All too often, when people discuss street harassment, some people who aren’t sexualized, antagonized, and intimidated on the regular bemoan these newfound “restrictions” to their interactions with strangers. Fear not, defensive dudes! It *is* possible to chat with or compliment a stranger without that stranger perceiving you as a threat. This is a handy little…
This past week, The New School of NYC hosted a panel discussion called “Are You Still a Slave? Liberating the Black Female Body.” The panel was comprised of Janet Mock, Marci Blackman, Shola Lynch, and bell hooks. During the discussion, hooks, the author of Feminism is for Everybody, dropped what felt like a bomb. The conversation…
Last year Assata Shakur became the first woman on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist list. Many people have never heard of her, and admittedly, I hadn’t either, until hearing the refrain to Piebald’s “If Marcus Garvey Dies, Then Marcus Garvey Lives.” I hadn’t heard of neither her nor Marcus Garvey, but I didn’t bother to…
Stop telling women to smile. Please. When you go for a check up, do you attempt to get your doctor to smile? No. Do you try to harass a chuckle out of the mail man? The pharmacist? No. That begs the question, why are you doing it at all? By all means, be kind and…
There is a certain insidious kind of behavior perpetrated by ‘enlightened’ individuals that takes the form of unsolicited criticism. It is packaged as evangelizing for The Liberated Choice. Those offering the criticism believe they are doing a service to those they criticize, that this criticism is educational and will improve the lives of anyone in…
“You’re too beautiful for that buuulllllllshit,” he says to me. The ‘bullshit’ being his misguided interpretation of a facet of my most sacred emotional bond. This ‘bullshit,’ determined after having known me for less than a day. After accusing me of lying about every personal detail I shared. After questioning me about banal objects and…
This uterus embracing menstrual products, bloomers, and an IUD illustrates a podcast episode of the same theme. We didn’t set out to talk about periods, but we ended up talking about little else. Menstruation is interesting!
Cosmo, a ladies’ mag seen in most feminist circles as almost synonymous with internalized sexism, whose once-groundbreaking inclusion of content geared toward sexually liberated women now regularly features sex tips seen as laughable or damaging, seems to be making some bold improvements. For a magazine that boasts 200 million readers annually in 100 countries, even…
Surviving the start of the Holiday Shopping Season is rough. Here’s a cute dog in a fancy outfit to decompress.
As the holidays are approaching, please consider patronizing small and local businesses. A sad note: we did lose the co-op.
