More Than A Magazine, A Movement
There’s so much at stake in the 2024 presidential elections, including the rights of women and LGBTQ people. President Biden has been a longstanding advocate for women’s right to be free from violence.
On the other hand, Republicans are pledging to eliminate Title IX protections against sex-based discrimination and sexual violence. The difference is clear.
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 convicted of 34 felony charges; President Biden officially recognizes Pride Month; a new law criminalizes medication abortion in Louisiana; Meghan Markle reflects on Ms.; the first Professional Women’s Hockey League championship; Mexico elected their first woman president; and more.
The U.S. ranks as the 19th most dangerous country for women, 11th in maternal mortality, 30th in closing the gender pay gap, 75th in women’s political representation, and painfully lacks paid family leave and equal access to health care. But Ms. has always understood: Feminist movements around the world hold answers to some of the U.S.’s most intractable problems. Ms. Global is taking note of feminists worldwide.
This week: news from Sudan, Mexico, Kazakhstan, and more.
This weekend, thousands of Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) delegates will assemble in Indianapolis, and one of the most misogynistic gatherings in all of Christendom will be on display. With 13 million members, the Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant faith group in the country. Considered as a bellwether for white evangelicals, and enmeshed with the Republican Party, the SBC carries an outsized influence disproportionate to its numbers.
When you combine the SBC’s misogynistic, authoritarian theology, which relegates females to second-class status, with an institutional structure lacking in effective accountability systems, you wind up with an institution in which abuse can run rampant.
U.S. patriarchal authoritarianism is on the rise, and democracy is on the decline. But day after day, we stay vigilant in our goals to dismantle patriarchy at every turn. The fight is far from over. We are watching, and we refuse to go back. This is the War on Women Report.
Since our last report: Harvey Weinstein made his first appearance in Manhattan Supreme Court after his 2020 conviction was overturned; FDIC chair Martin Gruenberg will resign once a successor is confirmed; Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer placed the Right to Contraception Act on the Senate calendar for a vote in June; the Minnesota Supreme Court rejected attempts from an anti-abortion activist group to retry Doe v. Minnesota; and more.
On May 30, 2024, Donald Trump was found guilty on all 34 counts by a New York jury. On the latest episode of On the Issues With Michele Goodwin: Fifteen Minutes of Feminism, Goodwin is joined by Moira Donegan, feminist writer and opinion columnist with the Guardian U.S., to discuss why the New York trial was about more than just “hush money”—it’s about a coverup, election interference and mistreatment of women.
Here are some of our favorite takes from the episode.
Each instance of gendered and sexualized narratives against high-profile women—and even ordinary people, including students like myself—serves as a warning to thousands of other women and those close to us. Witnessing these attacks often leads them to reconsider their own participation in public discourse.
The message is clear: Speak out, and your sexuality will be weaponized against you.
Former Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance’s opinion piece in The New York Times on Harvey Weinstein’s appeal offers an excellent opportunity to interrogate the larger systems in the U.S. that enable violence against women. But Vance’s article excluded a critical piece of the story: his decision not to press charges against Weinstein in 2015 after Ambra Battilana Gutierrez presented a recording of Weinstein admitting to groping her breast.
Women who experience sexual and physical violence are often criticized for delays in reporting. But if institutional inaction and underhandedness are more common responses than not when women do report, then why would they?
At least four women of color involved in the 2016 Trump campaign are embroiled in legal fights over workplace harassment, discrimination or violations of nondisclosure agreements. They have been subjected to scorched-earth tactics.
Trump is a well-known bully who has belittled and sought to dominate political rivals. It turns out that Trump’s campaign used similar bullying tactics against its own workers. These fights have been waged out of the public eye against women with few resources to stand up against the campaign’s battery of lawyers, paid from a seemingly bottomless trove of campaign money.
For Alice, a young transgender woman, navigating out of homelessness, a $40 bottle of foundation is lifesaving. She regularly purchases it, despite the steep price, because it’s the only product that properly covers the shadow of her facial hair. Doing so ensures that she is not identified and targeted as trans in public.
From physical safety to job security, how your present yourself to the world is critical. To transgender and other LGBTQ+ youth—in particular those that are unhoused, at risk or street involved—beauty products like makeup or haircare are neither optional nor frivolous expenses.