Reina Gattuso

  • The Most Brilliant Woman in the Room: Creative Freedom, Gender Justice, and Female Collaboration

    The Most Brilliant Woman in the Room: Creative Freedom, Gender Justice, and Female Collaboration

    Read the original piece in Louder Than Ten.  She was the most brilliant woman in the room. She was talented, she was charismatic, and damn, could she write. I wanted her and I wanted to be her. We talked long into the night about books and what we wanted out of college. We went to parties…

  • I’m an American woman living in Delhi. ‘Don’t date the locals’ is horrible advice.

    I’m an American woman living in Delhi. ‘Don’t date the locals’ is horrible advice.

    I first fell in love in Delhi three years ago, with an Indian classmate during a college semester abroad. The city and the relationship were new and exciting. We spent hours talking in the warm kitchen, a cigarette dangling from my girlfriend’s lips as she cooked. My budding relationships with her and with our new friends…

  • Should I Harass This Woman on The Internet?

    Should I Harass This Woman on The Internet?

    These days, women have begun to use the internet. Like other highly sexual activities — bicycle riding and the showing of one’s ankles — this form of newfangled female audacity can drive a man mad. Faced with all those flirty emoticons and naughty statuses about “walking the dog” and “burrito-eating,” it can be hard for…

  • Final Clubs, Take Two

    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.    

  • Harvard’s Final Clubs and Cultures of Exclusivity

    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…

  • Pleasure in the Time of Nationalism

    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…

  • Coverage of the Indian Student Movement for the Right to Dissent

    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…

  • What I Would Have Said to you Last Night Had You Not Cum and then Fallen Asleep

    What I Would Have Said to you Last Night Had You Not Cum and then Fallen Asleep

    Alas, friend of mine, you have had an orgasm and are falling asleep. I have not had an orgasm and am not falling asleep, which means I am awake, which means I am now going to lecture you about feminism. Who are you? (Big questions.) You are anyman, everyman, you are one of any number of lucky…

  • On Honoring Survivors — All Survivors

    On Honoring Survivors — All Survivors

    I’m interested in reconsidering the way we understand sexual violence and intimate partner violence, their victims, and their perpetrators. We need more complex models of sexual violence that seek real justice — not further harm. And we need to respect the complexity of lived experiences of pleasure, violence, and sexuality. My Vagina is Tired of…

  • Let’s Talk About Queer Intimate Partner Violence

    Let’s Talk About Queer Intimate Partner Violence

    I have written by this point an absurd number of pieces on queer intimate partner violence, because it’s really real and really ignored. Here are some of them: New Report on Intimate Partner Violence Among LGBT People The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, a coalition cordinated by the New York-based Anti-Violence Project, has just released…