In her new book Consent Culture and Teen Films: Adolescent Sexuality in U.S. Movies, independent filmmaker and scholar Michele Meek challenges the idea of consent as a straightforward concept and questions the messages about consent and teenage sexuality reflected in films of the last 20 years.
Tag: The Ms. Q&A
The U.S. Democratic Backslide and Gender Equity: Its ‘Own Form of Intersectionality’
“Women’s power as decision makers in the political process does not reflect our numbers or our needs. Who holds legislative or executive office, and whether we do so in critical mass numbers and with agenda-setting authority, obviously matters tremendously to the design, the enactment, the implementation and the enforcement of laws that can help us or harm us. That includes of course the power to select the judges who interpret these laws.”
(This essay is part of Women’s Rights and Backsliding Democracies project—a multimedia project made up of essays, video and podcast programming, presented by Ms., NYU Law’s Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Network and Rewire News Group.)
Feminism and Freedom in Ghana: The Ms. Q&A With Nana Akosua Hanson
Nana Akosua Hanson, feminist activist, journalist and founder of Let’s Talk Consent, discusses her vision for a feminist future, the importance of art and media, and activism.
“I’m an African feminist who believes deeply in the power of art and artistic expression in changing the world.”
Welfare Is a Human Right: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty With Annelise Orleck
In her book, Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty, Annelise Orleck not only shares the history of Clark County Welfare Right Organization’s (CCWRO) ascent and activism but also provides an insightful guide to community organizing.
“I loved the CCWRO’s insistence that poor women are experts on poverty and can run their own programs better than so-called professionals. And they did! … They demanded to know why a state that took tax revenue from gambling and prostitution was considered morally acceptable, but mothers trying to feed their kids were called cheaters. They were fearless.”
‘Girls and Their Monsters’: The Morlok Quadruplets and Mental Health With Audrey Clare Farley
In her newest book, Girls and Their Monsters, Audrey Clare Farley addresses the Morlok quadruplets’ earliest years as a singing-and-dancing sensation and zeroes in on their coming of age and eventual descent into schizophrenia.
“I want to stress that I don’t view the quadruplets only as victims. They looked for and found joy. The book is about people living under fascism, but it’s also about bravery and defiance.”
Why a Global Treaty Would Help End Violence Against Women and Girls
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.”
Telling the ‘Right’ Story: Dina Nayeri on Refugee Credibility
In her newest book, Who Gets Believed?, writer and refugee Dina Nayeri explores the role of credibility in seeking aid, from access to asylum to the criminal justice system. According to Nayeri, the most vulnerable (the uneducated, neurodivergent, etc.) are often deemed the least credible, because they don’t know how to tell the “right” story: the one that could save their life.
“We come at our most wretched moment to other people’s doors. And we should not have to be thinking about how we come across, or how we present right then.”
The Ms. Q&A: Jenny Odell on ‘Saving Time’ and Escaping the Clock
When Jenny Odell talks about “saving time,” she doesn’t mean what you might think—finding ways to live more “efficiently,” to optimize your life, to fit more hours into every day.
In her new book, ‘Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock,’ the ‘How to do Nothing’ author explores the clock as a tool of domination from the earliest days of global conquest and colonization to the modern-day work week which seeks to colonize our minds and attention spans, in search of a conception of time that isn’t painful—but rather, liberatory.
‘Working 9 to 5’: A Firsthand Account of the Women’s Movement, Labor Union and Iconic Movie
Ellen Cassedy’s Working 9 to 5: A Woman’s Movement, A Labor Union, and the Iconic Movie, is part memoir, part political history and part prescriptive look at the ongoing challenges facing workers today. But as much as it acknowledges how much remains to be done to achieve racial and gender equity on the job, it also celebrates 9 to 5’s many successes.
Texas Judge Doesn’t Have Power to Ban Abortion Pills Nationwide, Say Legal Experts
While media headlines across the country declare a Texas judge has the power to ban the abortion pills nationwide, three leading legal experts say he in fact does not have that power.