8 minute read
PROBLEMS WITH TOURISM IN HAWAII
from Fall Magazine 2021
“W e’d like to welcome them, but we also realize we only have so many beaches.” For over a year, we as a society have been obligated to face the hardships of the Coronavirus. One of those obstacles included the desire to travel to your favorite vacation spots. Once Covid-19 started to settle down a little bit, all fully vaccinated individuals from the United States were allowed to stop quarantine and travel by flight at the beginning of July. People immediately took advantage and started to go to their favorite cities and islands. A very popular spot to vacation in is Hawaii. Even before the virus, Hawaii racked up almost 6 million visitors per year, for a great reason.
Although tourism in the Islands has its benefits, like the economic increase of 10 billion dollars a year, there are numerous disregarded problems that we don’t witness firsthand. As a community, we must consider the little things that don’t pertain to just ourselves and our own pleasures.
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The increasing number of tourists have caused problems for preserving local habitat. A huge chunk of this environmental degradation relates to the absurd amount of infrastructure being built in relation to the tourism industry, mostly on the island of Oahu. From 1985-2010, the number of hotel rooms skyrocketed from 65,000 to approximately 132,000. The energy usage from these buildings to maintain the development will ultimately make the environment more fragile and unhealthy. Moreover, thousands of native burial grounds and sacred native temples have been violated for the resorts and hotel structures that lie in Waikiki today.
The Native Hawaiians are struggling to spread knowledge of their heritage when their island is starting to become just another city. Developing these properties has diminished their ability to preserve their traditional livelihoods such as fishing and gathering food and medicine.
The overwhelming amount of visitors has the local residents overwhelmed in many different ways. Visitor arrivals to Hawaii in April of 2021 increased over 10,000% compared to last year. In April 2020, Hawaii had 4,564 tourists, which jumped to 484, 071 by April 2021. The ongoing traffic and hour-long wait times at restaurants are just a small portion of why these locals get infuriated when their lifestyles get interrupted. Since we are also in a worldwide virus, there are still people testing positive and filling up the ICU beds. This led to a shortage of hospitality workers and more waiting time for people with more urgent discomforts or injuries. There is also a major water shortage in Maui right now that prohibits residents from using their own water for washing their cars and watering their own lawns, as it is deemed as “non-essential”. Doing so can get you a $500 fine and Hawaii’s tourists are worsening Maui’s existing water conflicts.
More aggravations stem from when the tourists are blatantly ignorant. During the resurgence of tourism in Hawaii, some toured and visited Laniakea Beach in Oahu. They pulled up and offloaded 600 people who stomped, kicked, and poured sand on the sea turtles who were trying to peacefully sleep on the beach. It is a felony to step within 10 feet of an endangered sea animal, let alone touch and harass them. It’s not a petting zoo
It is clear that the overbearingness of tourism in Hawaii has many negative impacts on the locals who actually live there and take care of the environment. Educate yourself, understand before taking part, and use your voice to help allow these local residents and born natives to live peacefully at their home as we do in ours.
PROBLEMS WITH
TOURISM IN HAWAII
GREG SANTOS // DESIGN EDITOR
Remember when you were at the age where you transitioned from shopping in the little girls section and wanted to start shopping in the teens/juniors? It went from tank tops and t-shirts to cropped, low neck shirts. Bathing suits went from shirts and shorts or one pieces to skimpy tops and bottoms. It’s understandable that there are plenty of girls who like to dress in that clothing, however there’s plenty that don’t. Whether girls like that style or not, isn’t it still inappropriate?
There have always been dress codes, but it didn’t matter at a younger age since the stores didn’t really sell anything violating it. If our dress code was strictly enforced, what would we have to wear? There aren’t any stores that sell a wide variety of clothing. We would only have a small selection of clothing to choose from and there are so many different tastes in fashion. We would probably be wearing the same 4 shirts over and over again.
In July, Norway’s handball team was fined $1,764 for wearing shorts instead of bikini bottoms. On the CBC news website, they tell us that beach handball rules require women to wear tops and bikini bottoms while men get to wear tank tops and shorts. The uniform regulations say, “‘Female athletes must wear bikini bottoms … with a close fit and cut on an upward angle toward the top of the leg, and ‘athletes’ uniforms and accessories contribute to helping athletes increase their performance as well as remain coherent with the sportive and attractive image of the sport.” This tells us that because of our gender, we are expected to show ourselves in an inappropriate manner, and for this sport it must be done for an “attractive image of the sport.”
Personally, the cut of clothing has always hindered my shopping abilities and made it harder to shop for me. Everything is always cropped, shorts are too small; however, my biggest problem is the swim suits.
Stores mainly sell bikini bottoms, and teens are expected to wear them and expose themselves in inappropriate clothing in public. I’m not saying that it’s completely impossible to find something to wear. It’s simply just very difficult and frustrating to me after seeing what is being sold, and what’s expected of me to wear. Females shouldn’t be seen this way; it is wrong in every way.
UNNECESSARY SEXUALIZATION
IN WOMEN’S CLOTHES
SYDNEY WESSELINK // STAFF
THE NEOPRONOUN DISCOURSE IN THE LGBTQ+ COMMUNITY
CAMERON CAIN // STAFF
Neopronoun discourse is an issue that isn’t often addressed with the same mainstream limelight as other issues. Many members both inside and outside of the queer community question the validity of neopronouns as they have come to light and become more popular recently. While these pronouns fit perfectly into the English language, they still get invalidated. Neopronoun users, who are often nonbinary and neurodivergent, deserve to be respected in their identity, even if their identity or pronouns are beyond the understanding of both cishet and queer people alike. While people in the queer community are often scared of speaking up about their issues as it can give bigoted individuals another excuse to be oppressive, speaking up about these issues and educating people about both the issues and the identities surrounding them can help resolve discourse and limit the amount of ignorant people, regardless of their sexuality or gender, in the world. But, what are neopronouns?
Neopronouns are often called nounpronouns but not all neopronouns are based on nouns, though a lot are.
Neopronouns are pronouns outside of he/him, she/her, and they/them pronouns. More common examples of neopronouns include xe/xem, ae/aer, ve/vir, ze/zim, and fae/faer. The prefix “neo” means new, however neopronouns aren’t exactly a new idea. According to the article, “The History of Neopronouns” by Emil Tinkler the earliest record of neopronouns was in the 1850s. However, most, not all, neopronoun users usually do have “backup pronouns” that are easier for those who reject neopronouns and ensures they don’t get misgendered at least as much, though that shouldn’t be used as an excuse to purposefully avoid using one’s neopronouns.
Refusing to use one’s neopronouns is not only transphobic but in some cases ableist as well, especially when they only use neopronouns. A lot of neopronoun users are also neurodivergent or more specifically autistic, as neurodivergent people typically have a different understanding of gender than neurotypicals. Though neopronouns aren’t a strictly neurodivergent thing.
An article by Elena Correa explains, “many autistic people use neopronouns because they can’t feel a connection to either the female or male gender binary like neurotypical people do. Neopronouns help autistic people exist in a way that is more comfortable and makes more sense to them, because their brains operate differently than the average person. Not all autistic people feel this way, but neopronouns are helpful for some.” Because of this, the ridicule of neopronouns is usually also rooted in ableism as well as transphobia.
However, despite neopronouns being harmless, many opposers to neopronouns claim that they are harmful. People in the trans and neurodivergent communities even going as far to say they are ableist, transphobic or are giving trans and autistic individuals a bad name. Regardless, to refuse to use someone’s pronouns is disrespectful and invalidates their identity, no matter who they are. In an article from The New York Times, some teenagers explain their relationship with neopronouns and neurodivergent, one teenager saying...
Neopronouns are just another way for trans and neurodivergent people to express their gender.
The validity of neopronouns is not something cis or neurotypical trans people get to discuss; it is not harmful to the community or to anyone in any way and the use of neopronouns should be respected. To invalidate one’s neopronouns is transphobic and in most cases also ableist. Neurodivergent and nonbinary people shouldn’t conform to the comfort of cis and neurotypical people, no matter how desparately cisgendered people might want that.
