In recent discourse there has been more attention paid to the ideas of gender identity and sexuality. In media coverage on a daily basis one can see that there is more attention being paid toward the trans and gay communities, yet there are still many people who have no voice. It is often believed that these communities, especially those who declare themselves as gender fluid or non-binary or anything other than the typical male and female genders , claim to be these things for attention rather than an actual feeling of relating to neither or both or other genders. This snubbing of a person’s identity has become a violent act against a whole community of people and it is only recently that any sign of people speaking out against it has been seen on a large scale. This, apparently new found, feeling of support and unity in these communities can be largely drawn back to the fairly recent popularity and downright unavoidability of social media.
Continue reading Gender Identity in Lilith’s Brood
All posts by Danielle Carrizales
Uncontrolled Contagion
As a student of political science and a current student of a class pertaining to the developing world, it is evident that the spread of western civilization and culture over time is a supremely problematic part of the world. It is common knowledge that western civilizations conquered and colonized the majority of the world, with countries such as England and Spain having colonies stretching across the globe. It is also generally understood that colonization ended, for the most part, after WWII. While it is true that many once colonized countries gained independence at this point, that does not mean that western countries lost their power over them. Many countries that were once the victims of colonization are still heavily dependent on those that had once been their colonizers.
The most evident ways of the lasting impact of colonization are a countries economy and its religion. On the continent of South America you see the lasting impression of Spanish colonization with the dominance of the Catholic religion. On the continents of Asia and Africa, you see a more economically based dominance with the economies of former colonies still relying on their colonizers to keep their economies afloat. This continued influence of the west on the “other” is echoed in Butler’s work quite effectively in The Patternist series. Continue reading Uncontrolled Contagion
The Effect of Hook-Up Culture
I have never been able to understand the idea of one person claiming inherent dominance over another for any reason, let alone for reasons such as race or gender. There should never be an instance where a person may hold control over a second person without the second person’s explicit consent. While the larger power dynamics of the world are so complicated that they often rely on tacit consent to claim dominance, be it in government, school or other established institutions, in issues of consent regarding sexual conduct, there should never be a middle ground. In the small scope of the argument are documents such as SUNY Geneseo’s own code of conduct which define the term consent and what it means to give consent using terms from state laws on the topic. While these laws governing consent are especially important in a college environment, it seems that people see a lot of grey area when it comes to the idea of consent, especially with the current “hook-up culture” that seems to have ingrained itself in college communities. Continue reading The Effect of Hook-Up Culture