Zombie Feminism

By Andrea Lowgren

The news media love to ask the question: is feminism dead? A quick google search finds literally millions of hits for the phrase. Yet despite the supposed death of feminism, gender equality has become strangely mainstream even while misogyny continues. Today’s sexism is sneaky AND overt; while violence against women continues and people ask female presidential candidates for cookie recipes, one is also hard-pressed to find someone respectable who will go on record arguing that women should not be given equal pay or have the right to run for office. Honestly, feminism has an image problem. Though many people agree with its tenets, relatively few embrace the label and the identity. The conservative Washington Times recently reported that “among women, 38 percent consider themselves feminists.”

Dear Kate Middleton

By Cheryl Lemus

Dear Kate Middleton,

Congratulations on the birth of your beautiful and healthy baby boy, George Alexander Louis! It really is a joy to wake up after you give birth and realize that you are a mother. However, it also a bit disconcerting to walk to the bathroom afterward (or waddle, like I did), and look at the mirror, and say “Holy crap I look like hell!” Yeah birth is awesome, and it sucks all at the same time because your body goes through this change afterward that no one ever tells you about, not even your mother or friends who have gone through the same experience.

Suicide Is Not Beautiful

Let’s Talk About Gene Therapy

By Elizabeth Reis

It is exciting to read about promising new gene therapies that might make living with various disabilities easier or even render them extinct. Researchers at University of Massachusetts Medical School are working on a way to “turn off” the extra chromosome found in people with Down syndrome. If the gene therapy works as they hope, turning off the chromosome would mitigate some of the effects of Down’s. So far this possibility has only been glimmered in a laboratory dish, but ultimately the goal would be to turn off the extra chromosome prenatally, so that the brain would form without developmental and intellectual encumbrances.

Sterilization is Not the Solution

Eugenics: It’s Good for You!

Hands holding a paper with colorful hand-written slogan: stop sexual harassment

Who has your Back? Harassment on our Streets

By Helen McBride

Last week the British newspaper, The Guardian, reported on a young woman named Jinan Younis, who started a feminist society in her high school in response to a personal experience of street harassment. By rightfully acknowledging how this harassment was part of a wider culture of sexism, she was determined to do something about it: “After returning from this school trip I started to notice how much the girls at my school suffer because of the pressures associated with our gender. Many of the girls have eating disorders, some have had peers heavily pressure them into sexual acts, others suffer in emotionally abusive relationships where they are constantly told they are worthless.” This quote is horrifying.

Legs with a pair of Red heels, other shoes on the ground

Sunday Mourning . . .

By Jacqueline Antonovich

I cannot bring myself to write Sunday Morning Medicine. Not today. Like many of you, I am heartbroken over the George Zimmerman verdict. My heart aches, not only for Trayvon’s family, but for every young black man in this country. I find myself feeling helpless, enraged, and at a complete loss for words.

A group of people facing the camera, one in the middle holding the slogan: abortion is a human right

Our True Enemy Has a Vagina, Not a Penis

A group of women gathering on streets, looking angry, holding anti-harassment slogans

No Paula Deen, It’s Not Just Men Being Men

By Cheryl Lemus

Sick of hearing about Paula Deen? Yeah, I know, it’s been a little overwhelming. Not only have we found out that Deen admitted to using the “n-word” in the past, that her ignorance about race still exists, and that she has subsequently been dropped by several sponsors, but we also have endured many, many responses to these events in the last few weeks. Well, I hate to break the bad news, but I am going to give you another commentary. One with a very different viewpoint, however, so please bear with me. The case against Deen and Bubba Hiers (her brother) is not that complicated, but the responses to Deen’s deposition raise issues of privacy (“we can say what we want in private”), reflect double standards regarding race (“well, African Americans call each other by that name, why can’t we use it?”), suggest the belief that time erases all sins (“she’s of a certain time period” or “well, she said it so long ago, it does not matter anymore”), and even elicit offerings of olive branches (an excellent example of this is here). But as much as this episode in the continual series “Celebrities are not Gods” demonstrates that racism is alive and well in America, I must remind everyone that Lisa T. Jackson is not just suing Deen and Hiers for racial discrimination, but also for sexual discrimination and harassment. These charges have gotten lost in the shuffle. Why?