Sarah Khan

When I tell people that I keep a box of tampons on my desk at work, they are either surprised or they want to know why. As if keeping a box of tampons on my desk is any different than the box of Scooby-Doo Band-Aids or the bulk candy I keep on there as well.

Thanks to a number of different stressful factors, I was sent to the Centre For Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) emergency department recently at the "professional advice" (read: insistence) of my general physician. This all happened because I admitted to planning the care of my beloved cats in case I killed myself.

What a lot of us don’t realize is that the patriarchy also makes us think it’s OK to objectify men.

For the last six years, I have been living with depression. Despite the fact that I have extremely low moments when there is an inexplicable and unreachable pain inside me that demotes me into a sobbing, self-harming, low self-esteemed shell of the person that I actually am, there are a number of ways that living with (not suffering from) depression has improved my life and made me a better human being.

I’ve been doing the online dating thing for a little over a year now, and it’s the first time I’ve been doing it as a staunchly, outspoken, won’t-take-any-bullshit feminist. That’s how I discovered the curious system of “revenge flagging,” which is when guys don’t take rejection gracefully or can’t deal with a bruised ego — they flag the woman’s profile as revenge.

I live, work,and was also raised in Canada, where abortion has been legal since the late '80s. And before that — since the late '60s — it was legal with the permission of a committee of doctors who would agree whether or not an abortion was necessary for the mental or physical well-being of the mother.

I’m proud to say my mother is a supporter of SlutWalk, is staunchly against victim-blaming, and all for empowering women. But when it comes to me, her ideals seem to change.