by Steph Herold

I learned about Dr. Tiller's murder via Twitter. I remember exactly where I was on May 31, 2009 — lounging in my mother's home in suburban Maryland, casually browsing the new Internet phenomenon, not yet convinced that it was a worthwhile pursuit for me. I saw a friend's tweet, "Dr Tiller is dead?!?" and at first it didn't register. I looked around. Outside, the wind was blowing through the trees. My beagle was sleeping, snoring next to me. Dr. Tiller was dead. What?

At the time, I worked at an abortion clinic. We referred our patients to Dr. Tiller if we couldn't see them due to a later stage in pregnancy …


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Honoring Our Legacy: Founding IAmDrTiller.com

by Jeannie Ludlow

In 1974, American feminist Florence Howe called Women's Studies the "educational wing of the women's movement." As a Women's Studies coordinator and faculty member, I work at the intersection of academia and activism, a place of excitement, debate, collaboration, and, sometimes, tension.

After reading Megan Carpentier's article from On The Issues Magazine on her uncomfortable experience with Women's Studies and Carol Hanisch's call for a resurgence of radical feminist consciousness raising, I began to …


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Feeding Minds Feminism: Women's Studies

by Linda Stein

DC Comics had its chance, and it missed the moment. In wanting to give Wonder Woman a trendy present-day persona, it released her new look on June 30, 2010 in issue number 600, and passed on its opportunity to create the first non-objectified female superhero in contemporary pop culture.

DC could have done the right thing. Instead, it went for a replay of the typical male wish-list and the diminishment of women.

The comic book company claimed to The New York Times that it was modernizing Wonder Woman, bringing her “into the 21st century,” and it wanted to “be …


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Wonder Woman Confronts a Makeover Moment: A Missed Chance

by Rev. Rebecca Turner

Since the 1960s, a sex education war has waged in school districts and state legislatures around the country. Schools seeking to be responsible in helping students learn how to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections established medically accurate sex education programs.

But almost immediately, they experienced a backlash from religious organizations that wanted no sex education in public schools. They usually voiced a fear that information about sex would tantalize students and encourage them into early sexual experimentation. The solution, these organizations argued, is that sex education should be done in the home and church where …


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Opening New Horizons on Faith-Based Sex Education

by Natalie Bell

By the early 1970s, nearly 20 years after the U.S. Supreme Court had found segregated schools to be inherently unequal, little had been done to voluntarily integrate in the South. Forced to take action, many districts began literally shipping black and white kids into schools once divided by race. So-called “busing” represented radical change, and generated widespread discord and upheaval. In Nashville, where desegregation had begun incrementally, one grade at a time, and one elementary school was bombed the night after a black child was admitted, fear threatened to choke the viability of an …


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'Earth to Natalie': One Teacher and Integration in Nashville

by Suzanne Grossman

I recently had the pleasure of speaking on a career panel to young women enrolled in Feminist Summer Camp, an intensive weeklong immersion in women’s issues and feminist organizations organized by authors and activists Amy Richards and Jennifer Baumgardner. Though I’ve worn many hats at a variety of organizations over the past ten years, this time I was representing the company I founded last year called, LYJ, which is shorthand for Love Your Job, Love Your Life.

LYJ started as a group blog but quickly turned into classes and workshops related to career exploration with a focus on women. My background in

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Tips on Making a Career Out of Feminist Work1 comment(s)

by Georgia Kral

Two indie bands with all female members, Mountain Man from Bennington, Vermont and Sleep Over from Austin, Texas, use their music performances to share more than sound. On the road, both experiment with offering zines that preach sex positive messages for fans.

Sex positive education goes further than the basic sex education one might receive in school. It’s not about what could happen if you have unprotected sex. Sex positive education teaches about, among other things, enjoying and understanding sexuality, being open to gender differences and identities and learning to talk about sexuality freely.

While some of this is happening in pro sex-education …


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Indie Music Groups Share Sex Positivity

by Rev. Donna Schaper

Judson Memorial Church, located in Greenwich Village in New York City, has trained 29 seminary students as public ministers over the last five years. As the senior minister at Judson and the developer of this program, I thought I would be teaching the public ministers. The opposite is true. The chief learning so far in five years of community ministry is that we had more to learn than to teach.

Public ministry contrasts to parochial ministry in attending the community first and the parish second. While the goal of parochial ministry is spiritual nurture, the goal of public ministry is social justice. The dividing line …


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Taking Seminaries Out of the Box3 comment(s)

by Carol Downer

To secure the availability of abortion, we who are "pro-choice" need to take the lessons from the "second wave" movement in the 1960s and 1970s and create a mass movement as strong or stronger.

As it stands now, women seeking abortion care must walk through crowds of protestors; abortion providers fear for their safety; states are passing laws to make women seeking abortions go through waiting periods, obtain parental or judicial permission, or view photos of aborted fetuses; politicians vote against women's reproductive rights; and the author of the last U.S. Supreme Court decision on abortion, Justice Anthony Kennedy, publicly shamed women who have later abortions in

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A Blast From the Past Can Secure Abortion Rights

by Myriam Miedzian

The issue of violence touches me in a very personal and profound way. I am a Holocaust child survivor. While my parents succeeded in getting our nuclear family out of Europe, other family members were not so fortunate—135 were murdered.

My interest in reducing violence resulted in Boys Will Be Boys: Breaking The Link Between Masculinity And Violence, first published in 1991. A major part of the book is devoted to concrete steps that society can take to begin to move away from violence.

Violent acts -- whether in wars, genocides, acts of terrorism, homicide or rape -- are …


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Reducing Violence by Educating for Empathy

by Angie Young

When I was a little girl in the mid to late 1980s, I thought hippies were the coolest thing. Peace, love, ending war, fighting for civil rights – these all seemed like ideas I could get behind. My father, who refused to cut his hair or wear a suit, is the one who taught me about illegal abortion and why it was important to be pro-choice. He also taught me to educate myself, love everybody, and question authority. I consider myself lucky to have been raised with ideals of making the world a better place. It's part of what led me to make The Coat Hanger Project and to become an activist.

It's funny how times …


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On "Generation Y/Millennials" and Teaching Reproductive Justice through Film

Spring 2012 Café --Level the Playing Field: Girls, Women and Sports

Winter 2012 Café --Abortion

Fall 2011 Café --Activism

Summer 2011 Café --Women, War and Peace

Spring 2011 Café --The Ecology of Women

Winter 2011 Café --The Conning of the Feminists

Summer 2010 Café --EQUALITY...How much further away?

Spring 2010 Café --The Feminist MInd

Winter 2010 Café -- Passion, Freedon & Women

Fall 2009 Café -- Race, Feminism, Our Future

Summer 2009 Café -- Our Genders, Our Rights

Spring 2009 Café -- Lines in the Sand

Winter 2009 Café -- New Revolutions we Need

Fall 2008 Café -- What is Terror for Women?

Summer 2008 Café -- Works Hard for her Money: Feminists and Prostitutes

Spring 2008 Café -- HIV/AIDS Blowback hits Women Hard