What goes on behind the scenes in the world of modeling? What’s behind the facade of beautiful photographs and expensive clothes? Ashley Sabin, co-director of the documentary Girl Model , attempts to answer just that. The documentary follows the story of a young girl named Nadya, scouted in her Siberian countryside and brought to the bustling world of [...]

Krystal Ball is someone that we can all learn from. At 29, she ran for Congress in Virgina’s first district. She would have been the youngest woman to serve in Congress ever, if elected. She didn’t win though. During her election, she faced a sexist smear campaign by her opponents on the right who leaked salacious college [...]

This past February, Colorlines announced Akiba Solomon as its new managing editor . And it’s no surprise. She’s been writing about race and gender for years now. She spent the early part of her years at print magazines like The Source and Essence. She eventually made her way to online journalism (and candidly speaks with me about how this switch sometimes isn’t a [...]

Kate Bornstein is a queer and pleasant danger , and her time is coming! Really. To expand on that perfectly succinct bio though, she wears many hats including author, playwright and performance artist. Her books include Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives To Suicide For Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws , Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us”; “My Gender [...]

Image via “Smith Q&A” Facebook page. Design by jack laxson. On Saturday, Gina de Vries, Elena Rose, and myself brought Girl Talk: A Trans and Cis Woman Dialogue to Smith College. Girl Talk is a multi-media performance show promoting dialogue about relationships of all kinds between queer trans women, queer cis women, and genderqueer people. We were [...]

Renee Bracey Sherman is an activist from Chicago, Illinois. While studying economics and sociology at Northeastern Illinois University, she found her passion working to break down barriers of multiple oppressions that people face each day through story sharing. Renee identifies as a biracial queer ally and found that discussing her own abortion experience and identities has helped to build conversations [...]

Zerlina smiling for Hannity Two weeks ago, Zerlina was on the Sean Hannity show to talk women, guns and rape. If you’ve been following this blog , or her Twitter , or watching cable news in general, then you’ve almost certainly heard about her appearance. The premise of the segment was that all women should have the right to own [...]

Bonnie McFarlane, pondering over the “women aren’t funny” debate It’s 2013 yet the ever-pervasive myth that women aren’t funny persists. Men like the late Christopher Hitchens, who wrote the piece ” Why Women Aren’t Funny ” in Vanity Fair , and comedian Adam Carolla (if you could call what he does comedy) have ensured that this absurd notion has [...]

Melissa Silverstein (left) & Kathryn Kolbert (right) Melissa Silverstein and Kathryn Kolbert are co-founders of the Athena Film Festival taking place this weekend at Barnard College in New York. Silverstein is the founder and editor of Women and Hollywood , and Kolbert is director of the Athena Center for Leadership Studies . We’ve partnered with the festival for two [...]

Olivia Joy Stinson is the founder of PEN Pals Book Club for Children of Incarcerated Parents. Growing up in Charlotte, North Carolina, Olivia Joy Stinson saw a high number of children of incarcerated parents around her and recognized a need to engage with them. Combining her love of reading and passion for service, Olivia founded [...]

In December, when controversy about the rape apologist org the Good Men Project was all over the feminist internets, I wrote about problems with the juvenile way of thinking about people in terms like “good” and “bad.” In that post, I briefly mentioned that to address the reality of sexual violence we need a more [...]

Jax Jackson In 2010, Tyler Clementi was a freshman at Rutgers University. After his roommate secretly recorded him kissing another man in their dorm room, Clementi jumped to his fate off of George Washington Bridge. It’s a story we should never forget and, unfortunately, one of many cases in which bullying and anti-LGBT sentiment has [...]

“We live in a society ashamed of failure.” Those are words from Reshma Saujani, who’s fighting to change that norm and leading by example. She’s founder of Girls Who Code , an organization helping girls in low-income neighborhoods succeed in technology and engineering. She was also the first Indian-American woman to run [...]

Today the White House announced their set of proposals intended to curb gun violence. A Somali journalist has been under arrest for almost a week because he interviewed a woman who claimed she had been raped by members of the Somali army. The criminalization of pregnancy has led to too many people being denied constitutional rights . The Wall Street Journal [...]

Cover art by Olivier Coipel, who will be drawing the book. Marvel is relaunching X-Men in April, to join the 2 ½ other X-Men titles they’re currently publishing. This one will be notable, though, for featuring an all female X-Men team . The comic will star Jubilee, who’s basically the early 90s in character form (I’m the perfect [...]

This graph, put together by the Enliven Project using Department of Justice  and FBI data, is super depressing. But it puts in stark visuals something a lot of us know: it’s way more likely for a rapist to walk free than for the rape to be reported or for someone to be falsely accused of rape. So can [...]

Editor’s note: OK, I’ll admit it. When I was in college there was a secret underground society of lefty organizers bent on taking over the world. It was basically exactly like the Skull and Bones, except we were a bunch of pinko queers who wanted to smash patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, and the state. Today you [...]

It’s a new year. Out with the old, in with the new. I’ve been running this column since 2011 and I’ve interviewed feminists all around the world, young and old, famous and unknown. Before we dive into another year of awe-inspiring feminist profiles, let’s recap some of the gems from 2012, just in case you missed [...]