Media Representation

The Campus Free Speech Crisis We Don’t Talk About

PUBLISHED 10/19/2026 by

It’s not often that an article in a college newspaper becomes national news, but an explosive oped titled “Cornell Won’t, We Will,” has sparked front-page headlines, protests and demands for accountability across the country since its publication in The Cornell Daily Sun on Sept. 21. Authored by the newspaper’s editorial board, the piece highlighted the alleged gang rape of a female student, identified as Jane Doe, by members of the Chi Phi fraternity in October 2024. The op-ed denounced not only the actions of the alleged perpetrators but also what it described as the inaction of Cornell University in response to them.

The authors accused the university of failing to provide transparency and accountability in the wake of Doe’s assault, calling it part of a “morbid pattern” of institutional indifference to campus sexual assault. Despite a finding by Cornell’s own task force that incidents of sexual assault had increased by roughly 40 percent between 2023 and 2025, Cornell had provided “no concrete, feasible solutions beyond the usual passivities of ‘communication’ and ‘understanding.’” The editors argued that the failure to protect the physical safety of students constituted a betrayal of Cornell’s promise to “preserve a higher education community and residential campus where ‘any person’ in the community can pursue their education in a secure and nourishing environment.”

Just over a week later, another op-ed by a Cornell student criticizing the institution reached a national audience. “Cornell Fails Its Free-Speech Test,” authored by Cornell senior Jared Lederman, ran in the Wall Street Journal on Sept. 29. Lederman’s op-ed cited his recent personal experience of being criticized by fellow Cornell students for his views on gender equality as a demonstration of the university’s “culture of intolerance.”

Lederman recounts that after publishing an online essay titled “Men and Women Were Not Created Equal,” which condemned “modern feminism” for “trying to suppress masculinity” and insufficiently appreciating the “irreplaceable beauty in a woman creating the home to which her husband returns and in which her children grow,” his professional fraternity asked him to resign from a leadership position and his social fraternity expelled him. According to Lederman, his experience of “exile” is proof that “expressing heterodox views is socially suicidal” at Cornell, despite the institution’s claims in a recent report to value “‘rigorous deliberation and engaged discourse.’”

The gulf between these two op-eds speaks volumes about what is perceived as a campus crisis, not only at Cornell but across the country.

Sexual abuse is a free speech issue. A campus where students are pressured to stay silent about abuse, where students are doxxed, threatened and swatted for filing complaints, where victims are forced to share classrooms and living spaces with their abusers, is not a campus that respects physical safety or free speech.

‘No One Wants to Talk About Women in Tech’: Why WIRED Made an Issue All About Women

PUBLISHED 10/16/2026 by

Katie Drummond “can’t remember working with a single female editor during [her] first stint at WIRED.”

The magazine’s global editorial director put out one of the most relatable and heartbreaking editor’s letters in a long time, to commemorate the magazine’s first “Women Issue.” In it, she describes not only the cultural need (yes, still) for women’s issues in the publication, but also calls out her experience with gender discrimination—including some frankly gross comments made by her very own bosses and teammates—over the past 17 years.

She writes: “It’s gotten easier to be an ambitious woman, but if my own personal experience is any indication, not by nearly enough. The steady reminders of sexism and deeply ingrained gender dynamics have had consequences: I wonder, often, if I was granted certain jobs or opportunities for less-than-professional reasons; on the flip side, I also wonder if I got them to fulfill some kind of quota. … And I’ve got it relatively easy: If a white, straight woman working in media and technology deals with this much bullshit, imagine the experience of a woman who happens to be a person of color, or gay, or transgender.”

Drummond and her team decided it was more necessary than ever to talk about women in tech—and that they would need an entire issue of the magazine to do so.

In an interview with Ms., Drummond explains how the first-ever dedicated WIRED Women Issue came to be.

Tools of the Patriarchy: What Book Bans Take From Women and Girls

PUBLISHED 10/9/2026 by

Tools of the Patriarchy is a column on the tools that establish men’s dominance in society, or, in other words, uphold the patriarchy. Whether or not these tools are used intentionally, they contribute to a world in which women are not equal to men.

The books disappearing from shelves are not random. Censorship campaigns continue to sweep up stories about women’s sexuality, sexual violence, reproductive autonomy and girls coming of age, alongside books about LGBTQ+ people and people of color.

Stories are also one of the places girls first encounter women who leave, resist, desire, survive, refuse motherhood, question authority or name the harm done to them.

Another gendered aspect of the censorship story: the people expected to absorb the backlash. Librarians are trusted to help children find books and create welcoming spaces … until their professional judgment includes a book about queer identity, reproductive autonomy or sexual violence. Then the helpful librarian can quickly become an “activist.”

For Louisiana librarian Amanda Jones, speaking against censorship at a public library board meeting turned her into a target. She was accused online of promoting pornography to children and subjected to harassment and threats. Her experience shows how quickly a librarian defending access to books can be recast as the danger herself—especially when a woman in a feminized profession refuses to quietly enforce someone else’s definition of what is “appropriate.”

Respectability Politics and the Making of a Menopause Justice Movement

PUBLISHED 9/23/2026 by

After generations of silence, menopause has entered mainstream conversation with remarkable speed, thanks in part to Gen X’s insistence and the emergence of older millennials navigating perimenopause. People are finding language for once-isolating experiences, and researchers and clinicians are paying closer attention.

But this cultural reboot demands that we ask whose stories are treated as authoritative, whose leadership is recognized and resourced, and who can access the care and knowledge being produced. Paid memberships, subscription communities, influencer content, concierge care, exclusive events and information behind paywalls are rapidly turning menopause into a marketplace. Who gains power as the conversation grows?

What may once have operated as a strategy for surviving racial terror has hardened, in many contemporary institutions and marketplaces, into an entrance requirement: Prove you are polished, palatable, professionally credentialed, “properly” gendered, sufficiently resourced and nonthreatening before your suffering can be believed or your leadership affirmed.

We are therefore being asked to interrogate more than whose voices, stories and activism are championed and pushed to the forefront. We must also examine whose knowledge is treated as credible, whose testimony becomes evidence, and whose experiences are permitted to define the full breadth of menopause. If legitimacy still depends on proximity to whiteness, wealth, cisgender identity, able-bodiedness, professional status or institutional approval, then the table has not been transformed. It has simply diversified its guest list.

(This essay is part of the latest Women & Democracy installment, in partnership with Black Girls’ Guide to Surviving Menopause. Menopause is not only a physical transition—it is also cultural, social and political. Recognizing its full scope is essential to advancing true health and civic equity.)

Why Blaming Sydney Sweeney Misses the Point

PUBLISHED 9/19/2026 by

If you follow the mainstream press and social media, you would assume that Sydney Sweeney is an amazingly powerful 29-year-old woman. With her new hypersexualized ad for Novig, she stands accused of single-handedly debasing women, especially female athletes, and has, according to The New York Times, reversed decades of progress.

But if Sydney Sweeney refused to do the ad, thousands of other women would have happily taken her place.

It’s much easier to blame the individual woman—as we see in the media frenzy against Sydney Sweeney—than the real culprits: the violently misogynistic porn industry.

The Perfect Victim Is a Dead Woman

PUBLISHED 9/17/2026 by

This is a story about choices that are not really choices. It is a story about impossible circumstances propelling us down pathways we believe unimaginable. You always believe it could never happen to you, until it does.

“Our last encounter was him trying to choke me, and me stabbing him.” Naomi sighs and leans against the passenger seat of my car, ending the story of the night she killed her abuser.

A grand jury indicted her for second-degree murder. A year later, she pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter. Initially facing five to 25 years in prison, her sentence was reduced under New York state’s Domestic Violence Survivor Justice Act to three years’ incarceration, with five years of post-release supervision. Even the District Attorney’s office acknowledged Naomi was a victim of domestic violence, which “was a significant contributing factor” to her behavior.

When the options available to her were kill or be killed, why was she even indicted?

We live in a world that punishes survivors and creates more victims with generous latitude inexplicably afforded to men who have proven themselves dangerous to society. It seems that the only perfect victim is a dead one, a woman who can’t talk back.

Activists Have Fought for Disability Justice. So-Called ‘Sickfluencers’ Still Face Medical Sexism.

PUBLISHED 9/16/2026 by

Mainstream legacy media in the U.K. has found a new target: young disabled women.

Last week, Telegraph editor Poppy Coburn published “How having a disability became cool,” arguing so-called “sickfluencers” are “turning chronic illness into a lifestyle trend.” Just a month earlier, Times of London columnist Kathleen Stock suggested the disproportionate number of Gen Z women diagnosed with what she called “vague syndromes” may be experiencing “social contagion.” Both pieces cast suspicion on young disabled women and the ways they discuss chronic illness and use mobility aids, reflecting a growing strain of far-right rhetoric that treats disabled women’s accounts of their own bodies with suspicion.

‘Galaxy Brain,’ Feminist Stand-Up and Looking Beyond the Netflix Algorithm

PUBLISHED 9/14/2026 by

“I’ve prepared a lot. I’m taking this very seriously, because it’s still very rare for women to get Netflix specials. I had to have sex with so many executives over there.”

So begins comedian Mary Beth Barone’s new Netflix special, Galaxy Brain, with a joke about just how exceptional a woman apparently has to be to reach one of comedy’s biggest platforms.

A recent New York Times article, “Feminist Stand-Up Was Once Ascendant. Can Mary Beth Barone Revive It?” paints a picture of a stand-up scene that’s left women behind: one dominated by deliberately confrontational, anti-“politically correct” comedy and Netflix Top 10 lists littered with right-wing darlings like Tony Hinchcliffe and Andrew Schulz. 

Barone’s joke points to a real disparity in who receives the industry’s most visible opportunities. Women account for only a quarter of Netflix’s stand-up specials in 2026. And among 2025’s 10 highest-grossing comedy tours, Nikki Glaser’s Alive and Unwell was the only one headlined by a woman. 

But asking whether Barone can “revive” feminist stand-up mistakes limited mainstream visibility for an absence of feminist comedy. Women—particularly Black women, queer women and other performers pushed outside the industry’s center—have helped shape stand-up from its beginnings.

After Sept. 11, the U.S. Press Corps Chose Patriotism Over Scrutiny

PUBLISHED 9/11/2026 by

(This article originally appeared in the December 2001/January 2002 issue of Ms. magazine.)

A free, independent and critical press is never more crucial than in wartime, when millions of lives and the course of history can turn on small bits of information.

But since the Sept. 11 attacks, corporate media outlets have been busy doing what News Corp owner Rupert Murdoch called their “patriotic duty”: waving the flag, toeing the government’s line, and ceding their major editorial judgment calls to Condoleezza Rice and other administration bigwigs. These insiders have pressured news executives to suppress information ranging from Al Qaeda statements and security details to public health data available under the Freedom of Information Act.

Who Should Decide Whether a Patient Needs an Abortion: A Doctor or an Opinion Columnist?

PUBLISHED 9/8/2026 by

In case you missed it, a Washington Post columnist published an op-ed late last month that can only be described as a whine-weary litany of complaints about blue states’ targeting of crisis pregnancy centers (its headline, “In Massachusetts, ‘reproductive freedom’ goes only one way”)—a response to the decriminalization of abortion care later in pregnancy in the Commonwealth this summer.

It is fatuous and lazy commentary, recycling antiabortion movement talking points and a tired victim narrative about crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs). It reads like straight-up CPC industry PR—something you’d find in the right-wing Washington Examiner. An embarrassment, even to Jeff Bezos’ Post.

And yet: It’s notable that extremist talking points are platformed in such a mainstream outlet.

To set the record straight about the Massachusetts law: The Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act removed statutory restrictions that had limited abortion care at 24 weeks or later to specified medical circumstances. Providers and supporters of the repeal said those restrictions were so narrow and difficult to interpret that doctors and hospital attorneys feared criminal prosecution or civil liability for authorizing care, even in cases involving grave fetal diagnoses or serious threats to a patient’s health. As a result, some Massachusetts patients facing pregnancy complications had to travel to places such as Washington, D.C., Maryland or New Mexico for care.

The Post column flippantly describes the new law as allowing women “to terminate pregnancies until birth, for any reason, so long as doing so accords with a physician’s ‘professional judgment’” (the writer’s scare quotes).

If not a trained medical professional, then who should be empowered to make this healthcare decision with a patient? An opinion columnist?