More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Civil rights mean equal protections and opportunities under the law, and are a vital part of human rights and for the functioning of a democracy. They include liberties such as the right to vote, the right to a trial, and the right to access government services and education.
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.
Apartheid is the one Afrikaans word that the whole world knows. It is arguably South Africa’s greatest contribution to the development of international criminal law so far.
As a South African who lived under apartheid, I recognize the same architecture of systemic oppression in the Taliban’s rule over women in Afghanistan.
In the same way that Black people were excluded from spaces and services—“whites only” beaches and benches, for example, and entire suburbs—women in Afghanistan are excluded from public life. They are not permitted to travel outside their homes without a mahram, a close male relative. Authorities have instructed businesses and health clinics to refuse services to all women who are not accompanied by a mahram.
On Jan. 7, Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada signed off on the “Penal Principles of Taliban Courts,” a sweeping new penal code that fundamentally reshapes Afghanistan’s legal system: formalizing violence, criminalizing dissent, legalizing slavery and stripping women of legal personhood under the guise of religious law. It took effect immediately without public announcement or consultation.
The regulation only became public weeks later after an Afghan human rights organization, Rawadari, published the text, raising alarm over provisions that legalize slavery, authorize private violence and institutionalize repression across nearly every aspect of life.
According to the regulation, absolute obedience to the Taliban’s supreme leader is mandatory. The penal code also codifies a rigid social hierarchy, dividing society into four classes and explicitly recognizing individuals as either “free” or “enslaved,” with harsher punishments imposed on those deemed lower status. Human rights advocates warn this structure institutionalizes discrimination and revives concepts long prohibited under international law.
Women are among the most severely targeted. Under multiple iniquitous provisions, husbands are authorized to punish their wives through discretionary violence, while domestic abuse is only recognized as a crime in limited circumstances and carries a maximum sentence of 15 days imprisonment for the perpetrator.
In contrast, forcing animals to fight carries a longer prison sentence than severe violence against women—reinforcing a sinister legal hierarchy in which women’s lives are afforded less protection than animal welfare.
These codes are not merely domestic policies. They will shape the psychological, social and moral landscape of an entire population and a new generation growing up under the Taliban’s brutal regime. Children are being raised under a system where violence is law, obedience is survival and women are denied humanity. The cost of inaction will not be measured only in today’s abuses, but in the long-term destabilization of Afghan society and the normalization of extremist governance beyond its borders.
Weekend Reading on Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation in politics, on boards, in sports and entertainment, in judicial offices and in the private sector in the U.S. and around the world—with a little gardening and goodwill mixed in for refreshment!
This week:
—We celebrate the impact of Jesse Jackson.
—A new poll shows that Kamala Harris would defeat Donald Trump in a rematch.
—What the Heritage Foundation’s war on gender equality means for women’s representation.
… and more.
I knew Rev. Jackson beyond the conventions. He married me and my husband, Gregory Shaffer, almost 25 years ago. He always showed up and gave graciously of himself when I called—whether it was to host a convening on HIV/AIDS at Rainbow PUSH in the early 2000s, or to bring together hundreds of working-class residents from the South Side of Chicago to engage on matters of national healthcare, or to meet with (mostly women) academics coming together to figure out the intersections of law, family and reproductive rights at the University of Chicago Club 20 years ago.
He called me “Doc” or “Doctor Michele.” I called him “Rev.”
A week ago, by his father’s bedside, Rep. Jonathan Jackson (D-Ill.) and I spoke by phone. He had just delivered a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast calling the president to account—to be more humane and just, and to “do what is right.” It was clear that Rev. Jackson’s legacy is already living on.
At least 25,000 unresolved civil rights complaints involving race, gender and disability discrimination are currently stalled as the Trump administration moves to dismantle the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights—leaving students in K-12 schools and colleges with few viable paths to federal protection.
At the same time, new Title IX guidance has shifted federal priorities away from survivors of sexual violence and toward expanded due-process protections for the accused—further eroding accountability in school environments already struggling to respond to gender-based harm.
Taken together, these changes represent a sweeping redefinition of equal access to education—one that disproportionately harms women, students of color, disabled students and survivors of sexual assault.
Last semester, after I published a piece in Ms. critiquing Charlie Kirk and violent masculinity, South Carolina politicians—including Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette and Rep. Ralph Norman—publicly suggested I should be fired. In a climate where ideologically driven attacks on funding and governance threaten the very survival of colleges and universities, I ultimately resigned my full professorship. The message from state lawmakers was unmistakable: Even private institutions are no longer insulated from direct government interference, regardless of stated commitments to academic freedom.
Weekend Reading for Women’s Representation is a compilation of stories about women’s representation in politics, sports and entertainment, judicial offices and the private sector—with a little gardening mixed in!
This week:
—Friday marks is Ranked-Choice Voting Day, an annual event held every Jan. 23 (1-2-3) to celebrate a proven, people-powered reform that strengthens democracy by giving voters more choice and candidates a fairer path to office.
—Steven Hill and Paul Haughey call a 2023 study from the University of Minnesota repeatedly cited by opponents of ranked-choice voting “one of the most error-prone” they encountered—relying heavily on cherry-picked citations, simulated elections and surveys disconnected from how voters actually behave in real contests.
—We honor the life and legacy of Claudette Colvin, an icon of the Civil Rights Movement.
—The Vermont Voting Rights Act seeks to codify key federal voting protections in the state.
—Portland reaches an important compromise in their City Council elections.
… and more.
The right-wing manosphere has quickly absorbed the lexicon of AWFUL: “Affluent White Female Urban Liberals.” Move over childless cat ladies, there is a new broad in town.
The movement hell-bent on extolling the virtues of tradwife life has now set its sights on “organized gangs of wine moms us[ing] Antifa tactics to harass and impede” ICE, according to the talking heads at Fox News.
Sigh, MAGA. There you go again, mangling the plotline. Don’t you know? Motherhood has always been political, embedded in acts of resistance, from Reconstruction to women’s suffrage through the rise of the Civil Rights Movement.
As 2025 comes to a close, we’re taking a moment to honor the wins—large and small—that reminded us progress is still possible. Here are a few feminist victories worth celebrating.
Last month, the State Department warned employees not to commemorate World AIDS Day through official work accounts, including social media, nor should they use government funds to mark Tuesday, Dec. 2, as World AIDS Day. The day came and went in a quiet, cold Washington, D.C., without the president marking what it represented—the more than 700,000 Americans who died from HIV/AIDS-related causes in the United States since 1981.
If his intentions were unclear, Trump’s budget proposed ending all CDC HIV prevention programs this past June, and Congress continues to negotiate next year’s budget, proposing massive cuts to HIV programs.
For many young people who never lost friends or family, there may be the misconception that the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s was localized and small, but nearly 300,000 men who have sex with men have died from AIDS-related complications, with over 6,000 deaths in 2019 alone. To put this in perspective, this would be as if over half of Wyoming’s population disappeared, or if everyone in Pittsburgh, Penn., vanished overnight.
Even Madonna criticized Trump’s move, posting on Instagram, “It’s one thing to order federal agents to refrain from commemorating this day, but to ask the general public to pretend it never happened is ridiculous, it’s absurd, it’s unthinkable. I bet he’s never watched his best friend die of AIDS, held their hand, and watched the blood drain from their face as they took their last breath at the age of 23.”