If You Followed The Media You'd Think

The Problem With Gender Is That It Prescribes How We Should Be, Rather Than Recognising How We Are.

You Deserve To Take Up Space.

We Teach Girls Shame; Close Your Legs, Cover Yourself, We Make Them Feel As Though By Being Born Female They're Already Guilty Of Something.

Her Blog Was Doing Well, With Thousands Of Unique Visitors Each Month, And She Was Earning Good Speaking Fees, And She Had A Fellowship At Princeton And A Relationship With Blaine - "you Are The Absolute Love Of My Life," He'd Written In Her Last Birthday Card - And Yet There Was Cement In Her Soul. It Had Been There For A While, An Early Morning Disease Of Fatigue, Shapeless Desires, Brief Imaginary Glints Of Other Lives She Could Be Living, That Over The Months Melded Into A Piercing Homesickness.

It Is Easy To Romanticize Poverty, To See Poor People As Inherently Lacking Agency And Will. It Is Easy To Strip Them Of Human Dignity, To Reduce Them To Objects Of Pity. This Has Never Been Clearer Than In The View Of Africa From The American Media, In Which We Are Shown Poverty And Conflicts Without Any Context.