The other night I was sitting in the photo lab on campus, sorting negatives, when I started Speaking Up, one of NPR’s Ted Radio Hour podcast episodes. It began with the story of a queer, Bahrainian woman name Esra’a. She introduced herself to a crowd, describing her upbringing in Bahrain: “You were encouraged to be invisible, and […]
Read More Where are you, in the fight for unity?If you’re like me and maybe don’t follow the news as closely as you should (but sometimes don’t like to admit it), you’ve probably heard the term “bathroom bill” being thrown around a lot recently. But what’s with all the toilet talk? The bathroom bill is quite the hot topic in Congress right now, so […]
Read More What’s with all the toilet talk?“A singular pronoun should agree in number with the antecedent.” It seems like an innocent comment that a professor would leave in the margins of my senior honors thesis. It’s basic grammar, right? A person walks but a group of people walk. Hannah screams but they all scream. It is grammar 101 – matching your […]
Read More Grammar is not an excuse to perpetuate the gender binary.In a class this semester, we’ve been learning about this thing called the Social Pain Overlap Theory. Basically, what it says is that social exclusion and being stigmatized register in the brain along the same neural pathways as physical pain. This fact blew my mind, but it makes sense. Recently, I got to see this […]
Read More Ignorance is…painAround 4 p.m. last Saturday afternoon, I sat in Elephant and Castle on Pennsylvania Avenue as President Trump delivered a televised speech to the intelligence community in front of the C.I.A. memorial wall. Around me a rowdy crowd booed and jeered at this man, and outside a steady procession filled the streets in opposition of […]
Read More Speak Loudly and Carry a Big SignAs we pack our bags and make the drive home for a much-needed break from the stresses of academia, many of you might be thinking what I’m thinking: “Sh*t, how am I going to sit across the table from racist Uncle Dave for an entire two hours on Thursday?” Well, earlier this week, one of […]
Read More Looking Forward to TrumpsgivingIt’s a phrase that is repeatedly asked millions of times a day. The epitome of every morning routine; the reason we sometimes change our outfit three times before walking out the door; the reason some spend hours at the gym; the reason my friend asked me if she looked okay before her company came over; […]
Read More Reclaiming “fat”: Because being fat isn’t a bad thing!
