When Charles Murray, the controversial writer who believes that intelligence (and therefore inequality) is based on genetics, spoke at Vermont's Middlebury College years ago, it wasn't that big a deal. Professors organized students of color to sit in the middle of the stage and look Murray, whose work cited racist pseudoscience, in the eye, but he was allowed to speak. In December 2013, when a similarly controversial (albeit less famous) professor named Amy Wax came to town, students protested by asking her tough questions in a question-and-answer session while holding signs that said "racist."

But the tenor of political debate on college campuses is much different than it was even a handful of years ago, and what ended up happening when Murray came back to Middlebury on March 2 made national headlines. Students turned their backs on him and shut down his talk by chanting. Then, when the shunned speaker and some school administrators attempted to leave the building, full-blown chaos ensued, with protesters (not all of whom were students, apparently) pushing and shoving and jumping on a car Murray got into. Predictably, the combined reaction to Murray and to professional right-wing troll Milo Yiannopolous––who kept getting shut out of campus speeches before his career imploded on its own––has conservatives serving up takes on "who the real fascists are." Liberal and centrist publications, like the Atlantic and the New York Times, have wagged fingers at students who would shut down Murray's abhorrent speech with violence.

But what typically gets lost in the discussion of free speech, campus radicals, and safe spaces is the voice of actual protestors. I called up three of them to ask why they felt like Charles Murray couldn't just be ignored and what they felt the media has gotten wrong about the story so far.

"We were painted as rioters and thugs, which is all racially coded language," Arianna Reyes, a junior who helped organize the shut-down, told me. "And a lot of the organizers are people of color. It was definitely something that the media really latched onto, and it's a really dangerous thread."

Below is a transcript of my conversations with the activists, lightly condensed for clarity.

VICE: First of all, I'm interested to know how this was organized. The College Democrats at Middlebury and Black Lives Matter in Vermont both told me they had nothing to do with it.
Hanna Gebremariam: The organizing for the protest began a week ago, a week before the event on Thursday. The organization started when there was an offset introducing that Charles Murray was gonna speak at Middlebury, and students started meeting and talking about how to respond. We had several meetings, some that were organized by staff or faculty, but others that were organized by students only. And at those meetings there were different actions that students, faculty, and staff wanted to take. So some wanted to focus on a rally that was gonna take place before the event outside of the venue, and some focused on writing a pamphlet talking about the policy of his work and the flaws in his argument. Others wrote up petitions asking our [college] president Laurie Patton not to provide introductory remarks for his talk. There was a third group of students who were working to shut down the event.

Arianna Reyes: I was one of the organizers of the protest part. A Facebook group was created for people trying to figure out exactly what to do, and I had an idea of reading something, like a prepared speech or statement, so I shared that to the group, and then we had a bunch of people latched onto that. Then we had some organizing meetings from there hashing out the specifics of what we were going to do, what we were going to say. We also pointed to the history of Vermont, and their history with eugenics, and we talked about how it wasn't civil discourse to have to have this conversation with this man, and be forced to talk with him cordially, I guess, in a conversation, because we feel like it wasn't level. So we kind of coordinated this standing up. Ideologically and physically, turning our backs on a lot of the ideology that he promotes, and taking back the platform that Middlebury has provided him. So that was the concept of the protest that we were working with.

"I actually think the point of shutting it down is saying, 'These ideas aren't what we're engaging with, they're discredited.'"

I'm curious as to whether or not you think more people might know who Charles Murray is as a result of your protest and all of the national coverage that it's gotten, and whether or not that's a winning trade-off in your eyes.
Arianna: Many people knew who he was before then, before now. And maybe now more people know how abhorrent his writings are. And honestly like, we came out to voice our dissent, and that was what was important to us.

Aliza Cohen: I would just add that I don't think his ideas are that far from some of the dominant narratives that we see. Like, all of these attacks on affirmative action are rooted in his ideas––that racism is connected with IQ, and that students of color don't belong in institutions of higher learning. So I actually think the point of shutting it down is saying, "These ideas aren't what we're engaging with, they're discredited." And it's important for us to stand up against that, and not give them more of a platform that they already have, and to not allow that platform to be at our school, [all of] which we have the right to say.

"A lot of professors on our campus are conservative, and we engage with them, we take classes with them. It's not that we're not willing to engage with conservative ideas."

I'm curious what you think might have happened had you just ignored the speech.
Hanna: I think, again, we didn't want to be in a place where we did ignore him, because he was here ten years ago and we've had very similar types of people come and give lectures. And we wanted to assert ourselves and say, "This is not the type of institution that we want Middlebury to be." You can't just allow anyone to come under the guise of freedom of speech and literally pose a danger to the student body and make students feel unsafe.

Arianna: It's not about safety, but I think it's dangerous that we allow speakers like this to become the dominant narrative, and make it seem like they're conservative or arguable, because that's not what's happening. That's not what happened here. And in other schools, such as Skidmore, where he has spoken recently, there was a walkout, and all that he really said was that they were irritable. And I think that people who feel upset about this are more than irritable, and that our ideology should be taken seriously. And we deserve to be taken seriously.

I'm curious as to where you'd draw the line for a conservative speaker you'd allow to speak on campus. Charles Murray is obviously uniquely awful, but there are gradations to awful. Like, would you bar Woodrow Wilson from speaking at your school?
Aliza: I think it's hard to speculate, but I'll just say that a lot of conservatives have come to campus. A lot of professors on our campus are conservative, and we engage with them, we take classes with them. It's not that we're not willing to engage with conservative ideas. Of course we are. We want to. But there's a difference between engaging with conservative ideas, and difference, and engaging with someone who values these white nationalist eugenicist ideas, and who questions people's' rights to be at this school, and their right to exist here.

I'm assuming you guys followed what happened with the Milo protest at Berkeley? If he, for instance, came to Middlebury, you guys would have engaged in a shutdown?
Hanna: Students would have protested his talk. But again, we condemn any sort of violence, especially against Professor [Allison] Stanger [who was injured during the protest], which we have come out apologizing for, even though none of us were present at the [events that took place outside the speech venue.]

Aliza: I don't know if he's in the exact same category as Charles Murray, they're different people, they say different things. But I would happily engage and protest and also try to shut him down.

Hanna: Another part of the frustration for students is that Charles Murray is painted as a scholar even though his work has been refuted many times, and we know that his work cannot stand any kind of criticism for any kind of academic standards. And so therefore Milo and him don't really have the same equal footing for us, but again, I think students would have protested both similarly. But there's a danger for the reach that Charles Murray has. He works at [the American Enterprise Institute], he has impact on a lot of policies that have been dangerous to a lot of marginalized communities. And we really wanted to emphasize that in protesting his speech here at Middlebury.

You bring up an interesting point about how at least Charles Murray has the veneer of scientific legitimacy. Meanwhile, people like Milo rely on protesters for their existence, since they don't really have any actual ideas that they're trying to promote. But given that Murray purports to be an academic, wouldn't it make sense to have him at least speak, and kind of tear him down using facts at the Q&A?
Aliza: People have done this. In Q&As that we've watched from other schools, and in his speeches we watched from other schools, people have tried to engage with him, and he's pretty unresponsive, and kind of evades people's questions. His ideas have been discredited for years and years, and so there's no argument to be had.

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Read all of Andrew W.K.'s columns here.

I was never very into sports, but from early on—age seven all the way through high school—I swam competitively. I did this despite the fact that I didn't enjoy it all that much. In fact, initially, it felt like torture.

I have vivid memories of waking up when it was still dark outside and being driven to the pool for morning practice. An instant physical and mental dread would set in as soon as my alarm went off. It took everything I had to muster the willpower to slink out of bed. I was buried under a tremendous sense of foreboding, unable to find relief or think about anything but the wretched and frigid task at hand.

I'd get in my mother's car, sulking, and ease the passenger seat as far back as it would go while she drove. I stewed in my resentment, half trying to sleep, half trying to slow time down in a foolish and useless attempt to keep the icy solitude of that chlorinated water at bay for as long as possible. This ride was especially bad during the school year, when my general melancholic state would edge up to full-on depression, knowing that after I finished this brutal early morning practice I had an entire day of school and then another practice after.

Even during practice, a cloud loomed. I'd dive into the cold, cold water and begin the monotonous back and forth from one end to the other, muscles aching, lungs burning. The strange muted sounds of underwater exhaustion intensified my morbid thoughts. Swim practices typically lasted four hours total, every day. Each second felt like a punishment.

But when it was over—inevitably, magically—I'd feel great. Practice pushed me to my physical and emotional limits. And though I didn't know it was happening then, it changed me in ways that were undeniably profound and lasting. It taught me the importance of pushing through something unpleasant in order to let it shape you for the better, and that doing so would make you stronger in ways both observable and immeasurable.

My time in the water also taught me the value of exercise and how it could drastically improve my mood, my mind, and my outlook. As much as my mom pushed and encouraged me to swim, she didn't demand it. I could've quit at any point if I really wanted to. And I didn't. Some part of my spirit understood this was good for me. It was building needed and desired character—by submitting to this unpleasant routine I wanted little part of, and coming out the other end, I blossomed.

Now, I should say here: Exercise and fitness aren't something I often promote or speak about. Generally I find talk of one's workout regimen slightly embarrassing and shallow. There is something paradoxical about fitness. In one way, it is the epitome of a vain approach to living—focus on it too keenly and you risk celebrating only what's seen on the surface, and elevating it to a place where it's prized over other things in life like kindness and wisdom that are arguably much more important. But in another way, our body truly is the vessel through which we traverse this journey of life, and its dutiful upkeep is vital. None of our inner experiences could take place without this physical form we're able to inhabit and through which we can explore the world.

I've tried to think of fitness as a personal obligation—something I simply do and refuse to think about too deeply. I take the choice off the table. I work out because I realize it's part of what I am meant to do. I don't need there to be a point to it, or have a goal, or a result in mind. Those aspects of exercise can work to motivate some people, but for me, they distract. As long as I'm doing something active each day, I know I'm ahead of where I would be otherwise. I try to make it as basic as eating or drinking water. It's just something that's part of my life. It needs to be.

Over the past ten years, especially, I've noticed exercise has given me a direct outlet to channel anger and rage, and can turn a bad day around. There is something undeniably magical about taking a negative feeling and literally pushing it out of yourself and into a weight, and having that action result in a positive development for your body and overall health. That is true alchemy: taking the lead of negative emotions and transmuting them into golden energy.

Whenever I have felt bad, resentful, frustrated, overwhelmed, or just very dark, I can always push against gravity with those feelings and have them ultimately make me stronger or feel better. For me, no number of physical results are worth even a fraction as much as the positive mental impact exercise has on my mood. If nothing else, I owe it to the people around me to exercise, because it truly makes me a better functioning version of myself—more patient, more thoughtful, more calm, more focused, more human.

I'll never forget the contrast of feelings before and after those brutal swim practices. Before and during them, I wanted to die. After, I felt alive. I'd almost float afterward as I ran back outside to my mom's waiting car. Opening the passenger door, I would see the seat I had left reclined all the way back in my pre-exercise state of sulking misery. I couldn't believe that earlier in the day I had been that person. It was unrecognizable to how I felt post-practice: clear headed, optimistic, and energized. Exercise is never easy, and is often painful, but it's always worth it.

For me, working out makes life more alive.

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I must have been six years old the first time I ever saw Ranma ½. At the time I didn't know why I was so drawn to this Japanese anime that featured a character who was a boy that transformed into a girl every time he came into contact with cold water. And there were boobs. Lots and lots of boobs.

At the time I lived in the US where the only channels my brother and I were allowed to watch were the Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon. We used to spend the summers in Mexico, where we would stay at my grandparent's house. They didn't have cable, so we were stuck watching Canal 5, a children's TV network owned by Televisa.

Boy Ranma

Canal 5 broadcasted a bunch of anime shows. It was through this channel that I realized I wasn't into Dragon Ball Z, but grew to deeply love Samurai Pizza Cats and Ranma ½. Ranma was nothing like the shows I was used to watching. For one, it had so much nudity and homoeroticism. It was, without meaning to be, the first LGBTQ show I ever watched.

Ranma ½ takes place in Tokyo. The story revolves around a boy and his dad who have just returned from a martial arts training trip to China where both of them fell into cursed springs. Ranma turns into a girl when he is splashed with cold water and his dad turns into a panda. Upon returning to Tokyo, Ranma's father informs him that they will be staying with an old friend of his and that he is now officially engaged to one of his daughters—Akane.

Girl Ranma sleeping

This premise allows for some incredibly racy, and notably queer and trans positive scenes. Ryoga, another male character, becomes obsessed with Akane as well as female Ranma. This provokes a lot of conflict and confusion for Ranma, who is suddenly having homoerotic dreams that he's grossed out by. Six-year-old me was especially interested in interactions between Akane and female Ranma, who had the mind of a boy but was attracted to girls.

The show also has its share of homophobic and misogynistic content—not unusual considering that the anime version was originally aired nearly 30 years ago in 1989. In 1993 it was bought by Viz Media and dubbed into English in Vancouver, BC.

While other LGBTQ+ themed shows that came later in the 90s, like Will and Grace, were written off by mainstream audiences as "too gay," Ranma ½ managed to bypass any reactionary protest—perhaps because no characters explicitly identified as "gay" or "trans." Yet to queer and trans youth, it not-that-subtly reflected back our current and future struggles.

Comic writer Charlotte Finn reviewed the manga version of Ranma ½, which predates the anime, in a series she created called Lost in Transition, in which she explores trans characters in comics. "When it comes to transgender themes, there is a link there, but not in the way someone may expect," she wrote.

"When Ranma is doused with cold water, Ranma winds up with a body and a social status that feels wrong, and which Ranma plainly doesn't want—much like how many transgender people feel physical and social dysphoria, a feeling of disconnect or being out of sync with one's body or social role. Ranma isn't a boy who turns into a girl. Ranma is a cisgender boy who turns into a transgender boy."

I was interested to know if Finn had had a similar experience to me, mainly that she realized later on that this show might have played a role in helping her discover who she was, so I contacted Finn to ask: Did Ranma ½ play a role in your journey towards coming out as trans?

"I read and saw a lot of media in that general vein, those kinds of webcomics and mangas and cartoons and animes that are trans-adjacent but not actually about being trans. Where gender is fluid and maybe that's good but maybe it's also a curse or a joke. Alternately called 'forced feminization' stories or, more crudely, the what-the-heck-happened-to-my-genitals genre."

It wasn't until recently that I realized just how much Ranma's gender fluidity and the subsequent homoeroticism present in the show are vilified. I only remembered that this show sometimes had a girl in it that liked girls. It also had a guy who was forced to be different gender every time he was splashed with cold water.

"I clicked with that, because I definitely felt a kinship with the desire to be a different gender than the one I was designated as having from birth," said Finn. "But I also felt so, so ashamed about it, because the world told me it was shameful since before I could even speak, and I internalized that message. So media that treated it like it was a bad thing tended to play into those feelings of shame that I had."

"Once I made the connection in my head, once I realized I was trans, I instantly saw why it appealed to me, and also that it couldn't really be all that I wanted. It didn't have all the pieces of the puzzle, but it had some, and I think that's why it's such a well-remembered trans and queer text even as we grapple with its blind spots."

This tends to be the case with shows that feature any form of queer representation. As a 28-year-old lesbian I'm finally over that need to watch a show just because some usually poorly constructed character happens to be gay. And luckily, nowadays there are way more shows, some of them are even good shows, that feature LGBTQ characters who aren't vilified or killed off.

It's surprising that a show about a gender bending martial artist was so easily available to children in Mexico in the early and mid 90s. I honestly can't see it being aired anywhere in North America without protest nowadays. But it's still pretty amazing how many young boys watched that show and apparently had no issues with the homoeroticism and the gender bending. Finn has a theory as to why this is.

"The martial arts battles were the gateway drug—even if you weren't into Ranma grappling with fraught questions of gender and sexuality, you could at least see the characters beat seven kinds of hell out of each other. There was even a fighting game, the perfect video game tie-in," explains Finn.

"Humor can go a long way in defusing gay panic amongst the straights … and Ranma ½ was equal parts classical farce sex comedy as it was martial arts battles and general queerness. Top Gun was the number one movie the year it came out in and I'm fairly sure all those tickets weren't bought by gay men, even though it is just about the gayest movie of the 1980s."

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A conservative campus group that sent around an email saying "feminism is a cancer" may have somehow dug itself into deeper shit.

Wildrose on Campus at the University of Calgary told media earlier this week that they fired the person responsible for the message, which was promoting a screening of the men's rights documentary The Red Pill scheduled for International Women's Day.

"You and I both know feminism is a cancer," read the email sent Monday. "To create a dialogue on campus, we have decided to take action."

Alberta Wildrose Party leader Brian Jean called out the "inappropriate" comments in the legislature on Tuesday. "I was extremely disappointed, but let's be clear," he told media, "this is not a registered association of the Wildrose."

The group promptly apologized for comments that "do not reflect the opinions of the executive or the club" and told the school's student newspaper that the group's director of communications, Robert McDavid, had been let go as a result. The club's president and vice president have also since resigned.

As first reported by the campus paper, The Gauntlet, former executive members of the club are now questioning whether Robert McDavid was ever a member, or even a real person.

"I have never met or known someone by this name," former WROC president Jenn Galandy told VICE. "I have been asking other current WROC members if they know this individual, and I can't find anyone who does."

Today The Gauntlet reported that the Facebook profile for Robert McDavid was created on March 7, and was removed today.

In an email to VICE, an unnamed member of the group countered that Robert McDavid was a member and held the position for just under a month. "After death threats were received, we do not blame Robbie for deleting social media," reads the email. "We will not take part in a witch hunt."

The group's former president Ben Robinson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read More: Why an Ottawa Theatre Pulled a Screening of a Men's Rights Documentary

Galandy released a statement saying she is not surprised that the group was caught in this particular shitstorm "because that is who these people are. It is my belief through this ordeal, they are anti-women, anti-feminist, anti-LGBT."

Despite the controversy, the men's rights documentary screening went on today as planned. "I believe as individuals we should have the freedom to speak about these issues, and watch films that relate to men's activism, or feminism, or what have you," Galandy told VICE. 

"However, to have an event like this on International Women's Day upsets me, because I feel like it is degrading to all the strong women who have fought, and are still fighting, for women's rights."

Lead photo of former Wildrose on Campus president Ben Robinson via Facebook.

Follow Sarah Berman on Twitter.

On March 8, women around the world are striking. For equal pay and reproductive autonomy; to stop sexual assault, protest all bigotry, and expand social welfare programs; to get a little more respect, because, God knows, we deserve it. I will not be working, but not for any of those reasons. Unconcerned with specific dates when my boyfriend asked what day he should pack up the only life he's ever known to move across the country and into my apartment, I said, "Whenever." Turns out, I'm spending the day of this strike at home for a man. Shit.

The International Women's Strike—organized by the same group as the massively successful post-inaugural Women's March, which in DC alone had three times as many people as Trump's inauguration—asks all women, regardless of employment status, to participate to varying degrees. If you can, ditch work. For women with jobs that don't offer paid leave or unionization, or for women who are unemployed, they suggest wearing red to show solidarity, abstaining from unpaid work like chores, organizing boycotts "of companies using sexism in their advertisements or approach to workers," and "strik[ing] from gender roles"—whatever that means.

Many women are inspired by the strike—Klementyna Suchanow, who is organizing the event in Poland, described participantsto the Guardian as a global "army of women" who are forcing the world to listen to them. But there's a fair amount of skepticism attached to the event as well. Even before I realized I had accidentally booked a major relationship milestone on March 8, I wasn't intending to take the day off from work. Though the strike's slogan is "A Day Without Woman," I figured enough women would be performing both paid and unpaid labor on March 8—a working single mom, for example, doesn't necessarily have a choice as to whether or not to perform chores or childcare let alone the job she gets paid for—for that to be pretty much impossible. Most women can't skip out on their jobs or the massive amounts of largely invisible unpaid labor they perform in the name of solidarity,so I wasn't convinced this event would have the discernible impact of strike. It didn't feel like a traditionalstrike at all, but rather, another protest.

Though its call to action identified the day as explicitly "anti-capitalist," it is only loosely a "strike" in the more formal sense of the word. "It's important to distinguish between a work stoppage—which is important and good—and a strike, which is a strategic tactic used by workers in collective bargaining or in pressuring their employer to meet very specific goals," Julia Carmel, a community organizer in New York, explained to me. "I don't think it is a strike. It's more like an international day of action/resistance, and I strongly support it in that capacity."

Labor strikes are generally understood as a large group of employees collectively refusing to work until their concrete and achievable demands are met. The United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, one of our nation's biggest unions, explains on its website, "Strikes are powerful for a simple reason: The only thing the boss wants from workers is labor. Withhold that, and the business grinds to a halt. It's powerful leverage; so powerful in fact, that a credible threat of a strike is often just as potent as a strike itself."

But what happens when your labor is largely invisible, overlooked, and necessary to society but only benefits you, your loved ones, or you dependents? If we are following this more traditional definition of a "strike," only women privileged enough to be able to take time off work (both paid and unpaid) can legitimately participate and make their absence felt. Wearing red to work, though a symbol of solidarity, isn't the same thing as striking, nor should it be regarded as such. How do you strike from the unpaid "labor" of being an adult woman with responsibilities? Is emotional labor OK? What about helping my boyfriend move into my apartment? If I don't wash my dishes on March 8 in the name of feminism, what does that really do for the cause if no one is around to witness it?

I spoke to a number of healthcare and childcare workers who did not support the Women's Strike because they didn't feel included or necessarily comfortable with the idea of abstaining from work. Ashlyn Clark, who works as a nurse at an understaffed hospital in Kansas, told me she feels conflicted about the strike "as a feminist."

"My concern is that, if I participated in the strike, I would not only probably lose my job or face disciplinary action, but I'd also be betraying my female working-class co-workers who simply would not see the act as one of solidarity," she said. "Nurses around here are nowhere near any kind of union or organizing movement. We are just trying to work together and survive with our licenses intact."

Alix Jason, who works at a residential foster-care center, expressed similar concerns. "If I got fired [for striking], my overworked and underpaid wonderful co-workers would be even more overworked and underpaid," she told me. "The question I have to ask myself about participating in this strike is whether my absence at work is more profound than my presence. I would like to think that what I do at work is more meaningful than this probably unsuccessful march."

Of course, striking is powerful, and although the impact of the day won't be felt everywhere, it doesn't mean it's useless. A resident of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, might feel the strike's effects more acutely since 75 percent of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School district employees are women, and the superintendent has preemptively canceled classes on March 8. While this may seem like a win for feminism on the surface,the Women's Strike, unsurprisingly, has been criticized for only being available to privileged women. Prominent internet feminist Sady Doyle penned an op-ed for Elle examining what the work of women is, best summarized by its headline, "Women: Go Ahead and Strike, but Know that Many of Your Sisters Can't." Magally A. Miranda Alcazar and Kate D. Griffiths pushed back on Doyle's accusations of privilege in the Nation, accurately noting, "Striking is not a privilege. Privilege is not having to strike." Which brings us back to the problem of marketing this protest as a strike—it alienates women who can't strike, and also those who don't believe abstaining from their job is the best way to achieve these demands.

In a persuasive defense of the International's Women's Strike for n+1, Dayna Tortorici wrote, "The real reason we devalue women's work is because women are the ones who do it," then cited some pretty damning wage-gap statistics. When it comes to unpaid labor that many don't even consider "work," like childcare and housework, she argued, "We will know what unwaged labor does for society by how much people miss it when it's gone."

But practically, many women without salaried positions weren't even sure how they'd participate. "I'm freelance and also job hunting, so it'd hurt me too much financially to not work," writer and editor Rosemary Donahue explained to me. "My striking wouldn't actually cause an absence in any work environment, because I work from home, which is one of the major points of the strike anyway — to show what things are like without women."

Tortorici also reflected on the history of successful women's strikes, noting, "Polish women went on strike last October to protest a proposed abortion ban, the historically far-right Polish government voted down the legislation 352–58, with 18 abstaining." She importantly argued that Sady Doyle's claim that the Women's Strike is only accessible to privileged women "helps no one. Instead, it places some women's fear of hypocrisy over the needs of those they might join." This is certainly an accurate assessment in some cases, but I don't think the women I spoke to rejected the strike because they were afraid of being hypocritical. Rather, striking for a day would put them in a sticky situation financially or harm their co-workers and/or patients.

In the New Yorker, Jia Tolentino pointed out that the two school districts that had to shut down on Wednesday as a result of the strike have already brought up important issues: "the indispensability of these school districts' female employees, the inextricability of their work from the community's functioning, and the seriousness and commonality of women workers' concerns." Acknowledging the day is by no means perfect, Tolentino wrote, "a strike illuminates the system in which it takes place, and the messy space between perfection and failure within which change tends to happen."

Framing March 8 as a strike is undeniably useful—it forces us to think about the work that women do. Women make infinite essential contributions to society that are so unacknowledged and interwoven into its daily functioning that it almost feels impossible to opt out of them. While some women who do important work are understandably incensed by the suggestion of stopping work today, the strike gives us room to talk about why that is and the significance of what they do.

Not all women blame their jobs for their oppression, and many think skipping out on work, a fundamental right we worked very hard to earn, isn't a good vehicle to achieving larger goals of liberation. That's OK. We're feeling the strike's impact already. We're talking about it, and women's labor. A lot.

After her older sister died in late 2015, Elizabeth Freise left the body to rot in the Oregon home they shared for five months.

The decomposing corpse went undiscovered until April of last year, when Freise fell on the front porch and required medical attention. That's when emergency responders made a startling discovery: Christine Freise, 63, had died of natural causes and been left to rot in a bed in the home filled with heaps of garbage, apparently since November 2015.

But while Freise's failure to report her sister's dead body may have been shocking, it wasn't against the law.

In some states across America, there is no statute in place requiring regular people report dead bodies, especially if there's no indication a crime took place. Although local laws may obligate certain officials such as police to report deaths, and others may ban the general public from abusing corpses, there remains something of a loophole in place, depending on where you live, if a corpse is decomposing in your own home.

Of course, plenty of states do have laws that require people to report deaths within a certain timeframe. And some ban citizens from treating corpses in ways that might, as Kentucky law describes it, "outrage ordinary family sensibilities." Last year in Pennsylvania, for example, a man was convicted of abusing of a corpse when his girlfriend overdosed in their apartment and cops only found out after a neighbor's complaint about the smell forced him to call 911.

But in Oregon, John Hummel, the Deschutes County district attorney, says that even if the manner in which Elizabeth Freise handled her sister's death may have been appalling, it wasn't illegal. Freise could not be reached for comment for this story.

Hummel adds that Oregon has laws in place that dictate what you can't do to a corpse—such as chopping it up and moving it. Community standards or a basic sense of decency, on the other hand, are often the only thing determining how people care for loved ones after they die; at a minimum, that generally means disposing of their remains.

"If you discover a corpse, you don't have to do anything," Hummel tells me of his state. "Some people might say that that's wrong, that the law should require that, but the law doesn't require that."

That can leave family members to cope with horrifying scenarios. In Michigan, Tiffany Jager learned the shortcomings of her own state's laws when she discovered her mother's body about five days after she overdosed in the Grand Rapids apartment she shared with her boyfriend in 2011.

Jager says she hadn't been able to get in touch with her mother, who struggled with substance abuse issues. After waiting several days, she asked the landlord of the apartment complex for a spare key to get inside.

Naturally, she was mortified by what she found.

Jager's mother's boyfriend was passed out in a bedroom, with the door to the second bedroom covered with a blanket and a towel jammed into the bottom of the door to seal the crack. Her mother had apparently overdosed there days earlier, but her boyfriend continued using drugs in the apartment and didn't report it, according to Jager.

"This is my mother, no matter if she was a drug addict or not, the way she was left was less than a dog," she tells me.

Jager was stricken when her mother's boyfriend wasn't charged with a crime. But at the time, no law was in place requiring prompt reporting of deaths. "To find out that your loved one is dead is one thing," she says. "And to find out that you didn't know is another."

In response to the incident, Tonya Schuitmaker, a Michigan state senator, introduced a bill the same year to fine residents who fail to report dead bodies, which ended up becoming law. Under the statute, people who neglect to report the deceased face up to year in prison and a $1,000 fine. That penalty increases up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine if they deliberately try to conceal the corpse.

"It wasn't a crime to report the dead body, which kind of defies logic," Schuitmaker recalls in an interview. "And it's unfortunate that you have to have such a law because you think it's common sense."

Watch the TONIC guide to fixing an impaled object wound.

Prosecutors in Massachusetts are currently grappling with a similar scenario. Seventy-four-year-old Lynda Waldman failed to report the death of her younger sister, Hope Wheaton, who decomposed in their home for about a year and a half before being discovered this past December.

"We always asked where she was," Harriet Allen, a neighbor and longtime friend of Wheaton's, told the Boston Globe. "She would ignore it."

In December, the sisters' cousin came to visit and found Wheaton, who was long dead. Her remains had been decaying on the floor under the kitchen table amidst piles of stuff, with authorities estimating she had been there since the summer of 2015.

The older sister has yet to face charges, and the Norfolk district attorney's office spokesman David Traub told me police are still investigating whether a crime has been committed. Waldman could not be reached for comment.

Of course, even if it's not required by your own state's laws, experts generally concur that you should report a dead body if you find one. "Whatever the case might be, the sooner the better," says Gary Watts of the International Association of Coroners & Medical Examiners.

Watts, who works as a coroner in South Carolina, says most states have laws to require people to report dead bodies within a certain period of time. And the more time that passes after someone dies, the harder it becomes to investigate whether a crime has been committed.

This January in Mississippi, a state lawmaker introduced a bill that would fine people $50 if they stumble on a dead body and don't tell authorities about it in a "timely manner." The Clarion-Ledger, a local news outlet, reported that a woman heading to a workout class had ended up calling 911 when she saw a body lying near an intersection near Jackson State University.

Which is to say most people don't need a law to compel them to report corpses.

"I think 99.9 percent of people's natural inclination is to call the police or call a funeral director or call somebody to report a death," says Scott Gilligan, an attorney with the National Funeral Directors Association.

After all, once a loved one has died, there are various legal and financial matters at stake, such as collecting insurance, ending Social Security payments, and canceling bank accounts. Oh, and the smell, too.

"We're always surprised when somebody doesn't immediately report it," Gilligan says.

Follow Marina Riker on Twitter.

In a deeply Catholic country like the Philippines, where abortion and divorce are still illegal, talking about sex is uncomfortable—and discussing HIV/AIDS is downright taboo.

But that reticence has borne out in the form of an explosion in new HIV infections in the country. According to UNAIDS, the HIV/AIDS agency of the United Nations, the HIV epidemic is growing faster there than anywhere else in Asia. From 2010 to 2015, it rose by more than 50 percent. (About 39,600 Filipinos are currently HIV positive, according to the agency.) It's compounded by a lack of HIV education among young Filipinos; according to the country's health department, only 17 percent of 15- to 24-year-olds in the country understand the basics of the virus and how it's transmitted.

Efforts to reverse the tide have been met by resistance from religious and government authorities, as with last month's news that the Department of Education had reversed a plan to distribute condoms to high school juniors and seniors, after outcry from parents, the church, and elected officials.

For young Filipinos, living alongside the specter of HIV is a harrowing experience. At the prestigious University of Philippines-Diliman, we asked students—both straight and LGBTQ, religious and non—to tell us how their generation has been affected by the epidemic and what must be done to stem it.

Interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

Nap Arnaiz

The epidemic only became real to me when I learned a close friend had HIV. He was irresponsible back then. He didn't know when or how he got it, exactly.

I don't think people here know how HIV works in general, like how it's transmitted and how it affects their body. Their only knowledge of condoms is to prevent pregnancy.

I haven't always practiced safe sex—at first I thought it was only used to prevent pregnancy and only for girls. But I learned that through my own research. It only came up in high school once.

Xavier Bilon

I'm the president of Babaylan, the longest-standing LGBT advocacy group in the Philippines. In this country, we don't talk about sex, and we don't talk about safe sex. HIV is growing because it's a reality that people have sex. Yet the government doesn't want to recognize that fact. The Philippines is not a rich country, and since the government isn't helping with access to condoms, many Filipinos who want to have sex with condoms can't. There's stigma here about condoms, too—lots of people with access to condoms refuse to use them because they don't think it's pleasurable, and they don't like to buy them because they feel judged. I have to provide my own older siblings with condoms and lubricants.

The government needs to begin to recognize that HIV/AIDS is an epidemic. Schools need to take responsibility for taking care of Filipino youth and the Catholic Church here should open their minds to promoting safe sex. Otherwise, things are only going to get worse.

Sam Cruz

I came to Manila from the provinces, four hours away from here—and being on campus is a new feeling. With it comes a feeling of liberty and freedom, because I can practice being myself. I'm only out as gay here at university. I know I have to have protected sex, but I haven't even experienced penetrative sex yet.

It's very scary to think about the rise in HIV/AIDS. People are very active on gay-dating apps, especially in Manila, and they're young and may not know about using condoms. It's sad, because a lot of HIV patients are under 21, and many are in Manila.

I grew up in the provinces of Manila, and there, they stick to traditions. Things are up to our grandparents, to our cousins, to our friends and neighbors. They just have this feeling that being gay is weird and meant to be looked down on. It was very tough growing up gay there.

Ian Juarigue ("Misses Tan")

HIV/AIDS is a pressing issue right now because people have so many misconceptions about it. I'm sad, and it really affects our community. The virus goes beyond just the HIV-positive community, the LGBT community—we got free HIV testing at a university fair last month, and most people were saying, "Why would I be tested if I'm not gay?"

I feel sad about the order that condoms can't be passed out in high school—you're taking away those students' chance to have safe sex. High schoolers are curious, that's when they start testing the waters. They're being robbed of the opportunity to experience that safely.

My first test was just a few weeks ago. I'm negative, but I was so scared, because I'd never been tested before. Though I practice safe sex, I know there's still a lot of risk.

Marc Nathaniel Estrabo

I'm part of a campus Christian group called Christian Brotherhood International. HIV/AIDS has not affected me at all, but I think the rate is rising because people my age don't use condoms. There's a cultural mindset that blocks them from using condoms—we're a mostly Catholic nation. The church preaches that we don't use condoms because that's a sin, and that's why the HIV/AIDS rate is so high. But I think that's wrong. I think there should be awareness groups all around the country and the churches should be more open-minded about the situation. HIV/AIDS is lethal. It's important to know how the virus is spread, what it is, and how to prevent it.

Avi Villa Flores

I'm affected by HIV/AIDS because now I'm more scared of having sex. I grew up knowing about safe sex because my mother is a medical technician. She taught me about condoms and how you use them when I was very young. But young people aren't educated enough about sex, especially our generation.

Many young Filipinos today are liberated. The government should help us, and I support them implementing sex education, but I don't support them giving out condoms to youth. If you give students condoms, it's sparking their curiosity at a very young age.

Bryan Del Castillo ("Sugar")

I have a couple of friends currently living with HIV, and it's surprising—I wasn't exposed to the HIV/AIDS epidemic before university. It's a quiet, private issue.

The important thing to remember is that it's not a curse. The HIV-positive need an open space to discuss what it's like living with HIV/AIDS, and there's a stigma that the disease is only for gay people, that it's a plague. But it's not, and we should be able to destroy this stigma. There's this emerging notion now that we don't have to be married to have sex, and more people are having sex as a result. Many are not getting tested for HIV because they're embarrassed. The scary part of that is the people who are more liberal are afraid, too. My friends are not open about their HIV because it's scary. They've changed their lifestyle, but not because they want to be healthy—it's because they're afraid of others figuring out they have HIV.

Follow Justin Heifetz on Twitter.

Geloy Concepcion is a photographer based in Manila.

It's no secret that Donald Trump doesn't exactly respect women. For years, the president has revealed his misogynistic tendencies on camera—from creepy comments about his daughter Ivanka to his infamous "grab them by the pussy" conversation.

Ignoring his past indiscretions, Trump tweeted about International Women's Day, saying he has "tremendous respect for women." So naturally, during last night's Desus & Mero, the VICELAND hosts called Donald out, and played a highlight reel of all of his most sexist moments caught on tape.

Be sure to catch new episodes weeknights at 11 PM ET/PT on VICELAND.

(Top photo: a woman demonstrating how she smuggled her drugs into a festival in her bra. Photo: Michael Segalov)

From income to civil rights to rates of liver disease, women are – however slowly – approaching gender equality. Yet one thing has not been equalised at all over the years: taking illegal drugs.

"I'm the only one of my close girl friends that loves taking drugs," Emily, a 25-year-old publishing assistant from Surrey, tells me. "I would love to trip with them, but it's hard to find anyone who'll do it, because the girls don't go for it as much as the boys I know. They would never get an Airbnb with me and devote a whole weekend to it, so I have to rent somewhere with the boys. I've always been the odd one out."

In 2017, despite the continuing rise of feminism, the increasing acceptability of drugs and more women in the public eye being honest and overt about their drug use, men are far more prolific drug takers than women. This is the case the world over.

In the UK, women are between two and three times less likely than men to have taken any given drug in the last year. Bizarrely, the gender drug divide has actually widened over the last 20 years; women are now less likely to have taken drugs compared to men than they were in 1996. So what's going on?

The most commonly cited reason is that men are risk takers – and the research backs this up: men are less averse than women to breaking the law and to damaging their health. Men also commit between 80 to 90 percent of crime. However, it's not because men are somehow innately braver or more stupid: risk-taking has a lot to do with social conditioning. Boys are taught from a young age to take risks in a way girls are not. It has always been seen as a stereotypical male trait.

But it's not that simple. Schoolgirls appear to stick two fingers up to this theory. Between the ages of 11 and 14, drug use prevalence in girls is almost identical to that of boys. In fact, at 14, British schoolgirls are more likely to have taken drugs than their male classmates. Between the ages of 12 and 15, the number of girls who have drunk alcohol rises far more rapidly than that for boys.

It's not like this for long, though. Women are fast catching men up in terms of the amount of alcohol they drink during adulthood, but from age 15 onwards the gender gap widens when it comes to illegal drug-taking. Men aged 16 to 24 are twice as likely to have taken drugs in the last year, rising to three times more likely aged 25 to 59.

Looking at those age ranges, is this about motherhood perhaps? It's true that pregnancy and the first few years of having kids can be a pretty effective antidote to drug taking – thanks to all the nights in and the terrible comedown/screaming baby combination – and it's not always an even partnership: mothers have to carry the baby and give birth; fathers don't, so may well continue squeezing in a sesh every now and then.

Even so, women's drug journeys through adulthood are not a straight path into kids and abstention, as some official statistics might suggest. A report published in the International Journal of Drug Policy in 2011 analysed the drug habits of 778 women from Manchester and Liverpool as they grew from being school kids to 27-year-olds through the 1990s and 2000s. It found that some mothers surf a second wave of highness when their kids are old enough to spend the night with family or friends.

"During pregnancy most desist from drug use, and this persists while they are new to parenthood," one of the report's authors – Lisa Williams, of the University of Manchester's School of Law – told me. "Some never return to drugs because of the competing demands of running a household, being a parent and working. They also have their identity as mothers to contend with, and refer to wanting to be 'good' or 'responsible' mothers. That said, some do return to drug taking, albeit at a slower pace, once their children are less demanding and they have appropriate social networks to look after them, for example, when they have gone out clubbing."

"The perception is that they are more vulnerable to taking drugs than men, although from what I know a lot of the MDMA lightweights are men"

Of course, it's not just about having families. There remains a claustrophobic moral pressure on women, enforced by wider society. It starts at school, according to Emily, who says that while at her all girls' school she was shown a Leah Betts video and told she would die if she took drugs, at the nearby boys' school they were handed leaflets about the different effects of drugs.

Karenza Moore, a lecturer in sociology at Lancaster University who has been researching the club-drug scene for over a decade, says women have always been painted as drug victims by society. "The perception is that they are more vulnerable to taking drugs than men, although from what I know a lot of the MDMA lightweights are men," says Moore. And she's backed up by the pharmacology: there is insufficient evidence showing that women's bodies are more vulnerable to drugs than men's, nor that men's brains are more hard-wired to impulsive behaviour than women's.

"Women are still bombarded with messages about drink spiking, getting home safe and how getting out of it is not becoming of a woman," says Moore. "There is that classic image, constantly repeated in the newspapers, of a young woman lying drunk on a bench. But it's seen as a masculine trait to drink your weight in beer." Possibly, because of the increased stigma surrounding female drug taking, women's drug use could be more hidden than men's.

Moore also points out that, from a young age, more often than not, it's boys and men who control the supply of drugs. So it's easier for men to buy drugs and easier for women to have their supply cut off when a partner or sibling becomes distanced.

Not all drug-taking scenes are unequal. Some club spaces offer a sort of narcotic oasis for women who want to take drugs without getting harassed by idiots. Moore's studies into drug use in clubs across the UK have found that in drum-and-bass and trance venues, in particular, women's use of MDMA, cocaine and ketamine was similar to that of men.

These venues were viewed as "permissive spaces", where women felt safer and freer to have a psychoactive night out. This is reflected in the official statistics: among 25 to 59-year-olds, MDMA – a drug closely linked to clubbing – is the only substance in Britain that women are as likely to be taking as men.

It has been predicted many times in the last 20 years that, like in other aspects of life, women's drug use will converge with men's. But this has never happened. Whether that's because of external pressures on women from society, the way the drug trade operates, motherhood or something innate, there is no conclusive proof as yet.

Maybe, despite advancing equality and more liberal drug laws, the future will not be one of equal and fair intoxication among the sexes – and instead, as women increasingly turn their back on drugs, they will be left watching and laughing while all the guys K-hole in the corner.

@Narcomania

More on VICE:

The Story of Mephedrone, the Party Drug That Boomed and Went Bust

What Happens If Your Number Is Found On a Drug Dealer's Phone?

This Is What's Happening in Britain's Drug Scene Right Now

New York, as a place, is not particularly kind. It is not particularly forgiving, and it doesn't welcome mistakes. Still, the hungriest people in the world always seem end up there. It's the only city that can satisfy those especially ravenous types, who need the most. That's what New York has, right? The most opportunity, the most debauchery. It is a city to be on top of the world in, but there are plenty of people there who are not. Millions. For those people, New York—with its politics, its amenities, its police force—is quite cruel.

Australian photographer Ward Roberts was at New York's LaGuardia airport when he met his former partner, who worked in the airline industry. They fell in love quickly. But five months into the relationship, Ward found out his partner had pancreatic cancer—he'd known for some time, but of all secrets to share with someone you're still getting to know, cancer seems unimaginably difficult.

What followed was an all-consuming relationship between two people who were, in different ways, struggling to keep it all together. In the mess of it all, Ward took a series of photographs to make sense of things. Later, he called it Sicklove. When we met to talk about the series Ward opened up, really opened up, about caregiving, depression, and how life is just really, really unfair sometimes.

VICE: To begin, can you tell me about this man?
Ward Roberts: I met him within my first year in New York, having moved there from Melbourne in 2013 to set up a better life for myself. You know those kind of relationships where you meet and it's like, really fast, really intense? This was really fast paced. He had a magnetic personality. One of those people who was just incredibly fun and spontaneous. I think he liked that I was Australian. And he liked my hair. Probably somewhere around four, five months later, I found out he had cancer.

That's a difficult thing to share with someone.
I think so. I mean, absolutely. You don't necessarily know someone all that well, it's still the beginnings of something. It was obviously a pretty intense thing to share with somebody.

Was there ever a question of staying or leaving?
There were so many different avenues or options. It was a really hard decision. It's not necessarily about whether you stay or whether you go, it's more about making sure—first and foremost—that there's some level of support there, relationship or not. My head went to support. My mum's had breast cancer twice, so cancer to someone close to me isn't new. You just want to be as caring as possible: Be a positive, caring person, and do the right thing. I like to think I have a calming energy. My strength, I think, is to give people a space where they can just belong. I tried to do that as much as possible, but it's hard.

Balancing caring for that person and caring for yourself—that's hard.
Yeah, I forgot about myself. I didn't think about myself at all. I wasn't a priority. And on top of it all, New York is incredibly expensive. It's not as if you can say, "Just rest and take the week off." No, it's relentless. It wasn't an option to take a break: He had to work while doing treatment because he needed to be able to keep his insurance. Still, he didn't have the energy to work, his job was very high capacity. But he kept working, because to do those procedures [uninsured] was, like, $100,000 or even more. I was barely earning enough money to support myself, let alone be a financial support to him. So there were all these little things like, he'd go to treatment but not be able to take a taxi back home. Or barely be able to afford food. He'd take bags of pretzels home from work for us to eat. We barely had rent covered.

That's just not something we experience here in Australia.
Yeah, I couldn't believe it. I talked to lots of my friends about it, exasperated. I'd say, "He's used up all his sick days. He's going to lose his insurance if he doesn't continue to work." They just said, "Oh yeah, that sounds about right." They don't value human life [in America]. It sucks to be poor in America, I mean, you're barely human there. It really separates people. That in itself was so painful because I didn't have an answer, I didn't know how to fix the situation.

Really late one night he attempted to overdose ended up in the emergency room—one of the worst hospitals in Brooklyn. I was completely physically, emotionally exhausted. It was one of those days that keeps testing you. I remember there wasn't anywhere to sit and comfort him, there were no chairs nearby, so I tried to sit on the side of the bed. One of the police officers in the ward was like, "Get off the bed!" I felt so angry, trying to explain I just wanted to comfort him. I remember going up and asking for [the officer's] details, telling him I was going to report him. So he threatened to tase me. Just insane. It's so degrading, and so demoralising.

Tell me how the series came to be.
You know, obviously not being able to afford a therapist or anything like that, the series became my therapy. That was my thing of almost trying to like watch a situation through a barrier, because it felt like a movie. I've only seen emotions and situations like this happen in a movie. So I tried to view it like that. It didn't feel that real.

Did the two of you talk about the fact you were taking these photographs? What were those conversations like?
He was really interested in being an actor, that was one of the things he's always wanted to do. I was like, "Well this, you know maybe we can kind of make this a little bit like stills from a movie-esque kind of thing." So I tried to view it a little bit like, this didn't really feel that real. That was where the series was my way of kind of trying to come to terms with what was actually going on, trying to find some way to explain this or understand the story. He didn't really like the photos being taken, I shot them on a large format camera so it was a very slow process. I asked him multiple times, "Do you want me to stop? I don't want to push the boundaries with something like this." But he was okay. He probably liked some element of it too.

How else did you try to cope?
Well, there are a lot of elements of suicide in the series. The pictures of the roof, that was the roof of the building I lived in. In my own quiet moments I'd often go up and sit on the edge. I wasn't really thinking I'm going to jump but in a really weird way, it would give me strength to know there was an off button. Like, if it gets too much, if it's too painful, there's the finish. It was very masochistic, and it's so fucked, I know. It's weird expressing that. I really just felt so isolated, like I was losing all of my friends. I became unbelievably depressed—my energy was awful, completely awful. I was in such a shitty space that I didn't even want to bare my presence on people's lives.

That's the evil thing depression does. I makes you believe you're a burden.
It does—such a burden. I'm a very emotionally connective person, and when you connect with someone going through this you take on so much of that pain. I gave myself so much hate for not being able to fix it. And you can't be selfish and say, "Let's make this emotionally about me." It wasn't about that, it wasn't about me. I tried to hide as much of the pain as possible, but both of our emotions were so raw. It was so relentless, so intense.

How did you get out of that space?
It's taken a long time. A lot of healing. But I just reached a stage where I had nothing left. I had zero love for myself, or anyone else—anything else. It felt like life was done, so I completely shut down. I couldn't leave my bed for ages, I don't know… I just sort of fell off, I guess. Then I reached a stage where I didn't recognise who I was. I remember looking in the mirror and thinking, "I don't want to be this person. I don't want to bring this energy into the world." It just had to change. It had to.

I imagine it's quite scary getting these photos out in the open.
I didn't think I'd ever release it. I don't know, and I'm still very, it's still a really terrifying thing for me to get this out. It's overwhelming to do it. I didn't really think about it in the sense of, "oh, this will be part of my folio," or body of work. I just thought it would be kind of part of showing vulnerability I guess. Which is one of the things I learned last year, that one of the most beautiful things is just being really vulnerable, like self-deprecating and raw and honest. Or just kind of open, so people can kind of criticise you and look down on you, but also sort of be inspired, or just decide, essentially.

That's a very difficult thing to today, online. You're so open to being—
—criticised, scrutinised. Everyone has a perspective. With this story, there's so many perspectives on it, which is why it's really hard for me to tell my own. Is it the right one, is it the honest one?

At the same time, a lot of people feel a compulsion to record these things. It's very natural.
I think we're at this era in life where anything that's incredibly emotional, we want to share it. We want people to relate to it. I don't know if it's because you want them to feel like they're a part of the story, but that's definitely a part of our culture, to share these experiences as much as possible.

Are you proud of each other?
I think so. There's been some mistakes, and some things that could be handled better, but I'm proud of strength. In general, so much strength.

See more of Ward Roberts' work here

There are no official figures on how many sex workers exist globally, with estimates roughly running between 13.8 and 30 million people. But their labor itself has been well documented throughout the ages, cutting through every class and society—from legal brothels during the Roman Empire to the Japanese oirans (courtesans). It's impossible to imagine a world without sex workers.

And—despite social seclusion—everyday women have much to thank sex workers for. Historically, sex workers have been heavily involved in activism and have pushed hard to progress women's and workers' rights, both within and outside the sex work industry.

You won't read about sex workers' contributions to women's rights in the history books. Most of their efforts have been ridiculed at best, and ignored at worst. Sex worker and activist Juno Mac of the Sex Worker Open University and the English Collective of Prostitutes explains the losses that could have happened without sex workers' help.

Continue reading on Broadly

EPA head Scott Pruitt, the climate change skeptic and fossil fuel fan who now leads the agency he has repeatedly sued, went on CNBC's Squawk Box Thursday to say that, nah, he doesn't really think carbon dioxide has much to do with climate change.

"I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do, and there's tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact," Pruitt said when asked about the relation between CO2 and rising temperatures on earth. "So no, I would not agree that it's a primary contributor to the global warming that we see."

Sure, 2016 was the hottest damn year in the recorded history—just like 2014 and 2015 were before that—and Antarctica just had its hottest day ever, but the man at the helm of the Environmental Protection Agency doesn't really feel like that's related to fossil fuel emissions.

NASA and NOAA, on the other hand, disagree, saying in a January report that the continued global warming is "driven largely by increased carbon dioxide and other human-made emissions into the atmosphere."

As head of the EPA, Pruitt happens to oversee both NASA and NOAA now, so maybe they should think about creating a mirror of their websites to back up their scientific findings like the EPA did before Trump and Pruitt have a chance to gut them.

From the moment Xander nearly falls off his skateboard ogling Buffy at Sunnydale High School, creator Joss Whedon set Buffy the Vampire Slayer up to become the most important television show until that point. It was 20 years ago, on the 10th of March, 1997, that the first episode – "Welcome to the Hellmouth" – aired, and a show about a teenage girl whose destiny it is to kill vampires (or whatever the latest "big bad" was that season) started to gather what remains one of the most dedicated fandoms going.

The show was more daring than anything TV had done before. Case in point: creator Joss Whedon made – with no warning – a musical episode, and then an episode conducted mostly in silence. Neither of these decisions seem dramatically revolutionary today, but that's only because Buffy took the risks first. The show made history by showing the first lesbian kiss on network TV in the US. It had the innovative spirit of something like Twin Peaks and the grand, sweeping sci-fi story arcs of The X-Files, squishing them together to make something more. The show effortlessly jumped from being witty, clever and ironic to urgent, thoughtful and touching. For all the scholarly study and debate it ignited, it was thanks to Buffy and the Scoobies that TV started getting taken seriously as an art form when it did.

For its landmark anniversary, I asked Buffy actors and Buffy Studies scholars about the episode that means the most to them.

Anthony Head, Giles – "Restless"

"One of my favourites is 'Restless'. I was going to Giles' apartment set, and Joss [Whedon] was in there. I went, 'Hello, what are you up to?' He said, 'I'm just seeing what will happen if I go through this set to Giles' kitchen, because it backs onto the dormitory set, and then if I build a tunnel that then goes into Xander's basement…' I said, 'What the hell are you trying to do?' He told me he was doing an episode about dreams and nightmares, and it occurred to him that dreams had no limits to where they could go, so he just thought he'd see what would happen. How cool?

"Cut to a few days later and he asked me up to his office. I was a bit apprehensive, although we used to chat and hang out, because it seemed like official business. He had good news and bad news. I asked for the bad news and he said, 'As you know, I'm doing a dreams episode, and each act is going to be one of your dreams – you, Willow, Xander and Buffy. Your episode is going to be the exposition.' I thought – no! We always joked that when it came down to it Giles did all the expositions because he had an English accent so he sounded very much more learned when explaining the evil. Needless to say, I was not thrilled about my dream being the one that explained everything. I asked for the good news – that I could sing it. Initially he said I'd have a white piano. I said, 'What! That's not Giles!' And he let me be a rockstar. We recorded it and then did it, and it was a quite extraordinary episode, which came about, as usual, from Joss saying, 'Let's see what we can do.'"

James Marsters, Spike – "Once More, with Feeling", AKA The Musical Episode

Buffy still (Image via Wiki)

"I actually hate most musicals. There was so much gnashing of teeth and worry before we started filming; the general consensus was that Joss Whedon was flushing a perfectly good television show down the drain. Tony Head [Giles] and I were comfortable singing publicly because we already were with our own musical side projects; I was in a band and still am. So we were OK with doing a musical episode. The rest of the cast were not. I remember one person going to Joss and saying, 'You hired me to be a one-camera dramatic-comedic actor. That's my wheelhouse. The world knows me as that, and now you're asking me to do something that I'm not prepared for at all. Can I please juggle chainsaws? Real chainsaws? Cutting my arm off would probably be less detrimental to my career.' There was a lot of 'poor us, what the hell is going on?' and we really didn't have faith in Joss.

"It became apparent very quickly that Joss was not going to be deterred at all and that we were gonna do this whether we liked it or not. As a company we stopped complaining and got to work hiring our own vocal coaches and dance instructors. As a company we decided, in the face of certain failure, guaranteed doom, we were going to go out swinging and try our best. I was proud of us. It was a huge risk. I think the only one that thought it wasn't was Joss, because he knew he could pull it off. He actually rolled out a television on the soundstage because he needed to do a quick edit on the first scene that he shot, which was the Xander and Anya dance. He showed that to us to allay our fears. After that we knew it was going to be brilliant; we went from the depth of depression to the height of fun during that episode.

"We were having a blast and thinking we were really wonderful, until Hilton Battle – a Tony award-winning musical actor from Broadway, who played the villain, Sweet – turned up. The last day was his scene at The Bronze, and he just killed it in one or two takes. We were standing below, looking up at him, like, 'Holy shit. That's how you do it. We're screwed. We're not doing that.' Of course, the episode as a whole didn't suck – that was the greatest icing on the cake. We thought Joss was a genius; we just didn't realise how much.

"The next episode was Tabula Rasa, where we all wake up and forget who we are. We were like, 'This is boring! Where's the music!' God, it was a letdown after the musical."

Meghan Winchell, Buffy Studies scholar – "Surprise" and "Innocence"

Buffy and Angel in 'Surprise' (Screengrab via YouTube)

"In this pair of episodes, Buffy and Angel have sex. I just think that it rings so true: here we have this couple, and they're young and they're in love, and there's this high school girl and she ends up having her first time with the man that she loves, and then he literally turns into a blood sucking monster the next day and treats her horribly. As a college professor who teaches Buffy to women and men who are in that age group, that episode really resonates with them. It's always a turning point in the course where they feel like, 'Okay, this isn't just a show about vampires. This is really about something deeper.'

"Then I love the fact that, at the end of "Innocence", Buffy does what she has to do, and at least momentarily she gives it this fight and defeats Angel, and just to rise up and to have that strength when he has really crushed her spirit. It's just so meaningful."

Doug Jones, the lead Gentleman – "Hush"

The Gentlemen in 'Hush' (Image via Wiki)

"We knew we were doing something very special in series television with 'Hush', because when the creator comes out of his office to direct that episode and has written that episode, that's a big deal. The other thing was the daring step that he took to write most of that episode in complete silence with no dialogue. I was the tall lead Gentleman, and once I stole the entire town of Sunnydale's voice and put it into a box. The network at the time was worried and fought Joss Whedon on this, saying you can't take audio out of the show – we're going to lose viewers. Their feeling was, 'Stimulate, stimulate, stimulate' to keep the viewer.

"Camden Toy [the other lead Gentleman] and I were the only two of The Gentlemen who had facial appliances – the prosthetics redesigned to actually be glued down to our own mouths so that we would manipulate our own smiles. Everyone else had masks. Then they put those metallic-looking dentures over our own teeth so that we could have, like, a gross smile. My face started to ache and get twitchy because our muscles are sore every day of our seven-day shoot. We didn't walk, we hovered, about six inches off the ground. When you saw us floating down the middle of the street or a hallway they would have us in a hip harness with wires that came up from our hips to our back and up to a T-bar that was then being drawn along a track.

"I think the Gentlemen weren't trying to be evil; they need seven hearts to collect and there's a reason for that, and the whole folklore behind them is exposed in that episode. I don't remember how often we showed up to do this, but it was just a necessity, like going on a hunting trip for food so our species didn't die off. We gotta do what we gotta do, and we're very polite and happy about it so we nod into each other when we're about to cut some college kid's heart out. What's wrong with that?"

Trisha Pender, Buffy Studies scholar and author of I'm Buffy, You're History: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Contemporary Feminism – "Storyteller"

Andrew in 'Storyteller' still (Image via YouTube)

"As a critic, but also as a fan, my favourite episode would have to be 'Storyteller'. Andrew the uber nerd, classic geek fanboy, decides to make a documentary called Buffy, Slayer of the Vampyres. It's one of those clever things in television where it comments on television as a medium, so it's a Buffy episode that is self-reflexive about being a Buffy episode. I also think it's Joss Whedon's homage to fandom and to Buffy geeks in particular. It's about loving something so much you want to make art of out it, but it's also about how embarrassing and pretentious that can sometimes be, and how self-incriminating.

"There's a darker side to 'Storyteller' as well. Andrew has killed one of his best friends, albeit under the influence of an evil demon. 'Storyteller' follows the arc of his denial and eventual repentance. It's really light and dark, really meta. There's something quite defeated and despairing about it, even in the face of beautiful humour. It's so funny, too. At one point, Andrew is talking into his camera, but he's doing it on the loo. Anya says, 'Andrew! Get out of there! What are you doing?' He says, 'Educating and entertaining.' And she says, 'Why can't you just masturbate like the rest of us?' I think that says a lot about fandom, about writing, about producing, about art."

Musetta Vander, Miss French – "Teacher's Pet"

Miss French in 'Teacher's Pet' (Photo via Wiki)

"I loved the movie, so I was very happy to do the TV show. As far as special effects go, at the time Buffy – and 'Teacher's Pet' in particular – was doing some pretty cool and unusual things. I play a teacher who can turn into a praying mantis, and there's that horrible moment when my head turns all the way around and another time when my hands turn into claws. When I eat that bug sandwich they actually had real bugs – little crickets, or something they use for fishing, I believe. They were kept in little boxes which they sprinkled onto the bread. I remember having a really hard time with trying to do that because I did not want to feel the little wings. They said, 'Well, they're gonna be bait for fish anyway.' But I did not want to hurt an animal. They didn't die – they were fine – they were just sprinkled onto the bread and then when I go to eat it they're not there. The scene with Xander was hilarious, too. The crew couldn't keep a straight face because his reaction was so funny. Xander was so innocent that you really just watch him squirm. But what's funny about it is how much older Nicholas [Brendon] who plays him was in real life – not a schoolboy this bug teacher is trying to seduce.

"At the end of the episode there's that egg that was left behind, and it was implied that she'd keep breeding and wasn't dead forever after all. People always asked me, 'Why did Miss French never come back?' My god, I was hoping she would."

Lorna Jowett, Buffy Studies scholar and author of Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy fan – "Becoming" Part One and Two

Buffy in 'Becoming: Part Two' (Image via Wiki)

"I always say these two episodes because they're probably the most fantastic season finale ever, and they prove that Buffy can be a hero – a real hero. There are awful consequences but she is continually stepping up. She had to see Kendra die; not physically die, but Kendra has had to die to make this series. There's the whole fight with Angelus that she wins, but she wins it at such a cost that she has killed her boyfriend for the sake of the world. She has that massive fight with Joyce, her mum, which a lot of people see as a 'coming out' allegory. Joyce tells Buffy that if she leaves she's not coming back, and she then does leave Sunnydale.

"Importantly, it shows that it's not OK that she had to do that. Up until this point, Buffy was always funny, and from this point Joss Whedon does these brilliant tonal shifts from comedy to something that's deadly serious. Thankfully, they also rehabilitate Joyce as a character, from her not recognising the strength in her own daughter to being an ally to Buffy in the later seasons. I have to say, the more I watch episodes with Joyce and Buffy, and the older I get, the more I identify with Joyce."

Camden Toy, Uber vamp, a lead Gentleman and Gnarl – "Same Time, Same Place"

Gnarl in 'Same Time, Same Place' (Photo via Wiki)

"Gnarl was a really rich, story book-ish character, and very scary. By the time I walked into audition for it I was having way too much fun, playing with the voice in that sing-song way – 'No one's going to save you.' I remember getting fitted for his teeth, and they hadn't rounded the edges yet so were really sharp. I lightly touched round the edges with my lips and I was bleeding. I had finger extensions to make my fingers look an extra three or four inches longer than they are, and at the end there's these claws. The first day of shooting I was in that body suit for over 12 hours. I couldn't go to the bathroom for 12 hours because I just knew it would take them too much time to get me in and out of that suit. It was pretty excruciating. I did all my own stunts, too, on a wire where they were pulling me up a chain.

"After I've paralysed Alyson Hannigan [who plays Willow], I'm sitting on her and stripping her flesh away and telling her how delicious she is. She and I had so much fun with that scene because she had such a good sense of humour and we really bonded. I'm sitting on her for literally most of the day, so I had to work out a way to do that without crushing her. I love the scene where she gets closed in on and I'm talking to her off camera and the cameras can't see me, but you can hear my voice so you're leaving him up to your imagination. It's very much like the scene with the shark in Jaws. You know he's there but you don't see him until towards the end of the film. And then, when I paralyse her, she kind of slumps to the ground, but all you see is my shadow. God, he is creepy."

@hannahrosewens

More on cult TV:

The Oral History of 'Daria'

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Marijuana activists Marc and Jodie Emery were arrested at Toronto Pearson Airport Wednesday and their national dispensary chain is now being raided as part of Project Gator, a large-scale coordinated crackdown by Toronto police.

Kirk Tousaw, a lawyer and cannabis advocate, said on Facebook Thursday that the couple, who owns Cannabis Culture dispensaries, was being detained pending a bail hearing at Old City Hall. He said fellow Cannabis Culture employees Chris and Erin Goodwin and Britney Anne Guerra were also arrested.

In a news release, Toronto police said  on Thursday morning "11 Criminal Code and Controlled Drugs and Substances Act search warrants were executed in Toronto, the Hamilton area and Vancouver as part of Project Gator, a Toronto Police Service project targeting marijuana dispensaries." It noted that charge details will follow.

Toronto police spokesman Mark Pugash told VICE search warrants were executed at five dispensaries in Toronto, one in Hamilton, and one in Vancouver, and at four private residences—two in Toronto, one in Stoney Creek, one in Vancouver. He would not say why Cannabis Culture was the only dispensary chain targeted. 

"I think when the case goes to court that'll become clear."

Pugash said no employees were arrested.

According to Leafly, Rex Mekkem, a manager at the Hamilton location said cops had taken employees' cellphones as evidence.

"They're just taking everybody's names and everybody's phones and kicking us loose, because it has to do with Toronto, they said."

Asked why Toronto police would go after dispensaries in other cities, Pugash said, "You go wherever the evidence takes you."

He didn't say how many officers were involved in the operation, only that there were enough "to make sure it was safe."

According to the Vancouver Sun, a dozen Vancouver police officers raided the flagship downtown shop Thursday morning. The Ottawa location of Cannabis Culture was also raided Thursday. 

The Emerys own around 20 Cannabis Culture shops across Canada. The first Toronto store opened just after the city-wide Project Claudia raids. They sell weed to anyone who is legal age, no prescription required.

Pugash said dispensary owners are being disingenuous to the public by saying they operate in a "grey area" when in fact they are completely illegal.  

"This is about money. It's about making large amounts of money and anyone who pretends otherwise I think is misleading."

He also said there are health risks in dispensary products, citing CBC and Globe and Mail stories that tested weed and found mould and insecticide. (One Globe story found a banned pesticide in Health Canada approved medical marijuana.)

Pugash said he's not concerned that the public will view the operation as a waste of resources in light of pending legalization.

"The idea that we ignore the law because it's going to be changed is a curious argument at best."

Both the Emerys and the Goodwins have been arrested before and Marc Emery has been imprisoned several times, including a five-year stint in the US for drug distribution.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

The bipartisan consensus is that the House Republicans' new healthcare plan is absolute garbage, with conservatives, Democrats, and pretty much anyone who isn't a Donald Trump or Paul Ryan loyalist denouncing it. Kentucky senator Rand Paul, an anti-government Republican with a history of publicity stunts, has an alternative he introduced on Thursday: He wants to nix the Affordable Care Act without anything to replace it, according to the Hill.

This strategy, called "repeal and delay," was floated by some Republicans weeks ago, the idea being that they could ax the hated ACA without having to specify how they would improve America's broken healthcare system. But Trump himself more or less nixed that idea in January, emphasizing he wants to institute a new healthcare policy as quickly as possible.

Paul's ACA repeal bill—a version of which was introduced to the House by Ohio Republican Jim Jordan—would get rid of taxes associated with the ACA over the next three years. The Hill reports that "the legislation would also eliminate eligibility for Obamacare's Medicaid expansion as of 2020 as well as the higher federal matching rate included in the Affordable Care Act."

Of course, taking away health insurance from millions of people without a replacement isn't necessarily good politics—though to be fair the House bill also seems politically fraught, as does just keeping the ACA in place. Paul promised that after the repeal, "We can have a separate vote on replacement legislation that will deliver lower costs, better care, and greater access to the American people." In other words, he wants to do the easy part first.

Follow Eve Peyser on Twitter.

This article was published in partnership with the Marshall Project

You may have never heard of the Reid technique, but chances are you know how it works. For more than half a century, it has been the go-to police interrogation method for squeezing confessions out of suspects. Its tropes are familiar from any cop show: the claustrophobic room, the repeated accusations of guilt, the presentation of evidence—real or invented—and the slow build-up of pressure that makes admitting a crime seem like the easiest way out.

That's why it jolted the investigative world this week when one of the nation's largest police consulting firms—one that has trained hundreds of thousands of cops from Chicago to New York and federal agents at almost every major agency—said it is tossing out the Reid technique because of the risk of false confessions.

Wicklander-Zulawski & Associates, a consulting group that says it has worked with a majority of US police departments, said Monday it will stop training detectives in the method it has taught since 1984.

"Confrontation is not an effective way of getting truthful information," said Shane Sturman, the company's president and CEO. "This was a big move for us, but it's a decision that's been coming for quite some time. More and more of our law enforcement clients have asked us to remove it from their training based on all the academic research showing other interrogation styles to be much less risky."

Research and a spate of exonerations have shown for years that Reid interrogation tactics and similar methods can lead to false confessions. But the admission by such a prominent player in law enforcement was seismic.

"This is big news in the interrogation world," said Steven A. Drizin, a law professor at Northwestern University and an expert on police interviews.

Joseph P. Buckley, the president of John E. Reid & Associates, which licenses the Reid method, said Wednesday that Wicklander-Zulawski's announcement was "very misleading and disingenuous." He said the technique has consistently held up in court and that it is not "confrontational" except when evidence already suggests the suspect's guilt.

Wicklander-Zulawski said it would use the Reid technique only to educate police on the risk and reality of false confessions.

The method, the company said, "has remained relatively unchanged since the 1970s, and it… does not reflect updates in our legal system."

Buckley said that Wicklander-Zulawski has been teaching the 1984 version of the Reid technique, which does not include "any of the updates or new material that we developed" since then—making it unfair to suggest that Reid itself is outdated.

The technique was first introduced in the 1940s and 50s by polygraph expert John Reid, who intended it to be a modern-era reform—replacing the beatings that police frequently used to elicit information. His tactics soon became dogma in police departments and were considered so successful in garnering confessions that, in its famous 1966 Miranda decision, the US Supreme Court cited it as a reason why suspects must be warned of their right against self-incrimination.

But the advent of DNA evidence and advocacy by the Innocence Project in the 1990s showed that about one-third of exonerations involve confessions, once believed to be an absolute sign of guilt. Academics have theories why someone would falsely confess to a crime, including having a mental disability, being interviewed without a lawyer or parent in the room, or suffering through hours or days in jail before questioning.

Watch the VICE News Tonight segment on a young recruit grappling with the racist legacy of the Chicago Police Department.

But the most common factor is the Reid method and its imitators, experts say, since it can create confirmation bias in the minds of investigators while overwhelming a suspect to such an extent that the truth no longer seems like the best option.

"At some point, the technique itself has to take responsibility," said Saul Kassin, a professor of psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and an expert on police interviews. "What Wicklander-Zulawski has realized is that once you start down the road of using trickery and deception, the misuses are inherent in that. There are no clear lines of, 'This is a good amount of trickery, and this isn't.'"

Experts are cautiously hopeful that Wicklander-Zulawski's decision will mark a turning point for interrogation tactics around the country and hope in-house police training shops will follow suit.

"We don't know yet how much of the old methods they are going to shed. Will they also stop teaching police officers that they can detect liars from truth-tellers based on body language and verbal cues, which study after study shows are unreliable?" Drizin said.

To Maurice Possley, a journalist who helps maintain a comprehensive registry of exonerations at the University of Michigan and has written for the Marshall Project, it's a big deal either way. "This is not defense attorneys or wrongly convicted defendants saying it," he said. "A major player in the field of law enforcement has stated that this method leads to false confessions."

This article was originally published by the Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization that covers the US criminal justice system. Sign up for the newsletter, or follow the Marshall Project on Facebook or Twitter.

There are entire days where I forget I'm an amputee. Life's most innocuous activities are what usually jolt me back to reality: being pushed by harried commuters in the subway navigating gingerly through snow and ice, or walking—always fearful of developing an infection. Most recently, though, the most difficult reminders come from my limited ability to protest the way I'd like—the way everyone I love does.

When my wife and sister-in-law marched in Manhattan on January 21 to protest the Trump administration, I had no choice but to remain absent. Not because I don't take issue with Donald Trump's disturbing rise to power, but because my disability means that I can't stand or walk for long periods of time. Yes, I could help by making inspirational "You go, girls!" signs and cheering everyone on. But although those things are relevant to the cause, they leave me feeling like I've been relegated to the kids' protest table.

It's easy to feel isolated watching so many able-bodied marchers, but statistics tell me that I'm in good company. According to the CDC, one out of every five Americans has a disability. An estimated one in four Americans in their 20s will become disabled by retirement age due to diseases or other traumatic events. In other words, disability is an issue that affects a large population of people, not just the New York Times reporter Trump infamously mocked.

So how can disabled people with willing spirits but unwilling bodies join the marches and demonstrations that have blossomed across the country? Here is an (incomplete) list of alternative routes you can take:

Social media

A little over a year ago, disabled activist Alice Wong helped start a social media campaign called #CripTheVote. The project hosts monthly Twitter chats that encourage people to tell their stories by using the hashtag. Though the campaign was in response to the 2016 presidential election, #CripTheVote has expanded due to overwhelming responses from disabled people wanting to connect, mobilize, and share.

Wong, who served under Barack Obama as the presidential appointee to the National Council on Disability, talked with me via email about the power of social media to give a voice to a group that would otherwise be suppressed. "Visibility can mean many things, as does what it means to 'show up' and make yourself heard," she wrote. "I'm no less of an activist because I stay home and Tweet. My visibility is as loud and real as anyone with a pink crocheted pussy hat."

A Safe Austin report confirms that people with disabilities use social media to keep up with issues, learn about events, and new information. Most importantly, they're using it to speak up. Digital activism goes beyond just tweeting, and technological tools offer even more options than many people realize. Case in point: hologram activism could soon become a solid alternative (pun intended) for disabled activists.

In Madrid in 2015, in response to the a Spanish law forbidding "unauthorized gatherings" around many official government buildings, thousands of holograms marched in front of the parliament. A similar "ghostly" demonstration took place in Seoul last year. When traditional gatherings aren't possible, virtual assembly is a startlingly effective way to demonstrate. Virtual reality technology has the potential to become a viable option for homebound disabled protesters in the future.

Watch Broadly's interview with reproductive rights advocate Wendy Davis:

Consumer Activism

One of the ways to get a point across to Trump-supporting corporations is to hit them where it hurts: their wallets. The disabled community boasts a potential $1 billion in consumer power, according to a Nielsen report, and a properly deployed boycott can devastate a company.

Just ask Uber about the 200,000 users who deleted their Uber accounts during a consumer boycott––ones they'll most likely never gain back. Just ask Ivanka Trump how she feels about stores pulling her products off the shelves, which may have been partially motivated by anger at her father's policies. Consumer activism is an excellent way for disabled Americans to insist that our rights have value—literally.

Words Can Speak Just as Loud as Action

Heidi Sieck is CEO of #VOTEPROCHOICE, an organization advocating for reproductive rights, and a member of the Women's March Policy Table. When I spoke to her, she stressed the importance of an "all hands on deck approach to activism." That means talking, lots of talking.

"Anyone who can communicate with people—particularly their friends—via phone, email, text—whatever their ability, can make a huge difference doing that," she said.

Sieck was part of the group who wrote the Women's March's intersectional Unity Principles. That document included disability rights, and our inclusion under the intersectional umbrella is an important achievement. The carefully crafted language shines a light on marginalized communities, the disabled included, who have a visibility problem––especially in Trump's America.

Wong, who was also the the first person to visit the White House via telepresence robot, voiced a similar call for a diverse coalition of women to combine their goals and fight together for justice. As she put it, "Organizers of marches need to be intersectional AF."

We live in a surreal time in history, but in a sense, it's given people with disabilities more visibility and a reason to continue fighting. Trump reminds me that I'm disabled––daily. But even if I can't leave my house, it doesn't mean I'm politically immobile. Like so many others, I can make an impact without having to take a single step.

Follow Aleks Kang on Twitter.