Pink Out the Capital

Roughly 500 women and a few men gathered on the east lawn of the US Capital building on March 29 to declare that "I Stand With Planned Parenthood."  The Senate was due to vote on a resolution to permit the states to deny federal family planning funds to health care ...
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Pink Out the Capital

Building a Feminism for the 99%

Mobilizing for the International Women’s Strike

Public Seminar broadcasted the open conversation with feminists, students, workers, professors and international activists, including Nancy Fraser, Cinzia Arruzza and Miriam Ticktin, live in Feb 28th at the New School. The event was announced with the following message. Enjoy the video! On March 8 more than 30 different countries went on strike. ...
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Building a Feminism for the 99%

International Women’s Day

March 8, 2017: Something old, something new, much was borrowed, nothing blue

Women all over the world marched, rallied, and demonstrated in solidarity to commemorate International Women's Day. While the tradition was established a century ago, never before have so many women demonstrated in so many places in so many countries. To show solidarity, women wore red, whether they were demonstrating or ...
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International Women’s Day

FIRST 100 DAYS

THE P*SSY MISSILE HAS LAUNCHED

Footnotes: [1] Al-Kassim, D. (2010). On Pain of Speech: Fantasies of the First Order and the Literary Rant. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, p. 11.
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Remembering the Female Sit-Down Strikes of the 1930s

Lessons for Today

Students of labor and working class history have searched the past to find examples of female militancy in the workplace, including strike activity. As strikers, women may be very militant, challenging authority of management and even the police, risking arrest for their activism. During the legendary sit-down strikes of 1937, ...
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White European Women’s Rights

France’s Paradoxical Women’s Liberation

While Clinton ran on the notion that “women’s rights are human rights,” Le Pen’s slogan might best be summed up as “women’s rights are white European women’s rights.” Employing xenophobic rhetoric all too familiar to Americans under the Trump administration, Le Pen has become the face of contemporary French nationalism, ...
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Trump’s Macho Populism

  Donald Trump's treatment of women is a matter of politics, not just style: rooted in populist and fascist ideas that exalt male power and promote misogyny. In the inaugural debate between candidates for the United States presidency, Donald Trump could not resist using bullying tactics and voicing his obsession with women’s ...
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Call to Participate in the International Women’s Strike on March 8th

Open Petition

Dear colleagues, In its first weeks, the Trump administration has followed through on its promise to aggressively target vulnerable populations through a series of illegal and inhumane executive orders.  Many of the policies of the Trump administration have harmed members within our own university community.  As members of this community, we ...
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Beyond lean-in

For a feminism of the 99%–and a militant international strike on March 8

The kind of feminism we seek is already emerging internationally, in struggles across the globe: from the women’s strike in Poland against the abortion ban to the women’s strikes and marches in Latin America against male violence; from the massive women’s demonstration of the last November in Italy to the ...
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The Meaning of Michelle

First Black First Lady as Outsider Within and Agent of Change

This post is part of the Bodies, Gender, and Domination OOPS Series. There are many aspects of the United States, of the political culture and system that I find interesting (to use a word that is telling without saying anything much). One of them is the office of the First Lady. There is ...
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25 Alternatives to Penis Envy

A Preliminary List

Penis envy is a catchy term, which is one reason it effectively made its way into popular culture. Coined in Freud’s 1925 Some Psychological Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction Between the Sexes, it is widely misunderstood to mean, or used to perpetuate, the idea that those who posses a penis ...
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Warehouse of Identities

A Neoliberal Delusion

Feminism & Capitalism Has second-wave feminism as an epochal social phenomenon unwittingly supplied key ingredients to the new spirit of capitalism named neoliberalism? This is the troubling question Nancy Fraser asks in her lecture Feminism, Capitalism and the Cunning of History.[1] At stake is the possibility that the cultural changes jump-started by ...
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