Set off Warning: This piece comprises references to sexual violence.
Blue Origin’s “historic all-female flight” took its 11-minute voyage on April 14 and… nicely. Individuals had emotions. About area tourism, about Jeff Bezos, about Katy Perry singing to her fellow “crew members” as they descended again to Earth — it was all a giant sizzling mess. It’s straightforward to say that this was a huge waste of money and a complete epic fail, however in the midst of all of it are some precise girls in STEM, like Amanda Nguyen. Seeing her obtain her dream of visiting area is beautiful! Figuring out she did it on a Bezos rocket is much less so. And it’s OK to really feel sophisticated about it.
As a result of actually, if anybody deserves to go to area, it’s Amanda Nguyen. The bioastronautics analysis scientist is understood for some fairly vital achievements, like being acknowledged as Time Woman of the Year in 2022. She’s the founder and CEO of Rise, a civil rights group. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019.
She additionally drafted the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act, a invoice that handed unanimously in 2016 and utterly overhauled the way in which sexual assaults have been reported, lessening the burden on victims.
The invoice got here after Nguyen was raped in 2013 whereas she was a scholar at Harvard College. She had already accomplished an internship at NASA in 2011 and 2013 and dreamed of turning into an astronaut, however after her assault, Nguyen took a 10-year break from her area goals to pursue the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act and create and develop Rise.
So yeah, seeing her come out of the shuttle together with her arms stretched to the sky? It felt like a full-circle dangerous*ss second. Nguyen wrote on Instagram that she determined to convey her hospital bracelet from the evening she reported her rape as her zero-g indicator on board the shuttle — the merchandise she’d have in her pocket to let her know when microgravity situations start. She shared that it was like letting her ache see the world she had been dreaming of, letting her ache see the world she had modified.
It’s deeply shifting. And understanding that Nguyen has constructed a legacy off of her trauma and ache, turning what occurred to her into this unbelievable net of help and sources and alter for different survivors, is big. In fact she deserves to go to area. In fact she will get to have her goals realized.
However… *sigh.* It’s onerous to not really feel sophisticated about it, understanding that the Blue Origin flight additionally had celebrities on it who paid an entire lot of cash to Bezos for a PR stunt. Figuring out the climate impact that 11-minute flight had on our world. Figuring out that Bezos has been a reasonably dominant supporter of Trump, and Trump’s administration is dismantling science left and proper (in truth, feminine scientists are actively losing their jobs and being scrubbed from government websites).
But, there’s one thing there. Nguyen did handle to do some experiments whereas she was on board Blue Origin, together with work that may affect women’s health in space, like space-friendly pads and tampons. She is the first Vietnamese woman to fly to space. Her household, coming to this nation as refugees and in search of peace and progress and goals, watched her launch off in a rocket.
There’s a lot to be pleased with for Nguyen. She’s a survivor, constructing a greater world for all of us due to one thing horrible that occurred to her. She deserves all the nice issues. She deserves to see Earth as a tiny speck. She deserves her goals to return true.
I believe all of us simply want it wasn’t on a Bezos shuttle.
When you or somebody you understand has been sexually assaulted, you may name the Nationwide Sexual Assault Phone Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to hotline.rainn.org.
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