by Phyllis Chesler

Every time a news story breaks about a woman imprisoned as a sex slave (for example the Cleveland Three) people are, appropriately, shocked and horrified.

What is even more shocking is the fact that such crimes are committed every single day in every country on earth.  Children and adult women are routinely sold, tricked or kidnapped in epidemic numbers and

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Is World War Needed to Protect Our Children?8 comment(s)

by Phyllis Chesler

I do not understand what motivates sensible, even heroic, people to claim what is clearly a defeat as a victory.

I am talking about the …


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Sharansky’s Non-Solution For Women Worshippers

by Elayne Clift

Since the days of the goddess Athena, armed and shouting war cries, there have been female warriors. Still, war is viewed as a masculine domain.

Traditional images of women during wartime have focused on what author Frank Moore dubbed "Angels of Mercy," like the nurses and caretakers in the U.S. Civil War.  "The story of war will never be fully or fairly written if the achievements of women in it are untold," Moore said at a time when wives and mothers were sending their men to …


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FROM BATAAN TO BENGHAZI: WOMEN IN WAR

by Phyllis Chesler

Nearly 25 years ago, I was blessed with the privilege of being part of the first-ever woman's prayer service at the Western Wall (the Kotel). We prayed out loud, with a Torah; many women were religiously learned, some were rabbis, many wore their prayer shawls. This was the first time in history that women had "liberated" the Wall.  We broke a psychological sound barrier. The date was December 1, 1988. The woman whose idea this was, Rivka Haut, turned to me and asked me to open the …


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WOMEN OF THE WALL: THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES

by Jamie Hagen

The U.S. Military's January 24th lifting of the ban on women soldiers serving in combat  is a bittersweet victory for the rights of women.  On the sweet side, it offers long-overdue recognition for women who have served in combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan for many years, and allows them to be eligible for career advancement for their experiences and medals for outstanding service.

On the bitter side, even in war zones, where violence is not unexpected, its disruptive …


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Stand up and Bark: Military Leadership and Women's Rights

by Mahnaz Rezaie

I am from Afghanistan. I am now an undergraduate student on scholarship at an American college. I was on campus last Sunday when I read – and agonized over – an article on the front page of The New York Times about the attempted “honor killing” of an Afghan teenager.

This young woman was from the provinces and dared to run away with a man who was not her …


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How My Friend From Kabul Escaped an Honor Killing and Saved Her Life – So Far2 comment(s)

by Jamie J. Hagen

The world may be concentrating on General Petraeus’ dalliance. But the real story of sexual misbehavior in the military is far broader – and far more serious and damaging to so many of our women and men who serve. SWAN, the Service Women’s Action Network, is one organization that knows the real scenario. It advocates for the 2.5 million women who make up 15 per cent of the United States military.

With the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) more than a year ago, SWAN is now better …


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Military Women Thankful as SWAN Combats Sexual Abuse

by Sheila Parks

Yes, my side won. So, the argument could be made that I was wrong when it comes to election fraud. The real story is more complicated. I believe that my side – your side, the women’s side – won in part because voting rights activists were vigilant. They kept Americans watching, to make sure to document irregularities at the polls.

As the result of a fair election, women now have a far better opportunity to lead and influence. More glass ceilings were shattered, although we still await …


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OPINION: Your Vote Got Counted. Here’s Why4 comment(s)

by Ariel Dougherty

“This is what feminism looks like,” shout young women in a contemporary street demonstration in the “She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry” video clip on the Kickstarter crowdfunding website. Film directors/producers Mary Dore and Nancy Kennedy are in the middle of a campaign, which started October 24th and ends November 28th, to raise $75,000 towards completion funds for their documentary. It is a history …


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A Crowdfunding Primer: Feminist Media Producers Engage A Community of Backers3 comment(s)

by Sheila Parks

In next week’s presidential elections women could, in effect, lose ownership of their bodies if the Romney-Ryan ticket, with its hard right stance wins. Even if Romney loses it will be a sad day for women in some quarters if candidates such as Akin and Mourdock, with their frightening, absurdist and fundamentalist leanings, are successful.

These candidates also may have an advantage that has not been publicized widely enough. Our elections are controlled by an international, privatized …


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OPINION: Will Your Vote Even Get Counted?3 comment(s)

by Linda Stein

In eighth grade, I was a bully.

We were five girls picking grass straws in the playground of my junior high school. I won. I was suddenly the president of the "I Hate Carole Club." I was thrilled. I'd never been president of anything before, and I thought these four other girls were the most popular kids at school. My job as head of this organization was to lead the others in ridiculing Carole. She had a funny last name, red hair and freckles. I didn't associate what we did with the term …


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Sculptor Linda Stein Apologizes to the Girl She Bullied in Childhood1 comment(s)

by Alyssa Pelish, Associate Editor

OCT 23, 2012

MANHATTAN — In her essay in The Atlantic last June (you know — that little piece called “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All”?) Anne-Marie Slaughter explains why, at speaking engagements, she insists that the person introducing her mention that she has two sons. “It seems odd to me to list degrees, awards, positions, and interests,” she writes, …


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Taking Custody: Owning the Role of Artist AND Mother2 comment(s)

by Fiona Carmody, Special to On the Issues

OCT 22, 2012

Queens, New York – “From locker room to boardroom is a very real concept,” says legendary Queens College women's basketball coach Lucille Kyvallos, who at 80 is now retired. “Those young women who participate in athletics, I think, have a better chance of doing things – doing better – in the business world and in their work professions.”

Kyvallos (or “Ms. K,” as she has always been called by her students) and the women she once coached on the first …


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From Locker Room to Board Room: Women Inaugurate Queens College Athletics Hall of Fame1 comment(s)

by Merle Hoffman, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief

OCT 12, 2012

Congressman Joe Walsh says abortions never save women’s lives.

He’s wrong. Here’s one story out of many:

This happened in 1989. Very publicly.

Nancy Klein, a pregnant Long Island woman rendered comatose by a car accident, was finally given an abortion, woke …


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No, Joe Walsh: Women Do Not Have Nine Lives1 comment(s)

by The Editors

OCT 15, 2012

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard made international headlines (and garnered much admiration) last week when video of her smackdown of Tony Abbott, Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, went viral.

Center-right Liberal Party leader Abbot had put forward a motion for parliamentary Speaker Peter Slipper to step down on the basis of some undeniably

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What Happened: "I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man"1 comment(s)

by The Editors

OCT 15, 2012

We've just learned of efforts by the Hoshyar Foundation* to build a school for girls in Pakistan, in recognition of Malala Yousafzai.

The foundation, which is "a secular, non-profit, U.S.-based organization whose purpose is to raise and distribute funds in support of human empowerment through female education," describes its latest initiative as follows:

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Malala's Legacy

by Robina Niaz

OCTOBER 11, 2012

On this UN-declared International Day of the Girl, it breaks my heart to think that a 14-year old brave, beautiful Pakistani girl, Malala Yousufzai, is lying in a hospital fighting for her life.

My heart goes out to Malala and her family, and I am praying that she recovers completely and lives a healthy life that allows her to fulfill all her dreams.

Malala popularized a slogan that, translated into English, means “Without education – what is the …


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Commentary: "Without education, what is the meaning of Pakistan?"2 comment(s)

by Alyssa Pelish, Associate Editor

The sad news of Shulamith Firestone's death in August has, it turns out, given new life to the radical feminist's legacy.

Although academics have been teaching her groundbreaking book, The Dialectic of Sex, for years, many more readers have became aware of it since her death. Recently, about 100 mourners — including many prominent feminist activists — gathered at …


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Landlord Says No to Shulamith Firestone Memorial Apartment

by Alyssa Pelish, Associate Editor

The Heathcliff brought home one night in Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights adaptation is a slight and wary boy (played by newcomer Solomon Glave). Through his eyes, unaccustomed to the landscape, we experience the overwhelming rush of the wind and the pelting rain, the hostile murmuring of the farmhouse, and the gurgling of the wet land. These images and sounds ground us in those forces of nature so aligned with the volatile Heathcliff and Catherine of Emily Brontë's iconic novel. …


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FILM: Andrea Arnold Darkens Wuthering Heights1 comment(s)

by Merle Hoffman, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief

After debating every major “right-to-life” leader in this country- including Jerry Falwell - I didn't need to watch the debate tonight to know that no matter who the pundits say won, it is women who are losing.

In the meager segment set aside to discuss health care in tonight’s debate both candidates brought out their shop-worn stump speeches on the merits and weaknesses of Obamacare.

At one point Governor Romney said "the government shouldn't be telling a patient and a doctor …


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Where Are The Women?1 comment(s)

by Barbara Fischkin, Senior Editor

It was 1992 and the presidential race between incumbent George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ross Perot was in full steam.

Five days before the second debate, ABC's Carole Simpson was named the first woman-and first African American-moderator.

It was also the first time a television debate would include a "town hall" segment, enabling selected "typical" American citizens to ask questions.

So many firsts. And a woman who was, in many ways, alone in trying to figure it …


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PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE AND THE TWENTY YEAR GENDER GAP: CAROLE SIMPSON ON 1992

by Pamela Leigh

Although I was relatively engaged with feminist issues in the late 1960s and early 1970s, these matters later took a back seat to career and marriage and for too many years languished. These feminist passions were reignited one night this past March after viewing the nightly news.

One of the lead stories that evening was how the State Legislature of Virginia was poised to enact legislation that would force women to endure a vaginal probe and ultra sound prior to electing an abortion. …


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Rebirth of an Activist

by Barbara Fischkin, Senior Editor

It was a memorial service - and a call to action.

Shulamith Firestone, the brilliant, troubled feminist author, artist and activist who died in late August, was remembered at a sad but energized Manhattan memorial service Sunday night at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery.

"The only box Shulie ever fit in was a simple pine box," Firestone's sister Laya Firestone Seghi told a tearful, multi-generational gathering, speaking about her sister's funeral on August 31. More than a …


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BRILLIANCE OUTSIDE THE BOX - SHULAMITH FIRESTONE REMEMBERED

by Chris Lombardi

SUSAN BROWNMILLER, author of Against of Our Will: Men, Women and Rape

Quote: "She was the first radical theorist. Her stuff on human reproduction -- no one was saying it back then."

History: In 1968 Brownmiller joined New York Radical Women organized by Firestone and others the previous fall. A few years later the group, renamed Radical Feminists, was still led by Firestone. It compiled the book Notes of the First Year, often seen as the canonical text for the …


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TWO PROMINENT FEMINISTS ON SHULAMITH FIRESTONE2 comment(s)

by Jennifer Baumgardner

September 7, 2012

Almost 15 years ago, I picked up my ringing phone and the voice on the other end identified herself as Shulamith Firestone. I almost dropped the receiver.

Second wave feminism had many iterations and reverberations. As readers of On The Issues Magazine no doubt know, some women, like Betty Friedan and Helen Gurley Brown, claimed space for women in previously …


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Shulamith Firestone and Me6 comment(s)

by Merle Hoffman

July 31, 2012

When the documentary "Saving Face" was awarded an Oscar this year, it was the first time many had heard about one of the most grotesque forms of violence against women: acid attacks on the victim's face and upper body. While the film focused on such attacks in Pakistan, this week a victim in India spoke out about her attack, telling a journalist that she should be allowed to legally kill herself.

"For the last nine years, I am suffering ... living without hope, …


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Acid Attacks: U.S. Women Can Face Global Violence

by Carolyn Gage

July 27, 2012

The Internet is abuzz with the posthumous outing of astronaut Sally Ride. Everyone seems to have an opinion: Some folks wish that Dr. Ride, as an iconic astronaut, had been out publicly as a powerful role model in the LGBT community. Indeed, there is a posthumous campaign on Facebook to point out the fact that, because of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), her partner Tam O’Shaughnessy will not be able to receive federal death and pension benefits.
Others, taking their …


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Dr. Sally Ride’s Legacy: The Frontiers of Identity2 comment(s)

by The Editors

July 26, 2012

This week, Washington is host to the 19th International AIDS Conference. It differed from its predecessors in some important respects. This is the first time in over 10 years that it has taken place in the United States (after the lifting of the Bush-era travel ban on HIV-positive individuals). And most of today's headlines from AIDS2012 focus on women.

As the conference began, UNICEF deputy executive director Rao Gupta told CBS News: "Women make up half of the …


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At AIDS Conference, Women Finally in the Spotlight

by Merle Hoffman

July 25, 2012

Comparing fetuses to Jews in the gas chambers and or black American slaves is an old trope of the anti-choice movement. Indeed, I have been called Hitler by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell on national television and current anti-choice protestors in front of Choices Women's Medical Center are generous with using the swastika on their signs.
So it was not a surprise to learn that an "abortion wailing wall" was being constructed in Wichita, Kansas -- "bleeding Kansas" -- where …


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Anti-Abortion "Wailing Wall" Gets it Wrong. Very Wrong.

by Lula Belle

July 24, 2012
This past spring, something happened where I live, something perhaps unexpected in my adopted hometown of liberal-minded Charlottesville, Virginia.
Billed as a "Poetry Review of R. Kelly," it featured about 12 white men and women, standing on stage and reciting some of the rapper's lyrics in a deadpan "white person" voice. The performance had some potential — a light jab on the "Poetry Voice" and academia's appropriation of hip-hop — and could have easily taken the route of …


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Musings on Minstrelsy: "Ironic" Racism in America1 comment(s)

by Bill Baird

 
(In yesterday's installment, pro-choice pioneer Bill Baird reported from the stages of the Right to Life Convention. Now, meet the young troops RTLC is training — and why pro-choice men and women must join together to fight back. - Ed.)

July 18, 2012

Compared to other Right-To-Life Conventions I've attended over the past 40 years, this year the youth activists seemed quite a bit younger, and a …


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Report From the Right-to-Life Convention, Part 2: Young Women and Men Unite!

by Bill Baird

July 17, 2012

My wife Joni and I were  the only ones  protesting in front of the National Right to Life Committee's annual convention this year, from June 29-July 1 in Washington, D.C.

I'd just turned 80, and this year's event was the 37th time I had been there to greet them. As always, I came with an eight-foot  cross inscribed with the words "Free Women From the Cross of Oppression - Keep Abortion Legal."

The convention's organizers knew to expect us. I've …


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Why Right-to-Lifers Hate Birth Control and Love Mitt Romney, Part 11 comment(s)

by Janet Mason

June 25, 2012



As the Affordable Care Act worked its way through the courts in the past three years, I began to reflect on how it might have affected my own life and that of my mother, who died of cancer in 1994. The Supreme Court is reportedly due to issue its ruling on the constitutionality of the health care insurance reform (“Obamacare” to some) on June 28, 2012.I don’t know what the justices will decide, but I do know that people like me and my mother need a …


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Health Reform, Supreme Court & What I Learned From My Mother3 comment(s)

by Chris Lombardi

June 18, 2012
This weekend, Egyptian voters went to the polls despite what many were calling a 'constitutional coup.' On June 14, the Supreme Constitutional Court ordered the Parliament dissolved, three days before the scheduled presidential runoff between Mohammed Shafiq, an associate of deposed leader Hosni Mubarak, and Ahmed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood — already regarded as a Hobson's choice by Egyptian feminists and pro-democracy activists.  By Sunday night, two things had …


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In Egypt's Crisis, Standing Up Against Sexual Abuse

by Kathleen A. O’Shea

 June 13, 2012

In the latest show of force, the Vatican is attempting to control and punish nuns and all women who think for themselves -- the most radical wave of feminism ever to wash over the Rock of Peter. As a former nun who loved being a nun, I concur with president of the Leadership Conference for Women Religious (LCWR), who said of the latest decision by Rome, "We're stunned."
Since 2008 the LCWR, the body representing over 56,000 nuns in the U.S. today, has been living …


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Nun-The-Less: Pope Tells Nuns to Stop Thinking2 comment(s)

by Chris Lombardi

 June 10, 2012
General Gale Pollock, former Army Surgeon General, was blunt: "When a servicewoman becomes pregnant due to an act of violence, she should not have to scrounge to meet her medical needs." She was decrying the current policy that prevents military facilities from performing abortions unless the woman's life is in danger, even when the pregnancy is the result of sexual assault or incest.
Last month, the Senate Armed Services Committee approved legislation that would …


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Sending Our Service Women to Back Alleys

by Yifat Susskind

June 5, 2012

It's been two years since the passing of Rhonda Copelon, a women's human rights advocate and lawyer. While we feel her absence, women worldwide also feel the presence of her vital work. She changed the face of international law, molding it into a tool that could better protect women. Her work was critical in winning recognition of rape as a war crime and a crime against humanity.

In my work at MADRE, an international women's …


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Crucial as Bread: Rhonda Copelon's Pioneering Work