Feminism

Arlie Hochschild coined the term in 1983 to describe a specific workplace cost. Starbucks' Green Apron Service is pushing it further than she imagined

After visiting an island brothel in Bangladesh, the novelist was inspired to write an imagined uprising. She explores the radical fictional worlds where women have the power

Respectfully, no thanks

Elfriede

I am beyond the point in my life
Where I am trying to save
An emotionally unavailable
Avoidant man

The story of the misunderstood, sensitive softboi
The story of the emotionally unavailable man
With fear of intimacy
And commitment issues
Who will eventually reveal their lovable golden core
As old as time
So old
My ears bleed from it
It’s a fairy tale
Cause all they ever reveal themselves to be
Is self-absorbed assholes

You say women never gave you a chance
To open up and be yourself
While all that time
you apparently expected them
to commit to your terms

But
two people
means two terms,
and a women’s terms are no less of importance than yours.

Maybe they waited patiently
Went in
Round and round again
For negotiation
And drove against walls
And eventually decided,
they had seen enough
You had shown them your terms
And respectfully,
They declined

If you don’t want to get to know me
If you are not interested in meaningful conversation
If you are looking for a good time,
laughter, kisses and good fucks
Then please
Let’s just call it like that
And let’s have some uncomplicated sex
Without all the other awkwardness

But also
without you reaping all the care work
All so eagerly
Without reciprocating

Yet, if in general
I am just too much
A burden
Demanding
Intense
You’re repulsed by me
Being an actual subject
A person
With a character
With needs, emotions and boundaries

Then
Better buy yourself
A pocket pussy
And talk to chatGPT
I heard its programmed for empathy and not giving strong counters
I have seen and tried and waited and
I, respectfully, decline.

Published in Harbour #4 Fall 2025

For weeks, WNBA fans and players kept an eye out for green dildos flying toward the court, a phenomenon that started July 29 during a game between the Golden State Valkyries and the Atlanta Dream and occurred during at least six more games around the country. Players, coaches and fans expressed shock and frustration.

Online, an entirely different group of people were following the games. Instead of focusing on the athletes, the cryptocurrency enthusiasts were posting derogatory comments about the WNBA and scanning the stands, awaiting the emergence of the green sex toy, based on a meme coin they launched the day before. They quickly claimed credit for some of the incidents, which were designed to create publicity for the meme coin and drive up its value. The meme coin’s value jumped 300 percent in its first week and traded over $1.3 million in a single day.

“We didn’t do this because we dislike women’s sports or, like, some of the narratives that are trending right now are ridiculous,” the spokesperson for the group told USA Today under the condition of anonymity. “Creating disruption at games is like, it happens in every single sport, right?”

For these women athletes, it wasn’t a harmless disruption. It was a safety concern and deeply disrespectful. Humiliation, often lewd, has long been used to make women feel uncomfortable or diminish their athletic accomplishments. The WNBA has grown significantly in the last two seasons with record attendance, television viewership and financial investment. As they negotiate for higher salaries, players are fighting to be respected.

“Everyone’s trying to make sure the W is not a joke, and it’s taken seriously and then that happens,” Sophie Cunningham of the Indiana Fever said during an August 5 podcast interview, referring to the first dildo being thrown. “I’m like, how are we ever going to get taken seriously?”

The 19th spoke with experts about the popularity of meme coins, how online jokes can lead to violence and what can be done about it.

But despite the continued attacks on queer people, the popularity of women’s sports bars, which typically attract a large queer clientele, hasn’t slowed. In fact, more women’s sports bars than ever before are popping up from coast to coast, with the number of bars expected to quadruple across America by the end of the year.

Like many other women’s sports bar owners, opening a spot had been on Diener’s mind for years, but it wasn’t until she saw Jenny Nguyen open The Sports Bra in Portland, Oregon, in 2022, that she realized her dream could really become reality.

Considered by most to be the first bar of its kind, Nguyen told CNBC that “the only competition is the status quo,” and by catering to fans often pushed out of sports spaces, she tapped into an unfed market, with her business racking in almost $1 million in its first eight months.

Nguyen has continued to be a key player in the ongoing success of women’s sports bars. Just last year, The Sports Bra announced that it had received a major investment from the 776 Foundation, owned by Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit and husband of tennis player Serena Williams who herself has always been vocal about supporting women in sport and has been a big draw for fans at Nguyen’s bar. With that investment, The Sports Bra is franchising, with plans to open locations in cities across the States, fostering more women’s sports and community building.

Dillard was the fifth Black woman to buy a home through Black Women Build’s program. Now, 17 women have moved into the Upton, Druid Heights and Poppleton neighborhoods, occupying some of the 21 homes founder Shelley Halstead has renovated since 2019.

“It’s hard to acquire houses if you don’t have the funding and the capital to back it up in the intermediate,” Dillard said. “I think that Black Women Build is bridging that gap between what city officials feel is necessary or needed for the Black community versus what is actually needed for this community.”

In 2015, Halstead was a recent West Baltimore transplant with a background in carpentry and a fresh law degree in hand. While exploring Upton, her new neighborhood, she saw the legacy of redlining and the impact of failed revitalization projects in the 1960s and 1970s that resulted in dilapidated homes, with trees growing out of them and collapsed walls and roofs. Many were slated to be torn down by the city.

But at least some of the units were salvageable, and she saw an opportunity. Halstead decided to put her skills to work. In 2017, she founded Black Women Build, a nonprofit that purchases the homes in Baltimore that are in need of serious work, renovates them and then sells the units at or below the market rate. She began renovating the homes and inviting Black women into the fold to diversify and uplift neighborhoods. In addition to the vacant homes, Halstead saw a lot of opportunity in the area to bring in more businesses and community spaces for her neighbors.

Through the organization, Halstead hoped to help Black women own property, which is often the path to wealth in this country.

Good article.

https://opinionatedogre.substack.com/p/maybe-dont-announce-you-want-to-fuck

@feminism@pullopen.xyz @feminism@beehaw.org

After eight months of pre-trial incarceration, endless speculation, and millions of dollars spent on attorneys, the United States of America v. Sean Combs trial came to an unsatisfying conclusion earlier this month. Combs, a hip-hop mogul with endless access to fame, wealth, and power, was facing a life sentence if convicted of the five counts charged by the Southern District of New York. Despite compelling testimony from several of his victims, including his former girlfriend Cassie Ventura, the jury ultimately acquitted him of three of the most serious charges, including sex trafficking, and convicted him on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution.

Combs is now facing 20 years, with legal experts estimating that he will likely be sentenced to less than five years and will have that time reduced by 13 months because he was denied both pre-trial and post-trial bail. It is certainly a disappointing outcome, especially for those of us—me included—who perceived this as the proverbial first domino in the long overdue reckoning owed to Black women in hip-hop.

I understand the hopelessness. I even understand the fear. However, as we sort through the wreckage of this trial, another possibility emerges. The jury acquitted Combs on two counts of sex trafficking for a number of reasons, including the fact that the SDNY overreached with the charges. But as I followed the trial, it became abundantly clear that the prosecution was committed to presenting Ventura and the witness known as “Jane” as victims who were forced to participate in sex acts. However, the defense team was able to split those hairs, lean into the sexist idea that these women were willing to compromise themselves for access to Combs’ wealth and fame, and ultimately convince the jury that they were willing participants in their own abuse.

But between those two legal extremes, there is another option here, one that could signal new protections for women who are publicly regarded as girlfriends to powerful, wealthy men but are privately treated as sex workers existing at the beck and call of their primary client. If the movement to decriminalize sex work were successful, there might be an avenue for those like Ventura and the anonymized Jane to seek recourse when they are abused in the act of providing of service without facing the possibility of being criminalized or prosecuted for participating in sex work. If these women were regarded as workers instead of the gold diggers Combs’ defense team depicted them as, then there might even be space in our cultural imagination to debunk the notion that these women were willing to compromise their “moral integrity” in exchange for access to wealth, power, and fame.

While there’s been a slow thaw towards openly talking about miscarriage thanks to social media, the word itself still contains an air of old-timey superstition and precious shame in most everyday contexts, something I would quickly learn in the aftermath of my own. Even now, chatting with friends or neighbors, I’ve found the word “miscarriage” invokes an involuntary wince, in both myself and others, because it’s just not something we talk about in a casual way.

Meanwhile, in a medical setting, doctors will bluntly inform you of how wildly common miscarriage is, ending 1 in 4 pregnancies, mostly in the first trimester and often before you’ve even realized you’re pregnant. One would hope that something that happens that frequently would be—I don’t know—discussed? But overwhelmingly, it’s not—until, as I learned, you join the miscarriage club yourself.

I’m not going to get into the public political discourse on pregnancy here—that would require several books, not an article. But with the trend of states legislating a stranglehold on women’s reproductive rights, it feels more important than ever to have open, candid, and clear conversations about the reality of pregnancy—including potential miscarriage. And that means sharing our stories, no matter how uncomfortable, so that we have a realistic, informed, and nuanced view on the many things becoming pregnant can entail.

So, here’s mine.

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/21033066

In which Mars-in-Theory🦋 goes into how 'common sense' and similar discussion terminating cliches are fascist and merely exist to maintain and prop up the status quo.

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The depiction of strangulation in pornography will be banned in a move to protect women from violence, the Government has announced.