Viva la Feminista

  Listen & Subscribe at Anchor | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts Show notes: Gloria Feldt  joins The Feminist Agenda to discuss her latest book, Intentioning: Sex, Power, Pandemics, and How Women Will Take The Lead for (Everyone's) Good . Gloria is a  New York Times  best-selling author, speaker, commentator and feminist leader who has gained national recognition as a social and political advocate of women's rights. In 2013, she co-founded Take The Lead , a nonprofit initiative with a goal to propel women to leadership parity by 2025. She is a former CEO and president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, directing the organization from 1996 to 2005. She has been featured in  The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, Time , NBC,  Fast Company, Vanity Fair ,  and much more.  Download the Intentioning workbook Ways to support The Feminist Agenda podcast: Archer & Olive : Use code "feminista10" to save 10% ...

Yup...The fabulous Stacey Abrams, along with badass couple Megan Rapinoe & Sue Bird join HBO's THE SHOP: UNINTERRUPTED to chat about the state of the world. Also joining the conversation is EGOT Whoopi Goldberg, Malcolm Jenkins, And Hasan Minhaj. By the look of the trailer this is gonna be a great conversation. Check it out on Friday, February 7 (9:30-10:00 p.m. ET/PT) or later on HBO NOW, HBO GO, HBO On Demand and partners’ streaming platforms.    

I needed to log into HBO GO to catch an episode of Real Sports that I missed about girls and baseball . The topic is fascinating for me. I played softball in high school and still play in a league - of course, Chicago 16" softball though. But as you know, I love baseball too. I did play Little League and never felt comfortable there. But you need to watch this episode. It goes through the history of Maria Pepe who sued Little League USA for the right to play baseball. They fought her for 2 years. And after she won, Little League started softball. I love both sports. And it breaks my heart each time I reflect on softball's role in discrimination against girls and women. It infuriates me to watch the clip of men giving bullshit excuses why girls shouldn't play baseball including: Dental injuries will make girls less attractive Getting hit in the chest will lead to breast cancer (isn't it FASCINATING how people who don't want women to do something will...

A lot of books show up at my home that go unread - to be given away or on the never-ending TBR pile. Thankfully something about Everything Grows urged me to read it and now. And that is exactly what this books does to your heart - it plants into your heart and tears it apart as it blossoms. Aimee Herman gives us the tale of Eleanor, a teen in 1993 (This GenXer is still floored each time she reads a book that is nostalgic for her own high school days and LOVES it. Even if it is hard to read "historical fiction" for that time.) whose bully has recently taken his own life just months after her mom attempted to do the same. At the prompting for her English teacher, Eleanor journals her way through the months after the bully's death, exploring not just their relationship, but also her relationship with her mother, and most importantly herself. There are definitely places in this book where I felt it was a bit unrealistic, but it works in the end. It all works....

Less than a year ago, Abby Wambach took the stage at Barnard's commencement and gave a speech that shook many, including myself, to the core . Her speech went viral and I made the above image in order to share the highlights of her speech. Earlier this month Abby released the speech in book form. Wolfpack : How to Come Together, Unleash Our Power, and Change the Game is short (less than 100 pages) but is much more than just her speech . You get a peek into how the speech came together and why she said everything. And because the book is short and is an expanded speech, it moves quickly. I feel that it moves with the same ferocity that Abby use to move down a soccer field. And you might find yourself cheering as she takes you through the story. Abby has always been one of my favorite players. The way she ran amok on the pitch was exactly the way I felt I played sports. Never caring how you looked and giving it your all. Leaving it all on the field. When she retired from socc...

As the days get shorter and the air gets crisper a lot of us start to move into homebody mode. Part of this for me usually means getting crafty. And that is why I was excited to get a copy of Feminist Icon Cross-Stitch: 30 Daring Designs to Celebrate Strong Women by Anna Fleiss & Lauren Mancuso. The patterns are pretty easy, so if you have never done cross-stitch before, most of these are totally doable. And you can choose from bad ass ladies such as Frida, as seen on the cover, and Sojourner Truth, Billie Jean King, and Simone de Beauvoir. Each pattern comes with a quick bio of each icon too! So you're learning something while taking some self-care time to craft. If you are new to cross stitch you might wonder, what do I do with them when I'm done? OMG! You can keep it simple and put them in a frame. Or you can get frames that are ornaments to hang on your Christmas or Yule tree. You can get hand towels with cross stitch fabric included so you can hang Cleopatra fr...

He left evidence along the way like pieces of bread crumbs. Angel's curse, that Wonder Woman script, and Black Widow as a Hulk pacifier. I saw it. I acknowledged it, but I still saw Joss Whedon as a feminist. "My feminism is not perfect. No one's is!" I would cry. But over the weekend I cried for yet another loss in the battle for men to be included in feminism . Buffy arrived in my life at the tail end of my college years. She took the baton from Xena to fulfill my need for feminist television. As a pop culture junkie I was desperate to watch something that not just validated my world view but also most importantly did not make me feel bad for being overweight, for liking to hang out in a library, and yes even just wanting to have fun despite the weight of the world on my shoulders. The series finale will always be the best finale ever. It depicted what I feel is the true spirit of feminism - that we are in this together. That together we kick the patriarchy...

Goddess knows that I had to see the movie at least two times before I could truly sort through all my feelings. Sitting in the theater the first time was like an out of body experience. I was there and knew I was there, but it didn't feel like it. I was somehow disconnected from the emotion of being there. Perhaps because my brain was taking a zillion notes a second. The second time...omg...the second time was overwhelming. First we got to the theater after the movie had already started - 2 minutes, that's ok. But when we got into the theater it was packed and we couldn't find seats. OMG! Where would we sit? Thankfully my daughter spotted three seats in row two. After we sat down it dawned on me...the theater was sold out in the second weekend. YES!!! AUDIENCE REACTIONS I found it odd that in both viewings there was little applause or cheering as in other eagerly anticipated movies. It was almost as if we were all stunned that we were actually at the Wonder Woman movi...

Like a lot of people I turned to Planned Parenthood during college.  Those were the days when Planned Parenthood sold birth control pills that fell under some weird rules that ended in the Dubya era so a pack of pills was maybe $10, maybe a bit less if I bought more than one at a time. But most of the time I bought a pack each month, having to hike over to the clinic off campus and say hi to the staff. Which might be why I love Planned Parenthood so much and ended up volunteering with them soon after college. via GIPHY Ah, the good old days of the late 1990s when passing out free condoms seemed to be the height of being a radical. That's how I spent one summer...passing out free condoms at street fairs in Chicago. But of course that was just to get people to the table. To get them talking. Once we lured people in with the free condom we would register people to vote, talk to them about how even with a Democrat in the White House, reproductive rights were being threaten...

Every summer blockbuster film arrives with anxiety over its reception. Will it be the summer champ? Will it be liked? Movies based on beloved harassers such as comic book heroes come with extra anxiety over reception. Then there is Wonder Woman. Summer 2017 felt like a lifetime away when word came in 2014 that our favorite Amazon princess (Sorry, Gabrielle) would find her way to the big screen. But honestly as we crept closer and closer to the day my stomach churned. Why? The Wonder Woman movie will be the first woman superhero since Electra in 2005 and that was a flop. Not to mention Catwoman , but we must. In addition, Wonder Woman has a woman director. When this film started up filmmaker Lexi Alexander publicly stated she wouldn't take the job if offered over the pressure placed on women directors. If the film flops, not only will the director take the fall, but will all women directors? This may be one of the biggest challenges to feminism in pop culture. Will feminist...

Battle of the Sexes  is a new movie that depicts the legendary tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs . The trailer was released today and it looks pretty awesome. I gotta say that I think Steve Carell NAILS Bobby. Normally I want to smooch Steve, but in this clip I wanna slug him! The trailer also teases plot lines about Billie Jean's love life. She kept her sexuality private for a very long time, as almost every professional athlete has done pretty forever. I got to meet Billie Jean King a few years ago at a luncheon. She has always been an inspiration to me so I am really looking forward to this movie. Hopefully Emma Stone's cultural baggage doesn't weight this movie down, but we'll see won't we?

While everyone is obsessed with how much damage the Fake Tanned One has done in 100 days , I'm more interested in what WE have done in the 100 days since the Women's March. Let's recall that 250,000 women, men, and children descended on Grant Park on one of the most beautiful days Chicago has seen in January. This so exceeded expectations that the march part of the March was officially cancelled, but you know when you have a quarter million people show up somewhere and they move, it's kinda a march. I've been to a lot of marches and few compare to the optimism this one had. I know it was too happy for a protest and all the marches had issues, but the turn out was a great way to kick off four years of resistance. And the diversity of those in attendance made me hopeful that no matter how bad things would be getting, we would fight every fight and maybe even win a few.  I think in 100 days feminists have put on quite a resistance. I truly be...

According to the CDC ,  664,435 legal abortions were performed in 2013. The Guttmacher Institute states that in 2014 1.5% of women aged 15-44 had an abortion . On average 1 in 3 women will have had an abortion over the course of their lifetime . This makes abortion or pregnancy terminations one of the most common surgical procedures, but most likely the only medical procedure that requires armed guards to ensure the safety of professionals performing them. The virulent attacks against reproductive justice - including medically accurate sex education, birth control, and abortion - has resulted in an atmosphere of fear. Fear that providers are assassinated in their churches or homes. Fear that providers being harassed outside their own homes. Fear that loved ones won't understand. This has resulted in silence. And this silence has resulted in people worrying if their decision to abort means they are terrible people or if the fact they valued the lives of their children over the...

Starting with the current issue of Women's Review of Books you can now read the issues online in addition to print. To celebrate this move towards online access to this great outlet, anyone can read the current issue online.   In this issue WRB looks to the work of Black Lives Matter and the intersectional politics of the new movement as well as its similarities and differences, in politics and strategies, from previous organizing. Go read! Then if you like, subscribe .

In the fifth grade a few of my friends & I wanted to feel connected. We decided to always were jean jackets and call ourselves a gang. Of course our teacher stepped in and said it was ok to want to band together, but not call ourselves a gang. She never fully explained it, or I have forgotten, but it was clear that as working class kids, most of us Latin@, that calling ourselves a gang was not cool.at.all. But while we couldn't call ourselves a gang, we still stuck together until we grew apart. Nevertheless I would continue to want to organize my groups of friends into tight circles. That is why when I watched Ovarian Psycos I was emotional. While my working class upbringing is far from the life we see in this new documentary, that sense of wanting to create your own family struck me to my core. What we get in this documentary are tales of young women seeking to strengthen their community by banding together, riding their bikes around LA, and being bad ass. Ovarian Psycos ...

Disclaimer: Anne & I are friends. Not just social media friends. We've been in each others homes, have shared food & drink, and all that jazz. I continue to be honored to call her a friend. Anne Elizabeth Moore 's autopsy of our culture's obsession with bodies and how they define more roles than you can imagine is pure art. Knowing that Moore fits the definition of a feminist may make you scoff at the revolutionary manner in which her latest book, Body Horror : Capitalism, Fear, Misogyny, Jokes , focuses on the body and gender roles. Yes, feminists are at the forefront of critiquing body image and our cultural obsession with perfection, but Moore stands at the front of that movement. WAY IN FRONT. So far ahead of the curve that some of the essays will leave you pondering, "What was Veronica thinking? This has nothing to do with feminism or bodies?" Then you'll turn a page and get smacked with what I'm talking about. Moore opens many of the es...

In honor of Women’s History Month, the Independent Women's Forum (IWF) is hosting Women Making History, an exclusive event on Wednesday, March 22nd, at the Capitol Hill Club in Washington, DC. Vice President Mike Pence will be honored with t he inaugural IWF Working for Women Award . The award recognizes an individual who values free markets, works to create a more dynamic and innovative work world, and celebrates the valuable contributions women make to society. Yup...you read that snip of a press release right. The man who help cause an HIV outbreak in Indiana is getting an away for working for women. I'm surprised this press release didn't mention his possible influence in sending a hate group to the 61st annual United Nations Commission on the Status of Women . "The Center for Family and Human Rights (C-FAM) is a think tank that has been labelled as a “hate group” for their international anti-LGBTQI advocacy work and violent rhetoric by the Southern Poverty Law...

Proposals are sought from scholars across all disciplines for the fourth edition of  Race/Gender/Class/Media: Considering Diversity Across Audiences, Content, and Producers  (Routledge, 2019). Edited by Rebecca Ann Lind, University of Illinois at Chicago ( rebecca@uic.edu ), the book will examine the consequences, implications, or opportunities associated with issues of diversity (socially constructed differences such as race, ethnicity, gender, class, etc.) in media. The fourth edition should be at least as wide-ranging in scope  as prior editions . Most accepted pieces will present original scholarship. There are three main sections: content, audience, and production.   Content focuses most closely on texts created by media  organizations.  Audience include s media usage, effects of media, audience  interpretations of media content, and studies of user-generated content.  Production  includes studies of media organizatio...