Feminism

Pleasure and Justice

On feminism, sex, and the ethics of desire.

Working on Our Primal Scream

Amidst a boys’ club of ’70s-era comics, Shary Flenniken’s Trots and Bonnie was unique for its feminist depiction of the political and sexual awakening of young women.

The Feminist Past History Can’t Give Us

Recent efforts to commemorate Laura Bassi—a pioneering physicist in eighteenth-century Italy—often say more about us than the world of women in science.

Violence Has No Gender

The penalties of gender and sexual violence are not equally distributed, but psyche violence is genderless.

Pandemic Moms. Trans Moms. Marxist Moms. Robot Moms.

—and those who wish they could be mothers. Our annual Mother’s Day reading list.

A People’s Anthology: Episode Six

On “Women in Prison: How It Is With Us” by Assata Shakur.

A People’s Anthology: Episode Five

The Combahee River Collective Statement.

A People’s Anthology: Episode One

Carole Boyce Davies on Claudia Jones’s “An End of the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!”

A People’s Anthology

A podcast reading series of radical essays and speeches from U.S. history.

Feminism in Lockdown

The pandemic has foregrounded women’s exploitation in the home and challenged feminism to once again go beyond middle-class concerns. 

The Obligation of Self-Discovery

Simone de Beauvoir’s relationship with her readers was a mutually demanding collaboration. 

Save the Equal Rights Amendment

Renewed efforts to quash it stand to wipe out a hundred years of women’s work as constitution-makers.

When Quotas Come Up Short

Some gender equality initiatives help to reinforce exclusion rather than dismantle it.

Pathologizing Desire

Current contempt for age gap relationships serves to strip both men and women of their agency. 

Inventing Nonviolence

Judith Butler’s The Force of Nonviolence advocates for pacifism but neglects much of the tradition’s philosophy and feminist theory.

Whose Anger Counts?

Cancel culture can go wrong, but that doesn't mean the objections of far-right trolls and social justice activists should be mistaken for having equal worth.

Violence Cannot Remedy Violence

Instead of deterring sexual violence, criminalization has empowered policing and punishment.

What Does It Take to Get Women Elected?

If women’s suffrage was the battle of the twentieth century, women’s representation will be the battle of the twenty-first.

Without Women There Is No Democracy

On the hundreth anniversary of suffrage, it’s time for gender equity in political office.

From the Editors: The Right to Be Elected

What does gender equity in a democracy look like?

Identity Politics and Elite Capture

The wealthy and powerful will take every opportunity to hijack activist energies for their own ends.

Andrea Dworkin Was a Trans Ally

On the fifteenth anniversary of Dworkin’s death, her longtime partner observes that she is often invoked to support beliefs she actively repudiated in her work.

AI’s Human Problem

Two new books about machine creativity mostly reveal how little appreciation we still have for the full range of human creativity.

‘Flexible’ Family Leave Is Lousy Feminism

Men can still opt out of these policies. The state needs to take more coercive action. 

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