More Than A Magazine, A Movement
A fast-paced Sundance documentary, Ghost in the Machine traces how modern AI’s obsession with “intelligence” and innovation is rooted in the eugenicist, sexist and racial hierarchies that have long shaped Silicon Valley and its technologies.
(This is one in a series of film reviews from the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, focused on films by women, trans or nonbinary directors that tell compelling stories about the lives of women and girls.)
Survivors of online sexual exploitation and abuse are not just confronting individual perpetrators—they are up against systems that were never designed to protect them.
A new report by Equality Now and the Sexual Violence Prevention Association documents how survivors who report tech-facilitated sexual abuse routinely encounter jurisdictional dead ends, outdated laws and opaque platform policies that leave harmful material circulating indefinitely. For many, the abuse does not end with the assault itself, but continues through repeated viewing, sharing and threats—often with devastating financial, professional and psychological consequences.
The report also makes clear that this harm is not inevitable. Survivors point to concrete policy solutions that could meaningfully change outcomes: consent-based laws governing the online distribution of sexual material, clear and enforceable takedown obligations for tech companies, survivor-centered reporting systems and access to free legal and mental health support.
Accountability is possible, but only if lawmakers and platforms choose to act.
Since the end of December, X’s artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, has responded to many users’ requests to undress real people by turning photos of the people into sexually explicit material. After people began using the feature, the social platform company faced global scrutiny for enabling users to generate nonconsensual sexually explicit depictions of real people.
The Grok account has posted thousands of “nudified” and sexually suggestive images per hour. Even more disturbing, Grok has generated sexualized images and sexually explicit material of minors.
X’s response: Blame the platform’s users, not us.
Birth control is the single most powerful tool for women’s economic mobility and autonomy in modern history. It changed everything: When women could plan if, when and with whom they wanted to have children, college enrollment soared, dropout rates fell and poverty rates declined. The ability to access contraception has been directly tied to women’s ability to stay in school, build careers and make decisions about their own futures.
So why, in 2025, are we finding ourselves in a messaging war on birth control?
We can’t afford to look away from changing beauty norms in our society, and how they are fueling eating disorders.
Jennifer Rollin, an eating disorder therapist based in Maryland, says, “What I hear from a lot of clients is that when they are trying to recover from their eating disorder in this society, it almost feels wrong, because ‘everyone around me is talking about Ozempic,’ and ‘all the celebrities are talking about their big amount of weight loss.’”
But while it can feel cathartic to criticize or distance ourselves from prominent women who seem to be conforming to dangerous beauty standards, that criticism is harmful and does not bring us any closer to addressing the problem.
Gift-giving may seem small, a holiday ritual, a birthday moment, a simple gesture. But it lays a cultural and societal foundation. Children need stories that build possibilities, not break them into stereotypes. They need toys that expand their sense of self, not shrink it.
The Huntington Library, located in San Marino, Calif., launches a new exhibit, Stories from the Library: From Brontë to Butler, on Dec. 13, 2025. This collection is especially renowned for its extensive archive on the personal writings and stories pertaining to science fiction author Octavia Butler, who died too soon at age 58 in 2006 due to a fall outside her home. The prolific writer and MacArthur Grant recipient leaves behind several series of novels and other works of fiction.
Janell Hobson spoke with Black feminist scholar and Butler biographer Susana M. Morris, who relied on the vast archive available at Huntington for her latest book, Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler, which came out earlier this year.
“With Octavia Butler, we get cautionary tales. We could have just listened to her.”
An exciting new anthology, Feminist Pedagogy for Teaching Online synthesizes decades of experience and pushes forward dynamic conversations about feminist pedagogy and remote learning, offering a meaningful and much-needed contribution to this area of research and teaching.
Overall, the collection strives to explore how online education can “align more thoughtfully with intersectional feminism and practices of social justice education.”
Feminist Pedagogy for Teaching Online, in print and as an electronic book, was preceded by the FeministsTeach.org website. The website went viral in August 2020 when large numbers of college professors were grappling with how to teach online. Two of the anthology’s coeditors compiled resources for colleagues at the Newcomb Institute at Tulane University for online teaching.
Rigid norms of manhood—based in manly confidence and toughness, emotional stoicism, disdain for femininity and dog-eat-dog banter—are influential among boys and young men.
Between one quarter and one half of boys and young men endorse these norms. Over half feel pressure from others to live up to them, believing most people expect them always to be confident, strong and tough.
These are some of the findings from a new Australian survey of adolescents aged 14-18 years, conducted by The Men’s Project at Jesuit Social Services.
In a climate of heightened concern about boys and young men and violent masculinity, this study provides invaluable data on boys’ and young men’s own views. This includes the pressures they feel to live up to stereotypical masculine norms and the profound impact of those beliefs.
As Republicans push the FDA to restrict mifepristone, the international online abortion service Women on Web is reassuring Americans that they will continue to support access to abortion pills in all 50 states, no matter what. Women on Web has served over 130,000 people worldwide since 2005 and began serving the U.S. in July 2024.
Venny Ala-Siurua, executive director of Women on Web, was recently named to the Top 100 Canada’s Most Powerful Women by the Women’s Executive Network Academe. Ms. spoke with Ala-Siurua about how their service connects people with pills, how they’re removing medical gatekeeping, and how they’re defending abortion access against digital censorship.
“We’ve always focused on countries where there are high restrictions on abortion. Unfortunately, the situation in some of the states in the U.S. qualifies now. … Many pharmacies and providers have stepped up internationally to support the U.S. and found ways of dispensing and shipping medicines really, really fast. …
“We are receiving around 30 requests per day from people in the U.S., though that number can rise during major political moments—for example, when Trump was elected or took office. Our U.S. care seekers live primarily in states with abortion bans. Globally, we currently handle approximately 4,000 requests each month.”