This article was first published by The Huffington Post Schools in Philadelphia are currently on high alert because of a threat of violence made against “a university near Philadelphia.” The threat was posted on 4chan, an anonymous message board, on Friday, the day after a murder-suicide that left 10 people dead in yet another campus shooting. […]
Author: Soraya Chemaly
Soraya Chemaly writes about the role of gender in culture, politics, religion and media. She has appeared as a guest on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, Sirius XM progressive radio, and is a frequent HuffPost Live Panelist.
Why Don’t We Talk About the Gender Safety Gap in the U.S.?
This week, John Krakauer’s book, Missoula, “a depressingly typical” story about college town rapes, was released. In a recent NPR interview, Krakauer describes his dawning realization about how many women in the United States have been sexually assaulted, most often by people they know. His prior lack of awareness about women’s experiences, either of being assaulted […]
Women Don’t Fear Power. Power Fears Women.
Reading yesterday about the abrupt firing of Jill Abramson, along with the resignation of Le Monde’s Natalie Nougayrède, was like watching a ripple of misogyny move through the air in slow motion. Similar, in fact, to watching the slow, then fast, build to Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s removal from office. There’s no way to […]
Why Feminists Need to Take Over School Boards
Actress Shailene Woodley is this week’s “She’s not a feminist!” It Girl. When asked her opinion about feminism, Woodley expressed her belief that it’s a bad thing and requires hating men. There are no sparkly Feminist Fairies running around sprinkling Feminist Fairy Dust on girls and boys. No Feminist Mindmelders transferring feminist history by osmosis. Feminists don’t […]
Why Won’t We Talk About Violence and Masculinity in America?
As I listened along with the rest of the world to the unfolding horror of what transpired at Sandy Hook Elementary School, I was struck by the persistent lack of commentary and analysis discussing the fact that mass shooters are almost all angry, male and white. What will it take for us to have widespread, […]
U.S. Now Ranks 79th in the World for Women’s Political Representation
This is The Year of the Woman. Again. As it was in 2011. 2010. 2008. 2003. (Pew officially announced that 2004 just wasn’t one, 2005 got lost in the shuffle, and everyone seemed to tacitly agree that 2009 didn’t qualify.) But, as a result of Tuesday’s elections, 2012 does, even exceeding the Mother of All […]
What Does Sex Have to Do with World Peace?
Last year, a quiet but powerful book, Sex and World Peace, was published by an interdisciplinary group of researchers and scholars. The authors, Valerie M. Hudson, Bonnie Ballif-Spanvill, Mary Caprioli and Chad F. Emmett, set out to demonstrate and document the complex but evident relationship between how girls and women are treated and the security […]