When we who claim any kind of feminist label look at the culture around us—and the art that reflects the culture around us—the way we articulate our thoughts about it matters. We should be intentional about it, even if the artists aren’t.

There’s comfort in absolutism because it gives that person’s ignorance a pass. No work or reading ever required.

When the audit known as feminist revision became a feature of feminist theory, it was never intended to eclipse in importance the activity known as praxis: organizing, taking over institutions, seizing power to make lasting changes in policy and law. Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique , but she also co-founded the National Organization for W... See more

There’s a limit, I think, to the utility of reading celebrity lives like tea leaves. The lives of famous women are determined by exponential leaps in visibility, money, and power, whereas the lives of ordinary women are mostly governed by mundane things: class, education, housing markets, labor practices.

Pop feminism doesn’t really engage with theory and mostly looks to pop culture to dictate what is and isn’t feminism. But the feminist movement started by doing the reverse: looking at culture and questioning the normalized misogyny and patriarchy around us, including possible internalization of those norms.

But when the media over-indexes on uninformed outrage and lumps feminists and the idea of feminism in with the crowd, it’s ultimately unhelpful, and adds to the narrative of feminists as chiding killjoys, confused about their own politics, too enamored with pop culture to look at the real issues, angry at everything, informed about nothing that mat... See more

Many of you may click out here, because you don’t want anything to do with The Discourse. And, okay, bye! But to me, this is also indicative of a huge problem when talking about pop culture, which is seen as a frivolous girl’s hobby.1 It leaves room for the loud and wrong people to be even louder and wronger. It contributes to the way history is wr... See more

Politics and culture move in symbiosis, one responding to the other.