Michael Jackson is cancelled. For the record, the Catholic Church is, too. Let me cancel Big Bang’s Seungri while we’re at it.

Cancel culture refers to the act of shunning something that was once socially acceptable but is considered no longer. Whether it’s a beloved pop singer or your favorite author growing up, cancel culture has seeped into social media, turning it into a pastime that borders on toxic. We scroll through our phones, viewing highlights, tweets, or statuses – snippets of time that do not give us the big picture. A person can announce that ‘so-and-so’ is cancelled, and within a few hours, mob mentality has everyone up in arms.

This is where the differences between 17th century witch burners and people who participate in cancel culture start to blur. Because a good majority of both crowds failed to do proper research, and just immediately attach a negative impression to whatever they’re burning.

Books can be some of the easiest things to burn, both literally and metaphorically. Last month, Kosoko Jackson had to pull his debut, “A Place for Wolves” before its release date, after it was determined by literary social media (aka book Twitter) that it was problematic, as it was not a respectful representation of Muslims and the Bosnian War. Just a month before that, another author, Amelie Wen Zhao, had to pull her book, “Blood Heir”, after accusations of racism and improper depictions of slavery.

Can I ‘cancel’ these books, as I’m an active part of book Twitter and young adult social media? I didn’t even read them, so needless to say, I won’t be setting any unnecessary metaphorical fires to literature anytime soon. I can speak about inaccurate representations of the female perspective because I actually read some of the literature pertaining to it. When I ‘cancel’ something without doing the proper research, this prevents me from thinking critically about a piece, about a person, about an aspect of pop culture, that everyone insists should be automatically cancelled, I’m doing a disservice to myself, to social media, and to the subject that is under fire. Everyone is entitled to their opinions, but actually reading up and understanding the media gives us a chance to critically critique and formulate opinions that are more than a rallying mob cry.

I can’t speak on Michael Jackson without watching “Leaving Neverland”. I can acknowledge the problematic nature of the Catholic Church, with its numerous infractions, but I’ll leave the cancelling to a better versed authority. I just found out that Seungri, a member of one of my favorite k-pop groups, is leaving the entertainment industry, after being placed under fire for possibly taking part in a prostitution ring. I found this out an hour ago, which makes me just the right person to ‘cancel’ him.

Though we’ve risen from literally burning to metaphorically burning, we’re no better than the witch burners of old if we just blindly charge without understanding the ramifications of our actions. We lose out on the opportunity to broaden our perspective when we set fire to the stake, when we perpetuate the cycle of cancelling by pressing to retweet.

-Raisa Alexis Santos

Hormone Replacement Therapy and its Possible Connection to an Increased Risk of Alzheimer’s in Women

When I came across this article I was very concerned. I am familiar with doctors prescribing oral contraceptives or hormones to women who are postmenopausal and also to young women who have Primary Ovarian Failure or Insufficiency.  Primary Ovarian Failure or Insufficiency  can occur when a woman’s FSH levels are high which means she is menopausal when she is not suppose to be. The FSH keeps sending a signal for the body to release the egg but the estrogen is not responding, so the FSH will continue to release more hormones that begin to put the women in a menopausal state . Another cause of ovarian failure could be that the woman’s antibodies are attacking the ovaries because they see them as enemies to the body( that was the best way I could explain, I am not a doctor). HRT is also given to prevent heart disease and osteoporosis in women, among other things. Lamotte, the author of this article, states that “An observation study on hormone replacement therapy in nearly 85,000 postmenopausal Finnish women found that those on such therapy had a very small increase risk for Alzheimer’s, especially when using combination hormones long-term.” Doctors that are working on this issue say that this increase should not deter women from continuing HRT.

I am assuming this is either a fairly new finding or a complex issue that takes time to solve because the people who are doing this study don’t know exactly how the use of HRT is increasing the risk of Alzheimer’s in women. It is said that this disease is common in women as they begin to age and shouldn’t stop women from receiving HRT. Although Alzheimer’s is said to be common in women, I don’t think it is okay to take medication that increases the chances of being diagnosed with any disease. I take this matter to be very serious because I personally have a connection to POI. There seems to be a lot of unanswered questions regarding the topic of infertility or why POI happens in young women. Doctors will usually prescribe HRT so that the women could receive the estrogen she needs and have a period. I don’t like oral contraceptives and reading this article strengthened my dislike for HRT. While I do believe it is important to take care of your health and I am aware that medicine is not perfect and is a work in progress, young women like me have to worry about how POI and the medication they prescribe is affecting our body. Here are some articles to read if you are interested.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/06/health/alzheimers-hormone-replacement-therapy-study/index.html

-Kalae

Black Girls Matter

On January 3, 2019, Lifetime television network premiered the first two episodes of the six-part documentary, Surviving R. Kelly. The documentary diligently dissects the allegations made against R. Kelly over the span of over twenty years, and presents interviews by several courageous survivors who were willing to share their experiences of sexual and domestic abuse. Over the span of two decades, dozens of allegations have been presented to the public regarding abuse by the hands of R. Kelly, ranging from performing sexual acts on a minor, to starving women for several days. The victims’ ages range from 14 to 35 years old. The severity, commonality, and the plurality of the allegations made against R. Kelly are analyzed throughout the documentary with the recurrent probing question: How has a person in the public eye managed to escape legal or societal retribution for his actions?

Fame, wealth, and artistic genius are all perpetuating themes that have gotten a significant degree of exploration within the film in terms of analyzing how a perpetrator could have gotten away with committing these crimes for so long. These factors have surely contributed to a normalization of behavior, and subsequent cultural complicity. However, one of the most insidious contributors that this documentary identifies as sustaining R. Kelly’s power, is the historical devaluation and sexualization of black female youth. Mikki Kendall, Writer and Co-Founder of HoodFeminism states in the documentary, “We still socially don’t perceive young black women as innocent, as deserving of protection. Somehow it’s their fault. When in reality the problem isn’t the girl, it’s the predators.”  In her journal article, “To Blame or Not To Blame: Influences of Target Race and Observer Sex on Rape Attribution,” Roxanne A. Donovan identifies the historical origins and implications of this stereotype: “During slavery, Black women were routinely stereotyped as immoral and hypersexual as justification for the sexual atrocities forced on them.” The historical and societal implications of this pernicious myth has evidently permeated into our present-day psyche. Though Surviving R. Kelly has garnered much media attention over it’s attention onto the failures of the justice system in responding to violence against female youth, R. Kelly’s popularity amongst his fans have not declined. After the documentary aired, USA Today online reported that “On-demand audio streams for the same period showed a 76 percent increase and video streams increased by 85 percent.”

On February 22, 2019, Kelly was arrested and charged with 10 counts of aggravated sexual abuse, with three of the four victims under the age of consent. This arrest marks the second time Kelly will be tried for sexual abuse against a minor, and hopefully this time justice wins. However, before we can optimistically cheer for good to save the day, we have to analyze why bad won for so long.

As previously identified, historical and social stereotypes have promoted a culture where some communities aren’t as valued or as protected as others. R. Kelly is just one figure that is emblematic of a systemic problem.

Here are some facts that have been provided by the Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault:

  1. African American girls and women 12 years old and older experienced higher rates of rape and sexual assault than white, Asian, and Latina girls and women from 2005-2010. (U.S. DOJ Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Female Victims of Sexual Violence, 1994-2010,” 2013)
  2. 40-60% of black women report being subjected to coercive sexual contact by age 18. (Black Women’s Blueprint, “The Truth Commission on Black Women and Sexual Violence,” 2012)
  3. 4 in 10 black women have been subjected to intimate partner violence in their lifetimes. (National Center for Injury Prevention and Control and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2010 Summary Report,” 2011.)
  4. 40% of confirmed sex trafficking survivors in the U.S are African-American. (Banks, Duren and Kyckelhahn, Tracey, “ Characteristics of Suspected Human Trafficking Incidents, 2008-2010”, The Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2011.)
  5. A study found that college students perceived a black victim of sexual assault to be less believable and more responsible for her assault than a white victim. (Donovan, “To Blame or Not to Blame: Influences of Target Race and Observer Sex on Rape Blame Attribution,” 2007)

These statistics are not just horrific, but absolutely embarrassing for a country and society that can and should do better.

As many have viewed the aggressive, erratic, and unpredictable behavior that R. Kelly exhibited in front of Gayle King, many applauded her composure and dignity. Throughout Twitter, many social media users praised her with claims that we had so much to learn from her resolved disposition. I’m calling BS. Though from a journalistic perspective, I commend her ability to not become intimated or distracted from the task at hand. However, as a society, we have to learn our history, our biases, and learn to actively do better. By this I mean that so much focus has been placed on R. Kelly’s questionable behavior, that we have often let the voices of the victims go silent. Instead of fixating on our Twitter feed about the next time R. Kelly goes to jail or does some awkward interview, let’s place our attention onto the victims.

-Justine Mekonen