Voices

[CN: alcohol] Once we were in her apartment she grabbed me by the necktie, kissed me softly on the lips, told me to take my clothes off, and walked into her bedroom. Her clothing dropped to the ground piece by piece from where I stood to the bedroom — like some sort of Hansel and Gretel breadcrumb situation (if it were less creepy and filmed for Cinemax).

Dirty Harry may be a highly entertaining character, but he is not a role model I would want my son to emulate. Young boys and men exposed to these sorts of stereotypes must be somewhat shaken to discover how little their inner life resembles this representation of heroism. In order to mimic the external impassiveness of these so-called heroes, how much of their true selves must they deny?

Every one of those “such a boy” comments make me hurt for all the other kids who hear these comments every day. Because of the many, many kids who cannot so easily hide the parts of themselves that don’t garner instant approval, knowing looks, happy eye-rolls. Because the culture that celebrates my son’s love of trucks and refuses to acknowledge his love of princesses is the same culture that shames and isolates trans and gender non-conforming kids every day.

When Clinton dismisses her women critics as merely whiny, she also dismisses their concerns, and exemplifies the exact single-issue mainstream feminist thinking that many young women and intersectional feminists oppose her for in the first place.

I’m not a fan of repeating things over and over so that they lose their meaning. "Pledge: a solemn promise or agreement." It is that extra level, the solemnity, that makes me uncomfortable with casual usage.

My favorite thing about this trip was that I spent my time in Vienna with fat feminists by my side every single day.... Occasionally, our bellies bumped into one another and then rebounded for just a second, like balloons. The familiar physics of fatness multiplied by two or three. I felt like we spoke in shorthand, the language of shared experience.

As soon as I hit puberty, I was fascinated by sex.... As I’ve gotten older (and actually had sex), my relationship with the act has shifted. Most of this has been the result of my not only coming to terms with my body and what it does and doesn’t like, but coming to terms with another part of my existence: my anxiety disorder.

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, but for those whose lives dramatically changed when they entered the realm of rape survivor, there is no 30-day expiration date.
This is made abundantly clear by Annie E. Clark and Andrea Pino, the co-founders of End Rape on Campus (EROC). They also have edited the book, “We Believe You: Survivors of Campus Sexual Assault Speak Out.”