Protests have raging across Iran over the last week after the death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman in the custody of the Islamic Republic’s morality police due to her defiance against the strict dress code. The country’s desperate effort to silence Iranian feminists has taken the form of violent responses and crackdowns of both in-person demonstrations and online activism.
Tag: Online Harassment
We Heart: P!nk’s New Protest Anthem, ‘Irrelevant’
On July 18, the music video for P!nk’s new song, “Irrelevant,” dropped and has since been deemed a ‘protest anthem.’ She explained, “As a woman with an opinion and the fearlessness to voice that opinion, it gets very tiring when the only retort is to tell me how irrelevant I am. I am relevant because I exist and because I am a human being. No one is irrelevant. And no one can take away my voice.”
The proceeds from the new track will be donated to Michelle Obama’s national, nonpartisan voting initiative When We All Vote.
Wartime Rape, QAnon and Saving the World: The Ms. Q&A with Mia Bloom
In this Ms. Q&A, Dr. Mia Bloom, an expert on terrorism and rape in war, sheds light on the gender-based violence and war crimes being inflicted on Ukrainian women and refugees.
Pro Sports Can Help to ‘De-Normalize’ Sexual Violence
Cleveland Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson recently signed a huge five-year contract for $230 million, even though he faces 22 civil lawsuits from women alleging sexual assault and abuse.
Children and adolescents often identify strongly with their sports heroes, clinging to their every word on social media, wanting to play like them, dress like them, and act like them. For this reason, it is especially important that the male sports culture—one of the most influential bastions of patriarchal privilege—takes a bold and unflinching approach to star athletes who have perpetrated sexual violence. The powerful message this sends to kids and adults is that men’s sexual violence against women is not “normal,” and will not be tolerated.
Amidst a Nationwide Formula Shortage, a Reminder: The Decision To Breastfeed Is Personal
As the nationwide formula shortage gained more news coverage, social media outlets like Twitter started buzzing—not with compassion for these scared parents, but rather judgment that these mothers hadn’t breastfed and were therefore at fault for their current predicament.
(Of course, the irony of the formula shortage happening at the same time that the Supreme Court is poised to force American women to carry unwanted pregnancies is also not lost on many.)
Politics Has Been an Unkind Place for Women With Children. It’s Time for Structural Change.
This Mother’s Day, we must recognize how politics has excluded mothers and work to create an inclusive politics where mothers’ voices can be heard.
Who Owns Our Social Media Matters
Someone like Elon Musk, who wants to empower people who abuse the power of social media, is not going to improve our digital lives. Already, women and other marginalized people face widespread abuse and harassment online, with very little recourse against people who target them.
Google Jigsaw Introduces New Tool to Protect High-Risk Online Users
Nearly 40 percent of women have personally been targeted by online violence. Jigsaw, a unit inside Google, hopes to make the internet safer place for women and people of color.
“Building this tool is a part of Jigsaw’s broader mission to protect democracies through technology,” said Google Jigsaw’s head of partnerships and business development Patricia Georgiou.
South Korean Election Could Be a Turning Point for Women’s Rights
Earlier this month, Korea’s presidential election brought the conservative candidate Yoon Suk-yeol and his decidedly anti-feminist party into power. But the groundswell of activism and resistance won’t go away. In fact, some think it will only grow stronger.
Demystifying Cybersecurity: Women and Marginalized Groups Must Be at the Forefront of the Digital Revolution
It will take a paradigm shift to defend our national security moving forward. And we know women and people of color should be at the forefront of this effort. The #ShareTheMicInCyber, campaign highlights the experiences of Black practitioners in the field of cybersecurity, driving a critical conversation on race in the industry.