The Last Amazon
On Wonder Woman’s feminist past.
On Wonder Woman’s feminist past.
Jill Lepore The New Yorker Sep 2014 30min Permalink
Marital advice columns from the past.
Rebecca Onion Aeon Sep 2014 15min Permalink
Bryan Goldberg’s site for women was widely mocked when it launched a year ago. Today it has 15 million readers per month and some of its harshest early critics are on the payroll.
Amanda Hess Slate Aug 2014 15min Permalink
A profile of Model View Culture founder Shanley Kane.
Elizabeth Spiers Matter Jul 2014 20min Permalink
The downfall of Hugo Schwyzer, feminist.
Mona Gable Los Angeles Apr 2014 25min Permalink
The capitalist evangelism of Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In feminist manifesto.
Susan Faludi The Baffler Oct 2013 35min Permalink
A day in the life of a twelve year-old girl: feminine sacrifice and reversed parenting/gender roles.
"When she's not ricocheting between coasts to spearhead corporate sales and yoga retreats, our mother is skipping off to islands (Cuba, the Canaries, Greenland) and leaving me typed notes that become more and more blunt and encoded. She doesn't spend much time with our father--none of the mothers do--and they have all become so hard and muscular and breastless that you wouldn't want a hug from them even if you were feeling bad."
Heidi Julavits Zoetrope: All-Story Sep 1998 Permalink
Shulamith Firestone, one of the first radical feminists, helped to create a new society. But she couldn’t live in it.
Susan Faludi New Yorker Apr 2013 35min Permalink
Forty years after its release, the story of “Free to Be… You and Me.”
“That learning to cook could lead an American woman to success of any kind would have seemed utterly implausible in 1949; that it is so thoroughly plausible 60 years later owes everything to Julia Child’s legacy.”
Michael Pollan New York Times Magazine Jul 2009 35min Permalink
An oral history of Ms. magazine.
Abigail Pogrebin New York Oct 2011 30min Permalink
SHRIVER: Regarding your Playboy exposé, I know you've discussed this a great deal, but I'd like to ask you this: You've said that you were glad you did it. What role do you think that exposé played in your early career and the notoriety you've achieved? Is there a similar exposé that someone could do today--something that would be as shocking? STEINEM: It took me a very long time to be glad. At first, it was such a gigantic mistake from a career point of view that I really regretted it. I'd just begun to be taken seriously as a freelance writer, but after the Playboy article, I mostly got requests to go underground in some other semi-sexual way. It was so bad that I returned an advance to turn the Playboy article into a paperback, even though I had to borrow the money. Even now, people ask why I was a Bunny, Right-Wingers still describe me only as a former Bunny, and you're still asking me about it-almost a half-century later. But feminism did make me realize that I was glad I did it--because I identified with all the women who ended up an underpaid waitress in too-high heels and a costume that was too tight to breathe in. Most were just trying to make a living and had no other way of doing it. I'd made up a background as a secretary, and the woman who interviewed me asked, "Honey, if you can type, why would you want to work here?" In the sense that we're all identified too much by our outsides instead of our insides and are mostly in underpaid service jobs, I realized we're all Bunnies--so yes, I'm glad I did it. If a writer wants to do a similar exposé now, there's no shortage of stories that need telling. For instance, go as a pregnant woman into so-called crisis pregnancy centers and record what you're told to scare or force you not to choose an abortion-including harassing you, calling your family or employer. Or pretend to be a woman with a criminal record and see how difficult it is to get a job. Or use a homeless center as an address and see what happens in your life. Or work at an ordinary service job in the pink-collar ghetto, as Barbara Ehrenreich did in Nickel and Dimed. But be warned that if you're a woman journalist and you choose an underground job that's related to sex or looks, you may find it hard to shake the very thing you were exposing.
Maria Shriver Interview Aug 2011 30min Permalink
On existing as a girl in the boy’s club that is the world.
Molly Lambert This Recording Feb 2011 25min Permalink
On a Duke student’s now infamous Powerpoint presentation of her sexual history; binge-drinking, post-feminism, and Mario Kart.
Caitlin Flanagan The Atlantic Jan 2011 20min Permalink
Thoughts on an emerging brand of feminism and the ridiculousness of claiming that Tina Fey is unattractive.
Sady Doyle Tiger Beatdown Mar 2010 10min Permalink
Booker winner Howard Jacobson on the bumper crop of sex worker memoirs and what they say about our understanding of paid sex.
Howard Jacobson Prospect Apr 2008 10min Permalink
How a childhood gorilla-hunting safari and a string of sexless marriages led Alice Sheldon to become reclusive sci-fi legend James Tiptree Jr.
Alex Carnevale This Recording Sep 2010 20min Permalink