Dr. Jean Pakter , who did important work to make sure abortion was a safe procedure, died Tuesday at 101. Today’s “No duh” study : about half of Latino voters find the term “illegal immigrant” offensive. And in a poll sure to make some people’s heads explode (you know, the same folks panicking about the lack of white babies), [...]

Whether you loved or hated Bridesmaids, Indisputable Feminist Wisdom posits that Kristen Wiig is the best ever . She’s smart, funny as hell, and not afraid to shy away from real conversations about what it’s like to be a woman in what can be a truly– let’s face it– sexist a$$ industry. Haliegh Collins over on Policy Mic even [...]

A woman who tried to travel wearing a pro-choice t-shirt was barred from an American Airlines flight yesterday because of her fashion choice. According to RH Reality Check , she was coming home from a meeting of pro-choice activists, and was about to change planes for the second leg of her travel when this happened (this comes from [...]

Last Wednesday, House Republicans stooped to a new low by throwing their support behind a ridiculous, callous and watered down version of the Violence Against Women Act . As we detailed last week, the heavily edited H.R. 4970 now moves backward on VAWA reauthorization, with the version that the House passed actually denying protection of undocumented immigrants, Native/indigenous people [...]

Can you imagine if the US government gave out free condoms at the Super Bowl? That’s basically the equivalent of what will happen in Poland next month, when the country is one of the hosts of Euro 2012, Europe’s annual football tournament held every four years (that’s soccer to all us ignorant Americans). The tournament runs from June 8 [...]

We deal with a lot of issues related to motherhood on the blog, and in feminism writ large: paid maternal leave, work/life balance, stay-at-home moms, single moms, mother’s day, breastfeeding. And the list goes on. But an aspect of motherhood that is sometimes overlooked in feminist spaces is maternal death, when a woman dies in pregnancy [...]

These days, there’s a fairly broad consensus– among public health advocates,  educators, parents, the media, and the porn industry – that condoms are GOOD. Whether one is penis-possessing or just along for the ride, most of us have been told to “wrap it up” since before we were performing acts that required us to do so. So why [...]

The Feministing crew is currently planning our annual retreat for June. It’s incredible how much we can get done when given the opportunity to meet face to face. Work that might take a year to hash out over the interwebs happens almost instantly when we’re in the same space. Since Feministing doesn’t have offices (some [...]

Janet Mock has launched a much-needed campaign, #GirlsLikeUs, to lift up the voices and issues of trans women of color. Darby Hicky on transgender motherhood . An interview with Vanessa Rochelle about how the murder of Brandy Martell, an African-American trans woman who lived in Oakland, is impacting her community. Jaclyn Friedman is writing at The American Prospect all this week [...]

Feministing’s own Chloe was on the Melissa Harris-Perry Show this weekend talking about same-sex marriage. You can watch the whole episode online here . Here’s video of the first part of the conversation: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news , world news , and news about the economy I haven’t been able to find transcripts for the Melissa Harris-Perry show online. Assuming they’re not online [...]

*Trigger warning* Lorena Escalera was a person. She was a performer in the ball scene. She died in a suspicious fire on Saturday. And she sure as hell does not deserve the treatment she’s getting from the New York Times . This is how the paper’s article about her death opens:

She was 25 and curvaceous, and she often [...]

A Queer and Pleasant Danger: The true story of a nice Jewish boy who joins the Church of Scientology and leaves twelve years later to become the lovely lady she is today is the new memoir from Kate Bornstein, author of Gender Outlaw and My Gender Workbook . The long subtitle outlines the narrative of the book. Kate takes [...]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkIPwx7_6Vg From Rookie , noted grown man Jon Hamm offers advice to girls. Most of it is really good, some of it is a reminder that Jon Hamm is not a sex ed expert (unfortunately I haven’t seen a transcript yet). One of the members of Against Me! comes out as a trans woman in the latest issue [...]

I guess the president’s overblown, over-long “evolution” on the issue of same sex marriage has reached its inevitable end. President Obama’s views have finally “evolved” to support same sex marriage. This just so happens to come shortly before the election, at a time when his support among LGB folks needs to be shored up and [...]

Mother’s Day originated as an anti-war event, but it’s been turned into a way to push a normative idea of motherhood – you know, the one you see in that isle of Hallmark cards every year. The Strong Families campaign has put together a collection of cards for mamas who don’t fit the image of a [...]

For a movie about dudes with big muscles who punch things, The Avengers  treats its few female characters pretty well. Which isn’t a big surprise, since the movie is written and directed by  Buffy creator Joss Whedon. But the film’s advertising has featured Black Widow in the standard “look at my ass!” poses we’ve sadly come to expect for our female [...]

While NC tries to ban gay marriage, yesterday Katie wrote about how Joe Biden is being pushed into the closet on gay marriage after expressing his full support on Meet The Press for same-sex marriage. Within hours of the appearance, a Biden aid  felt the need to clarify the comments and senior Obama campaign advisor David Axelrod tweeted, “What VP [...]

In response to Alice Randall’s unfortunately titled NYT editorial “Why Black Women Are Fat” Jamilah Lemieux has written a smart and hilarious rebuttal to the mainstream notion that all black people are the same:

Why are Black women fat? Why are Black men in jail? Why can’t Black women find “good Black men?” Why did I get married, [...]