are you sure about that?

As a child I would always disappear upstairs to my bedroom for periods of time during hectic family gatherings, and get scolded by my mother for being ‘anti-social’. Nowadays, while I love parties, I take frequent trips to the loo to have little breathers by myself. And I never make plans two nights in a row because the idea of spending that much time around other people is, quite frankly, overwhelming. I kind of always assumed I was a bit weird. Until I found myself nodding frantically while reading an article about introvert hangovers. Writer Shawna Courter published a  post  for Introvert Dear (a blog for introverts, oh hi) which really hit the nail on the head. She describes an introvert hangover as the following: ‘Introverts have a more limited ration of energy available for socialising, compared to our more extroverted counterparts. When we push past those reserves, we hit a tipping point where we go from being “fine” to “definitely not okay.” An “int...

August 10, 2016  by  Sam Dylan Finch everydayfeminism.com If you haven’t noticed, the Transgender Train has definitely left the station. Transgender people are now featured in magazines, television shows, books, websites – you name it. And yet, for some of us, it can start to feel overwhelming. After all, it’s not like we were taught what any of this gender stuff meant when we were growing up. And it’s true that a lot has changed in a short amount of time. How can we be expected to keep up? There’s a lot of talk about the transgender community, but if you aren’t in the know, these conversations can feel exclusive or downright confusing. Are you feeling like you missed the memo? Like you’ve been left behind at the station? Are you wishing someone would just slow down and explain what all this means? I get it! People write to me  all the time  to express these same frustrations – if you feel this way, you’re definitely not alone. Heck,  I’m tran...

July 19, 2016  by  Jamie Utt In Everyday Feminism I recently attended a presentation by Tony Porter, founder of  A Call to Men . After watching his  TED Talk , I was incredibly excited to see him speak because of how he demands of men that we consider the ways that all of us can act in abusive and violent ways. Seeing him in person, though, was disappointing. Early in the presentation, he held out his arms, asking us to imagine that his arms represented all men. He then gestured to the distance from his fingertips to his elbow on one arm and said, “These guys right here are the bad guys, the ones who are abusive and who commit sexual assault. Violence against women and girls can’t end until the rest of us, the good guys, call these men out and demand that they change!” When he said this, my heart sank. After all, setting aside the  heterosexist   implications  of his statement, framing abuse in this way lets most men, including me, off the...