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About Me
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Let’s get to know each other! I’ll start; My name is Abrina. I’m a 20yr old Poli-Sci Major/Gender Studies Minor in John Jay College of Criminal Justice. I am Ukrainian and Jewish, and I am a first generation American of my family. I’m agender and pansexual, and I use they/them pronouns to identify myself. I also identify as “femme” which means I like to portray myself as feminine, but that is not my gender identification, it is merely just a way I like to play with the concepts of gender. I also have other interests such as makeup, video games and horror movies. My love for makeup also stemmed from my experiences in the feminist movement. I’ve been dealing with acne as a teenager, and when I turned 18 my acne became cystic. I was very nervous about using makeup especially because there is such a negative culture attached to it from the outside world, but makeup is really just a form of artistic expression and a way to feel good about yourself. As for video games, I became a fan as a kid from playing with my GameCube, but it really turned into a hobby when I started playing The Sims and also Tomb Raider. I still love both of these games series, although I’ve been a die-hard fan of the Assassin's Creed series for a while, mainly because of the effortless combination of real world history and fantasy elements. I’ve also been a fan of horror movies since I was 8 years old, and the scariest movie I have ever seen is IT, from Stephen King, who also happens to be one of my favorite writers, next to Chuck Palahniuk. (No, Fight Club isn’t my favorite work of his, it’s actually Damned. My favorite book however, is A Clockwork Orange!)

 

I’m really interested in intersectional feminism and I have decided to dedicate my life’s work to bringing justice to all types of minority groups (being gender, sexual, disabled, ethnicity, race). I never really got into the hype of feminism until I was around 16 years old. I transferred schools, attending my first public high school from being in a yeshiva for the majority of my schooling life. I was recovering from an eating disorder then I had developed when I was 14 and I was also struggling with mental illness from a traumatic experience I had endured when I was 12. I started becoming more invested in online communities that had to do with LGBTQIA rights, feminism and body positivity movements, and from there I became really motivated and passionate. I became the leader of my high school's GSMA when I was a senior, and I later on became the president of my first colleges GSMA when I was in my second year. Because I’ve always been motivated by political issues, I felt that it was only appropriate for me to pursue a law degree, so I could put my work out there into a larger platform, and hopefully make changes and strides at a larger level.

 

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About My Design
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As a person who was assigned female at birth (afab) and someone who has grown up femme presenting their whole life, I’ve always had a weird relationship with the color pink. When we think of the color pink, as a society and a culture, we associate it with girls. We view pink as a “girly” color, not a “womanly” color. We assign the color pink to girls toys and clothes, as a way to identify femininity. But at the same time, we demonize this femininity that we project onto others. We teach girls that, after a certain age, they need to let go and give up these childish aspects of femininity. They aren’t allowed to enjoy cute things anymore, even though we expect them too. They aren’t able to dabble in makeup or openly admit that they like to invest time in their appearance, but we expect them too. They aren’t allowed to enjoy bold pieces, jewelry, or dresses, but we expect them too. We teach girls, as they grow up and become older, that they allowed to enjoy feminine things, but they still must enjoy these things to be read as “feminine” in this society and culture.

This is a main reason why I chose the color pink as the main scheme for my web page design. As someone who does not identify as a woman, but still enjoys appearing feminine, I have been constantly criticized for my love for “feminine” things, just as many other femme people, cis or trans, have been. When younger, I have criticized other women for enjoying stereotypical feminine things, because I was taught that enjoying these things was bad, and that if I took part it in I would be viewed as a silly and self-absorbed. I was taught that my self worth lied in what other people, especially men, saw in me. Unfortunately, that meant denying a big part of myself. This is why the “Hardcore Babe - Taking No Shit” was such a meaningful background choice for me. It represents a lot of aspects of my personal aesthetic that I wanted to bring out in this webpage. The fact that I, as well as many other femme people, can be hardcore and powerful, while still enjoying cute and stereotypically based feminine things. That we will not lie down and bare ourselves when other criticize us, but instead we will stand up and fight back.

The header banner is also very important and meaningful to me for the same reasons. With the pink color and tombstones, it mixes femininity with being something spooky, scary and powerful. It also bring a wider meaning - that we will not let the same institutions that constantly try to push us down (such as patriarchy, sexisim and racisim) continue to harm us and harm others. This also weaves into many of my writing works, which talk about the problems that patriarchy, sexisim and racisim bring. We need to be constantly aware of the way these institutions affect us and others, and we need to do everything in our power to fight back against it and show that we are stronger than this.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.