More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Transgender individuals face unique discrimination, stigma, systemic inequality and attacks on their ability to live freely. Care and safety must be protected. Rights for trans people are at the heart of gender justice for all.
Throwing trans and nonbinary people under the bus is a terrible compromise to the very authoritarian ambitions that liberals say they’re stepping up to fight. We need more love and support for people who are stigmatized and under assault, not less. And we desperately need more understanding of sex, gender and sexuality.
Let’s equip ourselves with the intellectual tools that will help us understand how would-be tyrants use gender to divide us.
A New York ballot measure to create constitutional protections for abortion and create explicit protections for people who experience discrimination, passed overwhelmingly on Tuesday.
How will the New York ERA change the state Constitution? How can the New York ERA address structural and systemic discrimination? Will the New York ERA protect reproductive rights? Will the New York ERA undermine or weaken parental rights?
In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.
This week: a Georgia judge strikes down the state’s six-week abortion ban; JD Vance and Tim Walz debate; childcare costs rise after pandemic-era grants expire; Senate Republicans again block IVF protections; school superintendants are overwhelmingly male; Kentucky governor bans conversion therapy; nonbinary adults face violence and discrimination at work; Aisha Nyandoro, founding CEO of Springboard to Opportunities, is on the TIME 100 Next list; University of Pennsylvania professor Dorothy Roberts (host of the Ms. podcast Torn Apart) has won a prestigious MacArthur Foundation “genius” award; and more.
More than 8,000 Catholic employers across the country will not be required to provide accommodations for workers needing abortion or fertility care following a ruling in North Dakota. An estimated 162,000 workers are on these health plans.
Abortion access, IVF treatment and gender-affirming care have all become major talking points in an election that may be defined by them. Vice President Kamala Harris, who supports all three, has been critical of Trump’s stance on abortion and IVF in particular.
If you don’t live in Florida, you may be inclined to distance yourself from the news that they just banned public school districts from teaching sex education—including lessons on consent, HIV transmission, abuse prevention, and the existence of LGBTQ+ people.
But this is not a “Florida problem”—it’s a national preview. Because Project 2025 calls for a federal ban on sex education too. It’s just hidden, snuck in as part of their ban on pornography.
Advocacy groups are mobilizing to safeguard access to the ballot as states implement laws that could deter trans people from voting in November.
In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.
This week: Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose admits anti-abortion groups helped him write abortion rights ballot language; Kamala Harris and Donald Trump spar over abortion, Project 2025 and immigration at the presidential debate; Paralympics athletes and Emmy winners break records; Taylor Swift endorses Harris and Walz; Montana Supreme Court protects minors seeking abortion care; attacks on women journalists and LGBTQ people; new pay gap data is worse than last year; and more.
Olympic athlete and women’s boxing gold medalist Imane Khelif recently became a target for anti-trans activists and know-it-all couch potatoes. They decided Khelif was a man based on her perceived appearance and strength, rather than actual facts. So hyped are the anti-trans police that any woman who doesn’t seem to conform to gender norms is suspect and fair game, particularly if she’s public and successful. This is dangerous for all women, no matter their gender identity, and especially women of color.
If we accept transphobes’ arguments against all trans women in all sports, we inevitably accept a set of assumptions that harm women, trans and cis alike.
Part one of a three-part series about the 900-plus-page right-wing “misogynistic manifesto”:
Project 2025 promotes traditional heterosexual marriage, stigmatizing single parenthood and same-sex spouses, and cutting programs to support single mothers and their children.
(This article originally appears in the Fall 2024 issue of Ms. Join the Ms. community today and you’ll get issues delivered straight to your mailbox!)
For years, bills that put tampons and pads in school bathrooms were gaining traction across states. But the rise of anti-trans legislation has made a health issue political.
