More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Being a feminist in South Carolina isn’t easy, and it is sometimes nice to imagine fleeing to some hypothetical feminist haven. But I know I won’t. My family is here, and I have a job and friends and a community I love.
We’ll do more to fight the people that are responsible for the oppression here if we insist on seeing the South as a queer place, where the feminist fights are ongoing. Join us.
Each month, I provide Ms. readers with a list of new books being published by writers from historically excluded groups. It’s already August and the heat is on. And while we are working hard to save the world, we must take time to read, rest and renew.
These 27 books are bound to support you, learn you, trouble you and try you. They may even heal you. So take some time and take care.
Renaissance, Beyoncé’s seventh solo album, offers a much different vibe and one that also represents an intergenerational inheritance engulfed in the pleasures of Black dance music vibrating across the various subcultures of Black communities around the world.
Black women—across genders, sexualities and communities—have been the blueprint, and Beyoncé’s Renaissance proves that.
Beyoncé returns on Renaissance to challenge listeners to ask a life-saving follow up question: Who taught you to love yourself? And she tells us: If you want to learn Black self-love, listen to Black queer and trans voices.
After realizing that gender equality wasn’t a right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, Rosie Couture and her friend Belan Yeshigeta founded Generation Ratify, an organization dedicated to adding the ERA to the Constitution. Other women-led organizations, such as The Feminist Front and The Ruth Project, joined the fight.
“Advocating for the ERA means advocating for a fight that began with many of our grandmothers.”
Mainstream framings often equate being LGBTQ+ with being urban, but queer people have always existed in areas of the country considered “rural.” Now, the idealized American value of “rugged individualism” is actively being challenged by diverse queer rural Americans through vibrant community-building.
R&B queen Kehlani’s coming out story encouraged me to reminisce on my own story of coming out and delve into some of the roles Black lesbians have played in popular culture over the years from TV and movies to queer literature.
Naya Rivera’s tragic passing earlier this year has prompted many to look back on her legacy on “Glee.” In the years since its departure from the airwaves, Rivera’s portrayal of Santana Lopez is still making an impact in the lives of lesbian and bi women. As one of the few lesbian TV characters to ultimately have a happy ending, her story was ground-breaking and impactful from start to finish.
The women’s suffrage movement allowed women to re-examine, question, and begin to systematically rebel against the many restrictions they had lived under for centuries—including oppressive gender and sexual norms.
“The findings of this study send a strong message to brands and media outlets that including LGBTQ people in ads, films and TV is good for business and good for the world,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD.
