Em-URGE-ing Voices

Taylor

Major: Social Work
Hometown: Sacramento, California
Favorite Writer: Assata Shakur
Favorite sex scene: Love Jones
Hidden Talent: Knows every word to Chris Brown's classic Say Goodbye

Posts By: Taylor Crumpton

We Need To Talk About The Maternal Mortality Rate In Texas

The Lone Star State is known for making legislative decisions that negatively impact reproductive health. From withdrawing Planned Parenthood from HIV testing programs, closing abortion providers , and cutting funding to health programs, the state has created unsafe atmosphere for reproductive health. Texans are dying of pregnancy-related ailments at a higher rate than the rest of the country and even most other industrialized countries. Black women in Texas account for 30% of maternal deaths and Hispanic women in Texas make up 31% of maternal deaths. The Texas legislature have used laws and policies to create a grim reality for women living in Texas. In rural regions of the state, Texans live without a nearby abortion provider and experience long waiting times at local health departments to receive medical treatment and services. Instead the state gives… Read more »

What I Learned from a Year of Celibacy

  I was never taught to wait until marriage to have sex. My mother encouraged me to wait until I found the right person who I felt safe and secure with, and then I would know that I had found the one. Due to factors out of my control, I was not in control of my first sexual experience but when I found the right person in high school to have sex with, I felt safe and did not regret my decision. After my first time, I became enamored with sex. I thought about sex constantly, I was having sex consistently, and sex had become a part of my identity. My sexual identity began to change when I began attending a private Christian university in which sex was discouraged and… Read more »

College Football, Masculinity, and Sexual Assault

It’s college football season! From now until the Super Bowl, millions of Americans will dedicate their Saturays to college football and their Sundays to the NFL. They will prepare feasts composed of pizza, wings, burgers, and beer. They will watch the game at local sports bars, homes, and stadiums. They will be adorned in sports memorabilia. And many of them will fiercely defend their teams from negativity even at the expense of survivors of sexual assault who have been assaulted by a player on the team. On September 13, 2016, Allen Artis, a football player at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was suspended from the team and a warrant was issued for his arrest, but the arrest warrant was only issued when the survivor went public even though the attack… Read more »

“Sexual Purity” and STDs

    The first time I heard about sex on my college campus was during my freshmen orientation in a session titled “Sex, Drugs, and Rock n’ Roll,” which covered the university’s policies over premarital sex and drugs. It was during that session that students were told about the sexual stewardship section in our student handbook where “all students were expected to maintain a lifestyle of sexual purity” while attending Abilene Christian University. This lifestyle of sexual purity was enforced by a midnight curfew on the weekdays, male and female-only residence halls, and visitation night where the door had to be open as your RA periodically walked by to ensure students were not sexually tempting one another. If it was discovered that a student was not maintaining a sexually pure lifestyle,… Read more »