Normalizing Entitlement: How Ordinary Moments Sustain Extraordinary Disrespect

PUBLISHED 6/11/2026 by

Over the course of three days, three very different public moments involving Kristen Welker, Cardi B, Donald Trump, Charles Barkley and Jon Stewart left me thinking about the cultural permissions our society grants men—and the expectations it places on women.

The incidents were not identical, nor should they be treated as such. Yet each revealed a familiar dynamic: a woman doing her job became the target of insults, objectification, condescension or scrutiny that shifted attention away from the original behavior and onto the woman herself.

Whether it was Trump calling Welker “crooked” and “stupid” before ending an interview with “Thank you, darling,” Barkley reducing Cardi B’s halftime performance to jokes about her breasts, or Stewart questioning whether Welker responded appropriately to Trump’s treatment, the pattern was strikingly consistent: Women are often expected not only to endure disrespect, but to manage it in ways that make others comfortable.

These moments are not simply about the individuals involved. They offer a window into the broader cultural permissions that allow entitlement to flourish—permissions that are reinforced through humor, rationalized through frustration and sustained by the expectation that women will absorb the consequences with grace.

When we focus only on the personalities, we miss the larger system that makes these moments feel ordinary in the first place.

Keeping Score: Threats Against Abortion Clinics Doubled in 2025; Sounding the Alarm on ‘Horrible Conditions’ of Delaney Immigration Center; Pride Celebrations Around the U.S.

PUBLISHED 6/10/2026 by

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:
—”Trump only seems to have the capability to fire female secretaries,” observes AOC.
—Two-thirds of abortion clinics reported violence or harassment in 2025.
—The TAKE IT DOWN Act (Tools to Address Known Exploitation by Immobilizing Technological Deepfakes on Websites and Networks Act) took effect last month. It requires social media sites to take down non-consensual sexual imagery within 48 hours.
—Members of Congress visited the Delaney Hall Immigration Detention Center after detainees started a hunger strike to protest inhumane conditions.
—The Trump administration announced an investigation into E. Jean Carroll, who Trump sexually abused and defamed.
—Harvey Weinstein’s New York rape trial resulted in another mistrial.
—A North Carolina bill would allow deadly force against patients seeking abortion care.
—Healthcare premiums have skyrocketed, forcing 21 percent of HealthCare.gov enrollees to lose coverage.
—Women freelancers charge an average of 19 percent less per hour than men.
—Americans are struggling to access disability benefits after cuts to the Social Security Administration.
—Social media platforms are enabling anti-LGBTQ hate and censorship.
—Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) reintroduced the Federal Death Penalty Prohibition Act to ban the death penalty at the federal level. Last month, the DOJ announced they would bring back firing squads and potentially electrocution and lethal gas for executions.
—A comprehensive calendar shows all the Pride parades this month, across the country and globe.

… and more.

Trump’s White House UFC Fight Is a Master Class in Fake Populism

PUBLISHED 6/9/2026 by

The UFC cage fight scheduled for June 14 on the White House lawn has been dismissed by some as harmless entertainment and condemned by others as authoritarian theater. But there’s another way to understand it: as a political strategy. By bringing one of America’s most hypermasculine spectacles to the nation’s most recognizable symbol of power, Donald Trump is signaling to his base—especially working-class men—that he still sees them, respects them and shares their cultural grievances, even as his policies continue to favor the wealthy.

The event reflects a longstanding formula in right-wing populism. When politicians cannot—or will not—deliver material improvements in workers’ lives, they offer something else: recognition, validation and cultural solidarity. Trump has built much of his political appeal on this approach, celebrating professions associated with toughness and masculinity while advancing an economic agenda that benefits plutocrats. The White House UFC fight is the latest expression of that bargain.

At the center of the spectacle is UFC CEO Dana White, whose close relationship with Trump has helped elevate mixed martial arts from the margins to the mainstream. Together, the two men have blurred the lines between sports, entertainment and politics, transforming a cage fight into a made-for-TV display of power, masculinity and populist branding at one of the most consequential moments in American democracy.

Rest in Power: Marjane Satrapi, Whose Masterpiece ‘Persepolis’ Transformed the World’s Understanding of Iran

PUBLISHED 6/8/2026 by

Marjane Satrapi, best known for her memoir and film Persepolis, has died, aged 56. The death of this much loved Iranian French artist, graphic novelist, filmmaker and activist has been met with widespread celebration of her life—and its dedication to resistance, freedom and humanity. French president Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to “a great artist who transformed an Iranian childhood into a universal fable.”

Satrapi illustrated the dislocations of revolution, migration, adolescence and return in such a way that her memoir travelled far beyond her home country.

Through its deceptively simple black-and-white illustrations, Persepolis became globally influential because it offered an intimate account of revolutionary Iran and exile that challenged dominant stereotypes.

For many readers, Satrapi is still the woman who explained Iran in the simplest, yet most powerful way.

What Do Most Female Prisoners Have in Common? They Are Actually Victims.

PUBLISHED 6/8/2026 by

When I first began reporting on incarcerated women, I was fascinated by studies that showed that showed that upwards of 70 percent of women in jails and prisons were subjected to intimate partner violence before they were incarcerated.

But as I covered more stories on the topic, I started to see that, more disturbingly, many women I interviewed had been incarcerated because they responded to violence perpetuated against them.

Again and again in my research, I came upon cases in which a woman claimed that she had acted in self-defense, or had followed orders from an abuser because she didn’t want to die, or had protected a loved one — and she was subsequently charged with murder, convicted, and locked away, sometimes for life. This is the little-known phenomenon termed “criminalized survival.” I wanted to understand how common it was.

A Visual Depiction of Lactation Rooms in the U.S.: Inside the Spaces Where Mothers Pump

PUBLISHED 6/6/2026 by

My latest book Milk Factory is the first visual study of America’s lactation rooms. Photographing spaces where mothers pump—disparate sites such as a prison, corporate offices, a farm laborer’s tent, schools, an airport and the U.S. Capitol—I reveal the hidden architecture of care. I wanted to give participants a record of their labor and make that labor visible to others.

Born out of my own experience, Milk Factory is personal and political. It challenges romanticized portrayals of motherhood and breastfeeding, underscoring the complexity and labor behind an act that is widely expected but rarely supported.

What if Women Really Went Back? Viral Thriller ‘Yesteryear’ Deconstructs the Dark Side of Tradwife Culture

PUBLISHED 6/5/2026 by

What if women really went back? That question sits at the center of Caro Claire Burke’s 2026 debut novel and viral summer read Yesteryear.

At a moment when tradwife influencers are building massive audiences by romanticizing domesticity, submission and “traditional” gender roles, Burke asks readers to imagine what life inside those arrangements actually looks like for the women who lived them—and what rights and freedoms were sacrificed along the way.

Yesteryear follows wealthy, polished (at least on the outside) tradwife influencer Natalie Heller Mills, who has built a carefully curated online brand around nostalgic femininity. But as the fantasy unravels, Burke exposes the gap between aestheticized womanhood and women’s lived experience.

‘Obsession’ and the Rise of Incel Horror: When Men’s Entitlement Becomes the Monster

PUBLISHED 6/4/2026 by

When I first watched Curry Barker’s Obsession, I assumed the horror was obvious. Not the supernatural curse at the center of the film but the decision that sets it in motion: a man deciding he is entitled to a woman’s love, to a woman’s body, regardless of her consent. 

Online, women have begun calling this kind of story “incel horror.” Particularly on TikTok, women for the first time are naming a terrifying and longstanding element in horror films often left unsaid. The real nightmare being the expectation that men depicted as the hero or the victim believe they are owed the bodies of the women in the story. As one TikToker shares, women’s reinterpretation of past films and casting a new light on modern films like Obsession (2026) through a feminist lens is going to change the future of cinema. 

In Barker’s film, it wasn’t the occult magic in the “One Wish Willow” toy that caused Bear to “control” Nikki—it was Bear’s belief that it was okay for him to make this wish in the first place. Barker places the central threat within Nikki who becomes obsessed with Bear and kills several of their friends. Conversely, feminists recognize that it’s Bear’s expectation that he is owed her affection and that he is right to use a supernatural entity to gain it, as the true horror.

June 2026 Reads for the Rest of Us

PUBLISHED 6/1/2026 by

Each month, Ms. provides readers with a list of new books being published by writers from historically excluded groups.

Happy June! Happy Pride! Happy Caribbean-American Heritage Month! Happy summer!

Wherever you are and however you spend your month, I hope you are able to slow down, rest and enjoy life with a good book. 

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?”