Pregnancy is one of the most beautiful things about life, but it can also be the scariest. How could someone possibly be depressed after finally bringing their own child into the world after carrying them for 9 months?!? Birthing a child is an EXTREMELY difficult and exhausting process. Mental illnesses are very common in new […]
Read More A bad case of the baby bluesFrom a very young age I have understood that the patriarchal view of my purpose on this earth is to bear children and raise them, the way my mother did, and generations of women before her. I remember expressing fear of the pain of childbirth to my mother in elementary school, and she told me […]
Read More No I Don’t Want A Baby, Stop Asking.Kristen Shrewsbury is an instructional faculty member at JMU who teaches the special topics course WGSS 300: Queer Families. She’s a Harrisonburg native who went to JMU for her undergraduate degree from 1996 to 2001, and began working at JMU as a professional in 2007. She’s married to a same sex spouse and has two […]
Read More An interview with JMU professor Dr. ShrewsburyThe release of Pixar’s Turning Red has stirred up a conversation about whether or not it is appropriate to have puberty be a subject in a children’s film. Are movies like this a step in the right direction to normalizing periods for young girls or is it too advanced for Disney’s audience?
Read More Turning Red: The Importance of Normalizing Periods for Young GirlsRecently, the topic of what’s being taught in K-12 schools has been making national headlines. From topics such as “critical race theory” to book bans, lawmakers have turned the classroom into a political battleground. This has garnered attention from not just parents of K-12 children, but celebrities, social justice advocates, students, businesses, and more. The […]
Read More Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” Bill isn’t actually about protecting childrenMy grandfather was, for the last sixteen years of my life, a pastor in my local church and it was amazing to have him be such an amazing role model for me in the early and more recent stages of my life. He is now recently retired and there is a new intern pastor that […]
Read More My little rant about churchesYou can take off 12 weeks of work when you give birth to your child. But hey, here’s the catch, we just won’t pay you for that time off. Alright, cool, see you in a couple weeks. As someone who is about to enter the workforce in the spring with lofty career goals for myself, […]
Read More unpaid maternity leave for 12 weeks: How graciousI had never conducted an interview before in my life. But for ShoutOut!, I decided that I wanted to showcase local feminist and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) professor Dr. Sharon Mazzarella, who has been teaching for 13 years at James Madison University. In this interview, we discuss her research in young girlhood, her […]
Read More Interview with JMU Professor Dr. MazzarellaThe long list of people failed by the American government continues to grow even as we approach 2022. Refugees, African Americans, and women are a few out of the bunch. Although the first two listed deserve their own blog post; Texas has made the conversation impossible to ignore. Texas and its undying efforts to turn […]
Read More America, who do you care about?Most of us learned internalized misogyny at home from our mothers and grandmothers, not men.
Read More Internalized Misogyny has Maternal Roots
ShoutOut! James Madison University 