Female Genital Mutilation

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a procedure that removes or injures part or all of external female genital organs. It is more commonly performed on girls under the age of 15 and is currently practiced on every continent except Antarctica—including in the U.S.

Let Them Eat Cake

On first sight, it’s pretty clear why Afro-Swedish male artist Makode Linde‘s performance art piece “Painful Cake,” which premiered at Sweden’s Moderna Museet for World Art Day last week, struck many people as just plain wrong. The performance featured a black-iced cake in a caricature of an African woman’s torso, complete with protuberant breasts and […]

Senegal’s Feminist Hip-Hop Star

Senegalese rapper Fatou Mandiang Diatta defied her country’s traditional expectations for women in order to succeed in Senegal’s male-dominated hip-hop scene. A new documentary shows how, using her music as a medium, “Sister Fa” campaigns against female genital mutilation, which she herself endured as a child.

Alice Walker: Beauty In Truth

I am the woman: Dark, repaired, healed Listening to you. … —Alice Walker, from her poem “Remember?” For more than four decades, Alice Walker has used the written word to make visible that which has been made invisible as a result of exploitation and marginalization. Equally as important, she is a humanitarian and social-change agent […]

7 Billion Reasons

By Suzanne Petroni Chances are, you’ll hear or read soon that the world’s population is about to hit 7 billion. Get ready for cool graphics demonstrating its remarkable escalation over the past century, as modern medicine and agricultural advances helped people live longer and societies flourish, while fertility rates remained higher than “replacement level” in much […]

Listening to Muslim Women’s Voices on 9/11

Much has been said about Imam Abdul Rauf, the Imam behind the proposed Park 51 Islamic Cultural Center in New York City, which would stand a few blocks from the site of the 9/11 attacks nine years ago today. In the intense controversy surrounding the construction of the community center, he has been called a […]

Guerilla Vulvas Take on Vaginal Rejuvenators

Vulva-activism is alive and well–and on its way to Las Vegas. The latest protests stem from concern about the growing number of practitioners performing female genital cosmetic surgery. The surgeries take many forms. A labiaplasty reduces the size of the labia (while often performed to correct damage to the labia during childbirth or to alleviate […]

Blog Roundup: Editors’ Picks, June 14-18

Ms. brings you our faves from the blogosphere during June 14-18: from mail-order wombs to American Apparel’s employee manual to Margaret Cho! From Jezebel: Master sleazeball and American Apparel CEO Dov Charney offers a flimsy rejoinder following the recent s**t-storm over his company’s elaborate and creepy photo-vetting hiring process, chronically grotesque ad campaigns and bizarrely […]

Newsflash: Pediatricians Rescind Female Genital “Nicking” Policy

After suggesting that American doctors should be allowed to “nick” girls’ genitals if it would save them from being sent overseas to have a full female genital cutting procedure done, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has reversed its decision. Human rights group Equality Now decried the original announcement. Citing that even the nicking procedure […]