Category: Essays
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Queer Studies: Gender Is The Problem
It’s easy to see conflict between people of certain genders as a problem, but what if I told you that gender itself is the root problem and that conflict between gender groups is actually a design feature? Gender says it is a set of discrete categories based on nature which imparts a series of roles…
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Manifesta: Gender panopticism must be dismantled.
Manifesta Take a trip to the store to buy just about any product and you may notice a surprising fact; the products are gendered. Products from pens to diapers and of course clothes are designed to enforce the gender binary while also doing its oppressive work. (Bond) The gender binary is a lie perpetrated by…
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Environmental Problems and Solutions: A cautious optimism that some manner of future may still exist for humanity.
Environmental problems can trigger an existential crisis in individuals both because of the scope of the problems and the scope of the duty this realization imparts on us. There are a lot of environmental problems from pollution to mass extinctions to sea level rise and so on. When people learn about the scope of the…
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Fall 2019: Weekly Intersectional Privilege Event
I am an affluent, white, male, cis, able person who has these privileged identities within the American white-cis-ablist-classist-patriarchy. I am also a gay, socialesque, atheist which are marginalized identities within American hetero-ancap-christian culture. I see many gay, affluent, white, cis men forgetting about the fact that they are affluent, white, cis, men. This has led…
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Queer Film History: Compare and contrast Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble
Compare and contrast Pink Flamingos and Female Trouble Pink Flamingos is an excellent example of John Waters’ early work. It is historically Queer in all four ways. Many of the characters are queer. The lead for example describes herself as a lesbian who has, “done everything,” and wants to, “kill everyone, now.” The film’s author…
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Internship: Demographic meta-analysis of the Sierra College student body and disparately impacted success of its populations.
Executive Summary During the fall 2019 semester, I completed a sociology internship at Sierra College. At some point in the last year, I had asked several professors which populations are the most impacted at Sierra College (Which group has the lowest success). I was surprised to learn that no one knew the answer. Further research…
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The Fight For $15
“The Fight For 15” is a flawed attempt to solve the problem of the decoupling of inflation from wages. Minimum wage is always stagnant, with occasional jumps, typically closer to a living wage. A living wage is a wage that is high enough for people to meet their basic needs and survive. This is not…
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“Criminal Justice System”
The modern American “criminal justice system” has for centuries been an institution of deliberate systemic oppression. This purpose was greatly expanded in recent decades through the drug wars and through the ignorant actions of armchair broken windows theorists like Joe Biden. This system is designed based on profit incentives. These incentives lead to no consideration…
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Socialization and Culture
I feel like I regularly come upon men offering free hugs, especially at queer events such as pride. Often these men identify themselves with clothing and signs offering further qualification such as “Free hugs from an accepting father,” etc. I approach these situations from a queer liberation perspective. I choose not to seek to use…
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Theory Vs Field Research
I marched with Black Lives Matter at Burning Man this year. Burning Man is supposed to be an experiment in building a city the right way. Together, we arrive at the literal blank slate of a dry Pleistocene lakebed in the Black Rock Desert. We build a city called Black Rock City completely from scratch…