‘FOSTA will make our lives exponentially more dangerous under the pretense of protecting us.’

In n 2011, New York City law enforcement officials were able to lure a serial rapist to a hotel room and successfully arrest him—all as a result of sex worker efforts. His phone number had circulated through a community of sex workers and escort agencies as part of a “Bad Date List”—jargon for the network sex workers use to pass along information, flag dangerous clients, and share the phone numbers that should never be answered.

Whether they utilize Facebook groups, other online forums, or even text group chats, sex workers’ ability to communicate with one another and screen potential clients is one of the only security mechanisms available to them — and one that will be further compromised, with assuredly fatal consequences, if the supposed anti-trafficking bill, FOSTA, passes the Senate this week.

The Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA)—a companion bill to SESTA, the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act introduced by Ohio senator Rob Portman last April—passed 388–25 by the House of Representatives on February 28th. The bill, introduced by Republican representative Ann Wagner—in theory at least—seeks to fight sex trafficking by targeting online websites and platforms “that unlawfully promote and facilitate prostitution and contribute to sex trafficking.”

The reality, however, according to the bill’s critics, is that the proposed legislation will only hurt consensual sex workers and encourage internet censorship—rather than prevent sex trafficking or support its survivors. Many pro-free speech and sex worker advocacy groups, such as the Center for Democracy and Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Sex Workers Outreach Project, all oppose the bill.

Per FOSTA, those who run platforms determined by authorities to be promoting sex trafficking would not only face up to 10 years in prison, but would be liable for lawsuits—both repercussions that effectively encourage platforms to delete any user content that could in any way be construed as promoting sex work.

Kamala Harris’ Whorephobia Is Sadly No Surprise

According to the sources I spoke with for this piece, the main issue with FOSTA is that it conflates all consensual adult sex work with sex trafficking — and many believe that this conflation is not accidental. “They want to get rid of all prostitution and sex work, but this is the oldest profession in the world and it’s not going away,” Allison Bass, the author of Getting Screwed: Sex Workers and the Law and assistant professor of journalism at West Virginia University told me over the phone. “Opposing sex trafficking is as American as apple pie, but this law goes after sex workers who go into the field by choice, and it will make their work more dangerous.”

“I know I’ve only avoided dangerous clients throughout my career because I was able to advertise to my clients online and screen them,” says Savannah Sly, a sex worker and volunteer for the Sex Worker Outreach Project (SWOP).

If platforms and sites, under the threat of legal ramifications, began to police and delete the ads for and posts by sex workers, then research suggests these workers will be forced to move onto the streets, where they will face much greater rates of violence. One 2017 study found that the female homicide rate dropped 17% in various U.S. cities after Craigslist launched an erotic service platform. According to the same study, after myRedbook.com was shut down in 2014, sex workers who relied on the site to find jobs were forced to move to the streets—where they faced much higher incidences of rape and assault.

This law goes after sex workers who go into the field by choice, and it will make their work more dangerous.

As a volunteer for SWOP-Seattle, Sly remembers the chaos that ensued after RedBook was shut down. “Everyone was panicked and scared,” she says:

“They would say things like, ‘I was supposed to post online tonight and I have to pay my rent and now what can I do? Will I have to go to a bar or a hotel or the street?’ When people are pushed into corners, they are going to take higher risks. I’ve been there. When I’ve been financially insecure, I started going back to clients who made me very uncomfortable. FOSTA will make our lives exponentially more dangerous under the pretense of protecting us.”

On the street sex workers are far more likely to encounter violent clients or be exploited by pimps. By cracking down on any and all sex worker ads, then, the platforms targeted by FOSTA would effectively be excising low-risk clients from the client pool — that is, the type of person who wouldn’t mind chatting with a sex worker online, but who wouldn’t be willing or interested in trolling the streets. Online platforms, such as Backpage, enable sex workers to have greater control over their bodies and their safety, allowing them to screen clients, negotiate condom usage, and plan safe meeting locations.

“This is literally life and death,” sex worker Arabelle Raphael tells me.

“I like my job and this how I make a living and survive, and my survival and safety is dependent on online tools. Without these tools, people will force themselves into dangerous situations and be murdered. Sex trafficking is extremely complex [but politicians] do not care about sex trafficking victims—just about eradicating sex workers. If someone gives me a ride to a job or advice on a job, they can be charged with sex trafficking. Even sex trafficking victims themselves are often prosecuted.”

According to Bass, the link between consensual adult sex work and sex trafficking is tenuous at best. When countries such as the Netherlands and New Zealand decriminalized sex work, they reported no increase in the sex trafficking of minors and undocumented immigrants. In fact, not only were sex workers better protected from violence and sexually transmitted diseases, but they were also more likely to cooperate with police to target traffickers—all because they no longer feared legal ramifications or police harassment.

Such a dynamic highlights yet another problematic aspect of FOSTA—that it, and similar laws, can, far from reducing sex trafficking, actually exacerbate it. Platforms like Backpage.com have been known to cooperate with law enforcement by flagging users who appear underage or to be involved with sex trafficking. But if such sites are shut down, sex traffickers will simply move to offshore options: “The bill won’t get rid of sex trafficking, but instead drive it further into the shadows,” Bass confirms. “It will be more difficult for law enforcement to work with these sites and more difficult for these platforms to be subpoenaed.”

Legal Red Light Districts Don’t Keep Sex Workers Safe

In short, the law has entirely failed to examine how trafficking operates—or what type of services could help individuals who are experiencing or at risk for violence. According to Liz Afton, a counselor and advocate at the Sex Workers Project (SWP), there need to be bills that target the root causes of trafficking, such as isolation and marginalization:

“This law is clearly not in the service of actual trafficking survivors. There is no funding for survivor services, or for improving victim screening. People have their whole lives shattered by arrests. Many victims who are trafficked are arrested while they were being trafficked and yet were not recognized as needing assistance, leading to criminal histories that keep them from accessing different labor opportunities in the future and increased vulnerability to predators who could traffick them again.”

This is literally life and death.

Afton worries about how the law will affect organizations like SWP, which could be construed to be promoting sex work—merely for giving sex workers advice on how to stay safe. The people the organization helps are already strained by the impact of a number of intersectional vulnerabilities, including barriers to a legal immigration status, transphobia, mental health struggles, and exposure to trauma. One of the most important resources the organization can offer, then, is harm reduction.

“This has a huge chilling effect on us,” says Afton:

“This law aims to shut down basic information sharing. If our ability to provide safety advice were to be hampered and online forums where peers share survival strategies were shut down with the passage of this law, I can’t imagine how urgent safety needs could be met otherwise. It is a recipe for increased exploitation of those most vulnerable.”

“The public needs to be weary of any anti-trafficking campaign,” Sly adds. “It’s an excuse to launch an egregious attack on our civil liberties and rights. They are trying to silence us. Sex workers need a place where they can meet in order to address sex trafficking, as it impacts us the most.”

Even without FOSTA, there a number of laws in place to prevent platforms from promoting sex workers—and, as a result, such platforms are continuously shut down. In 2015, for instance, federal and state law enforcement officials in New York City shut down Rentboy.com, a gay sex work site, and charged its employees with promoting prostitution. Similarly, in 2016, law enforcement in the Seattle area seized Thereviewboard.net—a site where sex workers posted ads—and charged those who ran the site with promoting prostitution. On top of that, the operator of myRedBook.com was sent to federal prison. And Backpage.com—one of the sites that the bill claims to target specifically—shut down its adult section due to public pressure, its CEO arrested for pimping a minor and conspiracy.

The difference between FOSTA and our current laws is that FOSTA allows platforms to be responsible for their users’ content, a singularity that free speech activists believe will be “disastrous for online speech and communities.”

“Perversely, some of the discussions most likely to be censored could be those by and about victims of sex trafficking,” writes Joe Mullen for the EFF. “Overzealous moderators, or automated filters, won’t distinguish nuanced conversations, and are likely to pursue the safest, censorial route.” Many big names in tech, such as Facebook, IBM, Oracle, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise support FOSTA. But while these mega-companies have the money and manpower to monitor traffic and fight lawsuits, FOSTA is likely to harm, if not totally decimate, the nonprofits and small community organizations that don’t have such resources.

“We consider the unbalanced policing of online adult-oriented websites as a direct assault against the sex worker community,” writes The Desiree Alliance, a national coalition of current and former sex workers, in a Sex Workers Rights Joint statement, signed by over 150 various organizations and individuals.

According to the Desiree Alliance, sex trafficking has never been an epidemic in the modern United States, and there are no statistics put forth by the U.S. Justice Department, FBI, or any academic institution that suggest such an epidemic. By contrast, statistics do show that hyper-criminalization and arrests disproportionately affect poor communities and communities of color.

Free speech activists hope that the Senate will reject FOSTA and uphold Section 230 of the CDA, which for the past two decades has ensured a free and open internet by protecting online platforms from liability for the speech of their users.

While FOSTA is unlikely to reduce sex trafficking, it is likely to lead to a greater number of lawsuits. The bill would allow civil plaintiffs to sue sites that “knowingly facilitate” trafficking, but critics believe that this language is too ambiguous, creating serious liabilities for websites that aren’t even aware that users are engaged in sex trafficking on their sites. “SESTA’s ambiguous language will create a new path for trial lawyers to bring expensive lawsuits against websites and social media platforms for quick settlements, fishing expeditions, and more,” writes Evan Engstrom, the executive director of Engine, for The Hill.

Put bluntly: the law will only help trial lawyers and those with the power to hire attorneys—while simultaneously harming sex workers and human trafficking survivors, and censoring marginalized voices along the way. According to Afton, advocates are bracing themselves for how to mitigate the harm of lawsuits already prepared and ready to launch as soon as FOSTA passes, all of which serves to divert much-needed resources from the trafficking survivors her program helps serve.

I’m A Sex Worker Who Was Raped, Here’s Why I Didn’t Fight Back

More disturbingly, FOSTA passed the House even after the Department of Justice sent a last-minute letter noting that the poor language of the bill would actually make it more difficult to prosecute sex traffickers, calling into question the constitutionality of passing such legislation. Despite this, the vote did not surprise Bass: “They don’t have the right information,” she says.

According to Politico, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told the Republican caucus that the bill would be voted on this week, but did not specify exact timing.

As her future safety and security hang in the balance, Sly remains adamant that FOSTA will only serve to hide sex work and sex trafficking.

“They are sending a clear message that they want us eradicated, but we are one of the oldest and most resilient communities in history and we are not going anywhere,” she tells me.

“Sex workers have always been on the cutting edge of technology. We were some of the first to use video, DVDs, cell phones, and make our own websites, and we will continue to use new platforms and new modalities. If they begin to censor our language, then we will use different language. If they begin to close our sites, we will use other sites like Sugar Baby sites, and regular dating sites. They are just playing whack-a-mole—and making our lives more dangerous in the process.”

By Aparna Rae and Ruchika Tulshyan

It’s International Women’s Day, which means corporations, governments, and nonprofits are amplifying the few women leaders they have on social media, complete with inspirational quotes like “she believed she could, so she did.” Everywhere you look, there’s a general celebration of how far women have come (as well as the inevitable tone-deaf or entirely hollow brand marketing stunts). Cutesy hashtags like #PressForProgress are being used liberally and in cities across America, organizations are hosting power breakfasts, lunches, and happy hours to celebrate the power of women.

The irony of this day is that, in reality, the picture couldn’t be bleaker. While organizations are honoring the women in their ranks with social media posts, they are simultaneously fighting against progressive pay equity legislation and pushing back on a call to transparency with respect to hiring practices. We are still not being paid equally for equal work, abortion rights are still under constant attack, and on the whole, millennial women are worse off than their mothers and grandmothers on a number of measures.

To be sure, recent movements to bring light to the issue of gender equity has created shifts for one group; there is one set of women who have progressed significantly in the past decade — white women. And it’s often to celebrate their progress that days like this one and “Equal Pay Day” were created.

There is one set of women who have progressed significantly in the past decade — white women.

White women have long relied on — and sometimes even forced — women of color to comply with their rising status. We have long been responsible for getting white women to this place of (semi-)equity with men: We washed your clothes and cleaned your homes, and even when we made it into corporate careers, we took the lion’s share of “office housework,” like making coffee and ordering lunch, so you could head to the corner office. And while white women nationally have experienced slow but steady gains — making on average 80 cents on $1 — African American, Latinx, and Native women have seen steady declines in pay equity.

So on International Women’s Day in the year 2018, during the #MeToo and #TimesUp moments, we can’t help but call out the gross inequity experienced by women of color. This does not take away from the various strides (some) women have made, but we are weary from watching women of color in our professional lives get sidelined, struggle to see their education and experience convert to professional gains, and work harder than their white peers — only to still ultimately come out on the losing end. We encounter too many well-intentioned gatekeepers who are downright frightened by the reality of diversity — where women of color, queer women, trans women, nonbinary people, and women with disabilities all have a seat at the table.

We are the invisible women, kept on the sidelines by our supposed allies — white women.

How Equal Pay Day Excludes Women Of Color

And you, our cis white women and allies, you are in a powerful position to speak up and disrupt the status quo. You can and should lend your voice, your credibility, and your power to women around you. Stop being bystanders, refuse to take the easy path of stepping back and waiting for the first domino to fall before taking action.

Allure’s Hailey McMillian says it best:

“For those of us who count ourselves as feminists, this also means not telling women of color to hold on, to not rock the boat, to not agitate too loudly, to sublimate ‘racial concerns’ and unify as a single one-size-fits-all (read: white) feminist movement, to wait for the eventual coming of an eventual better day.”

In the name of gender justice, we have come to bat alongside you at every step of the way. Last year, women of color helped save Alabama from electing a known racist pedophile, not to mention voted in the highest percentages against Trump. For decades, we’ve done the labor for you and now it’s your turn to be an ally to us in the gender and racial justice movements.

You, our cis white women and allies, you are in a powerful position to speak up and disrupt the status quo.

Here’s how you can step up as allies to invisible women this International Women’s Day — and every day going forward.

1. Recognize your bias.

Do away with loaded/stereotypical descriptions of women of color. Here’s a list of 15 things you should never say to a person of color. Recognize that you benefit daily from white supremacy; it’s time to do the hard work of looking at your biases, discomfort, and issues that have been informed by your white privilege. Recognize that women of color are not “angry,” “timid,” “brash,” or “aggressive” — like you, we have different personalities and styles.

2. Look at your community. Do you and your family have any friends of color?

Here’s where we find the opportunity for the most change — and the most resistance to it. A whopping 75% of white people have no non-white friends. We aren’t volunteering ourselves or any other person of color to be your token friend. But if this is your reality, and yet you are applauding yourself on “International Women’s Day” after you marched in the Women’s March, your feminism is irrelevant; true equality can only be realized through an intersectional lens.

Why The White Feminism Of The Women’s March Is Still On My Mind

3. Assess where women of color are in your organization.

Women of color don’t aspire to lesser roles; in fact, women of color are equally skilled and more interested in leadership role than their white peers. If you see a woman of color in your organization, ask yourself: Are they in a senior or decision-making role?

Collectively, we have experience in the media, finance, academic, government, nonprofit, and startup communities. In every sector we have found ourselves in, we’ve met the intelligent, eager woman of color ready to assume leadership roles — who were too quickly dismissed by their white counterparts. Even in the countries we have worked in that operate largely outside of the U.S. — expat white men and women hold decision-making, leadership positions. Women of color are few and far between, relegated to the lowest of roles: janitorial, entry-level, administrative.

In every sector we have found ourselves in, we’ve met the intelligent, eager woman of color ready to assume leadership roles — who were too quickly dismissed by their white counterparts.

4. Invite women of color to the stage.

Does your event have any women of color? If you are serving non-white groups, it is your responsibility to ensure equitable representation on panels. Here in Seattle, we are invited to hundreds of events where organizers consider themselves “woke” because white women are on their panels — what more could they possibly do? Until women of color are seen as thought-leaders and experts on equal footing with white women, we have not made real progress.

5. Finally, mentor, support, and connect with women of color in your community.

As you grow in your own lives and leadership, you have the opportunity to say “yes!” or “no, not so much” to another woman finding her own way. Think about how you introduce her with an extra word of support, include her in an interesting conversation, connect her to another awesome woman. Think about how you may have whizzed through the day choosing not to do these little things. Instead, choose, always, to help advance women who don’t look like you.

By Becky Hayes

The most persistent criticism of the #MeToo movement is that advocates have abandoned due process in favor of trial by the faceless internet mob. Critics accuse the women leading the movement of pursuing “vigilante justice” or worse, a witch-hunt.

These critiques have dogged #MeToo from the beginning, and now that the backlash to the movement has reached a crescendo, we’re about to hear a whole lot more.

But don’t listen.

Social media is exactly the right place for #MeToo to play out. In fact, it’s the only place it ever could. The frequent invocation of due process ignores just how inadequate the American legal system is for protecting women against sexual violence and harassment. It is precisely because the courts of law and other traditional avenues of recourse have failed women that they’ve turned to the internet and the court of public opinion.

Due process sounds great in theory. Zephyr Teachout, former Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in New York, defined it as “a fair, full investigation, with a chance for the accused to respond” in her recent New York Times op-ed on this topic. It’s hard to argue with that. The concept of due process is a fundamental pillar of the American justice system and one that we pride ourselves on.

The problem with #MeToo—according to its detractors—is that women have bypassed the courts, where due process rights apply, and gone directly to the public to seek out justice. The public, in turn, has rushed to judgment. Critics argue that justice can only be served by submitting these claims through the formal legal systems that guarantee basic fairness to the accused.

Social media is exactly the right place for #MeToo to play out.

We know from experience, however, that the systems currently in place to deal with complaints of sexual harassment and assault have systematically failed victims and have allowed far too many perpetrators to continue their abuse unchecked.

This is true of the nation’s criminal and civil courts, forced private arbitrations, HR department investigations, and campus tribunals. There’s no great mystery as to why. We have shorthand for these kinds of impossible-to-prove claims: “he said-she said.”

The phrase refers to the fact that all too often the only evidence in sexual harassment or assault cases is the victim’s word against the abuser’s denial. The incident of alleged abuse almost always takes place behind closed doors, so there are no other witnesses. With so little to go on these claims almost never result in a successful verdict.

And while no database tracks the outcomes of employment discrimination cases nationwide, a review of a random sampling of cases by Laura Beth Nielsen, a professor at the American Bar Foundation and Northwestern University, revealed that only 2% of plaintiffs win their cases.

Even when there are eyewitnesses, much of the mistreatment women are complaining about falls short of the legal definition of sexual harassment. There is a big gap between what the public believes is appropriate workplace behavior and what is considered egregious enough to warrant discipline, dismissal, or legal sanction under our existing guidelines and laws.

For example, did you know that your supervisor grabbing your butt at work is not enough, on its own, to sustain a claim under Title VII, the federal law that prohibits workplace sexual harassment? The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) defines sexual harassment as “unwelcome sexual advances” that “unreasonably interfere with an individual’s work performance,” or that create a hostile atmosphere at work. Under Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson the Supreme Court held that such conduct must be “sufficiently severe or pervasive” to “create an abusive working environment.’” As recently as 2014 a federal court dismissed the claim of an employee whose boss grabbed her butt twice in one day in front of co-workers because it was neither severe nor pervasive enough to offend the average woman according to the judge, a woman no less.

Laws protecting women from sexual misconduct are much narrower than the commentators who want to redirect all these claims into the courts seem to realize. Annika Hernroth-Rothstein argues in National Review that “[i]f sexual harassment is a crime, it should be fought not with hashtags but with the full force of the law” in a piece titled, “#Metoo and Trial by Mob.”

Sexual harassment is not, in fact, a crime. Title VII imposes only civil liability — i.e. money damages — on employers in cases of workplace misconduct. Further, only employers with more than 15 employees are covered. Employees of small businesses have no federal protection.

Due Process Is Needed For Sexual Harassment Accusations — But For Whom?

The same goes for freelancers employed as independent contractors and unpaid interns. Some state and local laws are more generous, but these are few and far between. Sexual harassment claims against anyone but employers and, under Title IX, federally funded schools are not covered at all.

Even if your claim is covered and meets the legal definition of harassment, there are still multiple barriers to seeking recourse through the courts. First, going through the formal legal system costs money. There are court fees and lawyers to pay, in addition to the time off work required.

Second, sexual harassment claims are subject to statutes of limitations — meaning that victims cannot bring these claims after a certain amount of time has passed. In many cases, these time limits are very short. The federal statute of limitations under Title VII, for example, is only 180 days, or roughly six months.

The New York State limit is three years.

Many of the claims of sexual harassment—and worse—that are coming out now as part of #Metoo are many years, and in some cases, decades old. Victims of sexual harassment often have more pressing needs in the immediate aftermath of the experience than filing a lawsuit, including dealing with the resultant trauma and, all too frequently, job loss. For these men and women there is nowhere else to go but the internet to air the grievances that have long been buried.

What Happens When Your Rape Expires? – The Establishment

The calls for due process are often tied with calls for reform to the existing laws. Reforms can take years to pass, and even when they do, they almost always apply prospectively to new claims, not retroactively. Thus, for many of the victims who posted their experiences as part of #MeToo, their options were internet justice or no justice at all.

Which would you have had them choose?

Social media has no barriers to entry. It is free and open to all. The only thing women need is an internet connection and the guts to come forward. Unlike the federal courts which are bound by the strictures of a nearly 50-year old law, the public has shown great willingness to consider the whole wide range of women’s stories that run the gamut from rape to a squeeze on the waist during a photo op.

Even better, social media has allowed for a dialogue among diverse voices about what kind of behavior is acceptable and desirable in the society we want to live in, rather than just what is legal or illegal. The recent engagement around Babe’s account of a young woman’s date with Aziz Ansari is the perfect example. That article engendered some of the most thought provoking discussions on today’s sexual politics despite the general consensus that the behavior described didn’t break any laws.

To Raise A Feminist Son, Talk To Him About Aziz Ansari

One of the unique advantages of social media that makes it particularly well suited to this movement is the incredible power of hashtags to connect women with similar stories. The men who have been brought down by the #MeToo movement have not been felled by individual women tweeting out isolated claims. In each case consequences have been visited upon abusers based on the strength of a large number of women coming forward with often nearly identical allegations that show a pattern of misbehavior.

Such is the power of #Metoo that it can aggregate the stories of women who have never met and who are separated by decades. Hashtags allow for the revolutionary possibility that sexual harassment will no longer be characterized by “he said-she said” allegations, but, as illustrated poignantly in a recent New York Times ad, “he said- she said, she said, she said,” cases, ad infinitum. (Though, of course, even one “she said” should not be dismissed.)

For all its utility, the role social media played in the #MeToo movement has also been overstated. The stories that brought down industry giants like Harvey Weinstein, Louis C.K., Mark Halperin, and others did not originate on social media platforms, but rather in the pages of the nation’s finest newspapers. The allegations were thoroughly vetted by investigative journalists bound by a code of ethics that provides its own kind of due process. Journalistic ethics require corroborating sources before going to print with a story with serious allegations such as sexual harassment. Furthermore, journalists always seek comment from the accused, giving them an opportunity to speak out on their own behalf.

Critics’ insistence on due process presupposes an answer to a still open question: What is “the point” of #MeToo? The courts are best at meting out punishment for violations already committed. What if #MeToo isn’t about punishment, or, more to the point, what if it’s about more than punishment?

What if it’s about changing the system prospectively, not seeking redress for the past? What if it’s about prevention? The author of the Shitty Media Men list wrote that her goal was to warn others about men in her industry so they could protect themselves. What if #MeToo is about catharsis and about having a long overdue conversation where we all get to have a say? What if there are a multitude of points, and very few of them are well served by the courts?

The reflexive outcry about the need for due process from #MeToo critics is not well considered. It’s time we stop telling women where, when, and to whom they can tell their own stories. If #MeToo is about anything, it’s about the end of the era of women and other victims suffering in silence.

By Julie DiCaro

Women are the keepers of the misdeeds.

It’s the women, not the men, who catalog and remember which men to avoid, which men to run from, which men never, ever to be alone with. If you want to know if a Hollywood actor, pro athlete, or politician has a history of sexual assault, domestic violence, stalking, or harassment, ask a woman. We are the archivists of the wrongs.

Since the sexual harassment and assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein have opened the floodgates for women in multitudes of industries to tell their stories, we’ve seen a wide range of reactions from men: shock, surprise, anger, remorse, and vows to do better. We’ve seen “apologies” from Harvey Weinstein himself (sexual harassment, sexual assault), actor Ben Affleck (groping), President George H. W. Bush (groping and terrible old man jokes), comedian Louis C.K. (forcing women to watch him masturbate), politician Al Franken (groping, kissing), and many many more who have been called out for their actions. We’ve seen a series of “apologies” from men complicit in the culture that allowed their friends and colleagues to continue to hunt and harass women, from Jon Stewart (who laughed off allegations against friend Louis CK last year), to podcaster Marc Maron, to actor Colin Firth, to sportswriter Drew Magary.

It’s the women, not the men, who catalog and remember which men to avoid, which men to run from, which men never, ever to be alone with.

I’m far from the first person to bemoan internet activism. You know, the kind of “activism” where you tweet out “thoughts and prayers,” share a relevant hashtag, or express your outrage about the topic du jour, then go back to whatever you were doing and forget about “the cause” entirely.

But look, women don’t need your insipid apologies, faux shock, and awe at things you’ve known about for years, or explanations that you understand so much better now because you have a daughter. If you, man who has been a creep in the past or has stood by and laughed while his friends were creeps, really want to help change the world, here’s what we need from you:

Recognize the toll this last month has taken on the women in your life.

Every woman you know has been sexually harassed in some way. Every single one. Yes, your mom. Yes, your wife. Yes, your great-aunt Edna. ESPECIALLY your great-aunt Edna. For the most part, women learn how to deftly avoid men who lean into them too forcefully on public transport, the guy who not only catcalls us on the street, but follows us for two blocks, trying to provoke a reaction, the boss who we’ve been warned to never, ever be alone with. It’s part of how we learn to navigate the world. There’s a reason we don’t go to public bathrooms alone, and it’s not because we want to gossip.

But recognize that for many women, there are far worse incidents of sexual misconduct in our lives. The guy who held us down and forcefully groped us on the back of the school bus while his friends cheered. The boss who stood in front of the locked door while he jerked off in front of us. The rapist whom we couldn’t fight off, no matter how hard we tried. Many of us have never spoken about these events to anyone. We’ve simply determined to put them away and not to look at them again. That’s how women survive the world of men.

But for the last month, with woman after woman coming forward with tales of sexual harassment and sexual assault that are far too close to our own, those memories have been banging against the locked door of our collective memories, begging to be let out, demanding to be heard, refusing to be ignored. But we are not celebrities, nor are our tormentors. There is no protection for us in the public eye. There is no benefit to us coming forward. We still fear not being believed. We still fear being destroyed by the truth.

For us, these are dark days. Kindness goes a long way.

Call out your damn friends and help us hold them accountable.

Want to know why feminists and non-binary folks are “always angry?” It’s because we’re sick and tired of having to be the ones to point out when men are being assholes all the time. This shouldn’t fall to one gender. Mocking and shaming sexist jerks should be a pan-gender pastime, like binging Netflix.

In the words of the immortal Albus Dumbledore, “It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.” Look, we know calling out other guys is hard for you. Far easier to just not get involved, look the other way, pretend you don’t see your “friend” harassing women on twitter, catcalling them from cars, sharing nude photos of ex-girlfriends. Got a friend who is cornering a woman so she can’t physically get away from him at a bar? Watching a friend refusing to take “no” for an answer at a club? Witness a buddy anonymously groping women in public spaces? It’s easier to take another swig of beer and look the other way.

So You’ve Sexually Harassed Or Abused Someone: What Now?

Of course, you’re free to take the easy way out, but don’t call yourself a “feminist” or an “ally” if you do. Know that every time you let your friends’ misogynistic behavior slide, you’re betraying every single woman in your life. Your silence and cowardice makes you part of the problem. Own it.

Be on our side.

Women will never understand the compartmentalization so many guys do when it comes to misogyny. A man can not simultaneously claim to respect women and, at the same time, carry on casual relationships with men who treat women like trash. Why was Mel Gibson, caught on tape famously berating and emotionally abusing his then-girlfriend, doing a cutesy little skit on supposed-ally Stephen Colbert’s Late Show? What was ESPN thinking in partnering with the openly misogynistic Barstool Sports? Podcaster Joe Rogan infamously called my radio partner, Maggie Hendricks, “all kinds of cunty,” then “apologized” by calling her a “bitch,” yet I see otherwise “good” guys wearing his t-shirts all the time. Chris Brown still gets booked on interviews and awards shows. Do we really need to get into R. Kelly? Donald Trump?

Women will never understand the compartmentalization so many guys do when it comes to misogyny.

The message misogynists have gotten from other men is one where they can be publicly hostile to women and still succeed in the professional world. And yes, there are certainly women who are willing to look the other way when it comes to the terrible behavior of men. But it’s men, by and large, who run every industry in the world. If men decided that there would be consequences for sexual assault and harassment, if men decided that public misogyny meant professional repercussions, if men made it clear that other men who harass and assault women would lose the support of their industry, it would end tomorrow.

Teach your sons to do better.

Be around when they interact with girls. Make it clear how you expect them to treat women throughout their lives. Expose them to women in positions of power so they learn not to be threatened, so that powerful women are normal to them. Talk to them about what women go through in male-dominated industries. Monitor their social media use and ensure that they aren’t engaging in online harassment. Don’t body shame in front of them. Don’t let them body shame in front of you. Treat every woman in their life with respect, even if it’s someone you don’t like. Praise successful women for their hard work and perseverance, even if it’s someone you don’t like. Criticize sexism when you see it. Teach them about internalized misogyny. Speak positively about feminism. Criticize men who don’t treat women well. Call yourself a feminist. Show your support for women every single day in some way.

Teach them to do better for all our sakes.

“You’re not trans. You’re just a transtrender!”

If non-binary people had a nickel every time we heard this, we’d be rich enough to hop a rocket and start our own space colony on Mars. But alas, we’re stuck here on Earth, constantly explaining to everyone what it’s like to not identify within the gender binary.

The “transtrender” argument is rooted in the belief that since non-binary people aren’t transitioning to the opposite biological sex, we must not experience gender dysphoria (defined as “a conflict between a person’s physical or assigned gender and the gender with which he/she/they identify”). Therefore, we’re just co-opting trans language to be hip and cool.

This is, in a word, bullshit — and while I expect it from those who are cis, it especially hurts coming from trans people.

Certainly, I understand the need to keep the “this isn’t just a feeling” narrative alive. Transphobes, after all, love to say things like, “Well I feel like a tree, so does that make me a tree?” — despite the number of studies that suggest a scientific basis for gender identity. But why can’t binary trans people understand that, just as they don’t identify with the gender they were assigned at birth, some people don’t identify with “man” or “woman”?

Interestingly enough, the DSM-V describes gender dysphoria in a way that includes non-binary people. Under the list of symptoms, the DSM-V lists strongly identifying as, wanting to be treated as, and having the same feelings as either the opposite sex “or some alternative gender different from one’s assigned gender.”

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The DSM-V describes gender dysphoria in a way that includes non-binary people.
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Well, that pretty much describes me. I’m not just an androgynous man; my entire sense of self and my experiences do not align with my assigned gender. When I was a child and socialized with girls, I felt like I was one of them. As far as my body goes, it’s complicated. I’m fine with my chest and genitals, but my body hair feels like a foreign object that’s infesting my body.

After talking to several of my non-binary friends, I found they experience similar forms of dysphoria where they are comfortable with some parts of their body, but not others. Could it be that this is the case for many, if not all, non-binary people? There was only one way to find out: the scientific method!

I sent out a call on both my Facebook page and a private Facebook group asking for non-binary people to participate in an eight-question survey. Ten people responded, so I private messaged them the questions.

Within a week I got all the results back, and it turns out I was right — non-binary people do have unique experiences with dysphoria.

According to medical experts and accounts from the trans community, most trans people start experiencing dysphoria around puberty — and the same seems to be true for non-binary people as well.

“I figured something was off [at age] 10,” says Kay, “but it wasn’t cemented until someone called me a man around three years ago, and I involuntarily cringed.”

“I always knew I was ‘not like other girls,’” adds Naseem, “but I didn’t start experiencing dysphoria until I hit puberty, which began around age 9. By 11, when I started my period, I had 100% developed dysphoria. By 14, when I started high school, I was already saying that I should have been born a boy, calling myself ‘a gay man in a woman’s body.’”

For some, puberty was when they first began feeling that neither “boy” nor “girl” really fit. Amy says, “I didn’t feel like I fit in with girls or women from the time I was maybe 8 or 9, but I didn’t fit in with boys, either. I didn’t know being gender fluid was a thing until I was in my late thirties. It explained a whole lot.”

In fact, some participants reported having dysphoria that was more mental than physical in nature. Says Jude:

“I have a very androgynous body, so it quite suits my gender. I’m lucky. But being forced into femininity so long caused me great distress. I’m genderfluid and sometimes feel feminine, but other than that I never dress feminine, so as not to put myself in a position to be dysphoric. It would trigger my mental illness symptoms, which are anxiety and dissociation mostly.”

As far as whether the participants were uncomfortable with some parts of their body, but not others, most of them said yes. “I love my breasts most of the time,” says Amy, “and I would never want them gone. But I absolutely do wish I could alternate genitals, and I would love it if I weren’t so curvy. I don’t mean fat (even though I am). I mean smaller hips, less hourglass.”

Kay says they’re fine with their genitals, but their dysphoria is “largely chest centered.” Danielle says their dysphoria led to an eating disorder. “I wanted to attain a small straight waist like my male friends,” they say, “but my body was and is curvy.”

As far as how intense the dysphoria is, nearly all participants said it fluctuates based on circumstances. On a scale of 1 to 10, Ingrid says their dysphoria ranges from 5 to 10 on average. Amy says some days they feel “100% comfortable,” but some days they “don’t even want to be seen.”

“My dysphoria fluctuates almost hourly,” says Daylin. “I can feel fine, look in a mirror, not like what I see, and my day is ruined. The good thing is, I seem to have the ability to turn off my dysphoria subconsciously when I’m going to work. I’m not sure why this is, but it’s obviously very useful.”

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My dysphoria fluctuates almost hourly.
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As with many binary trans people, some non-binary people do undergo medical transitioning. Both Ingrid and Daylin currently take hormones, and hope to get both top and bottom surgery in the future. Most of the participants, however, are still up in the air about transitioning. “If I decide to have children,” says Naseem, “I would ideally like to breastfeed, and there doesn’t seem to be enough informed doctors to do a top surgery in a way that would allow me to do so.”

Despite mixed feelings about medical transitioning, all the participants responded that changing their pronouns and presentations has made all the difference. Says Jude:

“Mostly I wear masculine clothing. I have a ‘men’s’ haircut and all. I talk about it to people I trust. In the workplace and the world I pretty much let it go, though it seems like people perceive me as a man almost as much as a woman and they don’t know what to make of it. I still get gendered as she, like I said, almost exclusively, but people often remark about how I’m ‘a dude’ and things like that.”

Naseem also notes a significant change in recent years:

“Ever since I discovered the term ‘non-binary,’ my dysphoria has become almost completely manageable. Just having a name for how I felt made me feel that much better. When I realized that I identified as trans and started using they/them exclusively — only from the beginning of this year, even though I discovered [the term] NB three years ago — a lot of that also subsided.”

I should point out here that I’m not a scholar, and that my sample size was pretty small; this is obviously not akin to a peer-reviewed science journal article. Still, I hope this experiment provides some insight into the unique ways non-binary people experience gender dysphoria.

Ideally, medical professionals will take dysphoria in non-binary people more seriously in the future, and give non-binary people proper medical care. And with deeper understanding, I hope there will come a day when I, and other non-binary folx, no longer have to answer respond to accusations of being “transtrender.”

Harrison celebrating at his graduation.

Circles are deceptively simple. A smooth ring with no edges or sides, circles are often made synonymous with the bittersweet cycles that govern our lives.

But their simple structure belies their more sinister nature. And perhaps there is no circle more sinister than the one we call our justice system.

Life After Life traces the journey of three men of color returning home from San Quentin State Prison in California, painfully illustrating the systemic racism that dominates American incarceration and the glaring lack of restorative justice for the 2.3 million people living in varying stages of captivity. According to the U.S. Census, Blacks are incarcerated five times more than Whites, and Hispanics are nearly twice as likely to be incarcerated as Whites.

Filmed over 10 years by Tamara Perkins — who began her journey in 2006 while teaching yoga at San Quentin — Life After Life was crafted from more than 250 hours of footage and aims to complicate the dialogue around those who’ve committed violent crimes; the film is a touching — if harrowing — portrayal of the complicated societal forces that prey on our most vulnerable communities.

Trauma, addiction, violence, poverty, and racism intersect in a twisted kaleidoscope that has rendered these men — like millions of others — “murderers and monsters” in the eyes of society, when in reality they were mere children suffering under extraordinarily difficult circumstances.

“America places people into poverty and then criminalizes them,” says Perkins matter of factly. “Our current system does not help the victim. It’s all about punishment with no care for cost. We’ve got to ask ourselves, what kind of force do we want to be as a country? Do we want people to thrive? What is our end goal as a society?”

Perkins, who has worked in grief and trauma for the past 17 years, also watched her Nephew — who is half black — get “the book thrown at him.” Although Perkins worked closely with the superintendent of the juvenile hall and the chief probation officer — and knew many of the judges when he was first arrested — she could do nothing to stop the process of mass-criminalization that actively feeds on young black boys.

She vowed to take aim at the system that took a child and nearly broke him.

Life After Life is taking that aim.

Harrison Suega, 45, and Noel Valdivia, 55, had both been serving life sentences at San Quentin for murders they committed at 17 and 18, respectively. Chris Shurn, 35, was first arrested for armed robbery at 16 and then sentenced to life when he was convicted of drug possession at 22.

Collectively they’d spent 61 years behind bars. All three men are on parole for four years; they must stay within a 50 miles radius and operate under a 10 p.m. curfew.

Seems simple enough, but when you’ve been stripped of your agency, your identity, your very adulthood, and face a devastating lack of support and understanding of a world without cement walls, creating a new life can feel nearly impossible.

And it nearly is.

According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, more than 65% of those released from California’s prison system return within three years. Nationally, 650,000 people are released from prison every year and 2 out of 3 will reoffend in 3 years.

And while it feels exponentially easier to relegate these staggering recidivism rates to moral corruption, depravity, laziness, or some such belief that tidily places the blame on the prisoners’ obvious deficiencies, Life After Life illustrates how deeply flawed and problematic these narratives are.

Harrison has had a long time to consider what feels like personal failure when it’s actually the dizzying cycle of poverty and violence that follows families for generations.

“I was raised the way my father was raised, “ he says in the film. “Discipline. Punish. You can get used to getting beat up.” Harrison says his father used to mercilessly beat his mother as well. He says his inability to protect her haunts him. “I wanted to defend her but I was too afraid. I felt so weak.”

Harrison’s abusive father eventually absconded with him to Los Angeles, where he fell in with a gang “who became his new family.” He began selling drugs to try and get back to his mother in Hawaii, but fired a gun in a deal gone wrong — frantic, frightened, and drunk — and found himself in prison instead. He was 17.

“Everything was violence,” says Noel, the son of farm laborers in Stockton, California. “I was a scary kid. At 18 I tried to rob someone, the guy reached for the gun and before I knew it, my hands were on the trigger and he was falling to the ground.” He was denied parole 11 times and finally litigated his own case to achieve parole.

“Every child is innocent,” says Chris. “Until something breaks and you become a survivor.” At age 5, Chris witnessed his mother get stabbed in the chest by her husband. She escaped death, but recognizes her children weren’t able to escape the trauma. Her eyes haunted and brimming with tears, she says, “They never got the counseling they needed.”

Perkins believes the intersecting roles of race and implicit bias cannot be underestimated. “Black children are almost four times as likely to be suspended than white preschoolers,” she says. “You have to unpack that. We are starting this punitive action in kindergarten.”

She points to a chilling study conducted by Yale last year which revealed the incredible discrimination that plague black and brown children; this racism underpins our industrial prison complex and destroys millions of black families across America.

While we’d like to believe that the particulars of a child’s home life are often unknowns to their teachers and thus they’re punishing them for acting out like they would punish any student — what the study discovered is precisely the opposite.

According to Gilliam’s study, black preschoolers in America are more than three times as likely to be suspended than their white classmates. “Implicit biases do not begin with black men and police,” says Walter S. Gilliam, lead researcher and Yale child psychology professor. “It begins with black preschoolers and their teachers, if not earlier.”

“If a teacher knew more about the child’s situation — they were hungry, dealing with abuse, uncertainty and trauma in the home, and they were the same race, empathy went up, but if they weren’t the same race…the punitive reaction was actually higher,” Perkins explains. “We expect little black boys — just as we expect grown black men — to behave badly, despite all the evidence that runs contrary to that belief.”

While Life After Life is equal parts heartbreaking and infuriating, it’s also designed to spurn a dialogue around restorative justice. It’s designed to offer a solution and a way forward.

“For most of the men and women who I’ve worked with in trying to transition home, they’re amazing allies in supporting youth. We should be leaning into them,” she says. “Once someone has a felony it closes so many doors for the rest of their life. So this to me is both the pathway to employment and a way to reach youth.”

Perkins explains that another piece of the puzzle is the way we treat these crimes and the people who commit them as though they’re operating in a vacuum. When you start tracing the effects of a life sentence on a family, the fallout becomes exponentially more complicated. When you jail someone for 25 years, you are not only harming the individual, but every single person that cares about them.

“Look at Noel and his family. Every one of those 45 people were impacted by him being incarcerated for 30 years,” says Perkins.

“We need spaces in which we can heal communities. And I’m not saying there’s no room for punitive actions but in restorative justice, it’s about offering support instead of compounded harm. We could spend a fraction of what we do on incarceration if the focus instead was on seeing the whole child and providing whatever that family needs support for addiction or substance abuse. Simply making sure they have food.”

And let’s be clear: White privilege is potent, ubiquitous, and undeniable. Treating every individual identically — ignoring the “whole child,” the child with absent parents, daily violence or exposure to addiction — is as ridiculous as it is dangerous.

“If you already have incredible resources and a legacy of success behind you then your baseline reality is in a total different realm,” says Perkins. “And the irony is, as a society we don’t want you to be able to understand this horrible trauma. But hopefully this film allows you to know someone who’s served life in prison. Walk a mile in someone’s shoes. You never hear anyone say ‘PTSD,’ but the entire film is dealing with under-addressed trauma. It underlies everything.”

When I ask Perkins what exactly she hopes the film will accomplish, she falls silent for a moment and shakes her head. I think she’s worked on it for so long, her hopes are massive — and complex. But then she speaks. “If the audience just came out of the film and said to themselves, ‘This is a public health issue! Oh my god, we need healing and mental health-care for young people! In the prison! For everyone transitioning home! And we should provide resources for communities to provide this care!’ That would go a long way.”

But as Harrison reminds us, his eyes scanning the horizon, “There is an expectation that for children of color, that prison is unavoidable at some point in their life. It’s ridiculous.”

But if we don’t address the racism and systemic oppression that comprises the very foundation of our society, if we don’t address the racism that continues to prey on those who most need our protection, this expectation feels less ludicrous than it does logical.

Want to get involved?

August 29 Screening, Panel and Resource Fair
Sacramento, CA

Please join us for the Sacramento debut of Life After Life, followed by a panel discussion featuring Noel Valdivia Sr. and Harrison Seuga from the film, along with the filmmaker and local community leaders. This event is co-presented by The California Endowment, Anti-Recidivism Coalition, and Sierra Health Foundation.

REGISTER — FOR FREE — RIGHT HERE!

September 15–17, Justice on Trial Film Festival
Loyola Marymount University | Los Angeles, CA

The Justice on Trial Film Festival speaks to the challenges of people caught up in the judicial system. But their voices are often unheard beyond their own communities. The film festival creates an opportunity to project their voices to a world deafened by the negative images and stereotypes presented by the media.The Justice On Trial film festival grew out of a conversation between award-winning author Michelle Alexander and Susan Burton, founder of A New Way of Life Re-Entry Project.

BUY FESTIVAL TICKETS HERE!

Interested in hosting a screening? Contact the filmmakers at tamara@lifeafterlifemovie.com.

If you could pick a moment when the sad girl tweeted and streamed and sighed her way into the mainstream, you’d probably place the year as 2011.

That summer, Lana Del Rey emerged, fully formed, onto the internet in a whirl of beauty and tears and cigarette smoke. With her pleading looks and plaintive glances, Del Rey was a Valley of the Dolls-era Sharon Tate for the 21st century, a Bardot beauty fallen on hard times, a good girl gone despondent. The image she cultivated was one of hard, masculine men and the women who yearned for them, who grieved for them — “it’s you, it’s you, it’s all for you, everything I do” — who were nothing without them. Above all, she was capital-“S” Sad. She was something tragic, something doomed.

“Vamp of constant sorrow,” Rolling Stone proclaimed, over an image of her wearing furs and smoking sadly (of course). It’s an image that Del Rey would shrewdly utilize in the years following — whether in song names (“Summertime Sadness,” the unsubtle “Sad Girl”) or public image (flower crowns, sepia filters, a fixation with suicide and death). Something about this overt yet glamorous sadness, this image of mascara smudged perfectly by tears, of a cigarette in a holder held by a delicate yet trembling hand, stuck in the cultural consciousness of the decade. And thus the Internet Sad Girl was born.

2011 was also the year when Instagram began to take hold, and YouTube continued to cement its place in media. With new technology came the opportunity to share your most intimate moments in a way that wasn’t possible before — the ability to be truly steam-of-consciousness in your discussions of your feelings, your secrets, your particular problems at that point in time. It’s easy to see why this way of baring all was particularly appealing to young women, who were used to being silenced when they tried to talk of their sadness and depression, who had it ingrained within them that they should aspire to be cool, calm, fine with everything that happened to them.

Young women in this new era were also the victims of wage stagnation and an escalating housing crisis, poor access to mental-health services, increasingly limited access to reproductive rights; in other words, they had many reasons to be miserable, depressed, and cynical, and suddenly there was a platform on which to voice these concerns. A platform where people listened, or at least related. Every retweet, every like, every “same,” serves as an affirmation that your feelings are valid, that you are not alone in your struggle.

It’s easy to see why this way of baring all was particularly appealing to young women, who were used to being silenced.
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The movement was codified, and then calcified, by artist Audrey Wollen, whose “Sad Girl Theory” argues that:

“the sadness of girls should be recognised as an act of resistance. [A] limited spectrum of activism excludes a whole history of girls who have used their sorrow and their self-destruction to disrupt systems of domination. Girls’ sadness […] is a way of reclaiming agency over our bodies, identities, and lives.”

Viewed through this lens, the Sad Girl is inherently radical — it is an expression of personhood, of the difficulty inherent in being a girl. The selfie taken while crying in a bathroom, the tweet about missing your ex — these are the methods of girls resisting what is expected of them.

But this new-era manifestation of the personal as political is undone by the very platforms it thrives on. Across Tumblr, Instagram, and Twitter, we saw artists like Molly Soda, who showcased works which consisted of her crying on webcam, and Arvida Byström and Amber Navarro, whose exhibition of digital and Instagram art was titled QWERTY, Flirty and Crying. Another flag-bearer for the movement was Sad Girls Guide, which in a memorable piece for The Toast, intoned that “sad girls aren’t the girls you see walking around with the teary-eyed gaze of someone who looks like they could break down at any instant if nudged the wrong way.” Hugely popular Tumblr users such as Plastic Pony and online zines like Sad Girl Magazine contributed to the sense that this was a major internet movement, rather than just the preserve of artists.

Adding to this, and one of the most high-profile examples of the Sad Girl phenomenon, is “So Sad Today,” Melissa Broder’s hugely popular Twitter account. Dedicated solely to publishing tweets about, simply, being sad, Broder’s account is so popular that it spawned its own book. Sample tweets include:

“i don’t like you, respect you, enjoy your company or find you cute but i still need you to like me”

“i miss ex-boyfriends who were never my boyfriend”

“determined to not get my life together”

At the time of writing, the account had 506,000 followers. There are normally four or five tweets posted a day, most of them with thousands of retweets, a constantly updated stream of wry, knowing despair. Laid out like this, an infinite scroll into the depths of sadness, stripped of complexity and context, the idea that the online Sad Girl is an act of rebellion seems hollow. Repeated over and over again, it becomes empty, no longer an outlet but a parody of sincere emotion, a stereotype and fetishization of female sadness.

If the Sad Girl is desirable, funny, sexy, then surely to make serious and concerted attempts to alleviate mental illness or depression is the opposite of those things. When there’s an onus on performative, calculated vulnerability, there’s no reward for sincerity.

After 27,000+ tweets about how sad it is to be a girl, to be alive, it begins to feel as though the Sad Girl phenomenon hinges on the idea that women should be inherently sad, never moving forward or growing, but instead that that is our default condition. Being a Sad Girl is not only a popular and profitable aesthetic, but its very name emphasizes that its defining trait is arrested development. It’s not a particularly novel concept; the thread of the Sad Girls connects to the weeping, beautiful girl of Victorian art (Tennyson’s Mariana, Waterhouse’s Lady of Shallot), who either wishes to die or, even better, ends up dead.

The tears are still on her cheeks, her pale face unblemished, beautiful and tragic forever. While today’s Sad Girls might be women on the internet, the point is still the same: Women are best when they are sad (and young, and hot) forever.

I Don’t Want To Be The ‘Troubled Girl’ Anymore

Attempts to feel better rarely translate well into 140 characters. Rather than immediately shareable or aesthetically beguiling, narratives of recovery are difficult and complex and ugly. Women trying to help themselves are ugly, as is any effort shown by a woman. To care, to want, regardless of optics or popularity, is something women are constantly denigrated for.

This is particularly worrying in the way the movement fetishizes bad relationships, in there being something glamorous or romantic about being treated shittily by men, and to keep wanting them all the same. Of course, this is reality: People can and will lust after those who have treated them badly. There is a certain luxury in longing for something you cannot fully have. But it’s that this, again, is championed as something that is a core tenet of being a girl, that womanhood is defined by sitting and waiting and yearning. That this is normally expressed as waiting for guys to text you back, or give you the time of day at all, not only seems to reinforce sexist ways of thinking about how men and women should communicate, but also emphasizes the heteronormativity behind the movement.

Just as Lana Del Rey’s songs and videos pine over daddy figures and emotionally-unavailable bad-boys, the Sad Girl movement seems to define the female experience as something that hinges on male interaction, a subtle exclusion of girls who don’t date men.

Narratives of recovery are difficult and complex and ugly.
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It’s no surprise that the rise of the Internet Sad Girl directly coincides with the ascendance of social media platforms that not only place a direct emphasis on sharing personal, private details, but also trade in an aesthetic currency. Look sad, but do it in a way that makes you look hot. Depression and sadness become something that is only valid if you can look good doing it, if you can post a selfie on Instagram with your mascara smudged.

As the Sad Girls Club article on The Toast notes in a painfully irony-free description of their muse: “she listens to better music than you and might spend her alone time watching French films from the ’60s or angsty TV shows from the ‘90s.” The Sad Girl is more than just a woman who’s sad: she’s always cool, always better than you. The Manic-Pixie-Dream-Sad-Girl.

Wrapped up on this is still another form of exclusion. Search for the term on Tumblr, perhaps the site that most fetishizes the idea, and you’ll see image after image of, specifically, thin white girls holding cigarettes, their tights slightly ripped (presumably this is an indicator of despair, rather than them having caught them on the edge of a chair). These images also betray the highly middle-class origins of the movement. It’s telling that the Sad Girl as a term was coined by an artist, that it is prevalent among those with social and cultural capital.

The tears of black women, of poor women, are constantly ignored in society — you can’t use performative sadness for your gain when you are disenfranchised and your sorrow ignored. As always, it’s only those who are privileged in society who can capitalize off it. Nobody wants to like your crying selfie if it’s about how you literally can’t afford to buy food, or if you don’t fit the mold of Western beauty standards. Then you’re just a woman, crying. You’re not part of a movement.

The Dangers Of The ‘Cool Girl’ Ideal

Similarly, actual mental-health problems, outside of references to various medications or therapists, aren’t part of the Sad Girl aesthetic. It’s not hot to be cowering on the floor because you can’t cope with your anxiety anymore. It isn’t sexy to lie in bed for four days straight and only eat beans on toast because it’s all the effort you can manage. When women’s real depression and real upset is taken and scrubbed clean and sanitized so that it becomes an aesthetically pleasing image, or a witty 140 characters, it is a negation of our complex and challenging lives.

With the ascension of Trump, the more ferocious and important battle for women’s rights, and continuing cuts to support services, you might expect the Sad Girl movement to be stronger than ever, for women to have retreated into an aestheticized version of disillusionment. But the opposite seems to have happened: The Sad Girl movement seems to be on the decline.

Actual mental-health problems aren’t part of the Sad Girl aesthetic.
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The patron saint of sad girls, Lana Del Rey, has even named her next album Lust for Life. While the @sosadtoday account is still updated, Melissa Broder now functions as an agony aunt in Vice, perhaps preferring the security of paid, traditional media outlets. The artists who used to be the forefront of the movement, such as Plastic Pony, have removed their Tumblrs from the internet, and Molly Soda’s artwork has turned away from videos of her crying. Web searches for So Sad Today peaked in early 2016, and have been generally declining throughout 2017.

Maybe we have realized that although not being texted back is irritating, it’s pretty small scale in the face of all the awful things we see every day in the news. Maybe it just fell out of fashion, as internet trends always do. Or maybe it’s the fact that we have become not just depressed at what is happening, but furious too, and we are no longer content to be regarded as passive.

The Internet Sad Girl is dead. Now let’s get angry.

By Apple Roselle

Why is the bar set so low when it comes to white accountability?

This week, in another example of “white wokeness,” a white woman started fundraising for her nonprofit. Her goal was to promote unity, equity, and start conversations about differences.

Seems legit, right? Wait for it …

Her grand idea was selling “I Love Your Melanin” t-shirts, then donating the money to a charity of the buyer’s choosing.

I don’t know about you, but I love, love, love it when random white people tell me how much they love parts of my body. That is not objectifying in any way. I cannot wait until I’m walking down the street and some random white person puffs out their chest at me — not to show dominance or superiority like they normally do — but to show solidarity with my melanin situation. Now that’s what I call progress.

I cannot wait until I’m walking down the street and some random white person puffs out their chest at me to show solidarity with my melanin situation.
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I’m honestly wondering, who co-opts a positive movement and turns it into a gimmick? Oh wait, white people do.

Seriously, how did this go down? Because it seems like this woman just happened upon some black people talking about how beautiful their melanin-filled skin is, cheering themselves on, building each other up, and thought: “Wow, I can totally capitalize on this, but in like…the good kind of way.” And it seems that must have been immediately followed by “We all must never forget that white people have melanin too! Praise the power of unity!” *high fives all around*

When people of color took to social media to criticize this campaign, it ended how it always ends when dealing with self-described allies — with people, including other PoC, defending the white woman as “well-intentioned,” and shaming those who challenged her. This nice white woman, we were told, was being personally attacked and threatened by mean, angry black folk, and it just wasn’t right.

White people, you see, have this thing called good intentions. And we’re told these intentions — which only white people have, while people of color just have suspicious behavior and sassiness—trump impact, everyday.

It’s like we — the too-angry, bitter, never-going-to-be productive PoC — get so caught up in fighting for liberation that we totally forget white people will literally die if we don’t constantly reassure them that they’re good people.

Who cares if we’re abused and killed by the system. Who cares if our societal worth is based on the color of our skin. Who cares if loving our melanin is a radical response to Eurocentric beauty standards. We can’t criticize a campaign like this, because any criticism of a white woman’s actions equals personal attacks, threats, abuse, and vilification.

The reality is, before the first word was even uttered about this project, white savior status and victimhood were claimed. The woman ended the campaign not because she recognized she’s way out of her lane but because she, somehow, was the victim. (I’ll take fragility for 500, Alex!)

She could’ve just admitted she fucked up and apologized — no excuses or justifications. She could’ve used what she learned to be a better person, then gone forth into this shitty world to make a difference.

But she didn’t. And she didn’t in part because she wasn’t held accountable.

We totally forget white people will literally die if we don’t constantly reassure them that they’re good people.
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Which leads me to where I’m going with all this: What the actual fuck, friends of color? Where were you when she came up with this bullshit? Yes, you. The ones who willfully defend good intention regardless of the harmful impact. The ones who happily participate in and bolster campaigns like this.

This isn’t only about white fragility — it’s also about all the PoC who enable white fragility.

Below is a letter I wrote just for you. Don’t worry: I sealed it with a kiss just to make it clear that I’m not threatening you. Despite what you’ve been told, assertiveness, unapologetic realness, and blackness aren’t bad things…and they sure as hell ain’t divisive.

We are already divided — the only way to bridge these gaps are to be honest, real, and unlearn the shit society taught us.

Dear Valiant Defenders of White Honor,

This is gonna be hard to read. Just realize that while you’re reading this, I’m calling you in, not out. Our liberation depends on you being in — and not peddling white supremacy.

You’re a PoC like me, and many others, and we all live in a giant racist ass society. So, tell me: Does it bother you when white people objectify, fetishize, and exoticize you? Yes? No? Maybe so? Shit. Stop lying. Maybe so ain’t an answer.

It bothers you. It bothers us. No matter how many good-intentioned white folks we surround ourselves with, those good intentions don’t protect us from their racism.

Why do you condone white people harming other PoC? Why do you defend their nonsense? The truth is, for every aggression perpetrated against us, there are five excuses and five justifications ready and waiting. We hear it time after time: “he’s one of the good ones…he doesn’t burn crosses in my yard.” “I don’t know about you but she’s one of the only white people who doesn’t hate me because of the color of my skin.” We, so freely, give white people cookies for not setting our lawns on fire.

We can’t keep doing this. We can’t keep being grateful that they aren’t killing us at this exact moment. Do y’all hear me? Stop giving cookies to white people for being semi-decent human beings.

We, so freely, give white people cookies for not setting our lawns on fire.
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Raise the goddamn bar.

The worse part is, we give the most cookies to the very people we should be holding to the highest standard: our white friends. Do you know why you don’t call them out? It’s because you, just like me and every other PoC, has been conditioned not to. When we do, we compromise our relationships, mental health, livelihood. When we share our experiences, our truth, we risk losing the limited safety we managed to secure for ourselves in this oppressive society. It’s no secret. The system is built this way. There’s no holding white people accountable without us suffering. Either we fight and push forward or we comply with white supremacy and accept the status quo. Honestly, is this really the world you want to live in?

No, it isn’t and you know it isn’t.

In our society, white people avoid responsibility for their racism. PoC risk way more by calling them out than white people will ever risk by acknowledging, apologizing for, and changing their behavior. We rationalize their racism just to make it through the day, just to have “productive conversations.” Just to survive.

But the last thing any of us should be doing is forcing their racism down our own or each other’s throat. It doesn’t matter how good of an intention a white ally has. Being a semi-decent human being is not a qualifier for immediate respect or forgiveness. You don’t have to let it be just because their feelings are hurt. Their feelings, time, and energy are not more important than your safety or right to exist. They sure as hell ain’t more important than mine.

People fuck up; what matters here is holding those who fuck up accountable. It’s not an attack to criticize someone’s shitty behavior. Most people are capable of learning and growing. Why do you expect so much from PoC you don’t even know, but not nearly as much from your white friends? Is it because it’s easier to place the burden on yourself, on other PoC, than it is to deal with white fragility?

You don’t have to be the perfect minority. Seriously, you can react to racism. You can feel anger. It doesn’t make you any less of a human being to be angry. You aren’t a trope, no matter how hard they try to make you out to be one. Why do you expect other PoC to let it slide, to just let it go?

As if there’s no such thing as righteous anger. As if any reaction other than straight up coddling and praising white people is bad.

Our white friends invade our space, co-opt our language, appropriate our culture, violate our existence, and we don’t call them out because we know what we’re risking when we do.

We know the power is never truly in our favor, even when it rightfully should be. This isn’t just about you. This is about all of us. We’ve all been conditioned to give white people the benefit of the doubt while subsequently throwing ourselves under the bus. We must fight for true liberation, not some whitewashed concept of equality. Our freedom won’t come from a crackerjack box full of pleasantries, hugs, and hand holding.

I’m constantly reminding myself to raise the bar, to surround myself with white people who value my humanity, who don’t judge my existence on how nice I am to them. White people in my circle aren’t there because of their good intentions, they’re there because their actions back up them up, because I let them stay there. I can’t make all white people acknowledge, understand, and actively fight racism, but I can hold my friends accountable. It’s tough and it hurts. It’s raw and brutal. It’s tedious and repetitive. But as they’re unlearning and relearning, as they’re becoming and being better human beings, allies, and friends, the space I secured in this world is growing. A space where you’re welcomed in, loved, respected, and valued. A space where you matter, your life matters. A space where you don’t have to hide who you are, where you can be real and feel without bullshit expectations and repercussions holding you back.

It’s come down the basic truth that a real ally, a real friend, will be there and support you, will fight for you and will fight by your side, regardless if you’re nice to them or not. They will do the work because your life matters, because you matter. If you can’t be real with the white friends, then what’s the fucking point?

Oh, and we also aren’t exempt from being shitty toward each other just because we’re PoC.

If you want progress, start where you’ve laid your roots. Stop tone policing other PoC. Stop placing hurt feelings over actual harm. Start by holding white people in your life accountable. Start by holding yourself accountable to other PoC.

Raise the goddamn bar.

Yours truly,

A productive and angry black woman

DECEMBER

New Orleans is magic, and so I drag myself a thousand miles southward to beg the help of its witches, soothsayers, voodoo priests, and mediums on the tail end of a Christmas season.

This year was not kind to me, and has me looking for a new kind of magic. The old magic, by which I mean medicine, is on its way out. SSRIs settled my brain, but their side effects were fierce and unyielding. I, with the supervision of a doctor, am going off.

At least for a while. At least until we find something new that works.

I choose a crystal shop in the French Quarter, a place called Earth Odyssey a few blocks from the riverside. I’m a sucker for stones, crystals, pendants, and rocks, and Earth Odyssey is full of them. At a quarter to two, I request a psychic. I don’t call ahead because I’m tired of planning. I’m tired of holding myself together with doctors; with spit and grit and grime. I’m tired of finding new ways to heal myself.

I’m tired of finding new ways to heal myself.
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My reader’s name is Kay. The woman behind the counter tells me “she’s one of our best,” and I believe her. Kay calls me into her tent. She calls me “my dear” like an auntie, and for once in my life, it doesn’t rub me the wrong way. She asks for nothing, not even my name.

“I don’t usually use these cards,” she says, pulling out a bold, vividly orange set, “but they’re calling to me today.”

“You’d know better than I do.” I mean it like a blessing.

Kay moves fast. She tells me that she likes to read first and ask questions later. She flips one, two, three cards, and doesn’t stop. The images come rapid fire, without order or arrangement. “You have a good heart, resourceful. I see a temple.” She marks the outline of a Chinese temple with her hands. “Very empathetic. You feel what other people feel.” And then she slams her hands on the desk. “Oh, you’re an empath.”

No one has ever called me an empath before, but perhaps that’s because, on and off for the last 15 years, I’ve chosen doctors over mediums. I’ve been lectured, patronized, named — but not yet cured. As my options have dwindled, I’ve increasingly turned to magic and tarot.

I want to tell Kay that actually, I’m not an empath, I’m “manic-depressive;” I was diagnosed last June. Before that, I was just a clinically depressed neurotic with an intense anxiety condition. Or something. What we know for sure is that I’m an emotional burnout with a mood disorder, and that I took the medicine because I wanted to stay alive.

I want to stay alive.

JANUARY

Jessica Reidy isn’t a psychic, but she reads tarot cards in the Romani tradition. It’s been two weeks since I started off medicine, and almost a month since I left New Orleans. I sit with Reidy in her Brooklyn apartment to reaffirm what I already know. Because I need to know it in a different way. Because I need to hear it again.

“In my family, fortune telling was a trade I learned as a child,” she explains. “My training began when I was five and was quite rigorous — dream analysis, prayer, and meditation accompanied with hours of studying and learning the lines and symbols in palms, tea leaves, and cards. My grandmother took it unusually seriously because of our family’s legacy of healing and medicine work. Though traditionally we read playing cards, not tarot.”

She sets the cards down and says, “this is an intense arrangement. Not bad, just intense.”

Reidy talks for half an hour about my pain. She offers insight on creativity, balance, and growth. At the end, maybe sensing my distance, she says, “sometimes we don’t let ourselves cry because we’re scared that we’ll never stop,” and it hurts to hear because it’s so true. Mostly though, after years of talk therapy, it feels good just to listen.

After years of talk therapy, it feels good just to listen.
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Indeed, it’s a huge relief to hear something about my problems from someone who isn’t trying to save me. Roma, too, have their own pain. Reidy certainly does. “I’ve had a colorful life with probably far too much trauma, heartache, and fear, and it’s rare that a client comes in with a problem that I haven’t already been through myself,” she says. Reading with her is a bit like speaking to an intuitive older sister — one who’s already been to the mountain.

“It is not about psychism or reading the future,” she explains. She says that fortune telling and performance were some of the few trades that Roma were historically permitted to practice. Tarot isn’t magic, any more than the Roma themselves are. Rather, tarot acts as “an informal therapy session issuing tools and metaphor to better interpret a person’s problems, to see the patterns in their life, opportunities for healing, and to make room for synchronicity. We think of it as creative problem solving with a dash of intuition,” she says, and that’s exactly what it feels like.

“I think everyone I see is looking for healing or comfort in some form,” she continues. “People usually come to me when they are at a crossroads, which involves some kind of suffering. Really, everyone’s question boils down to How can I be happy?”

I want to be happy.

I’m not happy yet, but I definitely feel better than I did when I tried to leave medicine cold-turkey. I was 25, and my descent into madness was swift and unyielding. I dragged more than one friend down with me, and refused to admit something was wrong until it was almost too late.

This isn’t uncommon. In her excellent memoir about living with bipolar disorder, An Unquiet Mind, Kay Redfield Jamison writes that “it quickly came down to a choice between seeing a psychiatrist or buying a horse. Since almost everyone I knew was seeing a psychiatrist, and since I had an absolute belief that I should be able to handle my own problems, I naturally bought a horse.”

I bought a deck of cards.

FEBRUARY

Jenna Lee Forde is finishing up her grad work at York University, where she explores the intersection between tarot, queerness, and self care. “My relationship to tarot is focused around using it as a resource for self care, healing, and specifically a divination tool that has a beautiful history of female artists illustrating the cards,” she says. “I most recently got interested in tarot when I was in an abusive relationship that left me with little emotional resources to take care of myself.”

While queer trauma and mood disorders are not intrinsically linked — a distinction I make emphatically in an age of “conversion therapy” — I sought insight from Forde because I knew that she had survived something. “For me, tarot enabled a space for peaceful contemplation,” she says, “and for many trauma survivors, including myself, the process of disassociation and dysregulation are fairly normative parts of our embodied experience.”

Forde’s pain is not my pain, but I know what it is to soar above my body. I know what it’s like to detach into the abrupt high of psychosis, only to slam forward under the weight of endless sobbing depression. I know how to let loose, and I am learning to be reeled in. I am learning to be saved by psychiatrists and doctors.

I know what it is to soar above my body.
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I try not to hate it. My doctors want to save me in the ways they know how, which feel patronizing and, at times, ruthless. They like to remind me that there isn’t a cure. No matter how many coping mechanisms we find, how many medicines I take, I cannot be cured. I need medicine, and I need them. Or else I will spiral. Or else I will destroy everything.

It’s been months since my trip to New Orleans, and I am completely medicine-free. It’s tempting to cut and run, but I keep coming to my therapy sessions. I stay out of duty. Or out of fear.

Forde herself is skeptical. “With the psy-complex, there very little emphasis on mindfulness practices that work to empower trauma survivors to find their own unique methods for healing,” she says. “I think tarot is a tool that can be used in conjunction with mindfulness or mindful based practices.”

I want tarot to be therapy, and it isn’t. Not fully. Tarot is listening; it’s problem solving. And at least that’s something. “If making sense of our life means finding calm ways to organize our disorganized and traumatized parts of ourselves, I definitely think that tarot and the ritual associated with using the cards can create that space,” says Forde. “Keeping my cards in a sacred spot, breathing and grounding and taking in the images and the knowledges from other interpretations of the cards can be a great way to make sense of my life.”

What I want from tarot is what I’ve always wanted from doctors and therapists and social workers: to be told that I’m going to be okay on my own terms. To be told that I am capable of saving myself, even if it is very, very hard. To be told, as Kay did in a crystal shop in New Orleans, that “you’re going to be fine, my dear. You have a deep fear of falling apart, but you’re going to be fine.”

Author’s Note: I cannot stress enough how important it is to consult a medical professional before making any changes to your prescription. My successful come-down was due in large part to a team of psychiatrists and social workers. I am also in the midst of negotiating different medicines. Tarot should only be considered as a tool of self-healing, but not as an alternative to therapy or, when necessary, psychiatry.

“And they wonder why those of us in our twenties refuse to work an 80-hour week just so we can afford to buy their BMWs . . . as if we did not see them disembowel their revolution for a pair of running shoes.”

I must have watched the opening sequence of Reality Bites dozens of times in college, a decade removed from its Gen-X cast, an early Millennial abandoned between generations. Winona Ryder’s Lelaina sticks it to her parents in a valedictorian speech about the failings of the Baby Boomers to preserve a functioning society for generations to come. The tension between political action and nihilist resignation staccatos throughout the film, never really presenting a resolution. Leilana continues, “But the question remains, what are we going to do now? How can we repair all the damage we inherited?”

Many UK millennials woke up wondering the same thing after Brexit, fearing that a decision spurred in large part by older conservative Brits would plunge them into even more despair. A young Brit who has since been asked by the Financial Times to expand on his thoughts had his comments on the site go viral. In his post he said, “Freedom of movement was taken away by our parents, uncles, and grandparents in a parting blow to a generation that was already drowning in the debts of our predecessors.” Other outlets, too — like the Washington Post — have written about young Brits being upset by the older generation deciding their future.

Their frustrations are well-founded — it was indeed the older generation that used its voting power to influence Brexit. According to the Guardian, 64% of 18- to 24-year-olds (and 65% of 25- to 39-year-olds) voted, compared to 74% of those aged 55–64 and an incredible 90% of those over 65. And there’s no doubt that things could’ve turned out differently had more of the younger generation made it to the voting booth; after all, of the younger people who did vote, three-quarters didn’t want Brexit to happen.

If this sounds dire, it pales in comparison to what’s happening in the U.S. The United States would be lucky to have a youth turnout in the 60% range. In fact, it would be lucky to have any turnout in the 60s. The midterms of 2014 had a historically low turnout, especially among young people, who according to CIRCLE at Tufts University, only voted at 22.2%, compared to 36% overall. While young people have been a huge part of both Obama victories, they’ve dropped off in midterm years, when the ballot is closer to their block. And as in Britain, the younger generation in the U.S. is more progressive, and the older generation predominantly conservative.

This fact has led many to ring the alarm on Trump; after all, young people are not only more liberal, but particularly anti-Trump, so it’s worrisome to think they may not come out in full force on election day. And indeed, if young voters voted as they did in 2012, a relatively good year for youth turnout, the projection is that we’d wake up to this in November:

And if they voted like they did in the historically low-turnout 2014 election? It’d look like this:

Still, this story of young liberals hampering progress by not voting in the same numbers as older conservatives is often told at the expense of understanding how nuanced the big picture of voting patterns actually is. While youth turnout certainly plays a significant role in election results, it only tells part of the story.

Not Just Age, But Coming Of Age

A 2014 study from the Pew Research Center draws some interesting conclusions about how voting patterns aren’t dictated just by age, but by the political climate during someone’s coming of age.

The graph below, adapted from the Pew data, shows how despite our common wisdom that old people are conservative and young people are progressive, those in “The Greatest Generation” (who served in World War II and ushered in the New Deal) faithfully voted Democrat in presidential elections into old age. On the flip side, those who came of age between Ford and the first Bush administration (also known as Generation X) have voted Republican since the early ’90s, even when they were in their early twenties. So while Gen-Xers’ laissez-faire nihilism may have helped usher in my own artistic pursuits and reckless early-twenties dating, it has not done our country any favors.

Common wisdom has held that as we get older, we tend to become more pragmatic, which is (problematically) code for more conservative. It seems though, that the only generation this is actually true for, of those still voting today, is the one that came of age between the end of the Roosevelt administration and the beginning of Nixon.

A pattern seems to emerge that those who came of age during a time where government did good and worked well continued to vote for government supports, while those who came of age during times that government was seen as the enemy continue to vote against public resources. (The verdict is out on millennials, but it wouldn’t be a surprise if this again held true.)

Fear Factor

Many pieces have reflected on the politics of hate, scarcity, and fear that drove Brexit and could lead to a Donald Trump presidency. This wouldn’t be the first time negative emotions won out . . . or that these emotions were tied up specifically in fear of the other.

In the 2010 election, following the historic election of our first Black president, fear and anger pushed back hard, with Democrats suffering their biggest defeats in 70 years. As The Guardian wrote in a post-mortem the following day:

At times, presidents have leveraged this fear into long-standing political success. Take the case of Reagan, whose “Welfare Queens” rhetoric was devised under the advisement of Lee Atwater, who also advised George H.W. Bush in the making of the now infamous “Willie Horton” ad, which attacked opponent Michael Dukakis for lax prison policies when he was Massachusetts Governor by relying on the racist trope of a dangerous Black man. In both cases, this fear-mongering was a “success,” giving the GOP an unchecked 12 years of power.

In other words, it’s no accident that GOP leaders are focusing on rhetoric raising alarm about Muslims, Latino immigrants, and other marginalized groups. And we must accept that, over the course of our history, this fear-based approach has often worked.

Why Voting Patterns Matter

Too often, the dominant discourse surrounding voting patterns — young liberals don’t vote as much as older conservatives — limits our ability to see other forces at play. But it is imperative that we do pay attention.

Returning to my maybe irrational love of Reality Bites, Leilana closes her graduation speech flustered by missing answers to her own question: How do we repair the generational damage left to us? “Fellow graduates, the answer is simple. The answer is . . . The answer is . . . I don’t know.”

There are no easy answers when it comes to politics — but it’s important that we ask the right questions about why we vote the way we do. Especially in an election like this one.