The Woke Feminist

By Staci Traynor Hello. Guys? I think that maybe — just maybe — we got off on the wrong foot here. Let me explain. It has occurred to me that my recent article, "Why 'Black Metal' Girls Will Never Be Happy" has, to an egregiously large extent, gone completely misinterpreted. For that I am deeply sorry. Many a harsh sentiment against me has been absorbed into my consciousness, yes, this gnarled underbrush where the leaves of littered words doth lie. You hurt me. But that is okay. Sometimes even writers get caught up in emotion, I suppose. Real talk. I am deeply embarrassed with how certain things were stated on my end, in retrospect, after having had these fallacies in logic pointed out to me by the esteemed and respectable members of the black metal community. (I don't know how to word this without sounding like a dick but I am being serious. You guys called me out on some broken logic and I guess what you were saying all along is finally resonat...

Don’t wait until your health fails before living the life you want to live Source: Bronnie Ware | from: AARP | February 1, 2012 For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to 12 weeks of their lives. People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality. I learned never to underestimate someone's capacity for growth. Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, as expected: denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance. Yet every single patient found peace before departing. Every one of them. When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced. Here are the most common five: 1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. This was the most common regret of all. When peo...

By Staci Traynor Every subculture has it's fair share of freaks but not every freak has a subculture. Enter the New York black metal scene. Last weekend I had the unlikely (dis)pleasure of accompanying a friend of mine to the famed Duff's heavy metal bar in Williamsburg — not my typical stomping ground but it was Saturday and the excitement once gleaned from my usual hangouts felt as though it was wearing thin, and I was invited, and I didn't have any other plans at the time, so yea, what the hell, I thought. It was a decision made moreso out of boredom than anything else. If there is one thing that consistently manages to get my creative juices flowing, it is the complete, unabashed immersement in the far depths beyond my comfort zone and this place proved to be nothing short of it. What surprised me most about Duff's as I first walked in was not the obscene amount of album posters on the walls or the red Christmas lights lining the ceilings, or any of th...

By Staci Traynor "Look at her, she is so beautiful. I'll bet she gets everything she wants, being so hot." These words, or some semblance of them, are uttered day in and day out across the spectrum of the world’s people-watchers, the silent coffee-drinkers on park benches, musing at the seemingly flawless beauty possessed by a passing female who they either yearn to be, or, yearn to have. And it is disgusting. “I'll bet she gets everything she wants.” Really? Do you actually believe that? If that were the case I would not be $60,000 in debt due to a college loan that bought me a degree that I have yet to use. If us “hot girls” got everything we wanted, we wouldn’t be searching for jobs. We wouldn’t be searching for love. We wouldn’t be fighting anxiety, or depression, or social pressures of any kind. And most importantly, we as activists would no longer be required to expend the effort that we currently do in bringing these issues to the pu...