The music video for “Hwages,” roughly translated as “concerns,” has been viewed about 3.2 million times since its December premiere, and for good reason—directed by Majed al-Esa of Saudi production company 8ies Studios, the incredibly catchy video shows a trio of Saudi women in niqabs overtly mocking the dystopian…
Observer freelancer Jacques Hyzagi’s “Elle on Earth” piece was a quite fascinating, entertaining piece as a standalone—a drunken bar brawl of a curio. As a curtains-up, jabby and somewhat fantastical piece of media criticism, it invited criticism of its own across the fashion and media internet, including here at…
Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Boy Problems,” a song that is ostensibly about annoying your girlfriends with too much boy talk but is actually (according to me) a beautiful treatise on the frisson of gay self-discovery, almost didn’t make it onto CRJ’s album but immediately declared itself as a crowd favorite upon Emotion’s…
Today in juvenile patriarchy news, a boy (ew) ended up winning a tech competition that’s part of a program meant for girls.
Since 1896 married couples in Japan have been legally obligated to take the same surname. However, five women are attempting to eliminate this antiquated rule by suing the Japanese government.
Although creating a brand new surname after marrying is a rare choice, it’s viewed by some as the most equal, romantic, and kid-friendly solution in an antiquated patriarchal system. But it’s also a very easy way to anger your loved ones.
Approaching women they don’t know can be hard for men, or at least I assume this, because they whine about it a lot. But apparently it’s not nearly as difficult as figuring out when to leave a total stranger the hell alone.
A new study published Monday has finally answered the age-old question asked primarily by women: why is the office so fucking frigid all the fucking time?
Speaker of the House John Boehner (R) participated in a jaunty interview segment on Golf TV, for some reason, and although the full tête-à -tête doesn’t air until August 3rd, the 30-second preview is an illuminating glimpse into the life of a Republican politician.
While there are the obvious industries and outlets that put women in the minority, if at all (congressional seats, music festival headliners, everything), some patterns are not as crystal clear until you see them put them together. Now there’s a Tumblr that points out the extreme lack of female representation,…
In response to the artwork for Nicki Minaj's upcoming single, Anaconda, Chuck Creekmur, the CEO of AllHipHop.com wrote an open letter to the rapper essentially scolding her for the sexual nature of the cover.
Earlier this month, someone stole $2000 worth of "racy" calendars from a kiosk in the Metro Atlanta Mall of Georgia. But this wasn't your average shoplifting job: The thieves left behind placards saying "Sorry, misogyny is out of stock," "the female body is not a commodity," and, yes, "fuck the patriarchy."
Some conventions of patriarchal culture are easier to conceptually dismantle than others. Sure, women are still being paid less than men for the same exact work, but most reasonable people (and hopefully this isn’t too optimistic a generalization) who aren’t dripping with troll goo and are too young to have ever…
In an AFI interview from late 2012 that’s just starting to gain some traction now, in the summer doldrums, Dustin Hoffman talked about how, when he was first made-up as Dorothy Michaels during his preliminary preparations for Tootsie, he had a revelation about the unreasonable expectations our society has for female…
If there's one thing I'm always going to remember about the 2012 election, it's that it was the moment I first saw the white male monopoly lose its vise-grip on American culture. Not that white men aren't in charge anymore—they are, and they will probably always be a dominant political bloc—but there's a sense that…
Patriarchies are defined by sexism: the valuing of men over women. In our American patriarchy, however, this is matched—and perhaps superseded—by something called androcentrism: the valuing of all-things-masculine over all-things-feminine. Enter the Mercedes SLK.
Monday, Forbes announced "The 10 Most Trusted Celebrities." As BlackBook's Rohin Guha notes, there is just one lady on the list:
Liesl Gerntholtz of Human Rights Watch has a great OpEd in the Boston Globe tracking how women's lack of property rights in some African countries directly affects their ability to feed themselves and their children.
A study from Cambridge University suggests that when men are laid off or fired, they don't cope with it as well as women. That's what my mom says about my dad catching cold.
The problem with being a liberal some days is that there are just so many things to oppose: the patriarchy, obviously; global warming; big business; the War in Iraq; the War on Drugs; oil companies; pharmaceutical companies; health insurance companies; zoos (but not when they do conservation work); circuses all the…