2015 Recap: Our favorite articles from elsewhere on the internet

To close out 2015, we’re showcasing our favorite feminist content from the past year. Yesterday, we featured Feministing posts that we loved. Today, we’re looking off the site to round up some of the most powerful articles we read elsewhere. Check them out and let us know what other posts you think should have made the list!

Mahroh: Oh, there are so many pieces that blew me out of the water this year, but one that radically shifted the language I use on a regular (if not daily) basis is Jess Zimmerman’s piece on emotional labor. It’s given me a way to understand sometimes frustrating, sometimes comical personal dynamics with men in my life in a much more structural way and for that, I am super grateful.

Lori: Again, I’m going to cheat by pointing to a series rather than one article, but George Yancy gets my vote in 2015 for his work interviewing 19 philosophers on race. The result has been so fascinating. In particular, don’t miss Judith Butler (“One reason the chant “Black Lives Matter” is so important is that it states the obvious but the obvious has not yet been historically realized.”) and bell hooks (“My militant commitment to feminism remains strong”), but the whole series is worth visiting (or re-visiting) tbh. Honorable mentions: New York Mag’s instant classic feature on Bill Cosby featuring 35 women and the “empty chair,” and Wesley Morris’ “The Year We Obsessed Over Identity,” which is one of those pieces that takes everything I’ve been thinking and feeling and spits it back up at me from the page, clear and crisp.

Dana: Education’s been on my mind: This American Life’s “The Problem We All Live With,” Freddie deBoer’s “Why We Should Fear University, Inc.,” and Sara Ahmed’s “Against Students”. And of course Reina’s haunting piece over at The Crimson on the ghost libraries of “books that did not get written.”

Alexandra: I was really blown away by “An Unbelievable Story of Rape,” a collaboration between the Marshall Project and Pro Publica, reported by Ken Armstrong and T. Christian Miller. I don’t want to spoil the devastating end of the piece, but it explores the terrible cost of the special skepticism we reserve for rape victims. 

Sesali: I’m not sure if this counts as an article, but I think “Speak Up & Stay Safe(r): A Guide to Protecting Yourself From Online Harassment” was such an amazing addition to the Feminist internet this year. As someone who spend a fair amount of time online, it was so helpful to have be reminded and learn some new ways to protect my neck.

Jos: I was really excited to read Rebecca Traister’s NY Mag article on consensual sex that’s still bad, particularly because three of the experts on bad sex (maybe not the kind of expertise we want, but this stuff is important) she quotes are Feministing writers – Reina, Alexandra, and Maya. A little over a year ago, the Feministing leadership team had a conversation about how young feminist discourse on sex was getting stuck at consent, so we weren’t actually talking about sex at all. I was really glad to see that, less than a year after that discussion, our crew included most of the go-to experts cited in this article.

Katie: This is tough, so I’m going with two: “Men Explain Lolita To Me” by Rebecca Solnit and “Split Image” by Kate Fagan. The former is a brilliant analysis about the importance of art that had me laughing, scowling, and fist pumping all at once, and the latter tells the tale of former University of Pennsylania runner, Madison Holeran, who committed suicide in 2014 while exploring the role social media curation plays in our lives.