The Taliban’s Systematic Erasure of Women Is Crippling Afghan Society

The future of Afghanistan depends on the participation of all its citizens, not just half of them

After the Taliban banned girls and women from studying beyond the sixth grade, in 2021, one avenue for education remained open: medical institutions, where they could train to become nurses, midwives, and pharmacists. However, in December 2024, Taliban officials announced that female students would now be barred from attending medical ...
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The Taliban’s Systematic Erasure of Women Is Crippling Afghan Society

No Sex With Men

The South Korean radical feminist movement 4B arrives in the United States

The night of the election, when it had become clear Donald Trump was winning the race, a call to action reverberated across the internet. “Ladies, I’m being so fr when I say this, it’s time to close off your wombs to males. this election proves now more than ever that ...
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No Sex With Men

After David

Why not get together for coffee?

Logging on the site is like stepping into a candy store. Or walking into a party and waiting for someone to talk to you, some swaggering dude with a joint in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. Except he is the only one you’re waiting for. All ...
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After David

The Powerful Convergence of Past, Present, and Future in Catherine Texier’s Latest Novel

An interview about After David

An older woman and a younger man—a trope that operates on elements of fantasy and plays with conventional expectations. The dynamic between an older woman and a younger man is complex; it's looked down upon, and it never gets tiresome. In After David (ITNA Press, 2024), Catherine Texier explores these themes ...
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The Powerful Convergence of Past, Present, and Future in Catherine Texier’s Latest Novel

The Blessings of K-Pop

What could be more divine than a real human who inspires and comforts without ever having to meet you?

As a child, I engaged in religious rituals out of obligation. Over time, the black thread tied around my ankle came off, the excitement of choosing a clay Ganesh and decorating its shrine slowly dulled, the prayers that I had spent hundreds of hours memorizing evaporated from my memory, and ...
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The Blessings of K-Pop

The Fashion for Baiting, Brainwashing, and Bullying

How does Brandy Melville continue to tap into the most desperate impulses of being a teenage girl?

“From the beginning of the supply chain to the end, we’re all being exploited by the same system” says Chloe Asaam, who represents the Or Foundation. She’s speaking in Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Fast Fashion, an HBO documentary that explores the toxicity of the international brand Brandy Melville.  The ...
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The Fashion for Baiting, Brainwashing, and Bullying

Her Choice

Honor Moore discusses the decision that shaped her life as a woman and a writer

In 1969, Honor Moore was a 23-year-old graduate student at Yale School of Drama when she made the profound decision to end an unintended pregnancy—an experience that would shape her life and work. In her memoir A Termination (Public Space Books), Moore reflects on this pivotal moment while embarking on ...
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Her Choice

Christine de Pizan and Women’s Tongues

Why do women bleed milk?

I am doing it again. Teaching Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies. As I always do, I asked at the beginning of class who knew the work before our “Philosophy and Literature” class. This time, a positive surprise! One student had been introduced to de Pizan’s ...
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Christine de Pizan and Women’s Tongues

Mexico’s First Woman President Inherits a Crisis of Femicide

How do we reconcile these coexisting realities?

This July, two of the three party-backed candidates in the Mexican presidential elections were women. Claudia Sheinbaum, the candidate of the ruling left-wing party, MORENA (an acronym for “Movement for National Regeneration”) won with between 58.3 and 60.7 percent of the vote, the highest percentage in Mexico's democratic history. As ...
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Mexico’s First Woman President Inherits a Crisis of Femicide

Enter the Glow

Hannah Burns explores identity, escapism, and queer belonging in I Saw the TV Glow

Sometimes the only place we can be ourselves is inside the media we consume. Sometimes that is where we see options, where we feel less “other.”  Watching I Saw the TV Glow, I loved the thought that Jane Schoenbrun’s amazing new film will join a queer film canon in which a ...
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Enter the Glow

What Courtney Love Knows About Taylor Swift

On making music for girls

When Courtney Love popped up in my Taylor Swift–heavy Instagram explore page, I rolled my eyes. Like almost everyone on the internet, I’ve been inundated with posts on Swift’s love life, feuds, and new releases. It turned out that, in an interview with the Standard, Courtney Love had declared, “Taylor ...
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What Courtney Love Knows About Taylor Swift

How American Jewish Marxists Forged a Macho Style for Public Intellectuals

A conversation with Ronnie Grinberg about her book Write Like a Man

In this biographical study of the New York Jewish intellectuals behind journals like Partisan Review, Dissent, and Commentary, Grinberg focuses on prominent post war writers and editors like Irving Howe, Norman Podhoretz, Lionel Trilling, and Irving Kristol, many of them native New Yorkers and graduates of City College....

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How American Jewish Marxists Forged a Macho Style for Public Intellectuals