Hello, From A New Intern: Feminism, Felines, and Finding Intersectionality

Hi, GLSEN community. My name is Lucy, and I’ll be working behind the scenes as a Communications Intern. As a self-identified feminist, and a queer woman with a girlfriend (and two cats) I love dearly, I look forward to bringing my pun-loving, nerd-grrrl feminism to GLSEN!

From a young age, my teacher mother instilled a deep appreciation of education, and its critical role in advocating for social change.  Though she likely never would’ve placed her twenty-something-year-old daughter as a zinester or a feminist calendar art coordinator, I do know that she accepted my awkwardly rehearsed coming out monologue with a knowing eye roll and a: Well, yeah. I still expect grandchildren, you know. And for that, I count myself lucky. 

But I haven’t always been that lucky, and neither have been my closest loved ones. When you factor in that 1 in 3 women will be sexually assaulted, and another 1 in 3 women are currently restricting their caloric intake on a diet (regardless of body type or BMI), it becomes exceedingly clear women are bombarded by various levels of demeaning emotional and physical attacks that suggest ‘we aren’t good enough.’ My interest in combating these messages, particularly aimed at young girls, prompted me to join a Peer Health Advocacy Program in college (where I specialized in lesbian health) and, upon seeing there was no such resource, to start my own feminist group. And you know who my greatest allies were? The LGBTQ community. From our very first meeting over coffee to our more trying campaigns to stage the first student-run burlesque show the campus had ever seen (which was a huge success, in case you were curious), the preexisting LGBT student group supported my feminist vision no matter how blurry or far-sighted it seemed at times. I am proud that both of my communities were able to harmonize effectively, but unfortunately, that isn’t always the case.

I’d like to keep pushing for intersectionality, not just among LGBTQ activists and feminist activists, but amongst overlapping boundaries of ethnicity and race, and amongst class lines and differently abled bodies. I come from a background of political protest for gendered and sexual equality, but nowhere was intersectionality better expressed than in the international zine community. At around sixteen, a beautiful girl gave me a mixtape. It was on my bed, bent over a handwritten love note that I first heard Bikini Kill, and a world of teen grrrl angst, heart-and-soul-felt punk music, and cut n’ paste zines opened itself up to me. It was through writing zines and trading them across the world—oftentimes receiving in turn a stapled publication scrawled in a language I could barely identify without the aid of an online translator—that my suburban experience was livened up by a chorus of uniquely different voices.  Intersectionality means questioning and embracing the intersecting lines of our shared and unique oppressions, and addressing one another with a respectful awareness of such differences. A white man may appear to hold a great degree of social privilege, but if he is also transgender, differently-abled, and working-class, it is just as important to consider his intersectional lines of oppression as it is his dominance. In short: nothing is that easy. The feminist and LGBTQ rights movement have become unlikely bedfellows, but here I am! Just as the lesbian and the gay, and the bisexual and the transgender communities have had their own intersectional conflicts of identity, feminists and LGBTQ activists have plenty to be gained from working alongside one another and cohesion.

I look forward to working together, both as a GLSEN intern, and down the long road ahead of my personal brand of queer sexual health activism, peppered by my feminist upbringing. The feminist in me is excited to meet the lesbian and queer activist in me, and the other way around. GLSEN perfectly marries my own passion for youth activism and education, and it’s a happy marriage. I’d love to see more happy marriages now, too. But before we can do anything, we need to support and advocate for our most vulnerable and most potentially powerful population: our marginalized youth.