Posts Tagged: young people
Universities need to offer child care facilities, student housing
Recently, I wrote an article for my college newspaper asking them to consider opening a childcare facility on campus for student parents. In it, I reference statistics from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research that claim that only around half of all public universities in the United States offer childcare for prospective student parents. Broken down, the study shows only 48 percent of community colleges offer basic childcare services, and 57 percent of public four-year colleges. Of the 3.9 million student parents enrolled as undergraduates at these institutions, 57 percent of them are low-income earners. Single parents, primarily women, have the toughest time of it, often having to work 40 hours a week to provide for their families. According to this same study, only 6 to 7 percent of private… Read more »
18 and pregnant: how a young mom is challenging the stigma of “teen pregnancy”
The thought of having a baby has always been difficult for me to grasp and a vision I never really had for myself. I just do not feel like I am the type of person fit to be a mother. Maybe one day I will feel differently, people do change after all, but maybe I won’t, and that’s okay too. In 2013, there were 26.5 births for every 1,000 adolescent females ages 15-19. I never thought I would fit into that statistic. And when I found out one of my best friends, Liliana Lucio, did the summer after our senior year, I was shocked. We grew up together, we went to school together from the time we were three years old to our high school graduation. We knew everything about… Read more »
What Could King v. Burwell Mean for Young People?
The Supreme Court is poised to release a decision on the King v. Burwell case any day. This case may have not received the attention it deserves for its possibly devastating outcome, especially for young people. Many people have discussed this case in terms of tax credits, something that young people may not think about very much. However, if the plaintiffs are successful, it would mean that any state using the federal government’s infrastructure for its healthcare exchange would not be able to receive federal financial assistance. Currently, that financial assistance in the form of tax credits helps low- and middle-income people pay their monthly insurance premiums. Without that assistance, monthly payments will increase substantially. For example, in Alabama where the average monthly insurance payment in 2013 was $178, that… Read more »
Child Free by Choice
Our society is based in many ways on children and families. Our culture devotes massive amounts of time and resources to the raising of children. Certainly this is good, as children are the future of our society, and that investment is worthwhile. But one side effect of this culture is the automatic expectation that people have children. I understand that as a man, I certainly don’t face the same type or intensity of pressures as my wife or any woman in our society does. And some of that comes from people believing that a woman’s job is to have children. So part of being seen as an adult woman in our society is having children. So as a man I don’t face the same level of stigma for not having… Read more »
Take Back the Night at Texas State
This week I attended my first Take Back the Night event at my university. For those who aren’t familiar Take Back the Night is a national organization that serves to create safe communities and respectful relationships. They seek to end sexual assault, domestic and dating violence, sexual abuse. The way my university organized was with a march through campus that culminated with a spoken word open mic at our outside amphitheater. I got a couple of my friends together and we met up with the other organizations that were sponsoring it and decided to march. It was a little nerve-wracking just because it was the first time that I openly marched for anything on campus. I’m an anxious person so I usually choose to show my activism in different ways, but this… Read more »
What are the Politics of Desirability?
“Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference – those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older – know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths.” — Audre Lorde Narratives about beauty, intelligence, and kindness have mostly been centralized on white people. Psychological experiments like The Doll Test have shown that from a… Read more »
Abandon Girl Hate
Last night, with no explanation, I walked by a girl who I instantly didn’t like. It might have been because she stared at me with a look of judgment in her eyes. It might have been because she was prettier than me. It might have been because patriarchal values have taught me to hate other women. I like to think I’m a pretty accepting person. So you can imagine my internal struggle as I try and talk myself down from girl hate, the phenomenon of hating other girls based solely on the fact that they are another woman, not for any legitimate reason. Before I knew about feminism, before I knew about social justice, I internalized everything that our society tells us about women. You should judge a woman for… Read more »
The Bechdel Test for Music
You might be familiar with something used to critique the film industry called The Bechdel Test. In 1985 it was created by a cartoonist named Alison Bechdel as a way to measure female representation in films. The test has three easy parts, A film has to have at least two women in it They have to talk to each other They have to talk about something other than a man Seems simple enough? Amazingly however today still about half of films don’t pass the test. As the test remains a good starting point for critiquing our film consumption I wondered if the test could be applied to other fields as well, like television or music. Then I found an article written for Pitchfork by Paul de Revere that adopts the Bechdel Test… Read more »
Fraternities and Guilt by Association
I’m sure by now most people have seen or read about the video that was taken of members of the SAE chapter at Oklahoma University chanting racial slurs. There have been countless articles written on it, tons of media coverage, and lots of social media interaction. The hashtag #SAEHatesMe has been used to talk about all sorts of issues relating to racism in Greek life. After this video surfaced, OU president David Boren issued a statement condemning the actions of this group. I should applaud the administration for their swift action, but I also think that making a statement that “Real Sooners are not racist” is a little bit ironic. However, the statement issued was undoubtedly further than the University had to go to deal with the problem, and going… Read more »
The Flaws of Parental Notification Measures
California has a reputation for being an incredibly liberal state filled with hippies and surfer dudes, but as a California native, I can tell you that such stereotypes are far from the truth. A good deal of the state is actually very conservative. How else do you make sense of a same-sex marriage ban successfully passing when left to the voters back in 2008, in this, one of the most liberal states in the nation? It’s because of this knowledge that I wasn’t all too shocked when I found out that there’s an abortion initiative gathering signatures to mandate parental notification for teenagers. It’s important to realize that California already has a law on parental notification, but it’s not really enforced. What this measure would do is force a pregnant… Read more »
