Posts Categorized: Sex and Culture
Tomi With The Bad Hair: Sorry, Trevor Noah Didn’t Drag Lahren
It’s Finals Week. Yes, the anxiety-inducing week where professors throw out all care for student’s mental health and we cram a semester’s worth of material down our throats. However, because my life seems to be plagued by a particularly specific brand of evil, not all my classes held finals. Some of them held mini end-of-semester lectures meant to show students “the big picture.” Today’s final was one of those. My teacher spent the better half of an hour telling us we couldn’t write and lacked passion. The second half however, he answered questions from students on a variety of topics. It was during this section of class that he uttered this phrase: “The most important issue we as a country must tackle next is the issue of the Black Man.”… Read more »
BDS-Empowerment: 5 Things the Lifestyle Does Right
Fifty Shades of Grey, that one Rihanna song from a few years ago, and countless Tumblr blogs — BDSM has become an up-and-coming curiosity that has taken the world by storm. Though not many of the interpretations of it have been completely accurate, it has gotten my attention as well, especially after reading multiple articles debating the relationship it has to feminism. After doing my own research — Daniel Day Lewis style — and actually talking to people involved in the hobby, I’ve found multiple things that it does right, and things that I wish people would recognize without an Ellie Goulding song to glamorize it. So, while this is by no means an attempt to persuade anybody into the lifestyle, these are the things that should be incorporated in… Read more »
Ring the Anti-choice Alarm: The 2017 Texas Legislative Preview
Texas lawmakers have proposed a slew of anti-choice, anti-queer, anti-reproductive justice legislation for the 2017 Texas session, which will begin in January. Three laws in particular caught my eye when I reviewed the pre-filed legislation; the first would outlaw existing and future anti-discrimination ordinances, the second would mandate the burial or cremation of pregnancy-related biological tissue criminalize abortions post 20 weeks in cases of severe fetal abnormalities, and the third would criminalize abortions post 20 weeks in cases of severe fetal abnormalities. These proposed bills pose real and tangible threats to the wellbeing of Texans and our future and demand our attention and opposition. Bogus Bill #1: Senate Bill 92 overturning and preventing local anti-discrimination ordinances State Senator Bob Hall (R- Englewood) authored and filed senate bill 92, which will… Read more »
No Teen Pregnancy: #ThxBirthControl?
November 16th was “Thanks, Birth Control” Day and as such, reproductive justice organizations flooded their timelines with tweet after tweet of birth control users everywhere pledging their undying love for what every knows and loves as — birth control. And, although the day was a ray of positivity after a week of what many saw as despair, I still feel strange about the entire thing. “Thanks, Birth Control” Day, known online as #ThxBirthControl, was started by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. When this information came to my attention, I felt an instant irony. As the product of an unplanned teenage pregnancy, there are many reasons in my life to “thank birth control” and yet, here I stood the exact opposite of everything the day hoped to… Read more »
Condoms Are Great. Prop 60 Is Not.
One of the measures on California’s massive ballot this election cycle is Proposition 60, an initiative that would mandate the use of condoms by performers in adult films. At first glance, the measure sounds great; condoms are an important harm reduction intervention within and outside of sex work and have been proven to reduce STI and HIV transmission. Prop. 60, however, would allow any California resident to sue producers of films that don’t visibly use condoms, something that a variety of prevalent players within sexual and reproductive healthcare systems don’t support including (and perhaps most especially) adult film actors themselves. The controversial president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) Michael Weinstein proposed Prop. 60 as a measure to reduce transmission of STIs by putting into law the Safer Sex in… Read more »
No More Queer Confessions: “Coming Out” vs. “Letting In”
The recent passing of National Coming Out Day on October 11 marks the 28th anniversary of the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. As stated by the Human Rights Campaign, the significance of the day lays in recognizing “…one of our most basic tools [as] the power of coming out” (HRC). With “one out of every two Americans [knowing] someone close to them who is gay or lesbian” and one in ten for transgender people, the perks of coming out are that it grants queer communities visibility, increases the number of average Americans who can begin familiarizing themselves with queer people, closes gaps of estrangement and, ideally, creates new advocates of equality. Coming out for me, however, has always presented a complex tension, proving less celebratory than… Read more »
This Intersex Awareness Day, Some Notes on the ‘I’ in LGBTQI
As the acronym that we come to understand as our community expands, so must our awareness of all it means. In recent years, an I has come to dangle from the end of LGBTQI. Most of us know that L is for Lesbian, G for Gay, B for Bisexual, T is for Transgender, and––depending on the weather––Q is for Queer or Questioning. Yet the ‘I’ that dangles at the end may confuse some; what does it stand for, anyway? Innovative? Impressive? Inspirational? While all of these are applicable, in this particular game of alphabet soup, ‘I’ is for Intersex. Intersex is a term used to describe folks who are born with genetic, hormonal, genital, or other sex characteristics that do not align with the stereotypical definitions of male or female… Read more »
#DrakeShouldHaveAlreadyBeenCanceledParty
In this week’s celebrity news, rapper Drake mocked Kid Cudi’s depression in a poorly written and insensitive line in his latest song Two Birds One Stone, after a Twitter rant by Kid Cudi a couple of weeks ago. The lyrics reference Kid Cudi’s current stay in a rehab facility for help with his depression and suicidal urges: “You were the man on the moon, now you go through your phases/Life of the angry and famous/ Rap like I know I’m the greatest and give you the tropical flavors/ Still never been on hiatus/You stay xan and perked up so when reality set in you don’t gotta face it” As someone who likes rap music but does not religiously listen to it, I could not help but roll my eyes. Drake’s… Read more »
Virginity is a Myth
Virginity, a hymen, and purity. What do these things have in common? Exactly. Nothing. Virginity is a concept that mainly regards a woman who has had sex as disposable. This is especially apparent in the chewing gum analogy where a ‘chewed up’ piece of gum, or a woman who has had many sexual partners, should be discarded for a ‘fresh’ piece of gum. Society’s fixation on preserving virginity in women and eliminating virginity in men has essentially created false meanings when it comes to sexuality. Society has created the term “purity” as a state that mainly aligns itself to the female sex. In Jessica Valenti’s book “The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women,” she argues that chastity and abstinence-only rhetoric places a woman’s worth on… Read more »
5 Responses to Rape that Feed, not Fight, Rape Culture
*Trigger warning: This article contains discussion of sexual assault. In 2016, we’ve seen unprecedented progress when it comes to recognizing the prevalence of rape culture, and coming up with legal and social ways to fight it. From bipartisan support for the Sexual Assault Survivor’s Bill of Rights and the success of the #ItsOnUs campaign, we’re closer than ever to protecting survivors of sexual violence and making sure victims feel safe and heard at every level. However, we’ve also seen some pretty shitty attempts to explain away rape culture, make excuses for convicted rapists, and blow off incendiary comments made by a certain Presidential candidate… There have been (too many) opportunities for our nation’s elected to not only speak out against rape and sexual violence, but to also take a stand against the pervasiveness of… Read more »
