Fertility rate and population growth are issues that have gained a lot of attention in the Danish media recently and various attempts were made to convince Danish women to have more children at an earlier age. I decided to take a closer look at three concurrent Danish campaigns that have put women’s reproduction on the […]
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12 Reasons Gender Matters To Understanding Teenage Sexting “Scandals”
Portions of this post are updated from an article published at Bitch Magazine. In what media is again calling a “sexting scandal,” a community in Colorado is grappling with the fact that hundreds of students have been exchanging “lewd” pictures, using photo vault apps that many parents and administrators were unfamiliar with. Situations like this […]
Having It All (Piece by Piece)
Wow, we have a long time to make our mark on this planet. Think about it: the current US adult life expectancy is 78.8 years according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Let’s round up to 80 years. If you think about it, that’s a lot of time given the rampant diabetes, heart […]
Why All-Male Minions Really Do Matter for Children
Earlier this week, Margot Mogowan, founder of Reel Girls, a web site dedicated to media equity, wrote a post lambasting the movie Minions for its dullard sensibility and disappointingly routine sexism. Most families taking kids to the movies aren’t giving sexism a second thought, preferring instead to just get out of the summer heat and […]
No Need for Us to Flip the Script – ‘Spy’ Does it for Us
When I was recommending Spy to some friends, they were dubious. “Melissa McCarthy movies always just focus on her weight,” they grumbled. While that is not the focus of McCarthy’s movies – it is the cultural dialogue that they see. It is the conversation that is frequently happening from the outside. It’s not the conversation […]
Pitch Perfect 2: Would-Be Feminist Film Fails to Strike Perfect Pitch, Continues Stereotypical Tones
I laughed more frequently than I breathed during Pitch Perfect 2. Director Elizabeth Bank’s sequel to the A Capella musical Pitch Perfect focused heavily on silliness with lines like, “I don’t want your armpit confidence” and insults like “your sweat smells like cinnamon.” In many ways this film was triumphant. It followed many female characters […]
“Shut Up Woman”: On Social Media Shaming, Silencing, and Standing Up
A few days ago, I watched a Danish talkshow on television. One of the guests was a woman who for years has been quite active in public debates about gender and feminist issues, but who recently decided to leave the social media sphere entirely and delete her Facebook and Twitter account. Her reason for doing […]
It’s A Man’s World, Now What?
This post originally appeared in Role/Reboot. Last year, I wrote an article about women standing in lines to use public bathrooms. It wasn’t actually about toilets, but about why holding women to male standards is discriminatory. It must have twisted some people’s knickers in very tight and uncomfortable knots, because it resulted in seriously outraged and indignant responses. What […]