More Than A Magazine, A Movement
The threats women candidates face on the campaign trail are intentional, especially towards women of color and those serving at the state and local level who rarely receive media attention.
Attacks on women candidates and elected officials are attacks on democracy. Full stop.
Huang (Sophia) Xueqin’s reporting sparked a wave of #MeToo allegations against various high-ranking media personalities and professors in China. She described the censorship she faced as “severe.” The extreme backlash Huang faced for her reporting included an onslaught of threats, bullying on her personal pages, and intimidation from authorities—eventually leading to her arrest in September 2021.
As of this month, Huang has been jailed and almost entirely cut off from her friends, family and advocacy groups for over 750 days.
Last year, 12 women journalists were murdered, and the number of women journalists imprisoned rose by 64 percent. By continuing to award courageous journalists, the International Women’s Media Foundation is making it known that the threat of violence against women reporters is ever-present. Still, it also is a testament to the unwavering spirit of women journalists globally.
Over the next several months, Ms. and IWMF will collaborate monthly to highlight the works of these journalists, all of whom are nominees or winners of the Courage in Journalism award.
(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.)
The Supreme Court issued a ruling on June 27 in Counterman v. Colorado, holding that a speaker’s subjective intention must be considered when determining whether speech is a “true threat” and thus punishable notwithstanding the First Amendment. The decision requires that a speaker must have been aware of the “threatening character” of the speech but delivered it anyway, and was thus reckless in their actions. The holding will limit protections for victims of stalking, verbal abuse and online harassment and increase the burden on prosecutors who must now provide evidence of the speaker’s state of mind.
The Court’s decision will have a disproportionate impact on the mostly female victims of stalking and verbal abuse who turn to the legal system for protection.
It’s about 1,500 miles from Austin to Sacramento, but Texas and California lawmakers are a million miles apart on how to treat private data related to reproductive health.
The goalposts are moving, what used to be legal is now illegal in many places, and online speech and personal data are the new battleground—with millions of people’s health and lives in the balance.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on April 19 in a case that could have a sweeping impact on the ability of victims of stalking, verbal abuse and online harassment to be protected from their abusers.
In the case, Counterman v. Colorado, the Court appeared willing to increase the threshold for identifying speech that rises to the level of a “true threat” and ignore the collateral damage of protecting harassers—which will have devastating consequences for victims of abuse.
Last month the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case, Gonzalez v. Google LLC—the first Supreme Court case to consider the scope of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which immunizes websites from legal liability for content provided by their users.
Ms. contributor Michelle Onello and co-founder of Every Woman Treaty, Lisa Shannon, discuss the causes and consequences of the recent rise in violence against women and girls, why a global treaty is necessary to meet their needs worldwide, and the prospects for moving forward with a treaty in the current political climate.
“In the absence of a global framework, we are allowing generations of frontline women’s rights activists to be stalked, harassed, beaten, murdered and chased out of their countries and forced to live in exile.”
We all know that the world as we know it was designed by men for men—including the internet.
“Growing resistance to human rights is happening digitally,” said Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir of Iceland.
The U.S. ranks as the 19th most dangerous country for women, 11th in maternal mortality, 30th in closing the gender pay gap, 75th in women’s political representation, and painfully lacks paid family leave and equal access to health care. But Ms. has always understood: Feminist movements around the world hold answers to some of the U.S.’s most intractable problems. Ms. Global is taking note of feminists worldwide.
This time with news from Spain, Nigeria, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Turkey and more.
