Material Girl
Do You Think I’m Pretty?
I talk to a lot of people about sexuality. A lot of women, a lot of queers. Experiences like this come up again and again: Times when something feels bad, but we have a hard time saying what. When we feel disempowered. When there is a real, scary doubt about our “yes.”
Straight, Gay, or Lying
Some days it feels like a liability. To shuffle around gender pronouns. To scan a space mentally before I enter it. To wonder: Who will hate me? Who will say they don’t hate me but tell a joke that makes me feel like I should not exist in the world?
Comp Me, Baby, One More Time
That was three years ago. In the intervening time, my peers have worked like crazy to alter what many of us—especially members from public secondary schools, members of color, and members from middle or working class families—felt to be a hostile space. I know we’re not the only group on campus to have to address these kinds of issues. And I know we've got a lot more to do. So as a new semester begins and many of us gear up for another comp process—another competitive, months-long audition for membership to campus extracurricular organizations—I want us to all make one promise: Don’t be a dick.
Yes, No, Maybe
The message read: “Want to stick around for a bit after the meeting to discuss comping and other things?” Corollary to the Conjecture: The phrase “other things” in shady subject-line-less emails basically always means sex.
