You searched for <a href= - Page 5 of 151 - Everyday Feminism

(Trigger warning: rape.) Like most college freshmen, I drank too much. And one night, I drank too much and was pitched out of a frat house in the dead of winter. I woke up in my lofted bed. My clothing was on the floor, and I felt an invisible miasma of shame engulfing me. And my coping mechanism was to make my rapist my partner, giving purpose and intent to something horrible.

Some time in between high school and college, I realized something about myself: I wasn’t sexually attracted to anyone. I thought there must be something wrong with me. It didn’t even occur to me that there was a sexual orientation that defined me, or that there were other people out there like me who didn’t see relationships with people through a sexual lens.

When I first told people that my husband was having an affair, I got a few different reactions. Some blamed me for his infidelity; others thought I was weak to consider staying. But I don’t think these are the only options. Here’s what I want you to know if you are ever involved in or asked to support a friend in a painful infidelity aftermath.

Society doesn’t want to blame men for making the choice to rape women. It wants to blame women for enabling men to make that choice and usually it succeeds. Rapists very rarely get to accept responsibility for their choice to rape. Even rape victims blame themselves for their rapist’s choice to rape them. So I spent between two or three decades feeling unable to tell anyone in case they wouldn’t believe me. (Trigger warning.)

When I strangely began to feel useless, hopeless, and worthless, it took me a long time to see a doctor. I didn’t want to be that girl who loses control of her emotions because of something so silly as a period. That sexist stigma allowed me to live with PMDD for far longer than needed.

It was April Fool’s Day when my boyfriend told me he (now we) had a STD. I laughed for thirty seconds until I realized he wasn’t joking.

I have been in a loving relationship for over a year but I can’t orgasm. Why? In short, I’m sexually repressed. Instead of embracing sex in all its beauty, I feel disgusted.

Ameena didn’t want to be a “good Arab girl” – virginal and submissive. So she moved across the globe to where she would be more free. And then found herself being slut-shamed.

When Tim learned his girlfriend, Marina, had been sexually assaulted, he saw how sex was scary for her. They decided to work through the sexual trauma from her rape together (Trigger Warning).

We’re all raised in a society that’s built on ableist values that are also linked to white supremacy, capitalism, and colonization, which is why the people we love sometimes have oppressive views.

I’ve learned there is no shortage of stylistic experimentation that’s possible if we allow ourselves to exist outside of the gendered boxes that constrain how we express ourselves.

The biggest challenge for me in finding social justice and feminism was how inaccessible a lot of the work was. At the time, I was an undergrad in college and my early introductions were through Women and Gender Studies and LGBTQ Studies courses. I absolutely loved those classes. During classroom discussions and while my professors…

As a millennial, I heard the same advice repeatedly during my senior year of college: “Live with your parents for a couple of years while you figure out what you want to do next, and save money.” I knew that wouldn’t be a long-term option for me. My dad and I are close and I…

Refugees and migrants across the globe are desperate to cross borders to seek new possibilities for themselves and their families. Many are interested in crossing into the United States particularly. It’s actually the top global destination for migrants and refugees worldwide. Unstable political situations, armed conflict, scarcities in solid infrastructure and resources, and devalued currencies…

Two years ago, I identified as a cisgender queer woman. I was a diehard feminist who claimed intersectionality and assimilated into white hipster culture, which meant that I was oblivious and nonchalant toward the problematic nature of my environment 99% of the time. Around this time, I co-led a feminist organization that claimed to be…

I’ve never thought of myself as someone who works “too much.” Even when, as a senior in college, I had three part-time jobs and an internship, I still made time to see my friends and participate in every end-of-college activity. In a society that’s built on capitalism and prizes the idea that you can achieve…

If your feminist space is predominantly white and cisgender, chances are that it’s got a lot of messy unchecked dynamics at play.

These actions can help us move beyond a circular conversation about why we need diversity and toward meaningful change.

Mainstream history has accepted the gender binary and cis-ness as natural and universal, which tends to filter out entire histories and identities.

The ‘LGBTQIA+ community’ is rife with hierarchies in power, and it’s been time to not just include, but center the most vulnerable members.