Just days since a massive campaign was launched by a coalition of more than 40 groups and individuals, advertisers have already begun to act swiftly about seeing their ads adjacent to images depicting rape and violence against women on Facebook. Indeed, the response has inspired hope that the demands in the Open Letter to Facebook [...]
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Coalition: Time for Facebook to take responsibility for gender-based hate speech
*Trigger warning* Starting on May 21, a coalition of more than two dozen organizations — including Led by Women, Action & the Media, The Everyday Sexism Project, and author Soraya Chemaly — are calling on Facebook to end its complicit approval of memes and pages that promote violence against women and gender-based hate speech. As [...]
Is Pepper Potts No Longer the “Damsel in Distress” in ‘Iron Man 3′?
Superhero films often exhibit assertive, outspoken female characters. Yet they often simultaneously objectify women’s bodies, reduce them to ancillary love interests or perpetuate gender stereotypes. So when I heard that Pepper Potts would have a more active role in Iron Man 3, I was excited yet remained cautiously skeptical.
Our daughters, the superheros!
What did you want to be when you were a little kid? I wanted to be a ballerina until I saw Lynda Carter spin into Wonder Woman on my black-and-white TV. Sure, I had already seen Christopher Reeves as Superman. He was pretty great and all, but the only quasi-strong woman in that story is [...]
‘How I Met Your Mother’ One of the Few TV Shows to Explore a Childfree Life for Women
I was ready. Poised to be pissed. For the first half of last season’s How I Met Your Mother(HIMYM) episode “Symphony of Illumination,” I sat on the couch, scowling perpetually.
In the previous episode “The Rebound Girl,” we learn journalist Robin Scherbatsky (Cobie Smulders) and playboy Barney Stinson (Neil Patrick Harris)’s adulterous one night stand (although is it really a one night stand if you’ve slept together and dated before?? But I digress…), resulted in Robin telling Barney she was pregnant.
Promoting Female Condoms:12 Short Films Do It
PATH asked filmmakers from around the world to create films on the theme “Female Condoms are (fill in blank)” for a contest. And filmmakers did! A dozen of the finalists are now posted on a branded PATH channel on YouTube. An international nonprofit organization working around the world on transforming global health through innovation, PATH [...]
Big Name Donors Finance England’s Women’s Book Prize
Former winners Zadie Smith and Barbara Kingsolver are among this year’s finalists in the Women’s Prize, formally known as the Orange Prize.
Last year, the prize lost its original sponsorship. But Cherie Blair, entrepreneur Martha Lane Fox and novelist Joanna Trollope were among the many private donors who stepped in to save the U.K.‘s only prize for women. The relevance was clear: women writers do matter. This week also saw the first annual Stella Prize, a new literary award given to Australian female authors. That prize has been mostly funded for the next three years by philanthropist Ellen Koshland, a granddaughter of jeans mogul Levi Strauss.
How are children supposed to know about boundaries and consent when there are mixed signals everywhere?
When I was a young the first I heard about sex and all that jazz was through friends. Most of what they ‘knew’ isn’t worth speaking of now but as far as I was aware at the time they were fountains of knowledge on the matter and not to be questioned. I went to a [...]
No, ‘Oz the Great and Powerful,’ We Don’t Need More Male-Centric Fairy Tales
After seeing Oz the Great and Powerful, I was annoyed. And angry. Everything in the film revolves around one dude: James Franco as Oscar Diggs aka Oz. Bleh. It’s a patriarchal dream come true. Women in the film fawn over Oz, swoon over him, make googly eyes at him, get enraged by him and arguably [...]
The revolution will not be televised: Ruminations on #femfuture and what it all means
There’s been a lot of bitching on the feminist interwebs about this whole #FemFuture: Online Revolution, proposed by Valenti Martin Media, aka Feministing co-creators Vanessa Valenti and Courtney Martin at a launch event at Barnard College on Monday. At its core, the #FemFuture project seeks to unify a disparate online feminist landscape and help the [...]