More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Book excerpts from the works of prominent feminist authors.
This “toy problem” doesn’t end in childhood—it grows up with kids and follows them into adulthood. When toys restrict a child’s imagination about their possibilities, it stifles development and creates a ripple effect. The path to gender equality must begin at the earliest stages of life—when children first engage with toys, books and screens.
Jodi Bondi Norgaard explores this in her new book More Than a Doll: How Creating a Sports Doll Turned into a Fight to End Gender Stereotypes.
An excerpt from Juanita Tolliver’s A More Perfect Party: The Night Shirley Chisholm and Diahann Carrol Reshaped Politics, a story of how the first Black woman to star in a network sitcom teamed up with the first Black woman to run for president in order to spark change.
“Diahann Carroll knew how to throw a party. On the cool evening of April 29, 1972, Carroll’s estate was bursting with celebrity, exuberance and history in support of the first Black person, and the first woman, to seek the Democratic nomination for president. The Welcome to Hollywood party for the Honorable Shirley Chisholm, U.S. representative of New York, was kicking into high gear.”
Of all the parts of the body associated with entering womanhood, the elusive hymen has perhaps come into play the most. The hymen has been presented as a clear, physical, nonnegotiable marker of virginity, its presence signaling purity and its loss marking womanhood.
In very many societies, virginity and the manner of its “loss” have mattered for women as well as for the men who use women’s bodies as currency in transactions between families. Projected on to specific body parts, this concern with virginity extends beyond the physical realm.
An excerpt from Solis:
In 2033, life in the New American Republic is bleak. A xenophobic and racist government has imprisoned thousands of undocumented people in a giant labor camp in the Arizona desert. Black people, Brown people, Asian people and Indigenous people are dumped on the cage floors, their bodies almost broken and their hearts filled with fear. The prisoners are forced to scavenge for a precious and newly discovered chemical in the surrounding mines. This chemical is being used by the president to control the weather. The climate crisis and global drought has pushed the country to the forefront of the water wars that are ravaging the world. The work is grueling, the torture inhumane. This world seems hopeless.
And yet, in the darkest of places is where the fierce light of revolution ignites.
An excerpt from Exposed: The Hidden History of the Pelvic Exam:
“Tasha Schwikert unwittingly entered the ranch at one of its most intense times. ‘We were all so broken down and injured,’ remembered Jeannette Antolin, who was a member of the U.S. national team from 1995 to 2000. ‘No one was taking care of their bodies. We were all malnutritioned. Most of us had eating disorders at the time. Most of us were being abused by Larry and not knowing it.'”
An excerpt from Mary Anne Franks’ new book, Fearless Speech: Breaking Free From the First Amendment:
“Amber Heard was professionally blacklisted, constantly surveilled by the press and the public, and subjected to death threats and harassment. All of this happened because Heard wrote something that people did not like—the kind of speech that, according to American free speech orthodoxy, should be most robustly protected by the First Amendment. But in a decision that chilled the speech of sexual abuse and domestic violence victims everywhere, Heard was found liable for defamation and ordered to pay Depp $15 million. … As the Heard case revealed in excruciating detail, when it comes to women’s speech, the protection of the First Amendment is little more than hollow rhetoric.”
What do Ronald Reagan, Sandra Day O’Connor, Antonin Scalia, and the occult have in common? In this excerpt from her forthcoming book, Reproductive Rites: The Real-Life Witches and Witch Hunts in the Centuries-Long Fight for Abortion, author Sophia Saint Thomas explores the unconventional and contradictory beliefs of prominent anti-choice politicians from the Reagan administration.
An excerpt from Allison Raskin’s new book, I Do (I Think): Conversations About Marriage.
“This elevation of marriage is a problem for multiple reasons, because as we know well by this point in the chapter, not everyone has the same level of access to it—legally or financially. The fight for true marriage equality didn’t end with the federal legalization of same-sex marriage, and it is impossible to ignore the classist, ableist and patriarchal forces at play when it comes to who can get married easily and what those marriages end up looking like. “
In their groundbreaking new book, Framed: Women in the Family Court Underworld, Dr. Christine M. Cocchiola and Amy Polacko expose the gender biased injustice in family courts. Through the stories of 22 real women from the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia the authors shine a light on how women are accused, arrested, abused and can even lose custody of their children—to their abusers.
“Most people have no idea what really happens when you get divorced—until they find themselves entering the world of family court. It is an abuser’s playground,” said Polacko.
In her new memoir, A Termination, writer and actor Honor Moore recounts her decision to have an abortion in 1969: “I didn’t think about I’m having an abortion, I just did it. Blasted through fear; I want this life, not that life. … I made the decision by myself. But also with the remote-control help of my mother: ‘Don’t come home pregnant.'”
Abortions are sought by a wide range of people for many different reasons. There is no single story. Telling stories of then and now shows how critical abortion has been and continues to be for women and girls. (Share your abortion story by emailing myabortionstory@msmagazine.com.)