Culture

Backtalk: VictimblamingToo

This week, Dahlia and Amy discuss comments made by Harvey Weinstein’s lawyer, Donna Rotunno, insisting that women could avoid sexual assault by not placing themselves in risky situations. Read more »

The Final Frontier: With “Sex Education,” Netflix Expands the Pleasure Discourse

The centralizing of pleasure is what makes Sex Education shine. Read more »

A Painful Paradox: The Case for Reclaiming the Black Beauty Supply

Black employees at non-Black–owned beauty-supply stores report being restricted. Read more »

The Lie That Feeds Our Ugly Fascination with Makeover Shows

How do you produce a show that purports to make women more beautiful—presenting them as undesirable as is—and still manage to preach self-love? Read more »

Moderating Mental Health: The Dangers of Social Media’s Report Button

Developing protocols for content that discusses suicide requires a much more nuanced process than social-media platforms are equipped for.  Read more »

Popaganda: Class War, but Make It Fashion

Fashion is fueling the marginalization, abuse, and exploitation of some of the world’s most vulnerable women. Read more »

Badass Broad with a PhD: In “Birds of Prey,” Harley Quinn Is Free of Joker and Sexist Branding

 Birds of Prey sets the bar for nuanced depictions of female comic-book characters on the big screen. Read more »

We’re Here, We’re Sheer: Cora Harrington’s Lingerie Revolution

The power of lingerie, and of intimates, is that you can express yourself underneath what you have to wear. Read more »

Women of a Certain Rage: Two New Books Tackle Getting Older—and More Pissed Off

 Like aging itself, Why We Can’t Sleep and In Our Prime are both reflective and daunting. Read more »

Judged Judy: Judy Blume’s 40 Years Old Fight to Tell the Truth about Sex, Religion, and Turtles

For refusing to condescend to her readers in the face of physical harassment and threats of nonpublication, Blume has been, regardless of whether it was her intention, a protector of intellectual freedom and the First Amendment. Read more »

Pages

She-Hulk, Attorney at Law: She's Mean, She's Green, and She Believes in Due Process

Avenger. Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Member of the Fantastic Four. Read more »

Politically Correct Language Isn't Just About Being Polite—It's About Survival

Photo by Phillipe Leroyer (Creative Commons). Two weeks ago, Jonathan Chait published the lengthy essay “Not a Very P.C.... Read more »

Black Girls Hunger for Heroes, Too: A Black Feminist Conversation on Fantasy Fiction for Teens

What happens when two great black women fiction writers get together to talk about race in young adult literature? That's exactly what happens... Read more »

Know & Tell: The Literary Renaissance of Trans Women Writers

For so long, the people who wrote about us were not us. Finally, that is beginning to change. Read more »