Just a reminder as a bi/queer, gender fluid person of color (Southeast Asian specifically), my interactions with different forms of oppression within reproductive justice won’t always be similar to some of yours.
I appreciate our growing awareness of the need to stay mindful of the power dynamics that exist in our society and how important it is to push for inclusion in our conversations. LGBT rights, prison reform, immigrant rights, economic equality, education, accessible healthcare, the destruction of white supremacy, and so many other issues… They’re all part of reproductive justice. This holistic issue needs to be seen through intersectional lens.
We’ll hold each other accountable as we continue to grow in our advocacy for social justice.
I was wondering how you got involved with activism so heavily? Like as far as your major and whatnot that you went to school with? I'm currently in college and searching for ways to figure out how to get there
Kind of a long post buttttt those who are interested in knowing a tiny bit of my experiences and how I got to that point or generally interested in how to get into activism more are welcome to read this.
When I came out to my mom years back, she kicked me out of the house. And at the time I wasn’t able to get any of my things. I don’t have a full four years worth of college education. I wanted to double major in political and social science but I gave it up. All I had were the clothes on my body at that time. And I had my iTouch, which thankfully could connect to wifi.
And in a brief glance at a really shitty anti-choice post that reeked of misinformation, I pulled out my ipod to respond to them and destroyed their arguments and provided resources. Then I thought, hey! Maybe I’ll make a blog out of this. And so that’s how stfuprolifers was born.
I didn’t really have an official address for quite some time but luckily I had a good support system. I couldn’t go to school. It was hard to find a job with no address, and even after it was still really tough. I had experience but it was either too much experience or just not enough. Because of this I had a lot of free time and I was already really passionate about these issues so I just jumped in to whatever volunteer opportunity there was at the time. (Definitely keep a look out because your community is always in need. And if there isn’t a project that isn’t actively addressing an issue you think needs to be addressed, start one! You need a space. You need friends, acquaintances, whoever with a like mind. Start a Facebook event! Post it everywhere. You need consistency. You need a plan, housekeeping rules, etc. You can totally message me off anonymous and we can talk more about that since it’s things I’ve been discussing with other folks who want to get into activism more. But super awesome note, if you’re in school/college– all of that makes this HUNDREDS of times easier.) It’s a lot of work. For the #MyStoryOUTLoud campaign’s open mic I am organizing in my community, that took two months of non-stop work and will continue to be that way for another month. And I still have projects for after that.
There were moments with my major depression that I was just in bed for some projects. And other moments in which I burn out everything inside of me. I made friends, and through them made more friends. And it just became this network of friends who were activists or just general social justice advocates.. One friend in particular connected me to the non-profit I work with now.
During all of that time stfuprolifers got a bit of web presence and folks liked what I had to say. Especially in being able to be critical in nuance and layers. I was invited to contribute to a non-profit through blogging, then asked to help in many of those areas related to writing, and then was recruited to YouthResource with the help of my old social science and gender studies & human sexuality professors writing letters of recommendations for me. This also exploded my connections to activists all over the country and world. Meeting people. Talking to people. Working with people. These are all strong parts to what you can do. And part of that was also letting go of people. I dropped several problematic people in my life and my mind, confidence, and abilities grew exponentially from there.
And those are the experiences that brought me here so far!
I am planning on going to school within the next two years. And I decided to change my focus to Media Communications because of all the experiences and skills I’ve picked up since being kicked by my mom for being queer. It hurts in retrospect, but I really grew so much and it forced me to go out of my comfort zone so I can be heard and do what I need to do to not just say something but actively do something.
I hope that kind of helped. You just need make yourself a platform and space to be heard. Throw yourself into opportunities to help in your community. All of that. You’ll build connections and all of a sudden you’ll find yourself a new family and endless opportunities to work on yourself and the space around you.
There's a pro-choice community Skype meet up that's an open invite. I missed the last one due to bad timing but this time I could probably do it. I run STFU, Pro-Lifers and would totally love to say hi to the other pro-choice blogs. Except that I'm extremely shy.
My friends on here who just read that would probably go, "What the fuck? No, you're not."
But I swear I am. D:
When it comes to writing for school and work, I will procrastinate to the very last hour with just my name on the paper to show for progress.
But when it comes to responding to people on the Internet, I'll actually forget about food and loved ones. I will have ten pages written, peer reviewed and established sources researched and produced all within an hour.
So now I'm really hungry and it's dark out. But wow, I've learned a lot more than I thought I would about the history between women and STEM fields.
Earlier, I responded to a guy's confusion by my assertion that the relationship between STEM fields and women is troubled and historical. I went over high harassment and assault rates, a notable gender bias from faculty to students, the obvious gender gap in STEM fields, the contributions women made to science that were omitted, glossed over, or blatantly stolen and taken credit for, etc.
How many people know that an Austrian actress and inventor named Hedy Lamarr, with George Antheil, invented spread spectrum communications and frequency hopping which paved the way to WiFi? Like, it's WiFi. Why haven't I heard of her until just a week ago?
And I just learned this an hour ago: Chien-Shiung Wu was actually the major reason why the Law of Parity (an accepted law for decades) was disproven, but the credit and Nobel Prize was given to her male colleagues in 1957 who only arrived a few years earlier to help her work on the "Wu Experiment"--you know, the self-titled experiment that contradicted The Law of Parity. She didn't get an honorable mention until 1978. But she did continue on to be a professor and lived a pretty successful life. (Of course I still feel that there was a major injustice here.)
Today I also learned more about the relationship between people with disabilities/people of color/LGBTQ+ folks and STEM academia and careers--and that made me pretty angry too.
The representation of women in general is pretty abysmal. But the numbers cut down in size with each identity that gets tacked on. It's naive to believe this doesn't affect people.
Anyway, thanks for reading this journaled thought post.
Anon 1: I think I'm grateful that my mother chose to have me even though I came as a surprise. If she never wanted me and was forced into giving birth to me, then I'd be a horrible, daughter to resent her. I love my mother. I understand that it's her body. Not mine. I do not own my mother. She is her own person. If I had been aborted, this conversation wouldn't even be happening. I would not have any feelings or thoughts about it. That's why I find the whole "What if you were aborted/Be grateful you weren't aborted" rather silly. It's not thought provoking. It doesn't move the discussion forward. It stagnates the debate with privileged hypotheticals that benefits no one.
Anon 2: That's what anti-choicers do. They appropriate the struggles of others. They use people with disabilities, women, and people of color as mere props to their movement. Because if they really cared, they'd support actual legislation that would improve their quality of life. They wouldn't stop at fetal development. But that's not the case, is it?
lachrymoselavender: We'll have to disagree about a fetus being a person. I care too much about actual people to ever equate them to a non-thinking, non-feeling fetus. I know it is human and living, but that matters very little to me. A fetus doesn't have a right to life at the expense of someone else. No one currently has that right. If you needed my body for whatever reason to live, you need my consent. It's as simple as that.
It's nice that you're not the type to scream abusive things at people, but your opinions on reproductive justice contributes to that type of behavior. It feeds the stigma and it feeds the people who do say and act to hurt others.
I signed onto STFU, Pro-Lifers because I thought it was time to address some of the questions but my god. There are so many hateful messages. I answered as many as I could privately, the ones that asked for privacy anyway, and there's still a lot of things to respond to.
I'm honestly really exhausted and can't deal with it tonight so I'll have to postpone it one more time. Sorry, everyone.
I'll have to respond to everyone's messages after the weekend. Sorry for the wait and inconvenience!
I'm on another trip to Washington, D.C. for Advocates for Youth/Youth Resource. I'm going to be busy the next few days, so there will be mostly queued posts making their way onto the blog.
