By Hope Grey
Photo by Cherry Laithang
I cannot remember the date
Of which I was last raped
I believe I was eight,
When my virtue was at stake
When my soul left its gate
When a serpent took my fate
No, I cannot remember when
But I do remember the sin
I remember the choice that was stolen
And the heart, which remains broken.
Hope Grey
By Lindsey Steer
This past semester, I got really into The Sound of Music…and I’m not ashamed to say it.
I was taking a film analysis class during the spring and noticed The Sound of Music on our syllabus for week number two. My professor introduced the film by saying, “You’re all probably wondering why we’re going to be analyzing The Sound of Music; it’s because when adjusted for inflation, The Sound of Music is the most successful film in cinematic history…and we need to know why.”
I live for this stuff.
Photo by Bruno Soares
By Kayla McCombs
I recently started watching the HBO series “Girls.” The decision to watch it stemmed from an odd mixture of my crush on Adam Driver and my irrepressible desire to have an opinion on everything and everyone, including the series’ creator Lena Dunham. As a person who cares deeply about social justice issues, I had “Girls” in the back of my mind for a while due to a lot of controversy over its lack of racial diversity and abrasively middle-class characters. That was my motivation to watch the show—I wanted to argue about it.
Photo by Rene Böhmer
While the aforementioned issues are undeniably important, I won’t be touching on them in this post. Instead, I want to delve into the topics of sexual assault and relationship abuse, two very real problems that are to this day clouded with controversy and misunderstanding. Sexual assault and abuse are often portrayed as being straightforward and easy to identify in film and television. While they both have distinct definitions—and it would be great if the world could be on the same page as to what constitutes either of them—the reality is that most cases come across as ambiguous and confusing. This, naturally, is a major source of pain for many victims who feel unsupported or discouraged from speaking out or asking for help.
By Lauren Cutshall
There are many things I could point out as being unfair differences between genders. For one, the ability for men to go into almost any public restroom and not face a line of people and five minute wait time will forever keep me envious.
Yet one of the more crucial differences deals, in some part, with self-identity. Everyday, we use words to describe what’s around us and what we are thinking and feeling. Most importantly, we use words to describe ourselves.
By Shelby Heinrich
I want to talk about something that’s been talked about a million times, but still continues to be an issue. It’s an issue and an experience that I’m pretty sure nearly all women in the U.S. and countless other countries encounter daily. And in fact, it is in a way the namesake of this blog: catcalling.
Not just catcalling in itself, but all forms of street harassment directed at women. From the “smile, beautiful” to the “damn, mami, your ass so fine” all the way to following someone on the street without consent and the infliction of violence. It’s all shitty. It’s all wrong, and we all know it. We’ve all experienced it. And if for any reason you have not, due to your gender or anything otherwise, you should consider yourself very lucky.
Photo by Samuel Foster
Catcall 