history

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

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
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.
photo of a fat Black woman covered in gold foil pieces, wearing purple lacy panties, while holding up an apple, surrounded by flowers and foliage.

Avenging Eve: The Death of Eden and the Birth of Patriarchy

by McKenzie Schwark
March 2, 2021 at 10:15am
The biblical origin story teaches us that the woman who dares disobey God is the monster. Read more »
Luciano Garbati’s Medusa With The Head of Perseus is a naked gold statue with long snake-like hair holding a gold man's head

Monstrous Men: The Medusa #MeToo Monument Has an Oedipal Complex

by Erin Thompson
October 30, 2020 at 11:28am
The statue embodies is the long historical pattern in which male competition plays out in the exploitation of female suffering. Read more »
Megan Campisi, a white author with long, gray hair, smiles for the camera

Eating the Poison: “Sin Eater” Turns Shame into a Superpower

by Evette Dionne
May 27, 2020 at 10:38am
The most important thing is what you think of yourself, even if you’re in a terrible situation; that kind of self-worth is where everything else begins. Read more »
a feminine person wearing an orange dress looks through an open hole in rocks at the ocean

Mixtape to My Heart: Music as a Function of Vietnamese Memory

by Kim-Anh Schreiber
April 20, 2020 at 9:55am
Music needs minds and media to carry it, but it doesn’t need bags. Music can’t sink boats. Read more »
Portrait illustration of Lucy Parsons with a partially erased face and a fragmented shadow in the background

Lip Service: Lucy Parsons’s Revolution Was Beautified

by Kim Kelly
March 6, 2020 at 9:00am
Desirability politics, social capital, and lookism remain present in even the most conscious radical spaces. Read more »
Rachel Vorona Cote, author of "Too Much," sits with her hands on her chin wearing a black shirt and glasses.

Corseted Up: Victorian Ideals Are Still Binding up Women

by Rachel Klein
February 24, 2020 at 6:33am
A woman who meets the world with intensity is a woman who endures lashes of shame and disapproval. Read more »
Author Nina MacLaughlin, a white woman with shoulder-length brown hair, smiles for the camera

Siren Songs: Nina MacLaughlin on Revisiting the Women of Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”

by Jessica Jernigan
November 19, 2019 at 11:47am
In Wake, Siren, Ovid’s women emerge as unique individuals, fully formed and very often full of anger. Read more »
a group of witches dance together in a black and white photo

Binding Harm: Generations of Witches Intertwine Rituals and Activism

by Jessica Jernigan
November 18, 2019 at 12:20pm
To be a witch is to have and to exercise agency on behalf of all. Read more »
weathered painting of a large tree hung with penises and surrounded by women

Dicks in a Box: The Enduring Fear of Penis-Snatching Witches

by Noa Azulai
October 30, 2019 at 10:57am
Castration anxiety is the unidentified main character in fantastical stories about penis-stealing witches. Read more »
two white women in Vita and Virginia stand in a room together as one takes the other one's shirt off

Finite Love: What Lesbian Period Dramas Lose When We Project Our Fears on Them

by Rachel Vorona Cote
October 24, 2019 at 2:32pm
Films and television series featuring queer characters are still relatively scarce. Read more »

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Best of Bitch

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 »

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 »

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 »

The Forgotten History of the Women Who Shaped Modern Advertising

a white woman smoking a cigarette walks through an office with a box
by Ciara Lavelle
March 21, 2019 at 9:00am
It's easy to dismiss advertising as an anti-feminist industry. Read more »