Category: movements
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Farmers march, students strike, and women rise: This week in Indian social movements
You don’t need me to tell you that these are dark times. From Mississippi’s recent (and definitely unconstitutional) banning of abortion at 15 weeks, to Trump’s revolving-door series of government appointments which are now slated to include a known torturer, the news is bleak. And it’s not only in the U.S.: Authoritarian right-wing governments are on the up worldwide. Including in…
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How Mental Health Activists Are Fighting Racism
Find the original article on Talkspace. During the Civil Rights Movement, white psychologists invented a so-called mental illness. Dubbing it “protest psychosis,” these psychologists used the racially-motivated “syndrome” to explain away the reasonable rage of black Americans demanding an end to segregation. Sixty years later, racial disparities in the mental health care system remain, including lack of…
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Woman Imprisoned for Converting to Islam Tells Indian Supreme Court: “I Want Freedom”
Read the original article at Feministing. On Monday this week, a young Muslim woman faced the Indian Supreme Court, finally allowed to speak after being imprisoned for converting to Islam and marrying a man of her choice. After months of petitions, news coverage, and speeches from everyone but her, she said laid out her demand clearly: “I want freedom.” In…
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We need to confront gendered violence in movement spaces.
Read the original article at Feministing. It’s easy to talk about gendered violence from conservative men because, well, their ideology is often consistent with their douchebaggery. When you’ve devoted your entire career to ranting against abortion rights on television or groping your way to a white-supremacist presidency, there’s a pretty clear and obvious connection between your stated values (sexist)…
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What Does it Mean to Break Silence?
Read the original article at Feministing. After the Trump — and the Cosby — and the Weinstein — and the Toback — revelations, we heard the same question asked over and over again: How can everyone know that sexual harassment and assault are happening, and still not admit that it is happening? Why are sexual assault and harassment so often “open secrets”? When we say that rape culture is a…
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We will fuck up. Let’s confront that and do better.
Originally published at Feministing My mother marched. My father, my sister, my cousins, my aunts and uncles. My Grandma, sitting home in her chair recovering from a broken hip, watched the crowds gather, a huge colony of pink-hatted ants on the tiny screen, and her heart marched. And my own heart, large and porous, flew…
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Final Clubs, Take Two
I continue to weigh in on Harvard’s contentious debate over single-gender secret societies: The final clubs. After a recent administration-level decision to sanction members of unaffiliated single-gender clubs, I do a happy dance and offer up some analysis.
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Harvard’s Final Clubs and Cultures of Exclusivity
Check out my new piece at Time about Harvard’s final clubs — and why they represent a legacy of exclusivity that has no place in the 21st century University. Walking down Massachusetts Avenue on a Friday night was always an exercise in exclusion. This main drag through Harvard’s campus in Cambridge, Mass., has the rare…
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Pleasure in the Time of Nationalism
A talk on pleasure, consent, and nationalism given at St. Stephen’s College and published at Feministing. There are some scary things happening in the world. In the United States, Donald Trump continues to spew fascist garbage, while simultaneously snatching up states like kids getting candy at an Easter egg hunt. Here in India, where I’m…
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Coverage of the Indian Student Movement for the Right to Dissent
Here in Delhi, recent central government action against students at Jawaharlal Nehru University, including the jailing of three student activists under archaic sedition laws, has prompted a movement for the freedom to dissent. You can check out my coverage of the movement for Feministing below. Activists Charged with Sedition as Indian Students Protest for the…
Reina Gattuso 