Written by Eva Zhu, Staff Writer

On February 14, a former student of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida murdered 17 of his schoolmates with an AR-15. This has already been the eighth school shooting of 2018 (eight in seven weeks!) that that have culminated in death or injury in the United States. Since 2007, at least 173 people have been killed with different versions of semi-automatic AR-15s. These shootings include those that have happened in Las Vegas (58 dead), San Bernardino (14 dead), Sandy Hook Elementary (27 dead), and the Aurora Century 16 movie theatre (12 dead).

An AR-15 is a semi-automatic rifle that is capable of firing around 150 rounds in less than five minutes. A weapon of this calibre has no business being in the hands of civilians — especially not the hands of 19-year-old boys who have exhibited histories of disturbing behaviour.

This might come as a shock, but from 1994 to 2004 — after two back-to-back shootings in 1993 — the Federal Assault Weapons Ban was put in place. The law banned 18 models of assault weapons, and those featuring military-style accessories. Although the overall rates of gun crime stayed fairly consistent, the number of mass shootings decreased dramatically. During those 10 years, there were only 12 mass shootings, compared to the 63 mass shootings since 2004.

Immediately after the law expired, efforts were made by Democrats to renew the law. However, all proposals were unsuccessful. Former president Barack Obama tried to propose the same law again in 2012 after the Sandy Hook massacre, this time without a ten-year expiry date. Unsurprisingly, the bill did not pass the Republican-controlled House and Senate.

The chances of President Donald Trump enacting any sort of gun control during his time in the Oval Office is slim to none. He is paid obscene amounts of money by the National Rifle Association (NRA) to continue endorsing semi-automatic rifles. In 2016, they spent over $21 million on Trump’s election campaign, which explains why he praises them to no end.

Some of the current administration’s favourite phrases to utter after a shooting are things like “it’s too early to politicize this tragedy” and “we need to pray for the victims.” By appealing to these sorts of traditionally minded, “common decency” arguments, we lose sight of coming up with actual practical solutions. Prayer is fine; grief is fine. But prayer and grief cannot, and do not need to, come at the expense of our problem-solving capacities, and we need to stop framing gun control discussion as an either-or.

Prayers are nice. What are prayers going to do when people are being gunned down left and right? Prayers aren’t going to bring the dead back to life, nor will they reduce the mass shootings in America. Besides, you can pray and also take tangible measures to prevent gun violence! They aren’t mutually exclusive. The current administration won’t even think about enacting a gun control policy until one of their own children is gunned down.

Additionally, gun violence and mass shootings will always be politicized. Why do you think the Clinton Administration passed the Federal Assault Weapons Ban? When hundreds of people are murdered in a year, not talking about gun control is a surefire way for Americans to lose faith in you. Just because you’re sticking your head in the sand and pretending the issue isn’t there, doesn’t mean anyone else is.

Emma Gonzalez — a senior at Stoneman Douglas — is a force to be reckoned with. Since the shooting at her school, she has made gun activism her main goal. Her “We call BS” speech at a gun control rally was a “fuck you and your prayers” to the current administration that we all needed to see happen eventually.

Despite the ridiculous far-right conspiracies suggesting that teens like Gonzalez are crisis actors paid by “the Left,” Gonzalez isn’t being paid by the NRA to keep silent, nor is she sprouting falsehoods, since she has actually seen her friends and classmates die, and lived to tell the tale. Since her speech, we have seen fellow schoolmates interrogate Marco Rubio at a Town Hall for school shootings and stage a lie-in outside the White House to protest the way Donald Trump is handling the topic of school shootings and demand gun reform.

As long as people continue to play smoke and mirrors with the gun control debate, trying to switch the narrative through appeals to tradition, courtesy, and downright tinfoil-hat behaviour, no logical solution to gun violence can be developed.

I am a feminist. My definition of a feminist is anyone who, like me, feels that men and women should be treated equally. I think that everyone should be supportive of gender equality, and therefore, feminist.

Some feminists are radical feminists. Traditionally, this means that they believe our current society is inherently patriarchal, and therefore, to achieve gender equality, it must be completely overthrown. Here, I define a “radical” feminist as any feminist that behaves in a radical way. Behaving in a “radical way” includes behaviours that some would call “extreme,” “progressive,” “revolutionary,” “attention-grabbing,” and so on.

When I say “modern” feminists, I’m referring to those that are products of and participants in the Third and Fourth Waves of feminism, from the 1990s and onwards. Most likely, the feminists reading this are modern feminists. I’m a modern feminist, myself. I don’t hate modern feminists, and certainly not all of them act out the behaviours I’m about to call out.

That being said, I think it’s time for many modern feminists to gain some respect for radical feminists of both past and present, as well as to stop dismissing their chosen forms of protest.

The term “radical feminist.” makes many people uncomfortable. Images of irate, aggressive women, bras aflame and legs unshaven, may come to mind. I know many women and men who cringe at the word “radical feminist” or use it as mockery or a joke. Most recently, I’ve noticed self-identifying feminists distancing themselves from radical feminism completely. Just check out some of the tweets relating to the Slut Walk and you’ll see women cursing out and mocking other women who participate.

“I’m not angry, I don’t hate anybody, I’m fine,” seems to be the new manifesto of modern feminists, who distance themselves from anything that isn’t calm and unthreatening. But, isn’t moving past the constraints of “calm and unthreatening” the entire point?

Stop me on the street and ask me if I’m mad about female oppression and gender inequality. I’ll give you a huge “yes!”. Why shouldn’t I? Gender inequality is threatening to all women. So be angry about it. Be threatening. When did that become such an atrocious thing?

A person I’m friends with Facebook shared an article a few days ago showing topless women protesting reproductive rights. They had pasties over their nipples and slogans written on their bare stomachs and chests. The poster had captioned it: “I don’t understand what this does for women. They’re coming off really aggressive and angry. That’s not a good look. Not cute.” Comments below echoed the sentiments, saying that this isn’t the right way for feminists to protest, that these girls should put their clothes back on.

Feminists that act too radical and out-of-the-box are getting shunned for it. As if feminism, in itself, isn’t and hasn’t always been radical.

Jessa Crispin, author of Why I’m Not a Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto sums up my thoughts well in her book: at some point, feminism has lost its identity in the pursuit of universality and become toothless. What used to be a criticism of culture has been mellowed to the point that it neatly fits into the current system.

“Feminism used to be outside the culture. It used to be a way of criticizing the culture. It used to be a way of imagining a different kind of culture. But somehow in the last 10 years or so, feminism became another part of the culture,” Crispin says.

There was once a time when the very thought that a woman is a person was considered radical, never mind the idea that these things deserve rights. In the same way that outsiders used to criticize and scoff at feminists, many modern feminists now criticize and scoff at radical feminists.

Feminism will never be accepted by every single person in the world; it’s just impossible. There will always be those who don’t think it’s necessary, and don’t agree with it – and that’s fine. So why are some feminists trying so hard to water down the cause so it’s easier for everyone to swallow?

“I’m not angry!” “You know, lots of women have it worse than me, I really shouldn’t be complaining that much.” “You’re making people uncomfortable when you protest like that.” “Those girls are really extreme. . . You don’t need to be that extreme.”

“Those girls”, meanwhile, are causing change.

For decades, radical feminists have been causing dramatic change with their out-there, extreme protests and ideas.

Take Mary Wollstonecraft, for example, who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792. In her time, the ideas of equality between sexes, equal access to education, women being single, women having relations out of wedlock, and a classless society were beyond radical, and she experienced backlash for these opinions. In exchange for that backlash, she is still well-known today by many.

What about militant suffragettes, who petitioned radically for the female vote? They smashed windows, destroyed mailboxes, cut telephone wires, and many died for the cause – for the vote that many women and modern feminists enjoy. And Coco Chanel, who dared dress women in pants when it was socially inappropriate to do so? As well as Sojourner Truth, a former slave who spoke passionately about racial inequalities in her “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech? bell hooks, who encouraged “radical openness” in teaching, thinking and learning. Consider Ellen Willis, the co-founder of the Redstockings and a vehement speaker on women’s sexuality – a taboo topic?

I could go on and on, listing more influential and radical women. Do you think these women wasted their time apologizing for their radicalness? Do you think they assured those around them that they’re ‘not angry’ and avoided aggressive debates? Do you think they scoffed and turned their backs on sisters who screamed, took their clothes off, smashed things in the name of the cause?

No. These women were radical and made changes that have benefited many, many women for decades, including the modern feminists that treat them with disdain today.

Modern feminists, radical feminists, feminists of every type are fighting the same gender equality battle.

The more feminists that exist and are passionate about this cause, the better, and everyone should choose how they want to express that passion. It’s okay to be radical and angry – you’re more than allowed, I encourage you, in fact, to be angry about the threats to women’s safety and rights that still exist today world-wide – and it’s okay to argue and protest.

Be memorable; be out-of-line. Feminism is and hopefully always will be radical, a counterculture, and a demand for change. There’s no point in pretending it’s not a threat, because threatening the status-quo is an incredibly important part of feminism. Be threatening to the status quo, and be forceful, or you risk going unnoticed and not making change.

It worked for Wollstonecraft, Truth, hooks, and Willis, it works for the “sluts” on the front-page paper and your Facebook feed, and it’ll work for you.  

Written by Winona Young, Peak Associate

In an interview with The Guardian, drag queen RuPaul commented that he would “probably not” allow trans* women as contestants on his show, RuPaul’s Drag Race. Following a swift and resounding backlash from not only fans but former contestants of his show, RuPaul issued an apology.

RuPaul’s arguments in his Guardian interview contain heavy notes of exclusivity towards trans* women and cis women within the drag community. This brings up the question of whether or not the drag community ought to be accepting of self-identified female drag queens. Not only should cis and trans* female drag queens be granted legitimacy to their drag, that courtesy should also extend to (cis and/or) drag kings and to non-binary drag performers, too.

To further understand drag, as well as to argue for acceptance of self-identified female drag queens, we have to examine the art of drag’s history. In an interview with TIME, Joe E. Jeffreys, drag historian of Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, described drag as a “theatrical form . . . [of] putting on clothing that is considered to be not appropriate to [the performer],” and is done with an “ironic distance.” Jeffreys notes that drag has played into historic settings like Shakespearean plays and vaudeville shows, and that while drag in its purest incarnation is performed within gay bars, it is “everybody’s art form.”

RuPaul claims that drag loses its sense of “danger” once cisgendered men no longer perform it, because the art of drag proves cis men’s rejection of conventional masculinity. Two things are wrong with that statement.

First, as transfeminine drag queen Charlene Incarnate points out, to imply that a sense of “danger” is lost when trans* women are performing proves to be ignorant. Given that in the social climate we have lived in and continue to live in “queer and trans women are raped and murdered in record numbers with every passing year,” the sense of danger and risk is very much present, if in a different form.

Furthermore, RuPaul’s stance proves myopic, in that it only focuses on one group/identity of drag performers in an otherwise very colourful and very intersectional community — a community that reveres this art form in its diversity. While drag performance is heavily rooted in gay culture, some of the most famous drag queens were certainly not cisgendered gay men.

One notable example would be Marsha P. Johnson, renowned trans* rights activist, who was also long rumoured to have been one of the first individuals to throw a brick during the Stonewall Riots. Johnson, a drag queen who was even photographed by Andy Warhol himself, also referred to herself with ‘she/her’ pronouns. Examples like Johnson stand as an example of drag’s historical intersection across the spectrum of gender identities, especially those of trans* women.

When RuPaul refuses to allow trans* women onto his show, and continues to accept cis gay men, he implicitly reinforces the notion that drag queens can only be made up by such a population. What RuPaul fails to consider, with his narrow perspective on who is allowed to do drag, is that he contradicts himself. He places gendered limits on an art that is historically renowned to be a ‘fuck you’ to gender norms and conventions in the first place.

One must question: why is it that only cis gay men are allowed to champion the title of drag queens? As a staff writer at Vulture, E. Alex Jung questions that if gender is all but irrelevant to drag as drag is to gender, “. . . why does it matter whether someone is a cisgender male or a transgender woman? Why can’t trans women subvert gender too?”

The drag community has been historically renowned to be vibrant and made up of wildly eclectic performers. In the exceedingly diverse landscape of drag today, Vancouver-based drag performer, Mx. Fortunate (pronounced ‘misfortunate’), considers drag as “gender art.” They affirm that, while drag is a fun means of expressing oneself, it is also “a political statement, especially for marginalized peoples to be in these spaces; like hyper queens, drag kings, and non-binary drag performers.”

Like their drag counterparts, Mx. Fortunate agrees that RuPaul’s definition of drag is exclusionary to trans* and non-binary people, and there is a stigma against certain types of drag. That said, Mx. Fortunate’s experience hasn’t been entirely negative; the local drag community here has been generally accepting.

With RuPaul’s Drag Race being unanimously the only high-profile, mainstream drag-centric TV show on air, RuPaul wields an enormous amount of power in helping control and deliver the narrative of drag performance to larger audiences as whole. This makes it that much more important that drag icons and ambassadors like RuPaul understand, recognize, and legitimize uncommon artistry like that of female cisgender, transgender, and non-binary drag performers alike.

Author’s note: Given the topics discussed in this article, it should be noted to readers that the author of this article is a cisgendered, heterosexual woman.