More Than A Magazine, A Movement
In her memoir, Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk (Ecco), Hanna shares her journey from a challenging childhood through college and her first shows to love, Lyme disease and Le Tigre. Intimate and candid, Hanna graciously explores it all, including the duplicity of the punk scene with its caring collectivity and underlying exclusivity, racism and misogyny.
I was lucky enough to chat with Kathleen Hanna about her book, the writing process and how her feminism has changed over time.
Mexico is on the precipice of electing its first woman president this June. What are the priorities of feminist movements in Mexico and how do they relate to the next presidency?
“Here in Mexico, we focus on women who have been the victims of femicide.”
In the latest study on gender and perfectionism by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the majority of women in the surveyed group were perfectionists. And Harvard economics professor Claudia Goldin conducted a study that found female students responded more negatively to imperfect grades than male students.
“It seems like the strongest social pressure affecting college-educated, professional women today isn’t that they’re afraid to succeed; it’s that they’re afraid not to,” wrote Amanda Hess, critic and regular contributor to
The New York Times.
From the boardrooms of philanthropy to the halls of government, democracy and gender are often treated as separate issues.
I’ve been working to sound the alarm. Because while our side has been slow to connect the dots, the authoritarian right has been acting on these connections for decades. The consequences are deadly—and mounting.
Trump has shown considerable indicators of autocratic tendencies—such as calling for the Department of Justice to prosecute his political enemies, claiming that Article II of the Constitution gave him the authority to do “anything I wanted,” shamelessly violating the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause to use his government position to enrich himself and his family, and many more. That all culminated in the attempted interruption of the peaceful transfer of power following the 2020 election.
In this three-part American Autocracy series, we track Trump’s comments on feminist issues. This installment: his stance on political enemies and those who disagree with him.
At the beginning of 2024, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a $78 billion tax legislation that included the expanded CTC, but this has since stalled in the Senate. Giving unconditional cash to mothers showed us just how transformative unrestricted financial aid and support for mothers can be—so why don’t we sustain these kinds of investments in families?
Each month, we provide Ms. readers with a list of new books being published by writers from historically excluded groups.
The 24 books on my list this month are certain to help you to strategize, reenergize and mobilize.
When I became a registered nurse two decades ago, I chose to work at my local Catholic hospital: Ascension Via Christi St. Francis in Wichita, Kansas. This Mother’s Day provides a bleak reminder of the stark contrast between my Catholic employer’s public image and the reality inside its hospitals.
Ascension is one of the largest and wealthiest nonprofit and Catholic hospital systems in the United States. Ascension cut a quarter of its labor and delivery units, just in the last decade.
The Catholic health ministry boasts the mission of giving “special attention to those who are poor and vulnerable.” Act like it.
This Mother’s Day—like the countless that have come before it—conservative politicians who fancy themselves members of the party that upholds “family values” will send out social media posts praising the moms among us. They’ll wax poetic about the “decision” to become a mother and how it’s the “most selfless, most important job in the world.” Some may even go so far as to task their speech writers with crafting some moving message about how vital mothers are; how we’re raising the next generation of prolific thinkers and world leaders; how we should be revered “not just today, but every day.”
And in the post-Roe world they created with their anti-abortion policies that have forced people into motherhood, attacked IVF and fertility treatments, and left doctors terrified to treat pregnant patients to the point that women are slipping into comas, miscarrying in hospital lobby bathrooms and enduring unnecessary C-sections instead of receiving common abortion care, it will all be one big, giant pile of bullshit.
The misrepresentation and erasure of single/lone mom’s on Mother’s Day happens right before our eyes, surrounds us—and yet can be impossible for some to truly see.
What’s being ignored here is an opportunity to speak directly to single/lone moms who construct their own days and lives—who buy their own Mother’s Day presents. Moms who, depending on the age and situation and ability of their children, do not wake up to breakfast in bed or presents from others. Mothers who celebrate themselves. Or are learning to.
