By the age of 14, I knew I wasn’t straight. But instead of feeling seen or supported, I felt terror. Guilt. Shame. I believed I was broken because that’s what I was told—through sermons, whispered warnings, and the thunderous silence around queerness. Internalized homophobia crept in early and deeply. I carried it like a weight, never knowing who I could trust, never knowing if I’d be “fixed” or rejected outright.

I tested the waters once—with my mom. I asked, “What if someone was gay?” Her answer? It’s a sin. They’d go to hell. And if I were gay, she said, she’d get church leaders to “fix” me. I still don’t know exactly what she meant—but it scared me enough to never bring it up again.

When I confided in my sister, hoping for at least one ally, I was dismissed. “It’s just a phase,” she said. “You’ll meet the right man.” That’s what queer erasure sounds like—kind, maybe even loving on the surface, but absolutely suffocating underneath.

So I stayed silent. I buried a part of myself to survive in a world that made me feel like my very existence was a sin. And in that silence, my distrust of religion festered. Not just of the church, but of anyone who embraced it.

But over time, I realized something: my bias was born from pain. And while that pain is valid, it doesn’t mean all religious people are the enemy. There are communities fighting for LGBTQ+ inclusion. There are believers who have turned their backs on oppressive dogma and chosen love over fear.

In my journey of healing, I turned to resources that uplift truth and justice. The Human Rights Campaign reports that some Catholic groups are trying—within the limits of rigid church doctrine—to offer welcome and support to LGBTQ+ people. In Gendered Voices, Feminist Visions, Shaw and Lee highlight a study where many families, over time, not only accepted their LGBTQ+ loved ones but also actively sought out faith spaces that embraced queerness.

This is what activism looks like: challenging harmful narratives, unlearning internalized oppression, and working to create spaces where all identities are affirmed. I’ve started identifying churches in Indiana that affirm LGBTQIA+ folks. I share that information. I talk to friends. I advocate—online, in conversation, and wherever I can—for inclusive spirituality.

This work isn’t just personal. It’s political. Religious oppression of queer people is a systemic issue, and healing requires more than just “acceptance.” It requires transformation. It requires us to name the harm, support the survivors, and demand change from within and outside religious institutions.

To anyone navigating the trauma of religious rejection: I see you. You are sacred. You deserve to exist fully and freely—without shame. And to allies within the church: your voice matters. Use it to make your faith a force for liberation, not control.

We don’t need to choose between queerness and spirituality. But we do need to dismantle the systems that ever made us think we had to.

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Take the early waves of feminism. First-wave feminists fought for the vote, yes—but they largely ignored the struggles of working-class and nonwhite women. They didn’t challenge the nuclear family structure or question marriage’s role in reinforcing gender roles. Second-wave feminists tried to go deeper, but many still failed to create an inclusive movement. Women of color were expected to assimilate into white feminist frameworks, even as they were erased from mainstream discourse. Their experiences weren’t just overlooked—they were actively invalidated.

Women who did speak up were labeled aggressive, bitchy, unfeminine. They were told to act like men if they wanted to be heard—and then mocked for doing so. This double standard is still alive today. Look no further than the treatment of modern women in politics.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Redefining Rhetoric

Enter Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—a Puerto Rican woman from the Bronx who flipped the script. She made headlines in 2018 not just for being the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, but for refusing to play by patriarchal rules. In her viral campaign ad, she said, “Women like me aren’t supposed to run for office.” And she was right.

As a working-class Latina with no corporate backing, Ocasio-Cortez faced ridicule, threats, and sexism from day one. After being called a “fucking bitch” by a male colleague, she stood up and gave one of the most powerful floor speeches in recent memory—not just defending herself, but every woman who’s ever been degraded, belittled, or told to shut up.

That’s feminist rhetoric in action.

She doesn’t wait for permission to speak. She doesn’t soften her voice to appease male egos. She doesn’t distance herself from her identity to be taken seriously. Instead, she uses her visibility to amplify the struggles of marginalized communities—calling out racial injustice, wealth inequality, and corporate corruption without blinking.

She’s what radical feminism looks like: a woman refusing to conform to a system built to silence her.

Why Nontraditional Rhetoric Matters

The feminist fight isn’t just about laws and policies—it’s about language. It's about reclaiming the right to speak and be heard. Traditional rhetoric was built by and for men. It privileges public speech over private conversation, dominance over empathy, competition over collaboration. But women’s communication styles—rooted in fairness, inclusion, and care—have power too.

The problem? They're still dismissed as weak, emotional, or irrelevant.

According to Dr. Dobris, nontraditional rhetoric—empathetic, inclusive, cooperative—has long been devalued. Women have been taught to be liked instead of being heard. Their communication is seen as too soft for public discourse, too emotional to be logical, too personal to be political.

But the personal is political. And identity is rhetoric.

Representation Is Resistance

When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks, she’s not just representing a district—she’s representing every girl who was told she’s too brown, too loud, too emotional, too poor, too different to lead.

She reflects the truth that philosopher George Herbert Mead and feminist writers like Paula Gunn Allen, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Stuart Hall have long championed: identity is formed through social messages. When the dominant culture erases your story, it erases your sense of self. That’s why seeing someone like AOC in power matters. That’s why hearing voices like hers—radical, Latina, working-class—changes the entire rhetorical landscape.

Feminist rhetoric isn't about fitting into the old molds. It’s about smashing them. It’s about refusing to be silent, about redefining who gets to speak and what power sounds like.

So Where Do We Go From Here?

We need to stop asking if feminism is still relevant. It never stopped being necessary. What we should be asking is: Whose voices are still being silenced? Whose rhetoric are we still devaluing? And what are we doing about it?

The future of feminism—and of rhetoric itself—depends on how we answer.

Want to support inclusive rhetoric and representation?
✅ Share speeches by women of color.
✅ Challenge biased narratives in politics and media.
✅ Demand that our public discourse reflect the full spectrum of lived experience.

We’ve been told for centuries to stay quiet.
Now is the time to speak louder.

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👁 Representation Is Survival, Not Luxury

Representation in media is not just a diversity checkbox. It’s about survival.

As This Bridge Called My Back powerfully documents, queer kids face higher rates of bullying, violence, and suicide than their straight peers. Many grow up haunted by rejection, silence, and shame. As Anzaldúa and others wrote, queer people carry the wounds of being "othered" from childhood.

That’s why shows like Sense8 matter. It gave people across racial, sexual, and gender spectrums permission to exist—to be complex, flawed, powerful, and loved. It built what This Bridge calls “alliances and bridges,” not only between characters but between creators and audiences, between fiction and reality.

As Renée Martínez wrote in This Bridge, seeing stories like hers in writing made her feel not alone. Sense8 did the same for thousands of people on screen.

🗣️ Feminist Rhetoric Speaks Truth to Power

Sense8 defied traditional masculine rhetoric, which often prizes dominance, control, and logic over empathy and connection. Feminist rhetoric, by contrast, centers care, collaboration, and lived experience.

Lana Wachowski, simply by being a trans woman creating for a global audience, flipped the script on who gets to tell stories—and how they’re told.

Sense8 challenged nearly every norm of mainstream television:

• It centered queer and trans stories.
  
• It included multinational, multilingual characters.
  
• It explored intersectional identities—not just one-dimensional ones.
  
• It invited empathy over violence, connection over conquest.
  

And despite facing criticism for being "too weird," "too sweet," or “too much,” the show's overwhelming fan support proved that there is a massive hunger for exactly this kind of storytelling.

📚 From Page to Screen: Building Bridges Across Identity

Some might argue that Sense8, being a show and not a book, doesn’t belong alongside works like This Bridge Called My Back. But both build rhetorical bridges. Both challenge mainstream ideas of who matters. Both uplift marginalized voices. Both save lives.

Like This Bridge, Sense8 helped viewers—especially LGBTQ+ people and people of color—see their lives as worthy of love, joy, struggle, and story. And that’s what feminist rhetoric is all about: using every available platform—TV, books, blogs, tweets—to shift culture.

As Diana Courvant writes in This Bridge, privilege lets some people co-opt struggle without living it. But creators like Wachowski, and characters like Nomi and Lito, speak from within the struggle. That authenticity resonates. It changes things.

🌍 What a Feminist Future Could Look Like

So, would I call Sense8 feminist? Absolutely. It may not have called itself that—but feminism isn’t about labels. It’s about impact.

A feminist future—one where rhetoric is shaped by empathy, inclusion, and justice—looks like Sense8. It looks like creators of color, queer storytellers, and non-binary perspectives leading the conversation. It looks like books and shows that tear down systems of privilege instead of quietly accepting them.

And if we ever get there, it’ll be because feminist rhetoric helped build the bridge.

TL;DR (But Really, Read the Whole Thing)

• Sense8 is a groundbreaking show that centers queer, trans, and multicultural characters.
  
• Created by Lana Wachowski, a transgender woman, the show disrupted mainstream TV with feminist storytelling.
  
• Representation matters—it can literally save lives.
  
• Sense8 and works like This Bridge Called My Back are vital forms of feminist, non-traditional rhetoric.
  
• Feminist rhetoric challenges the dominance of masculine, violent persuasion and instead uplifts collaboration, empathy, and resistance.
  

Call to Action:
Want to see more inclusive storytelling? Stream, support, and share media that uplifts marginalized voices. Your viewership is a vote.

#FeministRhetoric #Sense8 #RepresentationMatters #QueerMedia #InclusiveStorytelling

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🎙 Rhetoric and Storytelling: More Alike Than You Think

CNF is often misunderstood. Some assume it’s fiction disguised as truth, but really, it’s the opposite: a personal truth shaped by artful technique. According to the Purdue OWL, it’s "an accurate retelling of the author’s life experiences."

When Nye writes about cultural dissonance, gender expectations, and food insecurity, she doesn’t shout her politics—she invites us in. I related to Nye’s experience as a “good girl” navigating foreign cultural norms. I, too, was mocked for my accent when my family moved from Texas to Indiana. I, too, had food insecurity, and a parent from another country with rigid expectations. Though I no longer have the piece I wrote at the time, I mirrored Nye’s tone and themes—proving that CNF meets rhetorical criteria like:

• Ethos (credibility): lived experience grants authority.
  
• Pathos (emotion): stories move us.
  
• Logos (reason): structured reflection reveals broader truths.
  

🎨 Rhetorical Beauty Is Socially Constructed

Traditional rhetoric values eloquence—diction, rhythm, metaphor, repetition. But what counts as "beautiful" language is shaped by power.

Sojourner Truth’s “Ain’t I a Woman?” was dismissed by many in 1851 for lacking refinement. But her raw, repetitive phrasing was precisely its power. In CNF, using metaphors, sensory details, and nonstandard English (like “y’all” or culturally specific words) reflects voice and identity—not to be “correct,” but to be real.

💭 Eminence and Endurance: Who Gets Remembered?

Reputation is another rhetorical criterion—but it’s biased. Male, white, privileged voices have long defined who is worth quoting. Eminence is often about visibility, not value.

I am not famous. Neither was Sojourner Truth at the time. But our words still resonate. Whether a piece endures is shaped by cultural reception—not inherent merit.

Personal stories may never be widely known, but for readers who relate to their emotions—feeling out of place, trying to fit in, struggling with identity—they may endure in memory.

📅 Context Matters: Time Shapes Rhetoric

Audiences in 1851 dismissed Truth for being a Black woman speaking in public. Today, we celebrate her defiance. That’s proof: time alters how rhetoric is received.

If someone from 100 years ago read a deeply honest personal narrative, they might be scandalized. But modern readers—especially those who have ever felt marginalized—might find it deeply affirming.

🏳️‍⚧️ Feminist Rhetoric Makes Room for the Personal

Naomi Shihab Nye, a Palestinian-American woman, and I, a nonbinary author, do not fit the mold of the traditional rhetor. And yet, our stories speak truth. Feminist rhetoric recognizes that public life is shaped by private struggle—and that diaries, memoirs, and journals are public address.

As Dr. Dobris reminds us, traditional rhetoric has ignored women’s voices. But CNF reclaims space.

🗣 New Criteria for New Voices

Cheris Kramarae’s muted group theory argues that language was built by men, for men. Women and nonbinary voices must therefore reshape it.

So I propose new criteria:

• Rapport over reputation: Does the story connect?
  
• Voice over virtue: Does it resonate emotionally?
  
• Inclusion over eminence: Does it represent lived experience?
  

These changes open rhetorical space for Nye’s, Truth’s, and other marginalized work to be valued.

🧠 What Would Feminist Thinkers Say?

• Kramarae would call this work feminist because it challenges dominant norms.
  
• bell hooks would see it as breaking cycles of shame and silence.
  
• Gearhart might praise its nonviolent, empathetic communication as “womanized” rhetoric.
  

All three would agree: marginalized stories are not just personal—they’re political.

📚 Why Storytelling Is Public Address

To say memoirs aren't rhetoric is to ignore the impact of voice. Storytelling influences thought, challenges systems, and creates empathy—all goals of rhetoric. And let’s be clear: if stories weren’t powerful, they wouldn’t be banned.

Memoirs and personal narratives may not get the same attention as grand speeches, but they change readers, one page at a time. They are feminist. They are rhetorical. And they deserve to be heard.

Final Thought: In a world still shaped by patriarchal standards of speech and power, storytelling by marginalized voices is radical. It reclaims space. It builds empathy. And it changes what we value as truth.

#FeministRhetoric #CreativeNonfiction #StorytellingMatters #MemoirIsRhetoric #NonbinaryVoices #CherisKramarae #bellhooks #SojournerTruth

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🏠 Raised in Patriarchy: My Childhood Training for Wifehood

I grew up in an androcentric family in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, just after second-wave feminism had supposedly “freed” women. I was taught to be a caretaker, a future mother, and a good wife—nothing more. Feminist ideas were dismissed outright in my household, and I internalized the antifeminist rhetoric popular in media: that feminism was no longer needed, that women already had equality.

But it was all a myth. I have never earned as much as my male peers. I was born into poverty, without a single college graduate in my family. My mother, a second-language English speaker, was belittled for her accent. My father worked a union job and endured multiple layoffs. Still, I tried to follow the “rules”: marry young, stay home, raise a child, forget education.

🇺🇸 From Soldier to Student—But Still Not Free

Later, I enlisted in the U.S. military. The GI Bill gave me a path to higher education. But that path was paved with financial traps.

Despite my benefits, tuition, books, housing, and single parenthood were too much to manage. When my housing allowance ran out, I hit a wall. I was expected to student teach for free full-time, but also pay bills and raise a child. No one offered help. My father told me I didn’t need college. I took out loans I couldn’t pay back.

Then I dropped out.

📉 The Spiral: Debt, Homelessness, and Invisible Barriers

Without a degree, I could only get low-paying, traditionally “female” jobs—maid, secretary, childcare. My loans defaulted. My credit tanked. I couldn’t qualify for a car loan, rent, or even a basic credit card. Eventually, I was homeless—sometimes crashing with friends, sometimes sleeping in my car.

I had followed all the rules they gave me. But those rules weren’t designed for my success.

🔍 Feminist Studies: Naming the Systems That Failed Me

It wasn’t until I studied feminism that I truly understood the forces working against me. I wasn’t lazy, or foolish, or irresponsible—I was navigating an oppressive system designed to keep women, especially poor women and women of color, in place.

As Freedman writes, “jobs traditionally performed by women… offered lower wages” (2003). My lived experience proved it. Feminism gave me language for my struggle. And now, I want to use that language to fight back.

✊ Why I Write, Why I Speak, Why I Fight

I am not the first woman to struggle this way, and I won’t be the last—not until women’s rights are seen as human rights. I want to be a force for change: for women, for people of color, for queer and marginalized people who were told to sit still and accept less.

We need more girls to understand the systems they’re born into. We need more truth-tellers, more intersectional educators, and more feminist voices. Because knowledge is power. And I intend to use mine.

References
Freedman, E. (2007). No Turning Back. Random House Digital Inc.

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My South Korean Tour 

In Monsoon season, the streets would never be clean.

My combat boots were always covered in mud and grime,

sidestepping puddles as deep as my knees. We hummed

“Looks like dirty water and smells like turpentine,”

in the chow hall, downing our ration of steaming cups.

Beside Tongduchon gate, open urinals festered and stewed, 

next to the dazzling storefronts of imitation designers.

Every alley, was filled with unrelenting grandmothers, 

with permed hair and loud-mouthed voices, goading you

to buy an impersonation  of  Nike, Gucci, Versace.

Protestors’ broken bottles threatened to trip us as we raced 

 to make curfew, stumbling back from the clubs in the village. 

We tossed in our bunks, puppies yelping from nearby mills, 

pigs squealing in their pens. By day, we didn’t ask questions 

to the local villagers who set up tents inside our camp, ready to cook

us anything on their hot plates and tiny grills: sautéed meat on a stick,

rice bowls with eggs, piles of blood-red kimchee, rice-paper dumplings 

shaped like half-moons. The student radicals carried anti-American faults 

on outraged placards, cursing, and glared with resentment, but the older 

generation offered nods and smiles, of gratitude, to us in camouflage 

who protected the border, knowing what lurked in the North.