ByJessie-Lane Metz

Jessie is a perpetual grad student, studying all the social justice issues. She is a lover of all food (cheese is the only food, also bacon), critical analysis of everything all of the time, and really bad TV shows.

  1. Achieving equity requires real, actual hard work to address privilege, and policies and money directed at equalizing outcomes. I know this to be true because just waiting for things to get better doesn’t seem to work too well. And neither does having the best of intentions. Even when there are real efforts made to create more equitable spaces, people can get real upset that someone else may have gotten something they weren’t “entitled” to because…

    27 comments
  2. The university I’m attending seems to think that handing out rape whistles is the best solution to stopping a string of unsolved sexual assaults that have been taking place on campus all semester. Perhaps they are trying this new tactic because the administrative emails telling us to be very, very afraid, not to go out alone at night, and to be more careful (uh-huh) seem to not be working to stop a real-life rapist from…

    52 comments
  3. When I think of the two cases of Renisha McBride and Jonathan Ferrell, two young Black people who were shot and killed after getting into car accidents and seeking help, I have all of the feelings. I feel a lot of heartbreak for their loved ones. And I feel fearful. For myself and other Black folks about what could happen to us if we are ever in distress. If we can’t trust human…

    20 comments
  4. The first time I was involved in a fight about racism at school, I was so young my mom was still gently introducing me to the concept as a permanent fixture in my life. It was sometime in my early elementary years when I came home from school singing “Jimmy Crack Corn” and my mom had to go in and let the school music teacher know that her Black daughter (the only Black kid in…

    23 comments
  5. Spring has sprung. Summer has lingered. Fall is falling. And winter is coming.

    It’s back-to-school time for all of the little children (and many of the grown-ups like me, who have traded in reading the things we like to read for the things that we have to read). Fall also heralds in the back-to-school bigots who are interested in banning all the good books, and using all manner of explanations to

    16 comments
  6. Spoiler alerts galore.

    I follow Lucy Hale on Instagram. For those that don’t know who she is/don’t obsessively read US Weekly, Lucy is the actress who plays Aria Montgomery on Pretty Little Liars. The other day she posted a picture of herself and Ian Harding, the actor who plays Ezra Fitz, Aria’s high school English teacher and her rapist.

    I had a strong reaction to seeing their smiling faces, one of total disgust.

    98 comments
  7. In my first year of college I took a fair number of psychology classes. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I knew I wanted to avoid all of the math and science I could in the process of figuring it out. So psychology (of the non BSc variety) seemed like a great fit.

    It was in one of those early classes that an instructor told

    43 comments
  8. It has been a pretty rad week on Twitter for addressing some of the issues with non-intersectional mainstream feminism. If you haven’t seen the #solidarityisforwhitewomen hashtag started by @karynthia that's been trending on Twitter the whole world over, you should go right ahead and check it out. Here is an article written by Mikki Kendall herself, explaining what the movement is all about.

    #Solidarityisforwhitewomen speaks to the experiences of women

    58 comments
  9. I love Oprah Winfrey.

    When The Oprah Winfrey Show was on the air I didn’t watch it much, because that woman has a gift for finding my heartstrings and pulling them until I’m feeling whatever emotion she wants me to feel. Full disclosure: I cried like a baby when she interviewed John Travolta about his then-upcoming movie Ladder 49. And, I mean: really, Jessie? That shit is not sad. It got 40% on Rotten…

    31 comments
  10. Trigger warning at the author's request: This post discusses racism, racist violence, anti-Black racism, anti-Black racist violence, transphobia, and gendered violence at length. 

    I write this article at an important time in history, but also in my own personal life. I am reeling from the not-guilty verdict in the case of the murder of Trayvon Martin over a week ago. At the same time, I am preparing to defend my Masters’ thesis, on

    212 comments