May 2022

A few weeks ago on this blog I hazarded the bizarre notion that soon, right wingers would be patting themselves on the back for making abortion illegal for an additional reason than those they usually give, the new one being that it would please other right wingers terrified of “replacement theory.”

I promised that we would not let this story drop, so we are following up on it here: Marina Ovsyannikova. The 43-year-old Russian TV editor had held up a poster for six seconds on “Vremya,” the main news program on Russian state television, while live and on air, and had become an icon for freedom of speech, women, and the press overnight. Those six seconds would change her life forever. Lilienström spoke with Ovsyannikova about what motivated her to take such a courageous move with concrete repercussions, the moments that followed, and how her family reacted....

So we just had Mother's Day--fitting, because last Tuesday the United States Supreme Court ruled that every American woman must become a mother. The forced pregnancy ruling that was leaked from the United States Supreme Court, written by Justice Samuel Alito, is on one hand not at all surprising, in that we were expecting it, but on the other hand is an utter astonishment, because of its complete gall, an audacity, an atrocity. I and others, far more learned in law, have already and will in future make clear why the haphazard, erroneous reasoning cited by Alito in his draft is egregiously wrong, biased, myopic, and in brazen contradiction to the Constitution and to jurisprudence itself. Which is not to even begin mentioning the death-knell effect this ruling will try to ring on American women—more than half the population of the country—or blatant ignoring of the fact that over 54...

Ukrainian artists — performing artists and creative artists alike – have been coming to the aid of their country, donating time, concerts, etc., and doing so unapologetically for being artists and not in uniform. I find this quite moving, and it got me thinking about women and art.