This essay looks into reasons women have for reporting or not reporting domestic violence and sexual assault. While this topic has received a considerable amount of research from scholars, it still has not received the attention it should. When the #MeToo movement went viral, these issues started to become more salient in society, however there was still backlash, insinuating that there is still a large amount of misunderstanding around the issues of domestic violence and sexual assault. In this paper, I use my outsider looking in lens to examine reasoning behind the choice to report. Through looking at previous research in addition to my own case studies, I discover personal and institutional reasoning involved in the choice to report, in addition to details such as severity and assailant.

Dissenting Voices Cover Art Design by the members of the Women and Gender Studies Senior Seminar at The College at Brockport. The journal cover, a distinctive hand print of each author, captures the sense of feminist community that was present in our classroom and that spills into and gels the pages of the essays in the volume. Table of Contents All Voices - Our Voices. Joy Davidson-Davis, Gabriella Hoose, Bernie Lachman, Bailey Morse, Alise Murray, Kelsi Nau, Julia Palozzi, Melissa Szurgyi, Daphne Tucker, p. i. - Note from the Editor (Barbara LeSavoy), p. iii. Opening Voices - The Hunter vs. The Hunted. Julia Palozzi, p. 1-14. - The Outside Looking In: Examining Reasoning Behind the Choice to Report Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence. Melssia Szurgyi , p. 15-30. More Voices - Gender’s Impact on Majors in Higher Education: The Causes and the Consequences. Kelsi Nau, p. 31-46. - Redressing Dress Codes: The Effects of Sexualized School Dress Codes. Gabriella Hoose, p. 47-60. - LGBTQ Intimate Partner Violence: The Invisible Relationship. Alise Murray, p. 61-72. - A Woman Veteran Student’s Perspective. Bernie Lachman, p. 73-94. - Freedom en el fin del Mundo: Antarctica as the Key to Renegotiating Identity-Based Power Hierarchies. Bailey Morse, p. 95-106. Closing Voices - Book Review: A Queer and Pleasant Danger: The True Story of a Nice Jewish Boy who Joins the Church of Scientology, and Leaves Twelve Years Later to Become the Lovely Lady She is Today by Kate Bornstein (2012). Daphne Tucker, p. 105-114. - Book Review: The Other Side of Paradise by Staceyann Chin (2009). Joy Davidson-Davis, p. 115-122. - WMS 421 Spring 2018 Activism Photo Essay: #MeToo, p. 123.

The Internet includes groups of anonymous people identifying themselves as radical feminists who use their resources to spread hatred against trans people. A representative collection of words and images provide examples of this activity. Each of the images is explained and the significance of their Internet posting is explored.

This essay, which describes my curiosity on transgender identity, is a book review of the memoir by Kate Bornstein, A Queer and Pleasant Danger: The True Story of a nice Jewish boy Who Joins the Church of Scientology, and Leaves Twelve Years Later to Become the Lovely Lady she is Today (2012).

The purpose of this project is not to speak on the experience of all lesbian Asian Americans, but only the experiences of three lesbian Asian Americans: Sam, Jesse, and Sophie. The experiences of three individuals cannot be applicable to all lesbian-identified Asian Americans as their stories do not provide full understanding of the influential culture sanctions. This essay is merely an attempt to bring the invisible stories of these three women to the forefront, thus allowing the stories to become accessible so others can recognize that identifying as lesbian is not a betrayal of Asian American culture and identity. “Coming out” can manifest in whatever way feels natural, and the bond of family can help assuage the internal struggle of desegregating sexual and racial identity.

The circumstances are different for every individual who lives in poverty. Society foremost believe the information about poverty from people who have not experienced it, as opposed to the people who have. When people in poverty try to defend themselves from societal stereotypes, they are pushed back and told to know their place. It is as if we have zero credibility in our experiences living in poverty. The policies targeting people in poverty do not include us in the decision making. We are told to just get up and walk out of poverty. We are stereotyped and shunned from the economically privileged in society. If we are to one day become successful, we are still not worthy enough of the upper classes. We have aspirations, intelligence, experience, families, compassion, and most importantly we, have lives. People in poverty have stories that many could not fathom. This is my story.

Adoption tends to be described as an alternative form of family, but for a mother or father, family has no restrictions. This paper looks at the ways adoption deconstructs and recreates the idea of family. Existing research across fields of study surrounding family fails to cover specific research on adoption and lacks the research that looks at the ways adoption and other alternative family forms disrupt and distort the biological family unit. The word “family” can be defined in many different ways, and is a specific and individualistic concept. However, within the cultural sphere of family, biogenic families tend to be the culturally assumed and idolized form of family in today’s culture. As an individual who is an adoptee and has grown up in what is assumed to be an alternative family dynamic, this auto-ethnographic essay focuses on looking at the ways adoption redefines family and motherhood, as well as how the binary institutions of our American society is built to maintain the biogenic family ideal.

The systems and institutions that exist in our country are strategically designed to maintain patriarchy and privileged masculinity. Complacency of the majority ensures that these structures remain intact. In this paper, I consider the exclusion of feminism and discussions of gender from undergraduate political science and international studies courses, and why it is critical for us to be paying attention to it now perhaps more than ever before. I suggest that this exclusion only helps to ensure that patriarchal dominance continues into the future. We have the potential to change by adopting a more curious mindset.

Two photo essays document some of the gender-inspired activism of undergraduate Women and Gender Studies majors as an extension of their Women and Gender Studies Senior Seminar at The College at Brockport.

College students' anonymous comments about sexual assault issues on campuses are presented as a progressive narrative. Campus culture can normalize sexual assault with behaviors, language, and the active interaction between coed groups that hides sexual transgressions. The author states there appears to be a lack of awareness about rape across her campus, and advocates for rape and sexual assault education campus wide.