Hear Mysti Speak.

The ‘L’ in LGBT stands for ‘lonely’.

The fear felt prior to coming out is often vanquished as your young vulnerable self attends Pride or gay clubs in which they feel safe. It is not a path often simply strolled down, as discrimination from family, friends, or flat out strangers perpetually lurks at every step. However, what happens when it feels as though that rejection instead stems from the people you believed would be your saviours?

My Beef with Toxic Masculinity.

The idea of toxic masculinity is in no way a new one, but its definition and name are. In recent years, it has appeared increasingly in the media and conversation. Everybody knows someone who on some level exhibits its behaviours. It could be a close friend who makes derogatory, sexist jokes; a family member who gets away with oddly violent behaviours under the excuse ‘boys will be boys’; or any other men you know who fall under this category. One aspect of this I have noticed for the past few years is the retaliation of these men against veganism.

Erasure of Womxn in STEM.

Being a womxn with a deep adoration for the sciences, I was always told I should become a doctor or a nurse, while the boys were seemingly given more options, such as engineering or computer science. Not that I was not allowed to do these things, but I was simply never pushed to explore those choices as I was with medicine. On top of this, my knowledge of womxn in the science world was so limited: the ones I knew personally were again in medicine, and the role models I had in my classes were all men like Darwin and Einstein. This is not to devalue their research, they were incredible and influential scientists, but where was the teaching about womxn? Why was there nobody like me?