Britni de la Cretaz

History books are full of white men Doing Things. White men are the default, it's through their lens that we view history. It's why when a white man is the first person to do something, they're just the "first person to do something," but we have to specify the "first woman" or "first African American" to do that same thing. Men are people, women are women.

It’s bad enough when I’m street harassed out by myself — I feel vulnerable and deciding how to respond can be hard. But it gets really complicated when I’m harassed and with my child.

In part, I didn't want kids because I knew that I couldn't even take care of myself, let alone someone else.

While this is not about my or White people’s feelings, this is about White people’s violence. As White people in this country, it’s on us to dismantle White supremacy. Both the problem and the solution lie with us. This involves talking to other White people in our communities, having hard and uncomfortable conversations, examining and confronting our own privilege.

Other girls are awesome. I never had any close female friends. I always said girls were “vapid, “catty,” and “annoying.” In reality, I was threatened by other girls.

The first time I remember learning what a safeword was, I was sitting in my college dorm, devouring blogs about kink and BDSM. It all seemed so foreign to me, a teenager who couldn’t imagine real people doing any of the taboo things these blogs talked about.

Being attracted to your oppressor is hard. It means that the people you want to date (or fuck) are also people who contribute to your marginalization, who have privilege that you don't, and who, more often than not, have internalized some pretty gross ideas about you.

Street harassment is a global problem. Wherever you go, marginalized people have to deal with verbal abuse, harassment, and violence simply for entering public space.

I want my child to be able to self-determine. What that means to me is that they know they have options besides the “default” one that’s plastered all over their TV screens, and that they always know that.