Carolina A Drake

I am a NYC based writer, immigrant, and teacher from Buenos Aires, Argentina. I think poetically about Latin America, intersectionaly within feminism, and critically about pop-culture. You can follow my tweets at https://twitter.com/CarolinaADrake

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By Carolina A Drake • 11 years ago

Transgender Bodies and Censorship in Media Platforms, What is Up?

Last month Facebook did it again, and removed Colorline’s post about Ines Rau, the transgender model featured here in a photo spread with Tyson Beckford because it “violated the site’s community standards.” The images are the product of a photo shoot for OOB Magazine’s “Tropical Surrealism” spread, photographed by Rodolpho Martinez.

Facebook’s definition of “displaying nudity” is vague, and not the central issue anyway. But, on its site titled Community Standardsit claims: “We also impose limitations on the display of nudity. We aspire to respect people’s right to share content of personal importance, whether those are photos of a sculpture like Michelangelo’s David or family photos of a child breastfeeding.”

Both Ines and Tyler look gorgeaus, and (I would argue) Tyson Beck’s body DOES have the aesthetic qualities of Michelangelo’s David (take that Facebook!) but the central issue is not the nudity, it has more to do with the intolerance. Beck, has now collected sparking rumors about his sexuality after these images, and this ongoing censorship issue can be used to further the conversation about gender inequality. The question: what does this censorship say about how gender can or cannot be performed in the visual field?

Here we have Facebook, an hegemonic social media site with millions of viewers, removing an image of a transgender woman of color. Thus, the aesthetic of someone who does not conform to the normative idea of gender or whose gender is “vague” to mainstream audiences, is now left out of an ...
By Carolina A Drake • 11 years ago

To Teach or Not To Teach Cultural Pluralism in Arizona

As a teacher, I like to think my job involves preparing the new generations to enter a pre-existing world, and to help students transition from the private sphere of their homes and families, to the public sphere where they acquire voices and political identities, and where they can be politically active in the future.

The Arizona public school system was doing exactly that, with a student population of 41% Hispanic, they included a Mexican American and Ethnic Studies program implemented in high schools to allow a smoother transition between the private and the public. This program was a project with the goal of allowing students to produce social, political, and cultural critique while keeping a sense of their historical, racial, and ...

As a teacher, I like to think my job involves preparing the new generations to enter a pre-existing world, and to help students transition from the private sphere of their homes and families, to the public sphere ...