My senior year of college, two of my roommates and I watched Teen Mom CONSTANTLY. I liked to pretend I wasn’t watching it, but the conversation usually went something like this:
Becka (standing in ...
My name is Michayla Owens. I’m sixteen years old, and I attend Columbia High School in Mississippi. I was fifteen when I was sexually assaulted by two boys at my high school.
The sexual assault took ...
*Trigger warning: This blog post is about intimate partner violence*
Over fall break, my mom made an unexpected visit from California to New York City, where I go to school. She had been called the n...
I go to a public high school, and have recently expressed interest to the administration in starting a school roller derby team. However, I was first met with resistance and then refusal by the author...
Anybody who has ever met me can agree on one important point: I am a pop culture addict, with a list of favorite TV shows and movies a mile long. Some of my all-time heroes are fictional ones and it's...
Today is National Girls & Women in Sports Day, which has people singing the praises of Title IX from soccer fields, softball diamonds, tracks, pools and countless other sporting venues – and for g...
Imagine you’re an honors student at a community college. You’re doing great: you’ve got a merit-based scholarship and you’re enjoying your classes. You’re also pregnant and excited to welcome the new ...
In the midst of last year’s prom frenzy, as I was pulling my car out of the parking lot and waiting in line to leave, one of my friends popped into my car for a chat. He was irate: “Have you heard abo...
Hudson Taylor, a lifelong athlete and three-time NCAA All-American wrestler, is the founder of Athlete Ally, a nonprofit sports resource which, according to its website: "encourages all individuals in...
This past summer, I wrote about street harassment and highlighted my own as well as my friends' experiences concerning this matter. Since then I have learned, grown and have more to say on this matter...
Only 20% of political leaders in the world are women. Women leaders are under-represented in every country, from Nepal, where my organization works, to the United States, where only 17% of Congress is...
Education is the key to success. And if we want the feminist movement to be successful, we need to educate people on the matter. My dream is for feminism and feminist theory to be a mandatory national...
I was lucky enough to have been raised by open minded women. Never once did the idea that girls are only supposed to be a certain way come up. Early on I learned that girls and boys are equals. I was ...
Like many of you, I have spent the past week or so essentially glued to my television, watching the Olympics. I love sports—playing and watching—and I love this celebration of human spirit and achieve...
After-rape is to be consumed by emptiness, isolation, fear, shame, and anger.
And after-rape at college is to be confronted by my rapist every day—on the quad, in the library, at breakfast. It is to ...
I lost my virginity at sixteen to a boy who was just a friend. I was blessed to have friends who where very open minded and accepted that fact. I know from experience that some people would not take t...
Every morning when I take the train, I put my iPod on shuffle and let various thoughts run through my head. But as I think about how tired I am or about the math test I have during first period, I don...
In a day and age in which many people believe feminism is no longer needed or just outright misunderstand what feminism actually is, coming out and saying the words "I am a feminist" can be quite da...
There has been something I have been wanting to get off my chest for a while. As a man active in the fight against sexism in every form, I find myself looking back to my days in high school, middle sc...
Lately, I have been struggling with music -- specifically, rap. I am an African-American girl and rap is very popular not just in my culture but in my own family. I recently realized that the struggle...
I don’t have a diagnosed eating disorder and that makes me sad. That might sound like a strange thing to say, but what I mean is that I think it's wrong that my daily obsession with counting calories,...
I’ve often wondered if those who are provided with less, make more with what they are given. A few weeks ago, I went to a screening of a documentary called To Educate A Girl, and was convinced once ag...
I’m currently a senior at my high school here in the Dominican Republic. I was born in the States and have lived overseas almost my entire life. I’m also Hispanic-- both my parents and the rest of my ...
Recently, I was taking a course on linguistics, and we were discussing syntax. My professor asked the class-- a room of roughly a hundred English students, mostly female-- what pronoun to use when rep...
I’ve never really been one for New Year’s resolutions. All the promises I’ve made to myself have either been forgotten two or three days into January or are things that I’ve rationalized not doing. Fo...