Violence Against Women

What It’s Like to Be Stalked by Your Neighbors—And How Gender Shapes Who Gets Believed

An excerpt from Human/Animal: A Bestiary in Essays (out April 22 from Wilfrid Laurier University Press), Chapter 5: “On Catching and Being Caught.”

“I knew enough stories of violence to know that if I did not try and something happened, I would be to blame. … I went to the police station … The tall white man with a buzz cut who came out to talk to me was dismissive. What do you want us to do, ma’am? I wanted a restraining order. Unless our neighbors were caught in the act of trespassing, unless we could prove without a doubt that we were being followed, there wasn’t anything they would do. …

“The camera was visible from where they parked their car, no branches or shrubs hiding its location, its lens pointed directly at where they stood. … Their yelling entered through our living room window and took up all the air in the room. Since the camera only recorded image, I felt I was watching a terrible movie with surround sound, their voices not coming out of the television, but through the windows, bouncing off the plaster walls. … I didn’t want to watch them anymore. I could not stop watching them. I know you have a crush on me. You want to watch me. You want to look at me. I know it.

“This sounds familiar. When children are teased, especially when it’s boys teasing girls, adults will often use crushes to explain away the trouble. He is pestering you (or worse) because he likes you.”

Trump Officials Trolling Journalists Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg

When The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg revealed last month that he had inadvertently been invited into a Signal group chat of senior U.S. national security officials, the news dominated headlines, cable broadcasts and social media for several days.

While Democratic lawmakers called for an investigation into the incident, Trump officials set their sights elsewhere: on Goldberg himself. The harassment Goldberg faced was an unusually intense pile-on, but it underscores the increasingly common trend of targeting individual journalists by administration officials and even President Donald Trump.

“You can be a little heartened by the extent to which the administration is going after the news media, because it is probably the biggest threat to their agenda,” said Elisa Lees Muñoz, executive director of the Washington-based International Women’s Media Foundation. “It does speak to the power of the news media as the ultimate source of holding people to account.”

Thousands of U.S. Women Are Killed Each Year. Where’s the Outrage?

A spate of 11 femicides in Italy so far this year is making global headlines and prompting calls for “cultural rebellion.”  Yet femicide is far worse in the U.S., claiming thousands of lives a year, and comparatively normalized. It’s where the cultural pushback is needed most.

Last month, the U.N.’s annual two-week Conference on the Status of Women wrapped up in New York, having barely addressed growing threats of gender-based violence and without acknowledging the elephant in the room: how Trump administration policy swerves threaten to undo decades of progress for women, including women in the U.S.

Rearming Domestic Abusers: Trump’s New Gun Policy Threatens Women Across the Country

President Donald Trump restored gun rights to his friend Mel Gibson, who admitted to abusing his girlfriend. In a reality where domestic abusers are armed, women will suffer most.

—A gun in a domestic violence situation makes a woman five times more likely to be killed.
—Homicide is the leading cause of death for pregnant and postpartum women, with 68 percent of those homicides involving firearms.
—Black women face higher rates of intimate partner violence and are more likely than white women to be fatally shot.
—Forty-one percent of perpetrators in mass shootings between 2016 and 2020 had a history of domestic violence.

So why would any administration push policies that arm abusers? As always, follow the money. 

DOJ Attempts to Silence Fired Attorney Liz Oyer for Refusing to Reinstate Gun Rights of Convicted Abuser Mel Gibson

Fired for refusing to restore gun rights to a convicted abuser, Liz Oyer is now speaking out against what she calls a dangerous pattern of political favoritism and intimidation inside the Department of Justice.

If the Justice Department can use armed forces to intimidate former employees fighting against corruption and domestic violence, is there truly still free speech in the U.S.?

A New Phase of U.S.-Taliban Relations Leaves Afghan Women in the Shadows

A new phase in U.S.–Taliban relations appears to be quietly unfolding under the Trump administration—marked by lifted bounties on senior Taliban officials, a symbolic embassy cleanup in Kabul, and the release of an American hostage. While these developments are being framed as constructive steps toward diplomacy, they also reveal a stark reality: The future of U.S.–Taliban engagement may be transactional, and Afghan women and girls are likely to be left out of the equation.

Cuts to ‘Woke’ Programs Threaten Lifelines for Domestic Violence Survivors

Without stable residence, childcare, income and economic resources, many domestic violence survivors eventually return to their abuser, trapped in a permanent cycle of violence.

Now, the Office of Management and Budget’s review of 2,600 programs for potential cuts—including key domestic violence grants labeled as “woke” “gender ideology”—has sparked alarm among advocacy organizations scrambling to support survivors without federal aid.

When the U.S. Turns Its Back on Aid, Women Pay the Price

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The justification is always the same: fiscal responsibility, foreign policy recalibrations, shifting political winds. But on the ground, the reality is much more cutting. When aid disappears, people die. Not theoretically. Not eventually. Immediately.

Aid is not a line item to be slashed when convenient. It is a commitment: to humanity, to protecting women, to the belief that no life is worth less simply because it exists beyond our borders. It is the difference between Judith finding safety and Nyamal being forced to return to her abuser. It is, quite literally, life or death.