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Cassandra was admired by the god Apollo. In efforts to seduce her, he offered her the gift of prophecy. After receiving the gift, she changed her mind and rejected him. Angered, he spat into her mouth and cursed her so that none of her prophecies would be believed. She was seen as a liar and … Continue reading →

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Transcript 27- Maya

"I think that like the community... the people I met in treatment were incredible. Um, and I'm still friends with some of them. Um, but it's like... making friends in a treatment setting is really kind of hard because you all recover at different rates. So like, when I was doing really well, some of my friends weren't. And like that's when you need to make the decision, do I want to keep this person in my life and potentially have it affect my recovery or do I want to cut this person out because they're bringing me down and like... I did have to... cut some people out of my life because they weren't getting better and it wasn't helping me. And that's like a really hard thing to do and it feels like betrayal on my end, like to that person." 

Transcript 26- Cass

"So there was definitely this feeling that like... right, there's... there's sort of like the idea of like this like platonic man as like macho meat eater, easy to get into fights, probably does something blue collar, um, like... will bury their emotions until they die. Um, and then there's sort of like... how men actually are in practice, which is like... just them but like... colored by some of those things sometimes. Like you can't not be defined on or against that. Um, and so...you know, there... there was definitely a period of time being like, "all right, how can I like, carve out a space of masculinity for myself that like doesn't need to sort of like, make room for... for... for like these things that I don't really like... want to even kind of interact with?" Um, and like... at first it felt like a selfish thing. Like, "oh no, like I'm a man, I still need to address the ways in which men are shitty because I'm a man and men are shitty". Um, but as I sort of... as it went on, I was like, "oh no, it's not quite that simple". "

Transcript 25- Valeria

No professional fields have been really nice to women. But the sciences have been particularly cruel and I just feel like I have to do really well to prove that I deserve to be there cause if I fuck up, it's not just on me. It reflects on everyone who has a similar identity or presents similarly... Men are allowed to stand on their own and be like, “Hi, I am my own person”. Specifically white men, I should say. Whereas one woman is supposed to represent all of them. So like... in the 2016 presidential election when Hillary lost many people said, “Oh well this just proves we're not ready for a woman. We shouldn't have tried a woman because no woman can do it”. And it's just like... she is one person. You don't look at every man who's lost a presidential race and say, “Oh wow, well we could never have a man because look what happened when this one tried”.

Transcript 24- Meghan

"Um, and I think one of the things that still really angers me, especially given the current context with Kavanagh's confirmation... alcohol was used to gaslight me. Because I had had alcohol at time, you know, it was used to gaslight me to say that my memory was not accurate. He had had more to drink than I had at that point. And yet alcohol was not used to gaslight his memory, alcohol was used as his excuse. “If he hadn't been drinking, he wouldn't have assaulted me”. And it just really showed a very gendered attitude towards alcohol consumption."

Transcript 23- Ana

And that's like... there's this weird interaction of like, performativity of like, what am I doing when I'm like, trying to come off better than I actually feel like... cause there's definitely like this weird interplay of like, I'm insecure about telling people that I'm not okay. But also I... like holding parts of myself to a somewhat high standard so that I can remind myself that I can be okay. It's like... like I’ll like clean my room and do my makeup and then I'll be like, "so everything's fine and I can be fine because my room is clean and I've done my makeup". But in reality maybe I'm like... dying a little. But it's... it's, yeah. It's like a weird place between like self care and performativity.

Transcript 22- April

I think particularly when I was in middle school, there was this idea of, being depressed is just what teenage girls do and so there was this response of, “you’re just doing this because you’re a teenage girl, not because you’re actually experiencing anything wrong.” I think there was definitely subtext behind the comments.

Transcript 21- Valerie

"Like I think the analogy I use, if you were like, “hey, here are some magic pills that you can take. This one's for your bipolar disorder, this one's for your schizophrenia” I’d take the second and not the first because I don't know what kind of person I'd be like if my whole life and personality was different starting at the age of like six, right? Like [bipolar disorder] is a thing I know how to deal with, I've always dealt with. [the schizophrenia] is the thing that I have a clear before and after picture."

Transcript 20- Ada

“I still have this really intense relationship to desire. And when people desire me, I automatically owe them something… um, favors or flattery or my body or just… I don’t know, anything. Comfort. Um, the truth is, no. I mean, when someone is good to you or they’re just doing what they should do, like as long as you’re a good person and they like you and you like them, when someone is good to you, that’s face value how they should behave. And it just takes acknowledging that and being gracious to that and… finding ways to… you know, pay it forward. That’s not charity, it’s just love. It’s like, intimacy with someone on any… any sort of level.”

Transcript 19- Helena

"So my abuser was also my rapist and so recently, especially with the “me too” movement, which I'm so excited about, I'm really glad it's being talked about. However it's being talked about so much and pretty much everywhere I look... sometimes it's hard to get away from those conversations. So there will be moments in time where... for example, unfortunately the Brett Kavanaugh case, that was the worst bout of depression that I've really, really long time."

Transcript 18- Christina

"I feel like with narratives about men...there's more… I don’t want to say it's more heroic but it's like there's more of this sympathy. It's like, “what could have brought a man down to that?” Maybe... maybe... but with women it’s like monstrous and it's... twisted and it's not romanticized in the same way. Like all these tales we get about like... sad.... and I like a lot of the stories…. like I love a lot of movies or stories that are about like the tortured man. Cause it's like sympathetic regardless of gender-- I can recognize, you know? But with women... I feel like complex female villains... who are they? Like no, they don't exist a lot of times."