Feminism

A groundbreaking Ms. series, Front & Center first began as first-person accounts of Black mothers living in Jackson, Miss., receiving a guaranteed income from Springboard to Opportunities’ Magnolia Mother’s Trust (MMT). Moving into the fourth year and next phase of this series, the aim is to expand our focus beyond a single policy intervention to include a broader examination of systemic issues impacting Black women experiencing poverty. This means diving deeper into the interconnected challenges they face—including navigating the existing safety net; healthcare, childcare and elder care; and the importance of mental, physical and spiritual well-being.

What I am bringing in now with my job helps pay my car note, plus my car recently needed repairs. Working helps with food and daycare expenses. I am grateful to have recently moved into a new subsidized housing apartment. I applied when I was pregnant and was called three months after I had my baby, which was a relief because before that we were living with my mom, and I wanted my own place for me and my kids.

I’m part of the Magnolia Mother’s Trust this year, so that money will help me offset the lost income of going back to school part time. It was a revelation to be able to cover multiple things in one day that I would’ve had to space out for weeks before. I bought diapers, paid my car note and the light bill. That feeling of being able to take care of things has relieved a lot of stress. Before, it was so hard. I would cry in the shower so my kids wouldn’t hear me.

In the short term, I’m trying to celebrate the wins where I can. I just got a promotion to lead decorator at work, and my car will be paid off next month. And I found out I got back into school. So there’s a lot of good, joyful things happening in my life right now.

Last year, researchers at Dublin City University released a report on a disturbing phenomenon: a surge of male supremacy videos in young men's social media feeds. It's the kind of report that should sound an alarm for parents, teachers and administrators. But as the gender divide widens and young men increasingly lean conservative amid Trump-era authoritarianism, it feels less like a future warning and more like a current diagnosis.

In the report, researchers created sock-puppet accounts — fake accounts registered as teenage boys — to determine how quickly misogynistic videos show up in users' TikTok and YouTube feeds. Alongside a control group, one group used male-coded search terms, such as "gaming" or "gym tips," while another searched for more extreme anti-feminist, male-supremacist content. The "manosphere," as it is often referred to, includes videos by Andrew and Tristan Tate, influencers who profit off the insecurities of young men. (The Tate brothers are embroiled in criminal and civil cases in Romania, Britain and the United States. They deny the allegations against them.)

It took under nine minutes for TikTok to offer troubling content to their fake 16-year-old boys, which later included explicitly anti-feminist and anti-L.G.B.T.Q. videos. Much of the content blamed women and trans people for the standing they believe men have lost in the world. More extreme content appeared within 23 minutes. Male supremacy videos intersected with reactionary right-wing punditry within two or three hours.

By the final phase of the experiment, accounts that showed even slight interest in the manosphere — for instance, accounts that watched a video all the way through — resulted in their For You feeds offering more than 78 percent alpha-male and anti-feminist content. Messages included: Feminism has gone too far, men are losing out on jobs to women and women prefer to stay at home rather than work.

Women’s sports bars, which somehow didn’t exist in the U.S. until before 2022, are on the rise, with a new report from NBC News estimating that their number will quadruple by the end of 2025.

Currently, there are six women’s sports bars open in the U.S., three of which opened this past week, just in time for March Madness: 1972 Women’s Sports Pub in Austin, Texas, Title 9 Sports Grill in Phoenix, Arizona, and Set the Bar in Omaha, Nebraska. By the end of the year, there are projected to be roughly 24 women’s sports bars in total in the U.S., per NBC News. As the three bars that opened this past week prove, those establishments won’t just be limited to big cities on the coasts (although, yes, there are two bars expected to open in New York this year and two in San Francisco). They also include Columbus, Ohio, where Raise the Bar is set to open this fall; Kansas City, Missouri, where The Dub will open at some point this year; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where another bar named Title 9 is slated to open.

You might say that the [Republican] party has already succumbed to a culture of misogyny and sexual predation. And in many ways, this is true. Donald Trump, an adjudicated rapist, is the leader of the party. His cabinet is lined with officials accused of the same or similar conduct.

But it’s important to stress the potential for a much darker generational shift in how the party approaches women’s issues. This requires focusing on the young men already in the party and those who will age into politics over the next decade, looking at their views and the media ecosystems in which they operate.

The popularity of Trump with Gen Z men and the success of influencers like Tate suggest a dark and ugly future for the American right. I have argued before that the increasing popularity of Trump and MAGA with young men is indicative of a shift in our politics. It’s one that moves Trumpism from an outlier to the normalized mainstream. It’s an idea that runs counter to the liberal common sense about what should work in a modern, plural society. But it is integral to the nature of authoritarian, anti-liberal politics and the reaction against contemporary progressivism.

There is no law of gravity that dictates a generation must be more open-minded and civilized than those that came before it. Young voters have been enthralled with extremism before. Many young Germans, for example, saw the Nazis as a forward-looking and exciting party. As Rampell notes, there’s real cause for concern that figures like Trump and Tate can harness the anomie and sense of dislocation among young men to press them with ways of building community around noxious but potent ideas of masculine virtue.

A survey of more than 24,000 people across 30 countries revealed 57% of Gen Z men felt their nation had "gone so far in promoting women's equality that we are discriminating against men."

Six in 10 Gen Z men also said they were being asked to do too much to support women, with 28% adding that a father who stayed home to look after his children is less of a man than those who went to work.

Across the board, Gen Z had more extreme views on their role in creating an equal society than any other generation. For example, only 12% of baby boomers agreed with the statement that fathers staying home meant they were less of a man.

Overall, however, 62% of men across countries including the U.S., Australia, Great Britain, Canada, and Japan said that achieving gender equality is of personal importance to them."Despite the divisive headlines, our survey highlights that most people—including men—still agree that achieving gender equality…is important to them personally. Many problems we face are shared, and all genders can and should come together to address the challenges we face as a society, as only by uniting our efforts can we meet them."​

What if the separation of competitions, “said to be a natural consequence of the differences between men and women,” is actually is “just a tool to create those differences”?

[Link to mentioned post]: are terfs actual feminists or do most transphobic women just call themselves that?

As a feminist who stans for transpeople I personally don't believe terfs to be feminists and there are a couple of reasons as for why I believe this to be the case:

Transwomen believe themselves to be just as genuine as cisborn women. As such, transwomen often fight for the same rights and desires that cis women want. Empowering transwomen also help cis women in this system, so kicking down your fellow allies and supporters is suicidal.

For those reading this, if you believe that you're a true feminist then I strongly recommend supporting and standing with the transcommunity as they will help you in reciprocal quid pro quo fashion.✊🌻

I'm making this post in order to hopefully reach out to terfs who might be misunderstanding as to why they should be supporting trans people rather than attacking them.

The advancement of women at work is good for everyone. Closing gender gaps in areas such as employment and entrepreneurship could increase global gross domestic product by 20%, the World Bank calculates.

And while there’s a way to go – at current rates, it could take five generations or 134 years to achieve gender parity worldwide, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2024 – there are signs of post-pandemic recovery in economies and labour markets.

Hey friends. Reading this now. It talks about how the multiple Nicaraguan rules of power, including the Somoza dictatorship used the female identity to bend the will of the people to their ways. Super dense academic read but a worthy read, none the less.

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/18023674

Paywall bypass: https://ghostarchive.org/archive/puBWi

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/17930532

This one is very shocking, there's lots of things it covers: Abuse in general, religious abuse, psychological abuse, self harm, fat{phobia/misia}, misogyny, power dynamics etc. We still recommend watching it if you can deal with those things and the content warnings in the video because it shows the truth of the companies behind your favourite games and the systems which demand inexpense which leads to abuse and other awful things.