Not a Labor of Love

The radicalization of motherhood

t was argued that domestic work doesn’t produce any social wealth, is a backward activity, and that it isn’t really part of the capitalist organization of work and, therefore, women who are mostly involved with this kind of work do not have the power to change society....

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Not a Labor of Love

Reading Your bell hooks

Alone, together, or in community, this Black feminist icon always insisted on reading as a transformative act

bell hooks was blessed, and I believe that she transitioned to the land of milk and honey knowing how important her work was for so many people’s lives. Reading bell hooks is an action and a step towards personal and social transformation. ...

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Reading Your bell hooks

No, Joan Didion Wasn’t a Feminist

Joan Didion and feminism never had much of a relationship when she was alive. And yet, shortly before Christmas, as news of Didion’s death from Parkinson’s disease spread, prominent feminists claimed her as one of their own. Although Didion “wrote scathing commentary on feminism,” novelist Joyce Carol Oates tweeted, “she was (of ...
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No, Joan Didion Wasn’t a Feminist

Burning the Witch

There have been over 20,000 victims of accusations of witchcraft and related practices over the last decade. What can be done to help ensure more cases of sorcery accusation end in peace and reconciliation?

By the time his father died in his childhood home in Papua New Guinea, Father Benedict (not his real name) had been a Jesuit priest for decades. News of the death travelled from the Carterets—a chain of beautiful coral atolls—to Bougainville, one of the main islands, where Father Benedict lives ...
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Burning the Witch

What Does It Mean to Be “Written By a Woman?”

How a misleading phrase went viral on TikTok, Twitter, and then became part of the Gen Z lexicon

He could be skinny or ripped or somewhere in between, but never fat. He’s different from most of the men you meet: He doesn’t catcall, he doesn’t question your rape story, and he would never, ever put anything other than your pleasure and happiness first. He could be old or ...
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What Does It Mean to Be “Written By a Woman?”

Getting an Abortion in Buffalo

I terminated a pregnancy in my twenties. Decades later, I’m still learning the full truth of reproductive justice.

My boyfriend told me he wanted to keep it—he wanted another chance at fatherhood. He was 45 and I was 20. He’d left a daughter a few years younger than me behind in Dublin. He drank. And I was in fucking college.  At Women’s Health Services on Main Street in Buffalo, ...
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Getting an Abortion in Buffalo

The Making of a Girl

New School Alum Melissa Febos uses memoir to understand the startling shame of becoming a woman in the eyes of others in this excerpt of her book Girlhood

"I got my period when I was ten, and I’d been reading Judy Blume books for a while so I knew it was coming," said Tanaïs. "And when it came, I wasn’t prepared for it anymore." A 2011 American Association of University Women (AAUW) school survey shows that early development ...
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The Making of a Girl

Kathy Acker’s Astrologer Told Her She Would Meet Somebody—and That Was Me

A conversation with McKenzie Wark, one of our most dazzling contemporary theorists, about what we can learn from one of America’s most dazzling postmodern writers

Claire Potter: Let’s begin where the book begins—your relationship with Kathy Acker. McKenzie Wark: I should start by saying that the relationship was incredibly brief. She had a lot of them. It is the kind of thing she did—fall massively in love with somebody. It would last a few weeks, as it did ...
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Kathy Acker’s Astrologer Told Her She Would Meet Somebody—and That Was Me

Preserving the Life—and Autonomy—of the Mother

By enshrining a Christian stance on abortion in its legal code, Texas has ignored Judaic law and ethics

_____ To be pro-choice means to regard abortion as healthcare and consenting to sex as separate to consenting to pregnancy. Despite the United States’ tumultuous relationship with accessible medical services, since 1973, women and people with uteruses have been able to rely on the protection of Roe v. Wade. They have ...
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Preserving the Life—and Autonomy—of the Mother

How We Are Doing in Texas

S.B. 8 and the hypocrisy of a “pro-life” state

_____ On September 2, 2021, I received a text from an old friend, an advocate for global reproductive health. “Sending love to Texas,” she wrote. “How are you all doing?” In short, not well. The day before, Senate Bill 8 took effect; that night, the United States Supreme Court announced it ...
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How We Are Doing in Texas

How Banning Abortion Will Transform America

The Texas ruling takes us one step closer to the state surveillance of Ceaușescu’s Romania

_____ Across the United States, Republican-controlled legislatures are outlawing abortion, with the hope of bringing the issue before a sympathetic Supreme Court. If they succeed in revoking women's reproductive rights, the U.S. will quickly become a different society—one resembling Communist-era Romania.  “It was a horrible time,” recounts one Romanian gynecologist, referring to the period ...
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How Banning Abortion Will Transform America