Both a product (albums! cassettes! posters!) and a destination (rallies! concerts! festivals!), women’s music fused feminist politics, woman-staffed sound production and grassroots folk traditions to create a bold new recording and performance network. When we had no rights at all, women’s music was also the sound and site of the lesbian revolution. This year we celebrate the musicians and producers who, across five decades, gave us the soundtracks and spaces affirming our lives.
Tag: LGBTQIA+
Creating Careers Based on Uplifting Women’s Voices
Both Elisa Lees Muñoz and Cindi Leive have built their decades-long careers creating and uplifting reporting by and for women. In this back-and-forth conversation, the two journalists discuss the risks women in the news face, the importance of women-centered and feminist reporting, and how we can best protect press freedom.
(This essay is part of the “Feminist Journalism is Essential to Democracy” project—Ms. magazine’s latest installment of Women & Democracy, presented in partnership with the International Women’s Media Foundation.)
I Am the Woman the ‘Gender Critical’ Movement Claims to Protect. I Refuse to Be Their Pawn.
When almost 80 percent of rapes are committed by a perpetrator the victim knows, panicking about strangers lurking in loos is a dangerous diversion. Banning trans women from women’s spaces due to misguided safety concerns is not only nonsensical, it is cruel. I am incensed that the spaces I love are being weaponized to advance bigotry and exclusion.
Protecting women means protecting all of us and our right to freely express who we are.
Censoring Conversations on Race Doesn’t Protect Children
Lawmakers are barring the education of, or exposure to, an understanding of the purposes and catalysts for the civil rights movement and the lasting impacts of white supremacy and white superiority by insisting on revisionist history and outright elimination of teaching facts in schools.
As Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson reminded us on the anniversary of the Birmingham bombing, “The uncomfortable lessons are often the ones that teach us the most about ourselves.”
Keeping Score: Georgia Upholds Six-Week Abortion Ban; Republicans Aim to Eliminate Women’s Bureau at Labor Department; Elections Reveal National Support for Reproductive Freedom
In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.
This week: House Republicans’ plan to eliminate the Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor; Southern states push discriminatory election policies; Scholastic book fairs affected by state bans on LGBTQ+ books and books about race; actor Suzanne Somers dies after career shaped by advocating for equal pay in television; Georgia supreme court upholds six-week abortion ban; 82 percent of mothers handle more childcare responsibilities than their partner; harassment and violence mounts against journalists in Gaza and American Jews and Muslims; National Domestic Violence Hotline reports surge in “reproductive coercion”-related calls; and more.
November 2023 Reads for the Rest of Us
Each month, we provide Ms. readers with a list of new books being published by writers from historically excluded groups.
This November brings a brilliant selection of new book releases. From Native American Heritage Month to Trans Day of Remembrance, there are books for you to learn from, unwind with, and reflect upon. Which of these 24 titles will you be reading this month?
What Virginia’s Elections Could Mean for LGBTQIA+ People
Even as Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin has worked to restrict the rights of trans youth, Virginia remains the sole state in the South with more protections for LGBTQIA+ people than discriminatory policies—a status that could change after this week’s elections.
Major Opponent to Ohio’s Issue 1 Has Ties to Leonard Leo and Other Extreme Anti-Abortion Group
Protect Women Ohio would like you to think it’s a “grassroots” coalition of anti-abortion momentum in Ohio. In reality, it’s fueled by millions of dollars tied to Leonard Leo—the man responsible for packing the U.S. Supreme Court with the very justices responsible for overturning Roe.
House Speaker Mike Johnson Has Long Opposed Abortion and LGBTQ+ Rights
House Speaker Mike Johnson’s path to the speakership was circuitous, but it puts an ally of one of the country’s most influential anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-abortion groups third in line for the presidency.
India’s Supreme Court Just Rejected Marriage Equality. What’s Next for Queer People in India?
On Oct. 17, the Indian Supreme Court delivered a ruling opposing marriage as a fundamental right of all citizens, acknowledging the contentiousness of queer identity in India.
The court’s acknowledgement of the economic and social privileges marriage provides is significant—even if the queer Indian community has a long way to go.