Writer
Reed E. McConnell
Latest Content
The Rulebooks in Our Heads
But a protest is loud, and messy, and visible. It’s a spectacle, and through it we can see, hear, and otherwise physically experience power being exercised.
Sexing Discourse
The question of sex positivity has a fraught history within feminist and queer movements.
You are Better than Punch
By choosing to punch, you are reinforcing and legitimizing this system of shame, where people are made to feel inadequate and ashamed solely by dint of being poor, of color, queer, or a whole host of other things that don’t fit with the socially reinforced norm of being a wealthy white straight man
Put Aggression Out of Business
The most glaring problem with the initiative is that it seemed to be very focused on re-educating women about how to act, assert themselves, and make decisions about their lives.
Coming to Terms with a City that Never Sleeps
New York is New York. That is, the entire world compressed into a little box, a special kind of concentrated chaos. I’m interning at a small magazine and the offices are temporarily in the editor’s living room.
Controlling Birth Control
When it comes to Plan B and the question of unintended pregnancy, the issue of agency takes on another dimension.
Out of the Classroom, Into the Streets
We believe that it’s time to take back Take Back the Night, that we’ve been quiet for too long, that rape culture should—and does—make us angry, and frustrated, and that this is the perfect opportunity to let that anger out.
The Impossibility of Forgiveness
The obvious explanation of victim-blaming and valuation of perpetrators over their victims does have some hold here, but a full understanding of the situation needs to be more nuanced.
Women Are Not a Punch Line
The issue with these claims is that nothing is objectively funny; certain things can really only be funny to people who have certain kinds of privilege.
Should Women Serve in Military Combat Roles?
As long as we maintain a definition of progress that limits itself to diversification—which often consists of the diversification of oppressive institutions—we lose sight of the real benchmark of progress: the elimination of the institutions that cause oppression in the first place.
Dismantling Rape Culture
Rape culture is real at Harvard, and is perhaps even more pervasive on campus due to Harvard’s history as an all-male institution.
Remembering Romney
He was antithetical to nearly everything that I feel Massachusetts stands for, and if elected president, I am certain that he will be antithetical to all the good that this country is capable of as well.
Save the Boobies? Or the Woman?
There is nothing sexual about someone dying of breast cancer. There is only horror and sickness, and to suggest that the purpose of finding a cure for this disease is to restore the body’s ability to please someone else, even facetiously, reduces the dying person to a body and makes a cruel joke of their pain.
The Dangers of Armchair Activism
Armchair activism can be very effective in raising money and generating petition signatures, but we must realize that taking a small action like signing a petition does not excuse us from further action. We are not done.
Stand Up, Fight Back
While we do not have a comprehensive groundwork for women’s rights in the U.S., we have, at least, made some gains over the past few decades.
