More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Ahead of Election Day on Nov. 7, I’m reflecting on the women on the ballot in our local elections, as well as my mom’s own run for political office in 2010 when I was 8.
Regardless of the election outcome, your decision to run will have a huge impact on the women around you—especially young women and girls.
Schitt’s Creek star Emily Hampshire dressed up as Johnny Depp, holding with a wine bottle, while her friend impersonated a very distressed Amber Heard—a reference to the pair’s heavily sensationalized defamation trial. You may recall when Heard broke down talking about the alleged sexual assault she endured at the hands of Depp using a wine bottle.
This is merely the most recent in a long tradition of people dressing up as famous women during their lowest moments. I’ve seen several people celebrating Halloween as a bald, disheveled Britney Spears; an inebriated Amy Winehouse; a dejected but alluring Marilyn Monroe; a bloodied Sharon Tate, paired up with her murderer Charles Manson. Why do the Bill Cosbys and Chris Browns of the world get away with it, while the victims get pelted with sticks and stones?
The threats women candidates face on the campaign trail are intentional, especially towards women of color and those serving at the state and local level who rarely receive media attention.
Attacks on women candidates and elected officials are attacks on democracy. Full stop.
Weekend Reading for Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation. In this week’s Weekend Reading, we’ll expose the “tricks” that have haunted our democracy and celebrate the “treats” that can remove these obstacles once and for all.
Here’s a preview: Women-majority city councils (like New York City’s!) make a difference; Missouri’s supreme court is one of just 11 in the country to have a female majority; will Texas’ 12th District will elect another woman to office?; and more.
In the face of a referendum that could add a right to reproductive freedom to the Ohio constitution, state Republicans have organized a campaign to confuse voters and undermine the democratic process.
As Ohioans United started collecting signatures to make sure the Reproductive Freedom Amendment would be on the ballot in November, state Republicans started plotting. They first tried to make it more difficult to pass referenda. Thankfully, Ohio voters showed up during an August special election to defeat the amendment—by a 14-point margin. Unfazed by the loss, state Republicans embarked on a crusade to push voters away from the Reproductive Freedom Amendment.
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: The U.S. Coast Guard covered up an investigation of systemic sexual misconduct; a man fired two rounds from a shotgun into the front entrance of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Montana; the deadliest mass shooting in Maine’s history; some of Rep. Mike Johnson’s most eyebrow-raising beliefs; President Biden called for $16 billion in emergency childcare funding; and more.
Protect Women Ohio would like you to think it’s a “grassroots” coalition of anti-abortion momentum in Ohio. In reality, it’s fueled by millions of dollars tied to Leonard Leo—the man responsible for packing the U.S. Supreme Court with the very justices responsible for overturning Roe.
The Feminist Majority Foundation is saddened to hear of the passing of a dear friend and an inspiring feminist activist, Maine State Representative Lois Galgay Reckitt.
Rep. Reckitt was known as a relentless activist on behalf of women and dedicated her life to fighting for equality. She served as the executive vice president of the National Organization for Women from 1984 to 1987, where she fought for LGBTQ rights and to end violence against women.
The people who are least responsible for this war—women, children, innocents of all kinds—are bearing the heaviest burdens of this war.
I’m on the side of the women whose children’s lives have been stolen, of the women who were told to flee but had nowhere to go, of the women who fled but were bombed anyway, of the women who don’t have clean water or medicine or electricity or a safe place to hide, of the women who like so many women are desperate down to the marrow to protect their children, of the women who cannot do that one singular thing, of the women scrawling names on their children’s limbs so someone might be able to identify them, of the women who are pulling their children’s bodies out of piles of rubble, of the women who lost their lives to a war they didn’t start and wanted nothing to do with.
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 time with news from Mexico, Iran, Brazil, Somalia and more.
