Not “Too Emotional”
So, as I watched men tell Danvers that she’s “too emotional” again and again, I got angry. I heard the echoes of the same words lobbed at me. Like Danvers, I can’t stand when men tell me what I can do or who I am supposed to be.
Burning Out in Higher Ed
If faculty were burnt out before the pandemic, they find themselves even more burnt out now. How could they not be?
Learning How to Not Give a Fox
Published at Women in Higher Education on April 2, 2019. I had to inventory all my current foxes, and assess whether they bring joy or annoy, to clear out the mental clutter. My Things I Give a Fox About list, a suggestion of Knight’s, included things and people that matter to me. Things not on the list …
Stay Mad
Published at Women in Higher Education on Jan. 4, 2019: Each month, not only are there stories about the trauma and violence women endure, but also new studies that document gender gaps in pay, promotion and leadership, as well as the reports about how women shoulder the bulk of student loan debt. Newswatch makes me want …
Fight Racism or Be Complicit
Published at Women in Higher Education on August 1, 2018. White supremacy shapes our world: politics, laws, policing and punishment, educational systems, reproductive rights, banking, home ownership, etc. White supremacy determines who is understood as human, granted dignity and rights, and who isn’t.
Hell is for Other People
Published at The Baffler on May, 24, 2018. Yet, as I watched Come Sunday, I became less and less convinced that the film is strictly about Pearson’s wrangling with faith or even the question of what happens if you stop believing in hell. Instead, it convinces the viewer to ponder another question, an important albeit harder one: …
Pursuing Happiness for All Women
Published at Women in Higher Ed on June 7, 2018. Instead, women, especially mothers, are expected to sacrifice ourselves—our desires, aspirations, bodies and even lives—to keep others happy. There are social and cultural expectations (and rewards) for mothers to appear as martyrs, who serve others and never themselves. Women’s labor goes unnoticed and unpaid because our labor …
Necessary Unruliness
Published at Women in Higher Education on August 31, 2017. Unruliness pushes against the narrow vision of acceptable femininity and suggests that there are other ways to be a woman in our world, beyond what our culture tells us we should be. Unruliness can be the path to liberation, to being who you are, to claiming …
No Man’s Land
Published at Women in Higher Education on July 5, 2017: I started crying as I watched these fierce Amazons because it was only an ordinary Tuesday and I was already exhausted from being a woman in 2017. The fantasy of the matriarchy was so tempting. I found myself mourning a world that never existed but …
Surviving Sexist Workplaces Is Not Enough
Published at Women in Higher Education on June 5, 2017. Feminist Fight Club never quite gets to the root of the problem: the workplace is still structured for men’s success, not women’s.