“Islamic feminist.” Sounds like an oxymoron, right? But this week’s episode of the PRI radio show “America Abroad,” produced and written by (our amazing friend) Mia Lobel, will get you thinking. This fascinating hourlong podcast called “Understanding Islamic Feminism” covers feminist reinterpreters of the Koran in Egypt, Morocco’s most progressive family law in the East (which makes it […]
Emily Nagoski, Ph.D., speaks our kind of language. We read the first few pages of her new book, “Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life,” and we were sold. It tackles the tricky task of explaining women’s complex sexuality (which, hello, is different from men’s) so people can […]
For the most part, we tend to ignore the trolls. But every once in a while, outlandish claims need to be addressed to ensure that reality-based facts win over fear, insecurity and hate. In response to a post about a woman whose inability to orgasm without a sex toy was hurting her boyfriend’s feelings, one […]
by Ms Brenda Della Casa for YourTango | photo via Wikimedia Commons Never walk away muttering to yourself again. Anyone who has ever walked away from an exchange mumbling the things they “should have said” knows the crushing defeat that comes with not reaching deep into one’s vocabulary and putting together that one punchline phrase […]
I consider myself a hardcore feminist (I’ve even got the T-shirt), one who’s attuned to all the gender stereotypes bombarding us daily. I work hard to combat them whenever and wherever I can. But I don’t live in a vacuum, and I’ve found myself falling into traps I thought I could avoid: like talking tougher […]
Netflix’s “Happy Valley” “The Golden Girls” was a historic show: four central characters, all female and all over the age of 60! Of course, back in the ’80s, it was an aberration: throughout television history, female actors have been in supporting roles mostly, with an emphasis on their youth and beauty. Sex and the City […]
Lo wanted to pen a smart, thoughtful piece on all the serious, misogynistic, pro-rapey problems with “Game of Thrones” that have made it unwatchable for her, but after reading Bethany Jones’ piece ‘Game of Thrones,’ Sex and HBO: Where Did It Go Wrong For TV’s Sexual Pioneers? over at Indewire’s “/bent” blog last week, there was […]
Emma Stone went viral this week when she called out her boyfriend, Andrew Garfield, for his casual sexism during a Q&A session promoting The Amazing Spider-Man 2. When a little boy asked Garfield how Spider-Man got his costume, he said: “He made it. He made it with his bare hands. He sewed it… It’s kind of […]
Author Kate Monro has managed to make us jealous of her job: searching the world for first-time tales that don’t often get told. In her new book, “Losing It: How We Popped Our Cherry Over the Past 80 Years,” she picks up where Nancy Friday left off, letting a wide range of people — from a 90-year-old […]
Just when your blood is about to boil over all the reproductive rights rollbacks that have taken place in recent years, when you’re about to puke if you hear one more Fox pundit talk about “family values,” and when when your head is about to explode at the idea that “Dancing with the Stars” is a […]
Results from the Zimbio quiz “Which Disney Princess Are You?” have been popping up in our Facebook feed this week. Most of them are as saccharine and subtly sexist as the Disney movies themselves: They’re just begging for a more honest edit, with a little tough love thrown in — one that reflects the disturbing […]
Our contributor Jewely Hoxie studies Human Sexuality at the University of California Santa Cruz (read her blog here). She has this to stay about the slut stigma… How many times have you heard people say, “If she wasn’t such a slut…” or, “She’s kind of a slut, but…” or, “I can’t believe she’s slept with […]
While the topic of women’s rights doesn’t have the box office draw of a bunch of dudes getting wasted at a bachelor party, say, or a bride-to-be getting diarrhea in the middle of the street, there are many excellent movies that cover various aspects of the War on Women (either directly or metaphorically)—workplace discrimination, violence […]
No filmmaker in their right mind would advertise the fact that their film has feminist ambitions — we’re pretty sure that’s box office suicide (sad, but true). Despite that, some films have pretty obvious feminist heroes — think Thelma and Louise, G.I. Jane., Jodie Foster’s character in THE ACC– USED, and Erin Brockovich. And then there are […]
In this, the year of the War on Women, it seems important to take a look back on all the hard-won battles women have poured their blood, sweat and tears into over the past 150 years. Seeing how far we’ve come makes it hard to understand why there are so many people across the country […]
To follow up on our Vaginagate roundup post from yesterday, now that the trending on Twitter had died down, here are our top 30 picks for best #vaginamovielines Tweets of the past week, so you can avoid scrolling through the endless stream of mediocrity and get straight to the good stuff: NEGATIVE (from the perspective […]
