7 Essays To Read: Going To Gun Shows, Who We Humanize, And Netflix As Survival

The gun show loophole allows shoppers to buy guns from private dealers without a background check. For BuzzFeed Ideas, Kashana Cauley attended a gun show in Indiana, staring down a sea of Confederate flags, to find out what they're like. Her experience was hair-raising, and her conclusions are more relevant than ever. "Black people aren’t part of the big tent of gun ownership. We’re never assumed to be law abiding, reasonable gun owners. That kind of gun ownership is seen as an upstanding white person act," she writes. Read it at BuzzFeed Ideas.

In an all-too-timely piece for The Cut, Rebecca Traister asks why the media and society continue to humanize white killers but show no sympathy for poor, black Americans who have died at the hands of the police. "To be sure, white men may be charged, tried and convicted; they may be regarded as brutish criminals," she writes. "But they can be simultaneously understood as human beings, driven by conflicting emotions, able — even in their criminality — to have experienced loss and confusion and anger and love, emotions we do not imaginatively afford America’s poor and black." Read it at The Cut.

Dr. Natalie Whaley used to think violence against abortion providers was an anomaly. But after the attacks on Planned Parenthood, for the first time in her life, she fears for her own safety. In a Broadly essay, she denounces those who demonize her profession and explains why her work is important. Read it at Broadly.

In the year of "Netflix and Chill," there've been many reports linking binge-watching television to depression. But it was precisely this mass consumption of TV that helped Pilot Viruet get through the hardest summer of her life. "Television allowed me to have people around on a screen when people weren’t around in real life —or when I didn’t want people around in real life," she writes in a piece for Flavorwire. "Most importantly, though, they demanded no response from me. Instead, they allowed me to be as passive and introspective as I needed to be at that point." Read it at Flavorwire.

Young black creatives are using social media to shape the culture that society consumes, birthing viral content from the "Whip/Nae Nae" to "on fleek." But what happens when they don't own their work? In a FADER piece, Doreen St. Felix analyzes how the phrase "on fleek" rose to prominence on Vine and is now being used by large companies that don't credit its creator. "Part of the reason the originators of viral content are stripped from their labor is because they don’t technically own their production," St. Felix explains. "Intangible things like slang and styles of dance are not considered valuable, except when they’re produced by large entities willing and able to invest in trademarking them." Read it at FADER.

It's unsettling that VICE has its music journalists "date" their interviewees. For Brooklyn Magazine, Caitlin White makes the case against VICE's "First Date" series after reading her ex's account of time spent with Carly Rae Jepsen. "How many times does a female journalist have to assert that she doesn’t want to fuck her subject? That she isn’t in this industry as a glorified fan girl, but as a working professional? ... We’re already constantly assumed to do that, so why are the women who work at VICE happy to perpetuate that stereotype, then use their behavior as a defense for their male peers who corner famous women into this date interview setup? There are reams of examples of how fearful women are about speaking out when they feel uncomfortable with men. We’re socialized to soothe the male egos, lest irritated men physically attack or slander us." Read the entire piece at Brooklyn Magazine.

Recently, Nikesh Shukla wrote a screenplay for a sitcom with an all-Asian cast — it was rejected on the premise that an all-Asian cast wouldn't be relatable, thus hard to sell. When it comes to "relatability" and "the universal experience," they always mean "white." That needs to change. Read Shukla's essay on this frustrating conundrum at BuzzFeed.