#38: my little women

Please, Please, Please listen to the podcast I linked and share with friends!

hi hi hi sisters ♡ I hope you all had a great week! this week went by painstakingly slow and rapid fast. going from a school schedule, to a break, to a 9-5 pm internship schedule was a ROUGH adjustment for me. especially while having my body adjust from west coast time, I didn’t fall asleep until after 12:30 am most nights, which for me is WILD. but this weekend my roommates and I went on a little pilgrimage and visited the 2019 little women movie film sites in Massachusetts and it was LOVELY

this week we are continuing on with sharing lots of LGBTQ recs and consumption! (and ofc a push to be more politically involved)

the genocide in Palestine is unraveling each and every day. here is a link to email your congressmen in 10 seconds asking them to call for a ceasefire!!!

also, if you follow or know of Sharon Says So on instagram, but you want to consume more easily digestible information on the news and happenings in the world, she just published her own substack called The Preamble! get informed !! be educated !! as she says “Instead, I would rather give you the history and context about an issue and help you understand how to think critically about it, so you can make educated choices for yourself.”

movies: the only movie I watched this week was little women (no complaints there) but it was PERFECT preparation for our pilgrimage to Massachusetts for a Little Women 2019 film tour ♡

podcasts: this is a little women // pride podcast combo episode. there has always been a lot of discussion on Louisa May Alcott and her sexuality (whether that be lesbian or a-sexual) but this episode explores the possibility of Louisa possibly identifying as non-binary or even transgender. what I think is so beautiful about this episode is 1) you learn A LOT about Louisa and her personal life, but 2) it recognizes that while thinking about Louisa in these modern terms might feel weird, but we can still love Little Women and put our personal experiences into the characters even if the author isn’t someone we thought we originally knew as well.

music: unless you have been living under a rock, you’ll know that our residential pop-princess Sabrina Carpenter released a new single (and music video featuring Barry Keoghan) called Please, Please, Please, and holy cow its ADDICTIVE!!!

in my mind: truly don’t know how I found this substack post, but its a first hand experience of their time as an extra on the set of little women, so cool to get the inside scoop!

in case you missed last week, this month I am sharing parts of a paper I wrote for one of my law classes, you can read part one here

part 2 of 4:

This honor code and its regulations can and has led to the mistreatment and lack of safety for students within marginalized groups, especially those that identify within the LGBTQ community. A friend of mine shared, “When I was with certain individuals, students, and faculty alike, I felt safe and supported. However, I never felt supported, understood, or even wanted by the University, and the overseeing Church, due to contradictory, restrictive policies.” The honor code has gone through some shape-shifting the past couple of years that have lead LGBTQ students and allies to feel like they have gone through whiplash and gaslighting. In February 2020, the honor code office quietly removed a section titled “homosexual behavior” that had long banned students from “all forms of physical intimacy” between students of the same sex. This was interpreted by many students and faculty that LGBTQ students would no longer be disciplined or expelled for being in relationships, kissing or holding hands, as long as they follow the faith’s existing expectation that couples remain chaste or celibate until marriage. Three weeks after this quiet removal, BYU’s Church Educational Office came out with a letter stating, “even though we have removed the more prescriptive language, the principles of the Honor Code remain the same.” The Honor Code now states that students should “live a chaste and virtuous life, including abstaining from sexual relations outside a marriage between a man and a woman,” as the church teaches that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God. The LDS Church also clarified that the same-sex romantic behavior is a violation of the principles of the Honor Code and still not compatible with the rules at Brigham Young University. While these changes and clarifications happened just over four years ago, the hurt and confusion it caused to students is still damaging today.

The Mormon Church and BYU, as an appendage to the LDS faith, teaches that its members and students should love everybody; however, the regulations set forth add stipulations to this commandment. In 2021, a leader of the LDS church addressed faculty at BYU that caused many shelves to break. Within this talk the leader, Jeffrey Holland, called out and criticized faculty members and students who challenged the faith’s teachings on same sex marriage. Holland stated that BYU faculty and staff should take up their intellectual muskets to defend the LDS church, especially the doctrine of the family and marriage as the union of a man and a woman. He also was quoted saying, “be careful that love and empathy do not get interpreted as condoning and advocacy, or that orthodoxy and loyalty to principle not be interpreted as unkindness or disloyalty to people.”

tiktok: sometimes I am TRULY reminded that I do not live an original life at all (my roommates and I just went on this EXACT little weekend trip this weekend); we are witnesses a popstar rising to true stardom

instagram: miley cyrus has me GAGGED; this makes me so emotional, I don’t know how to explain it

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wehavethedata

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for next week’s newsletter I will be compiling some of my favorite LGBTQ movies, shows, books, and other forms of media! if you have any recs yourself i’d LOVE to hear them!!