WMC Women Under Siege
Forgotten girls: How one child in Yemen is drawing attention to underage marriage
Eight million people and counting have watched a video featuring an 11-year-old Yemeni girl named Nada al-Ahdal. From what looks like the seat of a car, she talks about why she left home because, she says, her parents tried to marry her off. Al-Ahdal talks about the “innocence of children” and the consequences—including suicide—of being force-married to an older man at such a young age.
WMC Women Under Siege
Sexual assaults, victim-blaming continues in Peace Corps
On November 21, 2011, President Barack Obama signed into law the Kate Puzey Peace Corps Volunteer Protection Act. The act aims to reform Peace Corps’ policies and procedures for preventing and responding to sexual assault. Its passage was intended to end the epidemic of sexual assault against Peace Corps volunteers and endemic culture of victim-blaming in the agency. But the success of the Kate Puzey Act is threatened by the Peace Corps’ use of outdated, victim-blaming definitions of sexual assault.
WMC FBomb
Attention People With Body Parts
My name is Lexie and I am the Founder and Creative Director of Attention: People With Body Parts, an international body-positive initiative with an emphasis on book-making, letter-writing, and collabo...
WMC Women Under Siege
'Survival sex': How NGOs and peacekeepers exploit women in war
It’s easy to associate rape with the Democratic Republic of Congo, a region torn by conflict since 1996. Dubbed the “rape capital of the world,” the country sees four women raped every five minutes, according to a 2011 study published by the American Journal of Public Health.
WMC FBomb
Model Citizen
I would like to preface this essay by saying that I am a feminist (I have written four other articles for the FBomb), I am sixteen, and I have been model with Ford Models for two years. My opinions ar...
WMC FBomb
Saturday Vids: Nothing To Prove -- Geek Girls and the Double Clicks
Women have written about the discrimination "geek girls" face before on the FBomb -- but now there's an anthem for all the girls out there who have been bullied or undermined about their passion. "Not...
WMC FBomb
All I Want Is Equality
All I want is equality.
Because yes, that is what feminism is all about. Equality for women. No, we feminists are not asking for better treatment under the law for women. Anyone who does is not truly...
WMC Women Under Siege
Creating heaven 'in a place called hell’: DRC activist responds to US tabloid
Sometimes I read something that makes the movement of the world, the very air in the room, freeze to a stop. That’s what happened recently when I read a letter written by an activist in the Democratic Republic of Congo named Neema Namadamu. I read it once, then I read it again. Instead of describing why it had such a profound effect on me, I’m pasting it in full below.
WMC FBomb
On Being 'Friends With Benefits'
The tricky thing about friends with benefits is that the lines you painstakingly set up get blurred so quickly; before you know it, there are no longer any lines discerning black from white -- it is a...
WMC Women Under Siege
The topsy-turvy world of men who oppose anti-violence campaigns
At the start of this year, my friend and WMC’s Women Under Siege director, Lauren Wolfe, started a Twitter hashtag, #2013EndRape, to highlight the epidemic of sexualized violence against women. While the hashtag has seen success, one of the unintended consequences has been its trolling and attacks on it by various “Men’s Rights Activists.”
WMC FBomb
Why I Shared my Abortion Story With North Carolina Law Makers
My voice was trembling when I spoke the words “I decided to choose abortion.” I was telling my personal story and expressing my opposition of House Bill 695, a bill that would shut down all but one ab...
WMC FBomb
Saturday Vids: "Dear Mom"
When Marc Goone learned that his mother was battling stage 4 lung cancer, he sought to honor her in the best way he knew how: writing a song. "Dear Mom" is dedicated to, as he puts it, "the amazing wo...
WMC Women Under Siege
Hope for a better life leads to torture for Ethiopians
When there’s not an acute famine in the Horn of Africa, the media tends to leave the misery in that part of the world unreported. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t heard much about Ethiopia specifically in awhile, minus a few international journalist friends mentioning that there is a migration problem for women who are seeking better lives in the Arab peninsula. As of this morning though, I can’t pretend to ignore what’s going on in the region any longer.
WMC FBomb
Why Dustin Hoffman’s ‘Tootsie’ Confession Is More Than A Personal Epiphany
A clip of Dustin Huffman’s emotionally charged recounting of a decades-ago epiphany that cross-dressing for his role in ‘Tootsie’ forced him to recognize how men are brainwashed to value women based o...
WMC FBomb
The Job You Never Realized You Had
One time the engineering class at my all-girls high school (yes, my school was that awesome) went to a near-by all-boys school to hear a speaker give a presentation about entrepreneurship, financial ...
WMC FBomb
Support Women Artists Sunday: Reesa Renee
Reesa Renee is an artist, musician, songwriter, and lyrical poet from the DC Metropolitan Area. Her voice skims through the soulful sounds of the jazz era and then fast-forwards your musical clocks to...
WMC FBomb
July 12, 2013 | Julie Zeilinger |
Feminism,
Free Speech,
Gender-based violence,
Media,
Science and tech,
Violence against women
Saturday Vids: Jaclyn Friedman On Hate Speech On Facebook
Last month, awesome feminist activists Jaclyn Friedman of Women, Action and the Media (WAM!), author/activist Soraya Chemaly and Laura Bates of the The Everyday Sexism Project launched a campaign to e...
WMC FBomb
Innocence Lost
Life never passed more slowly than it did when I cried behind the football stands. Like a movie, the crowds cheered while I bowed my head in defeat, the music roared while my smile was muted. Small to...
WMC News & Features
July 11, 2013 | Robin Morgan (1941 - 2026) |
Sports
Cry Foul at Wimbledon
Some media outlets proclaimed that this week's Wimbledon winner was the first from Britain in 77 years. In saying so, they erased not one, but four, female champions.
WMC FBomb
Me: The Closet Feminist
I wrote before I knew women had to write under pseudonyms to get their books published.
And I rode my bike without knowing in some countries the ban on women doing so has only just been lifted.
I wa...
WMC Women Under Siege
July 09, 2013 | Lauren Wolfe |
International
Photos from a border life: Syrian refugees live in limbo in southern Turkey
I spent much of June in Turkey, ostensibly. But in the south, at the Syrian border, where Arabic is the language of choice, women wear traditional Syrian hijabs, and families live in the strange half-life of an open-ended nightmare of exile, I was, in some ways, in Syria.
WMC FBomb
Moving On From The Past
The summer after my freshman year of high school, I was sexually abused, harassed and almost raped. I do not want to go into how -- it’s just not something I want to relive. I told my mom when I was a...
WMC FBomb
July 06, 2013 | Julie Zeilinger |
Media
Support Women Artists Sunday: Laura Izibor
Born to a working class family in Dublin, Ireland, Izibor admits she didn't grow up in a musical household. "My mother raised five kids on her own, so there wasn't much time to buy records - it wasn't...
WMC FBomb
Saturday Vids: TBYT Summer Dares
Our names are Lauren and Victoria Coaxum. We are teen sisters who run the anti-cyberbullying and positive self-esteem campaign, Think Before You Type. TBYT is here to raise awareness about cyberbullyi...
WMC FBomb
Your Body Is Too Distracting: School Dress Codes and Slut Shaming
I've always hated the idea of dress codes. As a teen, I felt like it was an assault on my personal freedom. Unlike the rebellious stereotype however, I wore as many layers as I could. I frequently wor...