race

I always believed that police used lethal violence to control citizens only as a last resort. Now it’s clear that they are jumping to it without fear — and without repercussion for their actions.
Do I believe all law enforcement acts this way? Of course not. But why do we so often see departments rally around and protect the bad apples?

My therapist of six months — let’s call her L — was letting me go. It was so subtle that I wasn’t even sure what was happening; I had to ask.

I understand the connections between the violence that leads to police shootings and the violence that leads people to starve themselves. I know with complete certainty that diet culture is a manifestation of the state’s expectation of assimilation and of social control, both of which are manifestations of institutional violence.

The fact that police killings are calculated by media organizations at all is a victory of the sustained protests of the Black Lives Matter movement. Yet, despite heightened visibility, the killings continue. According to the Guardian, 571 people have been killed by police so far in 2016—3.4 per million Native American and 3.28 Black.

My family stands out. My kids are Asian, my husband and I are white. Most people will (correctly) assume our children are adopted.

The danger of submitting to the false patriotic tranquility of the United States of Amnesia is Donald Drumpf. He reminds us that the United States of Amnesia is one of the most peacefully violent countries in existence, not only politically, but economically, socially, psychologically, and spiritually.

Much has already been said about the way the Stanford swimmer's privilege has insulated him from consequence, about the ever-pervasive victim blaming in public discourse, and about the inadequacy of the criminal justice system. But in so many of these conversations, in our rage against the rape culture machine, we forget the survivors — the most important people in the fight against sexual violence.

Honoring my feelings and being true to myself are just as important to me as being critical of the ways that a multiply-oppressive society manifests itself in the way I date, love, and desire.