It would be more honest for Johansson to simply say that she feels entitled to play any role because whiteness has taught her it’s acceptable for ...
Main Content
Race
Dear Scarlett Johansson: It’s Not “PC” — It’s Fighting Against White Saturation
Scrub Your Legs: Being Unclean By Choice is Such White Privilege
When Black and brown people are marked as dirty, we pay for it in ways that white people sulking on Twitter will never understand. By Gloria ...
Body Politics
Robbie Tripp Put the Final Nail in Body Positivity’s Coffin With His ‘Chubby Sexy’ Music Video
In “Chubby Sexy,” Tripp capitalizes on his wife’s “thickness” while using a poor approximation of AAVE to deliver heavy-handed fat jokes. By ...
How Postpartum Bodies Are Affected By Fatphobia
Being pregnant is complicated and societal standards for postpartum bodies can breed parent to child resentment. Parents struggling with image ...
LGBTQ+
Taylor Swift ‘Embraces’ LGBTQ People While Ignoring Her Nazi Fanboys
She may be trying to become the next queen of the gays, but Swift will remain an erstwhile “Aryan goddess” until she forcefully proves otherwise. ...
Non-Binary People Share Their Self-Care Tips
For trans and non-binary people, self-care starts with finding your environment, your home. When it comes to self-care, finding sources ...
Culture
The Magic of ‘Fast Color’ and Everything It Is Up Against
“Fast Color” is a welcomed far cry from the status quo. This review contains minor spoilers for “Fast Color” and a brief interview with ...
In ‘Booksmart,’ The Pussy Hats Come Home to Roost
In 'Booksmart' the characters of color are flattened and serve purely as plot devices for the white leads. By Noor Al-Sibai If you read ...
More
Wear Your Voice Partners With Planned Parenthood For Their New Series, Summer of Sex
Summer of Sex is a multimedia project centering Black, brown, and Indigenous people's experiences with sex. Wear Your Voice is excited to announce a ...
How Do Black Girls Navigate Sexuality When The World Insists That We Shouldn’t At All?
We are creating Black women who may recognize their physical appeal, but don’t know how to embrace it because they feel like they are not allowed to. By ...
When They See Us Yesterday: The Black Imagination Beyond State Violence
I believe we can build a world where the Black Imagination no longer has to be a response to state-sanctioned violence. This article contains light spoilers ...
Sex Should Not Be Painful: The Stigma of Vaginismus
Our Summer of Sex is made possible by the sponsorship of Planned Parenthood. With their help, we are able to bring you this thoughtful series delving into the ...
When a White Company Trademarks the Word ‘Black’
As mainstream companies discover the profitability of Black consumers, Black-owned businesses are threatened to be squeezed out of existence. In the United ...
Marshae Jones and how the Criminalization of Miscarriages Fits In With Abortion Laws
What is happening to Marshae Jones is yet another reminder that the pro-choice movement must move towards reproductive justice. TW/CW: This essay discusses ...
These Are The Companies Profiting From Detaining Migrants At Border Concentration Camps
It doesn’t do migrants and refugees a service to pretend that white supremacy, capitalism and other forms of oppression aren’t intertwined. Today Wayfair ...
Wear Your Voice’s Sherronda J. Brown Wins Planned Parenthood 2019 Media Excellence Award
Planned Parenthood celebrates journalists and Missouri abortion providers at the 2019 Media Excellence Awards. On Monday evening, we gathered with other ...
No, Kamala Harris Shouldn’t Pen Monthly Op-Eds For Essence
Essence could have chosen to critically engage Kamala Harris’ campaign as a way to actually support and serve Black women. By Vanessa Taylor On Sunday ...
Within a White Supremacist System, Eric Garner’s True Crime Was Being Fat
Eric Garner was killed by the people who should have helped him, but those representing his murderer are blaming his fatness. This essay contains ...
What It’s Like Being a Black Woman in the Legal Cannabis Industry
It's the fastest growing industry in the country, but am I profiting from an industry that is doing nothing positive for my community? By Brianna ...
Boston’s ‘Straight Pride Parade’ Is Really About White Supremacy
The parade is not about promoting straightness but about promoting traditional notions of white masculinity and the restoration of a white settler ethnostate. ...
In the Fight to Diversify Hollywood, We Need to Stop Ignoring Assistants
The entertainment industry thrives on unpaid and underpaid workers using the law of supply and demand to justify unfair compensation. By Adriana ...
Prison Abolition is a Key Component of Reproductive Freedom
The prison industrial complex looms large as one of the single biggest institutions which perpetuate and exacerbate unequal access to reproductive care. ...
As Gay Marriage is Legalized in Taiwan, Trans People Continue to Face Violence Across Asia
Marriage is not by any stretch of the imagination a barometer of progress for the majority of queer and trans people. This article contains mentions of ...
Lena Waithe and the Obligations of Leadership
This has been a teachable moment for Waithe but I regret greatly that Tiffany Boone and Ayanna Floyd’s bodies, minds and safety were the sites for her ...
Reproductive Control is About Far More Than “Women’s Bodies”
Insisting that this is only about "women's bodies" erases a whole host of other things that abortion rights are inherently about. This essay contains mention ...
Gentrification: Rich Black People Pushing Out Poor Black Folks Won’t Solve Anything
Gentrification is, in fact, a structural and cultural phenomenon that specifically and disproportionately targets low-income Black communities. April 26 was ...
#QueerCripRollCall Helped Me Feel Seen By The People I am Kindred to
Seeing Black disabled people affirming their identities, practicing radical transparency, gives me permission to move in my full selfhood. By Aurielle ...
‘Pleasure Activism’ Delves Into The Politics of Sex and Desire
adrienne maree brown’s "Pleasure Activism" offers its readers so much to think about and grapple with. by Josie Pickens Pleasure Activism: The ...
The Fight Against Reproductive Rights Targets the Most Marginalized People—Here is How You Can Help
Those disproportionately targeted by state violence for autonomy over their own bodies are fighting for reproductive rights and have been for a long ...
My Vow of Celibacy Helped Me Find Sexual Liberation
My sexual accessibility has never been up to me, and this was a crucial and painful epiphany to have. Content Warning: this essay mentions depression and ...
The Whitney Museum’s Biennial Silence and Its Culture of Oppression
The Whitney Museum chooses silence in an effort to displace, downplay, and negate valid public outrage regarding their policies, ethics and leadership. By ...
Daenerys Was Always A Narcissistic, Power-Hungry Colonizer
Dany’s descent into genocidal horror was an undeveloped turn of events, not an undeserved one. By Nylah Burton This essay contains spoilers for HBO’s ...
Title IX is Harming Transgender Youth: Here’s What We Can Do
If our youth don’t feel safe in our society, then what kind of society are we? According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine National Institutes of ...
Blackness is Heavy: Attending A Conversation Between Kiese Laymon and Tressie McMillan Cottom
Kiese and Tressie both wrote for, to, and about those of us who carry Blackness with us everywhere we go. The thin white woman beside me folds her ...
30 Tips from Trans and Gender Nonconforming People on How Cisgender Folks Can Be Better Allies
In understanding the way power dynamics work in favor of cisgender people, those who are allies for the TGNC community should take care to better understand the ...
Alyssa Milano’s Call for a Sex Strike is Peak White Feminism
How does it help people who need safe access to abortion to further limit our sexual autonomy? There is a constant, unrelenting war against women, LGBTQ+ ...
On Black Widow and The Expendability of Childless Women
Natasha’s “sacrifice” sends the detestable message that the only value that childless women have to our larger society is in death. This essay contains ...
Why We Need To Free Black Mamas for Mother’s Day and Beyond
America’s criminal justice system is one that continually targets and disrupts the lives of Black mamas and caregivers everywhere. By Gloria Oladipo Black ...
The Birth of Baby Sussex Isn’t The Promise of a ‘New World’ Free of Racism
Baby Sussex is certainly important in terms representation and symbolism, but we have to reckon with the idea that representation alone isn’t anything more than ...
I Am Tired of Overcoming Trauma: Does Healing Exist For Queer People of Color?
It seems likely that “overcoming” is a continued exercise without any end in sight and that the exhaustion from it is a part of our lives and our DNA. ...
Fat People Must Become a Priority to the Left
Fat folks carry the weight of the work in these spaces while our bodies and material realities are continually othered and written off. I am a communist. ...
Wear Your Voice Presents: Summer of Sex — Call for Submissions
We want to explore the myriad of ways QTBIPOC experience sex and attraction. “Not everyone experiences sex and the things surrounding it in the same way, for ...
What Gender Is My Brain? The Dangerous Phrenology of “Brain Sex”
History raises cause for concern about the stakes associated with relying upon brain imaging to dictate the source of transgender identity. By Alex ...
What Olivia Munn and Lizzo Get Wrong About Art Criticism
The reality is that celebrity careers rely on the expertise of critics. On Thursday, Olivia Munn tweeted two pages of a response she had in reaction to the ...
How Thanos Fits Into Real-World Myths of Overpopulation and Scarcity
The Marvel Cinematic Universe may be a fantasy, but it is always worth it to analyze the ways in which media narratives align with, highlight, and bring into ...
‘Women and Femmes’ Is Not As Inclusive As We Want It To Be
It needs to be understood that this fight isn't about a "battle of the sexes" but about revolutionizing our understanding of gender structures. By Danny ...
TIME Magazine and the Process of Revictimization
The simple act of featuring both Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh within the same pages shows how unwilling society is to dismantle r/pe culture. ...
The Unbearable Weight of Fatphobia: A Conversation with Samantha Irby
"I don't wanna have to teach a lesson on Health At Every Size just to get through every conversation in my day. I'm just trying to live my life.” This ...
