Four Reasons Men’s Sports Are Not the Gold Standard

As women’s sports make progress (however slow), it is imperative to examine the crucial problems characteristic of the industry and decide what equality can look like. Is the male model of sports really the standard worth striving for?  What does a healthy sports culture look like and how can we foster that with the evolution of women’s sports?

Here are four reasons why men’s sports are not the gold standard—they’re the relic of a problematic past.

Here’s Why The ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill Won’t Work

I was 25 when I was finally ready to admit I wasn’t straight. I was lucky politics didn’t factor into my journey. It’s a luxury today’s students don’t have, between policies like Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill and the Texas directive that orders state agencies to investigate gender-confirming care. Avoiding these topics won’t stop kids from being queer—it will just leave them feeling isolated. It will leave them closeted and at risk.

Pro-War Rhetoric Around Ukraine Perpetuates the Patriarchy and Plays Right Into Putin’s Hands

Watching cable news coverage of the tragic events in Ukraine, I hear again and again how brave the Ukrainian men who are staying to fight are. But we should be very careful about who we worship because fetishizing the masculinist and militarist response of war will hurt women and LGBTQ people for decades to come.

Putin is a madman, but his regime depends on these century-old notions of binary gender and “normal” sexuality. The way the U.S. mainstream media is covering the illegal invasion of Ukraine is doing similar cultural work.

Keeping Score: Women Win Big in the Winter Olympics; State Legislatures Widen the Abortion Access Gap; Supreme Court Dilutes the Power of Black Voters in Alabama

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 in this biweekly round-up.

This week: Women brought home 17 of Team USA’s 25 Olympic medals in Beijing; Wisconsin, New Hampshire and Georgia Republicans target abortion rights, while Vermont passes Reproductive Liberty amendment; more Latina women are running for governor than ever before; a record 36 openly LGBTQ+ athletes competed in the Winter Olympics; and more.

Sundance 2022: “Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power” Is an Edifying, If Familiar, Look at Film Language and the Male Gaze

Nina Menkes’s documentary Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power is based on a lecture Menkes, a filmmaker herself, began giving about the representation of women in film. Brainwashed has a clear thesis: The visual language of film (and its “male gaze”) objectifies women characters, a phenomenon that is further linked to employment discrimination and sexual harassment in Hollywood and beyond. (Of course, media studies and gender studies programs have been actively attempting to challenge these long-held patriarchal structures for decades.)