When abstinence curricula contain information about sexual abuse or assault (though they often don’t), the message is similar: The onus of preventing sexual assault is on girls, not on men.

Once you get married, women are still implicitly expected to do the majority of the housework and take care of any future children.

Given the reality of unintended parenthood and parental unhappiness, one would think that women and men who make the decision not to have children – who are deliberate and thoughtful about the choice to bring...

The only purpose of an engagement ring is to show you ‘belong’ to someone, and your man makes bank.

One of the difficult things, especially about blogging, is that you put all of your personal out there, into the political. And what’s been difficult, for me at least, is trying to keep some of...

By erasing any nuance and complexity about porn and sexuality, the virginity movement gives young women only two choices of who they can be sexually: sluts or not sluts. While the first choice doesn’t seem...

A huge part of keeping women in their place has to do with creating a really limited definition of what a ‘real’ woman is like. And a ton of that what-makes-a-woman nonsense is attached to...

Consider another abstinence product: a gold rose pin handed out in schools or at Christian youth events. The pin is attached to a small card that reads, “You are like a beautiful rose. Each time...

Feminism isn’t simply about being a woman in a position of power. It’s battling systemic inequities; it’s a social justice movement that believes sexism, racism and classism exist and interconnect, and that they should be...

There’s something really terrible about having your BlackBerry next to your bed or having your laptop in the living room when you’re talking to someone. The biggest source of stress in my life is the...

When women’s sexuality is imagined to be passive or “dirty,” it also means that men’s sexuality is automatically positioned as aggressive and right-no matter what form it takes. And when one of the conditions of...

The truth about parenting is that the reality of our lives needs to be enough.

There is something to be said for the power of figureheads. After Hillary Clinton became secretary of state, a record number of countries posted female ambassadors to the U.S. – some of whom have dubbed...

Making women the sexual gatekeepers and telling men they just can’t help themselves not only drives home the point that women’s sexuality is unnatural, but also sets up a disturbing dynamic in which women are...

Bra-burning never happened. It was completely made up by the media. A couple of women protesting a Miss America pageant threw some bras into a garbage can, and somehow that became this longstanding idea of...

What other movement has ensured that young women have the rights that they have today? Feminism is responsable not only for the decline in violence against women over the last decade, but also for equal...

Wanting to be liked means being a supporting character in your own life, using the cues of the actors around you to determine your next line rather than your own script. It means that your...

How insulting is it to suggest the best thing women can do is raise other people to do incredible things?

There’s a reason why the assumed goal for women in virginity-movement screeds is marriage and motherhood only: The movement only believes that’s the only thing women are meant for.

There’s no one right way to parent, and there’s no magic combination of genders that produces the most well-adjusted child. We all do the best we can at loving our kids and building our families.

The widely held belief that the heterosexual nuclear family is best for children has long been used as a smoke screen for homophobia and as a talking point to quash marriage-equality efforts.

mangina.”Notice anything? The worst thing you can call a girl is a girl. The worst thing you can call a guy is a girl. Being a woman is the ultimate insult. Now tell me that’s...

I think day care is terrific. Kids get to be around other kids, and they’re playing, and they’re teaching each other. When I was in college, my summer job was being a preschool teacher. I...

I’ve thought often about why – why?! – anyone, especially other women, would try to disrupt feminist work that combats violence. What in the world could be the point of that? The only reason I’ve...

As I grew up and began identifying myself as a feminist, there were plenty of issues that continued to make me question marriage: the father ‘giving’ the bride away, women taking their husband’s last name,...

I’ve seen straight, partnered women explain their decision to stay at home by noting that childcare would have taken too much out of their paycheck – as if this cost was just theirs to bear!

The less obvious hurdle is that of preparing parents emotionally and putting forward realistic images of parenthood and motherhood. There also needs to be some sort of acknowledgement that not everyone should parent – when...

Hearing the Beastie Boys speak out against sexism made me feel like if these men who had once sung about getting girls to ‘do the laundry’ and ‘clean up my room’ could understand, maybe the...

When you ask most American parents why they want to have kids, it’s to bring more joy into their lives. So, when you don’t feel that all-encompassing joy, it must be that something is wrong...

..the hope I have for women: that we can start to see ourselves-and encourage men to see us-as more than just the sum of our sexual parts: not as virgins or whores, as mothers or...

My parents have a wonderful marriage, but they have been together since my mother was 12, married when they were just teenagers and are barely ever separated. They even work together. As a result, I...

I’ve always found the idea of ‘saving’ your virginity intriguing: it’s not as if we’re packing our Saran-wrapped hymens away in the freezer, after all, or pasting them in scrapbooks. But packed-away virginities aside, the...

When I started blogging in 2004, I responded to every comment no matter how nasty the reader was. I was generally polite, believing that these critics would be so charmed by my professionalism that they...

In ‘The Purity Myth,’ I not only discuss what the purity myth is and reveal its consequences for women, but also outline a new way for us to think about young women as moral actors,...

Another abstinence book claims, “A woman is far more attracted by a man’s personality, while a man is stimulated by sight. A man is usually less discriminating about those to whom he is physically attracted.

I grew up in Long Island City. When I was growing up, my parents owned a women’s clothing store in Queens. It was for older women. I got my bras there, until I realized I...

I think that the ideal of parenting can make people unhappy. It’s that this lie that they’re being told by society that parenting is one thing – and when parenting is something completely different –...

According to the virginity movement, men have no self-control when it comes to anything sexual.

There have been women who stumbled across Feministing randomly, through a bizarre Google search or something, and had no idea what feminism was. They thought it was something older women do, or bought into the...

Be as pissed off as you want to be. Don’t hold back because you think it’s unladylike or some such nonsense. We shouldn’t be shamed out of our anger. We should be using it. Using...

The truth is that we don’t need everyone to like us; we need a few people to love us. Because what’s better than being roundly liked is being fully known – an impossibility both professionally...

There is no public space for women; the whole world is a prison where you have to be constantly aware at all times that you’re a potential victim. What’s more terrifying is that it’s not...

It’s not always easy being a full-time feminist – especially as a young woman – when you’re constantly being told that what you do is irrelevant. I’m on the defense all the time.

And really, how insulting is it that to suggest that the best thing women can do is raise other people to do incredible things? I’m betting some of those women would like to do great...

[Robert] Jensen calls for an end to our current understanding of masculinity. He says, “We men can settle for being men, or we can strive to be human beings.” What’s funny is that that statement...

Whether it’s repro rights, violence against women, or just plain old vanilla sexism, most issues affecting women have one thing in common – they exist to keep women ‘in their place.’ To make sure that...

deep”?Men who are serious are just that—serious. Think laconic cowboys and Clint Eastwood-style movie heroes. Strong and silent is a desirable personality trait for men—women, not so much. Because where silence in men is seen...

The implications of likability are long-lasting and serious. Women adjust their behavior to be likable and as a result have less power in the world. And this desire to be liked and accepted goes beyond...

Even the notion that women should have children at all is based on the idea that a woman’s inherent and most important role is that of mother. Shockingly, men’s ‘innate’ roles are a lot more...

I hope that by modeling feminism in my own life, work and relationships that it will haut become an organic part of my daughter’s life. But I’m also fully prepared for her to become a...