April 2019

As the size of the self-declared ISIS caliphate, which used to stretch across large swaths of Iraq and Syria, shrunk to approximately the size of a potato chip, and now is completely eradicated [1], it’s time to start talking about what comes next. Don’t harbor any illusions, the Syrian Democratic Forces’ victory in taking back land does not spell the end of the extremist group; just look at how ISIS-affiliated fighters have taken over a city in the Philippines [2]. Rather, the fight in the Levant leaves behind scores of surrendered fighters, former “ISIS brides,” many of whom were also full-fledged members of ISIS, and a lot of questions.

On March 6, the Associated Press reported that the Utah State Legislature failed to pass a bill which would have barred therapists from practicing conversion therapy on minors [1]. “Conversion therapy” is the practice of attempting to alter someone’s sexual orientation using psychology. The practice has been largely discredited and has been rejected as ineffective and unsafe by both the American Medical Association [2] and the American Psychological Association [3]. The bill’s progress collapsed when Representative Lisonbee added amendments that would have weakened the law to the point of being unproductive. Conversion therapy on minors will continue in Utah, as will a trend of LGBT+ youth developing low self-esteem and psychological trauma as a result [4]. This failure of the Utah State Legislature is harmful to the LGBT+ population, but, despite some recent improvement, it is not the only problem that needs to be resolved with the state’s treatment of its LGBT+ community.

The idea of male preference in the world is not a new one. In 1949, Simone de Beauvoir published The Second Sex, which points out that male is the default trait in society, while female is treated as “other,” which results in their relegated status [1].

The Divide

January 2018: The New York Stock Exchange closing bell rang, accompanied by thunderous applause. The stock market had just hit a record high [1]. 200 miles south of Wall Street, a very different story was unfolding. “How has your day been so far?” a teacher asked his class. “Cold!” his third graders exclaimed. The temperature in Aaron Maybin’s school had just dipped below forty degrees [2]. The heating system in this Baltimore school was broken and the school district didn’t have enough money to fix it. As he encouraged his young students to huddle together for warmth, he wondered how, in the richest nation on earth, something like this could happen.

After a 1996 mass shooting in Australia in which a man killed 35 people, the Australian government banned semi-automatic guns, self-loading rifles, and shotguns. In May of 2018, a family of seven was found shot to death, marking Australia’s first mass shooting in 22 years. In the U.S., by May of 2018, there had already been 79 mass shootings, according to Business Insider [1]. There is no standardized definition of “mass shooting,” so Business Insider based its statistic on the definition used by the Gun Violence Archive: “a single incident in which four or more people…are shot and/or killed in the same general time and location” [2]. Though the definition is flexible, the U.S. undeniably has a gun violence problem. There have been so many mass shootings in even just the past decade that it’s difficult to remember them all: Las Vegas, Pulse Nightclub, Sandy Hook Elementary, Thousand Oaks, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Squirrel Hill, Aurora—this list, and the lives lost, goes on and on.