“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

It seems that during quarantine, we have each managed to find our own unique unhappiness. Some of us are faced with too much alone time, feeling loneliness wrapping around us like a dense San Francisco fog. Some of us are not getting enough alone time, our minutes constantly interrupted by the loquacity of our housemates. Some of us are trapped in a symphony written in minor chords while others are trapped in a movement with never-ending discordant staccato.

Despite our different forms of unhappiness, there’s one app that I have been recommending to everyone — Balance.

The Problem

As someone who is new to meditation, I have found other apps to be overwhelming in the way content is presented. I need a tool that will give me easy, actionable steps for each day. I love that the Balance app is super straightforward and simple. It makes keeping up the habit of meditation less daunting.

The Aesthetic

The aesthetic of Balance is simple and calming, with a light green, yellow, pink and purple.

Great Use of Design Principles

• The “home” page for Balance is an icon labeled “Today” — this page is a great example of effectively leveraging visual hierarchy. Most of the screen is taken up by a single block that has a cute illustration and a “start” button. The only thing I need to do each day to stay on track is press Start.
• The Balance app effectively uses grouping to point me to the right meditation sessions depending on my needs, making the learnability and memorability of the app super easy. Need help with Sleep? Find all of the Sleep sessions in one tab.
• Calming use of whitespace allows me to navigate the app with ease, without feeling overwhelmed despite the robust amount of content available.
• Contrast and consistency make the usability of the app excellent, with the same teal color used for all call-to-action buttons.

Why it feels different from others

Compared to other meditation apps like Insight Timer, I like that Balance makes me feel like I’m going through a guided course on meditation rather than being presented with a giant syllabus of potential meditation classes that I may take. Notice the single action item I need to take when I open my Balance app (shown on left) vs. the number of actions that I can possibly take in Insight Timer (shown on right).

My Take

There are many great meditation apps out there, and an app like Insight Timer is great for those who want flexibility and options. But for those of you who are feeling overwhelmed lately and need zero friction between you and your meditation practice, I highly recommend Balance!

Stay safe and healthy, and may you find your balance!

In honor of SAAM, I’m raising $50k for RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network). RAINN is the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization. It provides a range of services for victims and also has programs that focus on education and public policy. You can contribute to my fundraiser page here. No pressure. Read on if you’d like to know how you can make a difference without pulling out your wallet.

I recently had the realization that rape victims are often treated the same as mosquito bite victims. People ask us, “Well, what were you wearing? You should have worn a long sleeve shirt and pants instead.”

I’m not going to list rape statistics in this post because you can find all of the numbers on RAINN here and here.

Instead, I am going to talk about how society has programmed us to believe that women deserve to be raped, and how you can actively fight rape culture.

The media does an excellent job of trying to find the good in rapists and trying to find “the conniving little whore” in rape victims.

The Washington Post lists Brock Turner’s many accomplishments — the fact that he was “a member of Stanford’s varsity swim team, one of the best in the country,” and the fact that he was (gasp) “baby-faced.”

I know! How can someone with a baby face possibly be a rapist? Indeed, I was equally shocked when I discovered that the baby-faced Ed Sheeran was the singer of the scandalous song, “Shape of You.”

The Washington Post meticulously documents Brock Turner’s childhood accomplishments and dreams. We learn that “at age 10, he was named in the local newspaper as helping his swim team win a championship,” and that in high school, he wanted to become a surgeon.

What about the aspirations of the young woman who was raped? Was the young woman not as adorable as Brock Turner? Does the fact that she was not “baby-faced” make her deserving of rape?

In 2011, The New York Times, questioned the moral purity of an 11 year old who was gang raped in Texas. Apparently, the 11 year old had it coming.

“[S]he dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s.”

But it’s not enough to blame an 11 year old rape victim. Many questioned, “Where was her mother? What was her mother thinking?”

Umm…how about, “Where were the rapists fathers?” or, “Where were the consciences of the men who gang raped an 11 year old girl?”

But alas, if a girl is raped, her appearance and the mother are to blame.

We send the message to young men everywhere that rape is not a serious crime when we give them laughably light sentences, or no sentence at all. Only 6 out of 1,000 rapists are convicted and incarcerated.

After 3 out of 5 panelists (twice and independently) found a Stanford football player guilty of raping a young woman, John Etchemendy (outgoing provost) said, “Imagine a senior, who has paid four years of Stanford tuition…Being expelled is really a life-changing punishment. I think we as an institution have a duty to take that very seriously.” [NYTimes]

You know what else is life-changing? Getting raped.

Apparently, the value of a woman is less than 4 years of Stanford tuition (~$257,908). Men, think twice before you tell your wife she looks like a million bucks! At most, she’s like…quarter mil.

You want to know why women don’t report rape? It’s because nobody fucking cares. If you think that sexism no longer exists or that we value women equally to men, please consider this.

We value points in a soccer game more than we value women. Bruno Fernandes de Souza had his ex-girlfriend and son’s mother murdered then fed to dogs. But it turns out he’s an excellent goalie, so he was signed by a Brazilian soccer team as soon as he was released from prison.

We value being entertained by a TV show for 30 minutes/week more than we value women. Charlie Sheen has threatened, assaulted and “accidentally” shot women, but he’s funny sometimes, so let’s all turn a blind eye.

But those guys are exceptionally monstrous, right? You have nothing in common with them.

The man who raped me received a master’s degree from Harvard and is now a husband and a father. Do you have anything in common with him?

The man who raped a friend of mine can often be found at a hipster coffee shop in San Francisco. Do you have anything in common with him?

What can you do to end rape culture, and ultimately help end rape? First and foremost, do not rape. Duh.

Educate the boys and men in your life about consent. Consent may be granted and taken away. When a woman says “no,” it means “no.” It does not mean,

“Oh, I’m just saying no because I’m a woman and I’m supposed to be coy and classy, but I totally want to be violated.”

NO MEANS NO.

As District Attorney Jeff Rosen said, “No means no. Drunk means no. Passed out means no. And sex without consent means sexual assault.”

Educate the girls and women in your life about consent. Consent is active. It’s not “slutty” for a woman to express consent. We need to get rid of words like “slut” from our vocabulary.

Society often teaches young boys and girls that it’s the girl’s job to resist and play hard to get and it’s the boy’s job to get her to yield. This is harmful for everyone, including boys. Even good boys and men may be convinced that they have to play the role of the “hero” and get a woman to yield.

Remember that the little things matter.

Language matters. When you let someone get away with “locker room talk” that denigrates or objectifies women, you are perpetuating the idea that women are not even worth 4 years of Stanford tuition.

If you find yourself in the company of those who make offensive comments, call them out nicely (attacking someone will just lead to defensiveness). You can say something like,

“I don’t believe that you’re a sexist or misogynistic person, so it surprises me that you would speak about women in such a degrading manner. Would you want anyone to speak about your wife/gf/mom/sister/daughter that way?”

I’m just as guilty as the next person. I definitely laughed at this scene in Clueless. Like, laughed real hard.

When you see brands capitalizing on rape culture, call them out on it. Have you ever really noticed?

How about now?

Your District Attorney is incentivized to throw sexual assault cases out. Sexual assault is notoriously difficult to prosecute, and DAs want high success rates so that they can get re-elected. Contact your District Attorney’s office and ask questions. How many sexual assaults were reported? How many were dismissed? Show them that you, a constituent, care about this issue. Rally your friends and get them to contact the DA’s office too.

Send a message to your DA and tell them that this sort of victim-blaming is unacceptable. Intoxication is not the reason women get raped. Women get raped because men decide to rape them and DAs decide to do nothing about it. It is not a woman’s responsibility to not drink or make sure she and her friends don’t get raped. It’s a man’s responsibility to not be a fucking rapist, and it’s the DA’s responsibility to prosecute rapists.

I am tired of hearing about what more women could have or should have done in order to not get raped.

Sarah Nicole Prickett says, “I am sick of rape stories on CNN and sicker of rape stories on Jezebel. I would like instead to see national, televised debates and full episodes of morning radio shows and several long-form podcasts and a portion of the next State of the Union address dedicated to determining whether men should be allowed to keep their dicks.”

There is always so much (well-deserved) fanfare around Movember, breast cancer awareness, alzheimer’s, etc. However, rape is the only epidemic that you cannot be immune to based on race, gender, age, socioeconomic status, education, religion, diet, etc. and yet it gets so little attention, or the wrong kind of attention.

I wonder if Sexual Assault Awareness Month just needs a catchy hashtag like #DontRapeEatGrapes. I’m envisioning all of my favorite male celebs and models eating grapes all sexy-like on giant posters that say #RealMenGetConsent and #DontRapeEatGrapes. Can someone please make that happen?

Like this…

In the meantime, feel free to contribute to my RAINN fundraiser page here. [https://fundraise.rainn.org/DontRapeEatGrapes]

Thanks for your support!

Here is our country’s new reality. Sexual predators will be emboldened by Trump. Currently, 63% of sexual assaults are unreported. I suspect that even fewer reports will be made now that a man with a history of repeated sexual assault has been elected President. Trump has made it clear that misogynistic patriarchy shall supersede women’s rights and that he will take action to raze the progress that has been made by women such as Gloria Steinem, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and of course, Hillary Clinton.

For those of you who are wondering “How much damage can one man do in 4 years,” here is a vivid case study from Afghanistan.

In 1921, Amunallah Khan’s wife, Queen Soraya, opened Afghanistan’s first school for girls in Kabul. Two years later, Afghanistan established a constitution which guaranteed secular education to both men and women.

Women in Afghanistan received the right to vote in 1965. This is before the 19th Amendment (women’s right to vote) was ratified by Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Mississippi. That’s right. Women in Afghanistan could vote before women in southern states could vote.

By 1977, women comprised over 15% of Afghanistan’s highest legislative body. In that same year in the U.S., only 3.7% of Congress members were women. By the early 1990s, 70% of schoolteachers, 50% of government workers and university students, and 40% of doctors in Kabul were women. [Source]

The Taliban took over Kabul in 1996 and its last stronghold fell in 2001. In five short years, the Taliban was able to set women back an entire century.

Please do not tell me the following:

• Everything will be okay. It’s only 4 years. (See above Afghanistan example.)
• The natural progression of things is for women to advance, so don’t worry too much about things going backward. (History has proven that women’s advancement is not natural at all. We have had to fight arduously for every ounce of precious freedom we have today.)
• The government won’t let Trump the President be as crazy as Trump the nominee. (Are you referring to the Senate and House, which are both Republican?)

Instead of attempting to reassure me, please rise to the occasion and fight for women — actively, and openly.

After Trump was elected, I did not think I could stomach living in a country whose leader is a sexual predator. However, I now realize that I must remain here and fight in any way that I can. Because I’m not going to let F*ckface Von Clownstick and the memories of a rapist drive me out of my country.

“Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise” — Maya Angelou

A few weeks ago, I got into a taxi and started chatting with my driver about politics. He asked me who I would be voting for, and when I replied, “Hillary,” his immediate reaction was, “Is it just because she’s a woman?” I wanted to say to him, “Are you supporting ____ just because you both have dicks?” but I refrained and continued my ride in silence.

A few weeks before that, I got into a taxi and my driver asked me what I did. When I told him that I worked for Venmo, his immediate reaction was, “You do UX or Design, right?” I wanted to say to him, “No. Also, our Head of Engineering is a woman,” but again, I refrained and continued my ride in silence.

Now that I have lived a handful of years outside of Wellesley, I find myself being silenced by the sheer exhaustion of having to deal with this type of subtle sexism every day. And for those of you who know me, you know that I am not a quiet woman.

Wellesley is a magical place where 100% of student leadership positions are held by women (past, present, or future)*. It is a place where women are inspired and encouraged to do anything men can do, where women can speak to figures of authority (our dear professors) and know that we will be judged for content and substance rather than for our tone or likability. When I was at Wellesley, I lived in a world where sexism was truly dead.

Although I appreciated all of the work that my predecessors had done for me and my generation of women, I did not fully comprehend the extent of what they had gone through in order to lift me up onto their shoulders so that I might see further and reach higher than they were ever permitted. I also did not appreciate how incredibly dangerous it is for women to live in a world where sexism is alive and well, but people believe it to be dead. When people believe sexism to be dead, they become less vigilant about losing all of the gains we have made towards equality. When people believe sexism to be dead, women who are victims are made out to be liars. When people believe sexism to be dead just because it has become more subtle, women, like myself in those taxi rides, become silenced.

Wellesley women — I have great respect for you and your opinions. I will never tell you to go against your personal convictions, even if it means voting for Donald Trump. However, as someone who is a handful of years out of Wellesley, I am writing to tell you that your future selves might be filled with regret if you do not consider voting for Hillary, at least in part, because she is a woman. Here is why.

Please consider: As recently as 1979, a company called American Cyanamid forced women to be sterilized or lose their jobs. My sister was born in 1979.

Now consider: In 2015, a company recruited and fired several incompetent men for a managerial position. When a woman on the team asked her superiors why she was never considered for the role despite being asked to run the team whenever the role was unfilled in the interim, they responded, “We didn’t think you wanted it because you have children.” However, she asked the question too late. An offer was already made to another man.

Please consider: In 1963, Ruth Bader Ginsburg became the 2nd female law professor at Rutgers and was told that she would be paid less than her male peers because “you have a husband who earns a good salary.”

Now consider: In 2015, a woman (Wellesley ’09) at a consulting firm was promoted along with a few male colleagues who started in her class. She discovered that their promotion entailed a 50% higher increase than her own. When she challenged this disparity, she was asked to justify why she deserved a 50% increase to match that of her male coevals. She was one of the highest rated consultants in her class.

Please consider: In 1973, Roe v. Wade was heralded as a victory for the women’s rights movement. However, the court did not support a woman’s right to choose; it supported privacy between physician and patient, and supported a physician’s right to choose.

Now consider: In 2016, 20 states have unconstitutional and unenforceable procedure bans that could outlaw abortion as early as the 12th week of pregnancy, with no exception to protect a woman’s health. In 2016, several presidential candidates treat Planned Parenthood as if it were our greatest threat to national security.

Please consider: In the 1960s and 1970s, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was rejected for Second Circuit judicial position, as well as several other positions, despite being the most qualified applicant.

Now consider: In 2016, Hillary Clinton may be rejected for President despite being the candidate with the most experience in healthcare, children’s rights, women’s rights, national, and international politics.

Obviously, you should consider a candidate’s policies; you can compare candidates here. However, if you are a woman (past, present, or future), I urge you to also consider all of the above. If a Democratic nominee were to be defeated by a Republican candidate, us women have much more to lose than do men. All of the gains for which our predecessors fought will be threatened.

Wellesley women whom I love, in large part simply because you are women — women who will go on to do great things — I implore you to consider the tremendous hurdles that women like Hillary Clinton faced so that you could live in a world with fewer, and smaller hurdles. As a working woman previously in consulting and currently in tech, I am telling you that those hurdles still exist. They exist in the U.S., and they exist much more acutely across the globe. So, I leave you with this: Please consider the above before you stand on the shoulders of giant women and take a giant shit on them.

*In recognition of our transgender community