Trump’s behavior has so dramatically lowered the bar for what is and should be expected of adult male behavior that it will take years to undo the regression. Come January 20, we will see if our nation’s “moral imagination” can be reignited—this time with infinitely more competent and enlightened 21st century leadership.
Category: Voices
Why Preventing Violence Against Women Requires Men and Boys
Under usual circumstances, risk factors for violence perpetration include job loss, economic stress, substance abuse, depression and feelings of isolation; all of these issues have worsened as the pandemic has continued. As a result, intimate partner violence and femicide have increased dramatically.
To end violence in society, we must address the drivers: the perpetrators of violence who are most often men and boys.
More Than One Way to Travel This Holiday Season
“My parents, understandably, do not want me to come home for the holidays—the risk for everyone is too high. … I will imagine my path home now, so I may travel it tomorrow.”
Patriarchy’s Post Election End Days
Even with President Joe Biden in office come January, Trumpism will still be with us, as will the Proud Boys, the faux militia Wolverine Watchmen, the civil war-promoting Boogaloo Boys, and the ex-military/police Oath Keepers.
As 2020 draws to a close, we need to acknowledge the connection between those groups’ brutish expression of patriarchy and its white-collar counterparts, like Mitch McConnell and Brett Kavanaugh.
Power to Decide’s 8th Annual ‘Thanks, Birth Control’ Day Shows the World Why Contraception Matters
On Thanks, Birth Control Day, we give thanks for the many opportunities birth control has and continues to make possible for women, families and society since the Supreme Court made it legal for married women in 1965 and all women in 1972.
Charting a Future of Child Care Post COVID-19 and Beyond
The 2020 she-cession laid bare for everyone just how broken the childcare system is. Fixing the broken child care system is about getting our country back on track. But more specifically, it’s about providing women the critical support we need to participate in the labor force, as well as care for our own social-emotional health.
80 Million No’s Mean No
The defeat of Donald J. Trump feels like emerging from a misogyny-trauma-hangover. The fact that he was ever elected and, as of this writing, has received over nine million more votes than his first run, is a massive global metaphor for rape culture.
For survivors of abuse and those who care for them, it was traumatic to watch his first ascendance to power, horrific to live through, and dehumanizing to have the prospect of a second term dangled in front of us. From the perspective of a women’s studies professor and life-long-feminist, one who is closer to sexual assault than anyone likes to be, the whole process felt traumatic.
“The First Woman in This Office, But Not the Last”: Four Ways to Empower a New Generation of Women Political Leaders
Research shows that women politicians make for more equal and caring societies, and that their increased representation in office improves health, education and welfare outcomes for the entire population. So how can we foster the next generation of effective women leaders?
“Madam Vice President”: Kamala Harris Makes History
Harris’s unprecedented rise as the first woman, who is also Black and South Asian, to serve as vice president forces us to recognize a woman from a richly diverse background has been chosen to lead one of the greatest democracies in the world.
America, at least half of it, can celebrate that we have chosen the path of inclusion, diversity and hope—even if we barely managed to do so.
“My Citizenship Is Not Legal, but Cultural”: The View from an Ineligible Voter
“We can no longer define political citizenship simply by the ability of a person to exercise the right to vote and run for office. We must expand our definition of who may take part in this country’s democracy, and in doing so bring a new cohort of long overlooked constituents into the fold of our political processes,” writes Swathi Kella, Harvard ’23.