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Girl-on-Girl Action: How the Anti-Pornography Movement Ignores the Unique Violence Queer Women Experience as a Result of “Lesbian Porn”

06.26.20

A variety of studies, statistical analyses, and testimonies have linked pornography with violence against women. These have shown everything from increased rates of sexual aggression in men after viewing violent pornography in controlled laboratory experiments to the prevalence of pornography as an inspiration and motivation for domestic violence and sexual abuse of women. The anti-pornography […]

Gender, Race and Identity

Queering the Housing Question: Leveraging the Los Angeles LGBT Center to Build a Better Housing Policy

06.24.20

This essay leverages the Anita May Rosenstein Campus—the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s forthcoming cohousing-style complex for both youth and senior members of the LGBTQ+ community—as an example of affordable, intergenerational housing that challenges the nation’s existing federal provisions for senior housing. The need for a broader, more inclusive, even queerer approach to addressing the nation’s […]

Gender, Race and Identity

LGBTI and the Sustainable Development Goals: Fostering Economic Well-Being

06.24.20

Introduction In 2015, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Agenda 2030, which outlined 17 Sustainable Development Goals to guide international development for the next decade.[1] The SDGs build off the previous set of global goals, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), by identifying 169 specific targets focused on creating an economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable world. […]

Gender, Race and Identity

Recipe for Success: Invest More in Early Education

06.23.20

I am not a baker. But, like so many others, I have tried my hand at a couple of recipes during these turbulent times. I quickly learned two things: the order of the recipe matters; and, second, flour is essential. Our education system has yet to take the first lesson to heart. Instead of adding […]

Education, Training and Labor

COVID-19 May Redefine America’s Social Contract for Decades to Come

06.22.20

As a record number of Americans file for unemployment and families struggle to make ends meet, the COVID-19 Pandemic has not only accentuated deep flaws and inefficiencies in the U.S. healthcare system; it has also exposed gaping holes in America’s social safety net. In response, U.S. policymakers must act boldly to construct a new social […]

Social Policy

The politics of language: How can we mainstream social justice vocabularies?

06.22.20

How might we mainstream social justice ideas and language, beginning a national conversation that extends beyond more recognised civil society actors? Reflecting on the discourse surrounding migrant rights, Quah Say Jye draws upon philosopher Miranda Fricker’s concept of “epistemic injustice” to propose a shared vocabulary that might allow migrant workers into our linguistic community. He suggests that our semantic choices need to accurately represent the lived experiences of migrant workers, be accessible to them and the general public, and have the potential to pivot towards broader structural critiques.

Social Policy

The Whole Youth Model: How Collecting Data About Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Gender Expression (SOGIE) Helps Probation and Youth Courts Build More Authentic Relationships Focused on Improved Well-Being

06.22.20

As reform efforts continue to encourage the juvenile justice system to shift its focus from punishment and surveillance to health and well-being, systems must engage in practices that acknowledge and affirm young people in their care as “whole youth” with multiple layers of identity, including sexual orientation and gender identity and expression (SOGIE). These identities […]

Gender, Race and Identity

Combating So-Called “Conversion Therapy” in New York: Training Mental Health Professionals

06.22.20

LGBT people continue to receive conversion therapy (CT) in the United States. CT refers to so-called treatments purporting to change a person’s sexual orientation and/or gender identity. This trend persists despite multiple laws and policies in the state of New York attempting to end the practice. Since some counselors, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers […]

Gender, Race and Identity

What’s in a Wristband: A Novel Hospital Policy for Transgender Youth

06.22.20

“Looking down and seeing that ‘F’ . . . No. No, that’s not right.” These were the words thought by Ben, a teenage transgender boy living in Aurora, Colorado. While an “F” is enough to upset any school-aged child, Ben isn’t talking about his report card—he’s summarizing the significant, pathological gender dysphoria he experiences while […]

Gender, Race and Identity

Ending a Culture of Discrimination

06.22.20

After Harvard Law School announced the creation of a new Religious Freedom Clinic on campus, LGBTQ students have been activated like a swarm of bees circling a kicked beehive. Our fear is that Harvard is condoning the type of arguments that try to justify LGBTQ discrimination under the guise of religious freedom. This is an […]

Gender, Race and Identity

The Indian Ban on Commercial Surrogacy

06.19.20

  Introduction The usage of assisted reproductive technology (ART) has grown immensely around the world, and future increases are expected.[i] The global market is expected to grow at the compound annual growth rate of 10 percent until 2025.[ii] Surrogacy, the process of a surrogate mother carrying and delivering a child on someone else’s behalf, is […]

It’s Time to Rethink America’s Presidential Debates

06.19.20

The Democratic Party primary is effectively over. Now that Joe Biden has secured the nomination on the first ballot of the party’s convention, Democrats are pivoting towards a strategy to defeat President Donald J. Trump in the face of a global health pandemic and a crisis of confidence in the American justice system. Citizens and […]

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