Feminist Highlights | Dissent Magazine

America’s Other Election

Gary Gerstle ▪ Fall 2016

Rolling back Republican domination in the states will not be easy. But it is a battle that must be joined.

China’s younger generation of feminists pose a unique threat to the Communist Party. By celebrating single, queer, and often child-free women, they are challenging government edicts that marriage and families are the foundation of the country’s political stability.

Gender Trouble in Poland

Ann Snitow and Katheryn Detwiler ▪ Fall 2016

Poland’s proposed abortion ban is part of a broader attack on women by the right-wing PiS government, which has sought to banish the word “gender” itself from the country’s vocabulary. But Polish feminists and their allies are fighting back.

A Feminism for Tomorrow: Introduction

Kaavya Asoka and Sarah Leonard ▪ Fall 2016

What are feminists thinking and doing today? We cast an eye to movements in the United States and abroad to help us imagine—and strategize—a more pluralist, and radical, feminism.

Introducing our Fall special section.

Not All the Single Ladies

Moira Weigel ▪ Fall 2016

The optimism of Rebecca Traister’s All the Single Ladies is encouraging, but the book’s blindspots illuminate the limitations of contemporary liberal feminism.

The Breadwinner-Homemaker Trap

Suzanne Kahn ▪ Fall 2016

Finding Time: The Economics of Work-Life Conflict by Heather Boushey Harvard University Press, 2016, 360 pp. What Works: Gender Equality by Design by Iris Bohnet Harvard University Press, 2016, 400 pp. [contentblock id=3 img=html.png] To illustrate the tensions between work …

A Radical History of Free Speech

Sophia Rosenfeld ▪ Fall 2016

With the rhetoric of free speech increasingly captured by the right, a new book tells the story of the radicals who first championed freedom of expression as a substantive political right.

Feminism at the Polls

Liza Featherstone ▪ Summer 2016

The Democratic primary revealed the fault lines of both establishment feminism and the socialist left. It also suggested an appetite for the kind of feminism we need—one that understands the impact of economic and foreign policy on the majority of women’s lives.

Not Safe for Work: Why Feminist Pornography Matters

Claire Potter ▪ Spring 2016

Since the sex wars, women have become more visible as producers and consumers of pornography, but many debates about working conditions and content remain stuck in the past. How should feminists, both within and outside the industry, engage with pornography today?

Trickle-Down Feminism, Revisited

Tressie McMillan Cottom ▪ April 21, 2016

“Having it all” is not a feminist theory of change.

Do Black Women Matter to the Black Church?

Lawrence Ware and Lauren Whiteman ▪ March 22, 2016

Award-winning gospel singer James Fortune’s recent conviction for domestic violence points to a larger problem of patriarchy within the black church.

Belabored Podcast #99: Because of Sex, with Gillian Thomas

Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen ▪ March 18, 2016

Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act made it illegal for employers to discriminate “because of sex.” We talk with Gillian Thomas, author of a new book on the history of the Supreme Court’s rulings on that little phrase, which have shaped the experiences of millions of working people.