history

Watch the Crown: What's Next for the Natural Hair Movement

Sarone SunRaa styling a client's hair in her salon
by St. Clair Detrick-Jules
April 1, 2022 at 12:42pm
St. Clair Detrick-Jules writes about the importance of celebrating and representing Black hair in media. 
Still from movie. A grainy, desaturated shot of a Black woman kneeling down, buttoning a young Black kid's shirt on a city street.

Maya Cade Reframes the Legacy of Black Cinema

by Rosa Cartagena
April 1, 2022 at 11:34am
Rosa Cartagena interviews Maya Cade about her work on the Black Film Archive, as well as movie recommendations from the collection. Read more »
A classical Greek stone statue of a man and a woman looking at each other. The man has edited red hearts over his eyes, and they both sit in a red swirl of liquid.

Bloody Lies: The Never-Ending Cycle of Menstrual Mythmaking

by Gabrielle Merite
April 1, 2022 at 9:30am
Gabrielle Merite traces an illustrated history of stigmatizing myths about menstruation.  Read more »
A still from the film "Call Jane" shows a white man with brown hair wearing a white lab coat pointing to a door and talking to a white woman with blond hair in a brown jacket. The two are standing in a hallway.

Abortion Is Under Attack. These 3 Films Illustrate the Resilience of the Reproductive Rights Movement.

by Michelle Krasovitski
March 30, 2022 at 1:13pm
Film has long been used as an intellectual battle ground over the legal state of abortion. These stories from the ’60s and ’70s are alive and sadly relevant today. Read more »
Black and white photograph of four topless women sitting together underneath a tree in a lushly forested outdoor area. Three of them are singing with their eyes closed, and one is looking into the camera.

No Men Allowed: Can the Dream of a Women’s Utopia Return?

by Ann Foster
January 24, 2022 at 2:05pm
For the women joining lesbian intentional communities, autonomy could only come to fruition through the creation of a unique and separate female existence and culture.” In this, they were initially successful. However, as time passed and the feminist movement progressed, interest in separatist... Read more »
Ivy Queen, a light-skinned Latine woman with long blonde hair and bold makeup, sings into a microphone over a digitally collaged purple and magenta futuristic background.

Whitewashed History: The “Loud” Podcast Amplifies Reggaeton’s Overlooked Black Roots

by Jasely Molina
January 11, 2022 at 2:30pm
Ivy Queen’s insightful podcast “Loud” examines reggaeton’s past, present, and future. Read more »
Author Juhea Kim in a bright red shirt in front of an orange background. To her right is a picture of the cover for Beasts of a Little Land

Juhea Kim Talks Korean History and Why Books Should Break Us Open

by Edi Kim
December 13, 2021 at 2:34pm
A new book explores the power of artistic imagery from Venus to Beyoncé. Read more »
Book cover alongside archival photo of three white women football players

How Media Moved the Goalposts on Women's Football: An Excerpt from “Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women's Football League”

by Bitch HQ
November 3, 2021 at 2:30pm
Women’s football had to take what media coverage it could get. What it got wasn’t good. Read more »
Author Keisha N. Blain is pictured, she is a Black woman with braids wearing black-rimmed glasses. Next to her headshot are three other images, two that picture activist Fannie Lou Hamer, a Black woman, speaking. The final image is of Blain's book cover.

Tell It Like It Is: Fannie Lou Hamer Sounded the Alarm on Forced Sterilization

by Bitch HQ
October 5, 2021 at 11:34am
Hamer was the first civil rights activist during the 1960s to openly address forced sterilization. Read more »
Anita Hill, a Black woman with short, black hair smiles against a gray backdrop

“This Is Not That Bad”: An Excerpt from Anita Hill's “Believing: Our Thirty-Year Journey to End Gender Violence”

by Bitch HQ
September 28, 2021 at 12:08pm
How do three simple words—“not that bad”—become so powerful? Read more »
Alice Diamond, Lillian Rose Kendall, and Florrie Holmes, three white women wearing fur hats and pin curls, were members of the Forty Elephants Gang in 1916

Criminal Accessories: The Ruthless Style of London’s Forty Elephants Gang

by Ann Foster
April 22, 2021 at 9:00am
The Forty Elephants remain one of the most successful and longest-lasting criminal organizations in English history. Read more »

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Best of Bitch

Sojourner Truth, Unveiled

by Deesha Philyaw
April 29, 2009 at 2:58pm

The leaders of the [women's suffrage] movement trembled on seeing a tall, gaunt black woman in a gray dress and white turban,...

Read more »

It’s Time to End the Long History of Feminism Failing Transgender Women

A transgender woman in business attire in an office looking to the side
by Tina Vasquez
May 20, 2016 at 11:28am
To imply that trans women pose a threat to cisgender women in restrooms is misinformation that preys on unfounded fears. Read more »

It's Time to End the Long History of Feminism Failing Transgender Women

by Tina Vasquez
February 17, 2014 at 1:26pm
The marginalization of transgender women in feminism is not new, but the decades-long debate has taken on new dimension thanks to social media and the ease of finding strangers’ personal information online. Read more »

In a Bizarre 1976 Comic Book, Spider-Man Fought the Villain of Misleading Sex Education

by Sarah Mirk
April 23, 2014 at 3:52pm
Last week, I came across a very strange comic book: in 1976, Planned Parenthood teamed up with Marvel to publish a one-off comic in which... Read more »