The Grok Generation: The Consent Crisis No One Is Stopping

PUBLISHED 3/10/2026 by

Grok, the AI chatbot used on Musk’s platform X, has been under fire for generating nude or sexualized images of real people, including individuals who are minors. In one estimate, Grok produced one nonconsensual sexual image per minute over a 24-hour period. Prompts such as “put her in a transparent bikini” produced altered images that were then circulated publicly, some accumulating thousands of likes. The targets are real women and underage girls whose images were manipulated without their knowledge or permission.

Elon Musk responded by making a joke, requesting a Grok-generated image of himself in a bikini and reacting with laughing emojis. When the platform’s most powerful figure and one of the country’s most powerful men treats the abuse as a punchline, it sends a message about what is actually harmful versus what he thinks should be considered humor—and provides a tacit granting of consent to young men on the platform to keep making these images.

Much of the public conversation about young people and AI has focused on cheating in school or declining literacy. Far less attention has been paid to what it means when a middle school boy can type a sentence and produce a sexualized image of a female classmate in seconds as a joke or for attention—or to pretend he received it from her for status.

For girls growing up in this online environment, the message is unmistakable: Your image is not protected as yours. Your body can be altered, distributed and consumed for entertainment. Its violation can be dismissed as a joke. 

Teachers, parents, lawmakers and platform leaders are behind. The question is not whether this will shape the next generation’s understanding of power and intimacy—but what we will step in to do about it. 

Equity Cannot Wait: Confronting the Unequal Burden of HIV and AIDS on Women of Color

PUBLISHED 3/10/2026 by , and

When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first reported what would later be called AIDS in 1981, public narratives narrowly centered on white gay men. Globally, women account for more than half of all people living with HIV today. But, women were present in the epidemic from the start, but their experiences were marginalized in surveillance and public discourse.

‘America’s Next Top Model’ Was a Microcosm of the Modeling Industry’s Power Problem

PUBLISHED 3/10/2026 by

Modeling appears glamorous. Beautiful people, high end clothing and photo shoots in exotic locations. But the reality is far more bleak. 

I was ecstatic when I was selected to be on America’s Next Top Model. By the time I understood how little control I had, it felt too late to ask questions. Personal phones were gone. Contact with the outside world was restricted.

When Netflix released Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, my reaction was not shock. It was recognition.

ERA Road Tour: Weekly Road Diary (March 2-7)

PUBLISHED 3/9/2026 by

Inspired by the 1916 suffrage road trip that helped win women the vote, activists behind Driving the Vote for Equality are traveling across the country in the restored Golden Flyer II to build support for recognizing the Equal Rights Amendment as the 28th Amendment.

Each week, Ms. will share highlights from the road.

During its first week on the road, the Golden Flyer II carried the push for the ERA through the Mid-Atlantic. In New York, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., and Virginia, ERA advocates connected historic sites of feminist resistance with renewed calls for constitutional equality.

Reproductive Justice Demands We Call In, Not Just Call Out

PUBLISHED 3/9/2026 by and

Reproductive justice is not simply about the right to abortion or access to contraception; it is about the right to have a child, to not have a child, and to raise families in safe and sustainable communities. This framework, created by Black women in the 1990s, recognizes that race, class, gender and immigration status all intersect with reproductive health and freedom. At its core, reproductive justice is about dignity and self-determination.

We must call out systems of oppression. We must call out elected officials who use the law to control our bodies and futures. But we must also call in those who are silent, those who are uncertain, and those who are still learning. Not everyone understands the full weight of these attacks. Not everyone sees how racism, poverty and patriarchy are connected to abortion bans. That is where our movement’s compassion must meet its courage.

It’s about helping a young person in a conservative home understand that their freedom to plan their life is a human right. It’s about showing a voter in a swing state that abortion bans are government overreach and economic violence. It’s about connecting the dots between forced pregnancy and the erosion of democracy itself.

Let us call in, where we can, those around us to join the work. Let us call on our government to honor its duty to protect, not control, our bodies—because true justice cannot wait.

Oscar-Nominated Documentary ‘The Devil Is Busy’ Shows What It Takes to Keep an Abortion Clinic Safe

PUBLISHED 3/9/2026 by

Tracii’s day begins early—before dawn. She arrives at work, turns on the lights and thoroughly searches the building for intruders. Then she checks outside, where it’s still dark, making sure no one is hiding in the woods or behind a dumpster.

Tracii is the head of security at an abortion clinic in Atlanta, and is also the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary short, The Devil Is Busy. Directed by Christalyn Hampton and Geeta Gandbhir, the film follows Tracii over the course of a long, stressful day at the clinic, as she works tirelessly to ensure not just the safety but the comfort of the women seeking care. (Neither her last name, nor the name of the clinic, gets mentioned in the film.)

Available to stream on HBO Max, The Devil Is Busy is a compelling portrait of a deeply compassionate woman on the frontlines of the abortion war. It packs a lot into 31 minutes, exploring not just the precarious status of abortion care post-Roe v. Wade, but also the fraught intersection of race, religion and women’s health.

The film arrives just as advocates mark Abortion Provider Appreciation Day, observed each year on March 10. The date honors Dr. David Gunn, an abortion provider murdered by a white supremacist anti-abortion extremist in 1993. Since 1996, supporters have used the day to recognize the courage and compassion of abortion providers—people like Tracii—whose work continues despite harassment, threats and political attacks.

Kristi Noem Is Out at DHS—But Women May Not Be Safer Under Her Replacement

PUBLISHED 3/9/2026 by

As frontline witnesses to the worst of humanity, physicians carry the heavy burden of moral distress—the anguish of seeing harm unfold and feeling powerless to stop it. This feeling has only grown with the rise of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in its current form. Its inhumanity under former DHS Security Kristi Noem’s leadership—reflected in the anxieties of our patients, many of whom are avoiding essential medical care out of fear—has us despairing with helplessness.

So, yes, many of us were excited to see Noem go.

The hope that swelled with Noem’s ousting vanished quickly with news of President Trump tapping Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) as her replacement, a former MMA fighter and co-sponsor of the SAVE America Act, which disproportionately targets women’s voting eligibility. Mullin holds extremist views on abortion, opposing even exceptions to save the mother’s life. Deeply disturbing is Mullin’s 2013 vote against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act.

While Noem’s firing is a step in the right direction, appointing a manosphere-adjacent fitness bro whose rhetoric of “protection” echoes the same ideology predicated on women’s forced subjugation—and whose political track record shows a distinct disdain for women’s lives—as her replacement is absolutely not the move.

‘¡Este País También Es Nuestro!’: La Herencia Duradera De Las Mujeres Hispanohablantes En La América Colonial

PUBLISHED 3/9/2026 by and

Siglos antes de la Revolución Americana, las mujeres hispanohablantes cruzaron océanos y desiertos para construir comunidades cuyo legado aún define a Estados Unidos.

Dado que el sentimiento antilatino coincide con el 250.º aniversario de la fundación de Estados Unidos, debemos recordar que mucho antes de la Revolución Americana, las mujeres hispanohablantes habitaban el territorio que se convertiría en Estados Unidos.

Al igual que sus homólogas protestantes inglesas de Nueva Inglaterra, las mujeres hispanohablantes fueron las madres fundadoras de nuestra nación. Su legado perdura a través de sus descendientes y de las muchas otras latinas que emigraron a Estados Unidos en los últimos 250 años. Ante la detención generalizada de mujeres hispanohablantes, es crucial recordar que Estados Unidos también ha sido su país durante mucho tiempo.

(Este ensayo es parte de la serie FEMINIST 250: Feministas fundadoras, que conmemora el 250 aniversario de Estados Unidos reclamando la revolución a través de las mujeres y las personas de género expansivo cuyas ideas, trabajo y resistencia dieron forma a la democracia estadounidense).

‘This Is Our Country Too!’: The Enduring Legacy of Spanish-Speaking Women in Early America

PUBLISHED 3/9/2026 by and

Centuries before the American Revolution, Spanish-speaking women crossed oceans and deserts to build communities whose legacies still shape the United States.

As anti-Latino sentiment coincides with the 250th anniversary of the United States, we must remember that long before the American Revolution, Spanish-speaking women inhabited territory that would become the United States. 

Like their English Protestant counterparts in New England, Spanish-speaking women were founding mothers of our nation. Their legacies live on through their descendants and the many other Latinas who immigrated to the U.S. over the past 250 years. Faced with the widespread detention of Spanish-speaking women, it is crucial to remember that it has long been their country too.  

(This essay is part of the FEMINIST 250: Founding Feminists series, marking the 250th anniversary of America by reclaiming the revolution through the women and gender-expansive people whose ideas, labor and resistance shaped U.S. democracy.)

From ‘Every Man’ to the ‘Epstein Class’: Misogyny in Male Peer Culture Cuts Across Class Lines

PUBLISHED 3/7/2026 by

The rich men surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, and the working and middle-class men who were lured into Dominique Pelicot’s twisted fantasy, navigate the social world from very different sides of the class chasm.

But they share something in common, too: They’re all men who were socialized into a misogynous culture that dehumanizes women, turns them into sexual commodities and licenses men to mistreat them.

Misogynous exploitation is not rooted primarily in plutocratic privilege. The sense of unquestioned entitlement to women’s bodies that many observers have noted about “Epstein class” men is hardly confined to the wealthy.