Dispatches From Ukraine’s Frontlines, Where Feminist Organizing Has Become an Act of Survival

PUBLISHED 5/28/2026 by

A lecture and discussion were about to begin in a local public library. It could have been a scene in New York, London or Melbourne. Yet this event was in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, just 25 kilometers from invading Russian forces, where most of the attendees had fled from Russian occupied cities and villages.

The meeting was one of many organized by Natalia Lobach and the Ukrainian LGBTQ+ human rights group, Insight. Lobach said these events aim to create “safe community spaces for people from different age and social groups,” but they are especially “a good way for vulnerable groups to socialize.”

“Putin’s military is trying to destroy us not only physically, but psychologically as well—to take away our identities,” she said. “We are surviving physically, but we are also preserving our identities and our pride. … Isn’t that a kind of miracle, what we continue to do despite the pressure of such a brutal enemy?”

Where to Watch ‘Ask E. Jean,’ a New Documentary on the Wit, Fury and Fearlessness of E. Jean Carroll

PUBLISHED 5/23/2026 by | UPDATED 5/29/2026 at 7:39 A.M. PT

E. Jean Carroll—the colorful author and advice columnist who beat Donald Trump in court twice—is finally getting the documentary treatment in Ask E. Jean, a film that is as poignant as it is entertaining.

Director Ivy Meeropol first reached out to Carroll after reading the devastating yet vibrant New York Magazine piece in which Carroll accused Trump of raping her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room decades earlier.

Carroll’s initial response: “I’d rather eat my shoe.”

But Meeropol persisted, eventually convincing Carroll she wanted to tell the fuller story of her life—not just the trials, but her remarkable rise during the heyday of glossy magazines and New York media culture.

The resulting film traces Carroll’s evolution from Indiana cheerleader to professionally fabulous Manhattan raconteur, weaving together archival footage, legal depositions and deeply personal interviews.

Some of the documentary’s most powerful moments come from previously unseen deposition footage, where Carroll recounts the 1996 assault while enduring invasive questioning from Trump attorney Alina Habba. Even in those moments, Carroll remains irrepressibly funny.

Meeropol says the footage reveals “what really happens when someone who’s brought a charge of rape or sexual abuse is deposed,” while also exposing the broader misogyny women confront “from the minute we’re born.”

Meeropol also describes struggling against “The Trump Effect”—fear within the entertainment industry about supporting projects that could provoke retaliation from Trump or his allies. Distributors hesitated, some producers reportedly asked not to be credited, and the film was repeatedly stalled despite strong festival reviews.

But Ask E. Jean is now expanding into theaters nationwide, bringing Carroll’s story to audiences at a moment when the politics of gender, power and public accountability remain impossible to ignore.

Black Women, Beauty Politics and the Power of Rage in ‘Is God Is’

PUBLISHED 5/23/2026 by

In one of the film’s most surreal scenes, the twins at the center of Is God Is—Racine, “the Rough One,” and Anaia, “the Quiet One”—pretend to be strippers for a room full of men. But while Racine is welcomed, Anaia is rejected because her scarred face disrupts the men’s fantasies.

That moment crystallizes one of the film’s central questions: What happens when Black women refuse to shrink themselves for the comfort of others?

In Aleshea Harris’ Gothic revenge thriller, ugliness becomes both a burden and a source of power, as the film transforms into a stereotype-busting meditation on misogynoir, beauty politics and righteous rage.

As the twins travel cross-country seeking vengeance against the father who burned their mother alive, Harris layers the conventions of the revenge genre with distinctly Black feminist aesthetics. The film moves between absurd comedy, trap music, intimate sisterhood and brutal violence while interrogating the ways Black women are expected to manage their pain, suppress their anger and perform acceptability. Anaia’s scarred face and Racine’s consuming rage become mirrors of the same misogynoir that shapes Black women’s lives—whether through beauty standards, domestic violence or the demand to remain silent.

What makes Is God Is so striking is its refusal to look away from the “ugly.” Harris insists that Black women marked by violence, scars and fury still deserve visibility, complexity and even divinity.

The film embraces the “angry Black woman” and the “ugly” Black woman as figures worthy of space, power and humanity. In doing so, it expands the tradition of Black feminist filmmaking by asking viewers to confront the realities dominant culture would rather ignore—and to recognize the beauty, dignity and selfhood that exist beyond respectability.

‘Ms. Book Club’ Miniseries: Four Must-Listen Conversations on Black Women, U.S. History and the Law

PUBLISHED 5/22/2026 by

Our podcast platform Ms. Studios has launched a newly updated miniseries: Ms. Book Club, examining the last 250 years of U.S. history through a feminist lens and asking what the nation’s founding ideals have meant in practice for women, Black Americans and other historically marginalized communities.

Across the four-part series, Dr. Michele Goodwin—host of On the Issues and executive producer of Ms. Studios—speaks with four leading scholars and authors whose recent books explore how gender, race, law and power have shaped American life from 1776 to today: Keisha Blain, Dorothy Roberts, Khiara Bridges and Patricia Williams.

Each episode features an in-depth conversation between Goodwin and the author about how their work reframes dominant narratives of U.S. history—and challenges listeners to reconsider what, exactly, America is celebrating at its 250-year mark.

Keeping Score: Supreme Court Blow to Voting Rights Will ‘Silence Our Voices’; Conservative Judges Try to Restrict Mifepristone; Moms Worry About Putting Food on the Table

PUBLISHED 5/14/2026 by | UPDATED 5/22/2026 at 9:28 A.M. PT

In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.

This week:
—The Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, slashing protections against racially discriminatory voting laws.
—A record high amount of books were censored from libraries in 2025, often due to LGBTQ characters or plotlines addressing racism.
—A third of moms living on low incomes have gone into debt or skipped meals so their kids could eat.
—Just 22 percent of American voters have significant confidence in the Supreme Court.
—In 2025 the number of abortions in the U.S. remained stable, but more patients in states with bans turned to telehealth services instead of traveling out of state.
—The Department of Justice announced plans to expand the use of the federal death penalty.
—An Epstein-Maxwell survivor, who asked to remain anonymous, laments, “I kept my identity protected as Jane Doe. I woke up one day with my name mentioned over 500 times. While the rich and powerful remain protected by redaction, my name was exposed to the world.”
—The Trump administration launched a Moms.gov site on Mother’s Day that refers pregnant people to unregulated crisis pregnancy centers.
—A Ms. piece on solitary confinement by Kwaneta Harris and her daughter Summer Knight won Kwaneta second place in the Collaboration category of the Stillwater Awards for prison journalism.
—Liberation, a play about 1970s feminism by Bess Wohl, won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. It was also nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play. Wohl was inspired by her own life: Her mother, Lisa Cronin Wohl, was an early Ms. contributor.

… and more.

What ‘The Pitt’ Got Right and Wrong About a Major Pregnancy Risk

PUBLISHED 4/30/2026 by

The Emmy award-winning medical drama The Pitt closed its second season with a storyline about a patient with preeclampsia, a hypertensive disorder of pregnancy most identified through high blood pressure and protein in urine.

As the patient’s condition worsens, including a horrible seizure leaving her nonverbal and her baby at risk, she is diagnosed with eclampsia and hemolysis, elevated liver enzymes and low platelets (HELLP) syndrome. The patient is ultimately (unbelievably) spared as her baby is surgically removed, and both are cleared to head to obstetrics and the neonatal unit, respectively. 

As a two-time preeclampsia survivor and CEO of the Preeclampsia Foundation, I want to wholeheartedly thank The Pitt producers for featuring preeclampsia, HELLP syndrome and eclampsia in their season finale. Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, which include all three disorders plus gestational hypertension, are not rare: They affect 15 percent of all pregnancies. We need greater awareness of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, the signs and symptoms, and the importance of fast, reliable intervention by medical professionals to save the lives of mothers and their babies. 

That said, I have thoughts—as does the broader community of preeclampsia survivors.

Reads for the Rest of Us: The Best Poetry of 2025 and 2026

PUBLISHED 4/24/2026 by and

Happy April, and Happy National Poetry Month. Since my dormant love of poetry was reignited, I’ve found it so refreshing and inspiring to read beautiful collections each year and share them with you.

In 2021, I tried something a bit different with the poetry list: Instead of the usual blurb, I focused my thoughts about each collection into three words. Readers responded so well to it that I decided to keep doing it. Sometimes the words are nouns, sometimes verbs, sometimes adjectives—and I may have just made up some words too. The words I choose are always inspired by the collection and often taken directly from it. Sometimes I try to be clever, other times straightforward and you can tell I love my alliteration. Since I find it challenging to be succinct, this is a valuable exercise in imagination, reflection and, well, restraint. 

I hope you find some collections that will have you reflecting on how poetry moves you, challenges you and represents you.  

No Pockets, No Power? The Feminist History of the Purse

PUBLISHED 4/23/2026 by

With a global market worth of over $56 billion, handbags are one of the main drivers of the fashion industry.

However, as Kathleen B. Casey shows in her latest book, The Things She Carried: The Social History of the Purse in America, they are more than just a fashionable accessory: Women’s purses are an important marker of identity and social status. They are a statement of power, of resilience, of defiance and even protection. Indeed, you can tell a lot about a person from their handbag and what’s in it.

While both women and men have carried bags in the past, it was the evolution of pockets (and lack thereof in women’s clothes) that led to the purse being specifically marked as a feminine accessory, often associated with the female body and particularly the womb. 

With pockets becoming a symbol of functionality and masculinity, it is not a coincidence that utilitarian pockets became a feminist demand. Feminists have long argued for their right to free hands and movement, while keeping their possessions secure and concealed. Pockets were often equated to votes during the suffrage campaign, as activists criticized the lack of both in hindering women’s independence.

Despite being a conspicuous item, one that could be snatched or stolen, Casey is careful to show the power of the purse (pun intended) in offering women the ability to gain visibility in public as equal to men. Women could not only carry with them money, sanitary pads and birth control pills that allowed them freedom of movement and independence, but their bags enabled them to do it while maintaining their respectability and status. At times when women had little control over their bodies, the privacy of their purse offered them an autonomy they could not otherwise gain.

At Rikers, a Book Club Is Helping Women Imagine Life Beyond Bars

PUBLISHED 4/23/2026 by

In 2024, comedian Nora Fried started the Rosebuds Reading Collective, a monthly book club for women incarcerated at Rikers Island, New York City’s island jail.

“I was looking forward to this all month,” Fried recalls multiple women telling her. “This is the only thing I had to look forward to.”

The women read Down the Drain, a memoir by actor Julia Fox. After the discussion, Fried tagged Fox on Instagram. Fox, whose brother was incarcerated at Rikers at the time, agreed to visit the group.

Fox learned that her book was a particularly hot commodity and that one woman’s copy had been stolen. Still, all were curious about how a girl like them had become a published author. The room resonated with laughter, from both the incarcerated women and the guards.

“It made me think to myself, I would do this every weekend. I want to come back. I love these girls,” Fox says. “They are amazing, remarkable, intelligent young women [who] made mistakes. We’ve all made mistakes. Some of us are lucky enough not to get caught.”