The Alliance Defending Freedom is the group that overturned Roe v. Wade. And they’re clear on what they’re coming for next: Trans rights. Gay rights. The separation of church and state. Secularism. Anti-discrimination laws. And contraception.
Author: Jill Filipovic
Jill Filipovic is a New York-based writer, lawyer and author of OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind and The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness. A weekly columnist for CNN and a 2019 New America Future of War fellow, she is also a former contributing opinion writer to The New York Times and a former columnist for The Guardian. She writes at jill.substack.com and holds writing workshops and retreats around the world.
Hell Hath No Fury Like an Accomplished Woman Facing Down a Man-Boy
I don’t think Nikki Haley should be president. But there’s no real comparison between her bona fides and Vivek Ramaswamy’s. She has spent the last 20 years working her way up the political chain. She’s held legislative roles and executive ones. She has terrible ideas, but she’s done what so many women have: Gone through the process, collected accomplishments, waited her turn. And now she’s experiencing what so many women have: A young man, buoyed by his own enormous ego, skipping the hard parts and the learning-how-to-do-it parts and feeling entitled to power, simply on the basis of his potential greatness and self-assuredness.
No wonder she’s livid.
Girl Bond Summer: Taylor, Barbie and Power of Collective Joy
Girls are showing up, shaping popular culture for the better. Their choices tell us about friendship, connection, and how to forge joy in this world.
Of course, the power of girls as consumers and taste-makers isn’t new. And life remains pretty damn hard for young people. But when I see the Swifties in their ecstatic thrall, or the pink-clad Barbie hordes stampeding toward the theater, I think: We could all use a little more of that sincerity and exuberance in our lives.
‘Family Annihilators’: When Conservative America’s Fetish for Guns and Patriarchy Turns Deadly
Every five days, a person murders his family. We see these killings so much more often in conservative states, where guns are easy to get and there’s a higher concentration of sexist, insecure men who expect their wives to behave.
The U.S. is a global outlier when it comes to gun deaths. in much of the world, violent, misogynist men cannot easily get their hands on deadly weapons. In the U.S., they can—and the Supreme Court may make that even easier.
The Global War on Gay Rights
Modern-day debates over gay rights and women’s rights are far less about long-standing cultural norms and far more about power and social control.
Abortion Bans Endanger Women’s Lives, New Study Shows
Criminalizing abortion makes pregnancy more dangerous and renders doctors impotent to treat pregnant women fully and appropriately.
Pregnancy has long been one of the more dangerous things a woman can do. It is not convenient for abortion opponents, but the truth is that pregnancies go wrong, and sometimes they threaten women’s lives and our health. Even when everything goes right, pregnancies are tremendously stressful events on the body; they leave their mark, and they cause permanent changes (and often permanent injuries). It is unreasonable and unconscionable for the state to force this on women.
When Voters Vote, They Vote for Abortion—So Republicans Want to Make It Harder to Vote
Where voters are allowed to have a say, they give a resounding “yes” to abortion rights. Instead of adjusting their politics accordingly, the GOP just makes it harder for voters to vote.
There is a direct relationship between authoritarianism and opposition to abortion rights. After all, what is more authoritarian and more a rejection of basic individual freedoms, than believing the government should be able to force you into pregnancy and motherhood?
(This essay is part of Women’s Rights and Backsliding Democracies project—a multimedia project made up of essays, video and podcast programming, presented by Ms., NYU Law’s Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Network and Rewire News Group.)
Happy International Women’s Day?
It’ll only take us three more centuries to gain equality, because conservatives in the U.S., Iran and Afghanistan and elsewhere don’t want equality at all.
The last century has largely been a good one for women’s progress. But with every large step forward, we’ve seen backlash, and this is a global trend.