Among the Mbendjele gathering-hunting people who live in the Republic of Congo, “women’s laughter manages to keep men in line.” Drawing from ethnographic research by Jerome Lewis, anthropologist Chris Knight relates that among the Mbendjele, “senior women exercise a special privilege, seeing it as their enjoyable role to bring down
Photo by Noam Galai Women (and some men) with signs, as far as the eye could see. In my first post about the Women’s March of January 21, 2017, I chronicled the social and emotional ties I saw created in this space of massive communitas, feminist style. Here, I
Donald Trump has revived old stereotypes in claiming that Fox News commentator/Republican debate moderator Megyn Kelly was ruled by her hormones (“bleeding from her wherever”) when she critiqued his multiple sexist statements and stances. Explaining away women’s anger by reference to the menstrual cycle is an old habit of those
As a high school student, I remember the excitement of going door-to-door to solicit signatures on petitions of various sorts. Adding one’s name to a list of other names on a single piece of paper may not seem consequential. But when that sheet joins hundreds or thousands of others, suddenly
This set of fourteen offensively sexist ads from the 1950s is so over-the-top, it’s easy to dismiss them, relegating them to a “Thank goodness we’re beyond this and have made some progress” trash bin. But many of the recent comments added to a website that uploaded the ads suggest otherwise.