Rush Limbaugh has been all over the news since his misogynistic rant about Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown University law student who testified before Democratic members of Congress about birth control coverage being a necessary part of women’s health. His rant went on for over three days, during which he called her a “slut” and a “prostitute,” along with about 50 other insults. Apparently,…

Unlike most commercials, those that air during the Super Bowl are ones that people actually want to watch. These $3.5-million-per-30-second-time-slots can be opportunities for companies to be clever, maybe even inspiring … but instead, many insist on falling back on lazy and uninspired sexist clichés. This is so expected in fact, that MissRepresentation.org, a campaign named…

The other day, my friend shared this image on my Facebook wall. I’m sure she had good intentions, as did the creator. At first glance, it seems like a girl-power-feel-good-kind-of-message that challenges the pressure to be thin, similar to the “real women have curves” mantra made popular by…

In pop culture, a whore is demonized — she’s a woman who sells her body for money, a prostitute. She’s promiscuous and immoral. She’s unclean — she’s a dirty whore, a filthy whore. She’s damaged goods and the opposite of virgin. It’s a bad thing to “whore yourself out” or to be anyone’s bitch. A Google image search for “whore” will bring up lots of porn (so make sure your SafeSearch is on) and quite a…

At various times, male strangers have stopped me to say: “You should smile; you’d look prettier”, “Why aren’t you smiling?”, or similar comments. I assumed it was some awkward form of flirtation, so I generally managed to force out a weak attempt at politeness. But it always made me feel uncomfortable and a bit irritated. Commanding a strange woman to smile isn’t exactly the pinnacle of good manners, so why did I feel compelled to do as I was told? Am I supposed to just grin like a…