Em-URGE-ing Voices

Posts Categorized: Uncategorized

Why Ohio Needs to Keep Golden Week

Ah, yes, as an Ohioan, I’ll never forget the first Election season and Golden Week where I could legally vote. What a magical time, literally full of giant buses and go-karts on my campus shipping us off to the polls and college students clutching their voter registration forms on clipboards. We were all fresh-faced from a candidate visit and ready to engage our fellow students about voting. You see, voting in Ohio is really funny. That’s if you find constant 24/7 political advertisements hysterical, or you somehow find it amusing that candidates from both sides of the fence practically live here from all of the visits (with both the Obama and Romney family visiting each 30 times in four months). Ohio is also famous for Golden Week. So what exactly… Read more »

#WhatWomenNeed, Valentine’s Day and Beyond

I loved All Above All’s Valentine’s Day twitter campaign. The simple #WhatWomenNeed was a great way to raise awareness about abortion coverage. It got me thinking about the big picture. What women need, for Valentine’s Day and beyond. Narrowing the list down to 5 was difficult. This is certainly not comprehensive. But I think it’s a good place to start. 1. Sexual assault needs to be taken seriously: Sexual assault is an epidemic. Ms. magazine reports that “1 in 5 women will experience a rape or an attempted rape at some point during college.” Activists, students, women and their allies have been campaigning for decades in the hopes of getting the public and our government to take sexual assault seriously. There have been many articles and books and blog posts written… Read more »

TED Talks and Eliminating Abortion Stigma

Recently the folks who do TED Talks announced that they did not do talks on abortion, claiming that it is more of a “topical issue” similar to a “state tax bill” rather than the issues covered by TED, which include “justice, inequality and human rights.” This falls under this silly guise that abortion is far too political, even amongst other issues that apparently aren’t as “topical,” such as contraception access and feminist theory. This “abortion is too political” attitude reminds me about an incident I had last semester in a class about human sexuality. This particular lecture had over 250 students, and it provided an opportunity for me to announce events on campus. While I had made announcements about the kick-off meeting and Take Back the Night rally from the… Read more »

Why You Need to Know About Telemedicine Abortions

Imagine that you are a college student who has just taken their first unexpected positive pregnancy test. You decide that an abortion is your best choice, but the closest clinic is across your state, 3 hours away. You’re practically eating ramen for two out of three meals a day, and the cost of an abortion, plus possible gas money and a night at a hotel, adds up quickly. What do you do? That’s where a telemedicine abortion would come in. Telemedicine abortion: Sounds like a thing of the future, right? 

Black Herstory Month: Audre Lorde and Lessons I Learned about Black Womanhood

The first book by Audre Lorde I read was Sister Outsider. It was March and I was getting ready to go home for spring break. I didn’t want to go back home after the months of freedom I enjoyed being away at college. To prepare for my trip home I went to the library to pick up two books I had waiting for me. Essex Hemphill’s Ceremonies and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Sister Outsider happened to be sitting next to Ceremonies. I almost didn’t pick it up, thanks to white feminism. You see, like most Women’s Studies departments around the US, the Women’s Studies Department at my school is really great at talking about intersectionality. Doing intersectionality however, is another story. I had gotten so sick of seeing white… Read more »

How a Pool Party Could Spark a Revolution

This weekend, I had one of those moments that fueled me to continue to break down barriers and stigmas around bodies. This experience happened at the Trans* Pool Party at Creating Change: National Conference for LGBT Equality. Not exactly the place I planned to experience a transforming moment after hours of workshops, caucuses and networking. When I walked into the party, I was amazed. The small pool was crowded full of all types of people. I will never forget the range of bodies – from fat to muscular, with everything exposed, from bruises to moles to scars to tattoos and stretch marks. People who had transitional surgery, women with unshaven legs and adorable queer couples were swimming free of harassment. When I looked around, I realized that it was more… Read more »

Creating Change: Accessibility and Diversity

This weekend I attended Creating Change: The National Conference of LGBT Rights.  Basically, the conference covers a wide intersection of issues impacting the LGBTQ community, including homelessness, HIV/AIDS, marriage equality, immigration, and a whole host of other issues. One of the big themes appeared to be queering reproductive justice. This issue addresses a persistent dismissal of the LBGTQ community’s involvement in abortion rights and birth control access and other reproductive health-related issues based on the idea that LGBTQ-identified folks do not need access to these services. Several of the panels were based on how to address this concern and continue to organize for reproductive justice inclusively for folks of all identities.

How Ohio State’s “Condom Club” is Promoting Inclusive, Safe Sex — One Prophylactic at a Time

One of the first things I did when I set foot on to the Ohio State University campus was sign up for “Condom Club” membership. “Condom Club” briefly known as “Safer Sex Society” is the place on campus to get almost all things a person might need to have safe sex. Oh and they also provide free sex-ed workshops to students. Ohio State is home to about 60,000 students. The presence of  “Condom Club” on campus is very important. For me, the Club has been instrumental in my sexual education and practice. (Fun fact: the very first lube I ever used was from the “Condom Club”). The Club is about more than providing students with prophylactics. For some like myself, attending one of “Condom Club’s” safe sex workshops was their… Read more »

Mike Huckabee, Controlling Libidos and Natural Family Planning

Recently, obvious mind reader of women/Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee said some troublesome things about contraception coverage. He said that the recent improvements with reproductive health “insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar [??] coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it.” The whole “controlling libido” comment reminds me so much of how anti-choice folks push natural family planning, or NFP, as the all-encompassing solution to avoiding hormonal birth control. NFP is a method in which a person uses signs of their body, such as cervical mucus and timing of menstrual periods in order to time… Read more »