Today is June 19, or Juneteenth. While the Emancipation Proclamation was signed on January 1, 1863, slaves in Texas didn’t find out slavery was over until June 19, 1865, hence commemorating this date as the end of legal slavery in the US. As Phillipe Copeland points out , the prison system was quickly positioned to take the place [...]

Check out this great interview with academic-activist Juanita Diaz-Cotto at Guernica.

Juanita Diaz-Cotto knows she’s seen as radical. The activist academic blurs the lines that often delineate two clear, if not antagonistic, camps: scholarship and social justice. An expert on Latina and Chicana women’s experiences in the U.S. prison system, she’s been one among just a precious few [...]

Auto shops tend to overcharge women. How the Center for Reproductive Rights is fighting back against 20-week abortion bans. Can women’s magazines do serious journalism? Our own Katie on Russia’s new anti-gay law . On the unspoken stigma of workplace flexibility . “If nothing is changing for men, nothing is changing for women.” Sarah Kendzior on the ” prestige economy. [...]

We’ve mentioned this street art before when it popped up in Philly, although I didn’t know then who was behind it. According to NPR , these anti-street harassment posters are the work of artist Tatayana Fazlalizadeh who’s been dodging cops in the cover of darkness to put them up in her neighborhood in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Fazlalizadeh says the frequent cat [...]

In many states, it takes longer to get a abortion than to get a gun. Via the Huffington Post : It’s worth noting that, too, that waiting periods don’t actually change people’s minds about getting an abortion, but do cause unwarranted financial and emotional stress. Waiting periods for guns, on the other hand, have been  linked to a drop [...]

https://twitter.com/feministtswift/status/344796447402782720 Feminist Taylor Swift is amazing #ff #tgif The Social Security Administration has made it clearer and easier for trans people to update the gender designation in Social Security records. A persuasive take on why Trent Franks may actually be worse than Todd Akin. Relatedly, here are seven of the most outrageous GOP explanations for why rape victims can’t [...]

Phillips Academy Andover, more commonly known as Phillips Andover,  is a prestigious and highly selective boarding school in Andover, Massachusetts whose students are known more for the high acceptance rates to elite and ivy-league universities they enjoy than for feminist activism. The high school’s Wikipedia page (yes, it has a long and elaborate one , having been established [...]

A queer Cheerio’s ad parody is like a blogger’s dream, if for the puns alone. I am therefore happy to call for three “queers” at the emergence of this gem, posted yesterday by Kenji America: http://youtu.be/gwReRl4Z7EQ The video closely follows the script of  the original Cheerio’s ad , which you may remember pissed off a lot of people for [...]

  A massive anti-choice bill is introduced in Texas . And another one is introduced  in Ohio . “There are few greater sins than to be a woman and to love yourself  and your art unapologetically.” The next Dalai Lama could be a woman. Um, what?  A school fired a teacher for being a victim of domestic violence. A woman in the CIA used to own [...]

They’re three times more likely than those who got an abortion to be below the poverty level two years later, for one thing. The New York Times Magazine takes an in-depth look at a first-of-its-kind study–which we’ve  mentioned before–that’s trying to determine how women who are forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term after being turned away from abortion [...]

The Nation has some interesting infographics on the effect of the US’s anti-prostitution pledge. The US provides nearly 60 percent of global funds to fight the AIDS epidemic–money that low-income countries absolutely depend on. But, as Melissa Gira Grant explains, for the last decade, it’s comes with the catch–pushed by conservative Rep. Chris Smith but supported by some feminist organizations too–that [...]

The New York Times reports :

Isolated human genes may not be patented,  the Supreme Court ruled  unanimously on Thursday. The case concerned patents held by Myriad Genetics, a Utah company, on genes that correlate with increased risk of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer.

Maine House Minority Leader Ken Fredette explained that he doesn’t support Obamacare’s federal funding for Medicaid expansion because of his “man’s brain.” Via ThinkProgress :

As I listen to the debate today and earlier debate on this bill, I can’t help but think of a title of a book, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. And it’s a book [...]

The new golden age of magazine publishing is pretty pale, male, and stale , according to  this Port cover. Granted the magazine business is still pretty male-dominated and granted the British quarterly is a men’s magazine and granted who had even heard of it before this cover? Not me. But as others  have noted , there are, in fact, quite a few women leading [...]

Activists Verónica Bayetti Flores, long time friend of the blog and recent writer here, and Marco Galaviz on being arrested today protesting for the New York State Dream Act. A study finds female politicians are stereotyped , but in different ways than the stereotypes of women as a group. More on E3′s sexism: Anita Sarkeesian tweeted that none of [...]

I’ve taken some time away from blogging while I’ve been in grad school, and it’s given me an opportunity for some perspective on the feminist blogosphere. I started working at Feministing in 2009 with a goal of centering trans issues within feminism. I think the oppression trans folks face, particularly the extreme marginalization and violence aimed at  trans [...]

Trevor, who is really good at flirting, likes to get women’s attention by flashing them: The woman Trevor texted this time was not having it, though. Trevor doesn’t see the big deal, and starts insulting this woman he’s apparently trying to hit on. The conclusion of their conversation is after the jump – for the full [...]

Apple and Microsoft are both currently throwing big conferences, one for tech industry developers and one to sell video games. The conferences of these two giant companies are giving us an eye into some common-place sexism. Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference is currently taking place in San Francisco. Yesterday Dan Ackerman tweeted this photo from the conference, which [...]

Joss Whedon wants more superheroine movies . Seconded! Sexual abuse is rampant in juvenile detention centers –and it’s mostly committed by staff. The Anonymous hacker involved in exposing the Steubenville case may spend more time behind bars than the rapists will. The number of women in farming has risen to 1 million, accounting for 30 percent of U.S. farmers. Why  Finnish babies sleep  in cardboard [...]