Shit is fucked up when it comes to appearances and women. We’re expected to be hot – but if we are, we’re vain and stupid. And if we’re not hot we’re useless. Kind of hard...

Wedding fever is one of the scariest diseases I have ever seen.

I think talking is as casual as blogging, and sometimes writing can be as casual as talking. My informal writing style is a political choice, because I want feminism to be more accessible.

I think virginity is fine, just as I think having sex is fine. I don’t really care what women do sexually, and neither should you. In fact, that’s the point. I believe that a young...

The stereotypes of feminists as ugly, or man-haters, or hairy, or whatever it is – that’s really strategic. That’s a really smart way to keep young women away from feminism, is to kind of put...

Antifeminists are the only ones who benefit from their version of working on women’s behalf; in reality, they put other women at risk and fail to solve any larger problems.

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...