For the past few months, I have been honored to be part of a team of activists and researchers engaging in dialogue with the State Department about human rights abuses against U.S. sex workers, in response to a UN review of the human rights record of the United States. In light of International Sex Workers’ […]
Month: March 2011
Live-Blogging Women’s History: March 3, 1913
In honor of Women’s History Month, I’m authoring a “this day in feminist history” post in you-are-there fashion throughout March. March 3, 1913: Any doubts about the courage, dedication or organizational skills of suffragists must certainly now lie discarded along Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, D.C. Had today’s massive suffrage parade and pageant been carried out […]
Pop’s Diva Daughter as Primal Mother
I’ve been looking forward to the music video of Lady Gaga’s much-hyped single “Born This Way” for several weeks, so, when it premiered Sunday on Vevo I really wanted to love it. Unfortunately, “Born This Way” just doesn’t have the twisted, Mad Hatter brilliance of Gaga’s “Bad Romance” video or the movie-pastiche playfulness and queer […]
Ukrainian Women Protest “Win a Wife” Contest
In the face of international uproar, New Zealand radio station The Rock FM has plowed ahead and picked a winner in its “Win a Wife” contest. The winner gets to pick a woman from a Ukrainian matchmaking agency and travel to Ukraine in the hopes of marrying her–or, in the words of the radio station, […]
Kansas Abortion Doctor Targeted by Extremists–Sound Familiar?
“Are doctors who are willing to provide [abortions] still just on their own, with their face on WANTED posters … waiting to see what happens next?… How do we as a country react?” Rachel Maddow posed that question last week as she reported from Kansas on the escalating campaign of threats, harassment and terror against […]
How a Nonexistent Study is Predicting the Future and Ignoring Women
Have you heard about the new study concerning rising rates of depression among men, as a consequence of both the mancession (men losing their breadwinner jobs in the latest recessio,n which will depress them) and changing social gender roles (men having to become house-husbands, which will depress them)? Neither have I, because the study doesn’t […]
Women Deliver 100: The List Revealed!
The list is out! Following our teaser last week for the release of the names of the top 100 individuals who most deliver for girls and women, Women Deliver has now unveiled them: This list recognizes women and men, both prominent and lesser known, who have committed themselves to improving the lives of girls and women […]
Live-Blogging Women’s History: March 2, 1970
March 2, 1970: In what is hoped will be a major advance for women’s rights, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed for the first time today to hear a case alleging sex discrimination in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The plaintiff is Ida Phillips, who was denied a position as […]
Heinous Billboard Reminds Us of Missing Voices
Last weekend, my friend told me that her 15-year-old student is pregnant. My friend works at a low-performing Philadelphia high school in a poverty-ridden, predominantly African American and Latino community. This particular student had been accepted into some of the most competitive high schools in the city, but remained in her neighborhood school in deference […]
Lebanese Rebel Girl
Stories of female teenage rebellion set in narrow-minded suburbia can be gut-wrenching enough, but when the revolt takes place in the midst of raging war and a clash of fundamentalists it’s a whole different story. French-based actor/writer Darina Al-Joundi was born in 1968 to a Shiite Lebanese mother and a secular Syrian father and was […]