 21

Birth Control & Domestic Violence: Excavating the Dark Histories of the Women’s Movement

By Rebecca Green

The right to the body: a fundamental right that has been historically and systemically denied to women in patriarchal societies. In the U.S., whether it is full control over our own health and reproductive capacities, autonomous existences where we are not conceived of as a man’s property, the ability to love and be sexual with whoever we want, the decision to present ourselves however we may choose, and an ability to live free of the fear of violence and bodily harm, women are denied our bodies in real and material ways.

The reclaiming of the body has been integral to feminist scholarship and movements in the U.S. Two particularly powerful struggles that have fought for the body have been the birth control movement and the anti-violence movement. But in both movements, dangerous undercurrents of racism and classism secured the liberation of some women’s bodies from patriarchal systems of control on the backs of poor women of color. To effectively fight for justice for all people in the future, we must excavate these dark histories.

Birth Control Movement The birth control movement in the U.S. during the 20th century lead to important victories for women and a slow uprooting of state and federal laws that criminalized contraception.

Groundbreaking research in the 1950s paved the way for the creation of a birth control pill,

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Birth Control & Domestic Violence

which when approved by the FDA in 1960 was revolutionary in the struggle for women to harness control over their own bodies, health, and lives. But this mainstream narrative leaves out a painful history of racism and medical violence.

While predominantly white, middle-class women in the U.S. with access to quality healthcare celebrated the revolutionary pill, women in Puerto Rico were reeling with the side effects from birth control testing throughout the 1950s, a history that is explored in detail in the documentary “La Operacíon.” Sweeping trials were conducted in the most economically destitute areas of Puerto Rico, where poor women were given little or no information about the purpose of the research, possible side effects, or indication of its being voluntary. These women suffered medical consequences of pills that in their pre-FDA approval phase were up to 20x stronger than those safely administered today.

Even more disturbing was the situation of this contraception testing within the greater eugenics movement that swept the world in the 20th century. While Margaret Sanger, one of the champions of the birth control movement and the founder of Planned Parenthood, worked tirelessly to guarantee women’s access to birth control in the U.S., she was a strong believer in eugenics. Her fight for birth control was inextricable from her motivations to weed out “unfit” populations, namely people of color and people with mental disabilities.

The ramifications of racism and classism permeating the birth control movement are extreme. Birth control is still less accessible to poor women and women of color, meaning that there are significantly higher rates of unintended pregnancies among these populations according to the Center for Reproductive Rights.

The failure of an intersectional approach to a struggle for birth control also created space for the widespread, devastating practice of the forced sterilizations of women of color.

In 1937, Law 116 legalized the sterilization of women in Puerto Rico, an invasive medical procedure that became so ubiquitous it became re-

“ The failure of an

intersectional approach to a struggle for birth control also created space for the widespread, devastating practice of the forced sterilizations of women of color.

”

ferred to as “La Operacíon.” Door-to-door visits, government subsidies making the procedure highly affordable, and an intentional lack of information about other forms of contraception and the procedure’s permanent effects coerced thousands of women into the operating room.

By 1968, one third of all Puerto Rican women had been sterilized.

Even within U.S. borders, forced sterilizations were written into law in the majority of states throughout the 20th century, allowing for invasive, irreversible surgeries on mentally handicapped individuals, as well as immigrant and Native American women. “No Más Bebés,” a PBS documentary, discusses the case of Mexican immigrant women in California who were forcibly sterilized in the 1950s and 1960s. As

recently as 2010, there have been reports by The Center for Investigative Reporting on forced sterilizations of female inmates in California, cases that show the deep and insidious legacies of the eugenics movement.

No matter how successful, movements that fail to address race, class, and other crucial aspects of identity are vulnerable to devastating consequences for women of color, showcased in the birth control movement’s inextricable ties with eugenics and forced sterilizations.

Anti-Violence Movement In the 1970s, an increase in state funding lead to the creation of slews of NGOs doing anti-sexual assault and anti-domestic violence work. With state funding, the movement and new nonprofits turned towards legislation and criminalization as means of ending the epidemic. Much like the victories of the birth control movement, wins of the anti-violence movement such as the criminalization of marital rape in 1984, the 1987 Domestic Violence Prevention Act, and the 1994 federal Violence Against Women Act were groundbreaking in the fight for an eradication of violence against women.

But, as with the birth control movement, there is an ugly history of racism and classism in the movement that must be excavated.

Beginning in the 1970s as a backlash to the gains of the Civil Rights movement, Nixon and Reagan ushered in an era of “law and order,” racially coded rhetoric about cracking down on explosive drug and crime problems, despite the fact that drugs were not a material reality for the majority of Americans and crime rates hadn’t seen a substantial increase. The documentary “13th” outlines how this war was solidified by increased funding for policing, an explosion in the construction of prisons, the birth of the prison-industrial complex as we know it,

Birth Control & Domestic Violence // 23

“ How do we acknowledge

the historical medical violence against women of color, and work to guarantee affordable access to birth control for all women?

”

and the infamous 1994 Crime Bill passed under Bill Clinton. The “war on drugs” and “war on crime” created an explosion of the U.S. prison population from 350,000 in 1970 to over 2.3 million today.

The intersection of a deeply racist criminalization campaign of poor communities of color under the guise of a “war on drugs/crime,” and the anti-violence movement has had devastating consequences on women of color. As Kimberle Crenshaw argues in “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color,” the primary focus on criminalization in the anti-violence movement has further marginalized women of color, and supplanted wholistic, radical, community based prevention work that could acknowledge and eradicate their particular struggles.

This “carceral feminism” — reliance on criminalization to fight feminist agendas — fails to acknowledge that mass incarceration disproportionately affects poor communities of color. It was a historical process launched in reaction to freedoms for black people and communities of color gained through the Civil Rights struggle.

Carceral feminism also fails to acknowledge the common physical and sexual abuse of women of color by law enforcement, which serves as a material barrier for accessing help and services provided by the anti-violence movement. Even further, it erases the experience of immigrant

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Birth Control & Domestic Violence

women who fear interactions with law enforcement for threat of deportation.

In “Medical Violence Against Women of Color,” Ana Clarissa Rojas Purazo discusses how the criminalization of domestic violence and sexual assault came hand in hand with the process of medicalization, in which there is an emphasis on treating violence as a sickness that must be remedied at an individual level. The weight that is put on completing Rape Kits or seeking medical attention post assault excludes many women of color from seeking care and support due to hospital mandated reporting rules.

When situated in this history of mass criminalization of poor communities of color within the U.S., the mainstream, white middle-class dominated domestic violence movement’s reliance on criminalization approach becomes problematized. While like the pill, the criminalization of domestic violence has been crucial in shifting cultural attitudes and has seen to substantial gains in the fight for women’s rights and a reclaiming of the body, we must ask who these gains have been made for and at whose expense.

Building Intersectional Movements While distinct in their historical processes, there are striking similarities in the birth control and domestic violence movements’ problematic marginalizations of women of color.

How do we reconcile these legacies of racism and oppression with the gains of women’s movements? How do we acknowledge the historical medical violence against women of color, and work to guarantee affordable access to birth control for all women? How do we intervene in the marginalization of women of color by the anti-violence movement and disrupt mass incarceration?

While I do not purport to propose answers, our movements must listen to and centralize the voices of women who have been silenced by patriarchy and strains of the U.S. women’s movement alike. We must all undergo a painful process of reflection and self-criticism to understand how even in our fights for justice we all benefit from different, intersecting facets of privilege at the expense of our allies in struggle. If we do not do this, we again will fail the women in our movements struggling with compounding factors of race, class, and even further sexuality, disability, homelessness, and more. If we do not do this, we cannot engage in the often painful but deeply necessary process of true, radical coalition building.

In the words of Lilla Watson, an Aboriginal elder, activist, and educator from Queensland, Australia, “If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. If you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.�

Birth Control & Domestic Violence // 25

28 Little Pills

By Olivia Whitaker

At 12:25 pm every day, my phone alarm goes off, announcing that it’s time to take my pill. The Pill, capital P, lives in an unassuming pale blue packet inside my purse.

I feel no shame in pulling it out and popping the revered round medication out of its weekly row and into my mouth. A few generations ago, there’s a good chance that this scenario would be vastly different. The Pill is not something I want to ever take for granted.

The story of the Pill in America begins with Margaret Sanger, a nurse-turned-activist. Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, which is sadly not an amazing superhero squad, but instead the precursor to Planned Parenthood. In the Prohibition era, Sanger distributed pamphlets about family planning and birth control options. At the time, condoms were commonly used, follow-

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28 Little Pills

ing Victorian and pre-first wave feminist movements for “voluntary motherhood”.

Back-alley abortions were an issue at the time as well, and Sanger saw birth control as a solution to that problem. A discussion of Sanger’s legacy would not be complete without a mention of her racism.

Though she laid the groundwork for generations of women to access birth control, she viewed birth control as a tool for eugenics as well. Instead of advocating for birth control as a form of reproductive justice, Sanger often spoke of birth control as a way of discouraging the “unfit” from procreating. In 1920s America, the “unfit” quite simply meant the un-white. When we fight for wider access to birth control, it is important to remember who it was originally intended for and why.

In 1960, decades after Sanger’s original fight, the Food and Drug Administra-

tion at last approved the first birth control pill. For an inestimable number of years before that, people had been fashioning condoms and other barrier-style protection from animal products and cloth. Here was a new dawn: a supposedly healthy, safe, legal form of birth control for the masses. Of course, birth control was originally only legal for married couples; millions of unmarried women were still denied the Pill, due to continued societal disapproval of premarital sex.

Slowly, the Pill became available for single women. As Claudia Gordin and Lawrence Katz wrote in 2002, as the Pill became more popular in the late 1960s through the 1970s, young single women were increasingly likely to put off marriage in favor of a career. Moreover, “the pill enabled young men and women to put off marriage while not having to put off

sex.” With the spread of the Pill, women had more control over their reproductive lives, which gave them more control over their career plans and futures. They didn’t have to get married and start families if they didn’t want to. The Pill widened their horizons beyond the domestic sphere.

The control and stigma around birth control in its early days are representative of outdated, mid-20th century ideas about gender roles and how women are supposed to be. The natural, respectable order of things then was step 1, marriage.

Step 2, sex. Step 3, pregnancy.

Step 4, baby. Repeat steps 2 through 4 approximately 2.5 times. Birth control completely disrupted that. Married women could control their childbearing, bringing their sexual pleasure to the forefront. That contrasts with the idea that a woman’s duty was to have children. In the free love era, unwanted pregnancies quickly became an issue and women soon wanted access to birth control as well as abortions. In Feminism is For Everybody, Bell ooks explains how the women of the 60s and 70s saw illegal abortions as well as unwanted pregnancies which led to

miserable forced marriages.

Furthermore, Hooks says that many of her contemporaries are the “unplanned children of talented, creative women” whose lives were interrupted by unexpected pregnancy. As a result, these women saw “better, safer contraceptives”

“ The fight for birth

control is a health matter and should be treated as such, instead of a social issue up for debate in rooms of powerful men.

”

and “safe, legal abortion” as key to “genuine sexual liberation.”

So flash forward to today.

What’s changed? Luckily, stigma around birth control use is way down. Currently, 62% of women of reproductive age use some form of birth control, according to recent statistics by the CDC. The Pill remains the most popular form of birth control, even over condoms. It is now available and accessible to millions of people who use it every day for a variety of needs. Some people use it for birth control, of course, but

it’s more than just that. The Pill also can help with heavy periods, acne, polycystic ovary syndrome, endometriosis, and more. The discussion about birth control must therefore be more nuanced than simply debating ideas about sex. The fight for birth control is a health matter and should be treated as such, instead of a social issue up for debate in rooms of powerful men.

The Pill may be the most popular form of birth control, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect, or that it even works for everyone. It’s important to note that the Pill is less effective for women with a BMI over 25. The Pill is most effective when taken at the same time every day, so if you skip a day or take it a few hours late, you are technically less protected against pregnancy. The Pill’s side effects are also varied and much debated. Commonly reported side effects include clearer skin, intermenstrual bleeding or spotting, weight loss or gain, increased breast size, and nausea. However, a September 2016 study

by Danish doctors found that there is a connection between hormonal contraception like the Pill and diagnoses of depression and use of anti-

28 Little Pills // 27

“I believe that the

struggle for widespread accessibility for the Pill, not to mention the lack of information ... is because society does not value women’s health problems.

”

depressants. This study confirmed what many women had been quietly saying for years. Interestingly, “adolescents seemed more vulnerable to this risk than women 20 to 34 years old.” More research is of course necessary to determine the extent of this connection between depression and the Pill, but this is certainly a new problem women considering the Pill must deal with.

Another clear issue with the Pill today is its overall accessibility. As Audre Lorde wrote in “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference,” issues of intersectionality and social location complicate and affect nearly every issue. As a white, upper middle class woman with liberal, college educated parents, it was in no way difficult for me

28 //

28 Little Pills

to go on birth control. Thanks to my mother’s health insurance, my birth control is free. Sadly and wrongly, this is not the case for everyone.

Based on class and financial situations, not everyone can afford the Pill (or maybe they can, but then there’s the visits to the gynecologist or general practitioner to get the prescription, or getting to the store, etc.). Based on age, some young women may not be able to get the Pill without parental consent or even know it is available to them.

I believe that the struggle for widespread accessibility for the Pill, not to mention the lack of information about other options such as intrauterine devices or shots, is because society does not value women’s health problems. In “The Egg and the

Sperm”, Emily Martin writes about how scientific literature and the language we use to describe sexual processes like ovulation and spermatogenesis can be sexist or play into stereotypes about gender roles. The creation of trillions of sperm, few of which ever fertilize an egg, could be seen as wasteful or excessive, but instead it is seen as a “remarkable” and “amazing” process. In a similar way, the stigma around female sexual pleasure, menstruation, and, yes, birth control, is part of a wider devaluing of women and our needs.

Let’s Talk About SEXual Abuse An Open Letter to My Parents TRIGGER WARNING and graphic content Article contains material that can shock, offend or upset.

By Anonymous

Dear Mom and Dad, My monster next door was actually two doors down. I know that house down to its framework and structure, but my mind has not allowed me to remember any of the many days, hours, minutes, and seconds I spent inside those walls.

And he spent in mine. With me. And all of us.

How many years exactly was it? I’m sure you remember. I have one very vivid 10-second blurb of hiding behind the couch. What’s unclear is whether that was playing, or trying to protect myself from the inevitable.

What was that inevitable? The children of the neighborhood that fell under the perilous clutch of the DeGoode’s were at the base of a vicious cycle that fortunately didn’t go any further than us. At least there’s a silver lining in everything, no matter the weight of the cloud. As you may know, childhood sexual abuse (CSA) is often believed to be cyclical; one person abuses, and the victim in turn becomes a perpetrator themselves. There may not be empirical evidence to back up such a claim, but at least our family can attest to the grim reality, right?

In a study by the British Journal of Psychology, researchers aimed to identify perpetrators of such abuse who were victims of pedophilia and/or incest, to compare characteristics of those who had and had not been victims, and

to revisit psychodynamic ideas believed to inspire or cause the behavior of perpetrators.

Among 747 males, they found that the risk of being a perpetrator was positively correlated with reported sexual abuse victim experiences.

The overall rate for perpetrators having been victims was 35%.

Eric, the boy who took pieces from the fulfilling childhood you two tried so hard to give me, was trying to replace the pieces his dad stole from him. He took those pieces by using an assortment of plastic toys and pieces in a fun game he used to call “Pee Pees and Butts.” Irony can be such a delightful bitch sometimes.

I know you stopped it as soon as you found out, as soon as the deep and dirty secret was hand-delivered over a relaxing plate of spaghetti and meatballs. I know. I can’t imagine how it felt as a parent when a neighborhood kid came to the door to tell you what had happened to him. To all of us. At the hands of the very people eating next to you. The people you had once called friends were key links in a chain of child sexual abuse that was rooted in a wealthy, predominantly white neighborhood swarming with unknowing children, vulnerable and malleable, in need of babysitters. I don’t blame you for it, nor should I, it was a terrible thing to happen to

Let’s Talk About SEXual Abuse // 29

anyone but we need to talk about it. How else can we move past something like this?

It’s a hard subject to discuss, but Janet Mock does so pretty fantastically. If you haven’t read Redefining Realness, you should stop what you’re doing right now and read it cover to cover. I’ll give you a little snippet into her sexual abuse and how it has affected her, past and present. When she was young, her father’s girlfriend’s son, Derek, abused her for two years.

She writes, “The predator in my early life expertly blended good and bad qualities. Derek knew what attracted me and wielded that knowledge, to target me… My vulnerabilities made me easy prey… He was young, so he didn’t know any better, I often thought. But blaming myself and making excuses for Derek didn’t allow me to uncover the facts about child sexual abuse. I later learned that the majority of sexual abuse offenses are committed by people who know the victim, including immediate or extended family members: a neighbor, coach, babysitter, teacher, or religious leader.” Ding-ding-ding. According to the U.S. Department of Justice and the Crimes Against Children Research Center, over a third of all sexual abuse against children is committed by a minor. Mock says, “These statistics show a commonality between my experience and that of others who know and trust their abuser, who may be another young person. Though I now have empathy for Derek and am aware of his emotional immaturity, that doesn’t negate the pain his actions inflicted on me over those two years in my childhood.” In my case, I have no recollection of the time spent in the basement, inside the mazes we would construct by connecting each of the mesh red, blue and yellow pop-up square tunnels. You remember those, don’t you? We had a lot of them tucked in the storage closet under the stairs in the basement. Little did I know that the more, the treacherous. It’s hard to talk about something your brain won’t let you remember but your subconscious won’t let you forget.

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Let’s Talk About SEXual Abuse

Everything with Eric was a game, a one-sided power struggle, whereas with Janet and Derek, it was for her own necessary intimacy she was constantly craving from anyone that would provide for her, regardless of the form of attention.

Eric and Derek were both minors, and both seen as allies from the views of impressionable children. Why would an ally do anything to hurt us?

In Bell Hooks’ book Feminism Is For Everybody, Bell Hooksshe talks about various forms of child abuse, where shebut delves into at the very least a surface-level appreciation of CSA. She writes, “…we have all been socialized to embrace patriarchal thinking, to embrace an ethics of domination which says the powerful have the right to rule over the powerless and can use any means to subordinate them. In the hierarchies of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, male domination of females is condoned, but so is adult domination of children.” Sexual abuse isn’t always about pleasure, but power. The hierarchies structured by societal beliefs and norms make it so that these power struggles can continue to go on and society can continue to function as oppressor and oppressed. Men, especially white, are at the top of the intersections and therefore can expel their dominance over any of the marginalized groups below them, particularly the voiceless children. I don’t know the dynamics of Eric’s family, but it’s safe to say it wasn’t healthy. I don’t know where he is today, but Dad, I do know that you look him up to see if he’s either dead or in prison every year without fail. Maybe one of these days he’ll actually be in hell, whether that’s above ground in a cell or far beneath.

The Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry did a study on the psychiatric outcomes of young adults who were victims of CSA. The study found that those reporting CSA had higher rates of major depression, anxiety disorder, conduct disorder, sub-

stance use disorder, and suicidal behaviors than those not reporting CSA. Perhaps if we actually addressed this as a family, the kids would be a little less emotionally disturbed.

As much as I’d like to go back to the days where a simple “they’re moving away because Eric did something bad” was enough to temporarily plug the hole, we need to talk about this. The plug is gone. This is not something you can just smile about and brush off. We thrive on acting as if nothing has happened, almost to the point we believe it ourselves. Perhaps we all should’ve been actors.

You two are the ones that gave me my voice, but you make me feel like I can’t use it. Tell me why that is, I’m begging you. Let’s talk about childhood sexual abuse, so it doesn’t permanently ruin me from the inside out.

Forever and Always, Your Baby

Let’s Talk About SEXual Abuse // 31

x

Media

Feminist Netflix Queue

By Lauren Perlik, Kerrina Williams, & Lauren Swank MOVIES A League of Their Own: When all the men are away during World War II, follow two sisters as they join the first female professional baseball league, the All American Girls Professional Baseball League.

If you liked this, check out Michael A. Messner’s “Separating the Men From the Girls: The Gendered Language of Televised Sports.”

Frida: This oscar-winning biopic focuses on painter Frida Kahlo’s relationship with her husband as well as her controversial political and sexual reputation.

If you liked this, check out the Coalition Zine.

Zootopia: When an otter mysteriously disappears from the animal city of Zootopia, a rabbit police officer teams up with a fast-talking fox to set things right.

If you liked this, check out Andrea J. Ritchie’s “Law Enforcement Violence Against Women of Color.”

The Get Down: A mythical saga of how New York, at the brink of bankruptcy, gives birth to hip-hop, punk, and disco.

If you liked this, check out Deborah Bradley’s “Hidden in Plain Sight: Race and Racism in Music Education.”

Easy: An anthology series that explores diverse characters who live in Chicago as they fumble through the modern maze of love, sex, technology, and culture.

If you liked this check out “Our Bodies, Ourselves” and Dean Spade’s “Love Story.”

DOCUMENTARIES How to Survive a Plague: Faced with their own mortality, a group of mostly young, HIV-positive, people break the mold by taking on Washington and the medical establishment.

If you liked this, check out Ana Clarissa Rojas Durazo’s “Medical Violence Against People of Color and the Medicalization of Domestic Violence.”

Jane the Virgin: After vowing to remain chaste until marriage. Jane Villanueva learns she’s pregnant due to a medical slip-up and has to rethink her future.

If you liked this, check out Ritch Calvin’s “Gilmore Girls and the Politics of Identity.”

13th: In this thought provoking documentary, scholars, activists, and politicians analyze the criminalization of African Americans and the U.S. prison boom.

If you liked this, check out Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”

Sense8: From the creators of The Matrix and Babylon 5 comes this tense series where eight people can telepathically experience each other’s lives.

If you liked this, check out Kimberle Crenshaw’s “Mapping the Margins.”

Poverty Inc: This probing documentary takes an uncompromising look at the processes and the problems involved with the global charity industry.

If you liked this, try “Nirmala Erevelles’ “Disability in the New World Order.”

TV-SHOWS

Feminist Netflix Queue // 33

Empower Your Soul 10 Songs to experience the feminist waves through music

By Juanita Barrera Get your speakers ready for this feminist playlist that will not only help you feel like the most badass person but can help you learn more about the different feminist waves and how different topics such as street harassment and intersectionality became more popularized as time went on. The soulful voices of these women will speak to you in a new, awakening way. So put your hands in the air and get ready to wave them like you just.don’t.care.

1. Song: You Don’t Own Me Genre: Pop

Artist: Lesley Gore Year: 1963

This song came out in the same year that the book “Feminine Mystique” by Betty Friedan came out.

The book was said to start the second-wave of feminism and with it the emancipation of women.

Although this movement failed to include women of color and other minorities, this song definitely entails one of the main concerns of the second-wave, which was to liberate women from their own patriarchal spheres in life. This is suggested through multiple verses of the song such as: “ You don’t own me, I’m not just one of your many toys”, “Don’t tie me down cause I’d never stay”, “I’m free and I love to be free”. There is clearly a message of ridding women from being tied down by power structures that, during this time, were mostly run by white, middle-class men. Feeling like you need to unleash yourself from our current society’s structures? Press play on this old classic and you’ll be screaming at the top of your lungs before you know it.

2. Song: Bad Reputation Genre: Rock

Artist: Joan Jett Year: 1981

Be ready to name this song your new bad-ass anthem. The 1980s were all about making equality within the gender binary and Joan Jett definitely speaks to wanted to do away with double-standards between men and women: “A girl can do what she wants to do, and that’s what I’m gonna do”, “I’ve never been afraid of any deviation”. This song is all about not giving a damn and just doing what you want to do. One of the greatest accolades that this song was given was in 2009 it appeared on VH1

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as the 29th best hard rock song of all time and this was the highest ranked female song on the list as well. Maybe not giving a damn is the best way to achieve success!

3. Song: None of Your Business Genre: Hip-hop/Rap

Artist: Salt-N-Pepa Year: 1993

Salt-N-Pepa are still extremely relevant to the feminism that we have in today’s society. They were part of the third-wave, which basically highlighted all the ways that the first and second-wave backlashed and addressed their downfalls by introducing intersectionality and sexual liberation, and sexual liberation is what Salt-N-Pepa were all about. None of Your Business is literally a call to all women to enjoy their sexual expression and to be able to do so without inhibitions. These women were empowered and talked about their sexual lives freely while at the same time objectifying men in the same way that they felt women are objectified. One verse from the song that really says it all: “Now you shouldn’t even get into who I’m givin’ skins to, it’s none of your business.”

4. Song: U.N.I.T.Y Genre: Hip-hop/Rap

Artist: Queen Latifah Year: 1993

The queen of all queens was right there along the frontlines with Salt-N-Pepa with this song. She is considered to be one of the first hip-hop, pioneer feminists so there’s no wonder we title her as ‘queen’. In this song she raps against the objectification of women in terms of violence against women both physically and verbally with suggestive slurs. The song takes words such as ‘bitch’ and ‘hoe’ and claims back ownership of them, which caused many radio stations to not censor the words in attempts to get the message out. Lyrics such as this: “Instinct leads me to another flow, everytime I hear a brother call a girl a bitch or a ho, trying to make a sister feel low, you know all of that gots to go.”, were a direct way of calling out all forms of disrespect upon women. Furthermore, since both U.N.I.T.Y. and None of Your Business were songs that spoke to issues that minority women were facing disproportionately higher than white women in society. Who ever thought that music could be such an integral part of intersectionality.

5. Song: Just a Girl Genre: Pop

Artist: No Doubt Year: 1995

This song is the anthem of my life. Just a Girl helped not only No Doubt, but Gwen Stefani, the lead singer, to get out into mainstream music culture. Similar to the use of satire in Valerie Solanas’ “SCUM Manifesto”, this song includes a lot of satire, which really highlights No Doubts’ call to arms in terms of how women are seen as weak and that they should not have rights. The satire in this verse: “Cause I’m just a girl, a little ‘ol me, well

Empower Your Soul // 35

don’t let me out of your sight. Oh I’m just a girl, all pretty and petite, so don’t let me have so don’t let me have any rights.”, reinforces even more the belief the view that society sees women as weak and ‘petite’. Stefani states that the reason that she decided to write this song was when her father told her not to drive late at night, to which her response was that she was 30 and later, this song

6. Song: Free Your Mind Genre: Pop

Artist: En Vogue Year: 2006

Flash forward a little over a decade and we reach what some call the fourth-wave of feminism. The fourth wave is all about keeping up with intersectionality as well as integrating technology where there are an increasing amount of platforms for different feminist sub-divisions to find an interweb community. Returning to intersectionality, this song touches on the prejudice that women of color face. For example, the lyrics read: “Why oh why must it be this way? Before you can read me you gotta learn how to see me, I said free your mind and the rest will follow. Be color blind, don’t be so shallow”. This message, sadly, still applies today. En Vogue really highlights with this song that we should not place prejudice based on the color of people’s skin. Or more blatantly, we should never place prejudice.

7. Song: Q.U.E.E.N. Genre: Neo-soul

Artist: Janelle Monae Year: 2013

The acronym for this song is Queers Untouchables Emigrants Excommunicated and Negroid. The song is meant for all those who are marginalized and oppressed, which included women. This song is perfect for defining the intersectionality of the fourth-wave of feminism. The lyrics also tie in religion: “Hey sister am I good enough for your heaven? Will your God accept me in my black and white?

Would he approve the way I’m made or should I deprogram, reprogram and get down?”, and how religion can sometimes oppress the marginalized. This song reminds me a lot of Audre Lorde’s piece on “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference”. She speaks to the fact that we can’t

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tackle prejudice one by one, it has to be intersectional, which is something I think this tune tries to get through. Although the song may not bring up women specifically, it definitely brings up topics that are currently our affecting our society and women as well.

8. Song: Can’t Pin Me Down Genre: Alternative

Artist: Marina and the Diamonds Year: 2015

One of the main parts of feminism now is that there is no definitive way to be a woman. This is exactly what this song is trying to point out, you can be a housewife or you can be a single mom or you can be the CEO of a company and still define yourself as a women. There is no role that you have to fit. Marina and the Diamonds says this so perfectly with: “I could be your sister, I could be your mother, I could be your friend or I could be your I could be your friend or I could be your lover. Do you like my body? Do you like my mind? What is it that you are having trouble to define.” Through social media we can see so many different portrayals of women and especially the feeling that women should be valued by their minds as well and not only their bodies.

9. Song: Smile Artist: The Jezabels Genre: Indie Pop

Year: 2016

‘Smile’ hints at an extremely prevalent problem in our society and one that has been coming up on social media time and time again: cat calls. With the most repeated phrase being “Don’t tell me to smile”, there is clearly a message being said about one of the most common phrases in cat calls. The song points at the fact that there are so many different ways of asking a women out and that it is unnecessary and counterintuitive to think that catcalling could possibly lead to any kind of relationship.

My absolute favorite part of this song is: “You know, I get my problems just like anybody else does when I might not look as whoopty-fucking-do as you may like it.” This also touches upon how women always have to fill the role of being gentle and kind, even when they may not feel like it.

10. Song: Mother Earth Genre: Electropop

Artist: Banks Year: 2016

This song is Banks’ ode to all women. As she said in a recent interview about this song and her album: “It has a big message that I believe in and I think women need to fucking hear. I wrote that because I needed to hear it.” (nymag). It’s all about seeing yourself as you are and accepting that and not trying to change who you are for society’s standards of beauty. The main verse of the song that portrays this is: “I know I’m mother nature, I see the weather. So I’m not gonna cover up the freckles on my faces, I covered all the bases.” This statement is pointing at the fact that there is no need to cover up your imperfections and that you have the power of mother nature to do anything that you set your mind to. A definite song to listen to when you ever feel like you have to cover ANYTHING up to fulfill your gender role.

Empower Your Soul // 37

The Appropriation of Drag

By Norik Kirakosian

Paris is Burning, Jennie Livingston’s film documenting the histories of ball culture in New York was released 25 years ago, and is still commended for providing insightful social commentary on the lived experiences of low income queer and trans people of color. 25 years later, the main portrayal of drag culture takes place through RuPaul’s Drag Race, a reality TV competition that airs internationally and reaches millions of viewers. While both creative works have achieved a lot in terms of familiarizing new audiences with drag, the cultures of drag represented in them are different, especially in the ways drag relates back to the represented communities.

“ Act of defiance against the hegemonic systems regarding race, class, gender, and sexuality.”

Drag has historically taken many artistic forms and been part of various cultural traditions. In House and Ball Culture Goes Wide, Ivan Monforte traces the origins of drag as we would define it in current US-specific terms back to ball culture in the beginnings of the 20th century in Harlem, and more recently in the 80s and 90s in New York, and other metropolitan areas like Chicago and Washington DC. In these contexts, drag appeared as counterculture, specifically as an explicit act of defiance against the he-

38 // The Appropriation of Drag

gemonic systems regarding race, class, gender, and sexuality. In this portrayal of drag history it becomes important to look at the communities drag culture was rooted in: lower class, Black and Latinx, queer and trans, with many prominent faces of drag being poor and homeless trans women and femmes of color, who participated in drag spaces to challenge dominant understandings of gender, sexuality, race, and class by performing identities and experiences that were otherwise inaccessible to them.

What becomes of drag then when it is displaced from its original context, and is appropriated by popular media in the form of a reality TV show?

How do pressures to assimilate drag to dominant culture change the way it relates to lower class queer and trans communities of color? I attempt to question this appropriative behavior by focusing on two visual aspects of drag performance: makeup and fashion.

Makeup and Ethnocentrism Western colonialism (and its offshoot globalization) is maintained in a number of pervasive ways, including through the construction of a universal ideal of beauty. This often interacts with material realities of racism, sexism, and classism to enact violence on women of color, especially if they are lower class and/or trans and don’t have the same access to western femininity. The pressures of Eurocentric beauty have also become prevalent in drag culture, as is evidenced by the changing trends in drag queens’ use of makeup. With the increasing assimilation of drag in capitalist economy, economic status is often the deciding factor in who gets to do drag. The value of a drag queen is placed on her ability and willingness to conform to a specific type of drag, which is often expensive to maintain, in order to succeed (and be able to keep doing drag and be validated). In terms of makeup this usually means replicating a cookie-cutter face that is created for white faces and usually produces white and European features (e.g. highlighting and contouring so that the nose appears thinner, the eyelids larger, etc. This is also evident in the language of “temporary facial surgery” used to describe drag makeup). This prioritizing of specific metrics of beauty perpetuates the idea that there is only one way to look beautiful or successful (read: if you are white), and leaves out a lot of people that don’t look the part from performing drag. To what extent does drag remain counterculture if it uncritically replicates Eurocentric beauty?

Fashion and Body Violence The same focus on visual aesthetics in drag has also permeated its pursuits in fashion. The worlds of drag and fashion have been converging, with drag being increasingly informed by current trends in fashion (and to the extent that

drag queens now often represent fashion as its icons). The privileging of fashion/runway drag over other forms makes it easy for the apparent racism, classism and transphobia in the fashion industry to also move into drag spaces. So not only the face, but also the body of successful drag is more and more associated with whiteness, cisness, etc. excluding people in marginalized communities that once found refuge in drag. How can drag be considered subversive when it has moved from a celebration of difference and diversity in dragged bodies, (and creativity in appearance and performance), to a glorification of white cis skinny bodies (usually dressed in expensive custom designed clothing)?

Bringing it All Together In her memoir Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More, Janet Mock shares her experience of being introduced to a group of drag queens with her friend Wendi as she was beginning to explore gender. In this narrative Mock highlights the opportunity drag offered trans women of color to express themselves and their womanhood, and to create community and find a family. But through the erasure and exploitation of the communities drag was rooted in, facets of appropriation that academics like Susan Scafidi have talked about, drag has come to exclude the experiences of trans women and women of color. Mainstream drag has undermined the context of drag as it originated in marginalized communities and eliminated its associations with communities living in the margins of race, class, and gender. Moreover, this new iteration of drag has enabled its appropriators to make profit, usually at the expense of the communities drag was rooted in, without crediting or giving back to them.

It is important to consider, thinking in terms

The Appropriation of Drag // 39

of what Kimberle Crenshaw termed structural intersectionality, how this new culture of drag that is taken out of its original context and assimilated into systems of racism, classism, transphobia, and capitalism relates to the particular social location of low income trans and queer people of color at the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality. For example, this new iteration of drag is not as accessible and doesn’t offer the same benefits to lower class trans women of color as it does for middle class cis white gay men (who are now overrepresented and hypervisible in drag scenes) and this further maintains and exacerbates economic disparities. Additionally, cis white gay men are (more and more so) allowed to amass wealth by doing drag as a full time job, or gaining celebrity status through drag, or designing fashion for drag queens, or producing media about drag, and so on, while the communities whose cultures are continuing to be appropriated are left behind.

With this comparative analysis of visible drag cultures in the US laid out, does it appear productive to return drag to its roots? In ball culture, drag was a complex performance of race, gender, sexuality, and class, whereas now it is

40 // The Appropriation of Drag

an uncritical performance of a very specific westernized femininity without a criticism of its reference point. Spaces where drag today manages to be more subversive offer a more critical interrogation of the matrices of power under which drag is assimilated. Perhaps we can get back to a more political and meaningful drag if we reintroduce and make space for the uniquely informative perspectives of multiply marginalized people.

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Global Perspectives

Feminism in Korea?

By Esther Chung

Seoul, South Korea is a tourist hot spot. Women, especially, flock to the many clubs, shopping districts, and makeup stores that Seoul is famous for. One leaves Korea with a bigger closet, new dance moves, more makeup, and an empty wallet. However, what would it be like, as a woman, to live in this glamorous city? That is when the perfect mirage that Seoul’s tourism industry strives to upkeep is shattered, and the darker underbelly is revealed…

The summer’s 2015 outbreak of MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) in South Korea had a devastating effect on the country. According to The Guardian, it resulted in 36 deaths and a drop in number of tourists from the previous years by 60%. The spread of the disease is believed to be from two women who traveled between Hong Kong and Korea on a shopping trip. They were supposed to be quarantined but due to a miscommunication from the South Korean government the women traveled unrestricted.

In response to this piece of news, netizens flocked to the popular blogging site DCInside to criticize the girls for their actions. Unfortunately, this turned into a heated conversation where many male bloggers called the two girls selfish, insulting them and calling them “kimchi girls,” which is a derogatory term to call out Korean girls for being materialistic and shallow.

In response to the sexist comments arising from this event, a Korean forum called Megalia was formed on August 6th, 2015. The site runs on an anonymity-basis, which has mixed results. On one hand, the anonymity provides a safe way for women to voice their concerns freely their concerns about the sexism that is so prevalent in Korean culture. On the other hand, more radical users who are taking away rather than contributing to the site are hard to block. The name Megalia is formed from the name MERS and Egalia from Gerd Brantenberg’s “Egalia’s Daughters.”

The book “Egalia’s Daugh-

ters” is a satire about sexism and tells of a fictional world where the standards for men and women are flipped. The online site Megalia utilizes a technique called “mirroring” and has altered popular terms such as “kimchi girl” into “kimchi man” and so on.

Mirroring can result in radical statements such as, “Let’s get an abortion if we become pregnant with a son,” which tries to show men the everyday discrimination that Korean women are faced with in society.

Taken out of context, the mirroring technique can seem too radical. Male’s responses to the site have been uniformly of disdain. Their sentiments online have been more or less that “Megalians are all crazy bitches.” It seems that Megalia is dangerously close to turning into another “SCUM (Society for Cutting up Men) Manifesto”. The SCUM manifesto is an infamous rant on how men are degenerate human beings and undeserving of females or even life. Megalia’s mirroring technique has

Feminism in Korea? // 43

“ Korea, though

late in the fight for women’s rights, is slowly entering the feminist scene.

”

created radical comments that are too in contrast with the meninist comments that perpetuate the Korean web and a middle ground must be found in order to unite the sexes and not create a further divide between men and women in Korea. As stated by bell hooks in Feminism is for Everybody, “mostly [men] think feminism is a bunch of angry women who want to be like men,” and this is how men in Korea are viewing the feminists in Megalia, partially due to the radicalness of the site.

However, Megalia has lead numerous campaigns since its creation that speak for it’s worth. Megalia has accomplished its purpose in bringing attention to the blatant misogyny in Korean Culture.

Megalia has released a petition against Sora.net, a porn site in Korea where men post pictures and/or videos of girls without their consent. Men on sora.net have posted pic-

44 // Feminism in Korea?

tures of their drugged girlfriends with invitations for other members to come and rape their girlfriends. It is also a site where men can upload sex videos of their ex-girlfriends as “revenge porn” and release their private information so that these victims can be harassed on the phone and at home. Megalia and other feminist sites have worked together to shut down this site which was accomplished this year. In September, Megalia successfully stopped the sale of hidden cameras on a site that were being used by men to take pictures of women secretly. It also forced Maxim to retract their issue when its cover promoted sexual crime by featuring a man standing over a car trunk from which a girl’s tied legs were dangling.

It has donated over 60 million KRW to the NGO Aeronwen, which helps single mothers.

Megalia has also stopped the sale of high-concentrate hydrochloric acid, a popular weapon used by ex-boyfriends to splash on the faces of ex-lovers and ruin their faces, through the Ministry of Environment.

Megalia has it’s definite shortcomings, but it is a step in the right direction for South Korea. With the continued growth of activist sites such as Megalia it is to be hoped that the deep rooted misogynist ideas that stem

from Confucian beliefs can be combated. Korea, though late in the fight for women’s rights, is slowly entering the feminist scene. With it’s first ever woman president and burgeoning feminist activist movements, there is perhaps a brighter future for the women living in Korea.

Africa Feminism

By Mambo Stephanie

Feminism is of the most talked about words in the 21st Century by most humans. There different perspectives and thoughts on what it means to be a feminist, but how can you define being a feminist without having the appropriate diversified knowledge on being a feminist within different continents. Feminism is not an act not a short performance or display of posters in dorms. It’s ‘a continual process that must be expressed to dismantle any form of oppression. Western liberal feminism , however may not necessarily express the needs and desires of African women in general . Therefore it is necessary to highlight the voices of these women .

Africa, is so often described as a “developing continent” where feminism is distracting and irrelevant. Africa is known for its striking gender inequality, HIV/AIDS, and its poverty level according to most data from international aid organisations. Unfortunately, all these reports are used to create the image of a generic and oversimplified third world womanThis image creates assumptions about how she has been enslaved by an unending patriarchy.Bell hooks criticizes Western feminism for ignoring all forms of western feminism which is why I am going to use my grandmum as an ideal African Feminist.As a 21st Century aspiring feminist, it is crucial for me to talk about how Africa has a contribution to make in gender studies by showing the powerful positions being held by African women. Being a feminist can be constituted and defined differently within a Global Context.I stand by the fact that feminism should

be a consistent framework of actions whereby, women freely elicit their ideas and opinions without being categorized in terms of being Western or not. Feminism has always been a part of the growth of Africa’s civilization within its ethnic histories and leadership. I grew up with a feminist, someone who expressed her feelings and emotions whenever the need arose .She continues to be the true definition of a valiant female warrior who fought alongside male counterparts to preserve her rights as a black African woman. I call her my Queen, my Hero, the true epitome of feminism in all aspects of life. That person is my Grandma, whom I got blessed to share most of my teenage life with and my early twenties with. She wasn’t educated and she still isn’t, but she always fought for the truth. As a single mum of seven kids-living in a one bedroom home,hardship was a daily struggle for my family, but she always belief in education as a key to dismantle poverty for her family. I don’t think my grandmum thinks she is a feminist, and unfortunately most women like my grandmum look at their transitions from being married to being domestically violated, having kids,and having to provide for their kids as the traditional norms of an African society.

The image she may have of her marriage, the separation and having to wear the same damaged outfits for years wasn’t the portrait of a feminist but as she will say“I just wanted my kids and especially my daughters to have the confidence it’s okay to take to be a breadwinner of your family and have success come along

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“ This article is for

women like my grandma who are feminist but don’t feel like they are one, women who embark on daily struggles just to provide for their families, women who embrace themselves as fighters and warriors.

”

with it without feeling worried about the opposite sex.” And as she gets older, I become more aware of the feminist I see in her. A famous African Feminist called Chimamanda Adichie wrote in one of her books (We should All Be Feminist) “we teach females that in relationship, compromise is what women should do, we raise girls to see themselves as competitors, not for jobs or accomplishments, which in my opinion is a good thing, but for the attention of men.” In some parts of Africa, these are still the norms of which girls are being raised by, but that doesn’t make us uncivilised.The Africa I see is that of women like my grandma who don’t hold protest on the streets or riots, to call on equality or requires the need to be domesticated or formatted to fit into the modern format of western feminism. I see a continent in which women are being to withstand the inequality they faced and still preserve its cultural heritage from its ancestors despite the level of globalization. African feminism stems from nu-

46 // Africa Feminism

merous liberation struggles.For example, Huda Shaarawi, the first Egyptian woman who took off her hijab after her husband died, and became the first female President of the Egyptian Feminist Union. In order to fight gender equalities in African culture, men have to join the African feminist movement regardless of the sacrifice it will take .Today’s African feminists like Chimamanda Adichie, Joyce Banda, and the African Feminist Institute are the forefront examples of Africa Womanhood in feminism.

We all as women still have a long way to go.Rather than seeing ourselves as competitors.

We should embrace our diversified cultures and histories and use them as a tool to express the daily oppressive facets we go through. There shouldn’t be a gap between how we should define some women as feminists and others as not. “We should realize that the only people who care about us to work consistently are for our liberation is us” (Combahee River Collective) as women in order to dismantle any form of oppression we need to address and accept the difficulties we do faced despite our races, tribes ,or ethnicity. This article is for women like my grandma who are feminist but don’t feel like they are one, women who embark on daily struggles just to provide for their families, women who embrace themselves as fighters and warriors. Although I grew up with my grandmum and uneducated women , I have come to the conclusion that feminism is a worldwide issue for each human on earth therefore feminism should be a collective journey accessible to all genders.

The Cartography of Oppression

By Katherine Begley

While it does seem logical to use your own principles to evaluate the world around you, they are your values after all, they should not be applied to other people and especially other cultures. Ethnocentrism is the idea of evaluating other cultures based on the ideas of your own culture. We can never truly understand the experiences of the people around us. This is essentially the basis for feminist standpoint theory: the idea that our thoughts and opinions are based on our previous experiences, and our place in today’s society and power structure.

We base our values on our own experiences; however, the problem lies with the projection of these ideas onto others.

The western domination of principles is often based on the idea that the west is the “norm,” that our society is the average, the control and the best. We are what is expected, and everything else is different and therefore wrong. Everyone else is “other.” Despite our attempts to claim that we are accepting, that America is a nation of immigrants, a “melting pot”, we have not succeeded. Even when we do accept immigrants, we accept them with the intentions of changing them. America doesn’t appreciate the “other.” America embraces “enlightening” the other into being the same. The Americanization movement aims to create a nation with all the same thoughts, opinions, and actions.

In Grover G. Huebner’s piece “The American-

ization of the Immigrant,” he declares that he aims to americanize all immigrants and that they can only be accepted once “[the immigrant’s] mind and will have been united with the mind and will of the American so that the two can act and think together.” However, this problem does not extend just to immigrants, but to the world as a whole. America aims to make everyone more like us, because we are the best; we are the most modern; we are the most important.

The principle that the west is the “norm” is based on how we see the rest of the world figuratively and literally. The most common map used in the American education system is the Mercator map projection. This is the map we’ve been taught about our whole lives. This is what I imagine when I think of where countries are, and especially how big they are. However, this is a completely disproportionate representation of the world. This map is mainly used for the purpose of navigation because it keeps the latitudinal lines straight and parallel by representing the world as if it were cylinder rather than a sphere. Consequently, this leads to inflation of the land masses close to the poles. The Mercator projection makes it appear as though Europe and South America are similar in size, and that Africa and Greenland are about the same size. In reality Greenland can fit inside of Africa nearly 14 times, and South America

The Cartography of Oppression // 47

parts of everywhere working together in perfect harmony.

Mercator map projection

is about three times the size of Europe. According to Christina Sterbenz of Business Insider, the lack of education about the reality of maps leads to skewed perceptions on the size of other continents and countries.

It is nearly impossible to reproduce accurate shape and size on a flat map attempting to represent a round world, but many other map projections have done a better job. The Gall-Peters projection provides a much better depiction of the relative size of different land masses. Additionally, a combination of maps could be used to give a more real depiction of the world, but just everyone else we have decided to pretend the world. As Americans, we are fundamentally lied to by our own education system about the reality of the of the rest of the world. As discussed in “Mapping Our Own Sea of Islands” by Lisa Kaboleole Hall, the way places are depicted in maps has a large part in our understanding of those places. She discusses the way that misrepresenting distances changes how we perceive the connections between places. In the same way, misrepresentating size allows us to see things as more or less relevant. Hall claims, “The distortions of the literal and figurative mapping are foundational to the self-mythologizing of the United States.” This mythology includes that we are a “nation of immigrants” mixing all cultures together to become an all-encompassing average of the world, the best

America’s practice of cultural mixing does not create an average though; it creates a society of assimilation, destroying and ignoring differences. Western culture is constantly thrust onto the rest of the world. This began during colonialism, from the very creation of the United States: the Americas were invaded, populations were wiped out, and people were enslaved. The history is simplified and erased. The story is told as if the continent was empty, here for the taking, other than a few groups of “uncivilized” people. These people were different. So “civilization” was brought to them, but it wasn’t civilization- it was European ideals. This narrative continues and repeats itself for hundreds of years, but now America has become the most invasive source of “civilization.”

Today we have adapted this strategy to teach the world the ways of our developed culture, in order to “help”. In “Under Western Eyes,” Chandra Talpade Mohanty explains how such behavior demeans and degrade the people we aim to influence. Often Western feminists see the women in other places as weaker and uned-

Gall-Peters projection 48 // The Cartography of Oppression

ucated because of the roles they fulfill in other societies. We use our values to evaluate their level of empowerment, considering ourselves the standard to be reached. Western feminists tend to see things like wearing a hijab or domestic labor as a way to bowing down to men, instead of appreciating religious freedom and contributing to the community. The idea that feminism needs to be taught to the women in other cultures is a form of cultural imperialism that discredits women instead of empowering them.

Feminists must work for a greater overall equality, focusing on the most marginalized groups, to create equality and justice. The end of ethnocentrism and the westernization of the world must be a part of the feminist mission, rather than further erasure of minority cultures. This endeavor begins with acknowledging that our viewpoints are focused on own experiences and

that the world is not centered in the west. One of the ways this can be accomplished is through increasing knowledge and education about the reality of the sizes, populations, and varieties in culture throughout the world.

Western cultures tends to impose our values on other cultures due to our belief that we are the norm, the standard and the most important. We even use maps that depict Europe and North America as much bigger than they actually are.

This inflates our sense of self-importance. In terms of both population and landmass, white westerners are not the average, yet the culture is treated as the standard. This causes a lot of westerners to feel that they must teach others how to be more like us. The western practice of ethnocentrism devalues other cultures and the women of the rest of the world, creating greater oppression.

The Cartography of Oppression // 49

Mr. & Mrs. Oppression

By Sarah Ogando

Imagine a world where everything is gendered. I know what you’re thinking, everything seems pretty gendered as it is. Let me paint you a picture in your head. Look around you. Everything you see and the stuff you own— your car, your keys, that water bottle you carry to school every day—has an implied gendered identity, and consequently an inscribed gendered association. The sun becomes a Mr. and the moon a Mrs., and everything around us comes alive with gendered qualities that cannot be erased or ignored. You come to see the world around you as falling within the female/ male binary, in terms of both the biological and grammatical sense. This way, the binary is reinforced and normalized, and the language with which to fight this binary appears to be nonexistent, powerless.

Concepts of gender neutrality and fluidity come to be completely invalidated, made to appear unnatural, and the identities become erased. For native Spanish speakers, this grammatical gendering be-

50 // Mr. & Mrs. Oppression

comes an essential part of the ways in which they come to understand reality.

Grammatical gendering is one of Spanish’s primary characteristics, and often one of the hardest for native English speakers to grasp. In simple terms, grammatical gendering can be defined as a nounclass system that categorizes nouns into genders. Often

“The sun becomes a

Mr. and the moon a Mrs., and everything around us comes alive with gendered qualities that cannot be erased or ignored.

”

times this system affects more than just nouns but also other elements of language such as pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and verbs. Through this process, the construction of gender goes beyond its connection to people, also coming to affect all objects and things we interact with.

The solution might seem easy, almost obvious. Why don’t we just tweak a few grammatical rules of the Spanish language? The real issue is that gendered language’s pervasiveness goes beyond Spanish. Around one-quarter of the languages worldwide uphold the system of grammatical gendering. Like Spanish, this system is used in other Indo-European languages, such as German, French, and Italian, as well as in some Afro-Asiatic languages. That being said, the gendered categories are not equal in all grammatically gendered languages. In Spanish, nouns are categorized to fit the female/ male gender binary, whereas in German, three main divisions exist, which they define as feminine, masculine and neutral. In his book Grammatical Gender in Interaction, scholar Anegiki Alvanoudi explains that the relationship between these languages and gendering “propose a binary way of thinking about gender, treating men and women as static categories, while little variation is acknowledged

within each category.” Gender is then not only assigned but also policed in strictly masculine and feminine ways, and supported through language itself.

Although not considered a grammatically gendered language, Old English used to abide by this system of gendering. Consisting of a largely Germanic vocabulary, Old English followed similar grammatical rules. Some words such as god/goddess and waiter/waitress serve as examples of the ways in which English used to gender nouns referring to people that we still use to this day. That’s not to say gendered assumptions and qualities are not often assigned to objects and things in English—an example being Emily Martin’s article “The Egg and the Sperm” and the ways in which gendered social conventions are naturalized through metaphors in science. Still, gender is for the most part expressed (or excluded) in English through the use of some third-person, singular pronouns. Yes, there are gender neutral pronouns in English (they/ them) that allow the creation of gender-neutral sentences with complete grammatical correctness, a concept that is hard to grasp for many English native speakers, but even more so for native Spanish speakers, where gender

neutrality has no real meaning.

Through these means of gendering language itself, we come to have polarized, dichotomous views of the world, which not only has challenged ideas of gender neutrality, but also of fluidity.

The queer performance theory, as defined by writer Julia Wood in her book Gendered Lives, suggests that this polarized view of gender reinforced through language “obscures the range of genders, sexes, and sexual orientations that humans express.” Yet because of this lack of representation and acknowledgment, individuals who identify outside the gender binary have no language to define not only their experience but also their very existence.

If language has the ability to define the world we live in, the problem arises when there is no word, when no definition exists. In her book Man Made Language, Australian feminist writer Dale Spender defines the myriad ways in which language constructs our reality. She argues that “names are essential for the construction of reality for without a name it is difficult to accept the existence of an object, an event, a feeling […]

When one wants to describe an object or event for which there is no name, doubt can

“If the language

cannot define what our poetry looks like— if it cannot represent the reality of alternative gendered identities—then it needs to be challenged.

”

arise as to the validity of the object or event.” Due to the dichotomous nature of Spanish grammatical gendering, gender neutrality is deprived of its meaning, there being no word for gender neutrality. There is, in fact, no gender neutrality at all. Audre Lorde argues that society addresses difference by either ignoring, assimilating, or destroying it.

This form of invisibility then becomes a form of oppression, since it both ignores and destroys alternative gendered identities.

Drawing on queer theory, queer politics, as defined by Cathy J. Cohen in her article “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens,” “recognizes and encourages the fluidity and movement of people’s sexual lives.” This fluidity extends to gender fluidity, and is often part of the experience of many trans and gender-

Mr. & Mrs. Oppression // 51

queer individuals. It presents itself in both identity as well as expression, through gender non-conforming ways of expression of many gender benders and androgynous people.

Social constructions such as gender and language work together, allowing us to understand and share assumptions of reality. Leslie Feinberg defined gender as “the poetry each of us [make] out of the language we are taught.” When this language

52 // Mr. & Mrs. Oppression

is constructed in a way that limits the ways in which we can define and express ourselves, it fails to do the very thing it was designed to do.

If the language cannot define what our poetry looks like—if it cannot represent the reality of alternative gendered identities—then it needs to be challenged. Cohen explains that “what queers want is acknowledgment of their lives, struggles, and complete experience.” Queer politics and feminist groups should tackle this issue. The Guardian explains that the “US has 41 million native speakers plus 11 million who are bilingual,” and Spanish ranks the second most spoken language around the world. It is critical that this issue be addressed, to give light to the invisible who are marginalized by language.

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x

Personal Statements

The Angry Feminist African Woman Living in the USA

By Sanya Okello

At first, when I sat down to write this piece and thought of what I wanted to write about, I had The Angry Black woman trope in mind.

Why? Because I have never understood the stereotype. I then I thought of writing about being an African in the USA, because, at this moment, that is exactly who I am. And so, I decided to combine the two by creating this piece,: “An Angry, Feminist African Wwoman Lliving in the USA.” Why am I always an angry black woman?

Why am I questioned about how I made it to the USA? Why am I always asked ifwhether I speak African? Do you speak American? Why do I have labels on me and you don’t even know my last name?

I choose to represent Africa in this piece, as a feminist African woman. Somehow your pride of being African grows tenfold when you are away from the motherland. I will start with one of my favourite lines-- when I am often asked why am I proud to be African, always puzzled, I ask, “my

friend, have you ever seen a lion beg to a hyena?” Africa is comprised of 54 countries with: their own rich culture, diverse complexions, colourful traditions, a manifold of languages and so much more. In as much as there is a deep bond between Africans, you must not forget that we are a continent, not a country. North, south, east and west. There are an estimated 1500-2000 languages (this should show you just how different the countries are). We are wonderful people, welcoming and warm, so why was there a point in history that African women were used as test- rabbits, sex slaves, and basic play- things? It was believed, according to Londa Schiebinger’s “Theories of Gender and Race”, that African women ‘bring forth their children with great ease, and require no assistance. Their labours are followed by no troublesome consequences; for their strength is fully restored by a day or, at most, two days’ repose.’ (pg. 26) Pardon me? Voyagers and ships’ surgeons had long reported that women of African descent gave birth easily (this was also assumed to be true of apes and other quadrupeds). You cannot be serious. If I could, I would time travel back to the time this was all believed and try educate them…somehow, someway. Apparently our large buttocks are nature’s way of compensating for racial deficiencies (pg. 27). And here I was thinking that we were simply blessed with large butts *shrugs shoulders*. The fact that all of these ideas were once believed is astounding and quite frankly disappointing.

The Angry Feminist African Woman Living in the USA // 55

To this, we add on living in the patriarchal societies we call home. Equality for men and women? Pssht, impossible. A fair balance of the household duties? Me? An African man? An African man, to cleanng? Never! Staying home to take care of the children? I am incapable of that.

Now don’t get me wrong, not every African man is like this. There are wonderful men who accept and agree that equality is needed for all.

There are men who will do all the tasks and so much more. A few bad eggs are still stuck in an era that’s trapped in misogyny and inequality. Domestic abuse, rape, female circumcision still occur today; and the list goes on, we need feminism in Africa! It is not un-African as it so widely regarded:, it is as African as the blood in my veins. I came across this gem of an opinion (please note the heaviness of my sarcasm here): “Now to family, why do we keep living in the illusion that the role of men and women are equal in the family? Why are so-called feminists deceiving our women, and ruining several marriages with their gospel of equality? And why do we keep thinking that a woman who “bows to her husband admits to inferiority?”

(Ayo-Bankole Akintujoye, 2013).

Is there much I can honestly say as a response to this? I was taught that, if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all. I will instead focus on this piece. Not surprisingly so, these views on feminism are a worldwide matter., Ffeminism makes a lot of men cower in fear.

Moving on to being an angry black woman… I don’t know how but supposedly we as black women are always so angry. An article by Audre Lorde, “Age Race, Class, and Sex”, depicts the position black women are in; the sexual hostility against

by racism and the pressures of powerlessness, violence against Black women often becomes standard within our communities, one by which manliness can be measured. But these women-hating acts are rarely discussed as crimes against Black women. We are paid less, constantly asked about our hair;, we watch our bodies get fetishised by the media, we deal with colourism, we worry about our brothers, fathers, husbands, boyfriends leaving the house because who knows if there is someone out there looking to cause more grievances to the Black community.; Wwe are all these and so much more, but we are strong and resilient and, nothing will stop us.

Black women are considered unfeminine, unpleasant, undesirable, and generally unworthy of any kind of protection, love, respect, or consideration.

I am not always angry, but being angry comes with the territory of my activism for Black women. I get outraged and offended when I see the discrepancies of how others are treated compared to us. James Baldwin said, “To be Black and conscious in America is to be in a constant state of rage.” Nnow add on being a woman:; we are in a constant state of exasperation.

We may be angry a lot of the time, but we are not always angry. Our anger is our defiance against whatever is thrown at us.

There you have it, a snippet of the experiences of an aAngry African fFeminist living in the USA. Despite its shortcomings, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

And yes, Black Lives certainly do Matter.

Black women is practised not only by the white racist society, but implemented within our Black communities as well. Exacerbated

56 // The Angry Feminist African Woman Living in the USA

How I Navigated Title IX

By Anonymous

After I hung up the phone, I dressed myself in the most convenient things I could find; a ‘Red and Black One Pack’ Northeastern T-shirt I must have gotten at some event, and the dirty pair of jeans I hadn’t bothered to wash that weekend. Never before had I felt so unsafe walking across campus at night. It was 5 in the morning on a Sunday, and it was cold and raining. I watched my back every step of the way to my sister’s dorm. In the elevator we stood in silence, both of us not knowing what to say.

When we reached her room and she closed the door, I broke down., ‘I don’t know what happened, I didn’t want him to.’ She held me for awhile as I cried in her shoulder and repeated choruses of ‘I just want to go home.’ I managed to fall asleep for about an hour when she woke me and said, “NUPD is here.”

I didn’t know it then, but those words were the beginning of the longest and most emotionally grueling journey of my college career so far. As a second year about to take finals in the coming week, I found myself sitting in the Resident Director’s Office of a dorm that was not my own, wearing my sister’s sweats, talking to two NUPD officers about my assault that had taken place not even 4 hours prior. I look back on this moment and remember it as the most embarrassing time in my life and not because I hadn’t showered or was wearing the remnants of a disheveled outfit, or because my hair was all kinds of untamed, but because. I sat there across the table and watched as the Detective wrote down every graphic detail of what happened, where, when, how, and to what part of my body. He asked me multiple times in that

sequenceoccurrence to retell the events, making me repeat things I had told him only minutes before. At the time I was frustrated, being forced to describe out loud again the details of my assault; now I know his purposehe was establishing consistency in my ‘story.’ I was asked to sign a form, somewhat of a checklist reviewing the actions I decided or declined to take at that time: was I seeking medical attention, did I want to move residence, was I requesting an order of protection or filing criminal charges?

All this was a lot to process, and I was left with several cards “informing” me of the resources available on campus; OSCCR, UHCS, WeCare, Vision, and Title IX. One thing that struck me as troubling was that I was expected to seek out all these resources I had to seek out myself, going out of my way to contact them. Nothing was actually being provided to me;, I was not being given help or support, I was forced to ask for it. This left me feeling utterly alone. This is the first issue I takewith the proceedings of Title IX on college campuses. Many of these former named resources are unknown to the general student population., I myself had only heard of two of them prior to my assault that night. After seeking out these resources I was unpleasantly surprised that they did not offer much support at all. I learned that WeCare, an office stationed under Student Affairs whose mission is to ‘support students who experience unexpected challenges in maintaining their academic progress,’ only has a responsi bility to send a vaguely worded email to professors notifying them that their bility to send a vaguely worded email to professors notifying them

How I Navigated Title IX // 57

that their students are going through a difficult time. This is something I personally could do on my own. Because even after these emails are sent, the professors are under no obligation tocomply. I walked back to my room that morning in a haze. Everything I had planned to do that day was cancelled., I sent out apology texts and emails with the word ‘emergency’ in the subject line. My room didn’t feel like my room; i, It felt like his. No longer did the place I felt most safe feel likeor at home;, iIt was now his domain, a space he took over to do what he wanted without asking for permission, and left me to pick up the pieces. The next day I called the Detective and told him I wanted to change the answer to a box on my checklist, and at the end of the week I had moved out.

An unforeseen challenge I encountered when pursuing criminal charges against my assaulter was the detail that we were not in a committed relationship. That is to say we were not dating, we had no official label to what were were doing other than friends with benefits. The process of charging my assaulter was delayed when the clerk who first read the case when it was presented was hesitant to label his crimes as Domestic Violence. I began to question all the wrong things, ‘Should I have pushed for a relationship, would this have happened if I had, would a label have protected me?’ I’m reminded of a piece entitled Is Hooking Up Bad for Women where the authors note that the tenacious doubles standard in our society that men can be sexually liberated while women must save and control themselves leads young men to disrespect their hookup partners. It seems odd that this double standard still exists on college campuses where hookup culture has matched and almost replaced serious dating. I have always found within my own peer group that, our choices as women to embrace our sexuality unattached were praised and encouraged by our friends. Just like how positive peer pressure can support youth into making a decision to be

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How I Navigated Title IX

abstinent, as outlined in Disciplining Sexuality, I’d argue that it can also aid young woman to support one another in decisions to defy these double standards.

In my experience of trying to find counseling and support on campus I was met with a feeling that what happened to me was somehow my fault. When I visited the office of WeCare whose stated purpose is to “Help students who experience unexpected challenges in maintaining their academic progress”, the staff member I met with informed me that their only responsibility was to send an email to my professors encouraging them to show me leniency as I navigated a diffi cult time. That was it, a simple email, and a smile with the regards “Take it easy.” A phrase I encountered multiple times throughout my experience with TitleIX. How could a whole office under the umbrella of Student Affairs be dedicated to sending emails?, Tthere must be more that they could do, or maybe they just weren’t telling me about it. Over a month after my assault my case was finally assigned to a coordinator who got in touch with me about moving forward. After many pleas for information regarding progress, timeline, and procedure, I was told to find an advocate to sit with me at the Student Conduct Hearing, and to “Take it easy.” After contacting half a dozen University faculty and staff members on the one page list I was given of qualified individuals who had volunteered to fill this role, I found an amazing woman who received Title IX training and did her best to aid me through the process.

Even Misogynist Parents Can Empower You

By Anonymous Growing up in foster care I have found it hard to proclaim and hold onto my growing feminism. I discovered feminist theories my second year of high school at a summer camp that I attended at Yale University- the same year I went into the system. I was accidentally placed in a course that was titled “The Psychology of Harry Potter” and I remember fighting with the programing coordinator proclaiming that I had never read the Potter series OR have seen the movies so I would be lost in the content. After going back and forth on this, they said that the only course they could squeeze me into the morning of was “Gender Theory”. I took it- anything was better than sitting lost in a classroom of Potter fans.

My new class was taught by the fabulous Laura Michelle, an undergraduate student from northern New York. In the small classroom, located in the far end of the library basement, lively conversation was constructed by 7 high schoolers who all were extremely bright, and unlike me, they were well-informed feminists.

The first question Laura asked us all was, “Who here considers themselves feminists?”

I thought to myself, “Well…. I shave my legs and I like boys so I don’t think I’m a feminist…”

[Use SCUM Manifesto to descrive the feelings and writings that most people see as everyday feminism] I left my hand down while the other 6 kids, one being a boy?!, shot theirs up. What was I missing??

I went back to my room that night searching for answers. I spent hours looking at websites

loaded with feminist literature, Bitch Media, Feministing, Feminist Everyday, and so on. I even bought the book “Feminism for Everybody” determined to become a feminist by finding some sort of “How to Guide”. No luck- apparently there isn’t a rubric for feminism.

I found that I was noticing that a lot of what I was reading, I agreed with. “Well yeah.. women should definitely get payed as much as men.. and what’s the deal with childcare?! That’s not

“That anger and desire to create equalityhung in my mind as I transitioned into my first foster home.” fair!” In that moment, a feminist was created.

That anger and desire to create equality hung in my mind as I transitioned into my first foster home. This journey into becoming a knowledged feminist came on abruptly. Once I had found a word to describe the feelings I felt often and the ideas that constantly swam around my mind, I began intense research. I came down to dinner often sharing overwhelming amounts of information across a variety of topics, but all coming down to women’s rights. The couple became so tired by all of this that they prohibited me from using the computer for research other than school work. I felt discouraged and started to wonder if being a feminist was a bad thing, if it was something to stay ‘hushed’ about.

Along with this hanging cloud of discourage-

Even Misogynist Parents Can Empower You // 59

ment and rejection, they couple I as with practiced strict gender roles in their family dynamic. Lisa was a part time nurse and a part time stay-at-home parent for their 13 year old daughter. Lisa did the majority of the cooking, even though John often bragged about his culinary skills, and John did the everyday house maintenance.

I remember wanting to go help John with the work he was doing on the shed out back. When I went to him to ask if I could help, he replied with “Hey- I think Lisa might need some help in the kitchen? I’m all set out here!”

Living with these specific roles and barriers did not stop with Lisa and John- they were mirrored in many families after them. Dawn insisted that I did the dishes and that I left the ‘male’ chores to Dan. Randy proclaimed that cooking wasn’t a ‘man’s’ job because women are naturally good at it.

Holding onto my feminist ideologies and my desire to break gender norms was difficult in these homes.

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To become a stronger and more driven feminist, I remained in contact with my instructor, Laura, from that summer camp years ago. We email, send letters, and skype often- and we have even expanded our group to a few other students she knows. This “Sisterhood” kept me grounded and allowed me to grow in such restrictive environments. [Sisterhood Article??

Reference here!]

My advice to lost feminists is to never let anyone ‘calm’ you down. Remember to never dismiss other’s viewpoints- embrace them (even if they are against everything you believe in) because they can make you a better feminist.

Lisa, John, Dawn, Dan, Randy, and many others have shown me how to be a strong feminist and to rise above negativity. I am more grounded because of them.

From Tumblr Blogs to the Progressive Classroom Why we should be taking “check your privilege” seriously

By Madison Heckert

My first interaction with the phrase “check your privilege” came from browsing the Ttumblr blog of a friend attending CalTech from my comfy suburban Pennsylvania home. My next exposure to the concept was on Rreddit, but this time in jest. The more I saw the phrase appear on the Iinternet and in daily life, the more I saw it as a joke, poking fun at overzealous Iinternet “social justice warriors,” and a dead and slightly embarrassing attempt from young people on Ttumblr at creating more progressive society. So, in a lenslense free of Iinternet debauchery, how important is it that we check our privilege?

In her seminal article, which coined the phrase itself, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” Peggy McIntosh constructs a list of unearned benefits she receives daily, simply because she is white. Among these privileges are the ability to swear, dress in second hand clothes, and not answer letters without having these choices attributed to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of white people. As I read the testaments of women checking their

own societal benefits, I began to feel defensive.

I consider myself to to be a feminist and someone who believes in equality, and the idea that I was now an unconscious oppressor produced a feeling of anger, then quickly guilt. The detriments of white privilege to greater equality movements is evident in the writings of women of color.

Iin “Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference,” Audre Lorde states, “bBy and large within the women’s movement today, white women focus upon their oppression as women and ignore differences of race, sexual preference, class, and age. There is a pretense to a homogeneity of experience covered by the word sisterhood that does not in fact exist.” The existence of white privilege blinds us from the perspectives of the oppressed.

The rejection of the concept of privilege is nothing spawned from Iinternet culture. From the book “Teaching Antiracism: College Students’ Emotional and Cognitive Reactions to Learning About White Privilege,” teaching the concept of privilege to white students resulted in negative defensive reactions from students on multiple accounts, as well as poor feedback on the instructor of the lesson. Just as McIntosh

does not need to worry about her race impactinged the quality of medical treatment she receives, most students in the study had not been concerned with their un-

From Tumblr Blogs to the Progressive Classroom // 61

earned advantages over others, only their disadvantages.

The importance of self-identifying one’s privilege increasingly appears to be inversely proportional to the amount of benefits gained from privilege. Those who need to reflect most are the ones who live the most untouched by oppression. I experience the silent elevation of my worth based on my skin color every single day. And it will remain silent until a step is taken back to recognize it.

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From Tumblr Blogs to the Progressive Classroom

Skin Like Tree Bark

By Randa Taher

“Dark skin like tree bark” were the first words I heard my family use to describe my skin. Tree bark was strong, invaluable, always there. The only thing the rough surface of the tree bark could never be was beautiful. It was a Sudanese proverb for women from the villages whose sun kissed skin was looked down upon or seen as lower class. To add salt to the wound, my hair was nothing like most north Sudanese girls. It was fierce like a lion’s mane and fought my mother’s comb on a daily, granted it usually won. My sisters strolled around the house with long flowy hair down to their backs, never once mutilating the house comb.

In the black community the issue of colorism and curl envy is so pervasive in everyday interactions, it is almost unbelievable how little we speak of it. We speak of bitter

“Our experiences of race and racism, no matter how much we would like to deny it, are varied by skin tone and while my family was black in America, their oppression was not my own.” black women, redbones who are perpetually single; this narrative I knew by heart but as I grew up I understood the concepts for what they truly were: internalized racism and white supremacy within the Black community. Our experiences of race and racism, no matter how much we would like to deny it, are varied by skin tone and while

my family was black in America, their oppression was not my own. My older brother whose skin is the palest shade of brown I have ever seen was once caught smoking pot with some of his white friends. While black men are brutalized by the police on a daily, thankfully he was let off on a warning. He would later come to explain to me the unspoken privilege his light skin had awarded him; he was allowed to be seen as less threatening. I, on the other hand hand, was only fourteen in a train station in Brooklyn when a police officer found me threatening enough to “Stop and Frisk” me. It was the first time of many and it helped me come to the realization that I would never be allowed the privilege of being seen as unthreatening.

This issue of colorism translated deeply into Sudanese conflicts. Since 1899 Sudan was ruled by the Anglo-Egyptians/British but since they didn’t have the force to occupy Sudan they decided to institute the ‘Divide and Rule’ policy which led to a separation of the Southern Sudanese provinces from the rest of the country while investing in the Arab North by liberalizing political and economic institutions and slowing down the progress of the south. The North began to feel disconnected from the South in terms of religion/culture but most of all the British made sure they felt the division in terms of colorism. Colorism is notable in the U.S, which has continuously valued white/ lighter skin as well as Eurocentric

Skin Like Tree Bark // 63

beauty standards. As early as the 18th century,white supremacy has nested itself into communities of color. Under chattels of slavery, the slaves with lighter skin were made to work inside the master’s house while those with darker skin were made to work in the sweltering heat stricken plantations.

After slavery even black fraternities, sororities and other prominent black organizations used the brown paper bag test to discriminate against darker complexions.

Nowadays it’s hard for us to celebrate the fact that black women are getting more roles because even though these talented women deserve every opportunity that comes their way, I feel the need to address the colorism in these positions. Zendaya, Beyoncé, Tessa, Kandice, Nicki Minaj, Tracee Ellis Ross are all light skin black women. Though this may seem like just a coincidence and individual accounts of extremely talented women, the fact that there are barely any dark skin women in media is more so a product of society’s distaste and consistent devaluing of dark skin black women without Eurocentric features. These implications of colorism are sewn into Sudanese media as well with at least one whitening cream commercial per hour of television or easy access to more high paying jobs if you are from a certain ‘class’ which is usually codename for looking a certain type of way. It is proof that racist systems are operating just the way they were supposed to, to divide and promote privilege within our own communities.

Colorism, whether our communities like to admit it or not, is at a high cyclical cycle and though the issue may seem divi-

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Skin Like Tree Bark

sive, it sheds light that our experiences as black folk is not homogeneous. There are campaigns out there working to show the beauty and power of dark skin such as Unfairandlovely which give a platform to dark skinned femmes as the center of discussion rather than the background characters. I want to personally have a hand in killing the proverb “Dark skin like tree bark” because our resilience, our strength and our beauty are not mutually exclusive nor will they ever be.

Staff Editors Sara Alarcon
 Katharine Amoroso Alessandra Bryant Rachel Ceskavich Mackenzie Coleman Jamie Cross Addison Feldman Sara Fogarty Rebecca Green Shanyueer Huang Gina Igoe Kevin Keegan Sarah Klieger Samantha Lavelle Caitlan Lucien Sanya Okello Lauren Perlik Sarah Rathje Xin Shu Lauren Swank Randa Taher Isabella Viega Haley Weinstein Kerrina Williams

66 //

Design Team Julia Barnes Alyssa Blumstein Nathan Botelho Esther Chung Allison Davis Jacob Edwards Madeleine Hahn-Smith Crystal Han Madison Heckert Norik Kirakosian Taryn Koury Olivia Nelson Mambo Stephanie Alexander Zilbersher Party Planning Jamez Anderson Juanita Barrera Katherine Begley Isabella De Marchena Perez Juliette Depalo Emily Harris Briana Hoang Caroline Kuppens Hanne Larsen Kelly Long Nathalie Nidetch Sarah Ogando Dominguez Olivia Whitaker

Thank you ! “ Let us remember: One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world.�

- Malala Yousafzai

Thank you Dr. Moya Bailey and Greg Palermo for your guidance, patience, and knowledge this semester. Your leadership is an inspiration to all of us as we go out into the world to see what change we can affect. We dedicate this magazine not only to you, but the spirit of fairness, equality, compassion, intersectionality and justice which you truly embody.

Thank you!

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