It’s rather taboo on the Left to criticize the strategies or goals of others working for justice and equality. This is especially true when you’re a person of privilege unaffected by policies and practices that do harm to others: a straight individual disagreeing with the tactics of a gay person pushing for equal rights, a white person questioning the wisdom of the policy ideas of black activists, and so on. If you can’t ever see yourself doing those things, use your imagination. What if an undocumented friend supports violence against the government to bring about radical change and you don’t? What if a female relative suggests the first woman president should be allowed to serve more than two terms in office due to historic discrimination? What if a black coworker says the police should be abolished, or African Americans should have places in the public sphere where whites simply cannot go, and you disagree? Obviously, no matter who you are you will always be an independent thinker — you won’t be able to help disagreeing with this or that. And as not all black people think alike, nor all LGBTQ people or women or whomever, you will always find comrades — on the Left or elsewhere — who agree with you. (“Men don’t get an opinion on abortion” or “You’re white, stay in your lane” have always had that problem. Someone can simply point out that there exist many pro-life women or conservative black folk. Do their identities inherently make their ideas morally or factually right? No, ideas have to stand on their own merits! So how could one’s identity automatically make one’s ideas morally or factually wrong? This blows everything up. We on the Left are sheepishly reminded that what’s ethical or true is completely divorced from who someone is. X is wrong no matter who says it, Y is right no matter who says it. Same with actions. Listening to impacted persons is hugely important; you want to become an educated, compassionate person. It helps you make the right moral calculus. A truly informed decision. But the moral or factual nature of an idea doesn’t change based on who espouses it, as much as we might want it to.) The question is whether you should keep quiet about those different ideas, keep such thoughts private.

One may see this as the right thing to do because, the argument goes, going public with criticism validates and emboldens those on the Right who don’t think certain policies and practices do harm to others and therefore shouldn’t change, who think oppressed and disrespected Americans are exaggerating or delusional, who don’t really care what happens to others, and so on. In other words, if the Left engages in rhetoric that resembles holding back or controlling or condemning the behavior of marginalized and mistreated people, it will only encourage the Right to do the same. While there may be some merit to this, I am doubtful as to the significance of the effect. It’s hard to say with any confidence that insensitive apathy, ignorance, and bigotry on the Right would worsen in any meaningful way if more liberals broke rank. But even if I’m wrong, the potential harm of speaking up must be weighed against the potential benefits. For instance, avoiding hypocrisy (pushing forward the adoption of what’s right seems like a potential benefit too, from a very subjective standpoint). If we oppose violence and speak up against the violence of others, will we also speak up when our allies commit violence? Or shall we be silent because it’s not our place? This brings about another potential benefit: finding common ground with the other side concerning things like violence, or unfairness, or segregation, or anything else. Reaching common ground with ideological opponents is surely helpful in moving toward positive social change.

But there remains the nagging question of whether to speak up when it won’t be viewed as your place. You’re not a woman, how dare you contradict us on policies that affect women? You’re not black, your opinion on strategies and tactics doesn’t matter and shouldn’t be raised. And so on. While we want to always listen earnestly to the people actually affected by modern discrimination, intolerance, and oppression, I think most everyone would agree that no human being is perfect. No human group is perfect. Or side of the political spectrum. We will do wrong. We’ll have bad ideas. We’ll be hypocritical at times. I think it’s possible, and acceptable, to listen sincerely to others, personally affected persons, but still, after all the education and pondering and moral calculating, to reach a different conclusion and express it. In my view, no matter who you are you should use your voice when you see something you view as wrong. You should speak based on two simple principles: wrong is wrong no matter who does it or says it and it’s never the wrong time to do the right thing. That’s an honest, moral way to live. No one’s saying you should charge the stage and steal the mic from a presenter of color, or kick down the door of a private meeting. Just don’t be afraid to say what you think is right when you’re in a conversation, posting on socials, or writing articles.

This brings us at last to the topic of safe spaces at universities, and the suggestion that we on the Left spend some time rethinking them.

This comes with a few points of clarification. First, I look favorably upon student uprisings when someone who demeans and disrespects people of other classes, races, sexual orientations, gender identities, and so forth comes to speak at colleges. Students must have the right to protest anyone they please! Conservative students also have the right to protest liberal speakers and try to get them to cancel their speeches or force the university administration to do so. All students must also have the right to protest college officials and professors, other student groups, racist incidents, bad policies, and more. Protests are a proud American tradition, fueling beneficial social progress, and must be protected from curtailment. Yet obviously we should be selective about when to exercise that right.

Second, colleges (like other public spaces) should be safe from hate speech, hate acts, and violence. What defines those things is subject to debate, and is a central problem here, but in principle any moral person would support this. The students who use slurs against gays or throw bananas at black people should be expelled immediately and then charged with hate crimes. Real punishment is not only deserved for awful acts, but it can make others (and the guilty) think twice next time and thus prevent such things in the future. Equal treatment can be reserved for those who say things like “Kill Whitey.” No one should have to worry about hate crimes while pursuing an education.

Third, the concept of safe groups, for lack of a better term, is a fine idea and it’s something most everyone would support. If you’re a student organization that supports trans rights and suddenly religious students who wish to restrict trans rights come along and infiltrate your meetings and try to undermine you from within you should have the right to kick them out and should have school support (including help with enforcement). Same for if pro-choice students tried to infiltrate pro-life groups. The Left should not try to keep conservative groups off campus unless they explicitly violate the second point above. So my caution of safe spaces doesn’t focus on those things.

It concerns places where classrooms, dorms, and quads are expected to be free of opinions that we Leftists don’t agree with but don’t constitute hate speech (again, the definition of this is in dispute, but we’re simply operating on principle). As a professor of religious studies at James Madison University wrote for the Atlantic, “[Students’] ability to speak freely in the classroom is currently endangered… According to anonymous in-class surveys, about one-third of my students believe in the exclusive salvific truth of Christianity. But rarely do these students defend their beliefs in class. In private, they have told me that they believe doing so could be construed as hateful, hostile, intolerant, and disrespectful.” They are likely scared sharing their opinions might lead to ugly exchanges like this one at the University of Kansas, which occurred after a conservative student suggested modern injustices and mistreatment were liberal “feelings,” not “facts.” Upon watching, I can hardly blame conservative students for being intimidated into silence, even as a social justice advocate myself.

“Homosexuality is immoral because God says so” or “Affirmative Action should be abolished” or “All (or Blue) Lives Matter” or “Your biological sex is female so your gender is female no matter what” simply can’t (or shouldn’t, in my view) be classified as hate speech worthy of official reprimand or expulsion or prosecution under hate crime laws, and thus should be permissible anywhere on campuses, even if we find them ignorant or offensive. They should be met without an explosive response like the one above. When they are uttered we can engage with the speakers in a civil manner and try to explain why certain views are inaccurate, strip people of their dignity, or even lay ideological foundations for hurtful laws and practices — not try to restrict such speech by making it socially taboo through intimidation or a violation of official university rules through policy change. This is important for a couple reasons. One is about the value of legal free speech, the other about the value of social free speech.

First, while some of us liberals may be tired of hearing it, free speech is a right that must be protected; like most all rights, it needs to have limitations, but it’s highly valuable to all of us. Now, “free speech” has to do with how the government relates to its citizens, not how we relate to each other. This is often forgotten by conservatives discussing this issue. So the student-to-student intimidation seen above isn’t at all a free speech violation. But most colleges are public spaces, owned by the states. They’re for everyone, not just liberals. Universities shouldn’t change their policies in ways that punish conservative or religious opinions. (Again, the line between hate speech and non-hate speech will have to be debated and determined; yielding to student protests to cancel one speaker may be the right thing to do, while the same could not be said for another.) Most of us understand the devastating impact restricting speech has had on oppressed groups throughout history, people being imprisoned or killed for daring to demand this or that right or saying this or that is scientifically true or socially desirable. Universities and other government arms were part of this. Today, we liberals wish to voice our opinions boldly. Free speech is something we have to extend to others if we desire it for ourselves. It’s the right thing to do and avoids hypocrisy.

Second, universities are places of learning where you should be met with viewpoints you think are dead wrong or horrific, as conservatives often correctly point out, but even more importantly in such a space you learn how to defend your views while people who are ignorant or prejudiced or apathetic are exposed to you. That interaction with the “Other” is a key to eradicating the very ideas that offend us, devalue the humanity of comrades, and contribute to awful policies and practices. It’s a chance to change people for the better. That seems less likely to happen if you insist on censoring, via collective intimidation, the people you’d like to see fundamentally transform. We really do need respectful, reasoned engagement and open communication. There’s value in social free speech.

In some places, safe spaces have surely gone too far. At American University, for example, after bananas were hung from little nooses on the day a black student government president took office, student protests made several demands to the university president, who agreed to them. One was to designate a new cafe on campus as a sanctuary for people of color for the rest of the semester (admittedly, a matter of days). The cafe, called The Bridge, was originally intended to be open to all students. Similar requests have been made at Oberlin College, Evergreen State, and elsewhere, and, similarly, private businesses have attempted to keep out Trump voters and cops.

(Sarah Huckabee Sanders was denied service at a restaurant because of her role in the Trump administration. This kind of act should not be legal. I personally do not want to live in some nightmarish Libertarian dystopia where everyone refuses service to everyone else and that’s somehow fine by law. If business owners want to violate the law and face the consequences in acts of dissent, that’s fine. A Nazi walks in, sure, break the law and refuse service — an epic stand! Of course, as with all lawbreaking, whether refusing service is the moral thing to do depends on why it is done. Ethics are situational. So we can’t pretend the motives and morality are the same for kicking out, say, LGBT Americans, who are still largely unprotected from this horror, the religious right frolicking along with no consequences for discrimination. But I still think the country should follow the example of Seattle, D.C., and the Virgin Islands and protect political rights in such spaces. It shouldn’t be legal to refuse service to, say, a liberal. That’s a more decent country, with better laws. What I want for myself I need to be willing to grant others. A society where I could be kicked out of a restaurant for being a Marxist or atheist with no consequence to the owner, no law broken whatsoever, sounds like a dreary society to live in indeed.)

I care a great deal about racial justice, about creating a society where black people have the same opportunities and privileges as whites, unburdened by present racism or Jim Crow poverty passed on to them. I recognize my own privilege: the one not experiencing the storm needs no shelter. And I don’t want to ignore the psychological and emotional needs of people who experience racism, from hate crimes to microaggressions. But a public space where whites simply aren’t supposed to go? While not enacted in the name of racial superiority and supremacy (quite the opposite), is not segregation in the name of shelter from the racist storm nevertheless morally questionable? Isn’t public segregation still wrong, even for that purpose, with that motive? Do we want to give racists a “they are doing it so we can too” card of justification? We should be a bit more cautious of any type of exclusion in public spaces. Opposing that seems like the right thing to do, and it avoids hypocrisy and the opening of a dangerous door — most of us liberals and Leftists are horrified at the idea of the return of Jim Crow segregation. At times I feel we are moving in that direction anyway, a terrifying feeling, so the white backlash (“we can do it too”) would likely be severe, a disaster for race relations that would leave many people of color hurt. Private spaces like homes and dorm rooms, safe groups, protests, and seeking real punishments for severe misdeeds (like hanging nooses) seem like more moral goals and strategies to escape or address injustices and hate, among many others.

A sanctuary like The Bridge pours gasoline on the fires of bigots (this seems a greater danger than liberals modeling how to object to social justice movement practices for the Right). You don’t have to care what bigots think, but you should care about what reinforces their worldview. Whites whining about being oppressed, about black revenge, about Leftist segregation, and about hypocrisy are virtually always spouting nonsense. Exclusion in public spaces seems to be actively offering such arguments a hint of legitimacy, which should be avoided at all costs. A cafe reserved for people of color also counters the Left’s goals and rhetoric of inclusion; it counters what we’re supposed to be working toward: a multicultural society where people of all colors, sexual orientations, genders, and creeds live, work, and learn together, where tolerance, justice, equality, and human dignity reign.

Surely designated areas or buildings at colleges for non-white, non-straight, non-cis, or other people do more harm than good in the fight for a better world.

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In 2013, after finishing my graduate studies, I accepted a job as a paraprofessional at an elementary school, working with special education and emotionally disturbed children in the Blue Valley School District.

I worked with W in the mornings. He was a friendly, energetic second-grade boy, skilled at math but slow at reading and writing. His ADHD was untreated. At his best, he was a creative spirit who loved to talk to adults and students alike. At his worst, as with all our kids, he refused to accept adult authority or complete his assignments. He would often kick his desk in anger, scream, cry, throw things on the floor. Once he became so angry he jumped on a table and bellowed like an animal. At times like that he was physically removed from the classroom and placed in our “quite room,” a padded room where our students were put when they become a danger to themselves or others (though our kids also used it to relax or nap). In this room, he once shrieked that he would kill me. But when it was over and it was all out of his system, he was quickly happy again as if nothing happened.

W, after the trauma of his parents’ divorce, was savagely raped by his new step-brother, a boy of 13. W likely has PTSD. He was terrified of and idolized his brother. One day he brought to school a drawing his brother made of himself, and all W wanted to do was stare at it. I was finally able to convince him to put it away so he didn’t have to think about the event his whole day. He was in therapy, but as a victim he will nevertheless be more likely to molest others when he is older.

I also worked with N in the mornings. He was a fifth-grade boy with Autism who had an incredible memory, excelled at math, and loved to clean. His mind was terribly logical, and he needed his day structured, with a minute-by-minute routine carefully followed. He was terrified of fire alarms, and I left the building with him before any drill. N often spoke in hypotheticals like:

If I was getting physically aggressive and was being destructive of property, would you get your walkie and say, “Could the principal come to C pod? I’m having trouble here.” Would you say that?

N accepted the consequences of his actions well, because he cared deeply about rules. But he also seemed to get a bit of a high breaking them. He was obsessed with curse words, enjoying the shock and awe of blurting out a random “fuck!” in class, and used Google to try to find new words to use (and he once searched for porn while at school). He sometimes encouraged our other kids to swear or throw rocks at recess, delighting in the rebellion. He loved to say things like “Shut up!” and “Zip it, happy meal!” He would sometimes throw chairs and become physically aggressive toward peers and paras, but this wasn’t common. N had a good home life; he was thoughtful, curious, and creative, and we enjoyed each other’s company so much I ended up being his para at summer camp after that school year.

I worked with L in the afternoons. She was the sweetest child I ever met. Her mother drank heavily (and was likely on drugs) while pregnant, so L had the cognitive functions expected with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. She was a third grader with the mind of a 4 or 5 year old. She could not remember 1 + 1 or 1 + 2; it had to be shown to her using manipulatives like blocks or fingers. We usually drew dots on white boards together, and either added more or erased some. L was a decent reader and writer, struggling with spelling on par with other third graders. Her loving grandma, whom she lived with, owned a horse and L knew how to ride. Horses were her thing. She was not violent in any way, though she did throw her math notebook on the ground once in frustration.

Her energy was extreme. She would race about the room, laughing maniacally. When I first met her, she was shy and terrified of me, but also very sober due to meds. After switching to new meds she was more vocal and spunky, and being used to me she was soon unafraid to yell “OK, we’re done with math now!” two minutes after we began, slamming her math book shut, cackling with laughter. I think what made L so cute was she repeated things you said to her to help her process. She spent most of her day speaking to herself:

I’m going to draw on this white board with permanent marker. No! Don’t do that, sweetie. You have to show positive behavior to get a happy face for this part of math. If you don’t get enough happy faces, you don’t get the prize box!

We eventually decided she had a voice or two in her head. One of them had a name, and when I asked L about this she grew embarrassed and secretive.

There were a few kids who needed hospitalization and residential care. Two girls, N and R, had psychological problems too severe for our setting.

Then there was T, a fifth-grade boy abandoned by his parents, living with an unloving foster mother. He was on the verge of being adopted in third grade, but at the last moment the couple changed their minds. When T received low marks, his diet was restricted at home and he was made to stay in his room, which reportedly had next to nothing in it. T always made sure to have a book with him — it would sometimes be all he had for the night. He loved to read; I gave him a copy of Redwall. His foster mother disliked him, but the way she treated him was not severe enough to have him removed by social services. T weighed as much as I do and was nearly as tall, so when angry he could hurt people. He screamed and tore apart classrooms, and when we restrained him he bit. He threw a textbook once to strike another child in the face. He sprinted from the building. Usually, his breakdowns occurred at the end of the day, when he realized his score was low and there would be repercussions at home. He dreaded going home, causing him to go ballistic. We suspected T was abused as well at some early point in his tumultuous life.

There were others. K was a cute kindergartner with Autism, who when upset screamed, bit, kicked, and grabbed the front of his pants to expose himself to adults. There was M, a sweet boy who was Autistic and for years, I was told, was a self-mute. He was vocal when I came along, but when angry and defiant simply sat and refused to move or speak. Happy or enraged, he always had that same goofy smile on his face. Sometimes, when really upset, he crawled under his desk, or slowly plucked things from the wall and set them on the floor, or took a chair and carefully tipped it over until it rested comfortably on its side. But he was in love with L, so often when she insulted him or didn’t want to play he charged her and angrily waved a fist in her face.

Another boy named M, a kindergartner, lived with grandparents who thought it wise to let him play Grand Theft Auto, and thus he loved guns and tried to talk about shooting cars and cops in the game before teachers cut him off. His father was decapitated by a train.

Finally, there was C, a girl with Asperger Syndrome. She had a terrible bowl haircut and large grey eyes. But she loved learning (I taught her social studies), was very bright and thoughtful, and enjoyed Karate (sometimes threatening to use it on adults, but in general remembering to only use her powers for good). She was known to elope from the school, but was usually not physically aggressive.

It was hard to say goodbye to them.

The next year I took a similar job at a Grandview grade school that offered a higher income despite being a poorer district. While the classroom in Blue Valley was evenly mixed economically and racially (far more racially diverse than the school as a whole, which made me worry about the perception of the hundreds of white students: why are the only black kids in the school in the naughty classroom?), the Grandview class was mostly poor black boys. Two or three times that year I found myself discussing race with them when they raised the topic; one amusing moment I won’t soon forget was when one inquired about a girlfriend of mine. He asked, “Is your girlfriend black, Mr. Griffin?” I replied, “No, I’ve never had a black girlfriend.” “Ha!” another laughed. “Mr. Griffin can’t have no black girlfriend! There oughta be a law against that!” “You know, it wasn’t that long ago that…”

The boy who found the thought of me with a black woman so hilarious and strange was a large, round second grader named C. From what I could gather his home life was pleasant enough, but he had great difficulty with authority and loved being in charge. He apparently ran the show at home and had trouble changing his attitude at school (days with a substitute teacher meant he had to be carefully monitored or he would attempt to take over classroom leadership). C, despite being a football player and knowing full well how much bigger and stronger he was than all the other second graders, was not one for violence. A gentle giant. He would threaten to beat kids up at times, but when angry would simply refuse to move and let two or three adults struggle to carry him to the private cool-down room (no padded room this time; students had to be held until calm). But he was delightful to teach, loved learning and excelled academically, and would often have us adults trying to suppress gales of laughter at his wit and flamboyant personality (“He’s more of a sista, really!” as one of my black co-paras put it). When C danced at Friday dance parties, however, there was no hiding our mirth.

The class was mostly second graders. There was R, who was always kind, calm, and thoughtful but struggled with academics, especially reading. I heard he brought a knife to school once, however, before my time there. M was almost certainly Autistic, though his mother didn’t want him tested. He was sweet and full of boundless energy, but could throw quite the tantrum — and sometimes objects. His meltdowns were always more “sad crying” than “angry crying.” He often spoke to himself, and I remember him saying “Oh, snaps!” when surprised. P came from one of the poorest families. He barely spoke at first and remained quiet throughout the year, usually a rather serious look on his face. For being skinny he put up quite the struggle when he had to be removed for not following directions or misbehaving, such as when he shouted “nigga!” at recess. He also stole from time to time, and even committed sexual assault — exposing himself and thrusting against a girl. Again, he was a second grader. And again, possibly abused himself.

There was a kindergartner, Z, who when upset always spoke of hurting or killing his cat. I often told him how much I loved cats and asked how his was doing, hoping to encourage peaceful interaction; abuse of animals can often predict worse acts later on. A white third grader named Z was abandoned, at least for a time, by his mother and lived with relatives, as did other boys. A black third grader named Z came from an extremely poor family. His father was a Burger King worker. Z was prone to screaming when having a breakdown, shrieks that could be heard throughout the school. L, a third grader, was sweet but very talkative, a bit nervous and socially awkward — sort of a chubby, white, human C-3PO.

An adjacent classroom had our older boys: a fifth-grader who was friendly and witty but often refused to do schoolwork and liked to challenge authority (he was held back, and resented being sixth-grade age in an elementary school); a usually stoic fourth grader who had few social skills, lived with a schizophrenic mother who lived by welfare alone, laughed uproariously at anything related to private parts (he may have been sexually abused), and often reeked of cat urine; a fourth grader obsessed with Minecraft; an ultra-sensitive fourth grader with a mohawk who was stained by secondhand smoke; and a fifth grader who lived with a grandma who told him she didn’t want him, had a brother in prison, once cut up his hand by angrily punching a window at home, and put me in an odd spot when he tried to physically barrel his way past our principal to escape the building, prompting me to restrain him while a black parent in the office next door recorded what she called white brutality against black youth. That was not a pleasant experience, to say the least.

I have many fond memories of my boys, such as drawing them pictures of superheroes, villains, and monsters. I loved teaching them and watching them learn. Taking them to specials (art, gym, music, etc.) was always a joy, and helping them practice controlling their anger and letting adults be in charge were powerful moments. Other experiences, such as daily supervision of hygiene (mouthwash, deodorant) or riding the bus with them to make sure they got home safely, were not so happy yet still made me proud to be doing good in the world. (On the bus I saw their homes: some modest houses in pleasant neighborhoods, others tiny, crumbling, crime-ridden, roach-infested apartments.)

I loved all the students I worked with those years. They were rebellious of authority in their own ways. Like other kids, they could be selfish or nasty. They would act poorly just to get attention or avoid schoolwork. Some could grow violent when enraged. They experienced trauma, loss, abandonment, hunger, anger, verbal, physical, and sexual abuse, extreme poverty, physical and mental impairment, and psychological and emotional disorders of the worst kind. Most of the fathers of my Grandview boys were in prison. Some of these children are the most likely to commit awful crimes and go to prison when older (a grisly rape-murder in Kansas City a couple years ago was committed by boys who formerly attended the same special education classroom in which I worked). But they were sweet children. They knew how to treat others with kindness. They would share, compliment each other, laugh and play and sing together. When they did so I reflected on their resilience. Life dealt them horrible hands, yet they found joy where they could. But when they were upset, when I struggled to hold them as they flailed, screamed, and wept, I marveled at how they functioned at all. How they tolerated a single math problem we asked of them, after what they had been born into and experienced! Truly, their rebellion against authority was an effort to control something — anything — in a life as turbulent as the sea, their misbehavior a product of factors beyond their control. When they broke down, after the anger passed, they would often sob uncontrollably, for far longer than the incident or infraction warranted. When I held them, now to comfort and not restrain, I thought I knew why they wailed. They wailed against an unfair life.

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As with any other topic, there exists a broad range of attitudes in human societies toward menstruation. Ancient cultures like the Cherokee thought menstrual blood was imbued with a woman’s strength and spirit, a source of power that could be harnessed to defeat enemies (Blood Politics, Sturm), and the Greeks may have used it for medicine and fertilizer. Menstrual blood was thought by some societies to have magical healing properties, so it was consumed or used in ointments. Yoruk women made menstruation a spiritual experience. But the attitudes have typically not been positive. Joan Chrisler summarizes the myths in Psychology of Women Quarterly:

Drops of menstrual blood upon the ground or in a river kill plants and animals; wells run dry if a menstruating woman draws water from them; men become ill if they are touched by or use any objects that have been touched by a menstruating woman; beer turns sour if a menstruating woman enters a brewery; and beer, wine, vinegar, milk, and jam go bad if touched by a menstruating woman. These beliefs have been reported in various places in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Americas, and they are related to contemporary beliefs that women should not bathe, swim, wash their hair, do heavy housework, play sports, tend houseplants, eat or drink certain things, or engage in sexual intercourse during the menses.

The Romans thought a woman on her period could stop storms, dull swords at a glance, or use her blood to cure ailments, but also kill crops and bees, drive dogs mad, and cause people and animals to miscarry (Natural History, Pliny the Younger). Monthly bleeding was seen by some cultures as the female body ridding itself of disease, impurities, excess emotions, or demons. Eskimo men thought contact with women on their periods would spoil their next hunting outing by making them visible to prey, and Bukka women could not go in the sea because they might poison fish. Europeans in the 13th century thought that menstruation produced fumes that would “poison the eyes of children lying in their cradles by a glance” and that a child conceived while a woman was on her period would have “epilepsy and leprosy because menstrual matter is extremely venomous.” In the 1920s and for decades later, pseudoscience claimed “menotoxins” secreted by women killed plants and caused colic and child asthma. In Britain as late as 1982, menstruating women were instructed to avoid killing pigs, milking cows, and making butter so the food wouldn’t go bad (Everyday Discourses of Menstruation, Newton). Plus, dough wouldn’t rise.

Today some Nepali force menstruating women to sleep in sheds and stay out of school so they won’t infect others or anger the gods (similar traditions persist in rural Africa and Brazil), and some Indians still believe magical menstrual blood is an aphrodisiac if consumed. In some parts of Ghana and among the Ulithi the cycle is celebrated and women receive gifts. A sect of Hindus in India celebrate the yearly menstruation of the goddess Kamakhya Devi with their huge Ambuwasi Puja festival, yet Indian women are typically barred from entering places of worship while “impure.”

In the United States, of course, the idea that women shouldn’t hold high political positions because of their cycle exists and has for a long time. In 1970, Dr. Edgar Berman infamously explained to U.S. Congresswoman Patsy Mink that a woman should not be president — or perhaps even a CEO — due to “raging hormonal imbalances.” Just imagine a “menopausal woman president who had to make the decision of the Bay of Pigs” or the head of a bank “making a loan under these raging hormonal influences.” Yes, because the Bay of Pigs was such a success. In 2009, conservative pundit G. Gordon Liddy said of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor: ‘‘Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate. That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then!’’ Hillary Clinton’s presidential runs in 2008 and 2016 drew plenty of the same from conservatives. Dimwits preached the tired inanity that a period could lead to nuclear war and holocaust. From male commentators on Fox News to female CEOs on Facebook, it’s consistently made clear that many believe menstruation disqualifies women from gaining the same power as men. We still live in a nation where sexism is a problem.

This stigma, that a woman who menstruates is too dangerous and unstable to handle major political affairs, exists alongside a larger stigma that positions menstruation as something shameful and horrid. This goes beyond mere evolutionary aversions to bodily fluids, to being “grossed out” by blood, urine, feces, or semen. Those attitudes exist, but do not always carry the same degree of associated stigma in a society (further, the fact some societies have more positive views of menstruation and others more negative views reveals the power of social factors as well). As Emily Jupp at the Independent wrote:

It’s interesting that so much embarrassment, awkwardness, and shame surround a natural bodily function experienced by half the population at some point in their lives. We don’t hide toilet paper away, yet some women still get flustered if a tampon drops out of their handbag, or we might buy a floral-patterned tin to hide our sanitary pads. If you spotted some toilet roll tucked away and covered in a little bespoke baggy in someone’s loo, wouldn’t you find it faintly ridiculous? And yet that’s what we do all the time with sanitary products, as though the evidence that we have periods is something to be ashamed of.

The mark of shame is pervasive, from the word “period” being censored on television to hiding away the “feminine hygiene” section in stores (which, as Chrisler writes, “itself suggests that there is something dirty about women”) to Kotex marketing “a new ‘crinkle-free’ wrapper, so that other women in a public restroom will not know that someone is unwrapping one of their products.” Experiments show people sit further away from a woman they suspect is on her period and judge her as less competent and likable. Research also shows women expect this, which demotivates them. Men and women alike are often highly embarrassed about this topic or anything that approaches it. Women commonly report that particularly great shame accompanies menarche.

Again, this is not to say other, related things don’t cause shame and embarrassment — the bloke who inadvertently gets an erection in class or has his condoms discovered by his mother for example. Addressing the stigma of menstruation doesn’t posit others don’t exist. It is important to ask how shame comes about and is perpetuated, and what might be done to alleviate it if that would be beneficial to society. These questions should be asked concerning many topics related to biology and sex, but this article only addresses a particular one.

While acknowledging the role that biological aversion to anything that exits the human body plays in the creation of stigma, we must consider the social factors as well. Different social factors will produce different attitudes in different societies. A more general piece would examine the absolute hysteria over human anatomy, nudity, sexual intercourse, sexual orientation and gender identity, and so on that still grips much of America, but looking at how social factors affect a specific issue like menstruation serves as a nice exemplar of the whole.

I see three major ideologies that affect American cultural attitudes on menstruation: patriarchy, religion, and conservatism. Whether these effects are positive or negative I will mostly leave to the reader for the sake of time, even though my position is clear and my last paragraph suggests action.

The ways in which patriarchy, religion, and conservatism encourage or perpetuate discomfort or disgust toward menstruation are obvious.

Consider patriarchy, the domination of societal power by men. What has historically been used to justify such a system? All the talk of women being inferior — inferior intelligence, reason, or courage, say — but also the fact that the ability to carry children or the menstrual irritability that would destroy a nation should a woman be president or even vote mean we’d all be better off if women were consigned to the home. In other words, biology dictates what women should or shouldn’t be allowed to do. This is blatant discrimination and patriarchal tyranny, of course, but the point is menstruation has been used in history as an excuse to not allow women to do this or that, and still is. They were (are) considered unclean and handicapped by periods. So if menstruation serves a function in a male-dominated society — if it’s a means of preserving male power by holding back the other sex — it is quite natural that men would hold and perpetuate negative attitudes towards it (even subconsciously), such as disgust. It’s highly useful.

This is on top of the fact that because men don’t experience menstruation it easily becomes taboo in a male-dominated society. It shouldn’t be discussed. They say man fears what he doesn’t understand, but I have always found this a poor choice of words. A better phrasing: Man is disgusted by anything outside the norm of his own experience. What he doesn’t experience is abnormal by default. Sadly, many women, particularly religious and conservative women, have been indoctrinated by his vain worldview, taught to view their own biology as shameful and horrid. Well, a female-dominated society would look quite different, wouldn’t it? Imagine if our society had been historically run by women and men were the powerless, marginalized sex. Don’t you suppose attitudes toward menstruation would be less taboo, more openly discussed, more normal? If you think it might, you can therefore see what patriarchy does.

Chrysler writes:

It is powerful members of a society who determine what the social (or physical) norms are and what defines people as deviant. In the case of stigma applied to women’s bodies, the norms are androcentric [male-centered]. Stigmatization legitimates the status hierarchy because it allows the nonstigmatized to justify the status quo and their place in it. Stigmatizing others also enhances the self-esteem and personal empowerment of the stigmatizers because it promotes favorable social comparisons with outgroups [marginalized women].

Powerful people can also protect themselves from the types of threats [to male power] by distancing themselves from stigmatized individuals, bodily substances, and biological processes; by objectifying the stigmatized groups and thinking of them less as individuals and more as objects to be derided, admired, or manipulated; by discriminating against stigmatized individuals in social and employment settings in order to minimize their contact with those individuals; and by setting and enforcing cultural rules that require individuals to control, eliminate, or hide their stigmatized marks from public view. After all, as Steinem wrote, if men could menstruate, the menses would be a badge of honor, not a mark of stigma.

As for religion, that one is almost too obvious to get into. Religious texts written by primitive male-run desert tribes that billions of people still hold dear and take far too seriously of course describe menstruation in superstitious and primitive ways. For example women on their periods are “unclean,” so unclean that anything they even touch is unclean, at least according to the bible. There are many examples in Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and other holy books of the horrors of this natural human body function. All unsurprising considering the unscientific, ignorant men who wrote them and the barbaric times in which they were penned.

So here you have God or Allah or whomever passing out laws that treat menstruation with disgust, as something that makes you a pariah. That’s going to influence societies and people, and has for thousands of years. It’s going to hurt and shame a great many women. Again, imagine if it were women who were the priests throughout history and made up the gods. You can imagine things might be a bit different in how female biology is discussed in holy books, how the church treated women, and so on.

On top of all this is the hysteria over sex itself, which on its own is a dark, dirty secret in the eyes of the ultra-religious. It’s taboo, can’t be talked about, certainly can’t be on ads and in shows, books, films, or even art. So anything related to menstruation is out by default. I don’t think there’s any question that less religious people have been the first to be more open and public about sexuality and sexual matters as the human race progresses. Considering that’s something the ultra-religious consistently complain about, it seems a fairly uncontroversial opinion.

Similarly, there’s conservatism, which by definition is resistance to new ideas and change (the term “conservatism” has been explicitly used to justify holding women back in U.S. history, I might add). So you have entrenched patriarchy and unyielding religious indoctrination since birth, and the conservative attitude, whether consciously or subconsciously, is to maintain the status quo. Conservatism by definition will resist new, more open attitudes to sex and menstruation and related topics. If you don’t, you’re more liberal on the issue, again by definition.

Political and social conservatism are very closely interwoven with religion (which conservatives take pride in) and patriarchy (which doesn’t get as much enthusiasm these days but is still an issue among some on the Right — check out the ultraconservative, sexist website Return of Kings, but not after eating). Many conservatives are deeply uncomfortable with and quite closed to public discussions of sex, so again menstruation is basically out automatically.

It won’t be controversial to say that the people who create period-related content like this cover of the Village Voice are usually not conservatives, nor is it a shock to suggest the people who react with the most consternation likely are conservatives. Liberals and feminists, like nonreligious people, tend to be much more open about matters of sex and anatomy (whether or not you agree that’s wise is your business). Because of this aversion to open discussion of sex and female biology, misinformation and disgust are allowed to breed like viruses in a petri dish. For a final round of role playing, imagine if there were only liberals in the U.S. Do you not suppose a reaction to the Village Voice cover — deemed indecent, vile, vomit-inducing, and so on by conservative critics — would be a bit quieter? Would it even be a thing? Well, the reaction itself is going to perpetuate ideas of female biology being so nasty it’s unmentionable. It will teach others to react in the same way. I think it’s clear where the loudest reactions come from and how the next generation is taught that menstruation is shameful and appalling. That’s conservatism perpetuating the hysteria.

This is not to say all religious persons and conservatives are horrified by periods, believe they shouldn’t ever be mentioned publicly, think they disqualify women from gaining the same power as men, etc. But I think we all understand reality too well to think these ideological factors don’t impact attitudes toward menstruation.

If we see women experiencing shame over their own biology and men perpetuating that shame and holding women back as undesirable, as any decent person would, we need to normalize menstruation, and that begins with open discussion and thoughtful listening to the experiences of women and unyielding assaults upon the ignorance and misogyny of men. We need to question the prevailing attitudes. That’s the only way stigma eases, and when you think about it there are many modern examples. The stigma of pornography use is easing, as is the masturbation stigma. It’s become easier, perhaps, to come out as gay or trans as humanity has progressed a bit. This doesn’t mean bodily functions aren’t still gross to most humans, but it does mean fewer humans are experiencing shame because of our innate sexual nature and biology. We have to likewise ask ourselves: Why should women be embarrassed concerning periods? Why should men make them feel embarrassed or handicapped? Why should it be this way? Why not build a society where the stigma doesn’t exist?

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In March 2016, Secretary of State John Kerry declared the Islamic State (also called ISIS or Daesh), an Sunni extremist group controlling territory in Syria and Iraq, guilty of genocide.

“In my judgment, Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in territory under its control, including Yazidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims,” Kerry said in a speech at the State Department. According to NPR, this is the sixth time the United States officially labeled state or group actions abroad in this way, the previous instance being against Sudan in 2004 (Darfur).

Kerry was under pressure from Congress to make such a declaration; Republicans and Democrats joined together in the House of Representatives and voted 393-0 on Monday to call ISIS actions genocidal. Congress set Thursday as the deadline for the State Department to accept or reject the designation, a deadline many expected the Obama administration to miss.

Kerry did not suggest that military action against ISIS would increase, the main objective of many politicians, particularly Republicans, that sought the designation. The U.S. currently targets and bombs both known and suspected ISIS operatives using unmanned drones, a tactic that protects the lives of American servicemen but also kills far more innocent bystanders than it does terrorists, according to multiple sources, and aids in terrorist recruiting efforts, inspiring further violence.

ISIS crimes against humanity include mass public executions, torture and mutilation, crucifixion, rape, kidnapping, sex trafficking, expulsion, destruction of places of worship, and forced conversion. Members have set about “stoning alleged adulterers to death and throwing gay men off buildings to their death and using child executioners,” to quote the International Business Times. Shia Muslims, Christians, and Yazidis (who worship one God, honor seven angels who look over the Earth, and believe in reincarnation) are the main targets of ISIS, whose members wish to subjugate others to Sunni Islam (the “true,” “pure” Islam) and their new caliphate.

Journalist Amy Goodman claimed that “ISIS has killed more Muslims than certainly members of any other religion,” which is likely accurate. Shia Muslims (13% of Syrians, 60-65% of Iraqis) have likely lost the most civilians at the hands of ISIS, followed by Yazidis (less than 1% of Syrians and Iraqis) and Christians (10% of Syrians, less than 1% of Iraqis).

In the first 8 months of 2014, ISIS killed 8,500 civilians in Iraq (a country with very few Christians), according to a U.N. report. From mid-2014 to late 2015, ISIS executed an estimated 10,000 people in Syria and Iraq, including 2,000 civilians in Syria and 3,000 civilians in Iraq. Thousands more people have died in suicide bombings, in battles, and massacres. For example, nearly 1,700 Iraqi Air Force cadets, mostly Shia, were murdered at Camp Speicher in Tikrit, Iraq in June 2014 and up to 5,000 Yazidi were mowed down in August 2014 in Sinjar Province, Iraq. Those events are not included in the 10,000 tally. The Knights of Columbus and In Defense of Christians identified some 1,100 Christians killed by ISIS in the report they sent to Kerry on March 9.

The reports caution these estimates are conservative — the precise number of deaths among all these groups is unknown, but likely higher.

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Three weeks after the election, I found myself sitting between two men: a black man on my right, a white man on my left.

We sat together at the Shoal Creek Police Station in north Kansas City. The black man and I were under arrest for participating in a peaceful act of civil disobedience in support of a higher minimum wage and union rights for Kansas City workers. We’d known each other for a few hours. The white man was a drunk stranger, I believe hauled in for domestic violence.

My companion and I were forced to listen for an extended time to this man’s thoughts, some incoherent, others insensitive, a few overtly racist. We tried to counter some of this, but the man was in no condition to be reasoned with.

Civil disobedience “won’t do anything,” he said, a smug smile on his lips as he readied the punchline. “All you’re doing is disrupting the crack flow in the inner city.”

He explained that Somalis are foolish because they choose to drive taxis instead of finding better work, and how poor Americans in general need to work harder (as hard as he) and get off welfare.

He spoke of how native Africans are poor “because they’re just so stupid,” and how if I ever started a business I should take on my black comrade as a partner because “he looks like he could use a helping hand, if you know what I mean.”

This angered me, but as a white man my indignation was only against attacks on others; it’s not the hotter anger of one who is personally demeaned and defamed. I wondered what my companion was feeling at that moment. When I was able to put aside for a second my embarrassment that a fellow white person, intoxicated or not, would say such things in the presence of a black man, or at all, I saw my companion was stone-faced, eyes observing something far away, something I couldn’t see.

Perhaps it was memories. He’d seen and heard such things before. Perhaps he was simply trying to quell the anger toward this slander against where he lived, his work ethic, his ancestors from another continent, who he was.

I didn’t speak to him about it after our release. But I imagine he didn’t feel like he belonged.

Like the nation as a whole, Kansas City struggles to be a place where all people feel like they belong. That our city should be such a home is not the unrealistic demand of “sensitive, entitled snowflakes” who “get offended by everything.” It is the basic ideal of the American experiment, that all people are created equal, worthy of the same dignity, respect, and human rights. In a decent American society, that lived up to its principles, every person would feel like he or she belonged.

Clearly, this is not yet the case. The Southern Poverty Law Center recorded nearly 900 hate incidents in the ten days following Donald Trump’s election. Trump supporters were emboldened, validated, and set about verbally and physically attacking the people Trump demeaned and vilified. Women were grabbed by the genitals, homosexuals beaten, hijabs ripped off Muslim girls, blacks called “niggers,” Jews called “kikes,” Hispanics mocked and told to leave the country. Vandalism featured swastikas, nooses, and racial slurs.

Whites and Trump supporters were victims also, to a small degree. 23 incidents, or 2.6%, were anti-Trump, and some included physical violence. All hate crimes are wrong and must be condemned, and all hate crimes make someone feel like he or she does not belong. But we cannot pretend all groups experience hate crimes equally. As The Star noted on January 6, only 10.5% of all hate crimes in 2015 were directed against whites (a typical percentage), even though the U.S. is still nearly 70% white. We also must not pretend hate crimes against one group cannot be a reaction to hate crimes against another. Such things do not always come from the same place.

What was the Kansas City experience? A black Kansas Citian found a swastika and noose spray-painted on his car. Alongside “Hail President Trump,” racial slurs, misogynistic slurs, and swastikas were left inside the Kansas City Public Library downtown. A Muslim business owner received threatening phone calls, and “white power!” was shouted at him in person. A student drew a Klansman saying “Kill all blacks!” at Piper High School. A gay man was beat, had a gun put to his head, and had “fag” spray-painted on his car. “Alt-Right” advertisements appeared saying “America was 90% white in 1950. It is now 60%. Make America Great Again.” A white man shot three people, killing one, while hunting down Arabs — he yelled “Get out of my country!” (The victim’s grieving wife, in a public statement, asked, “Do we belong here? Is this the same country we dreamed of?”) Further, a group of teenagers assaulted a white man they thought was a Trump supporter. Anti-white statements like “Kill Whitey” were scribbled on walls of a UMKC building.

Even before election day, things were getting bad. In 2015, religious hate crimes in KC rose 60%, most against Muslims, while general hate crimes rose 35%.

While there has been a great amount of progress in Kansas City since its Jim Crow era, since the heyday of its anti-immigrant and anti-religious minority hysteria, since its very beginning as a slave society in the early 1800s, there is still much work to do to make this city a place where everyone feels like they belong. But how can this be accomplished?

One way is to ensure local and national laws protect the freedom and equality of all people. Many will ask: if the law does not offer all the same respect, why should the individual? We must push for moral and fair public policy. That must be Kansas City’s response to proposals like mass deportations, the registration of Muslims, the repeal of same-sex marriage, the return of stop-and-frisk, and so on.

This is done through people’s movements, when ordinary people come together to force the government to yield to their demands. Progress always comes on the backs of troublemakers: those who organize, agitate, petition, protest, march, strike, sit-in, and engage in civil disobedience. When the powerful realize the trouble will not stop — only grow — until demands are met, they surrender. If enough people unite, they can shut down a city, a state, or an entire country. From Kansas City’s Valentine’s Day strike of 1918, in which 15,000 workers brought the city to a halt, to India’s 2016 strike of 180 million workers that did the same to a nation, the people have the power to take whatever they want — by simply leaving their workplaces and flooding the streets. This will occur in Kansas City whenever injustice rears its ugly head. We saw it at the inauguration day march from Union Station to City Hall, the Women’s March in Kansas City, and the protest at MCI against the immigration ban.

A second way is to help change the way others think. Make no mistake, the activism described above can make bystanders think differently. But in general, Kansas Citians must encourage each other to hold one another to the same standards — that is, you must offer the same rights, respect, kindness, and dignity to others that you expect. That simple maxim, which almost all profess to believe in, could transform society if actually followed.

Under such a rule, one would think registering Muslims as ludicrous as registering Christians. Immigration bans would be a thing of the past, because ethical societies don’t punish the many for the crimes of the few. Tearing apart families by deporting good men and women who came to the U.S. illegally to escape poverty and violence would be unthinkable, because no one would want that done to their family. Homosexuality would be accepted as a natural human trait, like heterosexuality, with marriage rights protected for all. Discriminatory policing against black folk would be under constant attack by all white Americans, who would not want to be subjected to such mistreatment. All men would likewise be up in arms against the constant sexual harassment against women, light sentences for rapists, and other trademarks of rape culture. Hate crimes and everyday racist comments, no matter who against, would be found only in the history books.

That would be a much better society, a Kansas City where all people lived without fear and with a sense of belonging. Such a society is ours to create.

When my black comrade and I were released, we sat in a warm van with many others who were trickling out of the police station.

“You think we made a difference?” he asked, to no one in particular.

I thought of all the ordinary troublemakers before us who had protested and been arrested: those who fought for decent wages and the 40 hour workweek, the end of child labor, equal rights for women, people of color, religious minorities, and LGBT people, and the end of bloody wars like Vietnam. Those men and women rose up against exploitation, injustice, and bigotry. Surely they asked themselves the same question, and surely there was only one correct answer.

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