Disability may be the final frontier for our consideration of human rights, following pushes for Black people and other people of color to get civil rights, for women's rights, and for gay/lesbian/bi people and now also trans people. Some people will start life with some kind(s) of disability/-ies, but everyone will become disabled in some way in their lifetime. COVID is considered a mass-disabling event, mirroring in some ways the ways HIV killed so many gay men and Black women, and, again, is downplayed because of who is most heavily impacted: people of color, the poor, the elderly, and immunocompromised or otherwise disabled people. What will it take for us to care about others' experiences? Can we make things more accessible for all without getting caught up in how we have to change to accommodate others?

While often referred to as "the LGBTQ+ community," this label is a bit more hopeful than it is realistic. There's so much diversity between each letter in the whole 2SLGBTQIA+ acronym and even a lot of diversity within each letter. We'll also explore the impact of various systems of oppression among LGBT people to highlight how our marginalization as gender/sexual minorities does not make us incapable of hating or harming others - even those within the "community." There are sexist gay men, transphobic and/or biphobic gays and lesbians, and racism, fatphobia, ableism, classism, and even pretty privilege can all affect all LGBT people's interactions. We're not as communal as we could be, but that's also influenced by the internalization of homophobia and transphobia that we all have to unlearn.

This episode is a bit of a bummer but it's still very necessary to address sexual violence and femicide. There is no word in the English language for killing a man on account of his gender, but women are killed on account of their gender often enough that "femicide" was coined, and we'll cover some important stats on the issue. We'll also look at how generally unsympathetic our society is to survivors of sexual violence and why that is, then turn to how hard recovery is for men who have been sexually victimized because of the systems of oppression we live under.

Feminism isn't just about women; it's about critiquing the unrealistic expectations our society holds of people based on their gender. Men are very privileged within patriarchy, and white men especially, but they're also generally very unaware of the gendered expectations they struggle with. We think of men as strong, independent, and unemotional then act surprised when they snap as a result of this dehumanizing conditioning. There's no wiggle room for men's sexuality and homophobia is still very much alive, as is biphobia, and there's a lot to unpack here!

Misogynoir is the intersection of anti-Black racism and misogyny and is important because (white) feminism fails to include the needs of marginalized women, including racialized women, disabled women, and trans women. Because Black women are so devalued, they are the least well paid demographic despite also being the most highly educated demographic. Our society was made by and for rich cis-het white men and Black women can see things so much differently because their personhood or needs were not considered and they can generally see the system as it is. We'll also look at the disadvantages of societal scripts that praise Black women for "being strong" and "overcoming" so much.

Misogyny is as American as apple pie and is, unfortunately, baked into all levels of our society. This shapes wildly different lived experiences for men and women in our society. In puberty, the world opens for boys and closes for girls. We'll look at how women are thought of in our society, what people get wrong about feminism, and the problems gender conditioning poses for heterosexual relationships. Women are undervalued and underestimated at every turn and this episode will explore why that is and what we can do about it.

You've likely heard about white supremacy but you probably don't really know what it is or how it shows up in your life, especially if you're white. Between COVID, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, 2020 really showed us that our society is not safe or welcoming toward people of color but is especially hostile toward Black people. This is not an accident but the intended purpose of white supremacy. White people hold a lot of power within white supremacy but it is at the expense of people of color and it's on us (white people) to learn about this system and bring it to an end.

Our differences matter but we’ve been taught to give them too much focus and it’s making us feel scared and disconnected. Underneath whatever you look like, we are all people who want to be loved. We want to have purpose. We want to do the things that matter to us. and then of course there's all the stuff that comes with how we show up in the world, how we look to others, and what others might think about us based on how we appear. These are some of the things we will cover in various episodes of this podcast.