Jennifer Pozner has an interesting piece up at the Daily Beast on the class-action racial discrimination suit against The Bachelor and The Bachelorette .

That calculus has governed casting on The Bachelor since its 2002 debut on ABC. Ten years, one spinoff (The Bachelorette), and 24 seasons later, every star of TV’s oldest reality romance franchise has been white. So were 22 [...]

Can’t lose, Mr. President. Can’t lose. Men are increasingly entering traditionally women-dominated professions. As one male dental assistant says, “The way I look at it is that anything, basically, that a woman can do, a guy can do.” Good point from Jamelle Bouie: For women, social issues are economic issues . Missouri passed a bill allowing employers or health [...]

Joyce Banda, who became Malawi’s first female president last month, is hitting the ground running. In her first state of the nation address, she announced that as “a matter of urgency” she’ll seek to repeal the country’s laws criminalizing homosexuality. Banda seems to have enough support in parliament to get the laws overturned, but Malawi is still a conservative [...]

At this year’s Cannes Film Festival, 22 films directed by 22 men will compete for the prestigious top award. But to feminist criticism of that dismal lineup, Cannes says, essentially, “Well, you can’t make us pick a girl just because she’s a girl.” Of course, those numbers are pretty standard for Cannes. Last year there [...]

Lashinda Demus of the US Olympic track and field team. More awesome Olympic portraits here . h/t Shakesville. “My mother died of femininity.” Interesting profile of the founder of Jimmyjane vibrators who’s aiming to make vibrators as well-designed as iPods . Conservatives have it backward: “Teen motherhood is much more a consequence of intense poverty than its cause.” Laurie Penney talks to Mona [...]

Spoiler alert: The answer is almost always PROBLEMATIC. Doing science? Sorry. You’re “reinforcing a masculine-supremacist view of intelligence.” Reading? Nope. After all, “the Western canon is white and male-dominated.” Watching sports? Please, that’s a “sort of miniaturized warfare.” Yep, it’s hard being a marginally acceptable feminist full-time. But it’s still feminist to watch Friday Night Lights . So that’s a relief . Riding two dolphins [...]

We’re all pretty pissed about the incredibly watered-down Violence Against Women Act reauthorization bill the House passed on Wednesday. But perhaps no one is more outraged than Rep. Gwen Moore–and with good reason. The legislator from Wisconsin shared her personal history with sexual violence during House debate on the bill earlier this year. And yesterday she spoke out [...]

Register for Girls for Gender Equity’s 10 year anniversary fundraiser with Anita Hill! We’re co-sponsoring it! Check out these posters that celebrate Asian-American masculinity . D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton is not allowed to testify during a congressional hearing on a bill banning abortions in D.C. after 20 weeks . Sure, because it’s not like it’s an issue that affects her [...]

The latest Mad Men episode primarily had the Feministing writers tearing their hair out over Betty’s weight gain storyline. Betty joins Weight Watchers, tries to manipulate Sally to undermine Megan and Don. I stayed awake through this episode. Barely. Unsurprising–Betty has never been particularly mature. Also, her weight is the most annoying plotline because it’s not [...]

You almost gotta respect how anti-choicers in Mississippi are totally upfront about their goals. I wrote recently at Mother Jones about the new law that’s basically custom-designed to shut down the state’s only abortion clinic. And now here’s State Rep. Bubba Carpenter bragging about how they’ve found a way to “literally” stop legal abortion in Mississippi without messing [...]

The National Partnership for Women and Families is out with a new report called “Expecting Better” that grades state laws that help new parents –such as paid parental leave, paid sick days, protections against pregnancy discrimination, and laws to accommodate breastfeeding mothers. A whopping 18 states were given Fs for “failing to provide a single benefit or [...]

Happy Mother’s Day! As we mentioned , we love these cards from Strong Families . Rebecca Traister thinks the stereotype of the joyless feminist may finally be put the rest. Great piece by Salamishah Tillet on Girls and segregated friendship . Here’s your annual Mother’s Day reminder that, for all our talk of “family values,” the U.S. is really not the best place to [...]

Knope 4 Life. Say it isn’t so! No, really–tell me I’m wrong. While NBC has said that 30 Rock will have just one more abbreviated final season , the fate of Parks and Rec and Community is still unconfirmed. But with rumors that they too will end after next season , the internet–or at least my section of it–was already abuzz with [...]

Argentina: doing it right. After passing a groundbreaking gender identity law on Wednesday, Argentina, which became the first Latin American country to legalize same-sex marriage, now leads the entire world when it comes to trans rights. The new law, which was passed by 55-0 and is expected to be signed by president Cristina Fernandez, grants trans people the [...]

**Trigger warning** A couple weeks ago, the Justice Department launched a federal investigation into the handling of sexual assault cases in Missoula, Montana . The town has seen 80 reported rapes in the last three years–including 11 cases involving students and accusations against several Grizzlies football players–but local officials say that’s typical for a college town that size. [...]

After I took on Katie Roiphe’s article on female fantasies of submission last month, Natalie Zina Walschots reached out to take issue with a couple of my points–and invite me to have a more in-depth discussion of submission, kinky orientations, and how BDSM can best be de-stigmatized. Natalie is a Toronto-based rock critic specializing in heavy metal [...]

Recently, the Obama administration quietly updated its list of “evidence-based programs” that “met the effectiveness criteria” for preventing teenage pregnancy and are therefore endorsed by the Department of Health and Human Services. This list includes the Heritage Keepers Abstinence Education program . Which is weird because, like basically all abstinence-only programs ever, it doesn’t work. According to [...]

While Wisconsin’s new restrictions on tele-medicine abortions recently went into effect, Minnesota’s Democratic Governor sensibly vetoed a similar bill in my home state–but not before the bill’s sponsor sang the praises of that “wonderful drug” Viagra . During debate on the bill a Democratic Senator asked the bill’s sponsor, Republican Sen. Paul Gazelka, why the abortion pill needed [...]