Influentials 2021

influentials

washington square news staff contents

Editor-in-Chief Ashley Wu Managing Editor Alexandra Chan DEPUTY Alex Tey, Trace Miller Creative Director Susan Behrends Valenzuela, Charitssa Stone Copy Chiefs Max Tiefer, Lorraine Olaya Multimedia Manasa Gudavalli PHOTO Jake Capriotti VIDEO Ryan Kawahara DEPUTY PHOTO Sirui Wu DEPUTY VIDEO Shaina Ahmed SENIOR STAFF NEWS Arnav Binaykia CULTURE Sabrina Choudhary ABROAD CULTURE Roshni Raj ARTS Sasha Cohen, Ana Cubas ABROAD ARTS Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer SPORTS Mitesh Shrestha SOCIAL MEDIA Ryan Walker

1 2–3 4–5 6–7 8–9 10–11 12–13

DEPUTY STAFF NEWS Kristian Burt, Rachel Cohen, Rachel Fadem, Suhail Gharaibeh ARTS Isabella Armus FILM & TV JP Pak MUSIC Yas Akdag CULTURE Alex Tran BEAUTY & STYLE Joey Hung DINING Gabby Lozano COPY Mallory Harty, Gillian Blum OPINION PAGE EDITOR Kevin Kurian, Asha Ramachandran DEPUTY Srishti Bungle, Michelle Han UNDER THE ARCH MANAGING EDITOR Caitlin Hsu, Sydney Barragan SENIOR EDITOR Ivy Zhu MULTIMEDIA Brooklyn Nguyen VOICES Mariam Khan EXPOSURES Julian Hammond Santander FEATURES Kiersten Dugan

ADVISING Operations Manager Nanci Healy Editorial Advisers Alvin Chang, Amanda Sakuma Editor-at-Large Carol Lee, Dana Sun, Vaishnavi Naidu ABOUT WSN: Washington Square News (ISSN 15499389) is the student newspaper of New York University. WSN is published in print on Mondays and throughout the week online during NYU’s academic year, except for university holidays, vacations and exam periods.

CORRECTIONS: WSN is committed to accurate reporting. When we make errors, we do our best to correct them as quickly as possible. If you believe we have erred, contact the managing editors at mgmt@nyunews.com.

ADVERTISING Business Manager Yejin Chang Director of Sales Mel Bautista Customer Specialist Catherine Chen

Letter from the editors Victoria Husain on leaning into pleasure: Sex, nature and community Aneesa Julmice’s colorful surrealist world of food, fashion and feminism Victoria Abraham on fat liberation and authenticity Tara Jones: sex educator and advocate Ian Partman on revolution, abolition and activist scholarship Alyssa LaFosse says it’s okay to talk about sex

letter from the editors

This semester was full of learning experiences, to say the least.

We pulled this special issue together despite the odds: ongoing staffing changes, a dearth of writers and an extremely constrained timeline were just a few of the challenges we faced. In previous years, Under the Arch editors combed through hundreds of student nominations over the course of a semester — this year, we scrambled to compile this list in only a fraction of that time.

Between Fringe — our previous special issue — and this one, there was a turnover of only two and a half weeks. Yet the polished final product would never suggest that this was the case.

Our theme this year deals with bold topics: sex positivity, sexuality and liberation. We wanted to talk about subjects that are sometimes considered transgressive by highlighting people who initiate these conversations. Through this, we hope to promote confidence, empowerment and self-love.

To our incredible subjects, Alyssa LaFosse, Aneesa Julmice, Ian Partman, Tara Jones, Tori Husain and Victoria Abraham — thank you for sharing your stories with us and entrusting us to tell them. Your confidence, candidness and vulnerability are the hallmarks of this project. In a similar vein, a huge thanks to our writers, Aleksandra Goldberg, Elle Liu, Jules Roscoe, Kevin Kurian, Lorraine Olaya and Rachel Mashambanhaka for taking on this project on such short notice and producing such amazing results.

Shoutout to our UTA elders Pamela Jew and Finley Muratova for helping us streamline this process. Your guidance has saved

us from many sleepless nights and meltdowns. Well, more than usual, anyway. And of course, nothing would be possible without the rest of our incredible management team: Ashley Wu, Alexandra Chan, Alex Tey and Trace Miller, who have worked tirelessly all semester to make this newspaper a must-read.

We also owe all our thanks to our creative directors Susan Behrends Valenzuela and Charitssa Stone for creating the beautiful layout for this issue. You two really brought our vision to life, and we are constantly stunned by your talent.

Our UTA staff continues to impress us with their skills and dedication. All our love goes out to Brooke Nguyen, Ivy Zhu, Julian Hammond Santander, Kiersten Dugan and Mariam Khan.

Special thanks to Brooke, Julian and our contributing photographers for pulling off an absolutely stunning photo shoot.

From Caitlin: I want to congratulate Sydney on her first UTAled special issue as a Managing Editor! You’ve taken up the mantle fabulously this semester, and I’m so excited to continue working with you.

From Sydney: I can’t thank Caitlin enough for her constant support and extraordinary leadership. She has fulfilled every aspect of what a mentor is supposed to be and more. Working with her has been one of my greatest experiences at UTA. Congratulations on yet another excellent special issue.

We hope that Influentials 2021 shows that UTA is still striving to tell big stories — even the taboo ones.

Caitlin Hsu

Sydney Barragan

Under the Arch Managing Editor

Under the Arch Managing Editor

1

Victoria Husain on leaning into pleasure: Sex, nature and community

By Jules Roscoe CONTRIBUTING WRITER

“In April 2020, we were all bored as fuck,” reads Husain’s website.

During quarantine, she missed the sense of community she had been creating at NYU. But rather than sit idly by, Husain took matters into her own hands. She reached out to Arty Furtado, a producer she had known prior, and organized a virtual concert in a matter of hours. Together, they gathered over 35 artists to come to a Zoom session and share their music with others. She said the first concert was electric — there was an “intense, energetic solidarity” among the performers. After that, virtual concerts became regular sessions.

“We’d get anywhere from 30 to 200 people on a call at once to share music with one another, just kind of collaborating, networking and sharing music,” said Will Florentino, a CAS junior who has performed at the Good Fxcking Music virtual concerts. “It was a really wholesome and gratifying and validating experience to meet all of these people in a virtual setting over the pandemic.”

Florentino is a rapper and producer whose music is a way for him to reach out to different groups of people. He first came across Good Fxcking Music on social media, which is how his friendship with Husain began. “[Husain] is just one of those people who’s very passionate about following her beliefs,” Florentino said. “She’s able to create actionable things for people to get involved in [within] their community. And I think that’s a pretty valuable characteristic of her person — providing the avenues for people to engage in the community.”

That sense of community persisted in Husain’s other endeavors.

They described their Gallatin concentration as “ways to organize people towards freedom.” Husain takes classes such as marketing and applies what they learn towards building communities. They also study some aspects of sociology, namely capitalism and how money can make or break communities.

“After you’ve been running organizations too, that’s a whole thing — you’ve got to learn how to have people come together and do things together,” Husain said.

Lorraie Forbes, a member of the activism organization Teens Take Charge, hosted a Zoom event with Husain and another member of the organization in Rubin Hall last year. The event was a partnership between the organization and NYU designed to be a discussion about activism. There was not a single dull moment in the conversation, Forbes recalled — Husain stepped up and kept the discussion lively and impactful.

“Tori and others made the space so safe and so non-judgemental, so we could really say whatever was on our minds without feeling like we needed to censor anything,” Forbes said. “I will never forget how safe I felt in that space.”

Forbes kept in touch with Husain after the event’s incredible success, and even joined @openthefuckup — an organization Husain co-created with fellow NYU junior Zoya Hasan in 2020. The page serves as a platform for people to ask uncomfortable questions that aren’t talked about.

“One thing about Tori: Everything she does is a statement,” Forbes said. “She’s a great person, and I’m so glad I had the opportunity to meet her. She reaches out every now and then and she makes sure to uplift me.”

Husain’s knack for bringing people together is what makes her admirable. She and I found a new community together that November day. The garden brings Husain’s ideas about pleasure together. Sex, nature and community, all intertwined — that’s what she believes pleasure should be about.

“I don’t think we have an actual understanding of pleasure, because people [deny themselves of] it just so they can pay their bills,” Husain said. “I think we talk about the priorities of life in the wrong way.”

“I hope we’re not in someone’s backyard.”

Victoria Husain and I are standing on a stone path in a community garden one block east of Tompkins Square Park. We had been walking around the city for about an hour and stumbled upon the garden by complete chance. It immediately drew Husain’s attention. We slipped in through the half-open gate and brushed past some bare trees into an open, grassy space. She runs her fingers along a branch by her face.

“You look like you’re looking at me,” she said to the tree limb. “Thank you.”

A light smile spreads across Husain’s face as they take in the garden’s beauty. They have a unique ability to find pleasure in everyday experiences, which is evident as I watch their eyes widen with excitement. It’s a type of appreciation that, according to Husain, a lot of people struggle to find because we aren’t taught how to look for it.

“Even if people say, ‘When you grow up, I want you to be happy,’ they don’t give you the skills to actually become fucking happy,” the Gallatin junior explained. “Because they literally can’t figure it out for themselves.”

But that’s what Husain is doing: figuring it out. She considers herself a “sex scholar,” and an expert on finding connections between sex and nature all around her. Sex is usually what comes to mind when discussing pleasure, but to Husain, pleasure goes beyond the bedroom. She believes it is present in all aspects of life.

“The things that I feel and do … that is sexual energy,” said Husain.

“It’s that manifestation of creation.”

As we walked through the community garden, La Plaza Cultural, we found a small bed of roses still blooming despite the cold November air.

She drew me over, took one flower gently in her hand and brushed open its petals for me to see.

“You can look at how plants are [a] manifestation of sexual energy,” she explained to me. “Flowers, the way I look at them, are composed of layers and [they have] the same anatomy to what a vagina looks like.”

Husain considers themself to be very spiritual, which has shaped their unique perception of sex. They told me about divine feminine energy — it’s “related to a flower”— and that they used the freeing power of that belief to overcome the societal stigma they grew up with around sex.

Husain first looked up the word “sex” on Google when she was in third grade. She had picked up on palpable sexual tension in G-rated Disney movies but nobody was explaining what she sensed. Her parents didn’t have much to say, and her traditional Pennsylvania public school sexual education class wasn’t helpful either. This lack of transparency, combined with her curiosity about a “natural human process,” quickly developed into a toxic relationship with sex and sexuality in high school.

“I would just lower my boundaries,” she said. “I would just be like, ‘fuck it.’ You’re giving me validation in the way that society tells women ‘that’s how you’re valuable’ — sexy.”

Husain felt the same kind of sexualization directed towards her racial identity, too. As a Colombian-Indian woman and one of only a few people of color in her school, people, especially men, treated her like she was an exotic animal when they discovered her ethnicity. At times she found herself using it to her advantage, playing the exotic card as a way to capture sexual attention. There’s a fine line between being appreciative of sex and seeing yourself as a sexual object, one that many women aren’t taught to see.

Looking back, Husain realizes how much she’s overcome to view sex in a positive light. It was by reading Adrienne Maree Brown’s “Pleasure Activism” that she developed a new perspective on sexual pleasure and happiness. For Husain, the key to pleasure is doing what she loves with the people that she loves.

And so she started Good Fxcking Music.

Contact Jules Roscoe at underthearch@nyunews.com.

2

I was inspired by the concept of divine femininity where a feminine figure can just be themselves — they don’t have to fit into the narrative that men have painted them to be.

IMAGE BY TOMMY TRAN

Victoria Husain

3

5

Aneesa Julmice’s colorful surrealist world of food, fashion and feminism

By Elle Liu CONTRIBUTING WRITER

pairing it with food is to necessarily desexualize it,” Narcisse said. “I think it’s to play with the idea of what sexuality can look like, to give power and autonomy to the female form and to reclaim sexuality as something positive in the beautiful surrealist world Aneesa creates.”

For Julmice, the exploration of food also extends to an analysis of our inherent biases towards appearance and weight. In October, she posted two paintings on Instagram, both depicting a woman in a bikini and latex ski mask holding food to her chest. She used the post as an experiment to determine whether the thinner woman would receive more likes. When she pulled up her Instagram statistics, she found that her original theory was true.

“She is an artist that others have an easy time connecting with,” Ari Elgharsi, a photographer and Tisch sophomore who was also featured in the exhibition, said.

Last year, she sold skateboard grip tapes prints of her piece, “In the waiting room.” In the painting, a woman in an emerald pantsuit sits next to Big Bird, who is smoking a cigarette and reading a Playboy magazine. The grip tape sold out rapidly, which, for Julmice, was a welcome surprise. This fall, when she was asked to share her art at an exhibition, she eagerly agreed.

Julmice was surrounded by peers and friends as she showcased her art at Liminal Space. She was smiling, happy to be there and happy to be sharing her art.

“I think there’s your artwork, and it looks different to other people than it does to you,” Julmice said. “Sometimes, it’s nice to have the reassurance from someone else that they think it’s good.”

Aneesa Julmice stands inside a dimly-lit art gallery on the Lower East Side. Her hair is slicked back in an updo and her graphic blue eyeliner matches her blue dress. She smiles for a photo. Vibrant images line the wall behind her: A topless woman wearing knee-high boots sits next to Elmo on the subway. Big Bird is reading a magazine. A woman wears a lampshade on her head. These are Julmice’s digital paintings. In them, she creates a lush world devised to reevaluate sexuality in new and challenging ways.

The gallery on Rivington Street was the site of Liminal Space, an exhibit that featured the artwork of four NYU students, including Julmice, who is a Tisch sophomore studying interactive media arts.

Growing up in Georgia, Julmice’s parents encouraged her to explore her creativity through activities like dance and music. In high school, she found a strong creative outlet in painting.

“Any chance I got at school I would take classes in art,” she said. “And my mom’s a teacher. She was always doing art projects with us at home. And I think for me, it kind of just stuck.”

She approached self-portrait assignments in Advanced Placement 2-D art and design by “trying to be as raw and feminist as possible.” A self-proclaimed feminist, Julmice wanted to explore genuine portrayals of the female body, beginning with herself. She says that she doesn’t shave her underarms and sports her natural eyebrows: “I paint all of that … my unibrow and everything.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of Julmice’s greatest inspirations is Frida Kah- Contact Elle Liu at underthearch@nyunews.com. lo, a pioneering Mexican artist whose self-portraits are vivid, honest depictions of life as a disabled, indigenous woman.

“I used to tell people I’m Frida Kahlo reincarnated,” she said with a laugh.

Technology plays a vital role in Julmice’s creative process. While she used to paint with oils on large canvases, she transitioned to a virtual platform using the Procreate app on her iPad. The convenience of being able to paint digitally has made it easier for her to harness the often fleeting strikes of inspiration.

“I used to paint in oils and I used to love painting massive, huge canvases,” she said. “It was always just kind of taxing … you’d have to fill your pallets and set up your easel and your canvas. I can bring my iPad anywhere.”

Her finished compositions are surreal, but behind them is a structured and logical process. Each new painting begins with an idea. Because her work is so pop culture-centric, reference photos are essential. And finding these reference photos takes up 70% of the time needed to complete a piece.

“The hardest part is looking for reference photos that fit together,” she said. “Once I establish a sketch, it’s super simple for me after that.”

This past summer, Julmice stumbled across viral mukbang videos on YouTube. These videos featured people overconsuming large amounts of food, which sparked a fascination with society’s obsession with food and what it says about our identities. She then decided to create a collection of paintings titled “Eaters Anonymous.”

The project — and indeed much of Julmice’s craft as an artist — is about recontextualizing the female form in new and playful environments with food and fashion.

“It’s cool to see how she takes two things that are heavily advertised — food and fashion — and marries them,” Gallatin sophomore and fellow artist Gabrielle Narcisse said.

Being in New York City has also helped Julmice discover new fashion brands that have fueled her inspiration. Fashion’s influence is present in almost every painting she makes. In one of her pieces, a woman donned in gold Schiaparelli jewelry bites into a chicken drumstick. An ice cream cone is plopped upside down in a sky blue Prada high heel. A Dior saddle bag is filled with milk and fruit loops.

“I don’t think the point of her making the sexual imagery more casual or

6

I believe the best way to address fear, hatred, and lack of understanding towards progress in sex and body positivity is by showing female and LGBTQ pleasure and sexuality through the medium of art as a way to normalize otherwise “taboo” topics and give people the opportunity to have open conversations about such things.

IMAGE BY JOSEPHINE LIEBER

Aneesa Julmice

7

Victoria Abraham on fat liberation and authenticity

By Lorraine Olaya COPY CHIEF

on social media is enough.

“A lot of influencers only show the highlights, and I don’t like doing that,” Abraham said. “I’ve been going through a rough time, and I have more than enough pictures to post and pretend like that’s not the case. But I think it’s important to just show fat people as full three-dimensional human beings, with good, bad and all the in-between.”

One of Abraham’s main goals with their account is to be the person they needed when they were younger — an honest, authentic, transparent and visible fat person. ”Victoria isn’t in it to be famous,” Jake Schneebaum, one of Abraham’s close friends, said. “Victoria wants to have an impact and something that she says all the time is she wants to be the person that her 12-year-old self would have needed. And when I’m watching Victoria’s videos, I feel like that is the person I’m seeing. It’s not someone who’s doing this, for fame or whatever … and I’m so proud of Victoria.”

Just being an honest and visible person online also helps Abraham in their goal to educate others on fatphobia. According to them, fatphobia stems from not having fat friends or knowing fat people. If you aren’t surrounded by anyone who experiences what fat people experience, then you might not be aware of what that’s like. Because of this, Abraham uses their page to address issues that impact fat people, ranging from medical fatphobia to confidence to societal beauty standards.

“One of the reasons why fatphobia is so pervasive is because people don’t notice it when it happens,” Abraham said. “If I don’t point out why there’s an issue with fatphobia … and how it subtly exists in our society … people aren’t going to know. So my goal is just to share these experiences with people so that they can be kinder to themselves and to others. And I think eventually, if enough people are aware of this issue, then it’ll be easier to talk about it or people will listen to fat people more when we talk about it.”

In the future, Abraham hopes to connect her public policy major with what she does online. She currently focuses on fat discrimination, and in the future hopes to work on making weight a nationally protected class under the Civil Rights Act alongside race, gender, ethnicity, religion and more. While they’re graduating in the spring, Abraham doesn’t see themself giving up social media any time soon. “[Social media] is a great way for me to be able to connect with people,” Abraham said. “I’m very lucky, privileged and happy that I get to experience this. Even if I do get a couple of hate comments here and there. It’s worth it.”

Victoria Abraham seems like the typical NYU senior, working toward finishing her public policy degree and thinking about what she might do after graduation. With her down-to-earth and raw personality, Abraham doesn’t give off the impression that she’s famous on social media. But they speak their mind to over a hundred thousand followers: 121,000 on Instagram, 84,600 on TikTok and 9,000 on Twitter.

Abraham goes by @fatfabfeminist on all of their social media accounts, using their platform to advocate for fat liberation, raise awareness of fatphobia and promote other social activist causes. Most of the content on Abraham’s social media talks about her personal experience as a fat person and aims to educate others on fatphobia.

They started educating others through social media in 2016, and over the course of four years they amassed 26,700 Instagram followers. But their following really took off during the pandemic when they gained about 50,000 followers in the span of six months. It was also around that time when Abraham started making their own content on TikTok. This allowed them to become a very visible figure, to the point of going viral and having their page double in size. Yet even with a large platform, Abraham doesn’t like to call themself an influencer.

“I don’t know if that’s what I am,” Abraham said. “I just am a person on the Internet … I’m not anything special. I just am hypervisible online. But my experiences are not unique. I’m not specifically interesting, I just talk about the things that I go through.”

Abraham is an activist for fat liberation, which for her means “working to collectively get rid of systemic fatphobia.” While Abraham promotes confidence in one’s own body, they don’t call themself “body positive.” To them, it’s more important to be focused on fat liberation than body positivity.

“It’s one thing like how you feel about yourself, but ultimately, you can’t self-love your way out of being marginalized,” Abraham said. “If you’re a fat person, you exist in a marginalized body, so my goal is that other fat people don’t have to deal with the harassment that most people experience being fat.”

On social media, Abraham educates their followers on how systemic fatphobia permeates the everyday lives of fat people.

“One thing I talk about a lot is medical fatphobia, which is a very prevalent issue,” Abraham said. “Anybody who is fat has experienced some kind of prejudice or discrimination for their bodies, especially at the doctor’s and, being fat, you get a worse quality of medical care than your thin counterparts. And it’s not just that — fat people are paid less, are less likely to get hired Contact Lorraine Olaya at lolaya@nyunews.com. for jobs or get callbacks. It’s legal to discriminate against fat people in 49 states.”

Hailing from Florida, Abraham grew up constantly surrounded by people who thought differently than she did, had opposing values and rarely understood her. Social media became an outlet for Abraham to express their thoughts and share their experiences to followers who care about what they have to say.

“I was able to find people that … I can have an actual conversation with, instead of fighting to prove that my existence is worthy of being talked about,” Abraham said.

Abraham aims to simply be a visibly existing fat person on social media. She didn’t have any representation growing up and desperately needed to see positive experiences of fat people, something that was rare at the time. Whatever their page might transition into over time, Abraham believes that being themself

10

Victoria’s comfort in this shoot was what made this such a success. The props — stickers and a tangerine — helped hone the entire shoot and highlight theme as well.

IMAGE BY SHIRENE ANAND

victoria abraham

11

Tara Jones: sex educator and advocate

By Rachel Mashambanhaka CONTRIBUTING WRITER

“It can be to the point that you could physically be in the middle of something, and you’re getting microaggressed,” Jones said. “And it’s stuff that Black people, Asian people, all of these marginalized groups have to deal with that white people don’t even have to think about.”

These microaggressions translate into her academic life as well.

Jones’ transition from sociology and the pre-law track to gender and sexuality studies in the College of Arts & Sciences was a natural progression as she became more engaged with sex ed. But respectability politics, in which conformity serves as protection, come into play even in such a field because of the assumptions that are created against her as a Black queer woman.

“It would be nice to say that [respectability politics] don’t affect me,” Jones said. “I think what ultimately keeps me going is the fact that it’s such a stupid white invention, the fact that I would have to do anything or be anything in order to be respectable. Being a human being, I should be respectable. I don’t always have to prove myself.”

Ultimately, Jones hopes to impact both younger and older audiences so families can facilitate conversations about sexuality without shame and stigma.

“I’m really excited about [sharing] resources around how to be a sex-positive parent,” Jones said. “How to teach your child about their anatomy in a way that’s honest and not stigmatizing, how to encourage self-stimulation instead of denying your child pleasure and knowledge about their own body.”

For now though, Jones’ work is already having an impact on her peers.

“Tara is honest, passionate and one of my favorite critical thinkers — I promise you, read her monthly newsletter and you will laugh, cry and learn so much about yourself and how to view the human sexual experience,” Alger said. “She gives permission to everyone around her to do the same. Tara’s work gives us information on how to best live our our sex lives.”

Tara Jones is a person to watch. The passion she has for her work and the compassion she has for people have made her a trailblazer. By bringing in her own experiences and amplifying others’, she has made a place for herself and her audience to be open and honest about their sex lives.

“If this even helps one person feel less alone or more comfortable to speak out or be honest about what happened to them, that’s good for me,” Jones said. “That’s enough. I’ve had my impact.”

When I first sat down with Tara Jones in Jurow Lecture Hall, my mind was racing with all the questions I wanted to ask. She was “the Sex Educator,” according to her Instagram. I could not stomach coming off as unprepared because she really knows her shit! But the warmth that radiated from her the moment we began talking ceased my racing thoughts, and a conversation began to flow.

Jones first realized her place in the world of sexual education when people started to engage with the stories she shared on social media.

“I’ve always been kind of an open-book sort of person,” Jones said. “And through having a private account — my finsta when I was in high school — and just talking about my sex life really openly, I realized that it seemed to be resonating with a lot of people.”

Jones now runs a public Instagram page, @tara.michaela, which currently has over 5,000 followers. Her social media platform centers itself around the voices of the unheard, whether through stories about Black women and their relationship to sexual trauma or by exploring what queer sex is. She aims to bring light to the harm caused by racism, heteronormativity and fetishization, while also empowering people to be more vocal and confident in their own sexualities.

Though her voice has fostered a safe space for people to explore and discuss topics they might not otherwise feel comfortable sharing, Jones remains humble.

“I’m still on this learning journey,” Jones said. “What’s really cool about sex education … is once you start, there’s no end point … I feel like I’m like maybe three percent into the giant, general knowledge of what sex is because everyone defines it so differently with things like BDSM, queer identities and queer histories. There’s so much to know and understand. So I’ll never pretend to be all-knowing, because I’m not.”

For Nicole Poiré Alger, a fellow sex educator and NYU student, connecting with Tara has empowered her and informed her own education as well.

“Tara’s account has become an inspiration and a ray of hope for me,” Alger said. “Even though I feel passionate about [sex] education … it can be extremely scary. Not only are sex educators systematically silenced, judged and rejected, there is also a lot of vulnerability and authenticity you have to put out there when doing the job. When I found Tara’s account I sighed in relief — I had found a brave woman from my school paving the way for … people that cared about useful and honest sex education.”

Contact Rachel Mashambanhaka at underthearch@nyunews.com.

Jones’ journey with sex ed became more empowering through understanding her own queerness. She recounts her time growing up in a white neighborhood, where people would often use queerness as a way to deflect from confronting their own prejudices.

“I saw white people sort of cling to their queerness as a defense mechanism whenever conversations about race would come up and they would get uncomfortable,” Jones said. “They were like, ‘you know, I’m queer,’ which sort of became what queerness was to me, unfortunately.

And I think stepping out of that bubble and … into this realm of sex ed and getting so much more exposure to so many queer people of color, I can actually be able to define queerness for myself.”

Her role does not stop in just understanding her own queerness, though. She draws on the importance of the relationship between ourselves and our sexualities — especially in bed.

“There are other sex educators who are like, ‘I always stand up for what I want, I always communicate my needs in bed, I always do this and that,’” Jones said. “ I have social anxiety. I’ve struggled with communicating my needs, and I’ve struggled with my sense of deservingness. I’ve struggled with how comfortable I feel communicating.”

To Jones, recognizing our self-worth enough to communicate our needs is a journey. But the beauty of sexuality lies not only in loving ourselves but also in being socially aware and understanding how social factors play a role in our sex lives. Even in intimate moments, racism, sexism and other bigoted ideas can seep their way in.

14

When I think of sex, I still think of love. I suppose these pictures show that side of it all.

IMAGE BY JASON TURNER

Tara jones

15

17

Ian Partman on revolution, abolition and activist scholarship

By Kevin Kurian OPINION EDITOR

ception, fear of oneself,’” Julian Hammond Santander, Partman’s close friend and WSN’s UTA Exposures Editor, said. “‘Go out and get what you want’ is something Ian has said to me.”

In addition to Partman’s direct action and community organizing, he is engaged in research that traces how the 13th Amendment has led to the justification of certain forms of slavery. The 13th Amendment was passed in the wake of the Civil War in an effort to abolish chattel slavery. However, it permits involuntary servitude to be used as a punishment for a crime.

The United States has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, with over 2 million people in jail and 5 million people under some form of government supervision. 38% of the incarcerated population is Black, even though they compromise only 14.6% of the national population. These prisoners are often conscripted into involuntary work and receive an average pay of just $0.93 a day.

Later in our conversation, Partman noted that the 13th Amendment has been used to criminalize child slavery, wage slavery and forms of feminized slavery like sex trafficking. He sees immense possibility to remake the country in a kinder and more compassionate image — one where the scourge of racism and bigotry is eliminated through the abolition of our current incarceration system.

Partman plans to pursue a career in human rights law after he graduates, a natural continuation of the organizing work that he’s done to secure the rights of the Black and queer communities. He is insistent that the impending climate catastrophe will not deter him in his goals to explore more of the world. As he continues organizing for a better tomorrow, he is chronicling his experience growing up as a Black and queer kid in a book with the hopes of motivating people to find a common cause within his story.

“But this is not to say this all came without effort,” Hammond Santander said of Partman. “I feel lucky to consider him family. Ian will change the world. He will expand the minds of many and lead the charge for the future we want — and deserve — to see. This is something I haven’t said directly to Ian, but have said many times about him, so he’ll have to read it here.”

As our conversation drew to a close, I asked what initially drew him into his active involvement. Millions of people witness and endure the suffering that he has, but very few dedicate their lives to leading movements that seek to undo systemic national ailments. He credits his inspiration to the first time he got an iPhone.

“When Trayvon Martin was killed on Feb. 26, 2012, I was 10 years old,” he said. “I didn’t own a phone. And I remember hearing, watching on the TV … and I saw this future in which I walked outside and I took the wrong corner, I was wearing the wrong clothes. And that was my future.”

“The summer that I got my first phone … was the summer of the trial,” he added. And I remember when Trayvon’s killer was acquitted. I just went to Instagram and I remember seeing all of these different posts and … information about protests. This digital world of activism inspired me. As I got older, I became invested in activism as an idea and as a communicative tool to interact with people who wanted to make this world a better place.”

Partman’s work didn’t start with leading a thousand-person march or a mass campaign against a bigoted politician. His work started by logging on and tuning in. If you’re interested in bringing about a better world with Partman, you ought to do the same.

Ian Partman strode into the headquarters of WSN, his steps imbued with purpose. The first thing I noticed when I saw him wasn’t the headphones dangling around his neck or the shock of blond hair that crowned his head, but rather his calming presence.

He greeted me with a handshake, and I felt welcome in a way that is rare within a school known for fostering feelings of isolation.

Beneath Partman’s peaceful exterior, though, lies a fiery passion for social change.

Partman’s activism started well before he enrolled in the Gallatin School of Individualized Studies last year. Immediately after former President Trump’s inauguration, he organized a walkout at his high school in Washington, D.C., leading a group of students to the White House and the Capitol to protest the administration.

As he stood among the crowd of thousands, he was struck by the capacity of collective action. However, he knew that more longterm organizing was necessary to stand up to an administration that routinely attacked the rights of Americans on the grounds of gender and sexuality.

“There’s some way that we could organize it better or more profoundly,” he recalls thinking. “I wanted to continue the vigor and the fire of my peers to advocate for other causes.”

And so he was called to action. He formed Ignite Collective in the spring of 2017 to organize mutual aid and direct action to combat police violence in his hometown — an issue that disproportionately impacts Black and queer people. He continues to lead the organization today.

As a full-time college student pursuing a rigorous concentration in literature, art-making, and histories of catastrophe, crisis and disaster, he somehow manages to lead and advocate for change through several organizing groups.

“I think that a large part of my drive … towards making this world … a better place is driven by a frustration with the status quo,” he said. “But in the context of my personal experience, I’m a Black, queer man who grew up in Washington, D.C., which is a political nexus, but also a policing nexus.”

He spoke of his personal experiences of feeling targeted by the police, and how he witnessed violence as he was growing up.

But rather than feeling dejected, he is enlivened with a passion to create a better, more life-affirming world for Black and queer people.

Recently, Partman received the Gallatin Global Fellowship in Human Rights, a year-long program that supports students working for human rights organizations. He has spent the last six months working for the New York wing of Survived & Punished, an organization that seeks to release victims of sexual violence who were imprisoned for defending themselves against their abusers. He helped commute the sentences of six people during his time at the organization. Such work is essential to create a world where victims of sexual violence — who are disproportionately Black, queer and transgender, are treated with the respect and kindness that they deserve. Partman hopes to meet the people that he helped free from New York’s prisons as soon as he can.

The communities that he fights for have had their survival criminalized for centuries. Whether by means of poverty, police brutality, or legislation that makes it a crime to use a bathroom that comports with one’s gender identity, so many facets of our society have denied people the basic dignity of inclusion.

“So trusting and steadfast in himself, Ian constantly reminds me not to limit myself by fear: fear of persistence, fear of per- Contact Kevin Kurian at kkurian@nyunews.com.

18

Thinking about capturing sexuality with Ian, it’s very important to focus on the power of selectiveness in showing. The idea that you’re only seeing as much as Ian — or I — want you to. Maybe it’s half a snarling mouth or the faint line down his abdomen, the outline of a face or an exposed chest presented proudly with pout.

IMAGE BY JULIAN HAMMOND SANTANDER

Ian Partman

19

21

Alyssa LaFosse says it’s okay to talk about sex

By Aleksandra Goldberg CONTRIBUTING WRITER

“Socially, culturally, sex is everywhere, right?” LaFosse said. “But there aren’t really good models or representation for what communication around sex looks like.”

LaFosse explained how most sex scenes we see in movies or TV portray a poor depiction of reality and often skip over communication entirely. “​​People aren’t talking about what they like or what turns them on,” she said. “You just see people starting to do it.”

Another issue LaFosse has noticed is a lack of respect between partners.

“I see a lot of students who tell me they had a sexual experience that wasn’t positive for them,” LaFosse said. “They didn’t feel empowered to say to their partner that they weren’t enjoying something or that they wanted something. If you’re going to be intimate with someone, you should treat them with dignity and with respect, but that doesn’t always happen.”

There’s a real stigma when it comes to sex and intimacy, especially about communication surrounding sex.

“I think that there’s still this misconception that if you talk about it, then it becomes unsexy, awkward or you’re going to kill the moment or make things weird,” LaFosse said.

But the main thing that LaFosse wants people to know is that it won’t.

She explained that the key to better sex is making sure both partners are on the same page and have a thorough understanding about each other.

“People should be having enjoyable sex,” LaFosse said. “It should be enjoyable for everyone involved, not just for one person.”

LaFosse’s primary goal is to help college students by giving them the best tools possible and by equipping them with the most comprehensive knowledge. Students often tell LaFosse that she is the first person they feel comfortable discussing these topics with. She acknowledged sex isn’t a major part of all students’ lives, but regardless, she wants them to know they have a space to talk about it and engage safely.

“I want to be there for them because maybe they don’t have a parent or some other trusted adult figure who they can go to with this,” LaFosse said. “I feel very humbled and privileged that students confide in me.”

To ask LaFosse a confidential question, NYU students can email her at sexpert@nyu.edu. Students can schedule a Zoom or in-person appointment with her via the NYU SHC portal.

Behind the bright, clean doors of NYU’s Student Health Center primary care waiting area sits a small, cozy room — the office of resident HIV counselor and Sexpert, Alyssa LaFosse. The first thing you see is an assortment of condoms ranging from XS to XL, lubricated, ribbed and extra-thin. The wall is lined with pamphlets detailing what to do if you contract a sexually transmitted disease. The warm light and deep purples, blues and greens accenting the room match LaFosse’s gentle, soft-spoken demeanor. You feel comfortable the moment you walk in.

LaFosse earned her Masters of Public Health from the University of California, Berkeley. She worked in the university’s health center on a variety of issues including stress management, drug and alcohol education, eating disorders and sex education — her favorite topic to work with students on.

When her contract ended in 2006, she left California, the only state she’d ever called home, and headed for New York City. She got a job working with youth who were experiencing homelessness to educate them on sexual health, but thought she’d go back to the Bay Area after a few years. A year later, she landed her dream job at NYU and has been here ever since.

LaFosse’s role as the resident Sexpert involves conducting sexual health counseling sessions with students, answering questions confidentially over email, and performing HIV and STD testing. In a given week, LaFosse sees 20 to 30 students in-person or on Zoom and answers a handful of emails, sometimes offering referrals to other counselors or health practitioners depending on the situation. She also co-runs a six-week workshop every semester called Let’s Talk About Sex with NYU sexual health and relationship counselor Dr. Danielle Elleman.

Elleman said that although she has her own experience in the field, she has learned a lot while working with LaFosse. She pointed to a few of the Sexpert’s unique resources, most notably a life-sized comprehensive model of a clitoris.

“I’ve seen what a clitoris looks like,” said Elleman. “I’ve seen photos, but not a real-life model. It’s really fascinating. I’ve never seen it like that.”

LaFosse first became interested in comprehensive sexual health education after she graduated from her Catholic K-12 school and started her undergraduate degree at the University of California, Los Angeles. She realized there was a whole world she hadn’t been taught to navigate as the Contact Aleksandra Goldberg at underthearch@nyunews.com. result of religious and cultural biases.

“I got very little sexual health education,” LaFosse said. “And what I did receive was abstinence-only and very anti-LGBTQ. I felt kind of robbed.”

Once she joined UCLA’s on-campus LGBTQ group, LaFosse realized how much she had to learn about healthy sex and the importance of having a thorough understanding of sexual education. It was then she knew that it was her passion.

“I didn’t want other young people to grow up like me and come to college not knowing anything,” she said.

LaFosse works to make sure all students know it’s okay for them to think about and prioritize sex. In an effort to combat the anti-LGBTQ sexual education often seen in the typical U.S. high school curriculum — as well as her own experience — she aims to be as inclusive as possible.

“I definitely make it a point for people to know I’m here to talk about everything,” LaFosse said. “All kinds of identities, all kinds of orientations, different kinds of sex.”

The most common problems LaFosse seeks to solve regard pleasure and communication. Many students come to her wondering why they can’t orgasm or get an erection — wanting to know what’s wrong with them. She assures students that their experiences are perfectly normal and that there is nothing wrong with them.

Her number-one recommendation is communication between partners, but a lot of students are unsure of how to do that.

22

IMAGE BY ALEKSANDRA GOLDBERG

Alyssa LaFosse

23