Sarah Khan

If you haven’t thought of Dorothy Parker (known as Dot or Dottie) since English Literature in high school that needs to change as soon as possible. All modern day women should turn to the goddess Parker, for lessons on how to survive in a man’s world.

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.

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.

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.

There are only a few people around who haven’t seen the video/picture of the group of sorority girls at a baseball game doing nothing but taking selfies. These women have become the butt of jokes all over the Internet and are being held as an example of the supposed egotism and self-obsession of today’s youth.

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

It isn’t until I actually sat down and thought about it that I realized that the badass feminist babe I am today is predominantly the creation of a mixed bag of women I’ve encountered in my life.