There was much drama earlier this year over the failure to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which has usually passed through Congress without a hitch since it’s such a self-evident piece of legislation. We’re talking about a law that provides support and funding to address concerns about violence against women in the United …
Category Archives: gender
The Right Makes War on Pregnant Women and Mothers
Here’s a thing about the right that puzzles me, and it’s something I have written about before: many conservatives claim to be deeply concerned about ‘the children,’ yet they actively work against their welfare on a regular basis. Most are specifically interested in foetuses, creating a sort of fetish for them that I find deeply …
And Then She Was Pretty, the End
Certain tropes tend to come up again and again in young adult fiction, and there’s one in particular that makes me positively aflame with irritation: the heroine who must become beautiful as part of her journey and transformation into a fully realised character. Beauty, in this setting and framing, becomes an essential part of what …
A Hostile Climate: Women and the Environmental Movement
While the domination of social justice movements by old white men is nothing new, one place where it doesn’t get a lot of examination is within the environmental movement. While women in the movement express frustration with the state of affairs and work on programs intended to increase participation by women and promote the development …
‘Why doesn’t she just leave?’
Five little words often spoken in response to finding out that someone is in an abusive relationship; the variant, of course, being ‘why didn’t she just leave’ in response to a horrific outcome in a violent relationship. She’s a grown woman, after all, she could have just walked out the door and not looked back. …
Can We Criticise Books Without Bashing Their Readers?
Literary criticism is as old as books themselves; the first thing many people want to do when they finish a book is to start talking about it with other people who’ve read it. They want to pick it apart to see what worked and what didn’t, they want to discuss the narrative, they want to …
Talk Back to Sexism
I was probably around eight or nine at the time, and my father had some people over for dinner; our house was often filled with people eating and having vivid, complex conversations and I was never driven away from the table as too young to participate. Consequently, I was used to engaging with adults as …
Hysterical, Oversensitive Harpies
To be a woman in our society is to be caught in a constant double bind; for every action you take, there will be someone there to condemn you, and if you take the opposite action, another set of people will be lined up to tell you you’re doing it wrong. Everything you do is …
Women Gamers Exist! They Aren’t Just Legends!
I was recently so bowled over by a commercial that I had to pause and replay it, which is an extremely rare occurrence for me. I wasn’t astounded enough to actually buy the product advertised or share the commercial my friends, as it tried to get me to do with a noxious little popup, but …
