Tag: Racial Justice

Why Is the Senate Failing To Build Back Better? Blame Sexism

Why Is the Senate Failing To Build Back Better? Blame Sexism

Build Back Better is not just about what’s right. It’s about what’s necessary to keep our country from falling apart at the seams. If we don’t mitigate climate change now, climate disasters will become more frequent, and more deadly and destructive. If we don’t build a strong childcare system, parents won’t be able to go to work, and we will lose skills and experience, as well as huge chunks of the labor force.

Without BBB, we’re losing not just a move toward equity, health and well-being—but also the chance at lasting prosperity.

From the Vault: Coretta Scott King, a Revolutionary Woman

From the Vault: Coretta Scott King, a Revolutionary Woman

While Coretta Scott King has been celebrated as a civil rights icon, her vision of “the beloved community” was bolder and more revolutionary than her husband Martin’s. When we retell the story of radical African American activism in the 20th century, we can finally embrace Coretta Scott King as the truly revolutionary figure she was.

*This article was originally published in the Spring 2006 issue of Ms.—a few months after Coretta Scott King’s death on January 30, 2006.*

Don't Fence Me In: Reproductive Freedom and Women Workers

Don’t Fence Me In: Reproductive Freedom and Women Workers

For centuries under common law, a daughter or a wife was the property of the family father or husband or, upon his death, the closest relative with a penis. Whatever was theirs was his, but most importantly the family patriarch oversaw her most valuable asset: her womb. In earliest medical thought, a womb was fertile ground in need of guarding and fences to make property rights clearer, and she to be plowed and planted with seed, quite literally semen.

We thought such laws and cultural metaphors were behind us. But now the cowboys of Texas have put a bounty on women’s wombs. The stakes are women’s civil rights as citizens, surely, but also financial ones.

Let Me Tell You About My Feminist Economic Agenda

Let Me Tell You About My Feminist Economic Agenda

It’s 2022, and we’re finally talking about how to solve the problems that have been plaguing U.S. workers for ages—women of color in particular.

Three policies from 2021 stand out in particular for their outsized positive impact in solving for gender and racial inequities: the child tax credit; Biden’s forgiving of $12 billion in student loan debt; and guaranteed income pilots.

billie-eilish-kids-porn-sex-ed

Kids Learn About Sex From Porn. Comprehensive Sex Ed Could Help Change That.

For decades, Howard Stern has used his celebrity status to normalize porn and misogyny. Last month, Billie Eilish, only 20, made a shocking revelation on Stern’s show: “I used to watch a lot of porn. I think it really destroyed my brain.”

Eilish is right—research shows conclusively that pornography is harmful for young people and, indeed, all brains. But kids take to porn because they find the sexual education offered by their schools and parents to be unhelpful and unreal.

Gloria Feldt

How to ‘Intention’ a Feminist World: Ringing in the New Year with Leadership Icon Gloria Feldt

For years, Gloria Feldt has focused on women’s leadership—and as we flip the calendar to 2022, her resolve is stronger than ever. I decided to find out more about her insights into women and power.

“One of the hardest things is to shift our focus from battling negative power reactively to embracing our positive power to implement change proactively and set our own agenda in a disciplined way.”