Modern Times

For my last post I think it’s important to hit on the importance of Pride Month. For so long being apart of the LGBTQ+ community has been frowned upon and it’s so important that we make the effort as a society to be inclusive and have open arms to those who are apart of the community. In response to Pride Month, I want to share some of my favorite photos of past Pride Month events.

Love shows no boundaries and the freedom of love and life should be guaranteed. We should all make the effort to show love and support love.

I am actually an avid listener of K-Pop, more specifically BTS.I think they’re music is great and the message of their brand is really important. Their music, while being catchy and upbeat and easy to dance to, also has messages of dealing with abuse, fighting for the LGBTQ+ community and other big issues. On the other side of the K-Pop industry outside of BTS, there is quite the dark side, specifically surrounding one central issue.

In the beginning of March a scandal regarding one of K-Pop’s biggest idols surfaced. Seungri of K-Pop group, Big Bang was reportedly accused of rape of multiple women. Since these accusations, it has been reported that he was in a groupchat with multiple other big name idols and actors in which they discussed drugging and raping multiple women and taking videos of their scandals and sending them within their groupchat. This scandal rocked the K-Pop world and shocked many of his fans. The messages sent in the groupchat were vile and disturbing and led to trials and charges against the idols.

Outside of this scandal, many idols amongst their other issues with depression and anxiety from the treatment in the agencies have also reported being forced into giving sexual favors to their representatives and other crude acts.

Despite all of these scandals, almost no one talks about these issues. Many people get caught up in the pop music and the idol personas and disregard all these scandals. With time, hopefully the standards idols are being set to will lessen and those affected by these awful circumstances will get the justice they deserve.

1. Even mega-conservative, Tomi Lahren, disagrees with the ban stating it’s, “Too restrictive.”

2.  These bans will 100% push women into getting abortion in the easiest and likely, the most dangerous ways they can.

3. Men are making the laws. They don’t have a uterus, or any concept of abortion, or contraceptives to prevent abortions, and quite frankly lack any real knowledge about the subject as a whole. No uterus, no opinion.

4. This forces victims of rape, incest, and other crude acts to remain trapped in the trauma of what they went through and carry that weight around for 9 months and the rest of their lives.

5. On top of number 4, if the only time a woman should be allowed to make a decision regarding her own body is when they’ve been raped or a victim of some trauma, this means that the only time a woman can control her body is when she’s been demeaned by someone who’s abused her. This is leading to a very strongly sexist narrative.  (inspired by @/jeevonchy on Twitter)

6. Politicians and leaders who say the things mentioned in the visual below clearly have no concept of the trauma of abuse, and therefore should have no opinion of what should occur after it happens.

7. A woman’s body is nobody’s except for her own. No man or any other woman should have the right to dictate what that woman does with her body. She has the right to choose and free will to make her own decisions. No one should control that, and now laws will stop that.

Over the past few weeks new laws regarding abortion have been proposed in Georgia and Ohio. Discussion of taking away a women’s right to choose has been long discussed over the decades, but it seems with these new laws being proposed we are getting closer and closer to stripping away a woman’s right to her own body more and more. In Georgia a bill entitled the “heart-beat bill” has been proposed. In this case, if a heartbeat is detected an abortion is no longer legal. This can stop a woman’s right to an abortion at as early is 6 weeks, 2 weeks after a woman usually finds out she is pregnant. It also states that a woman who has a pregnancy and chooses to get an abortion can face up to life in prison. In other cases, if a woman miscarries and doctors can find a reason to believe that she caused the miscarriage in any way, she can also face life in prison. In response, Dr. Catherine Romanos stated, “It’s patient abandonment.” It strips away the safety that woman can recieve when getting a legal abortion and having proper contraceptives to prevent pregnancy. It takes away a woman’s right to control herself, once again adding to the seemingly sexist narrative that has been growing over the past few days. These new laws are disturbing and pointless. It feels less like it’s about anything to do with “saving life” and more about robbing women from some of the only rights they have to control themselves. This is not a new narrative, these ideas have been brewing for a long time and now that we have people in power who can change these laws, it is the time to spark change. This is neglectful and disturbing, it is robbing women from being able to remain safe in their own skin.

In light of the awful occurrence that happened at the Notre Dame Cathedral, it only makes sense that our president would comment something like sending his thoughts or possibly even donating to help rebuild the cathedral, or so one would think. Instead of doing all the right things, like expressing his sadness for the tragedy, it seems he thought the best thing to do was to make a suggestion on how to stop the fire, which would’ve been beneficial if his suggestion wasn’t so ignorant and heartless. In response to the tragedy that shook up people from across the world, Trump’s suggestion was have “flying water tankers,” stop the fire, a truly brilliant suggestion. Luckily the France’s Sécurité Civile only took that suggestion with a grain of salt saying, “All means are being used” to fight the flames “except for water-bombing aircrafts which, if used, could lead to the collapse of the entire structure of the cathedral.” It is so unfortunate that in times of crisis, instead of aiding the circumstance, the only thing that could be offered by President Trump was a dimwitted response that unfortunately contributing to his present ignorance. Thankfully, many donations have been made to help repair the damages, totaling up to almost 1 billion dollars in aid.

It seems we have another politician being throw under for an alleged inappropriate behavior. This controversy seems particularly interesting since Biden had just recently declared his interest in running for the presidency in 2020. It seems odd to me that this controversy is because of behavior classified as “unwanted touching“. Not that I believe any man or woman should be subjected to any behavior they do not want happening to them, but this particular account seems… fishy to say the least. I think this controversy may take away from the many victims who have undergone serious emotional and physical trauma due to sexual assault. Not to take away from these women’s accounts, but it seems their accounts could be written off as Biden’s unnecessary friendly touching, which we’ve seen him do with Obama during his presidency, and many of his other political counterparts. I do not mean to come off as inconsiderate, however, in the grand scheme of things the timing of the release of her account should be taken into consideration when considering the validity of her statement. Biden even came out with a statement saying he is always affectionate and charismatic when meeting new people and being around people in general. I think now is a really important time for the Me Too Movement, and it would be a shame to see people who’ve experienced serious trauma have their experiences demeaned because of prior accounts.