Welcome back to the Feminist Fix, wherein we round up the feminist links you shouldn’t miss each week.
Feminist News
+ The fight to expose and end sexual harassment and abuse in the entertainment industry hasn’t slowed this week. Five women came forward to accuse journalist Mark Halperin of sexual assault. Stranger Things actor Finn Wolfhard left his talent agency when he found out his agent was accused of sexual assault. Marilyn Manson split with his longtime bassist when rape allegations against him surfaced. Actor Anna Faris came forward to tell her own sexual harassment story, and musician Alice Glass opened up about the abuse she faced from Crystal Castles co-founder Ethan Kath. In a new radio interview, radio DJ Kitti Jones detailed the abuse she suffered while she was in a relationship with singer R. Kelly. And Conde Naste finally dropped Terry Richardson, albeit seven years too late.
+ Meanwhile, Chef John Besh stepped down after 25 women came forward to accuse him of sexual harassment. A new report shows that Fidelity struggles with a culture of sexual harassment, despite an array of women in leadership. And in the EU, parliament members are demanding action against sexual harassment.
+ The New York Times talked to girls who survived being held by Boko Haram—many of whom escaped as they were being primed to be used as suicide bombers. On the Hill, Congressional lawmakers wore red in a show of solidarity for Frederica Wilson (D-FL) and her efforts to bring back the Chibok schoolgirls captured by Boko Haram in 2014.
+ Sen. Chris Murphy has introduced legislation to expand background checks for gun sales.
+ The NAACP has issued warned their members not to fly with American Airlines after a series of racially-charged confrontations between AA staff and Black passengers, the likes of which they say are unique to the airline.
+ A trans woman was tortured and killed in Pakistan.
+ These Indigenous women are taking on big oil, and they’re not backing down.
“There’s this stereotype of indigenous women that we’re docile, passive,” Fielder says And maybe her age makes these massive financial institutions underestimate her, too, which she thinks works in her favor. But “there’s a direct link between these companies and women’s rights,” she says, mentioning the North Dakotan tribes who opened their reservations to drilling along the Bakken Shale Formation: “The rate of violence, drug use, and especially human trafficking have skyrocketed there,” she says. (When the crime rate tripled on the reservations there in the years after Big Oil came, it was referred to as a “tidal wave.” The area has not recovered.)
But going after Wells Fargo and Wall Street institutions isn’t even just about women’s rights or indigenous rights, as far as Fielder is concerned. Next Mazaska Talks is working on its own public banking initiative—a way to develop an institution as much as tear others down. “We don’t want our money in Wall Street,” she says. “They’re not behind just pipelines. It’s about prisons, immigration detention centers, surveillance directed against indigenous people abroad. Every extractive economy you can imagine.”
Milestones
+ Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie is the first LGBT character in a Marvel film. The Thor: Ragnarok character is bisexual—in the text and now on the screen.
+ Sima Wali, an Afghan refugee who fought against gender apartheid in her home country fiercely, passed away this week at 66.
+ FX’s “Pose” will feature the largest cast of trans actors ever in scripted TV.
+ Andreja Pejić is the first trans model to sign with Ford.
Lest We Forget
+ Nicki Minaj on sexism on the radio and in hip-hop: “It’s almost like men feel like it takes something away from them to give a female props the way they would give say, a Kanye or Em… It’s not them, they give me my props, my core fans give me props… It’s y’all.”
https://twitter.com/Barb_Minajesty/status/923313950699204609
+ Ann Furedi, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), the country’s leading abortion provider, on the 50th anniversary of the Abortion Act: “I first got involved in abortion campaigning in 1982, and at that point, only half of abortions were paid for by the NHS. Our big campaign over the next decade was for 75 percent of abortions to be paid for by the NHS. We never thought we’d get to that. And now we’re at 98 percent. It’s become incorporated. I don’t think people will ever think it’s good. But they think it’s right.”
+ Chelsea Handler on stepping down from her Netflix show to campaign for women’s rights: “Like so many across the country, the past presidential election and the countless events that have unfolded since have galvanized me. From the national level down to the grassroots, it’s clear our decisions at the ballot box next year will mark a defining moment for our nation. For these reasons, I’ve decided not to return for another season of Chelsea, and instead devote as much time as I can to becoming a more knowledgeable and engaged citizen and to focus on projects that have significance to me. My goal is to be better informed, raise my voice, and participate in a more meaningful way.”
+ Michelle Suarez, Uruguay’s first out trans senator, pledging to fight for LGBT equality: “Uruguay has evolved, but it’s still a discriminatory country.”
+ Dr. James Peterson on being a “black identity extremist,” according to the Trump administration: “I believe that being married to and being the life partner of a Black woman is both a privilege and a political statement in a nation that routinely dismisses Black families and Black fathers/husbands as absent and/or invisible. I believe that raising two Black children in and through an array of anti-black institutions – especially media and schools – is as important a political act as I will ever have the fortune to pursue. I believe that BLACK LIVES MATTER and that activists’ various efforts to sustain a movement around equity, racial justice and human dignity for the Black community in this nation and abroad is the most important movement of my lifetime. Maybe you believe some of these things too. If so, you may be a Black identity extremist – and, apparently, a threat to our nation’s security.”
How We’re Doing
+ 11 times men in politics threatened their female colleagues with violence. Yep. It’s 2017. And there are enough for a list.
