It’s hard to accept that sexism is alive and well and that it undermines virtually everything we believe about equality, fairness, and justice. “Am I doing an injustice to the female members of this school?” This is the question 16-year old Junius Onome Williams, running in an election for his school’s student body president asked [...]
Tag Archives: #fem2
When will the world love my gay daughter as much as I do
My daughter Casandra just turned 17. She is many things—a swimmer, a water polo player, a reader, a high school student. She likes tarot cards and writes in her journal every day. She is teaching herself to play the guitar. She is a profound introvert. But if she knows you and trusts you, she is relaxed, funny, and philosophical. She stands 6’1″ in her athletic shoes and is skinny, with long slender hands, arms, and legs. Casandra works hard in every area of her life—in academics where she carries a 3.8, in athletics where she refuses to complain and is relentless about improving her times and endurance, and in personal relationships where she doesn’t always understand the shallowness of her fellow adolescents. She wants to, in some capacity, help people in her future career through psychology, social work, or criminal justice.
What Does Being Emotionally Healthy Look Like?
I know that when my heart was broken, or when I didn’t get the grant I had worked so hard on, or even when my feelings weren’t taken seriously, I hid my hurt. I tried to perfect.
What I had learned over the years is that sadness was a weakness and it was best to look poised rather than bruised or irritable.
Best to seem healthier or present a plastic version than to reveal the real, hurting version of myself.
Best to pick up and move on, throw myself into work, signal to the outside world an image of strength and charm.
“I Was Forced to Take A Cab After Being Street Harassed & Followed in Chinatown.”
Location: 5th and Mass Avenue NW, DC Time: Night (7:30pm-12am) I was walking from my house to the Gallery Place Metro Station. I had to stop at the corner of 5th and Mass until the light changed. A teenager (probably between the ages of 16-18) asked me if I had a dollar. I usually dont give out [...]
An open letter to the Anti Sex Ed crowd
Dear Anti Sex Ed Crowd: Greetings and salutations! I bet you’re surprised to hear from me. After all, you’ve spent some time lately calling me a terrible mother (on television no less) because I advocate for a much-needed update to Nevada’s sex education standards — originally passed at the height of the AIDS-panic-1980s — that [...]
Why is UConn Mascot a Wolf Rape Meme?
Where do you begin to tackle a culture where a school mascot is a popular rape meme and the campus television station airs a video for an campus safety hot-line that features a “howler monkey bitch” who is “crying rape”? Two days ago, Carolyn Luby, an undergraduate at University of Connecticut published a remarkable open [...]
Media, Movement, and Money: Evolving #femfuture, @MediaEquity Creates #10Gazelle
SUMMARY: Dougherty examines #FemFuture: Online Revolution in the context of being present at the Women’s Funding Network’s (#WFN13) annual conference. She brings five years of experience of work to broaden the funding of the vast and diverse field of women-directed media, online and off, into her analysis of the Martin and Valenti report. She highlights [...]
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 [...]
What Facebook Continues To Tell Us About Violence Against Women
There is a photograph being shared in Facebook of a woman cowering in a corner, eyes downcast, as large man standing in the foreground swings his fist at her head. The caption reads, “Women deserve equal rights. And lefts.”
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.