Women and Policing

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.”

‘Uvalde Mom’ Shows the Courage of Angeli Rose Gomez—and the Failure of Texas Leaders

Premiering at SXSW, Uvalde Mom follows Angeli Rose Gomez, the mother who defied police inaction to save her children during the 2022 Uvalde school shooting. The documentary not only captures her heroic actions but also reveals the relentless harassment she faced from local authorities in the aftermath. Through Gomez’s story, the film exposes systemic failures, community trauma and the power of mothers who refuse to stay silent.

There Can Be No Debate Over Asylum

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Tuesday’s vice presidential debate brought exchanges over the question of asylum and border security, with Sen. JD Vance lying—without real-time fact-checking—about the ease of obtaining asylum. He offered a baseless assertion that people can be “granted legal status at the wave of a Kamala Harris open border wand.”

Winning asylum is extremely difficult, and the horrific conditions forcing women to seek protection from gender-based violence in Central America and Mexico show no signs of abating.

Reimagining Child Welfare: The Ms. Q&A with Dorothy Roberts, Host of Podcast ‘Torn Apart’

Professor Dorothy Roberts worked for decades to try to fix the child welfare system—but she came to the understanding that the system could not be fixed: It had to be abolished. Ms. sat down with her to discuss how abolishing the child welfare system is an issue of reproductive justice for women and their families, and the importance of educating about the injustices of the child welfare system.

All episodes of Torn Apart are available here or wherever you get your podcasts.

Weaponizing the Law to Punish People for Miscarriage

A legal system that recognizes fetal personhood punishes people for their pregnancy outcomes and strips them of their rights in the name of protecting the fetus. One striking recent example comes from Texas, where the state Supreme Court recently ruled that Kate Cox could not have an emergency, life-saving abortion. And in October, an Ohio woman was charged with a felony after her miscarriage.

Miscarriage is normal. Subjecting people who have miscarriages to criminal punishment is needlessly cruel, counterproductive, and relies on a legal understanding that pregnant people are a lesser class of person.

‘Torn Apart’: Ms. Magazine Podcast Shows How the U.S. Welfare System Destroys Black Families

On Monday, Ms. Studios is dropping a brand-new podcast: Torn Apart: Abolishing Family Policing and Reimagining Child Welfare, hosted by Dorothy Roberts, which investigates how the U.S. child welfare system destroys Black families.

Over four episodes, Professor Roberts brings listeners front and center with the oppressive child protection system and what we need to do to reimagine child welfare.